00:00
what I was willing to do at that time was the work. I had nothing, but I was willing to do the work. I think a lot of people go in and they just build a funnel because someone else built a funnel. Let's go hack this, let's go hack that. If I were to give someone 30 quick and to build a funnel, it's like, I know it's not sexy, I know it's not exciting, but you gotta understand exactly what the problem, who exactly you wanna work with and what is their problem. And if you do that, you can write copy, oh, and I would 100% invest in a copy.

00:28
This part of that need is starting again. You're listening to the Radcast. If it's radical, we cover it. Here's your host, Ryan Alford. Hey guys, what's up? Welcome to the latest edition of the Radcast. We've got a doctor in the house today, folks. Dr. Marketing, the marketing doctor. Nate Kennedy, what's up, brother?

00:54
How much man? How you doing? Excited to be here. Hey man, when I said, all right, what are we gonna, I gotta get a title for you here, you know, serial entrepreneur. I'm like, no, you said marketing doctor. I'm like, all right, I'm gonna go down that path. I like it, man. I'm glad you're here. I'm glad you're in the studio. Yeah, me too. I'm excited to be sitting in here and, you know, face to face conversation. I know. We have been getting back to more of these with, you know, just the craziness of the world and people getting, you know, out and about.

01:24
No matter how you and I may feel about it, a lot of people have been, you know, probably more stuck than we have, but it's cool to have you in. Little short drive from Charlotte, right? Not too bad, just like Norman all the way down, so. Lake Norman's beautiful. That's pretty, so you live on the lake? Yeah, I'm excited for boating season here to start. Let all that pollen season pass and then get the boat out.

01:46
Yeah, we're on Lake Kiwi. We keep a boat at the marina there. So, uh, so that's over by Clemson. Yeah. So we just stayed there. We went down to a Clemson game and just stayed there recently. Yeah. There's the lake right on the campus is heart wall and then Kiwi's like seven minutes up and it feeds heart wall Kiwi's, uh,

02:07
It's just, it's the one that feeds Hartwell, so it's a little prettier, because it's got the mountain water and everything. It's like super clear, so we're at the marina there. So yeah, we keep a boat. It's a liveaboard boat, so it's like a two bedroom, two bath, so. Oh, there you go. I'll stop short of call, it says yacht on the side, but I'll stop short of that. I don't know if I'm flexing that hard yet. What's the limit, like 34 foot or something? Yeah, it's like 40. It makes it a yacht, so you're good. Yeah, it says it's a motor yacht, but this is a Tiger Woods. It's nice, don't get me wrong.

02:36
Yeah, man, it's all good. So Nate, let's tee things up for everyone. I know you're a serial entrepreneur, marketing guy. We were talking pre-episode, kind of the differences. I came up from the branding side. You've come up through funnels and performance marketing, but let's give everybody a little bit of that background of you. Ooh, man, how far do we wanna go back? Hey, man, as far as you wanna take us, brother. Okay, great. So for me, it's, you know, I...

03:03
I grew up in an entrepreneurial family watching my dad start companies. So I think that's something I was, I was going to do is kind of built into me watching that and seeing it. And I ended up starting my first business when I got out of college, you know, the first, first one first go at it. And it was the marketing, the marketing piece we put out was a direct mail piece. I had no idea what I was doing, but we wrote letters to all these houses in the outer banks where I was living at the time and trying to do security for him. Cause I was like, Hey, you know, the problem is no one's looking at their house.

03:30
Yeah, right in the wintertime. Someone's got to look after your house. So found the problem and wrote the marketing piece. Now that I understand the value, what that means from there, I got it ended up actually getting into the mortgage industry and real estate and a bunch of that. Two thousand eight built a multimillion dollar company. At least I thought it was because on paper I looked awesome. But after the industry started just plummeting, that paper value just dropped. And that's when I learned that cash in the bank is more valuable than.

04:00
some other things, right? And values in a home that you can't extract. So lost everything, actually went bankrupt. And at that time in 2006 is when I first started getting into internet marketing, but my mortgage company, real estate company, all that, kind of, you know, we went through that bankruptcy there. And I, that was in 2008, fortunate enough, I kind of started dabbling in internet marketing. I met a buddy of mine and he was writing his first book and he had been doing online marketing stuff and travel. And

04:28
2005, he left Columbus, Ohio and started traveling around the world and selling products and doing real estate deals. So we met, wrote a book with him, started getting into marketing. He called me up one day, and he was like, Hey, I'm going to a Dan Kennedy info summit, you got to come with me. So I flew out to LA went to that thing. And he was like, you're gonna want to buy everything from everyone on that stage. I don't know if you ever been at those events. And he was like, just buy one thing and execute. Yeah, I mean, thankful for my buddy, Mark for doing that.

04:58
You know, that reeling me in and saying just get something and execute great lesson in that but I take it Dan's not related No, he's not he was a brother from another no, but he is closer than you probably so So he we both are from Ohio. Yeah, and it is so yes I you know, I started getting into marketing and then after that event he called me up and he goes hey you need to What you need do is like I'm doing a lead gen program

05:25
We're gonna rotate leads, we're gonna do some email drops, we're gonna all get leads, we're gonna be able to sell products on the back, send emails. And I was like, I did that, and I was like, holy smokes. I was like, I just made money sending emails. So it was game changing for me at that point. And then, so fast forward to bankruptcy happens, I'm like, man, I can reinvent myself now, I can do something different. I don't feel so, like wasn't so like in that environment anymore where I had to be in the office and all that, so.

05:53
Started doing online marketing stuff, got back into just flipping real estate and doing that kind of stuff and started building internet marketing companies and built some smaller brands up and sold them over between 2009 and 2010. I ended up building up seven different companies and selling them, which was kind of cool. Some small sales, one low end seven figure, right? But one mostly smaller six figure sales, which is still cool. A lot of deals in one year. Yeah, well no, it was a three year period. I'm sorry, no, 2009 to, I'm sorry, 13.

06:22
Okay. So still seven, seven deals in four years. It was all internet-based man. It's driving speed. Right. And what I learned during that process was I had to, uh, ended up, I had to learn how to run paid traffic. I had to learn how to build funnels and I was self-taught. So, you know, I luckily had some great people in my corner and I've never had a problem asking questions on how to do things. And so that parlayed in 13 and 2011, I started a company, funnel architects before like the funnel, I guess,

06:51
branding thing became really big, right? With all these things that are out there. Russell Brunson. Yeah, I think that was, so I was three years ahead of him. Yeah. But I'll tell you what, he's done an amazing job building that system and that software and everything else. He solved the problem, right? I was doing it all manual. He was doing it, he created the solution. Yeah. But yeah, so, and then from there, people started hiring us to do stuff for him, right? Cause we had funnels and paid traffic and ended up having an agency for many years.

07:17
And then in 2020, I decided I was like, I got to get back to my roots. I want to send, I want to wake up, send an email and be done with my day. And so by May of 2020, I had launched a media company. And I also in 2020, I had a bunch of clients. I basically said, I'm going to base go to them and say, Hey, look, you know, we need to transition away and find you someone else to handle what we do. I'm going to start building our own brands. And so that's what we did. And just started, and that's been on a world wind since then building our own brands. So it's not only, uh, I would say.

07:47
marketing, that's all the happy side of the stories, not the bad sides, we got plenty of roadblocks along the way, but maybe we'll get into those later. We'll come back to those. But yeah, that's it, that's where I'm at today. So now I own a media company, I've got, we do traffic and conversion stuff as well for some people and we're always trying to launch something new, so I got a coffee company we're trying to get off the ground and that's pretty much it, just trying to create brands that we can grow into.

08:16
you know, eight figure to nine figure, hopefully is the goal. I like it. Definitely a serial entrepreneur. I'm hearing that a lot more than anything. I think you're at the definition. I do want to ask that I heard media company a couple of times, and I think media company is becoming a complicated name, you know, like. So I'd love to know what for you, what your media company exactly means and kind of that interpretation. Yeah. So for us, we have.

08:43
guess what I labeled as a conservative media company, right? So we we've identified a demographic, and we're building websites, news based websites, for them to read content and access content that they want to read. And then what we do is we generate, we turn them into newsletter subscribers. And then from those newsletter subscribers, what we're doing is, you know, we now are so we, we sent have about 70 to 75 million impressions per month right now.

09:12
So for me on the media side, it's, I guess to boil it down, it's like we own eyeballs, right? Yep. And we own the audiences. So with that, what we do then is people come to us and buy those impressions from us for different fees, right? Depending on where they're at or within the system, are they in the newsletter, are they on the website, are they dedicated email, like all these different things. So if I own a conservative business, whether it's a t-shirt company or whatever.

09:40
And it's and my audience is conservative based. I can come to you and the media company and buy audience, essentially. Exactly. So you're going to go to Facebook and buy those audiences, but you're also most likely in the conservative side going to run into couple of roadblocks along the way. So we just you know, it's like best ways, you know, Facebook's kind of a media company itself, too, with all the ad space they got. Right. So that's really we're just, you know.

10:07
I'd say we're on Facebook level, but we're a very small version of that with a very targeted audience, right? Yeah. And I think that's really key. And for our audience, you know, I'm glad you teed that up. You know, everyone in that thinks about these, they think about places like journals and magazines and all this stuff. But all of these people exist to do a couple of different things. One collect data, you know, build audience or sell subscriptions, you know, but a lot of it comes back to data now, right? It's all about like.

10:37
And look, when you aggregate content that they're interested in and you give them value, they don't mind sharing that data, right? And I think that's what's key. And it sounds like you guys are kind of tapping into that conservative mindset. Yeah, it's a larger audience and they're an audience that are interested in multiple verticals, right? So we're not pigeonholed into like one small piece, right? So we've got tactical, survival, financial.

11:07
There's gold out, you know, like gold industry is very big. So there's all these different types of verticals that they're interested in. Coffee, shirts, right? So it doesn't limit us to only doing one thing. Yeah, I like it, I like it. So I wanna step back, cause you talked about...

11:26
I want to talk about the learning lessons. You know, I mean, you know, I talked to a lot of entrepreneurs. It's kind of the nature of this show, where we go and telling stories and personal brand stories. And look, it's so cool to be an entrepreneur now, you know, at 21 and 20, and everybody wants to be an entrepreneur, own their own thing, which I don't I don't throw shade on it as much as I think it's glamorized a bit, you know.

11:54
Let's talk about, you know, your growth in that perspective. You talked about it with the real life bankruptcy. I mean, like nothing more real than that, right? Yeah. Yeah. Well, when I lost everything, I'll tell you what, I was sitting in my condo that was being foreclosed down only because all my other houses right. I already disappeared. My car was repoed. The had and I'll at my, my, my wife, bless her heart. She's still with me.

12:20
You know, so she saw me at my high, she saw me at my low, and now she sees us where we're at today. So her and I were actually literally like counting change. I don't know, I grew up on a house where my family always, like we always had a change bucket. And that change bucket was like the money we would take on vacation every year. Like my dad would always start changing it. So I always, I still to this day have like a change bucket. That's just one of those things from.

12:42
childhood, right? If you came into the offered house and you looked next to the stove, we have a glass jar about that tall with change in it. I can relate brother. Still got it. So we were rolling that change. Yeah. Literally rolling that change. And I saw a mouse run across the floor. I was like, Oh, you gotta be kidding me. So I was depressed for about two weeks, probably, you know, just going through that process of mental failure. I failed, I'm never going to recover and feeling sorry for myself and all that good stuff, but.

13:12
And little did I know that was probably one of the easier moments I was going to go through. Looking back on it and, you know, more money, more problems. When you don't have money, it's funny, though. You only have one problem, you know, when you don't have money. I mean, I'm not I'm simplifying it, but I think you know, it's true. You got one problem on your mind. Yeah. Because you're getting out of that hole. Yeah. You know, and then once you get out of the hole and you get somewhere.

13:36
Then you got all these other things, right? Bigger, bigger problems. Produces more money, though. Exactly. It's all bigger problems. So, yeah, I mean, I went through that. That was one of the probably my first real like hardship. Right. Going through that and then figuring out I had to rebuild. Like I had no choice. It was like I got to do something. I'm not going to sit here and wallow in my misery. It's either you either move forward or you stay where you're at. And I think, you know, I think that's one thing.

14:04
entrepreneurs as you talk about that it's glamorized, but what I was willing to do at that time was the work. I had nothing, but I was willing to do the work. And I knew that there are a lot of people who weren't willing to you know, a lot of people get into it. And they got this idea. And they're excited about being an entrepreneur, building a business and they get in and they're like, Oh, I got to do this. I got to do this. I got to do this. Like the list goes on and on and on. Right. So I think entrepreneurs are great, but you got to be willing to work and you got to be

14:33
competitive at the end of the day, too, is it's a game. Business is just a game. So I said, there's one hardship. The next hardship was through all of that, the bankruptcy and losing real estate and everything else I went through. And I've always been very hesitant over years to tell this story. And I've just recently started opening up about it because it's it was a tough one. Is the I got a I traveled around got back.

15:01
And on my doorstep in North Carolina, so I lost my real estate license too, right? During that process, I lost it because I made a mistake. And then I got made an example of, if I would have had money to hire an attorney, I probably still would have my mortgage license, but everything works out how it's supposed to work out. So I'm happy for that. And I co-brokered a deal and paid a little too much to the other company. And because I did that, they were like, oh, give us your license, right? So I'm like, all right, so I can't be the mortgage space anymore. So let's go reinvent. Yeah.

15:30
And I ended up later down the road after this couple years later, they come back, they go on my doorstep is that same commissioner of bank and an FBI agent. And I'm like, what is this?

15:44
can I help you? And he was like, Oh, the guy said his name was I know exactly who you are. Why are you here? I got it. I just instantly went on attack mode. Yeah. And I was like, here's my attorney's info and I get that off my doorstep and slam the door in his face. And that did not go well over for me. So I mean, it's funny. So mad. And I was like, I just finally got out all this stuff. And I'm back in it. But you know what I've learned, like,

16:10
I want to hear the rest of the story, I know. But I think it's a good learning lesson and a good point. What I've learned, and I'm that, you and I are a lot alike, I think. And both entrepreneurs, probably pretty base level, but when we get hot, we get hot. And what I've learned though is rarely, even when you feel like you're in the right, even when you feel like, okay, you've paid your dues or you've done whatever,

16:38
It just rarely goes well for you or as good as it could have when you kind of lose your shit, you know what I mean? Like, even if like you feel like you've got all your ducks in a row, you've done what you're supposed to do and like, you know, you want to just tell it like it is and you're ready to let that out and you won't let that frustration go.

16:55
seems to always put you in a more of a deficit than maybe you were to begin with. 100%. And that's exactly where the story goes too. So. I just, every time I'm like, damn it. I dug the hole deeper than it had to be. Yeah, I'm a pretty even keel guy. Like one of my clients years ago, he would get so mad at me because we'd have a huge win. And I just be like, awesome, man, we did what we were supposed to do. He's like, are you not excited? I was like, yeah, I'm excited. Next, let's go. I think it's an entrepreneur.

17:24
You can't get too high and you can't get too low. I think the best ones are have a little bit of, I don't know, I don't wanna say your flat line, but it's just if you, cause if you go too far on either level, it just doesn't seem to work. It's a roller coaster, right? Emotional roller coaster and it's super tough and you just beat yourself up mentally cause you're so high one day and then you're in the dumps. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, you gotta be even keel for sure. Yeah. It helps to be. It does. Control it. Yes. Control it. That's right.

17:51
So yeah, so anyways, that story ended up with a going through a couple year like legal battle. And the FBI switched over basically because they knew there was nothing there. But they had to start there on the criminal side. And then they went to the civil side over to the DOJ. And basically, when it all came down to it, my attorney, they said, hey, we can find you millions of dollars right now. But we'll settle instead. And I told my attorney, I was like, well, let's fight them. I was like, I don't I want to fight.

18:21
He goes, you can't fight. He goes, you can, you can pay me to fight, but you're not going to win because you're fighting them with it. They're using your money to fight you. Yeah. Your tax dollars. He goes, I recommend that you just settle and be done with it. And so supposedly they're going to find me millions of dollars. Instead, it was a $75,000 fine. So it was just ended up being a financial shakedown in my opinion. But, you know, so I had.

18:47
couple years of that process going on while trying to build my companies and doing all this other stuff. So you can, I couldn't be too high. I couldn't be too low, you know? So having a lot of success on the business side. So here's what it was. They actually said, Hey, you know, you're, you're, uh, we said, did this whole video, right? It's marketing video called the billionaire boy for this real estate product piece that we were launching and the billionaire boy, it's like his little kid, he's walking around and he's talking, Oh, he's a billionaire. And my buddy owned like a 16,000 square foot house. So we shot some of the video there.

19:15
We had him looking at houses. It was just this like comic video, right? And they went into that video and said, we see that you're making tons of money because of this video. And I was like, that's just a that's a that's just a joke. It's food parity. It's a parody. And so that's actually what YouTube YouTube video. That's what sparked it. That's what sparked it. Yeah.

19:37
So. That's correct. Oh, the whole FBI. Well, I think all of it, I think there was already there, but they brought that up in the meetings, right? And saying, well, you have this video, so we know you've got money and it's this and this. And it's like. Oh my God. So it was a process, but hey, I mean, at the end of the day, it's part of life. Yeah. I think that's maybe an extreme example. If you're an entrepreneur and you're building a business, hopefully you never go through something like that because it is a challenge. It's not a lot of fun, but it's the war stories, right? It's the battle wounds we get.

20:06
Yeah. And if I, you know, I try not to harp on this too much, cause I think I start to sound like, you know, like, you know, it all or something, but it's like, you do, the scars do make you better. I mean, it, it, you learn something, you know, and I don't know if you aren't challenged, you aren't growing. They say, you know, there's no growth in the easiness. I don't know if you found that true. Oh, 100%. I mean, if you're not growing and not learning, or one of our core values in my company is growth.

20:35
Yeah, like you got to be getting better. Yeah. And whether it be professionally and personally. So talk to me. It's always fascinated me. We talked about this a little bit, the brand versus performance marketing. And I kind of came up through that brand lens and bigger campaigns and, and you self-taught performance marketing. Now the marketing doctor, they might stick. I like that. The MD.

21:04
And but talk to me about the fundamentals of funnel building and stuff like that. I just find it fascinating. I think our audience does because still highly relevant with building leads and those kind of things. Like when you're talking about it or you give advice about it, I mean, what are just some of the cores of performance marketing? Yeah, I think the the performance is you really got to re engineer what you want. So I think a lot of people go in and they just build a funnel because someone else built a funnel.

21:32
Let's go hack this. Let's go hack that. Yeah. And so I try and stress right out of the front, like, what do you want out of the business? Do you you want an automated delivery? You want to be able to run traffic? Just generate sales? Or do you want to have do you want to do coaching? Do you want to do master? Like, what's your high ticket and going to be because your margins are going to be slim if you don't have something bigger on the back, right? So it's trying to figure out like, what do you what do you want out of the business? Yeah.

21:59
Because some people they want to build a coaching funnel and they love coaching, they love training, they love having that, you know, that environment. Yep. And so that that model is a lot different because you're charging more money. Yeah. As opposed to maybe you're selling a $97 training course, right. So I think for me, the number one thing is like, what do you ultimately want out of the business? And what's your what's the lifestyle you want? And how does your business fit? Because then you can design the funnel and the system all around that lifestyle that you want.

22:28
Yeah. And I think a lot of times people just go out there and say, Hey, this guy's got a funnel. It looks like he's killing it because he's running ads. So I'm going to go ahead and just do the same thing. Yeah. And the biggest challenge is I think that's the biggest challenge. Why there's so many people who dive in and fizzle out so fast, also be ready to spend money and lose money. Yeah. I don't know if that's, if that makes anyone feel good. No, it doesn't. I mean, but it's like that in everything. It's even like that on the branding side. And it's not

22:56
On the branding side though, I don't call it loss money, I call it investment. Because you're building awareness. And even on the performance marketing side, if you plan to stick with it, it's like you're gonna be a coach, or you're gonna be selling courses, or you're gonna be doing something, you plan to do it for the next five, 10, 15 years, or whatever, then every ad is building an impression. 100%. That's always been the balance for me with like...

23:20
Okay. We all want leads. We all want sales now. And certainly if you're a coach, every dollar you spend, you need to be trying to get ROA, which I understand. But it's also like, but if people don't know who you are.

23:31
and why are they gonna buy from you? And so it's like, how do you balance the brand versus the performance, you know? It's always been fascinating to me. Well, that's, I think, when you're there, it all comes down to performance, right? Because you can build your brand in the performance, no one knows you, but they gotta know you, eventually. And so I think you're speaking heavier on that, you're speaking heavier to their problem. Because you can see there's, I'm sure you know people, I know people, they can go, you know,

24:00
a buddy of mine just made a post recently and did a whole yacht trip. Filled up a yacht trip, did like $100,000 from one Instagram post because he's invested in that brand and people wanna be around him. And then there's also, but at the same time, before all that, he was doing more performance, like getting people into his pain to get people into his system and it was fun to follow up and then that brand was built over time. So for me on performance side, if I were to give someone, they're looking to build a funnel, it's like.

24:27
I know it's not sexy. I know it's not exciting, but you got to understand exactly what the problem, who exactly you want to work with and what is their problem. And if you do that, you can write copy. Oh, and I would 100% invest in a copywriter. Everybody thinks they're a good copywriter. Everybody I ever talk, Oh, I could write copy. No, you can't. I was like, there's a reason copywriters get paid big money because they're really, really good at what they do. But if you pay a copywriter, when you pay a copywriter, just make sure you know who you want to attract.

24:56
Cause you can, I've, I built a business one time through a funnel and I found that I ended up attracting all the wrong people. And we were generating sales and everything else, but I wasn't enjoying the conversations and the issues with the business because it wasn't people that I wanted attracted in that, in that model, right? So you can get off track pretty quick too. Yeah. And then there's a disconnect, like once you start delivering maybe the product or service, it's like, it may not boil itself up to the

25:24
to the forefront beginning, but you know, getting repeat business or the next round. Okay. If it was a mismatch, right? Yeah. You kind of get off the wrong foot. The, uh, so talk to me about, um, you know, the here in the now and the kind of like. The businesses that you're, you know, what's, what's today look like? What are we up to? Oh man. Today's.

25:45
I'm hanging out here. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I think you've got to. You've started bought and sold businesses. It sounds like that's still part of the plan. But what all's kind of in the day to day life now of, you know, where you want to take that? Yeah, my goal a few years back, I decided I really wanted to. I started focusing on becoming a better leader. Yeah, because for entrepreneurs like you're either in the trenches and in the grind or you're becoming a better leader to help people with you build and grow.

26:14
So big challenge I had my agency was people, I was a hired gun. People were hiring me, not my company. So on Saturdays I'm getting a phone call or if I had my account manager call and they're like, well, no, no, no, we wanna talk to Nate. So even though they could have done the same thing. So I knew going out of it, like I had, that's because I didn't do a good job leading and growing those people. So my big focus day to day is improving my leadership skills to help build great people. Like I wanna build up.

26:43
awesome people within our companies and help them get better, help them produce impact. So I think day to day wise, that's what I'm spending my time on. That's what my goal is. Company wise, on the marketing front, I'm just trying to build bigger audiences, you know, more media properties, bigger audiences, because it's, you know, there's so much value. And if you can own the eyeballs, there's value. What do you think about what's going on? You know, you're back to that with building audience building that.

27:13
smart owning and buying, you know, and those of you listening out there, you got to have your own first party data. You got to build your own audience. Uh, cause leading on the Facebook's of world as we talked about, but.

27:26
I just don't see that getting better. What's going on with some of the social platforms and some of the ability to kind of own your audience because let's face it, it's own land versus rented land is what I call it. You know, when you own your own site and own data, you know, and media companies, you own it.

27:47
when you're on social and other platforms, you're renting and you just never know when the, when the, the clothes sign is going to real life first, whatever. Sort of. Yeah, no, but it's just, targeting has gotten a lot harder on the social platforms, hasn't it? It has, which is targeting has got way harder. So you got to have your message down and know who you're trying to attract, right. And let your ad and copy and all that do the heavy lifting. But I agree with you. It's getting harder. It's getting, it's, it's getting harder. It's getting more expensive, but

28:17
It's people should still do it and use it. You just got to be a better marketer and continuously improve. But more importantly, you got to add other other channels. And if you own the audience. So the reason for me, that's big on that is because if my Facebook ad account goes down or my Google ad account goes down, I still have over two and a half million people I can send an email to in day one and generate revenue.

28:40
Right. So if there is, if you have an email list, you might only have a thousand people on your email list or 500 people on your email list. But if you communicate, you're like, oh, I'm not going to mail them because they don't, you know, I haven't emailed them before email, do it right now. Did like stop now and go do it because you're going to generate traction and revenue. Yeah. By doing it. And I know you're a big email fan. Oh, yeah. I was, I was waiting for you to tee that one up.

29:07
Okay, people out there listening, I think they go, email's been around for, I just delete the emails. That's not true because a lot of money is being generated every day from email. I know you're a big fan of it. What's your perspective on email marketing? I think it's a must for online companies. It's an absolute must. It allows you to do a couple things. If you're a coach or consultant or product owner, whatever that may be, if you have an email, you can send an email and pre-launch a product.

29:36
You can send an email and test a message to see if, hey, did this message work? If it did, all right, well, let me go put some money towards it on ads, right? So there's a lot of things that you can do with an email list, but you're always going to be able to communicate and you're gonna be able to communicate and consistently with them, stay first of mind. Not everyone buys right out of the gate too. So they might subscribe and then buy a year later. I've...

30:03
My big lesson on this was when I started growing an email list in 2006 and kind of understanding the power of it over that time was I still have people from stuff I was doing in 2009 that are still around that message me, Oh, Nate, good. You know, I noticed you got this, a new thing going on. That's awesome. Right. So I don't email nearly as much as I used to to that list. I used to email every single day.

30:29
you know, working on getting back to it, but we got a lot going on, so I haven't, so there's my excuse. But there is, it's one of those things where they're, those, they may come on your list one year and buy two years down the road from you. But if you're communicating and staying in touch, they're just waiting for the right time, right? And it's a way to bond. And people wanna do business, we all know everyone wants to do business with people they know, like, and trust, and email allows you to build that bond. What's the, talk to me about lead magnets.

30:57
What do you see as in this day and age where people have kind of been bombarded and everything's like that. And obviously having a media entity and newsletter and all that is certainly one of them. I don't wanna steal your thunder there, but what does it take to get an email these days? So we do stuff a little different. For me, I kind of got away from lead magnets and so what we do is what we call the one step funnel.

31:23
Okay, so we just rebranded a squeeze page. Ah, so but uh, but step funnel trademark, marketing doctor, is that noted? You got that noted? Nick? Got that down? Well, what we do is polls, right? So our goal is we want to go to a hyperactive audience, or a not hyperactive, but a larger audience that's passionate about something. Okay.

31:49
whatever that passion is, and then we do polls, and we'd like to get them to vote yes or no, and then we send them the results in email. So we'd like to do stuff along those lines and come up with the right phrases and ways to do that, because it's more engaging, because once you get them on the email list, the problem with lead medics lead magnets themselves is so many people are doing them. So as soon as they

32:13
Here's fatigue and people opt in and then they don't go and you're like, Oh, I sent it to an email, then they never go check it because they want it on the page there. Right. And they only opted in because they needed that you're getting a lot of bad email addresses that in opt in because they want to hear from you. Now, granted the polls, the one thing the poll solves for us is people really want to know if they're the right if they're right. Right. They want to be right. And so whether they vote yes or no, or whatever the vote is, they want to

32:42
They won't understand that answer. So are you doing these polls like within like the media platforms you have? Correct. Yeah. All right. So and so that's why we do larger audiences, though. Yeah. And now you can sift and sort them and push them where they need to go through different engagement. Right. But the biggest thing is when you get an opt in is get them engaged on email. A lot of times you will just send one email and then ever mail again. Like you got to really get them engaged. Yeah. Because clicks matter. Right. And email. So.

33:10
We do a lot of personal branding at the agency. I have a lot of guests on that have personal brands and leverage it. What's the Nate Kennedy personal brand? Like, you know, when you think about yourself, and maybe it's what you're hoping to convey, you know, what you convey. And one, I'd love to hear your perspective on personal branding, you know, overall. And then two, what you feel like yours is. Man, I think, well, one,

33:38
Personal brand is a must, I think these days. And even company brands are a must, right? For long term. And it just depends how you grow it. I think, you know, for me, my goal, I guess, I don't know what the brand will be. I'm a family guy, right? Like, you know, big thing for me was, you know, faith and family is always first. I'm definitely unapologetically American, you know? I've got, not hiding that.

34:07
Love me some America and love me some freedom. Yep. And, you know, and I think on the marketing side, man, I just, you know, brand side, I design campaigns that make it rain, you know? So it's one of those maybe. As for personal brand, I'm still, I'm hoping I can get some insight from you because I'm really, you're the expert. I know how to build and generate leads and make money out of thin air.

34:29
through marketing campaigns. But when it comes to the personal brand, I'm really going down that avenue these days and I think time will tell. I just think, you know, just being myself. Yep. You know, showing the stuff I do with my family. I'm constantly, you know, I'm into sports. So, you know, like a lot of my analogies, I'm coaching my son and his teams and stuff. And my daughter wants nothing to do with sports. So she loves horseback riding. So it's like just being there for that. And I think it's, you know, those are some of the big things like.

34:58
You know, that I, me as a person, faith, family, that kind of stuff. And I think I want to inspire entrepreneurs, right? To not have to take the hard way, not have to make the mistakes that I made. I think you've got it pretty nailed. I mean, your personal brand is, I'm distilling this now, is amplification of your reputation and your thought leadership. You know, like,

35:26
And you just described, you know, faith, family, things are important to you and freedom and liberty and, you know, conservative media, which, you know, all that plays together and personal brand is just the amplification of that. The, the circle of influence growing. And because at the end of the day, everyone has a story, everyone has a reputation, um, and when you're wanting to activate that for the good of others, you see there's

35:54
I've been having this debate. Christopher Lockhead, who's a genius in marketing and branding, he's from when I look up to written books, he designs categories he believes, which is true that in marketing, the way to break through is not to come into a category that has a bunch of players and try to compete and be better. You create a new category, which is pretty brilliant. It makes sense. It's difficult to do. But he hates personal brain and he calls it the disease of me.

36:24
And, but here's the thing, I disagree with them all the time because I think personal branding is the opportunity to amplify the good and the reputation and the inspiration that human beings can be to other human beings. And I think that's where it starts. And so, you know, you certainly find your categories but I think, you know, you trying to be an inspiration of other entrepreneurs.

36:53
If people don't know that, then you can't help but so many people. And so it has to be amplified. Just like running an ad for a funnel or for a business or anything else, if I'm trying to sell widgets, I need more people to see it more often. And I need to motivate them to make a buy. If I'm trying to inspire others, I need other people to know who I am and to know my story. And we need amplification of that so that it happens.

37:22
And I think that's, you know, it's that's the 80,000 foot. I like it. I got a nail. I'm good. But I think that's what's up. I'm an introvert. Yeah, I always have been. I like being behind the scenes, which is probably why I really enjoyed the agency and being the hired gun and not the guy in front. And so it took me a long time to start getting out in front of the camera. And what really set kind of pushed me was what legacy am I leaving?

37:50
And I think if I've had the ability to have all these experiences, a good buddy of mine's really kind of helped pull me out of this. Like, look, man, you've got you've got some crazy stories. You've done some amazing things because we and ourselves are very like I find like, and I'm sure the same way like you do something we to us is normal. Mm hmm. There's other people looking in. They're like, holy smokes. How did that happen? Or how'd you do that? Yeah. And so I don't know that I'm doing my legacy of justice by not sharing. Yeah. And I think, and like you just said,

38:18
you know, we have to amplify it so we can impact more people. That's right. And you know, I might not. The one thing, there's a guy in my house, guy in our neighborhood that started a painting company, a young guy 2322 something like that. He was in our house for something I gave him my book that I that I wrote and I just Hey, man, here's a copy. And he read it shot me a message the other day. He's like, Thank you so much for giving me that book. He goes, I just did a

38:45
He's like, February is always our worst month every year. And he's new, it was like his second or third year. And he goes, and we just had our best month ever. And he was like, we did 140,000 in revenue. And he was so stoked. I was like, I need more, I want more of that, right? I want that impact to inspire people to do more, right? Do the work and do more. Yeah, and that's what people get so stuck on. They're like, they think they're gonna be judged, you know, with personal branding, or they think like.

39:09
you know, we're all shy or whether you're an introvert or not, like it's not easy putting yourself out there like you're doing on the show. Like, and everybody kind of gets, you know, hung up on all that stuff. But the only way, but once you start feeling the impact, like I'll tell them, I told my wife, I have this story because I've been building my personal brand for like the last six or seven years. And you know, when she didn't get it at first. And then I started reading her, like some of the DMS that was getting.

39:38
You know, she's like, OK, I get it now. You know, like, like that feedback, you know, and it wasn't, oh, man, you're so successful. Congratulations. It was, hey, man, you really inspired me with this or that or the other. And I heard you here and this changed, which is awesome. I know it is awesome. Um, so, uh, what's, uh, nakenity.com? Right. Um, what's, uh,

40:02
What are we trying to get done? I know you're trying to buy some businesses, you're transacting and things like that. What else can we tell the audience about what you're, you know, if they want to. Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, for us, growth through leverage. Yeah. So, got the knowledge, got the experience, got the team and add more consistently to it. And it's, you know, one thing that's been exciting to me is, you know, last six months, we each, last quarter of last year and then this quarter,

40:31
Yeah, because it's not April yet. So Q4 and Q1, each we've acquired companies. So that's exciting to acquire companies within the verticals that we're in. Yep. And then I've also done two partnership deals, which is exciting to me to be able to bring some money and knowledge into other companies that we know we can help and help them grow and help them get over those hurdles and grow. So that's really kind of the stuff that I'm most excited about going forward, I would say. What's some of the media companies? What's the like?

41:01
media websites and stuff like that. American conservatives.com is one. Modern Patriots is another one that we've got some plans for we got right now it's content, but we're gonna grow it into some e-comm stuff. Liberty Coffee is something we're working on right now. We're making coffee great again. So coffee that's so right, nothing's left. I like it, I like it. So yeah, so we are, I'm excited about those things, you know, like really just.

41:30
taking all this experience that we've had from over the years and just, you know, leading a great team to help us grow these companies. So I can't do it all myself. And I think that's the biggest challenge is if you're in the trenches as an entrepreneur and you're in the trenches and doing all the work and you're trying to run three companies, it's never gonna work. But if you're gonna run multiple companies, you gotta put the right people in place to run them. And I think that's a big learning lessons I've learned over the last couple of years to help that.

41:54
You think and we could have spent the whole podcast and if we're not a politics park podcast, but, uh, you know, is it, is it going to ever get any better? Like, are we ever going to ever like find this common ground again? Or is it just going to be hard, right? And hard left for, for, for the, to the end of days here. So I don't think it's, I think if what's hard, right and hard left is what you watch, I think in real world, it's a little more than, I think you got center, right center left and people that are very.

42:24
all agree that freedom is a good thing. So, you know, it's funny, I was interviewing a guy yesterday, got to come in and do some content and brand management and he was, I make it very clear, we are a conservative company, Christian values, these are the brands we work on, right? Only because it is so polarizing for some people. And I at least want them to know what they're walking into, I don't want someone to come in and go,

42:54
I completely disagree with everything that's being said here. So I don't like it here. Like, I don't want that because I want people to come in and can thrive. Yeah. And so I just make that known. And the guy was like, I got no problem with it. He goes, I'm libertarian left. I was like, that's cool. I was like, I teach their own. Yeah. Right. So, but I think that, I mean, I don't know about the libertarians maybe could take off if they had a better name, but so I don't know. I think most of us, I think most people are in a center, you know? And I think, but the media doesn't want you to see that. Right. Yeah.

43:23
because then we get along. Yeah, exactly. Well, you were up his last time you walked down the street and someone was like screaming at you. Yeah. No. I know. And it's also, I mean, I was watching Tucker Carlson last night and Kid Rock, he did an interview. And so like, that's what's interesting is like, conservatives a little edgier than it used to be. You know, like it used to be, you know, button collars, all that now. And I mean, I know that's cliche, but like.

43:50
I feel like there's a, I don't know, Andy Fercella and like that crowd. Like, and he probably considered himself more in the middle too. He wasn't, I don't know if he goes, but. I would call him the freedom party. You know what I mean? Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Yeah. Well, if you look at Bill Maher, right? He came out recently and he was like, the liberal party is not what it used to be. Yeah. You know, like even they've, that's changed. Yeah. And so like it's, you know, you can hear him. So it's, I don't know, I think, I think eventually there's gotta, the pendulum swings, right? And everything you do, so.

44:19
I got hope. Me as well. So cool, Nate, where can everybody keep up with all things? I think we mentioned your website, Nate Kennedy dot com anywhere else. Yeah. Instagram. The best place, Nate Kennedy dot com. And then all my social handles Instagram is probably where I'm most active. Yeah. And that's Nate's Kennedy, MD. OK, Kennedy, marketing doctor. I'll get you there. Great. Great.

44:43
I really appreciate you coming on the show. I appreciate you having me. Thank you so much. Yeah, it's been fun. It was fun. Hey, guys, go follow Nate Kennedy. I like this guy. Hey, conservative or not, doesn't matter. We know I need to get along and be in the middle a little bit. And you know what? You might just learn something from him. Go check him out on Instagram, NateKennedyMD. Hey, you know where we're at. We're at theradcast.com. Search for all our content. Search for Nate Kennedy. You'll find all the highlight clips from today. You know where I'm at. I'm at Ryan Alford on all the platforms. We'll see you next time on the Radcast.