How SmashBrand Gets Clients a 40x ROI

Hello, this is Gray MacKenzie, and before we get started with today's interview, I want to quickly thank our sponsor for this episode, textexpander. You know I'm all about standardizing processes and working efficiently. Well, TextExpander helps agency teams do both from an efficiency perspective. TextExpander saves me personally a couple of hours worth of typing each month. And when you magnify that across our growing team, the time saving adds up. And this is a cool part that I didn't anticipate when I first started using Text expansion tools seven or eight years ago. TextExpander keeps our messaging consistently on point with the right spelling, language and formatting. So we've been able to eliminate a ton of simple mistakes and copy paste mix ups by rolling out textexpander across the team. I've actually got a video that'll be up on our YouTube shortly with a bunch of my favorite use cases. But for now, I want you to head to textexpander.com podcast and you get to lock in a 20% year one discount for all Agency Journey listeners. Again, thanks to Texas Banner, both for their sponsorship and the impact they've had on our team. Now let's get to today's interview. Awesome. Welcome back to Agency Journey. My name is Grant McKenzie. Today I've got the pleasure of bringing on Kevin Smith, who's a founder of this super cool agency called Smash Brand. We got connected recently and so I'm super excited to kind of selfishly ask Kevin some of these questions and share it with you all here on the podcast. But Kevin, thanks for joining me today.

Yeah, thanks for having me on Grape. Appreciate it.

I'm excited to dig into the story. I guess that's the right place to start is kind of. What's the quick version of where Smash Brand came from?

Yeah, the short version of a long story is my business partner, I had met him close to 20 years ago and we had normal jobs and we decided I convinced him to start a product company with me. So we did that and it was very successful and we exited that business and we started a few more product companies like physical, like vitamins and things like that. And when we had our last one, we just started having some VCs and other people say, hey, we've got this brand we've invested in. Would you work on ours? So somewhere we weren't expecting it, we started an agency. We don't know what we're doing. And that was like the first few years of kind of offering all of these services and Doing all this stuff, whatever anybody needed us to do, we were there for. And that was kind of how it started right there.

What was the evolution? Because we were just talking about kind of positioning and like niching down. What's the story of going from. I mean it sounds super similar to our story, like first year we just called ourselves digital. Yes, Ben, in retrospect, not at the time, we didn't demean ourselves that much, but it was like, yeah, if you have anything online and you're willing to pay us money, we'll probably figure out a way to do it. So what's the story for you of getting more focused?

Yeah, that's exactly what it was. And so we would do and it was, for us, it was kind of like a lifestyle business at that point. We would, we'd work on it sometimes if there was kind of business there, but we weren't like we also had some other things that we were doing, but I just don't think it was super enjoyable. We would do a lot of web, a lot of other things. And then we started consistently kind of getting hired for CPG brands specifically around packaging. But then they would want all the other stuff too, the marketing and the website. But we found that the packaging, like there was a pattern there. It was very interesting. And then we made the choice one day where we're like, let's don't make this a lifestyle business anymore. Let's commit to it and actually grow this. And that's when we, we realized that we needed to focus and like bring in kind of specialty, what we're going to position on and all the other things that are headaches that we have to manage. Let's just get rid of everything and go down to this really, really narrow focus that kind of seems scary right now, but it'll probably be better for us in the long run. So we decided what are we, we're going to do just packaging.

Today. Is that still what Smash brand looks like? Just.

It is. In fact, we get more and more narrow, I would think as that as the day, as the kind of the years progr. Um, you know, it's not just packaging, but you have to be in fast moving consumer goods, like anything you'd find in a grocery store, like that's where we're at. If you call us and you're like, hey, I've got headphones that I want to sell in Best Buy, like that's not for us.

Yeah, you were telling me just about the volume of kind of work that comes in that you Guys don't take on how, like if you just look at client acquisition right now, is it all referral based? Like what's, what's driving the pipeline?

Yeah. So we have, we have no outbound sales. And what we found is again, the power of that positioning. And we haven't gotten into it yet. Like we created some strong differentiation from any other agency that's out there. And that's, that's, that's kind of the power is the positioning. And, and, and the reason I'm deviating a little bit, but the reason that we did that is we started getting like bigger brands contacting us with real like big budgets. And that was interesting to me. But then I was losing business. I was losing business to companies that I would see agencies that were more specialized. That's one thing that drove us to saying, hey, let's just be experts in this one thing we're actually really, really good at and give up on those other things. And now once we're experts here, let's find differentiation. And it was at that point when it all came together probably four years ago that the business just came in from referrals. People would like a CMO would move from one company to the next or the first person that they called organic search around those keywords happened. So now it is daily 10 leads that come in, they want to hire you, they're 100k, 200k projects and you can just say no to them. And it feels good, actually.

Yeah, that's awesome. Let's talk about the differentiation side because you mentioned that you have an awesome guarantee. Obviously you're super niche. What makes Smash brand different from another CPG branding company?

Right. So we are the only CPG branding company that can guarantee what the performance will actually be in the marketplace. And that's a hard thing to do. And there was a brand who had called us probably around. This was kind of when I was trying to solidify. I'm like, all right, I know we're packaging. And my business partner has a very unique skill set. He went back and got his MBA and he did a lot of consumer testing. He focused in around consumer behavior research. And so for our own brands, he would run a lot of surveys and do a lot of testing before we're putting in a new flavor out. What do consumers actually want? And this brand called One Day and, and so I'm telling them about Smash Brand and I just completely made this up and I'm like, and, and as we work on these concepts, we're going to test them with consumers. We can actually show you without any subjectivity, like, what's going to, like what's going to be the most resonant for them. And, and I could. Right then they were like, well, we never heard of that. Hold on. And so I remember running in and talking with Michael and I'm like, hey, Mike, I need you to do this thing. Like, I just sold it. Like, they want to sign this thing. Can you do it? And he's like, yes. And from that moment on, that was in every sales call. And over the next probably two years, we spent every single bit of revenue on actually building platforms to make that our number one thing. Design is now something that we have to do, but it's really the testing mechanism of when somebody hires us and we have this variation of messaging and design that now we've built the right platforms where we can show them exactly how that's going to perform in the marketplace and what the actual revenues are going to look like. So when you pick this one right here that we made, you're going to do X in the marketplace and it will turn out like that every time. And if we don't, then we don't get paid. And, and if I can add like one more thing on that. There was, there was somebody that helped with that a lot. His name was Blair Enns. And he, he does, he does a, he wrote a book called Pricing Creativity. And I remember reading that book and then, and then going out and meeting with him and I'm like, I want to learn a little bit more about how to price this. And he's one of the people that really hammered in like the, to make sure about like the positioning and, and, and how, how you're pricing. And I think it was about that point two years ago when it all came together that the business growth just went like a hockey stick.

Yeah, that's awesome. That Blair on the podcast and his work, pricing creativity, the whole win without pitching brand is awesome. How are you? So I've got like three different kind of tag off questions off of what you just said, but the first one is you mentioned, I think you said something like, you know, hey, if you pick this one, here's the outcome that you're going to get. How often do brands not pick what you're suggesting? Or is that even an option?

Oh, it's beautiful now. So it's an option. The brand gets to do whatever they want at the end. But, but now like when we're working on like concepts and that's going to be you know, when you're going to see the first thing that's communication, it's visual. You're going to see your new packaging and you've got this other packaging that's been in the market. Let's say you're like a mayonnaise brand and you've been there and now you hire somebody to refresh your brand. If I just presented you a bunch of concepts, you're going to instantly be like, you know, with your team, oh, I like this, I don't like this. I like this part of it. I don't like this part of it. But now what we do is you don't get to see concepts. You get to see concepts when there's data and the data will start showing clear winners across like different category drivers of like what's actually going to drive purchase. Here the subjectivity completely leaves the room and, and they get right to the decision. It's like, well, the data showing us this, we can't argue with that. You know, there's thousands of consumers you put through this testing, we're going with that and, and it makes our lives so much easier now because there's no more like rounds of subjective revisions. It's just, here's what it is, here's what we should do, here's what the data says. And I say 99% of the time they move forward with that.

Yeah, that's wild. Are you guys both, are you and, and Mike, are you nerds by nature? Is one of you like, it's his. Is he the more analytical one? Basically, did the testing framework and data driven approach come because that you're driven there by the market or because that was secretly inside you the whole time and then you got to, you found a way to bring that into the business model.

Yeah. So when I met, when I met Michael, I had got out of the Marine Corps and he got out of the army in college, but we were both computer engineers so we got put on a team together of doing Linux UNIX engineering, which was a very technical role. I learned that I'm terrible at that really quickly. But Mike, he was good. He's very analytical, he's a problem solver, he's great with mathematics. He was born for this. And so that piece of the business that he runs now, which is the testing research side, I mean he can innovate on that all day because that is exactly what he does. And then for me, I found that actually what I'm good at in life is sales.

Yeah. How did, and feel free to talk about as much or as little as you want to in terms of the secret sauce here. But the testing side of what you're running and what gives you kind of statistical certainty or, you know, like a high level of certainty in terms of the guarantee. How does that process work?

Sure, it's without kind of like, you know, giving it all away. We didn't invent this necessarily. There's companies like Nielsen that have been doing this like top line research, companies that have been doing purchase intent testing and working with brands. So what would typically happen is let's say you're Pepsi, Pepsi, you're going to go out and you're going to hire, you know, maybe three, four agencies and say, hey, here's kind of the brief, we want designs. Those agencies are going to work on lots of concepts. But what Pepsi's also done is they've hired Nielsen to do validation. So Pepsi takes all these concepts, uses the Nielsen has two products, one's called Pack Navigator and one called Bases. And they're going to pay Nielsen, you know, 100,000 doll to then run against the category of like all the, all the, you know, the shelf testing and all of that, bring in the new concepts, have this report that comes out and then you get back to the brand is like, hey, these concepts are falling short here. This concept's doing better here across all the category purchase drivers. And then they're going to go back and they're going to give this to the agency and the agency is kind of like, ugh, I got to deal with this now. And they're going to fire two other agencies that were underperforming. So the real difference is it's not that this is like a new thing that nobody's done, but nobody has integrated it end to end, where the analysts are actually part of the design team and there's no more friction of this outside agency, Nielsen coming to your and disrupting your ego that it's, that it's all in one. And what it comes down to of how it works is in purchase, in cpg, in a category like a beverage category. If you think about like we think about energy drinks, let's say there's every category is going to have what's called top purchase drivers. And so I know in the beverage category by, you know, buying reports and doing our own research, that the number one thing somebody looks for when they're there is that does it taste great? The number two thing is how much caffeine is in it. And so you look at those category drivers and then you're going to develop testing around those. And so when you're bringing those competitors and your concepts in, are you scoring higher for tastes great? Are you scoring higher for it stands out against the other ones. And when you can check all of those boxes, those things I would consider like KPIs now, now you kind of move it forward and you do something. And again we do it just like Nielsen purchase intent testing. And this is like when you look at the shelf together and I see, and I see how often am I, am I going to purchase this? Which is going to lead to velocity. And that is the one metric that if you do the algorithm right behind it, it will translate into true outcomes in market. Yeah, the algorithm is the secret sauce we've spent millions of dollars on. And that's the only thing I can't go into.

Yeah, right.

Just like Nielsen won't tell you theirs, but they will tell you that if you hire them. If you hire them, like that's the one number purchase intent that will translate into real market outcome. Right, right. And that's what we put our guarantees around, I think.

I mean I'm just putting myselves well in my own shoes. I'm running a service based business, but also in the shoes of folks who are. I'm thinking of like CRO agencies. We worked a bunch of CRO agencies over the past 18 months. It's weird how in this business I feel like we hit little different pockets of agencies. Like Klaviyo Partners was a big segment for a little while and cr and you just kind of, I think you get into an ecosystem and do good work and get passed around a lot of the same network effects that you're benefiting from. But folks who may want to take and apply some of the same principles of we've developed kind of this guarantee and this methodology and there's really a couple different benefits. Obviously on the sales side, having a powerful guarantee is an awesome tool to have. From a servicing side, I think the equally appealing thing to everybody listening is a lot of the subjectivity going out of the room around. What we're going to choose is not what colors did you happen to wake up and like better today? It's like, no, what, what do we, like what do the numbers say are going to drive better results?

Yeah. As like a, from like a salesperson perspective, I always try to think of like what's the psychology of the buyer mindset. So even when we're doing packaging, we're thinking of the psychology of the consumer. But for Me, now I'm selling into a brand, and I found that. And I think this goes for any. Any agency that's out there. I don't care what you're selling. If you're an agency, the buyer mindset is they are looking to. Right. Because they, you know, they're. They have a budget and they have a job and they got to look good and they don't want to get fired. They're looking for the least risky agency to hire that can do and accomplish the work that they want accomplished. And so for me, I see everything that we do about subjectivity is the risk. The risk goes down. When I'm. When I'm telling them this story, I'm like, these guys are not risky. They're not. They're. I mean, they are not risky at all. Because the whole way I'm able to see if the thing that I'm going to greenlight is going to get me fired or not. And, and so I think that's the. That's the. For me, kind of, that's the power of being able to do guarantees. And again, I remember that came back to when I had first met Blair. He was explaining, like, you know, agencies as they go up in, like, value creation. There's, you know, you can price hourly, you can price value, and then there's this thing that not many agencies can get to, which is pricing outcome. And it's like if you can. If you can take money based on an outcome, which you can charge a lot more for, but you're not getting paid until the outcome actually happens, like, that's this ultimate place you want to land. And that's what we. That's why we've always kind of like, tried to get there with the guarantee if you pick that, it's going to be a lot more expensive. But we're actually getting paid on an outcome now.

Right, Right. I want to go back to. I'll get two different places I wanted to go, but I wanted to go back to the process of dialing in, the positioning. What was that experience? Like, you kind of told the timeline of it, but what did you guys go through to dial in on? Hey, here's how we're going to be positioned as a business.

Yeah, I don't think there was, like, an organized process. I think that's kind of what I, what I, what I do here. Like, that's, that's. That's in all of our companies that we've owned together. Like, that's sort of my thing. And it's not A. There's not like a method to it. I look at it as kind of as like pattern mapping. Again, like, when I think back on this one, it was like over time I saw the pattern of like packaging was something that was under service, lots of people could do web. But then when I showed more packaging and then the companies were attracted to us and they hired us. And then it was like the bigger brands came with the bigger budgets and I was losing business. And the pattern was, is that like I wasn't established enough. I was losing to the ones that had, you know, bigger portfolios that had like monster energy and things in it. I had these smaller brands in mind and I wasn't winning. There was a pattern there. And it was like, okay, like how do you get over that? You can, you can try to just keep winning and pitching business or you can differentiate. And then it was the kind of thinking about like Michael special skill set. And maybe that's like a good thing that adds, that adds some value and de risks usually. So I made it up. And then, you know, it was like it happened. And then the next time I pitched it, it was a little bit more thought through a couple days later. And then they signed. And I'm like, all right, there's a pattern here. Like two companies that I normally maybe had a 10% shot with signed the next day saying they'd never heard anything like this before. And then after that it was like, all right, this is what it is. Change our entire culture and vision to be, you know, around like this testing, performance based outcome, no egos. And then, and then that's just been like our solid, focused vision and everything we do now, if, if it's, if it doesn't fit in line with that, we don't do it.

Yeah, I'm curious about. This is the other totally like side trail here, but your relationship with Michael and the way that you guys have worked together, obviously you knew each other ahead of time and you just hinted at multiple businesses together. What was the first business you guys got into together?

Yeah, so this was when we were working for Raytheon together. I had, I had already like started some, some nutrition. And that was really tough. That was my only business that I can say. Like, it wasn't that successful. Like, it was really difficult to own retail stores. Like you barely made any money in there. But I saw that like the money came from the manufacturing side. So I had an idea to do again, create a brand of sports nutrition products that was differentiated by bringing in kind of like tech to them, like the first brand that gave you like a personal training app. And, you know, so when you bought supplements, you'd also get training with it. Nobody was doing that. Or we were the first company ever in that industry to do like micro influencers. Nobody had ever thought of that back then. And there was just forums that you'd sponsor, like the popular people in the forums and call them. But it was barely just influencers. And I had brought this to Michael and I knew that he was my complete opposite, where I'm kind of a mess and I got a lot of ideas. Like he was this logical guy that would, even while working in the computer field, like, he would, he'd figure out what's actually going to work and be able to execute it. And so I had asked him to quit his job with me. It was a big deal because we were giving up our security clearances and everything and like, do this brand. But when we did it, like, it just. That brand went to millions of dollars in sales the first year. It just happened and I, and I couldn't do it without him.

Any other businesses, what. How did you guys figure out who makes decisions? Or like, how do you, how do you deal with that? Some of the partnership dynamics. I was just, I just had this conversation with the agency owner out in, out in Vancouver last night and going through like, you know, some of the co founder tensions and like, hey, how do we make decisions around this stuff?

I hear that question all the time. And it's, it's been an odd relationship, I think, in general compared to like, most like, founder relationships, because I don't think we've ever, ever once in 20 years had something where we've like left angry or mad or we haven't been. We're good at compromising. I think we respect each other. And so I'm stubborn with an idea that I have and he knows that he's got a counter to it, but if his counter makes sense, I'm like, you know what, you're right, Michael. Like, that makes sense. All right, let's do that. Or vice versa. So there's never been a real hierarchy. It's always been like we've come together and within an hour we just have an agreement. And I don't, I can't think of a single time. And I know that I'm lucky now because over the years I've met so many people. They don't have that. And so we've also, we've also done ventures with other business partners where we've ran away because I see what it's like where you get somebody in there that can't work like that and it's a mess. Yeah, I don't have a good answer for that. It's just been, it's just somehow it was the right.

I think that's, that's rare for sure as you recognize. But hear that sometimes I think some people need more structure to make decisions like how are we going to deal with this where there is conflict and we need some kind of structure to be able to go back to, to solve this and other people need less. I think for Andrew and I, like in our relationship kind of both okay with in the few cases, the handful of cases where we disagree, like who cares more if you, if he cares more than I do, like that's fine.

Then I think that's how we are. Yeah, I can see he is very like passionate about this thing and he is like sure of it. I'm like, okay, like I trust you. I respect you 100. I don't care as much. So you got it. Like we'll go with you here and it'll, it'll come back to me, you know, the same way when that happens. I think, and I think that we are in a place right now and this is why we hired you guys as part of this is like now we've hit this. Now we've hit this like revenue place and amount of team members and everything else where from the outside we look like an amazing company. But honestly on the inside I feel like kind of we're a mess and so now we're actually dealing with some of these issues of we probably need a little bit more structure of like decision making and the old way of working isn't working together. So part of the organization with you guys is we're bringing you on to, to help really like the accountability click up management, like it's a mess right now and you guys are going to help us fix that. And then as I told you, the other part which we just started is like that business operating system and we kind of had that first bit and part of it helped me kind of maybe clarify like why Michael and I worked together so well is he'd be that integrator and I'd be that visionary person.

I think both of those. Some of my favorite clients are folks who've gone through obviously like outside of working with us have also gone through a framework, whether it's eos or scaling up or whatever else that we're most familiar with. But they start to clarify some of that high level stuff. And part of what happens is it's not even just the answers and getting your vision, traction, organizer together, whatever the framework calls it. Some of it is just somewhat recently or at some point they've gone through the habit and they've started building the habit of being able to have conversations and make decisions about how they want to operate an organization. And I think just that muscle of that that you're forced into by some of those frameworks is also helpful because you're going through a lot of the same stuff at a little bit more granular level in terms of how do we operate together, how's the team going to function together inside a platform? What, what numbers do we need to see? Like, what's the data that we ultimately need to be able to track back and how are we going to manage the team? So that's.

I agree 100%.

Yeah. When you, when you've got that in place, that's a, that's a huge asset to have as well.

And I think part of it too is it even for me, kind of it like helps me realize and see like the true potential of that relationship with Michael and I and like the things we should be maybe leveraging from each other. And the things that I probably like are my own weaknesses and hold the company back where I'm like, all right, I gotta like stop dipping my fingers in over here and like trust and let people, you know, let people just run with it, like it's okay. You can let that go. And that's been a challenge for me is like letting those things go that I truly care about. Like client management. Like something that, like, oh, if I don't see somebody getting responded to in an hour, like, I will make the response. And then I know it throws off our whole accounts team, which I shouldn't do that. But those are my challenges now. Like learning to grow.

Yeah, that's the, I mean, it's the same thing organizationally. Like, we've had to go through a lot of that in the last couple years as well in terms of growing and I think still going through that is you've got just like the hustle and try a lot of things at the beginning is the biggest asset that turns into the greatest weaknesses. You start to scale and that amount of chaos does not work well with a, with a larger team. And same thing happens in terms of just our own habits around. Like, it drives me crazy when little detail, like I'm a perfectionist, I need the little details to all be right. That doesn't scale. That's, you know, that is not the. Not the. Not the right way to build a culture where people feel empowered and trusted and have the autonomy to go do good work on their own.

I do have a question for you, too. I'm curious if this is something that. With all the people that you work with or people that are listening today, if they experience it. So, obviously there was a lot of change in the world with the pandemic, and I guess this is something that was a big business driver, too. You know, the. We've always been a remote team. I've had, like, all my companies have been that way because if I geo restricted my hiring to, you know, Boise, Idaho, it is not going to be good. Like, I need to pull talent from San Francisco, from New York, from Canada, wherever it is. Like, I want the best people working for me. And so that's how we've always been structured. And I will say it was interesting, you know, like, three years ago when we're still just starting to, like, figure out the positioning again. A lot of the conversations then at that time would come down to, hey, can you talk to me about your team? Like, that doesn't really happen anymore, but it's like, you know, you know, we weren't any different than anybody else, right? And so they would get into the details of like. Like, walk me through designs that you've done and let me hear about your team and your offices. And then. And then I would talk about, like, well, we don't. We don't really have, like, great physical offices. Or sometimes they would come out and I've had people tell me these are terrible offices compared to the $200 million offices they just went to in LA for some big firm. And I would lose a lot of business just on that. Like, right. Like, is they. They felt safe and secure. This. This agency had these big offices. They could see pictures of it. Like, again, risk. It comes down to risk. And then. And the pandemic happened. And it was interesting because what I saw, and I'm curious if this happened a lot. Like, for me, it was the great leveler where I'm like, this is. I mean, it's sad that this is happening, but it's not a big deal to my business because we've been operating like this for years now. It's not going to disrupt us. But what it did do is the CEO comes on zoom all of a sudden, and he's got dinosaurs behind him and a baby thing. And it didn't it no longer met, it no longer mattered where we worked from or where we had offices at. That was not a discussion point. And just that thing, just removing that, like, barrier started closing a lot of deals. And I'm just curious if you guys have seen that across the board too, or like, smaller. I think it gave smaller agencies a leg up of not having to have that big established kind of corporate office.

Yeah, I think that definitely happened. I don't know how to quantify it because we've also seen six consecutive quarters of the best environment for agency growth, at least in the last decade, just because everyone's forced to like, hey, we've got to get online. We've got to get online right now and change our whole presence. So there's this macro environment where it's just been agency growth stories. There have always been fast growing agencies who've figured something out and they've gotten it to click and they've outperformed the field. But the number of those stories that are like, oh, yeah, I just talked to an agency. They were three people in January just getting started. They just hired number 28.

Wow.

Last week. It's just like this, this crazy kind of growth trajectory. But yeah, for sure. And you probably. Did you live through this as well? For us, we've been remote since 2013. Remote used to be a benefit. I was like, oh, cool, I'll work at Zenpilot. I get to work from home and I get to travel whenever I want to. And now on the flip side, from a talent competition perspective, but like now we're. We're right there with Everybody else who's 100% as well. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, it's funny again, this could just be the pockets of people who I come across. The number of Eastern European agencies who I talk to who have grown just like crazy since COVID because of having a much easier time breaking into the States again, like people not really caring. You know, we're all in the same place. We're all working from our, from our computers.

Interesting. Are you talking about like, like, like Ukraine? Like that kind of eas. Yeah.

Yep. Yeah, we worked with some folks from Latvia, from Lithuania, from Ukraine. And yeah, it's just a surprising. And it could just be. Could just be pockets as well. But the number who have said, like, we've had a lot of success post Covid where we used to get, you know, maybe one out of every 10 brands was a US company who actually trusted us to do something often because, you know, they were desperate and they're you know, they're trying to save money and now, you know, now that's turned into 50, 60, 70% of their client base is from the U.S. nice work.

That's great.

Which is awesome to see. And also it's a little bit of a wake up call to us here in the US as well that, hey, the world is flattening out.

The reach is coming in for everybody. Yeah. And I think that's part of this all comes back to what we talked to in the beginning. Strong positioning, strong differentiation. That's the thing that's gonna weather a recession. It'll do all of that. But when you have a bunch of conversion and you're selling the same stuff as everybody else else, it's just you're gonna have to work eight times harder to get a sale.

Yeah. It's gonna get competed away. Well, I like to wrap up kind of this theme. Kevin, we talked a little bit about some of the stuff that you guys are working on organizationally right now, but from a growth perspective for Smash brand, what, what are you guys most jazzed about here? As we wrap up the second half.

Of, of 2022 our again, I think for, for growth for us is what we've decided. What we've decided as a company is like there's two ways to grow, Right. Clients or you can charge more. Like those are kind of the. And so we're going to charge more route. So we've got growth goals to increase prices again by 50%, which we've been able to do every year. It's, it's scary, but it's already kind of like the first ones closed out there and that's what we're shooting for. End of the year, we've doubled again and without having to take additional work.

That's awesome. This has been a really fun conversation. I could, I could grill you on especially a lot of the internal team stuff and partnership and growth stuff for a while.

We've got a lot of similarities there. It's. You got a cool story.

There's a, there's a lot of overlap. For folks who want to get connected or follow the Smash brand journey, obviously, smashbrand.com is the website. Anywhere else that you'd want to point.

People though, that's pretty much it. Smashbrand.com Feel free to reach out to me, Kevin. Smashbrand.com Easy.

Perfect. All right, well, I appreciate your time today. Thanks so much for joining me.