The D2Z Podcast
Gen Z entrepreneur and DTC agency leader Brandon Amoroso talks with some of the best in the marketing world. Brandon and guests reveal their top business-growth strategies for anyone in the online space–whether you are a brick-and-mortar business looking to scale or an established online business trying to grow. Consumer marketing is under constant and dramatic change, so Brandon aims to tackle new problems with a fresh Gen Z mindset. The D2Z Podcast delivers insights, strategies, and tactics that you can use and aims to shift how you think about business and your relationships with your teams, partners, and customers.
The D2Z Podcast
Building Empathy Into Your Marketing - 147
In this episode of The D2Z Podcast, Brandon Amoroso speaks with Steven Sakach about the intersection of Gen Z entrepreneurship and empathetic marketing. Steven shares his journey in the digital marketing space, emphasizing the importance of building love into scalable systems and the need for authenticity in marketing. They discuss the transition from a service-based organization to a software company, the implementation of a pod structure for better employee engagement, and the significance of understanding customer emotions. The conversation also touches on the challenges of navigating advertising channels, the pros and cons of bootstrapping versus VC funding, and the future of marketing in an AI-driven world.
Here's What You'll Learn:
❗Empathetic marketing is essential for engagement.
❗Building love into business systems can enhance employee satisfaction.
❗A pod structure can foster collaboration and passion among team members.
❗Defining a higher purpose is crucial for business direction.
❗Younger generations prioritize authenticity and meaning in their work.
❗AI is rapidly evolving and impacting marketing strategies.
❗Understanding customer emotions can lead to better marketing outcomes.
❗Bootstrapping allows for greater control over business vision.
❗Authenticity is key to resonating with modern consumers.
❗The future of marketing will rely on emotional connections.
Timestamps:
00:00 Introduction to the Gen Z Mindset
03:12 Stephen's Entrepreneurial Journey and Conscious Marketing
06:01 Transitioning from Services to Software
08:54 Implementing a Pod Structure in Business
12:03 The Importance of Empathy in Marketing
15:02 Understanding Customer Emotions
17:59 Navigating Advertising Channels and Technologies
20:56 Bootstrapping vs. VC Funding in Business
24:03 Conclusion and Future Directions
Stephen Sakach:
Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephen-sakach-3181aa28b/
ZeroCompany:
Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/company/zero-company-performance-marketing/
Website - https://www.zerocompany.com/
Brandon Amoroso:
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/brandonamoroso/
Web - https://brandonamoroso.com/
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/bamoroso11/
X - https://twitter.com/AmorosoBrandon
Scalis.ai - https://scalis.ai/
Hey everyone. Thanks for tuning in to D2Z, a podcast about using the Gen Z mindset to grow your business. I'm Gen Z entrepreneur, Brandon Amoroso, the former founder of Electra, now co-founder of Scaleless, and today I'm talking with Steven Sikach, who's the founder and CEO of Xero Company, as well as the co-founder and CEO of AICMO. Thanks for coming on the show. Good to be here. I'm looking forward to the conversation.
Speaker 2:So Thanks for coming on the show. Good to be here. I'm looking forward to the conversation.
Speaker 1:So before we dive into everything, can you give everybody just a quick background on your entrepreneurial journey and the two different companies you're currently running?
Speaker 2:Yeah for sure. So we're in the digital marketing space and I remember like years ago, maybe a couple of decades ago, going to this consciousness seminar, you know, where we're talking about things like oneness and stages of consciousness and integral theory, and you know all these different philosophies and stuff. Like well, how are you going to apply this to your business? Back then it's like well, we do like a Google ad, you know, for people and this is like 20 years ago or so You've got like one headline, a couple of descriptions. How do you fit, you know, higher consciousness, consciousness into that? And really, kind of the journey has been, yeah, how do you do that? And especially coming from a marketing standpoint. So you know it was just asking that question over and over until we're like, oh really, it's all these other things around your business that, um, you can do, maybe from like a lot of people familiar with like a conscious capitalist approach to stuff you know. And for us it really became kind of this journey. We've got this mantra that we've always used, um called bliss, which is build love into scalable systems, so kind of the standpoint, and so we just kind of put that to work for us from the marketing standpoint. So what does that mean when we're building love into, you know, marketing, or into our systems, and it's just really dive into every part of your business, and you start thinking about that question, which I think is an important one.
Speaker 2:Today, especially, there's Gallup studies showing that only 23% of employees are engaged worldwide. That's a tragedy worldwide, right, that's a tragedy. You know that 77% are active, you know, either not engaged or actively engaged. It's just, and we spend so much time in our lives, you know, at business doing business, and to have people so disengaged with that it's like well, why? And so, from a marketing standpoint, for us it was really about how can we help build meaning into companies, how can we help build love in companies? And so we started asking that question a lot more and it really became this sort of empathetic, you know, marketing approach to how we do that.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, long story short, that ended up kind of directing our agency, and then we built this software that we just launched recently, the AI Chief Marketing Officer, and really what it was designed was trying to build that empathetic marketing kind of leadership that we wanted, you know, from a tool standpoint, we could build like an chief marketing officer that you know we love to work with. What would that look like? And so we started building that out and spent about a couple years doing that, and it's really focusing on kind of that, that empathetic approach that I talked to about marketing, trying to make emotional connections, and one of the ways we do that is it starts out with trying to help you define your business's higher purpose, and that's really a good place to start if you're trying to find meaning in what you do is defining that, and you probably talked about that a bit on this show, for sure how, what was the process like, trying to take what you do from a services standpoint and then get that into the software.
Speaker 1:And also, you know, leverage ai, which obviously is all the all the buzz over the last 18 to 24 months.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah and with ai too, it's like it's changing rapidly as you're going along, right. So you're like, okay, what are we going to build that won't be replaced by, like microsoft co-pilot in you know a couple years, or that the technology won't even exist, because you know open AI has solved that problem or whatever. So you've got kind of this moving target that you kind of have to feel ahead of the curve. But really for us it was like what is our process? You know, for any given client, if we could give them as much expertise and build it into a single tool, what would that look like? And so it was breaking down each of these elements into separate tools and there's probably like a hundred different tools in there.
Speaker 2:That it does, but no one's going to want to use something that's like a hundred different tools. So it's like, okay, we've got about a hundred different things that can do. How can we boil that down to maybe 10 different things in a tool and take you through this process so that will leverage maybe about 100 different expert approaches to marketing in there. Right, do that. And then, along with our mantra of trying to build love into a scalable system, how can we do this so that it helps companies build love into what they're doing and tell those, and tell those, uh, those kinds of stories that are um much more connected.
Speaker 1:What's it been like making the transition from running a services or to a software company?
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're still like so it's really becoming sort of another part of our company, right, it's sort of a branch out of our company and it's like the interesting part is we've almost got like this working lab of marketers that we can test the tools on all the time so we can iterate and things like that.
Speaker 2:So that's um been exciting. And then the same time frame too, we're also like you know, maybe we're a little crazy, but we're we're kind of reorganizing our company to be more like self-managed, um kind of pod structures, which is, you know, kind of the sort of next level kind of business structure at the same time. So, um, which really helped us to kind of bring everybody together in different ways with their expertise, um, so that we've got our ai dev team talking to our sales people or talking to our marketers and, you know, really working together and that. So it's been. It's been, you know, certainly a challenge, but it's been fun. Um, actually, this has probably been the most fun I've had in the past couple years trying to go through this whole process you mentioned transitioning into like a, a pod structure.
Speaker 1:Can you talk a little bit more about that and what that actually entails and how that might be different from how most businesses are set up?
Speaker 2:yeah, I think most and this is part of that problem that we talked about with that, you know, engagement.
Speaker 2:They're like this hierarchical structure, right, where it's sort of top down, you know everyone cracking down the hierarchy on each other, and so I think that starts with leadership, kind of understanding that, no, now you're actually in service to your teams, to your employees, right, and so that, really, you kind of have to start with leadership modeling, eq and being empathetic and kind of understanding some of that, because what you're going to then do is allow people that you're serving to become leaders themselves, and so you've got, for us, it'd be like different marketing execs or salespeople that come together in these different pod structures and really allows them to almost find what they love the most.
Speaker 2:You know, hey, I, like I'm working with, instead of working in, kind of, a silo doing my job, now I'm working with this team, and one of the silo doing my job now I'm working with this team, and one of the team members says, hey, I really love doing this. Another team person might be, oh yeah, I hate that you take all that work and now I really love doing this other end. So what you end up having, though, is people who end up being very much more passionate about their different roles in there, and I think that really really does help that engagement process that we have, and it's just been fun seeing people participate in new ways that they haven't before.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think putting the ownership in the team members is always a good call, no matter how you go about actually putting that into practice, and so long as they're willing to take that on but also a little bit more accountability.
Speaker 2:And then this is where, really going back to having that purpose in your business, where, if you have a well-defined purpose, that becomes kind of the boss right For everyone. It's like this is the guide rails. How we get there, we don't know, but this is the guide rails, right, is this entire purpose that you're doing? So that really allows leadership a little bit to step back, let go and let them find a way to that, that purpose, and so you know, that becomes that freedom part that we talked about.
Speaker 1:so that's been a fun process, but, yeah, we're doing that in the middle of everything else we're doing what have been some of like the biggest gotchas, you would say, along your entrepreneurial journey that, uh, you took away as pretty big learning lessons that you've leveraged over time.
Speaker 2:Biggest gotchas business person is really thinking empathetically as much as you can, um, because you can have great ideas and you know it may not resonate and so, like, resonance is sort of everything, I think, especially when it comes to marketing, right? Um, you want stories that resonate, but also you want a job with meaning. You know that resonates with people, and since you know we're kind of talking gen z, I feel like the younger generation they kind of get this more and faster, you know, than previous generations. So, because of all the work other generations have done, but you know, going back to studying consciousness, they're coming up to a place of consciousness much faster, much quicker, and so meaning becomes much more important early on in in lives. You know, and so you're looking for a job that resonates with you.
Speaker 2:You're looking for, you know, meaning, and now we've got even younger generations who are going to be pretty much waking up in the AI algorithm space. They're born with this, they're raised by the feed and taught to consume, I guess, and definitely the most marketed to generations in history, right, because it's constantly coming at people now, and so you know, they know every trick, they know when they're being manipulated and they know when something doesn't sound authentic a lot easier, right. And so I think, really going back to that purpose in your company and kind of understanding sort of a North Star so that you can be about it, it's just the sooner you can figure that out with your company, I think, the better off you're going to be. And so it did take us a while just to figure that out, because it's like, how do we develop these higher consciousness thoughts into doing ads? It wasn't an easy journey, but I think we made some good strides there.
Speaker 1:I feel like the BS detector that consumers have now for marketing is way higher than what it used to be, and so the bar is so much greater for organizations, whether it be to be or be to see yeah, it's like they think maybe the younger generation even are like they're not anti.
Speaker 2:It's like they think maybe the younger generations even are like they're not anti-business, they're anti-BS right, they don't. They don't hate brands, they hate inauthenticity, right, it's just it's because it doesn't resonate. You know, they reject being manipulated, and so I think the future of marketing it's really got to go to that more of that authentic space. You've got to be about it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, when you're working with the business, how do you go about extracting from them the information that you need to be able to help them deploy successful you know, empathetic marketing campaigns?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So that's really kind of what we tried to build out quite a bit in the um, ai, cmo tool, which is, I think, starting with kind of digging down into purpose um first. And so we've got we've got kind of a tool in there that you could either spend an hour with or five minutes with, depending on how much time you want to spend with it. But it's really like help us define a general purpose for you in some way that resonates with you. It doesn't have to be the most you know eloquent purpose, necessarily out of the gates, but if we can at least use that as a guide rail, then we can then kind of move on to a next step is like okay, well, how can we do, uh, something that will emotionally connect with your audience? And so most marketers you start with that basic customer journey. You know kind of exercise, right right, like what are they going through in this customer journey? And so we've really tried to take that to more of a what are the emotions they're feeling during these different stages? Because really that's kind of the key part of that is empathetic marketing. It's just how people feel, I think, when you get to that process of advertising to them, there's all different ways they feel. Then, when they're actually consuming that product, there's all different ways they feel.
Speaker 2:And then when they're actually consuming that product, there's the consumption emotions, right, and this is where they can either be your biggest advocate, right, and your brand ambassador and all these things, if you hit it right, if you, you know, bring them some surprise or some delight kind of emotions in there and pull that out of it, um and or they can be like, you know, on social media. This is trash. I don't like this all the line. Now it's you got the opposite problem right, but so we're going through that process of even the consumption emotions Like, how can we?
Speaker 2:We have a surprise and delight tool in there? It's like, how can we help you build something into your business that taps into those emotions so that the experience people are having is one that really takes them to the next level? Because if you can build an emotional connection there's studies out there you'll get 306% improved lifetime value over a satisfied customer. That's over a satisfied customer's over a satisfied customer. But if you make that extra step to really try and emotionally connect with them, this is where you do find those communities around brands and things like that right when it comes to like actually deploying a campaign, what are your typical channels that you're you're working through with organizations and are you typically doing like b2b or it'll depend.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, it'll depend on what's kind of in their best interest. So, um, you, obviously I just think you kind of want to start with the, the low-h fruit, whatever that may be for you. But if it's a business, maybe your audience is on LinkedIn, right, but they're probably also doing some kind of search on Google as well, of some type, and those searches might be in different stages of that. Maybe they're just educating themselves right now, or maybe they're trying to choose between two products or something. So you have different stages that they're at even in those searches, and so you want to be able to speak to each of those stages so that you're relevant to them and you're emotionally connecting to them.
Speaker 2:Um, so, but we do, yeah, we, we'll do everything from search to you know, any social channel, uh, to programmatic advertising, which is maybe, um, maybe, like your hulu, you know, tv kind of things. Programmatic is really the area where you get into things can get really creepy with with this kind of stuff. You can do that. You can just target individual. You know, if there's 10 houses on this street, I want to target that one specific house, for whatever reason, right, and because our phones, our phones are so, um, they tell us a lot about ourselves programmatic. It has a lot of stuff there, we just have to be careful.
Speaker 2:It's like where's the line of creepy and, um, helping people sometimes that gets a little blurry, but we're like no, that's creepy I swear my phone is listening to me.
Speaker 1:I mean, the amount of times that I have gotten an instagram ad or something about a conversation that I was having, you know, 45 minutes before, is uh. It's adding up to the point where you know I, I, you're like something's not right here.
Speaker 2:But yeah, and what's interesting is like you can take your phone into like your friend's house or something and suddenly now you're seeing an ad that's directed just to you. It's like wait a minute, how did that happen? Um, but there's literally, I mean there's ways you can do that kind of stuff where it's just like you know, I don't know what year we are now it's just getting crazy.
Speaker 1:We're in the future.
Speaker 2:We've got AI, we've got, you know, ads tracking us around everywhere.
Speaker 1:Are there any like new tools, technologies, advertising platforms that you're excited about this year?
Speaker 2:advertising platforms, that that you're excited about this year. Well, certainly, I think, um, you know, we've been, we've been in ai a lot, like even before, like this new, you know, sort of generative ai phase. So, for you know, a decade or so, if you're doing any kind of google ad or any other you know platform, you're working with ai to some extent. Um, and I'd say there's probably some individual tools in certain platforms that can be used really uniquely. Like google, for instance, you know, you got like their performance max or some kind of campaign or a demand chain campaign, and you can either use those horribly wrong or you can, you know, use them.
Speaker 2:Uh, exactly right, and it'll do some very sophisticated stuff where, um, you know, if you're trying to, if you're buying a car, you're getting touched. Probably you've got about 700 touch points in that buying process, right, which is kind of crazy if you think about it. And so, um, humans, we can only help market to some extent. You know, along those different touch points and try and build that out. But, uh, at some point, ai is really going to be pretty brilliant at understanding all of those and figuring out where you are. So that's where some of, I think, some of the platforms are getting better at. So you know, not necessarily an individual platform, but some of that technology is really improving.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it feels like every day there's a new update or some sort of advancement that we're able to leverage in some way. I mean, like maybe half of what we have in our platform right now would not have been possible a year ago, because either the the accuracy or the price or just the actual functionality that it is providing wasn't there, and it's just seeming to multiply on itself even more so, yeah, yeah, and for us, when we're developing the ai chief marketing officer tool, really we were focusing on this empathetic approach and we knew one of the key elements is, the closer it can be to human senses, the better it's going to be right.
Speaker 2:And then along came that sort of vision element right in that development process, and so we didn't start out. We said this is going to come along at some point where ai is going to be able to see and tell you stuff about it. So we kind of programmed a bit around that until the capabilities came. And then we're like, yes, now this is perfect, we want this vision to be seen in our tools so that you can upload basically any kind of picture and say, hey, here's my marketing problem, help me fix this, and it'll do it from expert level, um, no matter what that is. So it could be.
Speaker 2:Hey, here's my trade show booth, right? Um, how can I improve this? Or here's my window display, uh, how can I, you know, improve that? Or even the interior of my store or my restaurant. So now you've given ai this vision so that it can be a little bit more empathetic in kind of solving that problem. So it's cool watching some of these developments come along. But as it gets these more human senses or capabilities, then I think it'll have more ability to be empathetic, the way we want it.
Speaker 1:Is your new software product. Is that all bootstrapped or did you raise outside funding for that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that, that all bootstrapped or did you raise outside funding for that? Yeah, that was all bootstrapped. Um developed it from uh. Then what? About two, two years almost um working through that process and really we launched um uh, it was about a month and a half ago, so six weeks ago or so, when we kind of soft launch Um, but yeah, that was. You know, it's not an easy process to do, but the nice thing is like we already had a functioning business and, like I said, our working lab of marketers where we can test things and iterate things and actually use these tools to make our marketing better at the same time. Things and actually use these tools to make our marketing better at the same time.
Speaker 1:So you know, it wasn't like being sort of cold turkey starting out from nothing, which is very it's much harder to do. What would you say are like the pros and cons of that approach? I mean obviously building within. You know the service offering that you currently are providing has its own advantages, but being able to take profits and revenue from other sources and then invest that in the software. I've heard pros and cons from people going to raise the VC route and then also just bootstrapping. I think bootstrapping is picking up more and more steam over the last two years as VC funding has either dried up or it's been a little bit less glamorized than it was historically. But what are your thoughts on that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think for us, because we're really in a way trying to do something that's really about kind of radical love in business if we can, and so for us to kind of be caretakers of that vision without it being, you know, pulled in one direction or another, I think that's a huge benefit for us.
Speaker 2:As far as bootstrapping going to work if you know we're coming from, say like a conscious capitalist approach or maybe a level above that as well um, as far as business consciousness and we've got, say, some investment, um company that's, you know, more in the traditional approach to things where it's just gonna, it's just not gonna work, um, and if you studied, like some of these organizations that are sort of those next level businesses that work, and when they don't work, it's when they bring someone in who's kind of not seeing eye to eye on that consciousness part, right, and then it's just everything just starts disconnecting and falling apart. So that's to me it's like all right, we want to kind of make our case, if we can, on our own, without having to be influenced. You know, one way or another, there are good conscious VC folks out there as well that will be along with you in that journey too, so I think you could probably find that route, but it's much rarer.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, there's bad money and there's good money for sure.
Speaker 2:So yeah, exactly, we're like just being able to control the vision. I think is really important to us right now well.
Speaker 1:I really appreciate you hopping on and sharing all these insights with us, but before we jump, can you let people know where they could connect or find you online, and also the the types of businesses that you typically work with as well?
Speaker 2:yeah, um, go to aicmoio that's the uh artificial intelligence marketing officer um software there. Um, really, we test it with any kind of business, so the crazier the better. We think it's just fun because it's like, oh wow, how can you build love into this type of business? Or come, find a purpose for this type of business, and sometimes those are the ones that are impacted the most, and so we're trying to test it on every type of business we come across just to see how it reacts. So, yeah, go there, check that out. Our digital agency, zerocompanycom, z-e-r-o company, zerocom. Check us out there if you need any, if you're trying to tell you know more of a emotionally connecting story with your business, you know in the digital space, we'd love to help you about that. That's what we're all about.
Speaker 1:Awesome. Well, again, thank you for coming on. I really appreciate it For everybody who's listening. As always, this is Brandon Amoroso. You can find me at brandonamorosocom or scalistai. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next time.