063. The Future of Demand Generation and B2B Marketing with Joseph Poschel

Foreign.

My name is Miranda Jenkins and I'm joined as always with Emilio Garcia. And today we're being joined with a special guest, we have Joseph Koshell. And so like always with our guest episodes to get us started out. Joseph, if you want to just kind of walk us through your background and your career journey of how you became a marketer.

Absolutely. Well, it's great to be with you, Miranda. Great to be with you again, Emilio. Always good to hang out in person and virtually so appreciate all the work that you do in the Greenville area also and your thought leadership around HubSpot and just marketing in general. So yeah, I am in, I'm currently located in Greenville, South Carolina. I'm from South Florida, West Palm beach originally born and raised, came up to the upstate and for school never left and started my graphic design career which then morphed into a digital marketing career. So some really exciting, you know, internships where I had I worked for on the agency side, then kind of cut my teeth as a digital marketing specialist in B2B and then was able to move into more data and martech focused roles and now I'm actually the life cycle marketing manager for a private money lender. So selling mortgages, definitely a blend of B2C and B2B all while keeping up a freelance practice on the side. So I've worked for nonprofits, global enterprises and startups and been able to kind of learn how digital marketing and demand gen works in all those different verticals and all those different spaces. So you know, all kinds of exciting stuff ahead as well for Lima 1. But even as the market kind of cools from from a rate perspective and as cool but hopefully we'll get some rate cuts here as election season rolls around and that'll make our investor is happy. So.

You said it.

Awesome. Awesome. That's great man. So let me ask you this. What was the, you know, how do you got started in Lima Capital One and what was the role that you initially got into and kind of like the, the things that you were focused at the beginning, how that role has evolved over time.

So yeah, Lima One Capital was founded in Greenville, South Carolina by two Marines and this was made one of their first forays in kind of their entrepreneurial journey after retiring honorably from the US Marines. So they were able to build this kind of local success story that grew throughout the southeast and then broke into the West coast around 2022 post pandemic when money was still much cheaper and rates were still at zero. So I came in around this kind of sweet spot in the real estate market and the U.S. housing market in general, which are in May of 20, sorry, March. In 2022, I was the first hire by a new CMO. And this is after the company had already been purchased from the original founders and was now in growth mode. So think growth, growth, growth. So this new CMO from the west coast, he came on and was building out a new team. So at first it was definitely that startup feel on the marketing team. We were smaller and nimble. Throughout 2022, we launched HubSpot. That was the fourth instance that I've managed so far. And I know we love HubSpot so much, you know, powerful features there as well. But so it was, it was very much initially a role of true lifecycle marketing. So how do we listen to the customer journey for all the different types of investor Personas? And how do we focus on email? Sprinkled in a little bit of sms, but mostly email. How do we think about onboarding? And then it was a lot of sales enablement. So I was owning the entire Martech stack. We're interacting with Salesforce and the sales teams and really coming to the sales teams with the approach of how can we give you the tools to go hunt and fish? And then how do we help our inside sales team to kind of nurture the leads that they were getting through through our website. So a lot of paid campaigns, a lot of, A lot of Facebook, a little bit of LinkedIn, but mostly Instagram, Facebook ads that brought in some of our fix and flip investors. So we, it was really at the time of testing, testing approaches, wearing multiple hats. And then in 2023 we were able to specialize as the marketing team grew. So I was able to lean a lot more into the Martech side, more into the data side and able to collaborate more on the content side with. With some of my newer team members, which was exciting. And so definitely 2023 was like specialization. If 2022 was like just growing pains, 2023 was, was kind of specialization leading into the Martech side and then now still owning the life cycle portion of the customer journeys and thinking through what touch points do we need for every Persona. And then really like I would say 2024 has been so far, you know, I can't believe it's. We're already in Q3, but it's really been the year of scale. So it would be, it would be growth. It would be. Then my role was, was kind of specialization Martech and now it's like scaling how do we scale. And man, there have been so many interesting insights that we found around engagement. We found webinars, no shock there, even in the post pandemic world this year, have been very, very effective in nurturing our audience. We had a, we have an annual market outlook. What I said was an annual market outlook piece that we do at the beginning of every year. And so for 2024 is no different. We had our CRO come and we had our pre campaign to the webinar and our post campaign follow up and we had him kind of explain a white, you know, this, this, this white paper and this, this bit of research that we had done. So we kind of had this anchor pillar piece of content and then we had a, we built a webinar around it and built some omnichannel outreach around that webinar and you know, presenting Limo one Capital as a thought leader and then following up with those, those touches afterward and nurturing the guests like that. That was a, you know, the textbook marketing example, I would say, not only of just like smart digital marketing tied with like a content strategy, but also a really powerful example of how our team collaborated together. So it's those kind of like integrity campaigns that we're like, we're now as a, as Lima One capital marketing team, able to push out on a more frequent basis.

Love it. And you mentioned something that, you know, you're unpacking here, some questions that I have first, I'm assuming that, you know, getting into the financial sector. Right, right. I know that Lima Lima 1 is not necessarily a bank, but it deals with the financial portion of it.

For sure.

It will be quite different from other sectors that probably you have experience with, both from the marketing and from the sales enablement side. But the other one being the type of business that Lima One is, because you are in between of what will be formerly B2B and B2C. But it's a more, you know, conscious decision, is not transactional in nature. Even if your investor is just a regular guy or person that, you know, is, is, is making a specific investment, I think there's still a path to follow. So the question that I have here for you is how you felt was and is now the balance between your role on enabling the sales team versus dedicating time on building up that journey. As you're saying, just touch points from a marketing perspective. What was the need and does it continues to be more enabling the sales team in the particular case or are you dedicating more time in the company as a whole to Build up content and thought leadership. And those kind of efforts are more for generating leads inbound rather than going out to the marketplace and trying to reach out to potential buyers.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So much, so much in, so much in there to unpack. So the, I would say this about a rough estimate of the spread between inbound versus Outbound. It's. We really have different sales teams that go after inbound versus outbound. So we do have an inside sales team that sits in HQ in Greenville and that benefits from tens of thousands of leads each quarter that come in from our website. Investors of various levels of experience. So there is self qualification going on. When they come to limaone.com most of the time they're price shopping. They want to know is Kiavi going to have a better rate, is anchor loans going to have a better rate or is Limoan going to have a better rate? So that would be on the acquisition side. So that is. So from, from Mark marketing team's perspective we are running different organic and paid campaigns, both SEM and social to drive inbound traffic through this kind of primary lead generation form which is, and it's about to expand to several more nuanced forms which we're really excited about. Some, some different kind of nuanced vetting with the new website that we're about to launch. We all love new website projects. I'm sure you know never, never a headache there but, but yeah, you don't.

Rest for more than three years.

Yeah, exactly. You know we all love our WordPress plugins but no, there's, it's, it's going to be really powerful to kind of augment the current vetting process that we have on the inbound side. So imagine one sales team that we're just kind of seeding that we're, we're creating the, the activity to, to really drive investors to come fleet. So, so some brand recognition but also very much you know, mid to lower funnel CGAs call to actions, come quote your deal, book a consultation with a sales rep.

Right.

So that's on the inbound side and then we have the outbound side and that team is actually nationwide and then we also have kind of a broker more channel if you will play where we help other business owners grow their investor base through either white label or through leave one branded products. So we're going to help their renter rental investors with DSCR loans. We're going to give their fix and flippers and ground up construction the upfront capital and the, and the four day draws that they need to make sure their project goes well and not just the investor, but the clients and like the actual brokers to help them grow their clients. So we have kind of like an outside team. So almost imagine like Keller Williams, like Realtors, but they're like Lima one bdrs and they're in different regions across the US Mostly focused. You mentioned on, on the kind of the east coast because that's kind of our bread and butter. Specifically Atlanta is where we have a really strong, a really powerful stronghold. And then we've been able to break into the west coast from the east coast. So truly nationwide. Imagine kind of like different areas, different regions and local areas and different real estate investment markets that are kind of owned by subject matter experts and owned by BDRs that are familiar with that area, that are members of local investment groups and local builder groups and they're in the community working with investors, helping them grow their businesses and giving them the funding they need whether they're a newbie or whether they're you know, you know like a miss and repeat flipping process. Right. So the outside team, the way we treat them is we like our marketing team gives them their own brand. So it's, it's almost a co brand with Lima one. So we provide them with actually an area, this kind of self service area that my colleague on my team was able to build. But yeah, and he so is a really cool internal platform that one of my marketing team colleagues on my, on my team was able to build. And it is a self service place where the reps can go, they can request LinkedIn graphics, they can showcase just funded deals in their area, they can request collateral. So we really like to make those BDRs on the outside team. It's really our job to be it's full sales enablement. We also run like email marketing drips on their behalf that are automatically personalized and go to what we call their book of business, their investors. But it's really this spread between the outside team which is here are all the tools you need on the digital side and on the physical side and on the event side we send them to events and we help wrap those events with event campaigns. So really how do we enable the outside team to go hunt and fish well and sell our loans into their local area. That's more seeing more of that as the sales day play. Whereas the digital lead gen play definitely feeds our inside team. So it's, it is, it is a kind of left and right split there kind of two different buckets. And when you're a small team. Part of the challenges is how do we, how do we recycle some of our content and actually help the outside team with their, with products they're selling and the method that they're selling and how do we keep that message appropriate for them but also recycle some of that content, some of that thought leadership collateral pieces for the inside team as well. So sometimes it's tweaks and then sometimes it's, you know, it's completely different content for two different audiences.

So yeah, I imagine. I would like to know your take on that one. What would be, would you say the struggles both from a technology and also from a people and processes perspective. What are some of the struggles of how do you keep the inside team, the outbound team and the marketing layer align? You know, as you said, right on brand, on the efforts, on the transition from all those leads coming from the website that the inside team handles. Do they, do they end up sending some of those to your sdr bdr Sorry. Eventually. And if that happens, you know, how do you, how do you keep everyone aligned in terms of the type of buyers that you're reaching out to?

A lot of teams calls a lot of, a lot of, a lot of, a lot of relationship building really going back to the point on growth and scale like, just like any kind of, you know, SMB, I would say small medium business that is, that is growing and scaling. In 2022 and 2023, our sales teams were growing like crazy. We were adding entirely new sales channels, including one, it's called wholesale, but it's really just larger shops, larger kind of almost white label investment products where we take our products and we're helping other shops left at Cross Country Mortgage actually sell to their client base. So I like to think of it as a channel play because I come from the, the wholesale, the wholesale hardware market where I was helping like Cisco and even Microsoft sell their hardware and software via telecom systems into, you know, into their kind of resellers. So I'd kind of take that mindset and apply it to this. But, but really, you know, just Lima One helping sell our products to other businesses. So when you are, whenever a new lead comes in and they say, hey, I'm ready to quote my deal, I've got a deal in hand is what we like to say. So I am ready to found a property I want. I'm shopping for the right financing. Help me or I've already done business with Lima One and I have another project. I like the service, I like the white glove experience and you all were competitive on the leverage and rates. So I want another one. When they come to us, if they have an existing relationship with that outside skills, it really, you know, it's, it's really up to the, to us as the marketing team to actually not get in the way to help foster that relationship. So it's, we, we help with certain kind of campaigns, we help the BDR say hey, you know, this person wants to schedule a meeting with you. We will send out these kind of micro blasts and larger email blasts that say hey, our rates just dropped, are you ready? And then the investor will see that, they'll book a call, they'll book a meeting and then from there they'll start the quote the process or they'll just reply to the email directly. It's, it's, it is kind of more transactional. Well, they, they will see the rate lowered and that will remind them Linmo's top of mind. And they have, if they have a deal, we try to create our segments to make sure that we are there at the right moment to ping them, stab them on the shoulder, say hey, reach out to your rep. So if the existing relationship's already there, it's really about just getting that quote process started and really just making sure that Leemo is top of mind. And then from there it's up to the sales rep to do what they do best, which is to really nurture, nurture that deal and be as competitive as we can be, including offering special pricing. So in some ways the customer relationship is, it does remind me of like a SaaS sales cycle in some ways just much shorter where it's not months because that is the world that I'm most familiar with IS B2B SaaS and selling that including at the startup I was at selling kind of like a bi product. So thinking about kind of maybe even a two month to a six month, even in a 12, 18 month sales cycle where you're working a large enterprise deal or maybe a smaller, smaller deal, our buying window and window consideration is going to be, you know, sometimes days, sometimes depending on the way we're pricing the deal, it could be up to like you know, 30 to 45 days. So which we try to lower it but it's almost a shorter, you know, window or we, you know, it's, they're being guided through by their BDR and it's up to us to make sure that our loan products are in front of the investor at the right time.

Yeah, now I know that you have experience maybe not just from Lima One on integrating and handling, you know, implementation within HubSpot and Salesforce. So I would love to know your take. Right. And for our listeners to that might be in situations where there are making those choices. What do you consider the strengths and weaknesses of each of the platforms? Do you think that the two together do a better job than any of the two separately? What is your so far your experience maybe not just because of Lima One, but in general all the instances that you have handled in the past.

Yeah, I've seen. So the answer, the short answer is it depends. Right. As with everything. So all of the stereotypes around enterprise instances of Salesforce I have found to be true. They're large, they are embedded, they are complex, they're highly customized and they require a skilled team, usually of consultants that come in, charge you a handsome fee, guide you through an implementation that works for your business as best as they can. There's always scope creep, but you can get something that is useful for your business and that it requires some kind of internal team to maintain. So for enterprises the cost is high and the cost can be perceived to be worth it. I found several of the, several of the firms I've been with, both Lima one has Salesforce and some other firms have had it as well. So I mean, it truly is ubiquitous. It truly is everywhere. And the stereotypes of it being expensive and highly customized and sometimes difficult to work with, those are true. So you just need to be able to devote those resources to make sure that you can make that make sense. And most enterprises can. Right. And then there's HubSpot. Right. So HubSpot for CRM is lower on the cost side. It is definitely in some cases can be easier to implement. Less, less customized typically. I've seen most instances be, you know, less customized though you can go very deep on the customization and be equally as complex as a Salesforce instance. So. And there is a healthy ecosystem of consultants on the HubSpot side that are willing to help, excited to help and have that expertise to kind of customize the workflows for your business. Right. So, you know, I definitely push it back against kind of, you know, these kind of magic pill like responses and recommendations of, you know, what's this going to solve all your needs. The fact is that HubSpot can be spun up faster and cheaper, especially for a smaller company. I have yet to see, I've yet to see an enterprise instance of HubSpot though I know they exist. So definitely SMBs and startups love, love HubSpot and find them very useful. I've been a part of two different startups including one that was acquired that both use HubSpot and it was, it was very, it's very easy to get set up quickly. So speed to impact, speed to set up and cost for SMPs are going to give HubSpot the edge and that's obviously been their marketplace for a long time. It's, it's interesting though. I currently Lima one, we have both. So we don't use HubSpot as CRM. We use it as our marketing engine and then it bolts into and connects the bidirectional sync with salesforce so it actually feeds our CRM. It mimics the kind of sales flow and sales funnel. So we're able to nurture leads through forms through all of our marketing activity. All of our email activity is run through there and data flows back and forth. So managing, managing that flow has been a challenge. It's been a very significant challenge and part of that is finding the right people to help you with that integration to help manage that. And that would be true of any system. Right, but so they are competitors but they can be taught to play nicely with each other and they can provide real value. It's happening at Lima one. But, but there is going to be that, that kind of data governance and segment management piece that, that you have to be aware of, you have to be very mindful of and it takes work, it definitely, it definitely takes scoping work and work to maintain. So. But I would say no different than any kind of data governance challenge. One word I like to throw out to my team and I was, I was very intentional about doing this when I came to Lima 1 from the start and my team, someone has adopted it which I, which I appreciate and I think it's been successful and that's the term like just platform agnostic. So you have to be careful with that word. What I mean by that word is let's actually make sure that we create a life cycle and a digital marketing strategy that aligns with our content strategy and aligns with the needs of the business that, that strategy. And I'm curious your thoughts, Emilio, on this and your perspective too from you know, being on the agency side and working with so many different kinds of clients. Like I'd love to hear how self aware you feel like your clients are and how much you have to guide them through that kind of platform agnostic approach where yes, I mean I might be a HubSpot partner, I might be a Salesforce partner. But how do we make sure that we are addressing the data governance issues throughout not just the marketing tech stack but through throughout the business and the data that is the competitive advantage. You how do we, how do we help educate? I found that to be firms large and small, from startups to enterprises, the same conversations are needed and the same coaching is needed. I found I'm curious your your experience with data governor and how you have.

To fantastic question because to be. To be honest it's a, it's a business questions for agencies. It's a you know, kind of like a business model. So my answer is and I'm sure there are exceptions but my answer is that small agencies or solo consultants and things like that will be always better off if they have a handful of tools that they master instead of being as you said, agnostic to the tool. Mostly because when you are very small you have to differentiate from all the options that the buyers have. And also it's a training cost. Right. If you have to train yourself in being good at Pipedrive and HubSpot and Salesforce and you know, keep adding the list toho CRM everybody will think you know, if you go to a prospect buyer, a prospect marketer and you say I know all these tools well, how well do you know them? Because when do you have the time to really learn deep on this one as you said, right. When you are doing something that is a one time effort, you want someone that has an expert that has, you know, dedicate hours and hours and hours that really can help you. Not someone that knows a little bit about everything. So I think that for agencies the reason we or I recommend that agency owners of small companies focus on a specific tool is so they can offer that expertise to their clients. Right? Yes. You are paying the price of you know having that this big bias toward your tool. That's true but the expectation is that the people will come in to you will be because you are an expert about about it rather than because they want to be convinced of using HubSpot or Salesforce or whatever. I do however think that doesn't apply to larger agencies that are like full type kind of service. Yeah, I think they have to be agnostic. Right. Your agency of record or your more traditional if they still exist. Right. Full service agency that can help you with your traditional marketing and off world digital one. I think they have to have experts from everywhere. Typically what they will do is they will bring in experts depending on what the client needs and they should focus more on picking up those processes now in house too. Right. That doesn't.

It's. It's definitely different if you're in house versus agency. For sure. Yeah.

Yes. Now that doesn't mean that as an agency you don't recognize the fact that not whatever tool you're expert. Expert at doesn't apply to every case. So I'm very conscious about that all the time. I try to. For example, with clients, just as you said, I think the limits of HubSpot are enterprise. Probably there you have better solutions on Salesforce. The other one is when you shift into more transactional B2C implementations. Probably not the best. Right. They are. Probably Shopify as a whole system is a better CRM if you want to call it that way, for more B2C commerce. So what I think is important, as you said though, is that even if you're an expert with a tool or a specific tactic on digital marketing, that you know your limitations. That you recognize that is just part of a whole instead of telling the client this is the hammer that we will use for everything that happens. So I agree with you. So it's a weird balance for sure for us.

Song and dance of like Emilio was saying, being a expert in a platform, but then also not solely tying your. What you can provide to customers in one platform because we all know it could change.

Yes.

Next year and like the industry standard can become a new platform that you have to divert to.

Yeah, yeah.

What is. What is the business model and like what is the business model of the agency? Right. So yeah, obviously if you're a Salesforce partner, you're dedicated to the Salesforce ecosystem and that is your expertise and that's what you'll lead with. So yeah. I'd love to hear your thoughts, Emilio, on the way you question the full service agency. Does it exist? I'd love your hot take on that. Do you think that full service agencies are still a thing or has everyone broken up into specialties on the agency side?

I said that with a little bit of sarcasm because obviously they exist. Well, what I mean by that is that another big challenge for every marketer that is thinking to jump ship and. And do something on their own is that it will be an error to try to emulate the big ones. Right. The big ones are there because they are large. You know, the big ones can get away with not being super focused and tackling every industry and tackling every tool because they are large. Right. They have a ton of people. Then you can have. Employees are specialized in so many things. If you're Getting started, it will be a mistake because then what is your, what is that you bring the edge that you bring to the marketplace and also again from a training perspective. So I'm not saying that they don't exist anymore necessarily. Right. But, but I do mean that most of us shouldn't try to be a full size or a full service agency. My, my take on this one, Joseph, is that ideally, and this is what we try to do for ourselves, you want to have a horizontal layer and a vertical layer on your definition, right? So for example, for us, the horizontal one is demand generation, is an enhanced version of pay media. Right? So pay media with a focus on learning what's going on with your CRM. So that's from all the things that you can do, SEO, content creation, social media and the things that you can do in the real world that we pick that horizontal expertise and then the vertical is. Well, but it's just for B2B. Ideally it's tech enabled companies. So we are taking away a ton of industries and we want to specialize in that. So I think as long as agencies can pick those two things ideally. And yes, if we throw in a platform of choice, like in our case HubSpot, that's even better because again, I will, I will think it in the, in terms of how the buyer will see you, right. Are you an expert in my industry or know it enough that, you know, I can feel comfortable, you know, working with you even when I will know that you will never be as good as the in house team. Right? The in house team spend day and night on that client or on that company compared to the agency, but at least that, you know, a struggle. So I think that's a good combination. And finally going back to your question, even if it wasn't Salesforce, any other CRM or marketing automation tool, I think the threshold always is if you want to accomplish something and you don't have anything, go with the tool that has all the features to begin with, right? Because then we get hung up on the technology part, right? Like, well, what is the best tool to make a blog? Well, really what matters is that you produce the blog, right? That you hosted on WordPress or you hosted on HubSpot or you hosted on WIX is irrelevant as long as you keep doing the process. That's what matters. So if you don't have anything, I think it's better to go with a tool that has all the features all together because it gives you the starting point. Only if you have very specific needs, then it Makes sense to say, well, I want, I want the best of it, of the, of the category because all these other features that I need that are making my work harder are missing in this, you know, overall tool that I have. So that's the other, the other point of when I stay away from recommending what we are biased to, which is HubSpot. Right. Is when you are getting into a situation where you, you need landing pages that are, you know, at scale, they need hundreds of them and run very complicated a B test and all that. Yeah. And two or four unbounds or something like that. But if you're just going to do a handful of them, use the landing page from hubs that you already have it or whatever tool you already have, you have to migrate to our choice if the implementation is quite simple.

And not. Yeah, it's such a good reminder to like make sure that we don't let the tools get in the way of the actual marketing behaviors. And if it is, we should be focusing on those marketing behaviors because that's obviously what's going to drive the impact that we're looking. We're looking for. So. Yeah. And I mean, and obviously it's going to affect your business model as agency or you know, for me right now in house or even, you know, freelance, like I have, I have my skill set so I definitely, you know, lean into the HubSpot side. So I'm going to be able to help people more with HubSpot. Right. And it's, it's also I can, I can bring on new clients without having to do the scoping, the vast amount of scoping and technical resource. You know, like I don't have to provide resources that I would to implement a large salesforce is, it's. That would, that would be a different kind of client that I'd be attracting for my finance practice. Right. So yeah, it even like the whole concept of like sitting in, you know, sitting in house and then thinking of yourself as an agency. I know I've had different, you know, colleagues kind of share that with me throughout the years and it's an interesting thought experiment. Like are we an agency sitting inside of a larger entity? I think that helps keep a scrappy mentality sometimes.

But yes, I love that idea that some departments see themselves as they are, you know, like their own thing and providing services to the client. I think that's smart because as you said, it keeps you on the edge, keeps you scrappy is. It's a way of, you know, seeing that you have internal clients. Right. Which typically is a combination of your sales and customer success departments for marketing. Right.

And.

And some other internal teams when the organization is larger.

So.

Love it. Love it. Joseph. So I want to tell you that I am, I really impressed because this, this is one of those interviews where you ask some questions as well. So that's fantastic. Thank you for that. And I just want to finish with some quick questions for you. Right. Whatever comes to your mind.

So let's go. Here we go. Here we go.

Is there a HubSpot or Salesforce hack or feature that you think is being underutilized?

So Hub dv. I will sing the praises of Hub DV all day and every day. So our team is currently using it to power dynamic landing pages that are created on the fly for our sales reps. And we're also, one of my colleagues is integrating it with the help from our BI team. We're actually integrating it to our Microsoft SharePoint and Microsoft 365. So we're able to take all the information from HR and the profiles of our sales reps and dynamically created like Keller Williams style kind of landing pages that are serve as kind of like that digital business card for the sales rep and then also Legion. So hubdb you can do so much. When I was at Inbound last year they had, I don't think they had any sessions on it. And it's, it is a little bit leaning more to the dev side. But even if you are not a coder at all, you can use it to create dynamic pages. You can use Excel, you can use Hub db. So definitely do the Googles and check that out. It's super powerful.

Interesting. Yeah. And it has been around for a while. Yeah. I haven't seen a ton of implementations of it, so.

Yes.

Oh, that's fantastic. Every day you learn something new. Demand generation or B2B marketing tool that you can't live without. Excluding HubSpot and Salesforce.

Some days you feel like you should, you know, live without certain CRMs. But you know, sometimes it's just too hairy. Oh man. I mean, you know, it's. I love, I actually do love Google Sheets and I do love Microsoft Excel online through 365. It's. It's actually very powerful. I know we're all spreadsheet heroes, especially if you get to run your own business. You absolutely have to. But collaborating with your teammates in the cloud on a spreadsheet, if, like if those servers went down for Microsoft, please, cloudflare, don't let that happen again. Then yeah, I Mean, we would be royally screwed if.

Yeah, I agree, I agree. Excel or spreadsheets in general are not going anywhere. They're always the backup for everything that you cannot solve with a SAS tool.

Too much sometimes.

What do you think? Yes. What are your thoughts on, you know, demand generation B2B marketing futures in general, especially with AI, how do you see the industry evolving over the next few years?

I mean, I think, I think the most honest answer is that we all have hot takes and we will all be shocked by how it actually unfolds. As with any large technology shift, I know that generative AI, we are using it at Lima One in probably less than 10% of our work. So I think that generative AI will continue to play a role, especially as SaaS programs, content creation programs like Adobe, like Canva has done a really good job integrating it into kind of the fun playing with Dall E images and, and now it's, you know, it's part of like Canva and you can create that. So I think generative AI will obviously play a role. I don't think that we will see. I think some of the job replacement scares is a lot of hype. I don't think, I think many more new jobs will be created over the next five years from coming from industry experts that I listen to and I trust they think that, you know, more people will be able to, you know, use AI to scale teams and that it won't. Certain sectors will be replaced certainly, but like the Internet, we will see more, more boom and growth of cheese, more billion dollar one person companies is what I'm hearing predicted. So I'm excited to see that in the years ahead.

I, I, I completely agree with that one. The, the analogy that I use is oh, how certain tools, what they do is that they untap so much latent demand that some jobs disappear or dwindle. But so many more are created. And the example that I use, so many more printing press. Right. So the printing press is a good example. Books were expensive to make. A handful of people had to, you know, write them down, copy by hand. So yes, when the printing press came, you lost that craft. Right. The person that will be writing the, I don't remember the name in English, scribe or something like that. Yes, but, but it happens that there were. So the, the analogy that I use here is that it wasn't just the fact that now a ton of people that maybe wanted a book in the past were able to afford, but the, the main change is that now you can write about so many other things that there were not books about because it was very cost prohibitive. Right. You can go into silly things, if you want to call it that way, or non economical things like comics to put an example. Right. So there is so much, much things that get created and obviously all the work or the job titles that got created, like the editors and all the people that you have along the way, beyond the author that you know and the amount of books that we have even today, even in this digital world, I don't think we have ever had as many books as we have at this moment. Right. And continue to be printed. I think that will happen with AI as well.

Right.

Is that we can foresee not just the jobs that will get created but the ways that it will be used, the new markets that will be developed because it will lower the barrier of cost for a ton of things. As you said, one $1 billion one person company. I love that. All right, and the last one, Joseph, is what advice would you give to a younger self, to a younger Joseph starting out in this marketing journey?

Boy, I would, I mean I would just say keep going. I would say, you know, continue to develop grit. The more grit you have, the farther you'll be able to go. But just stay curious and stay open minded and also grow your network sooner. Like reach out and really develop your network sooner. And definitely that's something I would tap my old self on my shoulder to say, hey, do that faster and scale down. But yeah, stay hungry, stay humble and keep getting after it.

Love that one. Yeah, I agree. Develop your network.

Awesome, man.

It's been fantastic. I don't know. Miranda, you have any finishing comments?

Yeah, I don't think so. This has been great. Thanks for sharing everything, Joseph.

It's great to be here. Great to share with you, Emilio. Appreciate it.

Yes, always. Great. I think this could be the one of many conversations that we might have to impact other things and you might be part of one HOPSU user group episode or we might go do another one in person. We haven't done that in, in a little while. So. Joseph, thank you so much for joining in and for our listeners, thank you for tuning in and yeah, until the next episode, thanks so much.

Cheers.