January 4, 2025 • 55 mins
What Makes a TRULY Successful Marketing Strategy?
In this episode of the Social Hotelier Podcast, host Sam-Erik Ruttmann speaks with Eric Dingler, a digital nomad and marketing expert, about the intersection of travel and marketing strategies.
He runs successfully a location-independent business.
Eric shares insights from his family's journey as they travel the world while managing a marketing agency.
The conversation explores how the digital nomad lifestyle has reshaped Erik's understanding of marketing, emphasizing the importance of simplicity in marketing strategies and the need for businesses to adapt to changing consumer behaviors. Marketing is simpler than many make it out to be.
Eric also discusses the evolution of web design and businesses' need to gather customer information for effective advocacy marketing. In this conversation, Eric Dingler shares insights on effective marketing strategies for engaging customers, particularly in digital nomadism.
He discusses the importance of specialized landing pages, understanding customer needs, and innovative engagement tactics, such as the unique Yahtzee experience at a restaurant in Buenos Aires.
Erik Dingler has been traveling full-time with his family for over three years. The digital nomad lifestyle has become routine for Erik and his family.
Eric also delves into the challenges and benefits of raising a family while living a digital nomad lifestyle, emphasizing adaptability and the use of technology to maintain connections. He highlights emerging trends in the digital nomad community, particularly the increasing number of families embracing this lifestyle and the impact of remote work policies post-COVID.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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(00:01):
You are listening to the Social Hotelier Show,
a podcast that inspires hoteliers to create meaningful
and memorable experiences
for their customers
in pursuit of their passion.
We share our views and experiences experiences relating
to hospitality,
technological trends, and also relating to humanity.
Here is your host, Sam Eric Rutman.
(00:25):
Hi, everyone. Welcome back to the Social Hotelier
podcast with me, Sam Eric Rutman.
My guest today is Eric Dhingler.
With more than 25 years of experience in
marketing,
Eric has helped he's here to help us
to connect the dots between our favorite marketing
tactics, which we are sometimes very good at,
and an effective marketing strategy.
(00:46):
Eric also happens to travel the world full
time as a digital nomad with his wife
and 4 kids.
Eric, what country are you in right now,
and how long will you be there?
Well, Eric, we just got to Northern Ireland,
about 4 days ago, and we'll be here
for 3 more weeks.
So you're spending Christmas in Ireland?
(01:08):
Spending Christmas in Ireland. We're very excited for
it. Our kids are pumped.
We've got 4 kids, 12, 14, 16, 17,
and they've already connected to some local kids
here, and,
it's shaping up to be a really nice
Christmas.
Wonderful. Wonderful. And I think that's, that's special
when you can considering your, your childhood where
(01:30):
you were growing in US, you had a
certain Christmas, and you must have spent
Christmas around the world in different countries. So
that gives always the new new nuance to
your the Christmas spirit.
Yeah. This for us, having Christmas markets
is a brand new experience, and we have
discovered we love Christmas markets. Europe just does
(01:51):
it so much better.
That's good. Yeah. We have our own here
in Helsinki also, and,
I
even I live here, so I tend to
get excited every year. I always meet the
same same vendors.
Particularly, there's one one guy who is importing
Italian chestnuts. So I buy his roasted chestnuts
every year, and then it kinda puts me
(02:13):
into the spirit. And then we try the
carousel with my wife, and, obviously, it's for
the kids. But, I think it's there's there's
no limit,
over what age you can enjoy a carousel,
and we actually enjoyed it a lot.
Yeah. Nice. Well, we're we're enjoying them. It's
great.
Wonderful.
So, just for, the audience who are listening
around the world,
(02:34):
could you get some background and tell me
about a bit about your how you developed
a digital lifestyle with your family,
and how it fits your profession as a
marketing
expert.
Yeah. Absolutely. So I'm an I'm what I
call an accidental
CEO.
It it wasn't my goal to build a
digital marketing agency,
(02:55):
but it's it's where we ended up
and thrilled that that we ended up here.
But for
the most part of my career, I was
marketing,
a summer camp.
And so every year, I had to go
out and do the marketing and and bring
in, you know, new campers and new staff
and,
you know, just recreate that summer camp experience
(03:16):
over and over. And,
then
went out from there, and and my wife
and I, we planted a a church, and
I learned how to do church marketing and
which is very different,
and then always had little side businesses that
I did marketing for.
And then my wife and I decided we
wanted to adopt. And so we have 2
(03:36):
biological children, and we adopted a sibling group
of 2 children.
And we wanted to do that debt free,
and so we were gonna have to come
up with an additional $50,000
to fund our adoption.
And
I started
building websites
for people on the side,
and that by the time we brought our
2 kids,
(03:57):
adopted kids home,
I had a web design business. And so
decided to do that full time
to
as a way to help other people fund
their adoptions.
So we started a nonprofit,
and we now run our company to fund
our nonprofit.
And then,
through that,
(04:17):
it just
became a it became a we pivoted to
being a marketing agency, which is great because
that's really what I've always done
Yeah. And
been the most,
found the most joy out of you know,
from a a work perspective was the marketing
kind of stuff. Okay. And so now we
help hundreds of companies,
across the United States
market, and
(04:39):
we were my wife and I, we were
getting ready to buy a house,
and
we had a few months before things were
gonna be
all in alignment.
And we decided, like, hey. Let's let's go
on a trip,
just before we buy the house to make
sure, like,
we wanna buy this house. And,
(05:00):
Eric, the thing is we we have no
problem with people at all that are living
the the typical,
American
dream, if you will. I use that in
in quotation marks, but the American dream. But
we just were doing what everybody else was
doing. You know? We we got married, and
we had 2 cards, and we had the
kids, and we're getting ready to buy a
(05:20):
house. And then we had, you know, we
adopted 2, so we have our kids. And
our kids were in all these activities, and
our life was just looking like all of
our friends' lives. And we're and it was
busy, and it was good,
but we never
made the intentional decision that that's what we
want our life to look like. We were
just doing it because that's what everybody was
doing. And so we said, well, let's let's
(05:42):
experiment. Let's go on this trip and see
if we like it.
And so we took a a 3 month
trip to,
we were in Istanbul for 2 months, did
a month in in Eastern Europe,
and we decided at the end of that,
we never wanted to stop traveling. So we
went back to the states,
sold
everything we own, and for 3 years now
(06:03):
over 3 years, we've been traveling full time,
around the world and just
beyond thrilled. It's such a great experience.
Wonderful. I mean, this is something that is
not for everyone, clearly,
to live a digital nomad life and particularly
that,
particularly when you have to plan to move
to a different place because I think
(06:26):
by, by person by by we have a
sense we're looking for a kind of a
sense of security always that there's there should
be, like,
best surprises, no surprise, but you don't seem
to have that, problem of
planning with your wife. And and, of course,
the kids need to be involved in that
decision making where you're moving next, but then
to go to a new place. And
in one way, you're starting all over again.
(06:47):
So is that your it's a is it
a thrill for you, or are you feel
very comfortable of just exploring the new opportunity?
Yeah. Well, it's it's interesting.
It's become our routine.
And so to us, it's
it's not that big of a deal anymore.
It's it's in you know, we meet people
regularly. They're like, oh, do you guys have
a YouTube channel? And we're like, no. And
(07:08):
and they're like, oh, you should have a
YouTube channel. I I wanna watch. And we're
we're very much like, our life is really
boring. Like, we don't know what you would
watch.
You know? It's it's
Wednesday afternoon
at 3 o'clock. I'm in an office.
My wife and kids are at home. She's
homeschooling. They went to a museum
(07:28):
this morning, which we would have even done
when we were in our passport country, the
United States.
And,
you know, there's a a pot roast in
the crock pot, like, you know, we'll and
I'll go home tonight at 6 and we'll
have dinner and, you know, we'll watch some
TV as a family, and and we'll go
to bed, and tomorrow morning, we'll get up
and we'll do the same thing. Yeah. And
(07:48):
so we live our life
not that much different than what it looked
like in the United States. It's just we're
inside 4 different
walls,
and then the evenings and weekends,
we get to go see new things. You
know? So, like, we get to go see
the Christmas market here in in Northern Ireland,
and we went we are we are people
of, faith. Our Christian faith is very important
(08:10):
to us.
So this past Sunday, we already went to
a church and
met some people at the church and got
connected, and and after church church, hung out
and got to know a lot about this
area.
And so
there are those moments
in between just normal day to day life
that are unique as a digital nomad.
(08:33):
But as far as the planning, we didn't
it doesn't take as much planning as people
think. It does it first. It does it
first. But
we didn't even have an Airbnb lined up
until last Thursday. We we thought up until
last Thursday, we thought we were going to
Greece, to be honest.
And we changed our mind kinda last minute
(08:55):
and found a place here in Northern Ireland.
We were in London
and, you know, grabbed a couple tickets on
Ryanair and popped over here on Sunday.
Okay.
Very good. Now
because you're moving from place to place,
and,
and you're becoming a,
a new customer over and over again for
this
(09:15):
stuff that you're normally used to, whether it's
the the the groceries or the getting the
go go for whatever reason you're going somewhere.
So how has that experience being a new
customer over and over again across a different
culture reshapes your understanding of marketing strategies and
the role cultural nuances play in their effectiveness?
(09:35):
Okay. So I would say, Eric, this is
the this is the thing that I
didn't expect at all to happen that surprised
me. Like, I knew when we started out
being digital nomads, like, it was gonna impact
our family. It was gonna impact our kids.
Our kids are having a very unique lifestyle,
and there's some intentionality with that. We wanted
(09:55):
them to see. But I never ever ever
thought it would
completely,
revolutionize how my my company and I how
we handle
marketing for our clients.
I thought I knew marketing. You know? I
thought I really knew it and had it
nailed and stuff like that.
(10:15):
And then I have realized through these these
last 3 years, I started realizing that,
marketing is a lot more
simple
than we make it out to be,
because we get we get inundated
with messages, and it happens to me all
the time. I get I get emails every
(10:36):
week that, you know, I need to try
this new thing. I need to do this.
And and I'm,
you know, I believe leaders are readers, so
I'm constantly reading, you know, business books and
listening to podcasts and stuff like that. And
so I hear people talk about all these
different tactics. You know, I gotta be on
LinkedIn. I should have a podcast. You should
have a YouTube channel.
(10:57):
You know, you've gotta do you should have
a TikTok. You should do you gotta do
SEO. You gotta do content with that. You
know, you have to have funnels and upsells
and downsells, and
you hear all these things that you gotta
do and and things like that.
And because of that, it makes marketing seem
very complex.
But I realized,
(11:18):
unlike, like, when we when we had a
rooted life, so that that in the digital
nomad
lingoland, it's it's called rooted. You're either rooted
or or or in location independent.
Rooted just means that you live in the
same place all the time.
Most of the things we needed, we've only
(11:38):
had to find them one time. Doctors for
the kids,
barbers,
where to buy clothes,
you know, where where to buy shoes, where
to buy groceries,
you know, what what little convenience store we
like, restaurants.
You you find these places once. Every 4
to 6 weeks, we have to find all
of them again.
(12:00):
I I can't even tell you at this
time, you know, how many different times we've
had to find a a doctor for one
of our kids or a barber. I my
gosh. My boys and I have been to
so many barbers
around the world,
pizza shops,
you know, burgers,
shoes.
Northern Ireland is freezing cold, by the way.
(12:22):
I don't know if anybody else is aware
of this, but it's cold. And we just
we spent just spent the last 2 years
in South America,
Central America and South America.
I landed here Sunday with
one long sleeve coat. I have a I
have a a nano puffy coat that compacts
down real small,
really super warm.
But outside of that, I just had t
(12:43):
shirts. Well, everybody keeps their their internal temperature
around 18 degrees Celsius, 64 degrees Fahrenheit.
That's freezing cold to what we were using.
My house in the states, we always kept
it at
72,
you know, maybe, like, 20, you know, 22,
you know, 21, 22 Celsius.
(13:03):
And so
I had to go I but where do
I go in Northern Ireland to find an
inexpensive,
you know, long sleeve fleece?
And so
we every 4 to 6 weeks, we have
to find everything
brand new. And I started realizing
there are these places that are getting my
money all of the time, and they're all
(13:23):
doing the same thing. They all have the
same things in common,
and that is when it started to click
on me.
This is effective marketing.
I go through and and, Eric, you go
through, and everybody listening to this, we go
through the same
4 steps,
4 phases every single time we we buy
something.
And most people call it have talked about
(13:45):
it for years as the buying cycle, the
4 steps of the buying cycle.
You know, awareness, consideration, purchase advocacy.
Well, I realized
that that's also the marketing cycle.
And in marketing,
it's as simple as making sure you have
a tactic that you like
for for each of those phases.
(14:06):
And as you do that,
you're going to stand out amongst the competition,
and your marketing is gonna be more effective,
and you're gonna win more wallet share from
people
like me.
And if we stayed here, if we came
rooted in Northern Ireland,
a lot of these places we're going to
for the first time
would be the places we would go to
(14:29):
the 2nd time, the 10th time, the 50th
time.
Yeah. Okay. So, I mean, you you you
mentioned that, wherever you travel, you you you're
always looking at certain
importance of of the the four phase phases
of marketing. Could you just repeat for the
for the audience again when it comes to
the marketing? Which are the key
(14:50):
key phases that
that should be paid attention to? Maybe there's
one of them that the business are not
paying enough attention to.
Yeah. No. That's good. That's a good question.
Okay. So to revisit the 4,
it's awareness,
consideration,
purchase,
and advocacy.
(15:11):
And most people
nail the first one, awareness. And and when
when our when new clients come to us
and we do an analysis,
most of them have been doing a really
good job of
awareness. So before anybody ever buys
from from us or before you ever buy
from somebody,
(15:32):
you you have to become aware
that you need
something.
Some people refer to this as, you know,
becoming problem aware,
and that's you know, so it's one one
way to look at it. But I have
to become aware
that I need something
or I'm never gonna I I would never
buy it. Now there's 2 ways awareness happens.
(15:55):
Self discovered awareness,
created awareness.
Self discovered awareness is
I need a long sleeve, Jack. You know,
I need a long sleeve something to wear
in Northern I discovered that all by myself.
That's self discovered awareness.
Created awareness
is when I see an ad for something
(16:15):
I didn't even know existed, and I'm like,
oh, I wanna buy that. I need that.
You know? That would that would solve all
of my world's problems.
So that's advertising
works to create
awareness.
So you need to have a tactic in
place that's creating awareness for those people that
don't know you exist,
(16:36):
but
you need to be ready for all of
the people that self discover
that they're become aware that they need you.
So this is the thing that most businesses
already
have in place
or they're lucky
because
people are just just self discovering every day
that they need what this person buys. So
(16:58):
that's awareness.
Once we become aware of a problem, aware
of a need, then we move to consideration.
Where am I gonna get this? Who's gonna
solve this for me? And exactly what is
that gonna look like?
And people can spend
seconds
in consideration.
They could spend months in consideration.
(17:18):
Really depends on the size of the purchase.
If I'm standing in the aisle at a
grocery store and I look over and suddenly
I see a row of gum and that
reminds me, I become aware, oh, I'm out
of gum,
then I go to consideration. Do I want
grape? Do I want strawberry? Like, I'm in
I'm in consideration super quick. And then I
I grab it to buy it, and I
(17:39):
have my my purchase experience.
If I'm buying a house or a car,
I'm gonna spend a lot longer than a
few sec you know, I'm gonna test drive
a couple models. I'm gonna go do you
know, I'm gonna talk to people. So it
we we spend different time and consideration.
The key to consideration
to winning consideration is you have to be
(17:59):
the easiest and obvious
choice.
For most businesses,
and I'm talking here kind of specifically local
businesses,
for most businesses, specifically, again, local businesses,
you have to show up
where people go the when they become aware.
So you have to ask yourself, when somebody
decides that they wanna look for my
(18:22):
product, my widget, my my solution,
where do they go? Do they go to
a friend? Do they go to Google? Do
they go to an app?
You know,
we have a lot of restaurants,
and and and some, you know, Airbnbs
and, some retreat centers. You know, we've had
the we've had a, a quilting retreat center
(18:44):
and,
some not Airbnbs. Some bed and breakfasts,
that that our clients. And it that that
used to always be
Google. Well, then it became Google Maps, and
so we had to adjust for our clients.
Now it's not even really Google Maps for
some of these people with it's an app.
Like, are you in Uber Eats? Are you,
you know, on Hotels dotcom? Are you, you
(19:06):
know whatever the app of the moment is,
you kinda have to make sure you're there
because that's where people are going in consideration.
Yeah. And then you have to answer their
prequalifying
questions
while they're there.
And then the 3rd stage is the actual
purchase experience, and this one is unfortunately,
so many people don't gather contact information
(19:27):
here,
so that they can easily do the follow
the the 4th win,
and the 4th one is advocacy.
So, Eric, in this stage,
every customer
that
every business every single business that they're they're
gonna have 1 of 3 types of customers,
and and
(19:48):
you are this customer yourself of of many
brands and many many businesses.
You're either a raving fan,
a roaring critic,
or you're silently satisfied.
And the majority of us are the silently
satisfied customers
of 100 of different brands and businesses.
(20:08):
It's the brands and businesses that
figure out how to
remarket to you,
how to they they gather your contact information.
They start building relationship with you through social,
through email. They get you to leave a
review that starts teaching,
training you to be somebody that speaks about
(20:29):
them highly.
They start turning you from silently satisfied to
raving fans. They give you an event to
bring your friends to. They give you a
reason to share and promote.
If anybody has a credit card, at some
point, you're getting,
an offer
to, you know, share with your friends a
credit card, and you're going to get, you
(20:51):
know, something in in return. This is this
is advocacy
marketing,
and
you asked which which of these stages do
I think people miss the most.
It's it's a toss-up between
advocacy and purchase.
Most a lot of brand like, even small
(21:11):
mom and pop restaurants or barber shops or
something like that,
they used to be really bad at getting
asking for people's email addresses and and cell
phone numbers. Now a lot of them have
become better because their POS system,
it has that built in.
So if they have a POS system that's
getting them to gather that, they they will,
(21:34):
but it's the it's
it's
email marketing
to email and SMS marketing to your current
customers,
I think,
is what we see over and over and
over as the biggest mist
that that most brands and businesses have.
So yeah. So it's we work really hard
to get that new customer,
(21:55):
but then we keep working really hard to
get a new customer, a new customer, a
new customer,
where
like, in my business
in 2020
like, February 2021
to February 2022,
we did
zero advertising,
0 awareness marketing,
(22:17):
and all we did for an entire year
was we more than doubled our our revenue
top line revenue by just upselling our current
clients
and educating them through email marketing, inviting them
to opportunities to add new services.
And that's all I had to do for
a year. And I and I owe more
than doubled my top line revenue.
(22:40):
So a lot of businesses leave gold in
the backyard,
by not nurturing
relationships with current customers and past customers.
Okay. That's a really excellent,
excellent,
information you're passing on, and I I clearly
have to up upgrade my outro here for
a podcast
after we're finished. But, one thing which came
(23:01):
to my mind is that, you mentioned that
you started to create web designs,
as
and now how has that changed? I mean,
you're you're basically,
you have seen the the the
when Internet was in its infancy and the
Internet and so on, when different softwares were
used at the time to create the web
(23:22):
designs. What has changed over the years as
far as you're concerned?
People don't spend as much time on websites
anymore,
and most websites
are are way too big. We get we
get new prospects every week, and we go
look at their website, and we come back
and we're like,
you know,
(23:43):
mister mister and missus dentist,
nobody
cares
about the make and model of your new
X-ray machine,
except for you and the bragging rights you
get at the next dentist conference.
But I have never once
looked at my wife and gone, you know,
(24:03):
we need a new we need to get
our son into a dentist. Let's make sure
we find someone that's got the X-ray 4,000
max. Like, that doesn't happen.
And so
a lot of small business owners build the
website
that they that
they think
makes them impressive.
Yeah. And it because that's what they've worked
(24:25):
hard for, and and that's they they have
a great X-ray machine. That's fantastic.
Yeah. But nobody cares.
They wanna know, do you have do do
I have to have an appointment? Do you
do walk ins? I'm scared. This is gonna
be my kid's first visit. How do you
handle somebody's first visit?
What about pain? Like, these are the prequalifying
questions that people really have before they come
(24:46):
to a dentist. Yeah.
Barbers. We do a lot of barbershop websites
and and hair salons.
Same thing. Like,
nobody needs barbers need 1 page.
You know, there are a few industries. You
only need a 1 page
website.
There are other industries where you you you
can't get by that. Now
(25:09):
we we are we're we're professional accommodation
searchers. We're constantly looking out for new accommodations,
you know, and we we try a variety
of things,
you know, mix of you know, we use
Airbnb
and VRBO,
but we're also we also look at, you
know,
kayakandhotels.com,
and and we go to hotel websites,
(25:30):
occasionally when we're gonna be somewhere short. And
I can't tell you how many times. I'm
like, none of the I don't care. No.
You're not answering my questions.
And so I think that's the biggest change.
People now
show up to websites
with
predefined
questions they want answered where it used to
(25:51):
be the not like, we didn't know what
to ask. We didn't know what we we
just but now we know exactly what we
want. We just want an answer.
And
AI,
you know,
we're your people are going to see a
lot less traffic coming to their websites because
now AI is answering a lot of the
questions for them. Yeah. So you have to
(26:12):
start preparing
for that shift.
You need you can you can try to
be the site. You can mark your sites
now with with
new, you know, up you need to make
sure you're you're marking your website with what's
the proper schema markup and things like that.
But there's now ways we need to start
websites if you wanna try to be shown
(26:33):
in
AI results.
So that's
and and, honestly, ain't nobody knows what that's
gonna look like. Anybody that tries to tell
you they know exactly what this is gonna
look like in in 18 months is lying
that nobody has a clue. Yeah.
But, we we have to be adjusting to
this
regularly right now on the search results side.
(26:55):
Sure. How is it I mean, just, by
curiosity because, I mean, in tourism and hospitality.
And I see the destination
websites.
And there's a, I was in a in
a conference here,
week ago in in Malta,
and, and there's part of the Mediterranean
tourism forum. Now Mediterranean
is about 23 countries if I'm not mistaken.
(27:18):
And Mhmm. Now the idea is to create
a tourism portal for the Mediterranean called Mediterranean
Observer.
And there's been a lot of discussion, what
should the Mediterranean observe look like? And it
has been,
going on for a while. It's been basically
news
only. And,
I was just want to get your
out of the blue, getting your feedback. Is
(27:39):
news the important thing, or is it maybe
some untold stories that some observer, who is
going to a a village in the mountain
of Cyprus
learn something about the place, and that would
attract people to travel there? What do you
think?
Yeah. Well, again, it it yeah. I'm always
gonna go back to the the marketing momentum,
(28:00):
cycle is what we call it. You know?
Okay. So
somebody are are we working to create awareness
with this
and getting people to go, wow. I didn't
even know I didn't even know you could
do that. I I didn't even know there
was that event, that activity,
that place, that that village. Like, I didn't
know that existed.
And so if you're doing awareness marketing to
(28:21):
bring people in, well, you need a very
specialized landing. So,
you know, when something like this starts to
happen, you're gonna do awareness marketing
off of the website. So you're gonna create
awareness through social media,
you know, advertising,
you know, different you know, all kinds of
different ways to do it. But there's tactics
that you're gonna use that you're gonna wanna
bring people to a landing page specifically for
(28:43):
that. Yeah. But then
we now need to then go, okay. What
happens in consideration?
Well, once somebody
decides where they're going to go,
what to do? What what do we what
can we do there? And, again, we look
this kind of stuff up all the time.
You know, things to do in Northern Ireland
as a family.
Now we often add the as a family
(29:06):
at the end of our search results.
So,
it that's where you have to spend time
going like who
who are we solving a problem for, and
what's the problem we're solving?
Once you identify the problem you're solving and
who you're solving it for, then we gotta
ask what are their qualifying questions? What are
they looking for?
(29:28):
And then we need to to to place
that in there,
and then
you can expect on average in most websites
now this
this is a very generalized statement. So,
you know, some people are gonna listen to
this and go, well, that's not true for
my industry, and it's and it's probably not.
(29:48):
But as a general rule of thumb, we
can expect 4%
of somebody coming to a website
to take the action you want them to
take.
So if it's booked now, you can expect
at most
to get 4%
of website visitors to do that. That's a
good benchmark
for book now, call now,
(30:09):
schedule
a free consultation,
whatever it is. So you have to have
a transitional call to action for the 90
other 96%,
and capture their information.
This is where you offer a lead magnet,
the email magnet. Yeah.
And so,
you know, people come to this this, you
(30:29):
know, access portal for for Mediterranean.
You know? Well,
what's going
to entice them to share their contact information,
with you? Because now you can start building
that relationship and trust. And then
how do you track once they actually come
and they visited
and they get back
(30:51):
and they tell everybody who they wanna tell
and they show those first few pictures
because that's what people do after traveling, but
then they're gonna slide into silently satisfied.
So how do you reengage them and and
and get them back? You know, that's mark
you know, email marketing and stuff. I don't
know if that's answering your question or not.
More than than I accept expected. Fantastic. You
(31:12):
know? It it was very good because I
I I we didn't prepare for this question,
so I thought I want to kind of
test your thinking pattern. And I I'm very
happy about the how you you the way
you were thinking about it, and it's very
helpful. So thank you so much already.
No worries. Then,
we talked we had a a discussion earlier
before we,
did this podcast. You mentioned about Buenos Aires,
(31:34):
but the restaurant,
is called Yahtzee? Or
Yahtzee. Yeah. It's a it's a game
very much in the United States. Yep. Okay.
And, it was a they had some sort
of a tactic. And can you can you
talk about what
tactic did they do? And then I'm interested
to know, how do you weigh the risks
of adopting an unconventional marketing strategy
(31:56):
against the potential rewards, especially when aiming to
transform
these,
that you talk about silently sat satisfied customers
into advocates.
Okay.
Yeah. I,
again, I am a raving fan of,
this restaurant in Buenos Aires,
Che Bonshe.
(32:16):
So
it is very unusual for my family and
I now to go to a restaurant more
than one time
because we're only some place you know, we're
only on in a city for 4 to
6 weeks.
And
if it's in a
economical
if it's in an
so
(32:37):
we we have a food budget,
and that budget doesn't change
wherever we are in the world. It's our
food budget. We're we're full time budget travelers.
We live on 8,000
US dollars per month.
A lot of people think it's a lot.
We live on a a very extravagant nope.
It's not. I mean, that's that's a pretty
(32:58):
typical income, you know, middle class income in
the United States.
And so
we we live on on 8,000 US dollars
per month, and we have a food budget.
And in some cultures
and some, you know, countries,
not cultures, but in some countries,
our food budget goes a long way, and
we can eat out a lot.
(33:20):
And then in London, we never eat out.
London is, where cheese and tomato sandwich is.
Like, we my my wife's favorite place on
the earth is the Peter Pan statue
at Kensington Palace. And so every time we're
in,
London, we go to Borough Market. We grab
(33:42):
some drunk cheese and,
meat pies from Ginger Pig, and then we
have a loaf of bread and tomatoes, and
we we go to the park, and we
have cheese and tomato sandwiches, and we buy,
3 meat pies, and each of us get
a half. Like, that's that's our that's the
extravagance
of of what we can afford to do
there.
(34:03):
But in Argentina, in Buenos Aires, we're able
to eat out a lot. Our food budget
goes very far.
And
so because of that, we because but because
of the fact we're only in a place
for a short amount of time,
you know, we wanna try new things. And
so
if we go back to a restaurant
more than once, it's a special restaurant. And
(34:23):
Chey Bon Chey is just that in Buenos
Aires.
So we went in. We just want we
wanted to watch,
a football game. My my boys are really
into soccer, and so, you know, they we
wanted to go, and there was this this
football game they wanted to see. Argentina was
playing. We were in Argentina.
We thought it would be a lot of
fun to go to a
(34:43):
a sports bar and be with locals, and
it was. We had a great time.
And when we were all done eating,
the best
hamburger
I've
maybe I've ever had anywhere in the world,
absolutely
this 5 cheese
unbelievably
delicious hamburger.
They brought us the check and it and
(35:03):
it they a cup, and in the cup
were 5 dice.
And we got a chance to roll
Yahtzee. And so you just 5 with the
same number. So you get 5 dice if
you 5 if you roll 5 ones, 5
twos, whatever, that's called a Yahtzee
and, you win.
So you get 2 chances to roll Yahtzee,
and if you roll Yahtzee,
(35:24):
your entire check is free.
And I was like,
I was not expecting it. And I went,
wait. Really? And they're like, yeah. And I'm
like, oh my gosh. So, you know, we
let our son roll the dice, you know.
I don't know why. He's not the luckiest
kid. I don't know why we let him
do it. We should've let one of our
other lucky kids do it, but he rolled
the dice. We didn't get Yahtzee, so I
(35:45):
had to pay for our meal.
But up on the wall
in Neon,
they had their Instagram handle.
And so I immediately pull my phone out,
and I'm taking pictures as my son is
rolling this dive because it's a new new
experience. And I see their Instagram channel, and
I just immediately switch over to Instagram,
and I and I, you know, post on
(36:06):
Instagram about it. I I follow them. I
post. I tag.
Because I'm in the business of getting local
businesses more Google reviews, I my wife and
I, like,
a big part of our bread, and we
we eat because
of,
getting helping businesses get local, more local more
more reviews from their customers. So we are
(36:26):
constantly leaving reviews for every business we we
interact with.
And so I left them a Google review,
but this time I added pictures, which I
normally do. But I had pictures,
And I went back we went back as
a family 2 days later and ate there
again
because they created the purchase experience. So what
how did it have so let's go back
(36:47):
to the the the marketing momentum cycle. I
love frameworks.
We became aware. We self created awareness
of
we wanna watch
a football match with Argentinians
and an Argentinian
sports bar.
Awareness.
Consideration. Well, where are we gonna go? We
(37:07):
don't know anybody here. We've only been in
Argentina for 24 hours. We don't know anybody
to ask. So we get out of our
phone. We go to Google Maps. My I
think my wife went to Apple Maps, and
we searched for sports bar near me. Now
we are in a Spanish culture country, so
it's in Spanish, but our Google is amazing
at translating this. And a couple places came
(37:30):
up, And so we scrolled through those first
couple ones until we saw one that was
closed. It had their hours. It had, their
updated menu.
I we looked at 1 or 2 other
places. I we couldn't find their menu. We
didn't know what their prices was, or
the a lot of the menus were
older than 6 months.
(37:50):
Inflation is changing pricing in in restaurants in
Argentina so fast that,
you know, prices may be double, triple what
they were in on the pictures from 6
months ago. So we we're constantly looking for
a menu from right now.
We found this place
that answered all of our prequalifying
questions,
(38:12):
had good had really good reviews, had a
lot of reviews.
We could see current pricing right now, which
is important for us as a family of
6,
and we see how far it was from
us. And we saw that some from their
pictures that they had TVs to show the
game. So that's where we went. Then we
had the purchase experience.
The servers were great. We had a good
(38:32):
time.
The food was delicious,
and then
they had these signs up to make sure
we saw their social.
They started interacting, started inviting us to interact
with them on social
to help turn us into raving
fans.
And then having that unique,
(38:53):
wait,
what, experience where I get to roll a
dice and maybe get my meal? And I
had I asked chat g p t, and
the chances of us getting a free meal
was out of there was, like, one out
of 686.
Alright? So
that's not
unreasonable odds. That's that's good enough. But from
a business owner, I'm also thinking, I only
(39:15):
I only have to maybe give away one
out of every 700 meal you know, checks
for free.
Like,
well, that's not bad. That's good marketing
budget right there. Like, that that makes sense.
This restaurant
is so amazingly
popular
that we didn't know this when we looked
(39:36):
it up,
but because they only have the one Google
business profile, which makes sense
that that why they do it this way.
But they got so busy and always had
such a long line
that instead of going and opening a second
location across town,
they bought the
the the restaurant
catty corner from them and opened a second
(39:57):
location
diagonal
from them.
It's the same exact restaurant. And I was
talking to the manager when I went back,
and he's like, oh, yeah. It's great. He
goes, if they get a little more busy,
you know, we can send staff over there.
They can send staff over here. We can
grab stuff from there. It's the exact same
business.
And if you show up and you see,
you know, one is full, people just start
(40:19):
filling up the other location.
I was just so impressed,
by this place. But,
yeah, that was that was one of my
I'll just I'll always remember
that experience of that Yahtzee cup. Very good.
Well, thank you for sharing that. It's a
fantastic
fantastic so story.
(40:39):
We have touched on marketing, but also I'm
more also interested about the digital nomadism
and family life.
And, you mentioned about the unique challenges that
you have, but,
could you just maybe expand a little dig
a little bit deeper on what unique challenges
and benefits have your experience
raising a family
while adopting the digital, nomad lifestyle? And how
(41:02):
have you addressed these challenges while maintaining stability
for your children? Because I think this is
something maybe the audience are very curious about,
how the children feel about moving from place
to place since they have made made friends,
and now they have to start all over
again, if you will.
Yeah. Well, so,
we started it, like I said, with a
test trip. So one of the things I
(41:22):
love, shoot a bullet before a cannonball.
And this kinda goes back. You had asked
at the end of the last question, you
had asked me to, like, how do I
also balance,
you know,
trying a new thing,
you know, in in business, you know, like
the Yahtzee idea. Like, if somebody wanted to
try that in their business, how do you
balance trying a new idea and stuff like
(41:43):
that? And I'm always test it first. We
we're constantly testing things with our clients.
You know, let's test a strategy before we
go real big. Let's test an ad, test
a thing. Well, we did a test trick
before we decided to go all in as
being a digital novat.
And so,
that's one of the things I love about
leadership. When you learn a leadership axiom
(42:04):
principle that works, you can apply it not
just
leading your business, but leading in your family,
leading in your community.
And so,
shooting a bullet before a cannonball is one
of my favorite leadership lessons, which is just
how do I test it with a little
something before I go all in?
And so
(42:24):
for us as a family, the test trip
was huge.
Now, also,
it helps,
technology.
We,
help our kids
engage with and connect with their friends using
technology,
but we have boundaries in place,
and safeguards in place. And, you know, there's
(42:46):
only certain types of apps that they're allowed
to do this, and and there's limits and
stuff like that. So there's a balance.
But
now when
I get home tonight,
who knows what accents I'm going to hear
coming out of my kids' devices?
You know, they're they may be talking to
one of their friends in,
(43:06):
Turkey,
could be Costa Rica. You know? It's just
they they've got kids all over or friends
all over the world.
And they've just learned to that's the great
thing about kids.
And we we'd realized this when we were
going through the process of adopting.
So when we went over to,
(43:27):
Bulgaria
to
meet the 2 children we adopted, we took
our 2 bio children, our biological children,
and they
were 68,
at the time,
and the children we were adopting were 10
and 12 or 11 and 12 at the
time,
and
(43:47):
or 1011.
1011 at the time.
But,
so we took our 2 biological kids. I'm
so glad we did,
because
play is a universal language.
I mean,
you don't have to speak the same language
if you both know how to play soccer.
And luckily, they all did. And so we
(44:08):
could go to the park
and our biological children who spoke no English
could go out and play
or I'm sorry. Our adopted children who at
the time spoke no English could go play
with our,
biological children who spoke no Bulgarian,
you know, but they could just play.
And so
(44:29):
kids are able to adapt quickly more than
and they're not afraid to adapt
as quickly as adults.
We get so used to
what we define as comfort, and
so getting here to,
Northern Ireland,
we
we took a chance on an Airbnb hostess
(44:50):
who is a new Airbnb hostess,
and,
she's got a lot to learn.
So, we got to the house and it,
you know, it was
she had not turned the heat on at
all.
And and it was just those thin radiator,
radiators. Well,
(45:11):
when everything in the house is really, really
cold, a radiator doesn't heat it up like
that. You know?
And
I could only get the radiators
on I couldn't get the radiator on at
at all in the bathroom
or 2 of the bedrooms.
And it's, like, 4 PM. We you know?
And we're just, like,
(45:34):
and so it it was a cold night.
You know? We were able to get one
bedroom heated, the living room. I was moving
mattresses around the house,
and stuff like that. Now,
you know,
to me
yeah. That would that that could've been really
frustrating. I could've gotten really mad and things
like that, but why?
You know? She's new. She's learning.
(45:57):
We as long we reached out right away.
She was very apologetic. She started offering ways
to help make it right. So she was
trying. Okay.
But it was it was still
it was still frustrating
Sure. And and stuff.
But but learning to keep things in perspective
is key. You know? And, like, so one
of our we were talking as a family
(46:19):
about you know? Because everybody was starting to
get, like, this is so cold. I'm so
cold. This is I'm so cold, because we
were very cold.
And and finally,
we were just like, you know,
yes, we're cold, but
we're together. It's an adventure.
It's always gonna be a story. We spent
10 days on the Appalachian Trail. We spent
(46:40):
10 days in the Amazon jungle. We can
live in hard extreme environments.
This is no big deal. And then the
next morning, I got up to go find
my office,
and I passed,
probably a half dozen, you know, people that
had been sleeping outside all night. And it
reminded me of this my dad used to
quote this song all the time when I
(47:00):
was a kid, and he would tell my
brother and sister and I all the time.
I cried because
I had no shoes until I saw a
man that had no feet.
And it just it reminded me of that.
And so coming back to the house, you
know, last or Monday night, you know, I
just kinda shared that with the kids as
we were having dinner, and it's not that
(47:20):
wasn't new to them. And we just had
a conversation about how blessed we were with
this house. Is it cold? Yes. But there's
a roof.
There's 4 walls.
My my 12 year old is like, dad,
the Wi Fi is so fast. Like, you
know, he's he's so happy that the Wi
Fi is fast. Yeah.
You know, we were eating a hot meal
(47:40):
because it had a kitchen we could cook
on. We could afford the groceries.
You know? So you just start to
if we had experienced this
as vacationers
coming out of a rooted environment,
I'd have been marching my kids to a
hotel. I'd have been on Airbnb
demanding a refund.
(48:01):
Like,
it would've I'd have been my entire experience
in in Ireland in Northern Ireland would be
ruined
because of that. Yeah. But I think because
of traveling for 3 years and stuff like
that, we've just gotten very comfortable with the
ideas
of the
of, like, it's okay. Like, it's just gonna
(48:22):
be okay.
And at the end of the day,
the things that we think matter don't really
matter. Yeah.
It's we're together as a family.
We've got our health.
We have the ability to smile when we
choose to take a deep breath and
and realize that
(48:43):
this this Airbnb
hostess,
she's just learning.
You know? And she she had no idea.
She's like, I turned on one of the
radiators and checked it, and I thought that
that they I just assumed they were all
okay.
Bet she never does that again. Yeah. Exactly.
Exactly. Well, that's thank you very much for
sharing because there's a lot of depth into
what is you what you are,
(49:05):
speaking about, but also to kind of tell
you have a perspective when those things happen.
And we tend to over over
get overheated for the things that I actually,
it's not that important at the end of
the day. So
but, overall, I mean, thank you very much,
Eric. This has been a very good
conversation, and I certainly have learned quite a
bit during this,
(49:26):
time that we have been together. But I
have 2 more questions for you before we
wrap up. And besides what we have talked
about,
what trends do you see happening in digital
nomad lifestyle that we should take note of?
Because this is something that has been going
on for a while, and maybe there are
people has been nomads for a long, long
time, and they became digital nomads. But maybe
there's something which is evolving. Maybe you can
(49:47):
share what you see going on in this
lifestyle.
Yeah. There are a lot more families starting
to live this lifestyle.
That's number 1. Digital Nomads for the longest
time
were singles,
or,
maybe cup a couple.
But
because
of
(50:08):
what our
because of what our current culture for most
of us,
tells us is
acceptable
means to educate our children,
we don't believe the kids can have this
type of lifestyle. So a lot of families
feel like
they look around, and and we get to
(50:28):
like, well, what about guitar lessons?
Well,
1, you know,
none of our kids
none of our kids are that talented
that, you know,
they're going to you know, a guitar is
gonna take them through life. You know? If
it was, that would be different. But our
daughter wanted to learn how to play guitar.
You can find people that give guitar lessons
(50:49):
in every city of the world. You know?
Our kids have been in soccer leagues,
you know, and and our kids have been
in clubs and organizations.
And a lot of places in the world,
like, if you my wife will call them
up and say, hey. We're gonna be there
for for 6 weeks.
Would it be possible
for our kids to join in? And
(51:10):
we nobody has said no yet. Everybody's been
like, yeah. That would be great. We would
love to have them. Okay. Because people start
organizations
for kids because they love kids. Yes. Now
what if somebody does say no? That's fine.
Then they said no. Why would I I
don't care. That's they're allowed they're allowed to
say no. They're allowed to say no.
But
(51:31):
back to leadership, never say somebody's no for
them. Like, just ask.
And
so I would say the big a big
trend is lot of more families
are traveling,
as digital,
nomads now. Now some we're we're kind of
a mix of of of
mid range speed.
(51:51):
Some people would go much slower than us.
Some people go much faster.
So there's lots of ways to do it.
So that would be,
I would say is probably
the biggest
trend. And the second the second one I
would say is
after COVID,
a lot of people started traveling
nomadically
because their job
(52:13):
will suddenly let them work remote.
But in the last three months,
we we are starting to see a lot
of friends and people
whose
their the companies are going remote's not working.
You gotta come back to the office.
And so
the benefit to that is
(52:33):
I never have to worry about somebody telling
me to come back to my office because
I own my business. So owning your business
is is
is worth it,
because a remote job,
the that that person could change their mind
at any time about letting you be remote.
Yeah. Very good. So,
lastly, if people are interested to find out
more about you, how can they do so?
(52:56):
Well, I'd like to give give 2 options,
if I can.
So if if anybody wants to just go
to ericdengler.com,
that's gonna forward you to my LinkedIn.
Just connect with me on LinkedIn.
If you're interested in the travel side,
the running a remote the location independent business,
you know, like, connect with me on LinkedIn.
(53:18):
But if you're listening and you have a
company and you're interested in,
unpacking your marketing
and you'd like to kinda see where your
marketing
is as it relates to the marketing momentum
cycle,
you can go to my marketing scorecard.com,
and I've got an assessment there. It takes
about 4 minutes.
(53:39):
And at the end of you taking that
assessment, you're gonna get a 1 page
marketing action plan,
customized
customizable with the results from the assessment
that's really quickly going to let you see
the answer to the question you asked earlier,
Eric, which is what which one of the
4 the most companies, you know, tend to
(53:59):
miss when they're doing? The the marketing mo,
my marketing scorecard.com,
that assessment is gonna let you
see
where you're crushing it in awareness consideration purchase
advocacy and what area maybe needs a little
bit of attention.
And so people can go over there. If
they own a business,
they can go over, take that assessment, and
(54:21):
get the the results and the one page,
marketing action plan that goes along with it.
Fantastic.
Well, Eric, thank you so much. I appreciate
you joining today and today's episode. I thank
you for all the fantastic insight. I certainly
have learned a lot, and I'm sure the
audience
are are applauding behind the curtains here. So
so thank you so much again.
(54:43):
Thanks for having me, Eric. I appreciate it.
Thank you for tuning in to The Social
Hotel Year. If you enjoyed this episode,
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(55:04):
Podcast on your mobile
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Until next time, take care, and keep exploring.
You are listening to the Social Hotelier Show,
a podcast that inspires hoteliers to create meaningful
and memorable experiences
for their customers
in pursuit of their passion.
We share our views and experiences experiences relating
to hospitality,
technological trends, and also relating to humanity.
Here is your host, Sam Eric Rutman.
(00:25):
Hi, everyone. Welcome back to the Social Hotelier
podcast with me, Sam Eric Rutman.
My guest today is Eric Dhingler.
With more than 25 years of experience in
marketing,
Eric has helped he's here to help us
to connect the dots between our favorite marketing
tactics, which we are sometimes very good at,
and an effective marketing strategy.
(00:46):
Eric also happens to travel the world full
time as a digital nomad with his wife
and 4 kids.
Eric, what country are you in right now,
and how long will you be there?
Well, Eric, we just got to Northern Ireland,
about 4 days ago, and we'll be here
for 3 more weeks.
So you're spending Christmas in Ireland?
(01:08):
Spending Christmas in Ireland. We're very excited for
it. Our kids are pumped.
We've got 4 kids, 12, 14, 16, 17,
and they've already connected to some local kids
here, and,
it's shaping up to be a really nice
Christmas.
Wonderful. Wonderful. And I think that's, that's special
when you can considering your, your childhood where
(01:30):
you were growing in US, you had a
certain Christmas, and you must have spent
Christmas around the world in different countries. So
that gives always the new new nuance to
your the Christmas spirit.
Yeah. This for us, having Christmas markets
is a brand new experience, and we have
discovered we love Christmas markets. Europe just does
(01:51):
it so much better.
That's good. Yeah. We have our own here
in Helsinki also, and,
I
even I live here, so I tend to
get excited every year. I always meet the
same same vendors.
Particularly, there's one one guy who is importing
Italian chestnuts. So I buy his roasted chestnuts
every year, and then it kinda puts me
(02:13):
into the spirit. And then we try the
carousel with my wife, and, obviously, it's for
the kids. But, I think it's there's there's
no limit,
over what age you can enjoy a carousel,
and we actually enjoyed it a lot.
Yeah. Nice. Well, we're we're enjoying them. It's
great.
Wonderful.
So, just for, the audience who are listening
around the world,
(02:34):
could you get some background and tell me
about a bit about your how you developed
a digital lifestyle with your family,
and how it fits your profession as a
marketing
expert.
Yeah. Absolutely. So I'm an I'm what I
call an accidental
CEO.
It it wasn't my goal to build a
digital marketing agency,
(02:55):
but it's it's where we ended up
and thrilled that that we ended up here.
But for
the most part of my career, I was
marketing,
a summer camp.
And so every year, I had to go
out and do the marketing and and bring
in, you know, new campers and new staff
and,
you know, just recreate that summer camp experience
(03:16):
over and over. And,
then
went out from there, and and my wife
and I, we planted a a church, and
I learned how to do church marketing and
which is very different,
and then always had little side businesses that
I did marketing for.
And then my wife and I decided we
wanted to adopt. And so we have 2
(03:36):
biological children, and we adopted a sibling group
of 2 children.
And we wanted to do that debt free,
and so we were gonna have to come
up with an additional $50,000
to fund our adoption.
And
I started
building websites
for people on the side,
and that by the time we brought our
2 kids,
(03:57):
adopted kids home,
I had a web design business. And so
decided to do that full time
to
as a way to help other people fund
their adoptions.
So we started a nonprofit,
and we now run our company to fund
our nonprofit.
And then,
through that,
(04:17):
it just
became a it became a we pivoted to
being a marketing agency, which is great because
that's really what I've always done
Yeah. And
been the most,
found the most joy out of you know,
from a a work perspective was the marketing
kind of stuff. Okay. And so now we
help hundreds of companies,
across the United States
market, and
(04:39):
we were my wife and I, we were
getting ready to buy a house,
and
we had a few months before things were
gonna be
all in alignment.
And we decided, like, hey. Let's let's go
on a trip,
just before we buy the house to make
sure, like,
we wanna buy this house. And,
(05:00):
Eric, the thing is we we have no
problem with people at all that are living
the the typical,
American
dream, if you will. I use that in
in quotation marks, but the American dream. But
we just were doing what everybody else was
doing. You know? We we got married, and
we had 2 cards, and we had the
kids, and we're getting ready to buy a
(05:20):
house. And then we had, you know, we
adopted 2, so we have our kids. And
our kids were in all these activities, and
our life was just looking like all of
our friends' lives. And we're and it was
busy, and it was good,
but we never
made the intentional decision that that's what we
want our life to look like. We were
just doing it because that's what everybody was
doing. And so we said, well, let's let's
(05:42):
experiment. Let's go on this trip and see
if we like it.
And so we took a a 3 month
trip to,
we were in Istanbul for 2 months, did
a month in in Eastern Europe,
and we decided at the end of that,
we never wanted to stop traveling. So we
went back to the states,
sold
everything we own, and for 3 years now
(06:03):
over 3 years, we've been traveling full time,
around the world and just
beyond thrilled. It's such a great experience.
Wonderful. I mean, this is something that is
not for everyone, clearly,
to live a digital nomad life and particularly
that,
particularly when you have to plan to move
to a different place because I think
(06:26):
by, by person by by we have a
sense we're looking for a kind of a
sense of security always that there's there should
be, like,
best surprises, no surprise, but you don't seem
to have that, problem of
planning with your wife. And and, of course,
the kids need to be involved in that
decision making where you're moving next, but then
to go to a new place. And
in one way, you're starting all over again.
(06:47):
So is that your it's a is it
a thrill for you, or are you feel
very comfortable of just exploring the new opportunity?
Yeah. Well, it's it's interesting.
It's become our routine.
And so to us, it's
it's not that big of a deal anymore.
It's it's in you know, we meet people
regularly. They're like, oh, do you guys have
a YouTube channel? And we're like, no. And
(07:08):
and they're like, oh, you should have a
YouTube channel. I I wanna watch. And we're
we're very much like, our life is really
boring. Like, we don't know what you would
watch.
You know? It's it's
Wednesday afternoon
at 3 o'clock. I'm in an office.
My wife and kids are at home. She's
homeschooling. They went to a museum
(07:28):
this morning, which we would have even done
when we were in our passport country, the
United States.
And,
you know, there's a a pot roast in
the crock pot, like, you know, we'll and
I'll go home tonight at 6 and we'll
have dinner and, you know, we'll watch some
TV as a family, and and we'll go
to bed, and tomorrow morning, we'll get up
and we'll do the same thing. Yeah. And
(07:48):
so we live our life
not that much different than what it looked
like in the United States. It's just we're
inside 4 different
walls,
and then the evenings and weekends,
we get to go see new things. You
know? So, like, we get to go see
the Christmas market here in in Northern Ireland,
and we went we are we are people
of, faith. Our Christian faith is very important
(08:10):
to us.
So this past Sunday, we already went to
a church and
met some people at the church and got
connected, and and after church church, hung out
and got to know a lot about this
area.
And so
there are those moments
in between just normal day to day life
that are unique as a digital nomad.
(08:33):
But as far as the planning, we didn't
it doesn't take as much planning as people
think. It does it first. It does it
first. But
we didn't even have an Airbnb lined up
until last Thursday. We we thought up until
last Thursday, we thought we were going to
Greece, to be honest.
And we changed our mind kinda last minute
(08:55):
and found a place here in Northern Ireland.
We were in London
and, you know, grabbed a couple tickets on
Ryanair and popped over here on Sunday.
Okay.
Very good. Now
because you're moving from place to place,
and,
and you're becoming a,
a new customer over and over again for
this
(09:15):
stuff that you're normally used to, whether it's
the the the groceries or the getting the
go go for whatever reason you're going somewhere.
So how has that experience being a new
customer over and over again across a different
culture reshapes your understanding of marketing strategies and
the role cultural nuances play in their effectiveness?
(09:35):
Okay. So I would say, Eric, this is
the this is the thing that I
didn't expect at all to happen that surprised
me. Like, I knew when we started out
being digital nomads, like, it was gonna impact
our family. It was gonna impact our kids.
Our kids are having a very unique lifestyle,
and there's some intentionality with that. We wanted
(09:55):
them to see. But I never ever ever
thought it would
completely,
revolutionize how my my company and I how
we handle
marketing for our clients.
I thought I knew marketing. You know? I
thought I really knew it and had it
nailed and stuff like that.
(10:15):
And then I have realized through these these
last 3 years, I started realizing that,
marketing is a lot more
simple
than we make it out to be,
because we get we get inundated
with messages, and it happens to me all
the time. I get I get emails every
(10:36):
week that, you know, I need to try
this new thing. I need to do this.
And and I'm,
you know, I believe leaders are readers, so
I'm constantly reading, you know, business books and
listening to podcasts and stuff like that. And
so I hear people talk about all these
different tactics. You know, I gotta be on
LinkedIn. I should have a podcast. You should
have a YouTube channel.
(10:57):
You know, you've gotta do you should have
a TikTok. You should do you gotta do
SEO. You gotta do content with that. You
know, you have to have funnels and upsells
and downsells, and
you hear all these things that you gotta
do and and things like that.
And because of that, it makes marketing seem
very complex.
But I realized,
(11:18):
unlike, like, when we when we had a
rooted life, so that that in the digital
nomad
lingoland, it's it's called rooted. You're either rooted
or or or in location independent.
Rooted just means that you live in the
same place all the time.
Most of the things we needed, we've only
(11:38):
had to find them one time. Doctors for
the kids,
barbers,
where to buy clothes,
you know, where where to buy shoes, where
to buy groceries,
you know, what what little convenience store we
like, restaurants.
You you find these places once. Every 4
to 6 weeks, we have to find all
of them again.
(12:00):
I I can't even tell you at this
time, you know, how many different times we've
had to find a a doctor for one
of our kids or a barber. I my
gosh. My boys and I have been to
so many barbers
around the world,
pizza shops,
you know, burgers,
shoes.
Northern Ireland is freezing cold, by the way.
(12:22):
I don't know if anybody else is aware
of this, but it's cold. And we just
we spent just spent the last 2 years
in South America,
Central America and South America.
I landed here Sunday with
one long sleeve coat. I have a I
have a a nano puffy coat that compacts
down real small,
really super warm.
But outside of that, I just had t
(12:43):
shirts. Well, everybody keeps their their internal temperature
around 18 degrees Celsius, 64 degrees Fahrenheit.
That's freezing cold to what we were using.
My house in the states, we always kept
it at
72,
you know, maybe, like, 20, you know, 22,
you know, 21, 22 Celsius.
(13:03):
And so
I had to go I but where do
I go in Northern Ireland to find an
inexpensive,
you know, long sleeve fleece?
And so
we every 4 to 6 weeks, we have
to find everything
brand new. And I started realizing
there are these places that are getting my
money all of the time, and they're all
(13:23):
doing the same thing. They all have the
same things in common,
and that is when it started to click
on me.
This is effective marketing.
I go through and and, Eric, you go
through, and everybody listening to this, we go
through the same
4 steps,
4 phases every single time we we buy
something.
And most people call it have talked about
(13:45):
it for years as the buying cycle, the
4 steps of the buying cycle.
You know, awareness, consideration, purchase advocacy.
Well, I realized
that that's also the marketing cycle.
And in marketing,
it's as simple as making sure you have
a tactic that you like
for for each of those phases.
(14:06):
And as you do that,
you're going to stand out amongst the competition,
and your marketing is gonna be more effective,
and you're gonna win more wallet share from
people
like me.
And if we stayed here, if we came
rooted in Northern Ireland,
a lot of these places we're going to
for the first time
would be the places we would go to
(14:29):
the 2nd time, the 10th time, the 50th
time.
Yeah. Okay. So, I mean, you you you
mentioned that, wherever you travel, you you you're
always looking at certain
importance of of the the four phase phases
of marketing. Could you just repeat for the
for the audience again when it comes to
the marketing? Which are the key
(14:50):
key phases that
that should be paid attention to? Maybe there's
one of them that the business are not
paying enough attention to.
Yeah. No. That's good. That's a good question.
Okay. So to revisit the 4,
it's awareness,
consideration,
purchase,
and advocacy.
(15:11):
And most people
nail the first one, awareness. And and when
when our when new clients come to us
and we do an analysis,
most of them have been doing a really
good job of
awareness. So before anybody ever buys
from from us or before you ever buy
from somebody,
(15:32):
you you have to become aware
that you need
something.
Some people refer to this as, you know,
becoming problem aware,
and that's you know, so it's one one
way to look at it. But I have
to become aware
that I need something
or I'm never gonna I I would never
buy it. Now there's 2 ways awareness happens.
(15:55):
Self discovered awareness,
created awareness.
Self discovered awareness is
I need a long sleeve, Jack. You know,
I need a long sleeve something to wear
in Northern I discovered that all by myself.
That's self discovered awareness.
Created awareness
is when I see an ad for something
(16:15):
I didn't even know existed, and I'm like,
oh, I wanna buy that. I need that.
You know? That would that would solve all
of my world's problems.
So that's advertising
works to create
awareness.
So you need to have a tactic in
place that's creating awareness for those people that
don't know you exist,
(16:36):
but
you need to be ready for all of
the people that self discover
that they're become aware that they need you.
So this is the thing that most businesses
already
have in place
or they're lucky
because
people are just just self discovering every day
that they need what this person buys. So
(16:58):
that's awareness.
Once we become aware of a problem, aware
of a need, then we move to consideration.
Where am I gonna get this? Who's gonna
solve this for me? And exactly what is
that gonna look like?
And people can spend
seconds
in consideration.
They could spend months in consideration.
(17:18):
Really depends on the size of the purchase.
If I'm standing in the aisle at a
grocery store and I look over and suddenly
I see a row of gum and that
reminds me, I become aware, oh, I'm out
of gum,
then I go to consideration. Do I want
grape? Do I want strawberry? Like, I'm in
I'm in consideration super quick. And then I
I grab it to buy it, and I
(17:39):
have my my purchase experience.
If I'm buying a house or a car,
I'm gonna spend a lot longer than a
few sec you know, I'm gonna test drive
a couple models. I'm gonna go do you
know, I'm gonna talk to people. So it
we we spend different time and consideration.
The key to consideration
to winning consideration is you have to be
(17:59):
the easiest and obvious
choice.
For most businesses,
and I'm talking here kind of specifically local
businesses,
for most businesses, specifically, again, local businesses,
you have to show up
where people go the when they become aware.
So you have to ask yourself, when somebody
decides that they wanna look for my
(18:22):
product, my widget, my my solution,
where do they go? Do they go to
a friend? Do they go to Google? Do
they go to an app?
You know,
we have a lot of restaurants,
and and and some, you know, Airbnbs
and, some retreat centers. You know, we've had
the we've had a, a quilting retreat center
(18:44):
and,
some not Airbnbs. Some bed and breakfasts,
that that our clients. And it that that
used to always be
Google. Well, then it became Google Maps, and
so we had to adjust for our clients.
Now it's not even really Google Maps for
some of these people with it's an app.
Like, are you in Uber Eats? Are you,
you know, on Hotels dotcom? Are you, you
(19:06):
know whatever the app of the moment is,
you kinda have to make sure you're there
because that's where people are going in consideration.
Yeah. And then you have to answer their
prequalifying
questions
while they're there.
And then the 3rd stage is the actual
purchase experience, and this one is unfortunately,
so many people don't gather contact information
(19:27):
here,
so that they can easily do the follow
the the 4th win,
and the 4th one is advocacy.
So, Eric, in this stage,
every customer
that
every business every single business that they're they're
gonna have 1 of 3 types of customers,
and and
(19:48):
you are this customer yourself of of many
brands and many many businesses.
You're either a raving fan,
a roaring critic,
or you're silently satisfied.
And the majority of us are the silently
satisfied customers
of 100 of different brands and businesses.
(20:08):
It's the brands and businesses that
figure out how to
remarket to you,
how to they they gather your contact information.
They start building relationship with you through social,
through email. They get you to leave a
review that starts teaching,
training you to be somebody that speaks about
(20:29):
them highly.
They start turning you from silently satisfied to
raving fans. They give you an event to
bring your friends to. They give you a
reason to share and promote.
If anybody has a credit card, at some
point, you're getting,
an offer
to, you know, share with your friends a
credit card, and you're going to get, you
(20:51):
know, something in in return. This is this
is advocacy
marketing,
and
you asked which which of these stages do
I think people miss the most.
It's it's a toss-up between
advocacy and purchase.
Most a lot of brand like, even small
(21:11):
mom and pop restaurants or barber shops or
something like that,
they used to be really bad at getting
asking for people's email addresses and and cell
phone numbers. Now a lot of them have
become better because their POS system,
it has that built in.
So if they have a POS system that's
getting them to gather that, they they will,
(21:34):
but it's the it's
it's
email marketing
to email and SMS marketing to your current
customers,
I think,
is what we see over and over and
over as the biggest mist
that that most brands and businesses have.
So yeah. So it's we work really hard
to get that new customer,
(21:55):
but then we keep working really hard to
get a new customer, a new customer, a
new customer,
where
like, in my business
in 2020
like, February 2021
to February 2022,
we did
zero advertising,
0 awareness marketing,
(22:17):
and all we did for an entire year
was we more than doubled our our revenue
top line revenue by just upselling our current
clients
and educating them through email marketing, inviting them
to opportunities to add new services.
And that's all I had to do for
a year. And I and I owe more
than doubled my top line revenue.
(22:40):
So a lot of businesses leave gold in
the backyard,
by not nurturing
relationships with current customers and past customers.
Okay. That's a really excellent,
excellent,
information you're passing on, and I I clearly
have to up upgrade my outro here for
a podcast
after we're finished. But, one thing which came
(23:01):
to my mind is that, you mentioned that
you started to create web designs,
as
and now how has that changed? I mean,
you're you're basically,
you have seen the the the
when Internet was in its infancy and the
Internet and so on, when different softwares were
used at the time to create the web
(23:22):
designs. What has changed over the years as
far as you're concerned?
People don't spend as much time on websites
anymore,
and most websites
are are way too big. We get we
get new prospects every week, and we go
look at their website, and we come back
and we're like,
you know,
(23:43):
mister mister and missus dentist,
nobody
cares
about the make and model of your new
X-ray machine,
except for you and the bragging rights you
get at the next dentist conference.
But I have never once
looked at my wife and gone, you know,
(24:03):
we need a new we need to get
our son into a dentist. Let's make sure
we find someone that's got the X-ray 4,000
max. Like, that doesn't happen.
And so
a lot of small business owners build the
website
that they that
they think
makes them impressive.
Yeah. And it because that's what they've worked
(24:25):
hard for, and and that's they they have
a great X-ray machine. That's fantastic.
Yeah. But nobody cares.
They wanna know, do you have do do
I have to have an appointment? Do you
do walk ins? I'm scared. This is gonna
be my kid's first visit. How do you
handle somebody's first visit?
What about pain? Like, these are the prequalifying
questions that people really have before they come
(24:46):
to a dentist. Yeah.
Barbers. We do a lot of barbershop websites
and and hair salons.
Same thing. Like,
nobody needs barbers need 1 page.
You know, there are a few industries. You
only need a 1 page
website.
There are other industries where you you you
can't get by that. Now
(25:09):
we we are we're we're professional accommodation
searchers. We're constantly looking out for new accommodations,
you know, and we we try a variety
of things,
you know, mix of you know, we use
Airbnb
and VRBO,
but we're also we also look at, you
know,
kayakandhotels.com,
and and we go to hotel websites,
(25:30):
occasionally when we're gonna be somewhere short. And
I can't tell you how many times. I'm
like, none of the I don't care. No.
You're not answering my questions.
And so I think that's the biggest change.
People now
show up to websites
with
predefined
questions they want answered where it used to
(25:51):
be the not like, we didn't know what
to ask. We didn't know what we we
just but now we know exactly what we
want. We just want an answer.
And
AI,
you know,
we're your people are going to see a
lot less traffic coming to their websites because
now AI is answering a lot of the
questions for them. Yeah. So you have to
(26:12):
start preparing
for that shift.
You need you can you can try to
be the site. You can mark your sites
now with with
new, you know, up you need to make
sure you're you're marking your website with what's
the proper schema markup and things like that.
But there's now ways we need to start
websites if you wanna try to be shown
(26:33):
in
AI results.
So that's
and and, honestly, ain't nobody knows what that's
gonna look like. Anybody that tries to tell
you they know exactly what this is gonna
look like in in 18 months is lying
that nobody has a clue. Yeah.
But, we we have to be adjusting to
this
regularly right now on the search results side.
(26:55):
Sure. How is it I mean, just, by
curiosity because, I mean, in tourism and hospitality.
And I see the destination
websites.
And there's a, I was in a in
a conference here,
week ago in in Malta,
and, and there's part of the Mediterranean
tourism forum. Now Mediterranean
is about 23 countries if I'm not mistaken.
(27:18):
And Mhmm. Now the idea is to create
a tourism portal for the Mediterranean called Mediterranean
Observer.
And there's been a lot of discussion, what
should the Mediterranean observe look like? And it
has been,
going on for a while. It's been basically
news
only. And,
I was just want to get your
out of the blue, getting your feedback. Is
(27:39):
news the important thing, or is it maybe
some untold stories that some observer, who is
going to a a village in the mountain
of Cyprus
learn something about the place, and that would
attract people to travel there? What do you
think?
Yeah. Well, again, it it yeah. I'm always
gonna go back to the the marketing momentum,
(28:00):
cycle is what we call it. You know?
Okay. So
somebody are are we working to create awareness
with this
and getting people to go, wow. I didn't
even know I didn't even know you could
do that. I I didn't even know there
was that event, that activity,
that place, that that village. Like, I didn't
know that existed.
And so if you're doing awareness marketing to
(28:21):
bring people in, well, you need a very
specialized landing. So,
you know, when something like this starts to
happen, you're gonna do awareness marketing
off of the website. So you're gonna create
awareness through social media,
you know, advertising,
you know, different you know, all kinds of
different ways to do it. But there's tactics
that you're gonna use that you're gonna wanna
bring people to a landing page specifically for
(28:43):
that. Yeah. But then
we now need to then go, okay. What
happens in consideration?
Well, once somebody
decides where they're going to go,
what to do? What what do we what
can we do there? And, again, we look
this kind of stuff up all the time.
You know, things to do in Northern Ireland
as a family.
Now we often add the as a family
(29:06):
at the end of our search results.
So,
it that's where you have to spend time
going like who
who are we solving a problem for, and
what's the problem we're solving?
Once you identify the problem you're solving and
who you're solving it for, then we gotta
ask what are their qualifying questions? What are
they looking for?
(29:28):
And then we need to to to place
that in there,
and then
you can expect on average in most websites
now this
this is a very generalized statement. So,
you know, some people are gonna listen to
this and go, well, that's not true for
my industry, and it's and it's probably not.
(29:48):
But as a general rule of thumb, we
can expect 4%
of somebody coming to a website
to take the action you want them to
take.
So if it's booked now, you can expect
at most
to get 4%
of website visitors to do that. That's a
good benchmark
for book now, call now,
(30:09):
schedule
a free consultation,
whatever it is. So you have to have
a transitional call to action for the 90
other 96%,
and capture their information.
This is where you offer a lead magnet,
the email magnet. Yeah.
And so,
you know, people come to this this, you
(30:29):
know, access portal for for Mediterranean.
You know? Well,
what's going
to entice them to share their contact information,
with you? Because now you can start building
that relationship and trust. And then
how do you track once they actually come
and they visited
and they get back
(30:51):
and they tell everybody who they wanna tell
and they show those first few pictures
because that's what people do after traveling, but
then they're gonna slide into silently satisfied.
So how do you reengage them and and
and get them back? You know, that's mark
you know, email marketing and stuff. I don't
know if that's answering your question or not.
More than than I accept expected. Fantastic. You
(31:12):
know? It it was very good because I
I I we didn't prepare for this question,
so I thought I want to kind of
test your thinking pattern. And I I'm very
happy about the how you you the way
you were thinking about it, and it's very
helpful. So thank you so much already.
No worries. Then,
we talked we had a a discussion earlier
before we,
did this podcast. You mentioned about Buenos Aires,
(31:34):
but the restaurant,
is called Yahtzee? Or
Yahtzee. Yeah. It's a it's a game
very much in the United States. Yep. Okay.
And, it was a they had some sort
of a tactic. And can you can you
talk about what
tactic did they do? And then I'm interested
to know, how do you weigh the risks
of adopting an unconventional marketing strategy
(31:56):
against the potential rewards, especially when aiming to
transform
these,
that you talk about silently sat satisfied customers
into advocates.
Okay.
Yeah. I,
again, I am a raving fan of,
this restaurant in Buenos Aires,
Che Bonshe.
(32:16):
So
it is very unusual for my family and
I now to go to a restaurant more
than one time
because we're only some place you know, we're
only on in a city for 4 to
6 weeks.
And
if it's in a
economical
if it's in an
so
(32:37):
we we have a food budget,
and that budget doesn't change
wherever we are in the world. It's our
food budget. We're we're full time budget travelers.
We live on 8,000
US dollars per month.
A lot of people think it's a lot.
We live on a a very extravagant nope.
It's not. I mean, that's that's a pretty
(32:58):
typical income, you know, middle class income in
the United States.
And so
we we live on on 8,000 US dollars
per month, and we have a food budget.
And in some cultures
and some, you know, countries,
not cultures, but in some countries,
our food budget goes a long way, and
we can eat out a lot.
(33:20):
And then in London, we never eat out.
London is, where cheese and tomato sandwich is.
Like, we my my wife's favorite place on
the earth is the Peter Pan statue
at Kensington Palace. And so every time we're
in,
London, we go to Borough Market. We grab
(33:42):
some drunk cheese and,
meat pies from Ginger Pig, and then we
have a loaf of bread and tomatoes, and
we we go to the park, and we
have cheese and tomato sandwiches, and we buy,
3 meat pies, and each of us get
a half. Like, that's that's our that's the
extravagance
of of what we can afford to do
there.
(34:03):
But in Argentina, in Buenos Aires, we're able
to eat out a lot. Our food budget
goes very far.
And
so because of that, we because but because
of the fact we're only in a place
for a short amount of time,
you know, we wanna try new things. And
so
if we go back to a restaurant
more than once, it's a special restaurant. And
(34:23):
Chey Bon Chey is just that in Buenos
Aires.
So we went in. We just want we
wanted to watch,
a football game. My my boys are really
into soccer, and so, you know, they we
wanted to go, and there was this this
football game they wanted to see. Argentina was
playing. We were in Argentina.
We thought it would be a lot of
fun to go to a
(34:43):
a sports bar and be with locals, and
it was. We had a great time.
And when we were all done eating,
the best
hamburger
I've
maybe I've ever had anywhere in the world,
absolutely
this 5 cheese
unbelievably
delicious hamburger.
They brought us the check and it and
(35:03):
it they a cup, and in the cup
were 5 dice.
And we got a chance to roll
Yahtzee. And so you just 5 with the
same number. So you get 5 dice if
you 5 if you roll 5 ones, 5
twos, whatever, that's called a Yahtzee
and, you win.
So you get 2 chances to roll Yahtzee,
and if you roll Yahtzee,
(35:24):
your entire check is free.
And I was like,
I was not expecting it. And I went,
wait. Really? And they're like, yeah. And I'm
like, oh my gosh. So, you know, we
let our son roll the dice, you know.
I don't know why. He's not the luckiest
kid. I don't know why we let him
do it. We should've let one of our
other lucky kids do it, but he rolled
the dice. We didn't get Yahtzee, so I
(35:45):
had to pay for our meal.
But up on the wall
in Neon,
they had their Instagram handle.
And so I immediately pull my phone out,
and I'm taking pictures as my son is
rolling this dive because it's a new new
experience. And I see their Instagram channel, and
I just immediately switch over to Instagram,
and I and I, you know, post on
(36:06):
Instagram about it. I I follow them. I
post. I tag.
Because I'm in the business of getting local
businesses more Google reviews, I my wife and
I, like,
a big part of our bread, and we
we eat because
of,
getting helping businesses get local, more local more
more reviews from their customers. So we are
(36:26):
constantly leaving reviews for every business we we
interact with.
And so I left them a Google review,
but this time I added pictures, which I
normally do. But I had pictures,
And I went back we went back as
a family 2 days later and ate there
again
because they created the purchase experience. So what
how did it have so let's go back
(36:47):
to the the the marketing momentum cycle. I
love frameworks.
We became aware. We self created awareness
of
we wanna watch
a football match with Argentinians
and an Argentinian
sports bar.
Awareness.
Consideration. Well, where are we gonna go? We
(37:07):
don't know anybody here. We've only been in
Argentina for 24 hours. We don't know anybody
to ask. So we get out of our
phone. We go to Google Maps. My I
think my wife went to Apple Maps, and
we searched for sports bar near me. Now
we are in a Spanish culture country, so
it's in Spanish, but our Google is amazing
at translating this. And a couple places came
(37:30):
up, And so we scrolled through those first
couple ones until we saw one that was
closed. It had their hours. It had, their
updated menu.
I we looked at 1 or 2 other
places. I we couldn't find their menu. We
didn't know what their prices was, or
the a lot of the menus were
older than 6 months.
(37:50):
Inflation is changing pricing in in restaurants in
Argentina so fast that,
you know, prices may be double, triple what
they were in on the pictures from 6
months ago. So we we're constantly looking for
a menu from right now.
We found this place
that answered all of our prequalifying
questions,
(38:12):
had good had really good reviews, had a
lot of reviews.
We could see current pricing right now, which
is important for us as a family of
6,
and we see how far it was from
us. And we saw that some from their
pictures that they had TVs to show the
game. So that's where we went. Then we
had the purchase experience.
The servers were great. We had a good
(38:32):
time.
The food was delicious,
and then
they had these signs up to make sure
we saw their social.
They started interacting, started inviting us to interact
with them on social
to help turn us into raving
fans.
And then having that unique,
(38:53):
wait,
what, experience where I get to roll a
dice and maybe get my meal? And I
had I asked chat g p t, and
the chances of us getting a free meal
was out of there was, like, one out
of 686.
Alright? So
that's not
unreasonable odds. That's that's good enough. But from
a business owner, I'm also thinking, I only
(39:15):
I only have to maybe give away one
out of every 700 meal you know, checks
for free.
Like,
well, that's not bad. That's good marketing
budget right there. Like, that that makes sense.
This restaurant
is so amazingly
popular
that we didn't know this when we looked
(39:36):
it up,
but because they only have the one Google
business profile, which makes sense
that that why they do it this way.
But they got so busy and always had
such a long line
that instead of going and opening a second
location across town,
they bought the
the the restaurant
catty corner from them and opened a second
(39:57):
location
diagonal
from them.
It's the same exact restaurant. And I was
talking to the manager when I went back,
and he's like, oh, yeah. It's great. He
goes, if they get a little more busy,
you know, we can send staff over there.
They can send staff over here. We can
grab stuff from there. It's the exact same
business.
And if you show up and you see,
you know, one is full, people just start
(40:19):
filling up the other location.
I was just so impressed,
by this place. But,
yeah, that was that was one of my
I'll just I'll always remember
that experience of that Yahtzee cup. Very good.
Well, thank you for sharing that. It's a
fantastic
fantastic so story.
(40:39):
We have touched on marketing, but also I'm
more also interested about the digital nomadism
and family life.
And, you mentioned about the unique challenges that
you have, but,
could you just maybe expand a little dig
a little bit deeper on what unique challenges
and benefits have your experience
raising a family
while adopting the digital, nomad lifestyle? And how
(41:02):
have you addressed these challenges while maintaining stability
for your children? Because I think this is
something maybe the audience are very curious about,
how the children feel about moving from place
to place since they have made made friends,
and now they have to start all over
again, if you will.
Yeah. Well, so,
we started it, like I said, with a
test trip. So one of the things I
(41:22):
love, shoot a bullet before a cannonball.
And this kinda goes back. You had asked
at the end of the last question, you
had asked me to, like, how do I
also balance,
you know,
trying a new thing,
you know, in in business, you know, like
the Yahtzee idea. Like, if somebody wanted to
try that in their business, how do you
balance trying a new idea and stuff like
(41:43):
that? And I'm always test it first. We
we're constantly testing things with our clients.
You know, let's test a strategy before we
go real big. Let's test an ad, test
a thing. Well, we did a test trick
before we decided to go all in as
being a digital novat.
And so,
that's one of the things I love about
leadership. When you learn a leadership axiom
(42:04):
principle that works, you can apply it not
just
leading your business, but leading in your family,
leading in your community.
And so,
shooting a bullet before a cannonball is one
of my favorite leadership lessons, which is just
how do I test it with a little
something before I go all in?
And so
(42:24):
for us as a family, the test trip
was huge.
Now, also,
it helps,
technology.
We,
help our kids
engage with and connect with their friends using
technology,
but we have boundaries in place,
and safeguards in place. And, you know, there's
(42:46):
only certain types of apps that they're allowed
to do this, and and there's limits and
stuff like that. So there's a balance.
But
now when
I get home tonight,
who knows what accents I'm going to hear
coming out of my kids' devices?
You know, they're they may be talking to
one of their friends in,
(43:06):
Turkey,
could be Costa Rica. You know? It's just
they they've got kids all over or friends
all over the world.
And they've just learned to that's the great
thing about kids.
And we we'd realized this when we were
going through the process of adopting.
So when we went over to,
(43:27):
Bulgaria
to
meet the 2 children we adopted, we took
our 2 bio children, our biological children,
and they
were 68,
at the time,
and the children we were adopting were 10
and 12 or 11 and 12 at the
time,
and
(43:47):
or 1011.
1011 at the time.
But,
so we took our 2 biological kids. I'm
so glad we did,
because
play is a universal language.
I mean,
you don't have to speak the same language
if you both know how to play soccer.
And luckily, they all did. And so we
(44:08):
could go to the park
and our biological children who spoke no English
could go out and play
or I'm sorry. Our adopted children who at
the time spoke no English could go play
with our,
biological children who spoke no Bulgarian,
you know, but they could just play.
And so
(44:29):
kids are able to adapt quickly more than
and they're not afraid to adapt
as quickly as adults.
We get so used to
what we define as comfort, and
so getting here to,
Northern Ireland,
we
we took a chance on an Airbnb hostess
(44:50):
who is a new Airbnb hostess,
and,
she's got a lot to learn.
So, we got to the house and it,
you know, it was
she had not turned the heat on at
all.
And and it was just those thin radiator,
radiators. Well,
(45:11):
when everything in the house is really, really
cold, a radiator doesn't heat it up like
that. You know?
And
I could only get the radiators
on I couldn't get the radiator on at
at all in the bathroom
or 2 of the bedrooms.
And it's, like, 4 PM. We you know?
And we're just, like,
(45:34):
and so it it was a cold night.
You know? We were able to get one
bedroom heated, the living room. I was moving
mattresses around the house,
and stuff like that. Now,
you know,
to me
yeah. That would that that could've been really
frustrating. I could've gotten really mad and things
like that, but why?
You know? She's new. She's learning.
(45:57):
We as long we reached out right away.
She was very apologetic. She started offering ways
to help make it right. So she was
trying. Okay.
But it was it was still
it was still frustrating
Sure. And and stuff.
But but learning to keep things in perspective
is key. You know? And, like, so one
of our we were talking as a family
(46:19):
about you know? Because everybody was starting to
get, like, this is so cold. I'm so
cold. This is I'm so cold, because we
were very cold.
And and finally,
we were just like, you know,
yes, we're cold, but
we're together. It's an adventure.
It's always gonna be a story. We spent
10 days on the Appalachian Trail. We spent
(46:40):
10 days in the Amazon jungle. We can
live in hard extreme environments.
This is no big deal. And then the
next morning, I got up to go find
my office,
and I passed,
probably a half dozen, you know, people that
had been sleeping outside all night. And it
reminded me of this my dad used to
quote this song all the time when I
(47:00):
was a kid, and he would tell my
brother and sister and I all the time.
I cried because
I had no shoes until I saw a
man that had no feet.
And it just it reminded me of that.
And so coming back to the house, you
know, last or Monday night, you know, I
just kinda shared that with the kids as
we were having dinner, and it's not that
(47:20):
wasn't new to them. And we just had
a conversation about how blessed we were with
this house. Is it cold? Yes. But there's
a roof.
There's 4 walls.
My my 12 year old is like, dad,
the Wi Fi is so fast. Like, you
know, he's he's so happy that the Wi
Fi is fast. Yeah.
You know, we were eating a hot meal
(47:40):
because it had a kitchen we could cook
on. We could afford the groceries.
You know? So you just start to
if we had experienced this
as vacationers
coming out of a rooted environment,
I'd have been marching my kids to a
hotel. I'd have been on Airbnb
demanding a refund.
(48:01):
Like,
it would've I'd have been my entire experience
in in Ireland in Northern Ireland would be
ruined
because of that. Yeah. But I think because
of traveling for 3 years and stuff like
that, we've just gotten very comfortable with the
ideas
of the
of, like, it's okay. Like, it's just gonna
(48:22):
be okay.
And at the end of the day,
the things that we think matter don't really
matter. Yeah.
It's we're together as a family.
We've got our health.
We have the ability to smile when we
choose to take a deep breath and
and realize that
(48:43):
this this Airbnb
hostess,
she's just learning.
You know? And she she had no idea.
She's like, I turned on one of the
radiators and checked it, and I thought that
that they I just assumed they were all
okay.
Bet she never does that again. Yeah. Exactly.
Exactly. Well, that's thank you very much for
sharing because there's a lot of depth into
what is you what you are,
(49:05):
speaking about, but also to kind of tell
you have a perspective when those things happen.
And we tend to over over
get overheated for the things that I actually,
it's not that important at the end of
the day. So
but, overall, I mean, thank you very much,
Eric. This has been a very good
conversation, and I certainly have learned quite a
bit during this,
(49:26):
time that we have been together. But I
have 2 more questions for you before we
wrap up. And besides what we have talked
about,
what trends do you see happening in digital
nomad lifestyle that we should take note of?
Because this is something that has been going
on for a while, and maybe there are
people has been nomads for a long, long
time, and they became digital nomads. But maybe
there's something which is evolving. Maybe you can
(49:47):
share what you see going on in this
lifestyle.
Yeah. There are a lot more families starting
to live this lifestyle.
That's number 1. Digital Nomads for the longest
time
were singles,
or,
maybe cup a couple.
But
because
of
(50:08):
what our
because of what our current culture for most
of us,
tells us is
acceptable
means to educate our children,
we don't believe the kids can have this
type of lifestyle. So a lot of families
feel like
they look around, and and we get to
(50:28):
like, well, what about guitar lessons?
Well,
1, you know,
none of our kids
none of our kids are that talented
that, you know,
they're going to you know, a guitar is
gonna take them through life. You know? If
it was, that would be different. But our
daughter wanted to learn how to play guitar.
You can find people that give guitar lessons
(50:49):
in every city of the world. You know?
Our kids have been in soccer leagues,
you know, and and our kids have been
in clubs and organizations.
And a lot of places in the world,
like, if you my wife will call them
up and say, hey. We're gonna be there
for for 6 weeks.
Would it be possible
for our kids to join in? And
(51:10):
we nobody has said no yet. Everybody's been
like, yeah. That would be great. We would
love to have them. Okay. Because people start
organizations
for kids because they love kids. Yes. Now
what if somebody does say no? That's fine.
Then they said no. Why would I I
don't care. That's they're allowed they're allowed to
say no. They're allowed to say no.
But
(51:31):
back to leadership, never say somebody's no for
them. Like, just ask.
And
so I would say the big a big
trend is lot of more families
are traveling,
as digital,
nomads now. Now some we're we're kind of
a mix of of of
mid range speed.
(51:51):
Some people would go much slower than us.
Some people go much faster.
So there's lots of ways to do it.
So that would be,
I would say is probably
the biggest
trend. And the second the second one I
would say is
after COVID,
a lot of people started traveling
nomadically
because their job
(52:13):
will suddenly let them work remote.
But in the last three months,
we we are starting to see a lot
of friends and people
whose
their the companies are going remote's not working.
You gotta come back to the office.
And so
the benefit to that is
(52:33):
I never have to worry about somebody telling
me to come back to my office because
I own my business. So owning your business
is is
is worth it,
because a remote job,
the that that person could change their mind
at any time about letting you be remote.
Yeah. Very good. So,
lastly, if people are interested to find out
more about you, how can they do so?
(52:56):
Well, I'd like to give give 2 options,
if I can.
So if if anybody wants to just go
to ericdengler.com,
that's gonna forward you to my LinkedIn.
Just connect with me on LinkedIn.
If you're interested in the travel side,
the running a remote the location independent business,
you know, like, connect with me on LinkedIn.
(53:18):
But if you're listening and you have a
company and you're interested in,
unpacking your marketing
and you'd like to kinda see where your
marketing
is as it relates to the marketing momentum
cycle,
you can go to my marketing scorecard.com,
and I've got an assessment there. It takes
about 4 minutes.
(53:39):
And at the end of you taking that
assessment, you're gonna get a 1 page
marketing action plan,
customized
customizable with the results from the assessment
that's really quickly going to let you see
the answer to the question you asked earlier,
Eric, which is what which one of the
4 the most companies, you know, tend to
(53:59):
miss when they're doing? The the marketing mo,
my marketing scorecard.com,
that assessment is gonna let you
see
where you're crushing it in awareness consideration purchase
advocacy and what area maybe needs a little
bit of attention.
And so people can go over there. If
they own a business,
they can go over, take that assessment, and
(54:21):
get the the results and the one page,
marketing action plan that goes along with it.
Fantastic.
Well, Eric, thank you so much. I appreciate
you joining today and today's episode. I thank
you for all the fantastic insight. I certainly
have learned a lot, and I'm sure the
audience
are are applauding behind the curtains here. So
so thank you so much again.
(54:43):
Thanks for having me, Eric. I appreciate it.
Thank you for tuning in to The Social
Hotel Year. If you enjoyed this episode,
please take a moment to leave us a
review on YouTube. Give it a thumbs up,
and don't forget to hit the subscribe button
to stay updated.
If you're listening to the podcast,
please write a review on the Apple Podcast.
You can accomplish that by going to Apple
(55:04):
Podcast on your mobile
device. We have an incredible lineup of guests
coming up your way, so stay tuned for
more thoughtful
thought provoking conversations.
Until next time, take care, and keep exploring.
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