As Meta continues to invest billions in AI, understanding its impact on advertising strategies is crucial for any marketer looking to stay competitive. In this episode, Andrew Foxwell, a true OG in Meta advertising, reveals how marketing agencies and consultants can adapt to the rapidly changing digital landscape.
Andrew discusses how AI is not only making advertising more automated and accessible but also revolutionizing the creative strategy game. He shares valuable insights on what works today and what doesn’t when it comes to creating effective ads and navigating Meta’s complex ecosystem.
Plus, Andrew presents a framework for agency owners who are feeling overwhelmed by AI adoption and the pressure of client expectations. His approach to identifying what matters versus what’s just noise will help you align your marketing strategy with Meta’s latest AI innovations.
Chapters:
- 00:00 – Introduction
- 08:34 – Meta’s investment in Andromeda and ad automation
- 14:31 – Meta’s AI innovations in organic traffic vs advertising
- 19:30 – What marketing agencies should be doing differently today
- 25:25 – Biggest challenges agencies are facing with AI adoption
- 30:58 – What marketing agency owners need most
- 38:06 – Helping agencies identify the “one thing they must do” and why
- 46:36 – Managing client expectations and communicating AI adoption plans
- 54:22 – How to connect with Andrew Foxwell and Foxwell Founders
Mentioned In This Episode
Ryan Reynolds Shares His Aviation American Gin Out of Office Reply – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbJwX6aG8Uc
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- LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurenpetrullo
- Consult Mongoose Media – https://mongoosemedia.us/
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READ THE TRANSCRIPT:
The #1 Non-AI Task an Agency Owner Can Do to Grow With Andrew Foxwell
[00:00:00] Andrew: There’s AI innovation that meta is making to make things stickier for users. What do you see inside your community for agencies, consultants, and advertisers on what they should be doing differently today versus what they were maybe doing six months ago inside meta? I think number one, if.
[00:00:17] You are listening to Perpetual Traffic.
[00:00:22] Ralph: Hello and welcome to the Perpetual Traffic Podcast. This is your host, Ralph Burns, founder and CEO of Tier 11, alongside my amazing co-host,
[00:00:31] Lauren: Lauren e Petrullo, the founder of Mongoose Media.
[00:00:34] Ralph: So glad you joined us here today and today, Lauren, we are getting deep on meta and if you’re an agency, if you are.
[00:00:44] Ralph: Somebody who’s freaked out by all the changes in meta. We have got the world’s foremost authority slash expert, probably in my opinion, one of the, one of the only guys I actually really follow when it comes to all this. And from way, way [00:01:00] back, I know that’s true and surprise, surprise. He actually, this is his second appearance on perpetual traffic.
[00:01:08] Ralph: We were going back in late,
[00:01:09] Lauren: but first with me, first with me.
[00:01:12] Ralph: First with you. That’s right. This was back with those other people that we don’t talk about anymore. Lauren, this episode one 13, we have got Andrew Foxwell from Foxwell Digital. He’s the co-founder of Foxwell Digital. Uh, also has an amazing platform called Foxwell Founders, which my team is actually a part of.
[00:01:32] Ralph: So, plug, plug, hint, hint for that over there. Welcome back. It’s a
[00:01:38] perpetual track.
[00:01:39] Andrew: Hey, thank you. Once every 10 years. That’s it. Alright. Once every 10 years. Great episodes. We’ll talk to you when I’m, when I’m 50,
[00:01:47] Ralph: I, yeah, that’s true. The, the joke was when, uh, when we first started this show, it was a digital marketer show, so we did as sort of a co-promote with Digital Marketer and it took us four, yeah, three shows to get Ryan Deis on the first show.
[00:01:59] Ralph: [00:02:00] So his joke was sort of the same. He is like, yeah, I’ll see you on, you know, episode 86 and we didn’t have him back direct. Nice. Episode 200. It was only paid you he got
[00:02:09] Lauren: with possum I think a year and a half ago.
[00:02:11] Ralph: Yeah. Did he? Hmm? Well, I don’t know. He’s retired from digital marketing, so we won’t even worry about him today.
[00:02:18] Ralph: But Andrew has not retired. Andrew? Yeah. You have tell, tell people don’t know you. Like if somebody knows meta ads or Facebook ads and sort of an og, you’re like one of the OGs in the space. And then of course you always say other people are OGs, which is sort sort of kind of funny. But how did it all start with you?
[00:02:35] Ralph: You started with an agency and then went into the information side as you know, I always sort of say, but stuck with it and have now been around. God, I mean, it’s 10, 12 years you’ve been doing this, so give us a little background on how it all started.
[00:02:51] Andrew: Totally. Yeah. I mean, you know, basically, uh, the short version is I was at the time, um, working in Congress and there was a [00:03:00] law that we changed internally in Congress that allowed members of Congress to, in the house representatives, to use official budgets to advertise on Facebook.
[00:03:08] Andrew: Huh. And I had been working on a campaign where I helped a mem, the member who I, he was running for the first time get elected and I was a social media guy. And so, uh, we launched that and that change happened. And then I launched an agency to help members of Congress advertise on social media, well, mostly Meta and Google ads, but mostly, mostly Facebook, right hand side ads.
[00:03:34] Andrew: Obviously the newsfeed didn’t exist the right. Then I went to three Key Digital, worked for David Tki. Uh, and I was the original director of paid social and I was remember being on a bus going to Marin County for like a wine weekend. ’cause I was 25 and that’s what I did when I was 25 with my wife. And I’m trying to launch a newsfeed ad They were called dark posts.
[00:03:54] Andrew: Of course. Yeah. Yeah. And then like, I’m like trying to upload, I’m like trying to upload the dark [00:04:00] post, right? Yeah. Yeah. And then, uh, years later launched Foxwell Digital with my wife Gracie, and we started doing Facebook advertising for companies. And so we. Early brands that we worked with were like pure Vita bracelets, plunders eyewear, uh, right.
[00:04:13] Andrew: The, the classics, uh, in the D two C world, when we would get 10 x return on ad spend on Facebook. Mm-hmm. And just print money. Yep. Um, and so we were in that and we. Had our agency, we have the agency, and that’s then about six years ago we started to do education and build courses. Um, we first were, were building them for John Loomer, um, who amazing, obviously resource, like one of the, the truest of OGs, right.
[00:04:39] Andrew: Um, and we built. A lot of education with John and taught that education. Uh, my Gracie, my business partner and wife is a, uh, is a writer and editor, uh, by trade. So that helped make those educational materials clear and our courses became known, um, when we launched our own for being really clear and, and like bringing in a lot of other opinions.
[00:04:58] Andrew: ’cause a lot of the courses that existed were like, [00:05:00] this is the Andrew Foxwell million dollar playbook. It’s like, no. It was like, here’s, you could do this, you could do this, you could do this. And so we brought in a lot of different people. And then four years ago. Uh, we launched the Foxwell founders, uh, to those customers of ours that had purchased more than two courses, and that was a group of 21 people and, or 22 people rather, and 20 of them bought the membership.
[00:05:23] Andrew: And I was like, whoa. Good conversion. We have a membership.
[00:05:26] Boom. Yeah,
[00:05:27] Andrew: we have a membership. Uh, and so we have now the Foxwell founders, which is 550 digital marketers from 30 countries around the world, and we spend an average between 400 and 500 million a month just on meta. So we’re meta forward, but we also talk about Google Snap, TikTok, Pinterest, CRO Agency ownership.
[00:05:45] Andrew: Um, you know, organic, social, anything you can imagine that would go under being a better digital marketer. Mm-hmm. Um, email or retention. Those things are all in our community and it’s lives in a lot of different ways for a lot of different [00:06:00] people. But yeah, and I’m proud to say it has an an 87 and a half net promoter score, so it’s good.
[00:06:07] Woo-hoo. Yeah,
[00:06:08] Andrew: it’s good. And we call it the Bentley of community. That’s what I’m building. And that’s like a year in. I was like, that’s it. And so I studied like the Ritz Carlton and Bentley and uh, four Seasons and what they do for people. And that’s the type of service that we provide to our members. So
[00:06:21] Lauren: does everyone get slippers?
[00:06:23] Andrew: You know, I’ve actually, it’s funny, we, we’ve done, we haven’t done slippers, um, but we’ve done a lot of like VIP merch that we give to like really active members and we do different thing every year. And, uh, we, Gracie just came up with the idea, she gave everybody luggage tags. ’cause we do a lot of events around the world.
[00:06:39] Andrew: We do like an event in Europe every year. We do usually three events in the United States every year. And people travel to these things like, and so luggage tag is, I think is, is the next step. So I don’t know about slippers, but I could see doing like a custom set of Nikes, like Jordans or something, I’d be pretty sick.
[00:06:57] Ralph: Yeah. Why not? Uh, l Luggage tags are [00:07:00] always something you can use myself. Right. You need
[00:07:02] Andrew: it myself, you know what I mean? You’re not gonna use like the, the, the, you’d like the delta like paper tag.
[00:07:07] Well, that’s what, that’s what I have right now. It’s kind of pathetic. Yeah. Actually I, I mean you gotta step it up.
[00:07:11] Yeah, I know.
[00:07:12] Lauren: I always get people an air tag. I feel like that’s the new
[00:07:15] Hmm. That’s, that’s nice. Oh, that’s a little air tag. That’s true. That’s a good one. That’s a good idea. Follow it where it goes. Yeah, that’s a good one.
[00:07:22] Ralph: That’s a good idea. Uh, so I’ve got 10 people in there. Including my direct, my VP of production and the reviews so far, they’ve been in there about a a month, have been nothing less than the Bentley of all, you know, digital marketing courses and the community and everything else that goes along with it.
[00:07:44] Ralph: So obviously. We only bring people on this show that we actually really believe in what they’re doing. Like yes, about some TikTok and all these other sort of softwares that we use. We’ve got Canva that’s gonna be coming up, who doesn’t use Canva, you know, another sort of guest here on the show, and you are one of [00:08:00] those people, so I appreciate it.
[00:08:02] Ralph: Having said that, you know, if you do have a team and you’re an agency and you’re looking for the, the best community that we’ve seen. We are gonna give you, I don’t know if there’s a special offer for anybody here for perpetual traffic, but at the very least, sounds like
[00:08:16] Lauren: there has to be. Now
[00:08:17] Ralph: I, I guess there has to be, now we can put that in pros production, but a Andrew’s community is the best that we’ve found.
[00:08:23] Ralph: So having said that, there’s a lot that’s going on right now, and the reason for the next level of education is because there’s so many changes and. We have talked a lot about on this show, the Andromeda ai, you know, the algorithm, the how much money meta is putting into ai, 65 billion in 2025, and even more in 2026.
[00:08:49] Ralph: A crazy amount. And I gotta read you a quote from this guy named Zuckerberg. I don’t know if you know who he is
[00:08:55] Lauren: from the Q2 earnings report.
[00:08:57] Ralph: Yeah, well. Here it is right [00:09:00] here. Quote. Any business will be able to just tell us what objective they’re trying to achieve, like selling something or getting a new customer, how much they’re willing to pay for each result and connect their bank account.
[00:09:15] Ralph: Surprise, and we just do the rest for them, said CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg and his shareholder meeting in May. Yeah. Yeah. What is your response to that? Is he insane? Yeah. Or is he actually. Because he did bring up this whole metaverse thing, which he’s kind, is kind of on the back burner now if anyone’s noticed, you know, the 25 billion they were spending, that’s not getting the news right now.
[00:09:41] Ralph: Everything is all about 99% of their revenue is derived from digital advertising. So yeah. What are your thoughts on that statement from Mr. Zuck?
[00:09:50] Andrew: I think that meta as a stock and, and his business is trying to increase the ability for uptake in advertising, right? They want as many people to try to continue to.[00:10:00]
[00:10:00] Andrew: Advertise and test on their platform as possible. And I think that up until this point, the barrier for them is it’s not getting people like us to spend more money. Like I think, you know, if it works, we’re spending more. And I, and we can talk about that, but I think, yeah, the more that he can go out and say to Wall Street, Hey, we’re gonna make this as easy as possible because Wall Street’s, you know, has heard, oh, it’s confusing.
[00:10:21] Andrew: I don’t know how to get it going. I don’t know how to launch it. There’s a pixel. I don’t know how to connect it. Right. It’s like all the Wall Street hears is barrier. Barrier, barrier, barrier. And so what they’re trying to look for is, yes, who’s spending more, but also like what’s the uptake of other people to make it easier.
[00:10:35] Andrew: And so this is why he’s saying this. And they also did, they, they did this in, in, in mobile ads too, back in the day, they. Basically started to talk about mobile before they really had it figured out. They were like, we’re leading in mobile ads and you, all of us that are digital marketers, we were like, like launching ads on on Facebook.
[00:10:52] Andrew: We were like, well, they’re showing it on mobile. Like, does that mean they’re leading? Like I don’t like, and sometimes the images wrong, but they have to go be able to go out and like [00:11:00] be guns blazing. Like we’re killing it with this. And so that’s what he is doing. Again, it’s the same playbook, which is like, you know what?
[00:11:06] Andrew: We’re gonna be making it easy. You’re gonna be able to just connect it. And that’s, and that’s what Wall Street wants to hear ’cause they’re thinking about mm-hmm. Um, you know, uptake. Sure. And making it as frictionless as of, of a flywheel as possible. So that’s, that’s why he’s obvi. I think that’s why he’s saying this.
[00:11:22] Andrew: Um, I mean, I think the, I. As it relates. I mean, there’s a whole bunch of stuff to talk about with the ai, but I think that’s as it relates to like how he is thinking about the ease of it. I think that overall there’s always gonna be a place for those of us that are pulling levers because there’s enough complexity in the platform that they can’t eliminate overnight.
[00:11:42] Andrew: Um, in terms of, I mean, if you think about. How confusing business manager is, or whatever event manager or getting your staff connected or like these permissions and pieces. Like right now, obviously creator led white listing is a, is a huge, uh, strategy lever that a lot of people are [00:12:00] pulling on for results.
[00:12:01] Andrew: That’s not like, that can be automated to a degree, but it’s still not gonna be easy. And I also think you have to always remember how busy. Brand owners are like, they don’t wanna do this. Mm-hmm. You know what I mean? They don’t want to, brand owners don’t wanna do this. They don’t want to go th like, even if it’s frictionless, they’re like, I don’t know.
[00:12:20] Andrew: I’d rather pay. $2,000 is somebody to do this. Mm-hmm. It’s like, I was thinking about this the other day. It’s like, it’s like dryer vent cleaning. Like, I could clean my own dryer vents, I’m not gonna do that. Mm-hmm. I’m like, it’s the same thing. You’re like, I’m not gonna, I’m not gonna do this. I’m just gonna pay an agency to do this.
[00:12:33] Andrew: You can create the ads, keep it going. I’m gonna run the ops. I’m gonna like, keep it going, keep our, uh, inventory running.
[00:12:40] Ralph: Right. Keep, keep running the dryer. That’s, uh, right. You know, pressing buttons. There we go. On that side. Uh, so I mean, this is, this is classic hyperbole that’s backed up. To a certain degree though, is an element of truth because I think some of the changes that we’ve seen, and obviously the, the folks that are in your community on the Tier 11 side are seeing it and it’s a [00:13:00] part of everything that we’re doing and the old days of separating out levels of traffic.
[00:13:04] Ralph: I hate to say at the e-comm ad amplifier, which we talked about, like we were probably just about to talk about it back in 2017 when you were out last on. All of that’s gone away now. So there’s fundamental shifts that people who are looking at things the old way, now they need to adapt to the new way.
[00:13:20] Ralph: And that’s always where the real learning is. And I remember when Google Performance Max came out, we were like, oh my God, this is like the new thing. And now it’s, and everyone was doing it the old way, separating out your broad and your exact, and your phrase match and all that. And the Google performance, max was gonna throw that all away.
[00:13:36] Ralph: And then it turned out that Google Performance Max was just sort of a big dud. It’s like a retargeting strategy basically. Yeah, that’s up all this inventory that doesn’t really matter to you to, to a certain degree. So I think people hear these sorts of things that we talk about it every single week we’ve been talking about this, just because I think.
[00:13:54] Ralph: And you know this, you’ve been doing this, you and I have been doing this at like the same amount of time. It’s like for the last 15 [00:14:00] years they’ve been promising this Google, I remember promised this way back in like 2010. It’s like, oh, we’re just gonna put conversion value. You tell us how much you wanna make, and you just plug in your credit card and we’ll figure it all out.
[00:14:12] Ralph: That was 10 plus years ago. So this bullshit has been slung for a while, this time. I don’t think it’s actually too far off base from what we’re seeing because of the investment that Meta has made in AI and infrastructure. It’s not quite there yet, but it could be close to what he’s saying. Maybe in three to five years, what are your thoughts?
[00:14:35] Andrew: I think there’s the, the thing to differentiate is there’s AI innovation that Meta is making mm-hmm. On the organic side, and that’s where Zuckerberg has said it spends his time and he said as much he goes on, he’s been on record. Say what, what it was that the quote is like, uh, in the advertising platform or like in the advertising part of Meta, it’s where I spend the least amount of my time, and so there’s.
[00:14:58] Andrew: Innovation that’s happening, and it’s [00:15:00] on the organic side to make things stickier for users, that that’s, that’s the entire goal that they’re putting forth, which is mm-hmm. How do we make this resource indispensable? I mean, if you think about just the product innovation of Instagram. In the United States, which is obviously the most high value platform, high value users, that’s where they are, okay?
[00:15:18] Andrew: That’s where a ladi is going. And reels is a part of that too. Of course. Let’s just talk about Instagram, think about the product innovation reference to Instagram stories. I started keeping a tally of every time I’d go in and update the app and see like what the main changes were related to AI on Instagram stories.
[00:15:35] Andrew: And in 25. We’re at 28 innovations, 28 things that are like, we’ve like new like cutouts, um, you know, AI related. Okay. Like, and so that’s, I think a big one of where people di people in the advertising side look at this and say like, oh, where they’re talking about mdr, they’re talking about all this. AI stuff and advertising.
[00:15:55] Andrew: It’s like, yes, that’s a separate thing than what, where they’re innovating or trying to keep people on the platform and keep it as [00:16:00] sticky as possible in as many ways as possible. It’s one, and this includes WhatsApp. This includes like transcriptions on WhatsApp for, for what it’s worth, right? Like that’s an AI innovation.
[00:16:07] Andrew: That’s like a big one. It’s it’s lightweight, it’s simple. It seems simple, but it’s actually quite complex. And that keeps people there because then they don’t have to read the message or they don’t have to listen to it. They can read it. So it’s just kind of from nuanced stuff, I think in terms of advertising innovation.
[00:16:19] Andrew: As it relates to ai, clearly they are attempting to. Remove manual levers as much as possible and make the ability to ad serve as flexible as possible. And you as a brand owner are gonna have to get used to this. Or an advertiser. You’re gonna have, like an agency, you’re gonna have to continue to explain this to your, you know, clients, Hey, look, this is gonna look different.
[00:16:39] Andrew: It’s gonna look d you know, here’s why. Here’s what it’s showing. And. They are continue to experiment with placements and where the ads are showing and how, and like that’s really where the innovation has been. I think that the ads, the ad serving from an AI standpoint or from a and dramatist standpoint is definitely [00:17:00] smarter and faster.
[00:17:01] Andrew: And I think they’ve taken a lot of signals from TikTok on this, to be honest with you, because it’s, the thing that made TikTok really powerful was if you looked up a skincare. Brand organically, or you followed a skincare brand, you’d see only skincare following in like. Two seconds later. And that’s the same thing with meta.
[00:17:19] Andrew: Now it’s much stronger and much faster in terms of here’s product recommendations. So those are the innovations that I think are really, have made a lot of difference on the advertising side. But you always have to look at these things separately and meta talking about we’re the AI king. And really where the main innovation is happening, in my opinion now is on the product side.
[00:17:37] Andrew: It’s not on the advertising side. The advertising side is like, as we’ve know, is like, can be great and also can be hot garbage. Yeah. Like some of it, you’re like, what the fuck is this? Yeah. So you know, like that’s, it’s been quite buggy, especially, we’re recording this in August of 25, like in the, in Q2, like it’s been peaks and valleys for sure.
[00:17:57] Andrew: It’s been the pro, probably the biest year. [00:18:00] I’ve known in a while, like since three years ago when the, when it melted down on Black Friday. Mm-hmm. But other, like, this is probably the worst that we’ve had. ’cause it’s like, and also they’ve had a huge crackdown on fraud. And so all everybody, you know, has dealt with account ban, people ban credit issues and then obviously the, yeah.
[00:18:18] Andrew: Count all this crap. It’s ridiculous. Right? And so like, they’re going out and saying like, we’re AI innovative and like, yes, on the organic side, but like some of this stuff they could use AI to solve this and like, make. Better. And they, and it’s, it’s not, it’s still quite manual. It’s very people heavy and it’s a mess.
[00:18:33] Andrew: Yeah. And so I hope that they apply some of these principles on the one side over to the other, but
[00:18:38] Ralph: either even nor they, it’s interesting ’cause when I go back and I sort of think about the evolution of meta, I mean now meta obviously it was really, it was just Facebook and Instagram way back. But the point was, is whenever there was a big.
[00:18:49] Ralph: Update or even an like, they used to announce the updates. Now this kind of was slipped in a bit like February, March, may. We’re not really even Sure exactly when rolled out slowly. [00:19:00] It’s, there’s always disruption that happens right in the middle of it. And then there’s certain people that say, well, oh, I’ve figured this out.
[00:19:06] Ralph: I figured that the way, and then that’s going to change. So. There’s always going to be this sort of messy middle where like the ghost is in the machine right now and the machine still isn’t working the right way as of yet. However, that tells me that they’ve injected some kind of massive tech, you know, infusion into what we’re referring to is the algorithm, which is basically just an enhanced AI experience overall.
[00:19:33] Ralph: So. But it’s, it’s interesting that you’re saying that you’re seeing sort of results that are sort of all over the place. Like let’s, for just sort of speaking from an advertising standpoint, what are the biggest takeaways? What do you see inside your community? For agencies, directors of marketing consultants and advertisers on what they should be doing differently today versus what they were maybe doing six months ago inside meta, let’s sort of get back, or even like a month ago.
[00:19:59] Ralph: [00:20:00] Well, yeah, I mean, pick your timeframe as far as what you’re seeing. What’s your take on
[00:20:05] Andrew: it? I think number one, you have to have somebody that is, uh, in charge at your agency or the head of onboarding. With the client and making sure that there’s sort of like an ops connection person. I think that if you have somebody that’s an account manager that’s attempting to do the connections, the creative requests, the creative briefing, the, you know, AMS are not able to do this in an effective way on a long-term basis because they’re also having to make sure that the ads are good and that record are like, that are getting results and the ads are productive.
[00:20:37] Andrew: And those are different skill sets. And so you’re putting. Uh, like, you know, doing deep reporting and analysis, and if you’re asking to do a lot of this, there’s a lot of logistics stuff. Mm-hmm. And that, that’s a, they can do it, but it makes it less effective. Mm-hmm. Um, and it’s cha it’s really challenging to have that person to continue to, to put these pieces on them because there are gonna be [00:21:00] disruptions.
[00:21:00] Andrew: Mm-hmm. And I think that that’s like 0.1 A is within creative, obviously creative is, is now the biggest lever that we have targeting is not necessarily the piece where we live. Although there’s, you know. Ways that you can build accounts and account structure where, uh, you’re having interest targeting, you’re having lookalikes, you know, uh, people say, we don’t use it at all.
[00:21:18] Andrew: Okay, well, you know. Neither here nor there. We don’t have to get into that. But my point is there’s ways you can keep that working. But primarily what you’re doing now is building better ads and making better ads, and you’re ca trying to capture attention. And by doing that, you need to have, make sure that you aren’t putting all of that on a creative strategist and that you’re trying to weave creative strategy and the idea of creative thinking and the idea of making great ads.
[00:21:45] Andrew: Into your staff and into the thinking that they’re doing, uh, because that’s predominantly what they are going to do to move the lever for people. Hmm. I think that if you [00:22:00] also, so much of what. People do is the old model, which is we’re gonna focus on the ads. The ads, the ads and that. And then there’s not a lot of discussion about the website and conversion rate optimization and the offer, and the biggest lever that people can pull that is outside of creative is the offer.
[00:22:21] Andrew: Yeah. There isn’t enough innovation on the offer. And if you look at brands that are scaling now, a lot of it is focused on that. It’s a combination of we have pushed forward on creative to make better ads. We’ve pushed forward on creative to unlock new personas that people didn’t realize were part of something they could sell their product to.
[00:22:41] Andrew: And we are innovating and thinking about how we’re speaking to the problems that those groups have. And that’s the new horizontal scaling. And we match it to offers that resonate with these people.
[00:22:53] Hmm.
[00:22:53] Andrew: That are also. Oh, by the way, good from a business sense in terms of raising a OV [00:23:00] in terms of raising LTV.
[00:23:02] Andrew: And then of course you’re following it up with a true retention program, mixture of emails, mixture of the way you’re speaking to folks, mixture of as email and SMS, et cetera. So I think that if you, if I’m speaking directly to, um, agency owners and even people that are CMOs. Likely right now you’re putting too much on your all stars and they’re not able to effectively do the analysis that’s required of them or have the time to do the analysis that’s required of them to make more effective ads and continue to help clients be profitable.
[00:23:44] Ralph: There’s a lot to deconstruct there. Even talking to the, like the agency model of, um, because there’s so much disruption, we’ve shifted our model away completely away from media buyers running the account. [00:24:00] And doing all the stuff and doing the client interface, because unless they’re a unicorn, which I found there’s not many of them out there, I don’t think unicorns actually exists.
[00:24:10] Ralph: But, um, I didn’t have little girls.
[00:24:12] Lauren: They’re out there. They’re out there once in a while. They’re,
[00:24:13] Ralph: they’re out there really. They’re, um. Separation of like church and state is, is sort of the way that we, we describe it sometimes inside tier 11. It’s like, you know, you’ve got a client success owner who owns the relationship, and then you have all the people, you have the strategists, but then behind them you have the people that are actually doing the work.
[00:24:31] Ralph: And it’s like separating that out and how you, because the data can be interpreted in a lot of different ways. If your media buyer is telling you, oh, this campaign went south and that ad and this ad said too granular, all of a sudden. The client or the CMO or the marketing director who’s listening to all this, it’s like, wait a second.
[00:24:49] Ralph: What? What the hell’s going on here? It’s chaos. Mm-hmm. When in fact, this is just a normal process of how the algorithm works to try and normalize and ultimately get you new customers [00:25:00] or, you know, lower your end CAC or increase your LTV, like, that’s the goals that they actually care about. So. There’s sort of a two part to that, I guess, going into your agency group that’s inside, you know, Foxwell founders, like some of the challenges that they have is, you know, obviously founder led, whatever, you know?
[00:25:19] Ralph: Mm-hmm. Name, pick your poison, sales ops, media buying, creative, you name it. But then there’s also how do you actually manage the client? Part in, in your experience, what’s the biggest challenge that you’re seeing from an agency standpoint? Knowing full well that we’re in the middle of this, you know, massive disruption within Meta, and what are the issues that you’re finding and how are you helping to resolve ’em?
[00:25:46] Andrew: The biggest one is that most folks are wanting to have innovation and change on ai. They know that they an adoption in their agency, but they have not [00:26:00] given full attention or full resources on an ongoing basis to testing it and to integrating and figuring it out. So a classic example is, um, we feel like we haven’t made any progress with ai.
[00:26:18] Andrew: My people have tested some stuff. We haven’t seen it do anything. What are you guys seeing? That’s a classic question that we get. Mm-hmm. Okay, so my, then my immediate question is, what are you currently doing? Who is in the agency as the point person to say or point people to say, we have half of our day, that’s de two, three days a week.
[00:26:41] Andrew: That’s dedicated to testing and trying these new processes in reference to. Tying it to the problems we’re trying to solve. This could be reporting, this could be creative efficiency. This could be, a lot of times people will say, well, we have ai. People are spending time in ai, and I give ’em free thinking time.
[00:26:57] Andrew: Nothing wrong with that, but also like. [00:27:00] There are business problems that you, that it will help you solve. And the first thing is, of course, identifying the problem. Look, you can’t just, it’s not like it’s just otherwise you, it’s like, yeah, you’re waiting for AI to tell
[00:27:11] Lauren: you what the problem is.
[00:27:12] Andrew: Yeah. You’re, yeah.
[00:27:13] Andrew: So like you have to be like, what are the issues? Like, okay, like I have an issue with client inbound, I don’t do enough. Okay. So. Why don’t you have your people focus on what you could do in reference to taking every call note that you have, and putting it into AI that is creating content from you, from things you’re already doing and pushing out that content.
[00:27:37] Andrew: Like these are the types of things that, like how could we do that, right? What are, how are we gonna do solve, what are we gonna do to solve that problem? So it’s sort of like taking, thinking in that problem solution way. So we help them walk a, a lot of times it’s also a function of time. People are overwhelmed and strapped for time, and they don’t feel that they have the ability to.
[00:27:58] Andrew: Uh, they feel behind [00:28:00] or they’re not having, you know, the clients are leaving or whatever. And so a lot of the times what we’re doing in the founders’ community is we sit down. I’m having a one-on-one with them. People are always like, I can’t believe you got on a call. I’m like, yeah, of course. It’s like, no, this is fine.
[00:28:14] Andrew: I love talking to. To people we work with are, it’s like, or um, they’ll say, I have an issue with this particular problem. Okay, cool. Let me connect you with a member of our community. And I pay for that member for the one hour to speak to that. Or on an ongoing basis, I pay for coaching. Mm-hmm. And that could be on ai, that could be on N eight N, that could be on TikTok ads, TikTok shops like it, whatever it is.
[00:28:38] Andrew: And, um, we then. Will or creative process, creative strategy, creative testing. We connect them with person, we talk to them, and then they have an ongoing dialogue, or they join one of our meetings where we talk about, we have some meetings that are recorded and some meetings that are off the record, and we go through some of these pieces and off the record meetings and say, here’s how we’re solving this.
[00:28:59] Andrew: A lot of it [00:29:00] is, it’s just breaking down the issue because it’s, it’s sort of like when you look at your. Task list and you see the whole thing. You’re like, God, I’m never gonna get all this done. And it’s just like you have to break it down and be like, what are you, what, what’s actually gonna move the needle?
[00:29:12] Andrew: And I think so many of us are, are trying to use a snowplow and we should like be using, I’m thinking, ’cause I’m Midwestern of course, in snow thinking, but like they’re trying, they’re trying to use a snowplow versus like just using a shovel. Like just start with one little area first. Don’t just try to move it all forward.
[00:29:28] Andrew: Right. So that’s a big part of what we’re doing is like listening and breaking down. It’s not rocket science, it’s just the, you have to give the issue and the challenges time to go through it and to break down what you’re particularly facing as it relates to ai. Just jumping back to, to, to that, you asked me earlier about ai, I didn’t directly go through that.
[00:29:48] Andrew: It’s, it’s the same thing. It’s not having a point person or point. People are tied to that. So that’s really. How you’re gonna start to make progress incrementally is identify what are the things are you need to do better? [00:30:00] Is it acquiring new customers? Okay. If it’s acquiring new customers for your clients, what are the ways you’re currently doing that?
[00:30:07] Andrew: Okay. We’re creating ads, you know, based on these, like, what’s your creative process? And you know, you can see where I’m going. It’s like it’s, it’s, you have to go into each of these pieces and break it down with what the thing is. I had a message yesterday from a new member. And he said, you know, I want new clients and I want them in this niche.
[00:30:24] Andrew: And um, I wanna just be able to get together with folks and chat and talk about our businesses. And I’m like, okay, what does that mean now? What, what are, are you just wanting to like be chummy with other owners and like, shoot the breeze, like group therapy? I’m trying to get to the nut of like, what are you actually wanting?
[00:30:44] Andrew: And usually that, sometimes that can take a little while. Um, and once you get there, that’s how you start to develop it. So a lot of what we do in the founders’ community is we meet people where they are, but honestly, a secret sauce of what we do is we slow people down.
[00:30:58] Mm-hmm.[00:31:00]
[00:31:02] Ralph: That’s, uh, I mean there’s a lot of different ways to, to ask questions about this, but I guess like we have a lot of agencies that listen to this show, and I know in most cases they’re completely overwhelmed and they don’t know where to start. Is that the biggest thing that like it’s the founder that’s just, oh my God, I’m doing everything.
[00:31:23] Ralph: It depends on sort of where they are in the continuum, but. No matter where you are, it’s like you’ve always gonna have some problem. You’re never gonna get to this part where it’s like, ah, now I can put my feet up. And you know, it’s new
[00:31:35] Lauren: problems, new day, new problems. You don’t wanna have the same old problems.
[00:31:38] Ralph: Exactly. It’s new, like almost never ending. So what is, is it just a fact of overwhelm and breaking it down and then. Solving what that specific issue is? Or have you found a common thread with all these agency founders as we’re sort of talking about that and that aspect of the community? Like what is it that they [00:32:00] need the most and is it just that simple?
[00:32:02] Ralph: It’s like break it down to its essential elements, or is it something larger?
[00:32:07] Andrew: Many times. So to answer the question directly first, what is it that they need most is its quality of thought is and, and time is the biggest one. People don’t have that and they feel perpetually behind. Mm-hmm. The other thing that they need is they need the, they need a framework of why.
[00:32:24] Andrew: Why are we doing this? Why did we start doing this? And what is our purpose? Because especially as you start to loop in employees that are Gen Z. Money is irrelevant. I mean, not irrelevant, but it’s less relevant to these folks. It’s, and mission is the most critical piece. So making sure that you, as the founder can articulate why the hell are we here is really important to maintaining and building and retaining great talent.
[00:32:51] Andrew: Hmm. And be and and making sure that there’s a loop between them saying, here’s what I think that you’re doing that’s not good, or that we can improve on, and [00:33:00] here’s how I’m reacting as the leader. And there’s this cycle that goes back and forth. So I think that that’s the biggest one, is articulating the why and articulating what your purpose is in owning this agency and doing this work.
[00:33:13] Andrew: Mm-hmm. I think that the other one is voicing fears. Is a big one from agency owners, and this also goes to those of you that are listening that are CMOs. We all anticipate that smart people. That we are hiring. Let’s say you’re CMO hiring a smart agency owner, you’re going to anticipate that you, they will read through the lines or read through like what you’re trying to say and, and really what you might be afraid of.
[00:33:41] Andrew: Like, I’m A CMO let’s, you know, I want to crush it. I have all these crazy goals. I’m hiring this smart person named Ralph. And Ralph’s team’s gonna come in and they’re gonna be able to be like, oh yeah. They’re like, I can talk through this, but they’re gonna be able to really see what I’m worried about.
[00:33:54] Andrew: And the biggest one is there’s like a disconnect between those two things is, is there isn’t enough. [00:34:00] And this sounds a little woo woo, but there isn’t enough vulnerability in sharing what you’re worried about since a lot of us are fear motivated. Mm. And marketing, you’re not gonna get to the goal that you want.
[00:34:10] Andrew: And so the more that you can actually, you self articulate what you are worried about. This could be crushing the client goal. This could be, you know, whatever, right? Um, new customer acquisition, getting on more channels, whatever the KPIs are that you have, making sure you can identify and voice that to the agency or the agency.
[00:34:29] Andrew: You can voice that to your employees. I feel like we’re doing really well, but I’m worried that you’re not proactive enough with this client that will solve a ton of issues. But the issue, but many people never get there. ’cause that’s like level three thinking. And so much of the life of an agency owner is this frenetic back and forth on calls, putting out fires.
[00:34:53] Andrew: Mm-hmm. And so I try to tell people one of the biggest things you can do is to step away from the [00:35:00] computer and put your phone down and go do something for you for one hour. Mm-hmm. It sounds silly and stupid and simple, kind of, but
[00:35:09] Lauren: I just did a flow tank for an hour, so I stand by that.
[00:35:11] Andrew: Beautiful. I mean, the thing is, is like we don’t, we underestimate, and this is CMOs, this is directors of marketing, this is agency owners, this is agency employees.
[00:35:21] Andrew: Anybody in this whole realm. What will set you apart and get you winning business is and is not in utilizing more ai, AI is helpful and it’ll help you do things faster. And if a, a players will become a plus players, right? Mm-hmm. But like. What will really help you win more business is your unique value add to the world and your, you know, and you can’t get to that if you are constantly putting out fires.
[00:35:50] Andrew: You have to remember and figure out what are the pieces that set me apart that make us different. That takes quality of thought and you have to have, [00:36:00] in order to get there, you have to have time that’s unstructured to think through that. And that’s a value pro. That’s like something that will set you apart.
[00:36:06] Andrew: Yeah. Because you have, you know, so I think that’s what we try to do with a lot of folks. That’s why we do these meetups. You know, we pull people away from their daily life. And you know, we had almost 75 people in Dublin, or really not. We had like 75, 80 people in Dublin this year.
[00:36:22] Lauren: Dublin. The country or Dublin?
[00:36:24] Lauren: Ohio.
[00:36:24] Andrew: Ohio. Dublin, Dublin, Ireland, Dublin, Ireland. Oh, and um, okay. A lot of in, sorry. We had sounds, had we had some Guinness, we had, uh, some learning sessions. We had time together where we were hanging out, where we were chatting and you know, we’ve all been to these in person things like that’s. A massive unlock because it’s, you don’t, it’s not something people normally have the time to do.
[00:36:46] Andrew: Yeah. And in those, we try to just slow people down and sit there and say like, how are you? Yeah. And usually off of that, they’re like, you know, like within 20 minutes they’re like, that’s a good idea. And they’re, I haven’t said anything. Right. They’re discovering it themselves. You know [00:37:00] what I’m saying?
[00:37:01] Andrew: Yeah. Like, all I’m doing is like, I’m the bumpers in the bowling alley baby. Like, I’m just, they’re just, the ball’s just do, do, do. I’m just like, yeah. Well, what do you think? You know? And like it isn’t. It’s not rocket science, it’s just the fact that a lot of people don’t have the time. So I think that’s the biggest one, is like taking time to really understand what’s gonna set you apart and using emotional vulnerability or vulnerability generally to talk about the things that you’re motivated by.
[00:37:21] Andrew: Fear, what’s keeping you up at night, and if you can do that to yourself, with your employees and with your, with your partners, creative partners, agency partners. Here’s what I’m worried about with this. You start losing language like that. That’s a different conversation and you will get better results from that.
[00:37:35] Ralph: And oh, by the way, if you’re listening at home, this does not involve ai.
[00:37:39] Yeah,
[00:37:40] Ralph: it does not involve, it does not
[00:37:41] Andrew: involve ai.
[00:37:43] Lauren: Well, I’m sure a lot of people are going straight to ai, asking what questions should I pose to my team to make me appear more vulnerable so that I can show up? And yeah,
[00:37:51] Andrew: I mean, and like, you know, I like, I, you know, look, if you’re gonna do that, like at least you are attempting to understand something deeper, right?
[00:37:59] Andrew: I think that [00:38:00] the ego that we all have, you don’t want to go there because you feel like you have to hold, uphold something. Different. And, um, that’s not necessarily the case.
[00:38:10] Ralph: The, I do a fair amount of speaking to agency owners and obviously whenever I’m at a conference, it’s like a, a lot of our listeners here on perpetual traffic or agency owners or consultants, and there’s a, there’s a presentation I now do, which is.
[00:38:27] Ralph: Not the three steps to building a multimillion dollar agency, but it’s like the one thing that you must do, and it comes back to what you are talking about. It’s because you need people to buy into your vision of whether you’re an agency owner or a business or whatever it is. What is your space in the market that you do differently than anybody else?
[00:38:49] Ralph: What’s your unique value proposition? I mean, it’s something I learned in college back in 19 something or other. The point is, is like that’s the thing, and I think agency [00:39:00] owners in general really struggle with it ’cause they don’t know. Unless they’re verticalized, maybe, but then they, it, it’s like this mushy kind of thing.
[00:39:08] Ralph: It’s like we grow businesses, uh, we run ads. Like how do you get it deeper? Right? And we used to do this with some of our sort of higher level clients, is we would do a day session with them when they first started. We do occasionally now, um, actually, actually we’re doing it more now than we were before, but I would go in and I would do a whiteboard.
[00:39:29] Ralph: I’m like, all right, why do you do what you do? Yeah. And it would be like seven why’s before I actually got to why they actually did what they do. And the, the example that I’ve used here is that we had a car polish company that was just booming like five, six years ago. Went to Jacksonville, went through this thing, like why do you do that?
[00:39:50] Ralph: Well, you know, we wanna be the best. Alright, well why do you do that? Well, we want to help, you know, car owners have, you know, pride in their, in their car. [00:40:00] Like, well, why do you do that? When they have pride in their car, they feel good about themselves. Well why do you do that? Well, when they have pride in their car and then they wax or do the polish and everything else there, people like my son and my wife get like a lot of pleasure from it.
[00:40:15] Ralph: Why do that? Well, it’s ’cause I get to spend time with my family. It was like something that was like so deep well below. And this was sort of a, it was a very interesting product. It was Simon Connect, but it was, it was very Simon Syne. Yeah, for sure. But. I find with agency owners, that’s a really hard thing to get to.
[00:40:34] Ralph: ’cause it’s like, what are they actually trying to do? You know what I mean? Yeah. And how do you get through that? Unless you say, oh, well we help roofers. Like I’m a roofing agency and I, we help roofers scale and grow their business. Which isn’t really the why, but it’s kind of close to the why it’s closer than like, we’re an agency.
[00:40:53] Ralph: So how do you, like, how do you step them away from that? Or do you have a process that.
[00:40:58] Andrew: That helps them do it. It’s all, I [00:41:00] mean, there’s no process. It’s all different ways that we arrive at that. It’s just trying to get people to understand, um, at a baseline, what is the why, what are they doing that’s different, that that’s different?
[00:41:09] Andrew: And how are they going to give themselves a quality of thought to be able to identify that and an ongoing basis. And then how do you communicate that to your clients and people that work with you and work for you? Right. That’s, that’s the, the big one. It’s, and everybody arises differently. Um, but I think the, the big.
[00:41:25] Andrew: Unlock is blending this then with, uh, a peer curiosity. Right. And, and understanding that to do this work well, you have to be infinitely curious. You have to be, you have to always be knowing and saying, I don’t know. And always be learning, uh, what. And the founder’s community is a great way to do that because there we’re, there’s such a tactical discussion all the time.
[00:41:50] Andrew: Like we had a presentation yesterday about how to negotiate with creators properly led by a creator.
[00:41:55] Lauren: Mm.
[00:41:56] Andrew: And it’s like, okay, great. Like that’s, you know, that’s the [00:42:00] type of, um, stuff that we wanna get into. And you wanna unlock better results and it goes through the tree of diversifying the creative that you’re doing.
[00:42:08] Andrew: And here’s how you search to negotiate with creators probably. Um, so. Uh, I think having that curiosity and setting aside time for that, for that is also a big part of what makes you successful. Uh, you know, when I was 25, like I thought I knew everything and now I’m 40 and I know, I know that I know nothing, which is actually quite helpful.
[00:42:27] Andrew: So I just am, I just go in with beginner’s mind to everything. People tell me stuff like, you probably know this. I’m like, no, I don’t know. I actually don’t know that, even though if I know it, I let them explain it to me because a lot of times I’ll learn something from that. Yeah, I think that’s, that’s a big thing that sets you apart and I think that there’s also, um.
[00:42:42] Andrew: The, just to, to get onto, you know, speaking to everybody on the CMO and the director of marketing side and on the, the, the agency owner side, I think there’s a lot of, um, understanding that everybody’s time is a big crunch. And so the question really is, what can we do to make your life easier? [00:43:00] Do you need a call?
[00:43:01] Andrew: Do you not need a call? What kind of reports do you need? Do you need, do you need, or do you just need to be able to show. C uh, going, going down and, and new customers going up. What, what do you need to do to be able to take it into your boss’s office, A CEO, uh, or maybe, you know, you’re the CEO. Like, what do you need to see?
[00:43:20] Andrew: Make it easier on yourself, and what are the things that you can eliminate? That aren’t really helping you. That’s a big, that’s always a big one too. Going through, I always have people go through and look at their calendar. One of the first things we do is go through, um, on a weekly basis and go through their calendar and rate everything that they’re doing on a zero to 10 scale.
[00:43:38] Andrew: 10 is, I love a zero, I hate this. And then essentially trying to eliminate anything that’s under a six.
[00:43:43] Lauren: Hmm.
[00:43:44] Andrew: So to eliminate or outsource anything that’s under six, because again, your, your goal is to try to free up what you’re uniquely good at and by you, and giving yourself more time to be able to think about that.
[00:43:55] Andrew: And so you have to eliminate all these little things that you’re doing. Like I was like, I’m still doing this [00:44:00] two weeks ago. I literally just. Gave my employee access to like Stripe billing for when like credit cards get denied. It’s like, why was I still doing this? Right? It’s like, I don’t need, you’re holding on to it.
[00:44:12] Andrew: She’s totally fine and incredibly competent and can handle this. Yeah. Um, you weren’t
[00:44:16] Lauren: ready. You weren’t ready.
[00:44:19] Andrew: Yeah. Well, it’s because I, I grew up, you know, this membership is, has grown a lot and honestly the, the honest answer is my parents were both teachers and we never had any money really. And so, uh.
[00:44:30] Andrew: Now that we have this thing that’s like a big or actual business, I, I’m, I have fear about protecting it a lot. Yeah. So,
[00:44:38] Ralph: yeah, I always tell my my employees and like my number one job is to safeguard against a, take the company down moment. Yep, totally. You know, we had an agreement this week with a huge brand and they put this, we have a limitation of liability clause and, and everyone’s just like, can you just sign it already?
[00:44:59] Ralph: Can you just [00:45:00] sign it? And I’m going back and forth with their legal, I’m doing it. Because it’s like guys, and I had to, I had to call, have a call. I’m like, this is my number one job. You like working here. I have to assume, so I have to protect that thing that you like working at. And I explained it and they’re like.
[00:45:21] Ralph: Oh, so if we do anything wrong, we are completely gonna pay all of their legal bills, which could be hundreds of millions of dollars potentially.
[00:45:31] Lauren: Pause, slow down before you go faster.
[00:45:34] Ralph: Yeah. So it’s stuff like that. And I, I’m not saying that I’m perfect with any of that. Like I’ve signed stuff with agreements.
[00:45:41] Ralph: I’m like, what the hell did I do? They like, I was just trying to go too fast and I’m like, Jesus, I gave that guy three months instead of one month. What the hell was I thinking? You know what I mean? So I think all business owners have to slow the hell down and that’s,
[00:45:56] Lauren: well, how hard is that, Ralph? When we have AI telling us that everything can be a [00:46:00] thousand and a half times faster, you’re like, sure.
[00:46:03] Lauren: Presented in with you things when Andrew was talking earlier about how you’d be vulnerable and what you’re afraid of. But then what do you say you’re admit that I’m afraid that I can’t keep up with all the technology innovations and then the clients are hiring me expecting to be that the case, like that’s not comfortable.
[00:46:15] Lauren: People are saying ’cause they’re expecting you, like you can use AI to enable efficiency in a lot of capacity. Yeah, but because we have. This demand, like I, like, I’ve personally seen this shift from when same day delivery happened with Amazon Prime. So I blame you. Bezos. Unrealistic.
[00:46:32] Ralph: Well, Bezos is the whipping boy for a lot of things that are wrong.
[00:46:35] Lauren: Well, he, he gave everyone prime and then added commercials. How dare he? But, uh, to the component of like, when same day shipping. Happened with Prime, everyone’s expectations of free shipping and same day delivery dramatically changed across lines of businesses. And I think that same expectation to be faster is a big [00:47:00] demand on anyone in any industry because of where AI is.
[00:47:04] Lauren: So it’s like, yeah, the importance of slowing down as a foundational principle. I mean, there’s like, you can get super religious on the seventh day rest, or you have Sabbath or whatever religion you follow, and I just think that. With everything is hard because you have, you have to stay on top of AI or you get eliminated.
[00:47:19] Andrew: Yeah, I think that’s true. I think a lot of it is figuring out, and I agree with you, you wanna be able to say this to a client. I think a lot of the answer is, is, is um. Is having a plan and communicating that plan to your client. If you’re the agency, here’s, here’s how we’re addressing this. We’re addressing this and in terms of, we have two people that are halftime dedicated to understanding how to improve efficiency.
[00:47:43] Andrew: And every week we’re gonna bring to you two different tools that we are testing and utilizing in your workflow and in the workflow with you, um, to make or in our ad buying process with you and our creative process with you to make this more efficient and make you. Uh, more money and here’s what we’re [00:48:00] doing.
[00:48:00] Andrew: If you have questions, I’m happy to direct you to our people that are running this project for us, um, because we know it’s important and it’s something we’re thinking about, but we also haven’t set our feet on exactly how and why. Right? Like you’re, you’re communicating the plan and the communicating that it’s in progress.
[00:48:16] Andrew: That’s the thing is that. It’s like being on a customer service line and there, and you have no idea where it stands. That’s the worst. So if the client doesn’t mind if, if you don’t have a plan, they, they wanna know that there’s a plan being worked on and that there’s a, like a destination in mind. That’s the big one.
[00:48:33] Ralph: It is. That’s why Uber is so, like I did Uber Eats last night. You track the little guys, he’s like coming towards you. It’s like I’m never gonna complain. ’cause I know where he is and all of a sudden he stops. I still find
[00:48:44] Lauren: that unrealistic expectations, like I don’t know how else to say, like telling no, it’s, Hey, admit that I have an additional service that’s not within scope.
[00:48:51] Lauren: But I have now two full-time dedicated employees that have part of their job now as usurped of what they were initially hired to do, to [00:49:00] be more efficient. Because of your wants and needs. I feel like that’s like it’s, I find it as a trap of people setting unrealistic expectations of like, if it makes sense.
[00:49:10] Lauren: Mm-hmm.
[00:49:11] Right.
[00:49:11] Lauren: Great. But I feel like people are gonna do it when it doesn’t make sense. And then going back to your earlier thing of like, do you need all that extra reporting? Is there, um, over delivery of fluff? Yeah. Is there stuff that isn’t actually what they want to, however, or hear or why? Huh.
[00:49:26] Ralph: However, Andrew said something really important that I want you to repeat ’cause I don’t want that to be lost in the mix.
[00:49:32] Ralph: You said, what can I, what piece of data or what KPI or what one thing can I do to help you? It, you know, improve the relationship with your boss, whatever your, what does your boss want? If you’re talking to a CMO or director of marketing or whatever it happens to be, it’s like, reiterate that statement because that’s the thing you should be showing the progress bar on and or the Uber driver getting to it.
[00:49:55] Ralph: Because that’s the destination that you ultimately want to get to. And then at that point in time, it’s really, it’s [00:50:00] about scaling. I have to assume. Say that again for people. ’cause I think that is an important one. I don’t
[00:50:06] Andrew: know. Yeah, you just said it. I mean, it’s just trying to identify like, what are the, you said it better though, trying to identify like what are the things that you are gonna, are, you know, that you can take in that make, that are gonna make you look good or are gonna help make your life easier or whatever.
[00:50:20] Andrew: Right. What are those pieces that you need to be able to show? And that could be to yourself too. What are the pieces you want? Is it we need to be making better, profitable revenue off the first customer? What you like. Identifying and understanding what that is, which of course goes back to like a huge thing, which a lot of folks don’t do, which is understanding the true business metrics about their partners or their business itself, right?
[00:50:40] Andrew: Like, what do you even need? I mean, we all got spoiled, I think in the early days of not necessarily having to deal with that because things were so profitable and now we’re not in that game. So we’ve had to go back and learn about the business side. But I
[00:50:51] Lauren: think Mark is trying to bring it back to your earlier conversation of, let me bring you back to the heyday of 2015 meta ads.
[00:50:56] Lauren: I know you had said it was important for what the Wall Street investors wanna hear, but I think it’s for [00:51:00] the. Small business owner, like we talked about, those HVAC people that have only one car, like they the, any money they spend on an agency or a vendor to do the ads is money. They’re not spending on ads.
[00:51:11] Ralph: Yeah. So last check they write too. Most cases
[00:51:15] Lauren: very I did. People still have checks?
[00:51:17] Ralph: Well, in theory, I, I wrote a check last week. I did actually write a check last week. I
[00:51:22] Lauren: think they’re gonna be a museum one day of like, Hey, did you know that there was postage and credit cards and checks,
[00:51:28] checkbook?
[00:51:29] Lauren: You didn’t pay with your face.
[00:51:30] Lauren: You paid with a physical object that if you lost it, you had to report it. And all these, anyways,
[00:51:35] Ralph: I know it’s true. It’s getting that way.
[00:51:38] Lauren: I feel like that’s going towards, going back to the heyday of what. Mark’s. Bigger vision is, is that let’s empower the business owner to focus on the business needs and focus on, like you said, developing new offers.
[00:51:50] Lauren: Hmm. Right. How do you penetrate new marketplaces? You had talked about like how you do horizontal sailing and introducing new offers, whether you spend time creating new offers or you spend time, um, [00:52:00] creating collateral that makes sense. After the click, so you can just say like. That staples, that was easy button.
[00:52:05] Lauren: I think that’s what Mark Zuckerberg wants to do for the smaller business owners because they, while if you’re not spending $200,000 a month on meta, you’re deemed small. There’s a lot more of small business owners than there are the major players, and I think that’s where he’s trying to say like, slow down on having to make all these other decisions about which copy, which creative, and all that, which button we’ll do it for you.
[00:52:28] Lauren: Focus on the part that is most important.
[00:52:31] Andrew: Yeah. I think going back to Lauren, to your earlier point about unrealistic expectations, just to comment on that, I think a lot of that goes to how do, how are we identifying and building a realistic plan with this person before we actually start to go? Mm-hmm. Or reestablishing that if they’ve been with you for a long time.
[00:52:51] Andrew: Because I do think that that is it. That is a problem for sure, and clients are used to. Having it, somebody come in, a [00:53:00] partner come in and having it be immediately better, and I think that that can happen, but it also cannot happen. It depends on what’s been established from the beginning in terms of those, so I appreciate you bringing that up.
[00:53:12] Andrew: Yeah,
[00:53:12] Lauren: I love that you used it. Depends. Everything always will come down to those two words. Yes. I
[00:53:17] Andrew: should not. Artificial intelligence, we, everybody says this in our industry. We should just print shirts that say, it
[00:53:21] Ralph: depends. It depends. It’s always, it depends. Well, we could get into a whole conversation about like KPIs, we call ’em NPIs here.
[00:53:28] Ralph: Like which ones are actually useful, which aren’t, and how to actually measure it and what like is a false expectation, a real expectation? We didn’t have time for that on today’s show, but today’s conversation, I think Hass been tremendously helpful for whether you’re a director of marketing, A CMO, you’re an agency owner, you’re a consultant, you’re doing this for another company.
[00:53:47] Ralph: A lot of this is mindset and taking that, taking that break every now and then to do it. Like my wife is saying, why do you wanna drive up to Maine to meet, like we have a, a lake house in Maine. Why do you wanna drive up there to meet with like the shades [00:54:00] guy? We can just give him the key and he can go in.
[00:54:02] Ralph: It’s like, I’m actually looking forward to the drive up there. ’cause I need that time. That’s why, that’s my thinking time. You know what I mean? So, so many
[00:54:10] Lauren: things we lost with working remotely. It’s
[00:54:12] Ralph: so true. It’s absolutely, I I actually missed the commute I used to have. It was 45 minutes at one point and then it turned into three hours at one point.
[00:54:19] Ralph: My commute is
[00:54:20] Lauren: down my flight of stairs and sometimes I hit traffic ’cause my dog is there.
[00:54:24] Ralph: I know this. Stumble over. So anyway, so this has been an, an amazing show here, Andrew. Like where can people connect with you? We’ve already hinted at it a couple of times, but where’s the best way to connect with
[00:54:35] Andrew: Andrew?
[00:54:35] Andrew: Yeah, definitely. I mean, if you have questions on anything, Andrew at Foxwell digital dot. Com. Um, and you can also, uh. Go to foxwell founders.com and you can apply and if you put in, um, you know, in the, the price, we ask what price would work for you. Um, and if you put in their perpetual traffic price, we’ll we’ll figure something out.
[00:54:53] Andrew: Ooh,
[00:54:55] Lauren: so ooh, we get something
[00:54:56] Andrew: out. So yeah, off. You can apply though, um, at [00:55:00] foxwell founders.com and we’ll look forward to, to having your application.
[00:55:03] Ralph: Uh, awesome. We will, uh, all those links will be in the show notes over@perpetualtraffic.com. Of course, if you wanna watch the video of this, you should be subscribed to our Perpetual Traffic YouTube channel that’s on perpetual traffic.com/youtube.
[00:55:16] Ralph: And of course, if you like this show, leave us a rating nerve view. Or both, or a comment over on Spotify helps us get this show out to, uh, more people like yourself and learn how to do this the right way, which is what this show is all about. So anyway, appreciate you doing it the right way, Andrew Foxwell, and for all the stuff you’re doing for the Tier 11 team.
[00:55:39] Ralph: Uh, thank you so much for coming on. Perpetual Traffic. Thank you on behalf of my amazing co-host, Lauren e Petrillo
[00:55:52] ta
[00:55:52] Ralph: Till next show, see ya.
[00:55:55] You’ve been listening to Perpetual [00:56:00] Traffic.
