Columbus marketing playbook: Networking for Marketers, Growing with AI, and Updates From Andy

Kind: captions Language: en What is happening friends? Welcome back to the podcast. If you guys are new here, my name is Andy. I'm the founder of MMG Studio here in Columbus, Ohio. And this is not a typical episode format. I'm going to go through a few things that I used to be very good at recording voice memo type of dialogues to be really close with you guys. And I want to do that again this week. It's been a couple months since we've done that. and we're kind of at a backlog in production and we have the new video editor Dan. Shout out to Dan has been doing an awesome job. We had a little bit of lapse in communication this week. Um, next week we'll be uploading the episode with Maxwell Miller. Shout out to Max. Awesome marketer right here in Columbus. Um, but I thought in the meantime, what a great opportunity to record a voice dialogue session. A lot has changed in my personal life. business is relatively the same. Still web flow and SEO for healthcare. Um yeah, you guys might notice a new setting here, new digs. So something we'll also talk about. But yeah, this will be a really good opportunity to just go through the things uh regarding the business and my personal life that I'm excited about and I want to bring you guys into the loop arm. I do have a little bit of notes uh of what I want to cover today here. Mostly personal versus business and some inspirations of mine as well that I want to share with you guys and I'm super excited to get into it. But other than that, it's going to be very off the cuff, very loose. I hope the audio quality is coming through good as well because I'm noticing a little bit of echo in this new office space. Uh which is a really good segway. So, let's talk about that. Those of you who have been following my journey for a while know I've been living in Springfield, Ohio. I've been commuting here to Columbus three days a week to meet people, you know, network, meet clients, build a business, working out of Coatch, going to coffee shops. And I had always built the business for the last two years, you know, with saving with the mindset that I want to buy a house one day. And the last six months have been a fantastic learning experience in terms of what buying a house looks like. I won't give you guys the whole run through, but we did 12 house visits officially, you know, hundreds of drivebys while I was in Columbus visiting. Official house visits, there were 12 of them. Three offers. One that we went into contract on that failed an inspection. And just through the last six months, it's been an abundant learning and trial and patience and something that I can only experience and describe as burnout, you know, several times. And I had the honest discussion, I was like, maybe this whole house search is not for me. And, you know, a couple months ago, working with my realtor Jeff, we found a four bed, two bath here in Clintonville, Ohio, which is a very nice suburb north of the city. case about 10 minutes from downtown. Definitely needed some work in terms of the aesthetics, the paint, which we just did yesterday. It was a full day and just the cosmetics and it was a intense period of back and forth negotiations. I had a lot of other offers but ended anyway ended up going through that was about 3 weeks ago and the last uh two plus weeks I've been doing cosmetic repairs mixing you know moving my things up from the old apartment and just a large transition period but starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. I posted about this on LinkedIn last week and it got an unbelievable response. It just reinforces the idea that, you know, the dumbest things and the most non-b businessiness related things are actually what do the best on LinkedIn. But yeah, great forum for conversation, great marker of progress in my own life. And I'm just very excited to set my roots up here and really, you know, continue to build a business, continue to build a network. Um, one thing I have in my notes here is just the highs and lows of excitement versus drowning. Uh yesterday was a really good example of that. Like I get so abundantly stoked of like hey and maybe you guys uh can relate to this as well. Buying your first house or living somewhere new if you are more seasoned but buying your first house like so exciting and I just go through this it's like entrepreneurship to a tea. There's moments where you're just like so excited like man I have this house. I work so hard for this and you're just like on a high. It's like drinking caffeine and you're like yeah let's go. And there's other times where it just feels like a mountain that you're just never going to climb. There's always something else to do. There's the water heater, there's the floors, there's the walls, there's the freaking back deck that puts water in the foundation. There's the electrical unit. It's so much of that. But I've been told that, you know, it's not common for people in their 20s to buy houses these days. So that's something I'm very proud of. And, you know, it's it's it's a good thing. you know, taking it all in stride. It's been a great learning experience. It also forces me to get away from the desk, which is something that we're all so lucky to do is work at a desk. I have a story about that that reinforces this idea. But even just yesterday, went on a run in the morning, got up at like 8:00, went on a run, got home, and dad came in from Springfield, drove over, we spent the whole day painting. Shout out to John and my uncle. We just really attacked everything. We did paint. We did a little bit of the trim on the entire house. And we were working all day. We took a 1 hour break along around 1 or 2 p.m. But think about it's like 3 hours in the morning and then no 6 or 7 hours until 7:30 at night after that is just a great reminder that we're lucky to do what we do. Um it also forced me to like reset my definition of success a little bit on the home ownership side. I used to view owning a house in my 20s as like the pinnacle of what success looks like with a business. Obviously, you guys have been following my journey. You know, I put a lot into this. You know, it's been a period of great imbalance in terms of trying to build a business in your 20s. And any monocum of success I've had has been saving and saving for this opportunity to really create the 10x opportunity that could be the next chapter. And I realize it's like, you know, people post on LinkedIn, you know, getting new cars, getting married, having kids. I'm in that phase in my 20s where I feel like that's happening all the time now. Um, so it's been really cool to just see like, you know, maybe getting a house isn't the ultimate goal, but it opens up all this opportunity. So, I think it's a very longterm slow burning type of pleasure that I'll get from a purchase like this. And, you know, it'll also present other challenges because what I want to do is rent out the bottom two bedrooms to entrepreneurs or other people in my network. And that would be a great way to obviously, you know, force the functions of not working all day and all night as with the house repairs currently do. So that's a chapter I'm really excited for as well. I was just on my walk this morning kind of highlighting the point of being so lucky to do what we do. I was just on a walk my this morning um Sunday morning currently as I'm recording this. Um, and I walked by. I was just listening to the My First Million podcast and I saw a mom who was no older than me. She looked very young, so early 20s. And she pulled up to a house and she delivered Door Dash to one of my neighbors here down the street. She walks back to and she looks very happy, very enthusiastic, very energetic. I said hello. She walks back to her van and her van has three young kids in it. And this lady is delivering Door Dash on a Sunday morning, you know, 9 9:30 in the morning. I just thought like this is a lady that has multiple young children. She's delivering Door Dash. She's working on the weekends. How lucky am I? How lucky are we to be able to do what we do, to work an office job, obviously doing paint and working 10 hours or so yesterday, doing physical manual labor was a reinforcer of that. But I just thought too, man, it's a it's it's a good reminder to be grateful, you know, like we have the opportunity to be doing what we're doing, working an office job, working where we're making money with our brains, not our bra, but also like, okay, like we have to earn this, you know, it's like a really good motivator to get to work today, create content, and say, okay, how can I keep earning my keep? because there's so many people out there that just either don't come from the same situations that we do and it's always a productive activity to remind yourself of that and use that to stoke your own internal fire to keep yourself going. But that hit me really hard this morning. I wanted to share that with you. Also, coincidentally listening to the my first million podcast, Sean Pur said this thing and it hit me with the home ownership chapter of free. He said freedom is the freedom true freedom is the freedom from not the freedom to. A lot of people view when they hear the ter the term financial freedom they view it as oh I can buy anything. I can do anything. I have the financial resources to make anything that I want happen. Even if it's for the moment, even if it's something that's not justified or doesn't make rational sense, I have the freedom to make that purchase. when in actuality the highest form of freedom is not having baggage and you can say no to anything. And I realized that I was like, "Okay, these past couple years I've been so stoked on building the business and adding value to other people so that I can afford this house when in actuality I'm attaining more resources instead of creating the ability to be from it." Now, I think owning property is not a bad thing. I don't regret the purchase, but I thought how can moving forwards, how can I create more leverage in terms of optionality rather than accumulating tons of resources. So, there's a lot of lessons there that I'll continue to move forward from and take away. I hope those help you as well. Last thing to kind of close the loop on the home ownership/personal life updates chapter is the good old days. Um, I consciously always constantly try to remind myself of this hardness that we're going through right now is the good old days. Like I'm going to look back and reminisce on all of the late nights, all the hardships, all of the things that I did to create these conditions for myself. And I'm not that far removed from them. And I'm still in them to a great degree. doing these home repairs, going to networking events, getting home at 100 a.m. in the morning after driving 2 hours to Columbus to go to, you know, a cocktail hour or to meet or a networking event or chamber event. Those are the good old days. Like those hard feelings like I am going to miss those. You probably missed the days too when you were early in your career and it felt so hard and all you're thinking about is the opportunity on the other side. like now now is the moment that you're going to want once these days are over. So it's so counterintuitive and I'm always trying to remind myself of okay this is the hard thing I'm going to miss this and be present in that. So a lot of personal updates there but on the business side some things that I want to share with you guys uh people in compounding relationships I listened to a podcast with Jesse Iller if you guys don't know who Jesse Iller is. who kind of sparked this idea for me in my own business. He is just one of the most seasoned entrepreneurs, has an insane network. He's married to Sarah Blakeley, the founder of Spanx. Not saying his network is the reason that that that happened. Um, but yeah, he's talks all about like the value of physical connection and just the compounding of that. Humans, and this is more, this is kind of a financial analogy, but humans cannot calculate or comprehend compound interest. You know, we're so bad at realizing, and that's why a lot of financial behaviors aren't the best in the country we live in, is because they're not immediately reinforced. Compound interest, for example, the longer you are invested in a stock, in a bond, and then, you know, an ETF, you don't see the immediate rewards. It's not until decades later sometimes that you see the compounding rewards of your earnings compounded over time. Your earnings start to create earnings in and of themselves like an army of dollar dollar bills working for you while you sleep. The same is true with relationships. I really had this mind-numbing realization that like talking to three new people a day, having a system, this is it's one of those things that seems infinitely un not unimportant, untime bound, non urgent. It's one of those things that is non seems non-urgent, but it's actually the most important similar to investing. Getting a system in place where you are a staying in touch with your network, nurturing relationships and doing that over time is going to open so many doors for you in business and life and creating some of that optionality. We talked about what to what true freedom actually is. And I think about this on the days where I feel like I didn't get much done. I am so diligent on outreach, on reaching it back out to past people, saying, "Hey, you know, hey, saw the Knicks in the finals. Send that to my friend Vincent. Saw the Knicks were in the finals. I bet you're having a great time right now. Just thought about you. That's all." You know, just small things like that. How good does that make you feel when someone does that to you and they're not reaching out for the first time when you haven't heard from someone in a while and they reach out to you? How good does it feel when they do that and they're not making an ask or they're not asking for a favor? How good does that feel if you do that every day? If I do that every day, if we do that every day, how much is that going to benefit us in the future? It is so uncomprehensible that, you know, I'm infinitely inspired to do it now. And I'm inspired to keep reminding myself of this in order to reinforce that behavior. So, even on the days when you feel like you don't get enough done, if you reached out and reconnected to 10 people, sent emails, did your due diligence for the day, you have accomplished something. And that's one of those things where it's hard to close that feedback loop because it doesn't feel productive. It doesn't feel hard, but it is the thing that's worth doing. Okay. Next thing I have here in my notes, and I'll probably just skim through the rest of these because some of them are good, some of them uh are more important, and some of them are I'm really excited to share with you guys. The ultimate most optimal version of what you're doing right now. So, I think about this in terms of general business. I realized throughout the day and I'm working with a consultant on the business now which is I'm going to share a little bit more about here. It's opened my eyes up to so much in the business. To add a little bit of context, I'm working with a consultant who has scaled, exited and sold a business in a similar niche to mine, a web flow agency. It's been so helpful to get just an abstract view, a third person view, another set of eyes on what I'm doing throughout the day. And to reinforce this point, how often we show up to work in a day and we remove ourselves from the bigger picture. All we're worried about is what's in front of us. It was it became so obvious to me when he asked me simple questions about what I want the business to be in the future. And if you're in house, if you're in if you're a marketer, if you're solo, if you're in house or you can apply this as well. It's like what does the ultimate fully optimized maximum successful version of what I'm doing right now looks like? What is the scaled version of this job of this business that I'm creating? And so often we just show up to work every day removed from that vision and we don't see how our actions in the day are leading towards that outcome. It became so embarrassingly obvious to me when he asked me simple questions about the business. what do you want the business to be in five years? And I just I couldn't answer it exactly. Now, I know a lot's changing with tech and AI is playing a big role in not just how we're providing value to our clients, but changing our workflows entirely, like who knows what's going to happen, you know? So, I didn't take that answer personally too close to the chest. But just having a direction, you know, like what does a perfect day look like for you? Does it look like getting up and working out in the morning? And what are the actions that you're doing throughout the day that you can invest in now to eventually be more leveraged in the future? Things like building a network? What do you enjoy doing? Is it podcasting? Is it sales? Is it is it the actual creative act, which a lot of times is the reason why people start businesses? Okay, let's shift the business to allow me to fit in that role and either hire out, delegate or learn what the what are the actions I should be doing now to lead to that more optimal version. So objectivity around your job, your business, your freelance habit is so valuable and I paid a large sum of money just to get this from someone who accomplished something that I want to accomplish exiting and scaling a business. So, can't say enough to the value of even if it's you don't have to pay someone to do this, just having someone say, "Okay, ask me these questions and really put yourself on the hot seat because when you're uncomfortable answering these questions, it's a really good activity because it forces you to acknowledge the fact that things aren't as put together as they could be." So, really, really valuable activity there. Some other things I've learned are how much we need to be reminded versus how often we need to be taught. We only need to be taught things once. We need to be reminded of them as many times as it takes until the activity or the idea is reinforced into our actions. So, for example, he asked me a question about instant gratification, instant satisfaction. I've heard so many times, okay, after a client signs, after a client pays you, those 48 hours are the optimal is your best possible time to make them feel stoked about the decision. It's very difficult to do traditionally in a services industry where it's a large scope project, but there's so many microcosms of that. For example, sending an email, sending a loom video, laying out next steps of the project very clearly, giving them some of that value back. You know, it's I've heard that philosophy so many times. Reduce the time to value after a customer pays. I'd heard that so many times and yet I had no method in place in my own business for doing that. So, that's a small example, but I encourage you guys to apply that to yours as well. If a client pays, what's the next 24 to 48 hours look like for them and how can you improve that? because that is such a high leverage opportunity for us as marketers to really add value to your clients and increase in increase their perceived value of us. Um so yeah always reminding things we need to be reminded things we need to be reminded of things more than we need to be taught. Last thing I'll talk about working with a consultant and creating objectivity around our business is what are our unique advantages like okay how did any how did all of our leads come in the past month and the past year what has the business what is what has the business been to this point how have leads come in what types of projects have we done presenting all of that in a very unglamorous transparent way it's been a very large exercise in patience and humility when you realize that there's a lot to do and the business is not perfect. Your life is not perfect. But then this is what creates the opportunity to realize what your advantages are against not just competitors but a commoditized value of the service you're offering. AI is making so many parts of the service funnel especially in digital services in marketing too is making a lot of that commoditized and able and empowering customers empowering consumers to be able to do that stuff themselves but what creating asking yourself the objective question like what is the value in me over AI over a competitor and creating that mode around yourself where you are clearly the obvious choice to say yes to Alexi calls it a home run offer but if you don't look inward and say, "What are my advantages?" And for me, this was it was a podcast. It was this podcast right here. So much of our inbound revenue has come from referrals, either from guests of this podcast or from referrals from guests of this podcast. So, we looked at that and we said, "Okay, this is something that not a lot of other agencies can do. How do we optimize this existing asset that we have that no one else does and build IP around it, make it clear and just double down on it? Because it's such a more valuable activity to do than to try and start something from scratch. And if I hadn't been transparent with all the things in the business that weren't as glamorous, that maybe I wasn't proud of in terms of the clients we've served or the work we've done, then that insight never would have arrived. It just makes it so much more clear what the next steps are. As a mentor once told me, there is no certainty in business. The closest you can get is clarity. And I'm starting to feel a lot more clarity now. Last two things I want to touch on here. I've been going on for a minute now. I'm not sure how many how far we are. I think like 20 minutes or so. Um I'm actually feeling pretty good, so I can rip for a while here. Yeah, about 21 minutes. I can rip for a while. Uh, next thing I want to talk about is kind of closing the chapter on this voice memo check-in is health, wellness, and accountability. I am in a mastermindesque sort of group with three other agency owners and it has been so awesome. Like we're just in a Slack channel encouraging one another and actually our second time meeting as a group. We meet bi-weekly just to create accountability, share our goals and struggles, and honestly call each other out on our BS, which is especially with this group where there's a lot of shared cander, something I really enjoy. uh we enjoy each other's company, but we're also we know that we know each other's goals and we want to push each other forward because I've even seen it myself as all glance over something and someone will call me out on it that I don't even see as a flaw or a missed opportunity, especially been somely helpful. But anyway, the second time we met with this group, we started the 75 hard challenge for which is if you guys don't know what 75 hard is, there's multiple variations of it kind of floating around online. and it started in the military community, made its way through the CrossFit community, but it's a group accountability challenge where you do all the following every single day. You stick to a diet, you and I obviously loosely interpret this because some groups have different metrics, but ours is stick to a diet, two 45 minute workouts a day, 64 ounces of water, 10 pages of a non-fiction book, and taking a picture to log your progress. We're all crushing it right now. We're almost I think we're over a month in now if I check. I also built an app that visualizes all the data which is super cool. But yeah, we're we started Yeah. four weeks into it now. Um five weeks into it now. So 35 days. Yeah. Wow. It's gone by fast. But it's make it it's made it so much easier to create accountability, especially these days when I stay busy and it's easy to make excuses like, "Hey, spent all day painting yesterday. Nope. got to get that second workout in. It made it so clear that environment and the accountability can just reduce a lot of the friction in becoming the person that you want to be. And it's still been hard, guys. Like two 45 minute workouts a day, you know, I I usually do workout twice a day, but not always for 45 minutes. It's also done the positive of creating a finish line. So a lot of times in business when you're working and you don't have a boss telling you what to do, you always think, hey, the more the better. But this has created barriers and guidelines to say, okay, if I accomplish all these things in a day, kind of like I talked about in the beginning with networking and outreach and building a world-class network. This creates the objective metrics of success as to what a good day looks like. So I just wanted to bring that up because it's been a big motivator in my life personally. I want to share that with you guys. Last thing I want to touch on here in this voice memo is people I've been listening to my motivations. Um, two people that I want to share with you guys. Michael Smoke of Higher Up Bonus. He has a business on Instagram where he basically talks about how you verbally articulate well. How do you earn trust with your words? How do you speak fluently, courageously, not use words, and come across as an expert and authority in your space? I've been listening to a lot of his content, not just for becoming a better podcaster, becoming a better host, but just learning this stuff. Um, and it's been very helpful. He's accomplished a lot in his life. He's also very raw and transparent. He lost his father. He hosts a podcast called Higher Up, the Higher Up podcast. So, highly encourage you guys to check that out. Great guy to listen to. Uh, second is Alex Hormoszi and his topics and discussions around transparent topics. I don't know about you guys, but I listen to I love Alex Formoszy's guest interviews more than I listen to his own personal content. I don't know if it's there's a reason behind that. I think his own content is a bit more polished and educational driven. But hearing him talk on other shows really gives me an insight into his mindset, how he works, because he I love I love Alexy. I trust him unconditionally. I've listened to so much of his work. I have a deep parasocial relationship with him and I trust a lot of what he says. But hearing his interviews with Tony Robbins and several other creators who are not as in the business space as me or as as he is has really helped me see like the person behind all of these great achievements and I really am reinforced by that. Two more podcasts I've been listening to, I mentioned it earlier, My First Million. Great Cander on that podcast. also really helpful stories and things that have helped me learn in my own right. I really love Sam, love Sean, and they do a really great job of creating like sticky ideas in my head. I don't know why, but between the guests they have on and the cander that they share, I think that's a big part of what makes a podcast amazing to listen to is when there is co-host. When there's two people that have cander, shared jokes, you know, inside jokes is a big thing, too. when you can let listeners in and feel like they're the third person and you know just a group of friends um great hangs that's uh it's a great a great audience to be a part of. The last one I've been listening to kind of to round out the personal enjoyment versus actual technical business side is Notorious B2B with Tasber and Tim Davidson. And that's another a similar reason shared cander. I love how they kind of b bounce ideas off each other. It's also tactical and helpful for me from a business standpoint. I was just a guest on their podcast, Tim and Tass. They have a second podcast called Marketers Exit. So stay tuned for that episode. But yeah, I love that show. I love all these shows and I think it's a good place to round out the voice memo here. So I wanted to I wanted this to be a little bit off the cuff. I had light notes to touch on, but this was very onetoone just me sharing my personal life business updates with you guys. Last week's podcast was very dense. It was over an hour of me going into our entire SEO process for our B2B clients. So this is a nice little touch-up contrast. not as scripted, not as intense or educationally driven, just building my relationship with you. And um I want to say too, I should have said this at the beginning, but I want to thank you guys just for following along all these phases of life and business. I mean, I look back at the podcast and first podcast was recorded in the agency that I used to work at, episode one, and I think episodes into the dozens through 50 were recorded in my apartment in Mary'sville. Then I moved to Springfield and you know those were 100 plus episodes recorded either in that studio apartment or you know in a co-hatch co-working space. Then Cohatch sponsored the show. We started recording in their studio and it's just wild to look back at all these chapters of the podcast and see how they relate back to my personal life. Now obviously not as refined as a studio but this is where the new studio setup is going to be. Got a lot of decorating to be. You got to do some echo reduction clearly. I hope that's not overly obvious as this episode is released and you haven't been like, "Man, Andy, what the hell? You sound terrible." But I just want to thank you guys for sticking around to this journey. Uh, episode 160 plus. We've got a lot of great ones coming down the pipeline and I'm infinitely inspired and motivated to keep having amazing conversations, sharing them with you guys and continue learning and sharing those lessons along the way. So, thank you guys from the bottom of my heart. I appreciate you greatly. If you are a Columbus marketer, head to that first link in the description to join the Columbus marketing jobs newsletter. will send you all the best curated job rules in Columbus into your email inbox for free every Monday morning. Love doing that. It's very helpful. Gotten great feedback on that. And that's all I have for you guys this week. Follow me on LinkedIn. And if you guys have any questions, feel free to drop them below. Drop me a comment on Spotify. My heart flies when I see Spotify or Apple Podcast comments. And I do read and respond to all of them. So, thank you guys for listening. Thank you for following along on this journey. Stay tuned for next week's episode with Max. Appreciate you guys.