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The WebWell Podcast - The Journey of a Digital Marketing Entrepreneur, Kent Lewis
19 Plays5 months ago
Welcome to the latest episode of the WebWell Podcast, your newest binge-worthy podcast, where we unravel the threads of digital marketing with the insight of industry leaders. Today, we're excited to host Kent Lewis, a digital marketing maestro and entrepreneurial spirit whose journey has shaped the digital landscapes of Portland and beyond. In this episode, titled "The Journey of a Digital Marketing Entrepreneur," hosts Simon and Ben chat with Kent about the thrills and challenges of starting and steering a digital marketing agency. From his early days to founding Anvil Media and his current role at Anvil Unlimited, Kent shares stories that are as educational as they are entertaining.
Tune in as we explore how Kent's leadership has not only driven business growth but also fostered significant community through initiatives like pdxMindShare and his involvement in entrepreneur organizations. We'll also get a peek into the world of a Fractional CMO and how such roles are revolutionizing strategies in the digital age. Whether you're a budding entrepreneur, a marketing professional, or just curious about the digital domain, this episode is packed with insights that promise to enlighten and inspire. Don't miss out on this compelling dialogue that bridges professional insights with personal journeys in the evolving world of digital marketing.
To learn more about Kent, visit:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/whats-your-story-write-book-kent-lewis/
https://kentjlewis.com/
https://www.anvilmediainc.com/
We'd love to know what you think!! Please send your questions or comments to [email protected] We look forward to hearing from you!
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Transcript
Introduction to the Web Well Podcast
00:00:09
Speaker
All right, welcome back everyone to the Web Well Podcast. I'm adding a little intro text here, Ben. This will be new to you, Kent, new to you. This is where we dive into digital depths, bringing the insights from leaders
00:00:25
Speaker
in the world of web development, web design, and marketing. I'm your host, Simon Part, joined here with Ben McKinley, and today our special guest, Kent Lewis.
Guest Introduction: Kent Lewis
00:00:37
Speaker
Welcome. Thank you, Simon. Yeah, so Kent and I, I think, were introduced formally back in maybe 2009.
00:00:45
Speaker
and more actively connected during the pandemic, actually. I was invited into a group of agency owners, graciously, before I was an EO member, to help navigate some of the weirdness there. And then over the years have continued to bump into each other and find more opportunities to connect. So I'm really excited to share with the audience Kent's insights and perspective on life. And yeah, we'll jump right in. Kent, thank you for joining us today.
00:01:16
Speaker
It's a pleasure to have me. Thank you, gentlemen. I'm looking forward to it. Wonderful. Well, to kick things off, why don't we start way back and just share a bit about your journey into the world of opening a digital marketing agency in Portland, Oregon. So yeah, talk to us maybe about where you grew up and start there.
00:01:34
Speaker
So I grew up in Seattle, Washington. I went to an inner city high school, Garfield High School, where I was a minority. It was a really important part of my growth as a person. It was very racially diverse. And it was during the mid 80s. It was definitely there was the Black Power Movement and this and that. And it was eye-opening. We were surrounded by, in that neighborhood at that time, it's all gentrified now. But it was crack houses and gangsters.
00:02:02
Speaker
amazing chicken and dizels. But I, you know, I was young and I had no fear of mortality.
Career Transition and Founding Anvil Media
00:02:09
Speaker
So, you know, I was on the tennis team, I played horribly, but I did see a shooting one day and it didn't even faze me. I just was the only one that didn't hit the ground on our tennis team. I just looked at the guy, I was like, I'm not an arrival gang member, so we should be fine here.
00:02:25
Speaker
But that school prepped me for college. I went to school up in Western Washington University of Bellingham, Washington, mainly because it was 20 minutes from the Canadian border, and at that time that was a 19-year-old drinking age. So I thoroughly academically decided to go to Western because of the drinking age nearby.
00:02:45
Speaker
Great school business degree marketing concentration ironically unlike a philosophy degree i'm actually using it. Having run an agency for twenty two years that is in marketing actually maybe learned a few things that i was able to apply.
00:02:59
Speaker
But I moved to Portland in 95, didn't know anybody, started my career in public relations in that, you know, basically in March of 95. And by June of 96, I switched gears and moved downstairs to a sister agency and started optimizing websites for 14 different search engines at that time, none of which were Google because it was back when the internet was in black and white.
00:03:25
Speaker
And it was OG times for me. And after that, long story short, I had 10 jobs in the first 10 years of my career, including Anvil, my 22-year agency. But the reason I became an entrepreneur is I kept getting fired, mostly by incompetent management that didn't understand what I was doing or the value I was bringing. So thankfully, they pushed me out and I did it myself, and it was a fruitful career.
00:03:52
Speaker
Excellent, so you share that sentiment of feeling like you're pretty unavailable for employee status, huh?
00:04:00
Speaker
I just prove after 20 years, 22 years in March of 22, I sold my agency to another Midwest based agency. I lasted 14 months as an employee and further confirmed no matter how much I evolve and mature or chill out, I'm still unemployable. And I'm enjoying my unemployment, although I do miss making money. So there's that, but we'll get into more of that later.
00:04:27
Speaker
Yeah, excellent.
Learning from Others and Role of Mentors
00:04:28
Speaker
Well, I think some of the things that are there are also unique about you. Like you said, you're using your college degree and you have your entire career. That's unusual. I share that as the as a business major coming out of Lewis and Clark and going into business. And of course, that was very broad based, very liberal arts. But yeah, hit on some frameworks and some high level elements.
00:04:50
Speaker
Also, talk to us a little bit. It seemed that there's a lot of key learnings that you could have taken away in those 10 years. Was that helpful when you started your own agency to have had that background of watching others do things right and terribly wrong? Absolutely. The challenge I have when I see young kids leaving college and going right into business for themselves, and I know two or three that we know, fellow agency owners that started there, one or two that started their agencies in college,
00:05:17
Speaker
One of them's still in business. One of them's winding it down. The other already sold it of the three I know. But the challenge is a lack of context. So I have helped build a bunch of other agencies and a bunch of other very senior digital marketers over the years, having been a part of 10 agencies. So I was at five or six agencies before I started Anvil.
00:05:38
Speaker
And I learned what an agency is, what agency culture is like, what an effective agency person looks like, what the roles are. But most importantly for my old boss, Ryan Wilson, who hired me in 1997,
00:05:53
Speaker
from the web development shop into a big PR firm here in Portland. He taught me how agencies work and the ratios you need to cover salaries and have what the target profitability is and all of these sort of things. So that when we parted ways after a year and three quarters together and I started Anvil Media after that,
00:06:15
Speaker
I already knew how to run an agency and he had given me enough leeway and enough guidance that it was a very unique, one of my few true mentors. I had basically two in my career and the other was one of my bosses at my first PR agency and end up working with her for another 20 years as a consultant on my team building and that sort of thing. She was invaluable, but really just two mentors. And if I could give part any advices
00:06:42
Speaker
have as many mentors as you can with as many different perspectives, particularly they're different than you. Because at the end of the day, I feel I was limited by only having two mentors because I jumped jobs too much and then suddenly I'm an owner. It's hard to have mentors when you're an owner. People are like, I don't think you're going to listen to me or you don't need me or whatever the misguided thought is on that.
00:07:06
Speaker
Yeah, no, I couldn't
Thought Leadership in Marketing
00:07:07
Speaker
agree more. I, you know, I, on the other hand, started an agency right out of college. I had a partner that was 16 years my senior. Um, but yeah, there was some mentoring there, but, um, I think the biggest thing he gave me was a confidence to launch. But for many years there were, there was that, that, oh my gosh, there's so much I don't know. And, and a lack of confidence to even, you know, reach out to guys like you and others in the, in the agency world to be like, Hey, let's,
00:07:34
Speaker
let's enjoy some co-opetition instead of the competition and be an adversarial. And I've certainly learned that lesson over time, but that's advice I suggest to others too is, hey, figure some stuff out on someone else's dime and then launch on your own with a lot more perspective. So yeah, that's helpful validating. Yeah, yeah, for sure.
00:07:53
Speaker
Well, one of the things that I always appreciate and respected about you two was not only, well, let's start with thought leadership. I mean, it's one thing to promote thought leadership in your work to other leaders. It's another thing to live it and find that cadence and hustle as consistently as you do. Talk to us about your commitment to thought leadership and yeah, let's talk about that for a little bit. Yeah, so I guess it started,
00:08:21
Speaker
It helped that I had a, you know, maybe almost two years of PR tech PR as a background before I went into the internet because most of the internet folks back in 96 were computer science nerds, whether they went to school for it or not.
00:08:38
Speaker
people that you translate to from my English to their Klingon. But in my world, I remember within two or three months of starting at the web development agency, which was called Vivo Media, which is informed of the name of my agency, Anvil Media later, coincidentally, or not coincidentally, is that I was doing all this research to figure out my job as what is marketing on the Internet. All I knew, I had one tool and that's PR.
00:09:07
Speaker
And so back then, there were very few publications online. They're not even easy. It wasn't even a thing yet. And so there are very few channels to learn. And trying to learn marketing, there were no conferences, no books, no nothing. So I was constantly surfing the web, finding great information. And within a month or two, I went back to my boss. I said, hey, I'm getting all this great information. I think we should start like a weekly newsletter.
00:09:32
Speaker
And eventually I called at Anvil Media thinking I would retire at Vivo Media two or three jobs into my career. I was wrong every time, by the way. So what I did is I created a weekly newsletter, like here's what's going on. And we did web design, web hosting, which was a disaster. And then I would talk about what I learned in marketing. And then I parlayed that in my next job as a monthly easing. So the thought leadership started
00:10:01
Speaker
And two months later, I was not even three months into my job, four months tops. I was invited to go speak to a bunch of professors in Orlando, Florida at this International Communication Professors Conference. So these were professors from around the world.
00:10:19
Speaker
So I flew there on a red eye. My creative director and I stayed up all night to create this really kick-ass presentation, which in the end, I don't even remember if it was any good. I just remember that we were both brain fried because we didn't have enough sleep and it was not our best work. Literally, it was terrible. But I got up there, mainly for him, he froze. He literally brain froze. He was half asleep and he couldn't think of what to say next. I got up there, did my little song and dance, and I realized
00:10:49
Speaker
I'm two years out of college and I, two years ago I was sitting and listening to professors, now I'm speaking to them and they're sitting down. And I was like, this is really cool. So that's what got, so I started the writing first with my easing, then I started the speaking part and I already had been pitching the media for a couple of years. So those are the three legs of my thought leadership stool, regardless of the content is you got to write about it, you got to speak about it and you got to pitch the media that you're an expert on and each of those feeds the other.
00:11:18
Speaker
And that's what I've been doing for almost 30 years. And now that I'm on my own with a recently lifted non-compete is I don't necessarily want to go back and I'm not going to run my own agency again with actual employees. And I don't really want to work for somebody else and fix their problems. I don't. It's not the worst thing in the world. It's easier to fix other people's problems on your own.
00:11:37
Speaker
But I like that I choose my clients. I have a network of partners like Cascade where my clients need something or people in my network reach out and they say, do you know a good web development company that maybe does affordable e-commerce and has a scalable platform? Yes, I know just the people.
00:11:56
Speaker
And that's an homage to you in case you were wondering. And so bottom line is I built my business in particular Anvil, but at my previous agencies when I was speaking and writing, I built our brand by being one of the first, one of the best, one of the biggest. But by 2013, after a little over 10 years of employees, Anvil wasn't also ran and I blew it up and rebuilt it. That's perhaps a follow on story.
00:12:23
Speaker
But I never stopped doing the thought leadership. It just got harder and harder as I got went from one competitor to a thousand competitors in Portland, right so Thought leadership is how we've managed to stay ahead at every place I've been and I still this day speak 25 to 30 times a year and I write, you know, roughly 30 articles a year and
00:12:45
Speaker
So that's what keeps me in front of people. It's my marketing engine and I've been
Teaching and Community Building
00:12:50
Speaker
evangelizing. I'm glad you asked because I have been speaking and writing about the concept of thought leadership for one main reason for the Cascade web dev audience is that it's brilliant SEO.
00:13:01
Speaker
Because AI, in the post-AI world, everybody, I just generated an article for my PDX Mindshare blog post about exit interviews as part of my new passion, which is employee engagement and retention. But when things go wrong or things go right and they leave, you got to have an exit interview process. So I wrote using a custom GPT prompt, I wrote an article that is undetectably, it's generated by AI but not detected. It says it's a human article.
00:13:30
Speaker
versus one I wrote yesterday for my Mindshare blog about a similar topic that was one of the same engine caught 100% of it as AI generated. So my point is, and I'm generating, not to make myself famous, but to help educate people on employer engagement, because I'm going around the country and speaking about it, and I just need more materials. People ask, what's a stay interview? What's an exit interview? Well, check out our blog. There's your answer. This is all you need to get started.
00:13:59
Speaker
So there's a lot to unpack in that, but that's, that's my long answer. Yeah. No, that's fantastic. How much time do you spend each day with, you know, with the thought leadership efforts? Great question. I would say I'm probably, um, I'm probably thinking about or, um, writing about writing probably on average once a week.
00:14:21
Speaker
But it may bleed into every two weeks, you know, so, you know, you know, a couple articles a month that goes to that can go to three or four if I include my PDX Mindshare backfill blog posts that are AI generated for that are supporting my that are supporting my my main content around employee engagement. I am pitching the media probably one to five times a week.
00:14:44
Speaker
probably closer to one or two. And I used to rely heavily on helper reporter out Haro for short now owned by Cision. And I saw the return rate go from a 20% success rate of all my pitches down to about a 2% success rate. I've tapped others like featured source bottle and inside our alternatives. And I found greater success, slightly higher conversion rates because they're lesser used, lesser abused.
00:15:09
Speaker
But the bigger thing is having been in digital for so long, I still occasionally get people reaching out to me for a source. You know, for the first 10 years of my career, the local news stations and magazines would reach out to me about a question about the internet. Because of my PR training, they knew I'd give a decent sound bite or a decent interview. My face is ideally designed for radio, but every once in a while they'd put me on the air.
00:15:34
Speaker
Uh, it's fantastic. Good to know. Cause that's something I'm, uh, I'm getting strong encouragement from Simon to, uh, to, you know, do some more of that and know that it would be beneficial, but, uh, also trying to get a handle on, on what level of commitment that makes. And obviously you're you've optimized it, uh, at this stage of your life, but, but good, good to know.
00:15:51
Speaker
Hey, you mentioned about speaking to professors early in your career, and then you found yourself in a bit of a professor position. Talk to us about the teaching you did with PSU and what that's looked like for you. Yeah. Back in 1996, before I was recruited,
00:16:14
Speaker
to another agency called KVO, I saw one of their head of digital called interactive back then. So they're building websites starting in 93, 94. So KVO was early into web dev. I saw this guy David Smith present and I thought he was a brilliant presenter. And he and I talked and that led to them, the head of the largest PR group.
00:16:37
Speaker
I got on his radar and he ended up recruiting me, but David would regularly have me speak at his classes, his web development classes at PSU, and that turned into, hey, would you teach a class? The first class I taught back in 99
00:16:51
Speaker
or 98 was an internet marketing research class I made up from scratch. Like it didn't exist. And I was using different tools, these bookmark tools that are long gone to sort and collate. And then I took them through different ways to benchmark. Basically doing what I was doing for a living to get paid to do, I taught my students to do that. And my win on that first, one of my first students, she took what she learned in my class
00:17:19
Speaker
Actually, by this time was my digital marketing search engine marketing class, which I taught for like 16 years as part of Continuing Ed. She took my, you know, I think she spent $350 on my class, and she charged a client $1,200 to do the work that she learned within a week of finishing the class. Wow.
00:17:38
Speaker
a huge win for me just justifying like, this is good stuff. People find value. She was a quick learner, super smart, client loved it. I only know this because we grab coffee after. She's like, I got to tell you the story. I was like, that's fantastic. I taught different classes, business, e-marketing, where I touch on e-mail marketing, other things, and I felt like I was out of touch. I just laser focused on search, which is what I do. I'd have guest speakers. It's like 16 hours of content around digital marketing.
00:18:07
Speaker
I did it because i love to teach i love clearly as you said up front i love to talk i love to share my knowledge but then i found you know in our world of digital there are computer web development classes people can learn the different tools and languages but you know
00:18:23
Speaker
What's the degree in that? You're either a designer or a developer that knows code. Maybe you can get a project management certification. But in my world of pure search marketing, there was no real degree. Even today, they're sparse, or as I've spoken at some of these at U of O in Oregon State, they take one assignment in a class and that's their digital marketing. They might have a class if they're lucky, but I found that I got great talent.
00:18:52
Speaker
me. Bless you. I'm allergic to great talent but I was able to find some good talent through that but that wasn't the objective but it was a benefit and a couple clients maybe but I really enjoyed it and I still am a volunteer instructor for score. I teach a two-hour social media workshop and I had on Tuesday this last Tuesday had
00:19:14
Speaker
70 attendees to my free two-hour workshop. And then inevitably I'm like, hey, I'll give you a free audit if, you know, we didn't get time. And I have like eight meetings booked and then I can turn those into leads for my network, basically. Wow. Yeah. That seems brilliant. Not only to bestow that wisdom on the next generation and help them be more effective, but to crank out job ready, you know, young professionals with this emerging skill set. That seems like a win-win all the way around.
00:19:42
Speaker
Well, wonderful. Well, hey, and I think you've also demonstrated, you know, EO, the interest in peer mentorship. I know you've been a part of that for quite a long time. But maybe just for a minute or so, talk to us about PDX Mindshare, because I've really been impressed seeing you kind of build that community and the support of that over the years.
00:20:01
Speaker
Yeah, so PDX Mindshare, I started back in 99, almost everything I did in my career, I started in late 99, between late 99 and late 2000. So PDX Mindshare started as a think tank of internet marketing folks that might include you, although I didn't know you back then, where we'd grab bourbon and talk about the future of the internet because it was
00:20:22
Speaker
before the crash people are too busy so i had like two we had two meetings and then it went on hiatus for almost a year and then everybody needed a job so like when's mine sure happening next so i restarted it had a couple meetings and then again people got jobs again
00:20:37
Speaker
So then I restarted a third time in December of 01 after realizing that, you know, it's not just a guy's bourbon cigar thing, it's there are some really brilliant women out there and other people that need to know each other. So I introduced some people, invited 20, you know, 12 showed up and they're like, this was great. When's the next one? That's when I started doing monthly events up until just physical networking up until Trader Vic's burned. And I think 2016, when we had workshops and a little bit of networking as it evolved,
00:21:07
Speaker
Then I was burned out with the physical networking events, went purely online. So we have over 12,000 members in our LinkedIn group. We have maybe 100 in our Facebook group. I had done a lot of webinars, but now it's mainly just curating the blog around careers and employee engagement, my new passion. After being an employee for a couple of months, I was like, there are some issues that need fixing. So that's where that pivot came from.
00:21:35
Speaker
And we have a monthly newsletter, but the main thing is the LinkedIn group. And then you can post jobs and events for free, and there's some premium options there. But that has been the glue. I just had a guy call me this morning out of the blue saying, I think I met you 10 years ago at Mindshare, and I'm looking for my next gig, and I just want to pick your brain. I talked to him for 15 minutes, gave him some ideas. Do you know Alignable? He's like, no, what's that? I said it's like a hyper-local LinkedIn. I think it's a good fit for his background and where he's trying to go versus
00:22:04
Speaker
you know, somebody like you, Ben, I think it's of limited value. But I say go to LinkedIn, go to the Mindshare blog and read about Alignable and go check it out. So I'm using the blogs, the blog is a go read about it, then go do it and then then come back to me with questions.
00:22:18
Speaker
That's really cool. Yeah. Like I said, the community building aspect to that and bringing folks together and giving them opportunities to speak and support and engage, it all seems really, really positive. Well, it's come up a couple of times, but employee engagement, you know, obviously you started off, you know, chasing business and being the guy and
Employee Experience vs Customer Experience
00:22:38
Speaker
doing the stuff. And now we're seeing you kind of shift to a couple of things. One, this fractional CMO
00:22:43
Speaker
aspect, this kind of consultancy that probably helps keep the lights on and keeps you sharp. And then this thought leadership and speaking around employee engagement. So love to have you share that journey with our audience here.
00:22:57
Speaker
Yeah, so basically I've had the CMO title chief marketing officer twice. I would say now that I'm part of this group called CMO coffee talk where I see real MBA educated, fortune 1000 B2B marketers. These people are, they're touching revenue, they're touching all the Martek stack. These people are some art. So like I'm at a different level. I'm my happy place when it comes to
00:23:24
Speaker
what we'll call the fractional CML or frankly, just digital marketing consulting is small business. I truly love working with small business, not just because they make me look smart because they have no experience or perspective in digital like I've been living the last almost 30 years. They appreciate, they pay, they're everything that my larger clients at Anvil were not.
00:23:49
Speaker
And I find it what I enjoy most is moving large needles for small business versus infinitesimally small needles for large corporations with a few exceptions of course. So I would say like a quarter of my time is consulting with a handful of clients.
00:24:06
Speaker
That's block one. Then other than my speaking and writing as a thought leader, which is 80 percent focused on digital marketing, 20 percent focused on employee experience, that's going to switch over the next three to five years. I'm focusing more and more on this employee engagement. Why? Because back in 2000, I read a book by Les Schwab, the tire company that everybody in the West Coast knows.
00:24:31
Speaker
People on the East Coast or Midwest do not know Les Schwab. But basically, he had this, his book, as I read it back 20 something years ago, was about customer experience. Because he trained his employees to run up to the car to greet people when they're coming in to literally change their tires. Something that was, he basically reinvented an industry that was low service, high sketch. And he built a multi-billion dollar business out of that.
00:24:57
Speaker
So I was inspired by his book as weirdly to authored as a title as it is. It's out of print. It's super cheesy spirit and action sort of stuff. The title is not great. The story is amazing. He's generated every store manager that is there for everybody never leaves Les Schwab. They all retire millionaires because of their employee equity program, their stock plan.
00:25:21
Speaker
and that's unheard of outside of the tech space. He's very, very generous and I loved his perspective, but it took me 20 something years until I was literally fired to realize that I had slightly overvalued the customer or client experience in the agency world over the employee experience. Then I read amazing work by a woman in Tiffany Bova,
00:25:43
Speaker
BOVA, and she presented to the CMO coffee talk, these CMOs, about how there is not a direct correlation between investing in customer experience and profitability versus investing in the employee experience and profitability. There's a direct correlation. Every dollar you put into employee experience returns 80 percent, and this is based on massive research studies and multiple studies, versus every dollar you put into customer experience may not return anything.
00:26:10
Speaker
And then I realized I put the connect to the dots myself is based on my experience having hundreds of employees, but being a relatively small agency, never really over 16 employees is that you can imagine an amazing I've written about this, the first class mindset, creating a compelling Ritz Carlton like experience, no matter what price point you're at, no matter what industry you're in.
00:26:32
Speaker
But it's not sustainable if your employees are not able to carry that torch, right? If they're unhappy, it's not going to work. So if there is a McDonald's store manager or better yet an owner that cares more about his employees than anybody else, it doesn't mean he pays them more, although that's implied perhaps, it's that he takes care of them.
00:26:51
Speaker
And then when you go into that McDonald's expecting this and getting this, just incrementally more, you'll never forget that McDonald's experience. I'll give you an example. Why is it that everybody complains about young employees are largely worthless because of this millennial mindset and everything else? They're entitled snowflakes, yada, yada. Yet, when you go to a Dutch Brothers, these kids cannot wait to make you a $6 cup of Joe.
00:27:17
Speaker
Right? They are ecstatic. How do they do that? Because Dutch Brothers has secret sauce. And ironically, as much as I politically disagree with Chick-fil-A, they have a similar culture with their young employees. People love working there. So why is it that you and I over the years have, you know, I'll just speak for myself, struggled to attract and retain great employees? It's because they didn't feel like they were my priority.
00:27:40
Speaker
They were way up there and I took great care of my team in retrospect, but my execution wasn't flawless. So once I saw the research, then I went to this, you mentioned EO, entrepreneur organization. We have an event called Global Speakers Academy. So I went to Panama where it happened to be hosted. And for a week I built a single deck around employee experience. And basically the title is like,
00:28:02
Speaker
EX is greater than CX. Employee experience is greater than customer experience. And because everybody in our world of digital marketing and in design, it's the user experience, it's all about the experience, right? The customer journey. And what I realized is nobody benchmarks the employee journey. Have you benchmarked that at Cascade? Like from the first time they hear about you till the exit interview at every touch point?
00:28:25
Speaker
where the gaps are, nobody has. Not singling you out. That's what I'm encouraging companies to do. I'm working on building speaking workshops for EO, and I'm doing one next week, a three-hour workshop for Vistage, one of the local Vistage chapters. I'm really truly passionate about this. I will just say one little tangential thing before you ask this question, I want to answer it.
00:28:52
Speaker
I sold my agency. Financially, it's okay. In fact, we won't go into details. It's gotten worse. So emotionally, not great. Financially, not great. So I'm not gonna BS that and silver code it.
00:29:07
Speaker
But let's say it went perfect and I got paid upfront, which I didn't. It's too much on the back end is I still would be doing what I'm doing today. Why? Let's say I had enough money to retire and never work again, because I believe and I'm in my early fifties.
00:29:23
Speaker
That I have the biggest network i've ever had. I have the most knowledge and experience i've ever had And I have I still have passion and I have these unique abilities the the fearlessness to speak to crowds for whatever length of time Um the competence to write effortlessly that's of decent quality good enough Um comfort working with the media. So my thought leadership isn't work to me. It's just fun. It energizes me
00:29:48
Speaker
And then working with entrepreneurs when I consult with them, I just met with CASA, a court-appointed special advocate.
Passion for Mentoring and Societal Impact
00:29:55
Speaker
I gave them what I call a $1,500 audit, a small fraction of what I gave you or will give you a small fraction of what I gave them.
00:30:04
Speaker
just as a pro bono right and they were grateful to say you gave us direction and prioritization of our digital marketing plans right we didn't have that and so that's what i love doing is giving these entrepreneurs small businesses i'm used to working with much bigger companies like
00:30:22
Speaker
the guidance and direction they need, and then they can decide, do they want to do it at a house? Can I refer, recommend, oh, you need Cascade to build this, or whatever the case. My point is, I'm not slowing down. Even when I moved to Bend in a couple of years, I'm just going to keep doing this because it's not work to me, and based on my exit, still got to work anyway, but it's not work anymore. It's fun, and I'm grateful to have had my journey, but I'm not giving up, I'm doubling down. I think it's a foolish,
00:30:49
Speaker
When people cash out and check out, I think it's straight up, I will say that to any, no matter how many billions or tens of millions people have in the bank, that they should be making an impact on society, make the place better than you found it. And if you're jerking in the bathroom, you're not taking care of business by employing your knowledge and your resources and your money to go make better.
00:31:10
Speaker
Just look at Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Zuckerberg doing nothing good for this planet with all the money they have. That's the end of my political rant. They could be changing, ending homelessness, ending starvation around the world instead of launching giant...
00:31:27
Speaker
Penises into the sky so because it may I that's why I encourage everybody that's exited or thinks they have enough and want to check out travel more Have experiences, but please give back right you have the reason in time. Please do that because that's what I'm doing
00:31:43
Speaker
That's awesome. I've seen no shortage of people that have found success relatively early in life. And all of the effort, all of the passion, all of the commitment to the cause, you know, when that dries up their purpose and their happiness, their joy starts to dry up. And it's very, very consistent. And I'm with you.
00:32:02
Speaker
the traditional notion of retirement where you check out and you hop on the front porch in a rocking chair and hold your wife's hand for 20 years and in most cases expire much sooner than that. It doesn't appeal. I'm not sure I'll have as much energy to push
00:32:18
Speaker
you know, web development and design initiatives post retirement, but or I should say post professional life, but certainly the appetite to really make positive change in other areas. I think that's a really important message. And going back to what you talked about in terms of charting that that employee experience at Cascade, you know, while we have been incredibly fortunate with the dedication of our development team and increasingly now with Simon going on four years in the creative director capacity,
00:32:47
Speaker
There are a lot of folks in that client that client services role project management strategist You know account manager over the years where I didn't prioritize them and I did you know put a lot of energy into it But it was sort of the hey, maybe the client is
00:33:03
Speaker
a little bit more important than you in this case, and maybe we should just take it. And then more importantly, I would hire junior folks to be the go-between between the actual knowledge holders and the doers, the developers and the client. And that was frustrating for the client because they weren't dealing with the brain trust. And it was really frustrating for our developers because they would be handed some, some initiative, you know, some strategic guidelines and saying, well, why are we doing it this way? Why wasn't I brought in sooner? And that, you know, that's on me putting, I wasn't setting the team up for success. So
00:33:32
Speaker
I agree with you 100 percent that employee experience component is so critical to long-term customer happiness, and it's really cool to see that work. I'm excited to continue to consume that content. It's awesome. Wonderful. Well, is there anything else you want to share or thoughts on the employee experience,
Balancing Business and Client Engagement
00:33:55
Speaker
or do we want to maybe move in and talk a little bit more about your digital consulting services?
00:34:00
Speaker
Um, I would just leave, I just want to leave one, um, my greatest lesson, uh, of, of all my, uh, we'll leave in the show notes. I've sent you guys my write that book, um, summary of like, you know, 28 years of entrepreneurship and successes and mostly failures. Uh, but is there's the e-myth, right? The entrepreneur myth is you work
00:34:23
Speaker
on the business, not in the business. A talented developer, a brilliant graphic designer, a copywriter, somehow they end up running a business and they have employees and that wasn't their intent, it's not their background. They have an English major, not a business major. I fortunately have a business major, and I worked with and saw how agencies operated, but most people don't get that coverage before they launch into or stumble or fall backwards into a business.
00:34:51
Speaker
And I just want to like to go against the grain a little bit. So the email is spot on. You can't grow your business when you're working in the business. If you're answering phone calls and taking client calls and dealing with customer issues, or frankly, just a lot of employee issues if you have enough employees.
00:35:08
Speaker
you're not growing the business so when i joined eo i instantly was like i got the mantra you know work on the business not in the business unfortunately in our industry mine in particular digital marketing moves really fast and so within less than a year of focusing solely on the back end of the business and infrastructure and engineering culture and all these things i quickly lost touch with the business
00:35:32
Speaker
And that's a problem when you're the lead sales guy, especially when you're supposed to be representing the latest and greatest. And my team was, at one point, told me when I was working with Real Networks out of Seattle, they're like, half of what you just said is wrong. And it took me aside, like, you need to shut up and step back.
00:35:50
Speaker
and I was so mad, and then I was just, I stepped on, I was upset with myself. So what I would say is, Lee Iacocca said, hire great people and get out of the way. That's true if you're running a manufacturing business where you take this widget and you do that and you do this and you're done, and just do that as best you can, you can kind of get out of their way. Or an experienced manager with a defined set of teams and responsibilities. My experience was, I hired really smart people.
00:36:18
Speaker
and i put them in these positions and i was like you let me know when you have a problem i assume you got it otherwise and they failed miserably because we didn't have enough definition we didn't have you know training we didn't have everything you would need to be successful but really what we lacked was them trusting me that it was okay to come to me and say i'm failing
00:36:37
Speaker
I am still to this day furious and disappointed in them, but that's on me because I didn't create that transparency and that trust that they could come and say, I'm failing. They literally quit instead of fixing it or even coming to me and telling me it's broken. So I was working on the business. I lost touch with the business. I lost touch with the team, with my clients and what it meant to do the work. And once I revisited that in 13 and reengaged,
00:37:00
Speaker
Meanwhile, keep in mind, we were at our record revenue and strong profits when I blew the company up because I knew we were on the down slide and I was miserable. So once I rebuilt, I had a plan, I started to rebuild, I was fine. I was like, I need to stay up on this stuff. I need to have real conversations with my team members. I need to, and things got better and better and better. So I didn't sell low because I wanted to get, I sold high because I had more altruistic goals of,
00:37:26
Speaker
becoming a full-time thought leader, of course, getting my wife out of the operational role, but giving my team a bigger path in a larger company, giving my clients more services. It was fairly altruistic. It hasn't totally played out that way. Let's say one out of four has worked out well. The agency has taken good care of my clients. Not everything else has worked out great, but the intention was there. That would be my one tip before we go into the services.
00:37:53
Speaker
Really solid. Well, something kind of different than our normal flow here on the podcast is I thought it might be fun for Kent to demonstrate some of the consulting services he does by doing a bit of a scrub down of Cascade WebDev and what he can glean
Digital Audit and Online Brand Management
00:38:08
Speaker
from our website and any digital marketing efforts that he can identify out there, just as we here at Cascade are going through a rebrand effort led by Simon.
00:38:18
Speaker
And the rest of us are trying to do everything we can to genuinely support that effort. So, yeah, looking forward to your observations, Ken, and the learnings that we can carry forward.
00:38:28
Speaker
Yeah, sure. I usually like to start at the beginning where I look at a website and I'm looking at, does it have the fundamentals? Keep in mind, my background for most of my career has been search engine optimization, SEO. I look at, say, the Cascade Web Dev website, and it does have the foundational elements that I would say 90 plus percent of websites have, but when they don't,
00:38:51
Speaker
it can be deadly. Your website should have your domain.com slash sitemap.xml and Cascade has a thorough XML sitemap and that's fantastic. What that does is tell Google what pages when you index my site, what pages should they focus on and for how long and with what emphasis. It's a roadmap on focusing that limited amount of Google juice or equity you have with that limited time they hit your site.
00:39:18
Speaker
The robot text file of which you have one that's wide open right now, minus protecting your admin, which is great, is telling Google specifically or other engines not to visit certain pages that are secure, the backend of the shopping cart, other secure folders. And then by the way, the XML sitemap is here if it's anywhere other than what I just said. So that's good.
00:39:39
Speaker
And then the third element you have that is important is that custom 404 error. So when I type in cascadewebdev.com slash XYZ, and you can do this for your website, just slash XYZ after your domain, does it come up with a branded template or is it a white error page of death with a little funny icon from your ISP, your website host?
00:40:00
Speaker
because what that does is it tells google and the visitor you're out of business because the page they bookmarked or somehow found in search that's old is not visible so when i do that with cascade i get your navigation i get your brand problem solved so these are things that that you're doing that everybody should be doing and and i'll give you an example i did this audit i do this usually when i had a team i would do this kind of audit for as part of my new business now i charge clients for it because i don't
00:40:27
Speaker
I'm not pitching a bigger engagement, I'm pitching an affordable initial consultation. I was pitching Symantec, the big software company with global concerns and tens of thousands of employees. And I told the CMO at this event I paid to go pitch them at call Richmond events. I said, your site is unindexable right now. For some reason, your robot text has disabled your entire domain.
00:40:52
Speaker
And I said, that's basically corporate suicide. And if you talk to your web team, you're going to see your traffic's down 80% or more. And she's stuck. Can you hold on one second? She got on the phone. She said, what the effing, whatever, fix this right now. It turns out the dev team had been making patches to the site and forgot to re-enable the robot text to what it was. They didn't revert it back. So they lost 90% of their traffic for a couple of weeks and had to rebuild it back. So that's how important this is. So even the big guys can get stuck.
00:41:21
Speaker
with this kind of stuff. Yeah, we've had that experience once with a client where something similar happened and a couple months later, everyone's kind of doing this. And ultimately, it's right here. That's where you get the choke. But those are some things from a policy perspective and checks and balances that the team must run. It's one of those critical filters. That's what a compelling story.
00:41:45
Speaker
Yeah, and I'll give you one or two other nuggets here and we can go offline later and I got like 25 other suggestions here. But one of them is with a PR background when people always say, oh, can you look at my site? The first thing I ask is not what your domain is. I say, what's your company name? And they'll give me like Cascade Web Dev. So if it's the first thing I do, think of the cocktail introduction and oh, yeah, I met that guy Ben from
00:42:07
Speaker
Cascade Web something. You type in and what you want to see is your website number one and your social profiles and favorable reviews from, in your case, not so much Yelp, but maybe G2 or CapTear, places that review service companies like yours or Anvil formerly.
00:42:28
Speaker
And then your local listing, Google My Business, you want that all to be curated. You want at least a dozen reviews and as high as five star average, as close to five as you can get. My experience with recruiting, so reviews on Indeed and Glassdoor that are under a four are actually preventing you from getting certain people to apply.
00:42:49
Speaker
And I had, back in 13, when I blew the company up, for two years, I had people post nonsensical reviews and one stars, and it crushed our star average. And people would agree to review an interview and then cancel. If they read the reviews, if they were smart, they would say, I have questions on, does the CEO really carry a skateboard from the trunk of his car to the office every day? I would say, no, not even once.
00:43:16
Speaker
I'm glad you asked because it's irrelevant to the employee experience here. That's just somebody taking pot shots and not even good pot shots at that. But people would just bail. You have to really curate when it comes to recruiting your Glassdoor and your Indeed reviews, and that's painful. If your consumer facing business, Yelp has a similar blackmail style where they lower your with the filters, lower your average to get you to do advertising and magically your star average goes up.
00:43:44
Speaker
So managing that's important. What are ways to do that? Having a whole employee review program or a customer review program to curate your online reviews. I have articles about that on the Anvil site that's still live at anvilmediink.com. And then you also can do that same thing with your employees. And then you can also buy your brand. So buying your own brand name, I have an article on five reasons you should buy your own brand on Google.
00:44:09
Speaker
Whereas eBay fervently disagreed, it cost them millions of dollars to buy their brand. Well, eBay is eBay, right? But when it comes to your brand, the lowest cost you'll ever spend is buying your brand, it's goodwill, you're defending it, etc. There's a bunch of reasons to do it. The other is, claim all the big eight social profiles, all the big social media platforms, you claim a profile, a business profile on each of those big eight.
00:44:33
Speaker
nine if you include a lineable and and curate the content on there so when I do a search for cascade web dev I see your website I see your ad above it so now you've got most of the fold and then below that is your social profiles and positive reviews
00:44:49
Speaker
And then if you take the PR side of things, which I highly recommend is pitch yourself as an expert, get those media mentions, then that rounds out your top 10. And then it's hard for an angry ex employee, angry ex client, or just some douche, you know, typing to ruin you with a blog post or a bad review, because you have a high number of reviews with a high star average. So those that curating your presence online is really important. And that's something that very few brands spend a good amount of time doing.
00:45:18
Speaker
It's fantastic information for us, again, as we're going down this path. And I think I'll be curious to see where we are on that journey, but completely understand what you're recommending. In fact, we did a pretty significant reviews push with our existing client base within the last year, because back in 2020, while we were relocating from our office and the rail cars across the street from Amzi,
00:45:41
Speaker
with a dedicated sort of company line to full distributed workforce working out of home offices. Someone tried to call that office line and it didn't work and they gave us a one-star review. Someone from a little Ma and Pa weed shop here in Portland, like were they a prospect? Did they really want a website? No, but they were having a bad day.
00:46:02
Speaker
Uh, bless you. They were not probably consuming enough of their own products to realize that was pretty unnecessary. And I've even called them like, Hey, maybe consider taking that down and you know, no action there. So interesting how you have to try and claw your way back from, from some dissidents. And it's, it's always, you know, you can't control where they come from. So interesting.
00:46:21
Speaker
Yeah, and I will say this two other quick thoughts and we'll see how we're doing on time. But so you're doing something really bold on your home page with a leave us a Google review and then you link to your Google My Business listing. That's pretty ballsy. I've never recommended that before because of what just happened to you is when people get the they use it when they're in a bad mood. Right. I recommend. But what this tells me is you guys are so good. And also, if you double check your reviews, they're phenomenal.
00:46:48
Speaker
is that you're so cocky you're saying i'm not worried bring it and almost nobody else does that so you can actually use that as a sale part of your sales pitches we're so good we put the google review link so anybody any hater could use it and we're not even afraid right bring it
00:47:03
Speaker
So so that's goals you for everybody else that's not doesn't have the cojones Send that through an email every time that moment when your client has maximum delight Send that send that suggestion to them train your team to do that, right? The other the last bonus point i'll give you our kudos is your email sign up in the footer of your website is really important
00:47:25
Speaker
And so, you know, saying what it is, sign up for our newsletter, it's not just a scheduled newsletter, it's a valuable resource. I will tell you from my experience, the Anvil newsletter over 22 years was my single best lead nurturing, lead generation tool. And secondarily, when other brands are all about getting more followers and engagement on social, the problem with that is, let's say you have, you know, 10,000 or even 1,000 followers on any given platform, Facebook, Instagram, doesn't matter.
00:47:52
Speaker
You have to keep buying those same people over and over because only 5% or less are seeing your posts. But your newsletter is getting 100% visibility. It just depends if they open it and click through. That's up to utilizing tools and best practices. That's an email marketing question at that point. But you don't have to keep buying them other than fractions of pennies every time you send them a note.
00:48:14
Speaker
So the job that I tell my clients as a marketer is get people to your newsletter, get them to complete a form so you can build a dialogue with them. Social are ATMs to your main branch, right? They make it convenient for people but they don't transact. You're not going to grow a client off an ATM. You're going to grow them face to face in the branch.
00:48:36
Speaker
And you can have a really good ATM and it's like, I'm not gonna do a home loan through my ATM while I'm getting 40 bucks for a scratch it. So the idea is like build that following through your newsletter and so many clients don't have the sign up in the footer like you do. So many companies I should say, all my clients do, I've demanded. But I think that's another heads up of something you're doing really well and the other should take note of.
00:49:02
Speaker
Wonderful. Well, that's good news. And I've gotten a couple of points of validation recently that email is far from dead and that, you know, that is still a really functional tool to stay in front of your clients. And then layering on top of it, obviously, once you have that list, it's a matter of strategically communicating with that audience. And as part of that, how do you feel about, you know, drip campaigns and automated marketing tools like HubSpot and others? So,
00:49:31
Speaker
I am...
00:49:33
Speaker
So I've used, I'll try and answer the question. So I've used maybe 10 platforms over the years to build and nurture contacts and mainly just send the email. And I would say that it's, I just had to have a call with another, one of the other EO agency owners. I reached out and said, I need somebody to help me understand what's going on with this HubSpot list. I'm trying to merge the lists and it's really easy. And when I used to use cooler email or more recently,
00:50:04
Speaker
MailChimp is like how to merge and dedupe lists and HubSpot does it differently with their active lists. So I have a workaround. But my point is, I just like that HubSpot because my database is under 2000 is I'm only sending monthly emails. It's free. That's the right price for me. And it does way more than I ever needed to do. And for if I want to pay another 20 bucks a month, I can have a do exponentially more. But my own point is,
00:50:29
Speaker
You can start with the free most basic email platform just to get a subscription form on your site and just commit to putting an email newsletter together. Of course, I've written a three-part series on how to build an effective email newsletter strategy because I built a plan for a client and realized this is too valuable information to keep, so I built it into a three-part article series for SmartBrief.
00:50:52
Speaker
Nice. Now, good information. Good information. Awesome. Well, man, I appreciate all that information. I look forward to the 25 other ideas you have that we can look to implement and just get better at that craft because I think there's a lot of blind spots, no doubt about it. And I think it would be real helpful as we're trying to just get a little bit better every day. Yeah, you bet.
00:51:14
Speaker
Excellent. Well, let's see. I don't know, any other, you gave us some great nuggets there in terms of some valuable lessons and recommendations. Anything else you want to share with our audience before we wrap things up?
00:51:27
Speaker
No, I just say that I've written and spoken extensively, so I would go to pdxmindshare.com, check out the blog and the archive webinars for more insights into how to build your career and how to build your business, and then how to improve the employee experience. Most of my, most, the last couple months of blog posts have been around improving employee experience. I'm gonna be posting an article on how to craft an effective exit interview. I'm working on that today, as a matter of fact.
00:51:56
Speaker
So there's a lot of that. And so that's a PDXmindshare.com. Plus you can join the LinkedIn group from there. And then if you want to learn more about sort of my speaking and what I do for a living, you can go to KentJLewis.com just because that's my name. And you can see some of my archive presentations. It's a little bit more about me. And then last but not least, connect with me on LinkedIn. And the most important Kent Lewis in Portland
00:52:24
Speaker
And I think I'm just like linkedin.com slash in slash Kent Lewis because I'm one of the early adopters. So I have a pretty sweet URL for that. So hope to stay in touch. Wonderful. Well, Kent, always enjoyable, always entertaining, always informative. Thank you for taking some time with us here on the Web Well podcast and look forward to connecting with you again soon. Yes, my pleasure. Thank you, gentlemen, for having me.