Bootstrapping With AI: The Startup Story Behind Omneky's AdTech Success With Hikari Senju

Speaker A: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast where we have top leaders and founders of agencies sharing wisdom on how they built their company. Hi there, I'm Kevin Horrigan, host of the show where I featured inspiring agency leaders and owners who are willing to share their insights and stories. Today's podcast is brought to you by Spiny Tech. Hikari. Hey. At Spiny Tech, we help middle market and larger agencies get more leads. Who doesn't need more leads? At Spiny Tech, we take an end to end digital approach, starting with your website website and making sure it has the right aesthetic appeal and convincing content to convert your visitors into action. And then we look through all of your digital marketing tactics such as SEO, paid search, paid and organic social email marketing and more. With the correct website and optimized digital marketing campaigns in place, we help our clients grow. To learn more, go to www.spinutech.com. that's Spin the Letter utech.com. well, today's guest is Hikari. He's a founder of Omni Key. Omni Key is an AI platform that generates, analyzes and optimize personal ad creatives at scale. Hikari has had a background in computer sciences from Harvard University and experience in AI technologies. He's a subject matter expert in leveraging AI for advertising and he's passionate about generative AI and data driven creative solutions. Hikari, I love catching up with you earlier today and we can't wait to learn more. Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast.

Speaker B: Thanks Kevin. I'm really excited to be here and having this conversation with you.

Speaker A: Yeah, well, Hikari, I think what a great introduction. I know you grew up in New York. You're in Sunnydale, California today. You went to Harvard. That's a lot to pack in. Tell us a little bit more about yourself, a little bit more about where you grew up, what you went to Harvard for, and what did little Hikari want to be when he became big. Hikari.

Speaker B: Yeah, so I grew up in Westchester, New York. My grandfather worked at IBM. Um, uh, and that's why actually my mother went to the same high school I did in Westchester in tropical horse. Really? Go, uh, go Quakers. Um, and uh, and so definitely from early age, early, you know, access to technology, uh, early access to and just developing intuition of Moore's Law. I remember some of my earliest memories is with my grandf, became a VC afterward, a venture capitalist and so going and seeing some of the cool projects that um, he was investing in some of the um, robotics and just really being wowed also by his stories that you Know, every, every six months the world changes. And this is back you know in the, you know in the obviously personal computer revolution, but also preceding the personal computer revolution with the microcomputers, um, and his. And just even back then the world was changing every six months. And if you didn't you know, keep up, you know, keep in step with the technological progress you were, you were out of business. And and so yeah, a deep passion and excitement for technology from a very young age. Um, uh, and then so I decided to study computer. I got into Harvard, I got to MIT and Princeton and all these schools, um ah, for college I was a good student and I uh, was a leader uh in my high school, um uh, and um, and uh, focusing on studying uh, computer science. And uh, then it was actually while I was taking computer science courses at mit, I was cross registering at MIT for a lot of my coursework that I came across some early gen AI models, like demos of gen AI, generative AI. It was generating these highly hallucinogenic uh, images. Uh but uh, this was back in 2014, 2015, uh kind of reverse engineering these computer vision models and you can kind of have these computer vision models spit out the patterns they're recognizing to identify objects and you can kind of use text to image to um, kind of prompt these image recognition models initially to kind of like spit out the patterns they're using to discover and recognize, you know cats and dogs etc. That I saw really the power of gen AI and kind of in 20, Moore's Law saw where it could be in, you know, within a decade, um, separately. My dad's a painter and so um, um uh the idea of an AI generating art we found just very exciting. And that's really how I got, yeah, that's really actually how I got to Gen AI was not even as, not even you know from an uh, just just being really wowed and excited about technology. The idea of an AI being creative of generating artwork, uh, the potential revolutionary implications of that, that if AI uh could be creative, if an AI can help with communication uh between people. Art is ultimately just communication. It's communication of emotions. It's a communication of a state of being. It's m. It's a communication of a mental state in many ways. And so um, uh the idea that an AI could kind of, you know, it's very resonant art. Art, you know art um, evokes an emotional response. And so if, if an AI can do that then you know that is a um, that is a, you know Revolution, truly revolutionary uh technology. And so that's really when I got hooked into Jenny. I was, was in college just uh, intuiting the implications of Moore's law and that ability to um, uh you know create, you know create content that resonates with people. Um, I started two venture back companies in college. I was entrepreneurial uh, uh as a you know as a kid, you know, you know had like a uh, you know but create a website uh you know in high school for like recommending clothes depending on which clothes you bought. And uh. So um, uh I started two venture backed companies in college one of which was an education. It was a personalized learning application was about connecting students with personalized tutors and helping craft personalized uh, uh, learning styles based on individual learning styles. Um, that's where also learning about the importance of personalization the idea that um, everyone has their own unique learning styles. Uh and I think that definitely applies to advertising because advertising ultimately I think is education at scale. It's fundamentally educating somebody about the value props of product. And so um, uh, uh yeah, one of the venture back companies was acquired by the company in the Bay Area in San Francisco. That's what got me to move to San Francisco back in UH 2017 to run marketing at the acquirer. And then it was running marketing combined with my passion Gen AI that I had this opportunity, saw this opportunity to start OMNIQ back in 2018 which is using Gen AI to solve this really you know, difficult marketing problem which is how do you create effective content and how do you create effective personalized content at scale? And so that was, that's kind of the quick origin story if you will. I mean a little bit, little bit uh, meandering but.

Speaker A: No, no but I mean listen man, it's an amazing journey and you're really probably right into the next question is what made you start Omni Key? So you know, you talked a little bit, you know, so you're talking 2018. Um, you know the acronym AI wasn't well used at that time. What gave you the vision to start all of this? Who did you think your first customers would be? You know, what did you take to market and just love to hear what your thoughts were at the time. I assume you needed to make a paycheck at some point. So you know, what were your thoughts are on what you're going to take the market, how are you going to charge for it, how are you going to market it? And I'd love to hear how that journey went.

Speaker B: Yeah, so the uh, the Strategy, you know and I actually have this very early version of the deck and I wrote it on paper and this is back when I was this 2018 and I was sharing you know some of the new team members. Every time they get on they see this deck and and really again it's, it's very clearly the thesis is laid out. It's like in 2018 I can generate or it's getting, you know it's already generating copy. Um, you know this is um 2017. I think his attention is all you need know famous comes out regarding the transformer. So AI can generate very good copy uh or start generating good copy. You can train it on people's corpus information, brand information. They'll kind of output uh um content uh reflecting that brand um uh and then images, you know seeing images as kind of closely following that and that we're going to have very realistic images soon and then video not soon, far after. And so that was really the initial thesis is like. And I think I was also very lucky because I ended uh up being very powered by open source. And I think partly it's because of um, you know just powered by these massive research institutions, you know and again going to one of them and kind of imbuing in the uh, the research from. From you know from. From a student, as a student I think you saw that uh then, then obviously a lot of the research institutions even within big corporations. Um and so um, the thesis was that the Gen AI technology is going to keep getting propelled through open source. This was back in. So therefore the opportunity was focusing on building the best application, focusing on an industry. Uh and I decided that the industry I wanted to focus on was in advertising. Um and I think you know this is actually why Omnikey is called Omnikey and I designed the logo back in 2017. Uh and it imbues certain hints of this. It's like for example you know publicists at that time and I think still is one of the largest, you know largest ad agencies in the world. Our logo is the same gold color as the publicist lion. In fact our M golden monkey is reminiscent of the Publicis lion. Um, you know Omnicom is the largest uh you know currently now the largest again ad agency in the world. And Omni Key is. And so ah our logo um reflects the focus on advertising and the idea and thesis that Gen AI is going to revolutionize advertising. This is back in you know again I'm designing the logo in 2017 as I'm still working at my previous company. And so the vision was build the gen uh application focus on a particular industry which is advertising um using data uh and creating more personalized effective content and that the genai underlying generative technology will improve. And so as, and this is the way you can surf the wave. The Gen AI wave is focus on building the best application and as the underlying models improve just swap out the underlying models, the latest and greatest new models. Um Also you know 2015 is when just as I'm graduating is when Hugging Face is founded. And you know it starts off initially as a chatbot but now but then you know around, around 2017 is when it pivots into an open source platform. And so as a uh actually at my previous job I was already starting to explore some of these Hugging Face models uh on the side and seeing hey look these massive LLMs, these Bert models. Ernie it's available open source. Anybody can access these models uh and start generating content. And so um and so that was. And so you know there was already kind of the, a fairly vibrant open source community around uh gen AI even back in 2017 or 2018. And so um. Yeah and so those, that was the thesis we started executing I think. Yeah, I mean it was very early uh we I was bootstrapped. I mean I took whatever savings I had made from selling my previous company and uh, I uh you know uh, invested in, lent the entire you know all that money to the company. Um uh uh and uh that's kind of how we got started. We I was very lucky. I had some really great angel investors early on. Um Village Global was you know one of our first investors actually investor in day one, uh one of the uh founders of the fund and Duane at my previous company when I was running my previous edtech company because she was formerly the CEO of chegg and so I met her at various Ed Tech conferences. She had become a partner at Village Global uh and then um and so Village uh Global was the first was initial investor in the company. Uh we My uh previous boss uh uh ah who had acquired my my company Nagim Serious was the first investor in the company as well. Uh I was very lucky. Early on I met Richard Socer who at that time was chief scientist at Salesforce uh was uh now runs uh u.com was the early angel investor in the company. Um uh you know and he ended up also being early investors and he was actually an early investor in Hugging Face. He was an early investor in Perplexity. And so he has a good track record of investing in you Know, leading gen AI companies. And so being in the bay, uh, you know, having uh, you know, uh, yeah, having a previous employer, previous investors, I met people, you know, in the AI community, become early investors. That's really kind of how we got started for the first two years. So uh. But yeah, it was definitely a lean, lean operation. I was, I remember, you know, going to events and subsisting off, you know, muffins at these events. I remember, you know, buying beans and surviving off the beans, uh, you know, and yogurt. I was like a beans and yogurt and kind of diet and you know, maybe if I'm feeling kind of indulgent, I'll buy like a burrito and split in half and have one burrito for breakfast, another beer for dinner, something. So those were the first two years, uh, company. But um. But uh, but yeah, it was, you know, it flew by so fast because the underlying tech. Because you know, in some ways I come from it as a technologist, as, as a computer scientist, as an engineer. And I was just so endlessly fascinated by the, the, the, the, the technology that I was building with, which is Gen AI. Learning more about gen every day and building products with Gen AI and experimentally with it that it just. The time flew by so fast because I just was so lost in the work and that. Um, and so uh, then, uh, and then, you know, then. And then you, then you have around um, uh, and then really things started really taking off around 2020, uh, with kind of GPT, uh, you know, initially GPT 2, but then GPT 3 and then you have uh, kind of a large surge in demand in advertising, uh, uh, due to digital advertising, due to kind of really tragic um, situation with Corona. But like a lot of the people were moving online and so a lot of business had to pivot suddenly to digital advertising. So that created a lot of demand for, for our um, for uh, you know, our platform. And so um, they. Yeah, it was very lean days early on, but uh, but also blew up. It was also a very fun period for me as well.

Speaker A: So you look back at the 2018 days, you're getting the business started like most entrepreneurs, lean times, you know, you're trying to find a way.

Speaker B: About the same time I was 25, like, you know, it's like you don't, you know, it's like you don't. Yeah, I mean it wasn't a hum m. You know, it wasn't like a huge opportunity class. It's not. I was single, you know.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: Like you just like it's a 25 year old just obsessing with technology. Right. And, and so it wasn't like uh, you know, like, yeah, it was fair. I could be lean as well, I think. Uh, but also very, you know, like very. But also had a very support even then though, you know, had a very supportive community around me a lot, very supportive ecosystem around me in um, you know, kind of as I'm describing, also supporting me as well. In those years, um, you know, we had early customers, um, who were, you know, uh, you know, you know, who were just, you know, were they paying customers necessarily? Not really. You know, they would give us access to their data and let us, you know, um, uh, you know, get insights from their data and suggest content. And so I was lucky, uh, you know, meeting some customers to iterate early versions of the product with I think of, I think of products like Curology, I think of um, products like Molecule, which is air purifier product and you know, it's a personalized beauty product. Uh, you know, these are all, you know, Silicon Valley, uh, startups and I think, you know, even to this day, you know, a large percentage of revenue comes from other Silicon Valley startups. And so, um, uh, and just, and so any kind of. And so, um. But yeah, so that was also, yeah, those are some of my early customers. And Stan Socks was another, was another early customer in the first year. Um, yeah. And yeah, so, um, so obviously, obviously

Speaker A: you survived those lean times. You had great partners, great investors. Um, you know, here you are seven years later, looking back, um, in your journey, what is the one thing that you learned that you enjoy the most? And then the follow up questions, obviously, what is the one thing you've learned as the founder of the company that you found the most difficult to continue to support?

Speaker B: Um, well, I think, you know, um, the uh, uh, gosh, I mean like, uh, yeah, well, sorry, maybe, yeah, ah, could you maybe like maybe could you be a little bit more specific?

Speaker A: As the company founder, you know, you took a risk and you. Beans and burritos on the good days, right? You did it for a couple of years, um, and you enjoyed the journey. But you know, a lot of people who are listening to this podcast are considering being agency owners or their new agency owners. Yeah, not many of them. Um, you know, there's not, not all of them are going to make it and some need to learn some learning lessons. So you know, in your journey you've been doing this for seven or eight years. You know, what do you look back on that You've enjoyed the most that you made the commitment to do it. And then what do you think was probably the biggest challenge as you look back?

Speaker B: Well, yeah, I mean, I think you gotta, you know, number one is you gotta love, you gotta love the work and you gotta love the fight and you gotta love the uh, you gotta be a fighter. I think for sure. I mean it's a battle for survival. I mean capitalism is not, uh, you know, it's, it's a tough place. You're in the jungle truly, you know, and, and uh, and everything is always trying to kill you. Right. Like.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: In fact, the default is that you're dying or you're dead or like, uh, you know, it's, it's, it's a, you know, default. Yeah. I mean imagine if you drop in the middle of the jungle, you're like constantly. It's a fight for survival. Right. And very much so. And so you got to really love the thing that you're doing and you got to love the fight. And for me in particular, you know, um, I think you have to be aligned in terms of why you're doing this as well and what are the motivations. And, and um, for me again, it comes down to this passion of just deep passion I had for the technology and the product, the problem we're solving, which is, you know, isn't it so cool if you build a great application? The revelation is the revolutionized industry. And so, um, um, uh, I think that is good. I think you have to be good at it. And you have to, I would say, you know, you have to be. So you have to be passionate about it, which is good, but you have to be, you have to be good at it, which is you have to be one of the best at it. I think I was very lucky that I was at the intersection of advertising and Gen AI and design.

Speaker A: Um, yes, great timing.

Speaker B: It's great timing in a great place. I mean, I don't think you would have a founder like myself in a different kind of industry or different time period. I mean, I think this is very unique to this moment in time where creative is being disrupted. And I have a mixture of an artistic background and a technology background and I was able to work in advertising for a couple of years and so I saw all three. So you have to have an expertise in a unique domain that you, that makes you very specialized and valuable. Um, uh, and then the third is you have to make money or definitely outspend or operate in a very cash efficient way. You have to make money doing this thing. And you have to um, figure out the economics so that is sustainable or not sustainable, at least you can survive for each day of battle. Essentially. Um, uh, uh, you have to make money and you have to have cash flowing. Especially in the early days. Cash flow is king because it's what feeds you and it's what feeds the team and it's what lets you keep developing the product, uh, and uh, growing the business and so being um, really rigorous in terms of the operational bottom line of the business and making sure that every dollar you're spending is delivering a higher ROI than the month that you're spending. Um, uh, and then I think also just thinking the time frame of the best you're making depends on your runaway. The shorter the runaway, the, the shorter the return, the ROI of capital that you're spending. And so, um, so there's that. I think if you're going down the path of raising money from investors and you also need to be, you have to understand in speaking the language of investors, which is about obviously the P and L, the balance sheets and the cash flow and the um, uh, uh, but also um, you know, the opportunity market that you're pursuing and the net revenue retention and um, the cohorts, uh, and uh, the annual contract value, um, and then the go to market like marketing, whether it's sales led or marketing led, whether the economics of how you're acquiring customers fits the ACV or the average contract value of your customers. So you have to have a deep understanding of uni economics. Um, uh, and then you gotta be able to communicate that story in a very pithy and concise way that gets investors excited because, you know, default for investors is no. Obviously most investors will say no to almost most of the deals they see. And so you have to be that small fraction that says actually, you know, this one excites me so much that I'm going to willing to kind of change my operation set. Yes. And so, um, and so you got to be worthy of somebody that can attract capital. You have to build a business ultimately that is, that is a good business. I think. Um, there's this great quote that I heard, you know, read, you know, that was read early on when I started coming, which is like grow slow, grow real, you know, big. You know, I think there's a lot of kind of, you know, quick buck schemes and the idea you kind of hustle and you fake it till you make it. And that could work for some people, but like rarely have I seen it work long term. I think eventually these things do catch up on you. And, and like, it's also hard. Like, it's really hard to do that versus just building a solid foundation. Business, uh, with, with solid economics is in some ways more easier because it's just a problem to be solved. You know, I need to make money and develop a product that makes money, and it has to work and it has to do these things and has to create value for my customers. And in some ways. And you know, and there are tons of opportunities, like, because there's tons of niches in the economy all over the place, uh, where, you know, the market's being underserved.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: Um, and so it's just a matter of identifying those opportunities and executing. And again, I think people also have this kind of fear or sense that the thing that you start has to immediately scale to a billion people or a million people or an entire industry. But that's not true. You just need to make your first million, then your first 5 million, then your first. And the way you make your first million doesn't have to scale to 100 million or a billion. You make your first million could be servicing this very unique niche that's underserved.

Speaker A: Right?

Speaker B: And then, and then you, uh, and then you leverage that position to, you know, and expand to a larger opportunity. So, like, the question is more like, you know, you view this almost like rock climbing or, or like hiking a mountain or, you know, if you're a skier, you know, like, you know, the path you're taking is like, you know, you just got to think one step ahead of you and, and not be like, okay, this has to now work for, you know, uh, you know, humongous market up front. But just, you know, what is, how do I make my first 10k, 100k, you know, 500k a million. Like, and that doesn't have to be scalable per se. Like, that can just. You're just taking one step ahead of you, and then eventually, you know, you're out of. At a scale that is much larger. But, um, sometimes I think, you know, you get almost intimidated by like, oh, my God, all these competitors are making billions of dollars. Like, how am I going to possibly compete with that? But, like, the thing is, that's not actually what you need to do to get started. You just, number one, be able to take enough money to feed yourself and then probably enough money to, uh, to like, feed a team and, and then, you know, and then enough growth to attract investors and all this. And, and that doesn't have to immediately like that doesn't mean you have to like me to become a billion dollar business tomorrow. So um, and furthermore, in fact, the opportunity advantage is that you're small, that like, you know, you can go and pursue a $10,000 opportunity or $500,000 per year, or a million dollar opportunity or $5 million opportunity that a company that's generating a billion dollars revenue cannot pursue because it's not worth the ROI of their time.

Speaker A: You're not gonna go after it, right? Right.

Speaker B: You're not gonna go after it because it's, because, yeah, because they have to make 20% revenue growth at least year, uh, over year, which is, you know, 100, they have to find 200 million in New revenue every year. If they're a billion dollar run rate business, they're not gonna pursue the $10,000 or million dollar opportunity. So there are actually tons of million dollar opportunities, you know, that are overlooked by big companies because for them it's just, you know, it's, it's small fry. But that is an opportunity for the entrepreneur to pursue. And that first million, you know, can start your business on the right track. And now that's working capital you can do to pursue bolder bets and you can attract more capital that way. And, and it starts, it starts a story and it starts a journey for you. And um, and so the other advice for people just getting started is, is, you know, don't be intimidated. That like the world is, there's, there's opportunities everywhere. There's money really honestly, there's opportunities for pennies and dollars all over you. Uh, they're overlooked by big companies because it's not worth for them pursuing it. Uh, and then actually I would say when it comes to smaller entrepreneurs, you know, because people are generally risk averse, there's actually a lot of these opportunities, like small opportunities that are not being met. Uh, and that uh, you know, the entrepreneur that's willing to take the risk and pursue that, you can actually probably capture that opportunity. Um, there's that. I think the other thing is just always look where technology is creating new, you know, leverage. Right? Again, like this goes back to growing up. But you know, the world is changing every six months through technology. That means that, you know, these, these opportunities I'm describing, there's a new fresh set of opportunities every six months. And especially with AI now, almost every week and every month, certainly, certainly. And so like now just you know, like think, okay, well what does this new technology, you know, help in terms what, what new opportunities is new technology Create that's a small niche that I can get started in. Uh, and then uh, and then from there you know, how to build product to serve that need. Um, and so um, uh, and then just. Yeah, and so again and then just start there. Um, so I don't know, I just say like one step ahead, one step at a time. Focusing on you know, uh, you know initially it's probably a small underserved market kind of expanding from there, you know and not be too intimidated by all the other big stuff that's going on by big players. It doesn't really, you know like you know you're uh, like you know you just focus on your thing and then you just, you know, and then, and then, and then if you just keep doing that, eventually realize that you're all bigger than you thought you would. You were going to scale.

Speaker A: Yeah, I'm going to switch gears and switch gears on a related topic to that. Who is your ideal customer profile today and how does Omni Key go after that? How do you sell or market or combine both to get new customers?

Speaker B: Sure. So you know our product is free trial. It starts at a fairly accessible price. I mean our customers are small and medium sized businesses, advertise online. Um and in particular I would say they fit into several kinds of segments. They tend to be um, uh e commerce companies, they tend to be uh, SaaS companies, they're tend to be fintech, um, um, uh health like health related, health and wellness, beauty related. Um, you know in some ways it doesn't actually deviate much from our initial set of customers. My first three set of customers was Stan Socks, curology and molecule. Uh you know one's a hardware company, one's a beauty uh, product and one is a you know a e commerce company. I think a lot of the companies uh, you know, um, you know we have real estate companies, we have resorts, we have entertainment, we have uh, um some uh, social media applications. Uh, we have some. We have a lot of crypto and consumer finance products. We've had a lot of those kinds of companies. I think there's a certain uh, resonance with a data driven value prop that resonates with fintech companies. Um, uh, how do I go after them?

Speaker A: Yes, how do you sell our market to that? How are you selling a market?

Speaker B: Yeah, so we run ads, we run our own ads and we run ads, our own ads profitably. So our cpa, you know could uh, be cost per acquisition on, on our own digital ads could be as low as 20 bucks. I mean in fact I was just running and you, you know, I, again I m, I managed actually a lot of our digital advertising and I just launched campaign, um, you know, fairly sizable budget and already getting, you know, just yesterday actually and get her getting a handful of signups from our website for like you know, $19 and you know, pricing. So it's 99. And so um, I think there's element of us dog. Yeah. Dog fooding our own product. We've become experts in digital advertising in omnichannel digital advertising, uh, through uh, the development of our product. And so we know, you know, where the good, you know, what the good best practices are for having the best uh, digital advertising campaigns and how to create effective content and creative, uh, for that and kind of, how do you kind of, you know, brute force performance out of these algorithms. Um, and so yeah, that continues to be our main driver of growth. We also get a lot of growth through referrals. You know, customers love our product, they refer their, you know, other friend and marketers move around and so they invite, you know, they move to another company and they, you know, they bring that new business in. Um, a lot of our growth comes from advertising agencies and servicing advertising agencies and having a platform to help ad agencies scale. Often many companies are, you know, particularly ad agencies are constrained in terms of creative, in terms of volume of creative. I mean I think ad agencies, creative agencies are very good at creating original content and innovative ideas. But when it comes to scaling that creative asset across different dimensions or different platforms is not something that people want to spend time doing anyway.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's not cost effective.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, it's not cost effective and oftentimes it's done very poorly through some, you know, outsourcing or offshoring or something like this and can be done more effectively through, through, through our tool. And so, uh, that's a use case that we serve very well when it comes to ad agencies. Um, and uh. Um. Yeah, and then we have business referral partners. We have, we are a partner, uh, you know, uh, partner with like SoftBank. They send us customers. They're uh, go to market partner of ours. We have great uh, partnership with StartEngine. Um, um. And so um, you know we get a lot of uh, leads, uh, that way as well.

Speaker A: Sure, sure. Picard, it's an amazing story so far. I've got one last question for you. Have you had any mentors in their life and how they helped help you become more successful?

Speaker B: Well, gosh, I think you know, one of the men, you know, John Donovan, who's um, um, um, um, um, many things. He's, you know, he's probably one of the most influential. Um, you know, you know, chat with him every two weeks. Um, spiritual guide, investor advisor. Um, uh, just, you know. Yeah, I mean, and yeah, I mean very lucky to be able to work with John. Um, yeah. Uh, and learned a lot from him, but also just you know, the incredible equanimity and patience he has for uh, everything, you know, for problems and just that you know, um, is contagious, you know.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: And, and that I think, um, you know, definitely helps me as well because you know, probably, you know, you, you have to approach problems, problem solving through that kind of very, um, calmness and uh, something I really admire about him as well. And he's, and he's um, being very, very spiritually centered. Uh, and, and uh, and uh, and, and so you know, he gives me readings and I um.

Speaker A: Awesome.

Speaker B: And, and, and religious readings and, and just learnings that I read and it helps me, guide me as well, uh, outside of m. Our conversations. Um, and so yeah, I mean if there's one, um, mentor, uh, person I would highlight is. Yeah. And it's very thankful for is John Donovan.

Speaker A: Yeah, no, that's, that's so nice of you to share. I think we find that a lot of the marketing agency leaders who are guests of the podcast, you know, mentioned their mentors have helped them see the, see their future through a different lens. And that lens gave them more clarity on what to do, how to do it, give them the reassurance and the confidence to go out there and do it, the calmness. So all of those things that you type and you mentioned and I'm glad John's been a great resource for you. Uh, Hikari, you shared a lot. You've been an amazing guest. If anybody wants to connect with you after hearing this podcast, what's the best way for them to reach out to you?

Speaker B: Uh, absolutely. So you can reach out to me@hikariomniki.com that's my email address. You can follow me on X, you can follow me on LinkedIn, you can add me on LinkedIn. Um, and um, um, yeah. And visit our website www.omniky.com o m n m e k y.com um, yeah. And yeah, you can try for sign up for free trial. Try generating ads. I genuinely do think we have the best generative ads product out there today. And you can see for yourself. You can sign up for some of our competitors and try generating ads of those tools and see the difference yourself.

Speaker A: Um. Um.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Well, Hikari, thank you so much for being a guest in the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. We appreciate your time, we appreciate your insights, and we wish you ongoing success in your journey. Thank you for listening to the Marketing Agency Leadership podcast powered by Spinutech. And you can learn more at spinutech.com that's S-P-I-N-U-T-E C H.com.