Everyone Sucks At Marketing

0:00I'm recording this around Christmas time, and it was really difficult because for Christmas, we don't really have a big family get together. It's really just, you know, me, my wife, my brother. And we got invited to go to a brewery the night before. I'm Christmas Eve from a couple of friends. And this was one of the harder things that we had, we had a lot of trouble going to an establishment the night before Christmas. And the reason for this is because we had no idea if a business was open or not. And even if the business was open, we didn't know what time they were closed. So it didn't even matter like where you checked. So, Steph was like, look, we're going to go to this brewery.

1:06And we're like, okay. And then she was like, yeah, it's something that these people do every year. And so like, I think they're supposedly open until like seven or eight o'clock in the night. And that's what we're going to do. And I was like, okay. Now, then Steph goes online just to double check, hey, you know, are they, are they open? You know, even though this, this couple said that this brewery is always open and they always go there in Christmas Eve, turns out when you went on their Google profile and Google, they're open because they didn't update it for Christmas day or Christmas Eve. That makes sense. So, the move is usually to go to Instagram, which, okay, so you go to Instagram, oh, it looks like they posted that they were closing at six. I was like, okay. So, oh no, no, sorry. They, man, I forget how this happened, but she found out, oh no, they're actually closed today.

2:07Oh, so we can't go there. All right. So then we go, all right, well, we're, you know, then we're going back and forth with this couple and it's like, hey, remember that place that we're, you go every year, apparently they're closed this year. We found that out. I think by calling them or maybe their voice mail or something and they were like, okay, so I guess we have to pivot. So we found another brewery, but that's closed by. We didn't know if they were open or not. We went on their Google, said they were open, went on their Instagram, posted nothing for the last five days and then we were like, okay, I guess we'll call. We called, no answer. So one of us had to drive there a couple of days before Christmas Eve because we're like trying to make this plan and it's right down the street. So I drive there and I'm like, hey, are you guys open on Christmas Eve? They're like, yeah, we're going to stay open on seven. I was like, okay, cool. So they're open till seven. Now we get there and of course they close at five.

3:08So we're only, we show up before they close at five and we're like, I drove here and you said you were closing at seven and now you're closing at five. And so we're like, okay, I guess we have to find somewhere else to go and then they were like, hey, that other brewery, they're open till six and I'm like, well, we thought they were closed. They said they were closed and they're like, well, no, apparently they're open till six and I'm like, so we just went home. A couple of days before that, I went to, I went to this pizza place with a few friends in the middle of the day and you know, it's, it's the holiday so everyone's off and so I said, hey, I want to go out for a beer. Someone said they want to go out for a cocktail, whatever. And then someone was like, hey, let's go to this pizza place. So okay, we're going to go to this pizza place. I start driving to the pizza place. The other two guys start driving to the pizza place. One guy

4:11text back and says, oh, hey, they're closed today. Other guy says, no, they're not. And he's like, well, I just went on their website said they're closed today. We get there and they're open. I'm telling these stories. This all happened in like a course of three days and when we were at the pizza parlor, I was talking to my friend who's also in marketing. I just said, man, I don't trust anybody to post anything about their business ever. So unless I can get you on the phone to say that your business is open, I don't trust you. I just don't trust you. You literally just have to be there. And that sucks. There's another thing that keeps happening. And I know I'm talking about like local businesses, but this is not just a local business problem. It just happens to be one of the more inconvenient ones because you're forced to like leave your house, go to these businesses,

5:15and you get very, you know, there's a lot of build up at least for us and the way that we like to have fun. We like to go to restaurants. We like to go to bars a lot. The worst feeling in the world, the absolute like, to me, it's like a devastating feeling and it happens far too often. And you know I've been lamenting a lot about restaurants and how they operate. And just like local establishments, it's just really disappointing. And it's so disappointing because I want to support local businesses so badly. And yet a lot of them make it really difficult for me to do that. And I'll give you like another thing, which is like, we would go, hey, let's go to this restaurant. Let's go to this bar. And we're like, hell yeah, we're so pumped, right? We've made the plan. We're not, they don't take reservations. So we're not, it's not like, oh, they dropped their reservations or whatever. So we go there and uh oh, they're closed for a private event.

6:19Now, this is one of the most devastating things that happens to us on the regular by the way. This happens at least once a quarter to us where we will show up somewhere and that place will have some sort of private party. And there's a point to all of this, which is everybody sucks at marketing. I suck at marketing. And the thing that I think it is to put it very simply is a lack of communication. And a lack of how to communicate and a cohesiveness of communication. So I had a friend of mine who ran an establishment where you could show up and they had regular business hours. But sometimes they would close because they couldn't get somebody to show up. They were on vacation, whatever

7:21the case was. And unfortunately, I had friends who would go, you know, they would drive out of their way to go to the establishment, knowing their business hours and only to be met with a locked door. And you're like, okay, why is this like and again, I'm not just saying this is a local establishment problem. This is an online problem as well. And I think it just comes down to communication. So I remember Steph this week, she had, I think she had called somewhere and they said, oh yeah, we'll be open, you know, it's so sad. But if we close early, we'll let you know. And her response is like, how will you let me know? Like, what are you going to call me back? Like, what? How? We're not on your, there's no email list. There's no, are you going to post it on Instagram? Do I have to check your Instagram? Like, this is like, why communication is so difficult? So you look at,

8:27let's just take social media, for example, right? Everybody tells me, oh, just check their Instagram. What? Wait, that's it. So if ever I have a question about a business, right, a local business, they say, check their Instagram. I go, I don't, what if I don't have Instagram? They're like, well, that's where they, that's where they post. I'm like, okay, fine. I'll download Instagram and I'll go to their Instagram. Oh, look, they haven't posted in three days. What food truck is going to be at their establishment today? I don't know. They're like, oh, well, if you want to know what food trucks going to be there, check their website. I'm like, okay, who updates a website? Really? Come on. So go to their website. Yeah, that date. Okay. Like, also, are they going to be there? I don't know. How are they supposed to communicate with me? This is the, this is the problem. Am I forced

9:28as a consumer to go to an Instagram page? Why that sucks is because one, the algorithm doesn't do that. It doesn't work that way. So it's not like if a local business, if I follow a local business, right? And they post something. So let's say Christmas day and they're like, hey, we're close Christmas day. That's their post. Okay, one, they're never going to grow their Instagram account because that's, that's not how Instagram works, right? Also, what are the chances of me being, like me being shown that post? If it does so poorly because, you know, it's just a message, how am I supposed to know? I literally would have to go to their page and see that post. That's what I would have to do. It's so archaic. It makes no sense. It can't work this way. All right, so I go to their page and maybe they have a story, but like, I don't know, I follow a lot

10:30of people. So their story is pretty buried to me. So I never see their story. This cannot be how we do marketing for, for events or for communicating, especially local or non-local. How am I supposed to let my audience know that we have something for sale? We have something on sale. We have an event coming up. We have a special, like, how do you communicate that message effectively to the right people? How does this local brewery who told us, hey, if things change, we'll, we'll let you know. How will you let me know? Seriously, I, it's not a knock. I'm, how would you do that? As a marketer, I would think, well, okay, probably the most reliable method would be email. And you know what? That sucks too, because how would I, what if I don't check

11:35my email before, you know, like, what if I don't get that email? What if I have, what if I'm terrible with email? I have thousands and thousands of emails. And it gets buried just like, you know, a post on social media or Facebook. How would I know? So here's, here's what I think. How, here's how I would solve this problem. Because, and it is so hard to do. I am sitting here, not angry at anybody. You know, some, there's some businesses I've been a little perturbed with. In this case, I'm not perturbed. I am like, what are they supposed to do? I'm like, I'm serious. How are we supposed to know? If you change your business, like simply changing your business hours, you know what I mean? Or using it as an opportunity to say, hey, look, we have an event today. Like, we want, we want the max amount of people to show up to this event. How would you let people know?

12:38And as a marketer, as somebody who's been doing this for a long time, I have just one very basic one very basic idea. You have to think of everything in a consistent and cohesive message. It's almost kind of like building campaigns. So when I think of a marketing campaign, what I, what I usually envision is a message, a single message broadcast through every single different type of channel. One, unifying message through multiple channels. So that way, if you have something to say and a local business, it's very easy to have something to say all the time, even I have something to say all the time, right? In fact, the more things you have to say, the more, the more chances to reach your audience and the more things you have to say that relate

13:43to your audience, the better that message is received. So fundamentally, okay, let's say I am, because I like to think of this in terms of a local establishment that I would personally visit and be excited about visiting because it helps me to think how I would do that for my own business, which has a very different type of audience, but the principles and the tactics should be the same, okay? So let's say I run a brewery and I always use breweries in example because I, you know, one day maybe I will be running a brewery, but I think, all right, my goal is to get people to come in the door and buy beer. It's pretty simple, right? There's no, there's really not much to it when you think about it. Okay, how do I get people to come in the door and buy beer, not just walk through the door, but buy beer, okay? So the first thing I would do is make sure I had a foundation,

14:48right? A reliable foundation for, like, I need to stop the bucket from leaking. That would be my first thing. For me is I would have very, very rigid business hours. And truthfully, I'd probably be open longer than most places because I would want to accommodate as much people as possible. So what I would probably do as an establishment is I, and I would keep it as simple as possible. I really dislike when businesses have different hours for different days and they're closed certain days and they're, it's, because it's really hard for me as an infrequent visitor to remember that. And so I'm, so what I want is to eventually, as I continue to message something, I want the automatic response to be, I know they're open. I don't even have to think about them being open. I know they're open. I've gone enough times. I've seen their hours. It's very simple.

15:55And this is just building a good foundation. So for me, I would have the same exact hours every single day. And if you want it to, you can close. You can be like, hey, you know, you could be like Chipotle, what is it? Chick-fil-A and it's like we're closed on Sundays or you could be like, you know, B&H or whatever those, those camera companies in New York, they're closed on Saturdays, even online. So you can do that. That's easy to remember, right? Just being straight up closed. And it's better if you do it like on a day that feels like, okay, it makes sense that the business will be closed that day. Now, you know, Sunday is, so for those two examples, they're both religious reasons they're closed, right? But like, I have, I know companies that are closed Monday and Tuesdays. Why are you closed Monday and Tuesdays? Because those are the slowest days for bars. That's okay. But keep that, you know, don't change that. You can, you can always open it up.

16:56But don't limit it and then have the same hours 12 to 8 p.m. 12 to 9 p.m. 12 to 10 p.m. Whatever, 3 to 10 p.m. Doesn't matter. Make that the same for every day. That's what I would do. Plaster that everywhere because, you know, plaster it everywhere and stay true to it. You can even bake in the holiday is, you know, you can have that all set up. You don't have to make those decisions in the moment. You can just make them in advance. Hey, we're always closed Christmas day and we're always closed New Year's Day and we're always closed Martin Luther King Day or whatever days you want to pick, right? You just make that so. The reason I think this is so important is because it allows you to unify your message across every single platform that you own, every form of communication you have, you don't have to go and update everything. That's the hardest part

17:57of this is the constant updating. So set the foundation. That's what you do, right? That's just being open now for us at SUNY University. We're a 24 hour business, but when it comes to customer service, we are open 9 to 5 Monday through Friday. Like that is our, that is when we answer emails. That's when we work as a company. We do not work weekends. And that's just how it is, right? We keep, we keep reliable business hours. That's for your internal team and for people to get familiar with the cadence and how you respond. So that they're not left going, are they like, what? And then when they go to check, whether they want to check Facebook, Instagram, fucking Pinterest, I don't care. It's always right. It's always the same. And and be open. That's the

18:59other thing too. It is like the, it's gospel. You must stick to it because even one day you have somebody, this has happened so many times. I'll give you one for me. This is why I'd really dislike the like private event thing. I do, I know that businesses probably sometimes make maybe more money by having hosting a private event and shutting it off to the public. That could be true. I don't know the logistics or the profit margins of doing that. But I can tell you this. As soon as you do that and you have a couple like me show up to your establishment and you're closed to a private event like you're open, but not to me. I'm basically, I have mentally wrote you off as a business that I can trust. I can't trust you now. It's not, it's not a bad thing. And like the business is still open. The business is doing

20:05a good thing. Whatever. But and I'm only one person. And I'm this type of person who just goes, oh, I immediately like when it comes to the next time I'm thinking, hey, where do you want to go? If I have to now question whether or not you're going to be open to me, I just say, well, I can't. Like I know all these other business that are open. I'll choose them over you. That's you do that enough times and you slowly erode the trust of your core audience. Can't I just feel like that's a really bad thing. Now, doesn't mean you can't have parties. I just think I just think sometimes closing off the doors to your regular patrons without notifying them somehow because I think that's really hard to notify somebody about. Like it's really hard to notify like, hey, we'll be closed today. And obviously there's

21:07ways that you can do it. And we'll talk about that in a second. But like, yeah, there's weather issues. There's power. There's things that are out of your control. Everyone would understand that. The private party thing is like, well, you're open. And I just, I'm just not allowed in. And that feels kind of shitty. Honestly, it does. And you know, you may not share that feeling. But again, I think there's, I can't be the only one who just goes, it's not that I'm like pissed at that company. I'm severely disappointed. I'm just like, I really want it to go here. And I'm and I'm standing here and I can't go. And it's open. Just not to me. And then it just what happens is the next time I want to go to a brewery or a restaurant, that one's not going to be on my list because I because if I have to call to see if it's if are you having a private party on a Friday

22:08night, like the business night of your entire, you know, it's like I get having private parties Sundays at Sunday afternoons or Mondays when you're, you know, establishment isn't busy. I get doing it then or I get businesses who have private events in them, but I still get to visit. You know, it's a, hey, we'll section off a corner of our spot. And that could be your private party, but look, we're going to stay open. It's like, we're going to be open to the public. You know, and it's like, anyway, I digress because it just it's so severely disappointing. And my point is it's like, set the foundation. Okay, once you're the foundation, now you can start building trust. How do you communicate reasons for people to come in to buy your things? I think this is where you need to start thinking and I just end the same way. We need to start thinking in campaigns. Okay, so let's just say in the case of, I don't know, you have, I could say

23:18a sale, but let's let's go back to the brewery example, right? You have a new beer coming out, right? You just you have a new keg, you have a new cans, you know, you want people to try this beer, all right? You want people to come in to drink the beer. It's a very simple exchange of goods and services. So what do you do? Well, you have to say, here's the campaign. This is the new beer drop, right? You could even develop a campaign template that every time we drop a new beer, here's what we do. You build this SOP. You create, you go into Canva or something and you create your images. You got a square image for Instagram, a tall image for whatever, you do a little video, whatever whatever it is, you gather your assets. You make those assets easy to create, which I get. I'm already saying all this, it makes so much sense to me, but I can see a business not doing any of this. It's very like they're so busy making the beer

24:21and like getting the staff trained up on it and just being open that they're not thinking about marketing, right? They're just like, well, we're open today and that's good enough. And I'm like, yeah, yes, that is good enough, I think. But you could go a little extra. But if every single time this happens, this is something that repeats all the time. You always have a new beer on tap. If you were just, if you just had a very simple process where you did the same thing every single time and you communicated to your audience every single time and by doing so, you continue to build the audience, you have an unstoppable business. Unstoppable. It doesn't even matter what it's for. All right, so I'm just thinking out loud here. You would have, you know, you have all of your platforms. You have Facebook, you have Instagram, you have Pinterest, you just meet people where they are. You have email, you have your website, you have untapped, whatever. Meet people where they are.

25:26That's it. So you have to, in this day and age, unfortunately, you have to kind of have all of it. But if you're, it's not, you don't have to think of it like, I gotta do a Facebook post. I gotta do an Instagram post. I took too many things. It's like, no, it's one thing. It's a campaign. You build the campaign. Those platforms are just where you post it. That's actually the easiest part, right? So you, so you have all your assets. You build all of your assets. And again, if this is something you do frequently, then you can create templates. You don't have to reinvent the wheel every single damn time. You know, as you get better at it and more consistent, you can add complexities to it if you want. But don't do that. So you build a little camp attempt for square images. You build, you do a quick video. It doesn't even have to be words. It doesn't have to anybody in it. It can just be, you set up your phone, you pour a beer in a glass. That's your Instagram video,

26:26that's your, your TikTok. That's everything. Whatever. I don't even, you could probably avoid TikTok. If you're not trying to go an online audience, you could probably avoid YouTube, honestly. If you're a local business, I would probably stick to like, you could post it on Google, your Google profile, your business profile, post everything, post it anywhere. Who cares? Send out an email, send out all your instant, all your social media posts, update your website, make it easy to update your website. And that's it. And then that would be my campaign. So whatever it is, you might have, you know, if you're a brewery in this case, you have beer drop campaigns, you have event campaigns, you might have food truck campaigns, you might have live music campaigns, although that's probably under events, you have, and then maybe you have a generic one that kind of fills in the gaps,

27:30whether if you don't have a new beer drop and you don't have a new event and you don't have a new food truck, maybe you just have like one that you can default on, that's like, hey, we just do, here's what's on tap post, right? Or, you know, hey, here's a shot of our tap room. Come join us, you know, or, you know, you just do like generic ones that you can just post on those days when you don't have anything to promote, you don't have a specific marketing campaign, you just want to promote the business and you just do general stuff. And then those would be your four categories, your four campaign templates, your four campaign types, and you just do it every single day. And you make it simple, you do it first thing in the morning, you do it the night before before you close shop, you do it the same time every day. It's really not a difficult thing to do, and here's the thing, when you start doing it, you're probably not going to see results,

28:32because it's just, you're still getting started, you're not going to have that many email subscribers, you're not going to have that many Instagram subscribers, you're not going to have, you're not going to have the audience yet, right? But you have to start becoming consistent and staying on a schedule of simply communicating your message. That's it. And you do it through campaign types. Now, once you've established a good foundation, you know, obviously your products have to be good, that's this is sort of, we're talking about marketing here and not product development. Now that you have a good foundation, you have good consistent communication, then the final, the final move here is actually the simplest move, which is now your job is to encourage the people who come into your establishment to become part of the communication cycle,

29:34right? Because yes, in the beginning, when you're posting these things, you might be posting into a vacuum. There's not going to be many people there listening, although there will be a handful, right? There's always going to be a handful and over time, as you continue posting, as you continue sending emails, more and more people will sign up just naturally, right? That's going to happen organically. But now you need to super charge it. So now you need to encourage people to sign up for your thing, to sign up for the communication messages, for these campaigns. How do you, how would you do that as a brewery? I do a few ways. One, and I've said this just a lot of businesses, and it's really hard for businesses to want to do this, and I totally get it. But I don't know a better way. I really don't. You just have a physical guest book in your establishment, and you have people fill out their email address, their first name and their email address,

30:38manually with a pen and pencil or whatever. You can even incentivize them to do this. So you could just have a guest book. People will sign guest books. They do it all the time. You can encourage it by offering some sort of rewards program, right? I know there's a brewery that I visit that has a punch card. The thing is, is that the punch card is a great idea. People use it. I'm not one of those users, but I can see why you would want it. The problem is you can just get a punch card. Now it brings you back into the establishment, but there's no communication. So how often are you coming back? You would hope the card would bring you back, but the card doesn't get you excited about coming back. It's just like, oh, well, I'll go there because it's cheap. You need both. I think if you have the punch card, maybe you have a punch card system where you type in your email address, and that's all done digitally, or you do both, where you say, hey, sign up your email address,

31:39and we'll give you a punch card. Okay, yeah, I'll do that. I'll take that. Or hey, sign up and you get a free backpack, right? You get a free can of beer. If you sign up or you get a free pine on us, if you put in your email address, like, how hard is that? And if you like the establishment, that's a fucking no-brainer, man. Like, right down your email address, now I'll pour you a free pine. What? Hell yeah. That's a good exchange, I think. Now, that's just a few ways you can just get email subscribers. You could also just have some light marketing, light on every single table. In your establishment, you have a little plastic stand that has a little card with a QR code. A QR code takes you to a page where they can subscribe to your Instagram or something, right? Maybe by doing it, and you can walk up to the bar and show that you did it, you get a free pine.

32:40I don't know. Or you get a chip for a free pine next time. That's a good idea, because now you're like, yeah, well, this is not for now. This is for the next time you come in. So now you're kind of forcing them to come back. They're probably not just going to come back for one beer. They're going to come back for two. Or they're going to bring somebody. So there you go, right? Maybe those cards of the table, right? This is where the campaign part comes in. You could also, whatever you use for Instagram, whatever image you create for Instagram to promote that thing, stick that, print it at your printer, right? In the store and stick that new card around. That's your beer drop of the week, beer drop of the month, whatever event, event calendar. Put that in there on every single table. Nothing can be, and you can be like when I say, do it simply in the beginning, and you can get more creative and complex later. Like right now, yeah, just get a fucking piece of plastic

33:41standard staples or Amazon or whatever, and use your printer. In the future, you can have artists do posters for you, right? But for now, like, just get the poster up. Same thing, take that, print it a little bit bigger, eight by 10, throw it in the bathrooms, have very basic picture frames in the bathrooms. Make sure, though, that every time you run this campaign, that's part of your SOP. You have to go in like post it in all the right places, update the bathrooms, update the tables, you know, it's a process, it is a system, and everyone has to, you know, whoever's in charge, just put one person in charge, and they can complete this. It's very simple. And then it's just encouragement. Now, you could go the extra mile, right? Or you could say, hey, that's just our baseline, right? We're communicating, we're sending emails, we're updating our website, we're posting on socials, we're running events, we're having events, we're updating our signage,

34:42we're encouraging people to subscribe to the communication methods, let them know that these communication methods exist. Like, hey, did you know we have an Instagram? We have an Instagram counter behind the bar. Hey, did you know we had a Facebook page? We have a Facebook counter behind the bar. Do you know this? Incentivize them. You're gonna, so now you're just building this like trust cycle. That's what you're doing. In the future, once you've established that, then you can supercharge it, right? Now you're like, okay, we got this trust circle going. And hopefully, and this is where I think businesses can, this is where if like, if you can, if you can create this trust cycle, right? Two other things have to be true. For your business to work, I think. One is your product has to be worth coming back for. That your product has to be good. Because the circle, if you have the trust cycle, right?

35:46People are staying in it because the product's so good. But if the product sucks, then that, it's like, that trust circle is going to exist and there's going to be some people in there. But it's going to be really hard to grow it because yeah, it's really only going to be your like, diehards and not new people to become diehards because the products aren't that good. Right? They're not consistent. It's like, yeah, it's fine. But I think you can still run a business either way. I think the product could be like pretty mediocre because you're always going to have diehards. But I do think having a good product, not a shitty one, is important. Second thing is accounting. I don't know this to be true. I don't have any data to back this up. But my suspicion is that the reason a lot of businesses fail is simply because they're bad at accounting. And you don't

36:47have to be a genius and you don't have to be, you know, some like mathematician, you just have to be consistent and you just have to track. And it's the same the same is true with like losing weight which is just monitor what comes in and out of the business. You don't have to change anything. You don't have to do anything. Just look at it. Just track it. Do it in a spreadsheet. You don't need anything fancy. What money did you spend today? What money came in today? If you'd simply do that, you won't make any mistakes. You will know what's going on. And it's very simple with weight laws. Just track how much you weigh every day or some other metric. If weight is not your metric, it's fine. Track the size of your waist or whatever it is. Track something to show progress. And in the case of accounting, track to show that you're not fucking up, that the money,

37:52that the bucket is not leaking. That's it. I think all of these things combined, you have a solid business. Now, the last thing I'll end on is, well, what if you want to grow it? A couple of things could happen. One is, if you have a great product, like a really exceptional product, you have good accounting, you have the trust cycle going, solid foundation, chances are simply by word of mouth and maybe a little bit about what you're posting and how you're communicating, you will grow. If you have a business that's on a street, people just drive by, you're going to get organic traffic. And because you have such a good foundation, you have a capture system. You have a way to keep them in the cycle. So you will grow, it will just be very slow because you have,

38:55the traffic is all organic. This is currently what we're doing as a company, which is we have all of these pieces in place. We're consistent, we have good foundation, we have good products, we have good accounting. The problem that we're experiencing, or at least the place that has the like every year, we make the same amount of money and we grow by a little bit, a little tiny bit. But because what we're getting is organic traffic. And because in our world, not similar to beer, in our world, we have customers come and go because one day they own a pool, the next day they don't. In beer, chances are you're more consistent, you're always drinking. So in our case, the problem is the incoming, the growth of it. So this is where I think once you

39:58established all of those things, then you can start thinking about, okay, how do we get more people to notice that we exist and will come in from outside the trust circle? How do we do that? Now that is where you can start doing like maybe outbound marketing. You could start advertising in local papers, local magazines, local newsletters, putting posters outside of your business to attract people in, collaborations with other breweries. You could create Instagram or social media content that has a broader appeal that could get more views, maybe more educational stuff. Which I think sometimes for a local business, that's kind of why would you do that? Because if

41:00you're doing that, but it's like, yeah, some guy in like Arizona and your businesses in Colorado, it's like, well, that's kind of useless. Unless you plan to expand the Arizona, I just don't see that. I don't see the need for a small local business to have such a massive presence. So I wouldn't even probably do that. I would stay as local as possible and kind of grow through local chains of communication outside of your own. And just keep doing that. And again, if you have a good foundation, you have a capture system. So all that effort of going outside of your own capture system helps grow your existing one. And you get bigger and bigger and bigger. And as you get bigger and bigger, you can start to expand into larger, larger areas. Or go national. If you want to take that lead. For us, that is where that's the thing we're working on in 2026, which is

42:04expanding outside of the trust cycle. For us, that means doing more content that appeals to a larger base in social media because we are a national company. That means perhaps doing more paid advertising because that reaches people outside of our existing subscriber base. That means coming up with more writing more articles because that, you know, lands us in different SEO terms, which allows us to find different people that could be trying different ways to get leads through different incentives like lead magnets and what have you. It could be doing more collaborations. It could be, there's a lot of things we can do. The ones that we're focused on is basically the content side of things because that's what we do. And perhaps even paid. Anyway, I hope that that's

43:04helpful in some way. I like taking real world frustrations with businesses and thinking through the fundamentals of those and then turning it into how would I approach it if I were writing the business, knowing what I know, and then, oh, now that I see it in that business, what are the gaps in my own that I'm not doing? And I kind of like that process. But let me know what you think. Shoot me an email, madatmoneylab.co, and I'll talk to you next time.