Interview with Kirk La Sala – Digital Marketing Expert – Small Business Show 221

The Small business show episode 221 for Wednesday, May 1, 2019. Greetings, folks, and welcome to the Small Business show here at BusinessShow Co, the show that is by, for and about small business owners here in Durham, New Hampshire. I'm Dave Hamilton.

And out on the west coast, I'm Shannon Jean. How are you, man?

I'm good, I'm good. Little travel to Chicago, back and forth this weekend, but back in the saddle here. Yeah, it's all good.

We're. We're both doing that college tour thing again with our boys this time.

That's correct. Yeah, I forgot. That's right. You and I are both in the same boat. Yeah.

Yeah.

We did a couple over the spring break as well. And so, you know, exciting times.

It is. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's interesting. It's one of those things that is. I'm, like, completely terrified by it and simultaneously totally go with the flow on the whole thing.

Yeah, that's right. It's gonna be awesome, but it's gonna be different.

Yeah. You know, owning a small business made me not worry about the massive, crazy, expensive college because you deal with these things, like, sometimes where it's like all of a sudden you gotta spend like 50 grand on something. It's like, you know, these numbers are just numbers and you sort of. You figure it out.

You.

It sounds like we need to do. We need to do a show about that. We do.

Not this show, because.

Yeah, that's right.

Yeah.

Yeah. So, hey, if you recall, if you. Our listeners, if, you know, we've had some awesome guests over the years and one of our. We had two founders on of a company called Tangle Free Waterfowl. And these guys are local to me. Great. Have become great friends. I typically, you know, go out with them once a month. We have lunch and talk business and this kind of thing. And they started bringing one of their guys with them that works for them. Is name is Kirk Lasalla. And, you know, I started talking to Kirk and I knew, you know, man, this guy's great. He's got a lot of knowledge. Every time we go, we'd get onto some kind of topic and just go dive deep in it, you know, and everybody else is kind of glazing over and I'd be like, oh, tell me more, tell me more. And so I'm really happy to have Kirk here with us today to talk about digital marketing and, you know, how he's, you know, worked within these various platforms. But in addition, you know, Kirk's also started a few different companies. And he's had a really great and very interesting entrepreneurial experience that we can, I think, share with us today. So, Kirk, thanks so much for joining us today. We're really happy to have you.

You bet, man. I'm super stoked to be talking with you guys today. Thanks for having me.

I have a ton of questions. You know, I always say at the end of these shows, you know, I'm learning. I'm learning the most. So, you know, we share all this information. So let's start with just a little bit of your background. Just give us a quick overview of kind of how you get started in this digital marketing space, business experience, and you wound up, you know, where you are today.

Yeah, you bet. So it's actually a bit of a story of desperation.

We've all been there.

When I, when I graduated high school, I was going to go to dvc, which is community college in the Bay Area, and I was going to transfer from there to either state, wherever I got into. And my folks came to me after I graduated and they said, you know, we're. We're gonna pay for your tuition to get for college, which I'm super thankful for, but you're gonna have to pay for, like, your living expenses. And so you. Fast forward two years and I show up to. I got into UC Santa Barbara. I show up there with literally a thousand bucks, and my rent's 300 bucks a month. And I'm thankfully, I'm living with my. My older brother Brent.

And.

And so I had basically three months and 100 bucks for beer. And I was going to be. I was going to basically be out of money. And I also want to apologize to my parents if they hear this, because they don't know that part of it. But so when I got down there, my brother actually helped me. He had already graduated Santa Barbara, and he was kind of helping me, like, whatever, buy food and that sort of thing. And I was feeling a little bit bad about it, so I started. My parents sent me with a laptop, and so I started trying to look for ways to make money online. And I came across affiliate marketing. And so I signed up with one of the affiliate companies to basically try to figure out how to drive online transactions and earn a commission to make some sort of money. And so I started doing that. It took me a little bit. It took me probably, like four months to make any sort of money. But what it did was, is it just absolutely opened my eyes to this, like, this whole new world of marketing that I've never even Known about, you know, marketing to me was all the traditional stuff. Radio, you know, print, billboards, that sort of thing. And I really just absolutely loved it. And I was able to earn, you know, anywhere from a couple hundred bucks to five hundred bucks a month by through affiliate marketing. And I. And so I did that for a while and it was just like barely making ends meet. And then there was a company that was local to Santa Barbara called Citrix Online that sold software, like all the go to products, go to my. Go to my PC, go to meeting, go to assist all those.

Oh yeah, sure.

And so I, I ended up getting an internship there because I kind of want to further my knowledge in the digital marketing side of things.

Smart.

And they actually put me stuffing envelopes. So that was my internship. I was stuffing envelopes that were going to be sent off to folks. I was making calls to remind people of webinars that they signed up for. And I was just kind of, you know, I don't know, I was, I was making money, which was fine. So I was able to kind of COVID my costs. But I ended up through that internship talking to more folks in the marketing department and was able to secure an internship doing search marketing. So that's kind of where it all started. And then from there, when I graduated, I got a full time job managing the search marketing side of the business. I mean, it was insane at this time. You know, it was. It was probably 2003 when I first started doing affiliate marketing. By the time that I was managing the search marketing side of the business was 2005, 2006. Ish. And back then, I mean, AdWords was absolutely insane. And we were also doing Overture, which was basically Yahoo. Yeah, yeah. And I mean, it was just crazy. It was literally like printing money back then. It was just no one, like for whatever reason, there wasn't a lot of competition and I learned a ton. And so then I decided at the end of 2006 that I wanted to start my own business. And I wanted to bring all this knowledge that I learned and apply it to the small business because I felt that there was a huge opportunity there. And so I created a little like what I refer to as an agency with one person in it, but. And started, you know, tried to basically sell my services and also provide my services at the same time. And I never really, you know, I did it for probably about three years or so and I was living with my parents. I moved back in with my parents and I really just wanted to do this. And I was making out of out of college. I was making pretty decent money right out of college, but I just didn't feel like, I didn't just, I just didn't feel like fulfilled. I was, I was one of 30 in a marketing department.

I see.

And, and so yeah, so I, you know, I made a little bit of money here and there, but nothing that was ever what I, what I wanted to do. And I also realized, you know, pretty early on that the only way to really scale a service oriented business is by hiring people. And you know, I knew obviously the E commerce side with software transactions and that sort of thing. And like you could go from freaking zero customers to 1000 overnight if you spend enough money or if you get the exposure. And it's really, you know, outside of maybe server capabilities and that sort of thing, I mean you can scale the business quickly and overnight. And so from there I just, you know, was starting to think about getting back into E commerce and eventually one day, you know, starting my own thing. And yeah, so that's kind of, I guess that's a little bit more.

But that's, this is great because it started and you, you used this word, but it's the right word. It started with desperation, right? You, your back was against the wall, you had to do something and it had to be something that you could do around your class schedule because you didn't want to, you know, muff that all up, right? So like this was, this is. So many small business owners find themselves in this scenario. And honestly the ones that do are usually the ones that are more likely to succeed because you're your backs against the wall, you've got to do something as opposed to if you know, you're flush with funds. And it's like, well, play with this or play with that. Sometimes those work and that's fine. But, but you need to already have the drive. This gave you that drive, right? Because you had no other choice.

Right?

No other choice. But that's how you learn drive. Like we all have it in us to do something like this. It's just, do you, do you learn that you act can do you learn to trust it. And at first you didn't, but it was the only thing you had so you might as well trust it because nothing else was happening. So off you go. And that's it.

That's great. And the other comment I wanted to make is what I hear when you tell this story of your journey. There is being an early adopter is really important. And when you talk about the early affiliate marketing, early AdWords and Overture. And you're right, I was doing the same similar thing. Dave and I ran a very successful affiliate based business for a decade before the market got super crowded. And the same thing with like the AdWords and everything when, you know, you remember you could buy keywords for a nickel.

Right.

It was so easy because nobody knew about it. It didn't feel easy at the time. We, we had to do the work, but all you had to do was the work. You didn't have to be lucky. Yeah.

So it's awesome in that you, you know, you took the risk, you check and we're going to talk more about risk and taking, you know, you know, leaps of faith and that kind of stuff as we go on. But yeah, I mean, I commend you that, you know, just continuing to power through. Okay, this is leading to this and now I'm going to try this, I'm going to try that. So we'll circle back. But, but you, you wound up eventually working for our friends at, at Tangle Free. Along the way you're doing some other stuff as well and still doing some other stuff that we're going to tap on. So tell us what you do now.

Yeah, so right now my title is Director of Marketing for Tangle Free. But it's funny, I laugh because I have that title and I also am the trenches guy. So I do all the work as well. I'll sit down with Dougie, Corey and Steve Stacy and we'll talk strategy, put together our calendar as far as what we're going to hit, marketing wise, messaging, all that stuff. And then I'm the one that's to go back to my desk and then actually execute on it. And so I also, through my starting that business, the agency side of things, I out of necessity had to learn web development as well. So I have a background in web development and also had to learn the creative side of things in order to provide like a real true service to my clients. And so I, so because I have like all the, I don't want to sound like I'm bragging or anything because I'm not. I'm just like, I have all the skillset to manage the website, to drive the traffic, to do all the creative side of the business as well. Which is why like, I feel like I'm, I'm a perfect fit for a small business because I enjoy it. Like I absolutely enjoy doing that. So that's, so that's what my title is, Director of Marketing. But I also execute on everything, every side of the Marketing or every piece of the marketing side of the business.

Yeah. And just like I thought Corey and Doug don't do anything. So I got it, I got it. I'm going to bring up next time. And when they listen to this, I want to be sure they can hear that.

You know, you said something though. You said out of necessity, I had to learn, learn. And you said web development. But, but that like, like you could insert a lot of things in there. That is that small business mentality. Out of necessity I had to learn, not I didn't know. So I like couldn't, I, I couldn't figure it out. Trusting that you can figure it out is, is that that small business like get it done mentality? And I'm, I'm reminded of Elon Musk, right. With SpaceX. He was like, well, I couldn't afford to hire the best rocket scientist. So out of necessity I had to learn how to be a rocket scientist, which he did. Now I don't know if I could become a rocket scientist. But you know, he didn't, he didn't ask himself that question. And you didn't ask yourself that question either. You just went and did it and that's like, and now you, you have, you are a more valuable person in the marketplace because you did that. And that's a huge thing. Just go figure it out. That mentality is the key.

Yep. Yeah. And honestly like when I tried to do the web development side of wasn't like looking hindsight, all that. It's like, oh yeah, now I'm a way more well rounded marketing guy. But it was literally going from a company that had endless amount of resources, from a creative side, from a web development side. And then it was like this punch in the face when I would hook into a small business that literally had no resour and it was okay, let's put together a search campaign. Do you have a website? And it's like, actually I don't. Or do you have landing pages that we can drive this traffic to? Actually, I don't. And is there someone that we can work with from a design perspective? Like, no. So it was okay, let me control the full process. I've done so much testing at Citrix and I know what for the most part works and I know how to implement it or at least you know, I know in my head how it should go. But now I need to, I need to have that skill set to actually do the work. And so it was just, yeah, literally out of necessity to make, to make the company more Valuable, which is me, I guess, at the end of the day.

And it's continually adding to your talent stack like our friend Scott Adams always talks about, you know, oh, you don't need to be a expert at one thing. You need to learn these different skills, you know, along the way. And it serves you really well.

Yeah, it's funny, I was actually, I was telling. It was like a friend of a friend who's asking me what I do and it's really hard for me to say what I do. And with. And not like, I don't know, I don't want to come across for a half an hour.

Yeah.

You know, well, and it's like, I don't know. And so I told him kind of the same thing that I told you guys, which is like, well, you know, I can do this, that the other thing. And he's like, well, it sounds like you're so. You're like mediocre at everything. Fair enough.

Yeah. Was that person a business owner?

No. No.

I would argue that, right. As a business owner, you'd be like, that's awesome, man. Because I know I have to do all these things too, you know, and manage that stuff. You get the concept, but a lot of people don't. And when I hear you, oh, it's kind of hard to describe what I do. I have had that same problem my whole life, you know, of. Well, let's see, I do a little of this. I have to do this. And when, you know, when the truck shows up at 5pm and needs to be unloaded, I have to go out there and unload the truck too, you know, so that those are good things in this crowd. You're in a safe space here when you talk like that.

Well, honestly, the people that, that are, that see themselves as above unloading the truck, most of the time you're not going to be successful, man. You got it. Like it's got to get done. Unless you've already paid somebody, it's not that you're above it, it's that you've already delegated it out. But if you didn't guess what the buck stops with you go unload the truck. Let's go.

Yeah. So let me ask you one thing that has just constantly haunts me and I'll speculate, there's a lot of small business owners listening that have the same question is, I'm always like second guessing where I'm. If where I'm focusing my efforts is the right place, especially now, do I put money and time into more Facebook ads, Do I focus on Twitter or should my adwords be this? You know, so for small business owners, to your point earlier that don't have a lot of resources, how do you figure out, you know, where is the best place to focus your limited time and budget?

Yeah, for sure. So I like for me, if it's something. So actually, let's take a step back. If it's so the way that I look at it is like this push first pull perspective, which it depends on what the product is. So like if it's a product and this is in terms of like, if you don't have any data and you're starting out, like you're starting this new business and you have this product idea that you're going to try to sell something. If it's a product that is maybe a different approach on existing people know about this product, but maybe it's unique in some various ways or it might be a product that no one has ever heard of and it's whatever, truly innovative and someone hasn't done it, which is typically pretty rare. But either way, there's like for sure on, on the product that people, you know, if people are actively looking for something that is the product that you provide, whether it's a, you know, different spin on it or not or whatever that it's, it's really in my mind it's a home run to, to start with something like search, right? Because you have, you have, there's millions of people searching probably for this product, right? If it's a common product. But then on the other side of that is that if you have this product, like there's the company that I created with my brother, which there's like, there's maybe a product that's similar, but it's a totally different application and we needed to put it in front of people because no one's looking for this. Like, literally there's zero wheat. We tried search and there's no one looking for exactly what we've created. And so then you're, you know, and that would be like the push side of it. So now we're trying to put it in front of folks based on their demographics. And so we started with Facebook as an example on that side of it.

That makes perfect. Okay, so I'm just going to, I'm going to sort of distill what you said here because this is the key, right? If you can find people looking for something that you've created, search marketing makes sense. Otherwise, if you need to go tell people about it, you need to do some push, some branding, if you will. Facebook lets you do that targeted brand. I mean, there's other places you can do targeted branding too, like on a podcast. Right, but, but like, like thinking about it that way, that, that really helps narrow it down. Obviously you could do both, but if you've got limited budget and you got to pick one, this makes sense. I like it.

Yep. Yeah, absolutely. And that's. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, and. And then if it's. So you have an existing business where you're driving traffic through some specific channels. You know, the. One of the things that I like to leverage is basically a chart of, you know, putting all the things in. Putting all your. What you think are action items for the business, whether it's the marketing side or even the entire business in some sort of chart, which basically measures them based on highest impact to the business financially and the least amount of time to implement things that sit in the highest impact. You may have Facebook, you may be running Facebook marketing and you're hitting a 10 to 1 and that's the metric that you want to be hitting in order to be profitable. From a cost of marketing perspective, applying more budget to that, to scale, it could be an option. Right. And that's easy to implement. So that's a high impact of the business and super easy. I mean, you're talking about changing a budget. Right?

Right. No time at all. Yep.

Right. So those are the things. When you start, if you have data from the business where you're currently driving traffic and you have, you know, all your analytics set up to know from a performance perspective that this is working or maybe it's not working, that that's how you would, you know, obviously allocate your time. And a majority of my time is focused on, you know, the top. The things that are having the highest impact to the business. And so that's just kind of how, you know, that's how we roll. That's how I roll. I work for a lean Six Sigma consulting firm where I ran marketing for that consulting firm. And they refer to that chart as a pick chart. And that's where I learned about that and loved it ever since I implemented it. So that's typically how I, like, organize.

Yeah, that's great. That's some great advice. That's very actionable. I like that. The polar pitch, polar push.

I never thought of it that way because, I mean, really you're pushing to both of them. But. But thinking about it separately, pull or push is really a good way to look at it. Oh, man, it's so smart.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Let that sound go by there. So while we're on this topic and you were talking about, you know, this product that you're involved in that, you know, nobody was searching for, so you had to put it out. Let's talk about that for. So, like, you know, one of the things I always told my employees is that they should have. And I tell everybody this. You should have something going on on the side, something, you know, and they, I don't have time, whatever night. And I would always ask them one question. Well, do you watch tv? And if. And of course they all say yes, I say, well, don't. Don't watch tv. And there's your time. Create something, try something, experiment. Even if you fail, you're going to learn a ton. And so you have done that a few times, like Dave and I have had failed a few times, you know, had some success. And so this product, look at Mommy. And you can find out more at. Look@mommy.com. tell us how that got started and how you use the digital marketing to push that product out.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. So my brother and I have dabbled in photography. I wouldn't call myself a photographer. My brother is way more talented. But, you know, at the time that we were talking about with, like, before this business had started, I was doing really well with Facebook marketing and, you know, had some great success with selling. Selling product. And we started looking at. It's kind of like, it's almost the reverse of how you. How people start a business. Like, most people start a bit. Or maybe I'm totally wrong, but this is what I, what I feel that, like, most people start a business with this, like, you know, need to solve some sort of problem or something that they're passionate about or whatever it might be. But for, for us, it was. We looked at audiences that we could target on Facebook and one of the, the. One of the things that we could easily target was mothers with kids at any age that you wanted. And so being that we both are like, really like photography and somewhat into it, my brother actually came up with the idea and he's like, look, I think I have an idea for. You know, there's also this problem that both my brother and I had, which was taking photos of our kids, which was like, impossible, you know, and especially if there's multiple kids, I mean, they don't look at. They don't look at your phone when you're. When you're snapping the shot. And so My brother came up with this idea which was take an LED light, ring light and then put hair on it, put some ears on it and some eyes and then, you know, and basically now you have something that can capture the attention of your kids. And when my brother and his wife and his mother in law created the first one and they used it on his kids, it absolutely worked. And so literally in I think it was a week's time from talking to Brent about it to actually being live with our first campaign he had, him and his wife and mother in law basically created, I think it was 100 of them. They ordered the LED lights off of, or the ring lights off of Amazon and then, you know, put all the hair and stuff on that. And after, when we first launched, and that's literally in all of the businesses that I've started, it's like right at the beginning, that first launch of campaign is like literally the most exciting part for me because it's like, okay, we've done this work, we think we have this product, but now we're actually going to find out if this is going to work in the first week we sold through them and we're like, oh, wow, that's awesome. Okay, we have something here. And so then that's when I reached out to Corey who owns Tango Free and he's helped us manufacture it in China. And so that. Yeah, so that's. Yeah. And it was, it was just. Yes, it's a fun, it's a fun side. It's obviously it's a little bit weird that.

No, no, so, so which type of.

Marketing, which type of marketing did you use for this? Was it push marketing or pull marketing?

Yeah, no, so that's what I. Yeah, so for this it was just all push. Right. Because like there's literally so the only thing that's out there. What. I'm sure there's more that's out there now. But at the time the only thing that was out there was for, you know, like a professional camera. Right. That you could put over the lens some sort of like animal thing that would go over the lens. But no, there was nothing for the smartphone user, which was the mass market. Right. And so, yeah, so that was. So for sure it was all Facebook and Instagram, what we did. That's great. Yeah.

I don't even know how I would search for that. Like, you know what I mean? It just needs to be shown to me. Yeah, that's a, that's a great.

Especially when you've had the experience of trying to take A pictures or trying to take pictures of little kids. You'd be like, oh, dude, I totally need that. You know, but you wouldn't know until it was shown to you.

So, yeah, we did like a ton of reviews of people just reaching out to us. Be like, oh my gosh, this is incredible. Yeah.

And there's two sides of it. I. Number one, I commend you for continuing the hustle and you know, pushing out because you're using all your skills you've developed over the, over the years, this talent stack you've created. But I also commend, you know, the guys at Tangle Free for giving you the, the not only encouraging you to do it, but even, you know, opening up their resources and manufacturing in China and helping you do that. And that.

What.

It's just a great back and forth between employer, you know, and. And your team and making everybody, you know, you build a lot of loyalty and trust that way. For sure.

Absolutely. I mean they're complete studs, you know, like they. Honestly. Yeah, they're incredible. They've helped me a lot. Like, and they're just. I literally look at them as like my brothers, you know, like they're just legit people. And I've had, you know, partnerships in the past that have not been that at all. And there's, you know, and it. And honestly, like just working with like minded folks that are like good people, genuine good people makes a day of work just like actually that much more productive too, you know, and it's.

Yeah. And more enjoyable, right?

Way more enjoyable. And I think that's why it's more productive. Right. That it is more enjoyable. That like I'm stoked. I'm pumped, like Monday, I don't, whatever. It's just another day in the week, you know. Yeah. And the stuff that we're doing at Table Free is just transforming the business and it's like just so exciting and I feel like we're just getting started.

Yeah. So let's, let's talk about that. So tell us, you know, kind of if you can, in some broad strokes. You don't have to go into any, you know, top secret proprietary stuff. But talk about the transformation because, you know, was it relatively older business that these guys took over and are, you know, transitioning in all kinds of different ways. How's. How have you guys done that and the impact of digital marketing on it.

Yeah. Yeah. So obviously like you said, I mean, Tangle Free has been a traditionally a wholesale business selling to Cabela's and Bass pro shops and all that stuff. And just over the years, you know, there's, there's a bunch of different reasons why the shift in the business. But you know, at the end of the day, the, you know, the big box stores and even some of the independent dealers that were buying from us, it just slowly kind of, you know, it just slowly kind of.

Yeah, it really wasn't working as well. Right, right.

It started decline. Yeah. And I mean the reality is, is that folks are searching for this stuff online and purchasing online and that sort of thing. Less, less and less people are going in store for, for these products. And so it just makes sense. And so, and this is what's awesome about the Tangle Free guys is that like they, they make decisions, you know, I mean like they're like legit. You know, let's, let's do it. Like, let's, let's go after it, let's understand the business, let's look at the data and really understand it. But when it's time to make a decision, they make a decision. And that to me is awesome. And you're just not going to get that in the big corporate America. Right, right. And so, you know, they basically. And also in 2015, when we really started pushing the online side of it, I mean, it was substantial growth on the online side of the business. And this is prior to making a shift from traditional wholesale business to a direct consumer business. And so we had some data to tell us that like there's legit volume here. And obviously me being a digital guy was like, yeah, let's go. You know, like, we don't need to wait, we don't need to talk about this anymore. Let's go. Because that's all I've done for 16 years. And so we made a decision that we were going to go direct to consumer. And a big part of that decision was basically sustainable growth at the time of being a wholesale business. You're relying on the Cabela's, the Bass pros to put in an order, even fulfill on the order that they said they wanted for this season. So you go and you have a bunch of product made and then, you know, you may find out that they actually don't need that much product. And now you're sitting on product and you know, and the future of the business is really in these guys buying it when it's really the consumer, that if we could get to the consumer that we could, you know, create a sustainable own the customers and create a sustainable business going forward. And so that was, that was really the push I Mean, it's multiple things, and I didn't touch on everything, but it was. Here's an opportunity. We can see it. And, you know, if we don't do this, there's a potential that the business might not be around if we just hold on to, you know, being a wholesale company. And when we.

Yeah, well, so with that, did you have to use both? Because, I mean, you know, waterfowl hunting is certainly getting some search. Did you wind up using a mix of that, that pull and push?

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. So from. From a marketing side, I mean, you know, waterfowl hunting products are searched all the time. Right. People know that they need decoys. If you're getting into duck hunting, like, you need decoys, you need bags, you need the gear. And those are all pretty commonplace. Right. Like, that's. And so there's a high volume in search, and we do really well with search. And then on, say, the push side of things, it's a lot of it. What's awesome about Facebook and Instagram is that you can basically leverage your existing data to find more folks that basically resemble the audience that buys from you.

Using their pixels and the people that want to view your products and your content.

Right, Absolutely. Absolutely. So, yeah, so that was. So we. I mean, we spend, you know, just as much on Facebook and Instagram as we do on search and. Yeah, so, yeah, and we have, you know, we're doing. We're also doing display through AdWords as well. We are totally focused on email right now, which is a huge channel.

Yeah. Let's talk about email, because I think it often, because it's been around for so long, and we all get bombarded with so much stuff we don't want to see. I think there might be some misconceptions that is it still a powerful way to connect with customers. And I know you guys use it a lot. And what have you found that is the best, you know, method to get your voice heard, you know, amongst all the, you know, spam and everything else we get in our mailboxes.

Yeah, yeah. It's funny, I had someone tell me that email was dead about two years ago. And it's like, what I can tell you is that email is not dead. And we're actually allocating a lot of resources, you know, financially and everything into it because there's a tremendous amount that you can do. And I think one of the things that I feel like we really want to be cognizant of as we approach expanding our email side of the business is not Being too intrusive and not sending an email a day based on, you know, the product set that we have and everything else. But it's more about, you know, extending, like, the customer service side of the business, which is, you know, you go into a store and if you frequently this store a lot, you probably know, the people that work there, they probably know a little bit about you and what you like. You know, you may always purchase dog products or something like that. And it's basically taking that same philosophy from an email perspective is just creating a relationship with our folks, our customers that are constantly purchasing from us, and we're collecting the data, and we know a little bit. Every time they purchase, we know a little bit more about them. And so it's more about providing communication that is very personalized to the customer based on certain things that they've done in the past. And so that's really like, for us, email is just an extension of the business to, you know, make folks aware that maybe, you know, always buy dog products. I keep using this as an example, but, you know, it's pretty easy to understand that if someone is always buying a dog product, that when we come out with a new, you know, version of a product or a new dog product, that they're, you know, being notified of that and just being smarter about how we're communicating and what we're communicating.

Yeah, it's. It's relevant and it's. You're adding value.

Right, Right.

Not just. Yeah, one of the things.

Yeah, go ahead.

Well, one of the things I think you guys have done a great job is you're, you know, you're telling a story, right? You're. You're kind of setting a tone, and you guys have sponsored, you know, these short films and this. All this great content that's shared across the thing. And, you know, is. Is that part of your. Your overall plan is that, you know, getting that message out of kind of, you know, this is what we're about and.

Absolutely.

Okay.

Yeah, absolutely. And that's. So this also ties back into. I think I mentioned in the beginning, we have an editorial calendar. So we know next year, which it's already. It's almost 100% complete, that we have these projects that we're working on. And obviously, before selecting these projects, if it's a film or, you know, conservation week or whatever it is that we have, you know, that we've. We've basically, we've identified that this story aligns with our brand and who we are. And so if that is the Case if those things, if those two things connect the project and who we are as a brand, especially from like a video perspective, a line, then, you know, it gets put into the editorial calendar. And it's just a way.

I want to stop you right there so that listeners are aware of this. You are a business that sells products to go and hunt and, you know, enjoy the process of hunting waterfowl. And you have an editorial calendar. I run a publication called Mac Observer. We don't have an editorial calendar. I mean, we do, but, like, this is like most of the time. I've never heard the term editorial calendar used outside of the world of publishing. Right. You've got one that goes way beyond where ours goes. Like, we have an editorial calendar, but it's not going into next year like yours.

They're publishing all the time. I mean, you know that. Yeah, it's fascinating.

That's just. It is. You see yourself like, you take yourself seriously as publishers and that is what allows you to leverage this email list that you have, among other things, right? Because you've got content now that you can send out to these people. And it's not this add on that you're like, oh, crap, we gotta write something for the newsletter. Timmy, go like, like spend 10 minutes and write something up so we can send it out. No, like, this is a part of what you are, who you are, what you do. This is huge. And it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it's. It's definitely. It hasn't always been this way. You know, it's basically our second year, of course, doing the editorial calendar. But it just, it aligns everything, right? Like, it aligns everyone. We're all on the same page. We know, we absolutely know what times of the year we're going to do a promotion that gives me insight into when I need to start creating all the creative site, like the assets for that promotion or if it's a new product that we're launching, we have that. So I know, okay, I need to get this product to whoever's in California or whatever that hunts a specific species and so that we can get some field shots so that when we launch this thing, we'll have those before and we'll be able to pepper it throughout our social and do all these things that we have in the editorial calendar. So it's just, it brings it all together. Like, it's just all organized. And that's not to say that the things don't change and that we skip certain things, but at least we all know that these are the things that we're focused on. And, you know, it's okay if we don't actually launch this at this time because we have some sort of issue or whatever, but at least we're all in the know on what needs to be done.

That's awesome, man. And just. Just for perspective, how many people work full time at Tango Free?

Yeah, so we have six people in the office and then we have two people in the. In the warehouse.

Yeah, exactly. This isn't a 50 or 500 person company, folks. There's eight people. That's right. But I mean, this is like, you can do this. Anybody can do this with your small business. You just make it a priority and off it goes. And, and like you said, just having a plan, even knowing that giving yourself permission to change the plan as you go is not only fine, it's smart, but having one to start with keeps you from spinning your wheels. It's like, all right, well, we know what to do. We don't have to guess, and so let's just go do it. Yeah, smart.

Well, I mean, both of you guys know and we could talk about this.

Stuff all day long.

That is great. I mean, we're all enthusiasts about it, so. But as we start to wrap up here and everything, number one, I just want to say I've totally learned the most, which always happens to me. That's why I love this show. But we've got thousands of other small business owners that are listening right now. Kirk, if you could offer, you know, one important bit of advice about digital marketing that you could leave them with, what would it be that they would remember after they listen to the show?

Yeah, I think, man, that's a really tough question for me because I think it's a couple things, but I would say, like, you know, especially from a digital side number, I'm going to say a couple of things.

Okay, sure, yeah, no worries.

The first thing is, and it's because I've seen it so many times, is just make sure that all your analytics are set up before you do anything. Make sure that you have your Google Analytics set up correctly. If you're running E Commerce store, make sure you have the E Commerce integration analytics. If you're running Facebook ads, make sure you have the Pixel firing correctly. Same thing with AdWords. All your Pixel and analytics data, make sure that's clean because that's the basis of what you make decisions on going forward. And second, I would say always test. Always test new, creative, new content and look for unexploited channels and try to figure out ways. I'm not going to tell you all the details, but I'm looking at as an example LinkedIn as an ad platform for us to help with Tangle Free. And there's reasons why. And I can guarantee you that no one in the waterfowl space has even considered LinkedIn as an ad platform to leverage.

They weren't until now. So the clock just started ticking, man.

Not in your, your, the manner you're thinking of for sure.

That's right. That's why I'm not, I'm not disclosing that information.

Yeah, no, that's, that's good. And you know, it's, it's been fascinating and I, I really have a lot of respect for all the different things you've tried and that you've, you know, came power through this, power through that and just you, you, you find more success and that's the way you do it. That's the way you create, you know, wealth and you, you know, you just, you just better yourself. And I love hearing stories like this and I, I can't thank you enough for coming on the show and, and you know, we ran a little bit long, but I don't think anybody will be complaining because it's such good information.

Yeah, thank you guys so much, man. I appreciate you guys having me on here.

Oh, yeah, we're gonna have.

Great.

Yeah, it has been. We'll have you on again. You know, folks, if you have questions for Kirk, you'd like us to pass on just feedbackus show co or, you know, post them over at the small business support group at BusinessShow Co Facebook that'll. I'll get you over there. And thank you so much for listening. And Kirk, thanks again for coming on. We really appreciate it.

Yeah, thank you guys. I appreciate it myself.

Oh, thanks, man. Yeah. Folks, we'll see you next week. And keep living that charmed life. Kirk Scott, good advice on getting you there.