March 20, 2023 • 58 mins
Running the Bases today with Adam Chronister: Digital Marketer, Speaker, Investor, and Philanthropist. The 2021 Spokane Washington winner for best SEO Company - the Founder of Enleaf Marketing
Adam is a fun and passionate entrepreneur, small business owner, digital marketer, speaker, investor, world traveler, philanthropist, student, husband, father and some might say Fashionista. How many of us have matched clothing or in his case their glasses to their laptops? Hailing from the Great State of Washington, this Spokane business entrepreneur founded his successful digital marketing company in 2009 and has contributed to digital marketing campaigns for some of America’s largest brands including Smiths, The Dallas Fort Worth Airport, and the University of Idaho. His insights and training tools have appeared in Social Media Week, MarketMuse, SEMRush, SERranking,and many more. This hardworking and dedicated entrepreneur is often on the road traveling for speaking engagements or just dedicated travel to see the world.
Key Lessons
- Adam Chronister encourages entrepreneurs to invest in themselves and seek out mentors to open up growth opportunities.
- He suggests wearing something unique to conferences to make a lasting impression.
- He offers free SEO tools to his clients.
To learn more about Adam and Enleaf visit: www.Enleaf.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
I'm fascinated with entrepreneursand small business owners.
Plus, I love baseball.
Every show I sit down with a smallbusiness owner and we discussed
their running the bases ofentrepreneurship.
We throw the ball around onstrategy, management, execution
and innovation.
(00:21):
Plus, a little fun baseball tug.
Hey, thanks for joining us today.
Settelaine, grab your crackerjacks and you know what they say.
All right.
It's a great day for a ball gameand we are recording this actually
kind of in the midst of thebaseball playoff.
So it's always kind of fun to havethat energy going on here.
(00:45):
But it is a great day for abaseball game and season and all
of that fun stuff.
This is Randy Rodi running thebases with small businesses.
And today's guest is a fun andpassionate entrepreneur, small
business owner, digital marketer,speaker, investor, world traveler,
philanthropist, student, husband,father and some might say,
(01:06):
fashionista.
Clearly somebody on my researchteam has a high opinion of you.
How many of us have matchedclothing or his case or in his
case, their glasses to theirlaptops.
I don't even know that waspossible.
Haley from the great state ofWashington, the Spokane business
(01:28):
entrepreneur founded hissuccessful digital marketing
company in 2009 and has beencontributing to digital marketing
campaigns for some of America'slargest brands, including Smith's,
the Dallas Fort Worth airport, theUniversity of Idaho is insights
and training tools that appearedin social media week, market muse,
sem rush, SER ranking and many,many more.
(01:52):
It's hard working and dedicatedentrepreneur is often on the road
traveling for speaking to theworld.
We love one of his social mediaposts, which states there are only
two people you should aim to makecrowd in your life.
(02:17):
One is that eight year old you andthe other is the 80 year old you.
The 2021 Spokane Washington winnerfor best S E O company.
I had no idea you are the man, thefounder of in leaf marketing, Adam
Chronister, Adam, welcome to theshow, Yeah, thanks for having me.
(02:41):
And as soon as the show is done,I'm going to go out and add
fashionista to my LinkedInprofile, because that's a new I
have no idea where so we have Youdefinitely did their homework.
homework.
Yeah, so we've got a great teamthat does this research and
sometimes some of the stuff thatcome up with it like, wow, really?
(03:07):
Your eye glasses actually matchyour it Yeah, yeah.
So is there still behind that?
I mean, I really am like, what?
I have a look story behind that.
So I have basically a wood on layon my my Mac laptop.
And I remember I forget who it wasa while back, but somebody talked
about having something that standsout, especially if you're doing
(03:28):
face to face and you know postCOVID, doing a lot more
conferences, getting back intothat, you know, realm and, you
know, I do like playing aroundwith glasses.
I'm just like, if it gets kind ofcrazy because she's like, do you
need another pair of glasses?
But so I went in and I went outand got a pair of wood frame
(03:49):
glasses, you know, just becausethey kind of stand out, they're a
little bit unique, you know, andit's, you know, that's one of
those kind of like insidebaseball, real marketing hacks.
When you go to a conference, maybewhere something that stands out,
whether it's bright shoes orcolored glasses, but when you're
connecting with people down theroad and doing your follow up, you
can be like, remember me, I'm theguy with the orange glasses or the
pink, you know, the pink sneakers.
(04:11):
So that that was kind of the ideabehind that.
And honestly, I've gotten a lot ofcompliments about these glasses.
So they're doing still behindthat?
I job.
Yeah, is that what you're wearingnow or the wooden.
Yeah, yeah, I know your audiencehardly can't see them.
Basically, I have some some woodframed glasses and they are wood.
Well, good for you.
Well, I stand out just because I'mlike tall, and bald.
so there you go.
(04:32):
I got a lot of skin and people cansee it.
It's all over.
Yeah, well that's pretty awesome.
Slowly before we could get toodeep into in leaf and.
and stuff that you're doing there.
I do have to your claim to fameand the great snoops story.
Snopes means?
Snopes, is that what it is?
Yes, yes.
So, is?
Yes, yes.
So, okay.
you about... so for those thatdon't know, snopes is basically,
(04:54):
it's one of those sites thatdebunks myths, right?
So you go and you hear the latest,you know, in Spear C3, you go
there and they say whether it'strue or not.
So anyway, if you go to snopes in,you search my name, I am there and
it's a, goes back a couple years,but essentially a number of years
(05:18):
ago, there was a switch fromanalog to digital TV.
you remember this?
I do remember this because we werein a bit of panic at our house,
like, what the heck?
Yeah, everybody is, like, hope wegot to go to Walmart or do you
know, DTV converter boxes, right?
And so around that time, that waskind of the thing in the news or
(05:42):
everyone's talking about, oh, theswitches coming, hurrying get your
box or switch your TV.
Otherwise, you're not going to getUHF, you know, over the air wave
broadcast anymore.
And around this time, I had afriend of mine who, you know, a
little bit of a tinfoil hatgentleman and he was trying to
convince me that the governmentwas putting cameras in these,
these converter boxes.
And, you know, we had a nicefriendly debate.
(06:03):
I'm like, look, this isridiculous.
They're not putting cameras in theDTV converter boxes and I'm like,
tell you what, bud, I'm gettingone next week anyway, I'll tear it
apart and I'll prove you wrong,okay?
And we can end this debate, youknow, once and for all.
And so I did that.
Sure enough, week later, I go outby the box and I get my
(06:23):
screwdriver and I'm, you know,disassembling it and a thought
across my mind and this is, thistells you a little bit about how
my mind works.
I have a little bit of a darksense of humor.
I was thinking, instead of provinghim wrong, it would be funny to
prove him right.
And so I could literally tear thisthing apart.
I find a old cell phone, you know,removed the little camera and a
little microphone and a hot gluegun in there.
(06:43):
I shoot a 15 second, you know,22nd video saying, hey, I found
this, my buddy was telling me thatthere's cameras in here.
I thought he was wrong, but turnsout he was right.
I send it to like maybe five orsix friends.
I'm like, I'll tell him in a weekthat it's a joke, right?
I think I put it on YouTube.
Again, I had really no YouTubepresence.
And, you know, a week later, myphone starts blowing up.
(07:06):
I get called from, you know, WiredMagazine, National like news
broadcast about this.
And actually, so I actually endedup breaking the story with
wired.com, their threat reportseries.
And yeah, so that's how my namein, in snopes.com, you know,
basically a prank that went viraland, yeah, that was, that was kind
of my first 15 minutes of famethere.
Awesome.
How did your friend react?
So I'm curious, how did yourfriend react when you sent him
(07:27):
that?
Oh my gosh, found this, you know,kind of thing.
know, the typical, I knew it.
The funniest thing is I had a lotof reactions.
The weirdest reaction I got wasfrom my mom.
And she said, I'm so proud of you.
(07:47):
And I'm like, I'm like, I don'tknow if that's a thing to be a
proud of.
I, I, I conned a bunch of peoplewith, but anyway, you know, I'll
take it, I guess, but I, I thoughtthat was quite humorous that of
all the things like she could havesaid.
She said, I'm proud of you.
(08:08):
But yeah, it was funny.
It, you know, it definitely caughtwings for a while.
Funny because for a while, therewas a huge threat online.
I think I had it.
It was a magnovox.
It was the box I got.
And there were rumors of peoplesaying, oh, magnovox is going to
sue this guy.
And at first, I was like, kind ofworried.
I'm like, oh, my gosh, maybe I,maybe I will.
But then I started realizing therewas all these follow-up videos
where people were buying theseboxes, not because they needed
(08:29):
just to see whether or not.
And I'm like, actually, magnovoxshould be writing me a check
because I probably sold like, youknow, 10% more of these boxes than
they would have sold otherwise.
to see whether or you should havean affiliate account with them or
Yeah, yeah.
And this was right before, I thinkthis is a couple months before
YouTube started doing their adprogram.
(08:50):
This is like around, I want to sayaround 2009.
And so I was like, man, I missedthat boat.
It was a good testament.
That was around my career, youknow, my career entrance in
marketing really kind of maybe ayear to before I really got fully
started.
But it kind of taught me the powerof the internet and, you know,
virality and social media.
And it was definitely aninteresting learning lesson and
I've been trying to recreate thatviral event ever since.
(09:13):
So, yeah, that is funny.
That is so funny.
I would have loved to been in theroom, watching your friend,
watched the video for the firsttime, right?
You could have imagined how hewas, you know, probably looking...
over your shoulder and think, whatelse is out there?
Yes, all of those things, right?
All right, well, let's flashforward here, but from there, tell
us about InLIFE.
When did you get started?
And some of the things that you'redoing over there?
(09:35):
Obviously, you are awesome becauseof your 2021 recognition.
So let's hear, this is your time.
you Yeah, so InLIFE started outreally through, I guess my
background in softwaredevelopment.
So at a college, I studiedsoftware development and about a
three-fourths of the way throughmy degree, I realized that I
wasn't really built to be adeveloper.
But I still loved all things, youknow, tech.
(09:58):
And the time I was started, one ofmy first jobs was a project
manager, project manager for asoftware company.
And at the time, it was a smallstartup.
The company had really nomarketing presence at all.
And I had started dabbling withsocial media marketing.
I realized that, you know,basically I said, hey, I'm happy
to take this on.
Nobody else is doing it.
(10:18):
And of course, when you say thosekind of things in a small startup,
they're like, sure, have fun.
And that's kind of how I fell inlove with digital marketing is
kind of a small pivot.
Of course, these days now, wehave, you know, developers on
staff, as well as marketers,content writers, all of that
(10:38):
stuff.
But I leave that to other teammembers.
But really, Emily was birthed outof that first out of college
experience.
I worked for a very large softwaredevelopment agency.
They were working, you know,primarily with, you know, large
name entities.
And so in that process, I foundout that there was this middle
market of, you know, smallbusiness owners that couldn't
(11:01):
afford the overhead that thisparticular business, you know, had
to, to, you know, offset on theirclients, but also didn't want to
just throw their business to, youknow, somebody out of college or a
cousin down the street.
So it was out of that.
The end length was birthed.
And we've actually really kind ofresisted too much growth because
that's always been our coreaudience as a small, the mid-sized
(11:21):
businesses.
Where, you know, entrepreneurshipis in our DNA.
And so not only our own company,like, rides on those rails, but we
like to basically impart that intoa lot of our, you know, existing
clientele.
So a lot of our clients arestartups, small businesses, or
some, you know, some middlemid-tier, you know, business
operation.
And we get to be very instrumentalpart of their growth and their
(11:42):
strategy.
And that's the stuff we love.
I mean, I think at the beginning,you rattled off some of the larger
name clients that we've workedwith.
And we do kind of touted out therejust to give people the confidence
that, hey, we can work with eventhe largest clients that we have.
But at the end of the day, that'snot our target, you know,
(12:05):
audience.
We really love to be part of thestory.
Yeah.
I know, and as we were talkingeven before, recording buttons hit
here, just about the, you know,both of us have, I think, a
similar philosophy of reallytrying to build that, being that
trusted advisor hyper-advice rolewith our clients.
And, you know, how fortunate, Ialways find it fortunate when, as
(12:25):
we develop those relationships,and because it's a great amount of
trust that these small businessesare placing on us.
And they really allow us to kindof look under the kimono, right?
Get the phone, like what's goingon with the business?
And, but when we get to thosepoints, that's when we truly can,
you know, provide some great, Ithink, strategy and consultation
(12:46):
on helping them to, to expandtheir business.
And so, clearly, you know, youmust be on the path of that, as
well.
I have a question for you, though.
So, in-leaf, e-n-l-e-a-f.
So, what's in the name?
What's behind that name?
What does that mean?
People ask me that about ouragency name, but in-leaf is like,
I've been trying to kind is like,I've been trying to kind of... I
(13:09):
wish I had a great story quitehonestly.
The name started out as anotherproject over a decade ago.
So, you know, 2009, when we werejust getting started, the company
was called freelance machine.
And we quickly, we quickly, infact, that's, that's, if you look
(13:31):
at our LSC network, DBA is, andwhen we started out, it was
freelance machine, but we quicklygrew out, grew, you know, out-rew
the freelance moniker.
It's like, you know, that has adifferent, you know,
monoclinification than somethingelse.
So, I had, at the time, I wasworking on a project where we
basically, we had created asyndicated job board where we were
scraping multiple job boards andaggregating that data.
(13:53):
And this was just kind of a short,somewhat memorable, you know, you
were all that So we grabbed it andeventually pivoted that name into
the core business itself.
So, you know, we do like innerbranding.
a- you were to look at that, youwould notice that we have an E
logo that has steps that indicateskind of growth.
You know, there's the idea ofleaf, which we haven't really
(14:15):
incorporated much into ourbranding from the, I guess, the
natural aesthetic.
So, quite honestly, there's not aton of forethought.
It's just something different andsomewhat memorable, short, sweet,
and to the point.
And we haven't had really thenecessity to make any changes.
So, it's like my philosophy is ifit's not broke, don't fix it.
no, I just, when I've looked atit, I'm like, I wonder what he's
(14:40):
reaching for there because I can'tmake a direct connection.
I thought, well, maybe that's justme.
I'm too simple.
Well, we were doing the naming,this was back in the day.
You know, this is a decade ago.
This is when people were coming upwith all these weird, you know,
(15:03):
names, you know, and so that waskind of a trend.
now things are getting back tomore like, you know, when you look
at naming conventions, there are alot more.
I wouldn't say plain Jane, butlike, there's there's a broader
vernacular where in the web 2.0days when that was, you know, kind
of just popping off when we kindof launch.
Like, people were just coming upwith all kinds of interesting and
strange names with maybe lackingmeaning just so that they could
(15:24):
get the common build their web 2.0property.
So, that's kind of, that's kind ofwhat we were burnt out of as well,
that whole scenario.
Yeah, yeah.
So now, I'm going to ask you alittle bit about, I'm not sure
when you developed some of thesecertainly out of your background
and programming and such anddevelopment.
But I know on your site and beforewe were talking earlier, because
(15:48):
I've used some of your tools.
you're known for some pretty coolstuff, actually.
And you've got this headlineanalyzer tool.
You got some reporting tools.
I saw what you're doing a coupleof weeks ago.
Yeah, auditing tools.
All kinds of fun stuff.
So how did you get into developingthose type of tools and why did
you go down that I mean, a lot ofit, a lot of the tools that we
(16:09):
have on our site, they're allessentially free tools.
A lot of them are tools, I'll kindof consider them micro tools,
quite honestly, most of them arescratching our own itch.
I'll give you an example of theheadline analyzer.
were working with an existing toolthat was a headline analyzer that
very similar in scope to what wedid.
I mean, quite honestly, we mostlyreplicated the tool, but the one,
(16:30):
there was two things I didn't likeabout this other tool.
One, it was behind a not apaywall, but basically had to
enter your email every time youaccess it.
was kind of annoying and it wouldkind of, you know, it degraded
into having to jump through a lotof hoops to use it.
So it became not very friendly.
And to this particular tool thatwe modeled ours off of didn't
(16:51):
factor in keywords, you know, andas a digital marketer, where we
pay a lot of attention to keywordsand their emphasis, especially in
the titles.
And so that's kind of the approachthat we go after whenever we're
creating tools, we don't just doit.
Obviously, it's not a part of ourcore monetization model.
(17:12):
Whenever we can find a need tobuild a tool that really kind of
meets our first, our needs first,and then we can pass it on to the
larger audiences or our clientelethat's great.
You talked about, you know, that'sone of your motivations with with
podcasting is it's the value addto your clientele, and that's kind
of how we think of tools, youknow, we can create these tools
(17:33):
offer value, maybe build trust.
And so that's the benefit.
But at the end of the day, a lotof these were kind of meeting our
own needs, you know, we're lookingat a couple other internal tools
tool for like marketingprojections and, you know, who
knows we made totally many publiceyes those at some point.
But typically that's where thosethings birthed, you know, yeah,
that's, well, that is that'sinteresting and certainly helpful.
(17:53):
I know as another SEO, you know,it's like, wow, here's a great
tool that we can use.
Yeah, thank you.
Thank you.
And I appreciate it.
started your company, so, what wewant to do is we have no
technology, and I want to go backto my but this is just, you know,
the nonStkey Sinova offer incompany.
That is the reason I invited youto do Bit Blizz for this.
(18:16):
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, every good, every.
Now we do, we do still offer apretty wide full stack.
So a lot of our clients aretypically coming to us at some
phase of the website design orredesign portion of the engagement
and then tacking on like a digitalmarketing strategy.
And it is one of the.
things that we tend to be able toleverage, particularly in our own
markets, from the PacificNorthwest, is the fact that we
(18:37):
have that bridge of understandingbetween website design and digital
marketing has really put us in aunique competitive spot.
And it's really kind ofsurprising, I'm sure you're
probably aware of this, but a lotof our clients don't understand,
you know, and rightfully so, thatthere's quite a different
discipline between website designand development and digital
marketing.
I know people in both of thoseverticals, you know, amazing
(18:58):
website designers and developersthat really don't know much at all
about search engine optimization.
And vice versa, I know someamazing SEOs that, you know, they
rely on their clients fordevelopment or maybe they have a
partner.
And that's been an advantage forme and, and Lee personally is
because I have that softwarebackground, I can, I can help
(19:20):
bridge those gaps with our clientsand with our team members and make
sure that the process is, youknow, holistically relevant from,
you know, design development tooptimization.
And in fact, that's even one ofour unofficial models is design
develop optimize.
nonStkey right.
So what is a team at Inleaf looklike now?
So you assume you've got, youknow, a number of folks are kind
(19:43):
of working with you, which isgreat.
Are you remote?
I know all of my staff is remote.
I do have somebody that comes inabout a half time now into the
office, but for the last couple ofyears through the pandemic, we've
all been remote and reallymaintained to do that.
(20:05):
Is that We've been, you know,we've been very much what I like
to call a virtual company evenbefore COVID because we have team
members all over the place.
You know, I've had multiple teammembers in New York, I'm one right
now in New York.
Interestingly, we end up getting alot of writers from the East
(20:27):
Coast.
So that's why we say they have saythey have developed.
I have two writers on staff thatare like a new Yeah, it seems as
soon as there's something aboutthe East Coast and creative
writers that I don't know.
But again, it's not broke, don'tfix it.
Right.
A lot of our development team isoverseas.
(20:49):
So we have two overseas developersthat we worked with one for
probably four or five years,another for about two years, you
know, who are trusted.
We do have kind of a webdevelopment oversight manager
who's in textis and another, youknow, data entry and general
processing members that arescattered, you know, either across
the US or overseas.
(21:09):
So yeah, we're very much a virtualcompany.
It's always worked well for us.
And now it's a lot more accepted.
But when we first started out, itwas kind of a rare thing.
So you were building the machine,as we will call it, surely you've
stumbled on various obstacles.
You've had challenges, everybodydoes, right?
And so so many of our listeners,small business owners, I mean,
(21:33):
they're constantly pushing, youknow, the ball up the hill and,
you know, always challenge withvarious kinds of things.
Tell us about maybe some of thechallenges that you've faced.
How did you guys overcome it?
How did you of Yeah, I mean, we'realways facing challenges.
I mean, I think if you're notinterested in dealing with
challenges, you probably shouldn'tbe an entrepreneur because
there's, you know, there's alwayssomething to be solved.
(21:54):
But on the flip side, that couldbe some of the, those can be the
things that can also be just asexciting.
I'll give you a good example ofsomething we're going through
right now and it's an ongoingprocess is, we're kind of almost
in a step phase where we're tryingto better two parts of our own
business.
One is operations.
And then I guess as a subset ofthat is the project management
side.
(22:15):
So as we speak, I'm, you know, onboarding and working with a new
team member who is kind ofredeveloping our project
management system and going to betaking on, hopefully a lot more of
the operations.
And I have, you know, along withthe rest, you know, of our team
started to build out or systemizeor product guys, a lot of our
(22:40):
services, there's always, there'salways holes that can be filled.
And so right now, like one of thethings we're going through is just
how do we better refine ourprocesses?
And I think that's, that's thekey.
Like sometimes I have people thatdon't, that, you know, ask maybe
they're, they're at an earlierphase of their business than we
(23:00):
are, especially in the, themarketing realm.
And they ask, well, what would youdo if you're getting started?
And I don't know if this works forevery business, but there's in
each and every business.
I know for us, one of the thingsthat I wish I would have done much
(23:23):
earlier was case studies.
things that I think I think I werein like five year, five or six
before we ever did any casestudies.
And that was a game changer for mybusiness.
you We did that.
So now that's a regular part ofour practice.
So that was a big, importantpiece.
So those are the kind of thingsthat you learn.
Some of them trial through air,but I think the biggest thing,
(23:45):
especially if you're a smallbusiness, you have to do marketing
and sales.
And the sooner you can get yourhead around building an
environment of trust to yourprospects, the better you're going
to be.
So maybe that doesn't look like,you know, maybe that doesn't work
out to be case studies for you,but maybe it's customer
testimonials or maybe it's videotestimonials or whatever you can
(24:08):
do as a business owner to positionyourself as an authority and a
trusted advisor in your space.
So those things are key, Yeah, andI love as well, just when you're
kind of talking about operationsand process, I always kind of
think as well what we have done atour specific agency is that we've
always and continually try tothink about how do we simplify
(24:31):
either a process or an operatingprocedure that we've established.
How do we simplify either to makeit smoother or to take touches off
of a process, so to speak, but youknow, just to flow through faster
and to make it as automated aspossible, because as we find, as
we can do more of that, then itallows us to do more of some of
the other things that you'retalking about, like the marketing
(24:52):
and the sales piece, right?
So I want that to be our focus,rather.
Obviously, we want to develop andprovide outstanding services, but
we say some aspects of ourinternal operations that we should
just continue to become more andmore efficient on.
And as we can do that, then itallows us to do some of the other
things that can help us grow orcontinue to build relationships
(25:14):
with the clients, if we're not sointo the weeds on some cumbersome
process or something, but yeah.
So after I was looking through mynotes here and I'm like, oh, this
is really weird.
And I remember I was talking withperson who does our research and
she showed me this thing like thatis weird.
That is crazy stuff associatedwith you, finding things on the
internet.
(25:35):
So I think they found this oneither yours or your wife's
Facebook page, the world's largestOlaf.
I think there's a picture of yourdaughter with like this thing must
be like, any feet tall orsomething like this standing in
front of a house looked like ahuge snowman.
Only it's like Olaf shape.
Was that in your neighborhood withthe So not in our neighborhood,
(25:57):
but one of the kids joining me wasand yeah, you guys dig deep
because that was a couple yearsago.
Yeah, my I hadn't even thoughtabout that until now, but yeah,
they somebody had decided at somestrange world record created this
giant snowman.
I mean, it was the thing wastaller than that.
That was exactly the crafted likea giant Olaf.
(26:20):
And of course, you know, mydaughter had to have a picture in
front of it.
So yeah, that wasn't us.
We're not that ambitious yet.
But I was impressed.
We we stop it just general goodold snowman.
But yeah, it was that was fun.
My daughter definitely got a kickout of that.
I have to remind her about thatwhen she gets home.
(26:42):
She remembers than that.
That was All right.
So we're going to tap into acouple of other things.
I know you've got a lot of otherinterests beyond digital marketing
and things that you're in.
So I want to get our arms aroundthat a little bit.
But before we hit the buttons onthat, it is that time.
(27:04):
it's time for the seventh I lovethis part of the show.
So if I can start by guess with alittle bit trivia and it's such a
fun time of the year right nowwith baseball playoffs happening.
So you know, it's a good thing.
I don't even know.
Adam, I didn't even get to askyou.
(27:25):
Do you like baseball?
Do you follow baseball?
know, you're going to bedisappointed because I don't I
don't watch a ton of sports.
That's all right.
Yeah.
Don't hate baseball.
It's probably the sport I knowleast about.
That's a lot.
Well, you just I am a team player.
(27:45):
You aware that your state team,the Seattle Mariners are actually
in the playoffs right now.
Right.
Are you aware?
I'll just pretend that I knewthat.
Yeah.
I'm sure I knew that.
All right.
And then the kind of guy.
And the guy that shows up at theSuper Bowl party and he like who's
He played.
Okay.
Yeah, that's fine.
(28:05):
All right.
Well, they had a tough game.
I'm like Tuesday night.
Tuesday night was the little bitmore in this first.
Well, Tuesday night was theirfirst game.
They had a hard night.
They were winning up into theeighth inning and then a Houston
hit.
Came back with a win with a threerun, a homer to win it in the
bottom of the ninth.
(28:26):
So it was like, oh gosh.
That was a hard, hard loss.
It takes the win.
I night.
Tuesday night was the I do knowthey've, you know, throughout the
years.
They had a pretty good baseballteam.
They want to do a little bit of alow.
It seemed like for a while, buthopefully they're making a little
bit of a comeback on this team.
Yeah.
See how I'm saying, know, so well,did you know that the Seattle
(28:49):
Mariners are the only MLB team tohave never reached the World
Series?
You know, I think I've heard thatbefore.
I couldn't be dreaming back.
There's six teams that have beencalled up.
They've gotten very close, butnever actually gotten in, that
have been called up.
They've Yes, they've never gottenin.
(29:10):
There's six teams that have neverwon the World Series.
Obviously the Mariners are one ofthem.
And then there's the Rockies, theRays, Padres, Brewers, Rangers.
They have never won the WorldSeries.
But the Mariners are the only oneswho have never reached the World
Series.
Never have even gotten there.
So and as a matter of fact, thisyear's the first time they've been
in the playoffs in 21 years.
(29:33):
So.
Yeah.
So this is a big deal for them,right?
So to have them be there.
All right.
So focusing on the SeattleMariners for you trying to bring
this a little home for you.
They actually, even though they'vehad, you know, a bit of, you know,
somewhat of a of a spotty successrate.
(29:54):
We'll say, actually, when I livedin Seattle, I lived in a Seattle
for five years, kind of years ago.
It's when the kingdom was still upand you could go to a game with
the kingdom, go to a baseballgame, get a beer and a hot dog for
five bucks altogether.
It was like, go to the game, get abeer and a hot dog, five bucks all
in.
That was a great day.
So here we are.
(30:14):
Seattle Mariners, they hold anAmerican league record for the
most wins in a regular season,which was in 2001, which was the
last time that they were in theplayoffs.
Do you know how many games theywon that season?
So this is It was couldn't tellyou.
Yes, you got to throw somethingout there, put a little game.
How How many games they won inthat?
I 15.
like 160 to a games in a season.
So I know I'm just not like yeah,116, 116.
Wow.
But wins that season.
Yes.
And so they are the, they hold theAmerican league record for that.
(30:37):
And they still, even in thatseason, they did not go to the
world series that season.
Unfortunately, I do want to letyou know that they actually share
that same record with the nationalleague team.
At the same number of wins, 116wins.
And it happened to be my favoriteteam, the Chicago cups.
(30:58):
They did that 1906.
So there we go.
A little bit of trivia for you.
So you'll have, I think they playtonight.
That's great.
Yeah.
So you I'm did that to, you know,I know that they're doing so well
in there in a pivotal moment.
Maybe it will peak my interest.
And what the, what the manoryou're doing.
So I am definitely a fair weatherfan.
(31:19):
I can tell you that.
So And what you go.
So now you can go sit aroundtonight with your friends,
Columnum.
And like, hey, you guys want to gograb a beer, watch the game.
And they were like, what?
You even know what's going on?
You could do some of those.
It's cool.
A You could do some of those.
It's cool.
(31:39):
A little bit.
Yeah.
This is like the, you know, the Ysthat take notes about the Super
Bowl.
So they drop their husbands.
Yeah.
One of the One of the things thisis what you can do.
You can be that friend.
All right.
Well, let's get back into it.
More baseball.
Like all all kinds of buttons.
I don't know what the heck I'mdoing on there.
(32:00):
So here we go.
So we do know you've got a lot ofother interests going on here.
I got to hit you up on thisbecause I've seen you kind of post
and talk about crypto andcurrencies.
Crypto currencies.
And what in the world is youropinion?
What is going on in the cryptomarkets?
(32:22):
Because it is crazy right Yeah.
It's not just crypto markets.
Everything is.
It's going crazy right now.
Yeah.
But it doesn't it hasn't certainlyhasn't like, panned out well, you
know, at least in the short term,both for crypto's end.
And you know, if you're payingattention to the stock market,
(32:44):
those are two, you know, generalareas that I look at and pay
attention to.
I never actually considered myselfan investor or formally publicize
that until at least a couple ofyears ago.
And you know, you start doing athing like.
enough and then you kind of, youkind of like, oh wow, maybe I am
(33:08):
actually halfway good at thisthing.
So, you know, to back up, my whenI started out a years ago doing
buy and hold real estate and got,you know, fairly proficient at
that kind of felt like we had anunderstanding of that environment
and it was number of years ago,maybe it's been about five plus
(33:29):
years now, I was thinking, well, Iknow enough about real estate, but
I don't know anything about thestock market.
So, I spent a good year justreading books and learning, slowly
putting my toe in the water andbuilding up a pretty healthy
portfolio and then, you know, come2017, this new thing, relatively
new at the time, a called cryptoand Bitcoin came on on the scene
and that's where I got really kindof fascinated with the story
(33:50):
behind it, you know what I mean?
And, you know, I bought in earlyand, you know, made some pretty
good money off of it and, youknow, I have kind of rid that wave
ever since.
I mean, now if you look at a lotof my portfolio, although I'm
still in the positive, you know,we're definitely going through
recessionary periods.
I mean, it's tough, but Idefinitely, actually, I love these
kinds of periods because this is,you know, as an investor, this is
where you make all of your money.
But the problem is your battlingpsychology.
As you see, you know, you seenumbers going down and you see
(34:11):
your, you know, quote unquote, networth going down.
instinctual side of you is like,okay, I want to pull my money out.
I want to cut my losses whenreally the intelligent investor
would say, okay, in fact, I spent,I put a number of, did a number of
purchases today, primarily in thestock market, but I'm also, I'm
dollar cost averaging into Bitcoinand Ethereum.
But yeah, that's the thing thatnot only are we in a really
(34:34):
interesting recessionaryenvironment where I think we're
going to look back, those that areable to put money into markets, be
it, you know, crypto or I thinkthe look back and find it to be,
you know, a good decision in thelong term, but a lot of people
don't understand general stats andtrends.
I looked at my calendar today andI a reminder, typically October
has traditionally been a very downand volatile month in markets.
(34:57):
Right.
This, this year, even more sobecause we're on an election
cycle, we're a recession.
This is like a perfect, perfectstorm.
And as quickly as the markets canfall, they can also come right
back up.
so for me, I love this period oftime.
I have to like, you know, notcheck my portfolio every day, just
know that, you know, in the longterm, you know, scheme of things,
you know, markets do recover andtypically, you know, an annual
(35:21):
return, average annual return is,you know, roughly seven percent
over time.
So yeah, it's something I like,you know, I like looking at it's
not for everybody, but I thinkI'm, I can be relatively robotic
as far as that stuff goes, whichmaybe helps me out in the long
term.
I get overly emotional aboutgaining or losing money.
(35:42):
So yeah, is.
It's going crazy right now.
you definitely have to have nervesof steel, I think right now.
I agree with your approach to it.
I think you just have to look athistorically and know that markets
will come back.
do come back.
Historically, have always comeback and have always continued to
(36:02):
grow and long term investmentgrowth in equities have been about
seven percent a year, long term.
That's kind of long term return.
if you've got time, you know, lettime work on your side and doing
dollar cost averaging is alwaysthe smart way to go, you know,
just buy, put in a couple hundredbucks every first Monday of the
month, I'm doing it every monthand just keep doing it.
(36:24):
It doesn't matter what the priceis up down sideways.
It doesn't matter.
Just keep doing it because longterm, you get the average and some
benefit to to you.
As far as like crypto, like mythought, it was one of the sharks.
It was Mr. He said something whichI agree with.
He basically said that he believesin the next number of years that,
(36:48):
you know, blockchain coins likeBitcoin and others will become the
third rail of the stock market.
And that's kind of what I seehappening as well.
I say 24 months ago, things likeBitcoin and Ethereum and these
other blockchain were not parallelto the stock market.
They were almost counterbalanceslike gold silver were, but as as
institutional money gets intothese assets, they more closely
(37:08):
align with the stock market.
And.
So, yep, I think consider that.
I look at now, and I didn't alwayslook at it this way, but I look at
things like Bitcoin and Ethereum,very much the same way I look at
it, stock like Tess or Shopify, orthese other tech-innovated-year
growth stocks.
I just look at it as another lineitem with maybe additional
(37:32):
applications.
And I think as people think aboutcrypto, you really have to look
under the hood a little bit andthink about what are, and you
throw out the term projects,because there are so many
interesting projects that arebuilt on the blockchains of these
various cryptocurrencies.
So like Ethereum, we enrassed inEthereum, and Ethereum is really
involved with a lot of differentcool projects that are big, big
(37:53):
companies behind them on amass-card visa.
You have some governments that arebuilding things on top of the
Ethereum blockchain that just addsvalue.
So it's not some crazy scam kindof thing out there.
These are real things, investingserious dollars on building some
incredible technologies onblockchain technology.
(38:14):
And yeah, so.
so. That's when I tell people, oneof the ways I like to bring a good
analogy is like, so there's aprotocol, SMPP, even if you've
never heard of that, you use itthat probably every day, because
SMPP is the backbone of theinternet, email and whatnot.
And so imagine that there was somekind of monetary or investment
vehicle that would allow you toreturn gains from a protocol.
(38:35):
And that's kind of the thesis fora lot of these cryptocurrencies
and there's in one layer, thereare protocol that build a new
web-free infrastructure, but onthe other side, you can invest in
this protocol in a different waythan you would invest in a
centralized company.
It's not for everybody, but it'sfor those that are interested in
the future and where that maylead.
(38:58):
It can be an interesting thing toconsider as part of a larger
investment.
Oh yeah, so I Oh yeah, so I agree.
All right, and so I will put acaveat in it.
Neither Adam or I are investor.
We're not here to provideinvesting advice.
So we're just two guys on theinternet.
So do your own research.
That's your own financial adviceor all that All right, so I know
you love to travel and I know youhit a lot of conferences every
(39:23):
year.
And I actually worked togetherjust a couple of weeks ago at a
conference, not a Nashville, whichwas great, loved it.
You'd had a great presentation.
I'll thank you.
And I know earlier this month ornot this month, this summer, you
spent a month in Costa Rica whenyou were living for the month.
(39:46):
You were still working.
Tell me about that.
You that month, and I was watchingyou sitting on the beach and you
were like, had your laptop, whatthe ocean, in the backdrop, I'm
like, he's living the life that Iwant to live here in a few years.
It's exactly what I want to do.
Just go travel, continue to work,but then work wherever I am.
(40:09):
Once my kids are off into college,there we go.
How was that?
How did you, I guess, kind ofscore that kind of an in It was
great.
This is the third year that we'vedone summers in Costa Rica.
Luckily, my wife is a teacher.
So that basically frees up ourwhole summers.
(40:30):
And I, of course, can work, youknow, being that NLIFA is very
much a distributed virtualcompany.
We don't have a, you know, anoffice, a physical office.
We work for multiple co-workingspaces, but most of our meetings
are done online, you know, the waythat a lot of businesses are
(40:53):
working these days.
So gives us the opportunity to,you know, pick up and move for the
summer.
And as our kids are getting alittle bit older, traveling has
become a little bit less diverse.
I think COVID also helped withthat too.
Kind of, but so we've been kind ofjust comfortable spending summers
(41:14):
in Costa Rica.
We've already got a plan to do itagain next year, potentially
buying some property down there toturn into vacation rental.
But yeah, we love, in general, welove traveling.
My parents, when my wife and Ifirst got married, booked our
honeymoon in a port of Ayarta,Mexico, and my wife and I have
(41:36):
been hooked on travel ever since.
So we typically are our goal.
I think before COVID, our runningback was like two international
trips a year.
And we had a running joke thatwe've seen more of the rest of the
world in our own country.
Now we did fix that during COVID,because we were, you know,
(41:57):
somewhat landlocked, not really,but, you know, we basically didn't
feel like we... to venture outwhile things the world was kind of
going crazy.
So we made up time and saw a lotof our own country which again we
have some stuff on our ownbackdoor which is absolutely
beautiful but really for me and Ithink my wife would agree getting
out of your comfort zone andexperiencing other cultures can be
(42:21):
amazing for your mindset.
When you're running a business dayto day it's in your you know in
your schedule, your routine, samecity, same office, same
environment, it can get reallymundane and it's I know for me
it's easy to get stuck in my headbut when I go and I leave my
comfort zone and I pick upbusiness and I do it somewhere
(42:42):
else, the thing that I take awayis like well there's a whole
world, a whole culture environmentthat works just fine without me in
it.
So it really gives me a lot ofperspective and also my brain kind
of operates that way.
I love the other reason that wekind of shut down our office you
know a couple years ago was I likeworking from different
(43:05):
environments.
Today I'm in my home officetomorrow we had a co-working
space.
It's not unusual for me to hit youknow more than one coffee shop in
a day because I basically havetermed something that I call
spatial ADD.
You know it doesn't I don't knowif that exists but it exists for
me where I get bored withenvironments very quickly.
So if you also suffer from spatialADD you know reach out we can
maybe you know I have a supportgroup or something but yeah that's
(43:31):
that's kind of part of the travelof scenario two is it just opens
up my mind frame for differentpossibilities you know.
I love that term I I love thatterm I don't know if that's
actually given a term that'sdying.
I don't think so I think Iinvented think so I think I
invented it.
I'll give you a credit for it.
(43:52):
I could come up come up with witha part of my personal hang-up song
and some moving around all thetime.
I love you a credit for and somethat I'll give you credit for it.
That is a great term.
I think I as well have that.
I can be throughout the day I'mfine to be in one place but I do
(44:12):
like there are certain timesduring the year like okay we have
to get out of here we have toleave somewhere and do something
yeah that's good that's a goodwith you because you're involved
in so many different things so youhave your business been successful
you're building continue to buildthis great enterprise you invest
(44:33):
in a lot of different kind ofdirections you love to you present
you travel you're going to theseconferences I don't know I can't
remember if we talked if you weregoing to go down there's a big
conference down in Texas nextmonth rock stars you go into that
not going to go to that one butinterestingly I may be speaking in
(44:53):
Vietnam so I've been asked tospeak next year in Vietnam at
another SEO conference so at leastverbally it's it's done I know
people won't sign everything yetbut so yeah and I actually would
also be speaking in January at aanother conference less marketing
oriented and actually orientedtowards small businesses all the
speaking to a Texas-basedinsurance company franchise a the
been trying to to get a little bitmore out there on the speaking
(45:14):
circuit this year especiallypost-COVID COVID kind of put a
hang up on some of that stuff butyou know the next couple years I
want to get out there and do moreof those but I am taking a little
bit of a break from conferencesjust in the next probably three
months just taking it easy youknow but yeah if it was up to me
I'd be at all the conferences butthen like I probably wouldn't be
(45:37):
married and go to shambles but Ido know some people you probably
know some of them as well thattheir conference junkies and I oh
my gosh you know I'm trying not tobecome a conference junkie but I'm
right on the edge I'll and go towell I want to shine a little bit
of light on one of your otherendeavors that more on the
Philanthropic and that is theorphanage that you have co-founded
(45:58):
and are a part of why don't youtell us a little bit about that
it's the mowcf and I'll just letyou go talk about it so my wife
and I also kind of oversee anorphanage in Liberia I'm called
Mosiv it's a long acronym butbasically we just call it Mosiv we
started that probably about eightyears ago and long story short I
basically connected with somebodyon the ground over there in
(46:20):
Liberia who went through as ayouth into an adult through
refugee camps and there's a wholehistory of Liberia that I think
most of the west don't understandand realize I'm during the turn of
the century you know around 2000they were at the end of you know
it's a long civil war and justmassive chaos a lot of bad stuff.
And so anyway, through thisconnection, you know, I started to
think, well, I don't know thefirst thing about running an
(46:42):
orphanage, but I know how to builda website and I know how to do
marketing.
So that's really where thisstarted just baby steps, you know,
and then that turned into somefundraising and then that turned
into like formal, formal likesystems where we have a 501C3 in
the US and then a non-governmentorganization and then a
non-government organization inLiberia.
And now, fast forward, we've hadabout eight kids go through there.
A majority of them still under,you know, under the care of the
(47:02):
orphanage.
We have our own building.
We're actually trying to launchbusinesses over there in Liberia.
We have one launched.
I'm not without challenges.
There's always challenges.
And you think running a businessin the States is hard.
Try it in Liberia.
So, but yeah, it's been a learningendeavor.
(47:24):
It's kind of a business in and ofits own.
Of course, we're not reaping thefinancial benefits, but we're able
to pour that back into anothercommunity.
So yeah, we've, that was somethingagain.
And it's a lot like business too.
Like, whether it's business ornonprofit, I think the biggest
thing that I've learned throughthat experience, as well as the
business experience, is you don'thave to have all the answers.
(47:48):
In fact, you will never have allthe answers.
And I think it's very easy asentrepreneurs and small business
owners to get analysis paralysis.
And think, oh, I got to haveeverything button.
I got to get my LLC or I have todo all this stuff.
And my, my recommendation whenyou're trying to build something,
(48:14):
you know, be it a nonprofit, abusiness is just get started.
Do the bare minimums get somemomentum.
And the rest of the pieces will,you know, if you're passionate
about it, they'll fall into place.
But you don't have to have all theanswers at front, because you'll,
you'll never have all the answers.
And there always be more questionsto solve.
But that was kind of, that's kindof where we started.
(48:35):
And it's, again, it's one of thosethings you look back, you know,
eight years later, you're like,wow, look at all we built, but we
didn't do it all overnight.
It was very gradual, you know,incremental baby steps until, you
know, until it actually startsmaking an impact.
So, well, good for you.
I think that's terrific.
You know, I'm sure you guys areputting a nice thumbprint on the
lives of those kids.
So good for you.
(48:57):
That's the goal.
it's definitely been rewarding tofeed back into a community that is
in such need.
Yeah, yeah.
All right.
Well, let's change gears hereanother time.
Here we are.
We're at the bottom of the ninths,Adam.
And this is where we get to askyou what advice do you have for
what we say rookies in the gamefor those just starting out those
(49:22):
small business owners and orentrepreneurs starting out in
their own business or maybe havealready opened their business and
they're looking for some guidance,words of wisdoms from old grizzled
veterans like yourself.
What do you have?
Well, you know, bit about a littlebit on that in the last, like last
phase of the program, but to echothat would be just to get started.
(49:47):
You know, I mean, don't feel likeyou have to know all the answers.
And then something else that I Iwish I would have done sooner is
really get good like mentors and,you know, council.
I think the last half of mybusiness I've invested, you know,
I've always invested in myselfthrough, you know, books and
training and programs.
But it's probably only been in thelast, I don't know, five years,
(50:09):
maybe the second half of the lifeof our business that I've really
doubled down on conferences,masterminds, really just buying
into those connections that I canlearn from others that are further
along.
I think that's that's the fastesthack I could give for anyone in
business is figure out what roomsyou can get into where you're the
dumbest person in the room.
(50:31):
And that's been my goal the lastcouple years is it's very
comfortable.
I feel like you're the smart guyand, you know, pat your ego and
luckily in digital marketing, youknow, there's plenty of that where
you can feel like, especially likein my local market, you know,
sometimes I feel like I'm a rockstar.
(50:53):
But that's not even though that'scomfortable, that's not the best
place to be.
That's not the best place to be.
That's not the best place to be.
That's not where I'm going togrow.
And so the last number of years,I've attended events we spoke
about one earlier where Itypically feel like I'm the
dumbest person in the room.
You know, just this last month, Iwas able to speak with people that
(51:16):
just a couple of years ago, Istill look to them.
Go me wrong, but I never thought Iwould be on the same stage at
these these folks.
And interestingly, I haven'treally shared this with anybody,
but one of the individuals therewho have followed their career for
a long time, I came up to them andI said, Hey, man, I've been
following your stuff for a while.
(51:38):
Every time you speak, it was justamazing.
I was blown away, this person who,you know, I put on this pedestal
said, you know, I've beenfollowing your stuff as well.
And actually, I'd like you tostart contributing to a program
that we're running.
That was amazing.
how did I never branched out to bethat dumbest guy in the room?
I never would have had thatopportunity.
(51:59):
And it's those kind of things thathave led to other opportunities.
I would say as far as like shortcutting those windows, figure out
who those people are that are, youknow, three, four, five steps
ahead of you.
And whatever it takes to get inthe presence of those people and
those rooms and those events, thatis going to propel, you know, your
business growth, your personaldevelopment probably faster than
just about Oh, that's greatadvice.
(52:20):
I know, and I know exactly thatfeeling that you're elaborating on
about being around some of theseguys.
You know, I walked away from thatcamera like, oh my gosh, that was
so awesome to like connect withsome of these guys that I've
looked at and followed from afarand just to be, you know, in the
same room with them.
(52:43):
Small, you know, this conferencethat we were at with a very
selected group of people.
And it was so great to be a partof that.
So yeah, good advice, good advice.
Well, let's say Adam is so fun tohave you on the show and to hear
in everything that you're engagedwith.
I want to be sure to send folksover.
You can find more information.
(53:03):
check out some of his cool freetools that he has available on
their website in leaf.com.
That's ENLEAF.com.
So go check some of that stuffout.
It's some really good stuff.
And again, man, thank you forbeing on the show.
I'm sorry.
If you're not going to hit somekind of references yet this year,
I'll miss you.
But, you know, hopefully next yearwe'll connect on next year.
(53:25):
year.
I'll be back at it unless you'regoing to be at the one overseas.
We'll talk about that.
That what I want hear aboutbecause I would love to get over a
couple of places overseas.
I know have some fun stuff goingon.
(53:46):
All right, folks.
that's the ballgame.
So thanks for joining us today.
And if you like our show, pleasetell your friends, subscribe and
review.
we'll see you around the ballpark.
Running the bases with smallbusinesses is brought to you by 38
digital market, a digitalmarketing agency committed to
(54:07):
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Connect with us today at 38
I'm fascinated with entrepreneursand small business owners.
Plus, I love baseball.
Every show I sit down with a smallbusiness owner and we discussed
their running the bases ofentrepreneurship.
We throw the ball around onstrategy, management, execution
and innovation.
(00:21):
Plus, a little fun baseball tug.
Hey, thanks for joining us today.
Settelaine, grab your crackerjacks and you know what they say.
All right.
It's a great day for a ball gameand we are recording this actually
kind of in the midst of thebaseball playoff.
So it's always kind of fun to havethat energy going on here.
(00:45):
But it is a great day for abaseball game and season and all
of that fun stuff.
This is Randy Rodi running thebases with small businesses.
And today's guest is a fun andpassionate entrepreneur, small
business owner, digital marketer,speaker, investor, world traveler,
philanthropist, student, husband,father and some might say,
(01:06):
fashionista.
Clearly somebody on my researchteam has a high opinion of you.
How many of us have matchedclothing or his case or in his
case, their glasses to theirlaptops.
I don't even know that waspossible.
Haley from the great state ofWashington, the Spokane business
(01:28):
entrepreneur founded hissuccessful digital marketing
company in 2009 and has beencontributing to digital marketing
campaigns for some of America'slargest brands, including Smith's,
the Dallas Fort Worth airport, theUniversity of Idaho is insights
and training tools that appearedin social media week, market muse,
sem rush, SER ranking and many,many more.
(01:52):
It's hard working and dedicatedentrepreneur is often on the road
traveling for speaking to theworld.
We love one of his social mediaposts, which states there are only
two people you should aim to makecrowd in your life.
(02:17):
One is that eight year old you andthe other is the 80 year old you.
The 2021 Spokane Washington winnerfor best S E O company.
I had no idea you are the man, thefounder of in leaf marketing, Adam
Chronister, Adam, welcome to theshow, Yeah, thanks for having me.
(02:41):
And as soon as the show is done,I'm going to go out and add
fashionista to my LinkedInprofile, because that's a new I
have no idea where so we have Youdefinitely did their homework.
homework.
Yeah, so we've got a great teamthat does this research and
sometimes some of the stuff thatcome up with it like, wow, really?
(03:07):
Your eye glasses actually matchyour it Yeah, yeah.
So is there still behind that?
I mean, I really am like, what?
I have a look story behind that.
So I have basically a wood on layon my my Mac laptop.
And I remember I forget who it wasa while back, but somebody talked
about having something that standsout, especially if you're doing
(03:28):
face to face and you know postCOVID, doing a lot more
conferences, getting back intothat, you know, realm and, you
know, I do like playing aroundwith glasses.
I'm just like, if it gets kind ofcrazy because she's like, do you
need another pair of glasses?
But so I went in and I went outand got a pair of wood frame
(03:49):
glasses, you know, just becausethey kind of stand out, they're a
little bit unique, you know, andit's, you know, that's one of
those kind of like insidebaseball, real marketing hacks.
When you go to a conference, maybewhere something that stands out,
whether it's bright shoes orcolored glasses, but when you're
connecting with people down theroad and doing your follow up, you
can be like, remember me, I'm theguy with the orange glasses or the
pink, you know, the pink sneakers.
(04:11):
So that that was kind of the ideabehind that.
And honestly, I've gotten a lot ofcompliments about these glasses.
So they're doing still behindthat?
I job.
Yeah, is that what you're wearingnow or the wooden.
Yeah, yeah, I know your audiencehardly can't see them.
Basically, I have some some woodframed glasses and they are wood.
Well, good for you.
Well, I stand out just because I'mlike tall, and bald.
so there you go.
(04:32):
I got a lot of skin and people cansee it.
It's all over.
Yeah, well that's pretty awesome.
Slowly before we could get toodeep into in leaf and.
and stuff that you're doing there.
I do have to your claim to fameand the great snoops story.
Snopes means?
Snopes, is that what it is?
Yes, yes.
So, is?
Yes, yes.
So, okay.
you about... so for those thatdon't know, snopes is basically,
(04:54):
it's one of those sites thatdebunks myths, right?
So you go and you hear the latest,you know, in Spear C3, you go
there and they say whether it'strue or not.
So anyway, if you go to snopes in,you search my name, I am there and
it's a, goes back a couple years,but essentially a number of years
(05:18):
ago, there was a switch fromanalog to digital TV.
you remember this?
I do remember this because we werein a bit of panic at our house,
like, what the heck?
Yeah, everybody is, like, hope wegot to go to Walmart or do you
know, DTV converter boxes, right?
And so around that time, that waskind of the thing in the news or
(05:42):
everyone's talking about, oh, theswitches coming, hurrying get your
box or switch your TV.
Otherwise, you're not going to getUHF, you know, over the air wave
broadcast anymore.
And around this time, I had afriend of mine who, you know, a
little bit of a tinfoil hatgentleman and he was trying to
convince me that the governmentwas putting cameras in these,
these converter boxes.
And, you know, we had a nicefriendly debate.
(06:03):
I'm like, look, this isridiculous.
They're not putting cameras in theDTV converter boxes and I'm like,
tell you what, bud, I'm gettingone next week anyway, I'll tear it
apart and I'll prove you wrong,okay?
And we can end this debate, youknow, once and for all.
And so I did that.
Sure enough, week later, I go outby the box and I get my
(06:23):
screwdriver and I'm, you know,disassembling it and a thought
across my mind and this is, thistells you a little bit about how
my mind works.
I have a little bit of a darksense of humor.
I was thinking, instead of provinghim wrong, it would be funny to
prove him right.
And so I could literally tear thisthing apart.
I find a old cell phone, you know,removed the little camera and a
little microphone and a hot gluegun in there.
(06:43):
I shoot a 15 second, you know,22nd video saying, hey, I found
this, my buddy was telling me thatthere's cameras in here.
I thought he was wrong, but turnsout he was right.
I send it to like maybe five orsix friends.
I'm like, I'll tell him in a weekthat it's a joke, right?
I think I put it on YouTube.
Again, I had really no YouTubepresence.
And, you know, a week later, myphone starts blowing up.
(07:06):
I get called from, you know, WiredMagazine, National like news
broadcast about this.
And actually, so I actually endedup breaking the story with
wired.com, their threat reportseries.
And yeah, so that's how my namein, in snopes.com, you know,
basically a prank that went viraland, yeah, that was, that was kind
of my first 15 minutes of famethere.
Awesome.
How did your friend react?
So I'm curious, how did yourfriend react when you sent him
(07:27):
that?
Oh my gosh, found this, you know,kind of thing.
know, the typical, I knew it.
The funniest thing is I had a lotof reactions.
The weirdest reaction I got wasfrom my mom.
And she said, I'm so proud of you.
(07:47):
And I'm like, I'm like, I don'tknow if that's a thing to be a
proud of.
I, I, I conned a bunch of peoplewith, but anyway, you know, I'll
take it, I guess, but I, I thoughtthat was quite humorous that of
all the things like she could havesaid.
She said, I'm proud of you.
(08:08):
But yeah, it was funny.
It, you know, it definitely caughtwings for a while.
Funny because for a while, therewas a huge threat online.
I think I had it.
It was a magnovox.
It was the box I got.
And there were rumors of peoplesaying, oh, magnovox is going to
sue this guy.
And at first, I was like, kind ofworried.
I'm like, oh, my gosh, maybe I,maybe I will.
But then I started realizing therewas all these follow-up videos
where people were buying theseboxes, not because they needed
(08:29):
just to see whether or not.
And I'm like, actually, magnovoxshould be writing me a check
because I probably sold like, youknow, 10% more of these boxes than
they would have sold otherwise.
to see whether or you should havean affiliate account with them or
Yeah, yeah.
And this was right before, I thinkthis is a couple months before
YouTube started doing their adprogram.
(08:50):
This is like around, I want to sayaround 2009.
And so I was like, man, I missedthat boat.
It was a good testament.
That was around my career, youknow, my career entrance in
marketing really kind of maybe ayear to before I really got fully
started.
But it kind of taught me the powerof the internet and, you know,
virality and social media.
And it was definitely aninteresting learning lesson and
I've been trying to recreate thatviral event ever since.
(09:13):
So, yeah, that is funny.
That is so funny.
I would have loved to been in theroom, watching your friend,
watched the video for the firsttime, right?
You could have imagined how hewas, you know, probably looking...
over your shoulder and think, whatelse is out there?
Yes, all of those things, right?
All right, well, let's flashforward here, but from there, tell
us about InLIFE.
When did you get started?
And some of the things that you'redoing over there?
(09:35):
Obviously, you are awesome becauseof your 2021 recognition.
So let's hear, this is your time.
you Yeah, so InLIFE started outreally through, I guess my
background in softwaredevelopment.
So at a college, I studiedsoftware development and about a
three-fourths of the way throughmy degree, I realized that I
wasn't really built to be adeveloper.
But I still loved all things, youknow, tech.
(09:58):
And the time I was started, one ofmy first jobs was a project
manager, project manager for asoftware company.
And at the time, it was a smallstartup.
The company had really nomarketing presence at all.
And I had started dabbling withsocial media marketing.
I realized that, you know,basically I said, hey, I'm happy
to take this on.
Nobody else is doing it.
(10:18):
And of course, when you say thosekind of things in a small startup,
they're like, sure, have fun.
And that's kind of how I fell inlove with digital marketing is
kind of a small pivot.
Of course, these days now, wehave, you know, developers on
staff, as well as marketers,content writers, all of that
(10:38):
stuff.
But I leave that to other teammembers.
But really, Emily was birthed outof that first out of college
experience.
I worked for a very large softwaredevelopment agency.
They were working, you know,primarily with, you know, large
name entities.
And so in that process, I foundout that there was this middle
market of, you know, smallbusiness owners that couldn't
(11:01):
afford the overhead that thisparticular business, you know, had
to, to, you know, offset on theirclients, but also didn't want to
just throw their business to, youknow, somebody out of college or a
cousin down the street.
So it was out of that.
The end length was birthed.
And we've actually really kind ofresisted too much growth because
that's always been our coreaudience as a small, the mid-sized
(11:21):
businesses.
Where, you know, entrepreneurshipis in our DNA.
And so not only our own company,like, rides on those rails, but we
like to basically impart that intoa lot of our, you know, existing
clientele.
So a lot of our clients arestartups, small businesses, or
some, you know, some middlemid-tier, you know, business
operation.
And we get to be very instrumentalpart of their growth and their
(11:42):
strategy.
And that's the stuff we love.
I mean, I think at the beginning,you rattled off some of the larger
name clients that we've workedwith.
And we do kind of touted out therejust to give people the confidence
that, hey, we can work with eventhe largest clients that we have.
But at the end of the day, that'snot our target, you know,
(12:05):
audience.
We really love to be part of thestory.
Yeah.
I know, and as we were talkingeven before, recording buttons hit
here, just about the, you know,both of us have, I think, a
similar philosophy of reallytrying to build that, being that
trusted advisor hyper-advice rolewith our clients.
And, you know, how fortunate, Ialways find it fortunate when, as
(12:25):
we develop those relationships,and because it's a great amount of
trust that these small businessesare placing on us.
And they really allow us to kindof look under the kimono, right?
Get the phone, like what's goingon with the business?
And, but when we get to thosepoints, that's when we truly can,
you know, provide some great, Ithink, strategy and consultation
(12:46):
on helping them to, to expandtheir business.
And so, clearly, you know, youmust be on the path of that, as
well.
I have a question for you, though.
So, in-leaf, e-n-l-e-a-f.
So, what's in the name?
What's behind that name?
What does that mean?
People ask me that about ouragency name, but in-leaf is like,
I've been trying to kind is like,I've been trying to kind of... I
(13:09):
wish I had a great story quitehonestly.
The name started out as anotherproject over a decade ago.
So, you know, 2009, when we werejust getting started, the company
was called freelance machine.
And we quickly, we quickly, infact, that's, that's, if you look
(13:31):
at our LSC network, DBA is, andwhen we started out, it was
freelance machine, but we quicklygrew out, grew, you know, out-rew
the freelance moniker.
It's like, you know, that has adifferent, you know,
monoclinification than somethingelse.
So, I had, at the time, I wasworking on a project where we
basically, we had created asyndicated job board where we were
scraping multiple job boards andaggregating that data.
(13:53):
And this was just kind of a short,somewhat memorable, you know, you
were all that So we grabbed it andeventually pivoted that name into
the core business itself.
So, you know, we do like innerbranding.
a- you were to look at that, youwould notice that we have an E
logo that has steps that indicateskind of growth.
You know, there's the idea ofleaf, which we haven't really
(14:15):
incorporated much into ourbranding from the, I guess, the
natural aesthetic.
So, quite honestly, there's not aton of forethought.
It's just something different andsomewhat memorable, short, sweet,
and to the point.
And we haven't had really thenecessity to make any changes.
So, it's like my philosophy is ifit's not broke, don't fix it.
no, I just, when I've looked atit, I'm like, I wonder what he's
(14:40):
reaching for there because I can'tmake a direct connection.
I thought, well, maybe that's justme.
I'm too simple.
Well, we were doing the naming,this was back in the day.
You know, this is a decade ago.
This is when people were coming upwith all these weird, you know,
(15:03):
names, you know, and so that waskind of a trend.
now things are getting back tomore like, you know, when you look
at naming conventions, there are alot more.
I wouldn't say plain Jane, butlike, there's there's a broader
vernacular where in the web 2.0days when that was, you know, kind
of just popping off when we kindof launch.
Like, people were just coming upwith all kinds of interesting and
strange names with maybe lackingmeaning just so that they could
(15:24):
get the common build their web 2.0property.
So, that's kind of, that's kind ofwhat we were burnt out of as well,
that whole scenario.
Yeah, yeah.
So now, I'm going to ask you alittle bit about, I'm not sure
when you developed some of thesecertainly out of your background
and programming and such anddevelopment.
But I know on your site and beforewe were talking earlier, because
(15:48):
I've used some of your tools.
you're known for some pretty coolstuff, actually.
And you've got this headlineanalyzer tool.
You got some reporting tools.
I saw what you're doing a coupleof weeks ago.
Yeah, auditing tools.
All kinds of fun stuff.
So how did you get into developingthose type of tools and why did
you go down that I mean, a lot ofit, a lot of the tools that we
(16:09):
have on our site, they're allessentially free tools.
A lot of them are tools, I'll kindof consider them micro tools,
quite honestly, most of them arescratching our own itch.
I'll give you an example of theheadline analyzer.
were working with an existing toolthat was a headline analyzer that
very similar in scope to what wedid.
I mean, quite honestly, we mostlyreplicated the tool, but the one,
(16:30):
there was two things I didn't likeabout this other tool.
One, it was behind a not apaywall, but basically had to
enter your email every time youaccess it.
was kind of annoying and it wouldkind of, you know, it degraded
into having to jump through a lotof hoops to use it.
So it became not very friendly.
And to this particular tool thatwe modeled ours off of didn't
(16:51):
factor in keywords, you know, andas a digital marketer, where we
pay a lot of attention to keywordsand their emphasis, especially in
the titles.
And so that's kind of the approachthat we go after whenever we're
creating tools, we don't just doit.
Obviously, it's not a part of ourcore monetization model.
(17:12):
Whenever we can find a need tobuild a tool that really kind of
meets our first, our needs first,and then we can pass it on to the
larger audiences or our clientelethat's great.
You talked about, you know, that'sone of your motivations with with
podcasting is it's the value addto your clientele, and that's kind
of how we think of tools, youknow, we can create these tools
(17:33):
offer value, maybe build trust.
And so that's the benefit.
But at the end of the day, a lotof these were kind of meeting our
own needs, you know, we're lookingat a couple other internal tools
tool for like marketingprojections and, you know, who
knows we made totally many publiceyes those at some point.
But typically that's where thosethings birthed, you know, yeah,
that's, well, that is that'sinteresting and certainly helpful.
(17:53):
I know as another SEO, you know,it's like, wow, here's a great
tool that we can use.
Yeah, thank you.
Thank you.
And I appreciate it.
started your company, so, what wewant to do is we have no
technology, and I want to go backto my but this is just, you know,
the nonStkey Sinova offer incompany.
That is the reason I invited youto do Bit Blizz for this.
(18:16):
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, every good, every.
Now we do, we do still offer apretty wide full stack.
So a lot of our clients aretypically coming to us at some
phase of the website design orredesign portion of the engagement
and then tacking on like a digitalmarketing strategy.
And it is one of the.
things that we tend to be able toleverage, particularly in our own
markets, from the PacificNorthwest, is the fact that we
(18:37):
have that bridge of understandingbetween website design and digital
marketing has really put us in aunique competitive spot.
And it's really kind ofsurprising, I'm sure you're
probably aware of this, but a lotof our clients don't understand,
you know, and rightfully so, thatthere's quite a different
discipline between website designand development and digital
marketing.
I know people in both of thoseverticals, you know, amazing
(18:58):
website designers and developersthat really don't know much at all
about search engine optimization.
And vice versa, I know someamazing SEOs that, you know, they
rely on their clients fordevelopment or maybe they have a
partner.
And that's been an advantage forme and, and Lee personally is
because I have that softwarebackground, I can, I can help
(19:20):
bridge those gaps with our clientsand with our team members and make
sure that the process is, youknow, holistically relevant from,
you know, design development tooptimization.
And in fact, that's even one ofour unofficial models is design
develop optimize.
nonStkey right.
So what is a team at Inleaf looklike now?
So you assume you've got, youknow, a number of folks are kind
(19:43):
of working with you, which isgreat.
Are you remote?
I know all of my staff is remote.
I do have somebody that comes inabout a half time now into the
office, but for the last couple ofyears through the pandemic, we've
all been remote and reallymaintained to do that.
(20:05):
Is that We've been, you know,we've been very much what I like
to call a virtual company evenbefore COVID because we have team
members all over the place.
You know, I've had multiple teammembers in New York, I'm one right
now in New York.
Interestingly, we end up getting alot of writers from the East
(20:27):
Coast.
So that's why we say they have saythey have developed.
I have two writers on staff thatare like a new Yeah, it seems as
soon as there's something aboutthe East Coast and creative
writers that I don't know.
But again, it's not broke, don'tfix it.
Right.
A lot of our development team isoverseas.
(20:49):
So we have two overseas developersthat we worked with one for
probably four or five years,another for about two years, you
know, who are trusted.
We do have kind of a webdevelopment oversight manager
who's in textis and another, youknow, data entry and general
processing members that arescattered, you know, either across
the US or overseas.
(21:09):
So yeah, we're very much a virtualcompany.
It's always worked well for us.
And now it's a lot more accepted.
But when we first started out, itwas kind of a rare thing.
So you were building the machine,as we will call it, surely you've
stumbled on various obstacles.
You've had challenges, everybodydoes, right?
And so so many of our listeners,small business owners, I mean,
(21:33):
they're constantly pushing, youknow, the ball up the hill and,
you know, always challenge withvarious kinds of things.
Tell us about maybe some of thechallenges that you've faced.
How did you guys overcome it?
How did you of Yeah, I mean, we'realways facing challenges.
I mean, I think if you're notinterested in dealing with
challenges, you probably shouldn'tbe an entrepreneur because
there's, you know, there's alwayssomething to be solved.
(21:54):
But on the flip side, that couldbe some of the, those can be the
things that can also be just asexciting.
I'll give you a good example ofsomething we're going through
right now and it's an ongoingprocess is, we're kind of almost
in a step phase where we're tryingto better two parts of our own
business.
One is operations.
And then I guess as a subset ofthat is the project management
side.
(22:15):
So as we speak, I'm, you know, onboarding and working with a new
team member who is kind ofredeveloping our project
management system and going to betaking on, hopefully a lot more of
the operations.
And I have, you know, along withthe rest, you know, of our team
started to build out or systemizeor product guys, a lot of our
(22:40):
services, there's always, there'salways holes that can be filled.
And so right now, like one of thethings we're going through is just
how do we better refine ourprocesses?
And I think that's, that's thekey.
Like sometimes I have people thatdon't, that, you know, ask maybe
they're, they're at an earlierphase of their business than we
(23:00):
are, especially in the, themarketing realm.
And they ask, well, what would youdo if you're getting started?
And I don't know if this works forevery business, but there's in
each and every business.
I know for us, one of the thingsthat I wish I would have done much
(23:23):
earlier was case studies.
things that I think I think I werein like five year, five or six
before we ever did any casestudies.
And that was a game changer for mybusiness.
you We did that.
So now that's a regular part ofour practice.
So that was a big, importantpiece.
So those are the kind of thingsthat you learn.
Some of them trial through air,but I think the biggest thing,
(23:45):
especially if you're a smallbusiness, you have to do marketing
and sales.
And the sooner you can get yourhead around building an
environment of trust to yourprospects, the better you're going
to be.
So maybe that doesn't look like,you know, maybe that doesn't work
out to be case studies for you,but maybe it's customer
testimonials or maybe it's videotestimonials or whatever you can
(24:08):
do as a business owner to positionyourself as an authority and a
trusted advisor in your space.
So those things are key, Yeah, andI love as well, just when you're
kind of talking about operationsand process, I always kind of
think as well what we have done atour specific agency is that we've
always and continually try tothink about how do we simplify
(24:31):
either a process or an operatingprocedure that we've established.
How do we simplify either to makeit smoother or to take touches off
of a process, so to speak, but youknow, just to flow through faster
and to make it as automated aspossible, because as we find, as
we can do more of that, then itallows us to do more of some of
the other things that you'retalking about, like the marketing
(24:52):
and the sales piece, right?
So I want that to be our focus,rather.
Obviously, we want to develop andprovide outstanding services, but
we say some aspects of ourinternal operations that we should
just continue to become more andmore efficient on.
And as we can do that, then itallows us to do some of the other
things that can help us grow orcontinue to build relationships
(25:14):
with the clients, if we're not sointo the weeds on some cumbersome
process or something, but yeah.
So after I was looking through mynotes here and I'm like, oh, this
is really weird.
And I remember I was talking withperson who does our research and
she showed me this thing like thatis weird.
That is crazy stuff associatedwith you, finding things on the
internet.
(25:35):
So I think they found this oneither yours or your wife's
Facebook page, the world's largestOlaf.
I think there's a picture of yourdaughter with like this thing must
be like, any feet tall orsomething like this standing in
front of a house looked like ahuge snowman.
Only it's like Olaf shape.
Was that in your neighborhood withthe So not in our neighborhood,
(25:57):
but one of the kids joining me wasand yeah, you guys dig deep
because that was a couple yearsago.
Yeah, my I hadn't even thoughtabout that until now, but yeah,
they somebody had decided at somestrange world record created this
giant snowman.
I mean, it was the thing wastaller than that.
That was exactly the crafted likea giant Olaf.
(26:20):
And of course, you know, mydaughter had to have a picture in
front of it.
So yeah, that wasn't us.
We're not that ambitious yet.
But I was impressed.
We we stop it just general goodold snowman.
But yeah, it was that was fun.
My daughter definitely got a kickout of that.
I have to remind her about thatwhen she gets home.
(26:42):
She remembers than that.
That was All right.
So we're going to tap into acouple of other things.
I know you've got a lot of otherinterests beyond digital marketing
and things that you're in.
So I want to get our arms aroundthat a little bit.
But before we hit the buttons onthat, it is that time.
(27:04):
it's time for the seventh I lovethis part of the show.
So if I can start by guess with alittle bit trivia and it's such a
fun time of the year right nowwith baseball playoffs happening.
So you know, it's a good thing.
I don't even know.
Adam, I didn't even get to askyou.
(27:25):
Do you like baseball?
Do you follow baseball?
know, you're going to bedisappointed because I don't I
don't watch a ton of sports.
That's all right.
Yeah.
Don't hate baseball.
It's probably the sport I knowleast about.
That's a lot.
Well, you just I am a team player.
(27:45):
You aware that your state team,the Seattle Mariners are actually
in the playoffs right now.
Right.
Are you aware?
I'll just pretend that I knewthat.
Yeah.
I'm sure I knew that.
All right.
And then the kind of guy.
And the guy that shows up at theSuper Bowl party and he like who's
He played.
Okay.
Yeah, that's fine.
(28:05):
All right.
Well, they had a tough game.
I'm like Tuesday night.
Tuesday night was the little bitmore in this first.
Well, Tuesday night was theirfirst game.
They had a hard night.
They were winning up into theeighth inning and then a Houston
hit.
Came back with a win with a threerun, a homer to win it in the
bottom of the ninth.
(28:26):
So it was like, oh gosh.
That was a hard, hard loss.
It takes the win.
I night.
Tuesday night was the I do knowthey've, you know, throughout the
years.
They had a pretty good baseballteam.
They want to do a little bit of alow.
It seemed like for a while, buthopefully they're making a little
bit of a comeback on this team.
Yeah.
See how I'm saying, know, so well,did you know that the Seattle
(28:49):
Mariners are the only MLB team tohave never reached the World
Series?
You know, I think I've heard thatbefore.
I couldn't be dreaming back.
There's six teams that have beencalled up.
They've gotten very close, butnever actually gotten in, that
have been called up.
They've Yes, they've never gottenin.
(29:10):
There's six teams that have neverwon the World Series.
Obviously the Mariners are one ofthem.
And then there's the Rockies, theRays, Padres, Brewers, Rangers.
They have never won the WorldSeries.
But the Mariners are the only oneswho have never reached the World
Series.
Never have even gotten there.
So and as a matter of fact, thisyear's the first time they've been
in the playoffs in 21 years.
(29:33):
So.
Yeah.
So this is a big deal for them,right?
So to have them be there.
All right.
So focusing on the SeattleMariners for you trying to bring
this a little home for you.
They actually, even though they'vehad, you know, a bit of, you know,
somewhat of a of a spotty successrate.
(29:54):
We'll say, actually, when I livedin Seattle, I lived in a Seattle
for five years, kind of years ago.
It's when the kingdom was still upand you could go to a game with
the kingdom, go to a baseballgame, get a beer and a hot dog for
five bucks altogether.
It was like, go to the game, get abeer and a hot dog, five bucks all
in.
That was a great day.
So here we are.
(30:14):
Seattle Mariners, they hold anAmerican league record for the
most wins in a regular season,which was in 2001, which was the
last time that they were in theplayoffs.
Do you know how many games theywon that season?
So this is It was couldn't tellyou.
Yes, you got to throw somethingout there, put a little game.
How How many games they won inthat?
I 15.
like 160 to a games in a season.
So I know I'm just not like yeah,116, 116.
Wow.
But wins that season.
Yes.
And so they are the, they hold theAmerican league record for that.
(30:37):
And they still, even in thatseason, they did not go to the
world series that season.
Unfortunately, I do want to letyou know that they actually share
that same record with the nationalleague team.
At the same number of wins, 116wins.
And it happened to be my favoriteteam, the Chicago cups.
(30:58):
They did that 1906.
So there we go.
A little bit of trivia for you.
So you'll have, I think they playtonight.
That's great.
Yeah.
So you I'm did that to, you know,I know that they're doing so well
in there in a pivotal moment.
Maybe it will peak my interest.
And what the, what the manoryou're doing.
So I am definitely a fair weatherfan.
(31:19):
I can tell you that.
So And what you go.
So now you can go sit aroundtonight with your friends,
Columnum.
And like, hey, you guys want to gograb a beer, watch the game.
And they were like, what?
You even know what's going on?
You could do some of those.
It's cool.
A You could do some of those.
It's cool.
(31:39):
A little bit.
Yeah.
This is like the, you know, the Ysthat take notes about the Super
Bowl.
So they drop their husbands.
Yeah.
One of the One of the things thisis what you can do.
You can be that friend.
All right.
Well, let's get back into it.
More baseball.
Like all all kinds of buttons.
I don't know what the heck I'mdoing on there.
(32:00):
So here we go.
So we do know you've got a lot ofother interests going on here.
I got to hit you up on thisbecause I've seen you kind of post
and talk about crypto andcurrencies.
Crypto currencies.
And what in the world is youropinion?
What is going on in the cryptomarkets?
(32:22):
Because it is crazy right Yeah.
It's not just crypto markets.
Everything is.
It's going crazy right now.
Yeah.
But it doesn't it hasn't certainlyhasn't like, panned out well, you
know, at least in the short term,both for crypto's end.
And you know, if you're payingattention to the stock market,
(32:44):
those are two, you know, generalareas that I look at and pay
attention to.
I never actually considered myselfan investor or formally publicize
that until at least a couple ofyears ago.
And you know, you start doing athing like.
enough and then you kind of, youkind of like, oh wow, maybe I am
(33:08):
actually halfway good at thisthing.
So, you know, to back up, my whenI started out a years ago doing
buy and hold real estate and got,you know, fairly proficient at
that kind of felt like we had anunderstanding of that environment
and it was number of years ago,maybe it's been about five plus
(33:29):
years now, I was thinking, well, Iknow enough about real estate, but
I don't know anything about thestock market.
So, I spent a good year justreading books and learning, slowly
putting my toe in the water andbuilding up a pretty healthy
portfolio and then, you know, come2017, this new thing, relatively
new at the time, a called cryptoand Bitcoin came on on the scene
and that's where I got really kindof fascinated with the story
(33:50):
behind it, you know what I mean?
And, you know, I bought in earlyand, you know, made some pretty
good money off of it and, youknow, I have kind of rid that wave
ever since.
I mean, now if you look at a lotof my portfolio, although I'm
still in the positive, you know,we're definitely going through
recessionary periods.
I mean, it's tough, but Idefinitely, actually, I love these
kinds of periods because this is,you know, as an investor, this is
where you make all of your money.
But the problem is your battlingpsychology.
As you see, you know, you seenumbers going down and you see
(34:11):
your, you know, quote unquote, networth going down.
instinctual side of you is like,okay, I want to pull my money out.
I want to cut my losses whenreally the intelligent investor
would say, okay, in fact, I spent,I put a number of, did a number of
purchases today, primarily in thestock market, but I'm also, I'm
dollar cost averaging into Bitcoinand Ethereum.
But yeah, that's the thing thatnot only are we in a really
(34:34):
interesting recessionaryenvironment where I think we're
going to look back, those that areable to put money into markets, be
it, you know, crypto or I thinkthe look back and find it to be,
you know, a good decision in thelong term, but a lot of people
don't understand general stats andtrends.
I looked at my calendar today andI a reminder, typically October
has traditionally been a very downand volatile month in markets.
(34:57):
Right.
This, this year, even more sobecause we're on an election
cycle, we're a recession.
This is like a perfect, perfectstorm.
And as quickly as the markets canfall, they can also come right
back up.
so for me, I love this period oftime.
I have to like, you know, notcheck my portfolio every day, just
know that, you know, in the longterm, you know, scheme of things,
you know, markets do recover andtypically, you know, an annual
(35:21):
return, average annual return is,you know, roughly seven percent
over time.
So yeah, it's something I like,you know, I like looking at it's
not for everybody, but I thinkI'm, I can be relatively robotic
as far as that stuff goes, whichmaybe helps me out in the long
term.
I get overly emotional aboutgaining or losing money.
(35:42):
So yeah, is.
It's going crazy right now.
you definitely have to have nervesof steel, I think right now.
I agree with your approach to it.
I think you just have to look athistorically and know that markets
will come back.
do come back.
Historically, have always comeback and have always continued to
(36:02):
grow and long term investmentgrowth in equities have been about
seven percent a year, long term.
That's kind of long term return.
if you've got time, you know, lettime work on your side and doing
dollar cost averaging is alwaysthe smart way to go, you know,
just buy, put in a couple hundredbucks every first Monday of the
month, I'm doing it every monthand just keep doing it.
(36:24):
It doesn't matter what the priceis up down sideways.
It doesn't matter.
Just keep doing it because longterm, you get the average and some
benefit to to you.
As far as like crypto, like mythought, it was one of the sharks.
It was Mr. He said something whichI agree with.
He basically said that he believesin the next number of years that,
(36:48):
you know, blockchain coins likeBitcoin and others will become the
third rail of the stock market.
And that's kind of what I seehappening as well.
I say 24 months ago, things likeBitcoin and Ethereum and these
other blockchain were not parallelto the stock market.
They were almost counterbalanceslike gold silver were, but as as
institutional money gets intothese assets, they more closely
(37:08):
align with the stock market.
And.
So, yep, I think consider that.
I look at now, and I didn't alwayslook at it this way, but I look at
things like Bitcoin and Ethereum,very much the same way I look at
it, stock like Tess or Shopify, orthese other tech-innovated-year
growth stocks.
I just look at it as another lineitem with maybe additional
(37:32):
applications.
And I think as people think aboutcrypto, you really have to look
under the hood a little bit andthink about what are, and you
throw out the term projects,because there are so many
interesting projects that arebuilt on the blockchains of these
various cryptocurrencies.
So like Ethereum, we enrassed inEthereum, and Ethereum is really
involved with a lot of differentcool projects that are big, big
(37:53):
companies behind them on amass-card visa.
You have some governments that arebuilding things on top of the
Ethereum blockchain that just addsvalue.
So it's not some crazy scam kindof thing out there.
These are real things, investingserious dollars on building some
incredible technologies onblockchain technology.
(38:14):
And yeah, so.
so. That's when I tell people, oneof the ways I like to bring a good
analogy is like, so there's aprotocol, SMPP, even if you've
never heard of that, you use itthat probably every day, because
SMPP is the backbone of theinternet, email and whatnot.
And so imagine that there was somekind of monetary or investment
vehicle that would allow you toreturn gains from a protocol.
(38:35):
And that's kind of the thesis fora lot of these cryptocurrencies
and there's in one layer, thereare protocol that build a new
web-free infrastructure, but onthe other side, you can invest in
this protocol in a different waythan you would invest in a
centralized company.
It's not for everybody, but it'sfor those that are interested in
the future and where that maylead.
(38:58):
It can be an interesting thing toconsider as part of a larger
investment.
Oh yeah, so I Oh yeah, so I agree.
All right, and so I will put acaveat in it.
Neither Adam or I are investor.
We're not here to provideinvesting advice.
So we're just two guys on theinternet.
So do your own research.
That's your own financial adviceor all that All right, so I know
you love to travel and I know youhit a lot of conferences every
(39:23):
year.
And I actually worked togetherjust a couple of weeks ago at a
conference, not a Nashville, whichwas great, loved it.
You'd had a great presentation.
I'll thank you.
And I know earlier this month ornot this month, this summer, you
spent a month in Costa Rica whenyou were living for the month.
(39:46):
You were still working.
Tell me about that.
You that month, and I was watchingyou sitting on the beach and you
were like, had your laptop, whatthe ocean, in the backdrop, I'm
like, he's living the life that Iwant to live here in a few years.
It's exactly what I want to do.
Just go travel, continue to work,but then work wherever I am.
(40:09):
Once my kids are off into college,there we go.
How was that?
How did you, I guess, kind ofscore that kind of an in It was
great.
This is the third year that we'vedone summers in Costa Rica.
Luckily, my wife is a teacher.
So that basically frees up ourwhole summers.
(40:30):
And I, of course, can work, youknow, being that NLIFA is very
much a distributed virtualcompany.
We don't have a, you know, anoffice, a physical office.
We work for multiple co-workingspaces, but most of our meetings
are done online, you know, the waythat a lot of businesses are
(40:53):
working these days.
So gives us the opportunity to,you know, pick up and move for the
summer.
And as our kids are getting alittle bit older, traveling has
become a little bit less diverse.
I think COVID also helped withthat too.
Kind of, but so we've been kind ofjust comfortable spending summers
(41:14):
in Costa Rica.
We've already got a plan to do itagain next year, potentially
buying some property down there toturn into vacation rental.
But yeah, we love, in general, welove traveling.
My parents, when my wife and Ifirst got married, booked our
honeymoon in a port of Ayarta,Mexico, and my wife and I have
(41:36):
been hooked on travel ever since.
So we typically are our goal.
I think before COVID, our runningback was like two international
trips a year.
And we had a running joke thatwe've seen more of the rest of the
world in our own country.
Now we did fix that during COVID,because we were, you know,
(41:57):
somewhat landlocked, not really,but, you know, we basically didn't
feel like we... to venture outwhile things the world was kind of
going crazy.
So we made up time and saw a lotof our own country which again we
have some stuff on our ownbackdoor which is absolutely
beautiful but really for me and Ithink my wife would agree getting
out of your comfort zone andexperiencing other cultures can be
(42:21):
amazing for your mindset.
When you're running a business dayto day it's in your you know in
your schedule, your routine, samecity, same office, same
environment, it can get reallymundane and it's I know for me
it's easy to get stuck in my headbut when I go and I leave my
comfort zone and I pick upbusiness and I do it somewhere
(42:42):
else, the thing that I take awayis like well there's a whole
world, a whole culture environmentthat works just fine without me in
it.
So it really gives me a lot ofperspective and also my brain kind
of operates that way.
I love the other reason that wekind of shut down our office you
know a couple years ago was I likeworking from different
(43:05):
environments.
Today I'm in my home officetomorrow we had a co-working
space.
It's not unusual for me to hit youknow more than one coffee shop in
a day because I basically havetermed something that I call
spatial ADD.
You know it doesn't I don't knowif that exists but it exists for
me where I get bored withenvironments very quickly.
So if you also suffer from spatialADD you know reach out we can
maybe you know I have a supportgroup or something but yeah that's
(43:31):
that's kind of part of the travelof scenario two is it just opens
up my mind frame for differentpossibilities you know.
I love that term I I love thatterm I don't know if that's
actually given a term that'sdying.
I don't think so I think Iinvented think so I think I
invented it.
I'll give you a credit for it.
(43:52):
I could come up come up with witha part of my personal hang-up song
and some moving around all thetime.
I love you a credit for and somethat I'll give you credit for it.
That is a great term.
I think I as well have that.
I can be throughout the day I'mfine to be in one place but I do
(44:12):
like there are certain timesduring the year like okay we have
to get out of here we have toleave somewhere and do something
yeah that's good that's a goodwith you because you're involved
in so many different things so youhave your business been successful
you're building continue to buildthis great enterprise you invest
(44:33):
in a lot of different kind ofdirections you love to you present
you travel you're going to theseconferences I don't know I can't
remember if we talked if you weregoing to go down there's a big
conference down in Texas nextmonth rock stars you go into that
not going to go to that one butinterestingly I may be speaking in
(44:53):
Vietnam so I've been asked tospeak next year in Vietnam at
another SEO conference so at leastverbally it's it's done I know
people won't sign everything yetbut so yeah and I actually would
also be speaking in January at aanother conference less marketing
oriented and actually orientedtowards small businesses all the
speaking to a Texas-basedinsurance company franchise a the
been trying to to get a little bitmore out there on the speaking
(45:14):
circuit this year especiallypost-COVID COVID kind of put a
hang up on some of that stuff butyou know the next couple years I
want to get out there and do moreof those but I am taking a little
bit of a break from conferencesjust in the next probably three
months just taking it easy youknow but yeah if it was up to me
I'd be at all the conferences butthen like I probably wouldn't be
(45:37):
married and go to shambles but Ido know some people you probably
know some of them as well thattheir conference junkies and I oh
my gosh you know I'm trying not tobecome a conference junkie but I'm
right on the edge I'll and go towell I want to shine a little bit
of light on one of your otherendeavors that more on the
Philanthropic and that is theorphanage that you have co-founded
(45:58):
and are a part of why don't youtell us a little bit about that
it's the mowcf and I'll just letyou go talk about it so my wife
and I also kind of oversee anorphanage in Liberia I'm called
Mosiv it's a long acronym butbasically we just call it Mosiv we
started that probably about eightyears ago and long story short I
basically connected with somebodyon the ground over there in
(46:20):
Liberia who went through as ayouth into an adult through
refugee camps and there's a wholehistory of Liberia that I think
most of the west don't understandand realize I'm during the turn of
the century you know around 2000they were at the end of you know
it's a long civil war and justmassive chaos a lot of bad stuff.
And so anyway, through thisconnection, you know, I started to
think, well, I don't know thefirst thing about running an
(46:42):
orphanage, but I know how to builda website and I know how to do
marketing.
So that's really where thisstarted just baby steps, you know,
and then that turned into somefundraising and then that turned
into like formal, formal likesystems where we have a 501C3 in
the US and then a non-governmentorganization and then a
non-government organization inLiberia.
And now, fast forward, we've hadabout eight kids go through there.
A majority of them still under,you know, under the care of the
(47:02):
orphanage.
We have our own building.
We're actually trying to launchbusinesses over there in Liberia.
We have one launched.
I'm not without challenges.
There's always challenges.
And you think running a businessin the States is hard.
Try it in Liberia.
So, but yeah, it's been a learningendeavor.
(47:24):
It's kind of a business in and ofits own.
Of course, we're not reaping thefinancial benefits, but we're able
to pour that back into anothercommunity.
So yeah, we've, that was somethingagain.
And it's a lot like business too.
Like, whether it's business ornonprofit, I think the biggest
thing that I've learned throughthat experience, as well as the
business experience, is you don'thave to have all the answers.
(47:48):
In fact, you will never have allthe answers.
And I think it's very easy asentrepreneurs and small business
owners to get analysis paralysis.
And think, oh, I got to haveeverything button.
I got to get my LLC or I have todo all this stuff.
And my, my recommendation whenyou're trying to build something,
(48:14):
you know, be it a nonprofit, abusiness is just get started.
Do the bare minimums get somemomentum.
And the rest of the pieces will,you know, if you're passionate
about it, they'll fall into place.
But you don't have to have all theanswers at front, because you'll,
you'll never have all the answers.
And there always be more questionsto solve.
But that was kind of, that's kindof where we started.
(48:35):
And it's, again, it's one of thosethings you look back, you know,
eight years later, you're like,wow, look at all we built, but we
didn't do it all overnight.
It was very gradual, you know,incremental baby steps until, you
know, until it actually startsmaking an impact.
So, well, good for you.
I think that's terrific.
You know, I'm sure you guys areputting a nice thumbprint on the
lives of those kids.
So good for you.
(48:57):
That's the goal.
it's definitely been rewarding tofeed back into a community that is
in such need.
Yeah, yeah.
All right.
Well, let's change gears hereanother time.
Here we are.
We're at the bottom of the ninths,Adam.
And this is where we get to askyou what advice do you have for
what we say rookies in the gamefor those just starting out those
(49:22):
small business owners and orentrepreneurs starting out in
their own business or maybe havealready opened their business and
they're looking for some guidance,words of wisdoms from old grizzled
veterans like yourself.
What do you have?
Well, you know, bit about a littlebit on that in the last, like last
phase of the program, but to echothat would be just to get started.
(49:47):
You know, I mean, don't feel likeyou have to know all the answers.
And then something else that I Iwish I would have done sooner is
really get good like mentors and,you know, council.
I think the last half of mybusiness I've invested, you know,
I've always invested in myselfthrough, you know, books and
training and programs.
But it's probably only been in thelast, I don't know, five years,
(50:09):
maybe the second half of the lifeof our business that I've really
doubled down on conferences,masterminds, really just buying
into those connections that I canlearn from others that are further
along.
I think that's that's the fastesthack I could give for anyone in
business is figure out what roomsyou can get into where you're the
dumbest person in the room.
(50:31):
And that's been my goal the lastcouple years is it's very
comfortable.
I feel like you're the smart guyand, you know, pat your ego and
luckily in digital marketing, youknow, there's plenty of that where
you can feel like, especially likein my local market, you know,
sometimes I feel like I'm a rockstar.
(50:53):
But that's not even though that'scomfortable, that's not the best
place to be.
That's not the best place to be.
That's not the best place to be.
That's not where I'm going togrow.
And so the last number of years,I've attended events we spoke
about one earlier where Itypically feel like I'm the
dumbest person in the room.
You know, just this last month, Iwas able to speak with people that
(51:16):
just a couple of years ago, Istill look to them.
Go me wrong, but I never thought Iwould be on the same stage at
these these folks.
And interestingly, I haven'treally shared this with anybody,
but one of the individuals therewho have followed their career for
a long time, I came up to them andI said, Hey, man, I've been
following your stuff for a while.
(51:38):
Every time you speak, it was justamazing.
I was blown away, this person who,you know, I put on this pedestal
said, you know, I've beenfollowing your stuff as well.
And actually, I'd like you tostart contributing to a program
that we're running.
That was amazing.
how did I never branched out to bethat dumbest guy in the room?
I never would have had thatopportunity.
(51:59):
And it's those kind of things thathave led to other opportunities.
I would say as far as like shortcutting those windows, figure out
who those people are that are, youknow, three, four, five steps
ahead of you.
And whatever it takes to get inthe presence of those people and
those rooms and those events, thatis going to propel, you know, your
business growth, your personaldevelopment probably faster than
just about Oh, that's greatadvice.
(52:20):
I know, and I know exactly thatfeeling that you're elaborating on
about being around some of theseguys.
You know, I walked away from thatcamera like, oh my gosh, that was
so awesome to like connect withsome of these guys that I've
looked at and followed from afarand just to be, you know, in the
same room with them.
(52:43):
Small, you know, this conferencethat we were at with a very
selected group of people.
And it was so great to be a partof that.
So yeah, good advice, good advice.
Well, let's say Adam is so fun tohave you on the show and to hear
in everything that you're engagedwith.
I want to be sure to send folksover.
You can find more information.
(53:03):
check out some of his cool freetools that he has available on
their website in leaf.com.
That's ENLEAF.com.
So go check some of that stuffout.
It's some really good stuff.
And again, man, thank you forbeing on the show.
I'm sorry.
If you're not going to hit somekind of references yet this year,
I'll miss you.
But, you know, hopefully next yearwe'll connect on next year.
(53:25):
year.
I'll be back at it unless you'regoing to be at the one overseas.
We'll talk about that.
That what I want hear aboutbecause I would love to get over a
couple of places overseas.
I know have some fun stuff goingon.
(53:46):
All right, folks.
that's the ballgame.
So thanks for joining us today.
And if you like our show, pleasetell your friends, subscribe and
review.
we'll see you around the ballpark.
Running the bases with smallbusinesses is brought to you by 38
digital market, a digitalmarketing agency committed to
(54:07):
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