3 Moves Your Agency Must Make in an Economic Downturn with Dan Kahn |Ep #790

3 Moves Your Agency Must Make in an Economic Downturn with Dan Kahn |Ep #790 Speaker 2: I want you to stop working for free. If you're tired of getting ghosted on proposals, the endless follow-ups and We'll think about it as a response. There's a better way. The top agencies aren't sending proposals. They're getting paid to pitch and close bigger deals way faster. I want you to grab this free resource I just put together at agencymastery360.com slash strategy. That's agencymastery360.com slash strategy and you'll learn how to flip the script if you want to get paid for your expertise instead of giving it away for free. Hey, Dan, welcome to the show. Speaker 1: Hey, Jason, thanks for having me on. Speaker 2: Yeah, excited to have you on. Tell us who you are, what you do. Speaker 1: I'm Dan Kahn. I run two different agencies. Our kind of principal agency is called Kahn Media. We primarily focus as an integrated marketing agency. Started off in PR and evolved and based in Ventura, California, but we have people around the country and clients around the world and primarily focus on automotive and luxury brands. And then our newer venture, which is about three years in, is an outdoor recreation-focused agency called TRED, which is based in Bozeman, Montana, that's more experiential marketing. Speaker 2: Wow. So that's pretty cool. So if I was going to start an agency again, so we used to do a lot of work for all of Lotus cars and Porsche. So I love the automotive space and I'm a gear head. And then obviously outdoors, like, yes, I knew we'd hit it off right over that. Speaker 1: Yeah, we were actually, it's funny you mentioned them because we've been the agency record for Lotus for about eight years. They were our first OEM client. We now also are AOR for Maserati. We handle actually a lot of racetracks, which is cool. So we work with Laguna Seca. We work with Willow Springs out here in California. We work with Rolex on all their motorsports programs in North America. We work with SEMA, which is the big automotive trade show where they are. About 15 kind of aftermarket and performance brands in automotive and about a dozen major automotive events across the calendar. Speaker 2: Oh, that's fantastic. You know, we won Lotus because I used to race cars and we were at Road Atlanta. I just started chatting with someone and they were really kind of the head of North America for Lotus and marketing. And that was when they came out with that four-door Evora, that four-door car. And so they were like, hey, we're getting a bunch of pitches for doing a website there. And I said, well, we don't pitch, but what we can do is we can meet for two hours and I do charge for this and we'll go through a strategy. Heck, man, we were the agency of record for many, many years until the UK took over kind of the marketing a long time ago. This was a long time ago. Speaker 1: Yeah, they're an interesting company because they've been really good to us and they've been a great client, but they are very small in the OEM world. But because of that, like during the pandemic, the big corporate clients, there's a lot of rules and a lot of layers to navigate. And because they're so small, like during 2020, 2021, They're smart. They kind of said like, hey, what do you guys want to do? And it's like literally we're talking to the head of marketing and it's me and a couple of my key people and the whole world's on shutdown and all the press fleets are locked down and journalists are all locked at home. And we're like, well, why don't we just like, we can do car deliveries. Like I don't need to hire a service to do that. I got nothing else to do. So we put on like a mask and gloves and whatever we had to do to like comply with whatever. And we're dropping cars off. And there was about an 18-month period where we had more share of voice in the media than Porsche or any of the other major brands with this little tiny company. And that was still within Evora. That was before the new Amira came out. So we had like a 13-year-old platform and we're kicking everyone's butt because we're willing to just show up. So I think that earned maybe a little bit of respect from their team. And ever since then, it's been a great relationship. Speaker 2: That's cool. Yeah. I remember they tried to pay me in a Lotus one time. I don't know if they've tried to do that with you. No, I can't really separate the pieces to my team. Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm not sure how you do that with payroll, but it sounds cool. Speaker 2: Yeah, it was fun. Speaker 1: But I mean, same as you, the same as what you said. I've been a car guy my whole life, so I was an automotive journalist before I moved into PR and then into marketing. And that was an easy one, but I spend my free time hunt, fish, hike, all the outdoor stuff. And so three years ago, I was like, okay, there's this whole part of my life that I really enjoy, and I'd like to sort of bring that into my work life a little bit. And that's when we started TREAD. So it's been fun. Speaker 2: Very cool. Awesome. You know, everyone, and there's some people going through it right now, or they're going to go through it. We've all gone through major kind of pivots or major things where business is not what you envisioned it's going to be. Business could be down significantly. There was years ago, like I think we were talking kind of the pre-show, you've gone through it kind of twice, where revenue was down, Questions probably arose in your head. I don't know. I've gone through it and be like, why the hell am I doing this? Should I just go get a job? Should I start another business? Have you gone through this? Speaker 1: It's interesting. I grew up in a family of entrepreneurs. My grandfather and father ran a business together for like 60 years. And I remember as a kid, my dad There were good years where we had a Ferrari in the garage and there were bad years where my dad literally sold my mom's car and I was driving a work truck. I remember in the bad years, and my dad is not an overly emotionally communicative guy, very old school, and I'd walk by the kitchen and he'd be sitting at the table alone with his head in his hands. Even at 10, I thought to myself, I was aware enough of what was going on where I'm like, this roller coaster is crazy. I am never going to sign up for this. This is nuts. I'm just going to get a job. So, it's weird how all of a sudden, fast forward to adulthood and I signed up for the same crazy... Speaker 2: What was your dad's business? Speaker 1: He was an air conditioning contractor. So, he had a big HVAC company out in Southern California, which based on... I mean, that's a truly seasonal business, right? And if you have a cool summer, well, this sucks. So, I always said I wouldn't do this. I did it anyway. And yeah, the first few years we were in business, A very steady growth. We were growing about 50, 60% a year every year for many years in a row on the gas really hard. And I was also working crazy hours. I was working 18 hours a day, six days a week, grinding really hard because in my head, it was directly proportional. The more work I put in, the more the business grows, so I'm just going to stay on the gas. And I'll never forget, it was 2013, my second daughter was born. We're in a little office in the San Fernando Valley of LA. We're living in the same house I lived in for years before I met my wife. And things were good. We had a good client base. Things were pretty stable. Everything was good. We were making some money. And a couple of things happened in a row. The first thing was, second kid is born, and it kind of dawns on me like, I should start being home more. There's these early years with these kids that are really little. My oldest was two, my middle one, who at the time was my young one, was a baby. I'm like, they're only going to be babies once. I don't want to miss this. The clients are happy. Everything is stable. At the same time, my wife was on me pretty hard about like, you know, she didn't love the neighborhood we lived in and the house we were in was not a great neighborhood. And so we move to a nicer neighborhood, obviously more expensive house. I moved the office because I don't want to have to commute now. So moved to a different town, moved the office, incurred all the expense of that. So all of a sudden my overhead skyrockets. You know, my rent triples for the office. My mortgage goes up significantly because I bought a nicer house in a nicer neighborhood. And at the same time, I stopped doing active biz dev because business was good and everything was stable and I want to have a better work-life balance. And as all of that happened in about a three-month period and things are starting to kind of fall into place and settle down after all the moves, I got two calls in one week. And the first call was from my very first client who'd been with me for years at that And he had gotten himself in financial trouble, had squeezed us hard for a lot of extra work at the end of the year. And I didn't know why. There was a two or three month period where he's like, I'll do this and do that. And we were doing like pre-work for like six months out. And I'm kind of going like, I don't understand why he's pushing for all this stuff that he doesn't need until spring, but okay, we'll do it. So we were sort of doing work that we knew we'd get paid for down the road. And he calls me up and said, Hey, I need to exercise the 30 day out on our contract. I'm out of money. And not only can I not move forward with you, but I can't pay the open invoices that I already owe you. And that was a real gut punch because I was client number one who'd been with us since day one. That was rough. And then literally a few days later, I get a call from our biggest client at the time, who was a really nice man and who had been having just problems with a competitor that was doing a hostile takeover. And he said, look, I'm so sorry, but I have to tell you that we're in a bind here and we're filing chapter 11. And so those two things hit at the exact moment that all this other stuff in my life is happening and it was like my world just imploded. And I'm going like, oh my God, what am I going to do? How am I going to pay my bills? I went to the bank. This is when I still used to bank with a big bank before I went to a community bank. And a hard lesson I learned that year was when you really need a loan, they won't give it to you. They will not give it. They wouldn't even look me in the eye to tell me they won't give it to me. They sent me a form letter telling me to FO. And I'm like, okay, so I'm done with you, Wells Fargo. But it was... Speaker 2: Not to mention any names. Speaker 1: No, no. But Wells Fargo sucks. So it was so brutal. So I didn't get paid for a year. We burned our savings down to almost nothing. Speaker 2: So you didn't have like a line of credit ahead of time? Speaker 1: We had a small line of credit, but it wasn't enough. It wasn't enough to get us through. It wasn't just that the big client said, hey, we can't move forward anymore. It was that we had nothing in the funnel and so we had nothing coming in to replace it. And this other client, we had done huge amounts of work for him and he had gone. Three or four months without paying his bills saying, oh, I'll get you at the end of the year, I'll get you at the end of the year. So we had a cashflow bind. Luckily, we had some money in savings that got us through the year. And at that point, I just worked my ass off and just said, I'm going to work as many hours as I have to work. I fired the cleaning crew. I'm scrubbing the toilets a couple of times a week, ground my way through it. And it was brutal, man. And it was emotionally destructive because I completely blamed myself. Speaker 2: Did you put everything on your shoulders or did you let the team know kind of the dire straits, like have them help you or was it just all on your shoulders? Speaker 1: Back then, I was a very different leader than I am now. So round one, the first time we dealt with this back in 13, I put everything on my shoulders. And I also didn't have a deep bench at that point. I mean, we started the company in 08, so we were five years in and I think I had maybe six or seven employees at the time. Most of them were in their 20s. Most of them at that point weren't particularly highly paid. I mean, hell, I wasn't highly paid. And so I just said, hey, look, I took my foot off the gas. I stopped developing new business. And then this whole thing implodes. It's on me. I should have had a funnel going. I'm going to have to drive the ship and work our way out of it. And I did. And at the end of it, the good news was at the end of that first one, We got through it, we pulled out, we ended up coming back stronger in the following year. And I swear to myself, I'll never take my foot off the gas again. I also got an ulcer that year. I ended up with super bad pneumonia that year. It was not healthy. And in retrospect, I look back on that, I'm like, okay, I totally did all that to myself. That was a bad plan. And then had a really, I mean, from basically 14 until basically last year, we were looking at 15 to 40% growth every year, consecutively, year after year after year, doing 5,000, I think, five years in a row. Even in 2020, where I'd say probably about 30% of our revenue comes from promoting events. Obviously, March 2020, every event on the planet gets canceled. That was scary. But at that point, we had a deeper bench. We had a good leadership team. We have really good relationships with our clients. Most of our clients are long-term clients. And most of them, we just called up and said, look, obviously, this is not a good situation for anybody. Let's figure out what we can do together to keep your brand out there. If we're doing experiential event type stuff, how else can we connect with people? We have a museum client that we said, hey, let's create a virtual museum. We sent our video crew out and just started creating content and populated a YouTube channel. They were cool. We had a good team and good clients that treated us like partners. We got through it and actually had a good year that year. It was interesting that the second time we had a major issue was last year. I think I didn't see it coming as much and I definitely handled it in a different way. Speaker 2: Hi there, agency owners. Let me ask you, are you ready to scale your agency without increasing your overhead costs? If yes, then you need to know about E2M Solutions. Now, E2M is the number one most reliable white label partner for agencies. They specialize in web design, WordPress development, e-commerce, SEO, and content writing. They basically do all the heavy lifting, which frees you up to focus on growing your agency. Now, here's the best part. E2M is just not another vendor. With over 10 years of experience, their team of over 300 experts has a track record of delivering for more than 300 agencies. They're your strategic partner. They deliver on time every time so you can focus on what you do best. Now, E2M's mission is simple, to help 500 agencies increase their revenue and profit margins with white label services that actually work. And to help you get started, they're offering a special deal, 10% off for the first three months. But act fast because it's only a limited time offer. So head over to e2msolutions.com slash Smart Agency to check out their transparent and their flexible pricing. Trust me, if you're ready to grow without burning out, e2m is the partner you've been looking for. That's e2msolutions.com slash Smart Agency. Go check them out and tell them Jason Swenk sent you. What was different from last year versus years back? Like you said, obviously the biggest problem was you weren't building the pipeline. So was this the same, same issue or something different? Speaker 1: Well, no. So we had a good pipeline. It was not as automated as it should have been, and it is now. But from 2013 on, I said, I'll never stop developing new business. We're always going to work on it. And the way we do it, and actually it's a very different business than it was back then. Back then it was a PR agency that did social. Today we are an integrated marketing agency. We're doing a lot of media buying. We're doing a lot of content creation and production work. We're doing a lot of experiential stuff. So it's a different business. We have a different client load. And what happened last year was just sort of a weird thing that I think is just cyclical where we had a really good year in 22. We had a really good year in 23. And then all signs... And two things happened simultaneously. The economy definitely had some weird hiccups in late 23, early 24. I think because it was an election year. I think so. That's what I've heard from a lot of friends in different industries that people were just pulling back on spend and they were nervous and they're going like, I'm not sure what to do. There was a lot of trepidation. Some of it was just weird cyclical economic stuff. Some of it was really a result of poor planning on my part where we launched the second agency. And I didn't think about the fact that launching a second agency requires a huge amount of capital. And so, we spent much of 23 investing all of the net profit from the parent company into the new agency. And our war chest, and normally we're just sitting there. It was not as robust as it should have been. So in that changeover, because most of our clients run an annual contract. And so from December, it really hit me like third week of December in 23. That, hey, some of these renewals aren't going as smoothly as I'd like. And what does that do for cashflow forecasting? Because we weren't doing cashflow forecasting. We had clean books and we have a P&L and I read that every week and I get a dashboard report, but we weren't at that level yet with cashflow forecasting and things like that. And it started to occur to me, I'm like, also because we're doing a lot of media buying, you know what that looks like. And we do have a line of credit that's pretty robust at this point. But I mean, sometimes you get a client calls up and says, I want to do a million dollar spend. And there goes your line of credit for a while. So you got to kind of, it's an accordion, right? It goes in and out. And so it really dawned on me like, oh my God, like Q1 of 24 could be real hairy. And it took a day or two of shock to understand how bad it was. And then at that point, it's like, okay, we're going to have to really get on the gas pretty hard. And the difference between the first time it happened and the second time it happened is I called my leadership team and said, okay, guys, here's what's going on. And I just laid it all out. And I said, here's what's happening. Here's why it's happening. Here's how we got into this position. I have a plan on how to pull us out of it, but we're going to have to work really hard. I'm going to be focused really hard on biz dev. I need you guys to make sure you're executing at the highest level because every client needs to really feel the love. We need to sell as many additional services that provide value to our clients as we can because growing your existing clients is actually easier than signing new ones and certainly faster. And then I honestly loaned the company a significant amount of money just out of my savings to get us through it and had some really candid conversations with clients. We had one client that I was talking to them openly about what was going on. They said, hey, if you'll cut us a deal, I'll pay our entire year of retainer in advance. Speaker 2: Done. Speaker 1: Deal, right? That's that partnership thing where I feel like if you really treat people the right way and you're open, honest, and transparent with them, They'll repay that in kind. And then the other thing that we did that sounds corny, but really worked is there's a book that I love about the hospitality and restaurant business called Unreasonable Hospitality. It's about the guy who owned and ran 11 Madison Park. And when he took over the restaurant, It was like a brasserie that was like, okay, and good and fine and whatever, but it wasn't anything particularly well known. And this guy's not a chef. He's a front of house guy. And his whole modality of how he transformed that restaurant is he said, we are going to provide a customer service experience that is so above and beyond that We will become undeniable. And he did that. And within two years, they were ranked the number one restaurant in the world. And it wasn't even based on the food. It was based on the experience. Like if you ever see the show The Bear, there's scenes in that show that are based on this book where they go out and get like the dirty water hot dog for the tourists who said, oh, the only thing we missed out on in Chicago was a hot dog. Speaker 2: Why did you bring ketchup? Unknown Speaker: What kind of asshole is going to put ketchup on a hot dog? A child, Richie. Speaker 1: And, you know, the maitre d' goes out and gets the hot dog and cuts it up. That's direct, almost word for word from the book, from a real thing that happened. And I bought a copy of the book for everyone in the company for like, you know, 35 people. And I said, everyone, you read this, we are putting this into practice right frickin' now. And a lot of my team did. And as a result, the clients started coming to us and saying, We love how you're taking care of us. We love how you're helping us. You're solving problems before they're even problems. How can we help you? How can we grow this partnership? And to be totally honest and candid, that first quarter was a dumpster fire. It was exactly what we thought it was going to be. It was bad. There was red ink everywhere. But all this stuff we started doing started showing results by Q2. And by the end of the year, we had record revenue and record profits. So we completely turned it around. Speaker 2: Especially the second time, the first time you learn from it and you try to be, and this is what I tell our mastermind members in the mastermind. I'm like, look, the members that are going to get the most out of it are the ones that are transparent and they're open and honest. Because when you can be open honest with a community that you trust, you can be open honest with yourself. And you can really kind of figure it out. And you know, like around the second time you were like, look, team, like I trust you. And the times I've gone through with my team, you know, in the past, you know, now wherever, right? Like there's always ups and downs, like on things you can't control, but how you react to it and how you go to your team. You're like, here's what we're going through. I like how you said, here's the plan that I want to try. Because if you just go to your team, I have no idea what to do. They're like, oh shit, the leader didn't have a plan. Like they're jumping ship. I go through some issues or challenges. As soon as I come up with a plan or the team comes up with a plan, I feel more confident regardless if it's going to work or not. Like, all right, let's try that. Speaker 1: No, I agree. I think intentionality is such a real thing where if you say you're going to do something and everybody has a target in front of them and they're all riding towards that same target, you're probably going to hit it. And if you don't do that, everyone's just kind of riding in their own direction and worrying about their own bag of stuff. You don't actually function as a team. And in our case, like I think probably a lot of modern agencies now, six years ago, there was a bunch of people sitting in the building I'm in right now. That is not the case anymore. We have maybe four or five employees that come into our office on a regular basis. And then we have another five or six that come in maybe once or twice a week. Everyone else is remote. Which is so much harder to get everybody riding in the same direction and focused on the same target, right? So you really got to work hard on that. Speaker 2: But how much more work do you get done now that not everyone's in the office? Speaker 1: In almost every way it's better. The only thing that's harder is training. The training thing takes a lot more work and intentionality. That's why honestly we bring people in for training most of the time. Because if you sit there and look someone in the eye and have a conversation, you can tell if they get it or not. And if they don't, you can have the conversation again and you can work on stuff together. But outside of training, it's better. And we also have access to a talent pool we wouldn't have access to. I want to hire the best person I can find. I don't care. We have a guy who lives part-time in Alaska. I don't care, as long as you're doing your job and you have good internet. Speaker 2: When we had an office, and if you had an office right now, Let's say I get bored, I go over to my VP's office and distract the hell out of him because I'm bored and I don't want to leave the office because I want people to know that I'm working. That's the shit that used to happen. Now I'm like, and I go to my team, I'm like, I don't care if you work three hours a day, just get your shit done. I never go over 20 hours a week. That's my rule because that's where I'm the most efficient. If I go over, I get overwhelmed, kind of like I was this morning. I was on a team meeting. I had all these things lined up I needed to do. I need to do this video, all these podcasts. I was so unproductive because I hit over the 20 hours a week last week. But if I'm under it, way under it, then I'm bored, like you kind of find that you're fighting weight a little bit. Speaker 1: No, I agree. And I've found a similar thing where to be totally selfish, that 30 nights a year that we spend on public land has become kind of my religion, where it has become... And it's interesting because when we talk to our kids now, who are now all adolescents and teenagers, they... Well, if you say, hey, what's like your favorite memories of your life? It's those memories that they point out. For our family, that's become very important. Starlink has been a complete game changer for me because I used to be a stress case. When I'd go out and we're wandering around, I've got one of those stupid Wi-Fi cards that sometimes work and sometimes don't. I'm trying to... I still have to work. I can't just disappear for a month. Checking in on the team and all that, but now I can be anywhere. I can be on top of a mountain and I can hop on a Zoom call and I can check in with everybody and say, what's going on? And they give me an update and everyone's efficient. And they also have the security net of knowing they can reach me if something goes on where they need me. And I'm a better person. I'm less of an asshole, which makes me an easier boss to work for and also lets everyone be more creative. So it really does work better. Speaker 2: Let me ask you, your leadership team, do you have to manage them? Speaker 1: I don't know if manage is the right word. I try to inspire them, and I try to give them the roadmap of where I want to go, and that's a fairly new thing. I'm really proud of that, that for a long time, and we've been in business long enough now, The early batch of leaders we had were people that started in entry-level positions and worked their way up. And in a lot of ways, it's good. They understood the DNA of the agency. They understood the clients. They understood the industry. But the problem was, in some cases, they were over their skis, where these were people that had good intentions, but they really weren't a good leader, or they weren't super strategic in how they thought, or they weren't very organized. And that created a really chaotic culture that was not healthy. And once I figured that out, first I had to work on myself and I had to figure out like stop being an asshole. And like if you can actually listen more than you talk to your team and actually like learn from them, you can... Be a better human and a better boss. And then once I figured that out, I started seeing these other people. I'm like, oh man, our culture needs some work here. Like we got people that are like mansplaining to everybody all the time. And we've changed that out. So it's gotten better. Speaker 2: What I realize, I'm glad you said inspire because When you have to motivate a team member, they're the wrong people. Like I always worried about demotivating the right people. And what I also realized was since I was an accidental agency owner, I'm the worst manager in the world. No one wants me as a manager. You probably operate this way. Darby was laughing at me. We met with the agency. We're doing some YouTube ads coming up. They gave me a great idea. He's like, well, can you get me a video in the next three or four weeks? I was like, I'll get it to you today. No one executes faster than me. And so if I was managing someone and someone said, I'll get it to you in two weeks, I'd be like, the fuck you are like you, right? Like, cause I'm like, I could get this done now. And so what I realized was I had to hire people that can manage that themselves. And all I had to do is, here's the direction we're going. Here's the plan. I don't know if it's going to work, but we'll test it. We'll see. And then you guys help me. Because they want to have that sense of accomplishment, right? Something bigger with more people or they'd be doing them damn self. Speaker 1: I used to use this expression that kind of, this is in line with what you're saying. And in retrospect, it's so obnoxious and I'm so embarrassed I used to say it. But I used to say to people, don't do your best, do my best. Oh, gosh. Man, what a dickhead thing to say. But I used to say that all the time because people are like, well, I'm doing my best. And it used to piss me off because I'm like, well, your best isn't really good enough. So, come on. Man, that's embarrassing. But, you know, hey, open, honest, and transparent, right? Speaker 2: But you said it, we all think it. We all used to think that way. Speaker 1: And what I've learned is, and to be totally honest, coaching and disc assessments and even some therapy and all that stuff has really opened my eyes to the fact that if there was a bunch of you and me in a room, That room is going to get weird pretty quick. You need other personality types on your leadership team. Speaker 2: That's not going to be done. We'll just be talking about ideas. Speaker 1: Exactly. Speaker 2: I'll be like, what's that 1970 Mach 1 behind you or that boss? Speaker 1: Yeah, it is the boss. Good eye. Yeah, you're right. That's exactly right. I have learned over time, and so that's why the leadership team now, To answer your question, I don't really have to tell them what to do because they know their job and they're good at it and they approach it in different ways. And one of our team leaders, her employees send me thank you notes that they get to work with her. And I'm like, dude, I've never gotten... Okay, that's a great hire because these people are so stoked and inspired to work for this person. So yeah, I'm very fortunate that way. Speaker 2: Well, that's awesome, Dan. Well, I do appreciate you coming on the show. Is there anything I didn't ask you that you think would benefit the listeners listening in? Speaker 1: I guess the one thing that is probably worth touching on is, and I know you've got listeners with all different types of agencies and the overall marketing world and all that. I just think it's a really exciting time. I think it's really interesting. I think the last couple of years, the decentralization of media is huge. Obviously, you're at the vanguard of that. I've been listening to your show for a long time. Podcasts are having a moment. Creators are having a moment. Traditional media is sort of in the toilet. And the real revelation that we've had that we spent a lot of time talking about both internally and externally is it's not really the delivery mechanism anymore. It's the message. And if you're focusing on message, you're going to do okay. And to me, that's exciting. I've also seen a lot of agencies really struggle and they cannot figure out how to adapt to that. So, for me, I'm excited. People, half the time I'm at a dinner party and they say, what do you do for a living? And I say, an agency. They don't even know what that means. But to me, I think it's like the coolest job on earth right now because we're right on the leading edge. Speaker 2: Oh, it is. And yeah, whenever anybody asks me, I don't say it anymore because I'm like, yeah, I have a community and a podcast for agencies. And they're like, what's that? And so now I'm just like, uh, I'm a podcaster. I'm a horse jockey. Like I just make up shit. Like I just don't want to explain it to people because they don't just don't understand. But it is a cool time. I mean, especially with AI and all this technology, you know, I mean, I get to interview people all day long, all over the world. And then I get to go play with my dog or ride my bike or go skiing, like right there. It's an unbelievable time versus like, you know, when I started the first agency, I needed an office. You know, I needed to, and like, I filled an office with all fake shit. So, and I would only invite clients in during lunch. I'd be like, oh yeah, everybody's at lunch. It would look bigger, right? Like when that was a cool thing to do a long time ago. So, you know, it's a, it's a cool time. Like people want to work with the smaller agencies that are creative. And innovative and have ideas and are fun to work with and partners and that kind of stuff. So, you know, it's just, uh, and I like that you have your perspective too, of like, just deliver the best service, the best customer service. That's something that's missing so much. I had a Facebook agency that we parted ways. Literally, every time I would chat with this agency, I felt like an ulcer because they would berate me. Like, don't ever turn off my ads. Well, your ads were going to the wrong page. You didn't respond in four days. Literally, just doing what you said you're going to do goes a long way. Speaker 1: Yeah. We have a pretty strict no A-holes policy and we enforce that with our employees and we enforce that with clients and we enforce that with the media we work with. It's like, life's too short. There's a lot of options out there. Let's work with people that we want to work with that do what they say they're going to do. Like you said most of us are working from home at this point and it's like I don't have time to deal with this Like let's just work with cool people new cool stuff Awesome. Speaker 2: Well, I love it. Well, thanks so much for coming on the show And if you guys enjoyed this episode, make sure you like subscribe and until next time Have a swank day.