July 8, 2025 • 42 mins
On this episode of Butternomics, our host, Brandon Butler, sits down with marketing expert Mahdi Woodard to explore his proven blueprint for turning content into commerce. Mahdi shares insights on the real definition of marketing, the secret behind finding product-market fit, and how he transitioned from hobby to thriving business without losing authenticity. This episode is a masterclass in translating your ideas, hobbies, and insights into commerce while staying true to yourself and your community.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
You want to go make a million dollars, you want
to go serve tens of thousands, if not hundreds of
thousands of people. It might help them talk to those
folks right a little bit and get some feedback. I
think people they don't realize how intense it is because
they get marketed too, and they go, wow, I probably
could do this. So I always give an analogy. Going
to the dentist does not make you a dentist. Getting
(00:22):
marketed too don't make you a marketer. You wouldn't wake
up tomorrow and expect to know how to do a rook. Now,
why would you wake up tomorrow expect to know how
to do a integrated marketing campaign?
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Here, everybody, welcome to another episode of butter Nom. I'm
your host, Brandon Butler, found the CEO of Buttery Tail,
and today we got the man himself up in here.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
Man.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Look, look, I had to make a couple of phone calls.
You know, I had to call some friends to call
some friends, I mean, me and him, cool and all,
but but I still had to make a couple other
calls too, just to make sure that his schedule was
clear he was available, because you know, I know you've
seen this man on social media. I know you've seen
this majors out here doing amazing things, the one, the
only mister wader Man, Mady, how you doing, man?
Speaker 3 (01:01):
What's up? Brother? Thank you for the introduction. Man, you
did have to do a little bit.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
Sometimes I'm heart They say easy to talk, too hard
to get a hold of.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
Hey, man, look, I appreciate you, bro.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
Man.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
Look man, Look, so I know people. I'm sure people
know who you are.
Speaker 3 (01:16):
You know.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
So we're gonna get into all that stuff, man, But
what we do some a little bit different here on
buttter Nomics.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
Now.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
One of the first things I like to do with
people is, you know, everybody likes to say, like, what's
your bio? Tell us about yourself. Actually, yeah, I asked
chat cheap et who you were.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
Oh wow, I wasn't ready for that.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Go ahead, I asked chat cheapt who you were. So
I'm gonna read you what chat cheepet t says about you.
I know that's one of your best friends, you know
what I'm saying. So we go, We're gonna see you're
ready for this, man, Let's do it and let me
know if it's on, if it's off, it's missing anything. Okay,
I'm with it because I know you got to. I
know you've got a two hundred dollars a month playing
all right, man, So look. Maddy Woodard is a marketing
(01:51):
specialist and entrepreneur based in Atlanta. He's known for helping
business leaders create content that drives both visibility and revenue
without requiring them to be online constantly. His back and
includes classical trading and consumer packaged goods marketing, with experience
developing products and leading integrated campaigns for fortune for one
hundred companies. Currently, he runs his own consulting firm and
serves as chief marketing officer of ben Broke Before as
(02:13):
a social enterprise focus on financial literacy and underserved communities.
He's also an active speaker, having presented at events like
A three C and the Huge Design Summit, where he
shares insights on branding, content strategy, and entrepreneurship. If you're
looking for someone that bridges corporate marketing expertise would focus
on community impact in digital strategy, he's your guy.
Speaker 3 (02:32):
Wow, man, that's powerful.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
You know, sometimes you just be head down doing the
work that you don't stop to think about. In that regard,
so I would say, yeah, it's pretty solid. Wow, that's dope.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
That's good man. Well look man, so let let me
just get into it.
Speaker 3 (02:44):
Man.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
When people ask you nowadays, what do you do? Man,
what's your answer?
Speaker 1 (02:48):
It's the hardest thing in the world to you know
what I mean. At the core of it, though, like
I am, I'm a marketing strategist. I typically have to
add another sentence to that because most people only pick
up marketing at the very end of it, when you
are doing the fun communication promotion stuff. But I pick
up marketing at the beginning of it, like the research.
(03:08):
Should this thing even exist?
Speaker 3 (03:10):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (03:11):
And if so, let's go through the process of figuring
out whatever it is. I'm a consultant more than anything.
That's my brain, my thought process. But I have to
fit into a lot of other boxes man. Coach to
some people, business part of the other folks, advisor to
other people. But yeah, at the core of it, I
would say marketing strategies.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
I love the definition you talk about too with marketing
because I tell people that all the time. I think
they don't understand what marketing really means. And to your point,
like marketing is literally figuring out what your market wants.
It's the research, it's all the work like y'all think
it's adverting. People get marketing and advertising stuff all the time,
and I tell people it's like no, like by marketing
by definition, if you're figuring out who your audience is,
(03:48):
if you know what they want and you create that,
then technically speaking, when you bring it to that audience,
you should have product market fitness should be flying off
the shelf. Absolutely, But at that point you're doing advertising.
But like, don't pep this from your spoint. Do people
not get marketing and advertising mixed up?
Speaker 1 (04:02):
Like all a lot of time? So yes, and people
like you. You did a great job encapsulating it.
Speaker 3 (04:07):
Right.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
Most people go in their corner of the world and
they create something, and so what they're calling product market
fit is really their own ignorance packaged up, and I
mean ignorance and not knowing, not taking a dig at them.
But they're gonna make something and go since I made it,
there must be an audience for it. And I'm going
to complete other way. What is an audience out here?
What do they want? What do they need? Do I
(04:29):
have the skill set? Do I have their resources? Or
do I have the willingness to go find or develop
these things. And then to your point, we got product
market fit. And from that part, yeah, never communicating, we're advertising,
we're doing the fun creative stuff. But before that, if
you don't do that up front part first, you're either
gonna get lucky, but most people are gonna fail.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
I mean I tell people like, you don't know product
market fit until you've seen it. Yes, you know. I
had Kiera on here from Ladies Who Golf right, and like,
you know, I was talk to her and she was
saying like, yeah, like once we launched this thing, we
had to make a couple of tweaks, but like this
thing is growing into like the almost a seven figure
business in lesson a year. I'm yes, that's product market fit.
You did something and you brought it out there and
it hit. Otherwise, again, people are launching stuff and they
(05:13):
realize like, hey, how come people don't like this? You
haven't done the research. You've been over here in this
little bubble, Like why do you think people get so
caught up and kind of like just building things in
it a little silo and being scared to do the
research and all the market work up front.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
Yeah, So I think we live in a world now
if you know the phrase like your truth right, we're
living in a world that's hyper individualistic, and to a degree,
I'm an advocate for people taking themselves serious and putting
themselves first.
Speaker 3 (05:36):
But you got to put that in context.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
Right, So when you want to go talk about something
that you want to go make a million dollars, you
want to go serve tens of thousands, if not hundreds
of thousands of people. It might help them talk to
those folks just a little bit and get some feedback,
and then there's another level of training on how do
you interpret and trust the feedback because you can't always
you ask most people what they want.
Speaker 3 (05:59):
They want everything, so you can't make everything right.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
I think people they don't realize how intense it is
because they get marketed too, and they go, wow, I
probably could do this. So I always give an analogy.
Going to the dentist does not make you a dentist.
Getting marketed to don't make you a marketer. You wouldn't
wake up tomorrow and expect to know how to do
a root can now, why would you wake up tomorrow
and expect to know how to do an integrated marketing campaign,
(06:22):
So they got.
Speaker 3 (06:23):
To put a little respect on it.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
What are some of the steps you go through, like
when you're identifying because I mean you've launched a ton
of products. I've seen you building things, driving tons of revenue.
Like what's your process when you're thinking about new products
and services? Like how do you kind of start that
from zero to one? Man?
Speaker 3 (06:37):
Beautiful question, and I haven't.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
I've been asked a lot of questions and a lot
of interviews, and that's not one of So I say,
the first thing I start from, should this thing even
exist or not?
Speaker 3 (06:48):
So?
Speaker 1 (06:48):
I think where most people mess up is if something
doesn't exist, they assume that nobody else has thought about it.
I go look to see has this thing been created
and has it failed before or has it succeeded before.
So if it's doing well in another market but it's
just not here, those are usually sleepers and sweet spots.
So think about like we're in Atlanta. We don't have
certain franchises that already have a proven business model in
(07:10):
other cities other states. So sometimes you can win just
by bringing a proven product to a market that doesn't
have it. You can find that you got to win right,
other than that. We're talking about bringing something new to
the world. Gear up for it, right, So I'm looking
for what is the buying power of that given market, Like,
is this something that they're proven to want to spend
money on? Are they finding a workaround to it? That's
(07:34):
another thing to let you know. You got to hit
if people don't quite have a master solution. And everybody
you talk to got the same problem, but they're finding
their own way. I do it like this, or I
rig it up like this. You might have something, so
I go through that entire process to figure out does
it exist? Has it ever existed before? Is this a
modification or a tweak that I need to do in
order to bring it to the market. And that's how
(07:55):
you get some of those bigger things. Yeah, man, I
think Atlanta's not a real place. We say that all
the all the time. I know me personally, I love
to get outside the city. I love to go see
different things, and I think, yeah, like, you gotta go
see Yeah, because I'm be honest, a lot of y'all
be starting at I call them Atlanta businesses for sure.
For sure, Absolutely that would only work here because you
ain't going nowhere.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
Yeah, you ain't see nothing different and it is.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
Man.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
It's like when you go other places, you see other things,
you get the perspectives. I would even argue to say,
there are a lot of things in Atlanta that would
travel very well. Atlanta travels very well, but just getting
outside of your comfort zone, your normal space, right and
going and seeing things and saying like, oh, this could
actually work or exists here because we don't think about it.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
So you said something powerful there right now. I don't
mean to cut you off. You get excited. If you
go to New York, right, you can get a snaps
out of the future. Compare it to most other cities.
If you go to LA you can start to triangulate that.
So you see it working in New York, you see
it working in LA. It probably ain't made it to
Atlanta yet. You got something right, But the same thing
(08:53):
happens in Atlanta for smaller markets, and I think oftentimes
these are none sexy brands, none sexy ideas. But you
just said something powerful, like if something's working in Atlanta,
you might have a chance and another market that's similar
to demographics here. It might have work into Birmingham. It
might be working in Charlotte. It might can work in Nashville,
but you got to know how to time it all
the way up. And I think the biggest mistake people
(09:15):
make is projecting themselves on the audience. You have to
remember that even if you overlap with them, you may
not be identical with them. So be careful to say
I wouldn't do this, so somebody else wouldn't.
Speaker 3 (09:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
One of the favorite things that I've learned is, especially
when it comes to the West Coast, I always say,
like the things that the nerds do on the weekends
and their free times, yeah, are usually become like trends, right,
because when think about especially on the West Coast, you
got people with supposed to blend come they got this
Facebook money and all these exit money, and they coming
up with all these like weird trends and stuff like that.
But like those kind of become the things that all
of a sudden, over a little time, becomes mainstream. Right, So, like,
(09:50):
how do you kind of spot and identify trends?
Speaker 1 (09:53):
So I don't get to travel as much as I
used to incorporate That's what we did. We travel all
the time. Now I spend a lot of time in
other people's comments, and I look at how they're reacting,
how they're responding to some type of stimuli that's put
before them, because I don't have time to make out
the content and test it myself, so I might just
go look and see what people are saying, what are
they asking, and it's something bubbling up that could be something.
(10:15):
So first I would say, if you're a smaller creator,
if you're an entrepreneur and you don't have as much resource,
go find somebody that's either in your market or adjacent
to it and see what people are praising or see
what people are complaining about. Right, I might also go
do some book reviews. I'll jump on Amazon and I
look at what people are saying in the comments, what
chapter of a book that they resonate with, what is
it that keeps coming up? And then does this thing
(10:39):
even exist somewhere? But the cool part, and we were
talking a little bit off camera, like I've got this
hobby around bird photography, right, but if I look at
where things are broken, there's a huge gap between I
want to go find this particular species, but I don't
know where to go to find it, and so there's
all these workarounds there's Facebook groups, there's people solving for it,
(11:00):
like right if there was a resource that told you
right here, right now, and so that type of stuff
is kind of what I would do to find different opportunities.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
Yeah, man, I mean again, I think when people got
to understand what just what I'm hearing you saying is.
It's the idea around just insights. It's like, you can
you can consume all this data, all this information, but
at a certain point you got to take a step
back and saying like what is this telling me? Go
to Facebook pages, or go to Instagram accounts, export the comments,
dum moment, the chat GPT in a CSV file and
be like, yo, what trendsit insights Like, There's lots of
(11:28):
ways that you can do this and use AI to
help you do this in a way that's a lot more.
Speaker 3 (11:32):
Efficiently at risk speed.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
We used to have to we do this stuff for
weeks and months, right just to do what you just said.
You can dump multiple social platform You can go YouTube,
you can go Instagram, kicked out whatever, dump all of
it in there and go give me the high levels,
give me the the like in music, how you got
a deep cut?
Speaker 3 (11:50):
Right? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (11:50):
What what are people saying but not really saying, right,
what else is here? And then specifically, one of my
favorite things to ask AI is to say, act like
an invent Yes, right, what of these ideas would you
invest in right now if you had a million dollars
and you wanted an x percent return something like that,
and start to let it like, do some consulting work
(12:11):
for you.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
Oh that's a good one, right there, Man, that's a
good one. Like so, I was telling my boy actually
yesterday we were talking about it, and I was like, look, man,
this is what I do. I'm like, bro, I ain't
watch a YouTube video like a.
Speaker 3 (12:22):
Month, for sure.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
I literally the other day, as I'm working on this
new tool, this automation tool called na N some people
heard of it. It's just for automation, right, I literally
went to their YouTube channel. I have another tool that
I use to download the transcripts of every single video
they had.
Speaker 3 (12:38):
For sure.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
It took me like two minutes. Yep, all those video transcripts.
I didn't upload it in the chat to train it
in the project yep. And then I went and found
the top twenty other creative videos to toilet download all
those trained it. And now I already got a chat bot,
you know, chat GBT thread. I'm like, okay, look, I
want to build a workflow for this, and you have
all the training and information right there and boom, it
spits it out in seconds.
Speaker 3 (12:59):
Have you used pop bro? Look?
Speaker 2 (13:01):
Look, look, I wanting to use Poppy.
Speaker 3 (13:02):
I'm introduce you.
Speaker 1 (13:03):
I know the founders. Yeah, y'all do a call directly
see it all? What do you think about it?
Speaker 3 (13:08):
Like fire? It's fire.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
It's basically you would plug it right into that same workflow,
dump multiple different types of media in there, let it
pull stuff and rapidly respond and stay sort of focused
on that stream of consciousness.
Speaker 3 (13:21):
Yeah, I'll make an introduction.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
That's easy.
Speaker 3 (13:25):
Yeah, bro, I love it.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
But what are some of your other favorite AI tools
out there right now?
Speaker 1 (13:29):
Man? So I would say at top of the list
would be Poppy right now, because I like comparing a
bunch of different things so it can transcribe, it can
grab anything from anywhere and be able to sort of
respond to it or find some correlations or find some outliers.
Speaker 3 (13:44):
That whole thing.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
But I'll go back to still the tried and true,
and we were talking about it just now.
Speaker 3 (13:49):
Most people aren't even using chat GPT to it's fullest
actually not right.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
So people are going wide with a little dusting when
they could be going really really deep. Go in chat
shipt up load documents. I think you can upload like
twenty documents on whatever you want to train it on
to give it a base on who you are, what
you do, especially if you're not like a public figure.
Speaker 3 (14:08):
That way you just get a baseline.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
But then you can dump go into projects, or you
can build your custom GPTs. I like building custom GPTs.
They really quick. Once you build them, you can save
most of the information on the dock, so you can
move really fast. But I think you gotta even with
any of these, regardless of what it is, you got
to have a direction on what you're trying to get to.
So for me, I'm trying to save time on ide
eating because sometimes I can spiral just getting my own
(14:32):
self thinking and on. I'm trying to save time on
automating anything that's got to be repeated, like why would
you keep doing that?
Speaker 3 (14:40):
Right?
Speaker 1 (14:41):
So even if it isn't hardcore, AI like the way
we use mini chat, the way we use zap here,
the way we use make, the way we use all
these other tools. If you got to do something twice,
let the software do it for you. So I'll stop there,
but I would say the power of for sure chat GPT.
I still like Claude for doing some additional copyrighting type things.
(15:02):
But popy right now sitting at the top of the
hill for me.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
Man, Yeah, look, I've seen poppy. I've seen it popping
up more and more definitely.
Speaker 3 (15:08):
Oh, I got another one to my bad. It's called Cassidy.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
Okay, So I use cassidy like internal, like intranet list
server of your own company. So I upload all of
my IP and I might say, hey, write me, I'm
about to go interview on butter numis. Write me a
story about how we use DMS of dollars. Right, that's
one of the classes. It'll go pull anything that's referenced
(15:34):
that and it'll tell you it'll index it. So I
pull this from your PowerPoint, I pull this from your
investor deck. I pull this from you know, your presentation
that you gave. But it's all your internal documentation. So
I like it for that reason. If you want to
be able to index stuff and find your own stuff
really fast and recreate, or if you want to curate
out of your own information.
Speaker 3 (15:52):
It's fire for that.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
No, man, Look I love it, man, and I see
you put out the prompts and stuff like that. I
was telling a boy to day. I'm like, look, man,
I'm the prompt king, but might be killing it. Like
I got a prompt that makes prompts, so I make
a prompt, right, and then it rewrites that into a
better prompt, and then it checks that prompt to get
something else, and then it writes even more optimized. Like
(16:13):
I said, somebody a prompt the other day. That shit
was like five pages. Little. I'll tell people. I'm like, look, man,
just open it up, hit the voice button on chat, just.
Speaker 3 (16:22):
Talk to it and just talk.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
And I think people don't understand where we are in
the arc of this thing, right. So at this point information,
the cost of it is going down to zo.
Speaker 3 (16:32):
Right.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
So it's not about information, it's about how irregular info
has spread it over the years. If your dad was
a carpenter and my dad was an electrician, if they
didn't talk to each other, one of them didn't know
about the other one's craft, and the kids definitely didn't know.
Now all of this stuff lives in one major place.
You just got to know what questions to ask, and
that comes with experience, that comes to wisdom, that comes
(16:55):
with a lot of us having this corporate training, having
great mentors. But if you don't know where to start,
would ever do your best version of a prompt and
just add this sentence, just say, keep in mind, I
don't know what I don't know. So if I'm missing
any information or if there's anything I should be asking,
please recommend that and just start going down that path.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
I love the way you just talked about people don't know,
especially in the stands of again going back to this
whole idea of Atlanta, and you know, Atlanta is a
wonderful place. It's a very entrepreneur based city. But I
think a lot of times there's a lot of people
that because they haven't had that corporate experience, for that
corporate training, they just don't simply know how to work
or work efficiently. Yeah, you know, And so a lot
of times it's weird, like people kind of see like, oh,
(17:47):
I mean you had a corporate jobs like a negative.
I'm like, no, that's like the ultimate hack, absolutely, like
you're learning how to work on somebody else's dome. How
has that not helped you in your business?
Speaker 1 (17:55):
Entrepreneur and immensely, let me tell you what the number
one thing that corporate helped me help me learn how
to shut up and listen. Because when you're at that
junior level, you're itching to say something.
Speaker 3 (18:05):
You want to prove your value.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
You want to show that your college education or that
your first role in this other company mattered. But sometimes
when you are around people who have done the stuff
that you aspire to do, the best thing you can
do is just shut up and listen. And now I
find myself recalling all this information because I didn't speak
and I'm just taking notes. That was like, that's the
(18:27):
greatest gift that I didn't even know I was receiving
at the time. So that was one is to be
able to look at wisdom in the room and know like,
if you can't improve on the conversation, you can just
be quiet and nobody will ever know where you sit at.
Right That's one second. One one of the things I
got from one of the best leaders I worked for.
He always started his feedback for the bottom up, because
if he spoke first, everybody else would just pair it
(18:49):
what he said.
Speaker 3 (18:50):
Oh, yeah, just you know what John said.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
Right, as opposed to start from the most junior person, Hey,
what did you hear?
Speaker 3 (18:55):
What's your perspective?
Speaker 1 (18:57):
Didn't go to their manager, didn't go to their manager.
So by the time it got to him, either he
was synthesizing and making a decision or he was showing
you the gap in between what wasn't seen or what
wasn't heard, and that way you could kind of build
the conversation off of there.
Speaker 3 (19:10):
That was powerful.
Speaker 1 (19:11):
I also learn good and bad how to lead people,
and you get a real gut check when you get
high enough to start leading folks. Because it's one thing
to be good at your job, it's another thing to
be able to do your job. Also, give a person
enough space to grow into theirs and not jump in
and save them every time they're doing something how you
wouldn't do it. Keep in mind our goal is the outcome.
(19:32):
We can't micro manage the process. Depending on the industry,
we might have different ways we do stuff, but a
lot of this stuff is left up to interpretation. You
just got a date in the deadline and the budget
to hit and how somebody else works there. Magine you
can learn a whole lot from just observing that process too.
So corporate, if you haven't, I recommend everybody go work
as long as you can get that perspective. These companies
(19:54):
are one hundred years old. I work for a one
hundred year old company, and we live in a world now.
If you make it three five years, you think your
dad something like, what is it like the past information
that IPEd out for one hundred years and you get
to sit at the feet of that and just learn
to take it all in.
Speaker 3 (20:10):
So it's been a guds end for me. Now.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
I didn't know it at the time. I was fighting it, right,
I was fighting it. But if I could go back
and tell my younger self something now, I would say,
just keep taking notes and when your time come, you'll
be ready.
Speaker 3 (20:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
Man, again, I think when people are in it, they
don't necessarily see it. I mean all of us, right,
Like you sat back in those rooms, like, man, you're
doing my own thing and you don't even know it
all comes with that, But like you get out here,
you know, I really believe that it's a superpower. I
tell people like having that experience or even working for
corporate while you're building your own thing, because when you're
jumping out there. You're jumping out.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
There, yeah, man, And you gotta like the one thing
about entrepreneurship like cash flow, that day in, day out,
there's some bill to pay every day.
Speaker 3 (20:51):
Every I don't care how much you playing and how
much you budget.
Speaker 1 (20:53):
Something's gonna break, something's gonna pop up, some fancy thing
gonna catch your idea. But your business model might not
be set up to bring in cash flow every day.
And so just understand how to manage the money coming in,
the money going out, and the emotions that come with it,
especially if you got a spouse, especially if you got
some kids, especially if the market you did all the
research right and the market ain't respond to how you
(21:14):
thought they should respond, Like you really want to do
all that on your own dollars? All right, I'll see
you out here. You know that works out for you.
I love that for you, right, But I think more
than anything, it's a journey of personal development. And you
go through this process of getting out of your ego
because you got to be in a place of service
if you actually want to stay in business long enough.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
So yeah, man, I mean you've done all this stuff.
I mean, obviously you know with helping people learn how
to create content and dms and dollars on all that stuff.
You build amazing business. And you know, I kind of
want to ask this is kind of a two part question. Yeah.
One part of it is based on everything you know,
based on tools now with AI and all these things
that exist, how would you start over? But then also
I've also seen you talk about how you've been starting over, yeah,
(21:56):
kind of getting more involved in like the bird watching space,
Like how do those two things come together?
Speaker 1 (22:01):
So if I was starting over, the first thing I
would do is try to find a gap in small businesses,
and I would do more of a B to B
type business. There's probably some stuff that's happening as you
all grow this podcast that you're like, ah, we didn't
think about, Oh we need right, I'm looking for those
things because one thing for sure, two things for certain,
y'all are committed. Y'all gonna keep showing up, y'all gonna
(22:22):
keep dropping episodes. You just showed me that you guys
took over State Farm. In between there, we got to
do a post op what do we wish we could
have done better? And the same thing I'm gona be like, Hey,
so Basically I'm hearing you say you need like a
little whoopoo, right, because I'd rather find three, five, seven
of those types of projects then to go out here
and try to conquer this entire market with some idea
(22:44):
I came up with in my third bedroom, Like that's crazy.
Give yourself time to grow into that, right, Find some
people that are established but still got opportunities because they're
growing really rapid, and plug yourself in. So if I
was starting over, I would probably do that. Even the
step before that, I wouldn't leave my job so soon.
I would have just taken a step down at my job.
(23:06):
What happened is I was overwhelmed. Yeah, I got promoted.
I also had this new idea that was that I
thought could be something, and that combination you don't think
you're reacting emotionally, but that combination of emotion got a
new role. It was you ever had a promotion that
was also slapping the face? Absolutely right. So in corporate
you want to be on the brands with the biggest budgets.
(23:29):
If you're at Coca Cola Corporate, you want to work
on Coca Cola, Sprite Dyke Coke. Like you don't want
to work on honest tea company. Right, So I got
a promotion, but then moved over to a smaller brand
and I was like, oh, okay, that's what we're doing, right,
And so emotionally I just sort of moved too soon
out of excitement for this new thing, when I could
have just said, hey, listen, I just want to be
(23:49):
an individual contributor. I don't want no more direct reports.
If that comes with a price adjustment, cool, but I
can get off work and actually be off work now, right,
And I would have start doing my thing on it
on the side until they sort of matched up financially.
So you got to kind of wait to risk and reward.
But if I was starting over one, be patient with
your job to look B to B before B two
(24:10):
C because there's more stability there, yeah, and go from there.
Speaker 3 (24:13):
And it was the second part of the question, I
might have missed.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
It, And then like, how have you been applying that?
Speaker 3 (24:16):
Now?
Speaker 2 (24:17):
Was the work you've been doing and building this whole
brand around, you know, bird watching. I mean even you
were kind of telling me like the market for that
is what thirty forty billion was?
Speaker 3 (24:25):
Who would know? Right?
Speaker 1 (24:26):
So the first thing I wanted to give a shot
out my Hunger Becks. I was so stressed out because
I went thirty five years without having a hobby.
Speaker 3 (24:33):
I thought hobbies were stupid. I'm from the hood.
Speaker 1 (24:36):
I'm like, you got free time, and you chose to
use your free time spending money instead of making money.
This is crazy, Like you should either be resting to
go make more money for your main thing or get
a side hustle.
Speaker 3 (24:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:46):
I was killing myself inside, though I didn't know it
until you just crashed one day. So then I'm like,
I got my I got my business going, I got
my hobby. I'm talking about it. I'm all passionate. And
then I'm going to bed and this hobby sounded like
a business. And I'm talking to my hunger of Becks.
She's like, nah, you can turn your hobby into a business.
Just get another hobby. I said, Bro, you freed me.
(25:06):
It was so it was run in front of me,
you know what I'm saying. So in that side, I'm
looking The first thing I'm looking at is don't reinvent
the wheel. Are there some transferable skills from what you
do now that is applicable over here in this other industry?
Who your people right, are there some people over here
don't try to go at this thing alone? This you
know whatever they call four hundred pound gorilla. Why would
(25:29):
you do that if you don't have to, you know
what I'm saying. So, are there some transferber skills? Is
the business model similar? That way, we don't have to
go in with a whole bunch of unknowns. And so
now I'm looking for even if it is a perfect
business for where you might pivot to, it's eighty percent
similar to what you've been doing.
Speaker 3 (25:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
Right, The only variables is that it's a new industry
that we're tackling. But we're not figuring out how to
We know how to do content. We know how to
run ads, right, we know how to how to grow
the thing. We're just figuring out the people, figuring out
a little bit of those insights and then making sure
that you know the next move is the best mode.
Speaker 2 (26:04):
So yeah, yeah, I mean that's that's a lesson I
kind of learned even when just even just like dealing
with clients and stuff back in the day, like I
used to do apps and websites and all that stuff,
and I would always talk about this idea of I
call it a marketing momentum. What was super difficult was
let's say I did some type of marketing work for
making up a doctor. Then my next client is a
auto repair shop. Then my next client is a retail store.
(26:28):
Like there's no efficiency in between those, Like, yeah, there
are things that I learned and doing that, but like
it's really difficult because you got to learn so much
about that business, how that business works, the vernacular of it,
kind of ins and outs, and like it's not transferable.
So when I started doing saying, you know what, if
I got a doctor's office, let me see if I
can get another doctor's office, yes, and then another, And
all of a sudden, you get that momentum. There's efficiency,
(26:49):
you can get better and things can happen right, And
it seems like to the same extent, it's like you're
finding ways to say, okay, like look like let me
not necessarily go reinvent the wheel. I know what I know, now,
how can I apply to this industry? But also it's
like you want to be kind of like an inch
wide and a mile deepenings man listen.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
And so there was a phrase again I'm writing thinking
that men chat, right, we locked in and I was
describing what my experience and my frustrations has been with
my current business model, right, and it said, it sounds
like you've been in the content business. How about looking
at the business of content. You don't have to own everything,
you don't have to make everything. It's already out here.
(27:26):
You just might need a partnership agreement or a licensing agreement.
Speaker 3 (27:29):
Or you'd be.
Speaker 1 (27:29):
Surprised how many people just want more eyeballs on their
content and will be willing to let you use it
as long as they just get a shout out. So now,
if I move over to business too, I already understand
contents in my bones. Instead of going trying to make
the best stuff, what if some good stuff is already
out here and it just needs to be amplified. Yeah,
and so even that saves so much time, so much energy,
(27:51):
because I mean, you know what, it liked to come
up with an idea if you're doing the full way
pre production, production, post versus somebody already been through this process.
They got to prove a model around it, like, hey,
let's just come up with some type of agreement.
Speaker 3 (28:04):
So when people talk about you can.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
Either build, borrow, or buy, like, don't sleep on borrowing
and buying. You ain't got to build everything. And I
add one more b which is barter, Like can we
trade something out? And you find out all of those
four pillars, seventy five percent of it doesn't have to
be built.
Speaker 2 (28:22):
Oh we cooking, Yeah, man. I think especially in our community,
what I kind of notice is you see different things
like trending, Like right now. The thing that's like trending
is like be a faceless creator. And part of that
I definitely agree with because like I don't like necessarily
being on camera, but it's something I've had to work
with a lot personally, you know what I mean. I
always see I like a man, I wish I had
that kind of confidence like you. Sometimes I go there
and point a camera myself and that's something I'm working
(28:44):
on right But like I think people do have a
lot of pressure in trying to figure out like how
they build things and can they build things up necessarily
having like a personal brand to tie to it. Like
at end of the day, it's just business stuff for sure.
So you can definitely build face the stuff. And I
would say, look at it two ways. Then going back
to the market, I never start from I want my
face or I want it to be faceless. I always
start from what's the right way to do this to
(29:06):
serve this particular audience, Because some stuff needs a face
because there's about to be a high transfer of money
and they want to look somebody in the eyes and go,
you don't want them giving my money to There's other
stuff that might be transactional or a lot of the
stuff that's media focused, where the strength of the message
can carry more than you looking at the person saying it.
You might have a face thiss opportunity there, you know
(29:28):
what I mean. So that's first.
Speaker 1 (29:30):
But then like we're both in twenty twenty five and
twenty fifty, right depending on how you look at it.
So I think prior to the folks that are doing that,
the media hacking being able to either borrow some things
or repurpose some things without having to show your face.
So I just tested a piece of content on Instagram, LinkedIn,
and Facebook and it went viral on all three. This
(29:51):
is the best part. The script was written by chat GPT.
I just gave it the starting point because I knew
the unique story. It's any seventy five percent b ro
which means I can get somebody else to do that part,
and then the little parts where I show up, I'm
just reading from a teleprompter, which means I ain't got
to mess up.
Speaker 3 (30:11):
I can also clone myself. Yeah right, and so.
Speaker 1 (30:14):
Now I can outsource this entire workflow to somebody and
say here's how it's done.
Speaker 3 (30:20):
Do this like this.
Speaker 1 (30:21):
Here go ten stories, match them up, and let's just
see what happens. And I can test that. Let's just
say five hundred to one thousand dollars. The first video
that Facebook was only one that was monetized. I made
one hundred and thirty bucks.
Speaker 2 (30:33):
Cool.
Speaker 3 (30:34):
I can make a hundred and thirty bucks a day.
I can do this.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
I can do one of these videos a day. So
that's three thousand dollars a money. I can pay somebody
a thousand, and I can live off that two thousand dollars.
Speaker 3 (30:42):
Gap. Let's see what happens.
Speaker 1 (30:44):
So I keep you When I come back for part two,
we will have an update on that model.
Speaker 2 (31:00):
With all the stuff you got going on too. And
I love the conversation too about just like balance and
finding hobbies. I'm gonna take you. I don't have a hobby.
I'm trying to find one.
Speaker 3 (31:07):
Black man, find you one.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
I'm working on it. I'm trying to get outside more.
I'm trying to touch more grass because look, at end
of the day, it's all about balance, too, right, And
I know, you know if you've experienced different things with balance,
just when it comes back to that part, like, you know,
how has finding that hobby helped you become more balanced
and also just be become more productive and successful in
what you're working on.
Speaker 1 (31:24):
So I got to give it context for people that
don't know me. I didn't find it, It found me.
I was the person that was walking into rooms the
big chairs and standing ovations to go in and talk
about content. And then I had a previous friend who
was also a previous business partner who passed away in
twenty twenty two. Everything changes when a core member of
(31:45):
your team is lost, right, and I found myself.
Speaker 3 (31:50):
I didn't recognize it as depression.
Speaker 1 (31:53):
All I know is that I was ordering Uber Eats,
and by the time I was ordering Uber Eats again,
I had forgotten that Uber East was already at the door.
So lunch and dinner up, you know what I'm saying.
And because I'm running my business from anywhere. I'm just
upstairs on the Wi Fi, but deep down like I'm
dying on the inside. And so I'm talking to my mentor,
which is also if you can get you one, get
(32:13):
you one. And I'm gonna try not to go on
too far bring me bad. Be well, I'm from We
don't pay for mentorship. You pay it forward and you
mentor somebody else.
Speaker 3 (32:23):
Right.
Speaker 1 (32:23):
So my mentor, who I've been with since I was fifteen,
He's like, man, you gotta find something to pull you
out of this space and just kind of snowball and
get the day rolling. Find something in the morning to
jump start your day, whether it be working out or whatever.
And I own a camera, but I was nobody's photographer.
It was just some stuff I needed for business. And
I went out and I'm like, man, I'm gonna just
(32:45):
take pictures of stuff, right, I want to go do
these black and white Atlanta versus Georgia to show you
how we a city within this state but were not
the same. And da da da da da. And I
went out and I'm taking pictures. Oh I missed that
part of the story. My buddy say, if you find
what you enjoy taking pictures you'll never put the camera down.
But me, because I'm Type A and I like controlling stuff,
I'm like, I know what, I want to take pictures up.
(33:06):
I want to take black and white photos of Georgia
and Atlanta. And I went out all two are getting
sixty pounds, jumped over a gate to take a picture
of this old vintage cooke machine. I'm like, yeah, that's it,
took the picture and I was like part of my language.
I'm like, man, I don't feel shit. This is crazy.
So I called him back. I'm like, this is stupid. Bro, Like,
why you tell me to do that. He's like, that's
(33:26):
actually not what I told you to do. I said,
take pictures of everything you find and see what speak
to you. And then one day I stumbled in the
park while I was eating some food in between two meetings,
saw a bird.
Speaker 3 (33:37):
And was like, huh, let me.
Speaker 1 (33:39):
Next thing you know, I'm down the hill across the
creek and I'm like, I'm gonna go back to Marlborough
because I missed a shot. I'm coming back for you.
And then it kind of just built off of that.
Now all of my other brain starts to find me,
cause this is like I'm learning through the acoustics. Why
did that sound like this? And this sounds like this?
I'm learning through the visuals. Why this bird smallest on medium?
This one large? Why that one chasing one? And so
(34:01):
all that other stuff that's been in you, the creativity
and the intellect, it's also present. And I tell folks, man,
it lives at the intersection of stillness and higher performance.
You have no control of the situation. You can't make
a bird do nothing. You can only be prepared. Look
at the light, look at the situation, assess it, make
sure you know your gear, all that preparation type stuff,
(34:21):
and then in a split second, I'm taking pictures at
one twenty five hundredth of a second, all right, And
so you just surrendered to the process. And I mean,
I could go on for days, but I would say
that part just getting in the hobby was amazing. It
actually made me more productive in business. So because now
I want to go do this thing, but I got
(34:42):
this business stuff standing in north right, So I'm like,
how can I do my business quicker, faster, better, more efficiently,
Because they'll give me thirty more minutes in the field,
or they'll give me an hour longer in the field.
It also, this is the sleeper bee birds are most
active at sunrise and sunset. So if I got to
be in the park at six thirty in the morning,
seven o'clock in the morning, that means the night before,
(35:04):
you can't go get drunk. You can't go run Atlanta
streets doing some foolishness. So I had to restructure my
entire not that I was doing that all the time, but.
Speaker 3 (35:11):
Still a little bit, a little bit, right.
Speaker 1 (35:14):
But I had to restructure my whole life around my
priorities because I got to be at the park at
seven o'clock and I got to be on my team
call at ten o'clock, and I became more organized, more efficient,
and I think a better person for it.
Speaker 3 (35:25):
Now.
Speaker 2 (35:25):
I love that insight actually, Like you know, the whole
idea of finding something a hobby that you really enjoy
makes you be more efficient so that you can get
back to doing that thing.
Speaker 3 (35:34):
Yeah, And I think.
Speaker 2 (35:35):
Even hearing that really resonated with me. It's like, Yeah,
what could I find that would make me want to
get some of this other work stuff out the way?
Speaker 1 (35:41):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (35:41):
Man, so I get back out to doing whatever that
thing is.
Speaker 1 (35:43):
Especially I mean, I know enough about you got family,
you got staff, you got team.
Speaker 3 (35:47):
Even it doesn't have to be something that.
Speaker 1 (35:49):
You I go every day because I'm crazy, but like
you once or twice a week that you can just
look forward to that thirty minutes for yourself that I
was for yourself. I promise you it's gonna recharge you
and all the other stuff you do. So I would
give you the same advice that was given me. Try
a bunch of stuff, see what's speak to you, and
when you find it, just listen to it.
Speaker 2 (36:06):
And I don't want to I don't want to distill
it down. I don't know if it's bird watching the
correct term, like what it's a photography called. I don't know.
I want to respect. I want to respect the process.
Speaker 3 (36:15):
And shout out to all of the people that came
before me.
Speaker 1 (36:18):
So it started as bird watching right and historically, before
cameras and binoculars were what they turned into, people would
actually hunt the birds in order to draw them and
describe them and differentiate them. Then you get to the
point of where binoculars and cameras sort of catch up,
and so bird watching it merged as the core term.
(36:39):
Birding is like an offshoot of that. That's one more
inclusive because there are people who are birders but they
don't have vision, so they're doing it via via hearing.
So one is sort of more inclusive of everybody. The
other part, and people tend to delineate, is like birding,
is you out here doing this thing?
Speaker 3 (36:57):
Right?
Speaker 1 (36:58):
You got a lifeless you got one hundred and six birds,
she's trying to get the one ninety. Bird Watching is
like grandmama on her porge with you know, a little
seed out on the battle stuff. Yeah, us birds we
out here were traveling. We we comparing those. But you
nobody would be offended if you said bird watching. But
if you really want to sound like you in the group,
just say you out birding?
Speaker 2 (37:16):
Yeah, yeah, I want to know. I want to know.
It's like I sound like I want to talk about it.
Speaker 3 (37:20):
Come out there with me one day. Let's do it
that way.
Speaker 2 (37:22):
Got you know what I'm saying, bad black.
Speaker 3 (37:24):
Birds week man, shout out, shout out to everybody.
Speaker 1 (37:27):
But but that's powering that So I don't know if
you know the story of Christian Cooper. So this black
guy that was up in Central Park, he was out
birding and had one of those caring episodes. But luckily
for him, he had a camera, so you were able
to document that entire story and see the hostility that
come with some you just out here doing what you're
doing and you sort of get approached by somebody with
ill intentions. Right, Yeah, he ended up birthing a show
(37:49):
on that GEO that sort of talked about his whole
experience and him as a birder in addition to all
the stuff that they can do. But one of the
powerful things that emerged, and I would say these things
were happening in parallel. Forgive me everybody, if I ain't
got all of my history together, I'm new right, But
one of the powerful things has been a lot of
push to make the space more inclusive, even all the
way down to reforming the name. So autobonn Society is
(38:12):
named after a person, but once they dug into his history,
he's got some deep racism issues. So there was a
lot of push to get that name changed, and so
at the national level they chose to keep it and
push it out to the state level. But I'm proud
of being Georgia. Georgia changed their name from Georgia Audubon
to birds Georgia to.
Speaker 3 (38:30):
Do away with their name.
Speaker 1 (38:31):
So a lot of that has been the blackbirds and
other people of color pushing to kind of make the
space more welcoming for everybody without that veil of just
dark America stuff on it.
Speaker 3 (38:42):
So now that's dope. It's a good community be part of.
Speaker 2 (38:44):
Man, Mean, I love that. Man. So you know, with
all the stuff you've done, all the accomplishments, and now
even kind of like you know, looking at mighty now
out here birding in building furself doing all this work,
Like like what advice would give to that twenty twenty
two might if you have to look.
Speaker 1 (39:02):
Back on everything another good question, man, I would say,
get your affairs in order right so you can get
through that first level of entrepreneurship just on hustle, but
like when you really trying to build something that people
pay the mortgage off of you, getting your shit right,
getting the ideas right. People can plan their kids tuishing
(39:24):
off of you making sound decisions, Like you got to
get your house in order. So whatever you need to
do physically, whatever you need to do financially, Like I
just had on them grown up doctor visits where I'm like,
do everything test me for everything. I went to the dentist,
I said, I messed up my mouth, Like just get
me back on track from all of the hustle and
all of that.
Speaker 3 (39:44):
I'll get to that laters.
Speaker 1 (39:45):
So if I was talking to me, I would say,
take some time, get yourself organizing structured, because if you
build a vision big enough, people will want to join
you in making this thing a real, real life situation
for you and for themselves. And that's a tall order
you when you got when you're responsible for payroll, when
you're responsible for the growth and innovation plan, when you're
(40:06):
responsible for going out and acquiring customers, and like these
this ain't stop saying followers and subscribers. These are the
whole humans with lives that are putting their trust in
you when you said you made this thing, or you
want to do this thing, So take it serious in
that regard. I don't want to take the fun out
of it, but I want to add the integrity back
(40:27):
into it because for a while it was just I
found a quick way to make some money. Let me
teach you, I find a quick way to Yeah, the
hell with that, Like, build something that you can be
proud of. So I would say, my advice would have been, like,
prepare for the journey you're going on, make space for
people to come on that journey with you, and be
the person that you know you can be. So I'm
probably seventy percent of who I see myself as and
(40:48):
that other thirty percent kicking my ass because I gotta,
you know, be discipline myself in some regards.
Speaker 2 (40:53):
No, man, Yeah, man, this has been an amazing conversation. Bro,
I appreciate it. We've been all over the place.
Speaker 3 (40:58):
Man, I appreciate you. Bro.
Speaker 2 (40:59):
Before we got to hear bro to like, how can
people find you? How can they support you? Like give
them all the things.
Speaker 1 (41:04):
My name is Madi Wooter on all platforms. I'm most
active on Instagram, so m A HD, I w D
A r D and I'll be around the way just
helping people. Man, I'm just happy to be here again.
Thank you for the opportunity. We've been rocking together for years.
I'll try not to be so hard to nail down
next time. I know where to find you. But yeah, man,
thank you for letting me be random in a sense
(41:26):
and be able to tell this story. I hope there's
a portion of it that resonated with your audience. We
can always go deeper if they're a subject that people
need us to unpack some more. But man, I appreciate
you building a platform big enough and sturdy enough and
allow me to stand on it.
Speaker 3 (41:40):
So thank you. Bro.
Speaker 2 (41:40):
Hey, man, you're welcome and I definitely see some things
in the future.
Speaker 1 (41:43):
Man.
Speaker 2 (41:43):
So Bro again, I've seen the growth, seen the progress.
I remember when we first were connecting with each other. Yeah, Man,
like I reached out, like, Bro, look, we don't know
each other. I got an opportunity for it, you know
what I'm saying. And you know, ever since then, Man,
you've been killing it.
Speaker 3 (41:56):
Bros.
Speaker 2 (41:56):
Congratulations and everything. Happy to see the growth and man,
we can't wait to see what you come next.
Speaker 1 (42:00):
Man.
Speaker 3 (42:01):
Man, I'm excited. Man, Thank you again for the opportunity
to tell my story. Bro.
Speaker 2 (42:04):
Absolutely. Man. With that said, we out.
Speaker 3 (42:05):
That's the podcast. Let's do it.
Speaker 2 (42:08):
You've been listening to button Nomics and I'm your host,
Brandon Butler. Got comments, feedback? Want to be on the show.
Send us an email today at Hello at butternomics dot com.
Butter Nomics is produced in Atlanta, Georgia at iHeartMedia by
Ksey Pegram with marketing support from Queen and Nikki music
provided by mister Hanky. If you haven't already, hit that
subscribe button and never missed an episode, and be sure
(42:28):
to follow us on all our social platforms at butter
dot Atl. Listen to betteron Nomics on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts
You want to go make a million dollars, you want
to go serve tens of thousands, if not hundreds of
thousands of people. It might help them talk to those
folks right a little bit and get some feedback. I
think people they don't realize how intense it is because
they get marketed too, and they go, wow, I probably
could do this. So I always give an analogy. Going
to the dentist does not make you a dentist. Getting
(00:22):
marketed too don't make you a marketer. You wouldn't wake
up tomorrow and expect to know how to do a rook. Now,
why would you wake up tomorrow expect to know how
to do a integrated marketing campaign?
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Here, everybody, welcome to another episode of butter Nom. I'm
your host, Brandon Butler, found the CEO of Buttery Tail,
and today we got the man himself up in here.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
Man.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Look, look, I had to make a couple of phone calls.
You know, I had to call some friends to call
some friends, I mean, me and him, cool and all,
but but I still had to make a couple other
calls too, just to make sure that his schedule was
clear he was available, because you know, I know you've
seen this man on social media. I know you've seen
this majors out here doing amazing things, the one, the
only mister wader Man, Mady, how you doing, man?
Speaker 3 (01:01):
What's up? Brother? Thank you for the introduction. Man, you
did have to do a little bit.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
Sometimes I'm heart They say easy to talk, too hard
to get a hold of.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
Hey, man, look, I appreciate you, bro.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
Man.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
Look man, Look, so I know people. I'm sure people
know who you are.
Speaker 3 (01:16):
You know.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
So we're gonna get into all that stuff, man, But
what we do some a little bit different here on
buttter Nomics.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
Now.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
One of the first things I like to do with
people is, you know, everybody likes to say, like, what's
your bio? Tell us about yourself. Actually, yeah, I asked
chat cheap et who you were.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
Oh wow, I wasn't ready for that.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Go ahead, I asked chat cheapt who you were. So
I'm gonna read you what chat cheepet t says about you.
I know that's one of your best friends, you know
what I'm saying. So we go, We're gonna see you're
ready for this, man, Let's do it and let me
know if it's on, if it's off, it's missing anything. Okay,
I'm with it because I know you got to. I
know you've got a two hundred dollars a month playing
all right, man, So look. Maddy Woodard is a marketing
(01:51):
specialist and entrepreneur based in Atlanta. He's known for helping
business leaders create content that drives both visibility and revenue
without requiring them to be online constantly. His back and
includes classical trading and consumer packaged goods marketing, with experience
developing products and leading integrated campaigns for fortune for one
hundred companies. Currently, he runs his own consulting firm and
serves as chief marketing officer of ben Broke Before as
(02:13):
a social enterprise focus on financial literacy and underserved communities.
He's also an active speaker, having presented at events like
A three C and the Huge Design Summit, where he
shares insights on branding, content strategy, and entrepreneurship. If you're
looking for someone that bridges corporate marketing expertise would focus
on community impact in digital strategy, he's your guy.
Speaker 3 (02:32):
Wow, man, that's powerful.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
You know, sometimes you just be head down doing the
work that you don't stop to think about. In that regard,
so I would say, yeah, it's pretty solid. Wow, that's dope.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
That's good man. Well look man, so let let me
just get into it.
Speaker 3 (02:44):
Man.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
When people ask you nowadays, what do you do? Man,
what's your answer?
Speaker 1 (02:48):
It's the hardest thing in the world to you know
what I mean. At the core of it, though, like
I am, I'm a marketing strategist. I typically have to
add another sentence to that because most people only pick
up marketing at the very end of it, when you
are doing the fun communication promotion stuff. But I pick
up marketing at the beginning of it, like the research.
(03:08):
Should this thing even exist?
Speaker 3 (03:10):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (03:11):
And if so, let's go through the process of figuring
out whatever it is. I'm a consultant more than anything.
That's my brain, my thought process. But I have to
fit into a lot of other boxes man. Coach to
some people, business part of the other folks, advisor to
other people. But yeah, at the core of it, I
would say marketing strategies.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
I love the definition you talk about too with marketing
because I tell people that all the time. I think
they don't understand what marketing really means. And to your point,
like marketing is literally figuring out what your market wants.
It's the research, it's all the work like y'all think
it's adverting. People get marketing and advertising stuff all the time,
and I tell people it's like no, like by marketing
by definition, if you're figuring out who your audience is,
(03:48):
if you know what they want and you create that,
then technically speaking, when you bring it to that audience,
you should have product market fitness should be flying off
the shelf. Absolutely, But at that point you're doing advertising.
But like, don't pep this from your spoint. Do people
not get marketing and advertising mixed up?
Speaker 1 (04:02):
Like all a lot of time? So yes, and people
like you. You did a great job encapsulating it.
Speaker 3 (04:07):
Right.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
Most people go in their corner of the world and
they create something, and so what they're calling product market
fit is really their own ignorance packaged up, and I
mean ignorance and not knowing, not taking a dig at them.
But they're gonna make something and go since I made it,
there must be an audience for it. And I'm going
to complete other way. What is an audience out here?
What do they want? What do they need? Do I
(04:29):
have the skill set? Do I have their resources? Or
do I have the willingness to go find or develop
these things. And then to your point, we got product
market fit. And from that part, yeah, never communicating, we're advertising,
we're doing the fun creative stuff. But before that, if
you don't do that up front part first, you're either
gonna get lucky, but most people are gonna fail.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
I mean I tell people like, you don't know product
market fit until you've seen it. Yes, you know. I
had Kiera on here from Ladies Who Golf right, and like,
you know, I was talk to her and she was
saying like, yeah, like once we launched this thing, we
had to make a couple of tweaks, but like this
thing is growing into like the almost a seven figure
business in lesson a year. I'm yes, that's product market fit.
You did something and you brought it out there and
it hit. Otherwise, again, people are launching stuff and they
(05:13):
realize like, hey, how come people don't like this? You
haven't done the research. You've been over here in this
little bubble, Like why do you think people get so
caught up and kind of like just building things in
it a little silo and being scared to do the
research and all the market work up front.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
Yeah, So I think we live in a world now
if you know the phrase like your truth right, we're
living in a world that's hyper individualistic, and to a degree,
I'm an advocate for people taking themselves serious and putting
themselves first.
Speaker 3 (05:36):
But you got to put that in context.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
Right, So when you want to go talk about something
that you want to go make a million dollars, you
want to go serve tens of thousands, if not hundreds
of thousands of people. It might help them talk to
those folks just a little bit and get some feedback,
and then there's another level of training on how do
you interpret and trust the feedback because you can't always
you ask most people what they want.
Speaker 3 (05:59):
They want everything, so you can't make everything right.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
I think people they don't realize how intense it is
because they get marketed too, and they go, wow, I
probably could do this. So I always give an analogy.
Going to the dentist does not make you a dentist.
Getting marketed to don't make you a marketer. You wouldn't
wake up tomorrow and expect to know how to do
a root can now, why would you wake up tomorrow
and expect to know how to do an integrated marketing campaign,
(06:22):
So they got.
Speaker 3 (06:23):
To put a little respect on it.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
What are some of the steps you go through, like
when you're identifying because I mean you've launched a ton
of products. I've seen you building things, driving tons of revenue.
Like what's your process when you're thinking about new products
and services? Like how do you kind of start that
from zero to one? Man?
Speaker 3 (06:37):
Beautiful question, and I haven't.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
I've been asked a lot of questions and a lot
of interviews, and that's not one of So I say,
the first thing I start from, should this thing even
exist or not?
Speaker 3 (06:48):
So?
Speaker 1 (06:48):
I think where most people mess up is if something
doesn't exist, they assume that nobody else has thought about it.
I go look to see has this thing been created
and has it failed before or has it succeeded before.
So if it's doing well in another market but it's
just not here, those are usually sleepers and sweet spots.
So think about like we're in Atlanta. We don't have
certain franchises that already have a proven business model in
(07:10):
other cities other states. So sometimes you can win just
by bringing a proven product to a market that doesn't
have it. You can find that you got to win right,
other than that. We're talking about bringing something new to
the world. Gear up for it, right, So I'm looking
for what is the buying power of that given market, Like,
is this something that they're proven to want to spend
money on? Are they finding a workaround to it? That's
(07:34):
another thing to let you know. You got to hit
if people don't quite have a master solution. And everybody
you talk to got the same problem, but they're finding
their own way. I do it like this, or I
rig it up like this. You might have something, so
I go through that entire process to figure out does
it exist? Has it ever existed before? Is this a
modification or a tweak that I need to do in
order to bring it to the market. And that's how
(07:55):
you get some of those bigger things. Yeah, man, I
think Atlanta's not a real place. We say that all
the all the time. I know me personally, I love
to get outside the city. I love to go see
different things, and I think, yeah, like, you gotta go
see Yeah, because I'm be honest, a lot of y'all
be starting at I call them Atlanta businesses for sure.
For sure, Absolutely that would only work here because you
ain't going nowhere.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
Yeah, you ain't see nothing different and it is.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
Man.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
It's like when you go other places, you see other things,
you get the perspectives. I would even argue to say,
there are a lot of things in Atlanta that would
travel very well. Atlanta travels very well, but just getting
outside of your comfort zone, your normal space, right and
going and seeing things and saying like, oh, this could
actually work or exists here because we don't think about it.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
So you said something powerful there right now. I don't
mean to cut you off. You get excited. If you
go to New York, right, you can get a snaps
out of the future. Compare it to most other cities.
If you go to LA you can start to triangulate that.
So you see it working in New York, you see
it working in LA. It probably ain't made it to
Atlanta yet. You got something right, But the same thing
(08:53):
happens in Atlanta for smaller markets, and I think oftentimes
these are none sexy brands, none sexy ideas. But you
just said something powerful, like if something's working in Atlanta,
you might have a chance and another market that's similar
to demographics here. It might have work into Birmingham. It
might be working in Charlotte. It might can work in Nashville,
but you got to know how to time it all
the way up. And I think the biggest mistake people
(09:15):
make is projecting themselves on the audience. You have to
remember that even if you overlap with them, you may
not be identical with them. So be careful to say
I wouldn't do this, so somebody else wouldn't.
Speaker 3 (09:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
One of the favorite things that I've learned is, especially
when it comes to the West Coast, I always say,
like the things that the nerds do on the weekends
and their free times, yeah, are usually become like trends, right,
because when think about especially on the West Coast, you
got people with supposed to blend come they got this
Facebook money and all these exit money, and they coming
up with all these like weird trends and stuff like that.
But like those kind of become the things that all
of a sudden, over a little time, becomes mainstream. Right, So, like,
(09:50):
how do you kind of spot and identify trends?
Speaker 1 (09:53):
So I don't get to travel as much as I
used to incorporate That's what we did. We travel all
the time. Now I spend a lot of time in
other people's comments, and I look at how they're reacting,
how they're responding to some type of stimuli that's put
before them, because I don't have time to make out
the content and test it myself, so I might just
go look and see what people are saying, what are
they asking, and it's something bubbling up that could be something.
(10:15):
So first I would say, if you're a smaller creator,
if you're an entrepreneur and you don't have as much resource,
go find somebody that's either in your market or adjacent
to it and see what people are praising or see
what people are complaining about. Right, I might also go
do some book reviews. I'll jump on Amazon and I
look at what people are saying in the comments, what
chapter of a book that they resonate with, what is
it that keeps coming up? And then does this thing
(10:39):
even exist somewhere? But the cool part, and we were
talking a little bit off camera, like I've got this
hobby around bird photography, right, but if I look at
where things are broken, there's a huge gap between I
want to go find this particular species, but I don't
know where to go to find it, and so there's
all these workarounds there's Facebook groups, there's people solving for it,
(11:00):
like right if there was a resource that told you
right here, right now, and so that type of stuff
is kind of what I would do to find different opportunities.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
Yeah, man, I mean again, I think when people got
to understand what just what I'm hearing you saying is.
It's the idea around just insights. It's like, you can
you can consume all this data, all this information, but
at a certain point you got to take a step
back and saying like what is this telling me? Go
to Facebook pages, or go to Instagram accounts, export the comments,
dum moment, the chat GPT in a CSV file and
be like, yo, what trendsit insights Like, There's lots of
(11:28):
ways that you can do this and use AI to
help you do this in a way that's a lot more.
Speaker 3 (11:32):
Efficiently at risk speed.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
We used to have to we do this stuff for
weeks and months, right just to do what you just said.
You can dump multiple social platform You can go YouTube,
you can go Instagram, kicked out whatever, dump all of
it in there and go give me the high levels,
give me the the like in music, how you got
a deep cut?
Speaker 3 (11:50):
Right? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (11:50):
What what are people saying but not really saying, right,
what else is here? And then specifically, one of my
favorite things to ask AI is to say, act like
an invent Yes, right, what of these ideas would you
invest in right now if you had a million dollars
and you wanted an x percent return something like that,
and start to let it like, do some consulting work
(12:11):
for you.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
Oh that's a good one, right there, Man, that's a
good one. Like so, I was telling my boy actually
yesterday we were talking about it, and I was like, look, man,
this is what I do. I'm like, bro, I ain't
watch a YouTube video like a.
Speaker 3 (12:22):
Month, for sure.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
I literally the other day, as I'm working on this
new tool, this automation tool called na N some people
heard of it. It's just for automation, right, I literally
went to their YouTube channel. I have another tool that
I use to download the transcripts of every single video
they had.
Speaker 3 (12:38):
For sure.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
It took me like two minutes. Yep, all those video transcripts.
I didn't upload it in the chat to train it
in the project yep. And then I went and found
the top twenty other creative videos to toilet download all
those trained it. And now I already got a chat bot,
you know, chat GBT thread. I'm like, okay, look, I
want to build a workflow for this, and you have
all the training and information right there and boom, it
spits it out in seconds.
Speaker 3 (12:59):
Have you used pop bro? Look?
Speaker 2 (13:01):
Look, look, I wanting to use Poppy.
Speaker 3 (13:02):
I'm introduce you.
Speaker 1 (13:03):
I know the founders. Yeah, y'all do a call directly
see it all? What do you think about it?
Speaker 3 (13:08):
Like fire? It's fire.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
It's basically you would plug it right into that same workflow,
dump multiple different types of media in there, let it
pull stuff and rapidly respond and stay sort of focused
on that stream of consciousness.
Speaker 3 (13:21):
Yeah, I'll make an introduction.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
That's easy.
Speaker 3 (13:25):
Yeah, bro, I love it.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
But what are some of your other favorite AI tools
out there right now?
Speaker 1 (13:29):
Man? So I would say at top of the list
would be Poppy right now, because I like comparing a
bunch of different things so it can transcribe, it can
grab anything from anywhere and be able to sort of
respond to it or find some correlations or find some outliers.
Speaker 3 (13:44):
That whole thing.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
But I'll go back to still the tried and true,
and we were talking about it just now.
Speaker 3 (13:49):
Most people aren't even using chat GPT to it's fullest
actually not right.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
So people are going wide with a little dusting when
they could be going really really deep. Go in chat
shipt up load documents. I think you can upload like
twenty documents on whatever you want to train it on
to give it a base on who you are, what
you do, especially if you're not like a public figure.
Speaker 3 (14:08):
That way you just get a baseline.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
But then you can dump go into projects, or you
can build your custom GPTs. I like building custom GPTs.
They really quick. Once you build them, you can save
most of the information on the dock, so you can
move really fast. But I think you gotta even with
any of these, regardless of what it is, you got
to have a direction on what you're trying to get to.
So for me, I'm trying to save time on ide
eating because sometimes I can spiral just getting my own
(14:32):
self thinking and on. I'm trying to save time on
automating anything that's got to be repeated, like why would
you keep doing that?
Speaker 3 (14:40):
Right?
Speaker 1 (14:41):
So even if it isn't hardcore, AI like the way
we use mini chat, the way we use zap here,
the way we use make, the way we use all
these other tools. If you got to do something twice,
let the software do it for you. So I'll stop there,
but I would say the power of for sure chat GPT.
I still like Claude for doing some additional copyrighting type things.
(15:02):
But popy right now sitting at the top of the
hill for me.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
Man, Yeah, look, I've seen poppy. I've seen it popping
up more and more definitely.
Speaker 3 (15:08):
Oh, I got another one to my bad. It's called Cassidy.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
Okay, So I use cassidy like internal, like intranet list
server of your own company. So I upload all of
my IP and I might say, hey, write me, I'm
about to go interview on butter numis. Write me a
story about how we use DMS of dollars. Right, that's
one of the classes. It'll go pull anything that's referenced
(15:34):
that and it'll tell you it'll index it. So I
pull this from your PowerPoint, I pull this from your
investor deck. I pull this from you know, your presentation
that you gave. But it's all your internal documentation. So
I like it for that reason. If you want to
be able to index stuff and find your own stuff
really fast and recreate, or if you want to curate
out of your own information.
Speaker 3 (15:52):
It's fire for that.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
No, man, Look I love it, man, and I see
you put out the prompts and stuff like that. I
was telling a boy to day. I'm like, look, man,
I'm the prompt king, but might be killing it. Like
I got a prompt that makes prompts, so I make
a prompt, right, and then it rewrites that into a
better prompt, and then it checks that prompt to get
something else, and then it writes even more optimized. Like
(16:13):
I said, somebody a prompt the other day. That shit
was like five pages. Little. I'll tell people. I'm like, look, man,
just open it up, hit the voice button on chat, just.
Speaker 3 (16:22):
Talk to it and just talk.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
And I think people don't understand where we are in
the arc of this thing, right. So at this point information,
the cost of it is going down to zo.
Speaker 3 (16:32):
Right.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
So it's not about information, it's about how irregular info
has spread it over the years. If your dad was
a carpenter and my dad was an electrician, if they
didn't talk to each other, one of them didn't know
about the other one's craft, and the kids definitely didn't know.
Now all of this stuff lives in one major place.
You just got to know what questions to ask, and
that comes with experience, that comes to wisdom, that comes
(16:55):
with a lot of us having this corporate training, having
great mentors. But if you don't know where to start,
would ever do your best version of a prompt and
just add this sentence, just say, keep in mind, I
don't know what I don't know. So if I'm missing
any information or if there's anything I should be asking,
please recommend that and just start going down that path.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
I love the way you just talked about people don't know,
especially in the stands of again going back to this
whole idea of Atlanta, and you know, Atlanta is a
wonderful place. It's a very entrepreneur based city. But I
think a lot of times there's a lot of people
that because they haven't had that corporate experience, for that
corporate training, they just don't simply know how to work
or work efficiently. Yeah, you know, And so a lot
of times it's weird, like people kind of see like, oh,
(17:47):
I mean you had a corporate jobs like a negative.
I'm like, no, that's like the ultimate hack, absolutely, like
you're learning how to work on somebody else's dome. How
has that not helped you in your business?
Speaker 1 (17:55):
Entrepreneur and immensely, let me tell you what the number
one thing that corporate helped me help me learn how
to shut up and listen. Because when you're at that
junior level, you're itching to say something.
Speaker 3 (18:05):
You want to prove your value.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
You want to show that your college education or that
your first role in this other company mattered. But sometimes
when you are around people who have done the stuff
that you aspire to do, the best thing you can
do is just shut up and listen. And now I
find myself recalling all this information because I didn't speak
and I'm just taking notes. That was like, that's the
(18:27):
greatest gift that I didn't even know I was receiving
at the time. So that was one is to be
able to look at wisdom in the room and know like,
if you can't improve on the conversation, you can just
be quiet and nobody will ever know where you sit at.
Right That's one second. One one of the things I
got from one of the best leaders I worked for.
He always started his feedback for the bottom up, because
if he spoke first, everybody else would just pair it
(18:49):
what he said.
Speaker 3 (18:50):
Oh, yeah, just you know what John said.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
Right, as opposed to start from the most junior person, Hey,
what did you hear?
Speaker 3 (18:55):
What's your perspective?
Speaker 1 (18:57):
Didn't go to their manager, didn't go to their manager.
So by the time it got to him, either he
was synthesizing and making a decision or he was showing
you the gap in between what wasn't seen or what
wasn't heard, and that way you could kind of build
the conversation off of there.
Speaker 3 (19:10):
That was powerful.
Speaker 1 (19:11):
I also learn good and bad how to lead people,
and you get a real gut check when you get
high enough to start leading folks. Because it's one thing
to be good at your job, it's another thing to
be able to do your job. Also, give a person
enough space to grow into theirs and not jump in
and save them every time they're doing something how you
wouldn't do it. Keep in mind our goal is the outcome.
(19:32):
We can't micro manage the process. Depending on the industry,
we might have different ways we do stuff, but a
lot of this stuff is left up to interpretation. You
just got a date in the deadline and the budget
to hit and how somebody else works there. Magine you
can learn a whole lot from just observing that process too.
So corporate, if you haven't, I recommend everybody go work
as long as you can get that perspective. These companies
(19:54):
are one hundred years old. I work for a one
hundred year old company, and we live in a world now.
If you make it three five years, you think your
dad something like, what is it like the past information
that IPEd out for one hundred years and you get
to sit at the feet of that and just learn
to take it all in.
Speaker 3 (20:10):
So it's been a guds end for me. Now.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
I didn't know it at the time. I was fighting it, right,
I was fighting it. But if I could go back
and tell my younger self something now, I would say,
just keep taking notes and when your time come, you'll
be ready.
Speaker 3 (20:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
Man, again, I think when people are in it, they
don't necessarily see it. I mean all of us, right,
Like you sat back in those rooms, like, man, you're
doing my own thing and you don't even know it
all comes with that, But like you get out here,
you know, I really believe that it's a superpower. I
tell people like having that experience or even working for
corporate while you're building your own thing, because when you're
jumping out there. You're jumping out.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
There, yeah, man, And you gotta like the one thing
about entrepreneurship like cash flow, that day in, day out,
there's some bill to pay every day.
Speaker 3 (20:51):
Every I don't care how much you playing and how
much you budget.
Speaker 1 (20:53):
Something's gonna break, something's gonna pop up, some fancy thing
gonna catch your idea. But your business model might not
be set up to bring in cash flow every day.
And so just understand how to manage the money coming in,
the money going out, and the emotions that come with it,
especially if you got a spouse, especially if you got
some kids, especially if the market you did all the
research right and the market ain't respond to how you
(21:14):
thought they should respond, Like you really want to do
all that on your own dollars? All right, I'll see
you out here. You know that works out for you.
I love that for you, right, But I think more
than anything, it's a journey of personal development. And you
go through this process of getting out of your ego
because you got to be in a place of service
if you actually want to stay in business long enough.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
So yeah, man, I mean you've done all this stuff.
I mean, obviously you know with helping people learn how
to create content and dms and dollars on all that stuff.
You build amazing business. And you know, I kind of
want to ask this is kind of a two part question. Yeah.
One part of it is based on everything you know,
based on tools now with AI and all these things
that exist, how would you start over? But then also
I've also seen you talk about how you've been starting over, yeah,
(21:56):
kind of getting more involved in like the bird watching space,
Like how do those two things come together?
Speaker 1 (22:01):
So if I was starting over, the first thing I
would do is try to find a gap in small businesses,
and I would do more of a B to B
type business. There's probably some stuff that's happening as you
all grow this podcast that you're like, ah, we didn't
think about, Oh we need right, I'm looking for those
things because one thing for sure, two things for certain,
y'all are committed. Y'all gonna keep showing up, y'all gonna
(22:22):
keep dropping episodes. You just showed me that you guys
took over State Farm. In between there, we got to
do a post op what do we wish we could
have done better? And the same thing I'm gona be like, Hey,
so Basically I'm hearing you say you need like a
little whoopoo, right, because I'd rather find three, five, seven
of those types of projects then to go out here
and try to conquer this entire market with some idea
(22:44):
I came up with in my third bedroom, Like that's crazy.
Give yourself time to grow into that, right, Find some
people that are established but still got opportunities because they're
growing really rapid, and plug yourself in. So if I
was starting over, I would probably do that. Even the
step before that, I wouldn't leave my job so soon.
I would have just taken a step down at my job.
(23:06):
What happened is I was overwhelmed. Yeah, I got promoted.
I also had this new idea that was that I
thought could be something, and that combination you don't think
you're reacting emotionally, but that combination of emotion got a
new role. It was you ever had a promotion that
was also slapping the face? Absolutely right. So in corporate
you want to be on the brands with the biggest budgets.
(23:29):
If you're at Coca Cola Corporate, you want to work
on Coca Cola, Sprite Dyke Coke. Like you don't want
to work on honest tea company. Right, So I got
a promotion, but then moved over to a smaller brand
and I was like, oh, okay, that's what we're doing, right,
And so emotionally I just sort of moved too soon
out of excitement for this new thing, when I could
have just said, hey, listen, I just want to be
(23:49):
an individual contributor. I don't want no more direct reports.
If that comes with a price adjustment, cool, but I
can get off work and actually be off work now, right,
And I would have start doing my thing on it
on the side until they sort of matched up financially.
So you got to kind of wait to risk and reward.
But if I was starting over one, be patient with
your job to look B to B before B two
(24:10):
C because there's more stability there, yeah, and go from there.
Speaker 3 (24:13):
And it was the second part of the question, I
might have missed.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
It, And then like, how have you been applying that?
Speaker 3 (24:16):
Now?
Speaker 2 (24:17):
Was the work you've been doing and building this whole
brand around, you know, bird watching. I mean even you
were kind of telling me like the market for that
is what thirty forty billion was?
Speaker 3 (24:25):
Who would know? Right?
Speaker 1 (24:26):
So the first thing I wanted to give a shot
out my Hunger Becks. I was so stressed out because
I went thirty five years without having a hobby.
Speaker 3 (24:33):
I thought hobbies were stupid. I'm from the hood.
Speaker 1 (24:36):
I'm like, you got free time, and you chose to
use your free time spending money instead of making money.
This is crazy, Like you should either be resting to
go make more money for your main thing or get
a side hustle.
Speaker 3 (24:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:46):
I was killing myself inside, though I didn't know it
until you just crashed one day. So then I'm like,
I got my I got my business going, I got
my hobby. I'm talking about it. I'm all passionate. And
then I'm going to bed and this hobby sounded like
a business. And I'm talking to my hunger of Becks.
She's like, nah, you can turn your hobby into a business.
Just get another hobby. I said, Bro, you freed me.
(25:06):
It was so it was run in front of me,
you know what I'm saying. So in that side, I'm
looking The first thing I'm looking at is don't reinvent
the wheel. Are there some transferable skills from what you
do now that is applicable over here in this other industry?
Who your people right, are there some people over here
don't try to go at this thing alone? This you
know whatever they call four hundred pound gorilla. Why would
(25:29):
you do that if you don't have to, you know
what I'm saying. So, are there some transferber skills? Is
the business model similar? That way, we don't have to
go in with a whole bunch of unknowns. And so
now I'm looking for even if it is a perfect
business for where you might pivot to, it's eighty percent
similar to what you've been doing.
Speaker 3 (25:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
Right, The only variables is that it's a new industry
that we're tackling. But we're not figuring out how to
We know how to do content. We know how to
run ads, right, we know how to how to grow
the thing. We're just figuring out the people, figuring out
a little bit of those insights and then making sure
that you know the next move is the best mode.
Speaker 2 (26:04):
So yeah, yeah, I mean that's that's a lesson I
kind of learned even when just even just like dealing
with clients and stuff back in the day, like I
used to do apps and websites and all that stuff,
and I would always talk about this idea of I
call it a marketing momentum. What was super difficult was
let's say I did some type of marketing work for
making up a doctor. Then my next client is a
auto repair shop. Then my next client is a retail store.
(26:28):
Like there's no efficiency in between those, Like, yeah, there
are things that I learned and doing that, but like
it's really difficult because you got to learn so much
about that business, how that business works, the vernacular of it,
kind of ins and outs, and like it's not transferable.
So when I started doing saying, you know what, if
I got a doctor's office, let me see if I
can get another doctor's office, yes, and then another, And
all of a sudden, you get that momentum. There's efficiency,
(26:49):
you can get better and things can happen right, And
it seems like to the same extent, it's like you're
finding ways to say, okay, like look like let me
not necessarily go reinvent the wheel. I know what I know, now,
how can I apply to this industry? But also it's
like you want to be kind of like an inch
wide and a mile deepenings man listen.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
And so there was a phrase again I'm writing thinking
that men chat, right, we locked in and I was
describing what my experience and my frustrations has been with
my current business model, right, and it said, it sounds
like you've been in the content business. How about looking
at the business of content. You don't have to own everything,
you don't have to make everything. It's already out here.
(27:26):
You just might need a partnership agreement or a licensing agreement.
Speaker 3 (27:29):
Or you'd be.
Speaker 1 (27:29):
Surprised how many people just want more eyeballs on their
content and will be willing to let you use it
as long as they just get a shout out. So now,
if I move over to business too, I already understand
contents in my bones. Instead of going trying to make
the best stuff, what if some good stuff is already
out here and it just needs to be amplified. Yeah,
and so even that saves so much time, so much energy,
(27:51):
because I mean, you know what, it liked to come
up with an idea if you're doing the full way
pre production, production, post versus somebody already been through this process.
They got to prove a model around it, like, hey,
let's just come up with some type of agreement.
Speaker 3 (28:04):
So when people talk about you can.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
Either build, borrow, or buy, like, don't sleep on borrowing
and buying. You ain't got to build everything. And I
add one more b which is barter, Like can we
trade something out? And you find out all of those
four pillars, seventy five percent of it doesn't have to
be built.
Speaker 2 (28:22):
Oh we cooking, Yeah, man. I think especially in our community,
what I kind of notice is you see different things
like trending, Like right now. The thing that's like trending
is like be a faceless creator. And part of that
I definitely agree with because like I don't like necessarily
being on camera, but it's something I've had to work
with a lot personally, you know what I mean. I
always see I like a man, I wish I had
that kind of confidence like you. Sometimes I go there
and point a camera myself and that's something I'm working
(28:44):
on right But like I think people do have a
lot of pressure in trying to figure out like how
they build things and can they build things up necessarily
having like a personal brand to tie to it. Like
at end of the day, it's just business stuff for sure.
So you can definitely build face the stuff. And I
would say, look at it two ways. Then going back
to the market, I never start from I want my
face or I want it to be faceless. I always
start from what's the right way to do this to
(29:06):
serve this particular audience, Because some stuff needs a face
because there's about to be a high transfer of money
and they want to look somebody in the eyes and go,
you don't want them giving my money to There's other
stuff that might be transactional or a lot of the
stuff that's media focused, where the strength of the message
can carry more than you looking at the person saying it.
You might have a face thiss opportunity there, you know
(29:28):
what I mean. So that's first.
Speaker 1 (29:30):
But then like we're both in twenty twenty five and
twenty fifty, right depending on how you look at it.
So I think prior to the folks that are doing that,
the media hacking being able to either borrow some things
or repurpose some things without having to show your face.
So I just tested a piece of content on Instagram, LinkedIn,
and Facebook and it went viral on all three. This
(29:51):
is the best part. The script was written by chat GPT.
I just gave it the starting point because I knew
the unique story. It's any seventy five percent b ro
which means I can get somebody else to do that part,
and then the little parts where I show up, I'm
just reading from a teleprompter, which means I ain't got
to mess up.
Speaker 3 (30:11):
I can also clone myself. Yeah right, and so.
Speaker 1 (30:14):
Now I can outsource this entire workflow to somebody and
say here's how it's done.
Speaker 3 (30:20):
Do this like this.
Speaker 1 (30:21):
Here go ten stories, match them up, and let's just
see what happens. And I can test that. Let's just
say five hundred to one thousand dollars. The first video
that Facebook was only one that was monetized. I made
one hundred and thirty bucks.
Speaker 2 (30:33):
Cool.
Speaker 3 (30:34):
I can make a hundred and thirty bucks a day.
I can do this.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
I can do one of these videos a day. So
that's three thousand dollars a money. I can pay somebody
a thousand, and I can live off that two thousand dollars.
Speaker 3 (30:42):
Gap. Let's see what happens.
Speaker 1 (30:44):
So I keep you When I come back for part two,
we will have an update on that model.
Speaker 2 (31:00):
With all the stuff you got going on too. And
I love the conversation too about just like balance and
finding hobbies. I'm gonna take you. I don't have a hobby.
I'm trying to find one.
Speaker 3 (31:07):
Black man, find you one.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
I'm working on it. I'm trying to get outside more.
I'm trying to touch more grass because look, at end
of the day, it's all about balance, too, right, And
I know, you know if you've experienced different things with balance,
just when it comes back to that part, like, you know,
how has finding that hobby helped you become more balanced
and also just be become more productive and successful in
what you're working on.
Speaker 1 (31:24):
So I got to give it context for people that
don't know me. I didn't find it, It found me.
I was the person that was walking into rooms the
big chairs and standing ovations to go in and talk
about content. And then I had a previous friend who
was also a previous business partner who passed away in
twenty twenty two. Everything changes when a core member of
(31:45):
your team is lost, right, and I found myself.
Speaker 3 (31:50):
I didn't recognize it as depression.
Speaker 1 (31:53):
All I know is that I was ordering Uber Eats,
and by the time I was ordering Uber Eats again,
I had forgotten that Uber East was already at the door.
So lunch and dinner up, you know what I'm saying.
And because I'm running my business from anywhere. I'm just
upstairs on the Wi Fi, but deep down like I'm
dying on the inside. And so I'm talking to my mentor,
which is also if you can get you one, get
(32:13):
you one. And I'm gonna try not to go on
too far bring me bad. Be well, I'm from We
don't pay for mentorship. You pay it forward and you
mentor somebody else.
Speaker 3 (32:23):
Right.
Speaker 1 (32:23):
So my mentor, who I've been with since I was fifteen,
He's like, man, you gotta find something to pull you
out of this space and just kind of snowball and
get the day rolling. Find something in the morning to
jump start your day, whether it be working out or whatever.
And I own a camera, but I was nobody's photographer.
It was just some stuff I needed for business. And
I went out and I'm like, man, I'm gonna just
(32:45):
take pictures of stuff, right, I want to go do
these black and white Atlanta versus Georgia to show you
how we a city within this state but were not
the same. And da da da da da. And I
went out and I'm taking pictures. Oh I missed that
part of the story. My buddy say, if you find
what you enjoy taking pictures you'll never put the camera down.
But me, because I'm Type A and I like controlling stuff,
I'm like, I know what, I want to take pictures up.
(33:06):
I want to take black and white photos of Georgia
and Atlanta. And I went out all two are getting
sixty pounds, jumped over a gate to take a picture
of this old vintage cooke machine. I'm like, yeah, that's it,
took the picture and I was like part of my language.
I'm like, man, I don't feel shit. This is crazy.
So I called him back. I'm like, this is stupid. Bro, Like,
why you tell me to do that. He's like, that's
(33:26):
actually not what I told you to do. I said,
take pictures of everything you find and see what speak
to you. And then one day I stumbled in the
park while I was eating some food in between two meetings,
saw a bird.
Speaker 3 (33:37):
And was like, huh, let me.
Speaker 1 (33:39):
Next thing you know, I'm down the hill across the
creek and I'm like, I'm gonna go back to Marlborough
because I missed a shot. I'm coming back for you.
And then it kind of just built off of that.
Now all of my other brain starts to find me,
cause this is like I'm learning through the acoustics. Why
did that sound like this? And this sounds like this?
I'm learning through the visuals. Why this bird smallest on medium?
This one large? Why that one chasing one? And so
(34:01):
all that other stuff that's been in you, the creativity
and the intellect, it's also present. And I tell folks, man,
it lives at the intersection of stillness and higher performance.
You have no control of the situation. You can't make
a bird do nothing. You can only be prepared. Look
at the light, look at the situation, assess it, make
sure you know your gear, all that preparation type stuff,
(34:21):
and then in a split second, I'm taking pictures at
one twenty five hundredth of a second, all right, And
so you just surrendered to the process. And I mean,
I could go on for days, but I would say
that part just getting in the hobby was amazing. It
actually made me more productive in business. So because now
I want to go do this thing, but I got
(34:42):
this business stuff standing in north right, So I'm like,
how can I do my business quicker, faster, better, more efficiently,
Because they'll give me thirty more minutes in the field,
or they'll give me an hour longer in the field.
It also, this is the sleeper bee birds are most
active at sunrise and sunset. So if I got to
be in the park at six thirty in the morning,
seven o'clock in the morning, that means the night before,
(35:04):
you can't go get drunk. You can't go run Atlanta
streets doing some foolishness. So I had to restructure my
entire not that I was doing that all the time, but.
Speaker 3 (35:11):
Still a little bit, a little bit, right.
Speaker 1 (35:14):
But I had to restructure my whole life around my
priorities because I got to be at the park at
seven o'clock and I got to be on my team
call at ten o'clock, and I became more organized, more efficient,
and I think a better person for it.
Speaker 3 (35:25):
Now.
Speaker 2 (35:25):
I love that insight actually, Like you know, the whole
idea of finding something a hobby that you really enjoy
makes you be more efficient so that you can get
back to doing that thing.
Speaker 3 (35:34):
Yeah, And I think.
Speaker 2 (35:35):
Even hearing that really resonated with me. It's like, Yeah,
what could I find that would make me want to
get some of this other work stuff out the way?
Speaker 1 (35:41):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (35:41):
Man, so I get back out to doing whatever that
thing is.
Speaker 1 (35:43):
Especially I mean, I know enough about you got family,
you got staff, you got team.
Speaker 3 (35:47):
Even it doesn't have to be something that.
Speaker 1 (35:49):
You I go every day because I'm crazy, but like
you once or twice a week that you can just
look forward to that thirty minutes for yourself that I
was for yourself. I promise you it's gonna recharge you
and all the other stuff you do. So I would
give you the same advice that was given me. Try
a bunch of stuff, see what's speak to you, and
when you find it, just listen to it.
Speaker 2 (36:06):
And I don't want to I don't want to distill
it down. I don't know if it's bird watching the
correct term, like what it's a photography called. I don't know.
I want to respect. I want to respect the process.
Speaker 3 (36:15):
And shout out to all of the people that came
before me.
Speaker 1 (36:18):
So it started as bird watching right and historically, before
cameras and binoculars were what they turned into, people would
actually hunt the birds in order to draw them and
describe them and differentiate them. Then you get to the
point of where binoculars and cameras sort of catch up,
and so bird watching it merged as the core term.
(36:39):
Birding is like an offshoot of that. That's one more
inclusive because there are people who are birders but they
don't have vision, so they're doing it via via hearing.
So one is sort of more inclusive of everybody. The
other part, and people tend to delineate, is like birding,
is you out here doing this thing?
Speaker 3 (36:57):
Right?
Speaker 1 (36:58):
You got a lifeless you got one hundred and six birds,
she's trying to get the one ninety. Bird Watching is
like grandmama on her porge with you know, a little
seed out on the battle stuff. Yeah, us birds we
out here were traveling. We we comparing those. But you
nobody would be offended if you said bird watching. But
if you really want to sound like you in the group,
just say you out birding?
Speaker 2 (37:16):
Yeah, yeah, I want to know. I want to know.
It's like I sound like I want to talk about it.
Speaker 3 (37:20):
Come out there with me one day. Let's do it
that way.
Speaker 2 (37:22):
Got you know what I'm saying, bad black.
Speaker 3 (37:24):
Birds week man, shout out, shout out to everybody.
Speaker 1 (37:27):
But but that's powering that So I don't know if
you know the story of Christian Cooper. So this black
guy that was up in Central Park, he was out
birding and had one of those caring episodes. But luckily
for him, he had a camera, so you were able
to document that entire story and see the hostility that
come with some you just out here doing what you're
doing and you sort of get approached by somebody with
ill intentions. Right, Yeah, he ended up birthing a show
(37:49):
on that GEO that sort of talked about his whole
experience and him as a birder in addition to all
the stuff that they can do. But one of the
powerful things that emerged, and I would say these things
were happening in parallel. Forgive me everybody, if I ain't
got all of my history together, I'm new right, But
one of the powerful things has been a lot of
push to make the space more inclusive, even all the
way down to reforming the name. So autobonn Society is
(38:12):
named after a person, but once they dug into his history,
he's got some deep racism issues. So there was a
lot of push to get that name changed, and so
at the national level they chose to keep it and
push it out to the state level. But I'm proud
of being Georgia. Georgia changed their name from Georgia Audubon
to birds Georgia to.
Speaker 3 (38:30):
Do away with their name.
Speaker 1 (38:31):
So a lot of that has been the blackbirds and
other people of color pushing to kind of make the
space more welcoming for everybody without that veil of just
dark America stuff on it.
Speaker 3 (38:42):
So now that's dope. It's a good community be part of.
Speaker 2 (38:44):
Man, Mean, I love that. Man. So you know, with
all the stuff you've done, all the accomplishments, and now
even kind of like you know, looking at mighty now
out here birding in building furself doing all this work,
Like like what advice would give to that twenty twenty
two might if you have to look.
Speaker 1 (39:02):
Back on everything another good question, man, I would say,
get your affairs in order right so you can get
through that first level of entrepreneurship just on hustle, but
like when you really trying to build something that people
pay the mortgage off of you, getting your shit right,
getting the ideas right. People can plan their kids tuishing
(39:24):
off of you making sound decisions, Like you got to
get your house in order. So whatever you need to
do physically, whatever you need to do financially, Like I
just had on them grown up doctor visits where I'm like,
do everything test me for everything. I went to the dentist,
I said, I messed up my mouth, Like just get
me back on track from all of the hustle and
all of that.
Speaker 3 (39:44):
I'll get to that laters.
Speaker 1 (39:45):
So if I was talking to me, I would say,
take some time, get yourself organizing structured, because if you
build a vision big enough, people will want to join
you in making this thing a real, real life situation
for you and for themselves. And that's a tall order
you when you got when you're responsible for payroll, when
you're responsible for the growth and innovation plan, when you're
(40:06):
responsible for going out and acquiring customers, and like these
this ain't stop saying followers and subscribers. These are the
whole humans with lives that are putting their trust in
you when you said you made this thing, or you
want to do this thing, So take it serious in
that regard. I don't want to take the fun out
of it, but I want to add the integrity back
(40:27):
into it because for a while it was just I
found a quick way to make some money. Let me
teach you, I find a quick way to Yeah, the
hell with that, Like, build something that you can be
proud of. So I would say, my advice would have been, like,
prepare for the journey you're going on, make space for
people to come on that journey with you, and be
the person that you know you can be. So I'm
probably seventy percent of who I see myself as and
(40:48):
that other thirty percent kicking my ass because I gotta,
you know, be discipline myself in some regards.
Speaker 2 (40:53):
No, man, Yeah, man, this has been an amazing conversation. Bro,
I appreciate it. We've been all over the place.
Speaker 3 (40:58):
Man, I appreciate you. Bro.
Speaker 2 (40:59):
Before we got to hear bro to like, how can
people find you? How can they support you? Like give
them all the things.
Speaker 1 (41:04):
My name is Madi Wooter on all platforms. I'm most
active on Instagram, so m A HD, I w D
A r D and I'll be around the way just
helping people. Man, I'm just happy to be here again.
Thank you for the opportunity. We've been rocking together for years.
I'll try not to be so hard to nail down
next time. I know where to find you. But yeah, man,
thank you for letting me be random in a sense
(41:26):
and be able to tell this story. I hope there's
a portion of it that resonated with your audience. We
can always go deeper if they're a subject that people
need us to unpack some more. But man, I appreciate
you building a platform big enough and sturdy enough and
allow me to stand on it.
Speaker 3 (41:40):
So thank you. Bro.
Speaker 2 (41:40):
Hey, man, you're welcome and I definitely see some things
in the future.
Speaker 1 (41:43):
Man.
Speaker 2 (41:43):
So Bro again, I've seen the growth, seen the progress.
I remember when we first were connecting with each other. Yeah, Man,
like I reached out, like, Bro, look, we don't know
each other. I got an opportunity for it, you know
what I'm saying. And you know, ever since then, Man,
you've been killing it.
Speaker 3 (41:56):
Bros.
Speaker 2 (41:56):
Congratulations and everything. Happy to see the growth and man,
we can't wait to see what you come next.
Speaker 1 (42:00):
Man.
Speaker 3 (42:01):
Man, I'm excited. Man, Thank you again for the opportunity
to tell my story. Bro.
Speaker 2 (42:04):
Absolutely. Man. With that said, we out.
Speaker 3 (42:05):
That's the podcast. Let's do it.
Speaker 2 (42:08):
You've been listening to button Nomics and I'm your host,
Brandon Butler. Got comments, feedback? Want to be on the show.
Send us an email today at Hello at butternomics dot com.
Butter Nomics is produced in Atlanta, Georgia at iHeartMedia by
Ksey Pegram with marketing support from Queen and Nikki music
provided by mister Hanky. If you haven't already, hit that
subscribe button and never missed an episode, and be sure
(42:28):
to follow us on all our social platforms at butter
dot Atl. Listen to betteron Nomics on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts
Host
Brandon Butler
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.