S3E22 – Matt Palmquist – From Pro Basketball to Marketing Agency

Key Timecodes

• (00:56) – Show intro and background history
• (02:03) – Deeper into her background and career path
• (04:05) – The high-performance athlete background and his transition to entrepreneurship
• (06:14) – Understanding his business model
• (09:06) – How was his transition from working for other companies to founding his own agency
• (11:21) – Deeper into his business
• (13:11) – A bit about reputation management
• (16:58) – Talking to the unsatisfied customers to understand their pain
• (18:32) – How many employees did he have
• (20:00) – Using contractors as qualified professionals to grow a team
• (24:35) – Deeper into his numbers and strategy
• (26:13) – How he provides the reputation management services
• (29:38) – How he charges for these services
• (34:41) – The importance of great customer relationship and reputation management
• (36:59) – His strategy to build a passive income strategy
• (42:51) – Guest contacts

Transcription

[00:00:03.820] – Intro

Hey, this is Sean Tepper, the host of Payback Time, an approachable and transparent podcast on business investing in finance. I like to bring our guests to hear authentic stories while giving you actionable takeaways you can use today.Let’s go. My next guest went from D1 basketball to the pros and then transitioned to a career in marketing. After working several years for a firm. He decided to take the leap and start his own agency. In this. Episode, we not only talk about how he built his own company but also talk a lot about his agency’s key service, which is reputation management. When companies grow fast things can slip through the cracks which can trickle down and negatively impact the customer. This can trigger bad reviews and reviews are a key marketing driver for a company. The question is how do we resolve these bad reviews? We answer that question in this episode.

[00:00:54.260] – Sean

Please welcome, Matt Palmquist. Matt, welcome to the show.

[00:00:58.040] – Matt

Hey, Sean, thanks for having me. I’ve been a fan of yours for a while, so thank you so much. I’m really excited to be on.

[00:01:04.650] – Sean

Thank you, sir. Appreciate it. So why don’t you kick us off and tell us about your background?

[00:01:09.280] – Matt

I don’t know how long I have, but I am the creative founder for 610 Marketing. The name 610 Marketing comes from my height. And our mantra is why try to fit in when you’re meant to stand out. And we are a boutique digital marketing and PR firm that handles everything from website development, SEO, SEM, crisis management, reputation management. So we offer a full suite of digital products for our clients. And we work with professional athletes. And we also work with midsize businesses that maybe don’t have their own inhouse marketing company set in place, but we come in and we fill their needs. So we’re really proud of what we’ve accomplished. We’ve been open since 2016. And yeah, that’s who I am. Besides the basketball background, we’ll get into.That later.

[00:02:03.820] – Sean

I want to dive in a basketball background here in a second. We’ll also dive into your business, the type of model it is. I know we talked about offline about creating passive income, so we want to drill into that. But I’d love for you to share your background and your college career. So where did you go to school? And then you played pro a little bit as well.We’ll talk about that.

[00:02:22.630] – Matt

I  got a real quick sniff in the professional ranks, but overseas. I grew up in Austin, Texas, and I ended up getting a four year scholarship to the University of Texas Pan American, which is now UTRGB, down in South Texas McAllen, Edberg area. One of the best four years of my life, some of my best friends I’ve met down there, was a Division 1. We played all over the country, got to travel for free, played on ESPN. I mean, it was a great time. We were really competitive. We didn’t win a lot, but we were competitive. I was a better than decent basketball player, obviously for the university, and fortunate of being a couple of records. But after college, I wanted to go pro, which I did. And I didn’t have the greatest pro career. It lasted about a year and a half maybe, and it was overseas and in Mexico and Peru. And so it was well traveled. But then at some point in time, you just got to say, okay, hey, it’s time to turn it start a new chapter. And that’s what I did. And so it’s taken me through the coaching career in high school and then wanted to be an executive at an NBA level.

[00:03:44.420] – Matt

So it’s been a great time. And it’s taken me through now to where I’m the creative founder for a digital marketing and PR firm. So I love every lesson that I’ve gathered through my career since high school has led me to this point. And now I’m on your show. So I’m really excited to be on the show.

[00:04:04.810] – Sean

I really like talking to athletes, especially high performers like yourself, that even though, hey, a year and a half or 10 years, regardless, you get to see you played pro. That’s awesome. But I like seeing people who are high performance in athletics, in sports and transition to business because you’re right, there are so many things you carry over. I talk about some of the guys in our team, and there’s people coming to me and they’re looking to build teams, I say try to look for people that have what I call field awareness or court awareness. When you are playing at that level, you know when things go wrong or something needs to happen. You don’t need to be looking directly at it. You’re just aware and you know how to react. And having people that can make those heads up plays in a split second and know what they’re doing, that’s so hard to find.

[00:04:56.440] – Matt

I 1,000 % agree with you. And also, if I could elaborate on that, I think it also has to do with the reason why companies like Hertz or enterprise, they hire athletes is because of that competitive nature. I personally do not set my alarm clock on my phone. I have to wake up as an entrepreneur, as a business owner, I have to wake up every morning and start my day because my day is not promised and so I need to make things happen for me and my team. And so there’s no, okay, I’m going to sleep in till 8 30 and my alarm clock is going to wake me up. No, I naturally wake up at 545 and I do my little morning routine to get my day started. But I’m hungry every day. I could probably tend to lose some weight, but you know what I’m saying? I’m hungry every day.

[00:05:49.800] – Sean

Now it’s in you. You’re an athlete for life. That mentality, get up, get after it.

[00:05:55.020] – Matt

No out of balance. Chris Paul, there’s a saying that Chris Paul, when he practices, there’s no out of balance and he will go until the whistle blows. So it’s the same way. You just got to go until the whistle blows and you just play until you can’t play anymore.

[00:06:13.720] – Sean

Right on. So let’s drill into your business a little bit. 2016 is when you started this company. What were you doing before?

[00:06:24.040] – Matt

That’s funny. I transitioned from the basketball world, being player development for the G League team out of Austin. I moved to Houston to be closer to my son. And through my network, which is huge in business, having a network, and I’m sure guests on your show have relayed that to the audience. But I tapped into my network, I wanted to be closer to my son, and I got a job with a marketing agency in Houston. It was fairly known. It was large. It was a great opportunity. My degree is in marketing. I was really excited, wanted to be closer to my son, see him in high school, play high school ball, but be there as a dad, but to start a new transition in life, a new chapter. And about a year and I don’t know, about 14 months later, I had my Jerry Maguire moment because I realized at that point what I liked about it, what I didn’t like about it, what I could adapt, what I couldn’t, that thing. I felt like it was time for me to just take my goldfish, so to speak, and start 6 10 marketing. And I did.

[00:07:34.610] – Matt

And that’ll be an answer for… We’ll get into that. I know you typically ask the same questions, and I’m excited to answer. But yeah, it was that moment in 2016 where I was like, I’ve got to make something for me happen. And I did. And that’s that desire in me being an athlete.

[00:07:55.010] – Sean

I call it do or die. You can either sit on the bench your entire life or you can get into the game. Let’s do this.

[00:08:01.020] – Matt

Yeah, exactly. I love that.

[00:08:04.070] – Sean

Now jumping in, did you line up? Were you bootstrapping a little bit? Did you bring in a few clients, help them out on the side, and bring a remedy in a little bit and then.

[00:08:13.990] – Matt

Say, Hey. I was fortunate enough that I’m a relationship person, and so every client that I was bringing on, it was relationship based. They were with the company because of me. I did everything legally as far as acquisition of clients after. But I made my clients at the time aware that my transition was happening and they could stay or they could leave if they wanted. And some stayed and some decided to take a chance on a 6’10 guy that had a dollar and a dream. And I’ve never looked back. And one of those clients is still a client of mine to this day. And it’s been, what, almost seven years. So it’s fantastic. It’s really great.

[00:09:03.420] – Sean

I’ve seen that with other people that have a service, or let’s back up a second. They work for a service business. They’re going to start their own service business. It could be an agency like yours. I’ve talked to people who have had sales companies where it’s all up on sales calls they do for other organizations. Same thing, service business. And they let customers know upfront that, hey, I’m going to be starting my own thing. You have the option to stay with his company. That’s cool. Or you could jump with me.

[00:09:32.670] – Matt

The way I did it was I just let them know that after a certain date, I was no longer going to represent. I didn’t want them to be left hanging. One day they call and they’re looking for me, or they call me and they’re like, Hey, what’s going on with my account? And then I’m like, Well, I didn’t want that to happen. So I just let them know what I was feeling and where I was going. And then some of them asked the question, Well, where are you going? So I’ve always been transparent. And in PR and crisis management and digital marketing, you have to be transparent with the client because this is their livelihood and they entrust you in their business. And so transparency, whether it be good or bad news, it has to be given. I just wanted to make sure that my clients knew that if they were looking for me after a certain date, then this is where I was going to be. And then they had the option. I never gave the ultimatum, Hey, I’m doing my own thing, so why don’t you come with me? I just never did that.

[00:10:39.540] – Matt

They were open to whatever they wanted to do.

[00:10:42.260] – Sean

Yeah, leave it up to them just… Exactly. It’s just a transparency like you said of letting know where you’re going, what you’re doing and.

[00:10:48.220] – Matt

Leave it at that. Exactly. It’s a whole lot better than the FTX model, right? There’s definitely transparency on my end, right?

[00:10:58.920] – Sean

We want to set up a third offshore company that’s buried under this umbrella. Good luck finding the contact information.

[00:11:06.010] – Matt

My college girlfriend is running the other company that’s funding me the money. Yeah. No, I’m not. Totally legit. Totally legit. Totally legit, right? And it’s in the Bahamas. Yeah, okay, come on.

[00:11:19.830] – Sean

No red flags. Well, let’s dive into your business model a little bit here. So you said you build websites, you do advertising as I assume Facebook ads, Google ads, YouTube ads?

[00:11:30.730] – Matt

Yeah, that’s the Sem search engine marketing, which is like the paid ads where now TikTok is coming into play. Snapchat, you’ve got Instagram, Facebook, Google. I mean, it’s a whole plethora of paid advertising. Linkedin. But then like you mentioned, we do website development. We can either rebrand your website. We can start from scratch. We do the SEO, which is search engine optimization, which is keyword placement, meta tags, headers, naming of images. I could go on and on about it. And then we do reputation management. Obviously, there’s some reviews or some things out there that you might not be proud of, or maybe not your entire fault. Because one of our big niches for the reputation management and crisis management, PR aspect is property management companies that get a ton of reviews by a ton of disgruntled tenants that feel that… And so we come in and we help negate the negativity and the perception of the way the property may look or the property management company itself. So, yeah, we do anything digital that you can find on the internet, we have our hands on or we can affect. And so it’s been a great six years and we didn’t start off that way.

[00:12:51.640] – Matt

We just fell into you adapt, you learn, you grow, and we’ve done that. And I’m really proud of my team. We’re a small boutique company, like I said, but we’re really good at what we do. I don’t play an instrument, but I can toot my own horn. We are really good at what we do, and I’m proud.

[00:13:10.850] – Sean

Of them. That’s great. I want to talk about your team in a moment, but this would probably be a good learning opportunity for the audience as well as myself. Reputation management, talk about this. What are you technically doing? Are you getting more good reviews to oversaturate the bad reviews?

[00:13:28.480] – Matt

Well, they can contact me at 610marketing. Com and you can leave me a little… No, I’m just playing. I don’t want to give away the recipe, the 11 herbs and spices like Colonel Sandwich. But a quick little overview. Yes, some people think that… Let’s just say Google, for instance, right? You’ve got a three and a half star review or rating, right? Some people are like, Well, let’s go get 50 more five star reviews. And that does sound good, but the needle is not going to move because the way Google looks at it is you’re going to take the number of stars, add them up. If you’ve got 10 reviews and you’ve got 35 stars, you divide the 35 stars by the 10 and you get 3.5. So if you just add 10 more five star reviews, then you’re going to take that 85 number and divide it by 20 and you’re still going to pretty much get a 3.5, 3.6. It’s not going to t’s.

[00:14:30.170] – Sean

Not making a big difference.

[00:14:31.430] – Matt

Yeah. So what you want to do is, and again, you can reach us at 610marketing. Com to reach out to us. But what you want to do is you want to reconnect with some of those reviews that were left in a salty manner, like a one star review. And again, our niche is property management. Maybe it was a tenant that needed their ceiling fan fixed. So then it’s like reconnecting, reestablishing contact with that person and saying, Hey, if we fix your ceiling fan, can you update this review? And you will see if you go from a one star to a four star, you’ve added three stars, but you haven’t added that review. So the number of stars goes up, but not the number of views. So the division works out to where the rating jumps up a lot faster than it would adding just more five star reviews.

[00:15:27.220] – Sean

What I like is option A, you can acknowledge you have bad reviews, then call Matt, or option B, call Matt, lean with humility. Right? Okay, we made a mistake and we’re here to fix that mistake, or we can do something for you. Can you do us a solid and bump up that one star?

[00:15:48.530] – Matt

Yeah. So the key thing to take away from both those examples is just call Matt, right? That’s it.

[00:15:57.060] – Sean

Here’s the recipe. Know you have a problem? That’s it. Just call Matt.

[00:16:00.400] – Matt

That’s it. Yeah, just 610marketing. Com and just leave us a comment or leave us a message and we’ll do it. Yeah.

[00:16:07.970] – Intro

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[00:16:57.880] – Sean

But in seriousness there, thank you for sharing that. That makes perfect sense. If your reviews are bad, reach out to the people. We actually try to do that at Tykr, too. If they get a complaint or something, I try to go to them first because that’s a learning moment. What are we doing wrong? What pain are we causing? And how do we turn that around?

[00:17:21.040] – Matt

Yeah. And think about this. With some people, with most people, I don’t want to speak for everybody, for most people, getting to the point where, hey, I need to leave a negative review for somebody or a business. They’ve exhausted every other channel that they felt to try and resolve that issue. And now they’re so exhausted, they’re like, I’m done. I’m just going to leave this review and try and get their attention, the company’s attention. So if you’ve got a review as a PR and a crisis management company, I look at it as what, as you, a company, did not do or achieve prior to them leaving that review. And you can tell if they’re serial reviewers, it tells you like, hey, they left 97 reviews. And you can look at their history of, oh, they’re all one star reviews. Well, okay, that tells us they’re just either grumpy or just… But every case is different. That’s why you got to call Matt. So we can identify what’s going on.

[00:18:31.060] – Sean

Yeah, right on. All right, let’s dive into your business here a little further. How many employees do you have?

[00:18:37.900] – Matt

We’re a small team of about seven people generally. We have an SEO guy, we have a website guy, we have a social media gal, we’ve got a director of operations who is the orchestra or the conductor of the orchestra. And then I’m trying to convince my son to come along when he’s done with college. He’s playing college ball now, but I’m trying to get him into the mix so he can… It’s a legacy, something he can have when he’s done. A small team, very.

[00:19:11.660] – Sean

Small team. Are these employees or contractors?

[00:19:15.320] – Matt

Three of them are employees and the rest, myself, the director of operations and the social media gallery employees. And then we do, based on projects, because we’re a boutique and we tailor and we customize to the client, if Tykr came to us, they might not need SEO or they might not need SCM. They would need, oh, can you help us redo our website? Or we need reputation management. Not that I’m suggesting you do, but it’s more tailored based. Of course. That’s why we do the contractors on certain levels. But the main thing to take away from that is our team gets everything done. So it doesn’t matter if they’re employees or not. If we’ve got a job for us, we’ll get it done and it’ll be really happy.

[00:20:01.360] – Sean

Exactly. I’ve seen your model, and I actually had your model in the 2000s. I went through a merger there and got away from the agency model. It’s hard. I give you credit for doing it that long. It’s a hard business. We did it during the recession, and people didn’t want to spend any money, but it’s smarter to go out. I found used contractors that are maybe they work out of their own home. They don’t have employees. It’s like that’s a win for them and win for you. You don’t have the overhead, you don’t have health insurance. And you can get some great quality service along the way.

[00:20:32.120] – Matt

Well, you’re exactly right. And one of the thing that shifted the whole mindset, the whole model was the pandemic. And we’ll get into that in a little bit. But the pandemic really, not just for digital marketing companies, but it really shifted the mindset of employers because prior to that, it was brick and mortar. It was needed to have the employees in house, cubicles. You needed to show up from eight to five, whatever the whatever your business model was. But they could not envision a world where you could have a work from home model and still be efficient and productive for your business. And the pandemic obviously shifted that. And it was a forced shift. And now we’ve been doing it since 2016. And now the companies that were breaking borders but that weren’t really paying attention to their websites or their digital footprint now was like, okay, I need something. I need to have a shop. I need to have so many things. And now you’re conducting meetings on Zoom. So it’s shifted everything. So I know it’s a long winded answer, but I just want to…

[00:21:42.940] – Sean

It’s not like the days of the 1960s with Don Draper running his ad agency, right? Yeah.

[00:21:49.030] – Matt

No, we’re all mad still. We’re still mad, but we are. There you go.

[00:21:53.520] – Sean

Great show, by the way. But it’s like you don’t have to be in a physical office. Those client meetings are rarely in person. It’s usually Zoom or Teams and that’s it.

[00:22:04.440] – Matt

Yeah. Well, look at this. You’re in Milwaukee and I’m in San Diego, right? And so we’re having an intellectual discussion. And I’ve been excited about being on the show for a couple of weeks now. But typically, we would have had to have been in the same. I would have had to come to Milwaukee or you would have been vacationing in San Diego. What have you. But now it’s like, okay, it’s a Tuesday morning and let’s have Matt on the show. And so I’m it’s changed for the better in a sense.

[00:22:33.070] – Sean

Yes, totally. So much more efficient. And I find that it drives me nuts when I hear these large companies, especially tech companies that mandate employees to come back. I’m like, Are you right? Let them live forever. They’re going to get their work done. And even I would go a step further because I’m a big fan of the four day work week, even more four hour work week. But we’ll touch on that in a moment as we talk about passive income. But with that, it’s like, let these people get their jobs done. Let them have off most of Friday, if not all of Friday. You can still get a lot of great stuff done as a corporation.

[00:23:08.490] – Matt

Yeah. I think I totally I can agree with you more. I think that people like entrepreneurs, a work week is a work week. I work seven days a week, sometimes 26 hours a day. And so that’s just different. And that’s that athlete mindset. And I’m cut from a different… And I’m sure most entrepreneurs are, but yeah, I totally agree for the workforce to be… You can be productive and if you give them the mindset that says, hey, you’ve got so many hours in a week to get your work done, then they’ll get it done. It’s just one of those things. It needs to shift.

[00:23:49.960] – Sean

What is the old analogy? You can give somebody a full week or one hour to get the same number of tasks done, and whatever you tell them to do, they will do it. Why not pick the shorter duration? Just saying.

[00:24:01.070] – Matt

Yeah, exactly. And you look at companies or corporations like Walmart, they hardly have any full time employees. Their workforce is mainly below full time so they can get away with not paying benefit. So that goes into that four hour work week. And I’m not trying to speak about anybody else’s business model, but it goes to the larger corporations in the world that are already skirting and playing with that four day work week. Four day.

[00:24:31.660] – Matt

Yeah. So coming.

[00:24:32.870] – Sean

Back to your business, I want to talk about the numbers a little bit. What I found with agencies is about 80 % of the revenue comes from one key or two key services. And is your model similar? Do you have one key, like the flagship service that generates the majority of the revenue? Is it websites or is it ads?

[00:24:53.340] – Matt

No, because with ads, a lot of the money goes towards probably 100 % of the money for ads goes to ads. Google and Facebook love digital marketing companies because a client says, Hey, I want to spend $5,000 a month in ads. As an agency and a transparent agency as we are, we have to spend that $5,000. Where we make money is the management fee, which is a nominal 15 % to 25 % depending on the spend. But to answer your question, our niche is that reputation management and staying on top of your digital footprint. We’ve had a lot of success with social media engagement and strategy. We’ve had a lot of success with reputation management. And then we’ll get the occasional website, we’ll get the occasional crisis management like, Hey, this news story is about to break. What do we do? How do we get in front of it? And those are always fun. I’d break out my Kerry Washington hat on that one and just try to t just try to do what I can to help it. I’m not going to go into what I’ve saved and what I’ve done, but I’ve definitely helped a lot of companies keep their reputation from being tarnished.

[00:26:13.310] – Sean

Yes. No, that’s smart. Let’s go a step further with the services on there, reputation management specifically. I’ve seen companies that the best agencies, best in class, this is something I did not do a good job of in the late 2000s, we were more project fee. Whereas the agencies I’ve seen that have done a great job are more monthly fee. You take a bundle of services and you provide that ongoing. Do you do the same thing with reputation management?

[00:26:41.650] – Matt

Yeah. So we do a little bit of yes. To answer that question, yes. And our business model is, yes, we do the project base where they come in, they’ve got a project, we’ll charge you for the project, we’ll deliver it, and then we’ll go about our way. And then usually, okay, we can count on Matt and his team. They’ll come back later. But then we also do the monthly retainer fee where we offer the services and we maintain it. We do a healthy balance of both. But yes, the reputation management is on a monthly retainer fee. Yes.

[00:27:12.550] – Sean

Nice. And do you usually do a three month or six month or 12 month?

[00:27:16.980] – Matt

I’m glad you asked that. We’re in agreements. We don’t like to use the word contracts, so we’re in agreements. We start off with a 30 day agreement, and then from there it’s a month to month with a 30 day write out. So it’s like, let us perform. And once you see that we will perform and how we work, then it’s a no brainer not to have us. Most people don’t like to feel boxed or cornered in with it. I don’t even like having a 12 month contract for my cell phone, but I have to. And so some people don’t feel comfortable with that type of thing. They want to be able to have that peace of mind and that freedom if they want to get out of something they can. I always tell them, hey, look, we’re not married to each other. We can get out of it pretty easily. You can just write me an email and say, hey, we’re moving in a different direction, and that’s fine. But yeah, we work on agreements and we work on it’s not a binding 12 months. You’re not signing over your life.

[00:28:16.950] – Sean

I love that. And that’s what I did back in the day with Projects 2.0. I never did try never to do contracts. There’s a client or two that demanded them, but anyway. I mentioned the guy’s name on a previous podcast, Frank Kearn, who I believe lives in San Diego as well. The guy had the best response to that. He’s like, My clients work with me until they no longer want to.

[00:28:39.680] – Matt

And that’s it. Exactly. Shout out to Frank. He summed it up the best. That’s exactly. They work with us until they don’t want to work with us anymore. That’s it.

[00:28:49.430] – Sean

And that’s their call.

[00:28:51.540] – Matt

Yeah. So we just pride ourselves on great work and transparency and deliverables. And we try to set expectations. If you want a new website, we’ll listen to what you need and what you want, and then we’ll give you the expectation. We’re not going to turn something around in a week. We’ll give you that timetable of expectations, what to expect. Sometimes we’ve overdelivered, and sometimes we’ve underdelivered in the sense that it’s taken a little bit longer than we expected because of different variables, but we’re still transparent to the end of the day. We’re still there. We’re just letting you know this is the obstacle that we’re facing now and this is going to push this back a little bit. It makes the job a lot easier when everybody knows all the cards on the table and what’s going on.

[00:29:37.890] – Intro

Let’s.

[00:29:39.190] – Sean

Dive into the numbers here a little bit, which would be your services. The reputation management, can you give us a ballpark range? What are you charging for this type of service per month?

[00:29:49.800] – Matt

Well, first of all, it varies in the sense that what reputation do you have? I don’t want to say, Hey, if you’re a bad Apple in the pond or in the bucket, you’re going to get charged more.

[00:30:06.680] – Sean

So I’ll stop you there. What would it cost to fix FTX? I’m just kidding.

[00:30:12.260] – Matt

Honestly, I wouldn’t take their money because it’s somebody else’s. It’s all the investor’s money. I would stay away from crypto companies and politicians. I just wouldn’t. The man.

[00:30:23.080] – Sean

Has a line.

[00:30:24.950] – Matt

Man has a line. Man has a line. But our niche, like I said, is property management companies, and usually those property management companies have more than one property. And so it’s a bulk discount if you’ve got three properties versus… I’ve worked with a company that had 71 properties, and so what we were charging them versus what we would charge a company with only two properties is a lot different. But the great thing that any of your listeners can take away if they are interested in visiting 610marketing. Com is that we are budget friendly. So we’re a boutique agency. We’re not trying to break the bank or we work with any size budgets and we’ll figure something out. All we just need is transparency from the client and figure out what the needs are. I can’t tell you, hey, it’s a standard. I hated that. That was the one thing I hated when I was with that large agency. It was a bucket thing. You got a platinum silver bronze bucket and that’s it. There’s no deviation from that. I wanted to make it more custom and tailored because everybody needs marketing. I’m sorry. And listen to me, everybody needs marketing.

[00:31:37.810] – Matt

And so you should be putting at least 20 % to 25 % of your gross revenue towards marketing because that’s how you grow. What we do is we try to establish what the needs are, what the pain points are, like you said, and then go from, hey, what can you afford? And then like, okay, well, we can do X, Y, and Z and we can set it up on an escalator, or we can do a phase type plan. We work with anybody. We just want to make it where they want to work with us, like what your friend said. I won’t press on.

[00:32:12.970] – Sean

The budgets anymore on that service because I get it. You don’t want to give across a number that somebody, let’s say, they’ve got the 71 properties is going to… Okay, you get a number there that’s applicable to a three property business.

[00:32:26.740] – Matt

What’s crazy was when we started with that client, he didn’t have 71 properties. He had 12. So he grew. And so we grew with him. It wasn’t like I stumbled onto a gray star. They have their own inhouse marketing. It wasn’t like that. But it was a great learning experience as far as organizational, you have to be organized and you got to have your processes in place. It was a great tool for a great experience for us to create those tools to manage something that large. But again, we’ve worked with companies that have $30,000, $35,000 budgets per month, and then we’ve worked with companies that got about a $2,500 per month budget. Anyway, our sweet spot is anywhere between $3,500 to about 6,000 a month, 7,000 a month. That’s a good starting point.

[00:33:23.800] – Sean

Yeah, it just gives people good context of like, Hey, we got a problem with reputation and we need help.

[00:33:30.400] – Matt

Yeah. What they really need to understand is don’t be afraid of the budget or how much it’s going to cost. You need to worry about how damaging this could be to your reputation because ultimately that could be priceless. If your reputation is damaged, you don’t know what that’s going to cost you in the end. Years down the road, two years. We’ve had clients come to us and ask for, Can you remove this link from six years ago? Because it’s damaging and now they’re trying to do different projects and it keeps coming back up. You don’t know how costly it’s going to cost you in the end. So I wouldn’t worry about the price now. What is going to be the price later? And so that’s what I would look at. Again, we work with anybody. It’s just a matter of they’ve got to make that call to reach out first and say, Hey, I have a problem or this is my issue. What can we do? What is an effective way to make this not go away, but how can we suppress this or how can we cast it in a different light? That thing.

[00:34:38.710] – Matt

How can we eliminate this issue? I say.

[00:34:41.690] – Sean

Lean into that on yours 100 % because I’ve talked to a lot of agencies over the last 15 years, and you are the first that focuses on reputation management. I’ve talked to so many people doing the popular, you’ve got your social media management, manual labor, then you’ve got your ad spend, those are the top of the food chain. Then you’ve got your website building, and then maybe video production is in there, too. And then rinse and repeat. It’s the same old thing, which is great. That’s a necessity. But reputation management, it’s not glamorous, but I can go all in.

[00:35:16.710] – Matt

It causes a lot of stress. Now, what we’re trying to execute into the portfolio is AI technology. I’m sure you’ve heard of this chat GBT, which hot topic right now. But then also you’ve got Google coming out with their own version. You’ve got B ing developing their own version. Ai tech is going to revolutionize all industries, not just the digital marketing vertical. I mean, you’re talking about it’s going to affect everything. And so how can we get ahead of that curve and implement some tools? Because that’s what AI is. It’s a tool, it’s not a weapon. How can we implement those tools into our everyday doing of business to better service our clients. If you want to know more, you can go to 610marketing. Com. So that’s the number six, the number one, and the number zero marketing. Com. That’s from my height. I told you off camera where I got the name from, right? We got it.

[00:36:16.540] – Sean

Yeah.

[00:36:16.980] – Matt

610.

[00:36:17.270] – Intro

Marketing. Let’s take a quick commercial break. Hey, this is Sean. I’d like to say thank you for taking the time to listen to this podcast. I know there’s a lot of other podcasts you could be listening to, so thanks for taking the time to listen to this one. I have a quick request. If you have a moment, could you please head over to Apple Podcasts and leave a five star review? The reason is the more ratings we get and the higher those ratings are, the more Apple will share us with the world. So thanks in advance for doing that. And then I have a quick comment. If there are any questions you want me to ask the guests, please head over to our Tykr Facebook group. You can drop a question right there. I’ll go ahead and make a note and I’ll do my best to ask that question on the podcast.

[00:36:57.350] – Sean

All right, back to the show.

[00:36:59.290] – Intro

What.

[00:36:59.740] – Sean

I’d like to talk about is something we chatted about prior to hitting record, which was passive income. What is your strategy? What is your plan to introduce passive income into the service model?

[00:37:10.950] – Matt

My plan is to listen to your podcast more because I am not going to sit here and pretend that I am an expert. I’m really good at digital and PR and crisis management, but like I shared with you off camera, I want to get into more of a passive income strategy. And so my plan to answer your question is to listen to your podcast more often weekly to get ideas and maybe to be in touch with people that are better suited in that field or have more experience where I can gain knowledge from. That is my answer to that question. I’m going to listen to your podcast. Which is the.

[00:37:47.000] – Sean

Correct answer. No, I’m.

[00:37:49.130] – Matt

Just kidding. I already subscribed. I showed you I subscribe, so I’m definitely listening weekly now. Good man. You’re doing a great job, by the way. Thank you. I love this. Let’s hit.

[00:38:01.690] – Sean

Some of the rapid fire round questions here. This is the part of this episode. Let’s do it. We get to find out a little bit more about math. If you can try to answer each question in 15 seconds or less. You ready? Okay. All right. What is your favorite podcast?

[00:38:13.840] – Matt

Saddle Up Podcast. It’s actually my podcast and it’s related to the alumni of my university and the athletes and telling the stories of their time at the university. Saddle Up Podcast, it’s a great, great, it’s a fun show. That’s cool. Nice.

[00:38:29.900] – Sean

And.

[00:38:30.670] – Matt

Now your podcast would be my second favorite. Even though you.

[00:38:33.000] – Sean

Haven’t listened to it yet, it’s second. Okay, all right.

[00:38:35.490] – Matt

It’s second already. Yeah. All right.

[00:38:38.470] – Sean

Next question. What is a recent book you read and would recommend?

[00:38:42.120] – Matt

Less Than Zero by Julie Houston. She is a mentor of mine and it comes out tomorrow, but I got a free release. S he sent it to me. Phenomenal book, tells her story. She was homeless 10 years ago. Now she designed, she’s a funnel architect for some of the largest multimillion dollars funnels for the gurus and coaches out there. And her success story is amazing. So Less Than Zero by Julie Houston, amazing read. And it’s rather short. I mean, it’s not crazy long. It’s not like the Bible, but it’s a great read. Really easy read. Short to the point.

[00:39:21.260] – Sean

I like it.

[00:39:23.150] – Matt

Movie.

[00:39:23.990] – Sean

Question. What is your favorite movie? Favorite movie?

[00:39:28.440] – Matt

Can I go genre or what? Do you need a specific… I’m a big fan of heat with Robert De Niro and Al Pacino. Yeah. I loved Moneyball with Brad Pitt because I wanted to be a GM type thing in the NBA, but that was baseball anyways. I absolutely love Peanut Butter Falcon. I don’t know if you ever saw that.

[00:39:52.780] – Sean

I’ve seen that too. My wife.

[00:39:54.820] – Matt

And I bought that movie online and we watched it every once in a while. But Shia La Bluff, did an amazing job in that Peanut Butter Falcon. And Old School. I’m a Will Ferrell guy, so Old School for sure. Not your lead. Yeah, I was.

[00:40:07.860] – Sean

Thinking about that the other day. Heath, though, you were the first person that is still in my top 10. Brilliant movie. That scene, you know the one I’m talking about in the diner?

[00:40:17.680] – Matt

When he says, don’t ever attach yourself to anything you can’t walk away from in 30 seconds or less. And he didn’t follow his own advice. So it’s just one of those things. The cast was amazing. Ashley Judd, De Niro, Pacino, Al Kilmer. It was an amazing cast. It’s a really good movie. The shoot out in downtown LA, unreal.

[00:40:41.650] – Sean

We could go on for another hour on that one.

[00:40:44.910] – Matt

We could do a whole another podcast on movies. On movies, we could.

[00:40:49.160] – Sean

Knowing your favorites there, yes. Moneyball 2, one of my favorite sports films, actually. All right, one more business question here.

[00:40:57.090] – Matt

There’s actually one more. I don’t know if you saw Hustle with Adam Sandler and just came out on Netflix?

[00:41:03.090] – Sean

Yes, on Netflix. Great movie.

[00:41:04.890] – Matt

Loved it. But go ahead. Next question. Sorry.

[00:41:07.730] – Sean

Last question here. Time machine question. If you could go back in time to give your younger self advice, what age would you visit and what would you say?

[00:41:16.340] – Matt

I would go back to when I was about to go into college and I would give my younger self about a list of 10 things to look for, to improve on, and to do. And I’m not talking about to do back to the future, too, where you takes the source and then…

[00:41:39.730] – Sean

Sports almanac. Yeah, and.

[00:41:40.770] – Matt

Takes the sports almanac and starts betting on horses. No, not that. But I would go back and say, Hey, these are the things you need to avoid. These are the things that you need to look to do and to improve on. Because it’s going to… If you improve on those at that point in time, it could possibly… And I’ve got a great life now. I’ve got a great son and a loving wife and everything is solid. But there’s things that, self confidence wise, you need to not worry about when people say this or when people… Things like that. Just don’t worry about it or improve on it or avoid it. Avoid these people. Right on.

[00:42:25.620] – Sean

All right, we’ll wrap this up here. So if anybody’s interested…

[00:42:28.720] – Matt

Oh, and one more thing. And buy Apple stock in 2007? When the first iPhone came out, buy Apple stock then. That’s what I would tell them. Instead of buying that.

[00:42:39.640] – Sean

Phone, that’s a.

[00:42:41.650] – Matt

Dinosaur, buy the stock.

[00:42:42.840] – Sean

As the guy who I’ve had, one or two people said, I would have bought Bitcoin in 2010, right? But hey, people can reach you at 610marketing. Com, correct?

[00:42:54.620] – Matt

Yes, 610marketing. Com, or they can email me @info. My team will answer, but info@610marketing. Com. You can leave us a message. I’d be more than happy to talk to anybody. And for your guests, I will tell you, we’ll do a free brand audit. If they reach out to us and tell them that they are a listener or a subscriber to the show, we’d be more than happy to do a brand audit and figure out what they got going on or what they can improve on. And we’ll do that for your show and for your listeners. So please don’t hesitate to reach out. We would love to speak to you. Awesome. Well, thank you so.

[00:43:27.430] – Sean

Much for your time, Matt.

[00:43:28.520] – Matt

Thank you so much. I appreciate it so much, Sean. Thank you. All right, we’ll see you.

[00:43:33.700] – Matt

Hey, I’d like to say.

[00:43:34.530] – Intro

Thank you for checking out this podcast. I know there’s a lot of other podcasts you could be listening to, so thanks for spending some time with me. Also, if you have a moment, could you please head over to Apple podcast and leave a review. The more reviews we get, the more Apple will share this podcast with the world. So thanks for doing that. And last thing, if you do hear any stocks mentioned on this podcast, please keep in mind this podcast is for entertainment purposes only. Please do not make a buy or sell decision based solely on what you hear. All right, thanks for your time. Talk to you later.

[00:44:07.320] – Sean

See you.