Clay Vaughan: 0:00

Well, welcome back to another episode of Good Business. Today, I have a special guest, James Hall. He was on last season talking about hiring and firing. This season, we're talking about something a little bit more nuanced. We're going to be talking about the concept of integrity, but specifically how that plays out in conflict of interest. And when we think about conflict of interest in the manages advertising spend. Well, that's only one small element of a potential conflict that might arise when you have a marketing agency. So we're going to dive into that. We're going to also talk about some origins of reverence and how those core values have shaped who we are, how we've endured failure after failure after failure, but those core values have provided us a platform for success. So I hope you can sit back, relax, and enjoy this next episode of Good Business. I'm I'm your host, Clay Vaughn, and I'm best known as the CEO of Reverent, a full-service agency that focuses on helping you market your business and share your story. If you're tired of letting your cold, warm, and hot opportunities fall through the cracks, then I think you should take a listen to this quick message from our new sponsor, Rocket Fuel.

Rocket Fuel: 1:24

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Clay Vaughan: 1:53

All right. Well, welcome back, everybody, to another episode of Good Business. Today, I have a dear friend here on our podcast. And James and I, we go way back. We got some history together. And James has sat in numerous seats in my companies over the years. And he's pretty elastic. He stretches and fits in each individual seat to make sure that he does an excellent job at that. And so... You'll hear a lot of never-before-seen or never-before-heard footage of the relationship of Clay and James way back when. And so with all that being said, James, thanks so much for joining me today. I know you've got a busy schedule. You have a lot on your plate, and I am very grateful for you carving out some time for our audience here today, because I know that they're going to have a lot of value to walk away with. So... James, I'd love it if you could just kind of introduce yourself. Tell me a little bit about you. You joined us last season on Good Business, and we had some very interesting conversations surrounding hiring and firing, which feel free to allude to if you want to, because that was our most downloaded podcast. But yeah, so James, I'd love it if you could just go ahead and tell everybody who you are.

James Hall: 3:10

Sure, sure. I appreciate the introduction, Clay. And it's a privilege to be on this podcast with you. We have done many wonderful things throughout the years together, and I love all the different businesses we've been building and continue to build. And so, yeah, I mean, we've, my gosh, I was just thinking through, you know, the history of us working together. You know, we first both started out back in high school working when you had a passion for film. And I was working as a part of a program director kind of role where I was in charge of a lot of different people. And then as time grew on, we eventually ended up working together at a heating company, which was a lot of fun. And I remember you basically were like, hey, we need a social media guy. And I was like, hey, I've never done that before, but I'll do that for you. And just jumped right in. And it was a ton of fun. I loved it. And we did a lot of meaningful work then for that company. I think we were growing them like 20% you know, I think it was like three years in a row, if I'm not mistaken. So that was, that was a lot of fun. And that's when Facebook, you know, uh, was young and you can start up a Facebook page and business and you could post a ton of memes about your organization. Like it's going to be so cold or, you know, buy a heater. And I mean, Facebook loved it and it ran up our numbers. I forget exactly how high we were. I'm sure it was like, I think we did something from like 18 to like 80, I think thousand followers or something along those lines. And, uh, so yeah, that was fantastic. But, And all of that, you know, I remember coming down and starting to work with churches and doing some different podcast work with them, doing story films with them. And then we just started to transition into the business space and help folks because, you know, you're helping churches, you're helping businesses, you're helping everybody just grow. And we started to do some really fun projects. just different businesses we got to work with, you know? And at that point we were building different businesses. Um, and that has just been an absolute joy. So I, I have, I have loved working with you, uh, over every, every year that goes by, like you mentioned, you know, doing the episode last season, I was like, Oh my goodness, it's been, it's been so long since, you know, we talked last time, but it felt like yesterday and that's how the years go by. So, uh, anyway, it's been from the good days of shooting some films out at, uh, camp to, uh, you know, working now and building, gosh, and we got all types of businesses, super small mom and pop kind of shop businesses up to, you know, companies that have north of billions of dollars behind them. So it's, it's a lot of fun, man. I love it. And, uh, yeah, my background has been a lot of fun in and out of all this. So.

Clay Vaughan: 5:44

Yeah. And you know, uh, something that I was talking to, gosh, one of my mentors a few weeks ago about was, uh, Most people, when they see a successful businessman, they think, man, he's been so successful. He must have just gotten really lucky. I'll tell you this. Every single business owner fails. Every single one. It's not, yeah, the 20% will make it past five years or whatever the number is. No, every single business owner will have an idea and will fail at that. Now, I'm not saying comprehensive nuclear failure, but James has walked with me from the very beginning and he's seen all of my failures. He's seen everything from Story Film Co. to Echo Podcasting to Ambition Agency to, oh gosh, I feel like there's more where that came from. But all of that, those were all failures, utter duds, like complete miserable failures, complete wastes. like tens of thousands of dollars down the drain. I cannot emphasize how much of a failure those were. And here we are. Here we are. It's not a matter of me being a failure or James being a failure. We are actually both very successful, but it's only because we were consistent and we kept on at it and we learned from our mistakes. And so anyway, it's cool to have someone on our team who's been with it. from the very beginning and can say, hey, Clay, you remember when we did that? Yeah, let's not do that again. Yeah. That's always fun stories. Yeah. So, James, I know that you have a unique background. And I was talking with Mike Thacker at the Work Lodge on a recent episode. And we were talking about how the leadership team that I've surrounded myself with, and I think you guys heard from Michael Green last season, but my leadership team is comprised of people who've had experience in ministry, specifically ministry that didn't quite go so well. I mean, at one point in time where there was a major loss. And I'll tell you this, the kindest people that I've ever met in my life are the people who've been hurt the most. And the most successful people that I've met in life are the people who've lost the most. And it's because they take those failures, they take those losses, And they use that as ammunition for their growth. And James is no exception to that. And so, James, I'd love it if you could... I mean, I know you've got some pretty intense stuff in childhood and moving 50 plus times or something crazy like that. But I mean, if you could kind of share a little bit about what your background is that kind of formed you into being this person who's so elastic, who can go with the flow, but still still rise to the top, no matter which role you're in. I mean, as you pointed out, uh, when I first hired you, I said, Hey, uh, can you come help me sell some stuff to churches? And Oh, Oh, by the way, I've got a perfume brand I need some help with on Instagram. Like, I mean, it was just all over the place and you were elastic and you fit the fit it, uh, quite well. So I'll stop talking. Go for it.

James Hall: 8:59

Yeah. Well, I appreciate that. Um, I mean, uh, Ultimately, I feel like when it comes to being elastic, it has to do with the mindset of, you know, we're here ultimately to get a job done. You know, and a lot of times I feel like people go to work and they're like, this is not my job. It might be something that is said. And I get that. But I think I was raised in a way that the thinking was because I grew up as a pastor kid in church. If you needed to get something done. You just did whatever it was that needed to happen to get the job done, right? And you didn't think about it. And my dad, of course, he had these great little sayings that I grew up with because he's a lot of wisdom. And he would say things like, well, James, you got to figure it out. And when I was in high school, that drove me nuts. I hated that statement. I was like, I am not here to figure things out. You obviously know how to do this. You could just teach it to me. But for some reason, he thought it was necessary for me to go through the painful exercise of having to figure out whatever it was that I was doing. And in the end, I now realize as a father of a couple kids, I now understand why he did that. It's like you want to learn that unique ability to see a problem, embrace it, solve it. And at that point, it makes you more elastic. I also worked in some really cool jobs. I worked at a Christian youth camp when I was 13 as a junior camp counselor. And this is back when counselors actually were 13. They don't do that anymore. Now you'd be like 16 or 17. But when I was quite young, I was quickly overseeing 13, 14-year-old little boys. And we had a blast at camp. But you're asked to do a lot of jobs at camp. I mean, you were You were the guy cleaning the toilet. You were the guy, you know, after you cleaned your hands, you were the guy making sure meals were in order and anything in between, right? I mean, teaching ski class to tomahawk throwing. I mean, you do a lot of different types of jobs because... You just need to get the job done. And so I've kind of always embraced that mindset of I really didn't care about titles. I could obviously argue I've never cared about titles. I just wanted to fit in a place that allows us to grow and to work hard. And I really do enjoy solving problems now. It's been kind of always a joy of mine is to look at things that are going not quite right and help steer them back on course. And I think that that longing to want to solve problems helps me fit into some different, like you said, being flexible in the workforce. And I'd say probably the foundation of all of that is that when I look at work, a lot of people might say, well, why do you think about work like that? And ultimately, I think about work the way I do because I'm not working for a person. I'm a Christian, so I hold very strongly to the teachings of I work heartedly unto the Lord. And so when it comes to my work, Because I'm not trying to just get money out of it or I'm just trying to, you know, appease somebody or just X, Y, Z, whatever it might be is my reasoning. My reason is, is I want to do good work and I want to honor the Lord with my work. I think that that also has a little bit of a driving force behind my willingness to be flexible, where I think a lot of other times people are a little bit, you know, I think that plays a factor on anybody who's got, you know, beliefs that they hold to. I think it drives the how and why they do what they do.

Clay Vaughan: 12:06

That's so good, man. That's really good. So, that's your origin and that's what has contributed. You moved around a lot as a kid, right? I mean, there was a whole lot of change in your life, right? Yeah.

James Hall: 12:20

Oh, absolutely. Yeah. When I was 17 years old, I had counted well over 25 moves. So we moved a lot. Yeah. Me and military kids have a lot of discussions about who moved most in life. So lots of moves growing up and it was ministry related. So I think that does add to my flexibility as well. And also my ability to say, hey, if something changes, it's okay. I think a lot of people change, it's like this big impact on them. Where for me, I feel like I'm a little bit more flexible to say, yeah, we're changing the scene again, because that's the world I grew up in.

Clay Vaughan: 12:56

Yeah, no, that's good. And I mean, that's, I think one of the biggest contributors that I've seen to your success is your ability to go with change. Because I mean, as we mentioned, there's been a lot of businesses, there's been a lot of titles, there's been a lot of responsibilities that you've been kind of the fixer. The moment where there's a person that isn't doing well in their job and they're removed from that job and it's kind of eaten everybody else that's tried to go into that job. Well, all right, it's time to put James in that job so that it'll get done. And he's like, all right, let's roll up the sleeves and let's do it. And the only reason I think you've been able to thrive in that pairing all, obviously all your character and all that, but it's been some of the formation years teaching you about the value, the pros and the cons of change. I mean, it's not like you're this, this bastion for, Oh my gosh, let's change all the time. No, if anything, it's the opposite, but yeah, you can still go with the flow and change as needed, which I think has contributed to your success and the success of, the companies that you've been involved in. So kind of switching gears a little bit, you were in the original meeting where we set our core values as a company. We were making the really dumb decision to introduce Tequila, I think at some point in the day. That changed our motivation a little bit. And we said, yeah, we're not going to introduce Tequila today. at four o'clock in the afternoon on a two day leadership meeting, not going to happen. Um, but we still walked away with our, our core values, which remain true today. And one of those was integrity. And I remember we had all these words up on the board trying to figure out what integrity is such a, uh, everybody uses that word integrity, integrity, integrity, and we talked about honesty and, and we, we landed on integrity and, for the reason of the fact that it had so many meanings to it. It meant not just the integrity and what we as a culture have learned as honesty, tying it into integrity, but the view of our team having integrity, as in the integrity of a ship. And if you're springing leaks, well, there's a problem. Your team's not going to make it. And also integrity from the standpoint of of making sure that we hold to our values um and that it's that it's paramount to do that so i'd love it if you could kind of talk to the audience here and and honestly i'd love to hear your perspective after six years as to how we how we actually got to that and what integrity means and what it looks like in in daily life as a as a business leader

James Hall: 15:50

yeah for sure man i appreciate that um integrity is, it's a great core value to have. And I'm very thankful that we have it because as you mentioned, as a society, you know, people think of integrity and they simply just say, well, that just means you're being honest. Um, but, uh, as we discussed in our very long two day meeting about nailing down core values, many other elements of business, um, there's something more to it than just that, you know, and throughout the years of being at reverent and all other businesses associated with reverent, uh, integrity, uh, has really been the flagship core value from the standpoint of like, we've made a lot of really tough decisions off of that core value. You know, I know that core values as a discussion are a great point to talk about. And I'll say this, you know, our definition of integrity is regardless of the cost, we are united to be honest, to live morally, and to humbly serve others. Which is a great definition. And I remember we had a hard time picking our core values because even when you say the word honest, you have to discuss with people and go, well, what do you mean by honesty? Or if you say ambition, well, what do you mean by having ambition? What do you mean by entrepreneurship or these different core value elements. And it was difficult to the point where we just said, you know what, we're just going to write our own definition. We could have pulled out the dictionary and just pulled that out. But we thought, like you mentioned, there's just so many other elements to integrity that are important. And integrity is a very practical core value because our opening statement about regardless of the cost, that's the part that I think makes it uh, it makes it feel real, you know, whenever you have a core value that you feel it. I mean, when you, when you sit down and you ask yourself the question, regardless of the cost, we didn't define how much the cost was. It didn't say, you know, regardless of, you know, a hundred thousand dollars, like that's not what we said, you know, it's like regardless of whatever the cost is. Um, and there's a lot of cost, um, to having integrity. I mean, uh, There have been businesses that have tried to work with us that we did not align with, and we've had to choose to lose them. As we've worked with certain clients after we took them on, we learned that their values did not align with our values at all. And we had to let them go, whether it was bad business practice or a couple of different other elements. I mean, it's costly, quite costly to hold to your core values. And even just being honest, I will say this on a personal level, Having a culture that regardless of the cost and you kind of ingrain that into your team, whenever I ask my team, hey, did you make a mistake? You can see them kind of bite their tongue first if they've made a mistake and then say, yes, I made a mistake. Because what they know is it's like in this company culture, it might cost you something to be honest with leadership, but you still have to be honest because we value leadership. them being honest with us.

Clay Vaughan: 18:45

It'll cost you more.

James Hall: 18:45

more. Yeah, it will cost you more. But it builds a fantastic culture. And also it creates a really great open environment. I feel like a lot of times as I read books about other companies that are out there, some companies I've worked with, the toxicity of culture is built around dishonesty. It's built around lies and rumors and gossips and just stuff that I absolutely hate. And so as far as you know, how much has our core value of integrity cost us over the years? The answer is a lot. However, I actually firmly believe also on the opposite side of that, having a core value like integrity has brought us other people who are folks who do hold to their own integrity. And they want to work with people who hold to their integrity regardless of the cost. So I think it's kind of one of these interesting things where, you know, it's... It's just interesting to see how that works whenever you start to hold the values that you start to work with and attract business owners who also have those types of similar values.

Clay Vaughan: 19:52

That's great!

James Hall: 19:53

I want to mention one last thing before I wrap up this concept of integrity, which is, you know, there's a verse in the Bible talks about, you know, better to have your integrity and be poor than to be, you know, we found out to be a liar, you know, and I always just kind of smiled. I was right there. Oh, yeah, that makes sense. Don't be a liar. Tell the truth. It's a simple concept, right? But then like two verses later, it says, if you're poor, you will have no friends. And I was like, wow, that is terribly uninspiring in regards to how important integrity is. Because it's basically saying it's better for you to have your integrity, even to the point of not having any wealth or any relationships, which relationships and wealth are very closely tied because, you know, your friends and your networks are how wealth building happens. And I mean, it's a podcast about business building. And so that's a pretty high stake that the Bible puts on the value of integrity because you want to hold on to that. that value, more so than holding onto relationships, which is really hard for a lot of people to do. They would rather compromise relationship and give up some integrity on some point. And that interpersonal element is really strong, but it's so important. And I'm so happy we came out with the core values that we did. I can say this, I'm very proud in the sense of work of the core values we came out of, out of that two-day meeting. I know you joked about there being tequila involved, but we walked out and I thought, these are our core values and they have been our core values. They stuck. they stuck and we built on them and they have been fantastic. So

Clay Vaughan: 21:18

yeah. Worth every, every minute of those two days. Uh, there's two, there's two things that you mentioned that I want to kind of add some clarity to. So I was doing some research the other day and at our peak and, and not, not saying that we're not at a peak now. I mean, we are a much more successful company than we were two years ago, but at our peak in 2019, we had 39 people on payroll and, And I was like, oh, wow, I didn't realize we had that many people, which for some of you guys listening are like, 39, that's it. But for a lot of y'all out there, 39 is a lot. I mean, it's a lot to manage. And one of the reasons why we ended up cutting back is there was that toxicity that started to creep in. And we realized, all right, this person's got to go. This person's got to go. This person's got to go. This person's got to go. And it was very healthy for our organization to go through that purge in 2019, 2020. But to your point, I mean, toxicity is the result of the lack of integrity on part of the team and therefore the lack of enforcement from the leadership. And we chose to enforce it. And we're like, hey, we're not going to have any of this. This is gone. The other thing that I would just point out, and one thing that just feels very raw to me now, is the concept of conflict of interest, specifically when it comes to marketing. I was doing some research the other day. I was like, what do other agencies do about conflict of interest? And do you know what? The only topics I could find are conflict of interest tied to ad spend. So if you're actually managing the ad spend and it's being billed percentagely, that's the only concept that actually came up. No one was talking about the conflict of interest of doing business with... your clients who have a competitor. So you're getting this insider knowledge about one of your clients and then you're going to their competitor and taking that insider knowledge and you're essentially creating this ecosystem that is unhealthy and, quoting that term, toxic. And it just baffles my mind. So it's real to me because we just lost a $60,000 contract just because of that. And it was because we were like, hey, I don't think we can work with you guys. Even though you really want to work with us, I don't think we can because we have a client who's about 15 miles away from you who does the exact same service, and we don't believe it's right. According to our integrity, we don't believe it's right to do that because you're both losing at that point in time. You're

James Hall: 23:55

both losing. Yeah, the only one, quote, winning. Well, first of all, I think that's terrible. The only one winning would be us. Yeah, we would be the one winning on that scenario. Yeah. Gosh, well, first of all, it just makes me sad. But as far as my thoughts are concerned, man, that's baffling to me. It's baffling to me. And us losing that much money for the integrity is also a really strong element. I think it's interesting that marketing agencies would take their talents from helping one business and roll over to, I mean, we could have banked for the last like two or three years if we had done that because we work with schools and we've done really meaningful work with private schools. We've killed it for churches and we've purposefully for a long time. more or less just drew lines into how far we would spread for our ad work. And I mean, it takes a lot of effort to draw out what your boundary lines are and then not do that, not cross those lines. But knowing that the other agencies that are out there are not doing that, well, honestly, this is concerning. And it sounds like a new blog needs to be posted here pretty

Clay Vaughan: 25:03

soon. I think it's on the horizon, mainly because I was just caught off guard when I couldn't find any information about that. But, I mean, for us, integrity means regardless of the cost. And if y'all are thinking about how to create your own core values if you don't have them, or maybe if you do have core values and you're like, okay, what do I do with these? Make sure they have teeth. That's all I have to say. If your core values are literally just a nice thing you can say that, oh yeah, these are our core values. They're on the wall over here. Oh, these are our core values. They're on the About Us page of the website. If that's the only place they're sitting and the only time you ever talk about them was when you give a tour for the first time, it may not have enough teeth to actually help guide you in business. And that's what we use our core values. They're guides for us because... We're faced with, gosh, I was hearing someone talking just the other day saying that we're faced with over 20,000 decisions in a given day, something nuts like that. And I mean, if we're facing that many decisions in a given day and you don't have any form of boundaries in place, gosh, you must have a really hard life. That's all I got to say. So, I mean, for me, having boundaries makes decision making so much easier, even if it hurts, right? So anyway, I don't want to belabor the point, but I just wanted to kind of tack on that. I want

James Hall: 26:23

to mention some advice here too, Clay. I think we talked about this a little bit in the last podcast that you and I did, which is that one way to help give your core values teeth. is to evaluate your team members on your core values. And if you have to sit in a room with somebody and evaluate them up against your core values, I think it helps. As far as how do you make sure you get teeth, I would say measure yourself and measure your team against your core values and then have the guts to hire and fire based upon those core values. That's where you start to really feel the teeth and realize it's really a part of your culture. Yeah,

Clay Vaughan: 26:56

that's great. So switching gears to another core value of ours, which I feel like needs to be talked about because this is a relatively recent ad for us. And it's the core value of communication. James, when I first asked if you'd be willing to jump on an episode with me, you said, I'd love to talk about communication. What was it that you were wanting to bring to light to our audience

James Hall: 27:22

Yeah, I appreciate that. Yeah, communication is key, right? More and more I'm learning in business that it is not what you say, it is what other people hear. And for you to be able to do that properly means you need to thoughtfully interact with people. You can't just jump in to start saying a whole bunch of things or even sometimes caring about when you say what you say to people, you know? And so the reason I mentioned communication is I feel like when I meet new business owners and I'm working with them in the marketing standpoint and they're like, well, we got messaging, you know, obviously, but you know, maybe to my understanding, even when they talk to you, Claire, the growth side, like people are like, well, what's, what's so important about this messaging thing? And the answer is, is Well, you could you could spend an enormous amount of money and no one has no idea who you are and what you do. And that's because your communication is bad, you know, to to your audience. And then equally, you know, on the inside of the company, if you are trying to communicate to your team members and vision or expectations or project timelines or new processes and you don't communicate. thoughtfully, you know, with the idea in mind is what are they hearing? Not so much what am I saying, but what are they hearing? Then all of a sudden, so many elements of what you do in business really just, the lights turn on in regards to every single thing. I mean, I've seen so many of our websites where literally we just turned around and messaged make things look more modern and clean and conversion rates went straight up. And it's for no other reason than businesses started to communicate to their customers more clearly about what they do.

Clay Vaughan: 28:58

And that applies to every single business, right? That's not just to this random, like, Oh, this one company doesn't have their act together. Literally every single company that is, I have ever spoken with that hasn't gone through the process yet, either through us or through another story brand certified guide. Like they struggle.

James Hall: 29:16

Yeah.

Clay Vaughan: 29:17

They're struggling. And I'm not talking like we work at, James mentioned this earlier. We work with businesses that are startups that maybe have a hundred grand in the bank, if that. And then we work with billion dollar companies and we all fit. I mean, we all face the same thing on that communication front, every single one. It doesn't matter how big you are. It doesn't matter how big your marketing budget is. If you're communicating in a way that isn't clear, oh my gosh, you're, you're doomed to fail. Or just waste every single one of the dollars that have been put in your hands to stewards.

James Hall: 29:51

Well, yeah. And then there's my least favorite element of communication, which is assumption. So let's just say somebody is a mortgage broker and they say, what are you for a living? I'm a mortgage broker. Well, then all of a sudden people just make a ton of assumptions about you. Like whatever they have been told a mortgage broker is, is all of a sudden what they slapped a label on you. And you're like, well, no, I don't actually do any of those things. It's like Aflac, right? Isn't Aflac like the number one most recognized brand or something five years ago? And they sent a survey out to ask people, what does Aflac actually do? And everybody failed the test. No one knew what Aflac actually did. They spent... hundreds, if not millions of dollars on all of this wonderful branding, you know, AFLAC, you know, the duck walking around. Everyone's like, oh yeah, AFLAC. And everyone thought they were a true insurance agency. No one realized that they were a supplemental insurance, that they weren't actually true insurance. No way. I didn't realize that. Yeah, see, that's my point. You know, so did they do a fantastic job at branding you that you should think of AFLAC? And so much so that they got the football coach from Alabama, to explain. I mean, this is a very long commercial where he talks about how if someone gets hurt, that they're not actually the insurance company for the big injury. They're just the ones that give you supplemental cash to help you in a bad time so that you can make it through the rough phases before you get paid for your injury. And I was like, how much could they have saved if they had just figured out how to properly get the duck to say, you know, And they're now correcting it because they realized, thankfully through a survey one day, they finally got that figured out. But just so you know, Clay, I also did not know that until I started doing research on basically companies that wasted a lot of money on marketing and they popped up. And I was like, wow, that's a great example. And like I said, pretty much everyone knows Aflac. So there you go.

Clay Vaughan: 31:41

Wow, that's so good. So all that to be said, when you're thinking about the core value of communication, the reason why it's so important for us is to thoughtfully interact with with others through precision and urgency. And the reason why we tack on urgency is like, you can't do it over this massive 5,000 word essay. It's got to happen succinctly, precisely, and quickly. And I think that that applies so clearly to what we do with StoryBrand, what we do with any of the work that we support our clients with on the marketing side, because marketing is words. Marketing is communication. And if you're doing it poorly or without precision or without urgency, then you're your marketing is not going to work well. So I really appreciate you pointing that out, James. When it comes to marketing, I mean, I run a marketing agency, everybody. Spoiler alert. I've tried to avoid the topic of marketing in this entire show, primarily for the reason that if you want to learn more about marketing, you can come talk to me. I'm happy to do that. And we'll be integrating pieces, parts throughout this season. But I just want to reinforce, this is not here to sell you on anything. We're just trying to bring value, trying to bring guidance to you as the audience, as people who want to run a good business, who want to have good values. And so anyway, James, I appreciate you bringing marketing into the discussion, not for any other reason other than to guide and to help. So I really appreciate that. So what I'd love to just kind of tie that up with is... Why should businesses actually be spending effort, time, money on marketing? Why is that important for all businesses of all shapes and sizes?

James Hall: 33:37

I'll try to say it really quickly, but then I want to expand a little bit more upon it. The reason you should be doing and working on marketing and spending time and energy resources in it is because marketing is the long-term game plan for your sales department. I mean, if you want to grow and you want to do it for years and years, you've got to spend time, energy, and effort on the marketing side. And I feel like having worked with so many brands now for so many years, I can 100% with confidence say, My goodness, you have got to spend money on marketing. And I say money, I just mean resources. You've got to spend energy on whether it's someone in-house doing it or a third party. And the reason is that people have to engage with your brand at least 13 times as of 2022 before they'll even engage in your brand. They have to be branded for 13 times before they will even become a lead. which sounds like an insane number, but it's so true. I mean, if you think about way back in the day, uh, people were branded a whole lot, uh, in, in a given city. You walk downtown, you saw someone's general store sign every day. You went to mattress Mac. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so you were branded. And so then you knew Joe or John or whoever, or Max, you know, whoever was the one guy running the show. And so same thing kind of applies today. Like people need to see you. But the interesting thing is, is that in my opinion, a lot of what we know to be the market of America has turned digital. And so when I say that to people, you need to be spending money on marketing. You can be doing print ads and billboards. Don't get me wrong. Billboards still have a lot of power. But as far as like being in the market is concerned, you've got to be able to get out in front of people so that they can even know you exist. Because if you're not going to do it, guess what? Amazon's definitely gonna do it and take your share, right? And so you definitely, you need to be there. You need to be in front of

Clay Vaughan: 35:22

people. I love it. I love it. Thanks for giving us that clarity in light of what you said about communication. So James, I really appreciate you taking the time out of your day to jump on this episode. And everybody, thank you so much for tuning in. We'll see you guys next week. on good business. If you like this podcast, then please consider subscribing now and share it with your friends, family, and any other business leaders who you believe would find value in the topics we discuss. You can learn more about each guest, any of the resources that we discuss at my website, www.clayvon.com. I also want to give a shout out to Rocket Fuel, our show sponsor. Rocket Fuel is an amazing CRM that has allowed my companies to grow exponentially. In fact, one of my companies went from converting 30% of its leads to converting 80% of its leads without seeing a reduction in lead volume. So I highly recommend you check out RocketFuel. And we'll see you next week on Good Business.