00:00
Hi, welcome to Power of the Network. I'm your host, Tim Locker, Vice President of Broadband here at CBM. uh You know, we've had a bunch of customers on here and we've had manufacturers on here like to highlight those relationships. We're taking a little bit of a different turn this week and actually going to bring on one of our vendors. Solar Flare Media is who we use that actually helps us on our website, helps us with blog posts, helps us actually produce this podcast. So today we're going to bring in
00:27
Mr. Tim Stone and talk about all things marketing all things digital. Let's get him on
00:37
Tim, thank you so much for joining us today. It's nice to have you in here and kind of highlight what you do, not only for us, but for some of your other clients as well. oh For those of us that don't know who Solar Flare Media is, give us your elevator pitch. Well, mean, it depends how big is the elevator, how many floors are we going up, how much time do I got you? It's a short ride.
01:03
Well, I mean, to put it as brief as I can, would say what we do is we help businesses uh shine on screen and on stage. And we do that by crafting a message that is clear, concise, gets the point of who you are, and actually drives growth for your business. And so really it's messaging, it's content, um it's communication, all of the above. You you've been working with us now for how many years? Oh, I mean, I've worked for you guys in a couple different capacities.
01:32
Gosh, close to a decade now. It's been a while. We've been working with Solar Flare Media doing this podcast for a couple years now as well. a few different capacities here. It's been a lot of fun for us and we kind of will highlight customers on the show and we'll highlight some of manufacturers. And we kind of got to thinking, well, what about some of the vendors that we work with?
02:01
been able to extend your reach to some other clients for you and et cetera. just wanted to get you on and promote what you guys do for us a little bit too. Fun to be on this side. get to work on your show every single week. And so it's fun to be on this side of the set because I don't normally get to see it from this angle when we shoot. Yeah, for sure. What was it that drew you into digital media? Oh man, I don't know.
02:29
attention. I love having people look at me. that's uh honestly, I love crafting stories. think it's a lot of fun to put together a story, especially for a business, because at the end of the day, uh what businesses need is they need to serve their customers, they need to help their customers. And a great way to do that is by helping your customer understand that they need your help. ah so I love being able to come alongside businesses, craft a story, craft a message.
02:58
and create content that actually resonates with people, because there's just so much stuff out there right now. So many brands that are putting together content that just kind of goes in one ear out the other. And so I love being able to work with businesses to make something that actually sticks and is actually valuable to their brand. But I like being on camera too. Let's talk about that storytelling. mean storytelling traditionally has been very important. uh
03:27
whether it's a comedian or any figure that's well respected that, maybe I shouldn't use comedian in that, don't know. Somebody that really drives a lot of respect, they're always a good storyteller. That's what draws people in, it gets attention and it draws them in. So I can remember when I first started here, I think it was Duff Greenwood who we've had on the show before.
03:57
you know, he was very big about, you know, what's the story, telling the story, and then consistency too, you know. Repeating that over and over and over again so people understand that. you know, there's an art to being able to tell a story. Do you think it's different, you know, being able to verbally say a story versus actually digitally putting a story together? What's the similarities and what's the differences there?
04:24
I don't think that there's a major difference. The message is the same, the story is the same, but I think when you're doing it digitally, have a little bit more tools at your disposal to make it more interesting, to make it more engaging. You're telling the same story. think ultimately, we are story-driven creatures. We love story. We've always loved story since the very beginning of time. uh Story will just, it'll hook people. That's why so much of our entertainment is stories.
04:50
We just love to see a story and we put ourselves into that story all the time when we watch them. So I think that's what's powerful for businesses um is being able to create a story that your customers can put themselves into and be able to be a part of that story and see them in that story. It makes it more than just you're just selling some product that they may or may not need. You're giving them a vision, you're giving them a future and you're helping walk them through that. And that's exciting. That's a lot more interesting.
05:18
But I think you also hit on the head there too. It takes repetition. I think the number is you got to hear something seven times before it really sticks. And so you got to get really good at telling that story because you're going to tell it over and over and over again if you want people to remember it. Well, sometimes it's, you know, frankly, it's, you know, let's face it, we're, you know, we're a manufacturers rep. We sell a lot of products for a lot of different manufacturers. That's how exciting is that, right? You know, so it is kind of a challenge to really create that story in.
05:48
tie those customers in. eh At the end of the day, we do provide a pretty good value to our customers and our manufacturers, but tying it all into one elevator pitch is kind of a challenge. I mean it is. The brands that do that well, those are the most successful brands in the world. being able to get ah something that is, like you said, a lot of businesses, work on something that might not seem very glamorous, might not seem very exciting, ah
06:17
they can manage to craft a story that makes it exciting, makes it interesting, ah then it builds value for the brand around that because they've crafted something that's good. And so I think that's when you work with marketing companies or media companies that are able to do that, that's where I think it's really worth them fetching those crazy numbers that you see in media about like, this logo cost this much money because it's, well, they were able to do that to craft a story around it that resonates, that works.
06:46
Some people charge a lot for logos that aren't worth it. In the marketing space, one of our challenges has always been, how do you justify the dollars? It's kind of a little bit of guess as to what's that return going to be? I think oftentimes companies will lean
07:16
too far back on it and not put the money into the marketing. ah What would you say to somebody that's kind of teetering that's like, do we dump more into it and how do we really look at what the returns would be? I think when you're looking at returns and looking at how you're going to spend your money in marketing, I think you really need to think, okay, what is our goal here? Because really there's three things you could be doing with marketing, and that is building awareness,
07:45
or building leads. And you need to ask yourself, what are the goals that we're setting out to do before we do that? And be able to set a target for what is success in that. obviously, in the digital media era, with social media and online advertising, it is a very clear and obvious path from we spend X amount of dollars, that leads to X amount of sales, which means we have X amount of ROI. And you can create a path through your digital marketing landscape to get directly to that,
08:14
direct sale online. But for a lot of companies, that's not a reality. They don't have an online web store, they don't have a place online where you book things or book services. uh And so for businesses like that, you might be in a space where you're looking at either awareness or building leads. Leads, again, is a little bit more clear because you're saying, hey, we were able to get X amount of leads out of X amount of dollars. And so you're able to then say, okay, well, that's the ROI because we can, our close rate on a lead
08:44
is whatever, X percent. And so then you can start to actually, there's an equation to that. But awareness marketing is a little bit of a different animal. that's kind of where we see it. That's kind of where we fit into it. And so if you work in awareness marketing, it becomes a lot more challenging to see where the return on that investment is because at the end of the day, what you're doing is you're doing what we see brands like Pepsi do. Pepsi's got their billboards all over the place. They're doing all these campaigns all the time. uh
09:12
go to pepsi.com to buy your Pepsi right now and use code, whatever, so that way they can attribute where that came from. It's just, they're just making you think about Pepsi. And the goal there is the next time you're thirsty, you think Pepsi. You don't think Coke, you don't think any other brand, you think Pepsi. And with that kind of marketing, it is difficult because like you said, you got to tell that story over and over again. You probably need about seven touch points for message to really stick.
09:42
who saw this marketing over and over again to be thirsty. And then it's hard to know. Did our awareness marketing get them to that? Was it something else? Did they just happen to see it on the shelf? It's hard to attribute that. But I think when you do a really good job at that ah and you're able to pour the dollars into that, you can start to begin to sort of infer and say, well, we put X amount of dollars towards this awareness marketing campaign.
10:08
and over two quarters we saw an excellent amount growth in sales. And so we can say, because this was the lever we pulled and we saw this growth, we know that it was probably that lever that made that change. But with awareness marketing, it takes a pretty big lever pull. got to put a decent amount of check. We've been doing this now for two years now. Which blows my mind. can't believe how fast that's flown by. uh
10:37
It is hard to measure, whether we like to highlight our manufacturers, we're bringing awareness to those brands, uh we're bringing awareness to our customers, showing the value we create with them. Whether we acquire a new line or a big project comes up and the customer thinks of us, it's hard to measure that return, but it's certainly working.
11:06
what you guys are doing with the podcast too. There is a little bit more of direct there too, because a podcast, it also works for SEO. So you're also creating this discoverability platform for a podcast. There's also places on your website, there's content on social media. And so it's not just awareness. There's a little bit of SEO thing happening there. There's a little bit of discoverability. There's a little bit of rapport that you're building and trust that you're building every time someone sees that content. uh
11:35
about as difficult to track. Let's dive more into that SEO. What do you find that most businesses are struggling with? Where are the top things they should work on? Not everybody's going to do a podcast, I'm sure there's, whether it's video marketing for product or services or whatever, what are some of those key things that people need to?
12:04
make sure they're doing. I mean, the challenge is think when you want to build a strong marketing position in whatever your market is, uh you kind of got to start to get to the point where you're doing everything. It's kind like a food pyramid. got to get all the food groups in there to really see the benefit from it. But at the same time, it's better to do something than to do nothing. And so I think you've got a lot of targets to hit. And what I would tell people is, uh
12:34
in, if that's video content, if that's a blog on your website, if that's email marketing. Take a shot at the thing you feel the most confident in, get some wins under your belt, and as you start to see some ROI on that investment, then start to work maybe with an outside agency at first, that might be the cheapest route to build it. And then build your foundation and start working on everything. Because really it is, it's like a food pyramid. You need everything in there to see the benefit of it and to see it really functioning um the way it functions best.
13:03
ah But if we're talking the things that I say I would see companies doing wrong, ah is I would say companies have a tendency to talk about themselves way too much. The reality is your customer doesn't care about you. They might care about you as a person, but they don't care about your business, they don't care about your story, they care about what your product does for them. And so I think what you'll see with the most successful businesses out there, uh
13:32
They're talking just about their product and just about how their product helps their customers' lives. They're not talking about their journey, they're not talking about their story, they don't have their mission vision values on their social media, all that stuff. doesn't happen in those big companies because at the end of day they recognize people think about themselves more. uh
13:57
the discovery meeting, you know, and how one-sided that is. if you tell a customer, hey, you want to come in and have a discovery meeting, that means, hey, I want to ask you a bunch of questions for my own gain, you know, and would you please sit through that? Yeah, please sit through that. Versus a consultation. Yeah. And the author had kind of put it in terms of like, think of it like a doctor visit where you're having a consultation, uh you know,
14:27
It's a back and forth trying to figure out what the diagnosis is or what the issue is. And you expect the doctor to have a high level of intelligence and answers for whatever that problem is. it's a two-way street where you leave feeling like, oh, well, I had a cold and I got some meds or whatever. So there's a value there. So you're 100 % right in the fact that you
14:54
people want to talk about themselves and as a salesperson or a sales organization, I mean that's what we've always said, you got to put the customer first. To use your analogy and take it a step further, when you go to the doctor's office, they have their degrees on the wall. They don't sit there and talk to you about how great they are and how much they know and all the papers that they've published and the journey that brought them to this point. They show that they know what they're talking about. They show that what they say is worth their salt.
15:23
Because that's what they're here for. uh And I think that a lot of businesses, spend too much time telling their own story than they are helping their customer and learning their customer story and then finding the way that they can assist in that story. ah I think that there's a uh couple years ago, this whole framework hit marketing by Storm the Story Brand framework and that framework tells you you want to be the guide, you don't want to be the hero. ah
15:52
they don't want to be the damsel in distress. Nobody watches the story and says, want to be the damsel in distress. They picture themselves as they hear the story. And so you want to be the Yoda to their Luke Skywalker and you want to help them take on Vader. uh That's crazy analogy I'm trying to follow. But I think I get it. You're helping them get the tools that they need and equip themselves to be able to go out and conquer their marketplace, conquer whatever area they're working in.
16:22
uh It doesn't matter your story. What matters is that they get what they It's a little contradictory because we just talked about how important our story is and now you're telling me that it doesn't matter. What I'll say, think story is important. I don't think your story is important if you're in marketing. think the story you need to be telling is your customer's story. And you need to be able to help position them as the hero, position yourself as the guide, and position your product as the tool that they need to accomplish what they want to accomplish.
16:51
ah That's the story that I think you will be telling. Well said. I read another little blurb that I caught this morning that I thought was interesting too was, you know, so often people talk about how long they've been in the industry. Yeah. And how often, you know, experience can be confused with expertise. Yeah. You know, and I think that happens a lot. You know, I've been doing it for, you know, 20 years.
17:19
doesn't mean you're good at it, right? If you haven't been doing it right. That just kind of caught me this morning. I think you get a lot of people too, especially in digital marketing, things change all the time. Right now we're in the middle of this phase where AI is taking this industry by storm. It's taking every industry by storm. um What you see a lot is you see a lot of people who will tell you, oh, well, this is the way it's done. When it's like, that's the way it was done last month,
17:47
And so you got to keep your finger on the pulse and be willing to be agile and change. um so to your kind of have the same similar effect, a little different, like, know, with, say, an installation contractor that's just, you know, we've built projects. This is we've designed it. This is how we like to do it. We've done it this way for 20 years, um which is great. Yeah. You know, but let's look at the different technology that you can use that can make it so much better. Yes. You know, enhance what you've got.
18:17
How is AI affecting you and what you do? I'm sure you use a bunch of it and some of tools. Yeah, mean AI as a tool is super effective for a lot of different things. You can use it creating content, helping you script out things, helping you plan content. It even can write some things for you. um You obviously need to review that, make sure everything you're saying is accurate and correct. But you can use it for a lot of stuff.
18:44
imagery, uh even some video stuff. There's a lot of tools that you can use that can be very helpful for you. ah But it's also interesting, the changes that uh I see that are the most interesting to me are the changes in the SEO space. Because when AI came out, everyone's like, oh, Google's dead. I was actually talking to one of our other, uh my co-founder yesterday about this, about how everybody was like, yeah, Google's dead now. You don't need Google anymore, everyone's just going to use AI.
19:12
turn out to be the case. People still use Google. And what we're actually seeing. And they've incorporated their own AI into that as well. That's like the first thing that pops That's the first thing. They're like, at our AI, then look at the ads, and then look at the stuff that's actually up. But what we're seeing right now with SEO, there's a million names, they haven't figured out what they want to call it, AIO, AGIO, whatever,
19:41
uh AI agents or AI chatbots. um What we're seeing is people use AI when they have a very specific question. It's I'm out in the field, I'm installing a specific thing, I can't figure out what I need to do in this very specific scenario, I ask AI. What people go to Google for or other search engines, which if you're using a different search engine, just use Google. ah What people go to Google for is when they have purchase intent.
20:09
It's, oh I'm looking for something, I know what I need. Yeah, I need to go find this thing. need to book something, I need a service. so what we're seeing is, yeah, questions are kind of AI, but um the thing that actually provides value for a business is still search engines. And that's interesting from an SEO standpoint because for the past decade or more, SEO has been spending a lot of money building um content that will bring people who have questions to your site.
20:37
and then try to convert them from someone who's asking a question to a customer. Where now what we're seeing is, those questions are going to AI. And when you're on an AI chatbot, there's nothing about, ChatGBT doesn't say, this answer was brought to you by CVM. It doesn't do that. It probably will. But it doesn't drive.
21:05
sales for your company, AI, where uh SEO does because now you're working with people who say, need this specific tool. And then they go and they find it then that brings a sale for your company. so it's changing the market a little bit because now we're seeing people optimize to answer questions on AI, optimize some content um for AI. we're also seeing people optimize products.
21:29
specifically for SEO. And that's a little bit different from a technical standpoint of what you're doing with that content. And it seems like that has a higher ROI than a lot of what we were doing before. So it's changing the market a little bit. um The AI side of things, the thing I'm most excited about is where AI is helping us kill a lot of the fluff that we've put on the internet with SEO. I don't know if you've tried to look up a recipe over the last 10 years. uh
21:58
how my grandma made this recipe and it was so great. And then finally you scroll to the bottom after you see 90 ads and you're like, okay, here's the actual, here's the cook time that I looked this up to find out how long I put this asparagus in the oven. AI is changing that because AI doesn't want all this stuff. It wants you to get to the point. And so it's moving some of this content to the top. mean, at some point, mean, those ads and all the fluff, if you will, is in there for a reason.
22:26
So at some point all this money they're spending on AI, I mean they've got to have a return there too. I would expect that to maybe change. uh There's a lot of unknowns right now. watch Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI talk about Cheshire PT and he's pretty upfront about the fact that he's like, don't know how we make this profitable. He's like, we're going to figure it out. uh
22:56
For what? So you can learn how to cook asparagus? At some point, it's just for being a... We brought in Zach Moser on the last episode and it was great to just hear how old I actually am. But that's just how our minds work. Where's the return? We're spending a pile of money on this, but where's the return?
23:24
Yeah, think when it comes to the AIO marketplace, think what we see a lot right now, it's very similar to what we've seen with every tech buzzword. In 2010, was data. Before that, was the dot com. It's just you put that word in whatever you're selling and it becomes valuable to investors. And so we're seeing a lot of that right now. That'll change. The market will correct.
23:52
this is actually profitable. Right now it's kind just a hype boom. But in that hype, there are useful tools that are being created. How those useful tools become profitable is questionable. mean, certainly anything that speeds up time and frees you up to do something else adds value.
24:16
CBM is a manufacturer's rep based right here in Kansas City. We've got territory where we cover from Iowa all the way down to Texas. We cover specifically three different market segments, uh utility, commercial industrial, and broadband communications. CBM is structured differently. We're an employee-owned company. We're ran as an ESOP. That allows us to do business differently. We can cross...
24:42
lines of markets, we can put our people where they need to be and really have expertise in the right place. That's what makes a difference uh for our customers and for our manufacturers. If you think we can help you uh with the product line in the Midwest, look no further than CBM. Find us right here at cbmrep.com.
25:06
I guess AI is just such a broad term to me. know, chatGTP or GPT, you got it. ChatGPT. You know, there's all these different apps that you can make videos. There's now one that you can create your own app. I don't even know what they are, but I just hear these things. But let's use an example for like Salesforce that we use as our CRM tool.
25:36
How does AI enhance a tool like that to make it easier for our folks in the field to do their day-to-day job? Yeah, I mean, think with a tool like Salesforce, to be specific on the CRM, that helps you, really it helps take a lot of the day-to-day kind of grind type work and remove a lot of that. Because AI, agentic AI, where AI agents, they're a tool if you're not aware,
26:05
ah with specific guardrails, pretty much anything you can do on a computer. just runs and does the task for you. ah And so you can kind of think of them like a personal assistant, but it's a digital personal assistant. And so when you were talking about a tool like Salesforce, if you have an agent in Salesforce or even a chatbot in Salesforce, it can take a lot of that busy work out of the system for you. There's a company that uh I work with out in
26:33
uh Spain and they actually do email marketing. what they do that's really interesting is they found that when someone signs up for an email list, they get a personalized message in the first five minutes, the odds of them closing a sale on that person skyrockets like a 90 % increase. But obviously if you're doing that at scale, it's basically impossible to have a real person email someone in five minutes every time someone signs up. And so they have an AI agent that is able to craft an email that looks very human.
27:02
looks at all the information about them and responds to them within five minutes and gets them on the hook. And then it sends that and basically pings their salespeople and says, hey, you've got a hot that's the lead generator that sends it in. Yeah, exactly. And it says, you've got a hot lead. We've sent that first email already, follow up within the hour. And so then it becomes a realistic thing where a real person can actually achieve that goal now. ah But you've kind of sped up that process to make it ah something that actually functions really well.
27:32
Does the email campaigns still play a role? We've not had a ton of success ourselves with that. What are the do's and don'ts there on email? Email is interesting, especially if you're talking email campaigns, when you're talking a campaign, one, it's hard to get an email list that you can acquire legally uh and use legally. Two, it's really easy to get blocked. ah
27:59
difficult market to be in, and it's also a market of scale. You need to be hitting hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people for you to start to see a return on that investment. It is a big, a big list that you have to to foster. And you also need to foster it in a way where your content doesn't just look like noise. think a lot of people, your inbox, more and more your email inbox feels kind of like your front door.
28:28
Like if someone shows up at your front door and announced, you're like, what are you doing here? Why are you here? uh And I think people think the same thing with their email inbox, because we all have so many emails we're trying to go through all the time. If you're not supposed to be here, I don't want to see you, you're wasting my time. And so you've got to craft an email that is worth their time immediately. It needs to be succinct, it needs to be to the point, and it needs to drive a sale. And that's a really, really hard thing to do.
28:57
email is like a .03 % average conversion rate. for a company like ours where we have very specific customers and targets, I mean, there's within our footprint thousands, but a mass marketing campaign may not be the answer for us. think what I would say to that is I think there's kind of a little bit of nuance there that I probably should provide. In your industry,
29:23
If you're working with return customers, think email can be very valuable. Cold email is an economy of scale. That's a difficult thing to work with. But if you're working with people you work with that are already, like they've already worked with you, they're already customers, when you're talking repeat email, you get higher conversion rates out of that. And people are more okay having you in your inbox. I'm much more excited to see emails from brands that I'm glad they're here
29:52
and tell them they can be here. And so I think if you've earned someone's business, it's a little bit of a different market and it's definitely a lot more worth it to get that repeat business. Cold email is a tough game to work in. Yeah, that makes sense. And you're seeing more even on the text now too. So they've kind of went from email to text. And I get plenty of them. buy something, you end up on the list.
30:21
That's a different thing because you can hit that text and you can click right to the website and you can buy something. For us, it's a little different because we are contracted sales force for a lot of different manufacturers. lot of the products go through distribution. So there's really no click to buy. That's kind of always been the one hang up for me is like with the marketing piece in general, how do we
30:50
how do we do that marketing so that it keys on those manufacturers? Yeah, think what you see in your industry, like you said, there's no online click here to buy, sign up for our event, get our service, whatever. There's no very clear online conversion. And so do think you go back to awareness. I think a lot of what, uh for CBM specifically, it's building that rapport.
31:19
ah And you do that not by being like, know what we're talking about because look how great we are. You do that by saying, here's how we can help. And then you prove it. You actually help people. provide content. You provide value. You do that through blog posts. You do that through social media content, through podcasts like this. Things that actually provide value to your customers. And you do that open-handedly. think a lot of what you see lot of ah businesses do is they try to create some sort of tool like this where it's like,
31:49
But you've got to pay for it. it's like, well, that doesn't do anything because then you're just creating another product. What you need to do is you need to create that open-handedly, create that for free. And then what will happen is people will view you as the resource, view you as the knowledgeable one. And then they realize, oh, not only are they the place where I can learn how to do the things I need to do, not only are they a valuable tool for me, just in terms of how do I do things, they actually can provide the tools and the product that I need.
32:19
to achieve the job when I'm there. What would you say or how uh would you open up people's minds? So like for example, even within our own company, everybody's different. Everybody's got different talents. Some people are very marketing aware. They've got great ideas, hey, let's do this, hey, let's do that. And then there's folks like me that are
32:46
more oblivious to it, set in your ways. I remember I go back to, a few years ago I did a little video on a pre-formed product I did, and everybody loved it. Put it out on LinkedIn, whatever, got tons of reviews, everybody loved it. And I don't think I've done another one since. So what would you say to guys like me that are like, it's just not natural. How do we bring that?
33:15
How do we get more aware and do that better? I think there's two things I would say to that. think the first thing I would say is I would say look across your organization and find the people who get it. And I would say really lean into that and invest in them and let them kind of run with it. At the end of the day, if you hand a drummer a guitar, they're not going to do a great job with it. So there's no hope for me. Is that what you're saying? I'm not saying there's no hope. I'm saying a drummer can learn guitar. They can learn it.
33:45
or else they're never gonna. And you also need to give them a way to learn and actually succeed. I remember to use the same guitar, acknowledge it. I remember when I first started learning how to play guitar, I remember going to this guitar school and they just gave us scales over and over again for weeks. were just doing scales and it was so boring and it was so repetitive and it's like a foundational thing you got to do. ah But I remember I ended up dropping from it because I was just like, don't feel like I'm making progress. I'm not having fun. uh
34:14
My fingers hurt. But when I started learning on my own, years later, I picked it back up and I just started looking online like what are the songs I like and how do I play it? Sure, I kind of did some things wrong and I picked up some bad habits along the way that took me some time to lose. But I actually learned that time because I really quickly started to learn to do the things that I actually wanted to do and got some wins under my belt and got some success. I was able to get some momentum. And so think a lot of times,
34:41
You can kind of start to try to fit a square peg into a round hole and you say, got to start making blog posts. Yeah, you got to start making some blog posts. You got to start filling some videos. You got to start posting on LinkedIn. And really what you need to do is you need to say, hey, what are the things that you're good at? Let's lean into that first. Let's take the shots that we were confident on. And as we get those wins under our belt, let's add some things and let's add different skill sets and learn together and celebrate the wins when you get the wins.
35:09
ah I think when people do good job on something, especially when it's something that they don't normally do, I think it's important to celebrate it. They deserve to be seen for the fact that they went pretty far outside their comfort zone to do something. Especially something like this where it drives business and drives things forward. I think practical advice, if I'm thinking CBN, you guys are in the field with customers every day. You see very specific problems and you offer very specific solutions.
35:38
something very easy I could see. You get in the car and you can use these AI tools. You can talk to them like a person. You open up the chat feature and you just say, hey, I was just in the field. Here's the very specific problem we had. Here's the very specific solution we had. Help me write a blog post about this. Make it 800 words. Use SEO best practices. Write on the fifth grade reading level and do all those things. And then you get something that is usable. uh
36:08
from that blog post, you're going to have a few sections, four to six sections of content. Those can each be LinkedIn posts. You just pull those out, post them on LinkedIn text posts. You can film a video, just read it, and then paraphrase it on the video. You've got your social video for that. uh So you can use these tools to make the road a little bit easier. then again, the more you do it, the easier it is. First time you do everything, it's really freaking hard.
36:34
Well, I think what gets me is more the technical, the back end of things, of just getting the data where it needs to be or editing the video or doing those kinds of things. That's not really my strong suit on the technical side of things. For those things, would just say find someone in your organization who can do that and delegate that. Or an agency partner. Or if it's got to be you.
37:00
There are YouTube tutorials and things like that all over the place. can watch a video of someone walking through how to do that specific thing, learn it, and then just do it. The more you do it, the easier it becomes. It's funny because it's just not firsthand. It's not the first reaction. I didn't grow up with an iPhone in my hand. my kids, they're like, oh, I have a question. Boom, here's an answer.
37:29
you know, I had to, you know, find somebody that knew the answer to my question. And so I still am guilty of that where like, hey, I wonder what, you know, such and such. And I'll make a phone call, hey, do you know? And it's like, I could have already had the answer, but it's just not the instinct. do the same thing. And I think changing instincts is a difficult thing to do. I obviously didn't grow up with AI. m
37:56
I was working with my dad on something, we were doing just a tune-up on my lawnmower. He came over, he was helping me do a tune-up. And for one of our wrenches wasn't fitting. And he's like, this is weird. He's like, it looks like the socket, it should be this socket, but it's not this socket. And he's like, what's going on? And he's like, look up, see if you can look up and find out what size socket we need for this. And so I go to Google and I'm like, I look up my brand and my dad's like, what's taking so long? He comes over and he looks over my shoulder and he's like, are you Googling that?
38:25
I mean, yeah, I guess I should use AI for this question. This would be an easy quick question. my point is my instinct was Google it. instinct wasn't ask AI. Somehow my dad's instinct was asking. I don't know how that happened. yeah, like changing instincts is a hard thing to do and it takes time. It takes practice and it takes just doing it over and over again. It really does. You got to work at it to change an instinct and that's effort. oh
38:54
So you're co-host of another podcast. talk about that for a minute. Things I Learned Last Night, or sometimes you call it Tilling. ah How did that start and ah what's your long-term goals for that? Or are there any? No, there's long-term goals I would say. We've been doing this, we started in 2017, so a little early for podcasting. Podcasts were around, but they weren't anything like they are today. ah
39:23
uh I just tell him the random things I learned on the internet last night and he makes fun of me for like 45 minutes to an hour. He's a stand-up comic, he travels the country doing stand-up comedy and it's a fun show because it kind of is that good balance between like you're going to walk away learning something a little bit uh but you're going to laugh a lot, you're to have a lot of fun.
39:44
You're mostly listening to me laugh. uh it's a cackle. call it the cackle. it's a fun show. have a lot of fun with it. We've obviously been doing it for years going on year nine. If we're talking goals, man, we've seen, uh mean, I would call it a lot of success from doing this podcast. um And I honestly would say, like, I feel like we're just getting started. And so I want to take this as far as we possibly can take it.
40:12
um I feel like we've taken it further than I ever thought we could have. And now I'm kind of like, how far can we? Yeah, so I've got to try to push it as far as we can. But ultimately, like, we're just having fun. think we love this podcast. We listen to it more than I think anybody else listens to it. I mean, if you're literally doing it with your best friend and just sitting and having a conversation, making fun of each other, I mean, there's nothing more fun than that. It's a blast. it's fun to see,
40:39
I mean, we've reached people all over the world. we're doing our patron hangout with our Patreon supporters. Literally people from across the globe will be on there, hanging out, doing show and tell, talking about houses they just bought, babies they just had. so fun to see a community come together. I don't know, it's a weird time in the world. And to do something that is light and fun and bring some joy and laughter to people, it's a blast.
41:09
Talk about the creative process. What does that look like? The creative process is interesting. I think it's different for everybody. think uh creativity comes uh in moments where you don't always expect it. think it kind of just, you get that spark and you just kind of got to run with it and let it run. And I think anybody who creates anything, whether it be music or art or content, uh it does feel
41:37
in the weirdest way, it sounds very like woohoo, but it feels like almost outside yourself. It just kind of comes. ah And so you've got to learn to capture that and learn to like hone it and like drive it towards a specific direction. And I think the more you do it, like we said, any skill like you learn to kind of carve off those edges and get it to something that's really good. think a lot about uh when I was a kid, I tried to become
42:05
like uh an actual artist. And I remember there was a moment where I kind of had this epiphany where I would draw stuff and I'd be like, man, this just doesn't look good. Something about this just doesn't look good and I can't figure out why this looks good and this reference looks really, really good where mine doesn't. And I realized it was like, oh, they just did more. They worked on it more than I did.
42:30
There's that you add more details, you put more effort into it, you put more thought, you put more intentionality into it to really say like, okay, hey, how can I take this little thing where like I have this shape of an idea and just keep working on it until I get it to the point where it's what I want it to be? ah And that can be a lot of work. Sometimes you just have a stroke of genius and it just happens, but sometimes it is effort.
42:56
And it is it is weeks and weeks and weeks of tearing at the same thing, trying to get it to be what you want it to be. And then it's not and you throw it away and you start something. Well, you do get out of it. What you put in. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it takes effort. so when we're talking podcasting, like it is for us, it's a team effort we've got. We've built this business. We've got a team of editors and producers behind the scenes that make it all happen. It is hours and hours and hours.
43:25
of work to produce a single episode and get all the content out to social media. ah then from the hosting standpoint too, like um you get this as preparation. You got a lot of work to do to prepare, to learn the content you're going to do and feel comfortable and confident when you sit down to be able to do something that is worth people's time. It takes work, it time. So it's not a let me just sit down, record this for an hour and then.
43:54
upload it. Absolutely not. Well, uh I can't thank you enough for coming in. I know we talk all the time and you produce the show for us and everything, but it's great to hear your perspective. One thing I did want to mention too was uh working with you guys. When we first started doing this, you guys had no idea what a manufacturer's rep does, or what we did.
44:24
And I got to give you a lot of credit on how quickly you all really figured out, you know, what we do. And I like the ability, especially, you when we're putting the show together, like, okay, you know, we don't want it to be product specific. You know, that's a snooze fest. Nobody's interested in that. But to take, you know, ideas from our market or industry that we cover, you guys always have a good perspective on, hey, I'm not from this world. ah You know, how do we make it interesting for
44:53
for people like us. I think you guys have done a great job with that. we appreciate everything you've done for us. We're having fun. We're loving it. It's a great time. Me too. I appreciate that you got us in the journey. It's been fun. So thank you. Awesome. Thank you.
45:11
Tim, thanks again for joining us on the show. ah It's been great working with you guys over the last couple of years and even longer. We've been this podcast for two years now and it's been great. So thank you for all your efforts. Remember, if you need help with a project or looking for representation from a great sales team here in the Midwest, look no further than CBM. You can find us right here at cbmrep.com. Thanks for joining us. Please like, comment, subscribe. Until next time, we'll see you next time.
