How to Partner with Businesses to Monetize Their Brand with Eric Berman of Brandetize

All right, welcome back to the show. This is Brad and today I am joined by a close friend and colleague of mine, Eric Berman. And I brought Eric on the show to really dive deep into a topic we don't talk about enough, which is really working with leading companies, brands and personal brands to help them grow their business and do it in a really innovative way that Eric has taken towards performance based marketing. But besides just this topic, Eric's got a really fascinating backstory both as an entrepreneur, as an investor and now as the manager of one of the premier marketing agencies out there. That company, by the way, is called branditized and he works with thought leaders such as Brian Tracy, Jack Canfield, Phil Town, as well as consumer brands like Heartmath, Aptera Terasana and a lot more. Also, Eric has consulted for multiple venture capitalists, including successful companies at all levels, including Club Med and Vessel and Phoenix Space, which I'm involved in. And he was also one of the co founders of collegeclub.com, which was the largest and most visited college site on the Internet in the year 2000. It was really considered the first Facebook of its nature. We're going to dive into that because it's a really fascinating story, but I've waited years to get Eric on the show and without any further ado, Eric Berman, welcome to Bacon Wrap Business.

Thank you, Brad. I was waiting years to get on the show and it was a long, long queue. So I appreciate you having me on here.

That's right. It's fun. So this is always interesting when I'm interviewing friends that I know a decent enough about and then I have to kind of like forget what I know and tee this up so that the listeners can get the benefit of, of the experience that in your story that you share. But I'm sure that there's parts of your story that I haven't heard as well. So we can dive into that. But before we dive into performance marketing and branded ties and really doing equity deals with high end brands, which I know a lot of my listeners are probably really interested in because a lot of them are likely expert marketers and they're or, or expert gurus who are looking for marketing help, let's go back in history to your entrepreneurial journey and like where you started and like College Club and how all that came about because I know it's really fascinating.

Yeah, well it's what's funny, Brad, you know, even we all look back into our lives and ask ourselves like when did you know you're an Entrepreneur, like, you know, you know, it's so funny. So, you know, I was at UC San Diego, grad in the management science econ degree. You look back in your life and I was one of the rare birds that didn't go run off to the financial investment firms and all those people that recruited us heavily out of school. And I, for some crazy reason, I was more interested in the first idea I heard, more or less. I think this is the other thing I learned along the way as entrepreneurs. I sort of say, yes too much. Everything sounds good. What do we know? This is great. I love it. And so, you know, it started when I met a couple. A buddy introduced me to somebody he was doing some work with. And, you know, this guy was such a good visionary explaining this concept. And back in the day, we're going to go way back to 93, and I hate to date myself here, 93, but we're going all the 93, had just graduated college and, you know, did my Europe, you know, my summer European tour and didn't jump into that first job. And, you know, the idea was, hey, the most coveted market is the college student. You know, advertisers love the college student. If you can capture them early enough, they become loyal to your brand. And we had an idea on how to do that. And of course, the idea back then, you got to remember, 93, there was no Internet. Nothing like that existed. So without going too deep into a story, it was almost like creating the browser over the phone and using a very sophisticated phone sort of messaging platform where you can hit different buttons to do different services. And then we integrate in local merchants to get deals for students, etc. Etc. So that was the grind. And I looked back and I was like, sounds cool. Where do I sit? And they're like, well, you'd love to help you, but we don't really offer pay right now. We're just sort of, that's okay, I don't mind. I'd saved up some money in school and did a bunch of jobs. So I went in there and that led to the first 18 months of no salary. And really, I look back at my career and said, this is a little bit of a pattern I had, and I'll kind of create an open loop for you. Just some of the stuff I've done later, which is taking on, getting myself into an interesting situation, taking some risk by really doing sweat equity and finding some cool opportunities for myself. And I do remember getting my first paycheck. The founders, we decided to all pay ourselves like, $1,200 a month, 18 months later. And we felt so guilty taking that first check, but we're like, all right, it's time to. We got to maybe eat a little bit more than ramen every week.

I remember that feeling well when I started my first business, and it was probably only about nine months later or maybe about eight months later, where I took, like, $1,500 out, because I just kept on loop, you know, reinvesting it back in the business, as you kind of should. But, yeah, I remember that.

Like, woo.

My first paycheck as an entrepreneur.

All right.

All my friends were jealous and started his own business. I was like, be careful what you're jealous of.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So fast forward that was about 3, 4 of us to 10 of us, to 12 of us, and trying to build this thing out when the market wasn't quite there yet. Probably not an exaggeration when I said we were less than 24 hours away from making payroll as we continued to shake the tin cup, raising money from angels, trying to explain this deal.

I think we did miss payroll runs and had to give all the employees more equity and have big conversation. Then ultimately, this Internet, this Netscape thing happened back in the day. Old Marc Andreessen and others, and oh, my goodness. And so then we had to quickly pivot and said, dang, all the stuff we've been doing as we kept building up and building up, obviously a lot happened. Things really exploded, though, when VCs were coming around and pouring money.

To fast forward that adventure, we went from a few of us to 10, 20, 100. Next thing you know, we had raised $75 million, had about 400 employees, acquired four companies, and we were just the little darlings of San Diego.

As you talked about earlier, if you looked up the Internet stats back in that day, and this is like 2000, we were the number one website for the entire demographic of the college market, that coveted market. And we were actually number 40 in the entire Internet. Like, imagine being the 40th most trafficked site on the Internet. We had filed to go public and took our first vacation in five years. I remember it vividly up in Playa de Carmen back in the day on a very rainy weekend. And we were watching the TV on that Thursday, I think, just the day.

We arrived, March of 2000.

This is April or March, whatever it was, of 2000. And that market just crashed those days. We literally like, oh, this is not happening. And then our CFO had a heart attack on the spot. Practically flew Home the next day because we had that Tuesday we had a $10 million bridge loan to take us to the IPO. And so what a bridge loan is, if you're not quite familiar really at that time, we're burning one to two million dollars a month just on payroll and costs. And back then, and in a little history lesson again, it wasn't about profitability, it was about eyeballs. Spend, spend, spend, lose money, don't worry about it, get eyeballs. And ultimately it was about being the number one for any whatever vertical you're in. So that's what we were told to do. That's what the board and the VCs and everyone wants to do. So we're losing money, but it didn't matter. $10 million was going to take us to the IPO. And then we were going to probably go out, they said about a half billion dollars or so, and we were going to be acquiring a bunch of companies. I was at 28 at the time and I would have had enough to retire back then at least six months after the ipo. And then it all just imploded. And you know, it was a really, really tough part of my journey because this is all I knew. I had no Life. It was seven days a week, you know, 10, 11, 12 hour days, mattresses in the office, that kind of thing. And you know, you get to a point where you feel like, God, I made it, I did all this work and you know you're going to make it. And then you just, you know, all of a sudden, you know, we didn't imagine what could go wrong. It could be this bad. Of course you don't know what you don't know. And nobody really knew at the time what was going on. And then that led to, you know, a big implosion and us having to lay off a couple hundred people very quickly. And ultimately, as nothing turned around that fast, there was a lot of sell offs going on. And that's when you also learned, and I won't get too far into this lesson, but just a quick note about the importance of board control. And at that time, after raising up Nutty, we were down one seat. Founders like three seats board, four seats. And ultimately the board decided that it was time to divest and just get whatever money out they can. So they just said, let's sell. They basically fired all the founders on the board and said, you're out. We don't want you getting on the way. No cause nothing. It's just we want to sell it and you're going to block us from selling it. So buy.

And ultimately we tried to buy the business out of what's called a 363 bankruptcy. So that's actually where they take you through a bankruptcy to cleanse the business of all the liabilities and start fresh and try to get the best deal they can get for that. So we were out on the road show trying to raise money to buy that of bankruptcy, actually me and myself and the founders and said, all right, we're going to get this back. Got down to the point where we found the investor, we were going to make the offer, probably get it. And then his wife had a stroke. And then we said, all right, that's the final straw. Messages on the wall running to the wall here. This is not meant to be. It's time to start a new chapter in our lives. And that was the end of that. And what a crazy, crazy, wild story.

Wow. So yeah, you were there at the, really the dot com days. I remember the, I remember March and April of 2000 real well. I was a financial advisor, so I had a bunch of clients. I was about two, three years into the business and I had a bunch of clients and it all went to hell and it was like, whoa, what do I do now? But being on that stage of it, I mean you, you at least got to see probably some really, really valuable lessons early on that served. So you talked about board control. So you were, you were one of the founders. But then the, but then the board was not necessarily made of the founders so that they had the ultimate control and they were able to push you guys out.

Right. As you go through each tranche. We had run early stock and then series A, series B, series C. And each time you're sort of adding another board seat for the investor. So at some point by the last round, when they put in a pile of cash, it was kind of like, okay, well the founder group, if you will, or the friendlies as you like to say, were one less than the investor groups. And ultimately, even though share wise we had more shares, at least the main founder didn't matter because the board got to dictate what was happening back then. And that was quite a lesson.

Wow. How would you, how would you. Or have you restructured something? Like, have you had to. Have you taken that specific lesson and restructured businesses you're in now? Because I know, for instance, like Mark Zuckerberg's famous for the way he structured his board and the voting chairs like he can basically never be unseated the Way that he structured his with the different classes and how certain seats have like 10 times the voting power of other ones.

Yeah. I mean, I would say, knowing what I know, other than advising friends and other colleagues, you know, I haven't gone down that path of building another business that size. I haven't had to deal with it. And so I went down in a different path. So if I ever do, certainly I'll take those lessons simpler. Yeah. So then I get to take, and I get to take away the lessons about like you said, I mean, I mean, when you get to learn, you know, from 21 to 28, you know, the real hands on experience, you know, you got to take a positive attitude the end of the day. It was very, very difficult at the time. But I always tell people it's easier to lose money. That's paper money that you never had. Then, you know, you know, you know, let's say I had 10, $20 million in the bank and lost it all. That'd be a lot more difficult to swallow.

Yeah.

So it wasn't like I just like it'd be a little different. So it's, you know, other than that, never really had that money and I had such a tremendous experience and, you know, I get to continue the journey with that.

Yeah, well, and at least you were in your 20s, I'm sure, so it was easier to absorb. So then, you know, when you and I met, it was probably right around 2013 when I first moved to San Diego. And I know at the time you were partners with Brian Tracy and running his business. But how did that, like, how did that jump? There's probably like a decade or so in between the implosion of College Club and that. Like what. What was your next step? How did you reinvent?

Yeah, so I started just consulting. And first it was a pivotal moment where the original partner, founder of the company, who owned the majority of the stock of College Club, was kind of my mentor, teaching me a lot of stuff. And he was having another new idea. And I remember sitting around and I had my own little idea, something to do randomly with Club Med. And it was at that moment where I said, I have my own idea that I want to explore myself. I don't want to always be under the shadow or the wing of somebody else, because I think when you grow up with somebody, they always see you as that sort of junior person. And I wanted to become my own sort of like leader, if you will. And I think I had that inside of me. I know I had that inside of Me. So it was a pivotal moment to say, all right, I'm done with that relationship with him. Well, I'm going to go my own path started. And that was just really where the entrepreneurial spirit started coming out there. I just have ideas and I wanted to pursue them. And so one of them was this idea for Club Med called My Club Med, which is building a social community for their travelers. And figure out a way for the company to engage their travelers beyond their one week trip. And they had such a big opportunity to do so and pitched it and they bought it and they loved it. And so I was having fun traveling to Club Med and getting their different locations set up and then did that for a while. And I was called on by a family friend. Actually, prior to that, somebody worked for Brian Tracy, and she helped him book his events. And she knows me through a family. She says, eric, I know you know, this Internet thing, this web thing, this is 2001, you know, about a year after everything else happened, she goes, brian needs help with a website. You know, this is all again back in 2001. So I said, all right. Met Brian.

And I need to tell you one more quick backstory. When we started college club, we learned about self growth, personal development really early on. That's one of the things my mentor taught me. We used to do 6am with Brian Tracy and Tony Robbins. Six to seven, was in the room with breakfast, listening to Brian and Tony and really feeding your mind with the stuff they don't teach you in school, which I wish they did. People skills, goal setting, time management, all that fun stuff. So I was a huge fan of Brian's. I was like. And I got a chance to meet him. I'm walking in the office, the kid drooling. It's like, oh, my God, it's Brian Tr. Wow, the legend. I can't believe I'm rooming you. And probably babbled a few times and drooled a few times. But I got a chance to meet him and he told me what he's looking for. I'm like, brian, I'd be so honored to do this. I know exactly what you need to do. I could do it. And by the way, I'm not an employee. I'll come in and do this, Brian. And I'm so confident we'll do this. That don't pay me until I make you a profit. And he's like, eric, you're my kind of guy. Let's do this. So I made him an offer he couldn't refuse. And then in hindsight, you alluded to it earlier, that was sort of the. Other than taking equity the first time in my career and not taking pay for a while, this is sort of the next time doing that again. So I guess I had this inside of me where I was willing to put sweat equity out there and put my neck on the line to try this. And so I did that with Brian and it worked out great. I was able to quickly generate revenue for him and go into a split and build up a business and really build up his online team that I, I hired and managed and ran his online business for. And now we're into year 21, about to enter to year 21 of that relationship. So that's been an incredible relationship, which really, in hindsight, started the journey into being an agency owner at Branditize. And agency owners, like the joke, you don't sort of grow up wanting to be an agency owner. You're kind of back into it. And this is my backing into it story where I was then managing Brian's business, doing Club Med and doing a few other projects early on, ultimately a few people came up to me and said, hey, what you're doing for Brian can you do for me? And when you hear that enough times, you start to realize, well, rather than me sort of screwing off, working on multiple things, maybe I need a focus. And you heard the focus word quite a bit in the entrepreneurial world. Maybe I need to hone in on this being sort of the journey I need to really go in on, which is doing similar types of things for what initially started as other thought leaders like Brian.

Absolutely. Now you. And then you did that. Right. So branded, when was Branditize born? Because Branditize kind of came out of Brian Tracy partnership.

That's right. Yep. So 2014, I like to call it the two year conversation with Brian. You know, you sort of had to go to Brian and say, Brian, you know, we're not going to have a monogamous relationship anymore. I want to take the staff and work on other people still love you, but. And that worked out really well. I mean, it was, you know, talking to Brian over time. And fortunately we had such a good, solid relationship. We totally love each other and it was all about mutual respect. As long as I was always going to take care of him, he trusted me and I would always do that to him and I would make sure that would never screw him or anything like that. It's been such a good relationship because of our communication that led to guys like Jack Canfield and Phil Towne and other big thought leaders. And also led to a lot of mistakes because we started with this model. And to talk a little about that, it was like, okay, this worked a couple times. Why don't I go out there and let's say, Brad, you were a thought leader and said, hey, Eric. Wow. You're like, hey, Eric, I got these books and I got this great event and this course. And I go, all right, Brad, how about I do all this stuff for you, do these things for you, and don't pay me until you make money. You'd be like, all right, sign me up for that deal all day long. Easy to sell, easy to sell. But then the mistake started happening about there's so many variables into that. And this is where the ignorance and. And being so young and naive into this kind of model, not really knowing what I was doing back then. That was the start of Branditize, but it was also the start of a major journey. This is like say about 2015 is really when we started getting the company going. And that's really when a lot of the learns and growth started happening and some of the misses and mistakes with that model and ultimately going to what's working today?

So that's a perfect segue statement. What is working today? How are you guys structuring your relationships? And.

Yeah, well, first, what we learned is.

Learning how to build influencers. And influencer wasn't a big word when we started, but really thought leaders, which we're now also considered influencers. There's a lot of marketing that goes into that. It's not just, hey, a traditional direct consumer product where you load up an IG ad or a Facebook ad or YouTube and people buy an impulse. This world, as you know, Brad, because you've done a lot of this as well. It's like you gotta do multiple channels, you gotta do the general Facebook, Instagram ads, you got to do SEO, you got to do content marketing, YouTube, a lot of email funnels. We applied that into B2C and B2B. And we ultimately decided B2C is a much better market for us when we do consumer goods as well. Learning to do the direct to do the influencers and the info marketing, it makes that actually kind of easier. We landed is on staying in the B2C, working with influencers and direct to consumer focus, you know, really cool brands that make a positive impact. That's one of the things that we liked is finding the real good influencers or brands that are doing cool stuff. Now where our model was, I'LL tell you what we were doing, what didn't work, and what's working now is going out too early and just saying, hey, let's partner up and we'll take a percentage of what we do. Sounds great in theory, but the problem is anytime you talk to a client or prospect, they tend to, let's just say their numbers are kind of like, hey, let's just take my best month and multiply that by 12. And that's the number I'm going to tell Eric about how good our business is right now. Let's just take a percentage of that. Or we're already doing this. Well, and the other thing that's just there's such obvious things in hindsight, but if I give you the deal, Brad, I said, hey, Brad, we'll do all this stuff for you. Don't pay me till you make money. But we actually truly need you to work. We need you to go to the studio, create content and give us these pieces and do a bunch of stuff. You're not that motivated and you'll get to it when you get to it, but you're not out there writing checks to us. So it's kind of like you'll move at your own speed.

Makes a huge difference.

Makes a huge difference. I know you've been through those scenarios, so you not having skin in the game kind of hurts as well. So I think a lot of it was absolutely mistakes. A lot of it was lack of confidence by myself.

You get into the.

I can't remember the word I'm looking for, but anyway, I get other imposter syndrome. Sorry, the imposter syndrome I have on myself, I'm not good enough. I don't know, is it really going to help them? And am I really providing enough value? Let me just do this great deal for you. And it's just silly in hindsight. And so we made a lot of mistakes looking back on deals that we cut even when we were making money when we started to. As an agency, you really need to be tracking hours and understanding what your billable rates are and how much you're making per client per hour compared to everything else you could be doing. And once we started getting under the hood of that data and going through that learning and growth, really the eyes open is that, wow, we're taking profits from clients that are going really well at an hourly rate and kind of trying to invest into newer companies. And it's just never getting to the point where it's making the money fast enough. So we're really just pulling ourselves down and not moving at the level we can. So a lot of mistakes about that. Also about personalities that we were going into business with. So just jumping into the answer to your question to fast forward.

We'Ve learned the hard way that we are going to date before we get married. I like to say, meaning getting married is the partnership is when we go into a relationship and say, don't pay us anything up front, we'll just take a percentage. And usually we do it off the net revenue of the business. You take the gross revenue minus, let's say, your ad expenses or your sales commissions, that net revenue number, we'll say we'll take a percent. And that percent usually is different for any kind of client because they're all over the place. If a client's making 100 million, you know, you're not going to take, you know, 20% or 50% of that. And if they're not making as much, and it depends on the work you're doing, etc. Etc. But before we get to the partnership, slash, hey, let's get married, we say we got a date first, and when we date, four things are going to happen and you're going to pay during the dating phase. It's going to be like a traditional retained model. We're going to ask you to pay us at a reasonable rate. We're not going to gouge you, but we're going to come up with a nice rate that we all feel like you're getting tremendous value over. And we're going to look for four things. First and foremost, is there a culture fit? Do we really like each other? It's not just us liking you. You got to like us. A fun test, I like to say in all relationships that I think applies across multiple for almost anything that everybody's listening to is I call it the cell phone energy play. When Brad Costanzo calls me, do I get drained or am I fired up to call?

Yeah, but we've all had those relationships with clients and others when they call, you're just like, oh, I don't really want to answer this, or let me just go to voicemail, just delete. Or, you know, I got, I got to work up some energy and drink a coffee before I talk to this person.

Bingo.

We don't want that, obviously. And, you know, or, you know, would we take them to dinner? You know, that kind of stuff. Is it fun going out with them with our, with our wives or significant others? Number two is, do we like the business? You know, now that We've been under the hood for a few months and we like the partner. Do we truly like the business? Is it making a positive impact? Are customers fired up? Are they getting great reviews? You know, it's not just me, Eric Berman running the business. I'm out of there. It's, I'm out of the weeds. It's my team. My team's gonna be fired up if they're complaining the business sucks and client, they're not gonna want to go the extra mile to really, you know, make this thing work.

Right. What are some of the, what are some of the services for a client? Because I know you guys are full stack, right. You technically do everything. So what are some of those like ideal clients for you? Like right now? Especially as they, as they apply to like B2C and maybe influencer based model. Right. So I know a lot of the people who listen to my show either are influencers or work with people like that. But who are some of your ideal clients? A and then what are some of the either services like you do or maybe it's easier to go. These are the things we don't take on.

Yeah, I mean ideal clients who like to say is somebody who's got a proven product and is looking to escalate and scale their product and understands the value of what it takes to really build up a business to put into the marketing. For us, we have our own internal minimum like $10,000 a month worth of spend in the marketing services, not including your ad spend. And what I mean by and if they don't have a product launched, which we have taken on cases, are they well funded? Meaning we have dealt with some early stage companies that have a bunch of capital behind them and they're like, okay, we have an option here. We can go out there and hire a bunch of people to run marketing or we could just snap our fingers and have a full team working for us tomorrow. But we have plenty of budget and we know what it takes to build this up. Understanding it's going to take a while. We also learned the hard way that we almost want to turn those people away and say do you really understand what it's going to take? And you got to have a six figure budget plus if you're a startup. So back to your question. I think so. Most cases if they have an existing business, they need to have a proven funnel prove a product showing that they're making sales and they're typically the founder, the influencer is under the hood, probably too much themselves and they're like, I just want to be creative. I don't want to be going under Facebook or doing SEO. Or maybe they have one person who's kind of like a friend, you know, friend, relative that's doing that, that they truly know that this person probably isn't the best marketing person, but they've been helping them out and they're ready to go to the more professional, the next level.

Gotcha.

That's what we come in and say, hey, we'll take over all your marketing, be your cmo, help with strategy, help do lead gen. You asked what we do and don't do. We do almost all marketing from lead gen, from your paid media, your SEO, your content marketing, YouTube marketing, email marketing. What we don't do and we partner with is Amazon PR app building, that kind of stuff. But we build the websites, we do the ui, UX testing the, the customer experience customer journeys. So most of the stuff we do, we like to have our hands around a lot of it. I think if people go out there and hire multiple agencies, I would always encourage people either build it yourselves internally or find an agency that could do almost all of it together.

If you hire multiple agencies, the problem is it's very difficult to have somebody in there that you think of a customer journey. The stuff that you're doing, let's say an SEO is going to affect the paid media and you know, it's going to affect the landing pages on the back end. And if you have multiple teams doing multiple things, you're not. It's really hard to get everybody talking synchronously. So that's kind of feedback on that one.

No, I love it. So clients, yeah, they get to come to you and they get to know that basically everything's handled right?

That's it. That's it. It's all handled. And ultimately when we, you know, back to the other point earlier, you know, if we like the product, like the client, you know you're going to item number three. We look, fortunately for items is do we know the true numbers of the business? When we take over a business, if we like the business and we like your funnel and you're making money and we've been in there for two, three months fine tuning it, if we ultimately could scale it, we'll at that point take the risk and we will then say, brad, stop paying us monthly, stop paying us your 10, 20, 30 grand a month, pay us zero instead. Now that we've seen the numbers of the business and we know we could double it if we add more Juice to it and add more fuel to the fire. We'll just take X percent of the net revenue. And therefore, if we have a good month, great. We're getting paid more. If we have a crappy month, we're going along with you. And now it fundamentally changes our relationship. Rather than you writing a check every month, wondering where your money's going, you're just cutting us a check out of profits, and that becomes a lot easier for you to manage. And that's been a really cool part of how to offer skin in the game. But do it in a way where it's more done intelligently from our standpoint.

Yeah, I like that. Well, in the first dating months, yeah, you at least get paid. So it de risks you without being overly burdensome on the client. But then eventually, yeah, once everybody knows that this is a good. A good relationship, it allows you both to. Allows you to de risk the client because. And increase your profit because the probability of success is a lot higher. You're not just starting from scratch like that. So that's fantastic. What's. Are there any kind of nuts you're trying to crack right now that you know, and that could be like a person or a role? You're trying to hire money, you're trying to raise a specific problem you're trying to, you know, to solve. This is where, like myself, my listeners can go, huh? Maybe I have an idea for you, like something besides just, oh, we're just trying to grow. Right. Is there anything?

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I mean, it's funny. Any month we talked, I probably have a new net. I'm cracking. Right. What's the problem of the day? I think. I think, well, a few. Few fold. I think all agencies and companies right now going through that. Let's talk culture for a second. You talk about the remote. We went from being a highly interactive creative team where all of us were in San Diego and about 30, 35 people in the office, very vibrant community, to Covid now we're all remote. And you can't mandatory get people, especially the creative millennial and others that are working in this kind of environment right now.

The supply and demand, I should say the demand for this kind of talent right now is so high that we lose leverage. If all of a sudden we're like, we got to force you back to the office. They're just going to quit and go somewhere else because there's too many opportunities to work from home, and people are getting used to that. However, you're also battling.

I'm really Big on culture and you understand, how do you maintain that culture in this environment? And you're also a creative agency. So we got to have the ability to be creative as well. So we're managing, we're doing well. It's just a lot of learning and pivoting and changing sort of the mental landscape. It's been tough on me to figure out how to reprogram my own thinking of that and feeling confident in the team and we're getting through that. But there's ongoing obstacles on that. I think going back to the recruiting, there's such a, you know, digital marketing is so hot right now. And I think within that I've heard from other agencies. You know, if I had a sibling in school right now, I'd say if you want to go make a lot of money fast, go learn the world of paid media. It is so hard to find good paid media talent right now. And they're getting paid a lot of money and not even the ton of experience. And that's just crazy. That's also tough too because you hire somebody and you think they're going to be great because they big salaries, but they're not. Also, it's tough to find really good talent. I've heard that from other agency owners.

And then lastly.

I think truly tracking.

A lot of it also happens as companies go remote as well. There's a lot of desire for employees to feel trusted and we do trust the employees. But there's also.

As a company, you have to have some checks and balances on where hours are going and utilization rates. The agency world makes things a little bit more difficult because things are up and down. You might gain a client, lose a client. And how you're managing hours and profitability amongst multiple clients, sometimes you're overserving, sometimes you're underserving. And just trying to do that delicate balancing act is a tough for us. But figuring out.

I remember, I think we had a conversation about this not too long ago, but I'd love to hear where you stand on it now. So I know in the past you just built staff, staff staffed up and you had all the various departments, departments and then. And you didn't really do too much contracting out with other agencies, right? Have you. But I thought you said that you were looking at being a little bit more lean, but then working with people who are more, a little more freelance to add on so that you don't have to.

You know, just take the, the payroll. Because obviously if you have somebody on payroll or you have several people and Then maybe you lose a client or two, which happens and then all of a sudden you got a lot of bloat, et cetera. Have you done any of that contracting out various departments yet?

Great question. Yeah, great question. No, no, you nailed it. In fact, and I've been studying and listening to some podcasts and some other agency owners. There's a movement. A lot of doing this, we're moving this direction too is it's almost like.

Your strategist, your subject matter magic experts, your department heads, all that we're bringing in house. But then as you add on and you get let's say to the third person on that team, sometimes the second person on that team, let me give an example. You have like a creative director, head designer, somebody who's running the department. They have their right arm in the company. Well, when you go down to the next level of let's say designers, at that point we can outsource. Maybe we outsource more overseas to hire a third designer in the office. When needs may up and flow. That's where the danger comes in.

So it's also been a difficult challenge to reprogram. Everybody's thinking to say, look, I know it's easier if it were up to you. Of course you want to go hire somebody local to you so you have another full time body. You're also not looking at the dollars of the company. Realize how difficult that is when we take a big hit at some point because the peaks and valleys do happen. So it's more about the we say hands on keyboard when you get down to the people that are really in the grind, doing less management and more just direct the direct following the projects. We're trying to outsource a lot more and we're even learning now. And maybe in the future I could give a follow up to that on doing more overseas. So certainly if you have any followers, I'd love to get some experience shares on hiring overseas talent, working with them. We're starting that path right now to help us grow.

Yeah, I would think that would be kind of important because I've seen some of the challenges that you know, you guys have faced and just a lot of just economically driven, right? Like you know, 2020 upset the apple cart for a lot of people and just being able to stay lean. But then also, you know, it's helpful because then some of those people you can go hire like really great freelancers who don't want a job, but they're like really good at X. And then you can use it when they want. But so that's fantastic.

So the, the clients you're working with with now though, what would you say is the split between like personality based thought leaders and influencers versus more of the traditional businesses or non, you know, non frontman featured businesses.

Yeah, it's about half and half. Okay. Or maybe it's slightly about 60, 40 into information marketing.

Sure.

And some of it even goes into a hybrid of they might not even be thought leaders together. There's also a middle one there where there might be a thought leader at the helm. But the brand isn't about the thought leader. It's about selling the content and the curriculum and the teachings of what they're doing.

Yeah, the thought leaders are the pitch man for the curriculum.

Yep, yep. Which is I think always better long term is not to have them be the brand.

And then with like for instance some of the clients you work with, Brian Tracy for instance. So there are obviously there's information products. I would imagine that there are, there is a sales team involved. People who probably talk to clients to sell some of the more advanced programs are though the way that at least it works with Brian Tracy. Are those internal to branditize? Do you contract out with salespeople? Is there another organization or how did things like that work?

Yeah, I mean for the Brian Tracy business. Yeah. We do have a sales team partner that you know, works on, you know, works on commissions that essentially works with our customers to sell them into coaching and to sell them to more products with Brian. So yeah, we have an idol, Phil Town. He's got a full sales team as well. That, that will. Well really it's, you know, it's sales and consultant that works with clients that are interested in more services, you know, things of that nature.

So, so it's kind of either or hybrid. If the, if the company has their own people, it's fine, you do the marketing for them. If not, you have the resources to do sales and marketing. Some of it's.

That's right. Cool. That's right. Yep.

That's fantastic. Are there any other things you're really excited about you're watching right now that kind of have your interest of where things are going.

Well? I just, I just continue to think it's going to be interesting. You know, first of all, I think it's a great time to be in digital marketing still. I mean it's not going to think of all industries. It's not going anywhere. It's. It's definitely positive and I think, I think trying to stay on top of the trends of what's doing is always exciting. You know, it's, it's, you know, obviously TikTok was the huge, you know, last, you know, 18 months or so. You know, really learning. It's not going away. Right. So how do you pivot your marketing to that?

Have you guys done any. Have you guys done anything with TikTok yet with clients? Like, started to manage that?

Yeah, we got a fun client called Terasana, which is acne, Gen Z, acne skin line using cbg actually out of a public company. And we're doing a lot of TikTok with them, so started there. It's been great. And I think we're doing a couple other companies. We're looking at that as well.

So, yeah, you got to figure it out. We got to get there. And sometimes in those instances too, we could find partner companies that are farther along and just white label, bring them in initially until we learn and then eventually bring it in house or just continue to have partners working. Working with.

I like it. So, you know, we're approaching the end of the. The show here, but I'm sure that you've probably piqued some people's curiosity. Are there any, like, if somebody thinks that they may either be a good fit for you or wants to explore this more, like what's. What's the best way to either reach out or to find out more and see if there's a opportunity?

Well, our website, Brand E ties. That's brand and E t I z e.com, which really came from. We're gonna help you monetize your brand. Branditize. There is a contact Us form, really easy to fill out and just. You can kind of just say you're interested and just reference your show and reference Brad. And that'll probably alert me because I do get a BCC'd in all inquiries. And so I will probably jump ahead my biz dev team to answer that one. So it comes from your team. Yeah.

That's fantastic. So that's branditized. Not Brad. It ties. There's an N in there. Brand.

So otherwise we're getting monetized. Brad, that's always fun too.

Absolutely. I like that. Well, Eric, thanks for joining me on the. On the podcast today. It's, as I said, it's always fun to interview my. My close friends, but it was. It was cool. I actually learned a few things about your history that I didn't know and think it's super cool the history that you've got there and you've kind of seen business from both sides. Both from the, you know, working in the high hustle VC or angel back startup and being what was that, the.

40Th biggest, biggest site in the web. That's crazy.

That's a cool trophy to have but I look forward to watching you grow, hopefully being a part of that and continuing friendship and investment projects long into the future.

Oh yeah, we'll talk about that some other day. But yeah, thanks for having me Brad. I really appreciate it. And thanks for listening.

Yeah and thanks to everybody else for listening to the show and hopefully you subscribed. If you like it, leave a review on itunes. I read every single one of them and I really greatly appreciate it. And if you have any topic or guest suggestions, feel free to reach out to ask bradakenraptbusiness.com and I'll be sure to check it out. Until next time. I will see you Eric. Have a great Thanksgiving. If we don't chat before then and for everybody else you do too. And I'll see you on the next episizle. Thanks a lot.