David Riggs: Stop Marketing Before You Talk to Customers

0:00 · Introduction and David Riggs background

Nathan Smith:0:01
All right, welcome back to the Why Marketing Sucks podcast. Today we have a good friend, David Riggs, here with us to join. David, how are you doing today?

David Riggs:0:10
Good man. How are you?

Nathan Smith:0:11
I'm doing fantastic. So David, for those of for those listening, explain who you are, what you do, who you work for, anything like that.

David Riggs:0:20
Yeah. my name is David Riggs. I've done a number of things really over a professional career. started in corporate finance and realized I probably wasn't built for corporate finance and ended up starting an agency called Numa. exited that agency over a year ago now, last May of twenty five, and then took a little bit of time off, reconfigured what I wanted to take a run at next. really tried all the things, including not working. and decided that I wanted to buy small businesses instead. So I have purchased a few since then and nowadays really just run a small portfolio, just me and a few others and we do a lot of consulting and a lot of capital work and try and buy small businesses and then for those not looking to sell, if we can do some consultative work to help them continue to grow, we do.

Nathan Smith:1:15
What kind of small businesses are you looking to purchase? Like any industry in particular?

David Riggs:1:20
Yeah, I've been pretty independent of industry or indifferent in in of industry, maybe is the best way to put it. for me, I think small business is critically important to the success of America, but also the success of the communities that they support. So, while maybe the business advice that someone would give me would be to niche down and build something around a certain ICP or a certain type of business, sure.

I think that's a great way to make sure margins are great, knowledge base is shared and you scale up quickly. For me, it's one of the things that I feel like I maybe left behind a little bit of that world with the last agency. My incentives aren't necessarily just financial, it's more impact. And I really want to make sure that while small business I do think is getting hollowed out in America, I can do my little part to keep it from being hauled out as quickly and and maybe continue to support that backbone that supported America for such a long time. So I say all of that. the the holdings vary from a coffee shop to a cabinet company to a gym to a health clinic to a couple other professional services firms. So kind of all over the place. which is unique and fun. There's a lot of similarities within those businesses that I don't think often meets the eye if you were to look at them. But when you dig deep enough into the businesses and you really look hard enough and you see how they operate and you see how they deliver products, goods, services to customers, you realize that they all share about ninety to ninety five percent of the same DNA. There's some uniqueness to each, but a lot of them have the same rhythm rhythms and the same problems and the same opportunities, which has been fun. So a lot of learning lessons across all of them, but trying to find ways to continue to support communities with small business.

1:44 · Choosing small business acquisitions over niche strategy

Nathan Smith:3:11
What's the favorite kind of community you like to support?

David Riggs:3:15
y so I think I think when we think of business, at least in America, I think, you know, Amazon and Apple and Microsoft come to mind and I think they're exceptions to the rule and they're probably more monopolistic in a way than really what true capitalism is. I think they're an awesome execution of capitalism, but when you think of small business and you think about how many Americans are employed, they are employed by a small business. And I think small business is defined under twenty million, thirty million Something of that sort. but as we think about the communities, right? It's a small business that you maybe don't think a lot of employs fifteen to twenty-five people, but they've been a staple of that community for quite a while. And I think the best small businesses and the ones that stay around long enough are actively giving back to their community. So they don't exist. But it's like if you always use the example if you go to Little League baseball game, the sponsors that you see on the front and s in the backs of the jerseys.

Probably the parents or friends of parents, small businesses that have really made a difference in that community. And the ones that have more of that storied past and storied impact on the community are the ones that I like trying to support or at least going after the support. yeah, I I think it's maybe even l at least for that answer, less about the community, more about the business, but specifically community, as much as I'd love to impact all small business in America, I've really been focused on Colorado. So a lot of the holdings are within driving distance to me. I think that's an important part of it as well. How can I continue to support the businesses that maybe I even supported? Many of these I was customers at before. So I think that's a unique way to to service it as well. I think small business is critically important for America, but it's gonna be hard to boil the ocean right out of the gate. So supporting a lot in your front range Colorado has been exciting.

Nathan Smith:5:05
I mean that's all interesting. I do have a question for you that's probably gonna be hard to answer because it's gonna be dependent on the industry, the c the business and all of that. But in terms of your portfolio right now, what's working the best? What type of business?

David Riggs:5:19
What's working? Yeah. you'd be surprised. Really all of them have similar-ish margins. there's a few that are local to Colorado but have digital footprints. So they don't carry office spaces and things like that. Those are always going to be a little bit better if you talk about working best from a financial standpoint on terms of margin. leases are expensive, office spaces are expensive, but I'd say the ones that I'm most excited about. in terms of growth, the ones that I think can have the most benefit are ironically the ones that do have a physical presence. digital is great. Digital allows you a lot, but physical presence means that you're physically a part of the community and it's really hard to overlook and ignore. the similarity between all those businesses though are the ones that are doing the best, the ones that I'm a most excited about are the ones that produce some type of wow moment with the customer. you're familiar with the coffee shop. as you walk into Vibe, you look around and you're like, wow, this place is really nice. Much nicer than the traditional coffee shop. That is that is the first and only thing that I think a lot of customers think of. And it's really a big reason why I chased after the the people who started it to put my money where my mouth was. It creates a wow moment. It's an incredible business. downstream, I don't think we necessarily do anything unique with

5:42 · Creating immediate customer wow moments in physical spaces

Nathan Smith:6:27
Every time.

David Riggs:6:47
Coffee, right? But we treat the customer very well. We provide them a wow moment. We care for them while they're in our actual physical space. And I think that goes a long way with people, especially in the way that businesses have treated customers now. that's changed quite a bit. I I don't think it's always about the experience. I think it's a lot more about margin expansion. So yeah, I think the the companies that are doing the best are the ones that have some type of wow in them. If you think of Arsenal as well, you've been over there. Very untraditional gym and what we've combined in terms of our service offerings, but I I've joked many times, it is very clean and when you walk in, you are wowed by how big the space actually is. Those are two things that very quickly win you over. Just get a foot in the door and keep us top of mind or at least keep the interest high so that you can go experience a l the rest of it. So I always try and show the customer that one, they are top of mind in what we've built and how we built it, but two, make sure they know that very quickly. I think a lot of businesses that I see, admittedly ones that maybe I'm not invested in, they delay the wow or they don't really understand what makes them unique and different. And the sooner that you can get that in front of a customer, the better. And really that's what I've been trying to do for I'd say the last six to nine months working with a lot of these brands is what actually makes you unique? Why why you? Why do you deserve to be in business? Once you answer that question, really lead with that from a messaging and a marketing standpoint, things can really Change for the better.

Nathan Smith:8:15
I mean, both of the examples you gave Vibe and Arsenal, there is a wow factor when you walk in. But there's also a wow factor of like when you meet the employees there, Vibe, especially, or actually both of them, just in obviously two different ways. Actually, we'll go with Arsenal. Like everybody there is very tight-knit. They're all very personable, they're all very friendly. They're actually just cool ass fucking people to talk to. Which makes the experience that much better. It makes you want to go back. Is there a part in which when you invest in an

David Riggs:8:28
Two very different, yeah.

David Riggs:8:37
Mm-hmm.

Nathan Smith:8:44
business that that is like one of the first things you look for. Like do they have the people put in basically in the right seat to allow for it to be successful? And if they don't, like what do you do with that?

David Riggs:8:56
Yeah, whenever there's an investment opportunity, there's always a reason that that company's looking for an investment opportunity. There's always some will call it a problem. I I do follow back on the term and opportunity though, right? Like there's a reason the door is open for someone else to come put capital in the business. Those reasons are broad. They're wide ranging. They're very different. Some are financial, some are marketing, some are sales, some are operations. That's fine. There's a few things though that if I see I won't invest in, and typically that is just Do I fundamentally enjoy being here? I'm gonna have to force people to be here. So a lot of times I will secret shop whatever I'm thinking about buying or investing into, whether me or someone else. So even when I was thinking about the Arsenal deal way back when, there are a few friends here that never heard of Arsenal. I paid both, I think, fifty dollars to go shop at the space. One of them is still a customer, the other one loved it. He just ended up not going, it was too far away for him. And Some things I can't change, right? Physical distance for people, but that really proved to me that okay, like the intangibles that I really need to exist here do exist. The rest can be solved. And I think if you were to deduce business down to its most simplistic form, there's a reason that somebody's using your good and service. And at the end of the day, as logical as you can make that purchase, it comes down to the people that you're either gonna be working with or working for. it goes a long way. So At least for me, right, if I'm gonna put my money where my mouth is, I want these businesses to be part of my daily habit and daily action. I wanna actually spend time with these businesses and enjoy being there. I don't want it to be a hassle and think I'm grateful that the people I do get to work with, all of them are time well spent, which is good.

Nathan Smith:10:41
I mean it's all very interesting, but I'm also interested in knowing

Nathan Smith:10:47
You said you started in the finance world, then you had an agency, now you're investing in businesses. Like what was the process of you pretty much getting out of college, getting a job and being like, Hey, this isn't for me? And then like how how what were those stepping stones to get you to where you are?

David Riggs:11:02
Yeah, I was always told that I was good with numbers, and I think good with numbers everyone translated to you should go be in finance. And certainly grateful because I think that path led me here. Good with finance, just because I was good or sorry, interested in finance because I was good with numbers, that doesn't always scale the same, right? Just because I'm good with numbers doesn't mean that it has to be finance. And I I look back, no one in my family was an entrepreneur, but we all have entrepreneurial mindsets. So I don't think anyone came to mind of you should go run a business. And for me it didn't either. I didn't really know it was a potential or possibility. I just knew that it was something I could go do. But that was for someone else. And I think after I took what Yeah, first in my family to ever run a business. I my mom has worked in a hospital for as long as I can remember, and my dad's been in

Nathan Smith:11:43
But you're you're the first in your family?

I didn't know that actually.

David Riggs:11:55
Policing, public safety, and most recently a pastor in some private work. But I'd say just recently my dad has really become an entrepreneur in terms of kind of the endeavors that he's going after. But no one in my family's been an entrepreneur and then far even to my grandparents. both sides had people serve in the military, both sides had people working very normal jobs. So there are Right, if you strip out what an entrepreneur is down to its core traits, that's resembled quite a bit in my family, but no one's ever been an entrepreneur. They've been the the word that you'd see an entrepreneur, right? You're working within a company but have those same mindsets. But yeah, I didn't really know it was a possibility. And I know that sounds odd. Clearly they're entrepreneurs, right? Someone had to start the business that you're utilizing, right? I drove a car, I used an iPhone, like all of those were businesses that were started. Just never really thought that that was for me.

So started out in corporate finance. I remember onboarding and realizing that I made a pretty grave mistake. And it wasn't the people that were there. It was just this isn't how I'm motivated and this isn't how I work. So told myself I'd stick it out for as long as the contract was two months. I lasted nine months or two years, excuse me. I lasted nine months. and after the nine months, I decided I was already building some websites on the side. So we'll just do websites full time. We'll go build a business about websites. And We did. that was the beginning of Numa and that went from February of twenty-one to May of twenty five. like I mentioned, exited from that. And I was really kind of confused about what I wanted to do next. I had a direction and I certainly had an interest, but I didn't have an expression of that interest. I knew I wanted to be businessy. I knew I wanted to maybe use a little bit more skill set in finance and deal making, but I equally knew what I didn't want. And I I listed a lot of those things out really on a piece of paper right here of like These were the things I loved about Numa. These were the things I did not love about Numa. If I wanted to do something next, I wanted to be in the column of things that I loved and things that I thought I had a skill set in. And fortunately spent some time, thought about never working it again, thought about working a lot more, thought about different companies I could start, kind of went back and forth, and I was grateful in a weird way that I did the deal with Arsenal before I ever exited Numa. I was actually doing both at the same time. It was like

12:13 · Moving from corporate finance to founding an agency

David Riggs:14:16
This was just as fun, if not more fun. I got to use my strengths. Financially, the ends were met and I I kinda got the same dollar amount or dollar return that I would have from Numa. This is pretty fun. Maybe I just go do more of those. So I'm famous for maybe just doing things quickly and experimenting. everyone always quotes the move fast break things. I get it. But for me it's what's the minimal

Nathan Smith:14:36
Yeah.

David Riggs:14:43
amount of work I can put in something to experiment with the fact that maybe I should go do that, right? I'll give you an easy example. I thought that I wanted to do an Iron Man. So great, what's the easiest way to do that? I'm gonna just pay for couple months of training. And I realized I don't actually enjoy any of the training and I'm not that motivated to do it. I'm gonna go do more ultra marathons instead. And and that's really what I've done. So for me it was if I liked Arsenal, what the heck? Let's go pick up another deal and just see what happens. So I picked up one actual capital-based deal, invested in a in a small business, and then did one consulting deal and just treated them the same as I'm gonna work with you the same way that I would work with any other company that I put my money in or not, and just see if I like this. And for the most part, I did. So I continued to carry down that path. And I think every role that anyone has, right, there are characteristics of what you liked and what you're really good at. There are characteristics of what you just did because the role was asked.

For me, every time I've changed roles, I've really written down the best parts of that, the worst parts of that, and really tried to target that next role to hone in on the best parts. And you'll learn some new things about what you didn't like about that next role, right? You'll write it down and you'll change again. But for me, it's kind of been that constant hone in of what am I really good at and what do I enjoy, trying to overlap those in every role that I did. And there's already things about what I do now that I'm not a he biggest fan of, but there's a lot more stuff that I'm a fan of, right? And every time I've switched a role or really redefined what I'm gonna work on, that list of things I don't like gets smaller and smaller. That list of things I do like gets bigger and bigger. And I think it's just honing in on what I'm good at and and really why I'm good at it and how I can take that to market.

Nathan Smith:16:26
Yeah.

When it comes to both like when you were running your agency and now you're investing in businesses. Actually, I have so many questions based off of what you said. actually I want to go back into the agency and kind of how so you've act you exited that agency and that's kind of how you got to where you are now. For anybody listening, I mean, even myself, I have an agency. and I worked with you in the past. So I can answer some of these questions for you so I'll eliminate some of the answers that I you would probably give. But what basically what are the steps in which somebody either just a business or agency that has to take in order to get to the exit. So one I'll give you a couple of because I've worked with you like I know how you are. You're one of the hardest working people in the room. You're also one of the smartest people in the room. So like leave that out of it because like that one I already know. And anybody listening, I'm just going to tell you now. But outside of that, what What what would you tell somebody that's just starting an agency or just starting a business, that's looking to exit, whether it's a year from now, ten years from now, what kind of tips or tricks would you give?

David Riggs:17:34
Yeah, I'm gonna at least comment on the two because I wanna add additional commentary that while I appreciate your comment, yeah, that I I work hard and I'm smart, that's always a good compliment to hear. What I would say is that I was never the hardest working person prior in anything professionally. and I certainly wouldn't say that I was the smartest. So I think the two things that I would always throw out to people there is that I had a background in finance and ended up in marketing and

Nathan Smith:17:39
Yeah. But those are just the easiest things to say.

17:57 · The Pareto principle and patience in business execution

David Riggs:18:03
Grew the company very quickly and exited very quickly. There's two big things that I apply really anywhere there. One is the Preto optimality rule. 20% of the input drives 80% of the output. I'm sure you've heard that before. There's even, I'd say, a more defined role of like 10% of the input can drive 90% of the output if you know where to look. For me, whenever I think about learning, I'm probably not the most depth based person in what I know across the board.

I know finance and I know deal making well, especially now and even before what I'm doing. But there's a lot of stuff that I can talk very densely on, but I I'm not maybe an executor of it. I just know how it plays together in the role of business, right? Being good at marketing is being good at marketing. Being good at business means how does marketing relate to customer success and operations and IT and delivery, right? How does everything really blend together to to create this really nice harmonious business that you want to grow? A lot of that is education. There's if behind me, right, you got a book that Bill Ackman recommends, Bankruptcy Investing, Leadership Not By the Book. You read that one. There's a couple others behind me as well. I'm a book fiend, whether I'm reading it, whether it's on Kindle, whether it's a summary of it. Anytime a book's recommended, I'll go buy it or go listen to a podcast of the author and just try and get the quick hit learning lessons from it. And I'm constantly trying to figure that out, which to whatever degree I think has helped my intelligence, but it certainly didn't start there. And I think that's the biggest part of How funny is it that I went from finance to marketing? Two things that are very, very different, and pretty quickly learned how to make marketing work. And I I think that's more of a skill set of how to learn and the pattern recognition that comes with how to really piece things together. on the working hard side of things, right? I I think it just comes down to if you're not wanting to work hard for it, it just might not be the right thing for you. Now.

At times there were things about Numa and things that I do now that I don't like and I don't really want to work hard for, but the bigger picture is what I'm going for, right? Now it feels like I'm saving small business, at least in Colorado now and hopefully in America later. Okay, I can get over myself for the evening and get some of the work done that I need to because what an awesome mission. I I think that's the biggest thing about working hard, but there are gonna be moments in time where it's just gonna suck and you gotta deal with it sucking. And and I think that's the uncomfortable part of it is that.

David Riggs:20:22
There's so many quotes about this. There's one in I think the Art of War, Sun Tzu. I'm gonna butcher the quote, but it goes something like, wait by the river long enough and that you'll see the bodies of your enemies pass by. It's morbid, it's crude, but patience and staying in the game, just playing the game long enough for everybody else to quit does make you win, even if you don't enjoy it. So I had a pretty hard nose about me to stick into Numa for as long as I needed. Right? I think Because the door opened, I walked through it. But if that door would have opened to exit in 10 years from now, I still would have been playing the game. And I'm really confident in that. So I think those are the two the two ancillary points that I'll I'll add. I think the third part about how did we get to exit quick enough. I would be remiss not to say that luck always plays a role in an exit. So while Numa felt like I did everything I could have to do it and I did all the work, I I did it. I I am a person of faith, but also a person of realism and I think doors were open because I put myself in those situations, but doors were also open because those were the situations that I ended up being in, right? Like I didn't do all the work, and I think it would be futile for me to say that. as you think about the business though, how did we get to exit, the tactical business advice? I'm a big believer in you you're a sports person, and I'm sure many of the people listening to this are. If you could walk up to The plate in an MLB game and always hit a home run, he'd be like, Of course, why would I ever bat 300 or 250 when I could always hit a home run? There's a way to do that. In baseball, no. in business, I think there's an easier way to hit a home run every single time, and a lot of people don't take to it. And it's just talking to customers. So many times with the businesses that I'm working in, we just do things and we don't really ever think to talk to the customer. Does the customer what the does the customer want it?

Does the customer ask for it? Will the customer even pay for it? Do you find it interesting or do the customer find it interesting? And the return to customer of how we can best service and shepherd our customers' time with us, I think is a really important feature or benefit of a company, right? And I would say if you strip away everything about Numa in terms of anything I've even said in this podcast, what made us work well, at the heart of it, I loved talking to customers. I loved figuring out.

David Riggs:22:49
how to better serve them. And the reality is that NUMA was started because I sat down all of my business owner friends and said, hey, what do you hate about your business? And through the myriad of answers that I got from all of them, there was one denominator that each of them called out, and it was that they hated their marketing, they hated their website, and they needed it to be fixed. So on the spot I pitched them all a website for 10 grand. None of them said yes. One of them said yes for five. And we were off to the races. So I'm a I'm a customer person at heart. I want to talk to customers as much as possible. Not all feedback's good. I think I have a little bit of a sense to figure out what's good and what's not. But if I ever wanted to get feedback from something, if I ever wanted to improve the business, I actually don't care initially what anyone on my team says. I want to get customers words first and then have the team support that story. To me, the customer is always right. And if we build it for the customer and think of the customer in mind, we're Setting ourselves up for success.

Nathan Smith:23:50
I completely agree. What about Numa in terms of you talk to customers? What did you find that you were not doing enough of that led you to be successful in terms of like pretty much the experience that the agency provided these clients?

David Riggs:24:08
Yeah. I take the stance that most agencies have a good motive. Most agencies have a good heart. Most agencies are probably decent, if not great, at the work that they do. a lot of them suffer from I'm too smart syndrome and forget to communicate. And that happens not only in agencies, that happens everywhere. any like CPA tax bookkeepers struggle with this as well. we overcommunicated to a disgusting amount at Numa.

And clients can attest to this, you can attest to this as well. We talked to our clients consistently. We asked for feedback consistently. When we met, the meetings had a very strict agenda to get the information that we needed to serve them better. And it got to the point to where the clients would end up backing off in a weird way because they knew that we were working on it because of how much communication they got. And it built a good level of trust. I would contend, and I think there's public data, not even data from Numa that would show this.

Customers will invest and retain with an agency if they have slightly less results and slightly more communication because the communication is valuable to them, so they know what's going on. I've seen people leave agencies with great ROAS, great returns, great design, great marketing, because they haven't really heard from them strategically in over two, three, four months. To me, that's inexcusable. To some, that's okay. But again, right, what does the customer want? The customer wants to be heard and loved and cared for in their marketing.

They don't really care if the design is incredible and you spent so much time on it. That's not important to them. And I think a lot of agencies, because they're founded by people great at the craft, over-index on the product. Sorry to say that the product is a small part of it, because a lot of work product can work in the market and deliver results. And what matters is how you care for the customer, the relationship that you build. And I think that was another thing, like we talked about with Numa, right?

We just built something for the customers that was better for the customers because it's what they asked for. I had no interest in marketing in a roundabout way because I was from a finance background, but I didn't really know anything about it. My college didn't have a marketing degree. I really had no basis of education on this whatsoever. The only person that was going to educate me was what the customer needed and then seeing those trends and patterns across customers and that's ultimately what we built.

24:31 · Why overcommunication keeps clients longer than pure ROAS

Nathan Smith:26:26
Yeah, I mean, I remember a lot of those conversations with clients, and I've taken that into my agency and kind of those were the founding or the building blocks in which I've done it. And even now when I talk to clients, some clients now, because we do the same thing in terms of communication, we overcommunicate. The way that I frame it to clients now is like results are pretty much a given. Not in a way that it's like a guarantee, but the everything everything's built around the experience. Clients now have even come back to us and be like, You send us too much. And I'm like, wait.

When we first started talking, you complained about your last agency not communicating enough. You got like one thing a month. Now you get like three to five things from us a week. And they're like, Yeah, it's too much. And I'm like, Well, all right, I guess we'll just cut all of that out and you'll just get one thing a month. And they're like, Nah, just keep sending it to me. I don't have to respond. I'm like, Yeah, exactly.

David Riggs:27:06
Mm-hmm.

David Riggs:27:14
Mm-hmm.

There's a got it from somebody that we both know. and I'm sure he might have created it. He might not have created it, I actually don't know. But every client interaction that you have, there are two cards on the table, and you get to choose between two of the cards, and the client chooses the other one, right? you might remember this. There's a card that says, It's the end of the world, everything's burning, please help. And there's a card that says, No big problem. And I have always encouraged anyone that I work with to always lean on the it's the end of the world.

Everything's burning, please help card, because the only card the client has left is it's no big deal. So if you overreact, over index, over care, over serve, put over in front of any positive word there if you want, and really show the customer that you are wildly in tune with what they want. The only option they have and how to react is, this is no big deal, they're on top of it. You pull that card long enough, suddenly they become they don't even think twice. they're definitely on top of it. I trust them.

And as soon as you can get a customer to realize that, your relationship is better because then you turn from a vendor to an advisor, which is a completely different conversation. Maybe we can sneak some of it in here, but most agencies die the death that they do because they stay in this world of being a vendor. No one wants a vendor. Vendors suck. There are whole departments to deal with vendors. There are departments like procurement that just beat up vendors because they don't really respect what the vendor does. They're going after a discount. They don't care about the relationship because you're just a vendor.

And vendor is kind of that negative word. And I think, well, it shouldn't be, it still can carry the right connotation of you don't want to be a vendor, you want to be an advisor, you want to be a partner. there's another great book, Getting Naked by Patrick Linchoney. Hilariously bad title for what the book is, but I think it's done on purpose because it gets people to raise their eyebrow. Actually, it's done on purpose because it gets people to raise their eyebrow. But that is a great book next to trusted advisor on how to be a client.

David Riggs:29:14
I wouldn't even say servant, but a client shepherd. How do you care for that client immensely? those are both great case studies and how to do it. And I would bet a million dollars if I could, a gazillion dollars if I could, on the fact that I could and still could be probably the best customer success person because those two books are so ingrained in who I am and how I service a client. You could put me into a customer success role in a product and service I don't know anything about.

And I guarantee you I'd outperform just because I have a good understanding of how to be that advisor and how to be that partner for the client. most times not, people just want to be heard, man. And I think those two books are a good execution and behavior of that.

Nathan Smith:29:56
I agree. Both are really good books. But I know the why'd I just draw a blank? Getting naked book. I quite literally like that has framed a lot of what I do and I actually train a lot of my team based off of that book. It really is.

David Riggs:30:10
It's great book. Great writing as well.

Nathan Smith:30:14
Well, I want to go back to something you said earlier. A lot of the things that you did, whether it was with New Emily Agency or even the things that you do now with the businesses you invest in, you like doing the things you like, but there's also things that suck. What aspects actually I'll just ask you this because I ask everybody this question. We'll stick with one, why marketing sucks. To you, one, does marketing suck? We'll start there. And then I'm gonna get into how marketing has evolved. within the different businesses that you operate now. But first question, do you think marketing sucks?

David Riggs:30:52
I I think marketing's confused, both as an industry and as a profession. they're confused on what matters. And what matters in marketing is how do you get in front of the right customer and tidy up your messaging. What doesn't matter is how pretty the brand deck is, how pretty the website is, how pretty this ad is. look at these impressions. And like these are all talking points that I think if you're in the space long enough, you see LinkedIn posts about. But the hilarious part is that.

Yeah, I see all the LinkedIn posts and nothing's changed. I I think marketing has this never-ending identity crisis about what role and purpose does it play. And I have no graphic design skills. I have very limited, I would say, really just design skills, paid media skills. I think I'm a pretty darn good copywriter and and understand what I need to write to grab attention. And I still think I could outmarket because I'm talking to that customer. And again, it it comes back to the customer, surprisingly, everything does. But I think broadly a lot of people see marketing as sucking because it's been a confusing thing. And at the end of the day, marketing is finding how your buyers buy and taking the company and overlapping it and intertwining the two, right? And one of my favorite things every time I jump into a cust company, it's like, Hey, talk me through your marketing. They're like, we do this and we do some cold email and we retarget over here and we've tried direct mail and like, it's so great. This is such a cool system. And I'm like, Okay.

All of that's good, I would like you to tell me, when is the last time you've purchased from a cold email? When's the last time you've purchased from a random Facebook post once a week? And you're like, wow, they're so committed to posting. I must buy from them. Right. We're clueless on this a little bit, which I think is funny. We do all of these marketing actions and tactics, and yet we never really consider what I buy from these things. And my very quick advice to any company that I work with is hey, do the things that you would buy from.

And not that you're always the customer, but typically they get a very good understanding of the motive of that, of like how you buy in the market is probably really similar to how your customer buys. You might be buying different things. There might be some nuances there, right? But if you start to say, How do you buy, you very quickly hear, I get influenced by a referral, and then I follow on social and I see some ads and I keep getting hit with the ads, and I'll go search and I'll go figure out what other products are like, and I'll see some more reviews and I'll find them on Google, and then I find them on chat.

31:15 · Fixing the identity crisis in modern marketing tactics

David Riggs:33:19
Suddenly it's this interweb of how they consider their buying process, and it's not as simple as I sent a cold email and they purchased. So I think that's where why marketing sucks and why marketing's equally as confused is because we are just doing things to do things, and we're not really focused on how do people actually buy. We're just focused on look at this cool automation I can put together that retargeted someone from over here and sends them over there. That's not helpful. Right? So I think that's the biggest issue with marketing is that we've forgotten that we still do need to get buyers to buy. But man, in the last twelve months, twenty-four months, a lot of that has changed in terms of how buyers buy, how buyers search, how buyers advertise, right? Everything's different and somehow everything's the same as that the customer still matters and how they purchase a product should be something that we target first, and then build a campaign from there.

Nathan Smith:34:12
I agree. I think the biggest thing that's changed is the disconnect in the different marketing efforts that businesses have. You can't always connect the dots where you could be spending X in SEO, you could be spending X in PPC, you could be doing social, you could do email, whatever it is. But like you said, that doesn't mean they converted right there within that channel. You might get retargeted later, or you might go to Claude like the next day and be like, actually, do I need this software? What is the best software for this problem?

Then you get cited there and they get listed. But the disconnect now is like people are might not be investing as much as they used to because they don't know the return in which that customer actually purchased from. So they can't connect the dots on the money that they're spending and the money that they're making. When now it's more so, what are you spending as a whole and what are you making as a whole? Is the ROI still positive? Rather than just like individual channels being individual channels, everything's pretty much. one large channel that you have to look at it in that way. Do you one, do you agree? And two, is that kind of how you're framing this into the businesses that you work with with your background?

David Riggs:35:20
Yeah, I've gone I've gone a little more simple with a lot of the companies. as we think about cost per lead or marketing spend, there are ways to split it out, but I just put marketing spin as a line item on a scorecard. I put the number of leads we generated as a line item on a scorecard. And the the funky thing that I've done away with is attribution. it's there, it's tracking, I don't look at it. I asked the customer how they found us. in a lot of fields recently, I've made it required.

And I've also made it longer than like a hundred characters or something like that. So they just can't write in Google. Tell me a story. And ironically, that works quite well because you realize that it's one multi-touch, two, all of your marketing efforts are playing a role. And three, there's absolutely no benefit in breaking it down line by line by line because you miss all of the nuance that gets you there. at the end of the day, I spin on marketing, marketing returns leads. How marketing return leads is vast. unique to each customer, but there are definitely some themes there. And again, my favorite thing is how and why did that person buy? I think attribution nowadays, it's not even asking the right question. It's not, hey, why are you choosing to reach out and purchase from us today? Why do you need this vendor? What were you looking forward? Where did you hear about us? Google. Okay, great. We're visible on Google. Why did you search me on Google?

What made you look for this person anyway? And I think a lot of this can come down to sales team qualifying and learning about the prospect as well. And a lot of times that doesn't happen. so there's a lot wrapped into this. There's a lot to say about this. but I think the most simple way is is I've simplified it down to we spin on marketing, here's our cost per lead, blended. I'll look for some low performers every once in a while. There are ways to trim the fat, but then I'm really looking for that story that the customer tells about where they found us and then Revert that all the way back to the top to inform the campaign.

35:43 · Removing attribution noise and tracking simple blended metrics

Nathan Smith:37:17
Makes sense. What are you it might be different per business, but what are you investing in right now?

David Riggs:37:26
What are we investing in right now? I so a lot of the companies have a very good, detailed, efficient, I would say, like Google search, Google paid, meta paid campaigns going. Like those have proven to be ROI positive. But if we go all the way back to the top of the conversation, a lot of these companies have wow moments when you go visit their space. How can we better bring that wow moment to you in different forms from a marketing standpoint? So while we have these campaigns that are running that are well.

How else can we test? What else can we be unique? Is there a unique angular offer that we can do? Should we try direct mail? Should we completely flip an offer on its head and give away something for free instead? So there are a lot of ways that I've thought about that, a lot of ways that we're targeting. But what I'm trying to do now is find unique ways to get the same attention that we were getting before. But make sure that our baseline and our foundation is set. Until we have a good baseline and foundation, I don't want to talk about unique campaign ideas. They're not helpful. Very rarely you're gonna hit a home run.

I would much rather go after the singles and doubles that I know are to be true in these certain campaign types and then build up from there. But the last thing I want to do is sit in a conference room and try and figure out how to do some unique crazy idea that I don't know is gonna work. I'd rather be safe, use what I know is gonna work, because right now, Google search, Google Paid, Facebook prospecting, kind of a cold outreach, all work to get attention. A basic retargeting campaign works to bring them back to the site. with some unique follow-ups and offers. That is a tried and true method that works for just about everybody. We get that implemented, we get it working, and then we look elsewhere.

Nathan Smith:39:03
You typically doing your marketing now in-house and building teams out because you have the background in doing so? Or do you hire agencies to do it for you?

David Riggs:39:13
Fifty fifty. I think teams naturally graduate to go in-house because of size and because of speed and because of concept. But I think without any type of program in place, the ones that do use an agency are using it to kind of skip the line and get there quicker. it's really hard to build a marketing program in-house when there's no one sitting there. Kind of a chicken in the egg, though. It's a lot easier to build it whenever someone's sitting there. At some point you need to put someone in the marketing seat.

But oftentimes it's just not worth the lift if you're a small enough company or you're big enough, you're growing quickly, but you don't have the time to fix all of it. it's a lot easier just to rock it and say, hey, I'm gonna work with an agency, because what does an agency bring? Specialized knowledge, specialized scope, specialized execution. They've done what you're gonna do, and they've done it so many times before that they can do it so quickly. That's always a benefit. At some point that shifts and changes and a company be can can become, I'd say, a little too complex for an agency, but That's few and far between, I think, and also it scales down the line. There are a lot of people, even at Numa and then elsewhere that I know have used agencies for five, ten, fifteen years 'cause the relationship works and there's no reason to change it. So for us it's fifty fifty. I think it probably retains fifty fifty based on needs and wants and goals of of those companies. And I think that's the fun of it is finding the right puzzle piece that helps solve or fix the issue that we're having.

Nathan Smith:40:37
Very true. Especially with small businesses, it's much cheaper for them to just have an agency who has the team than it is to go spend all that money building the team, taking the time to do it.

David Riggs:40:45
I think building the team right has a lot of questions that come with it, like, I don't actually know how to build this team and that's fine. Don't force it. Let's just work backwards through

Nathan Smith:40:58
Exactly. All right, we'll cool. We're gonna wrap up here soon. I do have one more question for you based off of everything that has gotten you here. And anybody who follows you who knows who you are and knows all the success that you've had, I think they might also be wondering this too. If you were to restart and you had to do it all from scratch, where's the first place you would start? Would you go with an agency? What kind of business would you do? I'll just leave it there.

David Riggs:41:27
In terms of marketing or in terms of the overall business?

Nathan Smith:41:31
In terms of just being successful.

David Riggs:41:34
Ooh, that's a good one. in this exact moment in time, there is a aggressive return to in-person events. Everyone wants to meet in person. All the time, everywhere. I don't care. I don't like going to those things. But if I if you were to click the reset button on me, you better believe the first thing I would do is to go to all those events and I would network incredibly hard and incredibly well.

To get in front of all these people and say, okay, you're a business owner. I guess go to networking events with business owners and say, what do you hate about your business? Tell me. And you might get different answers. You might continue to get marketing, but dig until you find a theme that you're really interested in. Tell me about how you manage your finance. How do you manage your month end? How do you manage your marketing? How do you manage your team? How are you implementing AI with your companies? Like all these are talking points. See what they hate.

Or frame it and say, hey, what's something that you would pay a million dollars to solve, ten million dollars to solve, or two grand to solve, right? Start to pick your poison in terms of what type of problem you are going to solve. Then I would say is you get deep into that, just ask them if there's anyone else you can talk to that's struggling with the same issue. Just go do some customer research, figure it out. But what you're doing is building one, a lead list and two, you're just listening to people talk. Build a little I I IC or not ICP, excuse me, MVP of the product.

If it's a product of a service, put it on a Google Doc. But like the same thing that I did with Numa could be applicable here. What are you going to solve with these businesses that you're helping serve? And I think for me, get into a room with a bunch of business owners, ask them what problems or opportunities they see, and then try and do as minimal amount of work as possible to solve it. And then go put it right back in front of them and ask them if you could do that, what would they pay, what the value would be, and then kind of rinse and repeat from there. I don't I guess I wouldn't focus too much on the product or service initially. I'd focus on how close I can get to listening to the customer and making sure that we're headed in the right direction. but that's exactly what I would do. I think because of this surge in events, you can get easy access to people and they all love to talk. Use that to your advantage. Get in front of them and see what they're struggling with.

41:50 · How David would restart from scratch using customer feedback

Nathan Smith:43:50
Great answer. I appreciate that. I'd everything you've mentioned this entire time, for anybody who's been listening with one ear and it's going out the other, really all you have to do to be successful is actually fucking talk to people. Listen to what they have to say, find their pain points, be a real person, talk to a human like a human.

David Riggs:44:04
Crazy how that works.

And this man, this is the thing of I'll even I I'm maybe I play close to a venture capital world because I'm investing in businesses, but I invest in a a very different business. So I think they're maybe comparable in some ways, but not comparable in many others. But I say this tongue in cheek because I know plenty of venture capitalists that are friends. I don't like VCs. Not because I don't like the person.

But because typically when they're investing in these brands or businesses, they're investing in how they hope people will work. They're gonna change the way that people and it's like, okay, you're taking a moonshot, but go talk to customers and tell me that that's an actual problem that they have. Or is it just something that you're interested in doing that you don't like and you think it's a cool market? Those are two very different things. And I oftentimes see these big investments into companies that it's like, yeah, people aren't gonna do that. It's just a basic human psychology thing. And 18 to 24 months later, they quietly disappear. I don't want to take a moonshot and change how people work. I think that's someone else's job, and that's where you get your Steve Jobs and Bill Gates of the world that saw the future a little differently and went to solve it. That's great. Me, I I want to improve the way that people work today. And I I really just want to make their working style better. With all the holdings that I'm in, I have not invented any new way of doing things. We've just chipped away and improved it and made it better and made it the best small business that it can be. And those are two very different things. And for me, the talking to people is where that happens. You can research ideate, look at market trends and say, I know the market's headed this way. I'm gonna build a company in that space. To me that seems like a bet. And I don't think business has to be so much gambling as some people treat it as. So I view it different. There are many ways to do it. There are people far wealthier than I have that have taken boonshots and have hit, but there are people that

David Riggs:46:01
don't really even have a business anymore or employed or back to doing something else because they took a moonshot and missed because they never really validated what was there. So, you know, you're maybe more risk, more reward, but I like to be maybe a little bit more conservative and and know the impact that I can make.

Nathan Smith:46:19
You have time for one more question.

David Riggs:46:21
Course.

Nathan Smith:46:22
Alright, so I've asked pretty much everybody I've talked to so far that's been successful in business marketing, growing brands, all that fun stuff. So you talked a lot about talking to the customer, you talked a lot about kind of all of that. The one thing I want to ask you that I've asked everybody is what it what was your secret sauce? Because of course, you can't you don't have any of this without building the team that you've had behind you. Whether it's the businesses that you're investing in now, Numa, whatever it was, And anybody that looks it up like leave me out of this because I used to work for you. But this is more so like for me too, like as I continue to grow. What was your secret toss in getting people invested in you to help drive the mission that you were trying to achieve to allow you to be successful?

David Riggs:47:09
You know, I think and it's becoming more and more true today. There's a disconnect between the ownership and the leadership level of a company and the rest of the people that do the work. And I think that divide grows a lot of companies. One of my maybe secret sauce, secret skill sets is that I am very good at closing that gap. I'm very good at closing that gap. Maybe not perfect. There are always ways to get better, but I am very good at building rapport with people.

And it I think it's because it's to me, you might call it a skill set. I just want to know about the person that I'm sitting across from and employing. I want to know what you're scared of. I want to know what you're excited about. I actually probably care less about whatever work issue you're gonna raise with me because I'm not the one solving it. You're gonna have a manager, a director port, and things like that. And then even the leadership team I expect to kind of solve these problems independently and it can help where it is.

I want to know what fish you got this weekend. I had this conversation with somebody at one of the companies the other day, and he just kept telling me about this fish he got. Awesome. All I care about is the fish in the moment because it's something you're interested in. And again, I I think you can listen to this advice and take it and apply it and still do it wrong because people won't have the motive. If you know me, you know that I can sit and I can talk to you for an hour on end. And I'm totally content with not sharing a single thing about me. And I just want to hear about you.

What do you care about? What do you want to do? Why why are you on planet Earth and what are you going to do with it? All the way down to what are you excited to do in the next 15 minutes? Like all of that excites me. I think the more that you can see that, and then the more that I can honestly communicate down. Every single time there's a change at any of these companies, I immediately am looking at that founder. If I I'm stick stepping in and playing a little bit of that role, you'll get it from me. But hey guys, here's what the leadership team met on today. Here's what you need to be aware of, and here's what's changing here, how impacting you.

Suddenly everybody's on the same page. And I've often said, and I've even talked to you about this as well, right? If I don't tell you a story about how the company's going, you will tell yourself a far more negative, disgusting version of what is actually happening. And you're gonna get yourself upset about it because it's not truth. And what I see with a lot of these companies is the siloing effect, is where they keep and hoard certain information. And I will be the first to also tell you there are a lot of these companies, or really all of them.

47:32 · Closing the gap between leadership and employees

David Riggs:49:29
Not all information is distributed with the team. I clean some of it up, not because I want to change the fact, but because I'm a big open finance, open PL person, if you will. If I sent the PL to everyone that worked for me, they would look at me confused because it's not something that they know how to read, and that's fine. So what I do is I clean it up. I put in a little bit of a messaging form, I build an analogy around it, and I make it really easy to understand. I am your filter or communication about how that. information's gonna be relayed and how I can put it into the the words of the rest of the people. But I I think I have a a good skill set because I truly want to close the gap between leadership and rest of team. And that's one of the biggest gaps I see whenever I go and invest is that, I don't know what they work on every day or they're so secretive. There's no need to. Let's just talk to the full team because all of us solving the same problems together is going to happen. happen to get us to success much quicker than hiding some of those problems. So I'd say the the secret sauce is anything, right? You strip out all the other skill sets. We've talked a lot about talking to people. Talking to your employees is another one of those people that you should be talking to. But making sure they know the same story that you do, right? There can be varying levels of information, not out of disrespect and silo, but out of it's unapplicable to you. And that's fine. That's a different conversation. But Hopefully at any company I work at, you can quiz the people from top to bottom and they should know the overall stance of the company, how we're performing, what we're doing, what's on the horizon, what's our goals, what we've achieved, where our problems are, and what we can do next, right? And if I'm not doing that right, it's really hard for the team to be bought in.

Nathan Smith:51:03
I agree. Fantastic answer. Well, David, thank you very much for joining us. anybody listening, this is the Why Marketing Sucks podcast. David, before we jump, if anybody wants to look you up, get in touch with you, how can they do so?

David Riggs:51:17
Yep. I post semi frequently on LinkedIn. I'll get back to it. I took the summer off to be outside and it was a nice nice investment. More more miles than emails is the goal. So I think we're there. But I you can find me on LinkedIn, David W. Riggs. I should be the first one to pop up. and then I have gotten back to writing on a newsletter. There's about fifty five hundred, six thousand people subscribed to that. It's called Working Theories.

Nathan Smith:51:23
How did you?

David Riggs:51:46
Essentially they are my working theories of running these businesses of what I'm working on day in and day out, week in and week out. sometimes they're kind of curiosities of here's what I think might happen, and sometimes they're more prescriptive of here's what I did and here's what happened. So hopefully a pretty good behind the scenes of what I get to work on week in and week out, which is exciting. So we're looking at sharing more on that and actually increasing the number of times I write there, which is which is fun. So those are really the two spots. If you're ever in Denver, I will buy you coffee or you can do a workout with me.

That's that's about it. So keep it nice and simple. Maybe we'll go do a workout at Arsenal or go on a trail run. But yeah, that's how you can get in touch.

Nathan Smith:52:24
Awesome. Well, thank you for spending time with us. Everybody listening. See ya.

David Riggs:52:28
Thanks for having me, dude.