Blending Creativity, Strategy, and Community: A Conversation with Eric Morley of Blue C

In this episode of Curve Ahead, host Brian Wiles speaks with Eric Morley, co-founder of Blue C , about his 20+ years in marketing and the importance of balancing brand strategy with community involvement. Eric shares insights into how his agency delivers impactful campaigns for clients like Monster Energy and Hyundai, while staying at the forefront of trends like AI and machine learning.

Key Takeaways:
✅ Why community engagement is vital for authentic brand-building
✅ How AI and machine learning are reshaping marketing strategies
✅ Lessons learned from two decades of marketing leadership
✅ The story behind the Distinguished Gentleman's Ride

Tune in for practical advice and inspiring stories about creating impactful campaigns and giving back to the community.

Transcript

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Hey, Eric, welcome to the podcast. I appreciate you taking time out of your day today to talk to me. Do you mind introducing yourself? Yeah. Well, first of all, Brian, thank you for the invite on here. I've actually listened to several of your episodes and very inspired by what you're doing. My name is Eric Morley. I'm a co founder of Blue Sea Creative Marketing Agency. We're out here in Orange County, California and we've been in business since 1998. Long time, especially for a marketing agency. So let's talk about what inspired the story of Blue Sea. How far do you want me to go back? I mean the story was start at the beginning. Right at the beginning. Well, it's my background is I've worked with other marketing agencies. Actually even going a step further back, further is my father wasn't printing. My mother was in direct mail. I grew up in that world. We would always go up on Thursdays to pick my father's check from the newspaper he worked at. And I was always inspired by, you know, seeing how they put, how the sales teams work together, how they printed things and so forth. Summers I would spend them, you know, with my mom is she did direct mail over in automotive dealerships and so I'd help her do the filing afterwards and totally mess it up for her. But the thing is that's what I grew up with and in going to college is, you know, I knew I needed to put my head down and focus on my swim lane. And my swim lane was very important is because it's so easy to get fragmented across different ways and you never get to that destination. So I said, you know, one day is I'm going, I said, what am I going to do with my life? And I spent weeks and weeks and I, I still remember that day. I said I'm going to do this because I took an advertising class in junior college and I kind of liked it. You know, originally I was going to go into accounting. I took accounting 101 several times and just, I just didn't have the motivation for it. But my sister, she's, she was our accountant for the first 10 years in business. And so, so basically as I focused on that, I went to school for it, La Jolla Academy of Advertising Arts down in San Diego. And then I went to University of San Diego for my business degree and came back here, worked for a small agency. From that small agency I went to a bigger agency, which was a nationwide Automotive agency and that was, that was a automotive agency that basically is, they did, they dealt with tier three which is dealerships. And I did that for two years and then from there I went the agency life in a dealership agency is a whole different world. And I just didn't have it just, I just didn't truly get excited about it. And then I went to work for a healthcare agency and the healthcare agency I was actually there for six years and back about the fourth I, I kind of, it was strictly focusing on Medicare and it was focusing on a lot of lead gen, a lot of marketing initiatives and so forth and the whole focus was doing ongoing marketing for these health maintenance organizations and Medicare risk contracts. And I came to a point one day where I'm just like, I just walked into the owners and I said hey, I'm just really not, I'm not, I, I, I'm not into this right now. I've got eight weeks of accrued vacation site because I never took vacation so I'd like to take two weeks off and figure out what I want to do. And they said fine, no problem at all. And I did that and then I started to really understand is a, I didn't like strict lead gen healthcare marketing but I liked the branding and the marketing side of it. And so I went over to found the sports marketing side of it and so were actually working with major league sports entities and helping the companies become integrated. Not just buying a logo in a place but how do we get integrated in it? How do we, how do we utilize this particular asset across all channels to help influence the sales chain? So I really got really good at that. Unfortunately the two owners had a spat after seven years and they decided to close the agency. I went to go work for another one of the owners and we just, the owner was highly creative but he just could not run a business and it just got to a point where financially it was not doing well. And so I left and I went on to work with one of my freelancers and he's actually my business partner today. Jeff Bentley is, he's probably one of the most sought after creatives in the western United States. He is just, he is extraordinary. Just to kind of show some of his background is he was selected by the Orange County Advertising Federation as career director of the year. So he's always, he's on the edge and he does like amazing work and he has amazing team that he inspires below him. But so him and I started the agenc we started out of his living room, and it's kind of funny. It's like he's a cat guy. And it's like I'd be sitting on the sofa trying to work, and there'd be all these cats kind of cruising around. And that lasted for about two weeks. And I'm going, we got to get a space. So I had a friend of mine, had a large office down on the water down on Balboa Peninsula. And he goes, yeah, you can use an office here, no problem at all. And so we moved in there, started the business there, and our first client was Absolute Vodka. And so we did the distributor promotions. And then from there we picked up Fremont Street Experience in Las Vegas, and then we picked up Hyundai Motor America. And so at that point, were expanding very quickly, very quickly. So from that space, we moved into Lido Peninsula. And were there 10 years. And then the Lido Peninsula went through a whole regeneration where they actually took it from where it was and made it a very prosperous area. And at this point is we just got to a point where the rent was just too exorbitant. And so we moved out of it to Costa Mesa behind Germany Airport. But through this time period, a lot has happened to Blue Sea, and we've been able to grow and expand and attract amazing talent and continue to become an agency and, you know, set work with our clients and really, truly understand the next it and how to really build onto marketing. One of our whole initiatives is that we believe marketing is infinite. Marketing is not a finite business. It's not like you set it and leave it, and you actually have to be. You have to be very fluid, and you have to keep on working through the process on it. That's kind of been our journey here. Been focusing on several core segments is we work with automotive after work, aftermarket power, sports, motorsports. We work with commercial and residential. We work with healthcare, we work with food and beverage, and we work with franchise organizations. Those are our core businesses. That was kind of a long way around the bus, but it kind of, you know, I'm kind of leaving a lot of the gore and the craziness that's happened throughout the years. But we continue to grow and we continue to expand, and it's all about the people here. So, yeah, I think that you made some really good points in that. Right. That marketing isn't. It isn't a finite thing. It has to be evaluated regularly to make sure that you're having the impact that you thought you were going to have with whatever campaign or whatever message or channel that you're trying to target. And I think that in itself takes quite a bit of work. You had mentioned the next it. What do you think that is right now in the marketing space or where do you think that's going to go in the next five? You know, it's interesting you bring that up because one of my projects I do every year is the trends analysis for the upcoming year. And I'm trying to put that together. And there's several different aspects. First of all is that marketing has to start with clarity. You have to be 100% clear with what you, who you are, who you attract, where you've been, where you're at right now, and where you're going towards. We have a process which we call it framework, which is called power here. And brand power is very specific, is that marketing is not just a tactical execution, but it is a strategy wrapped around goals and objectives. And so our first part of it is brand clarity. Very specific brand clarity. Understanding the brand and documenting what the brand stands for and making sure we have complete alignment on each and every aspect of it. Right, right from mission, vision, values, tonality, visual direction, verbal direction, you know, what words we use, what words we don't use. Very important to create this playbook. And then from that, it's the marketing plan, really defining what that marketing plan is based upon, the customers we want to reach. And very, very specific. The other aspect is that from that marketing plan is what does that creative campaign look like? Okay, if we're going to target these customers, what is it going to look like and how do we roll that out? Do we use influencers? Do we use brand ambassadors? Do we use people that are core to the brand to tell that story? Everything has to tell a story in each and every aspect of it. That's the core there. And then from that we have the digital marketing side and what is the digital marketing and what do we really want that to achieve? And then we have the content marketing and social media and then we have the KPIs and scorecards. Very, very important. It's like if you're not measuring what you're doing, you're kind of doing stuff for the sake of doing it. And so with that six phase framework, we wrap this up, a thing called brand power. I, I think that there are some brands who market right organically that don't necessarily kind of take the pulse check of what it is that they're doing. And I think they need to take a step back and really think about the data that they're trying to drive, the message that they're trying to drive and making sure that the data is supporting their decision to move forward with that, either that channel or that message or you know, that marketing avenue. And if it doesn't, then they either need to pivot or you know, go back to the drawing board and try something different. I think that when it comes to marketing is such a strong component that can be and sometimes is overlooked by the people, not necessarily the marketers. Marketers, because I think they understand the value of it, but I think brands might, nessus might overlook it and not necessarily weigh enough of that data towards their KPIs of what it is that they're looking to do. 100% agree. And the thing about it is that years ago we didn't have data points. We didn't have data points. There was no way to measure it. And it even goes back to everything that we do in digital media. And you know, so we have a very robust digital media planning and buying department here. And so it's anything from mobile conquesting to anything like meta ads, anything like LinkedIn ads to connected TV to even Amazon or placing ads on Netflix where you can actually, you know, through connected TV where you can actually people can order right on the spot. You know, if you're going to spend X amount of money, you're going to get X amount of returns on it and so forth. Very, very important. And we, you know, the aspect is that we define the media and we also focus all the media is AI and machine learning. And so once we do go through the testing phase on it, there's a testing period on it where it all that data and it starts churning all that data together to figure out what is the thing that is affecting the impact on it. And so typically it's like when we place the media, we place the creative is we'll do five different ads and then after two weeks we're seeing what's working. Okay, what is the 20% that produces 80% of the results. Okay, Then we drop those ads off. And so we always have control ads and we have test ads. So we're always testing ads against the control ads on it. And then when we're finally getting that mix, then we're able to put more gas on the fire and buy more media and excel the process on it. And so through AI and machine learning is taken our media buying and media planning to the next Level, you've been. In business for 20 years and you'd mentioned early on not necessarily having accessible metrics, but now I think that there are maybe at some points too much data to be able to process effectively. So take me through kind of that shift in mindset for you and the organization over the last 20 years. As you know, the data has evolved as the technology has evolved. How has your organization also evolved to support in these changing times? So we have a philosophy here is always be learning, always get outside your comfort zone and always challenge what already is out there. We focus on always be learning, seeing what works, what doesn't work. Not just being, I believe a marketing agency, if they stay in their comfort zone of just doing one tactic or two tactics and having their clients do it over and over, is you're going to get what happens. You're going to get the same result. Is that result in the positive or the negative on it. I know client, I know other agencies that all they do is they do mounds and mounds of direct mail, which is, you know, lead gen and so forth. I have one particular friend that owns a financial company and they, I think they drop about a million pieces of mail a month and for a lead gen for their sales team. And I don't know about you, but me, when I get home, I grab the mail of the mailbox and it can be the coolest direct mail piece. It can have a dollar inside it. I'll just chuck it in the trash. For some reason, that doesn't do it for me anymore. There is a generation that direct mail still works for, but it's aging up. And no matter what that offer is, and we've tested direct mail with a lot of our franchise clients, it doesn't have the impact it once did. And so, you know, the thing about it is it's like, well, what. First of all, I always go back to who we're marketing to is, okay, we're focusing on males and females 24 to 30 years old that do this, this and this. Okay, how do this process? And I'm just going to use a franchise example. Say a food franchise is okay, we want to focus on that market. So what we do is we pull an Insights report. Say we're going to focus on 10 franchise food locations. We do an insight report from those locations, which we actually pinpoint that location and we go back two weeks or four weeks or six weeks or eight weeks and we can actually pull a report of all the people that went in There. And that report is triggered by my. The cell phone. And that cell phone will tell me all the data points of who those people are. And from that I can actually drill down deeper in getting into audiences on it. And so what we do is we take the five reports and then we merge them all together as one. And then we look at them separately of like how we're going to conquer what we need to conquer. Okay, if we're going to focus on the 24 to 30 market is okay, this location is very strong in the older market. Why aren't we reaching this market for this? We really examine that. It might be a point is like, okay, there might be. There's no traffic in that area for that age group or that age, or the age group might have better options around there. So it gets very difficult. So we have to make, you know, decisions on that.

Then we go back to the reporting on it, the insights report of like, okay, what medias are each of those age groups looking at? And then we define accordingly on it. And then we can actually track back to whatever our media buy is. So we did a program for McDonald's, which was a test program, which was an offer. It was 4: 16:48

99 for a large Coke and a large fries. And we wanted to focus on Generation Z because what happened is the McDonald's customers aged up. And the biggest challenge is that how do you reach this younger market? Because if you're not filling in with the younger market, how are you going to. You know, there's a point where, say someone's 55 years old, what happens when they're 65? They're probably not going to be more apt to buy. It's your. They'll move on to the next generation in their life. So you have to go back. So what we did is we did mobile conquesting. And what happened is when people came within a mile and a half of that McDonald's, it triggered ads in front of them to show this offer. They click on the ads to download the ad to their phone and they actually go into McDonald's and we can track them right to the McDonald's. And then once they go to the POS machine and order that offer, we can basically do a scorecard, a KPI on that. What did we learn through the process is we're able to track these people. And these people have never been to a McDonald's that in particular McDonald's before in the last 12 months. So all these people saw this offer, saw McDonald's as a priced Right offer and they went to the McDonald's. Wanna know what we learned is they never know. We had some people respond to the offer but they got there and they ordered up to combos and it's like oh, it's interesting. And then we're able to track their second trip back and their third trip back and their fourth trip back and it's like, oh, it's kind of. I see. So our marketing message was on target. Our response on it was different than we expected. But we're able track that through mobile dashboards which are available 24 hours 7 days a week to our clients so they can actually look and see what's going on it. And then we have like weekly meetings and status and to figure stuff out and why things work. You started on in one area say with direct mail pieces where I would agree with you that there is a lot of ad money spent there without necessarily a lot of return on ad spend. I know that there are organizations now who are focus more on like if they're delivering a direct mail piece, they're also doing geofence targeting for you. Like they're doing other additional touch points in addition to delivering that. So are you going back to just the direct mail piece? Do you think that media mix is more important to be able to target customers more effectively than just sending a mailer? This is actually a really good question, Brian. This is one of the struggles we have in marketing right now and I challenge people is what is more important Media mix or customer journey. And customer journey helps define the media mix. If you put the media mix in front of the customer journey is you're just checking boxes per se. And the thing about it is that I truly believe is that take the time and too many people don't take the time to think. Too many people take the time just to execute. And as a society is we're built on executing because we're about getting things done and checking things off the list versus actually really sitting down and thinking things through. So I always draw out on a piece of paper the customer journey and what they do and how they go from point A. You know, I start at the end in sight and work backwards on it and what medias we hit and why the medias are so important on it is in how we retarget them and how we bring them into our funnel. And you know, the key thing is it's like what part of the funnel we trying to achieve in the first place. Is it upper funnel where we're just creating Awareness. Is it the middle of the funnel or is it the bottom of the funnel or is it loyalty? Is, you know, where exactly do we stand on things? Super important. The thing about it is that if you don't go through that journey and that big part of that journey is really, you know, I always start as like, okay, we know where we want to go. We want them to do this. Okay, who is that customer? And let's really focus on that customer. Okay, we want to focus on 24 to 30 years old. And what do they do? Why do what? What is the triggers that they want to come to our location or buy our product or if it's an online store, it's like, what triggers that them? Timeliness. I'm a huge F1 fan. I think about marketing and F1 is the thing is that the best marketing machine ever. And I got targeted somehow through social media for ugly sweaters. F1 ugly sweaters. And it's kind of funny because I just go, you know what? That would be kind of cool to have this year. And you know, it kind of, it's pretty cool. So, you know, I kind of got the whole Ferrari ugly sweater thing. And I just got triggered today from the company, hey, it's on its way. You should have it in a few days. Here's a couple other things you can buy that's like, wow, talking about marketing at its all time high. And they are obviously ancillary company off of F1, but they're utilizing that and they're, they're targeting, they know me specifically for it. And now what they're doing is they've already got me into the purchase on it. They got me from awareness, they got me to purchase, and now they're going to sell me more stuff. And the thing about it is that the email I got today, it's like, hey, here's a referral code that you can send to all of your friends and you get 20% of whatever they buy as a credit. I'm going, oh cool. This is. I, then I click on all their F1 stuff. It's like, well, they got some really cool stuff. I mean, they have this amazing McLaren backpack that's pretty incredible. It's $290. But if, but it, but then it's just like, I'm going, okay, well, they just, they got me into a different mindset and it's basically because going through that journey and that's what I really look at is how do we as a Marketeer, analyze that journey versus just saying, okay, we're just going to place. Digital ads, let's just focus on F1, right? Because all the cars have multiple sponsors on the car. Do you as sponsor expect a return on ad spend through marketing on this card? Does Oracle expect a bump because Max is world champion? Right. Does from a local perspective, PAX8, a growing Denver based business here, sponsored Williams last year and the year before. Did they get a bump for having their logo on the nose of a Williams and hopefully it didn't crash that day. But you know, what is their expected return on ad spend when you're talking about putting your name and logo on a Formula one car? So we need to separate sponsorship marketing and sports marketing. Sponsorship marketing is like a team comes to you and they say, okay, we could put your name on our car. It's going to cost this, this. We're going to give you a couple tickets, you're going to get this is our package, you know, and it's going to cost you this. And a tactical marketeer will say yippee I o ki yay and do it. Then there's the integration. There's, there's the people that really do sports marketing. Well, one of our clients is Monster Energy. Monster Energy obviously went from Mercedes and Now they're at McLaren and they still took Lewis as a personal sponsor and so forth. So they still have that. But the thing about it is that they're able to, there's all of the races who are there, who they really sell to. They sell to distributors because they got to get the distributors to sell to the retailers and the retailers got to sell to their customers. So the logo on the prod on the car is to really service the consumer. That's just to get the coolness factor there. But what we need to do is we really need to get the distributors to buy more of our product. And we bring them to the events, they do, the meet and greet, they have integration parties, they, you know, and that's why it's like there is so much activity up to it, you know, right from practice to Q1, Q2 to the final day, to even, you know, the point of like when they now always look at Austin, when everyone kind of rodeos in and so forth into it or Miami is where it's all in the Miami flavor on it. It's like that's another way to activate your brand in there. It's like, okay, well you can run. You know, I know Las Vegas is like, you know, for there's a consumer program is that, you know, you sign up and you get a chance to go to the Las Vegas race and you get to go in the vip, blah, blah, and you get this, that the other thing, okay, that's how the manufacturer or the brand says to the retailer, it's like, hey, if you buy this, we will run this promotion to do pull through sales at it and get everyone excited on it and so forth. We have Supercross coming up for Monster Energy. It's like, okay, you know what, you bring a can in to the Supercross pits for Anaheim one and you get free entries into the pits. Okay, Pretty cool. That's how that whole process works there. With that being said, is that marketing on an F1 team is. It's got to be multi level based upon your objectives. We have a, we focus here on Ghost, which is goals, objectives, tactics on it. But the other thing is really identifying who your customer is before you can actually define who you're marketing to. And it might be as like, okay, our overall goal is like increase sales. Now what is our objectives? It's like, hey, we need a consumer drive, we need a distributor drive, we need a retailer drive. And then we do a, you know, a high level halo on it and how are we going to make our driver like bigger than life on it? So I look at some, you kind of look at the smaller logo on it. It's like, oh, those people are just like, it's almost like it's a story to tell that they're a part of but they really haven't thought it out is like how are they going to monetize that sponsorship? And that kind of goes back to my sports marketing roots from years and years ago. Is it's the point of that we need to become better and we need to become better thinkers and how you plan versus just do so. You had mentioned that Monster is a client and in my mind I think that Monster themselves, they have a good reach when it comes to like youthful engagement. So your Gen Z, Gen Alpha because of the types of people and events that they sponsor. You had mentioned the motocross. Like absolutely I would. You know, in eight years I'm definitely going to take my son to be able to do something like that. Do you think that there's other opportunities for brands who are looking to target their, those younger audiences that aren't necessarily marketed to yet because of targeting through those types of sponsorship? That's A question that we struggle all the time on. It is say, for example, and we have a client that is a very well known client and they're 35 years old now and they have in the early days is that they marketed towards 18 to 24 action sports. And then those people grew up. Right. And now those people are 45 to 60. Right. And I'm like, okay, how are we going to start reaching into this market over here? Super important. And so the way we reach into the market is that we focus on the medias that attracts. So we just launched a new TikTok channel for them and we're going to be building that TikTok channel to really focus on that particular age group to help drive that age group there. We're also going to do collabs with other influencers in that age group in the regions that these locations are and getting them to collab with us on each and every aspect. So it shows their life. Life. It's kind of like if you're 45 years old, do you really want to see a 45 year old in your marketing or do you want to see someone that's in their 30s? You want to always aspire to look younger. Unless. Unless, and here's the caveat. Unless it's a product that targets exactly who you are today and what you absolutely, positively need to survive. You know, it is kind of funny as like I was flipping through the news yesterday and it kind of shocked me. Is Tony Hawk someone that I've grown up with? I mean, you just can't not love Tony Hawk. And he's actually on a news station that clearly targets people that are 50 plus. And he's talking about his Cosequin and it's. What's that? Cosequin. Cosequin, exactly. And it's like I was like, wow, did he sell his soul or is he really specifically targeting the market to the market that needs his product right now in alignment to his age? It's funny because like I had this same conversation with my wife a couple of weeks ago. She's like, was that just Tony Hawk talking about joint supplements? Like, if you think about it, the guys put some wear and tear on his joint. So yeah, he's a great person to be able to market it. And yeah, he's getting into that demographic, which it makes sense. I think the other thing is when you're looking at, I think financial institutions do this quite a bit. They use older people in their advertising to promote aspirations. Like, oh, I'm going To retire soon. Oh, can we do this trip? And I think that they intentionally have an older audience or older cast in their advertising to kind of be aspirational for people who are starting to get to that age. And it's even like, you know, the guys that sell the gold coins on tv, I think it's Monx and stuff like that. I look at them, it's like, hey, you're about ready to die. You're like 80 years old. But then again, I'm not their target audience. And so one of the things that I make at a point of is that I always make it a point of seeing as much media as possible. Always be learning, always be 100 learning in each and everything. You know, events I go to. I'm actually very blessed to have three boys that are. They inspire me. They. They take me to like, all the stuff they're doing and everything they're a part of. You know, like my younger boys, we spent last week going down the Baja 1000, which, you know, is basically family and been a very strong point. The week before we pre ran for the Baja 1000. So it's a whole experience there. Last weekend I went, my older boy and he took me to this part of la, which we learned all about the LA river bed and Frogtown and everything that's happening there. And I was like, wow, it's kind of interesting. Really, really interesting. You learn from how. How is having, you know, kids in, like, in the younger demographic help you as a marketer? It keeps me young, it keeps me thinking, and it keeps me learning. And I even go back to when I got in this industry is like, you know, it's like, get a mentor. And that mentor has the industry for a long time on it. And we, the whole thing is now it's like I believe that the people of today are my mentors. You know, it's like our team here, like my team that runs our social side here, Olivia, it's like the way she thinks and the way she can do things and the way that she formulates ideas. It's like, how did you think about that? It's like, oh, I did it. It's like, okay, you're. You're amazing. And you know, I even look to my account team and, you know, how they approach things and what they. And how they do things is like, wow, that's pretty interesting. And nowadays it's. I'm going to leave technology off the table in this conversation, but just true understanding of marketing, of what's cool and what's not cool is that's so important to understand that the younger generation is going to tell you what's cool and what's not cool. One of our clients from Monster Energy is Joe Parsons. And Joe Parsons is like, he's started like with Monster. Like, he was like number seven. Now he's. He's special projects. He's. He's the MacGyver that goes in and fixes stuff and makes magic happen. But, you know, I've worked with him since 2004 and, you know, I'd be presenting all these things and all these ideas and all these aspects of different things, and if there was something that was just kind off, he would just say, eric, is it cool? And I just go, no, you know, no, it's not, Joe. It's not good scale. But. But through time you learn. You learn what is relative. And I, I learn a lot from my clients too. I walk in their shoes is our team's required. It's like, we bring a new client and it's like, okay, they need to go spend a day at their facility. Go understand what they go through and how they do things. Do you know what if it's a healthcare client, you know what, they're there to save lives or make your life better. Understand why versus guessing. Too many marketing firms guess versus actually walk, you know, a day in the client's shoes. I think that's a great thing to understand, right? Because perspective on any sort of problem is key. You and me, you and I may have the same problem, but our perspective of the problem may be completely different. Where for you it's something easy to overcome, and for me it may seem insurmountable. So it's really about understanding the perspective and kind of bringing it back to what you had talked about earlier is just understanding the who, what, when, where, and why of the client themselves or your what you had mentioned your ghost protocol is what I'm going to call it now, and just kind of making sure that all those things are relating back to one another to be able to execute on their behalf. Because marketing is. It's an interesting thing to do, right? You're taking your creative visions, but executing on somebody else's message on their behalf. So you have to blend your creative mind to deliver their message. And without understanding a client's perspective, that message could be way off 1, 100%. And that's the biggest challenge on each and every aspect of it is. And that's why you go through the ghost process is goals, objectives, strategies, tactics. It's like, okay, well, we're going to do a website. Why are you doing a website? Well, we want people to see us. Why do we want people to see us? Well, because we want people to learn about us. Who are those people? Okay, those. But how do they come to us? Okay, it's. I call it unpeeling the onion. And if you don't really unpeel the onion, you're not going to get to the destination. You know, it's kind of like you meet someone the first time and, you know, I, I recently met this media guy and his whole, his whole thing is he spent too much time spending. Try talking about how great he was and everything he's done in the past. And I said, hey, name goes here is just be yourself. It's like, you don't have to prove anything. Here is like, you just be a part of what this experience is. And your job is to create the storytelling from it. You don't need to prove yourself for acceptance. Prove yourself in the execution. Spend time focusing on the execution. Don't focus on trying to be someone you're not. And that's, that's equally important in marketing too, is that if you're this, don't say you're this, right? Don't try to become someone you're not. And my understanding of what works and what doesn't work is by always being passionately studying what people have done. And that's the best part now is that you can study, learn, journalize what that journey is and execute. Now before it's like, okay, well, this worked in the past, so let's do it again. You know, it's like, okay, whatever, you know, whatever. And it's like now it's like everything's out there. Everything's an open book. And I even get to the point is, you know, companies that have a social aspect of it and why that's important for companies to give back and become a part of a charity or giving back to make the world a better place. Like, like, for example, my son, my younger son owns a company called Van Speed. And what they do is, they do Mercedes Benz conversion companies. And he started the company when he's 17. He's 24 now. He's got 40 employees and 45,000 square feet, and he's got like a machine going. And, and his whole thing is giving back to students to teach them, to encourage them, to inspire them. To start their own business and really not feel like you need to fit into the status quo. So yesterday, he spoke in front of 3,000 students. It's like, what were you and I doing at 24? I mean, it's like, you don't want to know that. But my point is that people nowadays, they need to give back and constantly put money back into the karma jar, and that's equally important. Or b. Or companies need to be really involved in something that is unique, fresh, exciting, and something that they can passionately be a part of to help tell their story. You know, they market a product here, but then you have this other company that's involved in this, and you're excited about what they're involved in. You have a passion for that. Which company are you actively spending want to spend your dollar with? So. So speaking of things that you are passionate about. About. Tell me more about the Distinguished Gentleman's Ride. Okay. Glad you brought that up. That's. Before I start on that. Is Blue Sea has a part of our business. It's called Blue Sea Cares. And it's. There's three aspects to it, and I learned this early in my career by Wing Lamb from Wahoos, is that you always have to give back. If you're. If you're always taking is. First of all, it's not good for the soul. Soul. It actually makes your soul very dark. But you. You have amazing opportunities when you give back and you see different things. And so Blue Sea started this. So Blue Sea Gives back is. It's called Blue Sea Cares. So it's caring for a community, being a part of our community, which we serve, being a part in doing different things, caring for those in need, being a part of organizations that will help support those in need, and caring for the next generation through mentorship. And so those are our three pillars on the whole thing. The Distinguished Gentleman's ride was something that I started in Orange county with a couple other people 10 years ago, we started it. And so for those that don't know, they can go to gentlemansride.com and it's a worldwide motorcycle ride, a vintage motorcycle ride. It was inspired by the TV show Mad Men, where it was. It was focused on the idea of dressing up in a suit, looking good, getting on a motorcycle, and creating that freedom. And so the aspect of it is that it supports Movember. Distinguished Gentleman's Ride is for men and women. I would say about 20% of the riders that we have are women. And so from that is the. We do a lot of so it focuses on men's raising funds for men's male prostate cancer research and men's mental health. I don't care who the man is. Is that those are two issues that totally affect both of us. And you know, on the mental health is, yeah, we have ups and downs and this helps support that. On prostate cancer is there was one guy that rode with us and he actually went ahead and got a check and he was actually at stage one or stage two prostate cancer. Answer. And he just didn't feel anything. And he just. Because he did the ride, it's like he did it and he got taken care of and he's like 1000 now. And so this is basically something that is. It's 750 rides, Nate, worldwide. So you'll have everything from Ireland to Australia to Brazil to Iceland to Canada to Mexico. Is. And then basically it's on the same day. So if you really look at the feed on it, which is, you know, gentleman's ride, you know, hashtag gentleman's ride, everyone's posting from all different countries. So you're seeing Rome, you're seeing. Gosh, you. You name it. Worldwide, seven or 50 on the same day. So it's a ride. And then you started a destination, which. This is our. This is our 10th year. It's like, I want to go big this year. And then you do the ride and then you end up at a destination. You celebrate. And the key thing is it's like you. You meet great friends through the whole thing and you meet other riders and so forth, and it's just a. It's a great experience. And it's something that is something that's core to what Blue Sea has supported year after year on our side is that we. We support the ride, we manage the ride, we provide creative services for the ride. Our staff. Staff donates their time for the ride, we do the content development for it. And all of that is uploaded. And then all of a sudden it's like, you know, we get a lot of exposure for it, we raise a lot of money for a great cause, and you have a great day on it. That's. That's what's exciting for me. And I definitely you as a motorcycle rider, it's like, I. I would hope you take this as an invitation to sign up for this year's, which is May 19th or. Excuse me, May 18th. Excuse me. I am super intrigued. I definitely want to see if there's something that's a little bit more local to me than Orange County. But I mean, knowing that it's your 10th year, that it might be worth the trip. You know what if you want to do it, you fly out here. There's. There's places where you can rent bikes on the day and so forth. But in your area is you're in Denver, Colorado. Right. So there. There's a Denver, Colorado ride, too. Cool. I think they have over 200 riders for that one. Wow. Yeah, we've got a pretty good writing community out here. It's interesting you mentioned, you just said something. Community is. A community is so important. A community is very interesting, fresh, and it's something brands have to embrace. If you don't embrace the community, then you're just you're kind of on your own little island on it. And it's like, how do you become more about the community versus just being able to take from the community? And it was interesting. I forget who said this recently. It's not about you. You have to give to the community before you can take from the community. And brands have to. They can't just expect to put a shingle up and expect people come in. They have to market themselves out there in order to bring people in. And that is so highly important. So, yeah, working with organizations who've been involved or they say that they're involved with their community, but then they don't necessarily market it well. So I, I think that you probably find this with some of your clients who like your automotive clients. They have local dealerships who spend time doing work in the community. And then there's not like there may be a blog post about it. There's nothing really that touts that they're out there on a weekly or monthly basis doing these things to help their community that they're giving back. And in my mind. Right. And I think younger generations minds being involved with that community. Showing that you care, that you are present, that you're doing something, that you're proactive is going to help drive bodies through your door versus going somewhere else. Exactly, Exactly. And I'm a. I'm a huge proponent is business is not done in four walls. I think digitally it can be. Now, I know a lot of people have been highly successful in selling their products digitally, but when you're. As a. As a brick and mortar company is. And something that is, you know, very personal is business is done out there. I mean, it's. It's funny. It's like I've had so many new clients come on board just from our work at Distinguished Gentleman's ride and I've had like met a lot of great friends through that too. So. So be involved with your community. All right, so Eric, we've had a great conversation so far. We've come to the end of the podcast. This is where I give you 90 seconds to plug anything that you're passionate about. This could be Distinguished Gentleman's Ride. This could be Blue Sea. So without further ado, 90 seconds, the floor is yours. So. Well, thank you so much Brian. Appreciate that. I always say it's like it's not about Blue Sea, it's about our clients and our clients are the ones that are the heroes in each and every aspect. We're just, we're there to support and serve them on it. And if you have any interest in Blue Sea, you can go to blue seasa.com you can kind of see some of our work for Distinguished Gentleman's Ride. It's gentleman's ride.com you can actually there's Discovery Channel came out and filmed us, did a 45 minute episode a couple years back and it's actually still up on YouTube on it and you can kind of learn about that. You know the other aspect is that other charities giving back is a big thing we're part of is California Love Drop. Where it started in the beginning of the pandemic where we brought food to first line responders goes back to our Lucy initiative of Blue Sea Cares of giving back to the community. So we've actually delivered close to a thousand different deliveries, probably served over 120,000 meals. And it's something that all of our partners are a part of. We, I co founded it with Wing Lamb from Wahoos and it's very a big part of Blue Sea and what we're about and so forth. So it's you know, integrating of that so you can go to California love drop.org and learn more about that. So I think my 90 seconds is up and but I appreciate the chatter back and forth and in my opinion is that having these conversations are the most important things is you can read and listen and so forth but everything starts at conversation. Absolutely. Eric, it's been a pleasure talking to you today. I know that we've, went off on many different directions but it just gave for really engaging conversation. So I appreciate that. No worries Brian. Always a pleasure chatting with.