Good Enough Isn't

Poetry, Private Equity, and the Marketing Principles That Outlast Everything

• Patrick Patterson & Myles Biggs

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In this episode, hosts Myles Biggs and Patrick Patterson sit down with Cody Lee, Principal on the Peak Performance Group at Summit Partners, to trace a career that spans pharmaceutical advertising, poetry, copywriting, growth marketing, and private equity. Cody leads the Marketing Center of Excellence, supporting more than 120 portfolio companies in technology, healthcare, financial services, consumer, and more. His path is anything but linear, and that is exactly the point.

What holds it all together? A conviction that the fundamentals of marketing do not change. How people think, what motivates them, how markets work. Cody introduces one of the most useful mental models in the episode: separating what is valid from what is relevant. It is a framework he learned from his father at 16 in a client meeting, and it is now more critical than ever as AI floods every organization with valid content that lacks relevance.

Tune in to learn how to connect marketing to a financial investment thesis, why the four Ps still win, what generative search is actually doing to your funnel, and how expanding your surface area of opportunity is the best career advice for anyone starting out, especially right now.

Key Takeaways

  • Valid vs. Relevant: Learn the mental model Cody inherited from his father and has applied across every stage of his career, from client meetings to AI prompting. Many things are valid. Only a few are relevant. The best leaders know the difference.
  • The Liberal Arts Foundation of Great Marketing: Cody never took a single marketing class in college. Instead, he studied psychology, economics, and creative writing, the disciplines that explain how people think, what motivates them, and how words connect to commercial outcomes.
  • Marketing Inside Private Equity: Understand how to connect your marketing programs to the investment thesis of your business. Learn to speak the language of value creation levers, lead with what is relevant to the board, and translate marketing impact into financial outcomes.
  • AI Amplifies the Fundamentals, It Does Not Replace Them: The leaders getting the most from AI are the ones investing heavily in context-setting upfront. AI is extraordinarily good at producing valid output. The human operator defines what is relevant.
  • The Four Ps Still Win: No promotion strategy can save a broken product, misaligned pricing, or poor distribution. Cody makes the case, with a Fyre Festival reference, that the most durable framework in marketing is still the one from the textbook.
  • Increase Your Surface Area of Opportunity: Stop treating each career step as final or fatal. Every move expands your access to people, worlds, and opportunities you cannot yet imagine. It is a grounding message for anyone navigating an AI-disrupted job market.

Resources and Links

Guest:

Cody's LinkedIn: Connect with Cody Lee

Marketing Order of Operations article: Read the framework


Connect with the show:

Myles's LinkedIn: Connect with Myles Biggs

Patrick's LinkedIn: Connect with Patrick Patterson

Level Agency: Learn more about Level Agency


Special Offer:

AI Visibility Audit: Find out how prepared your business is for the AI Search Revolution. Get your AI Visibility Scorecard today.

SPEAKER_01

One of the things that my parents instilled in me was learn how to learn, love the act of learning, and then try to learn the fundamental principles that don't change, and then apply those to whatever you want.

SPEAKER_00

Hello everyone, and welcome back to the show. I'm your host, Miles Biggs. Today I'm here once again with the CEO of Level Agency and my co-host, Patrick Batters. On this podcast, we are driven by truth, sometimes the hard truth. We believe it's imperative to be relentless for results because if you're not, your competitor is. We're obsessed with how to be better every day because that's what our customers deserve. And if you can set aside your ego, if you can truly be no ego, then we're at the show to help you go all in. Because good enough isn't. Today's guest is Cody Lee, principal of the Peak Performance Group at Sonic Partners. There he leads the marketing center of excellence across roughly 120 portfolio companies, spanning software, healthcare, financial services, and consumer tech. From poetry to private equity, Cody's path has been anything but linear. And today we're going to cover that career arc and how some of these seemingly unrelated endeavors have actually compounded into his success today. We're also going to cover patterns he's recognized in his work and learnings that you can all put into practice after you finish listening to this podcast. So, Cody, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_01

Thanks for having me. It's uh great to be here. And I love the theme of Good Enough Isn't. Um, and I tried to look back on my career, and I I think it actually helps be the fulcrum that connects all the pieces. So I'm looking forward to talking with all of you about that.

SPEAKER_00

From what I know about your career and uh some time spent researching, I have to admit it was super hard to know where to start with you. Because I mean, like from poetry to private equity, in and of itself, sounds like it could be like a Netflix original movie. Oh yeah, I'd watch that. We could just stay right there. Uh but like any good story, I like to just begin at the beginning, right? And from what I understand in the research is you were essentially born into marketing uh with your parents running a pharmaceutical advertising agency. And so I'm curious, growing up in that environment, like what did that teach you as a kid?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, it's a great, it's a great thing. I like to say, you know, marketing has been in my blood, right, from the beginning. Um, you know, my my parents co-founded a pharmaceutical advertising agency uh back in the 80s. Um and it had almost a 40-year run, which is quite a run for an agency. Um, it had peaks and it had uh implosions, you know, as every entrepreneurial journey does. Like I learned principally like a lot about entrepreneurship from that, right? How hard it is to start something, how it is interwoven into your identity, right? In many ways, like their first child was their agency together, you know. Uh Candidly was probably my dad's fourth child. He had six children, and uh my mom had two. And I come from a very blended family. But, you know, I learned a lot from the beginning about the importance of communication, the importance of listening, right? Um, and there's always multiple sides to a story. Um, you know, my my parents uh ended up getting divorced when I was very young as well, um, which was probably the best thing to happen for that situation. Uh they had an amicable divorce, but look growing up in a divorced environment with marketing and advertising people, right? There's many stories, right? And trying to find the truth uh and learning that the truth really depends on your perspective. Uh, if if you if you zoom out, right? Um so I uh knew that I would love getting into marketing, um, and I'm very blessed to have that, right? Some people they want nothing to do with what their parents did. I wanted to do everything that my parents were doing, and hopefully not their mistakes, right? So that's you learn a little bit of both.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I'm curious. Was there uh was there like that moment when you were a kid where you look around and you see what your parents are doing and you're like, this is what I want to do? And if so, I'm just curious, like what about it appealed to you at such a young age?

SPEAKER_01

You see an ad on TV, you know, and your dad comes into the room and he's like, Hey, I did that ad. You know, that's cool.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, that's cool.

SPEAKER_01

Right. Um, you know, they helped launch the brand Triaminic, for example, which is like a famous brand um for you know in pediatricians. And um, they had this incredible direct mail campaign back in the day. They literally mailed an orange tree to all of the top pediatricians in the country to plant in front of their office as a visual reminder of Triaminix distinctive brand asset was orange and orange flavor and orange color. And they would send their sales reps in every six to twelve months, the client that they were working with to tend to the tree and tend to the client. Right. And you hear this story, and you're like, I don't know what I was, probably 13 or something, and it's it's not live, right? It's like a tale of the past. I'm like, that is so breakthrough, right? And so cool. And you know, you think about direct mail and account-based marketing now and things like that, and you're like, oh, that's kind of like old and stuff, and it's coming back, and there's creativity, and you know, I like to think about what's old is new again, and how do you reinvent and see the things that don't change, right? Because so much does change. But that was really a pivotal moment learning about that. Um, and then I had the good fortune to be able to literally intern, you know, all through high school at their agency, right? So I was 15, I was getting on the train, I was commuting to Chicago at 7 a.m. I was working 10 hours at an agency, like grinding like you all do, right? And working 50-hour weeks at like 15, I did it at 15, I did it at 16, I did it at 17, I did it at 18, and I loved it. I just loved it. Um, and I I fell in love with the work, I fell in love with the craft, I fell in love with the commercial aspects, and uh I'm really blessed to have had that experience and kind of on-ramp into my career.

SPEAKER_02

You know, that's both my parents uh ran their own businesses. Uh, I wish either of them would have been marketing uh focused, right? You know, my mom was a child psychologist and my and my dad was an accountant. So at 14 I was doing nonprofit audits with my dad, right? And and all that taught me was that I definitely did not want to be an accountant. Those are important things. Those are important things. Uh so like looking back at like I I find every now and again, you know, something happens in my day-to-day, something happens in my, you know, in a leadership team meeting or a client meeting or something, and I'm like, man, I remember, you know, my parents dealing with something very similar. Uh you know, does that happen to you as well? Do you still pull back from those moments when you were 15, 16, 17, uh interning and and realizing maybe you didn't realize it then that you were learning a lesson, but now when you look back, you actually understood that you were learning a lesson and and what were some of those?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, so many, so many lessons. Some that you like you mentioned, you're aware of at the time, you know, and others you're like, what the heck? Like, I'm 16 and I'm like in the client meeting with like the brand manager of China? Like, what, like, what the heck are they thinking putting me in that room? And I have the foresight now to be like, oh, you know, we had such a good relationship with that client, you know, they were kind of doing my dad a solid, you know, letting their son come in. But they put me in the room to like take the notes and send the summary. And and at the time, you're like, oh, I'm just taking notes and doing a summary and whatever. But you learn now, I'm like, wow, I'm really good at articulating what actually just happened, active listening, what are the next steps that need to happen? Um, I I learned a core thing from my dad, he had this line that he talked about separating relevance from validity, which is a lot of things are valid, but only a few things are relevant. And it's how do you translate everything that happened or everything that was said into what was meant and what matters, right? And it's a key learning that I had through repetition, watching him do it, him guiding me on how to do it. Um, and I take it now to this day, I talk with the marketing leaders that I work with and collaborate with. I'm like, okay, you know, this slide has 10 valid things, but I think these three are the most relevant. And let's talk about why and how that matters. And the ability to know the context and connect the dots in order to find what's relevant is a key skill that I think I learned very early and continue to try to you know get better at and constantly learn about what's relevant and valid. Um, it changes depending on the context. I definitely learned a long ways of oh wow, that really wasn't relevant. You know, I shouldn't have said that, or you know, that was a mistake in context, but that was a key learning for sure.

SPEAKER_02

I think that's that's I mean, I love that framework. I'm gonna I'm definitely stealing that, Cody. So just uh yeah, you know you can you can send a note um to your to your dad and thank him if uh if that's possible. And so the the idea here though of valid versus relevant, I don't think there's ever been a period of time where that's more important when all of the data, all of the lists, all of the slides, all of the things that we're looking at now are being touched by AI. Um you know, AI is so good at putting valid up and so bad at understanding what is relevant, right? Yes. Um how are how has how have you seen that evolve over the past year as as you've seen leaders adopt more AI usage? And you know, how are you personally adapting that that framework that you have to to insert AI into it?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, yeah, it's a great question. And I I think fundamentally, you know, AI is a tool, right? And a tool requires an operator. Right. Um, and you know, maybe we'll get to universal intelligence and AIs managing AIs as operators, but like at this point, right, we the human in the loop, right, need to be that intelligent operator to provide the guidance, the guardrails, the context to define what is relevant, right? To help guide this all-knowing machine of what you provide it, right? It only is as good as the context. And so, you know, we have this AI, you know, show and tell series that I put on at Summit with the marketing leaders. You know, two marketing leaders come on to talk through hey, here's a use case that actually had quantified impact. Here's how I did it, here's the value that it provided, here's the learnings along the way. And what really connects those use cases that drive the most value is they spent a lot of time training, setting context, giving it the right information so that it knows what is relevant, right? Versus just the unlimited validity machine. Correct, yeah. Um, and so it's a totally uh a framework that I can apply, and I think the best leaders kind of intuitively do it and have that ability to identify and train on hey, I know this is relevant versus not. And it's part of the I think a challenge now because early career, it's hard to know what's valid versus relevant, right? Um, and that's why I think a lot of you know AI leverage is being had at the mid and senior levels, you know, more than the the junior levels, unless it's automating work that doesn't have as much of the relevance versus validity constraint where the difference between the two, the delta isn't actually as deep, right? Um, but it's definitely something that I look at and see the best leaders are are doing and kind of building it into their systems now.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I think you know that that context building at the beginning um with anything that you're doing, right? Working with people, working with systems, working with agents is so crucial. You know, I I do a lot of Claude code uh in in my spare time, and I'll spend two and a half hours on a spec for something that Claude can code in 45 minutes, right? Um but that two and a half hours saves you know 10x rewrites afterwards because it has the right context, it knows what's relevant um versus what's valid. Uh because as it starts, as you said, it's just this vanilla all-knowing thing, but it doesn't specifically know what you want, right? Uh and so I think it's it's really, really good. So definitely stealing that framework. Love that. Um you should patent that or something. It's it's really good.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, thank you.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I use it a lot. Uh if we go back to you on a train at like 16 onto your 50-hour work week, right? Um, by the time you even got to college, it sounds like you essentially had a marketing degree already just from like lived experience. So is that where the poetry came in to go back to our Netflix movie that we're all gonna watch? Like you just decided I already know this, and so I'm gonna learn something else, or like how does that fit in?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, it's a great question. So I um exactly right. Like I I'd been getting like MBA level coaching from my parents and my lived experience in marketing, um, you know, reading case studies, doing the work, um, but I loved the work, right? And um, you know, one of the things that my parents instilled in me was, you know, learn how to learn, love the act of learning, and then try to learn the fundamental principles that don't change, and then apply those to whatever you want. And so I I took a liberal arts approach to a marketing degree, which was combining, I studied psychology, economics, and creative writing. And so I I double-majored in creative writing and English, I double-minored in psychology and economics. And if you think about those three disciplines, they are the foundations of good marketing, right? How do people think? What motivates them? How do we move them? Uh, often what we're doing is creativity and words to influence and connect. And then the economics, why it's not an art but a commercial discipline, right? Is how does it turn into money, right? How do you connect the customer with the commercial outcome? Um, and so I I studied those those three things as part of that, and I fell in love with poetry. Um, I liked poetry growing up. My dad loved poetry, I read poetry books, and so I always had a kind of romantic you know connection with poetry. And so that was my concentration uh in college. And I was really at a crossroads when I graduated. It was do I go get an MFA, right, and and focus in poetry? My mother got an MFA in in design and ended up going into graphic design. That's how she started in her career, and so that was a path I was thinking about, you know, or the path was hey, that sounds really expensive. Like I could probably be a copywriter, which is turning poetry into commercial outcomes, right? Um, I'm gonna go into copywriting instead, right? And and I had I did have the leg up of of being able to essentially be a you know a fractional copywriter for uh you know my parents' agency. It was my dad's agency at the time. Um, but then I was also you know uh a fractional copywriter. I got a bunch of different jobs for different individuals as I would different companies as I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do next.

SPEAKER_02

When you chose those majors in college and working through them, was the goal to to go into marketing? Did you did you specifically choose those? I mean, they're perfect, right? As you said, for for a marketing uh career. Is was that your goal because of your your previous experience? Um and and so while you were doing that and you were in there, um you know, you probably had more experience than some of the professors uh that were teaching you based on your internships. Uh you know, were there were there moments where you were like, oh, this this work experience I got actually is is allowing me to do better than than than the other students, or you know, because you're able to make those connections probably that other folks weren't able to make.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I mean, I would say my professors were were incredible. Um and part of the things that I was studying were these, you know, disciplines that I I didn't write. I'm not a psychologist, I'm not a economist, you know, I'm not a noble laureate poet, right? So it was learning from from those folks. And it's it's I didn't take a single marketing class in college by design. To your point, right? It was like I could read the case studies on my own. Um, you know, I am doing the applied projects in my work, right? I was also interning through college, you know, at a digital marketing, you know, publisher, basically. Um, and so the lens though that you talk about was constantly while I was learning these things, in my back of my mind, I was using them to interpret the marketing I was seeing in the world, and how do I think about applying them going forward in in the work that I do? Um, and so you know, if I'm learning about you know Maslov's hierarchy of needs from a psychology perspective, you know, it's like, oh, what are the fundamental things that people crave when they're buying? Right? Is it security? Is it needs? Is it self-actualization? Right. Like I was thinking in those models, you know, and I I won't say every day because I'm also like grinding trying to figure out how to, you know, ace the test and stuff like that. But you know, after college, certainly, you know, I I had that lens and application, and I had the benefit of uh you know, knowing kind of what I wanted to do, uh, and just taking the next step. You know, I I never knew I was gonna go into private equity. I tell you, I didn't even know what private equity was when I was in college. I couldn't even spell it. Like so it was definitely a journey. Um, but certainly when I was in college, it was thinking about, you know, what are those fundamentals? And part of my job today, you know, I work with 120 plus companies in all sorts of different industries and all sorts of different scale. You know, what are those patterns? What are those frameworks that are the fundamentals that you can adapt right to the context, right? You can make them relevant to the context. Um, and that's part of what like I've loved my entire life is trying to figure out those aspects and kind of the contrarian point of hey, a lot changes, right? But many things don't. And human brains are very slow to change. Uh, and so it's how are we connecting with those minds?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, so if we jump ahead to that, like when we introduced you, we talk about principle at Summit, right? The private equity group. I think when people hear that, they just see a spreadsheet with numbers in their brain and assume that's what you're doing all day with private equity. So you've hinted at it, but let's let's talk about it more specifically. Like, what what is your role and what are you doing when we talk about we're working with these 120 plus companies and their marketing?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, absolutely. Well, I certainly have a lot of spreadsheets open right now. So uh so that's true. I'm in spreadsheets a lot. It's it's funny, like I'll just do a little zoom back for a second, but when I went from copywriting my next job, I was a paperclip campaign manager, right? It's interesting jump. And I was in that interview process, and they were looking at my background like you are, and they're like, How is this relevant? You know, my job's trying to make the valid relevant. And I said, Well, uh a search ad's not too different from a sonnet. We've got constraints and we've got uh character limits and we're trying to impact the audience. And they were like, But do you know Excel and math? And I was like, I also know economics. And they're like, okay, we'll take a gamble on this guy. But I was like, I can improve your click-through rate. So yeah, it's it's balancing this the spreadsheet with the arts. But um, yeah, so my role at Summit, um, I started here a little over six years ago. I'm on what's called our peak performance group, which is our our value enhancement group or our operational advisor group. Um, and so we exist to partner with our portfolio company management teams to help them drive growth, right? We are a growth equity investor. Um, so the name of the game is is how do you grow profitably? Right. Um and I joined the team. Team to build our marketing support practice. Our team's been around for about 15 years. We build our capabilities internally to address the common challenges or opportunities that we see in the portfolio. I had the pleasure before I joined Summit of getting to work as a somewhat fractional uh marketing leader in a few Summit portfolio companies, which is how I got to know Summit and they got to see my work in a few other companies. What's going on over there in marketing? And that seems good, and we're getting like pipeline and growth, you know. And so I would get to meet these, you know, board members from Summit perspective, and they got to kind of try before they buy, right, with with me and brought me into the to the firm. And you know, very candidly, it's like I was a black sheep, right? My peers are investment bankers and financial analysts and you know McKinsey consultants and things like that. And it was like, how can marketing drive value? Right. But I I think similar to good enough is it, Summit has a principle, which my translation of good enough isn't is continuous improvement at Summit, right? And it was okay, I think we can continuously improve by leveling up our go-to-market support for our portfolio companies. And so I came in to lead that and have built that function over the last you know six plus years. And really it's twofold. You know, one, I help on the um diligence side of things. So, hey, we're looking at a new investment. How's their marketing, people process tools, programs? What are opportunities that we can work on together or investments that we might want to make or risks that we need to mitigate, right? Helping that in the investment thesis. And then we translate that into projects that we collaborate on with the management team. And I'm working as often kind of a thought partner to the marketing leader, or helping many times hire that first marketing leader, right, for scale. Um, and then working collaboratively with them on key projects that can, you know, drive revenue, drive profit, you know, efficient growth, um, scaling the team, scaling the programs, scaling the measurement processes. And then um, you know, that's kind of my one-on-one engagements. And then I have uh we've built what we call our scaled programs or our network value, which is hey, there are 120 plus companies on the leading edge of experimentation of good enough isn't. How do we share those best practices and knowledge um to increase your time to value so that hey, you're thinking about this experiment? There's three companies who have done it with your similar context who've all succeeded. So, like, let's accelerate that investment. On the flip side, hey, there might not be as much success here from a confident experiment standpoint. And so we bring together leaders with um uh you know events, common like show and tell series, like we talked about, you know, data sharing, benchmarks, things like that. And it's been a phenomenal role. Uh, I love it. I love being able to help and add value to these companies and hopefully act as like a connector and a multiplier. Um, and that's you know, Summits MO. We we really try to act as true part value-added partners. Um, and it's one of, you know, Candlese is one of our differentiators in terms of when you're thinking about where you want to uh have an investor, you know, can they bring some of this operational support to bear?

SPEAKER_02

The um the transition from marketing role to private equity, uh you know, we we uh we brought on uh a private equity sponsor about three years ago. And that uh I I you know that it's funny, that black sheep feeling you have. Uh I definitely feel that sitting in the room with you know a bunch of Harvard and UPenn MBA uh folks that have you know done thousands of transactions and um and uh it's very interesting. Uh how do you you know I I for me, you know, there was uh definitely a period of imposter syndrome of like what am I doing in this room? Um but then realizing like hey, what I know about marketing is is is you know vastly superior, uh and what they know about what they know about is is is vastly superior. So there's a lot of learning that can go back and forth. So talk me through a little bit about that, like that process for you six years ago coming in. And it sounds like you were you were handling you were in private equity companies prior to that as well. But like how how what advice would you give someone kind of experiencing that for the first time and and and walking through that and then what lessons have you learned?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. I I think it it's it would be rare, it's a very rare job to have what I have, right? Um, and so I I think the the advice I would have is more for a marketing leader who's in a PE backed business or or a VC backed business, right? Because part of what I do is try to act as that translator and connector for the marketing leader.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, you're like a whisperer for both, right?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, for the board, for the marketing leader, for the financial organization, right? Um and it's really, you know, the the job, right, is to understand what are the value creation levers of the investment thesis, right? Which is you know, my colleagues are incredible at building businesses and partnering with entrepreneurs to build businesses, right? The I mean the entrepreneurs are building the business, we're we're supporting empowering that, but learning, okay, what are the four things that are relevant here, right? Um, we need to increase new customer acquisition from blank to blank, we need to increase ACV from blank to blank, we need to increase net retention from blank to blank, and we need to tackle this new market segment, right? And grow it from 10% of revenue to 20% of revenue or something, right? For example, right, of a B2B business. And then there's I work with consumer companies and healthcare companies, so it all changes. But if you understand what those core things are, right, and they usually have very clear KPIs in the financial model, then it's about okay, how do you connect the marketing programs and the sales programs to those investment theses? And a lot of times it's prioritization, but the other thing is just communication and connectivity, right? How are these things laddering to that? Um, or how are these things, you know, valid, but probably not relevant right now to this investment thesis? And so being able to speak the language, right, of multiple stakeholders, um, financial people, board people, and doing the work, you know, for them. Like a lot of marketing leaders, it's well, you know, they don't speak my language, you know. Um, and it's like, yeah. But it's so it's easier for us to control ourselves than it is to control others. So it's like learning the financial literacy, learning the ways that this translates into a PL, learning the ways that this translates to a board-level conversation about what they care about, right? We don't need to report on impressions and click-through rate. Valid, not relevant. Um, you know, having those conversations, I I think it's uh the the marketer who can think at that level and then translate it into their strategy and tactics, it's a superpower, right? And the ones that have uh a challenge is they don't have visibility into that context, right? Many times. And so it's hey, ask the questions, you know. What are the top priorities? What are the things that the board is thinking about? You know, how do I uh influence the value creation of this business? And then how do you translate that into your objectives and critically the KPIs that matter?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I think I mean that's such such amazing advice for any any professional in marketing, right? Yeah, um, you know, private equity, I found, you know, doesn't it doesn't really do anything very new, it just formalizes some really, really good best practices that people should be doing. Um and so you know, while a solo entrepreneur uh might not have a investment thesis or a growth thesis, they have those things in their head, right? Right. And so I think any any company you're working with, uh large, private equity, non-private equity, public, they all have their the the things that they want to get done. And I think this you know, the the the suggestion of like be curious, ask the question is often missed, right? Like what are your big goals? And then and then to your point, the communication of okay, these are the things that I'm going to do, and this is how it ladders up to the goals that you just told me about. And this is how I'm gonna track it, and this is how we're gonna know whether we're on track or we're off track. Um, you know, a lot of times we we walk into marketing, and I've seen this happen with you know uh with other agencies or even within our own agency. It's like, hey, like we're just gonna implement some best practices and we're gonna do X, Y, or Z, and those are tactics. And you know, what it misses is the Y to this, to the to the CEO, right? Or the or or the person on the other end of that email, Slack messenger or you know, a task, right? It's like, well, okay, like, yeah, we need to restructure your paid search account, but like why?

SPEAKER_00

Right. The relevance to the validity, right? It could be valid. Correct. Why does it matter?

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. And I, you know, I think I think that's such a crucial lesson, you know, because if we treat marketing like it's a purely a creative endeavor, and you said something earlier uh of of turning poetry into copy, right? Like to get people to take action, which I love, right? Because that that everyone can visualize that in their head of taking something that's super creative that maybe doesn't have a why, right? You know, poetry doesn't have KPIs around it. Um, and then formulating some structure and some KPIs and some why and some context around it into using that same creative juice, but then against a why and a goal, um, uh turns it into marketing, right?

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Uh and important like impact. In an impact, 100%. Um such a good lesson. Awesome.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I think I think the the other thing that I talk about is you know, uh real marketing happens when it hits the customer. You know, it's like not nothing can change without impact to the customer. And we we use this word like impression as like a media term. It's like, how many impressions did you get? Right? But it's like, let's remember the root of the word impression is leaving an impression on the audience, on the recipient. So it's like, what do we want to impress upon them? And a lot of times it's like, wow, you know, the media people are like, well, I got a million impressions. I'm like, what did we say?

unknown

Right?

SPEAKER_01

It's like, well, we Chat GPT created these assets about what we're saying. I'm like, what you're saying, who you're reaching, and how many of them, like, it's a it's an equation that all matters, right? You you look at data and you you look at the case studies and the empirical evidence, it's like creative is the lever, reach is the lever, right? And those are the two most critical components, right? And so we have to reach people, and then we have to impress them with creative. And so making sure that we're thinking and connecting both of those motions, which unfortunately at many organizations is siloed or broken into different functions or in the agency world, often different teams, right? And so the the best, you know, and I'm sure you all have this too, is with that flywheel and connectivity between the creative and the performance and the data and the goals, right? And how are we getting that feedback loop? And you see a lot, I see a lot more of that in you know, consumer and b2b comp or consumer and b2c companies. They have that flywheel because it's the feedback loop is faster.

SPEAKER_02

Faster, yeah, much faster, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Um, but that feedback loop still needs to happen in a B2B setting just on a longer time horizon, right? And then you have to bifurcate your myth in terms of these are my you know, short-term demand capture, performance marketing approach, right, versus our emotion, top of funnel, brand building, profit maximization, right, penetration goals. Um, and how you're connecting that again to your point, to the thesis that hopefully you're helping articulate, right? Like asking the question also helps articulate. I I love your point. Like people have these things in their head, but it's not that they don't exist. People aren't just like it's like, why did you do that? They have a reason, usually, right? And sometimes it's helping them discover that and then write it down, and then more people can follow that reason.

SPEAKER_00

You mentioned all the way back to when you were talking about your majors in college about picking them because it's the fundamentals that don't change, and then you apply them to new things. And we're talking about some of those fundamentals in marketing right now. Um to bring it back to AI for a second, I'm curious if you've seen anything start to break. Like, have you found anything where the fundamentals just like aren't applying anymore and we have to create new ones based on what's going on in the marketplace and how AI is changing things?

SPEAKER_01

It's a really good question. Like, I could be a victim of confirmation bias that I'm not looking for those, right? I'm looking for the fundamentals that don't change. I would also probably argue if they're changing, they weren't a fundamental, and so we just haven't gone low enough, right, deep enough to search. Um it's a really good question. I don't I don't have a good answer for it. I mean, I I think some of the like fundamentals of how we do work and do tactics, you know, are are changing in terms of do we need to hire that person? Does that person's role need to be this scope, right? Um, a lot of people are thinking about you know SDRs and and BDRs, right? And how do we think about that with AI um or with you know creative derivatives like editors, right? How are we using AI to do that instead of the editor doing that, right? I think there's some you could argue like fundamentals of marketing work that are being changed for sure by AI. But I haven't thought about any fundamentals truly changing in the way that I think about them, right? In terms of how humans think, how markets work, you know, what moves and motivates people. Uh it's kind of what I'm talking about when I talk about the fundamentals.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I feel like what I see sometimes is that AI is the shiny new thing. It like it blinds us to the fundamentals. It's like all of a sudden we forget what's worked forever and why it worked. And it goes back to what Patrick said about he's spending two and a half hours on a brief, like the fundamental of a brief. You wouldn't just give a coder and say, like, hey, build hey, code this. Like you have to explain all of it. How many people go into a prompt and just say, I want this thing, do it, and then they get mad when it's not right. And so if anything, the fundamentals are now more important than ever, and we have to remind ourselves to go back to the basics and that it's not this like cure all button that'll just that you have to be the operator, like you said. Right.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Well, and I think the the the this fundamental idea of context is going to dramatically change the way we do work over the next two years.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Um you know, depending on when this podcast gets released, uh this will date it a little bit. But you know, yesterday, Claude re uh uh came out with cowork. Um so it's been out for less than 24 hours. Um but you know, the the difference between you know Claude Cowork or Claude Code and a Chat GPT is its ability to truly pull in context from your documents, from your files, um, and and then execute tasks to keep that context up to date and you know create a system around that and then and then execute what you want work uh based on that context, which is fundamentally how people have been using Cloud Code since it came out, right? Uh you know, with with documentation folders and markdown files and all of these things. And so, you know, I look at the future of work, and you know, if Miles and I could have shared context documents, and part of our job, I think a large part of our job is keeping those context documents up to date, right? Right and and moving them forward and coming up with the ideas and approving things. And then once you keep those documents up to date, then you can have people or you can have coder, uh, agenic coders or agenic operators execute against that context, right? And I think like the ability to create good context, have the have the wherewithal to know whether whether it's good or not, right? Like the ability to know bad from good context, organize it well, keep it up to date. Like that's those are gonna be critical skills, I think, in the next two to three years that people should start thinking about now. And it's no different than what you've been describing as doing work. Uh it's just now at a scale where you know, hey, you don't you don't need to do the the 30 hours of spec uh or or uh creative uh uh um creative optimization, that's gonna be done by an agent. So you're gonna spend instead 30 hours writing context, right? And and and figuring it all out and and doing the research and and and and and really, really saying like this is what's relevant versus this is what's valid in those documents. And I think um that's a shift that I don't know if people are ready for and how fast it's gonna happen. Uh so like it sounds like these are things that you're teaching or you're you're coordinating and collaborating with your your portfolio companies on. How how like what what are you teaching now to help prepare people for that eventuality of you know, we're all really just kind of master editors of work that is happening um around us?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. It's a really good question. I I think you know, we we use the word context, you know, we we could talk be talking about data, right? Context as data. Um, but we definitely are spending a lot of time with our portfolio companies about their data infrastructure, right? Like good data, good hygiene, good governance, good systems, right? Proprietary data, right? What's proprietary versus not, and having that like system architecture and governance structure to be the backbone of enabling all these AI solutions, right? But also the ability for humans, you know, to pull context out, right? It's all already been super important, right? The companies that have that, they're able to have the humans who can then pull the context out that makes it relevant and direct the business. Now it's just in a heightened sense of urgency because the companies who can do that and are now doing it even better, faster with AI, it enables them to do that. It's like, holy smokes, like the the delta in speed between the companies who can and the companies who can't, with the application of AI on top, it becomes for many a like mission critical, more than a, yeah, that's good high like data hygiene, right? Like, I should have that. Now it's like we need that now, right? Um, and so we have a whole you know data science um and uh tech team that that helps our companies with that. We have a head of AI that that we hired um you know last quarter to help evangelize that in the portfolio. Um and so that you know that's an aspect that we talk about. We talked a lot about too, you know, the first principles of hey, we need to get back to you know what's gonna drive an impact and what's the ROI of that initiative, what's the experimental framework and time bound process that we're putting around these AI initiatives. You know, I think you talked about Miles like the shiny object syndrome, right? Um and it's true right now. It's like holy smokes, like it especially if you're like a native innovator type, right? Like, I love you know, if you're an innovator and love technology, you're like, holy smokes, a kid with a candy jar, like I got all these technologies, I'm testing all of them. And it can be a lot of cycles of time and distraction. I will say you can also have amazing emergent success stories that come from that. So, like, there's a balance between the emergence phenomenon and like the top-down phenomenon. But, you know, we we've talked about hey, like, you have all these AI initiatives going on, right? Like, what metric are we trying to move here? You know, how much is that costing to move that metric? Like, what's the size of the prize and the art of the possible? And doing some of that work up front, I think, can be helpful. Um, but there's there's definitely a lot of change happening. I think the other change that came to mind, Pat, when you were talking, and I wouldn't in in my parlance, I wouldn't call it a fundamental change, um, but I would say it's a meaningful change in the buyer journey, right? With LLMs and AI search overviews, you know, in SEO, right? Like so much of the buyer journey now is being aided by LLMs in the research and discovery and competitive intelligence phase. I mean, that was a tool that just didn't exist three, four years ago, right? I would say that the fundamental is that they're still going through unaware to problem aware to solution aware to brand aware to comparing those things and brand and marketing still matters, right, in terms of that construct, right? But now it's just a different expression tactic and tool for that phase of the process. And so, no question, like that's a hot topic in our portfolio companies now. How are we doing with answer engine optimization? What are we doing with the 20% of our organic traffic that just evaporated? You know, did that matter actually? Or is this an existential risk? So that's a definite area that's I think changed kind of fundamentally in the execution of the buying journey.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. Well, you know, I look at I look at Google usage or search engine usage, um and it's dramatically changed over the past two years. Uh and you could start to see it about two years ago. Uh the in in a small percentage of the the way people were using Google, right? Uh, it started to become a lot more question-based.

SPEAKER_03

Yep.

SPEAKER_02

And less traditional search, right? Where it's like, you know, I'm looking for financial newsletters from 2024 or whatever, and you just search financial newsletters 2024. Now it's now it's like you give more context in your in your in your query, right? Yeah. And you know, you know, like, well, hey, I need to compare my 2025 numbers against 2025 uh 2024 numbers, and I'm looking for financial analysis to help me do that. And because like that's now what we're used to typing in ChatGPT and Gemini and Claude. Uh and and so we're seeing a lot more of those types of searches in Google. Now it's it's you know still less than 20% or 15% of people have have switched over that mindset. But I do see that being a fundamental shift in how people are using search engines and uh and then the response of the search engines to now include structured content and AI content and you know the the idea of zero clerk, zero uh click search. Um and to your point, and I I'm curious on what you're seeing across your portfolios. You have a lot huge data set, but like are those the clicks we actually cared about in the first place? Like I get a I get a lot of questions about generative search. And it's like it's killing our it's killing our organic search. It's like, okay, but is it killing your your your inbound leads? Is it killing your the revenue that you're generating? Are you growing? Are you not growing? Um, you know, what about the 20% that you lost are you actually missing? Right. And then asking the question, okay, then what are we going to do about it? Right. Right. And that's where generative search optimization is and things. So, like, what are you seeing across your portfolio as a company when it comes to generative search optimization and and how how you how you guys are thinking about it and adapting to it?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. It's a really good question. It's it's top of mind. It's actually, you know, we we helped held a round table on on answer edge optimization just in December, brought, you know, about 30 marketers came together, you know, asking the question, right? Like, how has this impacted you? How are you seeing it in your business? Um, what are you doing about it now? How are you thinking about SEO versus AEO next year, which at that point is now this year? Um, and and it's really interesting, you know, a lot of people have seen their organic search traffic decline, you know, to your point. Um, but it hasn't had the same material degradation in leads or conversions or revenue, right? Uh commensurate, right? Say you had a 20% decline in in traffic, maybe you had like a 2% decline in your next funnel conversion. Um, or maybe you had a 10% increase, right? It's just like a total delta. Um and you know, so the early warning signs were maybe this I don't need to panic necessarily, right? But the the challenge is the time lag effect, which is is that 20% of traffic that used to discover our brand based on that top of funnel search that they weren't in market at that time, but we made an impression and got into their mind, and that person in six months became a lead because they saw us there, and we don't know like that lag effect, is that gonna disappear, right? Or a lot of our consumer companies, right? It's like they cookie and remarket them, right? It's the same with like enterprise, you know, we put them in our life cycle mix, right? And so we're losing that kind of top-of-funnel cohort at many companies. I think unclear today is that a material negative impact or not. Um I I think though, it definitely stresses the importance of a healthier marketing mix, right? Um and especially for you know AEO optimization, which takes signal from many places, right, in terms of your reviews and your social profiles and your PR and your own content and your affiliate content, all like I actually think it's an amazing thing, right? It was like I had I had a like I wrote like a nine predictions for 2026, and I think it was one of my predictions was you know, search traffic continues to decline, and it ends up being a good thing for marketers because they now create healthier marketing mixes.

SPEAKER_02

It it underscores the importance of a couple things to me. The importance of an omni-channel approach of marketing, where we're thinking about, you know, it's you you said something, it's you you uh that's very interesting. I've been debating this, whether or not paid search is a branding play or not. Um and I think you know, you you you verbalized it well in that like it's not really a branding play, but it becomes a branding play when you start to do um remarketing to them, right? Uh after they don't convert on your website. Uh but like the importance now of being available at every point along the customer journey in some way. First, you have to understand what your customer's journey is, and a lot of people don't even take time to do that. Uh but then it like it to me it underscores the importance of creative that gets people to notice, which when generative AI is generating all your creative, that means like that's gonna be the baseline of what creative that's good, that's gonna be like zero, and then you need to do a creative above that. You're gonna need to hire an agency or have an awesome team that can do that. And then like you can't just be running in one channel or two channels or three channels, you need to be running in all of the channels, and in some way, that orchestration is very, very difficult, and and doing it well is very, very difficult. Um, but like this this generative search shift, in my opinion, is is going to push more into okay, that means organic social is important, that means upfunnel programmatic is more important, that means digital out of home and and DTV and CTV are more important. Uh and like those are all, I think, good things, but it just underscores the importance. Like you can't you can't be reliant on any single platform or over-reliant on any single platform. And but the fundamental still hasn't changed, right? Like be available across the entire customer journey, uh, optimize towards diminishing returns, uh, and have creative that gets people to, you know, I love that the I love what you said, so I'll I'll just echo that. Like, impress people when they see it, right? Um, and if you can do those things, like gender search coming for for your organic is not something you need to worry about, right?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Yeah, and and I I do think it's also you know, your lens was kind of from a risk perspective. I do think it certainly is an opportunity for many, right? Like when you think about the SEO Battleground versus the AEO battleground, right? Like if you're a low domain authority site with an early competitive challenger brand, like SEO is a real hard game to get even any visibility, you know what I mean? But like I've seen with AEO, it could be a pretty fast impact for some of these like underweight brands to get into like you know, what are the top five shoes for runners going on a trail run, you know, next month? You know, it was like the four brands you know, and then like, wait, this one? Um, but that one, because it's in the company of the other four, you're like, okay, I'm gonna click on that. Like, that's pretty interesting, right? But like SEO, you would have never gotten in that. Um, and so it's I think there is a tactical opportunity for fast movers, um, especially those who are disadvantaged in kind of the SEO arena or the market share arena.

SPEAKER_02

That that literally just happened to me. I was searching for software. So if you're if you're listening to this and you're in you know B2B software, uh, you know, I was searching for something and there were, you know, that exact example, there were four software uh solutions that it recommended. Two I heard of and had already dismissed. Uh, one from a very large company, and then one from a company I'd never heard of before. And I ended up clicking through to that company and reading about it and installing it and using it. And then I realized it was like a team of three people uh, you know, probably in a garage somewhere, and like there's no support and there's no anything. And and it was like, oh man, how did that get mixed up? And there's like, you know, this was a this is a software uh category where there's hundreds of solutions. Like, how did that get put into there? And then like starting to think through how that happens. So yeah, no, I I think there, I I I think the the opportunity is there to get it. I don't I don't know, however, if it will be there forever, right? I think it's an arbitrage moment. You know, when you really look at what the search engines and what the LLMs, or at least maybe what the LLMs are trying to do is is trying to get you that relevant information. Right. Uh and so, you know, to me, I've always looked at SEO and now AI SEO or whatever you want to call it as how do you game the system? And that that's the opposite of what that's the opposite of what these these things are trying to do. Um so you know, I I do think there's an opportunity right now to maybe to to maybe you know leapfrog, but you know, there's fundamental best practices you should put in place so you can be pulled into the relevant conversation, right? Right, right. Um, versus try to game it to put yourself in a relevant conversation that you don't belong into, right?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, totally. And and I think, you know, I was just on with a CMO this morning and we were talking about short-term tactics that maybe have very fast diminishing return, and then medium and long-term tactics that are gonna take a long time to have an impact, but will have lasting impact, right? We we were talking about in the context of AEO, you know, it was like, yeah, we're doing the short-term, like you know, listical type content and working with some affiliates and you know, creating, you know, uh AI enhanced blogs and you know, doing some you know, metadata optimizations and technical optimizations, things like that that are making like quick hits, but then we're also investing in our Reddit community management strategy. There you go. And we now have two people on staff who like are managing Reddit and you know they came from our CS team and they're trying to add value and be relevant, you know. Um, and that's a much longer play, but like is a core citation source and probably also have value like in the community from a Reddit perspective. And like, let's not forget that like I I harp on this all the time, but like the marketing fundamentals of the four P's like include product and price and and placement, then promotion, you know what I mean? And so it's like we gotta have a good product, we gotta have a willingness to pay and a price that matters, you know, we gotta be placed at the places that people want to buy us from a distribution standpoint, to your point. And then our promotion needs to be aligned with all of that strategy. And so it's like no, no amount of good marketing can overcome challenges in the in the other, you know. No, I would I'll rephrase no amount of good promotion and communication can overcome lapses in the in the other kind of three tactical buckets. I I use the analogy all the time of like you know the story of the fire festival, and we talk about Netflix documentaries. Have you seen the fire festival documentary? Right? So like that product, epic marketing, right? Like if you saw the if you saw the 100%, right? Like the influencer campaign that took over everybody, everybody wants to go, it's sold out and whatever it horrific product. And it flamed out, right? But like you never want to be the fire festival of marketing, right? Um, you want to have a profitable growing business with an aligned, you know, 4P strategy. So I I use that as kind of a cautionary tale when when we talk about this.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, no, I think that's so important. We've actually we've actually you know separated from clients that that that you know there's fundamental issues with the product, right? And um and that we get involved a lot with the pricing strategy as well. And there's a lot of information you can glean from marketing through the promotions we're doing uh to help you inform product and pricing and obviously placement. But like uh, you know, that flywheel between the, or that not really flywheel, that interconnectedness between those four is super important. And I think, you know, you look at some D to C brands, and I think they're they they miss some of that. The ones that, you know, have the 79 pop-ups that don't let you leave the the screen and you know, 400 emails and you know, they're the the Instagram ads that that you know lure you in and make you think that five five million people have bought the product and then you receive it and it's not anything.

SPEAKER_00

And you don't receive it, you buy it or three weeks and it's still not there.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. So um no, I think I I think again going back to fundamentals, four P fundamentals super important. Uh and and remembering remembering that as we start to build the the the marketing of the future, it's like let's start with having an amazing product that's priced right, right? Um super important.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, yeah, and that connects to the solves to an actual problem or you know opportunity for the consumer. You know, and and it's interesting, you know, I think that you talked about some cautionary tales on the consumer side, but there are I I think incredible consumer marketers that typically still have some purview over the four piece, right? Like they're influencing price, they're influencing product decisions, you know, they're influencing placement decisions. Like, you know, it's like, oh, when we added Amazon, like it was incredible. Like our channel growth was amazing. It's like, yeah, you accessed 49% of your TAM that you weren't touching because Amazon is 49% of your e-commerce, right? And you added an additional placement where your consumer buys. Um, and fighting against that that fundamental kind of P is really hard. You just are are constrained TAM, and it's why um or TAM constrained, and it's why you know a lot of kind of former D2C only brands are now going on the channel, right? They're adding retail, they're adding Amazon, they're adding Walmart, right? They're adding because you have to get at where people buy, and it's really hard to change when it comes to the fundamentals of buyer behavior, like where people buy, you know, like the person who buys at Target sometimes buys at Amazon, sometimes buys D2C, right? But there's a lot of people who are like, I do my buying at Target full stop. Or like, I'm an Amazon buyer, like I do all my shopping on Prime, you know, or you're like, I love going to the brand sites and doing all the research and whatever, and I'm a and so the distribution strategy, the placement strategy, also maps when we talk about the you know value creation levers, like accessing additional TAM, total addressable market, is a core value creation lever, right? And so having that ability of a marketer to have that thinking, that business thinking, into those strategies, you know, it it helps inform those decisions, right? Um, and so I do a lot of like market-based thinking, right? I as you know, I do this a lot, but marketing, it's marketing, right? So it's we have to think about the market.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. Well, uh, you know, first of all, I just want to say I like to argue, and unfortunately, I agree with like everything you're saying. Uh so you know I you know, the the I I think I could probably you and I could chat for for hours about this stuff because it's super fascinating. Um but uh but man, what a just a masterclass in in less than an hour of of everything that you're putting together and everything you're doing. And um, you know, just phenomenal conversation. I really appreciate it. Thank you. Yeah, if if you could uh if you could travel back in time to to yourself when you just got out of school uh and give yourself one piece of advice, and it can't be like invest in Apple. Uh, but uh what would what would be that advice? What's the one hard hard one lesson that you've learned um since then? And what do you what did you need to hear at that moment when when you were just getting out of college?

SPEAKER_01

I I use this line that I talk about and I I say increase your surface area of opportunity, which is ten years ago I would have no ability to forecast where I am today. Right? Um and when you're starting out of college, it's almost like you think the next step that you take is final or fatal, right? Where it determines everything. And what I and and I candidly, like I would agonize over what is the next step that I'm gonna take, right? And you know, I was always looking for what is the next best thing, right? Uh, what am I not learning or understanding here that I can learn better in a different context? And that was kind of what fueled my decision making. But what I've learned in retrospect is like every one of those steps increased my surface area of opportunity to the next thing or the next world that I could never imagine beyond that. And you know, people talk about you know your network being your net worth, right? And I I think that's the encapsulation of this concept, right? Like now. Now that we've done this podcast, we've talked, people will listen to it. Hopefully, there's a nugget of value in there, right? Like I think about that as increasing my surface area of opportunity in terms of the impressions that I've made, the touch, you know, the reach that I've had, right? I try to apply marketing to myself, you know, be very transparent there, right? Um, but hopefully those aspects they allow you to then have these serendipitous connections, right? And serendipitous next steps that happen. You know, I have I have younger siblings, many of them, you know, starting about to graduate college or just graduated college, and you know, what do I do with my life? It's a terri, it's it's a very existentially scary time, right? Especially with AI, it's like changing everything, you know, and so I think the I hope it's a it's a reassuring advice to just take it one step at a time and think about what's that next step allowing you to increase your surface area of opportunity.

SPEAKER_00

And so if people want to help you with your your click-through rate for apply marketing to you, uh what link could we put in the show notes where people could go find more about Cody after they've listened to the episode? Where should we direct people?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, well, link to LinkedIn. I I'm I I will say I am probably casually obsessed with LinkedIn. Um so please, you know, connect with me. Would love to hear from you. Send me an email. Um would love to hear you know what resonates with people as you listen to this. I'm always interested in that feedback. I I write a newsletter every week to our marketing leaders and marketing portfolio companies. And you know, every Friday I send it out and I never get a response, right? Or maybe once I get a response. But then I jump on the phone with someone and they're like, hey, I love that newsletter on this topic. And like getting that feedback is just so helpful because a lot of times we just are talking, we feel like we're talking into a void, right? Right. So I just love hearing feedback. The other thing I'll say is like we have a ton of portfolio company, they're growing, they're always needing great marketers, great people. So, you know, if you are looking or you know someone who's looking and I can be helpful, let me know. Um, I'm also hiring for my team right now. Um, so if that's of interest, not sure when this comes out. I might not be hiring at that point. Um, but connect with me on LinkedIn. Um, I write a lot of content um on Summit Partners, so you can find out some of my frameworks. If you search the uh marketing order of operations, Cody Lee, you might find that one. Uh I like to say that article took me 10 years to write. Um so uh I love connecting with people, and it was great to connect with both of you, and thanks for having me on the show.

SPEAKER_00

Right back at you. Thank you. So for all you listening, we'll put that link to his LinkedIn in the show notes. Be sure to click it. Send him a message about what resonated with you most, and we'll see you here next time on Good Enough Isn't.