120: AI Marketing for Small Business Owners with Bill Crawley

Speaker A: This is the Marketing Umbrella podcast where it's all about getting the information you need from successful leading marketers to build and grow your digital marketing agency. Brought to you by Itamar Shafir, founder and CEO of Umbrella, the technology platform and brand that is powering thousands of marketing agencies around the country. Find him@us umbrellaus.com now, here's your host, Kevin.

Speaker B: This is the Marketing Umbrella podcast. My name is Kevin Pruitt. It is once again my honor to host this. And we've got another great guest today. He's a lifelong entrepreneur who has been self employed since the age of nine. He's built, scaled, and sold multiple companies across consumer products, consumer brands, publishing, and restaurants. He's fascinated by what makes businesses grow and thrive regardless the industry. And he sold his first company in his mid-20s and has had four successful exits since then. Just before his 60th birthday, when his younger self assumed he'd be slowing down and planning travel, he instead chose to tackle a problem that had frustrated him for over a decade. Digital marketing. Now he's the founder and CEO. And be careful how you say this, it's not aardvark, it's aardvark, AI. Please join me in welcoming the ageless one, the Dick Clark of digital marketing, Bill Crawley, to the Marketing Umbrella podcast. Bill, thanks again for joining us.

Speaker C: Kevin, thanks for having me. I'm so excited to be here.

Speaker B: We've already had a little chat here before we hit the big red button. And I told him, I said, man, uh, you got to save this until after I hit the record button. So I don't want to waste all this, all this gold just on me. So. Intros are never comprehensive. So tell us a little bit more about Bill Crawley and lay a good foundation for our audience.

Speaker C: Well, Kevin, I basically have just grown up just making money for myself. Never really thought about working for anybody. I didn't know that was an option until it was probably too late. And I'd been spoiled. And so. And not to, uh, make this too painful, but kind of grew up in a rough part of Salt Lake City and it was not a great area and had a single mother. And so I was kind of a feral kid running about and, uh, just figuring things out. And we had a problem with our bikes getting stolen on a regular basis.

Speaker B: And.

Speaker C: And so one day I'm strutting across this bridge with my friend and we look down and there's a river in Salt Lake called the Jordan river. And I could see my bike sticking up in the mud and I'm like, wow. And so it turns out all the kids, all the punk kids, you know, the teenagers would steal the smell. The little kids bikes, drive where they needed to go and then chuck them in the river. So there was no evidence. So we got some hooks and started fishing my bike out, and in turn ended up with about 20 other bikes. And we cleaned them up, washed them up, exchanged parts for which ones needed, and started a bike store in my garage.

Speaker B: On your bike shop? From the river?

Speaker C: From the river. And my mom said, this is today only. You're not having all these kids over here. And then when I came in the house with about 50 bucks, and at that time, that was a huge amount of money, you know, my mom said, okay, you can do it on.

Speaker B: This is a great idea.

Speaker C: Yeah. So that kind of got the bug going. And from there I've just taken ideas and turned them into businesses. And sometimes the exits are soft and sometimes they're hard. But, uh, along the way, we've. We've managed to do okay.

Speaker B: So I do think that the old adage is true. It says, you know, when. When you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail. I mean, it's. I think when you have that entrepreneurial DNA in your mind that, I mean, everywhere you look, you're going to see. See possibilities. So, uh, as obvious by the. The short intro we did on you. But I'm really curious, uh, just to drill down a little bit, you know, into Advark. You know, so often the people we've interviewed here, the solution that they came up with, the company that they're actually working for, was really just kind of an internal itch that they were scratching in maybe a previous job or previous company. And it kind of grew into something bigger than that. But it sounds like to me that this approach, your approach, may have been a little different than that. So walk us through kind of the genesis of Aardvark.

Speaker C: Well, I mean, it does start a ways back. Back. Not to age myself too much, but, uh, I'm there. I'm old.

Speaker B: We both are, brother. Yeah.

Speaker C: It started out, you know, when I started my business career, you basically would go to trade shows, join associations, and hire sales reps, and that was the extent of your marketing. And then you would try to get some free press releases and run some print and digital ads when it was affordable. And that's how I grew businesses. And it made sense. It was easy. I didn't need to focus much on that side of it. And you focused on what you were building or the service you were providing. And it all seemed to come together, you know, it made sense. And as I progressed and sold two of my companies and went from being the youngest guy in the room to being somewhere at the high end of the age spectrum, and I'm starting to notice how things are changing. It started to become endlessly frustrating to me how nobody really knew the ins and outs of digital marketing. You know, everyone would be like, oh, well, you got to do this. And, you know, it's all about algorithms and it's all about this and it's all about that. So I would hire in house people and in turn, you know, try to figure out, okay, are we making money? Are we not making money on this? Is it just a cash burn or is, uh, it. You know, and you would get the, well, think of it as brand building and think of it as this. And you would get as many answers as questions you asked.

Speaker B: Sound like a politician?

Speaker C: Yeah, it really. It was almost the point of. Once I kind of caught up to what was going on because I was always, you know, focused on what we were doing in the business. Once I caught up and realized I had to call a meeting every time to see what was going on with our marketing budget, it started to frustrate me. And five to seven years went by, sold that company and started a different one, which was almost all B2C. And because, uh, during that time, I was like, okay, what would happen if we started this company B2C and got rid of all the retail gatekeepers that we usually had to take care of, just, you know, get our other companies in line and, you know, buying retail space and all the things that went with that. I thought, B2C sounds great. Let's just do that. I don't. I don't have to sit there and navigate, you know, which buyer is now there and which one left. Our biggest client, you know, our biggest customer would go in and out of buyers quickly because that was changing as well. They weren't staying for 10 and 12 years. They were bouncing from place to place. And So I thought, B2C is the answer. Once I dove into B2C, I started realizing, wow, navigating the digital side of it, the branding side of it, and all these other things is crazy. And it came down to basically people just saying, just keep throwing money at it. It'll work. And, you know, that was around Covid as well. And so, yes, they were right. It was working during that time. And then all of a sudden, things came to a screeching Halt. And no matter what we did to buy customers interest, it just wasn't working anymore. And so that's kind of where Aardvark started to make a long story short. And I just decided, you know what, I've got to figure this out. This is driving me crazy. And it started taking my mind off my business that I was running and I started delving into that. So I decided, kind of put this business up on the market. I'm kind of done with products. I'm done with, you know, busy building physical things. It was, it was just getting tedious.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: So I sold that company and just dove into a place where I didn't belong at all. Because I normally would be, you know, asking people, so how do you send this email and does this ad look good to you? And I decided just to change my mindset on the whole thing. And it actually has been the funnest, most difficult thing I've ever done. So there you go.

Speaker B: Tell me, what does day one look like? So you, you got the, you got the other other company, the physical product company on, on the market. Let's assume it's sold. And so you're stepping into the adbark. You're going, okay, we got a problem to solve here. So we, we think we, we have some general, you know, hypotheses that say, okay, this, we can't really nail down what it's costing us. We can't really, there's no, you know, the, the return on ad spend. We really don't know exactly what that is. So, yeah, you know, it's a roas, kind of a newer term anyway, um, property in the, in the industry. So we're like really drilling down. People want to know this, they want to know is this, is this specific ad, you know, is there an ROI on that particular ad or ad spend there? So, and you're sitting down, you got the whiteboard and you're going, okay, why don't people know this already?

Speaker C: Yeah, that's a great question, Kevin, because it really did start out with. I had to first identify all the things I didn't know, um, which was a whiteboard in itself. And the things I did know were maybe two or three lines, to be honest.

Speaker B: That's the post it note over here versus the whiteboard.

Speaker C: I mean, it was okay, I know this is terrible and um, I hate it and it's frustrating and I, it was a lot like going to college and doing homework. You knew you should always be doing it and there was always that guilt in the Back of your mind of I should be really doing homework. I shouldn't be at this fraternity screwing or, you know, chasing girls or whatever was doing it was, uh, I should be doing homework. This the same feeling I always felt with the marketing side of it as well, is I should be focusing more on marketing. I should. You know, this stuff is incidental because without growth, nothing else matters. And so that endless sense of unclarity, if that's even a proper way to term that, but that lack of, let's say it this way, the lack of clarity I had about what I was spending, why I was spending it, and most of all, what were my competitors doing? They all seemed happy. Was it only worried about this?

Speaker B: Yeah. You saw the duck above the water. You didn't see the activity underneath the water.

Speaker C: Exactly right. And so those kind of things, those questions were omnipresent. So the first thing I went out and did was basically started interviewing people in my similar situation. And I wasn't looking for people exactly what I was doing. I was looking for validation of the overall frustration in the problem. Yeah. And it really culminated. I wasn't even sure if that was what I wanted to do. And because I thought I got no, no business being in this space. I'm not a technical guy, but I was sitting there with my wife one day and I just said, so, how's business? And she owns a furniture store and is an interior designer. And she said, honey, it's not business anymore. It's who can spend the most on Google. Um, and I was like, well, how's that going? You tell me. I have no idea. And that kind of started the journey of, okay, she's feeling the same way I did. We never discussed it in terms like that before. So I just went out, started knocking on doors and saying, here's my problem. What do you guys. And they're like, oh, my Lord, you don't even know. And it just started culminating. And then it started. I started looking at what tools are out there, what is it? And I started talking to small businesses about AI and what they were thinking and how they were thinking about it. And most of them said, I think it's really cool, but I don't think it's ever going to help a guy at my level. You know, sure, I can jump on, chat and ask it a question, but it's really not. It's designed for enterprise problems. And so, yeah, that's where day one started. That was a big day. As you can tell, a lot went on.

Speaker B: And it doesn't matter if that's. If that's perception or reality. I mean, if they. If. Whether they just believe that to be true or that's actually true that it did. Hey, this isn't for us. This is for, you know, the. The unicorns out there, the. The. You know, the Fortune 500s or whatever. So tell me, when you first started, did you. Were you kind of. I mean, you were doing kind of the, you know, the. Testing the theory a little bit, interviewing people, you know, reaching out, kind of networking? Were you working with others at this time, or was this kind of a solo effort right at the beginning?

Speaker C: Solo effort completely. I closed on the business I was running. My son had been running the business with me. He stayed with the new buyers, but I was working with him a little bit, too, because he's pretty technically savvy. So I would be like, okay, if I do this, what should happen? And he'd kind of chuckle and laugh and go, go fix the fax machine,

Speaker B: and I'll, okay, Boomer.

Speaker C: And so that started going. And then what I did is started talking to friends I knew that were in the tech space and said, how do I get started on something like this? And they would shake their heads and order another round and say, you really don't want to do this. This is a long road. Uh, but I was just curious endlessly about how to solve the problem, and I wasn't. I was more into the problem itself than the tool to fix it at that time. So I was waiting for that to kind of, you know, show its space as to how it would happen.

Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, the first thing you got to do is identify is, number one, is there a problem?

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: And number two, you know, what. What is the maybe kind of the. The remedies for that problem? What are some of the supposed solutions? And then let's build the tool that can provide those solutions, so.

Speaker C: Exactly.

Speaker B: If it doesn't exist already. But it is interesting that with just the. I mean, how broad the marketing space is and how many very sharp people have been engaged in this for, you know, quite some time. Especially like you were talking about post Covid. I mean, there. There's. It seems like we've had an assault of, you know, trying to find solutions, you know, since coming out of COVID It is amazing to me that. That, uh, you know, you found so little, you know, actual support when you were trying to find the solution for, you know, this problem that, you know, virtually every small business has.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: What was your reaction when you started doing these Interviews.

Speaker C: First thing I did, Kevin, was I went out and tried to find a tool to solve it myself. Before I sold my company, I was researching, okay, marketing for small businesses. And ah, how do, how do you market in the digital space and how do you know if you're getting a good roas? And when do you know? I started looking for all these tools and there's no shortage of tools out there. However, they were all really geared towards a professional, a guy who already knew the space pretty well.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker C: He, nothing would help a guy like me who, you know, if you just dropped me on the, in the middle of nowhere and said, here, make an ad. I would have starved to death. I couldn't have done it. And yet I was into marketing too. Marketing was how you built companies, but I didn't know the mechanics behind it and uh, nobody really felt like telling you. So you know, it was one of those, well, they would.

Speaker B: For 5,000amonth.

Speaker C: Yeah, it's not a contract exactly. And so that was kind of a different difficult thing. And then as I started realizing the epiphany was most of the guys in the space we're chasing after are so busy working in their businesses, they don't even have time to do the peripheral things like work on it and be out there, you know, trying to grow it. And so that's where they would get very frustrated, is they couldn't really fully put their attention there and they didn't even know where to start. Anyway, it's like, yeah, my waitress does all my Facebook stuff because she gets on Facebook a lot. You know, those are the kind of things I would hear.

Speaker B: She could smell. Tick tock.

Speaker C: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. That's sort of how it came together.

Speaker B: I um, you know, as you're researching this and you're talking to people early, was there ever a point in time during this kind of initial survey that they, you were talking to people over and over again. You're hearing the same things that they started saying, well, hey, why don't you build something?

Speaker C: I think my introduction was as such, they knew most of the people I was interviewing knew me or something about me that they knew I was up to something. And then as it got broader later on. Yeah, they're like, so do you have something to do this? Well, we're working on it. And then it would be, hurry, let me know.

Speaker B: Uh, yeah.

Speaker C: The funny thing was though, Kevin, I think I had probably two or three dozen people that would follow up with me, seeing how it was coming along.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: And that's when you knew you were what, a good painkiller.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker C: And so when they say, hey, how's that going? I could really use that. Now I'm just feeling like I'm drowning. Mhm.

Speaker B: Mm.

Speaker C: That was when I thought, we gotta make this happen.

Speaker B: I don't know if you mentioned this before we started recording or after, but you mentioned that, that, uh, heard you mention that Advark has not been around all that long. So when was it launched? And kind of walk us through the, like, what's the growth period look like from. From launch day to today?

Speaker C: Well, so what we did is basically I went out because I'm not a coder, and found a team to start coding it. And the problem turns out to be a lot more complicated than I had ever fathomed in the sense of, you've got to take your ideal customer who is not a technical guy.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker C: And you've got to, one, learn about his industry.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker C: Two, teach him, you know, show him a budget that will be followed for him and why he's setting the budget and how that money will be allocated. And then the third part of it was how to make an ad that will actually convert and work. And there was a ton of, oh yeah, make all your ads on AI. But when I would use those, you would come back and the ads were terrible. You know, they didn't really reflect any of this stuff. So all these things kind of had to come together. And in between that, you had to know how to do keyword searches and put that into the algorithm. All these, you know, how much was each keyword costing? And uh, where did it drive in? And how does this report to Google? And how does Google report it back? And how does Meta take in this data and put it into a place where our customer for Advark can go in and go, increase my budget by $26 on ad number three. And it goes through, carries it, shoots it out, talks to all the other platforms and then comes back and says, we've done it for you. And how do you put all that together? So it was a six month journey of identifying the problem, making sure we had a problem, and then a one year journey to realize the first dev team we hired didn't have the chops to finish the problem. So it was sort of a reboot at that point. And I'm just like, okay, how much Runway do I have here?

Speaker B: And, uh, they weren't sending any refunds, I'm sure.

Speaker C: Oh yeah, uh, it was just, please give us five stars and you're like, okay, so it was. And everyone that I talked to is like, you, you know better. You go through this. It's part of the process. Yeah. And that very rarely looks like what it started out to be.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: And at the end of the day, I learned a ton because, you know, our first onboarding for our thing, I thought, okay, we've got the best trained AI bots on the planet for marketing. We've trained them to do everything. Let's even give them more data and let's put together 15 good questions about this guy's business. So Bob, who is our icp, we call him Bob. Um, so when he puts it in there, he knows we're serious and we're going to learn everything about him. Well, as we started letting people use the platform, they'd get through two questions and then bail because they're like, this is a lot of work. So we had to retrain everything so we could extrapolate everything in two questions of what we needed and then slowly acclimate the information and aggregate it as they use the platform. So I don't know if I answered your question while there, Kevin. I rambled more than I did anything else, but it was a long period of time to get it, get it rolling. So, yes, we just barely launched two weeks ago.

Speaker B: Oh wow, we are early days.

Speaker C: Yeah, that was a long answer to your question as I recoup it. Sorry.

Speaker B: No, but that's, that's a great, I mean it is a great backstory for when you tried to, to get this off the ground and the, really the process for, you know, getting any SaaS product, you know, to, to market, so to speak. So yeah, how many of the, of those dozen that, that reach, you know, maybe check back in with you from time to time? How many of have signed on and said, okay, let's try this out?

Speaker C: All of them actually.

Speaker B: That's amazing.

Speaker C: So, yeah, they're all, they're all trying it, they're all using it. Um, really wrapping your head around what it's like to go use a SaaS product for the first time. You know, that was another struggle we had is how do we take a non technical business owner who is very strapped for time.

Speaker B: Yep.

Speaker C: And let him find value quickly and let him get there and go, oh, wow, this is going to be a great tool because the more I used it over time, I'm like, I can't wait for the world to see this. Well, it turns out the world really doesn't know what the hell you're doing so they don't care until you can show them. So that's been a thing as well.

Speaker B: So it is interesting to me to just how much, you know, in two weeks, you know.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: Now I'm sure a lot of that's for either from previous companies you ran and things like that. But just an, I mean we've talked in other people that are really, really early stage like this is, and they're like, well, let's, I don't know, let's wait and see. We're hoping, you know, hoping that that's a upward. Right. Hockey stick looking thing that we got building here. But uh, it is amazing to me that you, you, by the time you actually hit go, you know, you had a pretty good idea that we're, we're scratching an itch that exists out there. Already have, you know, kind of proof of concept because people are reaching out to me, asking me when this is going to go live. And you know, you also, it seems like to me that, and I don't want to be presumptive here, but it seems like to me that the way that you're wired and maybe the stage of life you're in, the stage of your work life that you're in, economics, you know, around the situation, you're like, you know, I, I'm okay with with some iteration here. I want to hear back from them. I want to, you know, I'm okay with with like making version 2.0 and version 3.0 and version 4.0. If we need to do this just to make it right, you know, and make it really work, is that about where we are?

Speaker C: Yeah, that's a great observation. And I think that breaks every rule of SaaS, which is iterate quickly, launch quickly, get it going. The problem that I, uh, either rationalized though, or really did have was you couldn't just do it quickly because you had to get from point A getting your ad all the way to being published to get data back. And that was a long road. But I did eat up, you know, I've always been a try it quickly, try it first, see how people like the product. And that's always been, even back when I made consumer products, I had it in people's hands within two weeks because I wanted to know, is this even worth chasing or do we put it on the back burner? And with this project of, I burned almost nine and a half to ten months with the first dev team, didn't pull it off, but told me everything I needed to hear all along the way and I bought into it because I had no other reason to believe otherwise. So that part was the only thing that I felt a little jilted about. It was like, ah, uh, should have got there quicker. But yeah, that's, it's all a part of the process.

Speaker B: So that's a, that's college education, that's college tuition, isn't it?

Speaker C: Yeah, it really is. So. But I, I get so curious about solving, you know, everything. Like you had mentioned, the iterations are important to me because I'm not out there trying to make money. Um, I mean, that sounds stupid, but I'm trying to really solve a problem for people because I've, I've felt empathy for all of their pains that they would discuss them like, how do small businesses even stay afloat anymore? When you have businesses that are mid sized, mid cap, that have full teams of really, really smart, young, digitally raised kids just coming up with brilliant ways to market and you've got this 40 year old who's put everything they have into their business. They're passionate, they're smart, they're ambitious, but they don't know how to get to that scale. You know, they don't know how to get there. And it's not because they're not smart and they don't know their, what they're doing. It's. You can't do it all anymore.

Speaker B: Great product, great service. They just don't know how to get in front of the eyeballs that it's going to take to, uh, to make that happen.

Speaker C: So, yeah, and you and I have it differently. When we first got started and we were in that same boat, like I said, you ran a print ad. The salesman from the magazine would call you and say, we got a great deal today, it's a remnant. And you'd go, okay, I'll do that. But that was it. And today it is a crazy world out there. And I don't want to be that guy that's always like, wow, things are moving so fast. But I think everyone would agree in the last four years we have seen insane things happening with AI and all these, uh, different things going on.

Speaker B: No doubt. Yeah, no doubt about it.

Speaker C: That's fast. Trains are cool to watch, but you don't want to get in the way,

Speaker B: don't want to be too close.

Speaker C: Yeah. It's just like, wow.

Speaker B: So before we, uh, before we started recording, you know, I told you that a lot of our listeners are kind of in the marketing agency space and you know, I really love to kind of ask questions directly related to that. So it kind of, you know, really um, provides, you know, value directly in their space. And this is a really interesting solution. Talk about, you know, what, what has been the, the intersection between agencies and this product or potential intersection. Um, you know, if you're just talking to a marketing agency owner, you know, through the mic right now, tell them, tell them what your thoughts have been. Really early days on this product.

Speaker C: Well, you know, originally, uh, the product started out as how do we serve a market that can't afford an agency? Or their budgets are too small, they're not running enough ads, they're not doing these things. But they're on the proverbial catch 22. They can't afford to, can't afford not to sort of thing. And that's where we started out serving. But as I spoke to all my colleagues and friends that I'd worked with in agencies and in that side of things that had helped my companies a great deal and I knew how smart, knowledgeable they were, I started running this past them, um, and I started talking to agencies at uh, B2B shows locally and things like that. And every one of them, they weren't threatened by this product at all. They really looked at it as, wow, this could really be an eye opener for my smaller clients. M. This could really be a way that I can provide them value and teach them, hey, here's how you're going to do it and once you get big enough, then call me and we can really start doing the next level of damage. And that's sort of where it came to pass, where these agencies weren't going, oh, you're threatening my livelihood, get out of my office. They're like, wow, this is a very powerful tool. Would you consider me white labeling it, for example, so I might use it with my smaller clients and let them have an insight. And it turned out to be more of a collaboration than anything. I was excited when I'd walk out of these agencies because they would, you know, show me potential that I hadn't thought of.

Speaker B: And I'm like, wow, it's almost like they don't have to hire somebody that, to uh, service that, that client potentially when the, this product could do it for them.

Speaker C: Exactly. And, and you know, this is, it's kind of an interesting angle like you had touched on earlier. To start a business when money isn't the motivator, um, you really have to find something there that what drives you. But I honestly work 10 hours a day diligently out of curiosity and love for helping all the people that I feel their pain. And it's not Kumbaya ish, it's not me being an angel. It's simply, that's what's motivating me right now. And when you look at it that way, instead of how do I make a paycheck? How do I make a paycheck? Yeah, it just has a different angle to it, a different smell, and everyone looks like a friend when you're coming from that angle. And I might be kidding myself, but that's, it's a fun way to build a business.

Speaker B: And I think that when you approach people with that, with that perspective, I think they can sense that, you know, that, that uh, hey, he's not in here just to reach in my, my pocket here. He's, he's actually wanting to solve a problem together. And yeah, you know, it's a, it's an interesting approach. I, I, um, I'm really interested to see like, you know, as this grows, just what, what it looked like for marketing agencies to white label this and did it. Because you're right, it's, it's uh, you know, the short term strategy is that yeah, maybe it could save me from having to hire another employee and I can, it can, you know, survive the dips and you know, that, that I would maybe have to lay people off, you know, on the staff until the company grows to the point that, you know, it might even outgrow the product. And hey, I'm here to service that need, you know, after the fact. And it really is a, uh, um. And it's funny because, you know, they're the ones that are telling you this is how we would use the product.

Speaker C: Exactly.

Speaker B: Four years at. Well, I hadn't thought about that when I walked in your office.

Speaker C: Well, here's, here's the reality that I found is agencies have the same problems as everybody else. They've got to take care of their, their 20% of their customers that are bringing in 80% of the revenue. Yet they get a million small companies who need their help to come to them. And they quickly realize these small customers, I love them and I want to help them, but the amount of money for the amount of time spent, it. The math doesn't work. And so the customer gets frustrated because they think they're the agency's only customer. And I was that same guy for a while. I'm like, what do you mean, you know, you're not taking my call? I give you over twelve hundred dollars a month. Little does I realizing I was taking up $2,500 of their, you know, their labor. And so they get into this catch 22 as well, where they want to help everybody. And then they come across often, and not rightfully so, as being the bad guy because they can't afford to help every small guy who's got a $500 a month budget. And so giving them that ability to say, hey, look, let's get you this level. Why don't you use this tool of mine? It'll cost you 39amonth or 49amonth. I'll check in with you.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker C: And we'll see how it's going.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: And then once we get you up to a certain level, then let's, let's discuss where we're going. Yeah, and that's where he was a, he's a friend of mine, but he owns an agency. That's where he saw the value. He goes, he goes, the hardest reality in the being an agency is my least profitable customers, my smallest customers are my highest maintenance customers. And he goes, I don't know why it works out that way in the universe, but that's the way it is.

Speaker B: That's the reverse side of the Pareto principle.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: You get 80 of your problems, 20 of your clients. That's right. Uh, it'll be interesting to see that. And I, I think that, you know, like, you're right. I think that if they start with an agency early and they're kind of using the tool like, like almost on the side, that they will remember that. They will remember that, hey, I got help through that tool, but I got it through your agency. So as I'm growing, there's still that connection. You know, there's not a, there's not a disconnect there. And I think that that would, that would certainly be, you know, helpful in the, in the growth cycle of the company. Talk, talk a little bit as we wrap up here and just right before we jump into the rapid fire round, you know that, that we're going to ask you questions really quickly. But um, one thing I, I want to ask you about, and we talked about this just a little bit maybe before we, we started recording, is that um, how can people find out more about the product and is there any, you know, like, can they use it for a certain period of time, you know, for free or whatever and sign up for free? Tell us, tell us what, what it is that you, you're offering for the, for the product itself that if I wanted to go check it out.

Speaker C: Well, anyone Right now we have it in sandbox mode and so you can go in and get access to all the features, everything. Backstage pass, basically it's not going to cost you anything. There's no put in a credit card, there's no nothing. We are simply letting as many people as we can actually use it. And that's the plan for the next 30 to 45 days. And the UI and everything is where we think it should be. But we want to get feedback from as many people as we can too of maybe this was sticky, maybe it wasn't. And so really we're trying to eat our own dog food right now. Kevin and mhm. Go out and say we're going to build this platform on our own platform. We would like you guys to be part of it.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: And so where we see this really going for agencies is the fact that they will be able to offer a service or help to anyone who happens to call them, even if they don't fit their ideal customer profile. M. They can say look for what we're going to charge you, you're better off using this. And then they'll be able to get a reoccurring revenue stream off of it. Mhm. Whilst checking in with the person every 30 days or something just to see. And as they help that person grow, not only are they making a reoccurring revenue stream, they're building a customer's loyalty. M. As to. You know, John was so helpful at ABC Agency. Oh my gosh, he got me on this tool and going and now our budgets have grown and he's shown me new ways to do it all is that customer begins to fit the profile better of who the agency needs to be to be profitable.

Speaker B: Yep.

Speaker C: So that's where it's going. Anyone can get on. It's advarkai.com or it's advark AI.com either one of them. Somehow we ended up with two, uh, two URLs during the process of development. But either one of them would direct you to the same place and so they can jump on, use the heck out of it and say whatever they want anyhow, any way they want. So.

Speaker B: Well I, I think it's maybe advantageous to have both URLs in case, you know, you have somebody out there wanting to, want to have a little spin off of your product here. It's yeah, good to own those. So we're gonna jump in, we'll have all that information in the show notes and uh, we're gonna jump into the rapid fire Just a very quick answers. First thing that comes to mind, real short, concise. We're going to go through these, um, and these are crazy. You're gonna think disparate questions, but we always have a method to our madness here. But, um, did you get along with your parents growing up?

Speaker C: Very much. Not in the sense that. Well, I didn't have a dad. I didn't know my dad. But my mom was very busy, very stressed, trying to raise two kids on her own. Uh, very matter of fact, but very loving. So you got tired of running a

Speaker B: bike shop at her house?

Speaker C: Yeah, she was very open to every crazy idea I had, and I loved her dearly for it.

Speaker B: I love it. Did you have siblings, you said?

Speaker C: Yeah, I have a two.

Speaker B: Okay. Uh, kids. I have four of them and any sibling or. I'm sorry, we're. On an average work day, what time do you get up in the morning?

Speaker C: 5:30.

Speaker B: And on an average work day, what time do you. Do you close your eyes at night?

Speaker C: Problem 1030.

Speaker B: Ideal vacation spot anywhere in the world. Money no object.

Speaker C: Probably Fiji. Just like to go and lay on the beach with no agenda.

Speaker B: That's right. Post, uh, entrepreneurial ideas. There you go.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: Um, how does faith affect how you approach business?

Speaker C: Did you say faith or fate?

Speaker B: Faith.

Speaker C: Faith is a big part of all my marketing plans. Whether or not it's, lord, make this work. Yeah, I don't even know if he realizes how big of, uh, every marketing plan I come up with, he is a big part of. And people will say, that's not a plan. And I'd say, oh, you don't even know. I, uh, guess Kevin, I, I told this to a friend a long time ago, and that is there are no atheists in entrepreneurship. Whether, whether you are when you start, I promise you, if you go through the whole gamut, you won't be when you're done.

Speaker B: I love it. So you are king for a day in the marketing space. What is one thing you would change about marketing as a whole?

Speaker C: I would just democratize it so everyone has the same opportunity to build their business based on the, the strength of their ideas and their commitment and their grit. Not as to whether I have the knowledge as to how long I should be running on this algorithm in order to make it like what I'm doing and trying to figure out the moving targets that are all around them.

Speaker B: Love it. Love it. Bill, this is, this has been such a great chat. I really enjoyed, uh, virtually meeting you through this, this medium and just the, the time we've had just to spend a kind of reminisce and spend stories and and just hear the story of adbark and and you know the reason behind it and why where it's headed in the future and um I it's just been such an exciting you know half hour we've gotten it gotten to share to you know through this and I really appreciate you just taking the time to try to add value to the marketing space and really help marketing agencies grow and scale their agencies. Bill, thanks again. Have a great weekend.

Speaker C: You too Kevin. I really have enjoyed the time with you and it's great getting to know you and it's awesome. Thanks for having me. I really enjoyed it.

Speaker B: Take care friend.

Speaker A: Thank you for tuning in to another great episode of the Marketing Umbrella podcast where we provide the information you need from successful leading marketers to build and grow your digital marketing agency. To learn more go to umbrellaus.com.