Designing Your Brand Identity and Success w/ Josh Smyth | Ep. 111

In this episode we shake it up and throw a good old fashioned panel style conversation with Raleigh Marketing superstar Josh Smyth, CEO of Lokal Design Co., Big Pixel’s Content Marketing Director, Christie Pronto and of course our dedicated and beloved hosts David Baxter and Gary Voigt- Gary most beloved of all.

Links: 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshsmyth/

https://www.linkedin.com/company/lokaldesignco/

https://www.lokaldesignco.com/

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Our Hosts

David Baxter - CEO of Big Pixel

Gary Voigt - Creative Director at Big Pixel

The Podcast

David Baxter has been designing, building, and advising startups and businesses for over ten years. His passion, knowledge, and brutal honesty have helped dozens of companies get their start.

In Biz/Dev, David and award-winning Creative Director Gary Voigt talk about current events and how they affect the world of startups, entrepreneurship, software development, and culture.

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Music by: BLXRR

Transcript

David: 0:00

Hey everyone, welcome to the biz dev Podcast, the podcast about developing your business. I'm David Baxter, your host, and we have a special edition. This week, we have two guest hosts, we have Christie, who is our marketing director, who you've heard on the you were here last week do right. So this is two for you get to for Christie. And we have of course, Gary which whatever. But more importantly, we are joined today by Joshua Smith, who is the CEO of local design, a actually very local marketing firm. I know, Josh through C 12. And, coincidentally, but he we also reached out to you totally unknown that I didn't know isn't C 12 When we first reached out to you. But since we have figured that out, and it's very cool. So I'm going to do this differently. That's why Christie is here, we're going to do this a little differently. We're gonna have a little panel about marketing, and about marketing with startups in particular. And I want to get two different perspectives on this. So before we get to that, though, Josh, I wanted to ask you about your business. How did you get your start? I know what a marketing businesses, so I don't need you to dive deep into that. But how did you get started?

Joshua: 1:12

No, it's a great question. I'll tell a little bit of my story, because that kind of leads into it if you're okay with that. But long story short, I was born raised in Southern Ontario, Canada, had the opportunity, as stereotypical as it sounds to play hockey in college in the US. So I moved down to Lynchburg, Virginia, in 2005 or six like that. And did that for a couple years, shortly after ended up moving down to Raleigh, North Carolina, because it's the greatest place to live in the world, in my opinion. And so shout out to Raleigh Durham, and spent about eight 910 years in construction. And in there really cut my teeth business wise, was surrounded by a ton of very, very intelligence professionals who taught me everything about business. from sales to finance to operations, we were manufacturing facility, really fabricating countertops and showers from a from a very high level. And we ended up expanding the business from just being a local kind of North Carolina brand, to more of a southeast company. And so while all of that was going on, was kind of taking a look at what my next steps in life and business for. And so there was this opportunity to create and help develop a marketing firm that provided really good creative marketing, but also it was backed by manufacturing processes. And so what that was for us was, by the way, not rocket science by any means. But until today, unless you guys prove me wrong. Every business leader that I've ever met, has had a negative experience with a company does what our company does. And typically, it's along the lines of, hey, this is a really cool graphic. But it's late, hey, this is a really cool website design. It's not what I asked for, where's the project management, communication, so on and so forth. So again, we're not building rocket ships here. However, if we could do really good creative marketing, and provide a really good client facing experience, then we could build a nice little company. And that's the path that we've been on. We're by no means perfect. We're human beings, right. But we have an unbelievable team. And that's really how it started was this idea of could we do this. And now for the last two and a half years or so, really trying to execute upon that and serve our clients, what we say is we wanted to passionately disrupt traditional marketing and design and want to re establish the credit marketing process around people clients, right, but not just the products we create. And that's held true. And like I said, we've got a great team, great set of clients. And it's been been a wild journey so far. Yeah, super, super grateful.

David: 4:26

So tell me about your first year. I'm always fascinated by every new company's first year, because it usually sucks. And I find that those questions give better stories than your 10th year which you know what you're doing? It's the first year where you have no clue for

Joshua: 4:43

sure. Yeah. No clue, like no clue, like, Hey, this is going to be great. So I'll start with this when I started talking with my wife Ashley, about us doing this and really leaving kind of corporate America and again, a great Business, still in contact with a lot of people who are there. I remember sitting down in the kitchen at our like kitchen island with my wife. Okay, here's what we're gonna do. We're just going to go get after it. She goes, so how you gonna get paid? And I was like, we'll figure that out. And like as she kind of blank stares across the kitchen that males like, Oh, yeah. Wonder how this is going to work out. So I say that to say the first year. I mean, our biggest goal was like little things like making payroll, and things like, hey, how do we actually get some clients who believe in this vision to pay you? How do we even structure this business? And what does our first hire look like? What does our second and third? I mean, it was it was stressful, right. But I think the biggest thing was we had a vision we really believed in, and others believed in it as well. And yeah, I mean, I remember, do I remember one time we didn't make payroll, right? Like that's, that's the worse than having to go back and be like, let's figure this out. So the first year is tough, right? You're trying to figure out who you are, you're trying to figure out how you're going to execute, you're trying to understand like what systems work with don't work. It's the whole, Hey, you want to fail early, fail fast, but only make the same mistake once. And so if you can learn from your failures, you're then able to execute on a higher level, because you're not making those same mistakes over and over and over make mistakes are great mistakes, define who you are, and how you're going to execute where you're going to go from here. But if you keep making the same mistakes more than once, then you've you've got other issues. So I want to summarize, I would say our first year was really, really hard. But it's really cool. Because when you if you're trying to develop these things within, we still have some of those team members with us. You really build this bond of, hey, we're in this thing together. And let's Let's get after it. So it was really tough. We always talk about the financial piece. That part's hard. But it really helped to define who we were, we were able to pick up some really big clients and we still have. And yeah, I don't know if that answered your question. But it was it was tough, sleepless nights. There's lots of those. And yeah, those

David: 7:30

scars that you make, for lack of a better term, in that first year. And I think that's why I'm so fascinated by that first year. They set up your tone for the rest of your business, if it was easy going, you start out with like, we talked to a guy. He was one of our early interviews. He was very upfront. I was like, how did you afford building your company? How do you get started? And he's like, Well, I had $16 million. And that's what I invested. Okay, that's, that's a different start. All right. But that sets the tone, I think what you're saying is exactly that. My wife told me the day we started, she's like, well, you can start this business as long as you don't less than your salary. So no pressure, right. So I totally get that. I think some of my

Joshua: 8:15

fondest memories of that, maybe not even just the first year, but the first few months were being over with, with team members, like literally in their house working at midnight. And like knowing you, I mean, you're not always gonna get those back. And when there was just really two or three of us, and it's like, hey, I'll answer some emails while you design this. And you work on this, and you just, you just kind of get after it. And there's no menu that's not sustainable. Right. But like, I wouldn't forget that. Those are the things you just, you just never forget. But like yeah, those those wounds are scars, I think what they do is like a broken bone, right? When you break a bone somewhere, and it's actually fused back together and ends up being stronger than it was before. And I think that that's that analogy, for example, is accurate and business as well.

David: 9:14

Well said, Alright, so I'm gonna switch gears on you. Now we're gonna go into this is, this is an experiment. I've never we've never done this on the podcast. We've never had four people on the podcast. Love it. So this might crash and burn. But here we go. So my thoughts were I wanted to ask you and Christie. Two, I'm gonna ask you both a question. And you guys tell me what you thought. And if you agree with them, you can just say I agree and move on. That's fine. But I'm just curious what different things because we focus on startups with focus on entrepreneurship. And marketing is such a key part of that. Sure. And getting off the ground at some point you requires marketing. You can define it a million different ways, but you have to let people know that you exist. So that itself is marketing. So I'm gonna I'm gonna start off with a softball. And since you've done all the talk and jumped at Christy first, please. Oh, gosh, Dee, what is your definition of marketing?

Christie: 10:12

Oh, what is my definition of marketing? That's a good one. I think we've been having this conversation a lot at Big pixel amongst us, and especially Gary and I, since the last podcast is what you're offering in all of its pieces to your company in some way, shape, or form is marketing, whether it be the web, the design, the creative, everything that you're giving to them is a piece of marketing, but pulling it all together, it's the it's the language. You know, I think it's really marketing is the language is the language with which you speak to your audience, telling them what makes you special. And it's not just words, it's, it's the way you go about it. It's the feeling, it's the imagery, it's the the trust that you build, it's the cadence that you have, as it has have, as a company, its marketing is pulling all of those things together for the strongest toolbox, you can have as a company just sort of put your footprint in the sand and say, we are here.

David: 11:11

Right, Josh?

Joshua: 11:12

We think well said, I think well said. Yeah, I mean, it's, it's, I think the definition is like the act of promotion. However, that's so much deeper than that, right. And with us in a, in a very, we're in a very creative realm as well, that language that Chris was talking about stars, like with your brand, and who you are and what you look like, which then turns into your art direction, the way that you present yourself to the public. And then from there, it's using those resources to promote who you are to others so that they want to partner with you. So yeah, I mean, I said it in different words, but the same thing. I agree completely.

David: 11:49

So what I think and I'm going to ask Gary, this question, and just to say the same question, but here's why I think this, the three of you are so interesting. So we have an internal marketing person, which is Christy, she works for me, and she does all of our marketing stuff. We have Josh, who works for other companies to do their marketing. So now you have an external marketing person. And you have Gary, who is essentially a client of marketing, right? We've had external people like Josh, Josh has not worked for us specifically. But we've had other companies in the past, like Josh's company worked for us before we had Christie. So I'm gonna ask Gary, that same question. So you as a client, for lack of a better term of these kinds of services, what is marketing?

Gary: 12:34

If I'm the client, and I'm expecting a different, Anthony's to do the marketing, I would Yeah, I would expect probably the assistance in crafting the brand, the personality of the brand, and the awareness of that brand, to the people that we want to see. So it's essentially what they both said. But I almost would prefer a more finite definition of what that audience is. And make sure that that audience you're looking for isn't just a huge net, that you're casting into a giant ocean full of a bunch of, you know, people that aren't necessarily going to ever be potential clients, but Honi into more of a crafted target of what the ideal client would be, and then expanding out and then showing that ideal client, the ideal personality and brand that you're offering. Besides just the services, you almost want to build a relationship based on the same way you would want to make make friends, you want to kind of expose exactly what you're about what you can do, and how you know, what you're passionate about what you enjoy doing, and then how that could work for them. And how could it make their business better?

David: 13:54

So we're so little inside baseball. So Gary and I have argued about marketing for years. And I have always and this is Gary Can, can back me up on this. I have always called Marketing throwing money down a hole. And I've never been a huge fan of it. Because and here's why I'm saying this, because I thought of it wrong. And Gary beat me over the head.

Gary: 14:21

You thought of it as a transactional engagement where correctly it was sales, you buy customers and that's it one to one relationship. If I give you money you give me customers. And that's and

David: 14:34

to be fair. I still view it that way. I just let tell Gary he's right. And so he shuts up. No, I'm just kidding. But But behind the scenes I actually do think of and I told Christie this when I hired her because we were placed a marketing team just like Josh's with Christie. And and I said this is not fair to you. But the only measure I have as to whether or not you are doing your job well for us not In terms of what she actually does, is whether or not we get sales. That's the only measure that I care about as a business owner because I can have a post go viral, right? And my marketing team when we had the external guys, she's laughing because he's we've had this conversation. The other team would be like, Look, guys, I got you 25,000 views on such and such? Aren't I also is the implied there. And they got so mad at me, because I'd look at them ago. Yeah, none of them went to my website and did anything, so I don't care. And it just totally took all the wind out of their sails. Because to me, as the business owner, I'm giving you money. And I need something in return besides metrics and, and smoke up my skirt as it were. So it's, it's just interesting. So I have I'm not necessarily as antagonistic as it sounds, but it's been my my view on marketing has morphed a lot. Christie has been amazing. That's helped. But so I'm gonna ask my next question. So I don't take up all the wind in the sails here. And I respond to that first. Oh, sure. Go ahead. Yeah.

Joshua: 16:02

I love that. So part of the reason why many business leaders will have, again, another negative view or impression of marketing firms or agencies. Is that very reason, right? Unless it's a different vision, from this business leader, I mean, revenue or client acquisition should be the number one KPI for marketing, unless it's like, hey, we need to develop a brand or a start, we don't even have a name yet, like that's got that. But the reason you're building the business is to be successful in business. And typically, you need revenue to do so. Right. But what I would say to you, David is like, I completely agree, because, hey, that's great. You went viral on Tiktok. So let's go viral on Tiktok. Like, if that's your thing, congratulations. And if you get brand deals out of that, you want to be a creative kick, got it, got it, got it. But for most businesses, awareness is not that big of a deal for them. They want this to turn into some level of financial gain by the end, which is typically revenue and profit. So I, I'm probably closer to your side of things, David, than maybe some of the others who will walk in and say, I got your engagement way up. Awesome. Got your awareness up? Awesome. What do you do with it?

Gary: 17:39

Just to add to that a little bit more. It also depends greatly what industry you're in and what what that looks like as far as who you're trying to reach. So the Eutelsat when you said, if you're a creator, and your goal is to go viral, then yeah, good for you. But you can't always expect some businesses to have, you know, you give them a lead list of 1000 potential clients, and then no one buys anything. You know, versus if you're just selling a product, and you have a list of 25 people that are actually already actively interested in that product. And five people buy things. Yeah, I mean, so it's, it's, it's got to be crafted differently based on the industry and based on the target as well,

Joshua: 18:20

for sure, and like how those things are good things, but they shouldn't be the only things. And if, again, it totally depends on your budget, like there are some businesses that we've worked with. And that's one of the things that they're looking for is, hey, we need to improve, because we know it some way shape or form, we need to have some brand recognition, and therefore we need to get our name out there. Got it. That's a goal. That makes sense. Let's get after it. But a lot, arguably, most organizations have business leaders, the end goals, to be successful as a business, which the number one KPI for that should not be vuser on social media. So I'm Mike Graham, I get roasted for that in the comments that people are watching.

David: 19:07

So I want to I want to ask going on onto that. So I'm a new startup guy, right? I've got an idea. I've got a business, we're making a, let's say a product of some sort. At what point do I need marketing? Now? Let me let me ask that a different way. When am I ready for marketing? And Josh, I'll let you take this first.

Joshua: 19:32

That's a loaded question. So I mean, and I'm communicating through kind of our lens. So there's going to be interviews on this. I mean, again, you got to ask, Does your organization have a name? So we wouldn't be doing naming ideation. If you don't have a name. You're ready for marketing? If you have a name and you don't have a logo or brand, okay, then you're ready for that level of marketing. Right? Then to do you have a website? Okay, great. Oh, And then after this, the next phase would be okay, then how are you looking to promote your organization, then we can go to that next level and then somewhere entangled in there, depending on how you build your company, where's your vision, your mission and your values, okay, then you determine whether you're ready for marketing yet or not all the way down to Okay, now, now I want to do, do do a promotion on social media or I want to do a PPC, Google ads, hey, I want to build a strategy around email marketing. So I think it depends on where you are as a business. And again, when we define marketing way down at the beginning of this conversation, one of those items you have to ask is have you defined the name to the brand to the website, because again, a lot of times, and we deal with this a ton, is people will, will bring us in just for a strategic conversation. And hey, I want to start advertising on Google for our whatever business. And the first thing we'll do is we'll go to their website, and say, you realize that if they come back to the website here, they might not hire you because of the website. And so in the readiness of because you always have to land somewhere when you're marketing, whether that's an email, a phone call a personal touch, oftentimes, the website because you can actually measure your activity on a website. And so many times in this conversation, we'll go to their website and check their analytics and say, Hey, by the way, you have an 80 plus percent bounce rate on your homepage, when they come here, they leave. And so I don't know if I'm answering your question, David. But the readiness for marketing, I say, has a ton of different answers based on where you are as a business and what your actual needs are and what you're trying to accomplish. And oftentimes we find that readiness is different, well, then when then what people think ready, this is based on where they are with their name, brand, website, strategy, vision, mission values, etc. Assets, you name it, Chris,

David: 22:06

yeah, I want you to answer the question. Question, when is a start up? Again, not not my company, I want to back that up. I want to say you're a relatively new company, you can choose when, but you you're moving forward, when are you ready for marketing? Yeah,

Christie: 22:20

I think Josh sort of hit the nail on the head with all of the corresponding if ands, or buts that go into everything. I think if you don't have at least a clear vision of what your goals are, then you're just sort of again, throwing money down a hole because what you know, you don't have a unified vision, you're not sure what your KPIs are going to be, you don't have a goal, you might not have a name. But let's say all of that is a given. You're coming and saying, Look, we have a name, we have a we have a clear vision. I think the next key is like he's stating, like Josh is stating for the website, you want to make sure you're able to scale, but that you're able to handle what we're going to be bringing to you if you're if you're relatively new. But I would say that marketing is something that you'd want to do in the very earliest iterations, when you're starting your long term strategy is begin to to market begin to have that brand authority that Mystique I think you want to like, like Josh was saying is, let's go after some of those keywords quickly. Let's get you some of those eyes on your page quickly. Let's get some of those things to you. And then let's have some of those short term wins for you. And I think that's really important right off the bat. But I don't think you go into that. On educated, I think you have to have those those answers, those questions answered. And marketing is needed from the very, very get go. Because all marketing is is really just the curation of your brand voice. And if you're at the market, wanting someone to purchase you or your service, you need that voice very clear, concise, and curated from the beginning, especially now when things are changing, and the algorithms are changing. And people are asking questions and wanting you to answer those pain points for them right away, then you want to make sure that your marketing or your brand voice is hitting them right from the get go. So there's no confusion as to who you are and how you operate and why they might need you and their field

Joshua: 24:18

as well. So the brand voice is, is or brand persona, some will call it. This is one of the things that often gets neglected in this process. Totally how you sound like, like the way that we could draw up an ad copy wise, with two different brand personas is it could be night and day. I think that's a if there's something to pull out of this podcast and highlight it what Chris had just said about that, I think is a big big deal because we've worked with companies who operate a little tongue in cheek versus medical which is very, very almost liturgical of the there's certain things you can and cannot say. That's a that's a great point.

David: 25:01

The reason I asked this in particular is, you know, a lot of companies come to us and they're usually pretty early on in their journey, we're obviously building their app because they have an idea. And they want, once we build that app, they want to immediately start marketing. And I think where a lot of companies get it wrong, is basically what you're saying. And they're not ready because they don't know who they are. And I think even problems with that are like, I've seen companies we've worked with companies, not as for us, but as as we built stuff for them, that would charge you $30,000 for a brand identity package. And I find that so interesting one, that's crazy expensive. But aside from that, I don't understand why any business owner would allow someone external to themselves to choose their identity. Right? If you don't know who you are, then why are you running a business?

Joshua: 26:04

I don't know, the light pushback, I would give this some people don't know how to get there, they may have that maybe. And there's, there's a lot of people that we have several on our team who are just far more creative than I am. And to be able to sit down and and we're probably saying the same thing, because you're gonna bring in a consultant, not somebody to define it, but to help guide you on how to get there. Sure. And they may have a product that they're really, really good at, but they don't necessarily know how they should take it to market. So therefore, they need to figure out who they are. Or, Hey, I built a really good X, but I don't know what to do with it.

David: 26:44

But you know who you are as a company, right? I mean, I understand. Yeah, I have no idea how to sell X. I don't know how to tell the tick talkers how to get a hold of me, right. I get that. But you should know who you are. Right? You as a company.

Joshua: 26:59

You should but I don't know, I don't think it's always the case. And I'm, I'm I've been thinking of few business owners in my head who didn't know who they were, but they had a good product or company and needing that help to get there. But I wouldn't say it should be done exclusively without the owner, founder leader involved.

David: 27:22

Fair enough. Gary, you were saying some, I

Gary: 27:25

don't think you can market a company without the involvement of, if not the founder, the people who are actually behind the company itself. But what I was going to say earlier is a lot of business owners or startups, they don't care about marketing at all, to the point where they just think they can just go buy a logo, cheapest possible, because they need to put a logo on something, purchase a website template, I didn't, I suppose, because they just gotta get their stuff out there. And then they figured, you know, we'll just find people to buy my stuff. So to answer your question, When are you ready for marketing? When do you start marketing? I agree with Christie, you start as soon as you start coming up with the idea of having a business like that should go hand in hand, if you're going to create a product or something to sell or service to sell. You should already be conceptualizing how you're going to do that through marketing. And you might not have all the answers. Of course, that's when you hire a team, or, or a consultant like Josh was saying, but you need to at least start where you have so many avenues today, that you could just start telling your story from concept forward. And you just start just spreading little stories out on social media like oh, hey, I'm thinking about starting this, with this, you know, start trying to gain a little bit of traction and an audience of people that might be somewhat interested. And then as corny as it sounds, build that little community out and help that grow your marketing organically, but you have to at least start thinking about how you're going to gain customers and make sales when you start thinking about what you're going to actually build a create, to sell.

Joshua: 29:08

I mean, if you're developing a business plan is what number two number three in the standard list of things that you work on in your business plan is marketing. So it shouldn't be right, it should be right in there. Which probably leads us right into our AI conversation, right?

David: 29:25

Dad ignore it. No, I do have an AI question. But I'm not gonna ask it yet. So I want to get into brass tacks. So a lot of you're talking about marketing in a what's the right word, a conceptual concept where you need to be doing marketing very, very early on, but I would assume a lot of that is done by yourself. Or with your internal IT you're you're making that and I'm saying I'm not saying make your logo please hire a professional but you getting your first your first Twitter posts out there Use me whatever they're called now. Their first Instagram, whatever. Nice. Getting those out there, there's no reason to hire somebody to do your first Instagram posts. There's no reason to wait to hire a professional to write a blog, right? You know, you need to do that you need to get your name out there, but you don't necessarily need a professional to come in to start. I've always heard the old adage. I think Gary Vee says it quantity over quantity, quantity, quantity over quality is often the winner. No, no, it's backwards. He says quantity over quality. Because a lot of people just never get into the rhythm. They never start making it. And he's like, who cares what you look like? Who cares what you sound like, don't care. If you have the best mic, don't wait until you have the perfect lighting, or the perfect shot. Just put it out there constantly. All the time. That's his shtick. But But anyway, that's that's low bar, kind of stuff that you could do. Now, the brass tacks, I want to say is, at what point do you need to bring in a pro pay money? And how much money should they have? Can I? And I'm not asking for your priceless there. Josh, can I ask can I go do something meaningful? For $1,000 a month? Is that meaningful? Or do I need more than like, give me that ballpark? where to where? What kind of money do I need to have in my war chest? Before I bring in the pros?

Joshua: 31:21

Yeah, interesting question. Because the questions that I would start asking is like, what are you looking to accomplish with marketing? You have to back it way up, do you have a Christie on staff who can manage these things. And actually, we had somebody in our C 12 group not long ago, who was like, I'm not on social media, I need to be on social media. And my first response was, don't hire an agency to do that, do it yourself. Like it doesn't like it doesn't have to be perfect. And then even now, on social media, talking about the algorithms continuing to change. Authenticity is actually now viewed as higher than professional. Or oftentimes, I'll say it because you know, the algorithm could change again tomorrow. But authenticity is a big deal. So if you're going to be an expert in your field, grab your phone and video yourself talking about it, add some subtitles and throw it up there. So, arguably, there's a lot of questions to answer. First, I think before you just pay, what what can an average spend? But yeah, I think you can start with minimal spends on getting the core things accomplished that you want to get done, whether it is hey, I want to run a couple ads on Google, or on social media, or, Hey, I need an update done to my website, I want some regular traffic reports that are on there, I want to take a look at my SEO and analytics. So where you can be at that level? And then as you can imagine, you can go even significantly higher. But the answer your question, yes, you can. But obviously, your costs will provide limits, or give you the opportunity to be as successful as you want to limit how much you want to spend it. So simple answer. Sure. But you got to ask so many questions before you even get the price.

David: 33:05

Yep. Chris, do you have any thoughts on that? I know you're being internals a little different. But no,

Christie: 33:11

I completely agree. I think there's a lot of questions and mitigating factors that go into that, I think that you can look at that spend. And as Josh was speaking, what I continued to think, to myself was, as long as the user journey, and the touch points that the user is having, at each step of wherever you're spending that money is as streamlined and as authentic to your brand. And as customer friendly as possible. You can be very strategic with that with that $1,000. And it certainly can get you get you a long way. And again, like going to social media nowadays with platforms that can manage that for you handle that for you start to propagate content for you. If you're a baby brand, or a startup, that certainly is wildly helpful, and you're talking about what an investment of maybe 500 a year for something like that. And that'll get you gains that will put money in your pocket to raise more funds for things like a website or an app or things where your $1,000 might not get you as far as you need it to.

David: 34:16

One thing I've had to learn and Gary once again has dragged me across this line is there's a lot of things I mean, we're a tech company so building the website not a problem now building the website actually not a problem. But designing it for a lot of companies is a problem I mean we have Gary somewhat talent right who helps but oh come on. He didn't even give me a face like Are you frozen? Because that was a good one. All right.

Gary: 34:43

I'm just so used to it by now you know death by

Joshua: 34:48

feelings to guys come on.

David: 34:51

Gary doesn't have any feelings. He's just a cyborg am what but I mean, we were able to make a really nice website because this is what we do. Right? So but there was a lot stuff that you, you've got to do in the beginning. And then marketing can get relatively cost effective, right? If I have the ability to make a great website, where that saves a lot of money, but if you don't, then that's a budget item you need to save, I wouldn't call that marketing, that's just part of business now. But you've got to have a great website, whether that's a marketing company building that are coming to like us or whoever. That's that's an expense. But then knowing who you are, that's an expense either in time or internal reasons, however you want to figure that out. But then having your who your brand like we have tons of brand assets now. So if if Gary needs to whip out a new image for a blog, it's not well, who are we it's not there's no navel gazing to figure out, we've got that we know who we are, we know our brand. Or he knows it. He's the king of the brand. But that's that once it gets easier, right, the snowball starts moving downhill. And that to me has been very nice. It's taken us a long time to get to that point where Gary can slap together a cool ad, Hey, dude, I need an ad for what it takes him a little bit of time, because he's just grabbing from his list of stuff he's worked really, really hard on in the past. It's not from scratch every single time. And so that took a long time to get there. And that's been nice. Now that we have our own assets. I don't know, maybe I've wandered off again. But that has been really interesting to me how that cost and the effectiveness of the bang for our buck has gone way up than it used to be everything was so difficult for so long. Sure,

Gary: 36:29

that's the one thing about marketing, that it took a while to convince you. That is real. It's it's not a matter of it's not transactional. And it's not quick, it's just a slow build and a slow burn, like you said, snowballs, you have to start somewhere. And then you have to build it up from there. But you have to be consistent, and you have to not veer off that path. And you have to just keep feeding the beast because as soon as you slow down and let go, then the harder it gets, again, the questions come up again, well, are we doing this right? Should we pivot? Should we move in this direction? Do we need to change this? Or who are we actually going for?

Joshua: 37:04

The other side of marketing, just not being transactional, is you always have to reevaluate. So you have to look at the data. Because there is data, there's always data, you have to look at the data and say, Hey, what worked, what didn't work, what was missing? What was confusing, and you kind of put those things in or a little bit of a bit and shake it up. And you can know right away what your next steps look like. But you have to constantly be able to evaluate what just happened, so that you know how to go forward from there. Because it's always going to change. It's always moving. Mentioned words like evolution, like it just it's always evolving, always, always always. And so if you're not staying on top of that you're already behind. Yeah,

Gary: 37:46

that's true for even ad spends, like where you're spending your money. If you're putting out campaigns in certain channels, and then two months later, you're not getting anything from that. And you're wondering why and then you have to shift to another one. Yeah. So it's trial and error. And it's definitely something you have to keep your eye on, like,

David: 38:03

for sure. Alright, so last question. And this is the biggest one, you saw it coming. But I am curious, as a marketing guy, are you scared of AI at all? Someone? I'm a big fan of The Verge. And the Neil Patel who does is the executive, whatever. He talks about AI creating mountains of sea plus content. And it's still, and I think that's a really good analogy, because you can create so much content with AI. But it's not great. But it's, it's better than nothing. Okay, fair. It's not as good as what you're gonna make fair. But you're expensive, theoretically. Right? In my head, you're expensive. So you're a lot of people are going to choose to use AI tools to generate their posts and blogs and blah, blah, blah. Are you nervous about that? And is that a valid? Let me just ask you blankly. Is that a valid path? If you don't have any money? Let's say I can't afford you, regardless of what you cost? I can't, because I'm brand new. Is that a viable path? Or is that something I should avoid? Yeah,

Joshua: 39:13

great question. I don't know if nervous is the right word. I would say that I respect it. And and the reason I say that is there's trillions, I believe, of dollars have been invested into AI. So it's not gonna go anywhere. It's always it's going to continue to improve. But what I will say is that, from many, many, many conversations about it, let's say this is the number one question we get asked, hey, oh, yeah, what's going on with AI? Are you for Are you against it, etc? And it's like, no, to all the above. Yeah, it's here. It's here today. It's not gonna go anywhere. And so yeah, no, I wouldn't say that. I'm nervous that Got it. It's a very hot topic in conversation. Yes, I think I hadn't heard that analogy. It does create a lot of C plus content. What it doesn't do is it doesn't build relationships. It doesn't know who you are. It doesn't. It doesn't interact with you in a way that another human will. It creates based on what it knows it doesn't create based on what's in a human mind. And, and obviously, it's just not there yet. As far as quality goes.

David: 40:34

I got this is totally inside baseball. But Josh is a business owner. Are you getting tons of emails that were clearly written by AI?

Joshua: 40:41

Oh, yeah, that's why

David: 40:44

I get those all day, we got

Joshua: 40:47

another thing we kind of joke about on our on our group chat, or work group chat. I got I got one last week, asking if I needed a date night personal assistant. And I was like, wow, okay. They're gonna they're gonna schedule date nights for me. And I was like, Oh,

David: 41:06

wait, wait. Hold on, hold on. I will totally plug them. They are called. Let's go. Raleigh. Does that who that was,

Joshua: 41:14

I don't remember it was dropped, maybe there is

David: 41:17

a local startup at that came out of NC State. I'm actually a client, I will totally pimp them out. And they helped me schedule date nights for me and my wife, I love them. I will totally tell you about that. Okay, well, that's awesome.

Joshua: 41:29

So I don't know, because I generate or not, but I probably get 30 to 40 of that. Oh, my God.

David: 41:35

I get the Hello big Baxter or something like that, because they're joining my name, which is great. And then it's like this huge, massive thing about what they can provide for my company. Like wow, like clearly you did not write this is just real painful. And that's where I think right now there's there's a stigma against it because not to talk about it too much. But the the content it generates is very wordy. And if you're halfway intelligent, you can spot that stuff. Pretty easy.

Joshua: 42:06

Well, one, I think it's hilarious that that you use the one that I thought was just I didn't even read the email. I just saw it. And I was like, Billy, but yeah, I get I get called clients names all the time. So that's a funny one. Then then, obviously, when the sentences aren't actually sentences, but yeah, I get so many a day that I struggle to read them all. So when I date night, Assistant, I'll reply back and David bastard loves you. So

David: 42:38

that's right. Go for it. Man. I'm a big fan of theirs. Absolutely. Let's

Joshua: 42:42

do it. I thought it was I thought it was spam. For sure.

David: 42:45

Let's go Raleigh. If you're in our neck of the woods, you should totally go to their website and hire them. Because yeah, they're great. They're great. I'm telling you. And no, they didn't sponsor

Gary: 42:55

this podcast. We don't get any commission or nothing. Nothing I

David: 43:01

should ask give me for a month. Anyway, Gary, finish us off, man.

Gary: 43:06

All right, Josh, let me ask you, in the course of of you developing this company, what would you give a new business startup or a new entrepreneur? As three pieces of advice for how to be successful?

Joshua: 43:20

Yeah, that's a great question. There's so much in there, we could probably do an entire day, maybe you guys have an entire podcast on that?

Gary: 43:31

Well, we end every podcast with that. So

Joshua: 43:36

number one would be I think I said it earlier, but fail early and fail often, but only make the same mistake once. That would be number one. So learn from your mistakes, but it's okay to make mistakes. Because oftentimes, it is entrepreneurs or business owners are extremely hard on themselves and probably their biggest critics. Number two would be surround yourself with people who make you better. And I know we've talked about C 12. A little bit on this so far, but I probably have 20 plus people that speak into my my business and life and kind of interchangeably, but surrounding yourself with people who will make you better at life, marriage, family, as well as your business. And living in community. I've kind of coupled that together. So that would be number two. And I guess number three is if you're going to do this entrepreneur, startup life, which is as we discussed once a year one like not easy, in fact, really, really really hard. Find something that you're passionate about love and I know that's kind of follow your dreams, right? Like like can feel a little airy, but if you're gonna get after something, and you're gonna grind and you're gonna be Get up till midnight working with partners, team members, etc. Do something that you really believe in and love. Just because life's too short. So off the top of my head, those would be my three.

Gary: 45:15

Three good ones. Yeah. Yep. And if anybody wants to learn more about you or your business, where can they reach out and see you?

Joshua: 45:25

Yeah, you can either. Email us at Hello at local design co.com and local is spelled with a K or website is local design. koat.com. So ello que el de Si Gn co.com.

Gary: 45:41

We'll put the links in the show notes to

Joshua: 45:44

awesome. Also spot

David: 45:46

on thank you so much, Josh, for joining us. This was our first ever panel on the podcast who that should have been panel on the podcast. Podcast. Come on, write that down. But that was a lot of fun. That went off better than I expected. So I will take all the credit and Gary, you know,

Gary: 46:04

I'm gonna edit it out. Doesn't matter.

David: 46:08

That's alright, Gary. Actually, I haven't had a co host in like 10 episodes. It has been so free. Anyway, thank you again for joining us. I look forward to seeing you at future see 12 goodies and we'll go from there. Awesome. Thanks, Josh.

Christie: 46:28

Hi, I'm Christie pronto, Content Marketing Director here at Big pixel. Thank you for listening to this episode of the biz dev podcast. We'd love to hear from you. Shoot us an email Hello at Doug big pixel.net the biz dev podcast is produced and presented by big pixel. See you next week. Until then follow us on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook threads, YouTube and LinkedIn