Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 55:07 — 55.1MB)
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | iHeartRadio | Email | RSS | More
Amanda and Mark Dalnodar – Brew City Marketing
[00:00:07]
You have found
[00:00:08]
Authentic Business Adventures,
the business program that brings you
[00:00:10]
the struggles stories and triumphant
successes of business owners across
[00:00:14]
the land. We’re locally underwritten
by the Bank of Sun Prairie.
[00:00:17]
My name is James Kademan entrepreneur,
[00:00:19]
author, speaker and helpful coach to small
business owners across the country.
[00:00:23]
Today we are welcoming/preparing
[00:00:25]
to learn from Amanda and Mark Dalnodar,
the owners of Brew City Marketing.
[00:00:31]
So, Amanda and Mark,
how are you guys doing today?
[00:00:35]
Excellent, excellent.
[00:00:38]
So it’s a good it’s a good
day for marketing, right?
[00:00:41]
Great.
Every day is a good day for marketing
[00:00:44]
I was just chatting with a guy oh,
I don’t know those two or three episodes
[00:00:48]
ago, but he essentially said every
business is a marketing business.
[00:00:53]
They’re just essentially selling
whatever it is that they offer.
[00:00:56]
And he went on to say most of them aren’t
good at it, which is totally true.
[00:01:02]
So I guess that’s where
professionals like you come in.
[00:01:05]
So let’s start out
[00:01:05]
when you first started out, how did you
guys end up owning a marketing business?
[00:01:13]
Well we both came from
[00:01:16]
a marketing company.
[00:01:18]
You can say, yellow page ads
for at AT&T, AT&T way back.
[00:01:22]
Wow.
Back in the day.
[00:01:26]
Yeah, that’s where we met too.
[00:01:27]
So we met there and we were selling yellow page ads
and that was my first job out of college.
[00:01:32]
Was that your first job? No.
[00:01:35]
And then we joined on when they
realized that it was the Titanic.
[00:01:39]
And so they were transitioning
and pivoting and started to launch
[00:01:43]
an Internet service
alongside the Yellow Pages.
[00:01:47]
And for me, that made a lot of sense.
[00:01:49]
The phone book didn’t make a ton of sense,
[00:01:50]
but I really got behind the Internet
product and I became one of the top reps
[00:01:55]
in the Midwest for selling websites
to my clients, to the agency.
[00:01:59]
Nice.
[00:01:59]
The company wasn’t doing
a great job on executing.
[00:02:03]
Oh.
[00:02:05]
Oops, that’s not good.
[00:02:08]
You know, that’s sort of understandable.
[00:02:10]
I mean, there are Fortune 50 company and
there’s a lot of moving parts and the internet is
[00:02:15]
fast moving.
[00:02:16]
And you’ve got to react
to market trends really quick.
[00:02:18]
They couldn’t do it.
[00:02:19]
So we saw the opportunity and we also saw
and we felt we could do it better.
[00:02:25]
So we decided to launch our own company.
[00:02:29]
So let me just clarify this.
[00:02:31]
So you’re like, hey, Amanda or Amanda went
[00:02:33]
to Mark and said, hey, Mark,
let’s get married and start a company.
[00:02:40]
Is that a
[00:02:43]
Well on our honeymoon,
[00:02:46]
we were in Saint Croix U.S. Virgin Islands,
and it was the night before we were going
[00:02:51]
to fly home to go back to our
corporate jobs and a regular life.
[00:02:55]
And I just remember saying to Mark that I
[00:02:58]
didn’t want to go back and I want to start
my own company or
[00:03:03]
what could we do together to start
our own business and then Mark said websites.
[00:03:10]
And then a light bulb went off in my head
because in college I helped project manage
[00:03:18]
a website redesign for a nonprofit
that I was working for.
[00:03:22]
And I just I don’t know,
like we’ve talked about starting
[00:03:25]
a business before and we would just
like brainstorm what we wanted to do.
[00:03:30]
But like, nothing, nothing felt right.
[00:03:32]
Like everything that we all the ideas,
[00:03:34]
it just didn’t sound
it just didn’t feel right.
[00:03:37]
But when he said website
like Boom, that’s it.
[00:03:40]
That’s all.
I know how to do that.
[00:03:42]
We didn’t really
know how to do it, but
[00:03:45]
we figured it out.
Right.
[00:03:47]
You are not the first company
[00:03:49]
owners to come on here
and say that, it’s cool.
[00:03:52]
So just to put a timeline
on this for the listeners.
[00:03:54]
Are we talking 12 years ago or more?
[00:03:58]
Yeah, we got married in 08, so. February 08.
[00:04:03]
No, we got married in November of 08, oh yeah,
[00:04:12]
It happens more often than you think.
[00:04:12]
And then we started Brew City
Marketing in February of ’09.
[00:04:17]
February of ’09.
All right.
[00:04:19]
Nice.
[00:04:21]
So, you guys, did you tell your job?
[00:04:24]
Hey, funny story.
[00:04:27]
We’re not really interested in hanging out
[00:04:28]
with you guys anymore
or how did that transition go?
[00:04:32]
Was she had she had moved on from AT&T
[00:04:36]
and I was still there and she was working
for another company and that was more or less
[00:04:39]
the crutch of it, you know, she was really
driven and she wanted to do this.
[00:04:44]
I was more holding on to the fact
that I had had a career and a pension.
[00:04:49]
We had health care.
I said, I’m gonna stick this thing out.
[00:04:52]
You start the company,
see how things shake out.
[00:04:55]
I’ll join you in a few months.
[00:04:57]
So she took it on.
[00:04:58]
She was
[00:05:00]
one woman solo artist for a few months.
[00:05:03]
Nice. Her brother joined, he
came on as a sales guy. Probably
[00:05:08]
like five months, five months into it,
like maybe August and then October.
[00:05:14]
I quit my job and came on board.
All right.
[00:05:17]
It all happened in that first year.
[00:05:19]
So we’re going to back up a step.
[00:05:21]
Did you say that you had a pension?
I did.
[00:05:24]
I did have a pension.
[00:05:26]
I didn’t even know they still
had those even 12 years ago.
[00:05:29]
You know what,
[00:05:30]
it was actually rare back in ’04 too and
[00:05:32]
there these things were
just crumbling around.
[00:05:34]
But, yeah, AT&T had a really good pension.
[00:05:36]
Well, yeah, but you had to stick it out
[00:05:39]
for thirty years or forty years
or something. Five vested in five.
[00:05:43]
And I was for five years
and like a month and.
[00:05:49]
All right.
All right.
[00:05:51]
So did you get to keep
that little pension.
[00:05:54]
Yeah.
Well that’s that’s a good thing.
[00:05:57]
That’s always something that’s cool.
[00:05:59]
I think this is the first time I’ve
ever heard that word on this show.
[00:06:02]
And we’re in
[00:06:04]
episode one fifty
[00:06:05]
something. That is cool.
[00:06:08]
That is cool.
So, Amanda, were you in the pension world?
[00:06:13]
No, I didn’t work
at AT&T long enough for that?
[00:06:17]
You know,
after I left AT&T, I went to Aramark and I
[00:06:22]
was a sales executive there
for their uniform division.
[00:06:26]
Gotcha.
OK, very cool.
[00:06:28]
I wasn’t there long enough either for
a pension or anything like that.
[00:06:33]
What is it with these
companies offering pensions?
[00:06:35]
Holy cow.
Oh, that’s funny.
[00:06:37]
So I want to talk about how you got
started with the whole website thing.
[00:06:41]
What were you guys coding
in back when you started?
[00:06:44]
Because WordPress.
[00:06:46]
I don’t know, WordPress was
the thing 12 years ago.
[00:06:49]
They were just regular little HTML
[00:06:51]
websites. Using Dreamweaver
and stuff like that or?
[00:06:55]
Yeah, yeah, whatever.
[00:06:57]
The web developer wanted to do whatever
[00:06:59]
they were using, but what separated us
from other web designers even back then,
[00:07:06]
was our knowledge of meta tags and getting
people’s websites found on Google and doing the
[00:07:14]
back end work to facilitate
finding their Google listing.
[00:07:20]
All right.
All right.
[00:07:22]
I should specify, Mandy and I
are not Web developers.
[00:07:28]
We never really have been at Brew City
[00:07:29]
anyway, she did that project in college.
But right away,
[00:07:33]
when we started our company,
we knew we needed a web developer.
[00:07:35]
So we found a guy on Craigslist.
[00:07:40]
Yeah, our first web developer
was a Mormon from Utah.
[00:07:44]
All right.
[00:07:45]
And he coded his sites
in HTML and Dreamweaver.
[00:07:48]
And so we said, I guess we build
websites in HTML and Dreamweaver.
[00:07:52]
That’s that’s who we are. Funny.
[00:07:54]
So is he living in Utah?
Oh, yeah.
[00:07:58]
Yeah, it was all remote, never met him,
was our first web developer.
[00:08:01]
We had him on four or five years.
[00:08:04]
He was doing websites for us.
[00:08:05]
Nice, a decade ahead of your time here.
Yeah I know, right.
[00:08:09]
Yeah.
Everything’s virtual now.
[00:08:11]
That’s cool.
That’s very cool.
[00:08:13]
Did he work out for you guys.
[00:08:15]
He was a great guy he was
[00:08:17]
turnaround projects quick
and he had really good artistic
[00:08:22]
abilities, and we like I said,
we kept him on for a few years.
[00:08:25]
He decided he wanted to do something else.
[00:08:27]
So maybe four or five years ago,
we parted ways with them amicably.
[00:08:31]
He was a really nice guy.
[00:08:34]
So did you guys I imagine you added more
developers over the course of time, right?
[00:08:40]
Oh, my goodness.
Yes.
[00:08:42]
We’ve worked with a lot
of people over the years.
[00:08:44]
OK, employees or
subcontractors or combination.
[00:08:48]
We were we had almost all contractors
up until like three years ago.
[00:08:54]
OK, when it came into
[00:08:59]
my world or whatever that we had to why did
we switch everybody to be W-2
[00:09:08]
because of insurance liability it had to do with
[00:09:16]
something along those lines.
[00:09:18]
Our accountant made the recommendation,
you guys should take these contractors
[00:09:21]
and move them to part time,
OK, so that’s what we did.
[00:09:23]
Yeah, alright.
[00:09:26]
Listen to your accountant.
[00:09:27]
I like it.
[00:09:29]
That’s a that’s good
advice for your listeners.
[00:09:32]
Yeah, I imagine if you yeah.
[00:09:34]
If you’re giving them enough work,
you kind of it’s justified.
[00:09:39]
Because I guess one there’s the whole you
could get audited thing,
[00:09:42]
which that would be a bad day,
a flip side, there’s also somewhat
[00:09:46]
of a loyalty, I imagine,
that you want to keep.
[00:09:49]
Very much so.
Yeah.
[00:09:50]
We’ve we’ve got four or five developers
that work with us right now.
[00:09:55]
And there’s a couple that we could convert
[00:09:57]
to full time their billing
full time hours with us.
[00:10:00]
We’ve just got them.
They’re classified as part time.
[00:10:02]
All right.
Gotcha.
[00:10:04]
We’re feeding a lot of work
to these these individuals.
[00:10:09]
One of them is Mandy’s friend from high
school. Oh funny. Still out of state.
[00:10:15]
She used to be in Vancouver.
[00:10:18]
She’s since moved to Seattle.
[00:10:19]
And she’s our lead developer
on a number of projects still today.
[00:10:23]
Very cool.
Very cool.
[00:10:26]
So are you guys when you initially started
the business, you get the developer
[00:10:30]
and developers as you grow,
were you essentially the sales force
[00:10:34]
in the management side or what were the
roles that you guys are taking care of?
[00:10:39]
Operations.
[00:10:42]
Her brother came on board to do sales
and he had his background,
[00:10:46]
and when I left AT&T,
that’s exactly what I did in those early
[00:10:50]
years, was a lot of cold calling
and 50 calls a day of peace
[00:10:55]
between Danny and myself for years,
every day picking up the phone.
[00:11:00]
And,
[00:11:01]
you know, that’s not an easy thing to do.
[00:11:03]
You have to have a certain
temperament for that.
[00:11:06]
Totally.
Yeah, absolutely.
[00:11:08]
Yeah.
[00:11:08]
You take a lot of no’s,
but that’s how we drove our business
[00:11:11]
in those first couple of years,
making phone calls, taking a lot of noise,
[00:11:14]
but getting some appointments,
generating some interest.
[00:11:17]
And we had a lower price point because we
[00:11:19]
don’t have a lot of overhead and we
were just driven to bring in clients.
[00:11:23]
Right.
[00:11:25]
Interesting.
Interesting.
[00:11:27]
Sounds like fun, was there was there ever
[00:11:30]
any fear of success or
fear of failure when it started?
[00:11:36]
For me, yes.
[00:11:38]
For her?
[00:11:40]
No.
[00:11:42]
She’s a driven woman.
And she always had this vision that I’m
[00:11:46]
going to push this wall forward and
eventually it’s going to move on its own.
[00:11:49]
And I think it was in the early years
where I might have called it quits
[00:11:55]
and we had those difficult conversations.
[00:11:58]
But
[00:11:59]
she was.
[00:12:00]
She was.
[00:12:02]
Going to make it work.
[00:12:04]
Yeah, well, it sounds like it has.
So that’s cool.
[00:12:07]
Oh, yeah.
Yeah. So at what point did you cross
[00:12:10]
the threshold where like, all right,
this is going relatively smooth,
[00:12:15]
we don’t have to look back anymore,
let’s just look forward?
[00:12:18]
Hmm.
That’s a good question.
[00:12:21]
I, I think it was driven primarily
on revenue and for me I think it was probably
[00:12:27]
three to four years in where I felt like,
OK, we got something here.
[00:12:31]
All right.
We started building our our revenue
[00:12:35]
stream, our reoccurring revenue
streams and bringing clients on for
[00:12:41]
digital services that we bill monthly.
[00:12:43]
And once that I think I said got about
maybe ten thousand a month,
[00:12:47]
I started to feel pretty good, like, OK,
we’ve got something that’s working here.
[00:12:51]
All right.
[00:12:52]
Digital services more
like SEO services or email services.
[00:12:57]
Yeah.
Hosting, SEO, digital, paid ads,
[00:13:02]
Facebook adds, social media
marketing and things like that.
[00:13:05]
Gotcha, ok, ok,
[00:13:07]
interesting. So how have you seen the
industry evolve over the past 12 years?
[00:13:13]
There’s a lot more competition.
[00:13:15]
All right.
[00:13:16]
For you guys or for?
[00:13:18]
Yeah. OK.
[00:13:20]
Yeah, when we started there was just a handful
[00:13:22]
of Web developers and digital agencies
in the marketplace that service the type
[00:13:26]
of clients that we service, which are
small businesses, look to a local base.
[00:13:33]
So there’s more competition.
[00:13:36]
These there’s also a lot more people going
[00:13:39]
online looking for business
as products and services.
[00:13:43]
So the opportunity for a company to start
[00:13:47]
spending money on digital is way increased
from where it was when we first started.
[00:13:53]
The phone book still had
distribution back in 2009.
[00:13:57]
You can’t get you can’t
get a phone book today.
[00:13:59]
I don’t.
We get them every once in a while.
[00:14:01]
And I just wonder who is in here.
[00:14:04]
It’s tiny.
[00:14:05]
Yeah, really small.
[00:14:07]
But there’s still somebody is paying
for that and it blows my mind.
[00:14:11]
Yeah.
I will tell you, two of the clients have
[00:14:13]
gotten more savvy, you know,
back in the day going in front of them
[00:14:17]
and say you need a website
and say, OK, whatever.
[00:14:20]
And we build all the content,
we put all the images in there.
[00:14:23]
They literally wouldn’t ask a question.
[00:14:24]
Look at it and look at it.
[00:14:25]
We just launched it for them. Wow.
Alright.
[00:14:28]
That all.
[00:14:30]
But, you know, they’ve been educated
[00:14:32]
to understand that you’ve
got to market online.
[00:14:35]
And so now when you meet with a prospect,
[00:14:37]
they want to know what’s
the content going to look like?
[00:14:40]
How are you going to market this site?
[00:14:41]
You know, they’re asking a lot
more intelligent questions.
[00:14:45]
So, you know, we’re forced to
be better project managers.
[00:14:50]
We’ve got account managers make sure
[00:14:51]
that we’re conveying what their ROI
is and giving our clients good customer service.
[00:14:57]
Sure.
[00:14:57]
Interesting. The other thing that changed a lot, though,
is that we used to just focus on
[00:15:04]
optimizing their website for Google
[00:15:07]
and having people be found
organically in the search results.
[00:15:11]
But now it’s like Facebook, Facebook,
[00:15:16]
get the paid ads on Google display,
banner ads, a bunch of things.
[00:15:21]
Landing pages.
[00:15:23]
Yeah, they’re complex.
[00:15:24]
There’s just more areas to advertise your
[00:15:28]
business now online than
there was back in the day.
[00:15:31]
Yeah.
[00:15:33]
Yeah, twelve years ago.
[00:15:34]
It’s interesting because social media was
a different beast, right? Yes, it was.
[00:15:38]
It was MySpace.
Right.
[00:15:42]
Yeah.
Even the YouTube ads and stuff like that.
[00:15:45]
And I feel like the SEO was
a little bit different game.
[00:15:49]
Well, a lot a bit different
game ten years ago.
[00:15:52]
Yeah.
[00:15:53]
It’s just things have evolved good or bad
and somewhat of a moving target
[00:15:59]
and the.
[00:16:01]
But then I guess
I would argue that you could spend
[00:16:05]
you could look at a given business and you
could say, hey, if you spend this dollar
[00:16:09]
amount, we can almost
guarantee you success.
[00:16:14]
Because we’ve seen it before, right,
[00:16:16]
like if you’re an electrician,
we’ve seen local electrician spend this
[00:16:19]
much money in these
places and be successful.
[00:16:23]
You can just kind of match that recipe.
[00:16:25]
And I don’t there’s so many
places to spend now, and
[00:16:30]
I would argue that it’s gotten
overly complex to spend online,
[00:16:35]
that, but I
[00:16:38]
don’t know if you can do that.
You can tell me.
[00:16:40]
Tell me in that regard how
you guys feel about that.
[00:16:44]
Hmmm, well, we’re in the
process of figuring out
[00:16:49]
or just declaring what our favorite
venues or just places where we will
[00:16:57]
advertise your business and we know what
kind of return you’re going to get.
[00:17:01]
And then not even saying we know how
to advertise your business on Amazon or
[00:17:08]
these other places because it is
each platform is its own ecosystem.
[00:17:15]
It is overly complex to say you’re
[00:17:17]
an expert at every
different platform, right?
[00:17:21]
We’re just not big enough for that.
[00:17:22]
And I guess that’s fair.
That’s totally fair.
[00:17:26]
A few, well maybe a couple of years ago.
[00:17:28]
I was trying to market a company
[00:17:30]
and I didn’t want to go on Facebook,
I wanted to be on YouTube
[00:17:36]
and finding someone locally here
that could help me with YouTube.
[00:17:40]
They kept saying,
just advertise on Facebook.
[00:17:43]
I’m like, I don’t want to I
want to advertise on YouTube.
[00:17:47]
Because it’s more of a video thing.
[00:17:49]
And and because they didn’t know YouTube,
[00:17:51]
they’re just trying to steer me into what
they knew, which, you know, I get it.
[00:17:56]
But I’m like, that’s not where I want
to spend my money I ended up not doing anything
[00:18:01]
because I dabbled in it.
[00:18:03]
And I’m like, I don’t want
to learn a whole new program.
[00:18:07]
But then I was thinking,
shouldn’t this be easy for any business
[00:18:11]
owner to just be like, these are
the kind of people I want to reach.
[00:18:14]
This is what I want to spend.
[00:18:16]
Here’s my ad.
[00:18:18]
I think it is trending that way,
[00:18:19]
and that is eventually what is going
to happen, but it’s just not there yet.
[00:18:23]
It is not, no. When I did
marketing on Amazon for my books.
[00:18:29]
So that was published three,
two and a half years ago.
[00:18:33]
Initially, they wouldn’t give you
any data that was beyond that day.
[00:18:39]
So you couldn’t look back 90 days or a
year or five years or anything like that.
[00:18:44]
They just give you a snapshot.
[00:18:46]
So every day I’d have to go
in there and take a screenshot.
[00:18:49]
And then there are people hustlin software
which essentially takes that data
[00:18:52]
and every day it would grab it
and put it in an Excel spreadsheet.
[00:18:56]
Oh, wow.
I’m like, wait, they have this data.
[00:18:59]
They’re just not sharing.
[00:19:00]
It seems kind of shady.
[00:19:04]
So they’ve changed that since then.
[00:19:06]
But it’s still it’s still not as
simple as I feel that it should be.
[00:19:11]
Right.
[00:19:11]
I guess for I don’t maybe I’m just
biased because I’m a business owner.
[00:19:15]
You got stuff going on.
[00:19:16]
You just want to, like,
bring me a business if I give you money.
[00:19:20]
And
[00:19:22]
there are a lot of companies out there
and platforms that are attempting
[00:19:25]
to service folks like yourself who would
rather do it internally and figure it out
[00:19:31]
without having to hire a digital agency
for whatever the reason might be.
[00:19:34]
And then that would be one.
[00:19:36]
Another difference from 2009 to today is
[00:19:40]
you’ve got a lot of website builder
platforms that you can go to.
[00:19:43]
You can build your own site
on Squarespace or Wex or Google platform.
[00:19:48]
But I think there’s always going to be
[00:19:50]
a need for an agency
such as ours because business owners get
[00:19:54]
busy and they’ve got
only a certain amount of time
[00:19:57]
and and their talents are
executing on their deliverables.
[00:20:01]
So, yeah, yeah.
[00:20:03]
Need those things for them.
[00:20:04]
I would imagine that there’s a price point
[00:20:07]
that a given a small business would spend
where you guys have to charge whatever
[00:20:13]
to just monitor and deal with that account
to take care of it.
[00:20:17]
And whether the ad spend,
let’s just say the outspend is five bucks
[00:20:20]
a month, you still got
time involved in there.
[00:20:23]
So your your labor essentially versus
the ad spend is not doesn’t make sense.
[00:20:31]
He’s going to come a point when the small
[00:20:32]
business grows and they’re interested
in spending this much more.
[00:20:37]
Well, now it makes sense
to get a professional.
[00:20:39]
That’s for five bucks, right, if I mess
up five dollar ad spend, whatever.
[00:20:45]
All right.
But if I mess up a ten thousand dollar ad
[00:20:47]
spend, well, now we got
a problem for sure.
[00:20:50]
So I think it’s a there must be
[00:20:52]
a threshold, I imagine,
where there’s an extension.
[00:20:56]
But it’s not just dollars and cents.
[00:20:59]
It’s, you know, return.
[00:21:00]
Is that what you’re putting out so
much of what you’re getting back?
[00:21:03]
Yeah.
And I would say for our prospect or
[00:21:06]
a client that says why I’ve only got 20
dollars per month, keep that 20 dollars.
[00:21:11]
Yeah, right.
And zero dollars.
[00:21:12]
But if you have five hundred dollars
and you want to get a thousand back now,
[00:21:17]
we can start talking about what
advertising can do for you.
[00:21:19]
Right.
[00:21:20]
And that’s the conversation that we
try to have with our clients is.
[00:21:23]
Yeah, it’s about strategy.
It’s about return.
[00:21:25]
If you can stomach the initial output
of investment
[00:21:30]
and you can then you can get a greater
return than what you’re getting if you’re
[00:21:34]
if you’re just nickel
and diming on the front end.
[00:21:37]
Yeah.
Yeah.
[00:21:38]
You have to.
That’s perfect.
[00:21:40]
I love that.
Keeping
[00:21:41]
the idea of marketing as an investment
is really affecting the return for sure.
[00:21:46]
And any digital agency
that’s figured out their
[00:21:51]
value proposition and
how they execute on their deliverables
[00:21:55]
should be able to offer
some return for you.
[00:21:56]
Mm hmm.
Mm hmm.
[00:21:58]
What have been some of the success stories
[00:22:00]
that you guys have had
over the past decade plus?
[00:22:04]
Oh, we’ve had some really good ones.
[00:22:05]
I mean, you know,
we pride ourselves on the fact that we’ve
[00:22:07]
got more testimonials,
more positive testimonials, online
[00:22:13]
reviews, rather than on our
Google, my business than
[00:22:16]
most of the agencies in the state.
[00:22:19]
Now is a good story.
[00:22:21]
You know, we push our clients,
[00:22:23]
they go online, go online,
tell that story, because.
[00:22:26]
we have clients that will email us,
oh, I got this.
[00:22:28]
I got this.
Go on.
[00:22:28]
And one that sticks out, though,
[00:22:31]
is we took a took a one man guy had one
truck, was one guy and we signed him on.
[00:22:38]
You know who I’m talking about.
We sign this guy on
[00:22:42]
pretty early on when we when we launched
[00:22:45]
our company today, he’s got
a fleet of ten plus trucks.
[00:22:49]
He’s got 50 plus employees and he’s
generating 60 plus legitimate
[00:22:56]
contact form submissions on his
website every single month.
[00:23:00]
Wow.
Contractor in Milwaukee.
[00:23:03]
And he spent primarily just digital.
[00:23:07]
So we’ve built a website for him.
[00:23:09]
We’ve built his entire online presence.
[00:23:12]
Yeah,
Google, we do some Facebook advertising
[00:23:16]
and we also manage his
organic social media.
[00:23:20]
And he’s an awesome success story.
[00:23:22]
I love bringing him up in meetings.
[00:23:24]
We’ve got a case study
we’ve written about him.
[00:23:25]
I love showing that the prospects
that we’re meeting with because
[00:23:29]
he’s a guy that, like I say,
he hears from the very early on.
[00:23:33]
He knew that he wanted to grow his
business, you know, sometimes we run across,
[00:23:37]
prospects that, you know,
I don’t want fifty employees.
[00:23:40]
I just I want to me a couple of these
guys, and that’s all I ever want.
[00:23:44]
OK, great.
[00:23:44]
We can still we can still
service those guys.
[00:23:46]
But this guy wanted to grow his business.
All right.
[00:23:49]
You’re able to go along for the ride.
[00:23:51]
And it was really cool to see.
[00:23:52]
You know, it’s interesting you say
[00:23:54]
that because when I’m out prospecting
for Calls On Call,
[00:23:57]
we run into a lot of people that are
just happy being the one guy in a van.
[00:24:03]
And to me, I’m like,
that seems like a torturous life.
[00:24:07]
Why would you want that
[00:24:09]
to grow or die?
[00:24:11]
But there’s some people there.
[00:24:12]
They’re happy and they’re content.
[00:24:14]
So more power to him, right?
[00:24:17]
Yeah, we can understand that, actually,
[00:24:20]
because, you know, when you decide you’re
going to grow your business,
[00:24:24]
there’s growing pains and certainly
it’s personnel, finding the right talent,
[00:24:30]
managing people,
customer service, figuring out, you know,
[00:24:35]
we we know that we’re
the best at what we do.
[00:24:38]
And now we’ve got to bring in people
that are just as passionate about it.
[00:24:41]
And that’s not that’s a challenge.
[00:24:44]
No employee’s
biggest challenge in the world
[00:24:49]
by a factor that I can’t even there’s not
a number that I’ve ever even seen
[00:24:56]
that could define the multiplier
of the pain that these are.
[00:25:01]
And it’s interesting,
and I started my business.
[00:25:03]
I had no idea that employees were a pain.
[00:25:06]
Oh, but it sounds like you guys
ran into the same situation.
[00:25:10]
Yeah, I didn’t I wouldn’t have I wouldn’t
[00:25:12]
have surmised that that was
going to be the case.
[00:25:14]
I would have thought it would have been
[00:25:15]
something else is going to be more
difficult, but it ended up being tough.
[00:25:18]
But I will say on a positive note,
that is what drives me to continue growing
[00:25:25]
our business,
because I get a lot of satisfaction out
[00:25:28]
of watching other people
grow and find their professional gifts.
[00:25:36]
I think that is definitely one
of the best things I like about my job.
[00:25:42]
Oh, I would agree a thousand times over.
Definitely.
[00:25:44]
There’s yeah, there’s
[00:25:48]
there’s pleasure, I suppose.
[00:25:50]
Just like parents with kids or something
like that where you can watch them grow.
[00:25:55]
Right.
[00:25:56]
And improve and you know, catch a ball,
throw a ball, do whatever,
[00:26:00]
learn how to spell all that jazz
of the employees are beyond that.
[00:26:03]
But you know what?
I like to watch them grow,
[00:26:07]
but it’s totally cool.
[00:26:08]
Well, likewise, we like I like
to watch customers do that same thing.
[00:26:13]
So there is yeah, in the end,
[00:26:16]
there are huge pain, employees are a huge
pain, but they’re worth it, so worth it.
[00:26:22]
You know, you’re going to grow.
[00:26:24]
You need to rely on other people to do.
[00:26:27]
To deliver the service totally,
completely, yes, on your own.
[00:26:32]
And it is it is really neat knowing
[00:26:34]
that we’re helping, you know,
somebody to put food on the table.
[00:26:37]
That’s a really cool feeling.
Yeah.
[00:26:39]
And just working as a team, like
[00:26:42]
having that support,
you know, it’s more fun.
[00:26:45]
It is more fun.
It is much more fun.
[00:26:48]
Yeah, definitely outweigh,
[00:26:51]
I’m sorry, say that again.
[00:26:53]
The positives definitely outweigh,
and I don’t want to say negatives,
[00:26:55]
but the positives are. Oh,
there’s some negatives.
[00:26:58]
There’s some negatives.
[00:27:00]
Yeah, because in the end,
employees are people and people have
[00:27:03]
baggage. Some people have tiny little
carry on bags and other people,
[00:27:06]
you’re just like,
where did that truck come from?
[00:27:10]
A lot of baggage.
Yeah.
[00:27:12]
So, yeah,
[00:27:13]
the trick is, I guess just finding
the people that can handle their baggage.
[00:27:17]
Yeah.
And not always the easiest thing
[00:27:19]
in the world because they don’t
share that on the interview.
[00:27:21]
Normally that I have a
747 full of baggage.
[00:27:26]
All right.
Flights coming in.
[00:27:29]
Yeah.
[00:27:31]
So let’s move on here.
[00:27:33]
How do you guys find the best
to market your own business?
[00:27:39]
Well, we are ranked in Google Local for
web design, and we have been for a long,
[00:27:46]
long time or like one hundred
percent of our leads from online.
[00:27:55]
No, not 100%. We drive
[00:27:57]
so we get a lot of repeat business
[00:27:59]
from clients that we build
sites for back in the day.
[00:28:02]
They’re coming back around.
[00:28:03]
We need to freshen up our site
and we get referrals too.
[00:28:07]
But we do drive a lot of leads from our
[00:28:10]
organic ranking,
we spend a lot of money on digital
[00:28:14]
for ourselves and of course,
we’re doing a ton of
[00:28:20]
we have a big effort around
our organic social posts.
[00:28:25]
But by and large, it’s from Google.
[00:28:27]
People are typing in web design Milwaukee
digital firm and they’re finding us.
[00:28:32]
We rank very, very well for our keywords.
[00:28:35]
Very cool.
[00:28:37]
Now I imagine that wasn’t accidental.
[00:28:39]
No, we put a lot of work
in that those early years
[00:28:41]
we weren’t we had to pick up the phone
[00:28:43]
and call people because they
weren’t finding us. Nice.
[00:28:46]
But that was a big turning point.
[00:28:47]
And we started driving leads.
[00:28:49]
We got we got a phone call,
someone found us online.
[00:28:52]
What is that ringing noise?
[00:28:54]
And literally in off three,
[00:28:55]
four times a week people are
emailing us or calling us.
[00:28:58]
They found us online.
I love sharing that story to our prospects
[00:29:02]
because obviously that’s
what we do for them.
[00:29:04]
We’re like estimates
of the value of being found.
[00:29:08]
For your search terms on Google.
[00:29:11]
Mm hmm.
[00:29:12]
The majority of your clients are they
[00:29:14]
hovered around Milwaukee because that’s
where you rank or they national, I guess.
[00:29:18]
Where do you find your clients?
Mostly.
[00:29:21]
Mostly local.
[00:29:22]
We have found some people that we have
company down in Florida call us a couple
[00:29:27]
of years ago and found us
online to do business with us.
[00:29:31]
We never met the guy we did some work
[00:29:32]
with, you know, just exchanging emails
and phone calls. Another guy in
[00:29:37]
Nevada.
[00:29:39]
I think there was somebody in Minneapolis.
[00:29:41]
It’s a small percentage of people
[00:29:43]
that have found us out of state,
most of them are in Wisconsin.
[00:29:46]
All right.
[00:29:47]
So does that mean that you were not
hitting the phone 50 times a day now?
[00:29:50]
No, I’m not hitting the phone anymore.
[00:29:53]
I haven’t made a phone call in six years.
[00:29:55]
Wow.
[00:29:57]
That’s got to be a good
feeling, I imagine.
[00:29:58]
Oh, man.
[00:30:00]
Yeah, it’s a great feeling.
[00:30:02]
Have you seen any trending downward
or upward in the past year?
[00:30:08]
Yes.
Yeah, covid hit us.
[00:30:11]
OK,
[00:30:12]
we we lost some clients that
they needed to close their doors
[00:30:18]
and we did have we had some clients
[00:30:20]
that picked up their advertising because,
you know, when their business is down,
[00:30:24]
they see the value in spending
more on advertising.
[00:30:26]
So and we have we did bring
on some new clients, but.
[00:30:31]
If you look at the trend over 12 years.
[00:30:34]
For sure, 2020 was a down year for us.
[00:30:36]
All right, all right.
[00:30:38]
In terms of bringing on new accounts,
[00:30:40]
our ability to upsell existing accounts,
it was it was about revenue.
[00:30:46]
It was the first year in 12 years that we
stagnated on revenue growth.
[00:30:52]
Oh, interesting.
[00:30:53]
Yeah,
[00:30:55]
that’s a you’re not alone there.
[00:30:57]
So that’s probably a decent
year to have that happen.
[00:30:59]
Yeah, that’s just like, oh, 2020 was rough
[00:31:05]
for her, wasn’t it.
Yeah, right.
[00:31:07]
Unless you’re a pizza delivery, you’re
probably having a somewhat better day.
[00:31:11]
But I felt grateful
that we just stagnated and
[00:31:15]
because so many other people
were impacted, much more so.
[00:31:18]
Oh incredibly so.
Yeah.
[00:31:20]
I was just I was talking with another
person I think last week
[00:31:24]
or so, like we’re doing,
we’re doing all right
[00:31:28]
almost to the point where I feel
guilty because you look around St.
[00:31:33]
Street in Madison here.
Yeah.
[00:31:36]
Restaurants just in general.
[00:31:39]
In fact, we just went to a restaurant,
I want to say was last week a Thursday.
[00:31:44]
And like, we haven’t been
to a restaurant in forever.
[00:31:47]
And it was my wife’s and my anniversary.
[00:31:49]
And she’s like, do you think
we need to make a reservation?
[00:31:54]
We both kind to like, oh,
[00:31:58]
no, no, it’s sad, but like, no.
[00:32:03]
And
[00:32:04]
we it was us and maybe one other couple there
[00:32:08]
like, there’s no way that we are paying
for this place to stay open right now.
[00:32:12]
No way.
[00:32:13]
Yeah, so which is it’s tragic because I
[00:32:16]
don’t know what’s going
to happen in a few months when.
[00:32:20]
We’ll want to eat at restaurants, and you
hope that they’re still around. Right.
[00:32:24]
So and that’s just one industry.
[00:32:27]
Yeah, so a big one.
[00:32:29]
But yeah, yeah.
[00:32:31]
We have had clients that were
you know, they had a gym and closed their doors.
[00:32:38]
A furniture retail.
[00:32:40]
They had to close their doors, you know,
a few businesses that didn’t mind,
[00:32:44]
at least not permanently, but no, no,
no, no, they’re not out of business.
[00:32:47]
But they had to literally close their
[00:32:48]
doors that nobody could go in their
place of establishment for months.
[00:32:51]
Interesting.
[00:32:54]
Yeah, yeah, I was just chatting with
the guy that owns the trampoline park.
[00:33:02]
Those things were germ
factories before covid.
[00:33:04]
What do they do?
[00:33:06]
Yeah, yeah, he’ll be fine.
[00:33:09]
That’s to survive a year
and then he’ll be good.
[00:33:12]
So that’s a years long time.
[00:33:13]
So hopefully he survives.
[00:33:14]
But yeah, it’s interesting.
[00:33:16]
I will tell you, though,
this year we have seen an uptick.
[00:33:20]
Nice.
Yeah, I know that there’s still concerns
[00:33:23]
around Covid and everything that’s
that’s still happening with that.
[00:33:27]
But our our business did stagnate
[00:33:29]
in twenty twenty and this year
it’s picked up just enough.
[00:33:34]
In the two months we’ve got an increase
[00:33:36]
in leads, we’ve got an increase in our
appointments sales.
[00:33:42]
Nice.
Yeah.
[00:33:44]
Very cool.
Yeah.
[00:33:45]
I can tell you from the volume of phone
[00:33:47]
calls that we have just
overall with our clients.
[00:33:52]
December and January were
people are hibernating.
[00:33:57]
I mean, there’s a lot of our industries
that we take care of that’s expected
[00:34:01]
pavement or landscaping is not a whole
lot of landscaping going on 20 below.
[00:34:06]
Not here in Wisconsin.
No, but the past week and a half.
[00:34:12]
As soon as the sun
[00:34:13]
came out and you could start to see just
little hints of grass phones just lit up.
[00:34:19]
Really?
Yeah, I would say we’re probably even
[00:34:23]
already looking, I don’t know,
a week or two early than typical.
[00:34:28]
So I think people are excited to get just
do stuff, spend money however they do it.
[00:34:35]
I think so too.
[00:34:36]
Whether you wouldn’t think that weather as
a is a big impact for a company like ours.
[00:34:42]
But
[00:34:43]
I think every business in the state
[00:34:45]
of Wisconsin sees an uptick
in business when the sun is up.
[00:34:48]
Totally, yeah.
[00:34:50]
Or your product spring.
Yeah.
[00:34:52]
My rule is that when the sun is out wallets are out, because I would think
[00:34:57]
we would see it with
a massage therapy client,
[00:35:00]
we answer phones for something that should
have nothing to do with weather.
[00:35:04]
That’s right.
[00:35:05]
Yeah,
but yeah, the sun comes out and all
[00:35:08]
of a sudden people are like,
I want to agree, it’s a mood elevator.
[00:35:13]
I mean, it’s, it’s driven
[00:35:15]
maybe the Christmas credit card is
paid off or something like that.
[00:35:18]
Who knows.
[00:35:20]
Who knows.
Whatever it is.
[00:35:22]
Yeah.
It’s interesting how many
[00:35:24]
industries that that covers that should
be not related at all to weather.
[00:35:29]
Sure.
It’s interesting.
[00:35:31]
So let’s talk about what you guys have
[00:35:32]
learned over the past decade plus because
that’s a long time to be in business.
[00:35:37]
Mhm.
So what have you learned.
[00:35:40]
Let’s just say
[00:35:42]
first year or two when you guys are first
starting and kind of clawing your way up
[00:35:46]
to success,
what are some things that you discovered
[00:35:49]
that you didn’t necessarily know or were
some of the challenges that you ran into?
[00:35:56]
Well, I can tell you that we actually did
come up with the idea for this company.
[00:36:01]
Amanda was going to be our web developer.
Oh, nice.
[00:36:04]
OK, because she built that website
and pretty quickly we thought,
[00:36:10]
let’s hire let’s actually
hire somebody to do that.
[00:36:13]
So that was a lesson.
[00:36:14]
I think our learning curve for us,
we decided we were going to delegate.
[00:36:20]
So that happened.
[00:36:22]
We also learned, I think along the way,
this happened early on.
[00:36:25]
We had to we had a client
way back in the day.
[00:36:29]
That was just a real hassle.
[00:36:32]
And we’d never returned money before.
[00:36:35]
And we didn’t want to do that because we
[00:36:37]
weren’t bringing in a lot of business
and it wasn’t a lot of money, but
[00:36:40]
we were bending over backwards for this
woman who we were never going to please.
[00:36:45]
And we finally said,
why don’t we just give her money back?
[00:36:49]
She can go away.
[00:36:52]
So we learned that it’s
OK if that’s not a fit
[00:36:56]
nicely to a point now where we can figure
[00:36:58]
that out in the prospect meeting,
where we won’t even bring the client on.
[00:37:02]
But being in a situation,
our position where we can say,
[00:37:05]
yeah, we kind of know who we want to work
with, we can ask the right factfinding
[00:37:09]
questions to figure out
who those people are.
[00:37:10]
And we won’t present
[00:37:12]
proposals to the folks that we just don’t
think we’re going to be a good fit for.
[00:37:17]
You figure that out as you go.
[00:37:21]
And I guess I would also say, you know,
just how we execute on our services
[00:37:27]
mistakes along the way,
at one point in time we we decided we were
[00:37:32]
going to outsource some of our
work to the wrong people.
[00:37:35]
All right.
[00:37:36]
And they did some things that were
not good for our clients.
[00:37:40]
And that was a big learning lesson for us,
[00:37:43]
making sure that we if we do partner
with other individuals to help execute
[00:37:47]
on some of the things that we’re doing,
that we do our due diligence,
[00:37:51]
that we’re always monitoring
what’s being done.
[00:37:56]
Just being smarter on how we
how we operate.
[00:37:59]
Mm hmm.
[00:38:00]
Let’s talk about hiring.
[00:38:02]
Let’s go back to the employees thing.
[00:38:04]
Did you learn anything about hiring,
even finding subcontractors?
[00:38:08]
Oh, yeah,
[00:38:11]
yeah,
[00:38:13]
I’ve learned that I am not good at that.
[00:38:15]
OK, OK.
[00:38:17]
This is really way better than me.
All right.
[00:38:21]
Yeah.
Yeah.
[00:38:23]
Why is that, though?
[00:38:25]
I think you have a natural ability to.
[00:38:30]
I think you would do a better job
[00:38:32]
at asking tough questions,
to be honest with.
[00:38:35]
Hmm, interesting, I just I’ve always done
[00:38:40]
well with the personal side and management
[00:38:43]
team, and Mark is really his gifts are
in sales and working with the clients
[00:38:50]
and that’s how we’ve operated and worked
together for the past 12 years as I kind
[00:38:57]
of take care of the employees
and he takes care of the clients.
[00:39:01]
Gotcha.
[00:39:02]
I would argue, Amanda,
that you have a tougher job then.
[00:39:08]
Well, thank you.
[00:39:11]
I would argue James that you should sit in on a call with me.
[00:39:17]
I am very
thankful he does the client side.
[00:39:20]
Yeah, I mean, don’t get me wrong,
clients for the most part are cool,
[00:39:24]
but every once in a while
you’re like, oh, right.
[00:39:27]
We’ve had somewhere we’re just like,
take your money and take a walk.
[00:39:32]
Right.
I don’t know who’s going to deal with you,
[00:39:33]
but somebody hopefully,
maybe will. Someone lucky.
[00:39:38]
But that’s rare.
[00:39:40]
Where employees having a challenge.
[00:39:44]
Man, I
[00:39:46]
used to joke about the number of Kleenex
[00:39:49]
boxes that we’d have
in our conference room.
[00:39:52]
Because I would make employees cry
with no intention of making them cry.
[00:39:57]
But just asking them questions,
[00:39:59]
which I thought were just like
logical questions and then they just
[00:40:03]
crack.
[00:40:05]
So I don’t think I’ve
ever had a client cry so.
[00:40:11]
Well, I think that goes back to what
you’re saying, like asking tough questions
[00:40:16]
and being in a leadership position,
but still motivating your team.
[00:40:22]
It is a fine line.
[00:40:23]
It is a balance that
[00:40:26]
luckily, I don’t know.
[00:40:27]
It comes naturally to me.
[00:40:32]
You do you do the same thing where you
ask tough questions and then people.
[00:40:38]
Crack.
[00:40:41]
You know, I don’t know what it is.
[00:40:43]
It’s hard to see, honestly,
if I if I had to say I think I would say
[00:40:46]
that you are a natural
extrovert and I am not.
[00:40:51]
I can be a very good extrovert,
but it’s it’s an effort for me.
[00:40:56]
We’ll go to a party
[00:40:57]
and we’ll come home at the end
[00:40:59]
of the night and she’ll just be lifted up
from all the interaction that she’s had.
[00:41:03]
Oh yeah.
For me,
[00:41:05]
I like I am at the party.
[00:41:08]
I appear to be the bigger extrovert, but
when I get home I am mentally drained.
[00:41:14]
Oh.
[00:41:15]
Of being an extrovert.
[00:41:17]
Interesting. So how does
that translate with managing?
[00:41:23]
Because it takes a lot of energy to have
[00:41:25]
that personal engagement develop
those that have that relationship.
[00:41:30]
And I just think that you do
that naturally better than I do.
[00:41:33]
If I had to guess.
That’s just a guess.
[00:41:35]
Very interesting.
[00:41:37]
And all of my opinions,
they’re just theories.
[00:41:41]
That’s.
No, that’s all right.
[00:41:42]
That’s interesting.
My wife and I are the same way.
[00:41:45]
I love the party.
[00:41:46]
meeting people and jazzin’
talking about stuff and whatever.
[00:41:50]
Yeah.
[00:41:50]
I just feel you feel alive
and she’s she’s talking to that one or,
[00:41:57]
you know, one person that she knows
[00:41:59]
and she’s cool with that just
safely in their corner.
[00:42:03]
I’m like, that seems like the most
boring party in the world.
[00:42:07]
But I guess that’s why I enjoy networking
[00:42:09]
events and why
this covid thing has been a challenge.
[00:42:15]
Yes, because the in-person stuff goes
away it’s the stuff that you thrive on.
[00:42:19]
You’re like, oh yeah.
[00:42:22]
What’s Plan B here?
[00:42:23]
Gives you energy.
Yeah.
[00:42:24]
Yeah.
Interesting.
[00:42:27]
I want to touch briefly on the new
business that you guys have ventured into.
[00:42:32]
The Med Spa MKE, can you tell
us a little bit about that?
[00:42:36]
It is located in Wauwatosa.
[00:42:41]
All right.
[00:42:42]
Our medical director is Dr. Byom
[00:42:45]
and we do Botox, dermal fillers,
[00:42:49]
facial rejuvenation, sexual rejuvenation,
vitamin booster’s, just a lot of
[00:42:56]
really fun things
[00:42:59]
to help people on their journey
with feeling and looking better.
[00:43:03]
Nice.
[00:43:04]
Now, that’s a pretty far
stretch from marketing.
[00:43:09]
So how did you guys get into that business
[00:43:11]
as well as, I guess,
in relation to this business?
[00:43:15]
Well, we knew Dr. Byom
[00:43:16]
from Brew City Marketing.
[00:43:18]
We had built his website.
[00:43:20]
Oh, nice.
[00:43:21]
Yeah, he was a client.
Yeah.
[00:43:24]
So it wasn’t just some ad that you saw?
[00:43:29]
He approached us, actually.
Really?
[00:43:32]
OK, well, that’s super cool.
[00:43:33]
There’s a lot of trust there.
[00:43:36]
Nice.
And how long ago was this?
[00:43:39]
Uh, one year ago.
Yeah.
[00:43:43]
One year was it really?
[00:43:44]
Yeah.
[00:43:45]
There was going to be an open house in
March of 2020 to relaunch the brand.
[00:43:49]
And of course covid not a good
time to start a Med Spa.
[00:43:53]
It’s a closed open house.
[00:43:58]
Interesting.
All right.
[00:44:00]
So I imagine you guys have learned some
things in marketing that as well then right?
[00:44:05]
Or were are you doing it
[00:44:06]
mostly before so it was pretty easy? Um, both.
[00:44:11]
Both.
[00:44:13]
I mean, yeah, we do all the marketing,
[00:44:16]
obviously, for it, but
it was really cool to step into a B2C
[00:44:22]
company and, like,
live in it because obviously we’ve been
[00:44:27]
working with a lot of hundreds of B2C
clients over the years.
[00:44:33]
But I’ve never actually ran a business
where I was in it, living in it every day.
[00:44:40]
Yeah,
a really nice, well rounded perspective
[00:44:45]
that I bring back to Brew City Marketing
and the clients that we have here.
[00:44:49]
Mm hmm.
Very cool.
[00:44:51]
Yeah.
[00:44:51]
Because I imagine before you were B2B and all of a sudden you’re B2C.
[00:44:57]
I imagine, do you take walk ins or
is it all scheduled? All scheduled.
[00:45:02]
All scheduled.
OK, all right.
[00:45:04]
But still it’s a little bit
different clientele than,
[00:45:08]
than a website or marketing.
[00:45:09]
I imagine, it’s
just a different sales process.
[00:45:12]
Yeah, yeah.
The the sales process is different
[00:45:15]
and the volume of clientele needed
to sustain a business like this.
[00:45:21]
Yeah.
[00:45:22]
Interesting, huh.
[00:45:25]
So I imagine after a year
you’ve had some more stories.
[00:45:32]
Yes, yes, but luckily,
[00:45:35]
the years of working, you know,
having Brew City Marketing and being
[00:45:39]
a business person has, you know,
hasn’t fazed me.
[00:45:43]
All right.
All right.
[00:45:45]
So what’s your favorite part
about owning the Med Spa MKE?
[00:45:51]
What would be my favorite part?
[00:45:54]
Hmmm,
[00:45:57]
I think
[00:46:00]
I don’t know,
maybe just the problems
[00:46:04]
that I see at Med Spa MKE,
like I can solve them within a day or two
[00:46:09]
with Brew City Marketing the operations is
just more complicated in that the issues
[00:46:15]
or the problems that we’re solving
with being in business for 12 years
[00:46:20]
and with the revenue that we have
and the more employees that we have,
[00:46:23]
the problems that I work
on may take a year to solve.
[00:46:28]
Oh! Bigger projects.
All right.
[00:46:31]
Like, Med Spa MKE is just quicker,
quicker things coming at me.
[00:46:38]
And I enjoy starting that energy
that comes with a start up.
[00:46:42]
All right.
Nice!
[00:46:46]
I always jokes that a new business is like a new
[00:46:48]
girlfriend kind of thing,
but your wife doesn’t get upset.
[00:46:54]
And I take that back, not as upset.
[00:46:58]
That’s so funny that you said it because
[00:47:00]
I actually made that same analogy
to some people the other day.
[00:47:05]
And I felt weird saying it,
but it’s true.
[00:47:07]
No, it’s totally true.
[00:47:10]
It’s the honeymoon phase
of a new business.
[00:47:14]
Yeah.
Everything’s so fresh.
[00:47:16]
So new.
[00:47:18]
Oh, yeah.
[00:47:20]
Ten years in you’re like oh
[00:47:21]
you again.
[00:47:25]
Here we go again.
[00:47:29]
And no surprises.
[00:47:31]
So, Amanda, what’s your favorite
part about Brew City Marketing?
[00:47:38]
My favorite part about Brew City Marketing is
[00:47:41]
oh, hmm.
[00:47:46]
Again, I want to say it’s the people.
All right?
[00:47:49]
I mean, I think I touched on that before,
but really building the team
[00:47:53]
that we we’ve had throughout the years and
who we have today and just providing that
[00:48:01]
that space for people to
grow and learn and change.
[00:48:07]
And
[00:48:09]
that for sure is my favorite part.
[00:48:11]
Just to support
[00:48:13]
your team.
Awesome.
[00:48:15]
How about you, Mark?
[00:48:16]
What’s your favorite part about
running Brew City Marketing?
[00:48:20]
Yeah, I would I would say the same
for sure, the people I mean,
[00:48:25]
the energy that we’ve created
and the camaraderie and the community
[00:48:29]
and the culture is really cool
and the challenge.
[00:48:33]
I like the idea of thinking about
where we could take this agency.
[00:48:38]
We’re in a really cool industry
and there’s a lot of opportunity for us
[00:48:41]
to grow and figuring out the right ways
to do it and the systems and
[00:48:47]
everything that’s kind of goes
into how you grow a business.
[00:48:51]
All the challenges.
[00:48:53]
I mean, I love it.
[00:48:54]
It’s difficult, but I love it.
[00:48:56]
It gives me a lot of energy.
[00:48:58]
Coming in every day and thinking about what
can I do today
[00:49:01]
to make it run just a little bit better,
what kind of decisions can I make, what kind
[00:49:04]
of conversations can I have
to tune this up a little bit better?
[00:49:08]
And every day kind of seeing it, you know,
[00:49:09]
seeing all that stuff come to fruition
and our business growing, it’s real nice.
[00:49:15]
I love it. So it’s time for advice time,
[00:49:18]
if you were to see someone or meet someone
that was considering starting their own
[00:49:22]
business, what is some advice that the two
of you would give to them
[00:49:26]
about things to look out for things,
to just any advice of any kind open door?
[00:49:33]
Hmm, I’d say don’t be scared to
build a team or find help sooner.
[00:49:42]
I think for a long time we were doing things on our own
[00:49:46]
for probably longer than,
you know, we should have.
[00:49:53]
Yeah.
Once we once he made the leap to hire
[00:49:56]
first employee things, our revenue
looked at it do it almost doubled.
[00:50:02]
Nice.
Yeah.
[00:50:05]
So yeah, a lot of.
Yeah.
[00:50:09]
Find someone to delegate.
Yeah.
[00:50:10]
No I agree for sure.
[00:50:13]
People have this idea in their
head when they’re running a business.
[00:50:16]
Well once we get to this much revenue
then we’ll bring on an employee.
[00:50:21]
But I think the right approach as is you
[00:50:24]
put somebody in place so that you
can get to this much revenue.
[00:50:28]
Yeah, that was a lesson that I think we
needed to kind of learn organically.
[00:50:32]
But because at first business.
[00:50:34]
Yeah, for sure.
[00:50:36]
That’s funny that you say that.
[00:50:37]
I was just I wrote a blog,
I want to say November,
[00:50:41]
something like that,
about people setting arbitrary milestones
[00:50:44]
that have nothing to do with what
they’re trying to accomplish.
[00:50:47]
They’ll be like, oh, I’ll look
into marketing after Christmas.
[00:50:52]
Like, what does that have to do with any
marketing that you’re going to be doing?
[00:50:57]
I get over the whole
Christmas thing first.
[00:50:59]
This just like I got to reach this revenue
[00:51:01]
threshold, like, how are
you going to get there?
[00:51:04]
You know, kind of, yeah.
[00:51:06]
Just maybe trusting in the universe a
little bit more to just take care of it,
[00:51:10]
get it done.
[00:51:12]
I love it, I would
[00:51:14]
you know,
[00:51:16]
there’s there’s all sorts of
business owners and coaches and mentors
[00:51:21]
online today with social media access
that give out really good information.
[00:51:26]
We just bought a book from somebody
who is running a digital agency
[00:51:31]
who is, you know,
got kind of like a roadmap for what what
[00:51:35]
the next steps might look like
for an agency similar to ours.
[00:51:38]
And her and I are both reading this book
[00:51:40]
and pulling a lot of really
useful nuggets out of it.
[00:51:43]
So,
you know, do your research and see if you
[00:51:46]
can find somebody in your industry that’s
done it that’s willing to give out some
[00:51:50]
free advice, whether it’s on their
Facebook page or a group that they’ve
[00:51:53]
created or a book that they’ve
written and digest that information
[00:51:58]
line as much as insight as you can
from somebody who’s done it before
[00:52:03]
so you can formulate plans for how
you create your own systems.
[00:52:06]
And I build your team.
[00:52:09]
There’s a wealth of knowledge out there
if you’re willing to look for it.
[00:52:13]
And even in the digital space,
[00:52:14]
whatever business that you’re
looking to start or grow,
[00:52:19]
tap into that.
[00:52:21]
Have conversations with people that have
[00:52:23]
done it before, and you’re
going to learn something.
[00:52:25]
Oh, yeah, absolutely.
[00:52:26]
Chances are the question has been asked
[00:52:28]
before, which is that chances
are the answer exists.
[00:52:32]
It’s out there in the ether.
Yeah, totally.
[00:52:35]
That’s a billionth
of a second Google search.
[00:52:38]
Right, exactly.
Whatever they say,
[00:52:41]
it’s still funny how they show
that time that it took to get the.
[00:52:44]
Yeah, I know.
[00:52:46]
It’s one point three million results.
Yeah.
[00:52:48]
Took you a long time there, Google.
[00:52:51]
Funny.
[00:52:52]
How can people find you guys.
[00:52:56]
Well, we’d be remiss if we didn’t
tell you to go to our website, right.
[00:53:02]
What’s your website? BrewCityMarketing.com.
[00:53:05]
Yeah. BrewCityMarketing.com
[00:53:10]
BrewCityMarketing.com
[00:53:10]
And then Med Spa MKE, where’s that at?
[00:53:12]
MedSpaMKE.com.
[00:53:14]
Man, you guys nailed it.
[00:53:17]
It’s almost too easy.
Cool.
[00:53:20]
Thank you guys so much
for being on the show.
[00:53:22]
This is a lot of fun.
Awesome.
[00:53:24]
Yeah, us too.
[00:53:28]
This has been Authentic Business Adventures,
[00:53:30]
the business program that brings you
the struggles stories and triumphant
[00:53:34]
successes of business
owners across the land.
[00:53:36]
We are underwritten locally
by the Bank of Sun Prairie.
[00:53:39]
If you’re listening to this on the web please
[00:53:40]
like, subscribe, give a thumbs up,
share, comment, do all that stuff that makes
[00:53:45]
the website an awesome place,
for the most part.
[00:53:48]
My name is James Kademan, entrepreneur,
[00:53:50]
author and speaker and helpful coach to small
business owners across the country.
[00:53:56]
What do we got here
[00:53:57]
Authentic Business Adventures,
I almost forgot what I was saying here,
[00:54:00]
is brought to you by Calls On Call,
offering call answering and receptionist
[00:54:04]
services for service businesses across
the country, on the web at CallsOnCall.com.
[00:54:10]
As well as Draw In Customers Business
[00:54:12]
Coaching, offering business coaching
services for entrepreneurs looking
[00:54:15]
for growth, on the web
at DrawInCustomers.com.
[00:54:18]
And of course, The BOLD Business Book.
[00:54:21]
A book for the entrepreneur in all of us
available wherever fine books are sold.
[00:54:25]
We’d like to thank you our wonderful
listeners as well as our guests Amanda
[00:54:29]
and Mark Dalnodar, owners of Brew City
Marketing, as well as Med Spa MKE.
[00:54:37]
This is good times, guys.
Thank you.
[00:54:40]
Nice.
I enjoyed it.
[00:54:42]
I’m excited to see where you guys
go with your marketing business
[00:54:45]
and with Med Spa MKE
I think 10 years is just beginning.
[00:54:49]
Right, right, right.
[00:54:52]
Check back again in 2030.
[00:54:56]
Nice, I love it.



