Vit Muller: 00:00:00

Time management systemsI just wanted to say I Time management

Vit Muller: 00:00:01

systemsdid a bit of research.

Vit Muller: 00:00:02

I did find something about like doing deals at 1:30 AM in Dubai.

Vit Muller: 00:00:06

Is that a thing

Joel Buhr: 00:00:06

What?

Joel Buhr: 00:00:07

What do you mean?

Joel Buhr: 00:00:07

What'd you find?

Vit Muller: 00:00:09

the power of Yes.

Vit Muller: 00:00:10

where's that obsession come from?

Joel Buhr: 00:00:12

That's like kind of a deep one, right?

Joel Buhr: 00:00:14

and I think the simple way to say it is

Vit Muller: 00:00:16

What's the segue here?

Vit Muller: 00:00:17

So you were selling gas, like how did you get from that to,

Vit Muller: 00:00:20

launching your own agency?

Joel Buhr: 00:00:21

it was one of those scenarios where the agency I was working for,

Joel Buhr: 00:00:24

he was a, he went outta business as simple as to say, went outta business.

Joel Buhr: 00:00:28

And I thought, you know what?

Joel Buhr: 00:00:29

I, I can do this.

Joel Buhr: 00:00:30

I don't want no more rules on me No anymore.

Joel Buhr: 00:00:33

And,

Vit Muller: 00:00:34

unemployable.

Vit Muller: 00:00:35

I can't listen to order.

Vit Muller: 00:00:36

I'm too obsessed with perfection and, and progress.

Vit Muller: 00:00:38

I'm better off doing it myself.

Vit Muller: 00:00:40

How did you come up with that whole idea

Joel Buhr: 00:00:41

the Yeti and the unicorn

Vit Muller: 00:00:42

Yeah.

Vit Muller: 00:00:42

It's pretty, it's pretty clever.

Joel Buhr: 00:00:43

I went to a conference and, the t-shirt literally had

Joel Buhr: 00:00:46

a Yeti and a unicorn on it.

Joel Buhr: 00:00:48

And I'm was thinking, I'm like, screw this.

Joel Buhr: 00:00:51

I just wanna have fun.

Vit Muller: 00:00:56

Hello everybody.

Vit Muller: 00:00:57

Welcome to another episode on the High Level Experience Podcast.

Vit Muller: 00:01:00

Our guest today is a relentless entrepreneur who lives at the

Vit Muller: 00:01:03

intersection of old school hassle and cutting edge strategy.

Vit Muller: 00:01:06

He's the kind of guy who helps you close deals at 1:30 AM in Dubai, then

Vit Muller: 00:01:10

hops on a morning flight just in time for breakfast, meaning back home.

Vit Muller: 00:01:15

He's the founder of First Direct, a powerhouse agency that's quietly helped

Vit Muller: 00:01:19

mattress retailers and other niche businesses scale with omni-channel

Vit Muller: 00:01:23

marketing that actually converts.

Vit Muller: 00:01:26

Whether it's print, SMS or HighLevel automation.

Vit Muller: 00:01:29

Him and his team built systems that just plain work.

Vit Muller: 00:01:32

He's also a pilot, a former podcast host, and a man obsessed

Vit Muller: 00:01:36

with one powerful thing: the Yes.

Vit Muller: 00:01:39

His obsession with helping others Say "Yes" has created ripple effect

Vit Muller: 00:01:43

across businesses in his area.

Vit Muller: 00:01:45

And today we're diving into the data driven mind behind it all.

Vit Muller: 00:01:50

Please welcome to the show Joel Buhr from First Direct Marketing.

Joel Buhr: 00:02:00

Thank you very much Vit for having me here.

Joel Buhr: 00:02:02

Glad to be here.

Vit Muller: 00:02:04

Joel, great to have you on the show.

Vit Muller: 00:02:05

Mate.

Vit Muller: 00:02:06

I saw that you're, you know, the power of Yes.

Vit Muller: 00:02:08

where's that obsession come from?

Vit Muller: 00:02:10

tell us about it.

Vit Muller: 00:02:11

Like why, what's the goal

Joel Buhr: 00:02:12

Power of Yes.

Joel Buhr: 00:02:13

That's like kind of a deep one, right?

Joel Buhr: 00:02:15

and I think the simple way to say it is I spent too many years not saying yes.

Joel Buhr: 00:02:21

Too many years.

Joel Buhr: 00:02:21

And, you finally come to that point where you probably wake up sick

Joel Buhr: 00:02:24

and tired of being sick and tired.

Joel Buhr: 00:02:27

And, I had one, business coach tell me.

Joel Buhr: 00:02:30

Joel, you're a heavy analyzer.

Joel Buhr: 00:02:31

you're trying to get all the information before you say yes,

Joel Buhr: 00:02:34

before you commit to something.

Joel Buhr: 00:02:35

I'm like, well, yeah, why wouldn't I Like, that's the problem.

Joel Buhr: 00:02:40

you're trying to have too much information before you make that commitment.

Joel Buhr: 00:02:44

And what you need to do is simply just say yes.

Joel Buhr: 00:02:46

I'm like, oh, well maybe I don't know what I think I know.

Joel Buhr: 00:02:50

and so that was probably about, A little over 10 years ago, roughly

Joel Buhr: 00:02:55

10 years ago or so, and I just, I'm like, all right, I'm gonna get the

Joel Buhr: 00:02:57

info fast, say yes, and go, and you never know where a yes will lead you.

Joel Buhr: 00:03:03

obviously you use some common sense and you don't say yes to bad things.

Joel Buhr: 00:03:06

Right.

Joel Buhr: 00:03:07

but, or things that would get you in trouble or are immortal

Joel Buhr: 00:03:10

or break the law or something like that, you know what I mean?

Vit Muller: 00:03:13

Yeah, I mean, it's an interesting one because it's also, you

Vit Muller: 00:03:16

know, one of the most profitable board also is saying no is another thing, right?

Vit Muller: 00:03:21

So there's like a bit of a conundrum there, like how

Vit Muller: 00:03:23

do you make the most of it?

Vit Muller: 00:03:24

So yes, there are deals that are not worth doing and saying no to different

Vit Muller: 00:03:28

projects, all things that are outside of your wheelhouse, because that's a

Vit Muller: 00:03:32

distraction than saying no to those is generally a good idea, rather

Vit Muller: 00:03:35

than getting yourself distracted.

Vit Muller: 00:03:37

But, I'm a big perfectionist and I think that's where it stems from.

Vit Muller: 00:03:40

I suppose in your case as well, because just naturally if you are the

Vit Muller: 00:03:43

type of guy who like, I need to have all the info, tells me you're more

Vit Muller: 00:03:47

like me, like perfectionist as well.

Vit Muller: 00:03:48

'cause yeah, like I kinda it's kinda like a logical thing.

Vit Muller: 00:03:50

Like I need to know all the things we need to m it all out.

Vit Muller: 00:03:53

Then I can quote you.

Vit Muller: 00:03:54

Then I can see if we can do it.

Vit Muller: 00:03:55

But yeah, I mean, it can be, it can create friction in a sales process.

Vit Muller: 00:03:59

It can mean that you might lose deals.

Joel Buhr: 00:04:02

Absolutely.

Joel Buhr: 00:04:03

I think my background, I was the kid that the parents hid the screwdrivers

Joel Buhr: 00:04:07

from because I wanted to figure out how did the doorknob work?

Joel Buhr: 00:04:10

And even though I'd opened the one doorknob I wanted to see

Joel Buhr: 00:04:13

how this one worked, right?

Joel Buhr: 00:04:15

Or I was always curious about why were they digging a hole?

Joel Buhr: 00:04:17

What's in the hole?

Joel Buhr: 00:04:18

What are they putting back in the hole?

Joel Buhr: 00:04:19

how do they do that?

Joel Buhr: 00:04:20

How does that machine work?

Joel Buhr: 00:04:22

Right?

Joel Buhr: 00:04:22

I was always curious about that, a big part of my background on

Joel Buhr: 00:04:26

the marketing front is data.

Joel Buhr: 00:04:27

And I started in the mid nineties, working at some of the data

Joel Buhr: 00:04:30

compilers in the United States.

Joel Buhr: 00:04:32

And so data, fascinated because it was just such a simple thing.

Joel Buhr: 00:04:35

and actually I was using one of the compiler's products

Joel Buhr: 00:04:37

prior to going to work for 'em.

Joel Buhr: 00:04:39

I was a teenager and I was working, in the streets of Chicago, Illinois

Joel Buhr: 00:04:44

when natural Gas was getting deregulated in the United States.

Joel Buhr: 00:04:47

I was literally going from business to business, signing

Joel Buhr: 00:04:51

people up for natural gas.

Joel Buhr: 00:04:53

And we used this little product called Business USA at the time.

Joel Buhr: 00:04:56

And so data fascinated me, and I think that's all feeds into this whole over

Joel Buhr: 00:05:00

analyzation because, in marketing data and stats don't lie, right?

Joel Buhr: 00:05:04

work in a space of, marketing and automations and AI and all

Joel Buhr: 00:05:08

that cool stuff, and there's a lot of fluffy stuff out there.

Joel Buhr: 00:05:12

however, at the end of the day, interpreting and understanding

Joel Buhr: 00:05:15

what data to pay attention to is a real critical thing.

Joel Buhr: 00:05:19

like people look at Vanity Metrics and they get paralyzed, by vanity metrics

Joel Buhr: 00:05:25

and invest the money in the wrong spot.

Joel Buhr: 00:05:27

So it's kind of getting probably off tangent from your question, but

Joel Buhr: 00:05:30

it's desire to have all the info before you say yes can be a limiter,

Joel Buhr: 00:05:34

especially as a business owner.

Joel Buhr: 00:05:36

you'll get the info and I think the quicker you move through things, you

Joel Buhr: 00:05:39

find the information much faster.

Vit Muller: 00:05:41

Yeah.

Vit Muller: 00:05:41

And there's always gonna be, you don't know what you don't know.

Vit Muller: 00:05:44

So sometimes it's just, we love this platform, right, called high

Vit Muller: 00:05:46

level and there is really a lot to take from their business model.

Vit Muller: 00:05:49

They didn't try and have it all, they start with skateboard

Vit Muller: 00:05:52

and they just keep iterating.

Vit Muller: 00:05:53

And so I think there's a lot to say to that.

Vit Muller: 00:05:55

So, now, what.

Vit Muller: 00:05:56

What's the segue here?

Vit Muller: 00:05:57

So you were selling gas, like how did you get from that to,

Vit Muller: 00:06:01

launching your own agency?

Vit Muller: 00:06:02

First?

Vit Muller: 00:06:02

Direct marketing, I think you've been doing it for 20 years

Vit Muller: 00:06:04

from my last conversation.

Joel Buhr: 00:06:06

Yeah, first strike.

Joel Buhr: 00:06:07

So, yeah, my long and short story, 'cause you know, you and I have met

Joel Buhr: 00:06:10

people in this space and it's oh, you have an agency that's cute, you know,

Joel Buhr: 00:06:15

where is it outta mom's basement?

Joel Buhr: 00:06:17

you know, it's not to diss anybody, you gotta start somewhere.

Joel Buhr: 00:06:20

But, my background, how I got to selling natural gas is, I was a telemarketer.

Joel Buhr: 00:06:25

I would sit there and smile and dial back when you had to pay in the United States,

Joel Buhr: 00:06:29

I don't know how it is where you're at, but you know, in the United States you'd

Joel Buhr: 00:06:31

have long distance and you have to sign up for the carrier, pay the long distance.

Joel Buhr: 00:06:35

you have to sign up for caller id, right.

Joel Buhr: 00:06:38

And all of those things.

Joel Buhr: 00:06:39

I was selling that stuff on the phone.

Joel Buhr: 00:06:40

And one of the programs we got moved over to was a business to business program.

Joel Buhr: 00:06:44

For a company called Mc Squared, they were a division of Occidental Petroleum and

Joel Buhr: 00:06:49

we were signing people up over the phone for their natural gas I was a teenager.

Joel Buhr: 00:06:53

I think like 18.

Joel Buhr: 00:06:55

I had to have been 18.

Joel Buhr: 00:06:57

And, the client asked for a couple people they could take

Joel Buhr: 00:07:00

from the phone room here in Omaha.

Joel Buhr: 00:07:03

I'm in Omaha, Nebraska, so here in Omaha, Nebraska, from the phone room

Joel Buhr: 00:07:06

to, Hey, we wanna put 'em right on the street, working out on the street.

Joel Buhr: 00:07:10

I'm like, I'll go.

Joel Buhr: 00:07:11

I'll do it.

Joel Buhr: 00:07:12

Yeah.

Joel Buhr: 00:07:13

And so I was flying back and forth, you know, I fly out on Mondays, fly back

Joel Buhr: 00:07:17

on Fridays, and man, you and I met at Level Up Summit and those that met me,

Joel Buhr: 00:07:21

I'm a tall dude, and I'm a little more meat on me today than I was then, but

Joel Buhr: 00:07:25

I was a. tall, you know, string beam.

Joel Buhr: 00:07:29

Yeah.

Joel Buhr: 00:07:29

I was a, I could blow away in the wind.

Joel Buhr: 00:07:31

so, but one of the products we were using was this product called Business

Joel Buhr: 00:07:35

USA and it was provided on a CD rom.

Joel Buhr: 00:07:38

And so we would use that to look up information, whether or not a business

Joel Buhr: 00:07:42

was a relatively valid and worthy, not credit worthy, but it was kind

Joel Buhr: 00:07:48

of like a little light credit check looking at some of their information.

Joel Buhr: 00:07:51

And I'm like, wow, this is so powerful.

Joel Buhr: 00:07:53

'cause it tells me so much about this, this prospect I'm gonna talk to or I'm

Joel Buhr: 00:07:58

talking to and I could close more deals.

Joel Buhr: 00:08:01

And, when you're 18, you don't think about much.

Joel Buhr: 00:08:04

I, I came back and, and my best friend say, he's let's go work

Joel Buhr: 00:08:07

for American Business information.

Joel Buhr: 00:08:09

'cause they're here in Omaha too.

Joel Buhr: 00:08:10

He goes, we're, we're gonna be on the phone anyway and we'll make more money.

Joel Buhr: 00:08:14

I'm like, cool.

Joel Buhr: 00:08:15

No brainer.

Joel Buhr: 00:08:15

We'll we'll be on the phone, make more money.

Joel Buhr: 00:08:17

That sounds good to me.

Joel Buhr: 00:08:19

And.

Joel Buhr: 00:08:19

That's where I kind of got, started into this, the data side of this whole

Joel Buhr: 00:08:23

marketing, you know, marketing thing.

Joel Buhr: 00:08:26

And so I went from working from American Business Information,

Joel Buhr: 00:08:29

who's now, nowadays their data axle.

Joel Buhr: 00:08:31

So they've been sold, changed a few times, but when working for them to,

Joel Buhr: 00:08:36

working for a brokerage and an agency.

Joel Buhr: 00:08:40

And then in 2005 I started my own agency.

Joel Buhr: 00:08:42

it was one of those scenarios where the agency I was working for, he was

Joel Buhr: 00:08:45

a, he went outta business as simple as to say, went outta business.

Joel Buhr: 00:08:49

And I thought, you know what?

Joel Buhr: 00:08:50

I, I can do this.

Joel Buhr: 00:08:52

So, you know, I, I had my son was three months old at the time, and, I'm like,

Joel Buhr: 00:08:57

I just gotta provide for my family.

Joel Buhr: 00:08:58

I, I did what, every entrepreneur goes and starts it 'cause they

Joel Buhr: 00:09:01

don't wanna work for the man, right.

Joel Buhr: 00:09:03

and they're like, I don't want no more rules on me No anymore.

Joel Buhr: 00:09:07

And,

Vit Muller: 00:09:08

unemployable.

Vit Muller: 00:09:08

I can't listen to order.

Vit Muller: 00:09:10

I'm too obsessed with perfection and, and progress.

Vit Muller: 00:09:13

I'm better off doing it myself.

Vit Muller: 00:09:14

Yeah.

Vit Muller: 00:09:14

you were in Omaha.

Vit Muller: 00:09:15

That was, isn't that where Warren Buffet's from?

Joel Buhr: 00:09:18

yeah, yeah.

Joel Buhr: 00:09:18

Warren Buffett's in Omaha here, so

Vit Muller: 00:09:21

Did you ever get to see him?

Joel Buhr: 00:09:23

No, no, no, no.

Joel Buhr: 00:09:24

He, I'm sure if I went to certain places I'd see him, but I'm not too worried.

Joel Buhr: 00:09:27

once in a while I'll go to the shareholder meetings and stuff like

Joel Buhr: 00:09:29

that, but, but yeah, the long story short is I started my own thing.

Joel Buhr: 00:09:33

I figured why not?

Joel Buhr: 00:09:34

And we started doing, providing data for companies that were using it

Joel Buhr: 00:09:37

for direct mail and telemarketing.

Joel Buhr: 00:09:39

at the time we started doing, email marketing that was

Joel Buhr: 00:09:42

starting to pick up around 2005.

Joel Buhr: 00:09:45

And, further and further we did a lot of direct mail.

Joel Buhr: 00:09:47

Millions and millions and millions of pieces of direct mail over the years.

Joel Buhr: 00:09:51

We still do that, but you know, obviously the.

Joel Buhr: 00:09:55

Marketing at the end of the day is getting your message in front of the

Joel Buhr: 00:09:58

right audience at the right time and staying there, in, in the simple way.

Joel Buhr: 00:10:02

And so that's, data helps you do that and understanding helps you do that.

Joel Buhr: 00:10:05

So that's, I've stayed in a niche that, just like any business in any industry,

Joel Buhr: 00:10:10

you have your moments of, of bliss and you have your moments of why did I do this?

Joel Buhr: 00:10:16

And the moments of, of bliss outweigh the, why did I do this?

Joel Buhr: 00:10:19

Moments?

Vit Muller: 00:10:21

That's the idea, right?

Vit Muller: 00:10:22

Hopefully that's the idea for everybody.

Vit Muller: 00:10:24

Yeah.

Vit Muller: 00:10:25

Okay.

Vit Muller: 00:10:26

So omnichannel, direct response, marketing, the old school methods,

Vit Muller: 00:10:30

direct mail, and you're still doing that.

Vit Muller: 00:10:33

That's interesting.

Vit Muller: 00:10:34

how do you, so obviously, that's a very old method, but, I think it's an interest

Vit Muller: 00:10:38

interesting one, because there's also a shift where businesses are not doing it.

Vit Muller: 00:10:42

So that helps you, I guess, stand out.

Vit Muller: 00:10:44

'cause that's kind of like a novelty again.

Vit Muller: 00:10:46

you work with mattress businesses, for example, right?

Joel Buhr: 00:10:49

Yeah, we, we actually work with a lot of industries.

Joel Buhr: 00:10:52

there's a, there's a lot of focus that we have right now on

Joel Buhr: 00:10:54

the mattress and furniture space

Vit Muller: 00:10:55

Mm-hmm.

Joel Buhr: 00:10:56

because they're, they're, and, and the flooring space just simply

Joel Buhr: 00:10:58

'cause there are a lot of indu, there are industries that are underserved.

Joel Buhr: 00:11:01

they're, they're stuck in archaic systems, archaic methods.

Joel Buhr: 00:11:06

And they're, they're the target of a lot of misinformation.

Joel Buhr: 00:11:09

So, you know, if, if you go to our website firstdirectmarketing.com

Joel Buhr: 00:11:12

and you know, we're, we're trying to have fun with it, is, Hey, no

Joel Buhr: 00:11:15

myths, just marketing that works.

Joel Buhr: 00:11:16

We're gonna pull all the myths out.

Joel Buhr: 00:11:18

We're not gonna fluffy fight.

Joel Buhr: 00:11:19

We're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna just tell you, let's get to the brass

Joel Buhr: 00:11:22

tax of it, the foundational elements, the fundamentals and consistency on

Joel Buhr: 00:11:27

fundamentals will help any business grow.

Joel Buhr: 00:11:29

And then of course, we can get super fancy if we want to,

Vit Muller: 00:11:32

Yeah, I gotta say the website, I mean, that's kinda that

Vit Muller: 00:11:34

would really got my attention.

Vit Muller: 00:11:35

That's why I reached out and get you on as a guest.

Vit Muller: 00:11:37

'cause I always feel like you guys should check it out, but I don't want, I

Vit Muller: 00:11:40

don't want to give you phantom traffic, but, the, the branding is very clever.

Vit Muller: 00:11:43

So, kudos to you mate.

Vit Muller: 00:11:45

How did you come up with that whole idea of the unicorn and this moving?

Vit Muller: 00:11:49

Is it like a. Yeah, it's

Joel Buhr: 00:11:53

the Yeti and the unicorn and

Vit Muller: 00:11:54

the, yeah, yeah.

Vit Muller: 00:11:55

Yeah.

Vit Muller: 00:11:56

It's pretty, it's pretty clever.

Vit Muller: 00:11:57

Yeah.

Joel Buhr: 00:11:58

Well, I actually, there's a few thoughts on how that came up.

Joel Buhr: 00:12:01

I, I was kind of, we were, we've been in a transition, so to

Joel Buhr: 00:12:05

speak, with a lot of privacy law changes and things of that sort.

Joel Buhr: 00:12:09

we're, there's a lot of shift that we are doing as far as where first direct

Joel Buhr: 00:12:12

was five years ago, 10 years ago, to where we're taking first direct into

Joel Buhr: 00:12:17

the next, the next five, 10 years.

Joel Buhr: 00:12:19

understanding, using data and adapting to privacy is a big part of it.

Joel Buhr: 00:12:23

and.

Joel Buhr: 00:12:24

At the same time, it's, I dunno about you, but, or those listening, but it's

Joel Buhr: 00:12:29

this is, today seems 10 times harder than it was a year ago to some degree.

Joel Buhr: 00:12:35

there's more challenge.

Vit Muller: 00:12:36

there's been so much, progress with AI and all

Vit Muller: 00:12:39

the technology going so fast.

Vit Muller: 00:12:41

It's This agency space and like trying to figure out the services

Vit Muller: 00:12:44

and the right offers and everything.

Vit Muller: 00:12:47

You're trying to figure it out and by the time you wake up is like everything

Vit Muller: 00:12:51

just keeps shifting way faster.

Vit Muller: 00:12:53

Yeah, it is.

Vit Muller: 00:12:53

I agree.

Vit Muller: 00:12:54

Like this year has felt different than any other, for sure.

Joel Buhr: 00:12:57

yeah.

Joel Buhr: 00:12:58

And of course I say that every year, but, when you think about Yeah,

Joel Buhr: 00:13:00

I, I guess we, we were at one of those moments and actually I, there

Joel Buhr: 00:13:04

was a t-shirt I picked up, from an airport on one of my business trips.

Joel Buhr: 00:13:08

I went to a conference and, the t-shirt literally had a Yeti and a unicorn on it.

Joel Buhr: 00:13:13

And I'm was thinking, I'm like, screw this.

Joel Buhr: 00:13:16

I just wanna have fun.

Joel Buhr: 00:13:18

we've been in business for a while and I, I just want to go

Joel Buhr: 00:13:21

have fun and play with this.

Joel Buhr: 00:13:24

And I'm like, I've, my tagline when I started first direct was it

Joel Buhr: 00:13:29

something that meant something to me, the marketing solutions that fit.

Joel Buhr: 00:13:32

And, and it, what it meant to me was you don't sell something to a

Joel Buhr: 00:13:36

customer that doesn't fit their growth.

Joel Buhr: 00:13:40

very intentional about what our mission is and what our vision is.

Joel Buhr: 00:13:43

Our mission is to transform businesses with the right information,

Joel Buhr: 00:13:46

insights, and solutions to empower their growth and success.

Joel Buhr: 00:13:49

And our vision is to do that for a hundred thousand businesses, which is crazy 'cause

Joel Buhr: 00:13:52

I don't even know how we'd support that.

Joel Buhr: 00:13:54

but it's our target.

Joel Buhr: 00:13:56

And we, I, I firmly believe in that target, even though I, I also acknowledge

Joel Buhr: 00:14:00

that I don't know how in the world am gonna get there, but that's my target.

Joel Buhr: 00:14:03

I'm gonna say yes to that.

Joel Buhr: 00:14:05

and we operate off of core values, but kind of going like into all of this, that

Joel Buhr: 00:14:08

structure, but yet at the same time, I wanna go have fun and make this engaging

Vit Muller: 00:14:13

was gonna, yeah, I was gonna say, just on that point, like with the

Vit Muller: 00:14:16

tagline, the branding, because there is, it's like the obvious, but then

Vit Muller: 00:14:21

you see it on a lot of agency website, it's kinda like a similar thing.

Vit Muller: 00:14:24

So it doesn't really help stand out.

Vit Muller: 00:14:26

So what you've done is adding that creativity to it, and it's

Vit Muller: 00:14:28

the emotion that, initially it's what got me is oh, this is cool.

Vit Muller: 00:14:31

I'm gonna hang around here a little bit.

Vit Muller: 00:14:32

I'm gonna look at this because it, it kind of got my attention.

Vit Muller: 00:14:35

And then obviously the obvious stuff that, that you guys do is it's there as well.

Vit Muller: 00:14:39

But yeah, I think, smart move.

Vit Muller: 00:14:40

Yeah.

Joel Buhr: 00:14:41

as marketers, we essentially, when we were talking to a client, if, if

Joel Buhr: 00:14:44

we're do, if we're a good marketer, we have a toolbox and outta that toolbox,

Joel Buhr: 00:14:49

we need to figure out what's the biggest pain they have first and solve the pain.

Joel Buhr: 00:14:53

And then, their ultimate goal.

Joel Buhr: 00:14:55

You know, there's nothing that you and I as marketers and, you know, and agencies

Joel Buhr: 00:14:59

and whatnot, working with clients, we have to battle with the impact of economy

Joel Buhr: 00:15:02

and, the shifts and tariffs and all of those things trickle down in effect

Joel Buhr: 00:15:07

what a business will do with us, right?

Joel Buhr: 00:15:10

but there's fundamental things that, you know, in, in a, in on

Joel Buhr: 00:15:13

our website, we break it down, attract, engage, convert, retain.

Joel Buhr: 00:15:17

It's the simple elements.

Joel Buhr: 00:15:18

I need to go attract people.

Joel Buhr: 00:15:20

I need to go engage 'em.

Joel Buhr: 00:15:21

I need to convert them, and I need to retain them.

Joel Buhr: 00:15:23

It's pretty elementary.

Joel Buhr: 00:15:25

No matter what industry you're in, no matter what, if you're

Joel Buhr: 00:15:28

B2C, B2B, it doesn't matter.

Joel Buhr: 00:15:30

I don't care what you're selling.

Joel Buhr: 00:15:31

You gotta attract your customer.

Joel Buhr: 00:15:32

You gotta engage 'em, convert 'em, and retain them.

Joel Buhr: 00:15:34

This is where, high level comes in.

Joel Buhr: 00:15:36

it's a Swiss army knife to engage, right?

Joel Buhr: 00:15:41

To retain with tools and remarketing and those types of things.

Joel Buhr: 00:15:46

So yeah, just going back to our, I guess the branding and to your question is,

Joel Buhr: 00:15:50

is, the Yeti and the unicorn, it's, and no myths, just marketing that works

Joel Buhr: 00:15:53

statement is, I, I'm a big believer in, I want to educate my clients and help

Joel Buhr: 00:16:00

them to understand what things mean and what, what things equal, right?

Joel Buhr: 00:16:04

oftentimes we're running like digital display and CTV and OTT, and

Joel Buhr: 00:16:09

helping clients understand that, hey, yes, we obviously want impressions

Joel Buhr: 00:16:12

because that means we're being seen.

Joel Buhr: 00:16:13

We want clicks because that means someone's engaging.

Joel Buhr: 00:16:16

But what we really care about is, is even if they see your

Joel Buhr: 00:16:19

ads, do they come back later?

Joel Buhr: 00:16:21

Do they, are we catching them at the right spots in their journey that

Joel Buhr: 00:16:24

we're impress, we're building brand recognition and building trust, and so

Joel Buhr: 00:16:28

helping clients, for example, understand, what type of household frequency they

Joel Buhr: 00:16:32

should have on their meta ads or Google ads or display or TV ads, you know, if

Joel Buhr: 00:16:37

you're targeting a certain geographic area, there's only so many households.

Joel Buhr: 00:16:40

There's only so many people in that area to start with, and there's only

Joel Buhr: 00:16:44

so many people that match the audience perhaps that could buy your product or

Joel Buhr: 00:16:46

service depending upon what that is.

Vit Muller: 00:16:48

How much is too much, how much you actually start to waste money away,

Vit Muller: 00:16:51

and maybe it's, it's less touch points is, is all it's needed and things like that.

Joel Buhr: 00:16:55

right.

Joel Buhr: 00:16:56

it's, you know, like with high level, it gives you and I both a very good

Joel Buhr: 00:16:59

tool to help them structure data.

Joel Buhr: 00:17:00

a lot of business owners don't structure their data.

Joel Buhr: 00:17:03

they don't structure their name and address and phone and email

Joel Buhr: 00:17:06

where your people that are spending money with you coming from.

Joel Buhr: 00:17:09

Right.

Joel Buhr: 00:17:10

And now if you're working with brands that are like, nation,

Joel Buhr: 00:17:13

nationwide brands or worldwide brands, that's a little bit broader.

Joel Buhr: 00:17:16

And unless you have a lot of data, it's really hard to see the

Joel Buhr: 00:17:17

trends more accurately perhaps.

Joel Buhr: 00:17:20

but when you're working with a lot, retailers who have a brick and mortar

Joel Buhr: 00:17:23

business that need to swing the door, there's markets, there's areas,

Joel Buhr: 00:17:26

neighborhoods you don't market to, and neighborhoods you do market to.

Joel Buhr: 00:17:29

so that's the, that's what we try to do with clients as far as Hey, let's make

Joel Buhr: 00:17:34

sure, we help you understand those basics.

Joel Buhr: 00:17:37

our focus, like on, on our approach is a lot, is we try to help them

Joel Buhr: 00:17:41

automate and bring that, that, that clear picture as close as possible.

Joel Buhr: 00:17:48

Because what I, what we wanna do is help them to see, hey, if we, you spent money

Joel Buhr: 00:17:53

on advertising, like on direct mail, That here, who just spent $3,000 with you?

Joel Buhr: 00:17:58

we've touched him with direct mail, three months ago or 60 days ago.

Joel Buhr: 00:18:02

And he then, he's been in our digital audience, for display at CTV.

Joel Buhr: 00:18:06

So we know he is seen it.

Joel Buhr: 00:18:08

and look, he spent 3000 where Bob over here who only spent 1500, wasn't

Joel Buhr: 00:18:12

a exposed to any of our advertising.

Joel Buhr: 00:18:16

So

Vit Muller: 00:18:16

Yeah, that's, and this is the important bit, right?

Vit Muller: 00:18:19

Because if you're selling things that, like that at touch points, it's

Vit Muller: 00:18:22

like podcast arts or, radio arts.

Vit Muller: 00:18:24

It's like you can't really directly attribute it.

Vit Muller: 00:18:26

so being able to explain it, it's interesting to me like how, you've

Vit Muller: 00:18:31

cracked a code on it, so that the businesses can value it because

Vit Muller: 00:18:34

otherwise they, it wouldn't work right.

Joel Buhr: 00:18:36

Well, again, I'm a big data geek, so we a lot of times, you, high

Joel Buhr: 00:18:42

level is our center hub, so to speak.

Joel Buhr: 00:18:44

we brand it as, white labeled as first direct 360.

Joel Buhr: 00:18:47

And we, our, my, my goal there is I want data synchronizing in.

Joel Buhr: 00:18:51

So if I can get data from their POS synchronizing in, or, hey, frankly,

Joel Buhr: 00:18:56

if, if they're only, if they're only writing 30 transactions a month or

Joel Buhr: 00:19:00

something like that, but enter the data, you're spending thousands of

Joel Buhr: 00:19:04

dollars with me, I can't help you.

Joel Buhr: 00:19:07

You know, just like a doctor.

Joel Buhr: 00:19:09

I can't, the doctor can't help you if you don't give him some

Joel Buhr: 00:19:11

information of what your symptoms are.

Vit Muller: 00:19:13

Yeah.

Vit Muller: 00:19:14

I'm a hundred percent If you, data is everything.

Vit Muller: 00:19:16

Without data, you can't make decisions.

Vit Muller: 00:19:17

you can't analyze, you can't do nothing.

Vit Muller: 00:19:19

So, yeah, I'm big on that.

Vit Muller: 00:19:21

we use, one of the tools we like to use, it's called GERU, which is how, I dunno

Vit Muller: 00:19:25

if guru, like you can create this, visual representation of a system and then

Vit Muller: 00:19:29

you've got this button and you press.

Vit Muller: 00:19:31

Simulate and they press it and it'll just, it'll calculate all the different,

Vit Muller: 00:19:36

conversion points at every step.

Vit Muller: 00:19:37

And then obviously you put your, like what's the price of the

Vit Muller: 00:19:42

product you're trying to sell?

Vit Muller: 00:19:43

And then you put your conversions and then you put your A spend and are other spends.

Vit Muller: 00:19:47

And it'll just tell you exactly okay, well based on this simulation, this is

Vit Muller: 00:19:50

how much this campaign's gonna make.

Vit Muller: 00:19:52

And then you could use it, that way as a simulation, or you can actually run

Vit Muller: 00:19:56

the campaign, come back to it, put the real numbers in there and run it again.

Vit Muller: 00:20:01

And okay, well here's exactly how much you made.

Vit Muller: 00:20:03

Now let's look at, you know, where was actually, I can pull

Vit Muller: 00:20:06

it out 'cause yeah, there it is.

Vit Muller: 00:20:07

I was gonna share a screen.

Vit Muller: 00:20:09

it'd be interesting.

Vit Muller: 00:20:10

So they were bought by, Russell,

Joel Buhr: 00:20:12

Russell Brunson.

Joel Buhr: 00:20:13

I think I have that actually.

Vit Muller: 00:20:15

Yeah.

Vit Muller: 00:20:15

So I, I mean, I scored a lifestyle deal on it.

Vit Muller: 00:20:17

It's called GERU, but they put it under,

Joel Buhr: 00:20:19

yeah.

Joel Buhr: 00:20:19

Okay.

Joel Buhr: 00:20:20

I Now I know what you're saying.

Joel Buhr: 00:20:21

GERU.

Joel Buhr: 00:20:21

Yeah, we have that.

Vit Muller: 00:20:22

Yeah.

Vit Muller: 00:20:23

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Vit Muller: 00:20:24

So you use it, you still use

Joel Buhr: 00:20:25

we have it.

Joel Buhr: 00:20:26

I, I don't use it, but I don't use it often.

Vit Muller: 00:20:30

Here for, for the guys, for the guys watching.

Vit Muller: 00:20:31

They see you guys see?

Vit Muller: 00:20:32

it's pretty, it's pretty cool.

Vit Muller: 00:20:33

for example, spoke to a client on Friday, they're like a local dance

Vit Muller: 00:20:36

studio and they're like, Hey, we've been struggling with our ads and

Vit Muller: 00:20:39

we've asked we've got some clients.

Vit Muller: 00:20:41

We were trying to do it yourself and then we just support them

Vit Muller: 00:20:43

with workshops and resources.

Vit Muller: 00:20:45

So there's they fall into that category and they try and do it all themselves.

Vit Muller: 00:20:48

But she was like, we've been having difficulty with these campaigns.

Vit Muller: 00:20:51

We are really trying to build something that is gonna better nurture people

Vit Muller: 00:20:55

that come in in from specific campaigns.

Vit Muller: 00:20:57

I'm like, okay, cool.

Vit Muller: 00:20:58

Well, let's do that.

Vit Muller: 00:20:59

So I open it up today and where, actually, this is not the campaign by the way.

Vit Muller: 00:21:02

This is just a little template, but yeah, this is how it looks like.

Vit Muller: 00:21:05

So you've got like different things.

Vit Muller: 00:21:06

You get your pages, opt-in page sales page.

Vit Muller: 00:21:09

You can just pull it all in there.

Vit Muller: 00:21:10

Like this, I'm just gonna delete this.

Vit Muller: 00:21:12

and then, what you do is, it's pretty exciting.

Vit Muller: 00:21:16

I've been using Clickup whiteboard to visually map out systems before

Vit Muller: 00:21:20

we build them inside hire level so that, I can go over that stuff with

Vit Muller: 00:21:24

client and it's way quicker, right?

Vit Muller: 00:21:26

Not wasting time.

Vit Muller: 00:21:27

But yeah.

Vit Muller: 00:21:27

So what you got here, guys, if you're watching this, if you wanna

Vit Muller: 00:21:30

nerd out on something you've got, okay, what's your traffic source?

Vit Muller: 00:21:32

So this is the, the one here.

Vit Muller: 00:21:34

So you click on this and this is okay, the traffic source here, YouTube

Vit Muller: 00:21:37

ads, and then you put your, like how many, you know, how many visitors

Vit Muller: 00:21:40

or whatever the, the metrics are.

Vit Muller: 00:21:43

And then you put your cost per click in this case, 75 cents, whatever, right?

Vit Muller: 00:21:48

So you put it all in there and then, and you put your conversions

Vit Muller: 00:21:51

like, okay, so somebody goes from there, watches, video, content.

Vit Muller: 00:21:54

How many of people from there do click through and, you

Vit Muller: 00:21:57

know, go to the next thing?

Vit Muller: 00:21:59

Onto the signup page.

Vit Muller: 00:22:00

So maybe 5% go and 95 don't.

Vit Muller: 00:22:02

So those 95, we're gonna put them in remarket until they do.

Vit Muller: 00:22:06

And then you look at those, so you set up your conversion points

Vit Muller: 00:22:08

across every single, spot Here.

Vit Muller: 00:22:10

You just put your opt-in basically percentages, and then you got this

Vit Muller: 00:22:13

is the most fun bit part here.

Vit Muller: 00:22:15

So you put your things there.

Vit Muller: 00:22:16

Then you might also put some additional cost here for your

Vit Muller: 00:22:19

expensive, associated with it.

Vit Muller: 00:22:21

then you hit this button simulate, and it'll just go and it'll calculate it all.

Vit Muller: 00:22:26

And it Hey, you're gonna run this.

Vit Muller: 00:22:27

You're not gonna, okay, you're gonna be, you're gonna be

Vit Muller: 00:22:30

losing money by running this.

Vit Muller: 00:22:31

It's, oh, okay, well that's just not no point doing it.

Vit Muller: 00:22:33

Right?

Vit Muller: 00:22:33

So then what do we need to do?

Vit Muller: 00:22:35

And then going back to the client, and maybe that's, maybe this is like what you

Vit Muller: 00:22:38

do based on what they've come to you with.

Vit Muller: 00:22:40

you haven't even done anything.

Vit Muller: 00:22:41

They've come to you with and you assess it all and you build it visually and then

Vit Muller: 00:22:44

you run it just to make it like, because let's say they're budging, they are.

Vit Muller: 00:22:50

They, you're trying to sell them onto your thing and then they're like, excuse this,

Vit Muller: 00:22:55

excuse that, or, you know, lack of trust.

Vit Muller: 00:22:57

They don't think that you can help them, or they have too much ego and they think

Vit Muller: 00:23:01

they've got everything worked out already.

Vit Muller: 00:23:02

And then you run something like this and you show them, Hey, look, I've gone the

Vit Muller: 00:23:05

extra mile and I just wanted to really show you like where you're at based on

Vit Muller: 00:23:08

the data, based on what you've told me.

Vit Muller: 00:23:10

you're actually losing money.

Vit Muller: 00:23:12

So wouldn't it make sense to work with us that we, we can actually

Vit Muller: 00:23:15

make it, it's profitable and show them that like this, I like this

Vit Muller: 00:23:19

'cause I'm big on data as well, so

Joel Buhr: 00:23:21

It, it helps you.

Joel Buhr: 00:23:22

Yeah.

Joel Buhr: 00:23:23

it looks like you're losing money, but you could add a, you could figure

Joel Buhr: 00:23:25

out and say, well, hey, what is, what's the thing I can sell next?

Vit Muller: 00:23:29

Oh yeah.

Joel Buhr: 00:23:30

you know, so you, you,

Vit Muller: 00:23:33

yeah.

Vit Muller: 00:23:33

Sorry.

Joel Buhr: 00:23:34

now that, that traffic's warm and hot.

Vit Muller: 00:23:36

Mm-hmm.

Joel Buhr: 00:23:37

what's the next sale?

Joel Buhr: 00:23:38

like I even tell my retailers that I'm like, I, I, I don't

Joel Buhr: 00:23:41

care if you break even, I don't care if you lose a little bit.

Joel Buhr: 00:23:44

if you sold 'em a bedding bundle, sweet.

Joel Buhr: 00:23:47

You know?

Joel Buhr: 00:23:48

Or if, if you break even on, a circular and insert and people are calling

Joel Buhr: 00:23:52

you and they buy some chairs and the money you make on the chairs pays

Joel Buhr: 00:23:56

for the ad and it's a break even, you better make sure you get your, your

Joel Buhr: 00:23:59

Google reviews from them and ask for referrals because that's how you're

Joel Buhr: 00:24:03

gonna now make money on the next.

Joel Buhr: 00:24:04

But the same thing is with this, Hey, what's the next product you can

Joel Buhr: 00:24:07

sell them or will these people also is one of the new traffic sources.

Joel Buhr: 00:24:11

Once you get people through, this is one of the new traffic sources,

Joel Buhr: 00:24:14

not YouTube, but a referral.

Vit Muller: 00:24:16

Yeah.

Vit Muller: 00:24:18

I don't know much about retail space, but I do know like grocery

Vit Muller: 00:24:20

stores, they work that way as well.

Vit Muller: 00:24:22

They have their loss leaders in order to get you in on buying other stuff,

Vit Muller: 00:24:26

and that's where they make their profit.

Vit Muller: 00:24:27

It's an interesting concept altogether.

Vit Muller: 00:24:29

But yeah, the power is in data, guys.

Vit Muller: 00:24:31

So if you have something like this, if you're watching this, by the way, if

Vit Muller: 00:24:34

you're listening to this, by the way, I know this is like a podcast meeting,

Vit Muller: 00:24:36

but if you, wanna see what showing here, just head over to our YouTube channel.

Vit Muller: 00:24:40

but yeah, so like with this, you can then go, look, we are not

Vit Muller: 00:24:43

gonna build a Rome in one day.

Vit Muller: 00:24:44

It's all about marginal improvements.

Vit Muller: 00:24:46

So may maybe, where's the biggest hanging fruit?

Vit Muller: 00:24:49

Maybe here look, there is the YouTube video here, and we only

Vit Muller: 00:24:53

get in 5% conversion on the click through from watching it.

Vit Muller: 00:24:57

To, maybe the video is embedded or whatever on a page, right?

Vit Muller: 00:25:00

So only 5% going to actual sales page.

Vit Muller: 00:25:03

So that's the biggest ha, lowest hanging fruit to fix this.

Vit Muller: 00:25:06

So what do we need to do?

Vit Muller: 00:25:06

Let's just get, let's just create a split test on another video.

Vit Muller: 00:25:10

Get a video, reshoot that video, and run that for, for a week or

Vit Muller: 00:25:14

two or whatever period of time.

Vit Muller: 00:25:16

And then, pick the new winner.

Vit Muller: 00:25:17

And then maybe you can bump it up from five to 20%.

Vit Muller: 00:25:20

And then let's say, let's say if you do that, let's actually

Vit Muller: 00:25:22

do that for shits and giggles.

Vit Muller: 00:25:24

Conversion rate go from five to 20, and that's a conversion rate on a

Vit Muller: 00:25:27

click through onto a signup page.

Vit Muller: 00:25:29

Keep everything else same, because the name of the game, when you're,

Vit Muller: 00:25:33

doing a b split testing, you just do do one variable, right?

Vit Muller: 00:25:35

Otherwise you don't know what was the, difference and then simulate.

Vit Muller: 00:25:39

And then maybe we go from there and we realize that now we, we lose less money.

Vit Muller: 00:25:44

Okay?

Vit Muller: 00:25:45

We're not still breaking even.

Vit Muller: 00:25:46

But yeah.

Vit Muller: 00:25:47

So it's just fun stuff.

Joel Buhr: 00:25:48

Yeah.

Joel Buhr: 00:25:48

you're starting to make it up.

Joel Buhr: 00:25:49

or, Hey, what if you changed your price of your product?

Joel Buhr: 00:25:52

Can your product price change a little bit?

Vit Muller: 00:25:54

Let's look at that.

Joel Buhr: 00:25:55

you know, if it's $3,000, could you charge 3250?

Vit Muller: 00:26:00

Yeah, let's do that.

Vit Muller: 00:26:02

So we got a one time offer product online course for $10.

Vit Muller: 00:26:05

Let's make that 20 because 10, you know, anything below a

Joel Buhr: 00:26:09

or, or, yeah.

Joel Buhr: 00:26:10

Or do 17.

Joel Buhr: 00:26:11

Do 17.

Joel Buhr: 00:26:11

I hear that's a magic number.

Vit Muller: 00:26:13

17.

Vit Muller: 00:26:13

Okay, let's go.

Vit Muller: 00:26:14

17.

Joel Buhr: 00:26:15

Yeah.

Vit Muller: 00:26:16

17.

Vit Muller: 00:26:18

That's it.

Vit Muller: 00:26:20

It's safe.

Vit Muller: 00:26:21

And then the, the, the main offer, consulting services has been 3000.

Vit Muller: 00:26:26

Maybe there's a friction.

Vit Muller: 00:26:27

so we'll ba make it two and a half K, which is gonna increase

Vit Muller: 00:26:30

conversion on the signup.

Vit Muller: 00:26:33

So we'll close that and then we'll go book a call, book a call, book call.

Vit Muller: 00:26:37

And then here is the sales.

Vit Muller: 00:26:39

So that would be right here.

Vit Muller: 00:26:42

So what's the sales conversion?

Vit Muller: 00:26:44

Now?

Vit Muller: 00:26:44

It goes up because it's slightly lower on the price goes from 19 to 30%.

Vit Muller: 00:26:48

It's safe.

Vit Muller: 00:26:50

Then let's simulate and see what happens.

Vit Muller: 00:26:53

And we were at minus $525.

Vit Muller: 00:26:56

Okay, now we're back to minus seven four.

Vit Muller: 00:26:59

So there you go.

Vit Muller: 00:26:59

So, but hey.

Vit Muller: 00:27:00

Okay, so this is a good point again.

Vit Muller: 00:27:01

So if you don't have a tool like that, it kind of turn

Vit Muller: 00:27:04

into a bit of a plug for GERU.

Vit Muller: 00:27:05

I didn't plan that, but, we thought this, we wouldn't know.

Vit Muller: 00:27:08

Then you're like, oh, this is gonna be better.

Vit Muller: 00:27:10

You're putting your, a finger up in the, in the air and seeing when the, when

Joel Buhr: 00:27:14

your initial offer from 10 to 17.

Joel Buhr: 00:27:16

Now that may actually, it you, you need to see what the stats are from that, right?

Joel Buhr: 00:27:21

Because you may think, oh, well, it's gonna go down

Joel Buhr: 00:27:23

because I asked for more money.

Joel Buhr: 00:27:25

It actually could go up.

Joel Buhr: 00:27:26

Or if you lowered the price, even it went from like 10 to seven or

Joel Buhr: 00:27:30

10 to hey, a couple dollars, right?

Joel Buhr: 00:27:34

Online course, you might find the conversion just skyrockets and

Joel Buhr: 00:27:38

now your list is bigger and your cost to remarket goes way down.

Vit Muller: 00:27:43

Yeah, so if you go from 17, you just like a $1 funnel thing for

Vit Muller: 00:27:46

a course, and then you're consulting.

Vit Muller: 00:27:49

Now you got a lot more people, then you can go back to three grand

Joel Buhr: 00:27:52

Yep.

Joel Buhr: 00:27:53

Or, or go to 30, 32, 50, are you making up, are you making up the money?

Joel Buhr: 00:27:57

Maybe you raise the price just a little bit,

Vit Muller: 00:27:59

yeah,

Joel Buhr: 00:28:00

you know?

Vit Muller: 00:28:02

Yeah, sometimes the pricing in itself is also like the perception.

Vit Muller: 00:28:05

So if something appears to be like too cheap, it's like people

Vit Muller: 00:28:08

perceive it as a lower quality.

Vit Muller: 00:28:10

It's an interesting one as well.

Vit Muller: 00:28:12

I don't know if this is working well.

Vit Muller: 00:28:13

we're not doing something right.

Vit Muller: 00:28:14

We kind of got stuck on this now.

Vit Muller: 00:28:16

We're still not making profit.

Vit Muller: 00:28:18

Joel, what are we doing?

Joel Buhr: 00:28:19

Yep.

Joel Buhr: 00:28:19

I don't know, man.

Joel Buhr: 00:28:20

I don't know.

Joel Buhr: 00:28:20

I

Vit Muller: 00:28:21

getting stuck on this.

Joel Buhr: 00:28:22

maybe we up the price and add more value.

Vit Muller: 00:28:24

Yeah.

Vit Muller: 00:28:24

Yeah, let's stop sharing for a minute.

Vit Muller: 00:28:26

But you guys get a point.

Vit Muller: 00:28:27

I'm doing it really quickly here, but it works the worst then whatever.

Vit Muller: 00:28:31

Joel, what is your day-to-day look like?

Vit Muller: 00:28:33

So, as a data-driven guy, you're running an agency, you are piloting

Vit Muller: 00:28:38

planes in your spare time, like what does your day to day look like?

Joel Buhr: 00:28:42

my day to day, I'm a guy that, my, my alarm goes off 4:45 AM.

Joel Buhr: 00:28:47

And I usually, hey, I'm usually crashing at the end of the day

Joel Buhr: 00:28:51

by, by eight or nine o'clock.

Joel Buhr: 00:28:52

So I wanna go get my, I wanna make sure I get my sleep.

Joel Buhr: 00:28:55

I, I've learned that to be a critical thing, if of take care of yourself.

Joel Buhr: 00:28:59

but, my day to day, hey, that morning time, precious to me.

Joel Buhr: 00:29:02

That's where I do, personal studies and prayer and meditation

Joel Buhr: 00:29:06

and those types of things.

Joel Buhr: 00:29:07

And, I kind of get my day organized for how, you know, what I need to do.

Joel Buhr: 00:29:11

at the office, we, we have an 8 0 5 meeting every

Joel Buhr: 00:29:14

single morning with the team.

Joel Buhr: 00:29:16

So our, we have, I have physical offices right here.

Joel Buhr: 00:29:19

We have people here in this office.

Joel Buhr: 00:29:21

We have people, across the United States and as well as overseas.

Joel Buhr: 00:29:25

And everybody's at that 8 0 5 meeting.

Joel Buhr: 00:29:28

So we have our team leads.

Joel Buhr: 00:29:29

We identify what's hot, what needs to get done, what didn't get done,

Joel Buhr: 00:29:32

what, feedback from different things so that way we can get things going.

Joel Buhr: 00:29:36

a lot of my time is spent on.

Joel Buhr: 00:29:39

What we call MMS calls, calls, managed marketing service calls where we're

Joel Buhr: 00:29:43

spending 30 minutes with a client and we're going through, Hey, here's

Joel Buhr: 00:29:47

the progress of what we've worked on.

Joel Buhr: 00:29:48

Here's the things you want.

Joel Buhr: 00:29:50

Here's campaign results, here's performance of, of SEO and

Joel Buhr: 00:29:54

all those types of things.

Joel Buhr: 00:29:55

Here's what to look for.

Joel Buhr: 00:29:56

It's helping them get things like with, with high level integrated like phone

Joel Buhr: 00:30:00

systems and all that type of stuff.

Joel Buhr: 00:30:02

Automations, like today I spent, time creating a whole, whole new snapshot,

Joel Buhr: 00:30:07

for our, our mattress retailers.

Joel Buhr: 00:30:09

So I could automate, automate that sales capture, the capture

Joel Buhr: 00:30:13

of sales data so that way we can correctly get them reporting, right?

Joel Buhr: 00:30:18

So we're not dependent upon other things, it's, on, on that.

Joel Buhr: 00:30:21

It's, you get into it and you solve problems.

Joel Buhr: 00:30:24

That's my day to day.

Joel Buhr: 00:30:25

I get into it and just solve problems.

Joel Buhr: 00:30:27

So I, I love it when we have a challenge that we can, put our

Joel Buhr: 00:30:30

hands on and find a solution to.

Joel Buhr: 00:30:33

And, of course, nowadays with ai it makes it even easier.

Joel Buhr: 00:30:36

I love it.

Joel Buhr: 00:30:37

'cause even with chat GPT, you can drop a, I drop a picture in there and

Joel Buhr: 00:30:40

say, I'm trying to, I'm, I'm stumped.

Joel Buhr: 00:30:41

This isn't working right here.

Joel Buhr: 00:30:42

And bam, it understands if you give it context.

Joel Buhr: 00:30:45

So, but no, our, our day-to-day is a lot of time spending time with clients,

Joel Buhr: 00:30:49

spending time with, besides business family, my faith is very important.

Joel Buhr: 00:30:53

I do a lot of volunteer work.

Joel Buhr: 00:30:55

so we, I do a lot of volunteer work on average about, 50 to a hundred

Joel Buhr: 00:30:59

hours a month of volunteer work.

Joel Buhr: 00:31:02

So that works all within that.

Joel Buhr: 00:31:04

it's, I'm busy at the end of the day.

Vit Muller: 00:31:07

Yeah.

Joel Buhr: 00:31:08

but I make sure it's busy with good things.

Vit Muller: 00:31:10

that's impressive.

Vit Muller: 00:31:11

Okay.

Vit Muller: 00:31:11

all right.

Vit Muller: 00:31:12

it's putting me too shame a little bit.

Vit Muller: 00:31:14

I'm not doing any volunteer work, but there, I do know, if I do

Vit Muller: 00:31:17

help somebody, it does feel good.

Vit Muller: 00:31:19

Like you've got some, feeling like you, yeah.

Vit Muller: 00:31:21

helping somebody out is a great way, to feel better about yourself.

Vit Muller: 00:31:24

Yeah.

Vit Muller: 00:31:24

so solving problems every day.

Vit Muller: 00:31:26

I do like the weekly huddle as well, or it is like a, we a daily huddle with

Vit Muller: 00:31:30

your team, so keep keeping everybody.

Joel Buhr: 00:31:32

with our team, it's every day, 8 0 5, we go through, we literally,

Joel Buhr: 00:31:35

Hey, what's our mission statement?

Joel Buhr: 00:31:37

What's our core values?

Joel Buhr: 00:31:39

and we, even though we know it, we do it every day.

Joel Buhr: 00:31:41

And the reason why is 'cause I want, I wanna keep my team

Joel Buhr: 00:31:43

tightly aligned to why we're here.

Joel Buhr: 00:31:46

What, why does this equal the money we get that pays our bills?

Joel Buhr: 00:31:51

'cause we're all not gonna show up for a job unless we're getting paid.

Joel Buhr: 00:31:54

But staying aligned to our mission and operating within the confines of our

Joel Buhr: 00:31:58

core values makes a client get results.

Joel Buhr: 00:32:03

And if the client gets results.

Joel Buhr: 00:32:05

From what we do, they'll spend more money with us.

Joel Buhr: 00:32:08

And if they spend more money, well, that's your job.

Joel Buhr: 00:32:10

Right?

Joel Buhr: 00:32:11

So, you know, we're, we're very transparent as an organization, making

Joel Buhr: 00:32:14

sure that our, all of our staff know where they're at in the process and how

Joel Buhr: 00:32:18

they, how what they do impacts a client.

Vit Muller: 00:32:21

Yeah.

Vit Muller: 00:32:22

Now, when I, speaking of impact, there's increasing, you know,

Vit Muller: 00:32:26

requirements on like privacy and stuff.

Vit Muller: 00:32:29

Now, being a data-driven guy, how do you balance the need for

Vit Muller: 00:32:33

like data and marketing with the growing demand for privacy?

Vit Muller: 00:32:37

it's a tricky one, isn't it?

Joel Buhr: 00:32:39

well, we'll use third party data, for direct mail that's

Joel Buhr: 00:32:43

in, in the United States, that's still a big, big thing there.

Joel Buhr: 00:32:46

we'll use specific anon anonymized data for, digital, in digital use cases.

Joel Buhr: 00:32:52

we have partners that are connected with that.

Joel Buhr: 00:32:55

there's the challenge in the United States right now is there's a lot of

Joel Buhr: 00:32:59

privacy laws that change by state.

Joel Buhr: 00:33:01

You know, California has its laws, Vermont has its laws, Texas has

Joel Buhr: 00:33:05

Oregon, and then all the other states.

Joel Buhr: 00:33:07

And then there's all, there's small nuances here and there.

Joel Buhr: 00:33:10

we, as a data company, we've been doing this for long enough.

Joel Buhr: 00:33:13

we're kind of on a few lists, and so we get privacy requests all the time.

Joel Buhr: 00:33:17

On average, we're processing, on a slow day, a few thousand.

Joel Buhr: 00:33:22

And on a busy day, I've seen it spike up to a hundred

Joel Buhr: 00:33:24

thousand privacy requests a day.

Joel Buhr: 00:33:27

I just, the privacy processing to from today's reports was in the last two days.

Joel Buhr: 00:33:31

So from Monday.

Joel Buhr: 00:33:33

We had 28,000 privacy requests.

Joel Buhr: 00:33:36

So, you know how how we handle that as an agency is we have processes in place to,

Joel Buhr: 00:33:42

to digest that data, store that data in a secure way and, and of course provide

Joel Buhr: 00:33:49

the, the necessary responses to that.

Joel Buhr: 00:33:52

we have a bit of an infrastructure here, just because of a lot of the

Joel Buhr: 00:33:55

data processing that we do, outside of, of, of a few other things.

Joel Buhr: 00:34:00

But that's, you just have to adapt.

Joel Buhr: 00:34:02

You have to use technologies, and be able to adapt.

Vit Muller: 00:34:05

For the guys listening who don't underst, what does

Vit Muller: 00:34:07

it mean this privacy request?

Vit Muller: 00:34:09

What?

Vit Muller: 00:34:09

What does that mean?

Joel Buhr: 00:34:11

Oh, that, that changes all the time.

Joel Buhr: 00:34:14

so a lot of times we'll get a request and it'll be, Hey, here's this is, you

Joel Buhr: 00:34:18

know, they email us a request or we'll have, privacy companies out there.

Joel Buhr: 00:34:21

And that's actually something really, I, I think really important for

Joel Buhr: 00:34:24

agencies to be alert to right now and not to dismiss if they get requests.

Joel Buhr: 00:34:29

because you're gonna, it's gonna expand and you're not gonna get away from it.

Joel Buhr: 00:34:33

but there's privacy companies out there where consumers will engage that privacy

Joel Buhr: 00:34:38

company to go have their information removed from marketing and, and what they

Joel Buhr: 00:34:45

think are data evil databases out there.

Joel Buhr: 00:34:47

Well, the reality is, you know, majority of the time, I, I don't have your data.

Joel Buhr: 00:34:53

I'm not a compiler.

Joel Buhr: 00:34:55

I acquire an audience to initiate marketing a client requests that

Joel Buhr: 00:34:59

we go get an audience and I go get it from, from, you know, verified

Joel Buhr: 00:35:03

partners that are already taking all of that data through privacy.

Joel Buhr: 00:35:07

I, but I still have to respond nonetheless

Vit Muller: 00:35:10

Right, right, because it's, you're talking about anonymized

Vit Muller: 00:35:14

data, data where like Google and search engines might provide you that data,

Joel Buhr: 00:35:18

not that.

Joel Buhr: 00:35:19

No, no.

Joel Buhr: 00:35:19

It's

Vit Muller: 00:35:19

remarketing?

Joel Buhr: 00:35:20

No, it's different.

Joel Buhr: 00:35:21

No, it's so, so we're talking about like name and address data, phone data, email

Vit Muller: 00:35:27

Oh, okay.

Joel Buhr: 00:35:28

agencies, you're, as agencies, particularly even in the United States

Joel Buhr: 00:35:32

and across the, across the globe, frankly too, you're gonna see it, you're gonna

Joel Buhr: 00:35:35

see it come across your deck more.

Joel Buhr: 00:35:37

if any presence at all on the web or you've been around for a you're

Joel Buhr: 00:35:41

probably gonna see that hit more.

Joel Buhr: 00:35:43

Your clients are gonna be impacted by it as well.

Joel Buhr: 00:35:45

If they're bigger clients they potentially have a lot of data because of transaction.

Joel Buhr: 00:35:50

They're going to be a target as a good marketer.

Joel Buhr: 00:35:53

We need to help them to know how to navigate that to some degree.

Joel Buhr: 00:35:56

Obviously, we're probably not attorneys, so let's not give legal advice, but

Joel Buhr: 00:36:01

let's use some common sense, right?

Joel Buhr: 00:36:03

And help clients, know how they need to abide by those.

Joel Buhr: 00:36:07

So like some examples might be, hey, help them implement if you're building websites

Joel Buhr: 00:36:10

for them, help them implement, terms and conditions and cookie compliance.

Joel Buhr: 00:36:15

one, one that I really like is, is a product called Termly, T-E-R-M-L-Y.

Joel Buhr: 00:36:20

Termly, very inexpensive for a client to sign up on and

Joel Buhr: 00:36:24

it's very easy to configure.

Joel Buhr: 00:36:25

Works with Google Tag Manager, for compliance and consent.

Joel Buhr: 00:36:30

So.

Joel Buhr: 00:36:31

That's a good one.

Joel Buhr: 00:36:32

there's a few others.

Joel Buhr: 00:36:33

There's another one called Climb Climbs.

Joel Buhr: 00:36:34

Got a good, you know, DSAR, when someone wants to make a privacy request, they can

Joel Buhr: 00:36:39

fill out a form, it authenticates them, and then you can respond back to 'em.

Joel Buhr: 00:36:42

it's a pretty clever thing.

Joel Buhr: 00:36:43

So helping the consum, helping your customers understand

Joel Buhr: 00:36:47

that, Hey, don't ignore this.

Joel Buhr: 00:36:49

if you don't get your site ADA compliant, there's attorneys out there unfortunately

Joel Buhr: 00:36:53

looking for good, rich targets of, of websites that are not ADA compliant

Vit Muller: 00:36:59

speaking of that, guys episode.

Vit Muller: 00:37:02

One of the earlier episode around episode 20 or episode 30, we had a great guest

Vit Muller: 00:37:07

on, on, on that front for ADA compliance.

Vit Muller: 00:37:10

So we dived into full episode on basically how you need to make your

Vit Muller: 00:37:14

websites more accessible for people who are visually impaired, hearing impaired,

Vit Muller: 00:37:18

whatever importantness they have.

Vit Muller: 00:37:19

That's what the aada a compliance is and yeah, to your point, what

Vit Muller: 00:37:23

you're probably about to say, they're literally lawyers looking for this.

Vit Muller: 00:37:26

And it's easy money.

Vit Muller: 00:37:28

It's easy money, but vice versa, it could be easy money for you because

Vit Muller: 00:37:32

government actually pays businesses money to be able to do that.

Vit Muller: 00:37:36

So you can just hit those businesses up.

Vit Muller: 00:37:38

And I don't know if it's still the case, but you can say, look, is

Vit Muller: 00:37:41

it, I mean, is this still the case?

Vit Muller: 00:37:42

Is there

Joel Buhr: 00:37:43

don't know.

Joel Buhr: 00:37:43

That's interesting what you're saying.

Joel Buhr: 00:37:45

Sounds there's free money out there.

Vit Muller: 00:37:47

Yeah, literally government giving out That's, I mean, when

Vit Muller: 00:37:49

I had the guy on, on the episode, let me just bring it up real quick.

Vit Muller: 00:37:52

'cause I feel a bit, I try to memorize everybody and it's

Vit Muller: 00:37:56

doesn't always just go captivate.

Vit Muller: 00:37:58

this is what we, use shout out to captivate guys.

Vit Muller: 00:38:00

If you're looking to launch your own podcast, captivate is what

Vit Muller: 00:38:03

we use to distribute, publish and distribute, our episodes.

Vit Muller: 00:38:08

and I've got data here on that, but I'm just gonna look up that

Vit Muller: 00:38:10

episode, real quick for you.

Vit Muller: 00:38:12

Oh yeah.

Vit Muller: 00:38:12

How ADA compliance can save you from lawsuits and boost, your agency SEO.

Vit Muller: 00:38:17

So the whole premise there is that there are certain states

Vit Muller: 00:38:20

or that time of recording that episode is, is, was, was current.

Vit Muller: 00:38:23

I think it still probably is, but you need to look into it depending

Vit Muller: 00:38:27

on what state or area you're in.

Vit Muller: 00:38:29

But yeah, Tony, Tony Caggiano, ADA comply guy actually.

Vit Muller: 00:38:32

So yeah, so episode 23, and he, he, he shared with me and with

Vit Muller: 00:38:37

you guys how government will pay businesses a certain amount of money.

Vit Muller: 00:38:42

there you go up to $5,000 in tax credits.

Vit Muller: 00:38:45

That's what it's not, not pay you money, but you can, you can claim

Vit Muller: 00:38:48

it in tax credits up to $5,000, when it comes to investing into

Vit Muller: 00:38:53

making your website ADA compliant.

Vit Muller: 00:38:55

So you can go to those businesses that are bigger and say, look,

Vit Muller: 00:38:57

you don't have this compliant.

Vit Muller: 00:38:59

You're at that size that this could hit you.

Vit Muller: 00:39:01

Did you know that the government can actually give you up to $5,000?

Vit Muller: 00:39:04

You know, I'm just saying just check the numbers, right?

Vit Muller: 00:39:07

But yeah, let's say that's the case, then that's an easy money.

Vit Muller: 00:39:09

Say, how much would it be worth to, what if we, what if, this is, or

Vit Muller: 00:39:13

you can say Hey, this is like round right about the figure, how much we

Vit Muller: 00:39:15

charge for that service, so it's not gonna cost you anything, basically.

Vit Muller: 00:39:19

Yeah.

Vit Muller: 00:39:19

So it's that.

Joel Buhr: 00:39:21

that you bring up an interesting thing that I'm gonna

Joel Buhr: 00:39:23

definitely be researching later.

Joel Buhr: 00:39:25

you know, hey, how can I, how can I help my clients?

Joel Buhr: 00:39:27

And actually, that's an interesting thing to think about.

Joel Buhr: 00:39:30

You know, if, if you're having a challenge, if this is out there,

Joel Buhr: 00:39:32

which I'm gonna have to do the research, but you just figured out

Joel Buhr: 00:39:35

then how to make, how, how to help a client pay for your services.

Vit Muller: 00:39:39

Yeah, exactly.

Vit Muller: 00:39:40

Yeah,

Joel Buhr: 00:39:41

Right.

Joel Buhr: 00:39:42

You just help them find the financing.

Vit Muller: 00:39:44

it's a no brainer.

Joel Buhr: 00:39:45

yeah.

Joel Buhr: 00:39:46

No, I, I

Vit Muller: 00:39:47

I just, I just put a link for you in the chat, but

Vit Muller: 00:39:49

for you guys listening, I will put in on the show notes as well.

Vit Muller: 00:39:51

But otherwise, here it's episode 23 titled How ADA Compliance Can Save You From

Vit Muller: 00:39:56

Lawsuits and Boost Your Agencies SEO.

Vit Muller: 00:39:58

And the guest name was Tony Caggiano.

Vit Muller: 00:40:01

yeah, now back to you mate.

Vit Muller: 00:40:02

for the listeners, I wanna talk a bit more about that multichannel,

Vit Muller: 00:40:05

the omni-channel marketing.

Vit Muller: 00:40:06

'cause I think that's like a, you know, strong wheelhouse for you.

Vit Muller: 00:40:09

So I was gonna pick your brain on that, even myself, but also for

Vit Muller: 00:40:12

the listeners, any practical steps.

Vit Muller: 00:40:14

Agency owners listening can, can take to, to implement omnichannel

Vit Muller: 00:40:18

strategies for, for their customers and for also for their business.

Joel Buhr: 00:40:23

I would say probably, 'cause a lot of your listeners are

Joel Buhr: 00:40:25

probably using go high level, right?

Joel Buhr: 00:40:28

Is take advantage, take advantage of a lot of the, the, automations

Joel Buhr: 00:40:31

are that are possible for merging data right back into like meta,

Joel Buhr: 00:40:35

you know, to, to, to handle that.

Joel Buhr: 00:40:38

There's also a number of partners that can integrate directly to initiate like

Joel Buhr: 00:40:43

a, like direct mail campaigns, right?

Joel Buhr: 00:40:46

But at the end of the day, having a strong strategy that's centered

Joel Buhr: 00:40:49

around, you know, identifying the right audiences and what those audiences

Joel Buhr: 00:40:54

actually look like, and how that should affect messaging, and by channel.

Joel Buhr: 00:40:59

And, sometimes actually, just simply, a lot of businesses fall

Joel Buhr: 00:41:03

into the simple, problem when times get tight, what do they cut first?

Joel Buhr: 00:41:07

Marketing,

Vit Muller: 00:41:08

Yeah.

Joel Buhr: 00:41:09

right?

Joel Buhr: 00:41:10

I got a, I got one of our flooring stores right now, and times are tight.

Joel Buhr: 00:41:13

Okay?

Joel Buhr: 00:41:14

Things are slow and first thing he is trying to cut is marketing.

Joel Buhr: 00:41:18

It's like you really wanna do that because there's

Vit Muller: 00:41:21

cutting.

Vit Muller: 00:41:21

Now the branch that you sit on.

Joel Buhr: 00:41:23

Yeah.

Joel Buhr: 00:41:24

It, it's a, it's hey, listen, if marketing's returning you, $50 for every

Joel Buhr: 00:41:29

dollar you spent, do you think it's getting you money, then it's the one thing

Joel Buhr: 00:41:34

you can't shut off or should not shut off.

Joel Buhr: 00:41:37

It's because the, but my advice there help your clients structure the

Joel Buhr: 00:41:42

flow of where they put their data.

Joel Buhr: 00:41:45

You know, sometimes you're having clients, they, they use various methods for

Joel Buhr: 00:41:48

accounting like QuickBooks or whatever.

Joel Buhr: 00:41:50

It doesn't make it pretty to store the data.

Joel Buhr: 00:41:53

get it in one central spot.

Joel Buhr: 00:41:55

'cause once you have it structured and you help them to see the importance

Joel Buhr: 00:41:58

of populating it, now you can utilize that for a lot of intelligence.

Vit Muller: 00:42:03

Let's talk about that.

Vit Muller: 00:42:04

This is good.

Vit Muller: 00:42:04

Yeah.

Vit Muller: 00:42:05

Now we're getting into the meat of it.

Vit Muller: 00:42:06

So how, I mean, you can share how much you wanna share, obviously, right?

Vit Muller: 00:42:10

I don't, you spill the whole secret sauce, but, if you want that's sweet.

Vit Muller: 00:42:14

But.

Joel Buhr: 00:42:14

we'll have a course for that,

Vit Muller: 00:42:15

yeah.

Vit Muller: 00:42:16

client comes in, brand new client, let's say whatever, a mattress store.

Vit Muller: 00:42:21

where do you start with that process?

Vit Muller: 00:42:23

Do you like custom fields first, mapping out what needs to be, what,

Vit Muller: 00:42:27

where is it gonna go, and do you wanna share that a little bit?

Joel Buhr: 00:42:30

You know, so, so, the process that we use there would

Joel Buhr: 00:42:33

work for any retail business that has a brick and mortar, frankly.

Joel Buhr: 00:42:37

And if they've been collect, especially when you have a situation

Joel Buhr: 00:42:39

where you're collecting data, 'cause you gotta deliver a product or

Joel Buhr: 00:42:42

ser or, or do home service, right?

Joel Buhr: 00:42:45

Having that data, making sure that the clients are putting that information

Joel Buhr: 00:42:48

in there is the starting point.

Joel Buhr: 00:42:50

and knowing what those transactions are worth.

Joel Buhr: 00:42:52

Right.

Joel Buhr: 00:42:53

as an example, we work with, on the mattress space, there's a number of POS

Joel Buhr: 00:42:58

systems that these, these stores will use.

Joel Buhr: 00:43:01

And unfortunately, some of these POS systems are not up with

Joel Buhr: 00:43:04

the times they are archaic.

Joel Buhr: 00:43:06

They are still running on old access databases or, the, the, that

Joel Buhr: 00:43:11

store owner can only get to it via a, a virtual desktop connection.

Joel Buhr: 00:43:15

And it doesn't really, make it easy to export data.

Joel Buhr: 00:43:17

There's no APIs, there's nothing like that, right?

Joel Buhr: 00:43:21

Well, you know, if there's not a way to export it, you're

Joel Buhr: 00:43:25

gonna have to put the data in.

Joel Buhr: 00:43:27

And, and so like in that case, for example, we'll, we'll add custom fields.

Joel Buhr: 00:43:31

Of course.

Joel Buhr: 00:43:31

Hey, what was the transaction date?

Joel Buhr: 00:43:33

What was the transaction amount?

Joel Buhr: 00:43:34

What store location was it for?

Joel Buhr: 00:43:37

And then we automate that to store that in one central spot that we can use.

Joel Buhr: 00:43:41

Then later to tie back to if we've been doing direct mail for them, or

Joel Buhr: 00:43:46

we've used GeoFrame based audiences.

Joel Buhr: 00:43:49

To drive our digital and CTV strategies.

Joel Buhr: 00:43:52

So that's the secret sauce right there.

Joel Buhr: 00:43:54

Basically, we're using custom audiences versus using just

Joel Buhr: 00:43:58

system platform targeting.

Joel Buhr: 00:44:00

So because I'm controlling the audience and I know that the audience

Joel Buhr: 00:44:04

is getting exposed, I can connect attribution back to those transactions.

Joel Buhr: 00:44:09

So again, it still comes down to structuring data.

Joel Buhr: 00:44:12

You need to have clean structured data, educate your customer of, Hey,

Joel Buhr: 00:44:16

don't in the address field, put the phone number too, or put the name

Joel Buhr: 00:44:20

like, separate the data points out so you can standardize that information.

Vit Muller: 00:44:25

Yeah.

Vit Muller: 00:44:26

Yeah.

Vit Muller: 00:44:26

Okay.

Vit Muller: 00:44:27

That's the secret sauce.

Vit Muller: 00:44:28

And then obviously then there's more to do you use, data enrichment as well?

Vit Muller: 00:44:32

there's services for that?

Vit Muller: 00:44:33

You probably

Joel Buhr: 00:44:33

so well, So a, again, I'm not in a, a home, a basement office, right?

Joel Buhr: 00:44:38

I got 3000 square foot of office space.

Joel Buhr: 00:44:40

we have dedicated servers.

Joel Buhr: 00:44:41

we have, three, a three host cluster over there that we use for

Joel Buhr: 00:44:45

running a lot of database servers and clusters and stuff like that,

Joel Buhr: 00:44:49

that we do a lot of enhancements with, with and things like that.

Joel Buhr: 00:44:52

We process, again, going back to, a data nerd, and, we process over half a

Joel Buhr: 00:44:58

billion rows of data on a monthly basis of consumer property and automotive data.

Joel Buhr: 00:45:03

We license that to clients.

Joel Buhr: 00:45:04

So we have a lot of access there and a lot of capabilities and

Joel Buhr: 00:45:07

capacity to, to handle that.

Joel Buhr: 00:45:09

So, but, enriching that data, nowadays gets more and more difficult.

Joel Buhr: 00:45:14

And you know what I would encourage marketers is, is

Joel Buhr: 00:45:18

don't try to take shortcuts.

Joel Buhr: 00:45:20

Be careful of some of the providers out there.

Joel Buhr: 00:45:24

as far as are they using sources that are privacy compliant, for example, and

Joel Buhr: 00:45:29

are you creating mechanisms there that, going back to the privacy point are,

Joel Buhr: 00:45:32

make sure you don't just think that, well, that's their responsibility now

Joel Buhr: 00:45:37

that's yours, and, getting this set up the right way is it's not that difficult.

Joel Buhr: 00:45:41

It'll save you a lot of headache later and help you defend

Joel Buhr: 00:45:46

in case you're chased after.

Joel Buhr: 00:45:48

which is, we've had experience in that.

Joel Buhr: 00:45:51

but foundational piece of it is simply structuring data because

Joel Buhr: 00:45:56

you can't connect it if you don't.

Joel Buhr: 00:45:59

if it starts with, hey, well, what zip codes, what postal codes am I

Joel Buhr: 00:46:01

getting the most revenue out of?

Joel Buhr: 00:46:03

You know, make sure you're capturing that data.

Joel Buhr: 00:46:06

If you can get the address, cool, now you can find out what neighborhoods.

Joel Buhr: 00:46:10

Right now, you can standardize that information and, and narrow it down

Joel Buhr: 00:46:13

to neighborhoods and you can say, Hey, if, if all your money's coming

Joel Buhr: 00:46:16

from these neighborhoods on a, on a historical, repetitive basis, why

Joel Buhr: 00:46:20

would you waste your advertising dollars on other neighborhoods?

Vit Muller: 00:46:23

So then it's either cutting off the, the thing that

Vit Muller: 00:46:26

doesn't work at all, or focusing more, more campaigns on the one that

Vit Muller: 00:46:30

do work or combination of the two.

Vit Muller: 00:46:32

Yeah,

Joel Buhr: 00:46:33

So, you know, at, at, what we've seen actually too, for example, we,

Joel Buhr: 00:46:37

when we analyze a lot of POS data, like I was looking at one client's POS data,

Joel Buhr: 00:46:41

and it's interesting because now that you have the POS data, you can start to

Joel Buhr: 00:46:43

see the trends and see what's happening.

Joel Buhr: 00:46:46

And they would write up people and if the people didn't close, they

Joel Buhr: 00:46:48

still had that writeup in the system.

Joel Buhr: 00:46:50

Right.

Joel Buhr: 00:46:50

And they, it was an, it was flagged as an unsold piece of revenue.

Joel Buhr: 00:46:54

But what we identified is because we're using data as we're driving

Joel Buhr: 00:46:59

things like direct mail or digital advertising, as we're using that data.

Joel Buhr: 00:47:05

they had, for a five month period about $160,000 of revenue.

Joel Buhr: 00:47:08

That was unclosed 160,000.

Joel Buhr: 00:47:10

So that's a good chunk of money for any business.

Joel Buhr: 00:47:12

I don't care who you are, you know, that'd be nice.

Joel Buhr: 00:47:14

Revenue.

Joel Buhr: 00:47:15

only, $40,000 of that rev of that unclosed revenue, 40,000 was exposed

Joel Buhr: 00:47:21

to marketing, meaning that we touched 'em with direct mail or digital.

Vit Muller: 00:47:25

Mm-hmm.

Joel Buhr: 00:47:27

So what does that tell you about the other, the other 110,000?

Vit Muller: 00:47:31

yeah.

Vit Muller: 00:47:31

Missed opportunity

Joel Buhr: 00:47:32

Does, does marketing help close ratio?

Joel Buhr: 00:47:36

Sounds like it does.

Joel Buhr: 00:47:37

Right?

Joel Buhr: 00:47:38

If you have enough, if you have enough odds.

Joel Buhr: 00:47:40

So it's, it's when you start to look at, you have to look at

Joel Buhr: 00:47:43

things in a few different angles.

Joel Buhr: 00:47:45

Be because, again, it's Hey, that's an interesting aspect there.

Joel Buhr: 00:47:49

Well, if marketing's gonna help me secure more revenue, why would I not do it right?

Vit Muller: 00:47:55

Yeah, this is where the numbers become so

Vit Muller: 00:47:57

crucial, even like understanding your, customer lifetime value.

Vit Muller: 00:47:59

And does it increase over time?

Vit Muller: 00:48:01

Because I mean, it's in the name of your business.

Vit Muller: 00:48:04

Attract, engage, sorry, attract, engage, convert, and, and retain, right?

Vit Muller: 00:48:09

So if you improve stuff on retention with upsells or keeping customers

Vit Muller: 00:48:13

longer, coming back from, I dunno, more mattresses or whatever, you

Vit Muller: 00:48:17

increase that custom lifetime value.

Vit Muller: 00:48:18

Now.

Vit Muller: 00:48:18

Now if you look at the, the cost of acquisition on ads,

Vit Muller: 00:48:23

you know what the range is.

Vit Muller: 00:48:24

how much more can you afford to spend on ads to add, compete, or competition

Vit Muller: 00:48:29

on that because you can't afford, right?

Joel Buhr: 00:48:32

right.

Joel Buhr: 00:48:32

Oh, exactly.

Joel Buhr: 00:48:33

I I can't show this 'cause it, it actually, it's a

Joel Buhr: 00:48:36

client report that we have.

Joel Buhr: 00:48:37

But for example, let me see what I can show.

Joel Buhr: 00:48:41

I'll just give the rundown of it.

Joel Buhr: 00:48:42

we have one client here where, we did a direct mail campaign for them.

Joel Buhr: 00:48:47

They spent, $12,000 they have of so far, month to date, they've gotten

Joel Buhr: 00:48:52

$37,923 and 86 cents of rev or revenue from individuals that we're exposed

Joel Buhr: 00:49:00

to on, on that direct mail campaign.

Joel Buhr: 00:49:02

I, I, I would say, hey, that's,

Vit Muller: 00:49:04

That's pretty good,

Joel Buhr: 00:49:05

enough and repeated the process long enough, we would see whether

Joel Buhr: 00:49:07

that actually has an impact on the trend, or did they just come in anyway?

Joel Buhr: 00:49:11

A lot of times business owners go, oh, well I would've

Joel Buhr: 00:49:14

gotten that business anyway.

Joel Buhr: 00:49:15

Well, let's, let's prove it, let's stop marketing now.

Joel Buhr: 00:49:18

Or what happens to your ticket value?

Joel Buhr: 00:49:21

Right?

Joel Buhr: 00:49:22

the reality is again, our responsibility, so from like a, as a marketer or agencies

Joel Buhr: 00:49:27

that are educating the businesses is people do business with people,

Joel Buhr: 00:49:31

spend money with people they trust.

Vit Muller: 00:49:33

Mm-hmm.

Joel Buhr: 00:49:34

In the absence of value, price will always be the problem, right?

Joel Buhr: 00:49:39

Absence of value, price is always the problem.

Joel Buhr: 00:49:41

So if, if a prospect who's gonna buy your goods or services doesn't have

Joel Buhr: 00:49:47

trust in you, they have no value in you, your price will always be the problem,

Vit Muller: 00:49:52

Yep.

Joel Buhr: 00:49:53

you know,

Vit Muller: 00:49:53

And how do you, how do you back yourself up, or how do you feel

Vit Muller: 00:49:56

confident about pitching your offer?

Vit Muller: 00:49:57

The only way you can back it up is by results.

Vit Muller: 00:50:00

And what, what are the results?

Vit Muller: 00:50:01

Results are data.

Vit Muller: 00:50:02

So we're going back to data.

Joel Buhr: 00:50:04

Right?

Joel Buhr: 00:50:04

but a lot of times, you'll also have business owners that will say, Pinterest

Joel Buhr: 00:50:07

that there's no opportunities there for me or, LinkedIn, you know, all my money's

Joel Buhr: 00:50:11

on Instagram, or something like that.

Joel Buhr: 00:50:13

Or coming through TikTok.

Joel Buhr: 00:50:14

Right?

Joel Buhr: 00:50:14

Well,

Vit Muller: 00:50:15

Pinterest.

Vit Muller: 00:50:16

Pinterest is a good one.

Vit Muller: 00:50:16

Right?

Vit Muller: 00:50:17

So like a lot of like wives, they wanna create their visual board

Vit Muller: 00:50:21

of their like new dream house.

Vit Muller: 00:50:22

they, what they call it?

Vit Muller: 00:50:23

The, the vision board?

Vit Muller: 00:50:24

Their dream new house.

Vit Muller: 00:50:25

So that's like already starting to collect different, like furniture

Vit Muller: 00:50:28

pieces, what they like, right?

Vit Muller: 00:50:30

So there is definitely market in how you can use it.

Joel Buhr: 00:50:33

Well, what I would say too, 'cause it's especially when you're

Joel Buhr: 00:50:35

working with a, a business to consumer, good product, like selling mattresses or

Joel Buhr: 00:50:40

furniture or flooring, or it could be a whatever shop, it doesn't really matter.

Joel Buhr: 00:50:44

or whatever business service or whatever it, if they land on your website,

Joel Buhr: 00:50:50

okay, somehow you get 'em to your website first and you're not doing

Joel Buhr: 00:50:54

retargeting across these other channels.

Joel Buhr: 00:50:56

Maybe you don't wanna dump all your main money on those channels, okay?

Joel Buhr: 00:51:00

But why not retarget be the unique thing that stands out and show

Joel Buhr: 00:51:05

up where they don't expect you.

Vit Muller: 00:51:07

Yeah.

Joel Buhr: 00:51:08

breaks the noise.

Joel Buhr: 00:51:10

There's a stat, and this was like a, a while back, when I looked at it,

Joel Buhr: 00:51:13

it was like a stat that, as a, as a general human being, we're exposed to

Joel Buhr: 00:51:17

six to 10,000 advertisements a day.

Joel Buhr: 00:51:20

Six to 10,000.

Joel Buhr: 00:51:22

So when a business is fighting to get attention, they're

Joel Buhr: 00:51:25

fighting all of that stuff.

Joel Buhr: 00:51:26

They're fighting the drama on the news, they're fighting the,

Joel Buhr: 00:51:29

politics and every other thing that is distracting a consumer.

Joel Buhr: 00:51:34

You have to break the noise.

Joel Buhr: 00:51:37

It's not always about click here to buy it.

Joel Buhr: 00:51:40

It's, it is, so a lot of the strategies we go through are strategies that are

Joel Buhr: 00:51:44

very specific, to catch people at the different stages of the buying journey.

Joel Buhr: 00:51:50

No matter what you buy, you go from a state of, I, I have a problem,

Joel Buhr: 00:51:53

and I don't know what it is yet, to, the, you're problem aware, you

Joel Buhr: 00:51:57

finally know you have a problem.

Joel Buhr: 00:51:58

Hey, my business isn't growing, or I'm not sleeping well, or, my skin

Joel Buhr: 00:52:02

itches, or something like that.

Joel Buhr: 00:52:03

Right.

Joel Buhr: 00:52:04

Then you finally figure out the problem.

Joel Buhr: 00:52:05

Now you're gonna go do information, and then you're gonna do comparison of that

Joel Buhr: 00:52:09

information, and then you're gonna make a purchase decision, and then you're gonna

Joel Buhr: 00:52:13

purchase, and then it's the follow up.

Joel Buhr: 00:52:15

And a lot where a lot of people owe a lot of businesses.

Joel Buhr: 00:52:17

and I think as marketers, we need to really strongly educate business owners

Joel Buhr: 00:52:20

to continue to market to the people that already spent money with you, even

Joel Buhr: 00:52:24

if it's gonna be a long time before they would spend money with you again.

Joel Buhr: 00:52:27

if you buy a couch, when's the next time you're gonna buy a couch?

Joel Buhr: 00:52:31

How many years?

Vit Muller: 00:52:32

five.

Joel Buhr: 00:52:32

Five.

Joel Buhr: 00:52:33

Five years.

Joel Buhr: 00:52:34

Maybe 10 years.

Joel Buhr: 00:52:35

Right?

Joel Buhr: 00:52:35

If it's good couch.

Joel Buhr: 00:52:36

You know,

Vit Muller: 00:52:38

Yeah.

Joel Buhr: 00:52:38

I got my, my flex steel recliner that I bought

Joel Buhr: 00:52:41

when my son was a little wee man.

Joel Buhr: 00:52:44

And, now he's almost 21.

Joel Buhr: 00:52:46

I still got the chair.

Joel Buhr: 00:52:47

I like the chair.

Joel Buhr: 00:52:48

It's my chair.

Joel Buhr: 00:52:50

but can't you market to me to get me to buy something else?

Vit Muller: 00:52:53

a home office maybe you want to Yeah, exactly.

Joel Buhr: 00:52:56

Or, or remind me, the marketing sometimes, and it's not

Joel Buhr: 00:53:00

a lot of spend for a business.

Joel Buhr: 00:53:01

The marketing sometimes is simply gonna be GERUed around,

Joel Buhr: 00:53:05

Hey, thank you for trusting us.

Joel Buhr: 00:53:07

we're your local partner, whatever.

Joel Buhr: 00:53:10

It's because when you and I start talking and we're having a cup of

Joel Buhr: 00:53:13

coffee and I start telling you, and you're like, I had the same problem.

Joel Buhr: 00:53:16

In fact, I just saw you, I bought from them.

Joel Buhr: 00:53:18

You should go buy from them.

Vit Muller: 00:53:19

Mm-hmm.

Joel Buhr: 00:53:20

What are they doing?

Joel Buhr: 00:53:21

They're reinforcing trust, brand.

Vit Muller: 00:53:23

an evangelist there.

Joel Buhr: 00:53:25

Yeah.

Joel Buhr: 00:53:26

but by them, if they continue to retarget you, even after you've

Joel Buhr: 00:53:30

purchased that one thing, something that maybe you're only gonna buy once.

Joel Buhr: 00:53:35

You need to feel good that you spent the money with them and if,

Vit Muller: 00:53:38

So, so the result doesn't always have to be the, the, the

Vit Muller: 00:53:41

conversion point is not always, a transaction in terms of actual monetary.

Vit Muller: 00:53:46

It could be that you just strengthening the brand affinity there are right.

Joel Buhr: 00:53:52

A hundred percent.

Joel Buhr: 00:53:53

A hundred percent.

Joel Buhr: 00:53:53

if I got you to dwell, so for example, here's maybe a little trick, right?

Joel Buhr: 00:53:58

Is when you're putting retargeting pixels on your clients, always make

Joel Buhr: 00:54:02

sure that you use Google Tag Manager.

Joel Buhr: 00:54:04

It's a simple thing.

Joel Buhr: 00:54:04

You can put it, you can put that tag container or a certain delay

Joel Buhr: 00:54:08

on there, for 10 seconds, put a ten second delay that the tag cannot fire.

Joel Buhr: 00:54:14

put a primary tag that catches all your traffic and put a second Facebook pixel

Joel Buhr: 00:54:18

or, or Pinterest pixel or whatever that delays by 10 seconds when it fires, right?

Joel Buhr: 00:54:25

Just 10

Vit Muller: 00:54:26

that be?

Joel Buhr: 00:54:27

Well, when you go to a website, what's the first thing

Joel Buhr: 00:54:32

you're trying to figure out?

Joel Buhr: 00:54:33

Does this website have the information that I care about?

Joel Buhr: 00:54:38

Yes or no?

Joel Buhr: 00:54:38

And you make that decision usually in a few seconds,

Vit Muller: 00:54:41

And then you leave if it, if it isn't right,

Joel Buhr: 00:54:43

you leave it if it isn't.

Vit Muller: 00:54:45

so you're making it more

Joel Buhr: 00:54:46

you're making that decision in probably about five seconds.

Vit Muller: 00:54:50

Mm-hmm.

Joel Buhr: 00:54:51

So Google counts an engaged visitor as anybody that's

Joel Buhr: 00:54:54

on there for 10 seconds or more.

Vit Muller: 00:54:56

Right.

Vit Muller: 00:54:57

So that's the secret that, I mean, that's, you just, you don't

Vit Muller: 00:55:00

even have to reinvent the wheel.

Vit Muller: 00:55:01

You just follow that same process.

Vit Muller: 00:55:02

Yeah.

Vit Muller: 00:55:02

Great.

Vit Muller: 00:55:03

I like it.

Joel Buhr: 00:55:04

start there and delay the pixel, pixel fire.

Joel Buhr: 00:55:07

See the difference?

Joel Buhr: 00:55:08

It is gonna blow your mind.

Joel Buhr: 00:55:09

You got, Hey, you got all these bounced.

Joel Buhr: 00:55:10

You know, what we look for, for example, is we look at what's our bounce rate?

Joel Buhr: 00:55:14

Are we decreasing the bounce rate because of awareness?

Vit Muller: 00:55:18

Mm-hmm.

Vit Muller: 00:55:19

Brilliant.

Joel Buhr: 00:55:20

And,

Vit Muller: 00:55:21

This is where content marketing on social media comes

Vit Muller: 00:55:23

in, why it's so important.

Vit Muller: 00:55:24

For example,

Joel Buhr: 00:55:25

And then, and we will get, we'll get granular to create little

Joel Buhr: 00:55:28

segments based upon, hey, if they, if they made it into the, anywhere past

Joel Buhr: 00:55:32

the homepage, like into a product or the store pages or anything like that.

Joel Buhr: 00:55:37

And I don't care really if a business that's selling a product, they're

Joel Buhr: 00:55:40

selling a, they're selling a pin.

Joel Buhr: 00:55:42

If they're selling a pin and they're like, everybody comes in to get the pin, or

Joel Buhr: 00:55:45

everybody comes in to, to buy the chair.

Joel Buhr: 00:55:47

Nobody buys it online.

Joel Buhr: 00:55:48

I don't care.

Joel Buhr: 00:55:49

Have an online store.

Joel Buhr: 00:55:51

They just wanna have trust that you have the product.

Vit Muller: 00:55:54

where's the point of diminishing returns on this,

Vit Muller: 00:55:56

like in terms of looking at the data and making decision on.

Vit Muller: 00:56:00

On that data because you need to know there, there's gonna be big enough sample.

Vit Muller: 00:56:04

If it's the sample, if it's too small, it's don't consider that to be enough.

Vit Muller: 00:56:07

Yeah.

Joel Buhr: 00:56:08

start with understanding your analytics.

Joel Buhr: 00:56:09

It's that simple.

Joel Buhr: 00:56:11

Whether you're selling, you're selling brick and mortar, or not collect your

Joel Buhr: 00:56:14

data, understanding your analytics, you know, and create the tools in the

Joel Buhr: 00:56:17

process that'll collect that data.

Joel Buhr: 00:56:19

and, and high levels made it easier than ever for crying out loud.

Joel Buhr: 00:56:22

It's like you can tie a physical phone to your tracking number.

Joel Buhr: 00:56:29

Inside the platform.

Vit Muller: 00:56:31

Yeah.

Joel Buhr: 00:56:32

So, you know, we're, we're getting clients to order their

Joel Buhr: 00:56:34

phones, you know, left and right.

Joel Buhr: 00:56:35

Shaun Clark, when they came out with this, he tagged me.

Joel Buhr: 00:56:38

He's Joel's been waiting for this, you know, but it's like these, I,

Joel Buhr: 00:56:41

I want this physical, a voice of IP phone, because I want the client

Joel Buhr: 00:56:45

to make all their calls from it.

Joel Buhr: 00:56:46

I want my clients to make their calls from it.

Joel Buhr: 00:56:50

'cause if I get them to make their calls from it, now I got data to track.

Vit Muller: 00:56:53

Yeah,

Vit Muller: 00:56:54

' Joel Buhr: cause I can take a phone number and shove that into,

Vit Muller: 00:56:56

to meta as an audience, right?

Vit Muller: 00:56:59

And if I get them to put some other stuff in there too, I can eventually expand

Vit Muller: 00:57:02

that and understand more how to help them.

Vit Muller: 00:57:05

Right?

Vit Muller: 00:57:06

And, and going back to, hey, if I can get their, their postal data

Vit Muller: 00:57:10

right now I can start to understand really unique, customer segments.

Vit Muller: 00:57:15

Using some different data products that help us to understand those

Vit Muller: 00:57:19

segments, you know, while all, all while having good privacy.

Vit Muller: 00:57:22

So,

Vit Muller: 00:57:23

we've dived, we've dive real deep into all this stuff.

Vit Muller: 00:57:25

This has been exciting.

Vit Muller: 00:57:26

Right.

Vit Muller: 00:57:27

based on looking at all this, working with this data stuff, you, you're

Vit Muller: 00:57:31

way, way more into this stuff than me.

Vit Muller: 00:57:34

What trends do you see happening in the next year?

Vit Muller: 00:57:38

with the data driven marketing and utilization of AI in

Vit Muller: 00:57:43

that process, what do you

Joel Buhr: 00:57:45

obviously, data driving marketing will never change.

Joel Buhr: 00:57:47

It's always gonna need data.

Joel Buhr: 00:57:49

you, you gotta have it and you gotta understand it.

Joel Buhr: 00:57:51

And you don't have to be, you know, you don't have to understand everything,

Joel Buhr: 00:57:55

but you gotta think of, you gotta think of things from a common sense

Joel Buhr: 00:57:58

standpoint that doesn't change.

Joel Buhr: 00:58:00

Just because of the years go by, it's, you know, it's just different tools.

Joel Buhr: 00:58:05

But at the end of the day, we're still just selling to people.

Joel Buhr: 00:58:08

What moves people?

Joel Buhr: 00:58:09

What moves people today hasn't really changed.

Joel Buhr: 00:58:12

I just have different ways to try to get your attention

Vit Muller: 00:58:15

more Maybe let's say, let me reframe my question, like

Vit Muller: 00:58:19

how about the interpretation of data making decisions of data.

Vit Muller: 00:58:22

Do you reckon maybe that could change by utilizing AI to be that proactive

Vit Muller: 00:58:26

aspect rather than you having to be the scientist that looks at the data?

Vit Muller: 00:58:30

You know, like AI is pretty smart at being able to go through it

Joel Buhr: 00:58:33

the thing that's gonna continue to change in the next

Joel Buhr: 00:58:35

year for sure, is privacy is going to increase, capturing data.

Joel Buhr: 00:58:39

You know, anything that's related, anything that's more identifiable, age,

Joel Buhr: 00:58:43

gender, those types of things are gonna become, especially in the United States,

Joel Buhr: 00:58:46

those are gonna come under more target.

Joel Buhr: 00:58:48

in the United States, we, we would, we used to be able to target by language

Joel Buhr: 00:58:52

and ethnicity and those types of things.

Joel Buhr: 00:58:54

And all of those data elements are falling off of targeting capabilities.

Joel Buhr: 00:58:58

Okay.

Joel Buhr: 00:58:59

So you gotta figure out other ways to say, how would I get this audience

Joel Buhr: 00:59:03

if I'm trying to get that audience?

Joel Buhr: 00:59:05

it's about thinking a different angle.

Joel Buhr: 00:59:08

So ai is gonna help you, but I don't think it's gonna replace the marketer,

Vit Muller: 00:59:12

No, no.

Joel Buhr: 00:59:14

you know, you know it's gonna enhance it.

Joel Buhr: 00:59:16

It's a 40 x multiplier if you use it, just from what I shared earlier today, it's

Joel Buhr: 00:59:20

like today I, I, I set up four of our, our subaccounts with, some complex web

Joel Buhr: 00:59:25

hooks that are processing, digesting and matching data back to other data tables.

Joel Buhr: 00:59:30

And, it's, AI helped me do that faster.

Joel Buhr: 00:59:34

If I had to figure that out, you know, a different way, it would've taken longer.

Joel Buhr: 00:59:39

But the privacy is going to restrict more and more data.

Joel Buhr: 00:59:42

and so you gotta think of other ways that you'll be able to identify what's

Joel Buhr: 00:59:48

responding based upon what you're doing.

Joel Buhr: 00:59:51

email marketing is still big.

Joel Buhr: 00:59:52

I highly recommend, people, talk with email to inbox.

Joel Buhr: 00:59:55

Right.

Joel Buhr: 00:59:56

Kristen?

Joel Buhr: 00:59:57

she's a brilliant lady.

Joel Buhr: 00:59:58

I mean, some common sense stuff for crying out loud.

Joel Buhr: 01:00:01

it's, what's funny is I'm getting emails still right now from some people, I

Joel Buhr: 01:00:05

won't say their name 'cause I'll be nice, but it's some people that are

Joel Buhr: 01:00:08

supposedly big, high level marketers and they don't even have their email set up.

Joel Buhr: 01:00:12

Right.

Joel Buhr: 01:00:13

when it's unverified.

Joel Buhr: 01:00:14

When it comes through unverified.

Joel Buhr: 01:00:16

Yeah.

Joel Buhr: 01:00:16

You don't even know, you don't even have your stuff set up.

Joel Buhr: 01:00:18

It's just going to my spam and it's, it's getting filtered out.

Joel Buhr: 01:00:22

but there's some basic things like, get your me, understand the

Joel Buhr: 01:00:25

mechanics of things, the fundamentals, and be willing to, you I'm in

Joel Buhr: 01:00:30

a big, purge, drive right now.

Joel Buhr: 01:00:32

So, in other words, what I mean by that is like I'm going through, if it's stuff

Joel Buhr: 01:00:35

that we haven't used, if it's stuff, if it's old designs, old ideas, I, I'm very

Joel Buhr: 01:00:39

likely to just shred it and throw it away.

Vit Muller: 01:00:42

Mm-hmm.

Vit Muller: 01:00:43

' Joel Buhr: cause you know what I was as a marketer when I made that the first time,

Vit Muller: 01:00:47

I'm a different marketer today, I'll think of a different way to solve the problem.

Vit Muller: 01:00:52

And I don't want to jade myself with an old solution always.

Vit Muller: 01:00:57

It's not that you don't gain some experience from those, but sometimes

Vit Muller: 01:01:00

it prohibits you from being creative.

Vit Muller: 01:01:04

So you have to upturn the box and say, okay, let me look

Vit Muller: 01:01:07

at this all fresh, all new.

Vit Muller: 01:01:10

And, you know, it it how you started out, with this, you

Vit Muller: 01:01:13

have to just simply say, yes.

Vit Muller: 01:01:15

You gotta say yes quicker.

Vit Muller: 01:01:18

because the world today is gonna go faster and faster, especially with ai.

Vit Muller: 01:01:22

Mm-hmm.

Joel Buhr: 01:01:23

If you can't learn to say yes faster with information and to

Joel Buhr: 01:01:27

make decisions quicker, it's gonna be more challenging for you to keep up.

Vit Muller: 01:01:33

Brilliant.

Vit Muller: 01:01:33

I like, I like how we closed the loop on that.

Vit Muller: 01:01:36

We started that and we finish on that.

Vit Muller: 01:01:38

Joel.

Vit Muller: 01:01:39

It's been a pleasure having you on the show, mate.

Vit Muller: 01:01:41

taking time at a busy day to share your wisdom.

Vit Muller: 01:01:45

Obviously, you've got a big agency, so you've got a lot of experience.

Vit Muller: 01:01:48

I really appreciate, sharing with us today, the aspects of it all.

Vit Muller: 01:01:53

if you wanted to leave like a last piece of advice to the guys

Vit Muller: 01:01:56

listening, that might be maybe starting up high level, that would

Vit Muller: 01:01:59

be a, a, a moment for you to do that.

Joel Buhr: 01:02:02

if they're starting up with high level, don't think twice about it.

Joel Buhr: 01:02:06

Say yes.

Joel Buhr: 01:02:06

That, that's, that would be my quick two, 2 cents.

Joel Buhr: 01:02:10

is get started.

Joel Buhr: 01:02:11

And, the other thing I'd say, Hey, for those that are starting up and those that

Joel Buhr: 01:02:16

are doing it, just be a good marketer.

Joel Buhr: 01:02:19

Be an honest, ethical marketer.

Joel Buhr: 01:02:21

don't try to create things that are, you're the reason why that new law

Joel Buhr: 01:02:26

has to get made because you're only making, just be a good human being.

Joel Buhr: 01:02:31

Okay.

Joel Buhr: 01:02:32

You know, be, be the type.

Joel Buhr: 01:02:33

when I started first direct, I said this to my wife, I says, I wanna always

Joel Buhr: 01:02:38

be able to come home and know wherever we're at that I did it the right way.

Joel Buhr: 01:02:44

If we don't have any money, I'm okay with that.

Joel Buhr: 01:02:47

Is if I did it the right way.

Joel Buhr: 01:02:48

And that's why I don't have the money because others are

Joel Buhr: 01:02:50

cheating in lying and stealing.

Joel Buhr: 01:02:52

I don't want that.

Joel Buhr: 01:02:54

I don't want any part of that.

Joel Buhr: 01:02:55

I, I actually, if I find out you're a dirty, rotten scoundrel, hey, I

Joel Buhr: 01:03:00

will tell people you're a dirty, rotten scoundrel and tell you,

Joel Buhr: 01:03:02

tell 'em why and what to look for.

Joel Buhr: 01:03:03

I will educate them on what to be aware of.

Joel Buhr: 01:03:07

That's the whole no miss, no just marketing that works is

Vit Muller: 01:03:10

Right.

Joel Buhr: 01:03:11

don't sell the fluff.

Joel Buhr: 01:03:13

Okay?

Joel Buhr: 01:03:14

Sell the real results.

Joel Buhr: 01:03:16

And if you don't know how to get the real results, tell the

Joel Buhr: 01:03:19

client, Hey, I'm starting off and, and I think this'll work.

Joel Buhr: 01:03:24

What do you think?

Joel Buhr: 01:03:24

I'd love your opinion.

Joel Buhr: 01:03:25

I'd love your feedback.

Joel Buhr: 01:03:28

You know, it don't underestimate how some business owners

Joel Buhr: 01:03:32

might be willing to help you.

Vit Muller: 01:03:34

Yeah, when you start an age, like there's, there's need like, and

Vit Muller: 01:03:37

it's not need, but like you're trying to get things off the ground so you

Vit Muller: 01:03:41

kinda take whatever comes to your way, but you can't just take everything.

Vit Muller: 01:03:45

Like yesterday I was at my BNI chapter and I had my 10 minutes presentation, and,

Vit Muller: 01:03:49

and I was talking about, you know what my belief is that a lot of businesses are

Vit Muller: 01:03:53

burning money away on ads and marketing, when they don't have the backend in place.

Vit Muller: 01:03:58

So then they're not converting leads because of no lead follow up, for example.

Vit Muller: 01:04:03

And then I talked about a bunch of other stuff, but at the end, One of the

Vit Muller: 01:04:05

guys like a, a big plumbing business.

Vit Muller: 01:04:07

He came up to me and Hey, do you do SEO as well?

Vit Muller: 01:04:09

I'm like, no, man, don't, we do have three I, I can help you a little bit.

Vit Muller: 01:04:13

but if you're looking for a blown, full-blown, like an SEO service

Vit Muller: 01:04:16

who will like, create backlinks all that, we don't have that.

Vit Muller: 01:04:20

But I would love to show you like the Yext, the search

Vit Muller: 01:04:23

atlas help you utilize it.

Vit Muller: 01:04:25

It's something that we are playing around with it as a beta group.

Vit Muller: 01:04:28

you don't wanna be bullshitting anybody basically.

Vit Muller: 01:04:31

Yeah,

Joel Buhr: 01:04:32

Yeah.

Joel Buhr: 01:04:33

By, by the way, for, one of the statements you made earlier, the IRS

Joel Buhr: 01:04:37

has a form 8 8 2 6 in the United States.

Joel Buhr: 01:04:40

It's a disabled access credit.

Joel Buhr: 01:04:43

So if you

Vit Muller: 01:04:43

I was right.

Joel Buhr: 01:04:44

your expense yeah, you can substantiate your expenses there.

Joel Buhr: 01:04:48

it'd be, under $1 million revenue or fewer than 30 full-time employees, and

Joel Buhr: 01:04:53

you can deduct 50% of eligible ADA related expenses between two 50 and 10,250.

Joel Buhr: 01:05:00

Your max credit per year is $5,000.

Joel Buhr: 01:05:02

So, hey, if you're paying web developers to work on your website,

Joel Buhr: 01:05:07

you can deduct five, get the tax credit for $5,000 of that.

Vit Muller: 01:05:11

Brilliant.

Vit Muller: 01:05:12

There you go.

Vit Muller: 01:05:13

Episode 23, guys, check it out.

Vit Muller: 01:05:14

Tony Caggiano, ADA Comply guy.

Vit Muller: 01:05:16

You can learn more about that.

Vit Muller: 01:05:17

There you go.

Vit Muller: 01:05:18

I'm glad to hear that's still the case, for US anyway, for the rest of the world.

Vit Muller: 01:05:22

Dig into it and find out.

Vit Muller: 01:05:24

Alright, Joel, thank you so much, mate.

Vit Muller: 01:05:26

Appreciate you being on, once again.

Vit Muller: 01:05:28

It's been, it's been great having you as a fellow, podcaster as well.

Vit Muller: 01:05:31

we actually didn't even plug your old podcast, but you

Vit Muller: 01:05:34

actually have some good episodes.

Vit Muller: 01:05:35

What's podcast name again?

Joel Buhr: 01:05:37

Be growth driven.

Vit Muller: 01:05:38

Speed, growth driven, and you're gonna relaunch it, right?

Vit Muller: 01:05:40

Is

Joel Buhr: 01:05:41

We are.

Joel Buhr: 01:05:41

Yeah.

Joel Buhr: 01:05:41

we've been working on a lot of stuff this year, and that's just, unfortunately,

Joel Buhr: 01:05:44

it's one of those things that kind of takes a back burner a little bit.

Joel Buhr: 01:05:47

but, it's making content's always tough.

Joel Buhr: 01:05:50

It's kinda like the roofer who, fixes everybody else's roof, but

Joel Buhr: 01:05:53

he, he hasn't fixed his roof yet.

Joel Buhr: 01:05:55

So that's the challenge, right.

Vit Muller: 01:05:58

Yeah.

Vit Muller: 01:05:59

it's, you have a few episodes there, but I must say I'm very impressed

Vit Muller: 01:06:02

with the the website for the podcast that you've done and that

Vit Muller: 01:06:05

cool little intro that you've got.

Vit Muller: 01:06:06

There's a few little things that I was looking at like how I'm gonna

Vit Muller: 01:06:09

implement some that idea, like those flowing, interview those talking heads.

Vit Muller: 01:06:14

It's pretty cool.

Joel Buhr: 01:06:15

Thank you very much.

Joel Buhr: 01:06:16

Appreciate that.

Vit Muller: 01:06:17

Thank you man.

Vit Muller: 01:06:18

Guys, thank you so much for being on today's show or listening to today's

Vit Muller: 01:06:21

episode or watching on YouTube.

Vit Muller: 01:06:22

If you're watching on YouTube, please give it a and subscribe.

Vit Muller: 01:06:24

We'd appreciate it as well.

Vit Muller: 01:06:26

if you enjoyed today's episode, then please share it with any

Vit Muller: 01:06:29

fellow high level mates, that you think would benefit from listening.

Vit Muller: 01:06:32

For show notes, ling's and extra tips to help your agency or

Vit Muller: 01:06:35

your SaaS at high level, please go to highlevelexperience.com.

Vit Muller: 01:06:38

Thank you and have a great rest of your day, everybody.