The Bender Continues
Everyday bros talking about how life goes!
The Bender Continues
TBC Member Spotlight: Kenny Massa
Ever wondered how to transform a modest startup into a flourishing 4,000 square foot enterprise? Join us for an enlightening conversation with Ken Massa, the visionary founder of Mass Inbound, as he recounts his fascinating entrepreneurial journey. From the early days of working alongside his wife and a colleague in a cramped office to leading a thriving, data-driven marketing agency, Ken's story is a masterclass in celebrating wins, learning from setbacks, and the relentless pursuit of growth. You'll gain invaluable insights into the ever-evolving nature of success and the importance of perpetual learning and adaptation in the world of business.
Risk-taking is an essential part of any business, but how do you balance it with fostering a high-performing team? Ken shares his philosophy on learning from mistakes, the significance of Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for risk mitigation, and the value of maintaining a directory of past events to prepare for the future. Through strategies like daily huddles and quarterly deep-dive discussions, Ken reveals how he keeps his team aligned and continuously improving. His approach underscores the critical role of reducing employee turnover and nurturing a dynamic team environment to drive sustained success.
Leadership isn't just about giving orders; it's about empowering your team to think and act independently. Ken explains his approach to leadership evolution, emphasizing the importance of speaking last in meetings to encourage team members to share their thoughts freely. This method not only prevents hierarchical pressure but also fosters critical thinking and self-sufficiency. Ken also challenges the industry belief in niche specialization, advocating for a diversified advertising strategy that spans multiple platforms. By viewing marketing as a strategic investment, Ken's insights offer a compelling roadmap for both aspiring entrepreneurs and seasoned professionals looking to elevate their game.
Welcome to the Bender Continues podcast. Today's episode is particularly special as we are joined by someone we deeply respect and admire. The following is a conversation not only with a business owner of a rapidly growing company, but he's also a beloved friend, dedicated partner and soon-to-be father. Join us as we explore his unique journey throughout the world of entrepreneurship, growth and the balancing act of managing both business and personal life. Today, you will hear a real, authentic and organic testimony around challenges, failures and wins.
Jonny Strahl:Hello, I'm Ken Massa, founder of Mass Inbound, a dynamic, data-driven marketing agency with a singular focus. Inbound, a dynamic, data-driven marketing agency with a singular focus, empowering businesses to amplify their brands and expand their internet and online presence. Kenny's journey truly embodies the entrepreneurial journey. The end goal is always to help businesses thrive. How to help his customers see success. In our conversation today, we'll dive deep into the challenges he's faced during this journey, the lessons learned and the vulnerabilities tackled along this journey. This has not been always easy, but we really appreciate Kenny being here, sitting down and being vulnerable with us today.
Ryan Selimos:Mass Inbound's story is no ordinary success tale. Mass Inbound was born with a clear mission to revolutionize the digital marketing strategies for businesses. With technology and the business ecosystem always changing, it's a journey that truly embodies the essence of evolution and the spirit of adaptation.
Jonny Strahl:So, in today's episode, what you'll get if you're an aspiring entrepreneur seeking inspiration or a seasoned professional looking to brush up or refine your business acumen, join us as we unravel the insights and wisdom and to better yourself in the business world. Kenny, thanks for taking the time, man.
Kenny Massa:Guys, thank you for having me and hosting a podcast that's more cultivating around the business world. I mean, we've all had individual conversations about the subject and I've had conversations with many people about the subject, so I'm excited to and discuss more about, you know, subtopics within that world and everything that revolves around business and entrepreneurship and really what I do on a day-to-day.
Jonny Strahl:Love it. So I think it's simply put you've got three champions who, obviously everybody's mentioned, admire you and just the success and the journey, and we're looking forward to you sharing that for others too here. But I think the question or the thing we really want to bring up is one we're very proud of you, but to see you sitting in your office in this studio thinking about where you were five years ago to where you're at now, it's got to be pretty fulfilling and I know there's a huge journey for you future state. But just walk us through how prideful you are right now and what that means to you.
Kenny Massa:Yeah, it's something that you don't really um, I don't think you you really think about too much Um, and I think that that's anyone with a with a large competitive spirit. I think that, um, something that I specifically have built into the just the, my persona as being a competitor in many faces is like it's like it's never over, right, when you're doing something in any capacity and you have a good win. You'll learn that celebrating a win needs to be done in a very strategic fashion and you can experience those things as a young athlete, which I think is super important, which is definitely a different discussion. But I think that in the business world it encompasses very much similar aspects of celebrating wins or shortcomings that you have that you've understood, because you can look at it from either perspective, but not celebrating a shortcoming, but understanding that a shortcoming is something that you learn from and you don't dwell on because it can keep you down. But I think that you don't really look at it from an aspect of like, oh, I'm here, We've arrived. It's always a constant progression, of moving towards the next step, there's always that next thing and I don't think that you do finish. I think that it always is a constant level of scaling and growth and development. And even when you do exit a business, or even when you do have that point in time when it is time to kind of, let's say, push forward in a different fashion or change directions, I still don't think the game is over. I think you've just found a different direction or a different position on the team and you're moving forward with something else. But it's definitely interesting to see Three years ago I was looking at pictures recently because we just submitted some documents for one of the different types of awards that you can win in our industry and three years ago we were in a room our whole facility was a room probably smaller than the podcast studio with one of our team members that's still with us and myself and my wife and she would come in part time but Dylan and I would work from our office, which we literally sat like.
Kenny Massa:Our desks were like this far apart. I'd be taking sales calls, dylan would be cranking out you know website development projects are doing things on the back end and we sat literally this close and our whole room was probably 15 by 15. So now in a, in a 4,000 square foot facility with a studio that's the size of our entire uh, or that was the size of our entire office at one point. It's interesting to see the progression of growth uh, in business and in and of itself, and I still feel like I'm just getting started, like you. You there's so much to learn from different angles of business, whether it's the legal and HR aspects, the accounting and finance aspects, marketing, sales operations, just the nature of dealing with people in a different perspective. There's so much to learn that it does take years for that and there's fast tracks for that process. But yeah, I still feel like I'm just getting started, quite honestly.
Jonny Strahl:Love it. So you mentioned, obviously, industry, the technology, marketing, data. It's changing right. Being a business owner, you need to learn and understand there's going to be pivots. One quote that really resonates to a follow-up question I'd like to ask is your work is going to fill a large part of your life and the only way to truly be satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. Steve Jobs, for you, what fuels you and keeps you going as a business owner and you hinted at it's not always. Maybe quote unquote about the celebrations or the wins and this and that. So I'm curious if you could just walk us through, like what keeps you going?
Kenny Massa:Yeah, I think that milestones always change and, like goals for someone's personal development perspective, goals are really great to have, but they need to be strategically placed in front of you so that they can be reached after particular events add up and lead you to a quantifiable goal right that you can analyze Whether it's losing 10 pounds, whether it's adding $10,000 of revenue to your monthly income. Whatever it is, you have to have these goals. So there's I look at it in a few different perspectives. I think that short-term, you have to have goals, but long-term, when you're building a business, I think that there has to be a long-term goal that's very large and almost seems far out of reach and you've heard this from other, I would say, motivational speakers but it has to be very, very large, because now it's not just your personal goal, it's a goal for an organization with a team that's backing it, whether that's 10, 20, 50, 100 people. So this goal needs to be large enough to impact the lives of many, depending on the size of the team, because you're not only affecting that team, you're affecting the families of that team as well. So by having a team of 10, and each one of those people have families, you're affecting dozens of people. So the goal has to be large and I use that for a perspective, from a large perspective, because businesses just quantifiably generate more revenue than an individual does.
Kenny Massa:In many cases that's driven beyond. Just me is really what I look at. I've been involved with a family business that was driven to solely around one individual and I've unfortunately had to see the outcome of that when exiting a business that's driven based off of solely one person's actions, or when the owner is also, the operator is also, the HR is also, the attorney is also, the accountant is also. You know all of these things. I think there's a stage of that business. But it's important to get out of that stage as quickly as possible. For many case scenarios the goal originally should be, or in the early stages should be, to create something that drives further.
Kenny Massa:If I'm not here, that's still able to operate if I'm not here, and for every industry that can be different, right, I mean, if you have a company that delivers goods somewhere, all you need is someone that can run operations and run sales and you have to have a definitely a team behind that.
Kenny Massa:But it goes beyond just you in that capacity. So I, that was, that was my probably early on cycle, but that took me a long time just to learn and to realize that, and an unfortunate event to to realize that too, because I went through, you know, the exiting of a family-owned business. That was really difficult because it was too heavily weighted on one person's presence. So you know, to answer your question more directly, I think what drives me is to create something that's beyond just myself, for the betterment of my family and the people that I continue to work with, because, you know, regardless of if I'm here or not, the show goes on and it's, I think, that's an important thing to create from an organizational perspective, because there's too many businesses that fall short of that many businesses that fall short of that Interesting.
Jonny Strahl:So you mentioned obviously some shortcomings, obviously challenges and really learning moments. I'd be curious if you could share with us, outside of, obviously, the sole ownership and maybe someone having their hands in a little bit too much within an organization, especially as you're trying to drive right and build, how challenging was it for you while you were learning in this moment to be able to trust and have faith that you can maybe hand some priorities and responsibilities to others and, as a business owner, this is your rock, your baby, essentially something you built that again you want to further when you're no longer here, so I'd be curious was that a challenge, and what did you learn from that during that?
Kenny Massa:It's a really big challenge and it's something that you're going to deal with for many years. You know there's definitely a case scenario still today that I think that you know I face in that regard too. But it's a very difficult thing to deal with because, as you're building a business, in many cases the person that is building the business has the experience and the know-how and the the, the fortitude to continue to build all of those relationships with the clients but also implement and perform in the operations aspect. So you're doing everything as a business owner, you're wearing many hats and to hand over one of these hats to a person is difficult because I wouldn't say it's inevitable that something is going to happen. That's not perfect. But let's say you're operating at 100% and someone comes on your team. They don't fully understand at that point in time everything that you do, even if they're an industry expert. Your systems and your operations and your strategies from within that industry or from within your business, is unique and different, or it should be, and that still is a learning curve for an industry expert. So, because of these things, sometimes problems arise and sometimes operations hinder or something lacks. But I think and I heard this one time I don't remember from who, but it was from an entrepreneur or business owner in some perspective. They said that they had a team member that slipped up and it cost them tens of thousands of dollars, I believe it was, and at the time they could have easily said so-and-so, that's it. You costed the business, you know, too much of a downside, there's too much risk. That slip up, you know, had a larger negative effect than we're willing to deal with and that's it Like we're done right and they could have fired that individual or your other side.
Kenny Massa:Is it's likely that if the person that did slip up or had that fault, it's likely that if the person that did slip up or had that fault, if they understand the downside that they brought or the risk they brought to the company or the negative effects that fell kind of down the pipeline from their actions whether it's them doing something wrong or not doing something that they were supposed to do If they understand the capacity of that, it's likely that they will not do that again. But if I fire that person and I hire someone new, what's the likelihood that they're going to do that again and I'm going to deal with that case scenario again, just with a different individual. So how I look at it and I took that to heart because I think that that's a really great way of growing a business, because you understand people, you work together and I think it's important to to really know that your team is going to support you and the whole saying, like you live and learn, or you know just the, the way human, you know psychology works is they're probably not going to slip up in that capacity again. So to hand over a hat, it's difficult, but you have to be open-minded in understanding that things are going to happen and you have to use it in an aspect of a learning experience as much as possible.
Kenny Massa:And if, as the business owner, you can be more understanding and open-minded towards knowing that things aren't going to go 100% perfect all the time and it's likely that that never happens or it happens very minimally but at least the things that are causing the downside are being learned from your team and the experience is causing more credibility, more expertise and a higher level of qualification, then in my opinion, I think that's more valuable, because every single day we go up against businesses and I know that they didn't experience some type of event and I know that what's going to happen internally is going to cause a fluster, but if my team has already experienced that and I can bring up so many case scenarios in life and in business but if my team has already experienced that we're going to look smooth On the top of the water.
Kenny Massa:We're going to look like ducks floating around real nice, but on the bottom of water, flapping our little feet as fast as possible, but everything's going to look smooth and we're going to be operating perfectly fine because the experience that the team has cumulatively is more powerful. So I think that you have to understand that. Again, something I've seen many times is like the passing of the hats or the understanding that it's not possible to be everywhere in every capacity. If your business is scaling, it's important to understand these type of aspects and to understand that there is a level of experience, credibility, qualification, learning and value that comes from the flip side of the case scenario on the flip side of the case scenario.
James LaGamma:Now we've kind of gravitated towards this conversation of risk. Now, obviously, sales is a huge part of business, bringing in revenue and flourishing and growing but the ability to manage risk is also kind of its sister, its brother, if you will right. Also kind of its sister, its brother, if you will right. I'm a firm believer that managing risk and mitigating risk is actually a competitive advantage. You kind of talked about employees' input into managing risk, but what other aspects and steps do you take in strategies to mitigate potential risks?
Kenny Massa:I think risks are necessary in business. I think if you are not taking risks, you are falling behind, and there's literally some times where I feel that we sit flat for too long and I'm like we need to take a risk, like we need to shake shit up and we need to do something. And whether that's a financial investment that's going to lead to something, that's a new avenue that we're going to explore, a service that we're going to explore, or another niche or vertical that we're going to enter, which poses a risk of entering an industry that we might not be as familiar with, I think that we always have to have a level of risk in the business. To mitigate that risk, I think operating procedures standard operating procedures, or SOPs is what many people would refer them to are really important, and if you have SOPs put in place, they're going to allow you to manage risk a little bit more appropriately, because you can always fall back on this structure that entices fulfillment or performance in some fashion. And I think that's really important, because I've seen too many times that SOPs aren't put in place and I would say that's probably something that is needed.
Kenny Massa:Use SOPs. We document a lot of stuff as well to help mitigate risk. So documentation of processes or events. Right, if something happens, document that so that the next time that situation arises again you know exactly what to reflect on. So although that's kind of like an SOP, it's almost like a, a reflection document that it says like what should I do? Like an FAQ it's like a debrief.
Kenny Massa:Exactly what should I do in this circumstance? So these things like, and just by the sheer time commitment that you're in business, just by being in business and being there and showing up, you're going to experience things. And there's things all the time, daily, that pop up where I'm like, hmm, how should we look at this? Like shit, this popped up. Let me think about how we could go about this.
Kenny Massa:There's alternative ways to certain situations, there's very direct ways to certain situations. But building that kind of directory of experiences increases the threshold of what your team could be, uh, could be doing and what your team knows. And I think what's really important about that is is having team members longer. So, um, by keeping team members and reducing the attrition of internal team members, it allows for your team to embody a larger element of understanding in synergy, because there's a lot of times where departments interact with one another. So I think, if I can say two things that could help manage risk or might agate risk in some fashion, it would be ensuring that team members are happy, satisfied and stay longer and reducing turnover. And two, ensuring that each department has standard operating procedures along with a directory of events that happen, that may arise at any point in time.
Kenny Massa:And by doing that, I think you can alleviate a decent amount of risk at any point in time. And by doing that, I think you can alleviate a decent amount of risk.
Ryan Selimos:First start like just, I've been very quiet, which is unusual. It's just I love this conversation. Number one I want to go back to that duck thing you talked about with the legs flapping. Yeah, I was in a leadership course and they called it. That was my biggest takeaway from the leadership course.
Ryan Selimos:Takeaway from the leadership course they called it being a swan, because the swan is so graceful as they move across the water. But what you don't let other people see is just how crazy it can be underneath. But it's all about kind of that Aurora, that presence that you've got everything under control, no matter what is going on. Yeah, um, so I just I love that. Now you talked about with mitigating risk and you really leaned into with your team members and having them long term, because you've experienced those different things and your team can be prepared for that. My question for you is how are you building, like, what's your strategy to building a high performing team? You've had them there for some time, but how are you ensuring that their growth to you know they're able to take more things off your plate and then they're able to be that high performing team that you're envisioned as they stay with you with longer, more tenure?
Kenny Massa:Yeah, that's a good question and it's something that's taken years for me to to kind of continue to evaluate. I don't, I wouldn't say I'm like the, the number one person at this right there's. I'm not any by nature. I'm not an HR person Like um, I'm not an by nature. I'm not an HR person like. I'm a very much more figured out type of person. You know, I'd rather you come to me, you know, and work, or with a, with a solution of something of some sort, and just kind of get a nod of agreeance towards that direction. But there's a couple of different case scenarios and I'll bring up something that I heard recently that was enlightening, that I did like that I've been implementing as well.
Kenny Massa:But we do a couple of things on a daily basis. We don't have a super big team. We don't have 100 people. There's a team of 10. So, or you know, between and it floats depending on our, our time and year and things like that so anywhere from eight to 12 is where we sit in most, most part, um, but what I would say is ensuring that the departments meet together. So we do morning huddles on Monday through Friday every morning. So there'll be and, depending on your team. It'll be with a different group of individuals, um so morning huddles. That's an important thing because I think it allows people to be aligned from the start of their day and in every micro-oriented 24-hour period In many cases we do deeper team meetings. So a team meeting will happen within departments that allows for us to sit together for longer periods of time, particularly 45 to 60 minutes. And in those meetings again, they're not that large, they're like you know, they're not with the whole company, they're not as large. I would say kind of a more Jeff Bezos style method where it's like everybody should be able to eat a pizza in that room together and that's more deep diving into more fulfillment and operation side of things from a perspective of that individual team.
Kenny Massa:I then also meet with the management side of that any account managers or website operations manager to understand what's happening from a high level perspective of that department per se. So that's happening on a weekly basis. You have daily meetings, you have weekly meetings. We do a monthly deep dive as well from a company-wide perspective and then we'll do a quarterly company-wide meeting with everybody and that's like. That quarterly meeting is like basically a half a day. We get lunch like we do a whole ordeal and I really do ask, ask, like every single person has time to discuss like what are they seeing in their department? How are they evaluating the processes that they're implementing into their situations? Because every sop is unique in that, in that department, and there's unique case scenarios that, for instance, the production studio would deal with, where the advertising side or the website development side maybe wouldn't, because it just doesn't relate to that department. So that's a time for them to sit down and explain that.
Kenny Massa:The thing I like about that situation is it's very much more like a who, where, when, why, how, who are you working with? How are you dealing with these situations? What are your top needs, or what are the things that we can assist with, or what are the things that we are assisting with the most, or what are you seeing from a top level perspective? Where are you focusing your attention the most? Because each department has kind of like subcategories that they may focus on, depending on different types of projects. And then the last one where it's more for me than anybody else, is like how can I help? Do you feel like you have the resources that you need to be able to perform, and do you feel that? How do you feel about basically the situations that you're put in?
Kenny Massa:And you know, for the most part it's just an open discussion aspect. We'll talk about company-wide changes, changing of software, changing of processes that affect more than one people. But it's a great way to have inter-department communication where we are allowed to discuss how things flow from one department to another and get everybody in a room and I will do that until it just is not feasible and get everybody in a room, and I will do that until it just is not feasible, and maybe we'll do it in clusters after you know, just doing it from a larger department perspective as we continue to see growth. But I think I really liked that meeting because I liked the how. For me it's important, but, but but I there's just a couple of different meetings that we have there. So to highlight daily meetings, weekly meetings, monthly meetings, quarterly meetings, we do all of them and that helps a lot. Continue to build just a more thorough understanding from that perspective.
Ryan Selimos:You mentioned Bezos kind of in that breakdown. In that breakdown and I recall I think you changed your approach to a scenario where you wanted to be instead of the first person to kind of set the tone. You kind of changed more to being the last person to speak because you didn't want to change your employees' opinions right. So you're allowing them, with this additional tenure, with this additional experience, to really share their thoughts and feelings on a matter before you jump in with yours and get the that true feedback. So I believe it was a recent change in approach. Just how has that been.
Kenny Massa:I like it a lot because I think that it's a transfer of of role, um hierarchy, right, like I don't want to come off as the person that tells you what to do every day. Like that's not fun in any capacity, that's not a good work environment If someone's just like you have to do this, this, this, this right. But if, if I talk less and everything is stated already and everybody knows everything, then great, everyone's aware. So I basically, by having me talk at the end, it does two things One, that allows me to see if I even need to bring up the thing that I'm going to bring up, because it's likely that someone else is going to bring it up because they're aware. If they're aware, I don't need to bring it up, they know.
Kenny Massa:And that helps alleviate the issue that I just talked about, where I feel like I'm dictating more than asking or allowing for someone to have a voice in the company. So I like that. And then two I think it doesn't change anybody's mind about something and I think that I can then provide my insight. And I really like asking, and I try to do this without sounding mean, but it's also like, well, what would you do in this circumstance, not like trying to throw it at them, but like what would you do? Like that's the way that you're going to be able to learn more, because there are case scenarios where I'm in a meeting or I'm doing something and I'm not around, or, you know, stuff just pops up and arises.
Kenny Massa:So I want to know that you have the ability to um, think through these processes in your own capacity. And I don't, I don't want to be your crutch. I want you as an, as a team member, I want you to be able to do that yourself. So I do like that. I'm going to continue to do that. I liked it a lot, um, because I think it's a, it's a transfer of the ownership of tasks and priorities and, um, just critical thinking.
Ryan Selimos:What you just said right there about being someone's crutch. I had a moment like that in my career where, in the same sense I was being I was an accident, accidental diminisher, because I was spoon feeding the answers to I was this person was struggling and you're trying to help them grow and you're trying to get them on the right path, but you're handing them the answers. So, in reality, you're not allowing them to be self-sufficient, for when you're not available, you're, you're being a crutch more than allowing them to grow. So a hundred percent, you know, like you said, you're not trying to be the bad guy, but what would you do? It's you want to understand their thought process so that you can see how close or far they are and then help them get you know if they need to get closer to the mark. How do we get them on that path?
Kenny Massa:So that's awesome Because there's a case scenario that you're not going to be there to help right or like, maybe in your ascension path, you don't want to be in that role forever and you're not going to be in that role forever, but it's important that your team could continue to perform without your presence on a minute-by-minute basis.
Kenny Massa:And then there's also case scenarios where, like, let's say and it's different in every business, but let's say, a client reaches out to that individual directly. I want that individual to be able to perform and understand the circumstance, to be able to problem solve in their own capacity without needing to call anybody else. And of course there's levels of this right, there's circumstances that there's many different angles and there's circumstances that may arise that create variations of this. But if it's a simple problem that in and of itself is an important aspect where it's like, if you're that point of contact and the client thinks that you're the person to go to for this, then and you really are the person to go to for this, then you should be able to solve that. And I think that kind of does that it reduces the crutch because, especially with some tasks, like some things are so minimal or so easy to solve. But you know, it takes experience and a process to learn it.
Ryan Selimos:And that's also how you move away from that owner-operator model. Yeah, which is your end goal?
Kenny Massa:Yeah, I'm there for those circumstances, like I've I just again going back to, I think, james's question. Before, as you show up and as you arrive and you're here and you're playing the game, you go through these processes and you see things like I, you know, web and certain industries have, I would say, what you would consider a more straightforward process. Right, like, if you look at website development, website development is a very thorough process that, if you can put together a plan of action with standard operating procedures and a very fluid pipeline of knowing what happens from the point of sale to the end of fulfillment, in many cases you don't fall out of the direct line of the process and there are certain circumstances with very large projects, but they're the unique projects and that's going to happen in any business. But then you have certain circumstances in advertising where the direct line is easier to deviate than many others.
Jonny Strahl:So, like, every department is different, every business is different and processes and your flexibility and driving back to your ordinary plan of action is going to be easier or more difficult in certain circumstances you've uh, you've referenced a lot of points where you've given credit to the people that you surround yourself around, um, which I think is awesome, and I think any business owner, any entrepreneur, finds out very quickly.
Jonny Strahl:It's about the people around you. Um, I know we all love our boy, gary vannachuk, but one thing that he's always said and preaches is like, hey, company culture is the backbone around success, right? And if you have that high-performing team, great things will happen. To have others come in and almost fail forward and learn from it and then take ownership and have the opportunity to continue and figure it out and not be that individual where you are almost getting mad at them or calling them out or threatening them, like you said earlier, for your organization and this fires me up because it's on the topic of the question you asked earlier around the culture and the people Like, what is your employee value proposition? Like, why do individuals want to come to work for a company that's thriving, that is ahead and fostering within innovation? What should people expect and what do they get out of it? And you've mentioned a lot of things, but I'd be curious what that is in this organization.
Kenny Massa:In this organization. It's going to be a little bit more unique to the industry that we're in, but every company is going to be different for their value that's being added within their industry and at the level that they serve For Mass Inbound specifically, though, there's a couple of things that I think about. One it's very common. You have different. Let's take a step back real quick. You have different types of agencies. You have premier agencies, which you just mentioned, like Gary Vaynerchuk, right? Premier agency is going to be like Ogilvy or, you know, maybe Vayner Media or any of the. There's big, big agencies that work with Fortune 500 companies or something of that sort. Then you have a tier that's lower than that and it continues to go down. It can go all the way down to the individual themselves. That's literally like they're doing search engine optimization from their house and it's just them. They're a solopreneur and that's okay. In many cases they're very experienced and they're knowledgeable about the, the subject matter.
Kenny Massa:The one thing that I have noticed in the advertising world that I do not agree with in many cases is that you have to create an if you want to create an agency that is um achieving success by by some standard, whoever's standards. These were when this whole idea came about, that you need to be good at one thing and you need to work within one industry. For instance, you need to be very good at Facebook advertising, which would also be Instagram advertising, facebook and Instagram. Facebook owns Instagram, but you need to be very good at Facebook advertising and you need to serve one specific niche. Let's say that niche was. It can be anything like, let's say, car dealerships. So the model that they say is you need to be very good at Facebook advertising and you need to be very good at Facebook advertising specifically for car dealerships. And they say that with that alignment that you'll have more success. I don't agree with that. I don't agree with that in a lot of capacities, but mostly the reason why I don't think that I agree with that is because I do not think that you are providing the best service that you can provide to the client. I don't think that you make quality recommendations as an advertising professional to the business that you're working with, because I think you're limited in your understanding and your belief in the angle to serve them best.
Kenny Massa:For instance, there is a point of diminishing return for advertising with Facebook advertising on Instagram and Facebook. What is that diminishing return? It depends on every industry. It could be a hundred thousand dollars a month, it could be five million dollars a month, who knows? But what do you do with your advertising strategy? When you hit the point where you think that you're hitting a peak of performance on that platform, you diversify your advertising strategy. You go from Facebook to Google, to OTT, ctv streaming, to podcast advertising, to YouTube advertising. There's so many other ways that you can implement advertising practices into the palm of the consumer's hand these days.
Kenny Massa:But the is if all I do is Facebook and Instagram advertising for car dealerships and they come to me and they say well, you know, I think we're doing really good. Our cost per accusation is XYZ. We're bringing in, you know, a return on investment of XYZ or, if it's a company that's e-commerce based, it might be a ROAS, which is return on ad spend of XY Y Z and you don't have the ability to diversify. Do you think you're going to say, well, I can't serve you at the best of my capability because I don't know how to serve you and to help you diversify, but I think that you should go to another agency that does the most. Genuine person will do that, but it's hard to find and my problem with that is that I think that the person that is good at Facebook advertising and nothing against this person or these types of agencies, but I just hope that they make the quality recommendation right to the organization to say you should bring in another subject matter expert that's very good at something that I'm not, or you should become very good as an agency to understand the diversification of advertising as a whole, because when you implement these strategies, you can adjust budget based off of seasonality, trends, based off of cyclical events, based off of all of these different things that happen in the world. That's going to help the company best perform, because there's certain times a year that social media might perform better than search engines, that might perform better than streaming platforms.
Kenny Massa:But if you can't provide these diversified solutions, you're not going to recommend them because you just don't know. You don't know. What you don't know is what I'm trying to get at. The value that we bring as Mass Inbound is that we incorporate a program that involves social media advertising, search engine advertising, ott and basically streaming advertising, whether it's audio-based or TV-based, basically, which you would see, like Hulu and Peacock and all these other streaming-based platforms, and then also we have the ability to tap into broadcast, which is traditional TV and radio as a whole too. So we offer a diversified plan that allows us to make the best recommendation to a company based off of where their consumers are at a particular point in time that's going to best provide them with a solution.
Kenny Massa:To do that, today you have to work at a premier agency. As we continue to scale, you're able to enter a company that has the knowledge and experience to diversify the marketing plan of the advertising structure for a clientele, but you're able to do it where there's a more thorough, I would say, process to ascension in the company. Right, you're entering the early stages of an organization. You're not working with a publicly traded advertising agency that's owned by a large conglomerate. You're working with a smaller agency that's growing at a fast rate and your point of growth could be in there early, almost like working with a startup in some capacity. Right, for some of the largest companies that we've heard of today, you can enter in an earlier fashion and your point of growth is larger. So I think that's really important for someone to understand. You're getting a large basis of knowledge and experience and a high value from team members.
Kenny Massa:Now, to point out, we have experts in every single one of these fields. That's how we're able to do that. We're able to bring in a person who just focuses on production and just focuses on creative development, and then we have a completely different person who just focuses on meta products Facebook and Instagram, who's an expert at launching, executing, building, managing Facebook and Instagram ads. A completely different person who manages Google and YouTube products. So the subject matter expert is here and we're working in synergy to work together to build the best advertising program for a company, no matter what industry you're in.
Kenny Massa:So now are we more heavily weighted in other industries than in some industries and others?
Kenny Massa:Of course, that is going to happen for a lot of agencies. But yeah, I think that the value that we bring to the, to anybody that's interested in entering the advertising world, is very, very unique, and it's a great point in time to become a part of that process. And it's a great point in time to become a part of that process. And then, of course, on top of that, the company morale that we have here is really important. Russell Branson said something, I think a couple of years ago or whatnot, that as an owner or as someone that's higher in the C-level position, I think that you have two jobs that are really important One, putting the right butts in the right seats and two, providing those people in those seats with the most resources or the best resources to be able to perform is really important, so I focus on that. Like, the resources and the access to things that you can get here are more grand than you know, let's say, doing it yourself or working at many other agencies.
Kenny Massa:So I'm very big in providing and maximizing the amount of resources that every department has to be able to perform at a high level. So, yeah, um, yeah, I I really love building a team and I think that we offer a really unique experience in the advertising world, uh, with the studio and with everything else that we do. So there's there's many things that I think I can continue to talk about. I think I rambled on here for a couple of minutes, but I'm passionate about the value we bring to the world.
James LaGamma:Funny enough.
James LaGamma:I kind of want to dive a little bit deeper into this I want to give you a scenario though I don't want to give you a direct question where you can kind of just go ramble on. I want to give you a scenario where, okay, you've got this new client that's interested. It's in an industry that you guys have not touched yet. I don't know if you have one, maybe top of hand, that you can think of that maybe you don't work on or have, maybe it's a luxury product, maybe it's healthcare related, I don't know. But in this scenario, you've got this new, this new client. What are the steps that you take to understand their brand and understand their target audience and then implement your strategies to best suit them as a solution and help build their company and grow?
Kenny Massa:Yeah, Great question. So, uh of, I have a standard operating procedure for this.
Ryan Selimos:Aha there you go see.
Kenny Massa:So this would fall into the advertising department. First thing. First we need to understand like what is the company that we're working with based on their budget? What avenue of marketing are we executing? Right, if they have a small budget or a smaller budget and it's on a smaller scale, maybe we're only implementing Facebook advertising or Instagram advertising, but we're not able to diversify quite yet. We'll get there, but not quite yet. So it'll depend on what team members and what departments are involved.
Kenny Massa:But nonetheless, the first thing that we do is we bring in that company and they go through an onboarding phase internally. Well, we send them an onboarding form. That onboarding form asks them any questions that are based off of their brand and their business. What is their unique value proposition? How do we understand their business? As much as they know their business? And it's like at that point in time, they know their business more than anybody. It's their business, and that might come from a marketing manager, that might come from a CEO, a CMO. We've had many circumstances. There's a handful of different people who could fulfill that onboarding document for us, and there's 20, 30, 40 questions in there, depending on the industries. Some industries are longer than others. Some industries are longer than others, but it helps us understand their brand, their values, their mission statement, their team structure. It helps us understand their branding, what they've done in the past, where they've been, where they're looking to go, where they are looking at direct competitors. So it focuses on their business, getting the picture, getting the picture exactly and as they're doing that, what we're doing is we're doing basically a market analysis and in that market analysis, we look at their business and we use a variety of tools that allow us to see this from different angles.
Kenny Massa:First, we'll look at their business, specifically their assets. So we'll look at their website. We'll look at their to analyze the performance of their site. We'll look at their website. We'll look at their to analyze the performance of their site. We'll look at their social media assets, their search engine assets, anything that we can analyze and dive deeper in. Of course, the more history they have and the more experience that they have from, let's say, working with in the advertising world a little bit more tedious of a process because we have to dive deeper into platforms, depending on if they've had experience. If they're just starting off, they don't have certain assets, so we obviously can't dive deeper into that and analyze.
Kenny Massa:So we'll do an analysis on the company from a more in-depth perspective of advertising, and then what we'll do is we'll look at it from an angle of market share and an aspect of competitors. Are they dealing with a local competitor base or a national competition base? And we'll analyze the leading competitors for those spaces. So when we do that, we can see if they have been advertising, what type of market share are they dealing with, based off of their advertising spend? On their strategy, are they reaching or are they maximizing the potential reach of putting their products or services in front of the market? That's, seeking that as a whole, and is it a highly competitive environment or is it a light competitive environment? And in that, are they aligned with the competitors? Are they creating marketing practices that are more enticing to the population?
Kenny Massa:Every industry is different and every business within an industry has their unique value proposition for that. So there's so many different things that happen, but by doing these two processes in synergy, we then come back, usually anywhere around a week later. We'll come back to the table and internally we'll sit together. Okay, here's what the business said about themselves, here's what we saw in the market research, and this is basically what we've, what we put together and sit down in a room with everybody that's going to be involved in that circumstance. So our, our structure is a little bit different. Some agencies you'll have an account manager and that account manager does basically everything Google advertising, landing page development, crm practices basically everything.
Kenny Massa:Google advertising, landing page development, crm practices, execution and management of ads, creative development we bring in a professional that's or an expert, a team expert that's basically a performer within each of those fields. So if we had a client that was running a more diversified plan of marketing, we'd bring in a creative person who's the person that's going to be in charge of creative development. We would bring in an account manager who's a liaison between our client's business and our business. So when they have something in need, we have someone that goes right to the team and ensures that all the pieces of the puzzle are aligning and being put together in a timely fashion, with proper execution and in alignment with the expectations of the client that we're working with. We'll have a meta product specialist that focuses on the management, build out and execution of the Facebook and Instagram ads. A Google product specialist that will do the same in the Google and YouTube world, potentially a streaming professional that is looking at things on the streaming sense, whether it's audio or video. And then we'll bring in a web developer as well that ensures that the practices for the landing page development or a website functionality, depending on the industry and the circumstance is to par right. The big picture is to ensure synergy between all of these things. Right, if something that you're advertising on Facebook is not correctly illustrated on your website, it's going to cause I would say it doesn't cause frustration for the consumer, but it does cause a lack of synergy and basically, a lack in performance. You will ensure higher performance with more synergy within the program. So we're really crossing our T's and dotting all of our I's.
Kenny Massa:This here this practice as a whole is unique and very missed by a lot of agencies as you go through that tiered system from premier agency to smaller structures, because it's a lot going on, there's so much stuff that is involved with it.
Kenny Massa:So that's what we would do to understand the business itself, the market that we're dealing with, to understand where we are, and then in the middle is how is the business that we're working with performing within that market that we just analyzed and then we put together a campaign. We basically provide recommendations. We have another call to finalize that process. We'll have a discovery call with the client say hey, this is our findings, this is what we've looked at, and we cultivate a plan to move forward to beat that and to basically create new standards and break through new heights for that client by executing the marketing practices that we feel is necessary. So it's a tedious process in the beginning to really execute this strategy and it takes anywhere from seven to 14 days to do all that. It's pretty heavy in the beginning but moving forward our team is more aligned, the client is more aligned, we're all in synergy with the business itself and then also the market, and it just allows for better performance altogether.
James LaGamma:That makes a lot of sense. Makes a lot of sense.
Kenny Massa:Yeah, so it's a lot goes into it, right, right.
James LaGamma:So it doesn't seem like a simple SOP it's not but it's years of cultivating that, that trial and error, what's worked, what hasn't worked, and your team keeps getting into these other industries. It now helps them grow, think of different angles, of attacking them right, and it's like you said earlier, with your employees like it. Just it makes a stronger company.
Kenny Massa:Exactly, and you have to also think that this is a team of potentially five, six people that are working on the account when you hire, like oh yeah, you're bringing a whole force.
James LaGamma:Yeah, we're bringing a whole team, the company gets to see what they're getting. Yeah, I mean, it's a lot of value.
Kenny Massa:Just in team member overhead as a whole, it's a lot of money, right, but not even bringing in the experience, the credibility, the tools, the resources that we have. It's a completely different level than many cases. So, yeah, it's unique, but it's a really great way to ensure performance and to ensure that the marketing program that's being put in place is effective, is measured right, because what you do not measure, you cannot grow and is powerful, and it's going to beat the marketing standards that they've had in the past and it's going to beat the marketing practices that are being implemented by their competitors to ensure that you win. And that's really we're in alignment with all of our clients, like we want to win.
Kenny Massa:And that's our goal, our goal for you is the same goal for them, which is we want to win, we want to basically drive revenue further and we want to ensure that everything that we're doing is being analyzed in a strategic manner, measured in a strategic format, and I mean the documents that I have have endless documents that can allow us to analyze this.
Kenny Massa:We have marketing logistics dashboards that we roll out that analyze from a month to month or week by week performance to see where revenues are, analyze cyclical trends. So the next year, when you work with us, we know everything that's going to happen in the most case, right Like you can have an event like COVID or something that throws a turn in things, but for many businesses, but all things remain the same we can ensure cyclical trends. Events that are happening in the world that may pertain to your industry are all being taken advantage of holidays, sales events, black friday, different things like that, right, all of these things are being taken advantage of to maximize the potential revenue that you can make and to ensure that your company is scaling from year to year which ends up keeping you with some higher client retention we've had clients for five, six years since we've been since they're not having to bounce around and trying to change to different agencies and stuff.
James LaGamma:They build that trust. Yeah, and the more we learn together, the since we're not having to bounce around and trying to change to different agencies and stuff that they, they, they build that trust.
Kenny Massa:Yeah, and the more we learn together, the more we have that history and that data. Right, data is really important. The more we have that data, it's going to benefit the both of us.
James LaGamma:Yeah, exactly.
Kenny Massa:Yeah.
Jonny Strahl:So wealth of knowledge right Over the years.
James LaGamma:So wealth and knowledge. So, wealth and knowledge.
Ryan Selimos:It to wealth and knowledge, to wealth and knowledge.
Jonny Strahl:It's a lot of coffee.
Ryan Selimos:Knowledge isn't the coffee.
Jonny Strahl:So you mentioned lots of coffee. Obviously, you've been doing this for quite some time. The knowledge that you've gained has been trials and tribulations. Yeah, walk us through just the journey of sacrifice and the journey of loneliness, and then, on the flip side, the power of mentorship and how that's helped you within this journey.
Kenny Massa:I won't dwell too long on the sacrifice, and it's no difficult task to find endless content about the difficulties that entrepreneurship brings to someone's life Like you can go on YouTube and find seven billion videos on that. And the one thing that I will point out is ensure and manage and be aware of what is self-inflicted and what is not self-inflicted, and what I mean by that is, if you have any ability to change that, do it. Like, don't sit there and think that entrepreneurship is this hard thing because everybody says it's hard, it's fucking hard. It's hard because you're not following a plan of directions that someone else is giving you. It's hard because the unexpected events is like a punch in the face. Like a punch in the face. It's hard because there's a psychological and a mental and physical element to building something that's bigger than you.
Kenny Massa:We know it's hard, but do something about it and don't dwell in that and allow the self-inflicted aspect of living that day to day hinder your, your performance and hinder your life. So that's what I focus on and I, I, I just say that, like everything I just said is what I say to myself, like basically, like hey, don't be a bitch, this is hard. You know it's hard, do something about it and then if you feel like, oh, this is really hard, go ahead and work out like go run for three miles. You know and we've. We have endless episodes where we've talked about those things that you do in hard times. Like I'm just saying what I feel and why, what I think about.
James LaGamma:So the mirror is losing. You look in that mirror and you're telling that mirror what's up.
Kenny Massa:And don's up. There's definitely times where I'm like, fuck, of course it happens and it's going to happen, but you can't let it dwell on you. And then, as you build a bigger program and I mean again, I haven't built the biggest team or the biggest company, there's companies that are a lot bigger and it happens in stages, but if I let something affect me, it's going to affect my whole team and I cannot allow that to happen. So there's definitely circumstances where I'm like you know, this is this is a difficult one to think about, but I've realized, like you have to, you know, just find your space, um, and again, don't allow it to be self-inflicted Like you have to manage your emotions and your level of awareness to a different level than you ever have. And more experience, more things that you do, builds more scars, builds more awareness, builds more experience, experience. And you just take it differently and differently, like something that I would have freaked out about, like three years ago. Today I'm like all right, like whatever it's normal day on the job yeah, like okay.
Kenny Massa:And it's funny because I see sometimes like the team members like they'll, they'll get like all bent out of shape and I'm like just do this, like you're good like oh okay, but, like you know, just don't, don't think about it like, don't allow it to be self-inflicted, so, um, the loneliness is gonna happen, and I think that loneliness only happens because you're not able to work with someone that understands you. You're doing something. In most cases that someone you just can't go to, someone you don't have a boss Like you are the boss and you can't go to a client, right, because it's like, well, fuck, the client's paying you to do something and then you can't, you know, and they don't even know how to do it. So, like that's not a thing. But as you grow, that's why mentorship comes in, because in many cases it's likely that you're you're not in a business that no one else has ever been in, right, there's other agencies. There's other agencies that are larger. There's other car dealerships, there's other car dealerships that are larger. There's other car dealerships, there's other car dealerships that are larger.
Kenny Massa:So the case scenario with mentorship is just finding someone who has synergy and understanding your industry or the practices that you're implementing let's say, advertising and is experienced at that particular industry or has been in the business, has exited a similar business.
Kenny Massa:And that's what mentorship is just finding someone that, or a group of people that are likely to understand your pathway, whether that just be as broad as entrepreneurship, which I am definitely involved in, those types of groups and those masterminds they're more general and then you have your kind of like deeper layer of that which is now advertising professionals and having your more select group of people which might be a mentor. The mentor might be more aligned with your lifestyle, entrepreneurship, and then your industry advertising. So I think there's levels that and and you can categorize that as a whole, at first, for me, when I didn't, when I didn't have a lot of money to spend on community support or like masterminds or events or summits or members or mentorships or communities, I would just go to like panera on like a thursday at like 7 a talk to people.
Kenny Massa:Um, like I did that for a long time. Um, and you can find me, go on meetup and you can find that shit all day. Um, and I did that for a long time until I outgrew it, and then that's your goal is, like, I am in this group today. How do I grow beyond this group? And I think that's where people stay too long. They get comfortable in that group and I watch this so carefully.
Kenny Massa:I will go into groups. I'll be there until I feel that I need a different level of experience, a different level of qualification, a different level of you know, not be. You can't be the smartest person in that room, right? So if you ever feel like you get to that you got to not be, you can't be the smartest person in that room, right? So if you ever feel like you get to that you got to go to a new room, or whether you're looking and evaluating that qualifier as finances, if you're the, if you're looking at, okay, I'm in this community because people are more wealthy than me, and then you're, you get to that level of wealth, well, you need to then go to a new room, like it. Just you need to continue to escalate, that People stay in that room too long, and that's really important. Again, just a little different of a level of self-infliction, but being self-inflicted in the state of your level of performance meets your mental capacity towards understanding where that performance lies and you need to continue to scale that in parallel with each other.
Kenny Massa:And we've all heard, the five people you spend your time with is most likely what you cultivate in your life and in your environment, and I think that there's truth to that in some capacity. But you know there's also not truths in that as well. I think it just depends on what you're getting out of that community of five people and what you're seeking at that point in time, because if you're seeking relationships and you're seeking wealth, those groups might be totally different. Or you're seeking relationships and you're seeking wealth, those groups might be totally different. Or you're seeking, let's say, sobriety, and in that capacity the group that you're with is going to be different than the group that you're spending time with, for who knows wealth or business or entrepreneurship. So it's just what you're seeking in your personal life in that current state, in that phase that you're in.
Kenny Massa:Um, yeah, I can, I can go on about that all day. But basically you know, stay on top of your stuff. Don't let self-inflicted thoughts or processes keep you in a place. Everybody has dealt with it like entrepreneurship is hard, that's it. If you don't want it to be hard, go get a job somewhere and do something else like and that's completely fine but yeah, I don't ever think about that ever appreciate you sharing that and I could see that and obviously, just as your, your friend here, us three, like we've seen that journey, um.
Jonny Strahl:So, in closing, um, obviously you've mentioned investing in your people, investing in've mentioned investing in your people, investing in your culture, investing in your organization, mitigating risk, making money, saving money. What could you share with us and the viewers out there Just looking ahead, what are your biggest aspirations? Future state for Mass Inbound, tying it into. If a viewer's out there watching like, what can you be doing as a better business person, entrepreneur, somebody's trying to get better business acumen, just trying to grow, you just tie that all in um, so as from a business perspective, uh, I think people are afraid of taking risk in some sense, and and there's a lot of risk in marketing.
Kenny Massa:Marketing could be similar to like investing right. When you invest your money, let's say, in any type of equities stocks, for example. Let's say you have a portfolio that you're investing into, whether it's managed or not. The example would be that you're investing into something right and no one whether it's a managed portfolio or it's you managing it yourself. Theoretically, no one without insider trading would know where that's going to go right, like no one knows. If I invest into Apple today, that stock is going to be at X point in 30 days. There's just no way for you to know that. Right? That's the theory of investing. It's similar in marketing right, you can align strategies and practices with the best professionals in the world to ensure that you're going to have the most likelihood of performance, which is basically what you're doing when you're investing your money with any type of big broker, big investor, any type of big bank, anything of that sense. What you're doing is you're saying that their experience, or credibility, their knowledge, your experience is so good that at least my chances are better, and that's what you're doing in marketing as a business owner. Don't let that investment hinder your ability to invest into marketing. Marketing is a really great practice to scale your business. It's the best practice you have to, even if it's a hundred dollars a day, even if it's $20 a day $20 a day although it's not going to massively change your business forever, it's going to impact your business with more data, more understanding and at one point you'll get a client that you get from investing into marketing and it's going to be your oh shit moment where you're like, oh shit, this works. And then you're going to do it more and more and more and in a period of time, your business is going to be different. So start investing into marketing.
Kenny Massa:The biggest businesses advertise and they advertise for a reason they hit people in large quantities with a direct initiative of understanding that their product and service is best fit for that audience. So start investing into advertising because it's really important and I think that's why you know we continue to scale our strategies and understanding and we bring in professionals to cultivate a more thorough marketing program, because the more we know, the more we can assist with businesses to scale them and to affect people directly. So I think I answered one part of your question, which was what would I say to business owners Invest into advertising? That's important. The other part of your question. Can you go back to the part two?
Jonny Strahl:What are you most excited for? Future state for Mass Inbound.
Kenny Massa:Yeah, I think that the advertising industry changes all the time. There's no doubt about that. It changes in great capacities. But we have a four-step process that we've built and it's taken years to build, which is you have to cultivate a game plan that's going to align strategy, infrastructure, creative and media buying. And if you have these four practices in line with a professional, whether it's our agency or someone else then you're going to ensure that you're basically putting yourself in the best position possible. So strategy is understanding your business in more capacity, your market in more of a capacity.
Kenny Massa:Infrastructure is where you drive traffic your website, your landing pages. If you have a poor foundation of a house, your house isn't going to be stable. You need to have a strong infrastructure. Your infrastructure is your digital assets. So, ensuring that the branding is in synergy, ensuring that the performance is in line to be able to bring in leads or sales as highly as possible.
Kenny Massa:And then creative is really important. Studios and having a creative team is really important, and I've really invested more into understanding the creative process. The quality of the commercial, the types of people that you bring into these commercials, the content that you're creating, is really important. So, creative, whether that be in a studio or on site at anywhere a golf course or at a stadium, a car dealership, whatever serves your community is important. Invest into creative and understand that.
Kenny Massa:And then media buying taking all of these previous three stages and implementing that into the best position to be where your customers are in the best capacity right.
Kenny Massa:So, if your customers are on social media, take that creative and drive those people, with that creative and with the media buying, to the infrastructure that you had, which all encompassing is a strategy. So I'm really excited about that and continuing to implement that into businesses. Again, this takes a bigger team to do, so we're always adding more subject matter experts to the team to develop more, more of a diversified plan of marketing but more of a thorough practice for creating the best program for businesses. And that's something that I'm really excited about, which means that, as a whole, studio stuff and different levels of our business are to come as well, because we get more ingrained with different studios and green screens and bringing products in and going to places that we would have never been, because we're creating more content, we're creating more creatives and diving deeper into the process. So, as a whole, I think that it's a really amazing thing that we've built over the last couple of years, and we're only getting started.
Ryan Selimos:Well, for starters, man, just thank you. Like Johnny said, we've been on this ride as friends a long time 10-plus years but we continue to learn more and more about each other, and today we got to learn a lot about you and just your business and your journey. So, for starters, thank you for sharing it with our uh listeners and our subscribers, but thank you for sharing that with us. Um, and just we're, we're so proud of you, we're so happy to be a part of this journey and we're going to continue to be right behind you, supporting it. As you, like you said, you're just getting started. We're just getting started. So it's awesome, Um, and this was different for us as well Just this style, this format, um, just a real good conversation. So we might be looking at some of that in the future as well, Um, but until next time the bender continues hey.
