076 – Let’s get Granular – We’re talking PPC on this week’s Happy Hour
October 1, 2022
In this Happy Hour podcast, we’re chatting with Steve Kroll and Jordon Meyer about the mysterious world of PPC and what it’s like to be a digital agency.
Timestamps
- (6:40) What is Jordan watching right now?
- (8:04) Who is Jordan Meyer?
- (9:20) What is Steve watching right now?
- (12:10) Who is Steve Kroll?
- (14:47) Who gets to tell who what to do?
- (15:56) Ask vs tell.
- (17:56) Working through a pandemic.
- (20:37) Should you still have a physical office post pandemic?
- (24:47) Why is culture important?
- (1:01:02) What are Steve and Jordan excited about?
- (1:10:51) Automation and AI.
- (1:20:38) What is one the coolest marketing projects Steve and Jordan have been able to do.
- (1:24:06) Two truths and a lie.
Transcript
Ryan Freng 2:06
Hello and welcome back to another backflip. Happy Hour. I’m Ryan Freng, co creative director here at backflip and Lord of the podcast self titled, if you are listening in your podcast app, thank you for joining us in the audio. We’ll try to keep it audio based and not visual, will describe everything in sweet, sweet, succulent details. As always, I’m joined by coconspirator. CO creator, John Shoemaker. What’s up John?
John Shoemaker 2:32
Yes, John Shoemaker and Lord of the Dance taken taken from somebody else,
Ryan Freng 2:41
have you ever come to Halloween as Lord of the Dance?
John Shoemaker 2:48
I mean, it’s arguable that I’m always that and then and then dress another character, but
Ryan Freng 2:58
I love that. So we got John, Lord of the Dance here today. It is a happy hour. We’ll start off with our drinks and then we’ll bring our awesome guests on. What do you got? John? What do you what are you up to? What are you drinking today?
John Shoemaker 3:11
I went with the limousine ride from dancing goat. To six year.
Ryan Freng 3:26
I imagine splendid. Yeah,
John Shoemaker 3:27
yeah. The Blended blended rye whiskey.
Ryan Freng 3:31
Well, in as much as it’s not a single malt scotch. Yes. Yeah. Now it sounds like real liquor. essexia Nanos. Good. Alright, so I’ve got an ice factory. It’s actually there. Hefa IPA. So this is in their new variety pack. As one does. You gotta be repping the brand. Kay for some partners of ours. So there we go. Oh, maybe this could be some like audio. What’s that called? ASMR ASMR. I wanted to call it ADR but that’s automatic dial. Everybody. Right now. Yeah. And you got to start over here. And then you come around the side so that you get the real full effect. All right. Enough of that nonsense. Let’s bring our guests on here. today. We’ve got Steve and Jordan from granular what’s up guys?
Steve Kroll 4:32
Hey, what’s going on?
Ryan Freng 4:35
I have to ask I’ve never asked anybody. What’s it like to sit there while we just nonsensically talk for like a minute. You just like come on. Come on. Come on, get us on. Let’s go.
Jordon Meyer 4:46
No, I was I was relating a lot to the Lord of the Dance stuff and then cracking up over your ASMR I mean, so relaxing. I almost fell asleep. It
Ryan Freng 4:57
was great. Nice. Yeah, you got some red hair to write in. Looks like a little bit something that you can relate. Yeah. Nice. That’s awesome. And let’s see, what do you guys drinking today?
Steve Kroll 5:11
Yeah, I’ll go first I have some ice cold triple filtered h2o Direct from the refrigerator located at the six o’clock position behind me in a grainy, rebranded pint glass of
Ryan Freng 5:26
course. Straight from the swamp of Milwaukee, right. Yeah.
Steve Kroll 5:30
Third Ward sits on a swamp. It’s triple filtered, so we’re getting
Jordon Meyer 5:34
nice. So I don’t know if this is showing up correctly or backwards. It is bells. No. Yeah.
Ryan Freng 5:44
There’s a lot of fun. That’s such a millennial. No, yeah. Yeah,
Jordon Meyer 5:48
there’s a lot of fun scenes all around it. No, yeah. Oh, sorry. Watch for the deer will just gonna sneak past Yeah. Which is so Wisconsin, but it’s made in. You know, it’s it’s Michigan right? Bells.
Ryan Freng 6:08
Ah, yeah. Where’s bells? Bells? Because they have like, a two hearted. Yeah,
Jordon Meyer 6:15
I’m gonna SMR this right.
Ryan Freng 6:17
There you go. Kalamazoo and Comstock. Yeah. So kind of Southern Michigan. Yeah, they must have that over there, too. I think the no, yeah. I love that. There’s some colloquial ZZ that millennials have. I’ll try to think of the other one that I have that people say. It might be no, yeah. It’s like a way of setting something up or, or agreeing. It’s so strange. All right. So for those who aren’t familiar with you, guys, let’s, let’s hear a little bit more about you. I’d like you to introduce yourself. And we can start with Jordan since you were just talking. Start off with what you’re what you’re watching right now. What you’re consuming. You know, in terms of, I guess, yeah. What’s your what’s your watching? That’d be good.
Jordon Meyer 7:09
Personal personal. What
Ryan Freng 7:10
I’m watching. Yeah, yeah, man,
Jordon Meyer 7:12
you have been binging great. Or the great. I think it’s great. It’s a very fictional, historic, entertaining story about Catherine the Great in Russia. Well, from the 1600s not as potent as I made it sound though. You know, kind of seizure of power. I don’t know. I think I think Dakota Fanning sisters, the main star on bad celebrities.
Ryan Freng 7:45
That’s how you know, it’s gonna be a hit Dakota fan. Yes. There’s in it. Yeah. Yeah. It’s
Jordon Meyer 7:49
it’s, it’s it’s entertaining, though. That’s, that’s what we’re on right now. And then survivor, of course, which I think I watched season one. And then I was like, this is a really dumb show. I’m never watching this again. And then the pandemic happened. So we watched every single season. Now, a little bit of time, we got to watch the new one. Yeah.
Ryan Freng 8:11
What’s the great on?
Jordon Meyer 8:13
I think it’s Hulu.
Ryan Freng 8:15
Okay. Yeah. He did some good shows. All right, cool. So now who are you and what do you do?
Jordon Meyer 8:21
I’m Jordan Meyer. I’m the founder of granular we’re a digital marketing agency, which today is a little bit nebulous. So really a paid search agency. Because digital can mean a lot of stuff these days. Yeah, I founded the company in 2014. And before that, I worked at a couple agencies in the Milwaukee area, and then went up to Minneapolis, managed paid search at Best Buy corporate, and then went into higher ed advertising in house a couple universities up there. Prior to kind of selling every night and weekend, I had consulting on the side, which grew into something I just couldn’t, couldn’t deny and decided to start granular full time in 2014 and move back to Milwaukee because the one big lake is better than the 10,000 lakes in
Ryan Freng 9:25
my mind. That’s that’s a good way to characterize it. All right. We’ll come back to that. I’ve got some some some follow up questions. Next up. We’ve got Steve What What are you watching? What’s going on?
Steve Kroll 9:39
Yeah, hey. So succession, and HBO. Yeah. Yellowstone, which is on the Paramount network, but also weirdly, not on Paramount plus Paramount Paramount Plus subscription. At this point is only good for Paw Patrol and pepper. ping reruns. And then you’ve got,
Ryan Freng 10:03
you’ve got some kids.
Steve Kroll 10:07
I wouldn’t judge if there’s a whole Paw Patrol subreddit where people really analyze things, but no, I’ve got it.
Ryan Freng 10:14
I’m a bit of a brony. Yeah, she’s
Steve Kroll 10:18
okay. She’s a two year old daughter named Aria. And then I been watching rewatching, all of the back catalogue of episodes of the BBC series a faker fortune, as well, which is eight year old series. It’s basically like, imagine national treasure meets, you know, art. It’s like a, it’s an art dealer, and a leading journalist where they have people submit paintings that they think are lost masterpieces, which had been mis attributed. And they try and do provenance research, scientific research, and try and fill in the backstory to prove that, for instance, a Picasso, which maybe was attributed to someone after Picasso actually was a Picasso and it’s, it’s pretty entertaining stuff.
Ryan Freng 11:13
Now, as you’re describing that, I was going back and forth in my mind, is that fiction or nonfiction?
Steve Kroll 11:18
It’s nonfiction. Yeah. So yeah. Okay. Good. Follow up. Yeah. So it’s nonfiction. So Fiona Bruce, she’s leading journalist over across the pond for the BBC, and Philip mold. He’s a leading art dealer. So he’s brought in has been brought in over the years as an expert on the Antique Roadshow and things like that. So I don’t know who constructed the program, but it’s going on 889 years, and very entertaining and compelling.
Ryan Freng 11:51
That’s awesome. What? What was the title of that? Again,
Steve Kroll 11:54
fake or fortune?
Ryan Freng 11:56
Fake or fortune?
Steve Kroll 11:57
You can watch most of the episodes on YouTube. And it’s incredibly difficult. You can’t even buy the DVDs. You can’t buy it on Apple TV or Amazon. If I could buy all I could. So
Ryan Freng 12:09
is it just all BBC? BBC One or whatnot? Yeah.
Steve Kroll 12:13
Yeah, I don’t I don’t know. If the one two or three I just if you basically just plug it in YouTube, you could find a lot of episodes, hop on
Ryan Freng 12:21
that VPN, go to England. Watch it on the BBC. iPlayer. There you go. Awesome. So Steve, who are you? And what do you do here?
Steve Kroll 12:29
Yeah, I’m our president here. So I really oversee operations, sales, marketing, essentially, Jordan, he’s built a great company. And my role primarily has been the been the growth engine behind things. And he’s really empowered me to be the guy to, you know, work in the business to grow it so that we can focus on the business and where we need to be I think a lot of founders are not able to let go delegate and power. That’s not Jordan, he’s from day one has been really good about knowing where his strength and skill set is. Get the people who are really good at theories, they excel. Understand human nature, understand the platforms, give everyone the tools and resources they need to do their job. And that way he can have his eye on, where do we need to? Where do we need to go? So yeah, I joined up with him a year after he started it. I think when Jordan posts on LinkedIn that he started granular, I was like the first person who saw the post on LinkedIn and shot him an email at the time I was building a b2b software company, I reached out to him because in a previous life, I had run an agency that focused on paid in SEO as well. And I thought you could tell by the language, you could tell by everything that Jordan knew you, both of us from our experience, he just kind of know within a minute of talking to someone if they really understand Google ads, if they really understand analytics. And I could just tell by the language, it was a, it was a combination on the website of, you know, Midwestern values, but like, a chip on his shoulder and competitive drive. Just clearly, there was a story there about, you know, having been in the belly of the beast, a level of healthy skepticism from having hired agencies. I could just read that through the language. So it’s very compelling. So yeah, I reached out to him. We not worked for a year, when my software startup was at a juncture. He basically said, Look, I’m building this thing. I’m going to need a guy like you and instead of a guy like you, how about you? So I had I joined as a contractor for like, three months and then I think we both saw booklets just let’s throw in and just make this happen and make it official and that’s 2016. We’re at what 23 full time employees now back then there was like Three or four of us, so,
Ryan Freng 15:02
yeah, wow. Yeah, that’s awesome. So let’s see a co founder and CEO, I always wonder too, like when you have CEO and president, you know, who gets to tell who what to do? But it seems like as, as the founder, that’d be huge. Or do you get do you get to tell Steve what to do? Or do you guys tell each other what to do? How’s that work?
Jordon Meyer 15:19
Now we’re, you know, asynchronous asynchronously, we tell everybody exactly what to do at the same time.
Ryan Freng 15:27
Really, there’s no right answer.
Jordon Meyer 15:30
Yeah, no, I mean, we both kind of own our own own little piece of this. And, you know, I, I asked instead of tell, so, you know, I think that’s the kind of environment here, no yelling? No. No, no hard management skills. You know, if someone doesn’t do something, I’ll be disappointed. And that’ll that’ll be enough to motivate
Steve Kroll 15:56
you just select the meme of the angry Arthur fist. And that’s enough, if about how it’s feeling? I’m just kidding. I don’t even know what that is.
Ryan Freng 16:05
Use the technology. Yeah, use the technology to show our feelings. Exactly. Yeah. You had said? Would you say you ask instead of tell, describe that a little bit more? What is that?
Jordon Meyer 16:18
Sure. So, you know, I just put people in a position of autonomy, you know, give them a lot of ownership of each account that they run. So we’re set up a little bit different, that’s part of, I guess, what Steve said, of like, having a chip on my shoulder, it’s, I’ve worked for other agencies, as a paid search professional. And then when I was in house, I got to work with you know, in house, PVC pros, and then also, hire and fire agencies to help us do that, as well. So I guess I get to see a lot of different environments and see, you know, sometimes it’s just like a business guy that’s running the show, has never done a lick of PPC in his life. And they’re just kind of rolling in a very traditional, like NBA style management, where they are dictating things. And they are, you know, telling you what to do, even though they might not know what to do. In our scenario, I was the PPC Pro, I’m hiring people that are just in my mind a few years behind me in their career. So we’re on very similar paths, and I try to lead people down that same path of really growing your practice, you know, enabling them to know what the right things to do are, and, you know, having, knowing exactly kind of what they need to do. That’s where, you know, we can kind of show and, and guide versus, and just ask them to do what I know needs done. You know, versus like, acting like I know what they’re doing. Right? It’s just a different environment, because I’ve been in their shoes. And I don’t think that happens all the time.
Ryan Freng 18:10
Yeah, and and what’s it been like to over the last two years? Were you distributed before? I believe you are distributed now? Or at least a mix? Looks like Steve’s in the office or he has a really cool looking home. You might be in the office, too. I can’t quite tell because I don’t see. Yeah,
Jordon Meyer 18:31
we’re in different wings of Steve’s mansion. He lets me hang out once in a while. Now we’re in the office. We are the only two people here. We were primed for the pandemic. We stockpile masks and sanitizer before then. Just kidding. We
Ryan Freng 18:54
that’s where all my masks went.
Jordon Meyer 18:55
Yeah, you know, we, we had a few remote folks before. We were primarily like, all Milwaukee centric, you know, we’ve got this awesome office that we built out in the Third Ward, which if you’re familiar with Milwaukee is like the place to be if you’re an agency or a small business. And, you know, we built that, that in office culture. That was really cool. But along the way, you know, as we’re growing past, like the nine or 10 number, we decided, hey, let’s stop pissing off all the other agencies and stop poaching their people for a breath. And let’s find somebody outside of Milwaukee. So we found somebody in Ohio and then we found somebody in Denver and Florida. So it’s been kind of a progression already. So we had zoom, you know, four or five years ago, we had no landlines, right. We had a phone system that was in the cloud already. We had everything set up. I don’t think We’ve introduced a new tool in the pandemic at all, because we’re basically ready to do this already. Which I feel super lucky to be in that position. So now, you know, we’re even more distributed. Couple people moved out of the out of the city and out of the state. Yeah. And I was like, I was encouraging people to do that if they wanted. Because remote has worked so well for us. Over the past two years, it’s been really encouraging to open up that talent pool across the country and really just dive fully into this. We’re, you know, we still have the space, we still meet up once in a while it’s open if people want to come in, but remote has been really great for us.
Ryan Freng 20:54
Yeah, and what’s, you know, what do you think about the space? Moving forward? Maybe this is that personal question we were talking about before, you know, being so remote and being the only two in the office right now, it’s a great office. And, you know, we’re, I think our lease is up in the year as well, we still probably need studio space. But these are the types of questions we’re always asking ourselves, you know, what do we need? How much do we need?
John Shoemaker 21:18
We’re moving the right, mouse.
Ryan Freng 21:22
Back, yeah.
Jordon Meyer 21:23
Nice. Yeah, we’re gonna keep a presence. I don’t know if it’s going to be this, it’s going to be in Milwaukee, for sure. We just want that opportunity to bring in a client if they want to come in, we want an opportunity to, you know, cook the team breakfast and have team team meetings. It’s important to me, and and I think, Steve to have some type of presence here, and still call this our hub and still invest in Milwaukee. From a real estate standpoint. Will it look exactly like this? Probably not. But it’ll be something.
Ryan Freng 21:59
Yeah, and kind of piggybacking on that, just about, I don’t know, company culture, because I think I was looking on Instagram. And I was like, that seems like a really rad place to work. Because you guys are so thoughtful, you know, bring in, I didn’t recognize specifically what some of the treats were about, like bringing treats to people during the pandemic, or little, you know, little things like that. Why? I don’t know, why do you guys do that? Why is that important?
Jordon Meyer 22:27
Yeah, I mean, I’ll let Steve talk about me a little bit. I think that helps. But, you know, personally, why I do that. I just think I just think it’s necessary. And it’s not even necessary with the times. It’s just a lot of the stuff here is based on my past experiences and what I was missing from work. You know, I hated getting the Cisco shitty coffee. And, you know, I hated the hand me down chair that was super uncomfortable. And a desk that was too low for me, you know, I’m a tall guy. So there was one office where I was like, crammed into the desk, and I’m like, can you guys just like, lift this up at all, or, like anything, please? Yo, and my first job, we had a CRT monitor, which is like the old school monitor. And there were flat screens everywhere else in the world. And I was like, why do we have to use this? You know, it’s just like a bunch of small stuff that bothered me throughout my career. So that was like, point number one is, give them everything I wanted. Because let’s get the business in a position where we can afford that. And we’ll do it right. So that’s what we did. And then, you know, especially during the pandemic, because we did have a lot of nice, like treats and snacks. And, you know, we would do happy hours and team lunches, and all that stuff in the office as like, how can we replace that stuff? So and how can we support local businesses? So a lot of the treats that you’ll see or the deliveries that you’ll see on Instagram are from local small businesses, like one of my favorite restaurants in braze. Right? They were like, shut down, no one can go there. They started doing deliveries. And then we’re like, Hey, can you put together some gift boxes for us? So one of them was a breakfast kit, farm fresh eggs, farm fresh bacon, butter and jam, like bakery from them. And you know, we deliver that to the whole team. Other things are like, we my wife is an awesome Baker. So like, she’ll bake birthday treats for everybody, like whatever is their favorite thing. From, you know, pie to cookies to whatever, like she’ll figure it out and bake. Um, so I don’t know it’s just one of those things like if you can do it, why not do it? That’s that’s just kind of my mentality and if if it makes somebody happy for a couple minutes Mmm, it’s worth it.
Ryan Freng 25:03
Yeah. Steve, what are your thoughts on that? Why is culture important?
Steve Kroll 25:07
Yeah, I’ve always looked at, there’s three components of culture. There’s a lot of the stuff that Jordan has talked about. And we’ve done, which I think if you really peel it back, it just shows what your values are. So prior to the pandemic, granular, we invest in the office space, great desk, great share. audio, visual, fully, stacked snacks, lots of Team outings, Team lunches, happy hours. You know, I think a lot of times people come in and they have almost derisively said, Oh, well, the cultures? Why have a ping pong table? If someone doesn’t use it? Why have all these snacks if you know, people aren’t going to use it? If that’s the only thing? Well, that was like a, like a, we want to do it because A, it helps reduce some friction for the team. And it makes makes the day a little easier. And it’s like a qualitative components, like hard to measure the value of it, but people clearly valued it. Number two, there’s the do people feel like they have the knowledge they need to do their job, the resources they need? Do they know how success is defined? Do they respect the person that is leading them working with them? Do they have clients that they like, do they feel like the work they’re doing is meaningful has impact. And I think that’s something we’ve been very deliberate about, you know, at some organizations are really good at that first, kind of leg of the stool, but bad at the second, I think that’s, you know, you can’t do one or the other. So we really focused focus there as well, just because that was important. And that really comes with being really thoughtful about the type of clients, you go for, how you set expectations in the sales process, how you push back on little things over time, you know, people, I think it’s gotten to be very invoked to say, you need to tell clients and all the time, you always need to push back, it’s more, you just have to have an equilibrium and a balance based on what people want to be reasonable. And knowing where there are soft lines in the sand versus like the hard lines in the sand. And the third is the compensation component. Right. And I think we’re granular the, you know, the mix that we’ve had, you know, we were really good at all three of those as far as, you know, the culture office perks, the, the the management and the tools and the training, and then the compensation. And so I think with the pandemic, it was just a natural extension of what our values were. And if you viewed that as an expense or an investment, you know, a lot of people are complaining about how hard it’s impossible to find people, you can’t you help one if people don’t want to work, we’ve got job postings were even saying, you know, how much you can make, and we can’t get people. And I think the, we’re very aware of that we know how hard it is to hire, but our approach of let’s really focus on retention, you know, the people you have, that are here are the biggest advocates, you know, they’re gonna want to if they see the organization’s leaning into them, pre pandemic, that they valued that but even more, so, I think it said a lot how you treated your employees during the pandemic. And I think, from the business operation standpoint, I, my emphasis was, how do we market and sell as much as possible because getting more business and generating more revenue doesn’t solve all problems, but it solves the money, problems. And so we knew, all right, you can’t just do all the little perks alone. If you really focus on let’s really
promote ourselves solve problems, when a lot of new business, take care of clients ask for referrals. That makes it even easier for us to do above and beyond what we were doing pre pandemic for taking care of employees when they’re at home, being thoughtful about, you know, bring your office chair at home, we’ll make sure internet’s good. We’ll make sure audio is good. We’ll bring your favorite treat or snack in then the compensation component. I mean, granular we paid out 100% of all bonuses give raises to everyone on our team didn’t furlough a single person gave multiple promotions. To me, that’s an all the while we had clients who were singing our praises, because of the great work that our team was doing. So I think that all works together. And I think that’s to me, what I really think of is culture. It’s when people say, Oh, it’s not any of that other stuff, or it’s only compensation or it’s only the management. It’s all three and we’re playing defense by playing offense when comes to talent culture and what we’re looking to build. And I really view that, that that’s our, our culture is our X Factor. And I think articulating it like we have is like the closest we’ve gotten to talking about what culture means to us. Yeah, I love that.
John Shoemaker 30:17
I’ve heard some things too, in some business, write ups about, you know, just kind of encouraging people to think about, you can’t, this is what you’re saying to you can’t just put a ping ping pong table in and have snacks and stuff and then be like, there, we’ve got culture, you know, get back to work. It’s a fun place. Yeah. And then not have not have good communication have that, like, you know, that dynamic between employees that feel like they can work together, they can work with their superiors, you know, good client interaction and things like, and there’s a lot of companies that I think see the exciting things, you know, that the likes of Google are doing, and you know, all the big companies like, oh, we want to be like Google and Twitter and Facebook meta. Yeah, I don’t know if they’re listening. So I, but it’s like, you put those things in, and then they don’t shift anything else? And they’re like, why aren’t people coming here? Why aren’t they staying what’s going on?
Jordon Meyer 31:30
100%. And I experienced that at Best Buy. So we had a game room. It was it was probably as big as our office here. pool table, ping pong table, all the gaming systems that you would see, like, I don’t even know where they were also would be, but you know, it was like a kiosk with the TV with the controllers locked in with everything, because it’s best buy. And I went down to play foosball with with one of my co workers. And we were both fairly new. And then we got back, it was like, during lunch, too. And we were the only people playing any game. It was like a ghost town there. And then we got back to the desk. And some of the OG folks were like, Yeah, people don’t really play that the managers don’t like it. So that was the one game of foosball I played the entire time, I was at Best Buy, like, and every time I would walk past that huge game area, it was just like a museum, like no one touched it, it was crazy. Yeah, it’s like lip service as about, you know, talking to talk, but not walking the walk. And that’s interesting, too, like,
Ryan Freng 32:38
so our makeup, John and I founded the company in 2009, just as a video production company. And then I don’t know, about five years ago, six years ago, we added web because people weren’t doing anything useful with their videos, they didn’t know how to market them. So we started adding some of those ancillary services in to provide that support and really make sure that this this ad spend this this expense, a significant expensive video was actually being used to the fullest extent that that we could help them with or that they could use it for. And around that time to we brought on an MBA, you know, we brought on a business person who’s worked at, you know, worked in Wall Street, worked at big corporations, you know, helping kind of get their organization organized again, and moving in the right direction. And so he definitely had some different perspective than what John and I kind of had. Jon’s worked at a few different editing shops, and I kind of worked through software before we started the company. So I was working at software companies, and that whole mentality, you know, the agile framework and beanbags. And all that was kind of becoming a thing, you know, whatever, 15 years ago, and so I was like, Ooh, that looks like how you can be successful. So we need to have snacks, and we need to do these things. So I was partially imitating, you know, without kind of understanding fully what that meant. And the MBA we brought in was like, Oh, we don’t need to do that. That’s, that’s unnecessary. You know, because he had this experience that was drastically different in industries that were drastically different. However, you know, those two kind of like, just different views have allowed us to have these conversations that we’ve made the workspace a lot better, like, Okay, well, why are we doing this? You know, that was the first question we asked, Is it effective? What do people want? Do people even want this or not? You know, and so then we did kind of fine tune it, and we tweaked it and, you know, we kind of have some of those some of those things as well. And like Max, our recent hire, who was a previous hire, who worked for a client who produce a YouTube show that we were producing, we hired him And he was the sole contractor for that. And then they hired him away from us. And then when we had a position open back up, he came back to us. So it’s kind of like Disney sale. And his
Jordon Meyer 35:10
name is Mac Mac’s? Yeah. Oh, I
Ryan Freng 35:14
get the joke. Yeah, no,
Jordon Meyer 35:16
no, no. I think Steve and I were looking at each other. We also had a Mac, and laughed, and came back. So I thought, man, ma see, yeah, yeah,
Ryan Freng 35:29
it’s it’s close enough, as long as he’s Maximilian, because this is a Maximilian. But he was just commenting. He’s like, it’s so nice. You know, it’s just a little thing. Like, you know, we go grocery shopping and grab some some other things. He’s like, it’s so nice. Like, we get nice coffee, and we get, you know, little snacks. And we occasionally have food. Because it is previous work. He wasn’t doing that at his wife’s work, or maybe it’s our friend’s spouse. They were saying that they’re not going to provide chairs anymore. This is the state of Wisconsin, one of the departments at the Capitol, like they’re not providing chairs for people anymore. Because of expense, or I don’t know why. And I’m like, How in the world, can you not provide a chair, you know, and like you were saying earlier, through the pandemic, we did the same thing of like, we love this team, let’s do everything we can to keep them, even if it’s like, you know, we’ll reduce our compensation, to some degree to try to keep you know, keep that going as long as possible, and work with them on whatever’s needed. So we don’t have to impact them. And we didn’t have to do any of that we didn’t have to reduce anything, people still got bonuses. Were able to rock because luckily, all this digital stuff, man, hey, we could still do stuff from home. But that’s that really resonates what you’re talking about, about creating their culture that people want to be at. And I think for us, because we’re just kind of making it up. We haven’t worked at agencies. It’s it’s great to talk with people like you guys who who’ve worked in other places. And now like, we have a staff of eight, or seven now. We’re going to be hiring soon. But you know, you guys kind of at that next size, just hearing what you’re doing and what you’re finding successful is great. And part of why I love these conversations.
Jordon Meyer 37:25
Yeah, I mean, it sounds like you’re doing the right stuff, too. And it just shows that a person is in charge versus a robot. Right? Like, oh, you actually want fresh food and coffee in the office. That’s what a novel idea. Let’s write a business plan around why that’s important. No, you just do it. He doesn’t go to Target and get a big basket of stuff. And bring it back. Like, it seems like common sense. But there’s so many people that don’t do it.
John Shoemaker 37:52
Well, let’s talk about person versus a robot for a minute, because I think this is a great tie in. And maybe, maybe, I mean, Ryan will take it where he wants to, but it could be a segue to the next section.
Ryan Freng 38:04
Segue. Oh, I lost you there for a second. One of them. Okay, now got you back. Nope. Still lost you experience? Wait.
John Shoemaker 38:20
Yeah, stop watching videos.
Ryan Freng 38:25
Yeah, I got you back now. All right, I can hear you your audio is out of sync, but we can hear you. Okay. The,
John Shoemaker 38:33
the analytics, the data, part of all of this, combined with where’s the intersection with the people, you know, so you can get the, the on paper, the best person, you know, for this role, but then how do they work? In the team? You know, can they work together with his team? In the, in the work that we do the output of the work on paper, this work can be you know, all the things that it needs to be but then, in the real world with people, it’s not performing the way that we thought it would. So yeah, I mean, that’s, that’s the side of it, where I always feel optimistic, despite our lack of, like, industry experience. You know, I’m like, Well, all we have to go on is just what we see happening. And, you know, we don’t in some way, we’re not burdened by Well, this is how we’re supposed to be doing it.
Ryan Freng 39:36
Yeah, it’s a little nebulous for us. So, you know, we create something and we’re like, what is success? And, you know, defining that with the client is often different for every client. And we have had one client that was like, Okay, our previous productions got this many views. If we get this many views, that’ll be a success, and we smashed through that and, you know, we’re able to do more work, but a lot of it’s anecdotal for us. A lot of it’s like, okay, we know that we need marketing in this space, because we’re not in there. But we’re not sure why or how to do it. And so it’s always a little bit weird. So what? I’ll take that segue, and you know, how do you guys approach it? Obviously, with PVC and Analytics, you can probably point to numbers to a large degree. But do you find yourself running into kind of anecdotal stuff too? Because, like, we’re talking about culture, it’s about, you know, anecdotal brand, or the feeling or, you know, you do it because it’s right, not because we’re gonna get, you know, 5% more productivity, even though things like that do come out of it. Same thing with the marketing, you know, a lot of what we’re doing in selling is, is brand equity and identity. And so it’s like, oh, yeah, well, people noticed you more, and you’ve gotten some more phone calls and some more leads, but that amounts to a handful of things, handful of instances. So that’s a long, long winded question about analytics or anecdotal ROI, I guess.
Steve Kroll 41:13
You Yeah, I can jump in, I guess. So. Again, I it’s kind of not too dissimilar from like what I’ve talked about with the culture side, but there’s, you don’t want to discount. Like the business side of things. You know, every conversation I have, when I get to know someone, there are along that spectrum of experience with pay per click, and Google ads and analytics, on the one extreme, they know nothing. On the other extreme, they know everything. Most people we talk to are in the middle. So you always have to establish, you know, the business context, side of things and understanding everything we’re going to be talking about and proposing has to make sense from a narrative and traditional like, finance standpoint. But there’s an emotional component to it. And then there’s a the data side of things, you can’t be too light in saying, Well, look, big picture, we’ll figure out all the details like those are less important to get into, like, we make the case and all the details actually are important and understanding the plant and the tactics, it’s even if we’re telling you directionally where things are gonna get end up and not be too obsessed about the specific what we forecast, here’s a low and high end range of how many conversions are going to be yielded from these channels, depending on this time of day and the weather and these devices. Like, I think it’s important for them to understand it, walking through our process and approach helps understand, alright, the thought process and thoughtfulness of being able to combine understanding our business objectives, our goals, the emotional component of what our owner or leadership cares about, from an emotional standpoint, that people will say, that doesn’t matter. I guess they just don’t work with a lot of wind, a lot of business, because that’s an important piece to not discount. That piece. There’s a big emotional component, a lot of times that you have to tie in what you’re doing. But you need to make sure the math checks out. And like they, we don’t ever want to get hired just because Hey, Jordan, and Steve, I golf with them, or we have like houses next to each other or whatever, that we want them to hire us because they see while we’re getting a team that is combining, they have the business understanding and context, but they are also really are well versed in all of these channels, and they really, they’ve walked us through the process of how it’s going to work you ultimately don’t know until you implement it, there’s so many factors that will determine if it’s going to be successful or not. But I think that that’s important. And something we talk about, like, again, we’ve had conversations where you feel you’re having to have meeting after meeting and more data that you’re pulling from Google and Facebook and LinkedIn and you know, scenario forecasting where you’re like alright, well I think that they’re either just looking for an excuse to or to not hire us right and no nothing weed, no amount of reams of information we’re gonna provide are gonna make it make sense. And the universe of certain people where they just have a gut feel components and look, I trust that it’s hard. I just here’s for every dollar I spend it needs to yield X or this will make make me money six months from now and we’re going to track awareness and this is not just going to be blown money on him impressions. I trust that you guys are going to make sure it makes sense from an analytic standpoint, work with my team to make that happen. So not sure if that addresses your question directly. But that’s how I guess I interpreted and chose to answer.
Ryan Freng 45:09
I liked that the way you wrapped it up there. But that’s how I chose to answer. So, ya know, it’s it’s it’s such a, I don’t know, difficult line because like you’re acknowledging as well, there are those components that and the way I phrased it was anecdotal versus analytic things that are anecdotal. And then obviously, it’s gotta like you said, it’s got to make sense for the budget, it’s got to make sense, to some degree, otherwise, you’re just throwing away money and not, you know, you don’t have any goals. You’re just like, I need to do that PPC, well, what do you what do you want to achieve by it? Or, for us? I know, we need a video or we need a website or, you know, well, why what are we trying to do? And do you really want to spend this much money on something that, you know, is not going to give you that that return? Or the perceived return? Right, to get into that anecdotal thought?
Jordon Meyer 46:05
Yeah, I’ll jump into just to add to what Steve said, I think he he nailed a lot of aspects of this. You know, we’ve seen so many examples, we’ve worked with a lot of clients. So like he said, we’ll we’ll walk in and you know, somebody’s very familiar with paid search and analytics, and they know the, the KPIs that they want to hit or beat from their previous KPIs. We’ve also run into I’ve got an anecdote about anecdotes. One of our big one of our biggest clients a couple of years ago, you know, the C level guy was at the table. And this is this, what happens to the bigger the client, the more layers, right, so we got a C level guy, his direct report, his direct report, the lowest knows the most, and you go up, and they get a little foggy on what this is. So he goes, You know, I don’t really care about the clicks and clacks, I just want to know, I just want to know if this is making me money. So, you know, right there, we’re like, okay, we know who we’re talking to now, we’re not going to drown you in data, we’re going to show you the bottom line and make sure that that makes you happy. Meanwhile, we got to tell the story at different levels, to his team. And we run into that all the time. So I mean, that just sticks with me. And Steve, is the clicks in the class. Talking about you’re gonna make I’m guessing Russians, I don’t know.
Ryan Freng 47:33
Yeah, no, that’s, that’s I love that so much too, because that’s, that’s what our business partner. So Scott is the third partner here, just, you know, a wealth of business experience, and from that other perspective, and that’s what he brings a lot to the table as well. And but he’s come up to speed with it all. So I think he comprehends and appreciates the clicks and the clicks. But at the end of the day, he’s like, are we getting more leads? You know, and sometimes it’s hard, because in you guys, we’re talking about working on the business or in the business? You know, I believe Steve, you know, as President, you’re there to work within the business and Jordan on, I’m sure there’s some, you know, a little bit of both in either case, but a lot of still what John and I do is doing in business, at working in the business and on the business. So it’s kind of difficult to switch minds. But Scott has, you know, helped with some of that perspective as well. Because if I’m working in it, and I’m like, Oh, we got it, you know, we’re we’re cranking on digital marketing. We’re getting this out there. We’re doing so well, we’re getting a lot of clicks and a lot of likes and shares and blah, blah, blah. And then it’d be like, Well, how many leads have we gotten from that? And I’m like, we’re working so hard. Or we’re working some someone hard, but it’s that good question. That always has to be considered and then has to be balanced with the anecdotal impression of like, well, people are talking about us, and like we did some radio. So we experiment with some radio as well. We ended up doing radio for several months, and we got one lead, but it’s one of our biggest clients. And besides that, we also just got a lot of feedback, like, Oh, I heard that ad, it was hilarious. Like, okay, so people are hearing it, you know, we’re getting into their, their mind. Hopefully, we can hit them with some more direct marketing, and when they need it, because it’s not, you know, same thing with you guys as being in the service industry. We’re not just an impulse buy. We’re not a guru. You just scrolled or I just heard you, I’m gonna go on our website and buy, you know, like our I don’t know what it is lead time, maybe could be a year could be several years. You know, we’ll even see people who worked with us at one company and then they moved to another company and two years later, they’re like, Oh, we got to get backflip and to help us with this stuff.
Jordon Meyer 49:59
Save coverage. It’s a nice snowball, right? Because as you grow and continue, you know, keeping the business alive, you do have plenty of people changing careers out there that bring you along, which is beautiful. Funny enough about the radio, yeah, we did a few months of NPR underwriting as well. And the it’s funny, the music they picked was by Star fucker, which is just a great name. But anytime I would hear that, that guitar lick would be like, Oh, is that a commercial? But, yeah, I think we probably got like one lead to it’s hard to measure. But you know, a lot of people hurt hurt it. And they do cycled through. We’ve had some super long lead times too, and we almost prefer it, if you can afford it to wait. Like, I don’t, I don’t want the guy that sees our sign on Milwaukee Street and comes in and wants to hand me a check. Like, that’s usually a bad client.
John Shoemaker 51:00
Yeah, and there’s this is an overgeneralization. But one of the things that I feel data companies get into, you know, is they get to, like, focused on these clicks in the class. And, you know, are my case study that I would use time and time?
Ryan Freng 51:25
Critical buyer that was
Jordon Meyer 51:26
going to be really clutch. I know. Again, that’s the next word, though.
Ryan Freng 51:33
All right, you’re back. You’re back. All right.
John Shoemaker 51:37
So the the case study, we, we did a series of deals for a ran a fundraising campaign. And with a series of emails, I think there were five. And they decided, one particular year after running this campaign that they were going to end their video side of this project. Because the email that had the video had the lowest click through rate, and ROI. Yeah. And they said, well, video or email, one, you know, had the most, and then email five had the second most, and the video email, then then every many. The video email was email number three, out of five, the first email was announcing a new fundraising campaign for the year. The fifth email was a hurry up the years almost over email. And we said, Well, yeah, but what were your total? You know, what was your total fundraising intake for the whole campaign? You know, like, and it was this failure of them to see the whole picture, in my opinion, to see the whole picture and say, That’s kind of hard to measure. Like, maybe people didn’t just click on it right after the email, but maybe they had an emotional response to it that they remembered and then later in those later emails, Oh, that’s right. Yeah, I really should do this thing. You know, like, and oh, this is the last one. Hey, you know, remember the thing we saw, let’s go ahead and, you know, give to this. So, it was one instance where, like, the I felt like the raw data did not contain the information. That was the important aspect of what they needed to know.
Ryan Freng 53:29
Yeah, and I think the video playthroughs were great, you know, so there was great video playthroughs but yeah, the click through donation or purchase was the lowest on the third email but in use you’ve said this before, I don’t know if you mentioned it just now. But the sorry, somebody’s calling is distracting reject.
Jordon Meyer 53:53
Let’s take it together.
Ryan Freng 53:55
Yeah, my brain. Oh, wouldn’t that be fun? We’re going to answer every call. It’s something nice and we’re totally going to do it. I’m going to do it. Challenge accepted sir. The best part is it’ll probably just be spam and we can screw with them Yeah, you’ve said this before John wasn’t gonna say the views the click through nope, lost it the phone call completely. You pick up Pick any one of them? Know you. So the third was the video.
John Shoemaker 54:36
Yeah, just landing on the video just happened to land in a what I would perceive to be the more you know, number instead of five emails,
Ryan Freng 54:49
and I believe we asked the question too, and it’s consistent. Like, it goes down interaction and donation goes down, and then it typically goes back up and that’s what they saw. But We did have the views. And that was an interesting discussion. Because yeah, you know, what is that value? When you interpret the data in one way versus another? Do you ever do you ever have that issue interpreting data?
Jordon Meyer 55:14
Well, I love this issue. Because it’s just, it’s actually showing that, you know, the wrong kind of marketing manager on the client side was in place. Because they don’t understand or have have the history of like, attribution, right? Because video is typically in a very different part of the of the funnel of the marketing funnel, it’s usually higher up. So you can’t, if you’ve got an email campaign to subscribers, or you’ve got first party data, and you’re you just hitting them up for a donation, that’s like, candy bar next to the checkout and target, right. Like, that’s, that’s pretty easy to buy, it’s really straightforward. But you’re, you’re like, you know, way up, creating awareness, creating the action down the line, and people have been trying to perfect the attribution model for, you know, the whole time I’ve been in this business 1516 years, and it’s never gotten much better. There’s definitely not a silver bullet out there. But what has gotten better as people’s understanding and respect for the positions of the funnel, so that person should have been like, or the company, whoever should have been, you know, excited about the view through rate excited about the number of views excited about maybe the audience, if you could get that data? You know, oh, this is the right age range, this is the right geography of our audience, the right people are seeing this, we’re excited. We got a couple direct emails, that’s amazing from a video, right. So I think it’s just like the misunderstanding of attribution that can get in the way of putting dollars towards good creative and good ideas higher in the funnel. And I think it’s more, it’s more rare than, you know, the the normal kind of understanding of these things. And I think I’ve been lucky enough to work for a few corporations that understand it, you know, we would, in one of the higher ed institutions, we would spend a lot on bus wraps and billboards. And those are pretty darn hard to measure directly. But, you know, we could we could do a test in certain geographies, right, so we could launch a couple billboards, and a couple of bus wraps in Kansas City. And we would go without those things. In St. Louis, and you could actually see in search and analytics, that the brand lift, you could actually see more people search for that brand in Kansas City. And then it’s really just distilling down like, alright, what was different? Well, we had out of home stuff running. And as a digital person, I know that’s probably taking money away from the PPC budget. But as a, as a person that wants the business to succeed, no matter what you gotta go with, with that full funnel approach. So that’s, you know, just speaking back to like, how important video videos but as
John Shoemaker 58:23
well, then you’ve got to try to convince clients because what they’ll want to do sometimes, I mean, I think this is fair, everybody kind of feels this is, well, it to increase cash flow to increase sales, we let’s just do more of the things that had those direct sales. Like, let’s cut out those other things that, you know, okay. Yeah, we got some, we got some attention from them. But we didn’t, you know, let’s just put more into the sales thing. And I don’t think people realize that, like, there’s a connectedness to this that you can’t see. And if you just dump into the like, well, these give us direct sales, just put more there and then you cut the other things out, you may end up skewing all of it, like the whole thing might start to
Jordon Meyer 59:10
fall apart. Yeah, we get we call that the death spiral. Right. So we’ve seen it even in you know, take the full picture of the funnel with with all these these mediums. But even in PPC, you know, we’ve got a bunch of campaigns, a campaign running on brand, right, and people know about the brand, they’re searching for it that’s got the highest conversion rate, the highest click through rate, obviously. But then you’ve got all these awareness campaigns, and we’ve seen it when we take over campaigns over the years. They’ll whittle it down, they’ll start cutting off the highest cost per conversion and they’ll start cutting off the lowest click through rate and it’s not because they’re not performing it’s because they’re higher funnel and more awareness based and more research based and consideration based. So we call that the death funnel because or the death spiral because Only now you’re just whittling down the traffic, whittling down your potential customers and only relying on people’s brand recall. And you better hope it’s really sticky and somehow keeps growing by word of mouth because you need these upper funnel campaigns and mediums to make brand perform.
Ryan Freng 1:00:25
Yeah, it’s that weird anecdotal nests of some marketing. And I do remember what this campaign that I have people who mentioned it to me, you know, we put out commercials and YouTube ads and Facebook ads all across the board. But this one marketing effort was actually noticed and mentioned to me by at least two other people like, oh, wow, I got that. And I saw that that was really, really great. So like, there you go, man. Let me let me put that on the datasheet for you. Let’s see, we are live. So we can take questions, not inappropriate ones, like some kind of Spam is happening. I think I blocked them. So welcome to the internet, everyone. Yeah, so what’s, you know, what’s kind of going on? Right now? Is there anything that you guys are excited about? I mean, that’s maybe what I’m most interested in. Like, I also love the nerdiness of it, too. We’ve worked with some PPC folk who have helped us in the past. And I get a little bit into it. And I love the I don’t know, just kind of the mindset and the data methodology. And I don’t know, I guess in check in just working through that process. I love that. But is there anything? And it doesn’t have to be necessarily anything you guys do it granular, but like, is there anything you’re excited about in the industry, like what gets you up in the morning, you’re like, I can’t wait to go do this.
Jordon Meyer 1:02:04
I’m gonna have to say like, programmatic connected TV, I just think there’s still more opportunity there to get personalized or somewhat personalized ads in front of people on TV. So I can stop seeing commercials for bladder control and all these, you know, pharmaceutical products that, you know, don’t pertain to me and nail polish, and, you know, other things that, you know, show me the, I don’t even know what what commercials I’d want to see. But I know which ones I don’t want to say. So that’s the cool part about you know, connected TV, and even, you know, online video, ads are getting a little more sophisticated, you know, as time ticks here, so we can deliver relevant content to people. So that I think that’s exciting to me. I think one of the bigger news things that we’re always keeping a pulse on is just, you know, the disappearance of some of the third party data. And some of the targeting that we used to have. It’s really interesting that, you know, the targeting kind of peaked a year or two ago. And now we’re on like, the downward path of that, which is shocking to a lot of people in this industry.
Ryan Freng 1:03:29
And to some degree did GDPR kick that in the neck?
Jordon Meyer 1:03:33
Yeah. Is that and you know, the European aspect of it, so? Yeah, should it? Should digital ads not be creepy? Absolutely agree with that. But sometimes the personalization is, is really good and relevant and important. So
Ryan Freng 1:03:54
yeah, right. Wouldn’t you rather have an ad for something that you would want something for something you would buy? Like, I remember when Hulu came out, and it had like one ad every show? And I was like, Nope, I still don’t need that feminine product. Thanks for sharing. And I wrote them and they’re like, sorry, this is the only the only sponsor we have on this show.
Jordon Meyer 1:04:15
Yeah, sometimes it’s like here can I just give you my data please? Like yeah, yeah.
John Shoemaker 1:04:21
I also would love it if somebody would figure out how to capture the data. Have I bought the product? I don’t need the ad
Steve Kroll 1:04:32
anymore. Oh, that’s an that’s an audience you can create in GA that they just chose not to apply to their Facebook campaign.
John Shoemaker 1:04:39
Yeah. I need it more.
Jordon Meyer 1:04:43
Yeah, I’ve we don’t really do a lot of outbound sales. But I bought a product for similar to your your story about a product for the office that I thought was cool. I saw the ad a couple of times. And I got hammered with the ad for like them. next few months and finally I was like, alright, LinkedIn, who’s the marketing manager, I’m frickin email on them and tell them them. I just bought this multi $1,000 product. Please stop advertising to me, you guys are wasting your money. And I actually got a couple email threads in with them being like, I will show you how to how to remove me from the audience.
Ryan Freng 1:05:20
Ah, nice.
Jordon Meyer 1:05:23
And it kind of ended. I think I got somebody in trouble over there.
Ryan Freng 1:05:27
Yeah, just email us at Hello at granular marketing.com. You know, we’re happy to talk with you, we’ll get this going. That’s awesome. So I have a follow up to this too. But I want to hear from Steve. Steve, what? What gets you up in the morning? And what are you excited about these days?
Steve Kroll 1:05:46
Yeah, more companies, more people are understanding the value of what we do every day than the previous day. And when I think about granulars positioning from day one, when Jordan started it, which is, we’re not going to try and be awesome at everything. But the areas we’re going to focus on, we’re going to be exceptional. And we want to be the Michael Jordan of pay per click and analytics and measurable digital advertising. That is exciting. Because we I know every day we’re going to come in and you don’t get better at something without being exposed to the organizations who are investing heavily in digital. They rely on it for their business, their see their C suite needs us to perform. And it’s the thrill of our team, you don’t get better without the reps and getting exposed to it and succeeding and failing. And I think that’s what I get excited about is the side of the coin of seeing our team grow and you don’t grow without those challenges. And just the confidence that builds in the talking success perpetuates access. Because as you get exposed to those scenarios, where you’re managing, you can’t get good at something without in just a pure simulation, you actually have to do the work and the fact that we have so many reps, that’s enabled, people know that and I get to talk to amazing people who give us amazing insight into their business, their motivations, their team, and we can have our group here, you guys get it, you because of the types of services we provide, you get a window into so many different businesses and industries, it appeals to certain personality types, and I would say definitely appeals to me. So that’s there’s that component, I would say that. You know, there’s a lot of people who’ve talked about, there’s just a lot of misunderstanding around the phrase automation, our jobs going away, even for an industry like us, I’ve always had a viewpoint of there’s an inevitability but having just using some common sense. So I think of automation more like a mech suit from alien or an exoskeleton or when I look at what the company Panther has been able to do. I won’t comment on, you know, their ethics or politics, but they their hypothesis was, we aren’t going to build a perfect AI, but we’re going to, because, but what we’re going to do is we’re going to create a system that makes it really easy to aggregate database and query lots of disparate datasets and make the apples to apples. And then if you take a really talented practitioner, an analyst who has years and years and years of experience, and you give them that tool, it’s going to lead to better results. And that’s for us, what I get excited about is our team, you know, baseline, we have to have the expertise and understanding of Google ads of Facebook, programmatic of LinkedIn, all these platforms. But where automation comes into play is how does it enable? It’s not the way that a lot of platforms are our clients and kind of this cynical like, oh, there’s an easy button that you can press. I think that’s a very short sighted mindset. It’s, you know, how can you use these tools to surface insights that allow you to ask the right questions to make certain decisions. And I seeing that that’s the level we’re playing at, you know, where I think one of the only Google premier partners in the Midwest where one of we were just talking to a Google rep earlier this week, where one of there’s like 1000s of agencies in the US a couple 1000 that are Google partners within that only 3% our premiere partners were one of those. And because of that, we just get we get to see where the puck is going and get to be a part of that. And I think that’s what’s exciting to me. Because there, yeah, there’s a complexity to it. But still, if you can combine the complexity and the technical side and see the beauty, in art in that in the Create creativity, and marry that with, you know, just having a strong business fundamentals, I think that’s so exciting to me, I just,
I see what we’re building and the team we have, and it feels really special. And it’s, you know, felt like that since day one, and it still feels like that. And, you know, every day I tell Jordan hates it. Myself, and everyone here chooses to stay at Grant’s, it’s like a proactive choice, because it would feel so dull to go somewhere else, I would say, where you’re just like, you know, you’re used to, you know, having to go yes, the best pitching to use a baseball metaphor, and now you’re getting down to single A, and, you know, you, it’s just not very challenging, it’s not as exciting because you don’t get the same sort of challenge. So that’s, for me what I get excited about.
Ryan Freng 1:11:07
And I love kind of your ruminating about automation, as well. And I appreciate your metaphor there at the end, because we’re always trying to come up with metaphors to help people understand like with video, like, we’ll just get the inquiry, how much is video cost? And you’re like, how much is your car cost? How much does the house cost? Right? That’s a good metaphor to get people thinking about scope, and scale and components and things like that, with automation, and this type of thing, you know, PPC or data driven, you know, digital marketing, or whatever it is, I was just struck, as you’re talking about it is like a good analog might be like, gardening. Like, there’s a lot of automation in gardening. You know, you put the plant in, and you water it, and you just occasionally water it and the plant does all the figuring out how to, you know, create itself and grow. And then eventually you get a fruit and it’s great. And you do a little bit of watering. Can everyone garden? No. Are there people who can farm a lot more for other people? Yes. And that, you know, that’s kind of, in my mind what it is with our automation, kind of like what you were saying, as that that care, and certainly the analysis and kind of pivoting, but that nourishment, until we get a little bit closer to an AI that scares Elon Musk off the planet. You know, we’re gonna need humans for.
Steve Kroll 1:12:36
Yeah, organization, the nonprofit neuro link or whatever, where it’s very, his thing is like, well, we have to race like the AI is coming. The only chance we have is to just augment ourselves with technology to stand a chance. And he’s not. He’s talking about it in a very matter of fact, way. Like when he talks about, like, yeah, you have to switch sustainable energies, like, it is not even rooted in any political viewpoint. It’s you have finite resources, and you have more people coming online on the grid, who will can continue to need to use energy. So just from a pragmatic standpoint, we have to move to sustainable energy because it’s finite, current solutions.
Ryan Freng 1:13:29
Right? And did you see his robot as well? That just came out? Like, was it a couple months ago, I
Steve Kroll 1:13:36
saw the limited edition cyber truck whistle trending on Twitter, but I did not see this robot.
Ryan Freng 1:13:41
Yeah, you should look up the I don’t know if it’s Tesla, it might be the Tesla. It’s like a robot helper. But it is slower than a human moves. And it’s lighter. So theoretically, like, basically, you can run away from it or like, knock it over, throw it away. Like that’s the thought of how to engineer a robot that could be very helpful for maybe an old person carrying and lifting things or doing some things like that, but not one that can be reprogrammed to, you know, terminate us or whatever it is. So you got it. You gotta check that out.
John Shoemaker 1:14:16
Yeah. Meanwhile, there’s other companies just going ahead and making the robots that can do backflips and outrun people and any stuff like great.
Ryan Freng 1:14:28
That episode of Black Mirror. Yeah.
Jordon Meyer 1:14:30
Boston robotic dog, I think is terrifying. It’s terrifying.
John Shoemaker 1:14:35
You Elon Musk guy. I bought your slower, weaker robot and it’s also failing to protect me on the other Boston Dynamics.
Ryan Freng 1:14:46
Yeah, the robot dog with machine gun on it. Yeah.
Steve Kroll 1:14:48
I saw that on Reddit as well. And it’s like well, that it’s clear. That’s just where things are going to go if you’ve got a gun attached to the back of the robotic gets game over to whoever has the controller.
Ryan Freng 1:15:04
Yeah, whole and hopefully it’s not AI.
John Shoemaker 1:15:07
Yeah. I mean, it’s so goofy, but but the part of it that I can get I can get behind is the speed of change. So he, Elon Musk recently pointed out something about you know, we went from the heck was it, he was like comparing some like old computer system. You know, what we could do with computers 50 years ago to today, you know, having these like photorealistic 3d three dimensional virtual environments that we can like, you know, look around and interact with. And that was, like, 50 years, like, the speed of change and technology. That’s, that’s a thing that is like, just fascinating and mind blowing to me. I mean, we can tie it back into our industry to is just like, what, what do you even do? Like, I mean, Facebook, and the social media companies, they change, they’re, like, algorithms. So frequently trying to keep up with all this stuff, or like, it’s crazy to think about where it’s headed and what, what will we do to be competitive when AI can just be like, oh, we’ll just, you know, put these things in, and you know, this click through percentage.
Ryan Freng 1:16:33
I love those marketing, ads. Oh, sorry, go ahead. Oh,
Jordon Meyer 1:16:36
I was just gonna say that’s part of what is so exciting about this industry is like, you can, if you take a month off, somehow, you come back and like, half of the things changed. You gotta keep up with it. And you have to love learning, and that has to give you energy. Otherwise, you’re gonna fail in this industry pretty fast. Yeah, and just to go to like, the, the super nerdy side, like Moore’s law is that every two years computer processing is going to double. So when you get really, really fast computers, and then two years, it’s going to double like, that’s how part of this stuff keeps accelerating so quickly, is it is really traveling at a fast speed right now.
Ryan Freng 1:17:24
Yeah, and it’s crazy to with the Moore’s Law thing, because I’ve read a little bit about it. There’s some proponents who say it’s dead. But it’s interesting, because it’s like a hardware thing that like, we haven’t surpassed kind of the current Microchip Technology. So you’ll see a little bit of a change in like the the size, how many like nano nanometers or whatever you they can make the circuitry. But a lot of it, I think, is actually the software stack on top of that. And so I would love, you know, one of these more intelligent people who are analyzing this, to kind of analyze that because the hardware isn’t getting as fast as it was. But the software is developing at a rate that seems maybe even beyond what, what we’ve seen with with Moore’s law in hardware. So
Steve Kroll 1:18:15
yeah, to your point, Ryan, I think that’s where Apple knew that you could only get so many yields by adding another camera or trying to get a better optical zoom. That’s why they’re, again, their hypothesis of software hardware working in concert with each other. When you look at when you take a photo on one of the newer iPhones, I’m a bit of an Apple fanboy myself, I have one, what they’ve been able to do, they knew that there was only so much you can max out knowing, alright, until battery technology gets better, we need to have the biggest battery on board, we can. But we know we can’t just put, we can’t do too much more from a space standpoint from the camera. So they had to do it through software. And I think that’s where, you know, Qualcomm and Intel and some of these other people who’ve been very, have always written off Apple, I guess, is like just a marketing company who happens to sell consumer products. That’s where I’ve seen the kind of real respect and the tip of the hat is what they’ve been able to do with their chips, what they’ve been able to do with software, working in concert with the hardware, and it’s Yeah, I think that’s where you’re seeing some Moore’s law, you know, take going to the next level.
Ryan Freng 1:19:31
And I’d love to, you know, I’m definitely a bit of a fanboy as well, Apple fanboy. But I’ve really appreciated how Google has come through over the years with their hardware. And they’re like, oh, that thing that Apple’s doing that makes people want to use their phone or use their headphones or whatever. Why can’t we be really good at that too, because they also, you know, kind of had the software and even with Android being just kind of not lightyears ahead, but usually about two years ahead in terms of the technology that they have. Yeah, And then, you know, after that’s been tested and the kinks have been worked out apples like, I suppose that’s probably the thing that’s gonna stick around. We’ll use it. But I love it now because I don’t feel bad with my parents like having a Google phone. Or who’s at Samsung, maybe that’s not bloated, it’s not janky. It just works like things that just work. So I love that we can have have some competition there too. But I’m definitely a white blooded. fanboy.
Jordon Meyer 1:20:31
I heard that phrase. Yeah.
Ryan Freng 1:20:34
What’s cut? What’s the Apple Color white?
Jordon Meyer 1:20:35
I don’t know why.
Ryan Freng 1:20:38
So we are winding down here, we have a game that we like to play, though. We’ll play that in a second. I did want to get a quick little answer from you guys being kind of in the segmenting world, carving off audiences and remarketing and things like that. What’s one of the craziest things you’ve ever been able to do? Or coolest things you’ve ever been able to do with that? And there’s lots of different ways to answer.
Jordon Meyer 1:21:04
I’ll go one of the one of the coolest things I’ve ever done is just use a custom audience list, which means you have their first party data, you have their you know, I think I had basically like a client list back in the day of like, email address, telephone number. And this was, this was short lived allowed in Facebook, and you can upload, you know, 200 names and, and all this private data of theirs. And basically whittled down you see, you can target like 200 people, but then you can whittle down based on like geography or age to like two or three people and get an ad in front of them. So it was kind of manipulating the system by saying, Hey, we have all this targeting data, let’s target all these people. But then within the campaign settings, you can like whittle it down to just a few people. That was definitely short lived. I don’t know how many years ago, but I think that was that was like the heyday of like, controlling who you’re going after. Almost targeting individuals versus audiences. Those are the good old days.
Ryan Freng 1:22:22
The specificity is scary, but also you’re like, Yeah, show me crap that I would buy. Don’t show me crap that I don’t want to buy. Yeah, exactly. Alright, Steve, yeah, I
Steve Kroll 1:22:33
would say something we still do. And I still, I think clients get a kick out of it is you can sequence ads on YouTube, but also display Facebook based on a user’s engagement with the website and based on their path along the funnel. So for me being able to see for our clients, you know, where you’re trying to get someone to test drive a vehicle, let’s say we have an initial promotional ad, then they say that they’re going to schedule a test drive, for instance, then for a specific model, and then you can show them that vehicle. Next time, they’re on YouTube. And then once they’ve, you know, visited taking the ride, they’re considering them, you show them other types of ads that speak to those value propositions, I think that’s where it’s, it’s really fun, because you’re helping, you know, based on where they’re at in the funnel, you’re matching content and matching ads, you know, based on what their considerations are. And yeah, that’s, there’s, there’s just so many different things. We do. It’s like hard to filter. But that’s a that’s a tactic. I think it’s practical can be implemented. As long as you have someone who really understands Google Analytics, you have the accounts tied in properly, and you’re able to match content based on stage in the funnel. I think it’s very effective.
Ryan Freng 1:24:08
And I think we have all that data. We definitely don’t do that. That’d be that’d be really cool to do. All right. So now it’s it’s time for something very special that we do most weeks. Yes.
There we go. Now we’re back. So we’re gonna play a little game called two truths and a lie just to get you just to get to know you guys just a little bit better. You were not prepped for this. So we will go first. Just to give you a moment to think of three stories. Two of them will be true, one of them will be false and the rest of us have to pick the false one. Now you guys do know each other a lot better than we know you. So the trick you know might be to try to get the other person to not get your answer. You know, you want you don’t want it Be easy on anyone. And we’ll let people who are watching now, if you if you’re listening to this or watching this after the fact, feel free to guess. And if you’re right, we’ll send you some fun swag. We’ve got these great little coasters that we have, that you can use to keep your desk clear from those those pesky water stains. And if you entertain us with your answer, maybe we’ll give you more stuff. Who knows? So, three stories, two truths, one lie mix it in there. Tell it really, really well. I have mine. John, do you still need a second?
John Shoemaker 1:25:41
Ah, yeah, second would be good. Hi, I’m almost
Ryan Freng 1:25:44
there. We played this game only. I don’t know at times, maybe. So. I don’t know how many more stories we have or more lives we have. So let’s see where my notes go. Mines mines contextual. You guys probably have no basis to understand this, but it will still be fun to guess. So my last name is Freng. It’s Norwegian. That’s about all the setup you need for this. So my three stories. I was born in Norfolk, Virginia. Also mispronounced Northfolk. We just moved to Norway drive in Fitchburg. And my family’s last name was Nord Fring before they came over, so kind of like an ethnic prefix. And they’re like, no one will know we’re ethnic. So that those are my three. I was born in Norfolk. We just moved to Norway drive. And my family’s last name was Nord Fring. Before we came over before they came over, I didn’t come over. This was three generations ago. And I’ll have once you guys are ready, I’ll have you guys guess first because there’s a small chance John could get this because that was my goal to try to trick John because we’ve done this so many times.
Steve Kroll 1:27:15
I’m gonna say that your last family’s last name was not Northfolk. Thank that’s, that’s not true.
Ryan Freng 1:27:21
Or Nord. Freng. Yeah, yeah, Nord bring. Good guess.
Jordon Meyer 1:27:25
And I’m gonna say born and raised in Wisconsin. Born in Virginia.
Ryan Freng 1:27:36
Another good guess I mean, I’m gonna say that no matter what so I mean, I’m gonna replace John what you got? I’m I like to think your family
John Shoemaker 1:27:50
was immune when I did it, or
Ryan Freng 1:27:52
I can’t remember. No, you unmuted.
John Shoemaker 1:27:56
I have my finger near the button. It’s my turn. Great. I’m gonna go with the first one. I think you might have been born somewhere else. And I think the other ones are true.
Ryan Freng 1:28:19
Great guesses everyone. This is I think this is the first time I’ve stumped everyone. Because either somebody usually guesses it, or John just knows it. So I was born in Norfolk, Virginia. I usually save Virginia Beach, because that’s where we lived. But the hospital that you’ve been lying in hospital, I’ve been lying. It’s a long con guys. The hospital for the military was across the bay or whatever, in Norfolk, or it’s like, I don’t know. It’s kind of like this, like Virginia Beach. And Norfolk is right here. So the neighboring town that’s where I was born. My family’s last name was Nord fraying before they came over. So Peter, let’s see Peter Nord Fring married Anne Frank, which I have to assume was a northern cousin and a southern or not northern cousin. And they came over and just went with a simpler fraying because I’m guessing like most people did when they came through Ellis Island, wanted to not be ethnic so that they could not be you know, persecuted or get jobs or I don’t know. We, we might go back to it. It’d be really fun to add that ethnic prefix back on. We did just move. We did not move to Norway drive though. We move to Norfolk drive, North drive.
John Shoemaker 1:29:48
I thought you said
Ryan Freng 1:29:52
oh, I intentionally made it extremely confusing. Yeah,
John Shoemaker 1:29:56
I think you were like we moved in now. Ha ha.
Ryan Freng 1:29:59
Yeah. We got Norfolk Norway Nord Fring. So number two is my lie. You can you can come find me in Norfolk Norfolk drive.
John Shoemaker 1:30:09
They’re all very wise. Yep.
Ryan Freng 1:30:13
All right, John, you’re up and Stephen Jordan you’ve got one more round before it’s your turn i
John Shoemaker 1:30:21
i built a tiny house in my basement complete with real siding okay I got a custom bowling ball and shoes as a present for graduation from college I sang as a baritone in a traveling acapella group
Ryan Freng 1:30:53
I don’t too because because I forget stuff
Steve Kroll 1:30:59
I’m gonna say you’re not the baritone in the acapella group
Unknown Speaker 1:31:04
who will make you say that
Ryan Freng 1:31:08
I liked Jordans response to he just goes Hmm Interesting choice Steve.
Jordon Meyer 1:31:16
I don’t think he built a tiny house
Steve Kroll 1:31:21
all right, or can you build it with the with the exciting with with fake siding that real siding?
Ryan Freng 1:31:27
Yeah, it’s like a really annoying detail. I mean, I guess I did that with Northfolk Norway drive so let’s see. So Steve said you did not sing baritone and traveling acapella group. Jordan said you did not build a tiny house. I think I think I’m gonna go with acapella group. You do sing? And you have been in choir and you have been in musicals. I know you have a tiny house in your basement. I’m pretty sure it’s got real sighting. Because I’m pretty sure like, I don’t know. You went to town on that. I think you got a custom bowling ball. I don’t know about the shoes. I don’t remember hearing that. But I feel like you do have a custom Bowling for college. But yeah, I mean, I was in an acapella group in college. But that doesn’t mean you weren’t. You weren’t in a traveling acapella group. I don’t know you were in a traveling steel band group though. So I’m gonna go with three is the lie. That’s what I got.
John Shoemaker 1:32:33
All right. Yep. That you’re correct to this. I thought maybe I throw you off by being so close to your own acapella group that you would just second guess everything about your life.
Ryan Freng 1:32:48
And I was I was second guessing everything, all my choices. It was risky.
John Shoemaker 1:32:53
But I also added the the detail of what part I sang so that you’d be thinking about that, too. I have a baritone. I don’t know how much of a I mean, you can call it a house. It’s there’s a structure in my basement. It’s got stairs, there’s a window and it has real siding because one of my friends was reciting a telephony of leftover. He’s like, do you want this stuff? So I used it the side the kids play house here. That’s what
Ryan Freng 1:33:20
all the just in case there’s just in case there’s inclement weather in the basement.
Jordon Meyer 1:33:24
You skimped on the insulation? Yeah. That sounds
John Shoemaker 1:33:29
there’s a lot of open wiring. around it. The and then I was in a I was in a bowling class. My senior year of college is like a one credit PE class. And I loved it. It was so fun. And I must have talked about it too much because one of my friends bought me a custom ball and shoes as a present for graduation. So I have to show for my college career.
Ryan Freng 1:34:03
Nice. All right. John, and I have gone who wants to go next who’s ready to stump us?
Steve Kroll 1:34:10
Yeah, go for it. I was born in the Philippines. I fist bump Yiannis, and there was some concern that I may have actually heard a shooting hand. And then the third is that I asked Senator Herb Kohl an inappropriate question in grade school without realizing it and was reprimanded for for doing so in front of a whole auditorium of kids.
Ryan Freng 1:34:37
Who you asked an inappropriate question. Is that what Oh,
Steve Kroll 1:34:39
yeah. Yeah. A question I didn’t know. You weren’t supposed to. It was a very big honor to have Senator Kohl at our school. And it was the sort of like taboo, you’re not supposed to ask type of question that I asked that none of the kids understood. I thought I was very clever. You In the teachers were horrified.
Ryan Freng 1:35:02
Oh my gosh, that’s awesome. I want all these to be true. Let’s see. I mean, specifically that you bumped up on us. Fist Pump was it? Would you bump him or this bill knuckles. Okay. And you might have injured a shooting arm?
Steve Kroll 1:35:19
No his hand. Yeah, he there was genuine concern that I may have heard his hand. And this is before he was the before he never won an MVP.
Ryan Freng 1:35:29
Is this this free throw hand? Because I don’t think that matters.
Steve Kroll 1:35:33
Hey, yeah, if you watched the close out game where you had a 50 piece, he made almost every one of those free throws so he’s overcome it.
Ryan Freng 1:35:43
Guys, we shall not throw shade on the Champion. All right, John, you go first. Born in the Philippines may have injured Yanis and asked representative or call an inappropriate question did not know he was inappropriate question when you were
John Shoemaker 1:36:03
I I’m gonna go with the Yanis one. And maybe it’s just that detail of maybe of hurting hurting his hand. There’s a lot actual detail on there. I feel like we’ve all asked her Kol inappropriate questions in grade school. So
Ryan Freng 1:36:26
I’m gonna, let’s see. I mean, I have no idea where you were born. So it’d be hard to choose that one I want to make the third one. I want to guess that you asked an inappropriate question when you were a kid. Because I would like to think that you asked an inappropriate question when you were an adult. Maybe, you know, maybe that’s the part of the lie that is in there. So I’m gonna say number three.
Jordon Meyer 1:36:50
And I think I know this, but also just in case so one of us wins. I’m gonna say you were not born in the Philippines.
Steve Kroll 1:37:01
Yeah, that is correct. I was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Columbia, St. Mary’s, my, my mom was born in the Philippines on the island of Palawan in the province of Puerto Princessa came to the United States when she was 18 years old. And I was born not too long after that. So yeah, the other two are true during a Bucs fan event meet and greet. This is before Yanis is MVP. You could get down out of the court and take photos and they would have one good player with one bench player and then one for lack of a better term scrub practice squad guy and they would rotate them out every five people and I was just praying that Yanis would be the one I’d get take a photo with. And so when it finally was me and he was there with him Thun, Thun maker, miles, Plumlee went, I was going to shake his hand he went to do the fist bump, and I fist bumped him and he went Ah, and staff was freaking out. And then he and his Jana Swain went, Ah, he got me. So it was classic classic Yiannis. And then yeah, the unfortunately the her cool thing is true. So I was in grade school. It I not thought about it for 25 years until we just had this segment and it came flooding back is like a level of embarrassment. I you know, my politics are talked a lot as a kid in my household. And so I was parroting back something thinking I was being very clever. And it was a very big deal for our elementary school to have the senator come and visit. So it was not seen seeing well, in theory. It should have been encouraged that I was so civic minded from a young age, but it was not.
Jordon Meyer 1:38:48
Never again that the school was boarded up after that.
Steve Kroll 1:38:53
Who knows? Funds were pulled.
Ryan Freng 1:38:57
All right. Let’s see Jordan, you’re up. All right. Good. Good job tricking us with the where was I born? For sure. Yeah.
Jordon Meyer 1:39:11
All right. So with me and my siblings combined, we’re over 42 feet tall. My name is spelled with an O instead of an A, because of Charlie’s Angels. And all of my passwords. Pay attention. Hackers are actually really precise finger rolls. So I just line it up and do a roll. It’s muscle memory. It’s a lot better than remembering a bunch of passwords.
Ryan Freng 1:39:53
You guys are really good with this. I like it. If I ever needed somebody to tell a lie, I would count on you guys. Oh great. I also like to think Steve’s original comment was like, How do you feel about second generation Filipino immigrants? We don’t ask questions like that. Alright, so Jordan, you and your siblings are 42 feet tall. I like to think there’s one tall trench coat as well. spelled your name is spelled with an O. Because of Charlie’s Angels. Also, my my note here is spelled with an O because of a so I don’t know what I was writing when that happened. But that is because of Charlie’s Angels. And then all your passwords are precise finger rolls. Alright, I’ll go first on this time, because because I threw John under the bus last time we go first. I’m going to say they’re not precise finger rolls. That just sounds insecure. But if it’s not, I would love to hear how it is. So I’m going to say, you know, on the sake of shock value from your clients, that your passwords are not finger rolls. That’s my guess.
John Shoemaker 1:41:11
What do you Yeah, I mean, I don’t have knowledge of your family. So if there’s like, if it’s just like you and your sister, like, obviously.
Unknown Speaker 1:41:26
But the finger roll loss very intriguing. But if it had a proper, a proper, believable,
John Shoemaker 1:41:39
I feel like there would be you know, like, like, you would use a corporate manager or something. So like, yeah, we got this, like, this sophisticated marketing data company and my passwords are a whole
I don’t know. I don’t know. Maybe.
Ryan Freng 1:42:00
We what you want the hackers? Exactly. Yeah. He came up with a finger roll methodology. I think I’ve seen that video. So are you picking finger roll? John, I didn’t hear I’m gonna I’m gonna say yeah. Okay.
Steve Kroll 1:42:18
So is that a finger? Or is it more of like a knuckle rock? Or what is the? I don’t know what the, whatever.
Jordon Meyer 1:42:25
Patented technique is a finger roll, although that’s part of what throws him off because you actually use the knuckles.
John Shoemaker 1:42:34
We call it a finger like this. Yeah. That one is the one song that every middle schooler can kind of go around. Yeah, no.
Ryan Freng 1:42:43
But all but different, you know, angles on the keyboard.
Jordon Meyer 1:42:58
It’s all about where you start the role I started. Exactly.
John Shoemaker 1:43:01
Yeah, that’s where you start.
Ryan Freng 1:43:04
Alright, Steve, do you have a favorite? Your founder? What?
Steve Kroll 1:43:07
Yeah, let’s see. So I know that. I’m just trying to think I’m pretty sure Jordan is one of seven siblings and his sister who is not much shorter than me if at all. And I’ve met two of his brothers who are each. I always always looking up at and I’m six feet tall myself, Jordan six, four. I’m gonna have to guess that’s true. And then I want to say her the Charlie’s Angels story two weeks ago for the first time. So I don’t believe the password methodology just unless you use a different approach for the passwords. We share that you pray. I don’t think that’s how you generate them.
Jordon Meyer 1:43:52
Lots of insider knowledge here. Yeah, the I really almost got all of you. Password was the live.
Ryan Freng 1:44:01
So close. So close. That’s great.
John Shoemaker 1:44:06
Yeah, so that’s tall. As long as the average six feet. Yeah, as long as the lie is entertaining.
Jordon Meyer 1:44:13
Yeah. Yeah. What’s great about the family is the oldest brother is the shortest. He’s like five, seven. And my sisters are both taller than him. So
Ryan Freng 1:44:27
Oh, that’s awesome. Yeah. Yeah. My sister is one to my sister. My wife is one of 12 So I think their combined would be like maybe 72 Because the girls she’s the shortest at 510. Well, and Thomas brothers maybe six five and yeah, so that’s a good one. I like that. I’ve never heard heard anybody say something like that before. So love to use that again.
Jordon Meyer 1:44:55
I’ve got we did another question for you guys. Just
Ryan Freng 1:44:58
cool. We’ll take a question if you got time. I’m sure either of you
Jordon Meyer 1:45:00
do a backflip.
Ryan Freng 1:45:05
John, you want to go ahead and demonstrate in here, I wish I could make your your video freeze right as you go.
John Shoemaker 1:45:20
Just when I was younger, I think I was probably pretty close. I used to, I’ve used this in a previous teachers and ally and it was one of the truths. I used to be an assistant coach or assistant teacher for gymnastics class for kids with my mom. My mom competed in gymnastics in college level or whatever. But so I would do that as like a summer job. And I got pretty decent at some of the skills and I want to say
Ryan Freng 1:45:59
100% want to see that videotape. If I can’t have
John Shoemaker 1:46:04
land, say I’ve landed a backflip in like, you know, on a cushion spring floor. Like where it’s very safe to do so. Yeah, beyond bounce.
Ryan Freng 1:46:19
Yeah, I could do one on a trampoline, but not around. And I don’t know if you guys have been on a trampoline since you’ve been adults. But it is hard as an adult. Like, I went to a trampoline park here with my kids. And after a few jumps, I was like, my head is rattling my knees and hips hurt like none of this feels fun. I’m out. Quick follow up though. Can you guys granular? Yeah, it’s a special day and really hard hitting here at the end. I do have so people can check you guys out. Granular marketing.com. And you guys have a podcast as well. Is there anything else you’d like to promote that I can throw up a link for?
Jordon Meyer 1:47:07
I don’t think so. Yeah, the website, the podcasts. That’s great. Thank you for that.
Ryan Freng 1:47:12
Yeah, check that out. Let’s see, we’ve Who do we have we got somebody next week. I should know this, I should have prepped and looked at it. We’ve got Daniel Kinney, local director here in Madison, in the Midwest. So that’ll be really fun check in next week, Friday at noon for that. And if you’re watching after the fact, we’ve got all the episodes probably listed below or above or however your app does it. If you don’t already do like, subscribe, follow, do all the things. You’ve heard it on everything that you’ve listened to ever. Share it with your friends that you think would enjoy this and leave a review. Let us know how we’re doing what you like what you want more of that would be really awesome to get that feedback, because we continually kind of assess and we have a blast with it. But we want to make sure everyone who’s consuming it also is having fun as well. So you got anything else for me, John.
John Shoemaker 1:48:09
You gotta learn how to backflip. And this is something
Ryan Freng 1:48:13
next week, John will
John Shoemaker 1:48:15
show all the workout stuff that you’re Yeah, I feel like there’s a I feel like there’s some diet routine that could get you there. Like pretty quickly.
Ryan Freng 1:48:27
You know, my wife’s always like, look this heavy thing you work out and I’m like, it’s not practical. Like I can’t do more things. I just feel better. So, John, we’ll be doing a backflip next week. Thank you, Jordan and Steve for coming on. It was awesome. I got some questions for you after we go off live. So just stick around for that, everyone else. Thanks for tuning in. We’ll see you next time. Bye.
