Right About Now - Legendary Business Advice - Nate Kennedy - CEO, Builder of Funnels, Master of Ads, King of Conversions and Doctor of Marketing

Episode Date: April 26, 2022

Welcome to another episode of The Radcast! In this week’s episode, host Ryan Alford talks to Nate Kennedy, CEO, Builder of Funnels, Master of Ads, King of Conversions and Doctor of Marketing.Nate, who is both an entrepreneur and a marketer, provides a background on how he got his first business off the ground. He also sheds light on what his company's name signifies and what it does.Nate explains why some advertising campaigns succeed and why others don't, as he underscores what can be done to make ads more effective. Nate also discusses the most difficult challenge he has faced and how it shaped him into the kind of person that he is today.He also talks about his podcast "Marketing Rebels", and offers tips for those who look up and want to be like him. If you want to learn more about Nate Kennedy, check his website https://natekennedy.com/. Follow his Instagram @natekennedymd and Facebook https://www.facebook.com/natekennedymd. If you enjoyed this episode of The Radcast, let us know by visiting our website www.theradcast.com. Check out www.theradicalformula.com. Like, Share and Subscribe to our YouTube account https://bit.ly/3iHGk44 or leave us a review on Apple Podcast. Be sure to keep up with all that’s radical from @ryanalford @radical_results @the.rad.cast. If you enjoyed this episode and want to learn more, join Ryan’s newsletter https://ryanalford.com/newsletter/ to get Ferrari level advice daily for FREE.  Learn how to build a 7 figure business from your personal brand by signing up for a FREE introduction to personal branding https://ryanalford.com/personalbranding.  Learn more by visiting our website at www.ryanisright.comSubscribe to our YouTube channel  www.youtube.com/@RightAboutNowwithRyanAlford. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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 they're looking to build a funnel, it's like, I know it's not sexy. I know it's not exciting, but you got to understand 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. 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? How much, man? How you doing? I'm excited to be here. Hey, man. When I said, all right, I got to 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 going to 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. No matter how you and I may feel about it, a lot of people have been, you know, probably more stuck than we have. it's cool to have you in. A little short drive from Charlotte, right? Not too bad. Just like Norman all the way down. I know.

Lake Norma's beautiful. That's pretty sure you live on the lake. Yeah, I'm excited for boating season here to start. Yeah. I got all that pollen season pass and I get the boat out. Yeah. We're on Lake Kiwi.

We keep a boat at the marina there. 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 Hartwell. And then Kiwis like seven minutes up.

And it feeds Hartwell. Kiwis, 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, uh, yeah, we keep a boat. It's a live aboard boat. So it's like a two bedroom, two bath.

So I'll stop short of call. It says yacht on the side, but I'll stop short of that. You know, I don't know if I'm flexing that hard yet. What's the limit? Like 34 foot or somebody that makes it a yacht. Yeah. It's like 40. You know, makes it a yacht.

so you're good. Yeah, it says it's a motor yacht, but this isn't Tiger Woods. You know, it's nice. Don't get you wrong. But yeah, man, it's all good. So, Nate, let's, let's tee things up for everyone. I know you're serial entrepreneur marketing guy. We were talking pre-episode, you know, kind of the differences.

I came up from the branding side. You've come up through, you know, funnels and performance marketing. But let's give everybody a little bit of background of you. Oh, man. How far do we want to go back? Hey, man. As far as you want to take it, brother. So for me, it's, you know, I grew up in an entrepreneurial family watching my dad start

company. So I think that's something I was always going to do. It's 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 one, first go at it. And it was 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 because I was like, hey, you know, the problem is no one's looking at their house. Right? In the wintertime, someone's got to look after your house. So found a problem and wrote the marketing piece now that I understand the value, what that means.

From there, I ended up actually getting into the mortgage industry and real estate, did a bunch of that 2008. 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 some other things, right? And values in a home that you can't extract. So lost everything. I 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 that was in 2008, fortunate enough, it 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 in 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. He 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 L.A., went to that thing. And he was like, you're going to want to buy everything from everyone on that stage. I don't know if you've ever been at those events.

Sure you have. And he was like, just buy one thing and execute. I mean, thankful for my buddy and Mark for doing that. You know, dialing me in and saying just get something and execute. Great lesson in that. I take it Dan's not related. No, he's not. He wasn't a brother from another.

No, but he is closer than you probably, right? So he, we both are from Ohio. Yeah. And it is. So, yeah, so 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 to do. He's like, I'm doing a lead general. program. We're going to rotate leads. We're going to do some email drops. We're going to

all get leads. We're going to 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, you know, fast forward to bankruptcy happens. I'm like, man, I might just, I can reinvent myself now. I can do something different. I don't feel so, like, wasn't so like in that environment anymore. I had to be in the office and all that. So 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 I 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 okay but one mostly smaller six figure sales a lot of deals in one year yeah well no it was a three year period okay I'm sorry no 2009 I'm sorry 13. Okay. So still seven, seven deals and four years pretty good. So it was all internet base, man.

It's rapid speed, right? And what I learned during that process was I had to, and 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, luckily I 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. In 2011, I started a company funnel architects before like the funnel, I guess, 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, building that system and that software and everything else. You know, 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? Because we had funnels and paid traffic and ended up having an agency for many years. 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, I'm going to 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, that's been on a world win since then building our own brands. So it's not only, I would say, marketing that's all the the the happy side of the stories not the not the not the bad size we got plenty of roadblocks along the way but maybe we'll come back to those yeah but yeah that's it that's where I'm at today so now I own a media company I've got you know we do traffic and conversion stuff as well for some people and we're launching I always trying to launch something new so I got a coffee company we're trying to get off the ground and you know it's that's pretty much it you know like just trying to create brands that we can grow into

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 out of the definition. I do want to ask that. I heard media company a couple 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, I guess what I labeled as a conservative media company. company, right? So 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 have about 70 to 75 million impressions per month right now. So for me on the media side, it's, 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. 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 on the conservative side going to run in a couple roadblocks along the way.

Yeah. We just, you know, it's the best way is, 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, not to 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 audience. 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, you know, 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.

There's gold out, you know, gold industry is very big. So there's all these different types of verticals that they're interested. it in coffee shirts right so it doesn't limit us to only doing one thing yeah i like it i like it so i want to step back because you talked about um i want to talk about the learning lessons you know i mean you know i talk to a lot of entrepreneurs it's kind of the nature of this show where we go and telling stories and personal brand stories um and look it's so cool to be an entrepreneur now you know at 21 and 20 and everybody wants to be an entrepreneur, or 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? Let's talk about, you know, your growth in that perspective. I mean, you talked about it with the real life bankruptcy. I mean, like, nothing more real than that, right? 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 are already disappeared.

My car was repoed. And the he had, and my, my wife, bless her heart. She's still with me. 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, when I started changing it. So I always, I still to this day have like a change bucket. One of those things from childhood, right? If you came into the orphan house and you looked next to the stove, we have a glass jar about that tall with change in it. I can relate, brother.

I still got it. We were rolling that change. Literally rolling that change. And I saw a mouse run across the floor. I was like, oh, you got to 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 and little did I know, that was probably one of the easier moments I was going to go through, right? Looking back on it. And, you know, more money, more problems.

Yeah, exactly. 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 what I'm saying. 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, then you got all these other things, right? Oh, yeah. Bigger problems, produces more money, though, too. Exactly. Sol bigger problems.

Yeah. 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. 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 were 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 to build in a business.

And they get in. They're like, uh-oh, I got to do this. I got to do this. The list goes on and on and on and on, right? So I think entrepreneurs are great, which you got to be willing to work and you got to be competitive at the end of the day, too, it's a game. Business is just a game. So that was 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 the years to tell this story. And I've just recently started opening up about it because it was a tough one. Is the I got a, I traveled around, got back. 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 I got made an example of if I had had had money to hire an attorney I'd probably still I'd have my mortgage license, but everything works out how it's supposed to work out. So I'm happy for that. Yeah. And I co-brokered a deal and paid a little too much to the 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 and reinvent. Yeah. 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? Can I help you? And he was like, oh, the guy said his name,

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, well, here's my attorney's info. And I get off my doorstep and slam the door in his face. And that did not go well over for me.

I mean, it's funny. I was so mad. And I was like, I just finally got out of all this stuff. And now I'm back in it. And I'm like, you know what I've learned? 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 of like, 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, 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'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 want to let that frustration go.

It seems to always put you in more of a deficit than maybe you were to begin with. 100%. And that's exactly where the story goes to you. Yeah. I just, every time I'm like, damn it. Like I created, 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, 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 want to say your flat line. But it's just if you, because if you go too far on either level, it just doesn't seem to work. It's a roller coaster, right?

Emotional rollercoasting gets super tough. and you just beat yourself up mentally because you're so high one day and they're in the dumps. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, you've got to be even QO for sure. Yeah. It helps to be. It does. It helps.

Yeah. Control it. That's right. 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 the DOJ. And basically, when it all.

claim 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. He goes, you can't fight. He goes, 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. Yeah. And he goes, I recommend that you just settle and be done with it. And so suppose they're going to find me millions of dollars and instead it was a $75,000 fine so it just ended up being a financial shakedown in my opinion but you know so I had a couple years of that process going on while trying to build my companies and doing all this other stuff so you can't I couldn't be too high 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 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 uh the billionaire boy it's a billionaire boy it's It's like his little kid, he's walking around. He's talking out.

He's a billionaire. And my buddy owned like a 16,000 square foot house. So we shot some of the video there. We had them looking at houses. It was just just 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 cop.

That's just a joke. Spoof. It's a parody. And so that's actually what it, YouTube video. That's what sparked it. That's what sparked it. Yeah. That's crazy.

The whole FBI Well, I think all of it I think there was already there But they brought that up in the 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. Yeah, and if I, you know, I try not to have to harp on this too much because 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, 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, one of our core values in my company is growth. You know, like you got to be getting better. Yeah. 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 you self-taught performance marketing. Now the marketing doctor. They might stick. I like that. I like that. The MD. And, uh, 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 it's 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 performance market 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. Let's go hack this. Let's go hack that.

Yep. And so I try and stress right out of the front, like, what do you want out of the business? Do 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 mastermind? Like, what's your high ticket end 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 want out of the business? Yep. 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 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 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. 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. I don't know if that makes anyone feel good. No, it doesn't. But it's true.

But it's like that in everything. It's even like that on the branding side. It's not on the branding side, though, I don't call it loss money. I call it investment. Yeah. Because you're building awareness. And even on the performance marketing side, But if you plan to stick with it, it's like you're going to be a coach or you're going to be selling courses or going to be doing something.

You plan to do it for the next five, 10, 15 years or whatever. Then every ad is building an impression. You know, 100%. Yeah. And that's always been the balance for me with like, 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 R.O.A., which I understand. But it's also like, but if people don't know who you are.

and why are they going to 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 got to know you eventually. Yeah. And so I think you're speaking heavier on that.

You're speaking heavier to their problem. Yeah. Because you can see there's, I'm sure you know people. I know people. They can go, you know, my buddy of mine just made a point. post recently and did a whole yacht trip. I filled up a yacht trip. Did like $100,000 from one Instagram post because he is invested in that brand and people

want to be around him. Yep. And then there's also, but at the same time, before all that, he was doing, you know, more performance, like getting people into his pain to get people into his system and it was funnel to follow up. And then that brand was built over time. Yeah. So for me on performance side, if I were to give someone, they're looking to build a funnel,

it's like, 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. Yeah. And if you do that, you can write copy. Oh, and I would 100% invest in a copywriter. Everybody thinks they're a good copy writer. Everybody ever talk. Oh, I could write copy. No, you can't. Yeah. I was like, there's a reason copyrighters get paid big money because they're really, really good at what they do. But if you pay a copyright or when you pay a copyright, just make sure you know who you want to attract. Yeah. Because 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. Yeah. 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 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 of service,

it's like it may not boil itself up to the forefront beginning, but, you know, getting repeat business or the next round, okay, if it was as mismatch, right yeah you kind of get off the wrong foot the uh so talk to me about um you know the here and the now and the kind of like the businesses that you're you know what what's what's today look like what are we up to oh man today's i'm hanging out here according to podcast oh yeah yeah i think you've got to you start bought and sold businesses it sounds like that's still part of the plan but what all's kind of in in the day-to-day life now of you know where you want to take things 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 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 no we want to talk to Nate you know so even though they could have done the same thing so I knew going out of it like I I had, that's because I don't, I didn't do a good job leading and growing those people. So my big focus, you know, day to day is improving my leadership skills to help, you know, build great people. Like I want to build up, 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, back to that with building audience, building that. And you've smart owning and buying, you know, and those are you listening out there, you got to have your own first party data. You got to build your own audience. Because leaning on the Facebook's the world, as we talked about, but I just don't see that getting better, you know, what's going on with some of the social platforms. and some of the, you know, the ability to kind of own your audience

because you're, let's face it, your rent, it's own land versus rented land is what I call it, you know, when you own site and own data, you know, and media companies, you own it, you know. When you're on social and other platforms, you're renting and you just never know when the, the clothes sign's going to turn. Like real life first metaverse? Sort of. Yeah, I know, but it's just, Targeting's gotten a lot harder on the social platforms. hasn't it? It has, which is targeting's got way harder, so you've got to have your message down

in. You know who you're trying to track, 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 getting more expensive. But 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 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 2.5 million people I can send an email to in day one and generate revenue. Right. So if there is, if you have an email list, you might only have 1,000 people on your email list or 500 people on your email list. But if you can you're like, oh, I'm not going to mail them because they don't, you know, I have an email to me for email.

Do it right now. Do it like stop now and go do it because you're going to. to generate traction and revenue. Yeah. By doing it. I know you're a big email fan. Oh, yeah.

I was waiting for you to tee that one up. Okay. People out there listening. I think they go, email's been around for, you know, I just delete the emails. That's not true because a lot of money's 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. Yeah. For online companies. It's an absolute must. It's, it's allowed.

you to do a couple things. If you're 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. 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 going to be able to communicate and consistently with them. stay first of mine. Not everyone buys right out of the gate too. So they might subscribe and then

buy a year later. 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. And I'm, you know, working on getting back to it, but we've got a lot going on. So I haven't. So there's my excuse. Yeah. But there is a, it's, it's one of those things where they may come on your list one year and buy two years down the road from you. Yeah. 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 want to do business. We all know everyone wants to do business people they know like and trust and email allows you to build that bond. What's the, uh, talk to me out about lead magnets. Like what, what do you see is in this day and age where people have kind of been barred and different things like that? And obviously having a media entity and newsletter and all that is certainly one of them. I don't want to steal your thunder there. But like, but what, what does it take to get an email these days?

So I, so we do stuff a little different. For me, I kind of got away from lead. magnets and what and so what we do is what we call the one step funnel okay so we just rebranded a squeeze page so but uh so but anyways step funnel trademark the marketing doctor is that noted you got that noted nick got that down uh 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. And whatever that passion is.

And then we do polls and we like to get them to vote yes or no. And then we send them the results in email. So we 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 magnets themselves is so many people are doing them. So as soon as they opt in, here's fatigue and people opt in and then they don't go and you're like, oh, I sent it you 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. They didn't opt in because I want to hear from you. Now, granted, the polls, the one thing the polls solves for us is people really want to know if they're right. Right. If they want to be right. And so whether they vote yes or no or whatever the vote is, they want to understand that answer. Are you doing these polls like within like the media platforms you have? Correct.

All right. So, and so that's why we do larger audiences, though. Yep. And then 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 people just send one email and they never mail again. Like, you got to really get them engaged. Yeah.

Because clicks matter, right, in email. So 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. Like, and one, I'd love to give perspective on personal branding, you know, overall. And then two, what you feel like yours is.

Man, I think, well, one, personal brand is a must, I think, these days. If, and even company brands are most, right, for long term. and it just depends how you grow it. I think, you know, for me, at the end, my goal, I guess, I don't know what the brand will be. I'm a family guy, right? Like, you know, a big thing for me was, you know, faith and family. There's always first. I'm definitely unapologetically American, you know.

I've got not hiding that. 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 it's one of those maybe. As for personal brand, I'm hoping I can get some insight from you because I'm really,

you're the expert. I know how to build, build and generate leads and make money out of thin air. Yeah. 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 team. teams and stuff. And my daughter wants nothing to do with sports. But 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, you know, that I, me as a person, 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. So that's, you know, that I made. I think you've got it pretty nailed. I mean, your personal brand is, I'm just. distilling this now is amplification of your reputation and your thought leadership. You know, like, and you just described, you know, faith, family, things are important to you and freedom and liberty and, you know, conservative media, it's, you know, all that plays together.

And personal brand is just the amplification of that, the circle of influence growing. And because at the end of the day, everyone has a story, everyone has a reputation. and when you're wanting to activate that for the good of others. You see, I've been having this debate, Christopher Lockhead, who's a genius in marketing and branding. He's whom 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 and it makes sense. difficult to do. But he hates personal brain and he calls it the disease of me. But here's the thing. I disagree with him 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 category,

but I think, you know, you trying to be an inspiration of their entrepreneurs. If people don't know that, then you can't help but so many people. And so it has to be amplified. It's 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. And I think that's, you know,

it's that's the 80,000 foot. I like it. Yeah, I got a nail. I'm good. But, uh, so I think that's what's 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, uh, what really set kind of pushed to me, was what legacy am I leaving? And I think if I've had the ability to have all these experience, and a good buddy of mine really kind of pulled 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 you're the same way. Like you do something, we, to us, it's normal. As other people looking in, they're like, holy smokes, how did that happen? Or how did 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, 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, a guy in our neighborhood that started a painting company, a young guy, 23, 22, something like that. He was in our house for something. I gave him my book that I wrote.

And I just, hey, man, here's a copy. And he read it. He shot me a message the other day. He's like, thank you so much for giving me that book. He goes, I just did. He's like, February is. always our worst month every year and he's new. It's 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 of 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? You go work and do more. Yeah, and that's what people get so stuck on.

They're like, they think they're going to be judged, you know, with personal branding. Or they think, like, you know, we're all shy or whether you're an introvert or not. Like, it's not easy putting yourself out of like you're doing on this 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 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, she didn't get it at first. And then I started reading her, like some of the DMs that I was getting, you know,

and she's like, okay, I get it now, you know, like that feedback. And then it wasn't, oh, man, you're so successful. congratulations it was hey man you really inspired me with this or that together and i heard you here and this changed which is awesome i know it is awesome um so uh what's uh Nate kennedy dot com right yeah um what's uh what we trying to get done trying to i know you're trying to buy some businesses you're transacting and things like that what else uh can we tell the audience about what you know yeah and i think you know for us growth 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. Yeah, because it's not able to yet. So Q4 and Q1, each, each we've acquired companies. So that's exciting to acquire companies within the verticals that we're in. Yep. To be able to. And then I've also done two partnership deals, which is exciting to me to be able to bring our. some money and knowledge into other companies that we know we can help and help them grow and

help them get over those 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 company? What's the like 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 going to grow it into some e-com 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. So I like it. I like it. So, and so yeah, so we are, I mean, I'm excited about those things, you know, like really just 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 yeah. I can't do it all myself. And I think that's the biggest challenges. If you're in the trenches as an entrepreneur and you're in the trenches doing all the work and you're trying to run three companies, it's never going to work. but never if you're going to run multiple companies you got to put the right people in place to run them and I think that's the a big learning lessons I've learned over the last couple of years to help that you think and we could have spent the whole podcast and if we're not a politics podcast but uh you know is it is it going to ever get any better like are we are going to ever like find this common ground again or is it just going to be hard right and hard left for

further 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. Yeah. I think in real world. It's a little more of them. I think you got center, right, center left. And people that are very 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? Yeah. Only because it is so polarizing for some people. Yeah.

And I at least want them to know what they're walking into. I don't want someone to come in and go, 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, to each their own, you know? Yeah, right. So, but I think that, I mean, I don't know about libertarians maybe could take off if they had a better name. but so I don't know I think most of us are 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 because then we get along yeah exactly well you happens the last time you walked down the street and someone was like screaming at you yeah or you know no I know and it's also I mean I was watching Tucker Carlson last night and uh kid 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 like it used to be you know like it used to be you know, button collars, all that.

And I mean, I know that's cliche, but like I feel like there's a, I don't know, Andy Fricela and like, oh, that crowd. And hey, he probably considered himself more in the middle, too. He wasn't, I don't know if he goes. 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. He was like, the liberal party's not what it used to be. Yeah. You know, like that's changed. Yeah. And so, like, it's, you know, you didn't hear him.

So it's, I don't, I don't, I don't. I think eventually there's got it. The pendulum swings, right? And everything you do. I got hope. Me as well. Well, cool. Nate,

where can everybody keep up with all things? I think we mentioned your website, Nate Kennedy.com. Yeah. Instagram. The best place, Nate Kennedy. com.

And then all my social handles, Instagram is probably where I'm most active. Yeah. And that's Nate's Kennedy MD. Okay. So Nate Kennedy Marketing Doctor, how to get you there. Great.

Great. I really appreciate you coming on. the show. I appreciate you having me. Thank you so much. It's been fun. It was fun. Hey, guys, go follow Nate Kennedy. I like this guy. Hey, conservative or not, it doesn't matter. We know all we need to get along and be in the middle a little bit. And you know what? You might just learn something from them. Go check them out on Instagram, Nate Kennedy, MD. Hey, you know where we're at. We're at the Radcast.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 Offord on all the platforms. We'll see you next time on the Radcast.