A Toast to 2025

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Host: Rich Mackey 
Producer: Zac Hazen

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Think of us as your very own offsite, highly effective team of local marketing growth experts, from digital marketing to traditional (who you’d also happily grab a beer with). Antidote 71 is equal parts skill and personality. We’re super fun to hang out with (in our opinion) and exceptionally good at what we do. We love our work and care about the people we work with. 

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Transcript

Year-End Setup And Plan

SPEAKER_00 0:00

The final episode of the year, Zach, is a chance to reflect, right? So what worked, what surprised us, what reshaped how we think about marketing and content heading into next year? So let's get into it. All right, we are back. Oh my god, where that was really fast. Um, we are doing a toast to 2025 with a look ahead to 2026. So this is our last episode of 2025. We're gonna take a little Christmas pause. So um, I believe this one's coming out like this week, right? Isn't it? Yep. Okay. Yeah, so we're gonna turn this one around. We're recording on Wednesday. It's coming out on Thursday. So Zach's got some editing to do tonight. Um we're gonna talk about our wins, surprises, lessons, and things we'd repeat, things we'd do differently, and then we will um get to all of that. But first, we've got a weird cocktail, Zach. It's the pink squirrel.

SPEAKER_02 0:56

I love the pink squirrel. It is definitely a weird one, but um, I don't know if you you've been to Fizzies, right, Rich? Yeah, I've been to Fizzies. I'm pretty sure they have one of these on their menu. So if you want to go try one, or if anyone's listening in Omaha or Sioux City area and wants to go try one, definitely try theirs because that's kind of where I was inspired.

SPEAKER_00 1:14

But yeah, and there's a few places that will do this, but they've got to have that special like like most of this is normal, right? Like people have you know, creme de cacao and heavy cream. It's the last one. Creme de noya is how you name N-O-Y-A-U-X. So we did not phonetically look that up to see how to spell it. But it's um what's it made from again, Zach?

SPEAKER_02 1:37

So it's made from stone fruit pits, and that's what kind of gives it its like flavor and signature color. I have heard that it can be hard to come by, so that if you don't have it, you can substitute amaretto, but you won't get that pink color. The color will be a little bit off. So definitely try and get it. Uh, a little more information about this drink is it was made in Wisconsin in Milwaukee in the 1940s. Wow. At the Bryant Cocktail Lounge. Uh, it's known for its white creme de cacao, heavy cream, and creme de New York, whatever, however you say it, that drink, that uh liqueur. It's also originally served of ice cream, so this is how you can have it at um fizzy's too. It falls into that adult boozy milkshake kind of uh like category, which I really love. And it's also similar to a grasshopper. So uh yeah, this one's really great. I'd love to hear the recipe, so we can get into that.

SPEAKER_00 2:33

Okay. So I had to look it up. That's what I'm doing over here on this screen. Creme de noyau, N-O-Y, hyphen, oh H Noyau. Um, so like interesting. So creme de, of course, we get Noyo. Um, yeah, and I was reading about it, like it's really interesting. So I'll have to see. So Bowl Bowls has one. We do the bowls like creme de cacao, and there's like three or four of the bowls brand that we do, but there's a whole bunch of them. Um if you can't find it, you can find it online. Like um, if you can't find it locally, because yeah, it could be really hard to come by. Okay, so uh in this drink, how we make it. Um, three-quarters of an ounce creme de noyau, three-quarters of an ounce of white creme de cacao, one and a half ounces of heavy cream, and you can garnish this with freshly grated nutmeg. That's just going to really give it that holiday feeling. Also, the pink color is sort of that red and green of Christmas. Ooh, Zach, party idea. You serve these and a grasshopper, and you've got your red and your green for Christmas, just your pink and mint. There you go.

SPEAKER_02 3:34

That's a good one.

SPEAKER_00 3:35

I'm not doing a Christmas party, otherwise, I would do that. So uh maybe I'll just somebody steal the idea from us. Yeah, maybe I'll just make a picture of each one and just drink them through the holidays myself. That sounds good. All right. So everything goes into the into a shaker with ice. Um, this is a super easy one. Um, and you do that until it's well chilled. So for me, if you've got a metal thing, as I've said before, just do it till your hand is so cold you can't hold the shaker anymore. Uh, strain it into a chilled coop glass. Ooh, a frosted coupe glass sounds fantastic. This is like my drink. I think I would like this. Um, I've had one before, it's just been a long time. So garnish it with fresh nutmeg then. So you're gonna get a little bit of that foaminess on top because you've got the cream and the milk in it, or the cream and the creme de cacao and stuff. So that nutmeg is just gonna kinda settle on that, like I don't know, like sand and fresh snow or something.

SPEAKER_01 4:27

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00 4:28

All right, so an amorada can replace the creme de noyau, as we said. The flavor will hold, the color does not. Um, and I would not recommend adding a little tequila rose to this to get that pink color. That's not gonna work. Not the same at all. You could probably do like a tiny drop of red food coloring if you had to to get the pink color because it's gonna mix with that white creme de cacao and the heavy cream.

SPEAKER_02 4:50

Um, but I just don't like adding like artificial stuff like food coloring to it's interesting to me that amaretto can like replace the flavor of it, but obviously, like it's a lot darker of a red, so it's definitely not gonna replace the color. So it'd probably be more bloody, like a darker crimson red. So red squirrel, but that's not a good thing.

SPEAKER_00 5:10

Doesn't sound as good. Um yeah, and when I was looking it up, it said it's almost like if you like marzipan on cakes, which is kind of that um I don't know what I want to say, like it's the tacky layer that they tacky like feeling, not like well, sometimes it looks tacky too, but they put over, it's like the wrap they'll put on cakes to really make them funny and cool. And a lot of decorations on cakes are made with marzipan, uh, which is an almond derivative. So that's how that all works.

SPEAKER_01 5:36

Oh, nice.

SPEAKER_00 5:36

All right. So there you go. It's pink squirrels for everybody for Christmas. Maybe we can get Adriana to send everybody a pink squirrel kit, minus the heavy cream. Because that wouldn't be good. Although it's December, we could ship it, it'd probably be fine. Fingers crossed with that one. All right, so we're gonna get into our 2025 recap and then uh look forward to 2026 when we come back.

SPEAKER_02 6:07

All right, we're back. We are back.

SPEAKER_00 6:09

Oh, so Zach, you have a whole bunch of questions about 2025. Goodness.

SPEAKER_02 6:15

Yep. So we're gonna cover some of the stuff that you and I honestly we're just this is gonna be a light casual conversation about the year as a whole. We don't have to cover all these points. We'll see where the conversation takes us. I'm sure that'll be more fun. Um so yeah, I think the first thing I wanted to cover though is the wins we had. So some highlights and stuff that you thought went well.

SPEAKER_00 6:36

Um yeah, so I think that one of the biggest ones that we did this year, and there's still a client, is the People Perspective website because it was a website, but then it was so much more than that. They're really like maximizing what HubSpot can do for delivering content to their clients and value to their clients and helping them build all that. Nothing was um like stock out of the box. There's a lot of custom stuff. And Caitlin and Jessica and Adriana just nailed that one and knocked it out of the park. And I know that um they sent us a really nice testimonial. I think it's on the website somewhere.

SPEAKER_02 7:12

We have a case study, yeah. We put it on social media.

SPEAKER_00 7:13

Yeah, we got the case study for that one. So that's a great one. You can link to the case study um down below. But they really maximized everything, um, which was fantastic.

SPEAKER_02 7:22

Um and the visuals and like the design and stuff was like super cool. Like it all really flowed well and like nice together. I really liked that one.

SPEAKER_00 7:31

Yeah, I think that one was really good. Um, I'm trying to think of what else we did. So a lot of our clients were business as usual, right? So like we did great things, but it was just, it wasn't anything that necessarily stood out because they've just been building over time. Um, we have a couple new clients that had some struggles early in the year, like February, March, April, and we've turned all those around. Um, it's always interesting when somebody comes to us and says, we think our old agency has screwed up all of this stuff. Can you help? Um and it's like, yeah, we we've cleaned up a lot of people's nesses and we make some of our own. We're not perfect, we make mistakes. Um, but I think those were good.

SPEAKER_02 8:06

Um really good at like resolving those headaches is like kind of how I like to see it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:14

Um she just wants in. She's like, yes, yes, Zach, yes.

SPEAKER_02 8:18

She's uh doubling down on that. I think for me, um, so something that I've really thought has gone well this year, it's kind of the end of the year, so I don't know if it's cheating, but a lot of the content planning stuff that like we've been doing for like a few of our clients has been really cool to like see, and like seeing the reactions that they're seeing from it has been really awesome. Yep. And like seeing them get excited about where their content is going. Yep. I think especially with like the content theme stuff, like the new way that we're doing that has been super cool.

SPEAKER_00 8:51

And I think that um it also kind of plays into your outstanding standout performance, right? So the way like you created that content thing because we're like, hey, we need a content offering because people need content and they have a bunch of stuff and they're confused, and we were doing audits and trying to fix stuff, but then it's like, okay, we have to go beyond that. And we can't start with this is what you have, let's make it fit. It's what does your audience want and what's important and what can you actually be seen for and known for? And then we'll see what fits and then what doesn't. And I think from the way that that has evolved, the um the ones that I looked at from last year, I was overwhelmed. I'm like, oh my God, there's so much stuff in here. And if I was a client, I'm like, oh my God, I don't know what to do with this. But the way you pivoted that at the end of this year, and you took a look at it yourself, you took feedback, and you pulled it back around to something that like all that work is still there, and you still have all those documents and all that backend. It's just not all in the presentation. Yep. Like, it's enough to give an idea of where we're going. And I think that helps people be more excited about it because it's really digestible. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 9:54

And it's been really exciting to see kind of like how clients are like, oh wow, this is like really awesome. This this feels totally like me or our voice. You know what I mean? And I think uh that kind of goes into like something that like it's like a part of that is you're more we're more focused on the depth of like strengthening our clients' brand voice through their content rather than just like the noise of getting as much solid content out as possible around specific topics.

SPEAKER_00 10:25

Right. It shifts from volume to meaningful content that can go out there. So I think that's a huge one. It also qualifies for your experiments that paid off. Um, you know, that was just something that we were working on and you know, trying to do, and clients needed it, and we pulled it together. And we've now got a really solid process and a really solid end, you know, presentation. I think the last one we did didn't take all that long, like realistically. I mean, it was probably like a month, but it wasn't like it took three months to pull together or anything.

SPEAKER_02 10:55

And I think it's the um I think we're really starting to find our footing there.

SPEAKER_00 10:59

It's good. Um, I would agree with that. Um I'm trying to think of other work. Jesse would be better at this. He'd be like, oh, this, this, and this and this.

Experiments: Webinars, LinkedIn, PMAX

SPEAKER_02 11:07

Um I think um my brain is always with our stuff because I'm so closely I'm always closely working with our stuff. I think the webinars, while they weren't exact necessarily unexpected, some of the results from them were pretty, I think they stood out to me and they were pretty unexpected.

SPEAKER_00 11:23

Yeah. And we did like we hadn't done webinars before, so we're doing webinars now. Um and so um, you know, that's fantastic. Um and they worked. We got people on there, like it was like 12 people or something like that joined, which is great for us. We don't need, like I said, we don't need like a dozen clients or 200 clients this year. We need like two. Like that's our growth pattern.

SPEAKER_02 11:44

We had a lot of engagement during the last webinar, especially, where people were asking a lot of good questions, and it really felt like we were like providing really good information. So that kind of like content and like that kind of response is really cool to see. I think it brings up a new opportunity for 2026 for us. Also, with like the LinkedIn event ads that we ran for the webinar, that helped us gain over like a a hundred followers in a week on LinkedIn. So that was like mind-blown for me. Like, wow, we need to be doing more stuff like this on LinkedIn. And obviously, like I think uh I think that was something that really like stood out to me.

SPEAKER_00 12:21

Yeah, and I think that um alongside that, the experimentation with LinkedIn ads that you and Riley have been doing, your collaboration on that has been really good. So that experimentation will see if it pays off. It seems like it will, but I think it's still a little too new. Um, I also think that one of the um the big ones that we did was like when we had a client who is struggling, so they're sort of retail B2B adjacent. It's an odd, you know, business model, but it works and it's it makes sense for them. Um, but I didn't ask if I could share their info, so I'm not gonna name them. I'll I'll ask after this. But um they just had some, they had some issues with their Google ads. Google had made changes, some of the AI changes had we talked about those before, a Google's AI. There's certain things where it was like tanking your visibility and suddenly our ads just weren't showing. We weren't spending budget, we weren't getting the clicks, and it's like, no, we want to spend budget and get people in because we need to sell stuff. And um we ditched their typical search ads and we went PMAX and we layered audiences on them. And that is not a recommendation from Google to ditch search and go PMAX, it's to do both. They always say do both, but we had we had limited budget and we really needed to shake things up. And PMAX let us consolidate stuff in. And I just looked the other day like we are like blowing it out of the park on Roas. Like it's crazy how well they're doing. And that's really the last week of October or November, first week of September or December really like kicked it up. So that was one that was another experiment where we're like, you know, and PMAX ads are an experiment in themselves, right? They keep changing, they keep updating. And I know Riley's Riley takes a more cautious approach to that. I'm more like, let's go, let's dive in and spend thousands of dollars. Um and luckily it paid off. So that's good.

SPEAKER_02 14:07

Yeah, well, I know you haven't listened to the last episode, Rich, but we did talk about PMAX campaigns. And one of the experiments that we want to run in 2026 is we we're running for that client, right? We're running PMAX campaigns without the recommended search campaign, which Google says you should not do. And we're seeing good results. We want to put that to the test more and see like just how much better or how much worse it is without a search campaign, and like actually like test, hey, like we're seeing results with for a client without a search campaign. Why is that? And what can we do to like continuously like improve that? Is there a way to get more out of it? So it's kind of an interesting experiment where running like an A-B test with a search campaign without like which will do better, and how integral is it? Because it's like you said, we're seeing that it's not that integral, but like, why is that?

Lessons In Leadership And Culture

SPEAKER_00 15:01

So and it might be it might be their unique nature. So they're a ton of repeat business. Um, so they're not looking for new acquisition. That's the other thing Google keeps saying, like, you should bid more for new customers. And I'm like, that's not how their model works. Like, we need everybody who's in there, like in their database, to just buy one more time, and that's millions of dollars, which is most companies, right? Like, if if all of your customers just bought one more time or just did one more thing, if every one of our customers or clients added one more search campaign or or added SEO to their program, like we make good money on that. So it'll be interesting. All right, shall we uh move on to some uh lessons learned? Uh oh, 100%. What did you learn in 2025, Rich? Um, I learned, well, I didn't learn it, but I reaffirmed that running a company is hard. Um, that, you know, we survived 2020, which was kind of a miracle and a half. We survived several years of negative income, which is um frustrating and difficult as an owner because you've got to make up that income, right? So the cash has to come from somewhere. Well, it comes from me. Like I put that in there. Um, but I think the the biggest one is, and I think we kind of all learned this. We struggle with difficult conversations. Um, just as a team, as individuals in our lives, like we just there's like two or three of us who have difficult conversations and are good with it. Um Misa's, she does not like the difficult conversations. Um so I think we pushed that a little bit. Um, and it became um, we've gotten to a point where I feel like we're just being more open, more honest, and we're listening more. Um, and people are talking more. Like I'm getting more input, Jessica's getting more input, Jesse's getting more input. Um so I think that was a big one for me, like a lesson from this year. And some of it was like shut up, right? Just so, and you saw me do it a couple of times. I did it with you and Riley in um San Francisco when we were at um at Inbound. I lobbed a question at you with no context, and then I just shut up and let you freak out or talk to each other, or and just said, we'll talk about it later. Like no other background, just here's your here's a thing, a what if. Um, and some people can handle that and some people can't. And so, and that's okay. We're all different in that. But I think that being able to let people react, absorb, and come forward, um people have to get there on their own terms. I can't pull you all along. I can't force you all to stay with me. Um, and I think that was a big one for me because there were some initiatives I wanted to do, like with the way we operate and how we how we go to market. And I just wanted to be like, bam, bam, bam. Okay, let's go workshop these and figure this out. And a couple of people were like, hell yeah, let's do it. But a lot of people were like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, like we need to talk about this, we need to think about this, I need to understand better what it is. Because I'm kind of like in shock about it and I need to absorb it. What's happened since it's been two months now, since we kind of had all those conversations at our annual meeting, is I was ready to pull back on one of the initiatives. And what I got from the person leading it was, no, I think we can get there. And I'm like, we have like, I mean, we have like 15 days because we closed between Christmas and New Year's. So I'm like, we have 15 days to do this. And she's like, no, no. She's like, she's like, I have it. She's like, I just haven't put it in like to a document. But she's like, I've been thinking through it, and we have like 90% of it. And I'm like, oh, okay, because I was ready to back off of this and this and this. And she's like, no, we don't have to. We can make it work. And I'm like, okay.

SPEAKER_02 18:47

And I think we all got to that. We all got we're all getting to a place where we can all agree and like, you know what I mean, like move forward together rather than having separate ideas. And having those difficult conversations really helped bring everyone together. Even if people disagreed on both sides of the fences, like you can at least see people's like different perspectives and like where they're coming from. And I think that helped everyone bring bring everyone closer together. And yeah, that was a great like lesson, I think. Like it's easy to feel one way with without understanding the other side's objectives and thoughts and feelings.

SPEAKER_00 19:23

So well, and that I have to share those more. I have to be more and I have to share them more often. Like I can't just say, this is what I want to do and this is why. Let's go. It's gotta be more of a conversation. Like, here's something that's on my mind. I'd like you to think about it. Here's why I think it might or might not be a good idea. And I am absolutely open. If you come show me 10 reasons why it sucks, great. Like, prove it to me. I'm not gonna force us to do something that's stupid. Um, and there are a few things like that was the other thing is when there is something that I'm like, we're just doing this, and like I'm not asking anybody's opinion. Like it's something we have to do for the business. We I just like I clear. About that. It's like, I'm letting you know this is coming. We have to do it. I'm not going to be convinced not to do it for these reasons. So let's find the best way to do it. Um, because sometimes that happens, right? Like we're not all in control. We can't all vote on everything. Um so yeah, it's it's a little weird.

SPEAKER_02 20:20

Wow, we're getting some good leadership insights from the customer. Oh, are we? Are we?

SPEAKER_00 20:24

Okay, we'll we'll snip at this then. I should be wearing a better shirt. Like so.

SPEAKER_02 20:28

We're both kind of we're kind of a beachy theme today. I got palm tree. I don't know.

Going Fully Remote And Team Rituals

SPEAKER_00 20:33

I think these are waves, but this one might be a shark. I'm not sure. Um, but no, so we were um this gets back to you've got a question about how what changed and how we operate, and there's a big one. Um so I was in Sioux City today clearing out some stuff we had to get rid of that needed to come to Omaha. So some of it came to my house. I have Charla's desk, her monitor, a shredder that I think she bought, like all this stuff because we've gone fully remote. So as of no November 1st, right? Yeah. We're all fully remote. So you you've been fully remote. It's nothing new for me for years.

SPEAKER_02 21:05

Yeah, and nothing new for me.

SPEAKER_00 21:07

But you know what's new though is Adriana and Jesse have both we I've had conversations with both of them in some like meetings we were in about like it's hard just being at home alone all day. And it's like, yeah, it is. Even if you're an introvert and you want that, and Adriana was like, we need a happy hour. She's like, I know they were kind of fizzling, but we haven't done one in a couple months. And she's like, in the meeting on Monday, we all just wanted to be chatty. Everybody just needed to talk. So she's like, let's do a happy hour. So I think we got a happy hour on for next week.

SPEAKER_02 21:35

Everyone probably understands why you and I are so talkative in those meetings.

SPEAKER_00 21:39

I know, right? Yeah, so we record the podcast, but it we take like way longer than that just to get into everything and just catch up on life and what's going on and all that. Um, and then I think the other thing that comes with that though is like we're looking at the holiday party, so that'll probably be in February. So Megan is back in the US between like January and March. So, and and every time I for people who don't know, every time we try to do a holiday party in December or even January, there is an ice storm, there's two feet of snow. Because people have to go between Omaha and Sioux City. And now we'll have somebody in Des Moines, we have you in North Carolina who has to be able to fly in. Um and then figuring out, you know, what we do, you know, in the summer and in the fall as a full big team, or if we just do two things, like, you know, a year where we're all together in person.

SPEAKER_02 22:27

And then small like big things like cross-team collaboration and how you work together remotely. I think it's been a good learning experience for everyone that hasn't been remote because it can be difficult when you can't just walk up to someone's desk and say, Hey, what do you think of this? or hey, yep. Like you actually have to like plan and coordinate or like be very sporadic with how you like talk to people over meetings.

SPEAKER_00 22:50

So people in the same city, yeah. People in the same city, I'm seeing lunches get planned, I'm seeing breakfasts get planned, I'm seeing like Jessica has her bookshed where she works. If anybody's a client listening and is ever on a call with her, it's a beautiful space. I love it. I got to go see it. Like I was actually up there. I had to drop something off for her, and I was up there and I was like, oh my God, this is amazing. I'm jealous. Um, but she's got room in there for another person to like have a laptop stand and work or sit in the chair. Um, and so I don't know if anybody's taken her up on that. Adriana has said she would, or Jesse might. Um But yeah, it's been a shift, but you know, it just didn't make sense for us to maintain a 3,000 square foot office for the few people who were actually there. And most people kind of opted into this remote thing. Um, and so we were just like, okay, let's all go remote. And that wasn't my idea. Um, it was something that came up from our landlord through other people. And Jesse and Jessie, Jessica were actually the ones that said, you know, we're the ones who are here the most. Like, and it just doesn't make sense for all this space for just us. Um, but yeah, so we were clearing all that stuff out. So I'm just in a t-shirt and jeans today. Sometimes I'm in that anyway. But I was gonna wear a holiday thing, and I just was like, I literally was the movers like left with the check 15 minutes before we started recording.

Content Strategy: Attention And Quality

SPEAKER_02 24:07

So well, hey, we're here. That's all that matters. We're wrapping up 2025 the right way. We are, we are. So this next one I have is like what new insights we kind of gained from content, audiences, and strategy. And obviously, I can probably talk to this one a little more since I'm like a little more in on everything with our content and our audiences and stuff. I think for me it's like the attention economy, right? Like, I I know we've brought it up in several podcasts, but just how important it is to get your point across, yep, like right away. Click-through rates are going down across the board for everybody. It's harder to get people to click on a blog or to through a video if you're not providing value in that very moment. Yep. So that's something that's very interesting that I'm looking at going forward is how can we provide more value to you, the audience, without having to make you jump through hoops and locking your attention.

SPEAKER_00 25:08

Yeah, 100%. Some of that's just how we consume things today, right? Like, like how often do you actually read the article or do you read the headline and the summary and you feel like you got enough and you don't need to click in. So when we do have clients who are saying, like, hey, our newsletter goes out with our blog post and it's got the picture and the headline and the summary. And we literally are getting zero clicks, but we're getting all of these opens. Like we have a huge open rate on the email, but no one's clicking through. And it's like, right, because you're giving them the snippet they need and they don't feel the need to go deeper. And so then that becomes a challenge for you and for the account team and the strategy and stuff. On okay, how do we make it worth it for them to go deeper? Like, how do we, you know, or do we need to? Do we is the open enough? And we know that they've scrolled through. Um, you know, is that good enough? Because they're we know they're seeing it and they're at least getting our ideas. They may not be getting the depth. Um, do we write shorter articles because no one's reading them? You know, do we just put out snippets like snacks of information?

SPEAKER_02 26:11

Well, it's interesting. It's interesting. And then you have to worry about each individual platform and what works on each individual platform and where algorithms are going. And that's a whole other thing I don't want to get into because I could just go for days and run around in circles. But another thing that I think is interesting is a lot more content is focused on quality over quantity, and that's definitely where we're looking to go in 2026. We're always focused on quality, but really just putting out content that we're really, really proud of, not just like three pieces that we feel decent about that has good information. Because we put out a lot of good content, but at the end of the day, what is valuable to our clients is really well thought out, in-depth content that provides them value without bullshitting them. And content that we've experimented with that does that, where we're writing reviews on specific tools or looking at HubSpot product updates beyond the lens of just telling you what it does, actually giving some insight behind it. Our product updates and insight for those like our audience. We you guys love those. Uh those are our highest performing blogs and they get consistent traffic organically and through like emails. So giving you better versions of those and proving finding new formats for those is gonna be interesting. But also, again, it's just focusing on quality in general, just really focusing on the quality of the stuff we're putting out.

SPEAKER_00 27:41

Yeah, so I think for our HubSpot tips, I'll take credit for the idea, but you get credit for the execution because you do the heavy lifting on that. I will throw you every once in a while. Like, and you watch our channel where I'm like, hey, this is really cool. This is a thing you can do now. Um, there is a new one that's really neat. So AI can actually, there's a beta where um when like if you send me an email and it's got somebody else's contact information in the body of it, like, hey, I need you to reach out to my admin, Jessica at Jessica at Anna, blah, blah, blah, blah, um, the AI will actually create a contact for that admin as well. Oh, wow. Um, I don't know if it'll link it to you by title, but it pulls out what it can. So if there's a name, email address, phone number, really easily recognizable data. They had one where it'll pull it from your signature. So if it notices in your signature file that um your phone number is different or your title is different, the AI would update the CRM. It's part of that smart CRM, right? Um, but now this one is, and we've got clients who need to parse that out of the email. Like they get referrals from a third-party generic email address, and all the information on the contact is in the email. So now I've gone down a whole rabbit hole. I've I'll move back on.

HubSpot Tips And Product Update Ideas

SPEAKER_02 28:48

And when you were explaining that, in my head, I was like, we need to do like a video of you explaining product updates next year. So we can do that. I'm happy to. Then you can like this is what it means for you guys our clients, stuff like that. Okay, we'd yeah, that's an awesome idea. Okay. Yep. Yeah, no, that's some of the stuff that I've been thinking about. I know we're getting a little low on time, but I don't know if it matters that much since it's gonna be the last time. It's our last one.

SPEAKER_00 29:11

We're not doing the next two, so let's just run it a little longer.

SPEAKER_02 29:14

Let's just run it a little longer. That's what I was gonna say. So yeah, I think that brings us kind of into our last point, right? Is what we're bringing into 2026. So what are you bringing into 2026, Rich?

SPEAKER_00 29:30

Um, so me, I I bring a hot mess. Like I am just all over the place right now. Um, I'm currently having my panic of 2025 compressing on me. Oh my gosh. Like personally, professionally, accounting, like everything. Um yeah, I'm just like, I mean, to the point of where I'm like, somebody else just buy Christmas gifts and put my name on them. I'm like, I here's your budget. Like, just go do this. It doesn't help that we both weren't on I've been on trips like the last week to where Yeah, I think being gone for 10 days and coming back, so I'm still catching up, but I'm also like, oh, this shit has to be done by the end of the year. And I'm like, ah. Um so I say we close between Christmas and New Year's. I will be working. I've also got to move our server on December 28th from Sioux City to Omaha and make sure it works and everybody can access it on in January when we're back. Um, I think the biggest one though, so what um what we're I like your first question here. What are we gonna continue to invest in next year? Super, super easy. Existing clients, huge investment in existing clients. Um, and then uh team training. Uh whatever people want to do, team training. There's one that I posted while you were on vacation that I think you will want to do.

SPEAKER_02 30:40

Oh man, I think I saw it. Because Jessica posted the Digital Marketing Institute, and then you posted one after. Yep.

SPEAKER_00 30:46

And it was only$250, and you get two. It's Simon Sinek's Simon Sinek, we'll just plug him, why not? He's not a sponsor or anything, of course, but he didn't even know we exist. But he's doing a twofer. So he's got his presentation skills um seminar that is 90. Oh, yeah, that's what it was. And then he's got the um, if you do that, you can have a you can do find your why, which I think is like a five hour multiple sessions um based off of his book. So he'll give you find your why for free. So for 250, you get both of his top kind of things. And I just know everybody's been like, I want better presentation skills. I want to know more. And I'm like, I send it to just just because I'm like, everybody should sign up for this. Um but yeah, so investing in our people and our clients. So we are gonna pull back from new business, we're gonna pull back from going out and getting new clients. It's not that we don't want them. Um, we do. Um, it's just we've got a lot of good things going and we're hitting a stride. And I think that we've got this opportunity to invest more deeply in our clients. Um, and we're gonna change some of how we bill so that people can spend more time on things and not be as frustrated with like, I only have two hours to write this thing.

SPEAKER_02 32:00

Quality over quantity for sure. Yeah, for me.

2026 Focus: Clients, Training, And Value

SPEAKER_00 32:04

Yeah, and it's you know, I mean, we get to selling our time and it's like, why don't we sell our output? Why don't we sell our brilliance, our brains, and like the benefit that people get from this versus I paid five, I paid for five hours of you know, copywriting, so I got five hours of copywriting. It's like I'd rather be like, I wanted four blog posts and I wanted them to be really great and on brand and get noticed, and I did that, and they did. And if that took four hours, great. If that took 16 hours, great. Like it's we've got to figure out how to how to make that work. Um, so that's one of the things that we're really working on. But that's a huge investment in our existing clients because they're gonna benefit the most. Um, because they may not pay less. Um, I don't think that'll happen. But our team will spend more time and go deeper on things for them, and we'll have kind of some of those handcuffs that come with a like build for build per hour with you know accountants and lawyers and marketing and all that. So I think that's gonna be a big one. Um, and we've talked about that with content, like shifting our content to be really like, yes, there's gonna be a nod to potential new business, but it's really gonna be valuable for our existing clients.

SPEAKER_02 33:16

And we're gonna have fun with it. Like something that I want to go take into 2026 is not being afraid to take more calculated risks when it comes to our content with experiments, with our themes and our strategy. Strengthen like using content to strengthen our brand voice, which is gonna be fun. Like, I think I'm excited for 2026 and send this.

SPEAKER_00 33:40

Yeah, I mean, we've talked about we talked about those brands that had like weird points of view, right? We talked about the um the owl on TikTok for the Duolingo, right? Like some of that, like we're not gonna go that far, but we really need to hone in on what like that is and like double down on it and leverage it. Like it could be really great.

SPEAKER_02 34:00

We're gonna have a lot of content that doesn't bullshit you. I'm there goes the there goes the explicit ranking.

SPEAKER_00 34:07

You already said bullshit earlier, so yeah.

SPEAKER_02 34:09

But we don't want to bullshit you, and we're gonna tell you how it is. So if it's a tool, if it's a strategy or trend that we think is frankly bullshit, we're gonna tell you and we're not gonna dance around it, right? Like I mean if I do that at yeah, I do that in my onboardings.

SPEAKER_00 34:23

Like I'm sure you know, some people at HubSpot would probably be frustrated. But I also have seen the really good HubSpot CSMs who've been there like five years, 10 years, they do the same thing. They're like, yeah, that feature sucks. And we've talked about it internally, and no one's really doing anything about it. So here's some options for you to work around it, you know, that kind of thing. Um and I've shared that because when you've got new people coming into HubSpot, like they're super excited, like they're gonna launch it and do it. And I'm like, okay, here's some things that you need to fix right now before you have any data in here, because they shouldn't be built this way, but they are. You know, like the closed one uh property being just an open blank, like type anything you want into it. Like, no, it should be a drop-down with our common issues and maybe an other and a and a box. If you choose other, there's a box to type in what it was. But otherwise, like you could do closed one and you could say pricing, and I could do closed one and I could say, you know, competitor bid competitive bid. Those are the same thing we lost on price, but when I pull a report, they're gonna be different. Like anyway, I won't get into it.

SPEAKER_02 35:27

Well, and that's the kind of stuff that our clients and our audience want to hear, right? They want to hear what's worth doing, what's what not worth doing, and then what we think about things. So it's gonna be a big focus going forward. And I think uh I would love to build enough of a community through our content to have our audience's feedback become an integral part of how we create content. So creating that loop where we're getting suggestions and questions, and so 2026, that's what my focus is gonna be.

SPEAKER_00 35:56

So, what's interesting, Zach, is one of the things you've got this what you know set a marketing goal for 2026. We can go back to some of these other questions if you want to, or we can skip them, it doesn't matter to me. But um, that one is in here, and I think one of them is um we're gonna start measuring customer satisfaction. We do an NPS score, a net promoter score. Um, and it's pretty good. Um, but a lot of people don't fill it out. Like it goes out every six months to any client who's been with us more than six months. Um, but we're gonna start doing a CSAT. So, for instance, if we're working on a website right now, when that is over, the key contacts that we worked there, it's just gonna be um how easy was it to work with us is the question. And it's like a one to five, I think. Um, and then we'll have the option if they want to to expand on other things, but we're gonna start doing that with other stuff. So, how do we do that with retainer clients? How often do we do it? Who do we do it with? But anytime there's a big project that we do, so for instance, you deliver a content plan to a client. We're gonna send them a survey and ask them how easy it was to work with us on that. And then we're gonna ask them like how satisfied they are with the result and those kinds of things. So we're gonna start measuring that, and that's one of our marketing goals is to really have that data and that understanding. We're gonna use client health scores. Um, but I think as part of that, we can get some of that feedback that you want, especially if our primary audience is our clients. Um, you know, we want their feedback.

SPEAKER_02 37:22

And we wanna we have to raise the standard of work, right? So having those scores is like a number to shoot for. So 100%.

SPEAKER_00 37:27

Well, the other thing is if somebody's like in the fours and fives all the time, and then you do a project and suddenly it's a two, okay, we gotta have a conversation about why that one was a two because you're not usually a two. Are you upset about some people with different people? Were we trying something new? Did we bill you too much? Like what is the issue that came up there? Um so yeah, it's a lot. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 37:50

I think we covered some good points. Uh we did. We're gonna be pushing ourselves forward in a lot of ways. I mean, I think you covered a lot of the leadership stuff and a lot of the team-based like behind the scenes, which a lot of people don't get to usually see. And I covered my normal content stuff.

Measuring CSAT And Raising Standards

SPEAKER_00 38:06

Yeah. I mean, and I want, I think one of the other goals, like not a marketing goal necessarily, but a goal would be to have all of you pushing us. Like I don't have to come up with all the ideas. Um, and I actually have told a couple people, like, I you need to make me irrelevant within five years. Like, because I kind of want to, I mean, I'm gonna wanna sort of retire early, maybe or do whatever. But I'm like, like, I don't have to be the center of everything. Just make me irrelevant. But you got five years to do it, six years, whatever. Um and so that's like, you know, an interesting thing that requires, you know, me not coming up with ideas and forcing them on people, but you guys coming up with why are we doing it this way? Here's a better way to do it. Let's all talk about it and then let's go do it that way. Um We're definitely getting there. I think we're we're getting there, 100%. And I think some of that comes with autonomy, right? Like you have to have the autonomy to manage your area and do what you need to do. Um so that's always on my mind a lot.

SPEAKER_02 39:02

Yeah. Definitely. All right. All right. We went way over, but I think I had fun. I didn't even think I had fun. I definitely had fun.

SPEAKER_00 39:12

Yeah, it was good. And it's got to tide you over for like another two weeks. Because I don't think what the next one's gonna be like the first full week of January, probably, right? Yeah, give or take, something like that. Okay. We're not committing to it. Um and we are gonna experiment with something new next year. Do you want to share what that is? You remember what you don't want to talk about?

SPEAKER_02 39:28

Yeah. Yeah. We we're probably gonna try and do some of these live so that there's more interaction, which could be really cool. Uh the format might be a little different, so stay tuned for that. We still have some planning to do with it, but it's really exciting. I think we're gonna experiment with some different episode types. We still have guest spotlights that will be coming up. Um so getting more of those in the pipeline. And then also just experimenting with other formats with our podcast that we might not have tried before, maybe shorter 10 to 15 that are separate from these longer discussions that cover one. specific topic more in depth. Maybe we'll do a roundup of product updates, something like that.

SPEAKER_00 40:06

Just spitballing ideas here, but we could do uh we could do apertifs and answers. Just a little just a little cocktails. Or quick shots. Quick shots, shooters. Somebody we do get shooters, yeah. We do get people like who internally who've sent us like a drink and it's like a shot. And I think we've done one or two of those, but it's like we're not really about shots.

SPEAKER_02 40:26

It's more about the cocktails, but maybe we can give some of our team members their soapbox if they want to cover something in-depthly, but we don't want to write a blog about it. So just be ready for whatever. We don't know what we're gonna like exactly do, but we're probably gonna try a lot of different things. But definitely be ready for some live stuff and be ready to interact.

SPEAKER_00 40:43

That'll be a lot of fun excited about that one and getting that out there and we've got to kind of figure out timing and where to do it and some of the technical pieces, but I think we've got everything we need to do it. So yeah. So anyway, um we will see you in the new year. And until then you've got a plenty of time to give us feedback, right, Zach?

SPEAKER_02 40:58

Yep. As always, you can find our agency at inadote71.com and all of our socials are there as well. If you have a question you'd like to send our way, head to CTA podcast.live to shoot us an email or even better, leave us a voice message on our hotline at 402-718-9971. Your question will make it into a future episode of the podcast. And it says might on my prep sheet and I always have might but I always change it to will because it definitely will.

SPEAKER_00 41:26

Yeah and I mean maybe 2026 is the year we get like maybe we'll have a call in January. Somebody just call like starting and that'd be that'd give you an easy way to start the year off right with the first podcast. Just be like we'll take this topic that came in over Christmas and we'll just hammer that out.

SPEAKER_02 41:41

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 41:42

All right well Zach I will see you probably I'm definitely we'll see you before the end of the year but um for everybody else out there we'll talk to them um in a few weeks.

SPEAKER_02 41:50

Have a good rest of your year and see you in 2026.