Ryan Alford [00:00:01] Hey guys, happy holidays. Really looking forward to this episode of the Radical Company podcast, I think you'll get a lot out of it. I sat down with our growth marketing strategist here at radical Robbie Fitzwater, not I discuss the role of relationship marketing in today's landscape, the reality of organic social media going away and the importance of that relationship and what we describe as chivalry with your existing clients and prospects and how you have to build that relationship over time. Nothing happens fast. And it's really back to branding and the importance of content and providing value to your customers. A lot unpacked here. Hope you enjoy it. 

Ryan Alford [00:00:45] Hey, guys, it's Ryan Alford. Welcome to another episode of the Radical Company podcast. I've said this a few times here lately, Robbie, but it's holiday season and I'm behind. But I am stoked about the podcast. 

Robbie Fitzwater [00:00:59] Everything I feel like everything this time of year is just that slam time where everything is bumping up against next week. Next week, everything is going to go silent for the next two weeks. But, right now it's a scramble. 

Ryan Alford [00:01:11] And so I've got to get a few more gifts. But we are here, as always, at Camaraderie, the Coworking workspace in Greenville, one of our sister companies and the podcast studio. And so Robbie Fitzwater joins me today. He is our growth marketing strategist here at Radical, among several other daily duties that Robbie has, including somewhat of a new father. But welcome. 

Robbie Fitzwater [00:01:36] Try and figure it out. It's good to be here. 

Ryan Alford [00:01:39] Robbie has a really detailed background on the marketing side, which we'll get into. He's also an adjunct lecturer. Am I saying that correctly now? 

Robbie Fitzwater [00:01:49] So I think I need to change it on my LinkedIn. It's technically a lecturer. 

Ryan Alford [00:01:53] So I like lectures, straight lectures now. Yeah. So he's lecturing daily here. Radical, but on the regular at clubs and university. So, you know, we don't just bring in people that say they know what they're doing. We bring in lectures that are telling our youth how to do it. 

Robbie Fitzwater [00:02:13] Hopefully, hopefully I'm educating the youth well enough. But yeah, there comes in MBA programs. So  not always youth. A lot of times are actually older than I am, but 

Ryan Alford [00:02:22] Oh you never go! 

Robbie Fitzwater [00:02:24] It's always fun to get to talk about marketing.  I enjoy it, I can talk for days. You talk about market digital marketing strategy last semester and social media strategy next semester or so. 

Ryan Alford [00:02:35] Oh boy, I love it. Well you get to somewhat practice what you're preaching. Both you're a radical, but then you get to preach there and practice here and, and elsewhere. So you're getting it all. 

Robbie Fitzwater [00:02:49] It's it's it keeps me fresh on the real world perspective side and then it keeps the content relevant on the teaching side. 

Ryan Alford [00:02:58] What's interesting about that is we'll just go down a bunny rabbit hole here early. That was the biggest mistake for me. You know, ecology at Clemson. I was like these professors. I feel like they're wise, but not smart, if that makes any sense. I was like, I feel like what they're telling me is, is there's wisdom here, but I'm not sure how practical it is. 

Robbie Fitzwater [00:03:23] So that was actually my rub. And that's one of the reasons I wanted to get into teaching. It was the gap. It's happening. I previously and again a few years ago, I was actually the director of social media for Columbia University. So, um, Dawngate, I can get into the background later, but was it Clemson University for a while. And while I was there, I always had a content team of student student content creators that were on our team. They were kind of in the weeds, making the donuts for us to develop content for the university. So it was great for them. They got a great experience and they learned a lot of the tools and skills they would need to use later on. They would all go on and get sexy marketing jobs. A lot of their marketing students weren't necessarily always getting marketing jobs because they're competitive. It's a bloodbath for marketing jobs. But for educators on the marketing side, it's tough because marketing, digital marketing in general is a complete dumpster fire. As a practitioner you've got to work really hard to keep up, let alone as an educator where you're trying to do a bunch of different things and then teach people how to do stuff. So just the space in general doesn't lend itself as well towards learning how to do it. And that was one of the reasons I wanted to get into teaching, is if you can if I can kind of unpack what some of the durable ideas are about a certain topic areas then and make it translate translatable to people who aren't necessarily born-bred marketers, it will translate better for them and they'll be able to kind of take that. Run with it and be way better marketer than I ever will be in the category they're looking to get into. 

Ryan Alford [00:05:05] That's definitely unique for, I think, most universities. I mean, I think they're starting to get there, but it's definitely not my perspective coming through school. And, you know, I think there needs to be a lot more of that. So I think that's great for the students of all ages there. 

Robbie Fitzwater [00:05:22] And it's always fun because ever before I did this well while I was a Clemson, I would always get to speak in like one semester. I spoke at twenty two class classes just because there's teachers across the university who want to teach this content to their students, but they have never been in that role themselves. So getting to hear from a real practitioner really helped the students and really hopefully helps the teacher kind of gain a different perspective. But it was always just a blast to kind of get to help them learn and then kind of help them connect the dots of, OK, this isn't super complicated when you kind of boil it down like SEO search engine optimization, it's kind of like a credit score. It has multiple variables that impact your credit score. So if you can understand that, you can start to kind of unpack what these things entail or like for social or any digital channel. Yeah, you get a lot of eyeballs in the front end. But if that channel makes money from your eyeballs that that channel is going to become more and more it's going to become harder and harder to reach people as time goes on because they need to monetize that platform. So you can kind of predict the way those things are going to move. And if you have some of those durable ideas, you can really start to apply them in different ways. 

Ryan Alford [00:06:37] I love it. So, Robbie, we wanted to get into some of the foundational things that you preach to our clients, around content, around social media, around performance and growth marketing. But maybe we've done it a little bit because we jumped right into the college side. But maybe give everyone that's listening, the the background on you and why the hell you're so damn smart. 

Robbie Fitzwater [00:07:03] I'm a question your judgment when you call me smart as the dumbest thing in the world, you can say, no, I'm kidding. But when I started I was really lucky. I started doing marketing when I was in college. I was a um I worked at a running shoe store in Fayetteville, Arkansas, and this was twenty seven, twenty eight like early days of Facebook. So Facebook was still the dark ages at that point. So we decided to create a Facebook page for the store to try and sell shoes. So again, starting off and kind of the whiteboard was just sharing content, seeing how it worked. So eventually got to the point where we'd be selling a pallet of clothing before it even hit our sales floor. So we were able to kind of developing and cultivate an audience. Again, this was before any algorithms were on Facebook. So everybody saw everything. But we were able to master that. It was wonderful. It was like shooting fish in a barrel. But we would have fun with it, like we'd get a shipment of women's apparel and I'd grab one of my colleagues and myself and say, OK, hey, why don't we take a photo of this, of what we just got in. And he's like, OK. And I was like, oh, yeah, it's women's clothing too, so be ready. We posted on Facebook and just kind of have some fun with our audience and kind of irreverently joking. But we'd have people commenting, saying, like, hey, save a small for me, save a medium for my daughter. And again, we'd sell out before we never hit the sales floor. Kind of fast forward a few about a year or so. I started helping other other retailers and other other companies in the northwest Arkansas area kind of do that for their own stores. So eventually I started my own small consulting practice with about seven clients at one point and helping them do their so on social media. And they grew, they had a lot of fun. But I was lucky enough to be in northwest Arkansas and met some really smart people there who were kind of in the same. I had the same ideas as I did where we wanted to kind of teach how to teach those different groups how to do it. So them telling their stories as opposed to us telling their story for them, teaching them how to fish and then teach them the skills they need to thrive in the digital space, they would do a lot better. So eventually work started a company with a few people in northwest Arkansas that we were able to kind of grow to a certain extent. There had twenty twenty seven clients or so, and then my wife finished her PhD. So we moved to this area and as opposed to working in the agency, I ended up working at Clemson.  So, fast forward a little bit with the director of social media consent, and then was it after that director of marketing at a place called Freshwater Systems here in Greenville and then took a step in a different direction, one of the teaching thing and wanting to kind of work with a lot of different groups around the area. So, here I am now. And a kind of war stories from. The long period of time working in digital marketing, but just kind of the right place at the right time, when I got to kind of get my hands dirty early, early stages and then learned a lot of the skills that would translate into what I think content marketing is and how it can help businesses grow faster than grow more consistently, more sustainably than just about anything else. 

Ryan Alford [00:10:30] Yeah, a lot there to kind of build from. And I want to get down specifically down the content marketing growth strategies. So the e-commerce stuff that we tackle every day with our client. But I think it's fascinating people talk about it, and I certainly hear  the pros and people that are in marketing every day talk about that organic versus paid thing. But I don't feel like for the small to midsize businesses that we tend we're working at all levels here. I don't know that they've quite even still grasped the change that's taken place. The fact that a beautiful picture or a terrible picture or a funny post, no matter how great it is, sort of the dancing dentists or couple of clients that we've hit gold with those are exceptions, but generally speaking, it is pay to play. And the organic side, that transition, I still don't feel like is mainstream as it should be.  

Robbie Fitzwater [00:11:38] So you can put me on a soapbox. Everything in social, if you're going to find success, a lot of it's an arbitrage play, it's basically just you're trying to find opportunities where there are not as many and especially like a place like Facebook, if you Facebook, like New York, if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere. And if you can start to if you can grow an organic community, that's great. That's awesome. It's not sustainable. And once it changes, you've got to stay ahead of the game and ahead of the curve to try and understand what's working, what's not, and then trying to evolve and change gradually to stay just another step ahead of the curve where you're putting more content and kind of paying your dues, the Facebook gods. And OK, we'll do a Facebook live twice a week so we get a little bit of organic reach around those because they're pumping it through their algorithm really hard. Or, hey, LinkedIn video is crushing it right now. Let's share more video on LinkedIn in between other content that we'll use and have always done, especially from the Sun, was always focused around selling different parts of the university and talking about different aspects of the university, but trying to do that while not feeling stuffy or heavy handed and then trying to keep people engaged at different times in different ways. So it's you've got to have kind of a delicate balance of what's going to work, what's not going to work, and then always be testing something new and different. But again, if Facebook's got to monetize their platform, they've got to monetize your eyeballs so that they just tighten the faucet a little bit tighter, a little bit tighter. And eventually it's going to basically go away, which is kind of the case right now. But it's developing an audience and hopefully in some cases moving that audience over to where I'd like to spend a lifetime's email, because for the most part, Google is a little bit of a diva sometimes in that with their inbox strategy of promotions, newsletters and everything's strategy. But you likely have an audience there where you're not fighting that algorithm all the time and you own your audience as opposed to Facebook or LinkedIn or Instagram owning your audience. Where that's going to change, that's going to evolve. But if you're learning the skills on those platforms, they're going to make you a better marketer. So they translate directly to a place like email marketing. 

Ryan Alford [00:13:57] And do you think that I mean, I feel like Instagram's crossed that bell curve. I mean, like you said, Facebook's on the other end of it. It's almost that fast. It's almost turned off completely. We're 10 percent of your active followers probably see your post at best, if it's really good. And then Instagram is kind of getting there fast as well. LinkedIn is still there's some organic opportunity there, I believe. I see that with my own posts and then some of the clients that we have. I do still think that there's some organic opportunity, but it's just a matter of time. They're all going to monetize at the highest level. And look, they exist to make money. So I understand why they do it. But I think it's an important education point for clients or people listening to this understanding what's happening on these platforms and back to your point, owning the relationship, not owning the customer, but owning the relationship and being at the forefront of the of the communication channel and having an open dialogue that's not shut down through someone else's control. 

Robbie Fitzwater [00:15:10] I mean, again, like going back to the early days of Facebook when they first introduced an algorithm or when Instagram released an algorithm or their non chronological news feed, people were just knives and pitchforks out, ready to go to battle with Instagram or Facebook. But you've got to understand, there's so much content, nobody can consume all of it. So you value either got to get really good and be the best at what you're doing. And in those cases, sometimes the cream does rise to the top and where you're going to be able to get your content seen. But you've got to really understand how to keep evolving and changing, because if what made you successful on Monday is not going to make you successful on Friday and that window is getting smaller and smaller all the time, and with the kind of the firehose getting becoming like the small drip, eventually you've got to keep moving, moving and changing. And LinkedIn has got opportunities now because they don't have as much of an established behavior on LinkedIn. They're trying to move from what was like the person's digital resume to like LinkedIn used to be really stuffy and boring, where it's like a digital resume that nobody really spends time on LinkedIn to, where it's a value added platform for people. They still need a pipeline of good content to keep people engaged with it because they want people to stay on the platform longer. So their eyeballs, if content is good and does drive action, their eyeballs are going to keep people there and people are going to use it more and more. And it's a difficult battle. You fight, but it's something that you kind of have to deal with on those platforms or pay for it, which is kind of the case where like Facebook, it's like thirty three cents of every digital ad dollars spent in the US right now because they are that behemoth they can afford. They can really command that respect. But again, marketers are like Facebook. I was a kind of joke about Facebook or any social platforms like drug dealers, like the first taste is free. Next one's going to cost you. And they really kind of get people addicted to those eyeballs. But then when they turn that off, they make those more and more expensive. And you're kind of seeing this play out on Amazon right now. A lot of people are selling products on Amazon where those are Amazon's Amazon's customers and they don't necessarily have any real retention strategy around keeping those customers in the long run, because Amazon's customers, they don't have an email, they don't have a way to follow up with them. It's Amazon's marketplace. 

Ryan Alford [00:17:36] Amazon just wants to sell more. They don't necessarily care more of what. 

Robbie Fitzwater [00:17:41] They're taking fifteen percent of those transactions. They don't care. And then the second time around they're not buying from you again. They're buying from Amazon again and they're taking fifteen percent of that. And then the more they have to spend through ads there, it gets more and more expensive. And that ratchet kind of continues to go up. 

Ryan Alford [00:17:57] Let's continue down that path a little bit, which is kind of owning your customer relationship. I think that plays right into it. We end up working with a lot of clients that some are already selling on Amazon. Some are considering it. And, they have any ecommerce presence, but they want to grow it. But talk about the reality of let's go a little deeper on that point with the Amazon behemoth, that is. And maybe marketers out there are clients out there that might be listening like You dance with the devil, you'll get burned. But we do understand that sometimes you do need to flirt. 

Robbie Fitzwater [00:18:42] I mean, it's yeah, it's a delicate balance. I always know I keep your friends close enemies closer, where if you're spending a lot of time focusing on there, you need to know it's going to change. Like what is going to find what's going to be successful today is not going to be successful tomorrow. And they're gradually going to follow the same trajectory as a social platforms where they want to own a higher percentage of that transactional revenue every time. And Amazon is a different beast because they're selling ads and selling and they're making ad revenue from their ads and from their transaction on every transaction. So if you're paying them for ads, you're paying them for a service fee. And you may even be paying Amazon for warehousing and fulfillment. You're paying a lot of money for Amazon and they've got this. 

Ryan Alford [00:19:26] And for hosting your website, probably hosting fee 

Robbie Fitzwater [00:19:29] Everything's on Amazon Web Services. Like that'll be the next they'll be when like that'll be the next giant companies when they spin out Amazon Web Services off. But you can pay for those eyeballs and pay for that attention. But it's not going to be a long term game. And if it's a recurring purchase, they also are trying to get private labels into those different spaces really quickly, too. So you're you're going to be building your house on rented land when you're getting into that into that space again, if that's the direction you want to go in, it's a great place to have either a high, high amount of I guess, hopefully quick eyeballs, quick revenue, easy way to make a lot of it. If you can own that specific category, if you're in a really commodities category, it's not going to be as profitable because you're going to be playing that commodities game consistently where it's a race to the bottom. If you own a specific product category and have a have enough demand to really supplement that, then you're going to be in a little bit more favorable position that you're not going to get knocked off, but you're eventually going to get knocked off. And Amazon is maybe the one doing that, or a company outsourcing out of China may do that, too, too. So depending on the product category, there's some opportunity there. But a lot of times it's going to be a it's just not as profitable in the long run. And that's where it becomes really difficult to make the value proposition in the long run. Because if you get become a great Amazon seller, eventually, maybe you can transition that over to your own platforms. But it's a lot harder to do that afterwards when you're kind of become beholden to Amazon for a larger portion of your revenue. 

Ryan Alford [00:21:07] I love it when you tee up some. I like the key points that I talk with clients all the time. It's called branding. And if you do not establish a brand and when I say brand, it's not your logo, it is your logo. But it's not just your logo or your colors and all this. And I think some people get caught up in that. It's the relationship with your customer. It's how you make them think, feel and act. And if you're making them think, feel and act, to go to Amazon to shop for you because it's quick, easy and convenient and there's no real relationship, you're in trouble. And it's not that you don't want it to be quick, easy and efficient, but it needs to be done directly with you and you need it in the relationship. And you have to do that with establishing key differences that are not commodity driven. We work with clients that are in that commodity business and it's taking some time to get them to that next level. But it's because they have to establish a brand. You can't just it's not just build it and they will come. It's not built, it's one thing if you can cure cancer, great. We can sell that. But if you're not curing cancer and if your product is in a commodity area, then you have to build a brand, you have to build a relationship and you have to bring Amazon-like experiences underneath your own umbrella and make them feel and be a part of something bigger than just the product. 

Robbie Fitzwater [00:22:38] So that's where, again, kind of reiterating it like that's where I love the content marketing side of things, because suddenly you can take a niche retailer or a niche group and they can really own an audience. They can own a conversation. And it's a time where the democratization of what's going on, all these platforms and social media is a microcosm of this. If you can build an audience, you can drive that audience. You see it like a college dinner. I have no bearing on what I don't know much about Kylie Jenner. Honestly, I'm probably more pop culture literate than I really should be. But she she monetizes her social platforms into a beauty line that just grows exponentially and has a valuation of billions of dollars, like a glossy start to blog and then monetize that blog where it's suddenly one of the most revenue positive businesses around and kind of a direct to consumer golden child because they know their audience. They can drive, leverage that audience, and they have a passionate group of people that are really devoted to that brand being successful like I had. I spoke at a workshop recently where I had somebody who purchases Kostia in that room. And I started talking about a glossy case study that they have a small private channel of their superfans where they get test products before they even hit the shelves and say, hey, would you buy this? Would you want to use this? And how warm and fuzzy they would make it. You want your customers to feel like if they're a super fan, they're going to be shouting your name from the rooftops. And if you can really own that and be there, go to source for information relevant for the product, relevant information, relevant products that are going to fit their lifestyle that they can help. If your brand can help them tell a story about themselves, then you really win. And the brands that are doing it well and the opportunity that I think a lot of the Internet offers for them in the direct consumer space is really exciting because nobody's going to Amazon, Amazon. They're going to. But you can out human Amazon and that human side of things. And that human touch is what's really going to be the differentiator for a lot of these groups is if you can develop a human connection with your audience and you can really understand who they are, what makes them tick and help solve some of their problems, then you're going to be in a lot more favorable position in the long run because you're you're like a friend that just help them fix a flat tire. Like everybody's going to love their friend to help them fix a flat tire. You're that that social capital is being built time and time again, and you're suddenly in their inbox a few times a week and they love you for it. And they feel it's valuable. 

Ryan Alford [00:25:17] And I think that's the difference between overwhelming people with marketing messages and doing things without any trust or any credibility. People want to. I'll save the college kid in with his girlfriend analogy that I was going down, but, they will want instant gratification, and it takes time and a relationship. It takes time to build and trust takes time to build. And again, unless you have a product that's truly differentiated by the problem that it solves, that no other product does or very few products, then then you've got to do it through other means and ways. 

Robbie Fitzwater [00:26:03] And yeah, it's like just closing what you heard. It's like the middle school boy that just I can't it's just going in for the kids going in and just like has no business doing what he should be doing. And that's where it's just there's so much there's so much nuance to it. But like there's a relationship you want to build, but you want to build that relationship through consistency and not necessarily intensity. Like it's like. A good relationship probably has good, positive quality interactions all year round as opposed to roses and everything and like over the top on just Valentine's Day and nothing else, you want to have consistency in that relationship. And without that, it's really difficult to maintain it. So developing relationships online is no different. You want to be able to maintain consistently, add value, add value. And if you're helping that person solve their problems, if you're helping them kind of understand things differently and you're providing value consistently, then they're going to feel differently about making a purchase because there are other people who have sold t-shirts before. But if you buy t-shirts on the person you care about, then that's going to be something that you tell. That's part of the story you tell about yourself and the value that they bring to you. And that's what really I think is so many cases that separate so many groups is just their ability to tell their own story and to differentiate themselves from the knowledge they have and just bring that knowledge of the real to the real world through digital channels because they've already got it in their head generally. But bringing it to digital space is really pretty easy for them if you just give them the right tools to do it. 

Ryan Alford [00:27:42] Yeah, it brings me I think I was thinking when you were talking, like the title of this podcast is going to be Chivalry is dead, but you can do a lot about it. I mean, like it is true, but like it with brands. Now, everybody, it's easy to start an e-commerce company. It's easy to start a business. Everybody wants to be an entrepreneur and they wanted it yesterday and it can happen. But you've got to be some story. There's got to be some relationship building. 

Robbie Fitzwater [00:28:12] And that that kind of drip by drip by drip like trust is built in trust, is built in drips and lost in buckets. And if you can gradually start to build up, build up, build up and maintain that, that it's going to be easier for you to to leverage that audience than it is to just assume, hey, let's let's just pay for let's pay for everything and assume everybody is going to be here right away because you have to establish a clear value proposition. You have to have social proof. You have to do a lot of those things. You have to do him well. You have to give like just really care about the people you're selling to a lot of time. Do you have to know who they are intimately? And you have to have a really clear understanding of what job that serves for them. And if you can do that, you're going to be in a lot better place. But it takes some time to refine and change and build and build and build. But if you're in for the being, know if you're if you want to be an overnight success overnight, it's not going to happen. If you want to be overnight success after five years, then absolutely it's possible. But it takes a lot of blood, sweat and tears in between and seeing people do so. You'll see a lot of people understand what their story is, understand who their audiences are. But then they fall flat on the consistency side of things. And that's where it gets really hard because like you see people, it's hard to tweet at five o'clock, five o'clock on a Friday night. Like, I don't you don't want to you don't care about that at that point. But if you put it into a system where you're consistently churning out good quality content, it's going to pay dividends because you're building relationships, you're building an audience and you're adding value over time. And then you can always improve on it, too, which is the beauty of it, because the stuff you did a year ago is can be so embarrassing for you a year from now that you're going to be embarrassed of it. But you have to start somewhere. And that's kind of the beauty of it, is you can start trying things and evolving and understanding your audience all the time. You should always be learning something. 

Ryan Alford [00:30:09] What's some practical back the overall theme here of content and content building in twenty, twenty years? I think you've unpacked some of that so far, but maybe what some of the more tactical recommendations that you'd have for people listening and I know you spoke in high level philosophically about it, but maybe, if there's any meat and potatoes of of practical advice for what to do with that next year. 

Robbie Fitzwater [00:30:40] So I've done this. I've been a big fan of this for a while now and just trying to make content as easy as possible. It doesn't need to be reinventing the wheel every time you do something. How easy can you make it? If you're an expert in the subject and the subject, you're talking about even just finding a few different like a few different buckets that you want to talk about and then building out a few questions that you get around those buckets all the time, like what pain points the people have there consistently and gradually answer those. Like, what questions are going to help your audience do a better job of achieving the goal they have? What questions do you get on a regular basis that people? Because if you're getting those questions on a consistent basis, probably seven other people that had the same question that never got answered. And the more you can serve that audience, the better you're going to have, the better chance you're going to have to go to Google, go to answer. The public is a source I really like. If you have a topic area, you can find frequently asked questions around that topic area and harvest some questions around that and know that, hey, I have customers who like the area. They have questions around this, this and this like and I did something. I did freshwater systems. We would take a product category. We would find questions that were frequently asked in that category. We would answer them. We'd have one of our experts answer it in a video that was great because he could just go to town and talk about these things for days. He doesn't have time to write a blog post, so let's make a video about it. Let's transcribe that video, add that transcription to YouTube, because it's going to get indexed. You're going to get search traffic there organically. So that automatically grows your audience. It's also going to be able to translate really nice into a nice, clean blog post with really searchable terms because those are already highly search questions. It's going to drive traffic for you on the organic side and the long tail. But it's also something you can distribute your audience because those are questions they probably have and they probably need those answered. And if they see you as the expert, then they're going to see you as a valid, valid source. That information, even if they don't see you as that expert, if you're solving a problem for them, you're going to gradually build that brand equity over time. And it doesn't always happen overnight. But even if it doesn't translate into revenue coming in right away, it's still value, value, value. You can add. Then when you do need to ask for a sale, you can. And in that case, like we had an expert talking about anything and everything, water, and he would just go to town talking about these things he did super nerdy about. I don't get as nerdy as he does about it, but there's a community of people that did. And eventually, like, we'd send those out as an email and they'd make thousands of dollars and thousands of dollars in a day. And then we can automate that into it, into an email automation system where if you purchase in that category, you're going to get this eventually. So you make sure that content is going to live a few different ways in a few different forms. So you can really maximize the opportunity there. But you're just answering the questions that people ask you all the time. And it's kind of like the market share and like they ask you to answer and it doesn't have to be perfect, does have to be rocket science. Even if you just suck at it, just try it. And I'm truthfully like I'm always the I always get on myself because I'm always a cobbler whose children has no shoes. I need to do a lot better job myself personally, but put it into a calendar, do it every week, make it consistent and use that as a piece that you do it. Hey, every Wednesday at one thirty I'm going to be writing this from one thirty to two or one thirty to four and really just add it into your calendar and add it as a consistent piece. But suddenly you have something you could use to reach your audience on a weekly basis and really trickle out content that is valuable for them. And hopefully if you can serve serve them consistently, they're going to need to eventually make a purchase in your category for your product, and it might as well be you that's in their inbox on a consistent basis where, hey, if you help if they help with workout ideas, I suddenly have workout information I can use. If I suddenly use that on a consistent basis and find more value in it, I'm going to be purchasing from you on a much more regular, consistent basis. 

Ryan Alford [00:34:58] I think the biggest thing of everything you said is. Making it easy and staying consistent with it, because I think what happens is for a lot of people, they throw a lot of hooks out there, they do a few things. They do it for 30 days or 60 days, and they take all the advice and then they don't see the immediate ROIC or followers or whatever the metric is, blog views. How it's not working. And I think, that's back to the relationship over time. It's the consistency of that that I think is so, so key to making it work. 

Robbie Fitzwater [00:35:35] Like when you get married to somebody after after after a month, like I probably not like there are those one of those edge cases that people people I love at first sight. But generally it's not going to be like that, like you're going to have to build a relationship over time. And Rome wasn't built in a day. And you've got to gradually kind of chip away at that. And the consistency, it's 12 to 18 months before any real content program is going to be successful because you've got to do your kissing frogs. You've got to understand how to like what you want. Your Goldney needs to be who your audience is and how to reach that audience and solve their problems. Once you've kind of honed in on that, you can do a lot better job. If you have a clear understanding of what problem you're solving on the front end, it makes it easier because you're not trying to run around with a key. You don't have a key that you're running around trying to find a lock that fits into you're a person that has a key, that has a lock that you're actually with the key to. So who you're shooting for and who your audience necessarily is. But if you're starting from ground zero, it's going to take a long, long time. And that's where putting in the blood, sweat and tears takes a while. When I was when I worked it was considered one of the people I always spoke with, Jonathan Gant, who runs all the clubs, and he said he was headed up all of their Clemson football content and they do a great job with content just across the board. They really have established the Clemson brand nationally. And again, it was really fun getting to work with people like that. But everybody was like, oh, Clemson football just blew up overnight. And he was like, no, absolutely not. Like this took years and years of blood, sweat and tears. It really sucked before they were able to make it into something that was great. But by the time they were there, they had all of the operating systems in place to really ramp things up and continue things. So that's where you have to have those foundational pieces where you can keep the donuts churning and keep that keep that content process consistent. And if you can do it on a weekly basis, it's great if you do it on it, if you can do it more than once a week, that's even better. But you see, how are you finding success with one video a week as a piece of content? They may have one or two other things in addition to that, but just that consistency makes a huge world of difference and then finding a way to distribute that in a meaningful way on top of that is really important. Sorry, like I said, I can go into a soapbox for days. I love it, I love it. I wouldn't teach it if I didn't really love it because it's exciting. I mean, so much is changing so quickly. And if we can continue to kind of stay on the forefront of this is really fun for me. 

Ryan Alford [00:38:16] So I was like, I love it and I'm excited to unpack a few more topics in future. I'm going to arm wrestle you into doing this maybe a couple of times a month. And because I mean, I think it's important we're talking to our clients about this. You come in on the strategy side and coach our clients. But I think it's important for us to get out there because your knowledge base and your passion around it is so obvious. And I think we've still got a lot to unpack here. 

Robbie Fitzwater [00:38:43] I mean, yeah, I could talk for days. And when I'm not doing this, I normally and always like a lot of podcasts and a lot of other information because I just like learning about the stuff. 

Ryan Alford [00:38:54] So cool. Or rather, I appreciate you coming on and I look forward to the next one

Robbie Fitzwater [00:38:58] That went by really fast. So I appreciate it and we'll have some fun. 

Ryan Alford [00:39:02] Awesome. Well, this is Ryan Alford, host of the Radical Company podcast. Hope you'll continue to listen. Please leave reviews. Please follow us on social media at radical interschool results on Instagram and a radical dot company online. We'll see you next time.