October 17, 2023 • 62 mins
Who knew a career pivot could lead to mastering the dynamic world of marketing? It worked for Brooklyn-born Mark Friedman. Step into our journey as we explore Mark’s thrilling transition from the gritty world of accounting to becoming a marketing maven after being asked to invest $3 million in a budding catalog company during the late 80s boom. An era where there was no room for the faint-hearted. Join us as he recounts his growth, the errors he made along the way, the lessons he learned, and the resurgence of catalogs in digital marketing.
The digital age brought with it identity resolution technology, and Mark found himself riding this wave of change. This technology, though a boon for tracking customer behavior, raises some serious eyebrows on data privacy. We delve into the changes in iOS and how it's become trickier to track customers, marking a pivotal shift in digital marketing. Mark also shares insights on how crucial it is to understand what a business can afford to spend on marketing and why a return on investment is key to survival, especially for small businesses.
Our hike concludes with Mark’s transformation from a salaried employee to an entrepreneur. Hear how the power of networking led him to his first consulting gig in just two months. Our trail also takes us through Mark’s return to the corporate world with his dream role at Steve Madden. Plus, he reveals how his podcast, The Marketing Playbook, has helped him form connections with industry giants. We also discuss the critical role successful team-building plays in the grand scheme of things, emphasizing the importance of hiring individuals with complementary skills. So lace up your boots and join us on this enlightening journey!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
All right, mark Friedman, are you okay with
being recorded on a podcast?
Yes, sir.
Well, there goes that liability.
This is I Took a Hike.
I'm your host, darren Mass,founder of Business Therapy
Group and Parktime WildernessPhilosopher, here we step out of
the boardrooms and home officesand into the great outdoors,
where the hustle ofentrepreneurship meets the
rustle of nature.
In this episode, we stride withMark Friedman and e-commerce
(00:26):
and marketing pro.
Our topics include animpressive career with a major
pivot, marketing strategies, thevital role of direct mail and
networking the ever importanceof networking.
I was engaged with insight whenI took a hike with Mark
Friedman.
It wasn't until I embarked onthis podcast journey that I
(00:56):
realized the impact of problemsolving in nature.
And now I would like to helpyou.
I invite you or your team tojoin me on a hike and experience
business therapy, all while onthe trail.
Visit itookahikecom for moreinformation on our hiking
therapy.
So let's start off with MarkFriedman.
You are a marketingprofessional one would say a
(01:18):
guru.
I don't know if you would saythat, but I would say so based
on your resume, or CV, as thecool kids call it.
So why don't we start off withwho you are a little bit
personally and we'll get intothe marketing world, sure.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
So I live in Westfield with my wife.
We have two kids, twins, boyand girl, man and woman, 29
years old.
I grew up in Brooklyn, my wifegrew up in Scotch Plains, which
is how we wound up in Westfield.
Very cool All right.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
So pivoting forward grew up in Brooklyn.
We came out to the Burbs.
I guess we can call that theBurbs right, yes.
So what was it that made youpivot to marketing?
Speaker 2 (01:59):
Really was kind of more happenstance than anything.
When I left public accounting Iwent to work for a startup
catalog company.
It was an apparel business allgoing to be done through catalog
, and they hired me to be theircontroller.
There were four of us in thecompany.
I walked in the first day.
(02:20):
They had been venture capitalfunded.
They gave me a check for $3million and said, hey, why don't
you go invest this money for us?
So wound up doing that and fastforward.
Two years later we're stillwith the business.
We had put our first catalogout.
We were now $50 million involume.
That's pretty good growth.
(02:41):
Yep, it was great.
It was a lot of fun.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
The.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
ABC was happy.
Well, yeah, at least at thebeginning.
And then they wanted to movethe location of where our
distribution center was down toRoanoke, virginia.
We were up here in Patterson,new Jersey, and I didn't want to
move Understandable.
So they said, all right, well,we need some help in marketing.
(03:07):
I'm like, okay, I don't knowanything about marketing, but I
can give that a try.
So they were very gracious.
They really wanted me to staywith the business and I wanted
to stay as well.
So I moved into catalogmarketing, which was all about
the concepts of how do youdecide who to mail a catalog to
(03:31):
which customers.
It was all about segmentationand targeting.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
Sorry, we just hit a muddy patch here on my favorite
trail, the Watchong.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
Trail.
We've only had about six inchesof rain in the last week.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
Yeah, it's been crazy here on the northeast, so let's
go back to that story.
So, catalog marketing did youfind excitement in the catalog
industry?
Speaker 2 (03:53):
Yeah, you know again, this is late 80s.
So catalogs were booming, thatwas the market oh yeah, there
was no digital.
You know, internet wasn't.
Al Gore didn't create theinternet yet.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
Yeah, and, by the way , is it kind of not true?
Yeah, I think we all know this.
It was Darpanet and, yeah, heallowed Darpanet to continue
with funding, but I don't knowif he created the internet.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
But what was nice?
You know about that?
It was something new for me.
I never kind of thought ofmyself as creative.
You know I was more of thatanalytical, you know, accounting
side, but it gave me anopportunity to be a little bit
creative and, more importantly,I was learning.
I thought that was the bestpart of it.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
Yeah, on the job, learning is the best way to
absorb knowledge.
Making mistakes, you know.
Learning from your failures.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
Yeah, you know.
Unfortunately, you know we'rein such a society of immediate
impact.
Everything is fast, everythinghas to happen.
Yesterday it's sometimesdifficult to be able to get a
job be compensated well, evenyou know, for kind of future
value that you might bring.
Everybody wants you to, youknow.
(05:11):
I guess I understand that theywant you to be able to produce
today for some mediagratification.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
Yeah Right, I had a boss.
I worked at an electronics andappliance store once and I had
this killer day.
I think I sold like $10,000worth of merch, which is a lot
for a single salesperson in asingle store High fives, pats on
the back, etc.
That's the first day I come inand it's a slow day.
I'm under a thousand.
(05:37):
I'm eating my lunch and my boss, andy, runs into the break room
, starts screaming at me whatare you doing?
And I reminded him of the day Ihad and he said yeah, that was
yesterday.
What did you do for me today?
Speaker 2 (05:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
Important life lesson .
Unfortunately, we're judged bywhat we do at the present moment
, you know, and with theimmediate gratification of
everybody, and everything thatkind of makes learning on the
job a little more difficult.
Absolutely All right.
So you are in catalog marketing.
Did you stay in catalogmarketing for a while?
Speaker 2 (06:06):
I did.
I stayed with this companycalled Tweeds for nine years.
We kind of back to your comment.
You know that the privateequity guys were happy.
You know private equity guyswant to have a return, they want
to get it quickly.
So while we had achieved $50million, they wanted it to be
much larger and we got pushedinto doing some things and I
(06:30):
think this happens a lot inbusiness got pushed into doing
some things that probably werenot right for the brand Creating
products, creating creativethat was more mass so that you
could grow, as opposed tocatering to a niche that we were
initially targeting.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
So this is an interesting topic because this
is pretty universal with anytype of capital raise, whether
it's PE, vc or any organizationthat's willing to give you a
large sum of money.
They want to dictate or steerthe direction of the company,
but sometimes they don't havethe experience.
So how do you deal with aninvestment party or partner when
(07:10):
you know what they're going tosay or do is the wrong approach?
Speaker 2 (07:15):
Yeah, it's super hard and hopefully when those
conversations develop, you'vebuilt some political capital or
respect capital or just theyunderstand that you know what
you're talking about and theydefer to you.
You know.
Look, the fact is they have youin place for a reason because
(07:35):
these investment guys, theirexpertise is money and return on
investment and capital andleverage and all those things.
If you're part of the business,they have you for a reason.
It's for your business acumenand knowing the market, knowing
the competition and oftentimes,to your point, they don't allow
those people to do what they'rebest at.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
And it's important to understand as a small business
owner.
When you're going out forcapital, especially with a big
organization or a fund, it's notyour company anymore, even if
you think it is.
Even if you maintain the CEOposition, you still have to
answer to the investment partyor the guy Kyle who you now
report to and he graduated fromStanford three weeks ago and
(08:21):
he's your boss or he's askingyou for your job description.
It's not just about raisingcapital, it's about the whole
process that you have to gothrough.
Now.
There's benefits to raisingcapital, of course, but you got
to be aware of the pitfalls.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
Yeah, and I think that's what leads to hesitation
by many entrepreneurs of sellingtheir company Either.
If you look at, often times theinvestment company that's
buying in wants to keep theentrepreneur there because of
their knowledge, but it's a verydifferent working environment
(09:00):
for that entrepreneur.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
Yeah.
What's funny is I have a friendwho is asking me for investment
advice when it comes to acapital raise.
He had an interested PE partnerand I told him the same thing.
Only, instead of Kyle, I usedthe name Zach with an H.
No offense to Zach's with H'sLove the name, it's great.
But I said some kid named Zachwith an H.
(09:23):
He's 23 years old, graduatedfrom Stanford, started working
for the company.
He's going to ask you for yourjob description.
And my buddy called me up threeweeks later and he said do you
have a crystal ball?
I asked why he goes.
A guy named Zach with an H,who's like 20 something years
old, is asking me for my jobdescription and I now report to
(09:43):
him.
No offense to any Zach with anH.
Raising capital is a necessaryevil sometimes, especially if
you want to accelerate yourcompany.
But just be aware that youdon't work for your company
anymore.
You don't work for yourself.
With that being said, you arein catalog marketing.
(10:05):
At what point did you pivot?
Speaker 2 (10:09):
I've had a number of pivots in my career and I've
been very lucky and some talkabout well, I say it's lucky,
some say, well, you make yourown luck.
I made that first pivot when Iwent from accounting into
marketing, when I was with thecatalog business.
The second, more significantpivot was moving from catalog
(10:31):
marketing into digital commerce.
That happened in 2000.
I went from a catalog businesscalled the company store.
We were manufacturing andselling through catalog down
comforters and coats and fillaround, fill around, right, yeah
, still around, actually ownedby Home Depot.
(10:52):
I was recruited to go work atBrooks Brothers.
They had, I guess, 2000,.
They had a nascent e-commercebusiness.
They were predominantly storesand they had a fairly large
catalog business.
They hired me as generalmanager of what they call direct
(11:12):
to consumer.
It was the catalog and the web.
Then, shortly thereafter, Itook over marketing for the
stores that we had.
That was really my firstopportunity in digital.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
That was your springboard into the more modern
era of marketing.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
Back to where I was saying about being lucky.
I had a lot of catalogcolleagues that really got left
behind.
They went on, continued to havegood careers, but many of them
had really wanted to make apivot into digital and just
didn't have the opportunity.
Because, back to what we weresaying before, a lot of
(11:52):
companies they want experiencedpeople doing things for
themselves, For them.
They don't want people to learnon the job anymore.
That's right.
In my case, they brought mebecause they had a big catalog
business.
I was able to use them to learnabout digital.
Speaker 1 (12:10):
Is catalogs still current?
Is it still around?
I mean, I know I do getcatalogs, but what's the point?
Speaker 2 (12:17):
The point is that catalogs are, first of all, to
your question, they're stillaround.
Number one, number two, I thinkthey've actually had some kind
of a renaissance Because you'vehad so many brands, a lot of the
apparel space, but so manybrands that were digitally
native.
They started their businessjust with a website.
Then, ultimately, in a desireto grow, they opened up stores.
(12:39):
In a desire to drive trafficinto stores and to the website,
they started using direct mail.
Now there's this almost acottage industry of a couple of
agencies that are helping brandswith catalog.
It's a different concept oftentimes in catalog today than it
(13:01):
was.
It used to be 80 pages, 100pages the old days of Spiegel
books, 300 pages.
Today they're more targeted,probably fewer pages, so less
cost in the mail, but clearlyways to drive traffic to stores
and to online.
Speaker 1 (13:21):
Is there a number of conversion?
For every household that acatalog has sent, x dollars of
revenue comes in or is lost.
Or is it just to show viabilityin the company still?
Speaker 2 (13:32):
No, no, every business is a little bit
different.
Frankly, nowadays it's muchmore difficult to determine.
The terminology is attributionhow you're marketing dollars or
attributing to the sales thatyou got, so that you can make
decisions on whether a dollarspent here is as good as a
(13:53):
dollar spent there Across theback.
With this Correct, when I wasgetting started, you mailed the
catalog.
Only one of a few thingshappened.
You got no orders, or you got aphone order, or you got a mail
order.
That was it.
You didn't have to worry aboutwhether a customer was starting
(14:14):
their transaction on a digital,on a mobile device, or they were
starting on desktop, or youdidn't have to deal with that.
The only other situation whenyou mailed the catalog is the
customer could go in the storeand make a purchase because they
saw something in the catalogand they wanted to touch it or
(14:37):
see it in person rather thanjust buy it.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
Correct, they had to get a phone and I feel like
that's the main reason whyretail stores although a lot of
the times they're empty, that'swhy they still exist Is so the
client can touch or feel theproduct, see it with their own
eyes, before they make thepurchase.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
Yeah, there's still a real need for retail.
It's an experience number one.
Walk around the Short HillsMall on a rainy Saturday, over
the summer or anytime, and themall is very, very crowded.
Alright, maybe there's not asmany people that are actually
carrying bags, but they're therefor the experience, to walk
(15:18):
around to see what's new topeople watch.
I think there'll always be thatneed.
Speaker 1 (15:25):
Got it.
So I will say there are timeswhere I get a catalog, for
instance, something I'm reallyinto.
I'm into jeeps, I love my Jeep.
I think any Jeeper willunderstand the passion for
driving a Jeep and when I do getone of those Jeep catalogs, I
do look through it.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
Does it stimulate you to go online to buy something
it used to, but now that I'vebought everything before I hit
crazy excess obsession.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
I put it down, but it does get me to look, which puts
that company in the front of mymind.
But other magazines I do throwout.
And I happen to have a clientthat does direct to mail and the
conversations I have with himis regardless of if that piece
of mail gets thrown in thegarbage, your client, right, the
(16:16):
homeowner had to put theireyeballs on it, Even if it's for
a split second.
They had to make a decision isthis junk?
Let's go the other way.
This is too muddy.
We will certainly be sinking inthat over there, but that's why
his business is very relevant,because you had to make that
decision before you threw it inthe trash.
(16:37):
And that's what some of thismarketing is about.
It's a reminder.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
Yeah, well, it's the three.
Second rule Can you get infront of the customer for three
seconds and look?
Marketing is?
You've probably heard it's a360, trying to get a 360 view of
the customer.
But it's also trying to touchthe customer in as many ways as
possible.
So maybe, as they pick up theirmail and they're standing over
(17:03):
the garbage pail, maybe it'saround digital advertising that
they see while they're playingwordle.
I mean, there's just so manydifferent touch points and you
try to hit on them as best youcan.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
Hey listener, thanks for hiking along with us.
Discover more episodes atiTookahikecom, or to recommend
an adventurous guest, apply tobe a sponsor or to simply drop
us a line.
All right, so back to digitalmarketing.
You pivoted into the digitalspace.
Is there a learning curve foryou?
Speaker 2 (17:38):
Yeah, you know yes and no.
So much of what you do indigital is kind of similar to
what you did in catalog.
You spend dollars, you getsales, so there's KPIs around
that which are very similar.
You get impressions on adigital website, which is very
(17:59):
similar to the fact that youhave mailed out a bunch of
catalogs.
You get orders, which gives youa conversion rate.
You get dollars, which givesyou a dollar per impression or a
dollar per spend.
So the key metrics in digitalversus catalog were very, very
similar.
Okay, sure, there's a learningcurve in the tactics that you
(18:20):
use.
You mean, you have to learn.
When I got started, googlewasn't a thing, it was all Yahoo
search, so you needed tounderstand that Digital
marketing was not prevalent then, certainly, sms messaging.
So, yeah, there was a learningcurve about the tactics, for
sure.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
So what was one of the biggest learning lessons
that you were able to glean fromdigital marketing that really
accelerated or propelled yourunderstanding?
Speaker 2 (18:49):
Well, I think when you go back again to catalog,
you kind of had two buckets.
You had your customers, yourhouse file and then you had
prospects.
And here in digital it's notall dissimilar.
You have a funnel, you have topof funnel, which is kind of
your prospects.
Maybe you would consider itmore brand awareness.
(19:10):
And then as you move down thefunnel, it's more about speaking
to your customers and lookingfor more performance.
I guess performance resultsfrom the dollars that you're
spending as you move down thefunnel.
It's more of what we callperformance marketing.
(19:32):
So think of a retargeting adthat you might see on.
You go visit a website, xyzsite and then you go back to,
let's say, wordle, like I said,and you see an ad because you
were on XYZ website.
If you click on that ad and youget a sale, that's bottom of
funnel, that's retargeting.
That's a customer who had beenon your site maybe was playing
(19:55):
around, didn't check out, andnow you're coming back to
retarget them on another siteand if they buy, it's an
effective campaign, all right.
Speaker 1 (20:06):
So let's talk about that for a second, because that
is the greatest mystery ineveryone's mind.
How does that work out?
How come I go and add apaintbrush in my Home Depot cart
right, and then I go, switchover to anything else and all of
a sudden an ad popped up.
How does that work?
Speaker 2 (20:24):
I probably won't even bother to explain the technical
side of it, but it's.
Is this a nerd alert moment?
Yeah, look, it's all about thetech.
The tech has been built to beable to track either a cookie on
your device, on your desktop,or other kinds of personally
identifiable information that'savailable out there, to know
(20:49):
that not necessarily that it'sMark Friedman, but to know that
this customer has exhibited thisbehavior.
It was that device, correct, itwas a device.
And one of the things thatagain didn't exist so much in
the catalog space is aboutwhat's called identity
resolution.
(21:09):
The name of the game is to beable to stitch together Mark
Friedman's doings in the digitalworld so that I can really view
him as a whole.
Now, I talked about 360 before.
What is Mark Friedman doing outin digital?
(21:31):
And I could be on my iPad, Icould be on my mobile, I could
be on my desktop, I could clickon Instagram.
All that stuff gets pulledtogether, and there are
companies out there who theirsingle claim to fame is the
technology behind identityresolution.
Wow, so.
Speaker 1 (21:51):
How dangerous is identity resolution, right?
So is this a big brother momentwhere the machine knows more
about me than me?
Speaker 2 (21:57):
Oh yeah, there's no question that there's a big
brother-ish.
My wife and I laugh, or shelaughs that Facebook and
Instagram and not serious.
But Siri, all these things arelistening to us.
So she kind of will have aconversation and the next thing
(22:19):
you get an ad on your Facebookfeed from that kind of thing.
So one day she wanted to see ifit worked and she likes
Twizzlers, so she's yelling outTwizzlers, twizzlers.
I'm like what are you doing?
She says I want to see if I getan ad from Facebook for
Twizzlers now.
And no, we didn't get one.
Speaker 1 (22:36):
Ah okay, so that's a very anticlimactic finish.
That's kind of the way it works.
But so I do remember thishappening.
We had Alexa in our home andsince then I've stopped having
Alexa Make your own decisions.
But we were approaching the endof our car lease and I wanted
(22:57):
to look at a specific car.
My wife wasn't really into thatcar anyway, but I mentioned the
car in our living room wherethere happens to be an Alexa
device.
Everything was peppered on ourphones with that car company,
the exact car.
So that's not coincidence.
Speaker 2 (23:16):
Maybe I'm noticing it more or not, but that had to be
obviously because of no, it'sgetting more prevalent, though
in and I'll probably get thiswrong At least two years ago,
there were a lot of changes iniOS and the level of tracking
capability that was available.
Apple made changes and some ofthe other large companies made
(23:39):
changes, and, in theory, withthe intention of making it more
difficult to track, which madeit more complicated for
marketers.
Speaker 1 (23:47):
So then Apple is trying to protect its consumers.
I would think it would be theopposite, because Apple can't.
They profit off of this.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
For sure, and it depends upon how skeptical you
are or not.
So that's a different topic.
Speaker 1 (24:04):
Fair enough, All right.
So let's go pivot towards thesmall business and maybe some
lessons that we can offer tothem.
If you were advising themarketing efforts of a small
business, what is the firstthing that they should really
look at?
Speaker 2 (24:19):
It's really understanding what your business
can afford to spend to marketand it's incredible how many
businesses that I see andusually I'm working with
companies that want me to helpthem with their digital business
.
So, and if they have retailstores or they have other
(24:45):
channels, you'd be surprised howmany businesses don't have a
P&L specifically for their Ecomchannel.
I'm not surprised.
Speaker 1 (24:52):
I am not.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
Even if you realize that there's some things you
can't break out.
But at least go through theeffort of establishing the P&L,
establishing what you think yourbreak even is, and based upon
that you will know what you canafford to spend to acquire new
customers, the cost ofacquisition, all of those things
(25:14):
are super important.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
So I hear this all too often from CEOs, from
business owners, where theydon't understand that spending
money or spending budget orcreating a budget on marketing
should be a percentage ofrevenue Correct and it will have
a return.
Because I think and please keepme honest here, but from my
(25:37):
experience business owners seemarketing as a risk and a waste
of money.
Right, and I think that'sbecause they don't understand
the powers of marketing or evenhow to market.
Speaker 2 (25:48):
Well, I think the answer is yeah.
There are probably some, lotsof folks out there like that.
Now, it also depends upon whatkind of marketing we're talking
about.
If we're talking about brandawareness marketing, so, I've
got.
Someone let the dogs out.
Yeah, let's hope they staybehind that fence.
(26:08):
Yeah well, who can outrun who?
You probably can outrun me.
Speaker 1 (26:14):
so I don't know.
So let's turn in on this pathand we'll pick that one up again
.
Speaker 2 (26:19):
So what were we saying?
Are we talking about marketingand spending.
Speaker 1 (26:24):
Marketing for small businesses isn't spent.
Speaker 2 (26:26):
Yeah.
So if my experience again isthese smaller businesses, if you
can show them that a dollarspent on Google, for example,
will drive $3 of revenue sowhat's called that a $3 row as a
return on ad spend they mayunderstand that I put a dollar
(26:49):
out, I got $3 back.
If you tell them to do top offunnel which I was talking about
before, which is just brandawareness, I just want to have a
whole lot of people see mywebsite, even though it may not
be as targeted as I like and Imight not get any direct sales
that I can track.
That's really hard for asmaller business to understand.
Speaker 1 (27:10):
Yeah well, small businesses want to see faster
returns.
Right, that dollar is deeplypersonal to the business owner,
so sometimes they don't have theability to have a duration of
time.
Speaker 2 (27:21):
Correct.
That's correct.
And oftentimes if you're in itfor the long haul and you're
well-capitalized, you could beinvestment spending.
And investment spending ismeaning that you know that the
dollar I spent today does notgenerate a sale that is
profitable to me today, butyou're interested in acquiring
that customer because maybe youknow that your rebuy rate the
(27:46):
number of people that youacquire today that will buy
again from you in the future.
Maybe that next purchase iswhere you gain the profit.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
That's right, so return on investment.
So this is unfortunately.
If we're gearing theconversation to small business
owners, they're afraid of takingadditional risk with their
investment, that's correct.
What I advise business ownersis you should not be taking a
hefty salary.
Take whatever you absolutelyneed to get by, preferably
nothing, because every dollaryou reinvest back in the
(28:15):
business can be worth tenfold inthe future.
Same thing with marketing Forevery dollar you invest in a
good marketing strategy it canbe worth infinite times more.
But you do need the duration oftime you need to water that
seat.
So, with a small business inmind, if there was a very, let's
(28:36):
say, strategic investment, howlong do you think a business
owner should wait or be patientfor a marketing strategy?
And I know this is kind of avery big topic, hypothetical but
how long would you say theaverage marketing strategy in a
small business would take toreturn an investment?
Speaker 2 (28:54):
Yeah, I think it really.
It's not only what I mightthink, it's the appetite, the
risk averse or not that thesmall business owner is.
When we were operating some ofthese businesses, we were
willing to lose money on thefirst purchase because we had a
good understanding that, basedupon the products that we sold,
(29:16):
there was going to be a repeatpurchase 30% of the time, let's
say, within 12 months.
That's right.
And when I factored in, let'ssay, the loss on the first
purchase and 30% of those peoplebuying again, on average,
whatever they were going tospend, if I could make money on
the sum of those two, then wewere willing to do that.
Speaker 1 (29:38):
But that's for a much bigger company.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
Well, yeah, I mean again, it's not so much size of
company, it's how wellcapitalized you are and the
culture of the business and alot of what you sell.
If you're a car dealer and theaverage customer turning that
car over five years, six years,seven years, you've got to be
(30:01):
able to make enough profit onthat one sale.
That's going to hold you for awhile because you're likely not
going to see that customer Againanytime soon.
Speaker 1 (30:11):
Well pertaining to car dealers.
From my understanding and ifanyone has better knowledge,
correct me if I'm wrong it's allabout service.
Yeah, it's about the service.
Speaker 2 (30:19):
They make virtually nothing, very low margin on the
sale or lease of that car, butthey fact yeah, but to your
point they factor in, you know,the, let's say, the cost of
acquiring the purchase or thelease and then what they can
generate on average over thethree-year term of the lease.
But you're right, all thosecomponents are part of it.
Speaker 1 (30:42):
All right, so back to marketing efforts.
What happened to your careerafter digital?
Did you stay in digital?
Did you pivot?
Speaker 2 (30:49):
No, I've stayed in digital.
You know, I think the pivot forme was still digital, but going
from a scenario of being on thebrand side where I was an
employee of a company, you knowand this is a good you know,
perhaps a lesson for you know,for some folks that are
listening In 2010, I guess andyou know, I first started
(31:12):
working in 1983, so you knowquite a lot of years was the
first time I woke up without ajob.
My position had been eliminatedand now needed to think about
what was I going to do next.
I really hadn't had to look fora job for a very long time.
(31:35):
All the jobs that I had gotten,up until this one I had been
recruited for, or I knewsomebody, or what have you.
But now come, basically,february 1st 2010.
On January 31st, my boss saysjeez, we're eliminating the role
.
Thank you very much, see ya.
(31:56):
And look at that.
Wow, just like that.
Yeah, now I'm being overlydramatic because I was very
lucky.
I had a good severance package,so I wasn't stressed, so there
was no jelly of the month, clubNope.
Speaker 1 (32:12):
Please, listeners, get that reference or Google it.
It's hilarious.
Speaker 2 (32:18):
But I did have two kids that were getting ready to
go to college in 2012.
Pressures on, so now I had todecide what I was going to do.
Next morning I woke up, calleda buddy of mine who has an
office still does in downtownWestfield and told him I needed
an office.
He said come over.
He stuck me in an office andthat's where my LLC Details
(32:40):
Interactive was formed and theidea behind that and, as I say
this a few times, the wordinteractive back then made sense
.
Today it's a little dated, butI was now going to go from an
employee of a company to astandalone.
Put my shingle out try to be adigital commerce consultant.
Speaker 1 (33:03):
So the baker for the bakery, who makes great muffins
and cupcakes, is now a bakeryowner.
That is a pivot.
You go into the world ofentrepreneurship.
Speaker 2 (33:12):
Yep.
So what is that like?
Well, it was interestingbecause I'd always wanted to
have a business, but I never hadan idea enough of what that
business could be.
So I wound up just being anoperator of other people's ideas
and being the strategist andthe executor of those businesses
.
Now I had to find out whethersomebody would actually pay me,
(33:37):
be on a salary for what Ithought I knew.
And I have always been a goodnetworker and we can talk about
that.
At least I think I am a goodnetworker.
I can't understate what's theright word Understate,
understate, over estimation.
Yeah, I can't understate howimportant networking is
(34:00):
maintaining relationships,reaching out to people
periodically without being apain in the behind, and keeping
those relationships going.
Speaker 1 (34:09):
Networking is a huge skill that takes a lot of
practice and a lot of gettingover the fear of vulnerability
and embarrassment, but it is themost critical aspect of any
successful sales mentality.
Speaker 2 (34:22):
Absolutely and frankly it got easier, at least
for people like me.
I'm not the kind of a guypeople laugh at me when I say
I'm shy, but I'm not the kind ofguy who walks into a room of
people that I don't know.
I don't stick out my hand andsay hi, I'm Mark Friedman, not
my comfort zone.
But when you're doing it onLinkedIn or you're doing it
through email or a text, ittakes that fear factor away.
(34:45):
Well, you have anonymity.
Speaker 1 (34:47):
You do have a screen so you can be who you want to
portray in a way that's correct.
Speaker 2 (34:52):
You need to be persistent, but you need to be
respectful of people's time, andit's really served me well.
And so I got.
I started that February 1st2010,.
And within 60 days I got myfirst gig.
And I got the gig because of arelationship with a recruiter
(35:13):
who didn't have a job for me butwho had a friend who had a
company and he had said to herhey, if you come across anybody
that could help me on aconsulting basis, let me know.
Well, sure enough, I got myfirst gig and for that full year
I had quite a lot of projects,you know, one begat another, and
(35:37):
I was kind of at the cusp ofdeciding do I stick with this?
Do I hire somebody to help meor do I continue to pursue a
full-time gig?
And just as about the time Iwas getting serious about doing
this permanently, I wasrecruited to head up the
(35:57):
commerce business at SteveMadden Well-known brand, yeah
and wound up doing that.
For seven years and fastforward to today, I've had a
number of different full-timegigs.
For various reasons they nolonger existed.
But I'm consulting again and Ilike being busy and the
(36:23):
consultant thing is just adifferent kind of busy than
having one job, but it's workedout very well for me.
Speaker 1 (36:31):
So that's an interesting pivot that you took.
You were seeing all of thissuccess especially early on in
your entrepreneurial career,which is rare, by the way.
Right 60 days having your firstbig client, and a big client at
that, and you took the route togo back to working in corporate
America.
Yeah, and is it solely becausethe big name, brand and the
(36:54):
title or the ego, which is okay,or is it the fear of when my
next meal will be, or you justdidn't like being an
entrepreneur?
Speaker 2 (37:03):
No, I liked being an entrepreneur.
It had nothing to do with whenmy next meal was going to be.
I think some of it had to dowith when you're a consultant.
You're not an operator, right,which means that you can make
suggestions.
Ultimately, the brand itselfhas to implement.
And I still, even to this dayalthough, as my career moves
(37:27):
towards the ninth inning, Istill really like waking up in
the morning and seeing how thebusiness performed, that I'm
involved with.
The prior day.
Speaker 1 (37:37):
So you like being in charge and I agree with you.
As a consultant, I can coach, Ican consult, provide business
therapy for my clients all daylong.
If they don't want to do it,they won't do it.
Speaker 2 (37:48):
Yeah, and you just have to realize that.
But so to your question aboutwhy did I move back away from
the consulting, that's, theopportunities presented
themselves to be involved withone brand as an operator, and I
(38:12):
like that Dream job, were theymy dream job.
Speaker 1 (38:15):
Yeah well, with Steve Madden when they came knocking
at your door.
Was that considered your dreamjob at that time?
Speaker 2 (38:20):
No, as a matter of fact, when I went there the
first day I live in New Jerseytheir office was in Long Island
City.
That's a hike.
So that was a schlep number oneand candidly and this is gonna
sound like I was a primadonna,but I walked into that office
and it was an absolute dump.
Speaker 1 (38:43):
That doesn't make you sound like a primadonna.
That's unfortunately, in thiscase, the shoemaker's kids.
It was just, I had no shoes.
Speaker 2 (38:50):
Yeah, it was.
Just look.
It was an extraordinarilysuccessful company.
It still is.
I'm still friends with peoplethat I made relationships with
there.
But when you're looking to takea job you look at the totality
of the experience and firstimpressions are big.
(39:12):
You walk into an office.
It was in a residential area inLong Island City.
The building was kind of oldand run down, then steps to walk
up to the main level were abouttwo feet wide.
They had duct tape over therisers Awesome, it wasn't what I
expected from a brand like that.
I went in there and they keptme waiting 45 minutes for the
(39:36):
first interview.
I was like am I really going to?
Is this going to be a culturethat I was going to like?
But anyway, I got past thosethings they made.
Steve was very gracious, mademe a very nice offer and wound
up working with them for sevenyears.
Speaker 1 (39:55):
So that's actually really important and this for
anybody that owns a businessthat first impression for a new
hire, even when you'reinterviewing them.
You could have walked out, theycould have lost the opportunity
to have hired you.
Speaker 2 (40:09):
I think companies look at I'm generalizing
companies look at it that it'smore important, that the hire is
more important for the employee, the potential employee, the
candidate, than it is for thecompany, and that is quite the
opposite.
Speaker 1 (40:23):
Today, especially with the shortage, in quality
people.
Speaker 2 (40:27):
But you'll be surprised, Darren.
I still see situations where,because it's so much easier to
apply, very easy to click theapply button on LinkedIn, which
is a mistake.
We'll get to that in a second.
How many companies really willhave interviews with people and
(40:48):
then ghost them?
It's still an issue.
Speaker 1 (40:53):
It's asinine, but the reason why I say the easy apply
button is a mistake is becauseeverybody easy applies and then
you're just gonna fall into apile.
If you really want that job,it's a dream job find out who
the listing HR person is, orwhoever's listing the position,
and send your CV directly.
Speaker 2 (41:10):
Yeah, or find other people that are connected to
others in that organization andsee if you can get your way in.
And this goes back to what wewere talking about before about
networking.
Speaker 1 (41:21):
I've advised people back yes, back to networking.
A great opportunity is connectwith others around that listing
person, build a quickrelationship with them, connect
with them on LinkedIn and ask ifthey can be willing to
introduce you personally to thatperson.
It does work.
It's worth the effort.
Hey listener, thanks for hikingalong with us, discover more
(41:43):
episodes at iTokaHikecom, or torecommend an adventurous guest,
apply to be a sponsor, or tosimply drop us a line.
We'll keep marching forward.
So let's go back toentrepreneurship.
Do you miss it?
Speaker 2 (41:59):
Well, I'm actually in it at the moment.
I had spent a bunch of timeover the last couple of years
with Eddie Bauer in acombination of full-time
employee roles and contractorrole and, beginning in the
middle of the summer, thatchanged, so I'm consulting again
(42:21):
.
I've been very lucky to havepicked up a number of clients,
which is great.
I feel like I'm adding value tothe respective teams.
I think they feel like that aswell, and in many cases they're
fairly small businesses andthey're dealing with much of the
things we've talked about today.
Speaker 1 (42:43):
So would you say that back again, networking very
important.
That's how you got your clients, because you seem to have a
stroke of luck.
You start a business, you findclients.
So are these individuals thatyou've known in the past?
Speaker 2 (42:55):
Well, let's see.
I'll cycle through for you themore recent ones.
So the first one that presented, right after early in the
summer, a friend of mine that Iknew from the industry.
She had interviewed with thesefolks for a job.
The job wasn't really bigenough for her so she went off
and did something else, but sherecommended me, so that was a
(43:16):
referral.
The second one was somebodythat I knew from a prior job
that we worked together.
I had done a project for themthree or four years ago.
They called me back and said alot of the work you did for us
was right on, spot on.
We need to evolve, so are youavailable?
The third one was a guy thatI've never met face to face.
(43:39):
We cultivated a relationship onLinkedIn and he called and said
hey, I've got a project.
I don't have the bandwidth todo it, I think you'd be great at
it.
He had heard my podcast and wedid that.
The fourth one is somebody thathas a store in Westfield.
(43:59):
My wife's a shopper there.
I reached out to them and justagain, back to the networking.
Then the last one was alsosomebody that lives locally,
lives close by.
We had some mutual friends.
So I persisted and learned, Ifound out what she was doing and
(44:23):
I reached out and reached outuntil she responded.
And now I'm doing a project forthem.
Speaker 1 (44:29):
So I think that's the most important takeaway from
this.
Obviously, the marketingconversation is phenomenal, but
networking is everything You'reputting yourself out there.
So let's look back.
And then I want to talk aboutyour podcast, because you do
have a podcast and you have somevery amazing guests on there,
thanks.
So, before we go there, overyour entire career, if you could
(44:51):
think back what was the biggestmistake that you made and what
was the learning lesson fromthat mistake?
No, this is not a job interview.
Speaker 2 (45:03):
I think that the mistakes perhaps that I've made
when you lose a job and I thinkI can explain at least
rationalize why I have lost someof the jobs in digital commerce
there's lots of reorganizationand whatever.
Speaker 1 (45:20):
Not uncommon for marketing people to be replaced.
Speaker 2 (45:24):
Yeah, and look, I can go back over my career and say
were there things I could havedone differently?
I think probably the oneconsistent thing is when
businesses were struggling,maybe I wasn't as quick to react
to the downturn as perhaps Ishould have been.
(45:46):
I don't think you feel itnecessarily in the moment, but
if you've had time to go backand think about it, that's
perhaps the learning.
Speaker 1 (45:59):
Well, it's a hindsight reflection.
Speaker 2 (46:00):
Yeah, look, I have no regrets for.
Maybe there's one job I tookthat I have regrets for, but I
don't really have regrets.
It's kind of a wasted emotion,I think to be regretful.
I just try to learn from eachexperience.
(46:21):
When, like I said, my career isalready close to the ninth
inning though I'm not a retiringkind of guy.
I need to be busy I will feellike I've had a nice career.
For me, the most important part, when I leave a job and when
people reach out and tell methat jeez, I feel like I've
(46:43):
learned something from you.
That's the most satisfaction Iget.
That's the thing that reallymakes it worthwhile.
Speaker 1 (46:51):
Now let's talk about your podcast.
You do have a podcast and youhave quite a few episodes.
How many exactly?
Speaker 2 (46:59):
Just recorded number 84 today.
So I've been at this sinceright before COVID.
Wow, it started as really itstill is a hobby.
I had worked with a really niceguy still friends with him at
Steve Madden.
He was my IT e-commercebusiness partner and we had done
(47:22):
a bunch of conferences togetherOther of us are funny, haha,
but we're kind of clever and wereally got along well and the
audiences, I think, responded tous.
I had said to him hey, weshould do a podcast together.
He agreed but we never did it.
Then I left Madden and whateverRight before COVID started.
(47:46):
So the end of 19,.
I kind of put the concepttogether with a friend who's my
editor.
It's been fun.
It's called the MarketingPlaybook Podcast.
You can find it wherever youget your podcast on Apple or
Spotify.
There's a YouTube channel.
The idea is to take a guest,have it be very conversational,
(48:13):
talk about their first story,kind of whether or not there was
something in there growing upthat suggested that they would
be or follow the path that theyhave in their career, and we
kind of wrap up the show withthree key takeaways that
listeners can bring back totheir personal or to their
(48:34):
business lives.
We've had the CEO of Levi's, afellow named Chip Berg, who went
to the same college that I didand happened to be in the same
fraternity and kind of a bookend.
You know that we're recordinghere in.
(48:56):
I guess it's October already,october of 2023.
Speaker 1 (49:00):
This is October what Second?
Speaker 2 (49:02):
But last week I interviewed and put out a show
with Gary Vaynerchuk Gary's kindof the self-professed king of
social media.
That was a great opportunity tospend a half hour with him.
Speaker 1 (49:18):
We've had a lot of fantastic guests.
Can I surmise that networkinghas played a role in you getting
these guests to appear on yourpodcast?
Speaker 2 (49:28):
Yeah, every single one.
I would say that I haven't goneback to count, but I would say
that roughly half the peoplethat have been guests I did not
know previously had no priorconnection with but somebody
either introduced me or Ireached out to them on LinkedIn,
told them what I was doing andit'd be a surprise.
(49:50):
More often than not, peoplewere willing to do it.
Speaker 1 (49:54):
Well, because who doesn't love talking?
Speaker 2 (49:56):
about themselves, talking about themselves.
Speaker 1 (49:57):
Absolutely that, and podcasts are a very awesome
opportunity to really marketeither yourself or your brand,
put out a life legacy, and whenyou do have a listener, the
listeners tend to stay engaged.
Speaker 2 (50:12):
It's been a lot.
When I first started, my wifesaid to me, after I told her I
was going to do this, hercomment was are you going to
make any money?
Doing this no.
Speaker 1 (50:22):
I was like it is incredibly difficult to make
money by doing a podcast,because a podcast is a marketing
tool.
Speaker 2 (50:31):
I said to her no, I'm not going to make any money and
, as a matter of fact, it'sgoing to cost me money for every
show that I do because I havean editor.
It's not a significant expense.
Well, it's fun.
It is fun and I've met a lot ofreally nice people.
(50:54):
The other part of it you talkabout branding, and one of the
other things that I do in mycareer is try to make
relationships, referrals.
If I have some partnershipswith companies that offer a
certain service, I can talk tosomebody on the podcast.
(51:17):
Now.
I have a personal relationshipwith them and, as they feel like
they have a need, I can perhapstalk to them about their need.
Now they feel comfortable withme because they were on the
podcast.
Speaker 1 (51:30):
Networking yet again.
So what are some of thegreatest learning lessons of
having your own podcast?
I think I've learned a few ofthem.
Speaker 2 (51:38):
Well, you probably have Turn the mic on.
Speaker 1 (51:40):
Yeah, hit record, especially on new gear, that's
important.
Speaker 2 (51:44):
It's funny that you say that, because when I get
ready to do the show, I alwaystell the guest I'm going to hit
record, because I don't want youto be the recipient of the
first one that I forget torecord.
Speaker 1 (51:56):
So are you the first one?
For me, no, actually you're thesecond one.
You're the first time where thecable was unplugged, but the
first time I got my handy dandynew recorder forgot to turn it
on.
No, I turned it on, I leveledit, but I forgot to press the
record button.
Luckily the practice when Ipreach redundancy diversity I
(52:17):
have backups so we were able tomake it work.
Speaker 2 (52:21):
But not every show is going to be good and I don't
beat myself up over it.
That's probably another goodtakeaway for folks Make a
mistake, you don't do somethingwell, there's really not a lot
of value in beating yourself upover it.
Take away your learnings.
Make sure you don't do it again.
Make sure you try to improveupon what it was that you didn't
(52:42):
like.
I think in my early shows therewas a lot of stammering.
I wasn't as natural as I wantedto be, even though I felt like
I knew the content.
When I was done with the Garyshow, my wife always says to me
after the show how to go.
I was like I nailed that one.
(53:04):
It was good.
In my show, much like you'redoing here, I tried to ask a
question and then get out of theway and let the guest just talk
.
It was great.
Speaker 1 (53:17):
Awesome, that was a great episode.
Thank you.
A lot of good lessons from that.
We are now at a river crossingof just some rocks.
They're an easier path.
Yes, right here, maybe Muchlike life, there is always an
easier path if you open youreyes and take time to think and
stretch.
Speaker 2 (53:35):
Yes, you go first.
Look at this.
All right, great, I think Iknow where I'm going.
Speaker 1 (53:39):
All right.
Speaker 2 (53:46):
This is like the horse crossing.
Speaker 1 (53:48):
This is except.
I'm the horse and there's aloose rock All right.
Speaker 2 (53:55):
I'm not sure where the next foot goes, so maybe
that's not the best path.
I think you should get a strawand suck all the water out of
here until it's dry, and then Iwill go.
You think I've got yeah, Allright.
Speaker 1 (54:11):
are we finding another path?
Speaker 2 (54:13):
I'm not sure the one that you're walking on is
optimal.
Speaker 1 (54:18):
This is.
I took a hike and a bath.
It's the beauty of natureTrails get flooded.
So, to tie up the whole episode, what should we really be
focusing on when it comes tomarketing efforts?
What is the most importantvalue that we should take away
from this?
Speaker 2 (54:39):
Well, I think it's we didn't really talk about this
but know who your customer isright, because you can spend a
whole lot of dollars talking topeople that are not potentially.
You know your customers, sothat's important Understanding,
perhaps, who your competitorsare, so that you would evaluate
(54:59):
your own business based upon youknow the kinds of things that
your competitors are doing.
And then you know marketingdollars and how you measure the
marketing efficiency of thedollars you put into play.
I think those are kind of threeimportant things I would agree,
and what are the pitfalls thatyou should avoid?
Speaker 1 (55:17):
At what point do you know that your marketing effort,
whether it's with a vendor oryour team, is just not working
and you need to pivot?
Where are those warning signs?
Speaker 2 (55:27):
Yeah, I think it's about metrics.
You know, if you know you canspend a whole lot of money, but
you know, if you don't havesomething that you're really
confident in, that youunderstand.
You know we talked about itbefore return on ad spend.
You know you need to know youreconomics, you need to know what
you can afford to spend andwhat your comfort level is.
And you know I see so manybusinesses they look at the
(55:49):
metrics and the spend doesn'tmeet their requirements and yet
they continue to spend andthat's just dumb.
Speaker 1 (55:57):
Well, that sometimes, you know, is relatable in all
aspects of business throwinggood money after bad.
Yep, and unfortunately thereason for that is because you
haven't set up KPIs metrics inthe traction world rocks or
milestones objectives.
You just started spending whereyou got fooled into spending
(56:19):
right and unfortunately we,rather than admit failure, cut
our losses.
We like to throw more money ata problem and you see that with
marketing all the time.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (56:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (56:32):
So burning marketing question why are most people not
all, but most people inmarketing bad at marketing
themselves?
You?
Speaker 2 (56:42):
know, it's funny.
Speaker 1 (56:44):
Do you want to see the graves?
There's a grave site up here.
Speaker 2 (56:47):
Is that where they put people like me that can't
make the backup on the?
Speaker 1 (56:50):
You made it, so you should recognize where you are.
Speaker 2 (56:54):
Yeah, yeah, we can see whatever you want.
Yeah, I don't know, it'sinteresting.
But you know what?
If you said to me Mark, sitdown and write your resume,
that's hard.
Yeah, it's very hard.
Speaker 1 (57:11):
Outward looking self-reflection is extremely
hard.
Speaker 2 (57:15):
Even a LinkedIn page.
I created a LinkedIn pageforever ago.
I probably haven't updated theabout section forever.
Yeah, you should probably dothat and I probably should do
that the Gen Zers.
Speaker 1 (57:30):
I'm learning this with my marketing efforts.
The Gen Zers don't like tospell so, for instance, when
you're dropping an episode,instead of writing the word
episode, they like epi.
That's just lazy.
Well, aren't we more efficientnow?
Isn't that the nature?
Speaker 2 (57:51):
of evolution.
Look you look at brands thathad multiple oh, that's
interesting.
Speaker 1 (57:55):
We have a grave site here in a trail, some old graves
.
Speaker 2 (58:02):
Crazy right?
1785,.
Wow yeah.
Well, Jersey is an old state1776, november 22nd 1776.
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (58:12):
Jersey is an extremely old state and this is
where Washington fought in thesehills, defeated the British.
I don't know if anyone here wasin that, but I imagine I've
lived here 30 years, never beenhere.
You never know.
So that's why I like cominghere, especially with residents.
(58:34):
They just don't know about this.
Speaker 2 (58:37):
Well, look, union County's big and there's places
in Westfield that have neverbeen True, but it's funny you
were talking about shorteningthings, epi.
Look at brands that werewell-known brands and over time
they fall back to using theletters of their brand and the
(58:59):
marketing space is littered withcompanies that have done that.
Speaker 1 (59:03):
Yeah, well, it looks better on social media.
On a short form platform, butI'm learning that myself, as a
43-year-old dad who didn't havesocial media until about three
months ago.
With the birth of this podcast,I am learning how not cool I
can be.
Speaker 2 (59:23):
Well, and I'm enjoying that you need a
12-year-old to run your socialfor you.
Speaker 1 (59:27):
Well, I don't know if they're really truly employable
.
My kids are nine and five.
Nine, nine, five, so I guess Ihave to reach out to somebody
who knows a little more than me,which is another extremely
important lesson Find smarterpeople than you, baby.
If you're a business owner anda CEO, hire people that are
better at their job than you are.
Speaker 2 (59:49):
And it's not just about a business owner or
whatever.
When I've looked for staff inmy organization, the comfort
level is finding people like you.
Because you feel like you cantalk their language, you'll feel
like you'll like them better.
On the contrary, you findpeople that are complementary to
your skills.
If you're the numbers geek,find somebody that maybe has a
(01:00:13):
little bit of a creative head,and vice versa.
Speaker 1 (01:00:16):
That's right.
Write people, write seat.
And what I've also noticed inhiring staff and advising when
you hire people it actuallymakes you better.
You want to perform for othersand they want to perform for you
.
So you can have a much betternet result if you surround
yourself with good, qualifiedpeople and make up a nice,
well-rounded staff.
(01:00:36):
We are almost back.
So, mark Friedman, you consideryourself successful.
Speaker 2 (01:00:44):
You know, I said to you earlier in the show,
everybody's measurement ofsuccess is different.
I'll say I'm successful in thesense that I'm happy I've been
able to provide for my familyemotionally and with the other
things that they've needed overtheir life.
I've been able to do that withmy parents as well.
(01:01:07):
So yeah, I think from thatperspective I would say I've
been successful.
Speaker 1 (01:01:12):
Well, I would say you're certainly successful in
everything that you've puttogether, both in your business
and personal world, right yourentrepreneurial world.
You've been able to make it andsucceed.
You've inspired me, for sure somuch so that this episode's far
better than the last one.
So I will say thank you forbearing with me and coming out
(01:01:32):
again and really not making funof me, which would have been
comical as well.
And this time we did hit recordand we're on the back nine, so
to say.
Speaker 2 (01:01:41):
Look at that, turning the coming off full tilt on
golf.
Speaker 1 (01:01:45):
You know it's a practice thing.
After a while you just get thisintuition.
So, mark Friedman, thanks forhiking with me for the second
time.
I really enjoyed this.
It's my pleasure.
Thanks for having me Next timewhen I took a hike.
We venture into the remarkablelife of Andrew Ruditzer, a
trailblazer who co-foundedMaxBurst and continues to
(01:02:06):
inspire as a visionaryentrepreneur.
All right, mark Friedman, are you okay with
being recorded on a podcast?
Yes, sir.
Well, there goes that liability.
This is I Took a Hike.
I'm your host, darren Mass,founder of Business Therapy
Group and Parktime WildernessPhilosopher, here we step out of
the boardrooms and home officesand into the great outdoors,
where the hustle ofentrepreneurship meets the
rustle of nature.
In this episode, we stride withMark Friedman and e-commerce
(00:26):
and marketing pro.
Our topics include animpressive career with a major
pivot, marketing strategies, thevital role of direct mail and
networking the ever importanceof networking.
I was engaged with insight whenI took a hike with Mark
Friedman.
It wasn't until I embarked onthis podcast journey that I
(00:56):
realized the impact of problemsolving in nature.
And now I would like to helpyou.
I invite you or your team tojoin me on a hike and experience
business therapy, all while onthe trail.
Visit itookahikecom for moreinformation on our hiking
therapy.
So let's start off with MarkFriedman.
You are a marketingprofessional one would say a
(01:18):
guru.
I don't know if you would saythat, but I would say so based
on your resume, or CV, as thecool kids call it.
So why don't we start off withwho you are a little bit
personally and we'll get intothe marketing world, sure.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
So I live in Westfield with my wife.
We have two kids, twins, boyand girl, man and woman, 29
years old.
I grew up in Brooklyn, my wifegrew up in Scotch Plains, which
is how we wound up in Westfield.
Very cool All right.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
So pivoting forward grew up in Brooklyn.
We came out to the Burbs.
I guess we can call that theBurbs right, yes.
So what was it that made youpivot to marketing?
Speaker 2 (01:59):
Really was kind of more happenstance than anything.
When I left public accounting Iwent to work for a startup
catalog company.
It was an apparel business allgoing to be done through catalog
, and they hired me to be theircontroller.
There were four of us in thecompany.
I walked in the first day.
(02:20):
They had been venture capitalfunded.
They gave me a check for $3million and said, hey, why don't
you go invest this money for us?
So wound up doing that and fastforward.
Two years later we're stillwith the business.
We had put our first catalogout.
We were now $50 million involume.
That's pretty good growth.
(02:41):
Yep, it was great.
It was a lot of fun.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
The.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
ABC was happy.
Well, yeah, at least at thebeginning.
And then they wanted to movethe location of where our
distribution center was down toRoanoke, virginia.
We were up here in Patterson,new Jersey, and I didn't want to
move Understandable.
So they said, all right, well,we need some help in marketing.
(03:07):
I'm like, okay, I don't knowanything about marketing, but I
can give that a try.
So they were very gracious.
They really wanted me to staywith the business and I wanted
to stay as well.
So I moved into catalogmarketing, which was all about
the concepts of how do youdecide who to mail a catalog to
(03:31):
which customers.
It was all about segmentationand targeting.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
Sorry, we just hit a muddy patch here on my favorite
trail, the Watchong.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
Trail.
We've only had about six inchesof rain in the last week.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
Yeah, it's been crazy here on the northeast, so let's
go back to that story.
So, catalog marketing did youfind excitement in the catalog
industry?
Speaker 2 (03:53):
Yeah, you know again, this is late 80s.
So catalogs were booming, thatwas the market oh yeah, there
was no digital.
You know, internet wasn't.
Al Gore didn't create theinternet yet.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
Yeah, and, by the way , is it kind of not true?
Yeah, I think we all know this.
It was Darpanet and, yeah, heallowed Darpanet to continue
with funding, but I don't knowif he created the internet.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
But what was nice?
You know about that?
It was something new for me.
I never kind of thought ofmyself as creative.
You know I was more of thatanalytical, you know, accounting
side, but it gave me anopportunity to be a little bit
creative and, more importantly,I was learning.
I thought that was the bestpart of it.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
Yeah, on the job, learning is the best way to
absorb knowledge.
Making mistakes, you know.
Learning from your failures.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
Yeah, you know.
Unfortunately, you know we'rein such a society of immediate
impact.
Everything is fast, everythinghas to happen.
Yesterday it's sometimesdifficult to be able to get a
job be compensated well, evenyou know, for kind of future
value that you might bring.
Everybody wants you to, youknow.
(05:11):
I guess I understand that theywant you to be able to produce
today for some mediagratification.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
Yeah Right, I had a boss.
I worked at an electronics andappliance store once and I had
this killer day.
I think I sold like $10,000worth of merch, which is a lot
for a single salesperson in asingle store High fives, pats on
the back, etc.
That's the first day I come inand it's a slow day.
I'm under a thousand.
(05:37):
I'm eating my lunch and my boss, andy, runs into the break room
, starts screaming at me whatare you doing?
And I reminded him of the day Ihad and he said yeah, that was
yesterday.
What did you do for me today?
Speaker 2 (05:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
Important life lesson .
Unfortunately, we're judged bywhat we do at the present moment
, you know, and with theimmediate gratification of
everybody, and everything thatkind of makes learning on the
job a little more difficult.
Absolutely All right.
So you are in catalog marketing.
Did you stay in catalogmarketing for a while?
Speaker 2 (06:06):
I did.
I stayed with this companycalled Tweeds for nine years.
We kind of back to your comment.
You know that the privateequity guys were happy.
You know private equity guyswant to have a return, they want
to get it quickly.
So while we had achieved $50million, they wanted it to be
much larger and we got pushedinto doing some things and I
(06:30):
think this happens a lot inbusiness got pushed into doing
some things that probably werenot right for the brand Creating
products, creating creativethat was more mass so that you
could grow, as opposed tocatering to a niche that we were
initially targeting.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
So this is an interesting topic because this
is pretty universal with anytype of capital raise, whether
it's PE, vc or any organizationthat's willing to give you a
large sum of money.
They want to dictate or steerthe direction of the company,
but sometimes they don't havethe experience.
So how do you deal with aninvestment party or partner when
(07:10):
you know what they're going tosay or do is the wrong approach?
Speaker 2 (07:15):
Yeah, it's super hard and hopefully when those
conversations develop, you'vebuilt some political capital or
respect capital or just theyunderstand that you know what
you're talking about and theydefer to you.
You know.
Look, the fact is they have youin place for a reason because
(07:35):
these investment guys, theirexpertise is money and return on
investment and capital andleverage and all those things.
If you're part of the business,they have you for a reason.
It's for your business acumenand knowing the market, knowing
the competition and oftentimes,to your point, they don't allow
those people to do what they'rebest at.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
And it's important to understand as a small business
owner.
When you're going out forcapital, especially with a big
organization or a fund, it's notyour company anymore, even if
you think it is.
Even if you maintain the CEOposition, you still have to
answer to the investment partyor the guy Kyle who you now
report to and he graduated fromStanford three weeks ago and
(08:21):
he's your boss or he's askingyou for your job description.
It's not just about raisingcapital, it's about the whole
process that you have to gothrough.
Now.
There's benefits to raisingcapital, of course, but you got
to be aware of the pitfalls.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
Yeah, and I think that's what leads to hesitation
by many entrepreneurs of sellingtheir company Either.
If you look at, often times theinvestment company that's
buying in wants to keep theentrepreneur there because of
their knowledge, but it's a verydifferent working environment
(09:00):
for that entrepreneur.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
Yeah.
What's funny is I have a friendwho is asking me for investment
advice when it comes to acapital raise.
He had an interested PE partnerand I told him the same thing.
Only, instead of Kyle, I usedthe name Zach with an H.
No offense to Zach's with H'sLove the name, it's great.
But I said some kid named Zachwith an H.
(09:23):
He's 23 years old, graduatedfrom Stanford, started working
for the company.
He's going to ask you for yourjob description.
And my buddy called me up threeweeks later and he said do you
have a crystal ball?
I asked why he goes.
A guy named Zach with an H,who's like 20 something years
old, is asking me for my jobdescription and I now report to
(09:43):
him.
No offense to any Zach with anH.
Raising capital is a necessaryevil sometimes, especially if
you want to accelerate yourcompany.
But just be aware that youdon't work for your company
anymore.
You don't work for yourself.
With that being said, you arein catalog marketing.
(10:05):
At what point did you pivot?
Speaker 2 (10:09):
I've had a number of pivots in my career and I've
been very lucky and some talkabout well, I say it's lucky,
some say, well, you make yourown luck.
I made that first pivot when Iwent from accounting into
marketing, when I was with thecatalog business.
The second, more significantpivot was moving from catalog
(10:31):
marketing into digital commerce.
That happened in 2000.
I went from a catalog businesscalled the company store.
We were manufacturing andselling through catalog down
comforters and coats and fillaround, fill around, right, yeah
, still around, actually ownedby Home Depot.
(10:52):
I was recruited to go work atBrooks Brothers.
They had, I guess, 2000,.
They had a nascent e-commercebusiness.
They were predominantly storesand they had a fairly large
catalog business.
They hired me as generalmanager of what they call direct
(11:12):
to consumer.
It was the catalog and the web.
Then, shortly thereafter, Itook over marketing for the
stores that we had.
That was really my firstopportunity in digital.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
That was your springboard into the more modern
era of marketing.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
Back to where I was saying about being lucky.
I had a lot of catalogcolleagues that really got left
behind.
They went on, continued to havegood careers, but many of them
had really wanted to make apivot into digital and just
didn't have the opportunity.
Because, back to what we weresaying before, a lot of
(11:52):
companies they want experiencedpeople doing things for
themselves, For them.
They don't want people to learnon the job anymore.
That's right.
In my case, they brought mebecause they had a big catalog
business.
I was able to use them to learnabout digital.
Speaker 1 (12:10):
Is catalogs still current?
Is it still around?
I mean, I know I do getcatalogs, but what's the point?
Speaker 2 (12:17):
The point is that catalogs are, first of all, to
your question, they're stillaround.
Number one, number two, I thinkthey've actually had some kind
of a renaissance Because you'vehad so many brands, a lot of the
apparel space, but so manybrands that were digitally
native.
They started their businessjust with a website.
Then, ultimately, in a desireto grow, they opened up stores.
(12:39):
In a desire to drive trafficinto stores and to the website,
they started using direct mail.
Now there's this almost acottage industry of a couple of
agencies that are helping brandswith catalog.
It's a different concept oftentimes in catalog today than it
(13:01):
was.
It used to be 80 pages, 100pages the old days of Spiegel
books, 300 pages.
Today they're more targeted,probably fewer pages, so less
cost in the mail, but clearlyways to drive traffic to stores
and to online.
Speaker 1 (13:21):
Is there a number of conversion?
For every household that acatalog has sent, x dollars of
revenue comes in or is lost.
Or is it just to show viabilityin the company still?
Speaker 2 (13:32):
No, no, every business is a little bit
different.
Frankly, nowadays it's muchmore difficult to determine.
The terminology is attributionhow you're marketing dollars or
attributing to the sales thatyou got, so that you can make
decisions on whether a dollarspent here is as good as a
(13:53):
dollar spent there Across theback.
With this Correct, when I wasgetting started, you mailed the
catalog.
Only one of a few thingshappened.
You got no orders, or you got aphone order, or you got a mail
order.
That was it.
You didn't have to worry aboutwhether a customer was starting
(14:14):
their transaction on a digital,on a mobile device, or they were
starting on desktop, or youdidn't have to deal with that.
The only other situation whenyou mailed the catalog is the
customer could go in the storeand make a purchase because they
saw something in the catalogand they wanted to touch it or
(14:37):
see it in person rather thanjust buy it.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
Correct, they had to get a phone and I feel like
that's the main reason whyretail stores although a lot of
the times they're empty, that'swhy they still exist Is so the
client can touch or feel theproduct, see it with their own
eyes, before they make thepurchase.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
Yeah, there's still a real need for retail.
It's an experience number one.
Walk around the Short HillsMall on a rainy Saturday, over
the summer or anytime, and themall is very, very crowded.
Alright, maybe there's not asmany people that are actually
carrying bags, but they're therefor the experience, to walk
(15:18):
around to see what's new topeople watch.
I think there'll always be thatneed.
Speaker 1 (15:25):
Got it.
So I will say there are timeswhere I get a catalog, for
instance, something I'm reallyinto.
I'm into jeeps, I love my Jeep.
I think any Jeeper willunderstand the passion for
driving a Jeep and when I do getone of those Jeep catalogs, I
do look through it.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
Does it stimulate you to go online to buy something
it used to, but now that I'vebought everything before I hit
crazy excess obsession.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
I put it down, but it does get me to look, which puts
that company in the front of mymind.
But other magazines I do throwout.
And I happen to have a clientthat does direct to mail and the
conversations I have with himis regardless of if that piece
of mail gets thrown in thegarbage, your client, right, the
(16:16):
homeowner had to put theireyeballs on it, Even if it's for
a split second.
They had to make a decision isthis junk?
Let's go the other way.
This is too muddy.
We will certainly be sinking inthat over there, but that's why
his business is very relevant,because you had to make that
decision before you threw it inthe trash.
(16:37):
And that's what some of thismarketing is about.
It's a reminder.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
Yeah, well, it's the three.
Second rule Can you get infront of the customer for three
seconds and look?
Marketing is?
You've probably heard it's a360, trying to get a 360 view of
the customer.
But it's also trying to touchthe customer in as many ways as
possible.
So maybe, as they pick up theirmail and they're standing over
(17:03):
the garbage pail, maybe it'saround digital advertising that
they see while they're playingwordle.
I mean, there's just so manydifferent touch points and you
try to hit on them as best youcan.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
Hey listener, thanks for hiking along with us.
Discover more episodes atiTookahikecom, or to recommend
an adventurous guest, apply tobe a sponsor or to simply drop
us a line.
All right, so back to digitalmarketing.
You pivoted into the digitalspace.
Is there a learning curve foryou?
Speaker 2 (17:38):
Yeah, you know yes and no.
So much of what you do indigital is kind of similar to
what you did in catalog.
You spend dollars, you getsales, so there's KPIs around
that which are very similar.
You get impressions on adigital website, which is very
(17:59):
similar to the fact that youhave mailed out a bunch of
catalogs.
You get orders, which gives youa conversion rate.
You get dollars, which givesyou a dollar per impression or a
dollar per spend.
So the key metrics in digitalversus catalog were very, very
similar.
Okay, sure, there's a learningcurve in the tactics that you
(18:20):
use.
You mean, you have to learn.
When I got started, googlewasn't a thing, it was all Yahoo
search, so you needed tounderstand that Digital
marketing was not prevalent then, certainly, sms messaging.
So, yeah, there was a learningcurve about the tactics, for
sure.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
So what was one of the biggest learning lessons
that you were able to glean fromdigital marketing that really
accelerated or propelled yourunderstanding?
Speaker 2 (18:49):
Well, I think when you go back again to catalog,
you kind of had two buckets.
You had your customers, yourhouse file and then you had
prospects.
And here in digital it's notall dissimilar.
You have a funnel, you have topof funnel, which is kind of
your prospects.
Maybe you would consider itmore brand awareness.
(19:10):
And then as you move down thefunnel, it's more about speaking
to your customers and lookingfor more performance.
I guess performance resultsfrom the dollars that you're
spending as you move down thefunnel.
It's more of what we callperformance marketing.
(19:32):
So think of a retargeting adthat you might see on.
You go visit a website, xyzsite and then you go back to,
let's say, wordle, like I said,and you see an ad because you
were on XYZ website.
If you click on that ad and youget a sale, that's bottom of
funnel, that's retargeting.
That's a customer who had beenon your site maybe was playing
(19:55):
around, didn't check out, andnow you're coming back to
retarget them on another siteand if they buy, it's an
effective campaign, all right.
Speaker 1 (20:06):
So let's talk about that for a second, because that
is the greatest mystery ineveryone's mind.
How does that work out?
How come I go and add apaintbrush in my Home Depot cart
right, and then I go, switchover to anything else and all of
a sudden an ad popped up.
How does that work?
Speaker 2 (20:24):
I probably won't even bother to explain the technical
side of it, but it's.
Is this a nerd alert moment?
Yeah, look, it's all about thetech.
The tech has been built to beable to track either a cookie on
your device, on your desktop,or other kinds of personally
identifiable information that'savailable out there, to know
(20:49):
that not necessarily that it'sMark Friedman, but to know that
this customer has exhibited thisbehavior.
It was that device, correct, itwas a device.
And one of the things thatagain didn't exist so much in
the catalog space is aboutwhat's called identity
resolution.
(21:09):
The name of the game is to beable to stitch together Mark
Friedman's doings in the digitalworld so that I can really view
him as a whole.
Now, I talked about 360 before.
What is Mark Friedman doing outin digital?
(21:31):
And I could be on my iPad, Icould be on my mobile, I could
be on my desktop, I could clickon Instagram.
All that stuff gets pulledtogether, and there are
companies out there who theirsingle claim to fame is the
technology behind identityresolution.
Wow, so.
Speaker 1 (21:51):
How dangerous is identity resolution, right?
So is this a big brother momentwhere the machine knows more
about me than me?
Speaker 2 (21:57):
Oh yeah, there's no question that there's a big
brother-ish.
My wife and I laugh, or shelaughs that Facebook and
Instagram and not serious.
But Siri, all these things arelistening to us.
So she kind of will have aconversation and the next thing
(22:19):
you get an ad on your Facebookfeed from that kind of thing.
So one day she wanted to see ifit worked and she likes
Twizzlers, so she's yelling outTwizzlers, twizzlers.
I'm like what are you doing?
She says I want to see if I getan ad from Facebook for
Twizzlers now.
And no, we didn't get one.
Speaker 1 (22:36):
Ah okay, so that's a very anticlimactic finish.
That's kind of the way it works.
But so I do remember thishappening.
We had Alexa in our home andsince then I've stopped having
Alexa Make your own decisions.
But we were approaching the endof our car lease and I wanted
(22:57):
to look at a specific car.
My wife wasn't really into thatcar anyway, but I mentioned the
car in our living room wherethere happens to be an Alexa
device.
Everything was peppered on ourphones with that car company,
the exact car.
So that's not coincidence.
Speaker 2 (23:16):
Maybe I'm noticing it more or not, but that had to be
obviously because of no, it'sgetting more prevalent, though
in and I'll probably get thiswrong At least two years ago,
there were a lot of changes iniOS and the level of tracking
capability that was available.
Apple made changes and some ofthe other large companies made
(23:39):
changes, and, in theory, withthe intention of making it more
difficult to track, which madeit more complicated for
marketers.
Speaker 1 (23:47):
So then Apple is trying to protect its consumers.
I would think it would be theopposite, because Apple can't.
They profit off of this.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
For sure, and it depends upon how skeptical you
are or not.
So that's a different topic.
Speaker 1 (24:04):
Fair enough, All right.
So let's go pivot towards thesmall business and maybe some
lessons that we can offer tothem.
If you were advising themarketing efforts of a small
business, what is the firstthing that they should really
look at?
Speaker 2 (24:19):
It's really understanding what your business
can afford to spend to marketand it's incredible how many
businesses that I see andusually I'm working with
companies that want me to helpthem with their digital business
.
So, and if they have retailstores or they have other
(24:45):
channels, you'd be surprised howmany businesses don't have a
P&L specifically for their Ecomchannel.
I'm not surprised.
Speaker 1 (24:52):
I am not.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
Even if you realize that there's some things you
can't break out.
But at least go through theeffort of establishing the P&L,
establishing what you think yourbreak even is, and based upon
that you will know what you canafford to spend to acquire new
customers, the cost ofacquisition, all of those things
(25:14):
are super important.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
So I hear this all too often from CEOs, from
business owners, where theydon't understand that spending
money or spending budget orcreating a budget on marketing
should be a percentage ofrevenue Correct and it will have
a return.
Because I think and please keepme honest here, but from my
(25:37):
experience business owners seemarketing as a risk and a waste
of money.
Right, and I think that'sbecause they don't understand
the powers of marketing or evenhow to market.
Speaker 2 (25:48):
Well, I think the answer is yeah.
There are probably some, lotsof folks out there like that.
Now, it also depends upon whatkind of marketing we're talking
about.
If we're talking about brandawareness marketing, so, I've
got.
Someone let the dogs out.
Yeah, let's hope they staybehind that fence.
(26:08):
Yeah well, who can outrun who?
You probably can outrun me.
Speaker 1 (26:14):
so I don't know.
So let's turn in on this pathand we'll pick that one up again
.
Speaker 2 (26:19):
So what were we saying?
Are we talking about marketingand spending.
Speaker 1 (26:24):
Marketing for small businesses isn't spent.
Speaker 2 (26:26):
Yeah.
So if my experience again isthese smaller businesses, if you
can show them that a dollarspent on Google, for example,
will drive $3 of revenue sowhat's called that a $3 row as a
return on ad spend they mayunderstand that I put a dollar
(26:49):
out, I got $3 back.
If you tell them to do top offunnel which I was talking about
before, which is just brandawareness, I just want to have a
whole lot of people see mywebsite, even though it may not
be as targeted as I like and Imight not get any direct sales
that I can track.
That's really hard for asmaller business to understand.
Speaker 1 (27:10):
Yeah well, small businesses want to see faster
returns.
Right, that dollar is deeplypersonal to the business owner,
so sometimes they don't have theability to have a duration of
time.
Speaker 2 (27:21):
Correct.
That's correct.
And oftentimes if you're in itfor the long haul and you're
well-capitalized, you could beinvestment spending.
And investment spending ismeaning that you know that the
dollar I spent today does notgenerate a sale that is
profitable to me today, butyou're interested in acquiring
that customer because maybe youknow that your rebuy rate the
(27:46):
number of people that youacquire today that will buy
again from you in the future.
Maybe that next purchase iswhere you gain the profit.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
That's right, so return on investment.
So this is unfortunately.
If we're gearing theconversation to small business
owners, they're afraid of takingadditional risk with their
investment, that's correct.
What I advise business ownersis you should not be taking a
hefty salary.
Take whatever you absolutelyneed to get by, preferably
nothing, because every dollaryou reinvest back in the
(28:15):
business can be worth tenfold inthe future.
Same thing with marketing Forevery dollar you invest in a
good marketing strategy it canbe worth infinite times more.
But you do need the duration oftime you need to water that
seat.
So, with a small business inmind, if there was a very, let's
(28:36):
say, strategic investment, howlong do you think a business
owner should wait or be patientfor a marketing strategy?
And I know this is kind of avery big topic, hypothetical but
how long would you say theaverage marketing strategy in a
small business would take toreturn an investment?
Speaker 2 (28:54):
Yeah, I think it really.
It's not only what I mightthink, it's the appetite, the
risk averse or not that thesmall business owner is.
When we were operating some ofthese businesses, we were
willing to lose money on thefirst purchase because we had a
good understanding that, basedupon the products that we sold,
(29:16):
there was going to be a repeatpurchase 30% of the time, let's
say, within 12 months.
That's right.
And when I factored in, let'ssay, the loss on the first
purchase and 30% of those peoplebuying again, on average,
whatever they were going tospend, if I could make money on
the sum of those two, then wewere willing to do that.
Speaker 1 (29:38):
But that's for a much bigger company.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
Well, yeah, I mean again, it's not so much size of
company, it's how wellcapitalized you are and the
culture of the business and alot of what you sell.
If you're a car dealer and theaverage customer turning that
car over five years, six years,seven years, you've got to be
(30:01):
able to make enough profit onthat one sale.
That's going to hold you for awhile because you're likely not
going to see that customer Againanytime soon.
Speaker 1 (30:11):
Well pertaining to car dealers.
From my understanding and ifanyone has better knowledge,
correct me if I'm wrong it's allabout service.
Yeah, it's about the service.
Speaker 2 (30:19):
They make virtually nothing, very low margin on the
sale or lease of that car, butthey fact yeah, but to your
point they factor in, you know,the, let's say, the cost of
acquiring the purchase or thelease and then what they can
generate on average over thethree-year term of the lease.
But you're right, all thosecomponents are part of it.
Speaker 1 (30:42):
All right, so back to marketing efforts.
What happened to your careerafter digital?
Did you stay in digital?
Did you pivot?
Speaker 2 (30:49):
No, I've stayed in digital.
You know, I think the pivot forme was still digital, but going
from a scenario of being on thebrand side where I was an
employee of a company, you knowand this is a good you know,
perhaps a lesson for you know,for some folks that are
listening In 2010, I guess andyou know, I first started
(31:12):
working in 1983, so you knowquite a lot of years was the
first time I woke up without ajob.
My position had been eliminatedand now needed to think about
what was I going to do next.
I really hadn't had to look fora job for a very long time.
(31:35):
All the jobs that I had gotten,up until this one I had been
recruited for, or I knewsomebody, or what have you.
But now come, basically,february 1st 2010.
On January 31st, my boss saysjeez, we're eliminating the role
.
Thank you very much, see ya.
(31:56):
And look at that.
Wow, just like that.
Yeah, now I'm being overlydramatic because I was very
lucky.
I had a good severance package,so I wasn't stressed, so there
was no jelly of the month, clubNope.
Speaker 1 (32:12):
Please, listeners, get that reference or Google it.
It's hilarious.
Speaker 2 (32:18):
But I did have two kids that were getting ready to
go to college in 2012.
Pressures on, so now I had todecide what I was going to do.
Next morning I woke up, calleda buddy of mine who has an
office still does in downtownWestfield and told him I needed
an office.
He said come over.
He stuck me in an office andthat's where my LLC Details
(32:40):
Interactive was formed and theidea behind that and, as I say
this a few times, the wordinteractive back then made sense
.
Today it's a little dated, butI was now going to go from an
employee of a company to astandalone.
Put my shingle out try to be adigital commerce consultant.
Speaker 1 (33:03):
So the baker for the bakery, who makes great muffins
and cupcakes, is now a bakeryowner.
That is a pivot.
You go into the world ofentrepreneurship.
Speaker 2 (33:12):
Yep.
So what is that like?
Well, it was interestingbecause I'd always wanted to
have a business, but I never hadan idea enough of what that
business could be.
So I wound up just being anoperator of other people's ideas
and being the strategist andthe executor of those businesses
.
Now I had to find out whethersomebody would actually pay me,
(33:37):
be on a salary for what Ithought I knew.
And I have always been a goodnetworker and we can talk about
that.
At least I think I am a goodnetworker.
I can't understate what's theright word Understate,
understate, over estimation.
Yeah, I can't understate howimportant networking is
(34:00):
maintaining relationships,reaching out to people
periodically without being apain in the behind, and keeping
those relationships going.
Speaker 1 (34:09):
Networking is a huge skill that takes a lot of
practice and a lot of gettingover the fear of vulnerability
and embarrassment, but it is themost critical aspect of any
successful sales mentality.
Speaker 2 (34:22):
Absolutely and frankly it got easier, at least
for people like me.
I'm not the kind of a guypeople laugh at me when I say
I'm shy, but I'm not the kind ofguy who walks into a room of
people that I don't know.
I don't stick out my hand andsay hi, I'm Mark Friedman, not
my comfort zone.
But when you're doing it onLinkedIn or you're doing it
through email or a text, ittakes that fear factor away.
(34:45):
Well, you have anonymity.
Speaker 1 (34:47):
You do have a screen so you can be who you want to
portray in a way that's correct.
Speaker 2 (34:52):
You need to be persistent, but you need to be
respectful of people's time, andit's really served me well.
And so I got.
I started that February 1st2010,.
And within 60 days I got myfirst gig.
And I got the gig because of arelationship with a recruiter
(35:13):
who didn't have a job for me butwho had a friend who had a
company and he had said to herhey, if you come across anybody
that could help me on aconsulting basis, let me know.
Well, sure enough, I got myfirst gig and for that full year
I had quite a lot of projects,you know, one begat another, and
(35:37):
I was kind of at the cusp ofdeciding do I stick with this?
Do I hire somebody to help meor do I continue to pursue a
full-time gig?
And just as about the time Iwas getting serious about doing
this permanently, I wasrecruited to head up the
(35:57):
commerce business at SteveMadden Well-known brand, yeah
and wound up doing that.
For seven years and fastforward to today, I've had a
number of different full-timegigs.
For various reasons they nolonger existed.
But I'm consulting again and Ilike being busy and the
(36:23):
consultant thing is just adifferent kind of busy than
having one job, but it's workedout very well for me.
Speaker 1 (36:31):
So that's an interesting pivot that you took.
You were seeing all of thissuccess especially early on in
your entrepreneurial career,which is rare, by the way.
Right 60 days having your firstbig client, and a big client at
that, and you took the route togo back to working in corporate
America.
Yeah, and is it solely becausethe big name, brand and the
(36:54):
title or the ego, which is okay,or is it the fear of when my
next meal will be, or you justdidn't like being an
entrepreneur?
Speaker 2 (37:03):
No, I liked being an entrepreneur.
It had nothing to do with whenmy next meal was going to be.
I think some of it had to dowith when you're a consultant.
You're not an operator, right,which means that you can make
suggestions.
Ultimately, the brand itselfhas to implement.
And I still, even to this dayalthough, as my career moves
(37:27):
towards the ninth inning, Istill really like waking up in
the morning and seeing how thebusiness performed, that I'm
involved with.
The prior day.
Speaker 1 (37:37):
So you like being in charge and I agree with you.
As a consultant, I can coach, Ican consult, provide business
therapy for my clients all daylong.
If they don't want to do it,they won't do it.
Speaker 2 (37:48):
Yeah, and you just have to realize that.
But so to your question aboutwhy did I move back away from
the consulting, that's, theopportunities presented
themselves to be involved withone brand as an operator, and I
(38:12):
like that Dream job, were theymy dream job.
Speaker 1 (38:15):
Yeah well, with Steve Madden when they came knocking
at your door.
Was that considered your dreamjob at that time?
Speaker 2 (38:20):
No, as a matter of fact, when I went there the
first day I live in New Jerseytheir office was in Long Island
City.
That's a hike.
So that was a schlep number oneand candidly and this is gonna
sound like I was a primadonna,but I walked into that office
and it was an absolute dump.
Speaker 1 (38:43):
That doesn't make you sound like a primadonna.
That's unfortunately, in thiscase, the shoemaker's kids.
It was just, I had no shoes.
Speaker 2 (38:50):
Yeah, it was.
Just look.
It was an extraordinarilysuccessful company.
It still is.
I'm still friends with peoplethat I made relationships with
there.
But when you're looking to takea job you look at the totality
of the experience and firstimpressions are big.
(39:12):
You walk into an office.
It was in a residential area inLong Island City.
The building was kind of oldand run down, then steps to walk
up to the main level were abouttwo feet wide.
They had duct tape over therisers Awesome, it wasn't what I
expected from a brand like that.
I went in there and they keptme waiting 45 minutes for the
(39:36):
first interview.
I was like am I really going to?
Is this going to be a culturethat I was going to like?
But anyway, I got past thosethings they made.
Steve was very gracious, mademe a very nice offer and wound
up working with them for sevenyears.
Speaker 1 (39:55):
So that's actually really important and this for
anybody that owns a businessthat first impression for a new
hire, even when you'reinterviewing them.
You could have walked out, theycould have lost the opportunity
to have hired you.
Speaker 2 (40:09):
I think companies look at I'm generalizing
companies look at it that it'smore important, that the hire is
more important for the employee, the potential employee, the
candidate, than it is for thecompany, and that is quite the
opposite.
Speaker 1 (40:23):
Today, especially with the shortage, in quality
people.
Speaker 2 (40:27):
But you'll be surprised, Darren.
I still see situations where,because it's so much easier to
apply, very easy to click theapply button on LinkedIn, which
is a mistake.
We'll get to that in a second.
How many companies really willhave interviews with people and
(40:48):
then ghost them?
It's still an issue.
Speaker 1 (40:53):
It's asinine, but the reason why I say the easy apply
button is a mistake is becauseeverybody easy applies and then
you're just gonna fall into apile.
If you really want that job,it's a dream job find out who
the listing HR person is, orwhoever's listing the position,
and send your CV directly.
Speaker 2 (41:10):
Yeah, or find other people that are connected to
others in that organization andsee if you can get your way in.
And this goes back to what wewere talking about before about
networking.
Speaker 1 (41:21):
I've advised people back yes, back to networking.
A great opportunity is connectwith others around that listing
person, build a quickrelationship with them, connect
with them on LinkedIn and ask ifthey can be willing to
introduce you personally to thatperson.
It does work.
It's worth the effort.
Hey listener, thanks for hikingalong with us, discover more
(41:43):
episodes at iTokaHikecom, or torecommend an adventurous guest,
apply to be a sponsor, or tosimply drop us a line.
We'll keep marching forward.
So let's go back toentrepreneurship.
Do you miss it?
Speaker 2 (41:59):
Well, I'm actually in it at the moment.
I had spent a bunch of timeover the last couple of years
with Eddie Bauer in acombination of full-time
employee roles and contractorrole and, beginning in the
middle of the summer, thatchanged, so I'm consulting again
(42:21):
.
I've been very lucky to havepicked up a number of clients,
which is great.
I feel like I'm adding value tothe respective teams.
I think they feel like that aswell, and in many cases they're
fairly small businesses andthey're dealing with much of the
things we've talked about today.
Speaker 1 (42:43):
So would you say that back again, networking very
important.
That's how you got your clients, because you seem to have a
stroke of luck.
You start a business, you findclients.
So are these individuals thatyou've known in the past?
Speaker 2 (42:55):
Well, let's see.
I'll cycle through for you themore recent ones.
So the first one that presented, right after early in the
summer, a friend of mine that Iknew from the industry.
She had interviewed with thesefolks for a job.
The job wasn't really bigenough for her so she went off
and did something else, but sherecommended me, so that was a
(43:16):
referral.
The second one was somebodythat I knew from a prior job
that we worked together.
I had done a project for themthree or four years ago.
They called me back and said alot of the work you did for us
was right on, spot on.
We need to evolve, so are youavailable?
The third one was a guy thatI've never met face to face.
(43:39):
We cultivated a relationship onLinkedIn and he called and said
hey, I've got a project.
I don't have the bandwidth todo it, I think you'd be great at
it.
He had heard my podcast and wedid that.
The fourth one is somebody thathas a store in Westfield.
(43:59):
My wife's a shopper there.
I reached out to them and justagain, back to the networking.
Then the last one was alsosomebody that lives locally,
lives close by.
We had some mutual friends.
So I persisted and learned, Ifound out what she was doing and
(44:23):
I reached out and reached outuntil she responded.
And now I'm doing a project forthem.
Speaker 1 (44:29):
So I think that's the most important takeaway from
this.
Obviously, the marketingconversation is phenomenal, but
networking is everything You'reputting yourself out there.
So let's look back.
And then I want to talk aboutyour podcast, because you do
have a podcast and you have somevery amazing guests on there,
thanks.
So, before we go there, overyour entire career, if you could
(44:51):
think back what was the biggestmistake that you made and what
was the learning lesson fromthat mistake?
No, this is not a job interview.
Speaker 2 (45:03):
I think that the mistakes perhaps that I've made
when you lose a job and I thinkI can explain at least
rationalize why I have lost someof the jobs in digital commerce
there's lots of reorganizationand whatever.
Speaker 1 (45:20):
Not uncommon for marketing people to be replaced.
Speaker 2 (45:24):
Yeah, and look, I can go back over my career and say
were there things I could havedone differently?
I think probably the oneconsistent thing is when
businesses were struggling,maybe I wasn't as quick to react
to the downturn as perhaps Ishould have been.
(45:46):
I don't think you feel itnecessarily in the moment, but
if you've had time to go backand think about it, that's
perhaps the learning.
Speaker 1 (45:59):
Well, it's a hindsight reflection.
Speaker 2 (46:00):
Yeah, look, I have no regrets for.
Maybe there's one job I tookthat I have regrets for, but I
don't really have regrets.
It's kind of a wasted emotion,I think to be regretful.
I just try to learn from eachexperience.
(46:21):
When, like I said, my career isalready close to the ninth
inning though I'm not a retiringkind of guy.
I need to be busy I will feellike I've had a nice career.
For me, the most important part, when I leave a job and when
people reach out and tell methat jeez, I feel like I've
(46:43):
learned something from you.
That's the most satisfaction Iget.
That's the thing that reallymakes it worthwhile.
Speaker 1 (46:51):
Now let's talk about your podcast.
You do have a podcast and youhave quite a few episodes.
How many exactly?
Speaker 2 (46:59):
Just recorded number 84 today.
So I've been at this sinceright before COVID.
Wow, it started as really itstill is a hobby.
I had worked with a really niceguy still friends with him at
Steve Madden.
He was my IT e-commercebusiness partner and we had done
(47:22):
a bunch of conferences togetherOther of us are funny, haha,
but we're kind of clever and wereally got along well and the
audiences, I think, responded tous.
I had said to him hey, weshould do a podcast together.
He agreed but we never did it.
Then I left Madden and whateverRight before COVID started.
(47:46):
So the end of 19,.
I kind of put the concepttogether with a friend who's my
editor.
It's been fun.
It's called the MarketingPlaybook Podcast.
You can find it wherever youget your podcast on Apple or
Spotify.
There's a YouTube channel.
The idea is to take a guest,have it be very conversational,
(48:13):
talk about their first story,kind of whether or not there was
something in there growing upthat suggested that they would
be or follow the path that theyhave in their career, and we
kind of wrap up the show withthree key takeaways that
listeners can bring back totheir personal or to their
(48:34):
business lives.
We've had the CEO of Levi's, afellow named Chip Berg, who went
to the same college that I didand happened to be in the same
fraternity and kind of a bookend.
You know that we're recordinghere in.
(48:56):
I guess it's October already,october of 2023.
Speaker 1 (49:00):
This is October what Second?
Speaker 2 (49:02):
But last week I interviewed and put out a show
with Gary Vaynerchuk Gary's kindof the self-professed king of
social media.
That was a great opportunity tospend a half hour with him.
Speaker 1 (49:18):
We've had a lot of fantastic guests.
Can I surmise that networkinghas played a role in you getting
these guests to appear on yourpodcast?
Speaker 2 (49:28):
Yeah, every single one.
I would say that I haven't goneback to count, but I would say
that roughly half the peoplethat have been guests I did not
know previously had no priorconnection with but somebody
either introduced me or Ireached out to them on LinkedIn,
told them what I was doing andit'd be a surprise.
(49:50):
More often than not, peoplewere willing to do it.
Speaker 1 (49:54):
Well, because who doesn't love talking?
Speaker 2 (49:56):
about themselves, talking about themselves.
Speaker 1 (49:57):
Absolutely that, and podcasts are a very awesome
opportunity to really marketeither yourself or your brand,
put out a life legacy, and whenyou do have a listener, the
listeners tend to stay engaged.
Speaker 2 (50:12):
It's been a lot.
When I first started, my wifesaid to me, after I told her I
was going to do this, hercomment was are you going to
make any money?
Doing this no.
Speaker 1 (50:22):
I was like it is incredibly difficult to make
money by doing a podcast,because a podcast is a marketing
tool.
Speaker 2 (50:31):
I said to her no, I'm not going to make any money and
, as a matter of fact, it'sgoing to cost me money for every
show that I do because I havean editor.
It's not a significant expense.
Well, it's fun.
It is fun and I've met a lot ofreally nice people.
(50:54):
The other part of it you talkabout branding, and one of the
other things that I do in mycareer is try to make
relationships, referrals.
If I have some partnershipswith companies that offer a
certain service, I can talk tosomebody on the podcast.
(51:17):
Now.
I have a personal relationshipwith them and, as they feel like
they have a need, I can perhapstalk to them about their need.
Now they feel comfortable withme because they were on the
podcast.
Speaker 1 (51:30):
Networking yet again.
So what are some of thegreatest learning lessons of
having your own podcast?
I think I've learned a few ofthem.
Speaker 2 (51:38):
Well, you probably have Turn the mic on.
Speaker 1 (51:40):
Yeah, hit record, especially on new gear, that's
important.
Speaker 2 (51:44):
It's funny that you say that, because when I get
ready to do the show, I alwaystell the guest I'm going to hit
record, because I don't want youto be the recipient of the
first one that I forget torecord.
Speaker 1 (51:56):
So are you the first one?
For me, no, actually you're thesecond one.
You're the first time where thecable was unplugged, but the
first time I got my handy dandynew recorder forgot to turn it
on.
No, I turned it on, I leveledit, but I forgot to press the
record button.
Luckily the practice when Ipreach redundancy diversity I
(52:17):
have backups so we were able tomake it work.
Speaker 2 (52:21):
But not every show is going to be good and I don't
beat myself up over it.
That's probably another goodtakeaway for folks Make a
mistake, you don't do somethingwell, there's really not a lot
of value in beating yourself upover it.
Take away your learnings.
Make sure you don't do it again.
Make sure you try to improveupon what it was that you didn't
(52:42):
like.
I think in my early shows therewas a lot of stammering.
I wasn't as natural as I wantedto be, even though I felt like
I knew the content.
When I was done with the Garyshow, my wife always says to me
after the show how to go.
I was like I nailed that one.
(53:04):
It was good.
In my show, much like you'redoing here, I tried to ask a
question and then get out of theway and let the guest just talk
.
It was great.
Speaker 1 (53:17):
Awesome, that was a great episode.
Thank you.
A lot of good lessons from that.
We are now at a river crossingof just some rocks.
They're an easier path.
Yes, right here, maybe Muchlike life, there is always an
easier path if you open youreyes and take time to think and
stretch.
Speaker 2 (53:35):
Yes, you go first.
Look at this.
All right, great, I think Iknow where I'm going.
Speaker 1 (53:39):
All right.
Speaker 2 (53:46):
This is like the horse crossing.
Speaker 1 (53:48):
This is except.
I'm the horse and there's aloose rock All right.
Speaker 2 (53:55):
I'm not sure where the next foot goes, so maybe
that's not the best path.
I think you should get a strawand suck all the water out of
here until it's dry, and then Iwill go.
You think I've got yeah, Allright.
Speaker 1 (54:11):
are we finding another path?
Speaker 2 (54:13):
I'm not sure the one that you're walking on is
optimal.
Speaker 1 (54:18):
This is.
I took a hike and a bath.
It's the beauty of natureTrails get flooded.
So, to tie up the whole episode, what should we really be
focusing on when it comes tomarketing efforts?
What is the most importantvalue that we should take away
from this?
Speaker 2 (54:39):
Well, I think it's we didn't really talk about this
but know who your customer isright, because you can spend a
whole lot of dollars talking topeople that are not potentially.
You know your customers, sothat's important Understanding,
perhaps, who your competitorsare, so that you would evaluate
(54:59):
your own business based upon youknow the kinds of things that
your competitors are doing.
And then you know marketingdollars and how you measure the
marketing efficiency of thedollars you put into play.
I think those are kind of threeimportant things I would agree,
and what are the pitfalls thatyou should avoid?
Speaker 1 (55:17):
At what point do you know that your marketing effort,
whether it's with a vendor oryour team, is just not working
and you need to pivot?
Where are those warning signs?
Speaker 2 (55:27):
Yeah, I think it's about metrics.
You know, if you know you canspend a whole lot of money, but
you know, if you don't havesomething that you're really
confident in, that youunderstand.
You know we talked about itbefore return on ad spend.
You know you need to know youreconomics, you need to know what
you can afford to spend andwhat your comfort level is.
And you know I see so manybusinesses they look at the
(55:49):
metrics and the spend doesn'tmeet their requirements and yet
they continue to spend andthat's just dumb.
Speaker 1 (55:57):
Well, that sometimes, you know, is relatable in all
aspects of business throwinggood money after bad.
Yep, and unfortunately thereason for that is because you
haven't set up KPIs metrics inthe traction world rocks or
milestones objectives.
You just started spending whereyou got fooled into spending
(56:19):
right and unfortunately we,rather than admit failure, cut
our losses.
We like to throw more money ata problem and you see that with
marketing all the time.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (56:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (56:32):
So burning marketing question why are most people not
all, but most people inmarketing bad at marketing
themselves?
You?
Speaker 2 (56:42):
know, it's funny.
Speaker 1 (56:44):
Do you want to see the graves?
There's a grave site up here.
Speaker 2 (56:47):
Is that where they put people like me that can't
make the backup on the?
Speaker 1 (56:50):
You made it, so you should recognize where you are.
Speaker 2 (56:54):
Yeah, yeah, we can see whatever you want.
Yeah, I don't know, it'sinteresting.
But you know what?
If you said to me Mark, sitdown and write your resume,
that's hard.
Yeah, it's very hard.
Speaker 1 (57:11):
Outward looking self-reflection is extremely
hard.
Speaker 2 (57:15):
Even a LinkedIn page.
I created a LinkedIn pageforever ago.
I probably haven't updated theabout section forever.
Yeah, you should probably dothat and I probably should do
that the Gen Zers.
Speaker 1 (57:30):
I'm learning this with my marketing efforts.
The Gen Zers don't like tospell so, for instance, when
you're dropping an episode,instead of writing the word
episode, they like epi.
That's just lazy.
Well, aren't we more efficientnow?
Isn't that the nature?
Speaker 2 (57:51):
of evolution.
Look you look at brands thathad multiple oh, that's
interesting.
Speaker 1 (57:55):
We have a grave site here in a trail, some old graves
.
Speaker 2 (58:02):
Crazy right?
1785,.
Wow yeah.
Well, Jersey is an old state1776, november 22nd 1776.
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (58:12):
Jersey is an extremely old state and this is
where Washington fought in thesehills, defeated the British.
I don't know if anyone here wasin that, but I imagine I've
lived here 30 years, never beenhere.
You never know.
So that's why I like cominghere, especially with residents.
(58:34):
They just don't know about this.
Speaker 2 (58:37):
Well, look, union County's big and there's places
in Westfield that have neverbeen True, but it's funny you
were talking about shorteningthings, epi.
Look at brands that werewell-known brands and over time
they fall back to using theletters of their brand and the
(58:59):
marketing space is littered withcompanies that have done that.
Speaker 1 (59:03):
Yeah, well, it looks better on social media.
On a short form platform, butI'm learning that myself, as a
43-year-old dad who didn't havesocial media until about three
months ago.
With the birth of this podcast,I am learning how not cool I
can be.
Speaker 2 (59:23):
Well, and I'm enjoying that you need a
12-year-old to run your socialfor you.
Speaker 1 (59:27):
Well, I don't know if they're really truly employable
.
My kids are nine and five.
Nine, nine, five, so I guess Ihave to reach out to somebody
who knows a little more than me,which is another extremely
important lesson Find smarterpeople than you, baby.
If you're a business owner anda CEO, hire people that are
better at their job than you are.
Speaker 2 (59:49):
And it's not just about a business owner or
whatever.
When I've looked for staff inmy organization, the comfort
level is finding people like you.
Because you feel like you cantalk their language, you'll feel
like you'll like them better.
On the contrary, you findpeople that are complementary to
your skills.
If you're the numbers geek,find somebody that maybe has a
(01:00:13):
little bit of a creative head,and vice versa.
Speaker 1 (01:00:16):
That's right.
Write people, write seat.
And what I've also noticed inhiring staff and advising when
you hire people it actuallymakes you better.
You want to perform for othersand they want to perform for you
.
So you can have a much betternet result if you surround
yourself with good, qualifiedpeople and make up a nice,
well-rounded staff.
(01:00:36):
We are almost back.
So, mark Friedman, you consideryourself successful.
Speaker 2 (01:00:44):
You know, I said to you earlier in the show,
everybody's measurement ofsuccess is different.
I'll say I'm successful in thesense that I'm happy I've been
able to provide for my familyemotionally and with the other
things that they've needed overtheir life.
I've been able to do that withmy parents as well.
(01:01:07):
So yeah, I think from thatperspective I would say I've
been successful.
Speaker 1 (01:01:12):
Well, I would say you're certainly successful in
everything that you've puttogether, both in your business
and personal world, right yourentrepreneurial world.
You've been able to make it andsucceed.
You've inspired me, for sure somuch so that this episode's far
better than the last one.
So I will say thank you forbearing with me and coming out
(01:01:32):
again and really not making funof me, which would have been
comical as well.
And this time we did hit recordand we're on the back nine, so
to say.
Speaker 2 (01:01:41):
Look at that, turning the coming off full tilt on
golf.
Speaker 1 (01:01:45):
You know it's a practice thing.
After a while you just get thisintuition.
So, mark Friedman, thanks forhiking with me for the second
time.
I really enjoyed this.
It's my pleasure.
Thanks for having me Next timewhen I took a hike.
We venture into the remarkablelife of Andrew Ruditzer, a
trailblazer who co-foundedMaxBurst and continues to
(01:02:06):
inspire as a visionaryentrepreneur.
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