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Dynamics Corner
About Dynamics Corner Podcast "Unraveling the World of Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Beyond" Welcome to the Dynamics Corner Podcast, where we explore the fascinating world of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central and related technologies. Co-hosted by industry veterans Kris Ruyeras and Brad Prendergast, this engaging podcast keeps you updated on the latest trends, innovations, and best practices in the Microsoft Dynamics 365 ecosystem. We dive deep into various topics in each episode, including Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, Power Platform, Azure, and more. Our conversations aim to provide valuable insights, practical tips, and expert advice to help users of businesses of all sizes unlock their full potential through the power of technology. The podcast features in-depth discussions, interviews with thought leaders, real-world case studies, and helpful tips and tricks, providing a unique blend of perspectives and experiences. Join us on this exciting journey as we uncover the secrets to digital transformation, operational efficiency, and seamless system integration with Microsoft Dynamics 365 and beyond. Whether you're a business owner, IT professional, consultant, or just curious about the Microsoft Dynamics 365 world, the Dynamics Corner Podcast is the perfect platform to stay informed and inspired.
Dynamics Corner
Episode 409: 🌴🖍️ Progress over Perfection in the Digital Age 🖍️🌴
In this engaging episode, Kris and Brad speak with Brandee and Tara from Big Room Creative for a captivating conversation that explores the dynamic world of modern marketing. They emphasize the mindset of "progress over perfection" in personal and professional growth.
They dive into the shift toward self-directed buying, the critical role of problem-solving content, and the need for businesses to differentiate themselves in a competitive, tech-driven landscape.
The conversation examines the evolution of marketing strategies—particularly in the ERP space—highlighting the impact of AI, the importance of thought leadership, and the power of community engagement.
Focusing on building meaningful relationships over chasing quantity, they share insights on articulating a brand, targeting the right audience, and leveraging passion to foster industry knowledge and connection. Ultimately, the episode underscores the human element behind marketing success, offering listeners practical takeaways for navigating the digital age with authenticity and purpose.
#MSDyn365BC #BusinessCentral #BC #DynamicsCorner
Follow Kris and Brad for more content:
https://matalino.io/bio
https://bprendergast.bio.link/
Welcome everyone to another episode of Dynamics Corner. What is a marketing strategy, or even an SEO? I'm your co-host, chris.
Speaker 2:And this is Brad. This episode was recorded on February 19th 2025. Chris, Chris, Chris, Marketing. I think marketing is one of those undervalued, underrated things that everybody needs, and today we had the opportunity to learn a lot about marketing, marketing strategies and even some tips and tricks how to market a podcast With us. Today we had the opportunity to speak with Tara and Brandi from Big Room. Hey, Chris, did you know that you can use AI in Business Central to manage your financials?
Speaker 1:Really you can how.
Speaker 2:You can with Data Courage's apps for Business Central. Data Courage helps you uncover the why behind your data. It's not just about looking at numbers. It's about truly understanding them. Their AI-powered apps for Dynamics 365 Business Central go beyond reporting and give you real insights things like recommendations, summaries and suggestions you can act on. You can even chat with your data and ask what matters How's my profit and loss looking? Where are the risks? What's the best decision for tomorrow? And you'll get clear, actionable answers. How cool is that? That's cool. Take their apps Financial Intelligence it creates your profit and loss statement and balance sheets in minutes, gives you an instant pulse check of your financials and frees up your time to focus on decision-making. And they've also got other apps that give you insights on customers and products. Oh, and here's an important part, the AI is built with security as a top priority, so your data stays safe, right where it belongs in your environment. Ready to see the why behind your numbers, Visit datacouragecom and check out their app and app source. Clatter, clatter, clatter, clatter.
Speaker 1:Who's typing?
Speaker 2:Me Are you working? You working, yes, very hard. I can tell I don't know what you?
Speaker 3:what were you typing? I was typing to brandy that I'm drinking lemon water in my progress over perfection mug and what's the significance of that. The progress over perfection. Mug Brandy got me, I got them for all of us. Yeah, you did get one for all of us, that's right.
Speaker 1:So we could just you didn't get me one. I was going to say define us Where's mine.
Speaker 4:I mean, is that a thing you struggle with? Maybe I can get some more.
Speaker 1:There's people that I know struggles with that.
Speaker 2:Yes, progress over perfection. I do like that we could talk. That is a discussion on its own, in my opinion.
Speaker 1:I can go get my progress over perfection mug and we can both have them going. If you send me one, I'll drink it in front of that person that wants to be perfect that wants to be perfect.
Speaker 3:We do love our progress over perfection.
Speaker 1:Reminders. That's a good phrase, by the way, because a lot of people want to perfect something and then you'll never get it running. I don't think perfection is attainable?
Speaker 2:No, because you'll always find something else right, and that's why, if you try to define that you like something or you don't have strict rules or guides for it, someone can always look at something. Oh, one more thing. Oh, one more thing.
Speaker 1:The infamous scope creep, and you just have to that's like marketing, right, like marketing is just like that. You everyone wants you to be perfect, but I'll never get perfect. Well, it's always improvements.
Speaker 4:So exactly perfection. Are we going?
Speaker 2:oh, see this.
Speaker 4:We could turn this into a philosophical discussion, if you'd like this is where tara and I are slightly different, because I'm just like ship it and see what happens, and she would like it to be perfect. But as you pointed out, br, there is really no attaining perfection, so there isn't.
Speaker 1:So you're saying Tara is like perfectionist, so you like got her a mug to remind her.
Speaker 4:Define herself as a perfectionist. I just like remind her that sometimes, when I'm being chaotic and just shipping things before she feels like we should do that, that I'm on the progress over perfection side of the coin and she can sometimes be closer to the perfection side.
Speaker 2:I think, to clarify, I think that the progress over perfection and I think, brandy, to your point of just shipping it I'm on the lines with you because I do like things to be perfect in a sense, according to my level of perfection, but I found that sometimes that's more of a hindrance than a help. So I believe in getting something out there that's functional and usable, whatever that may be, and then seeing what falls into play with it, because sometimes you can spend a lot of time on something and it's not adopted, not used, not used, not reached or it's changed, and then you feel like you perfected it.
Speaker 2:But then correct, but I'm not saying just to throw stuff out there and see what sticks. So there does have to be some level of completeness to it. But you're not going to get everything perfect because, as I had mentioned and I see this every single day it doesn't matter how many times you look at something. Every time you look at it again you'll find something that you'd like to change, or somebody will find something they like to change and to be clear.
Speaker 4:If perfection was an option, that would be my 100 goal in life at all times. But it just it gets in my real life hey right. So at some point, just for my own mental health, I had to accept that, that maybe I'm never gonna get everyone's everything all right the first time you said another key statement see, we're going to be best friends after this taris quiet because I, I've learned like you is you're not best friend quite yet I'm not best friend.
Speaker 2:You gotta work.
Speaker 3:You gotta work on you gotta work on it, you gotta work at it, but you hit the.
Speaker 2:You did hit. A key point is yes, things will change, somebody will look at it and you have to get it out. If it was achie, achievable or attainable, then we'd all strive for it, but unfortunately I don't believe there is such a thing as perfection.
Speaker 4:If I was an accountant, it would probably cause me more concern to be perfect because I can ruin lives.
Speaker 2:Well, that's concrete, because I think even in there define perfect, the numbers have to add up. You may not like the numbers and you can have the numbers in different places, but as long as the numbers add up, it still may not be a perfect balance sheet. It may not be a perfect income statement, because you want more revenue, but ultimately you put the income statement of balance sheet together. So I don't think perfection is achievable anywhere and I'm just going to lay it down. But I do agree with a lot of things that you said. I didn't know we had some similarities.
Speaker 3:It scares me in a way, but that's okay. I also think that it happens. I mean, we see it happen a lot, especially in products and in marketing, right, where people are trying to guess what that last 20% well, what if they want this, or what if we did this? And then they're trying to guess what that last 20% well, what if they want this or what if we did this or what? And then they're trying to put that in for something perfect, and then you'll spend 80% of your efforts on 20% of the output. That may or may not matter, right? And so it's better to and again, my mug always reminds me to you know refine what is going to matter, and then you know 80-20 rule.
Speaker 3:Yeah, what happens? And then you can better adjust after you've gotten feedback.
Speaker 2:That was perfect what you just said. So you achieved perfection in this conversation.
Speaker 2:But it is true, you can please some of the people some of the time, but you can't please all the people all of the time. So, even if the point when you do deliver some and I'm talking universally there isn't, I'm not talking. I do have some questions, a lot of questions on marketing from you. But it could be marketing, it could be a software product, it could be a vehicle, it could be a pen, it could be a table, it could be anything be a software product, it could be a vehicle, it could be a pen, it could be a table, it could be anything.
Speaker 2:Somebody will always find something different. Or what, if you know what? If it's raining on Tuesday and the power goes out and the wind is high, what will we do then? Well, sometimes you have to say, well, we just will deal with it if it happens, and you know it's, or we'll just let it go because that's not that important to us. So you have to be able to cut some of that stuff off and realize that there is a target market that you want to reach in the case of marketing. But before we jump into the topic and I've been dying to have this conversation, so be ready well, I thought we were best friends already, so now that I know I'd say now she's stuck with that.
Speaker 4:She's gonna be stuck the whole entire time no, I'm gonna work on making him my best friend.
Speaker 2:See, see, Chris, you see what I did there. Now she's going to work on trying to be perfect. So she was working on progress, but now she's trying to be perfect, a perfect best friend.
Speaker 4:If I work on trying to be perfect, this will all go sideways.
Speaker 2:So I we don't want anyone to try to do anything, but before we jump into the conversation, would you mind telling us a little bit about yourselves and tara? You have the mug, so I guess we can start with you.
Speaker 3:we'll say oh man, I was gonna make brandy go first okay, you can go first.
Speaker 2:No, I, because you want to try to be more, you want to try to be a little more perfect than she is.
Speaker 4:She has a perfect response to perfect whatever she we're a little competitive like not usually amongst each other, but a little bit ourselves. What do you want to know about me? I have been in this channel since the mid 90s, so I'm just going to let all of you do the math on that. I have been working. I started working in admin, so my one of my first roles was working for one of the larger bars that was selling division that came over from Denmark to Canada or to North America, and so I started working in admin and then I did sales and marketing coordination for that company. I vowed that under no circumstances, but I work in technology or continue to do marketing.
Speaker 4:When I got out of university I got a four-year degree in criminology a good old arts degree.
Speaker 4:If you need to know how to bury a body, I can give you some tips.
Speaker 4:And then when I got out of school and couldn't find, you know, a role in my space, because halfway through university decided I didn't want to be a lawyer, which was sort of my track at the time Ended up working for going to a recruitment company, working for them for a bit in sales and marketing coordination and then, when you know what, I ended up back at a marketing company that was focused only on VARs and ISBs, and that was in the early 2000s and so somehow.
Speaker 4:And ISPs, and that was in the early 2000s, and so somehow, despite going to university and working really hard to not be in this space, I am here a solid you know, however, many years later, that that makes me and, yeah, and I actually really do enjoy it, and I think just over the many, many years of being exposed to all of the wonderful and wild people in the software reseller channel, I have absorbed a lot of really great information and learned by osmosis a lot of why the partners and bars and ISPs do what they do and then, on the flip side, what the customers or the prospects are looking for, which I think is a part of what makes our team great. Tara will go into her background as well, but everybody here sort of has a long-standing story with the Dynamics channel specifically.
Speaker 2:It's one of those things. It's like that ride or that saying I messed up this week, I don't know why, so you'll have to forgive me with it. But it's once you enter you cannot leave, because I have known many people over the years that have been in the space, that have left and they come back. They get pulled back in they do so it's once you come in, you can't leave there's an invisible magnet there, for sure oh yeah, I believe so, I believe so yeah, absolutely yeah, I'll give you my long winding journey in this channel.
Speaker 3:No, so currently I'm COO and partner at Big Room Creative and you know just a little quick about that. I mean, we, we are a boutique marketing agency specifically in the Microsoft dynamic space. So so we, we really focus on that, really focus on that. However, I started in about 2004 in the channel, so that's a little more specific than Brandy's. But you know fun fact a lot of people don't know this I actually started selling Navision when it was Navision, but that lasted only about a year until I moved over to ISV side for a very prominent ISV in the channel and I worked there for over 15 years until I was the VP of marketing there.
Speaker 3:And then they were sold off and in that process I was lucky enough to work with Brandy and Brian and that team because we were augmented marketing, so half was in-house and half was outsourced, and when the company sold we had just worked together so well, brandy and Brian asked me to join. Well, brandy and Brian asked me to join, and so it's been about five years now that we've worked together on making marketing magic in the Microsoft world.
Speaker 2:Aiming for progress, huh. I like that marketing magic in the Microsoft world. So Big Room is a marketing agency in the Microsoft space. Do you primarily work with customers, partners, ISVs? Who do you work with from the marketing point of view?
Speaker 4:Almost exclusively the partners and the ISVs. We don't really have any end user customers. We have in the past sort of been exposed to some of the end users and sometimes done some stuff for them. But we really focus on helping the bars and the ISVs build their brand identity and differentiate themselves in this market. Obviously, on the ISV side it can be a little bit easier to differentiate yourself as the products are a little different. But you know, working with some of the bars and everyone selling similar products, that's sort of our sweet spot is helping the brand identify. What is it about them that makes a customer want to buy Business Central from them versus, you know, any number of the competition.
Speaker 2:Excellent With the marketing, and this topic has been on my mind for quite a bit and, from hearing the history from both of you, like myself, we've been in this space for quite a bit of time. Chris I think we've already determined Chris was in high school or elementary school when I started working with this. I don't remember.
Speaker 1:No, we joke.
Speaker 2:I think I was in high school, yeah, like junior or something like that, when you started your career, we'll have to do the math again, but one of the things that I see and one of the challenges that I was hoping that you could help talk with me a little bit about is, as we mature in the space, the we get older. As far as we have is working with the product. Technology changes. You know, in the world. We have AI, now we have the internet, whereas when we first started out working with this, the internet didn't exist. We use dial up and people made decisions differently.
Speaker 2:So now, as we move forward into 2025, to me, I think, is there a difference in an approach to marketing, to decision makers to go for a product or a service from a partner at ISV? That has changed over the years and more in turn is how do you market across generations? Because we have a mature industry with Business Central, started with Navision, microsoft Dynamics Nav, but there's also a lot of new companies that are starting to use the application because Business Central is becoming more and more popular. What are some challenges or how can some companies deal with marketing across generations?
Speaker 3:A really good question, you know, uh, good timing. We actually were just looking at some new research that came out about self-directed buying, right, and that's a really big part of uh. There's a couple of things, there's a few different answers to your question, but I think self-directed buying is really at the center of a lot of this, and we were just reading an article about the importance of that and how I think a lot of organizations know okay, you know, buyers, and especially younger buyers, but even buyers throughout, across generations, really do want to collect information and start matching solutions on their own right. And is this the partner for me? Is this the ERP solution for me? Is this the CRM solution for me? They don't want to talk to sales representatives all too much before they've made most of their buying decision right.
Speaker 3:And the real key is amongst that educational material and that thought leadership material that you're putting out there to help them self-serve. How are you differentiating yourself? Because organizations and whether it's software or anything else in the B2B or even really the B2C space, what are you doing differently that might match something that they need? Is it a culture fit? Is it your you know? Your responsiveness, your expertise there's different. Is it your, you know technical, the technical team, that you have your availability, your support. There's different areas that you have to identify. So, first off, you need to meet the buyer where they are. You need to meet the customers where they are. What are they wanting to learn on their own and are you providing that information? And then, within that information, how are you distinguishing, how you're different? Right, because that's really. Ultimately, it's not even bridging generational gaps anymore. They know the tools are at their fingertips to go get what they want and they want to make sure that that information is there. So, are you there where they're looking?
Speaker 2:So with the self-directed buying, the buyer now typically does a lot more research, would you say, or they do a lot because of the ease of the internet. They can do a lot of searching and research before speaking with you. So would it be safe to say that, before they even speak with you, they already have some sort of decision? I don't want to say decision you, they already have some sort of decision. I don't want to say decision, but they already have some sort of decision or view of who you are and what you have, before they even talked with anybody.
Speaker 4:Yeah, they're not. You know, it's an interesting space in marketing because we get data from like search and, like you know, search data and those kinds of things. If we look back over, say, the last decade, all of this stuff has been happening the entire time, but the actual people who are selling and some of the buyers themselves, having not gone through the experience, haven't caught up with it. But if we go way back to sort of the tendance of SEO in the beginning, how do we get my website to rank? We were never going to rank for Microsoft Dynamics 365, business Central, for instance. If I want to know about Business Central, I'm going to go to Microsoft's website. They're going to publish the most useful technical information for me.
Speaker 4:I know that I, you know, I'm young enough to have gone through university when there was the internet. People who are sort of 40 and younger have definitely just grown up assuming that everything is on the other side of the keyboard. Right, that's just how they were made to think. So, even if you look way back, when we talk about what were some of the ways to get to the top of search engines, it was really about honing in on what are people searching for. People do not go to their computer and say I want to buy Dynamics, erp or even ERP. Most of the time, if you're talking about ERP, even those people in those research positions have no idea what ERP even is, unless they're trying to replace one they have.
Speaker 4:So they are searching for things like how to get my financials under control or what do I do about my inventory mess in the warehouse. Those are the kinds of things that they're looking for. So you need to be able to answer that question. And it's like the first duck syndrome where, like the first quack, you follow who you know. So if I search for that and your website comes up and it's a really great article, I'm giving me a lot. You feel my pain. My inventory is a mess. It's costing me a bunch of money, it's taking a bunch of time. Now, when I think about my next question, I might just go right to your website. No-transcript read was like the current average is 13 to 15 pieces of content that a buyer will interact with on your website or about your company before they contact you. So that could mean attending a webinar, watching a video, your LinkedIn profile downloading a white paper.
Speaker 1:It's increased.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and that is happening constantly, right, because it's right there at the end of your fingertips. How that information kind of gets transferred over to decision makers depends on the size of the organization and what that criteria sort of look like. But people are not out there looking for a product, they're out there looking to solve a problem. So to the degree that you can be the beacon of light in their distressed state, you will be the place that they want to connect with.
Speaker 1:That's a good call out, just talking about problems that you're solving, not necessarily focus on the tools and the software itself. It's much more important to put content like hey, this is a problem that we're going to solve and be able to find it because you're right, they're going to look at how do I reconcile a bank statement, and there's tons of tools and softwares that can do that, but you want someone that has the knowledge and and be able to answer that question for you. So I think their content is becoming more important and, of course, you get a follow-up with the relationship aspect when they do reach out to you yeah, and it means having content that covers a range, right, and so you need to have that content.
Speaker 4:That's really what we call top of the funnel or tofu content. Where that is a person, they have a problem. They have no idea if there's even a solution for that. That's where you want to meet them. You want to meet them there. You don't want to meet them when they're looking for Dynamics 365 because they're already bought in. They've already talked to somebody. They already have a connection with this guy because his support team's great, or this person because the guy that owns the company went to university with me. There's a million ways that they get there. You want to meet them when they're still trying to figure out if there's a solution. And I mean, I think everybody knows there's a technology solution to every problem you could imagine, right, like, obviously the accounting software is going to help your accounting Great, so who cares? Right? What is the company going to do for me? How am I going to get more value out of this than just you plugging software in?
Speaker 2:So it's more to the services and the company and the individuals over the product. So, to take it back, it's individuals aren't searching for Dynamics 365 Business Central because they may or may not know it exists. And if they do know it exists, they may know they already want it. They just need to work with someone who can help them solve their problem the best. So, from a marketing perspective, it's having the proper image of where a problem solver we specialize in these types of problems per se Right.
Speaker 4:And not everybody. Not every partner or ISP solves the same problem, and so what is the problem that you're the best at solving? Let's exploit that to market it to the people who are looking for that right. Some people really need a really robust support team because they have a huge accounting department that they're maybe not as skilled and they need to know that they're going to have 24-7 support. Other people are like I don't really need the support, I just need someone who I can trust to maintain it and make sure that my software doesn't go down right. There's a whole gamut of reasons why people will attach them.
Speaker 2:No, I like it. The point that you hit was Microsoft is now spending a lot of time on the documentation of Business Central, as you had mentioned. They're doing a great job of explaining what it can do, having white papers of what it can do, adding content to their website, even down to the details of how to do specific functions. So, in a sense, as you had mentioned, you're not going to beat that on a website yourself unless you just take all of that same content and put it on yours. So it's a matter of being able to differentiate yourself from others that implement the software and then focusing on the things, as you had mentioned, that may make you different. So, just to recap, I'm learning, so I just repeat so I can put it in my head. So, if you have something like you have multilingual resources or geez, I'm not supposed to say that, chris you have to edit that out.
Speaker 3:I'll get in trouble.
Speaker 2:You have multilingual contributors to your team. So if somebody has multiple locations in different countries, that's something that could differentiate you. Focus on what makes you different in the services you provide. Countries. That's something that could differentiate you. Focus on what makes you different in the services you provide. See, this is great because I see so many that they emphasize and I always bring ERP software and Chris loves to hear me say this to building a house or doing an addition to a house, because it is. It's a project. You're building something. You don't call the carpenter worrying about the hammer that he's going to use. You just say a wall put up, or I need a house built, you use the tools. So here's the tools that we have to have the house built.
Speaker 1:So I like the materials itself right, like I mean, you could choose whatever materials, but you still want that person that will not only just implement but give you you know the pitfalls and things to look out for and better design. You know how do you? You know how do you approach this differently.
Speaker 4:That's important than just someone who can just hammer stuff in yeah, I mean, anyone can like put flooring down, but it would be great if the person who was going to do that told you that this is the worst floor you can choose for your dog because they're going to ruin it right, like that's the disconnect. Yes, kind of right there, right, anyone can sell you anything, but is it going to work for you?
Speaker 3:Right, and I think this is also you know where we saw this emergence. So you know what I'm actually going to create a much longer story about this, going back to my one year, as in the vision sales, I'll never forget. I had to create the CD like an actual CD-ROM. That was sort of this sales presentation. We focused on like kind of like civic organizations, right, maybe municipalities, cities, things like that, counties, cities, things like that counties, and I put together this whole CD-ROM. That was like why, right, our organization addressed this and our version of NAV and how we configured you know what I shouldn't even say now, because it was Navision at the time and it was like kind of animated. I mean very rudimentary, right, but I literally had to drive four hours and take a ferry to give this CD-ROM to somebody on the San Juan Islands, and I mean, right, san.
Speaker 1:Juan.
Speaker 3:Islands. This wasn't that long ago I mean, it's a little while ago we won't age me too much, but this isn't that long ago it used to be about who could get in front of the person right, who was there physically, who was attentive enough, and now everything that was probably on that is is something that you would want to put out there on a much more generic, much more accessible informational site, right, essentially a much broader audience. But I think this is also where we saw as the product, the core product, got a little more general. This is where we saw that emergence of verticalization right, like really focusing on industry and we know your industry, we know your processes and then you know from there it's okay. Well, are we local? Are we not local, or do, as, as Brandy mentioned, do we have the larger support team or do we have the more boutique firm because you want this white glove service?
Speaker 3:Going circling this all back to our progress over perfection. Where I think a lot of providers software providers maybe got misdirected was they were focusing on the 20% outliers, right, and thinking that if they could just capture or target the broadest audience, what if somebody's bigger? What if somebody's smaller? What if they're this what if they have a bigger budget, a smaller budget? Let's make sure that we look like we can do it all. I think that's where a lot of organizations got misdirected in this transfer from like these on-premise you're in person, you know software solutions to more of these accessible cloud. I mean, you know what an ERP can do for the price these days is just uncomparable to what it could do 20 years ago, right, and so again, it's really about that distinction and there's multiple ways to do that Verticalization, team makeup, culture, resources, those types of things but it is so important and it has obviously evolved over the time.
Speaker 2:I think technology has added to it. I have a whole list here that I've been keeping track of questions, so do you want me to fire them all at you, or do you want me to do them one at a time?
Speaker 4:It's your show, man, we could do rapid fire it's not.
Speaker 2:So we talked about. It's not my show, it's your show. You are the stars of this show.
Speaker 1:You are the stars.
Speaker 4:Yes, it's hard marketing, sir, like we are used to it being everyone else's show.
Speaker 2:Well, this is an exception.
Speaker 1:This is your show.
Speaker 2:You make everybody else's show look good. How's that that? Is so therefore it is, Therefore it show look good, how's that that is so?
Speaker 3:therefore, you, it is. Therefore, it is your show, without it being your show. Yeah, we're the quiet, we're the quiet stars.
Speaker 2:I like that well. I think marketing is one of those. In my opinion, marketing is one of those that it's tough to measure the results at times because it can take time and how can you quantify certain things that you're marketing? Because you may do a specific campaign to go with what you're talking about. This is my opinion, so just tell me if I'm off base before I get into the questions. So if they're going to look at 13 or 15 pieces of content, that may be over a span of time, because if we're talking with that Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, that's not something. Somebody wakes up one morning and goes, huh, I need a new ERP system. I'm going to buy it. Tara, can you sell it to me? All right, install it tomorrow. It's usually a process for them to get to the point where they reach out to somebody by doing some research for solving problems.
Speaker 1:Long-term play.
Speaker 2:Yes for solving problems. So long-term play yes. So you may have campaigns or such that were from chris and I talk about. We do presentations that shows. You'll hear from someone two years later saying a conference, events, conference. See, I can't speak, we have to just fix all this. So and they'll say well, we talked with you two years ago and now we're looking to do something. So tell me more and it to me it's tough to measure, but it's also important because you do need to be in front of people with all of the information that's accessible to somebody behind the keyboard, because I can sit here and type up a quick search right now in between a conversation and have a lot of information and read quickly. So it's a matter of getting that information out there. How can someone and you mentioned that one important thing with this is don't sell Dynamics 365, sell solving a problem or sell what makes you different from others how can someone determine what truly makes them different from others? That's market.
Speaker 1:Do they even know? Sometimes they don't know what makes them unique. That's my question is how?
Speaker 2:how do you determine what that may be and how do you pull that? There's an exercise right.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I mean, at some stage the company matures right and they they start to need more leads or more sales to keep themselves going. And that's usually the point where they start to reach out to an agency or look at augmenting their marketing. They're moving their marketing from making it like an off the side of the desk thing that somebody has to do to actually being something that they focus on. And you know, in that transition and when that happens, people have to really start thinking about, like, how did you get here? What makes your current customers happy? I mean, the best, the quickest way to find out what differentiates you from your competitor is go talk to a few customers and ask them how they feel about you. Ask the ones that love you, ask the ones that you've had challenges and overcome, and ask the ones even that maybe are still in the midst of a challenge with you and just figure out what they would say. What would they tell somebody else about working with your organization? That's kind of where we start the base of this. There is a whole exercise to Chris's point. He may have been put through part of it at some point in his life and, you know, as something that we work on. When we have new customers on board, is this foundational element, right? So if we have someone come to us and say we need a new website, we're like that's fantastic, we love that we can do that for you.
Speaker 4:Why, what's it about? Well, we want to sell Dynamics, right? You and 7,500 other people to my left. What do you actually want to do? You don't actually like. Do you wake up in the morning and think I want to sell Dynamics 365? Probably not. What do you want to do? You want to help a nonprofit get a better handle on everything so that they can contribute back to the community better. You are really jazzed about inventory velocity and making sure stuff doesn't sit on shelves and you really feel good when you help somebody uncover that mess. Maybe you're just somebody who loves to support and you just know so much about the technology and it really gets you fired up and you want to contribute that back to another tech team at. You know your customer organization, so starting to look at like what motivates you and your company to continue to do this that isn't just to get a paycheck.
Speaker 2:Understood. And I think the exercise would be important because I talk with many and I don't know if they really even understand themselves what they're trying to do. And it's not that they're not good at what they do, it's not that they're not passionate, they're not successful. Sometimes it's difficult to pinpoint. Like you said, let's identify in reality what are the key, distinct bullet points of what makes us different. It's, it's tough to. It's almost like writing a bio about yourself. You almost you need someone to pull it out of you versus you writing it yourself, because you may miss. Some people will over exaggerate and some people be extremely humble and cut themselves short, to put it in my terms Exactly.
Speaker 4:And you have to be willing to accept that that's an integral part of this exercise. So I would say that one thing that comes up in, you know, with us all the time, with new prospects and in marketing in general, is this sort of concept that marketing is this like tap, like we need a lead, turn it on, throw out a campaign, get some stuff in, turn it off because it's expensive, sales guy's job. Now and this is where the sales and marketing rub always come in but believing that marketing is going to work for you, when you treat it like that, is the start of your problem. Right, because this is an integrated situation and you have to build that foundation, otherwise, like we call it, like throwing spaghetti at the wall, like we can do that all day I can do it. You have to build that foundation, otherwise, like we call it, like throwing spaghetti at the wall, like we can do that all day.
Speaker 1:I can do it all day. I can send campaigns all day.
Speaker 4:That sounds fun, you might throw spaghetti against the wall. To Brad's point, it's very hard to get to any sort of like success metrics when all you're doing is like spraying everything out the hope and pray method, right, yeah, that's not the best and most strategic way to leverage your marketing resources, but getting people to understand that marketing is more than just a side administrative function or standing up a campaign or having a LinkedIn page is actually a big challenge that I think we face when we're dealing with prospects, and I think, internally, that a lot of the companies face themselves.
Speaker 1:The way I look at it too, it's like, um, you, when, when I have this conversation and and Brandy, I've gone through that, you know branding conversation like who are you? And and the way I look at it, it's almost like I want to catch fish, okay, what kind of fish you know? And there's like there's like a there's different oceans and lakes. I want to catch freshwater fish or I want to catch tuna, and then you're, you know, maybe you're fishing out in a different ocean or there's no tuna there, but then you're wasting your time, right. So it's very, very important for all organizations and at least the ones that I've worked with where you have to identify that fairly quickly of, like, what kind of fish you want to go after, and not just any fish. So it's important to go through that exercise to really identify okay, what kind of a fisherman are you?
Speaker 3:And what kind of lure do you need right? Or a pole or a boat?
Speaker 2:Exactly, that's extremely important and it's for anything, I think, from a sales point, it's understanding your target and you have to define a target. And the answer can't be to Chris's point every fish on the planet, because it's not feasible for you to be able to catch every fish in the planet, because saltwater versus freshwater, you have different bait, small fish versus large fish, some fish will eat frogs, some fish will eat crickets, so your bait's there. But talking with this and you're talking about the marketing campaigns and not just throwing and spraying I think that you had mentioned Tara it's how long we had mentioned that. Already now we have to go through an exercise, to bring it to simple terms. So an exercise of identifying how we're different from others, also identifying who our target is like, who is our ideal customer in this case, or ideal fish. Once we have that done, we need to determine, to come up with a plan to market to them.
Speaker 2:How do you and you have to be searchable. It's what your point was. How do you and you have to be searchable? It's what your point was how do you determine where to market? You had mentioned linkedin. I had a conversation with someone the other day. They said and I don't ever use it, unless somebody sends me a link and I click on it tiktok, they said. Well, tiktok is a big advertiser. Used to be instagram, used to be facebook. You have web pages, you have websites. You have different events that look for sponsors. How can you determine who, excuse me, how can you determine where you could market yourself? Or do you have to just do everything?
Speaker 4:Well, it's not financially feasible to do everything unless you are Microsoft, so that's part of where you start, right, is that Dara?
Speaker 3:Microsoft. So that's part of where you start, right, is that, dara? Yeah, I mean, there's. There's a lot of different. We're specifically working in the B2B space, right, and so there already are certain outlets that are just a little more successful than others, based on what we know, right.
Speaker 3:One really popular method is LinkedIn, as you mentioned, brad, account-based marketing. Do you know the profile of the companies or the people at those companies? And that goes back to the foundation. There is a way to target them through that. Through you know the information that they have on their LinkedIn profiles. That can be very effective. It can also be very expensive.
Speaker 3:So another way is searching, now that you've identified, okay, what are the compelling events that happen with your target audience before they come to you, happen, um, with your target audience before they come to you? That's another really good question. To sort of start to identify what your target market looks like. What are these? What is happening to them prior to them seeking solutions? You start to look at search terms. What are they looking for on the internet to solve their problems, or, um, to reach the goal that they want to reach? And, um, you start to look at the viability of those. So, before you put, obviously, any money into it. There are ways to see okay, these people are searching for this or they're not searching for this and there's this volume for this.
Speaker 3:And you have to look at your existing assets. Do you have a list of people you've met previously? Are there people that go to certain events that fit your profile? You do have to lay it out and start to say okay to get any.
Speaker 3:You know it is a full exercise as the next step to decide where you put your money, but it's not going to be perfect the first time. You do it right. There's baselines that you need to. You know what was successful in paid media and using these search terms versus what was successful in LinkedIn or what was successful at these events, to see where do you turn the dials right, what dials should we shift down and what dials should we shift up, and that's a constant, ever-evolving, ever-changing thing that you always want to look at. But even upfront, it's going to take you some baseline to figure out, okay, which one is doing the best or seems to be yielding the most results in terms of converting or engagement, that sort of thing. So you do have to do a little trial and error, but you can do enough legwork up front once you've identified your target audience, that being the biggest right importance there to start to see what works.
Speaker 2:Once you go through all that, you mentioned that you'd be able to measure, like their search terms, or measure the results of your campaigns, is what you're talking about, or where you're marketing.
Speaker 2:How do you determine that and how long would you say that it takes for something to become effective to where it is searchable? And I hate to say this because I don't like talking about it I had a session about a month ago and I told everybody I wouldn't say the word in the session because I'm sick of hearing it all the time Now that there are AI tools that bring results back. So what considerations should you make for tools such as AI that may bring information back or search differently? Then I know there are also blockers, ad blockers and such that may inhibit some information being obtained of the effectiveness of the campaign. And that also goes back to the question of see, I have them all here and I'm just trying to get them all out before I forget. That's it. I do it on purpose sometimes just to see which ones you can remember. Sure, or actually the truth is, and I'll say it now, for everybody.
Speaker 4:I just say them all so I don't forget. Yeah, we know the secret.
Speaker 2:Now you know the secret, it's out because Brandy and I are best friends. Now I could share that secret with my best friend. But how long would it take for a campaign to be measurable I'm not saying effective, because the campaign may not be proper or appropriate based upon the conditions that you put for selection of audience or selection of information, the key for the differentiator itself. But what is the time period that you should wait and what are the considerations that also you can make for the technology of today to make yourself appear?
Speaker 4:It'd be so amazing if marketing was even remotely as linear as you're asking this question of. Unfortunately, it's difficult, right? If you're starting from a good place and you've got some brand recognition, you've got some good domain authority on your website, you've got good people working on your stuff, you can tell within a few if it's like an email marketing campaign. After the first two emails you have a pretty good idea of if this is going to do well or not. Right, Like the first email is always the best and then they kind of drop down and so if your first email is a flop, you are pretty ready for the rest of it, to kind of do that.
Speaker 4:But when you're looking at something like your organic campaigns or your paid media campaigns, those are a lot harder to really quantify in terms of time and it also depends on what matters to you, right? So we have some customers and one deal to them is a success. Whatever they're selling, whatever they need to do, is so valuable to them that just one deal makes the whole campaign a success. Where we have other customers, they need 30 deals for them to consider it a success because they're more transactional or it's a smaller piece of the pie for them that we're working on, and so it's really it sort of it depends on a lot of factors, and I do hate to say that it depends, because I think that's a bit of a trite answer when you're asking for specifics but a true consultant.
Speaker 4:Everything is, it depends um, but you know it does it, it is. It is difficult, and I think you know if, if you take anything away from it, it's that you need to launch a campaign from a place where you feel like you gave it as much attention as you expect to get in return, and so you need to build the pieces that go with it. Sometimes the campaigns are meant to just be like let's see if something happens, and that's okay. Doing something is always better than doing nothing.
Speaker 2:So, to go back to your point of marketing being not so linear, I am not that unique, so I'm thankful that we're having this conversation because I'm certain that many others may have a similar question of how do I do this. But I heard in your response to the question put some sort of success metric in the campaign along with I guess, take out the time but put in, as you had mentioned, if we get one deal. I guess take out the time but put in, as you had mentioned, if we get one deal, the campaign successful, we're happy. Instead of we're going to send out 700 emails, for example, and we get seven, we expect to have 700 replies because everybody loves us. So it's just a matter of having some sort of realistic metric of what is successful to me in a realistic fashion and sometimes it's brand awareness campaigns.
Speaker 4:Right, sometimes you're not even necessarily working on a direct like I need a lead to give to sales. It's just, you know, I need someone to know that we exist. I need people to start talking about us. We're a new ISV or coming to North America for the first time, or we just got a cash injection and we want to do more. Well, no one's ever heard of you. So what can we do to even just drive some brand awareness amongst this channel? Right, as we talked about at the beginning, this channel is we've all been here for a long time People know somebody everywhere and so you know when it, when you're looking internally, some of it is just getting that name recognition out there, so that you are somebody that that somebody else feels that they could trust or do business with.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know, we did a workshop, um, at, at an event last year where we we talked a lot about campaigns. So you want to build a campaign, right? Um, and there is two parts to this right. But one thing we really emphasized was when you build your campaign, yes, you can lay out the metrics that you are going to track. Are you going to track clicks, track conversions, track how many leads ended up becoming sales, qualified, sales qualified? There are probably as many metrics across as many campaign concepts that we could spend an eternity sort of discussing or diving into right, but decide which ones you are going to track. More importantly, define, like, clearly define the objective and the goal. Right, because you could track all these metrics. But to Brandy's point, which metric matters? Right, what is your goal? Are you getting brand recognition? Are you trying to just get LinkedIn followers or are you really trying to get people to fill out a form to discuss a very specific solution with you? Those are two very different things. So it's really important that you define it, because what we see too often is that people throw a lot of money, a lot of resources and a lot of capacity at building campaigns and they're not actually thinking about how are we going to measure what the success of this was or what the outcome was afraid to also, I think, be honest with themselves sometimes, like what if we don't hit four sales? Or what if we don't hit 10 sales? Or what if we don't hit 50 leads? That's okay. Put a stick in the ground so you can say this worked, this didn't. We're going to change it next time, because that's how great marketing evolves. Right Is being honest with yourself and seeing what actually worked to meet the objective, and the objectives can be different across different campaigns.
Speaker 3:The other thing I just want to add is that you will start to see metrics instantly, right. The second something launches. You're going to start to see opens, clicks, cost per click, all that stuff. That will all be data you start to get right away. You do have to get those some directional, like you know information about that data, which means you do have to let things run for a period of time.
Speaker 3:I think that kind of goes back to your original question. But well, how long do you do it before you decide it works or it doesn't work? I think if you're starting a new let's say, paid media initiative, you've never done it before and you want to try it out and you're going to do these search terms or whatnot. Anybody is likely going to tell you, or we would likely tell you, you got to let something run for 60 to 90 days to baseline it. It doesn't mean you don't see some directional data after two to three weeks where you can make some tweaks and be like, okay, you know, this search term or this campaign or this segment of this is working really well, this one isn't so much. Let's dial this one up, let's dial this one down, see if it changes. But don't just try it, for you know four weeks and then be like, well, that did or didn't work, that that probably won't give you the directional data that you're looking for.
Speaker 2:And with the consideration how do you think AI? And the reason why I'm asking I hate to bring it up because I hate to talk about it, cause it's not everything. World's not AI centric, as much as everybody may think it is. Uh, or maybe it is, and I'm just it's affecting everyone. It does affect everybody, but I saw somebody post something and I forget where it was the other day and they said well, they got their first lead from ai and it's one I. I'm curious to know how you can track it back to AI.
Speaker 2:You know somebody prompting AI and getting a result, but how do you feel that that impacts somebody's marketing campaigns? I'll use the word campaign versus the traditional campaigns, right, traditional campaigns again. Over the course of the years you had mailings, flyers, emails, ads on websites. There's what I would call traditional, but now with search, search in my opinion, being condensed, because now even on google or uh, what's the other one? Google, microsoft?
Speaker 2:the other search engines bang see, I told you I'm, but it's now you get like. You get the AI response at the top of your results. That has links to it, along with the listed websites or pieces of content that match your result. What are some considerations? One how does that impact your campaign with everything that we've spoken about, and what are some considerations someone could make so that it can be in that top summary for problem solving?
Speaker 4:So if we go back to the start of our conversation, when we talked about the 12 to 15 or 13 to 17 pieces of content that somebody wants to interact with you with before they talk to you, that is basically what's going to feed those AI snippets, and so to the degree, just like SEO, it's garbage in and garbage out Whatever you have. So companies that have spent the last three, five, ten years building thought leadership content, focusing on helping people solve their problems, meeting the buyers where they are, are going to be a lot better than the companies that are running what we refer to as brochure websites, which is like here's the product, here's our location, here's how you get a hold of us. Those companies are going to lose ground a lot more quickly in the AI space in terms of that searchability Because, even beyond what you're talking about, at Google IO last year they announced that they are not going to serve links at some point. Google will not give you a link to a website. Eventually they want it to be an enclosed system. Now they announced this and then they had to sort of reconcile what they're going to do about getting money out of the paid ads and those kinds of things. I think they have pulled back a little bit on it, but in their ideal world, they're not serving a link to your website anymore at all. They're answering your question. You're staying in Google. Google is your friend now.
Speaker 4:And so how do you become the answer to those questions? Well, you have to have the content on your website. You have to have the people in your organization that actually live, breathe and die by what you're talking about. So, hiring 25 consultants to come in and be like well, I have a team of 30. Well, do any of them know what they're talking about? If they don't, you're not going to necessarily beat the person with the five-person team next door. It's really about, like, we are at a place where your thought leadership, your ability to demonstrate your expertise to a robot, may be the most important thing you can do, like right now, today, in this transition.
Speaker 1:So you mentioned thought leadership. You mentioned thought leadership. Now I want to kind of break this down further. And you mentioned that there's different channels. You know 11 to 13 different places you put content. Which one of those brings more weight into being found? Is it more thought leadership or you're All of them together? All of them together? Okay.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I liked what you said.
Speaker 4:Having one post on LinkedIn irrelevant, nobody cares. One post is not helping you. You spending the last however many years you've spent building up a personality on LinkedIn and then having that reflected in your podcast, in conversations you have places, in sessions you lead at conferences, in write-ups that people have about you. This is building the story of who you are and it's becoming a lot more. The individual is becoming more relevant than the company as a whole in this transition period. This is why you're seeing such an. I love that. Can you repeat that?
Speaker 1:in stereo you might not even have to.
Speaker 2:We might just have to loop that over and over. I say that time and time again in this world. It's all coming down to people, all coming down to people. Where it is the individual, even in consulting that, we all know the space well. People work with people. They have I use the word loosely a relationship with the people of the team that they have. It's not the company exactly. The company brings them together. The company may have other talented individuals or a group of individual, but it's the team that's servicing your fish. To Chris's point, that are the most important part a strategy right, and then every component of that's just your uh tactical approach of individual um component.
Speaker 1:But the whole thing is a strategy to get. You have to get all 11 to 13 things to you know to make it all work to to get results and it takes time yeah, I think it's also important to just like keep in mind, right, google's been changing consistently and constantly changing their algorithms for years.
Speaker 3:I mean, I mean years and years and years, ever since they were Google. And the one thing, though, that hasn't really changed too much in those algorithms is what has what holds weight and time and stands the test of time right, like websites that have been there longer, or content that is constantly getting built off of a site right, that always um holds a lot of weight with google, and, and ai is another component right right of this evolution and the changing algorithms. But what we kind of like to remind people is that what you want tomorrow, you need to have started yesterday, because the one thing you'll never buy is time right. And so I think a lot of organizations think, oh, now there's AI or now there's this, and they're very reactive.
Speaker 3:How do we address this? How do we get this? The thing is, it's a long game. You need to create the thought leadership culture and you need to really invest in that and that content and that value add out there right on the internet, and that will always wait more than just yeah, like Brandy said, like a few social posts or like oh okay, let's just build a new site today and then it'll be different and it'll be better. Yeah, it might have the better schemas in it, but you still have to feed that over time to show that you know you're a player in the game that you're trying to get in front of.
Speaker 4:I think the AI thing is an interesting opportunity in our space.
Speaker 4:I know in the technology space, there's lots of different things that it's being used for, but it is an interesting thing when you look at what Google is preferencing and when you're looking at how things are coming together.
Speaker 4:All that Google's doing right now, at the bare bones of it, is trying to determine what was done by a human and what was done by an AI so that it can deprioritize what was done by an AI, which is hilarious, because they're using an AI to deprioritize the AI.
Speaker 4:All of the updates that they're doing and they're looking like I think it's probably not Google so much as Bing, but Bing is actually doing work on where they can sort of match your LinkedIn content, because they can get into there with exterior content about you and say, like, does this sound like Brad? Does it actually feel like Brad is writing his LinkedIn content and his sessions? Or is this two different people a marketing person pretending to be Brad and actual Brad? Right, the AI is actually actively trying to suppress when somebody's faking it or when it's AI content that was generated, or when it's not real thought leadership. That's all they're working on, and so, to the degree that you've just established a base of expertise in your space, you're going to come up a lot better than somebody who has been sort of trying to grift off the idea of like content, spamming or whatever right. They're trying to determine who's a real person.
Speaker 1:That could change in time, though, right, because as it gets, as it improves and you know, now you could teach AI how to sound like you and, you know, feed it.
Speaker 4:That's going to be a tough one to help you work these days it's a little complicated, but yeah, I mean, and that's, it is going to change probably before we continue, let the record state, counselor, that brad is brad.
Speaker 2:The only thing brad uses is grammarly is a great tool which I've used for a long time to just.
Speaker 3:AI built in there, Brad.
Speaker 2:I don't know. It does have AI to help improve some of your sentences, but you don't have to use it. I sometimes will dictate in a rant what I want to say and some of the things that I post, because I'm mobile or somewhere and I'll have to use gramly or something to go back to clean it up. But brad is brad at this point until we feed it with your voice.
Speaker 1:Man, look, look, these are all recorded, right? So anybody can download this episode and just feed it to ai and say I want you to sound like I'll tell you.
Speaker 2:I did. I used 11 labs before and I've had conversations. I mean it wasn't as good as real time, but recording some snippets and I would love to have some conversations that way, which this is another PSA for that. Speaking of the voices, this is how the tangents of my mind will go. You need to have a safe word with people.
Speaker 2:Because of AI and these conversations, I cannot tell you how many people that I've heard stories of and I've known firsthand where they've been almost scammed, because someone will say hey, dad, I'm stuck at the car dealership, can you send me $200 or $2,000 to get my car? At that point you should say, okay, what's the safe word? It's not some crazy questions, because now anybody can find anything about anybody on the internet. It's not some crazy questions, because now anybody can find anything about anybody on the Internet. You need to have a safe word that somebody can authenticate them. Or I know someone that had someone call and say that they were broken down on the side of the road, like someone close to them was broken down on the side of the road to come pick them up. They weren't there. There was someone there that was ready to rob them.
Speaker 2:This is how creative some of these scams are going. You're talking about the voice, chris. Scams are going. You're talking about the voice. Go back to my public service announcement. Maybe we'll cut that out, maybe we won't, but everybody have a safe word. That's all I have to say.
Speaker 3:Chris, we need to have a safe word with you I know yeah I'm sorry, you fuck the tangent I wasn't sure how far I should go with it, but like this did actually happen to my in-laws, you know where they thought my stepson was calling them, because it is actually really scary. And, and you're right, we talked about the safe word.
Speaker 2:But see, just right here in the conversation of four I don't know Brandy and Chris. If it's you know first and I'm talking firsthand, I'm not talking, I read it on the Internet. If it's you know first and I'm talking firsthand, I'm not talking, I read it on the internet. Like between four of us here, two of us know somebody close firsthand that had somebody try to use fake voices to take something from them, whatever that may be, and mine was money, I mean. So if that's happened to you, then that's what I'm saying. Look at the percentages of how good this is getting now, because it't take a lot. You can automate a lot of that stuff now too. So the safe word is good. So, tara, thank you. Now we're best friends, brandy see you.
Speaker 1:Bye, brandy, you're still working on that. You got progress going. I got the progress I didn't get the other perfection.
Speaker 3:You get me a yeti with progress and perfection, or even a big room yeti, so then I'll drink it and we'll be best friends you know, overall, I think we're we're kind of ai is is so broad, right, what it's affecting, and I think it does get very philosophical very quickly, right. But if we're just speaking in terms of marketing or um, delivering software solutions, it it is. Also. There is some exciting stuff right, and I think that we shouldn't be just push it aside and be like tomorrow's problem, tomorrow's problem, right, because it really is affecting us today. So being a part of that evolution and using it as a tool where it makes sense is really important, and also staying on top of okay, how can I build in strategies and execute them? So it's going to meet AI where it is today and help me not be so reactive in the future where it's like oh oops, didn't do that, now what do you do?
Speaker 1:right, so you're adapting to the AI revolution, whereas some marketing folks are like, no, I'm not, you know they're so against it, but sounds like you guys are adapting to that and make it part of your strategy.
Speaker 4:Those people are either lying or almost retired and they don't want to learn something new. Because I think it would be insane to believe that you could operate in a digital landscape these days without understanding what the AI is doing. That doesn't mean you have to turn your job over to it, but it does mean you have to stay up, like you know, on top of it all. And we do use it here, right. We're not going to pretend like, oh well, we never would use it, and I think Chris and I had a conversation on LinkedIn about chat GT the other day. But it's the same thing garbage in, garbage out right, I can use it to quickly get something done, because I can say I want X, y and Z in this format for this audience done this way. I want you to look at this. It has to sound, you can tell it all of those things and it will give you something that you can then start to work on right.
Speaker 4:So now I have a draft. That's 70% of the content that I want. I still need to go in there. I need to make sure that the headlines make sense, I need to make sure it makes sense for the brand voice, I need to put the links and the calls to action and all those things have to go in there. I also had to start with something more than write me a blog post about inventory, because that is not any use to anybody and so you have to be an expert. And then you have to use the ai to supplement that, not to replace it. You're not going to get rid of a staff member and then be like, well, now all of the content's written by this ai. It's like yes, we know intel, because it it reads it. You can tell you use the word delve.
Speaker 4:Oh, there's, there's so many words you can pick up on this landscape we delve into this inventory management man do I ever use any of those phrases.
Speaker 2:See, I'll have to have to have to create content and say we need an anti-a, anti-ai agent to say that we need to make your text not sound like ai it will just spit back the same.
Speaker 4:In today's dynamic business environment, if you google just that sentence, like 700 of the websites will come up. Everybody starts a web like a blog post like that. We. It's an internal like joke in our organization like.
Speaker 2:What is it that I have to search for?
Speaker 4:like in today's dynamic business environment, or to in today's competitive landscape.
Speaker 1:It's always today's ever-evolving business landscape like now we have an 80s organization like have you found using um, you know, chat, gpt or whatever ai tool, your lm tool you're using where you ask it to write something for you? But consider the seo yep like has that worked well or is it off entirely?
Speaker 4:it works, ish.
Speaker 4:So again, if you're going to say, I'm gonna do, do my SEO with chat, gpt, with the little agent that someone built in there, like you're going to get 70% of the way there, the same 70% that the other 12 people that also went through that exercise got right and so it can start, it can help, it can give you ideas, it can build out a bit of the structure, but again, if you don't know what you're doing, it's not going to be the end, all and be all of that.
Speaker 4:And I mean I think we go back to, like, you know, how do we get found and how does my website come up and how does this happen? Like the base of that is not just your foundational messaging about who you are, it's your digital architecture and how all of that stuff was constructed in the first place, and how all of that stuff was constructed in the first place. There's no, to our knowledge, there's no amount of AI that is available right now that could replace somebody who has that as a background, who could come in and do that in a way that we would say would be successful. It's an augmentation, but it's not going to be a replacement right now. I mean, who knows right? Future is what it is.
Speaker 1:So you're using AI tool to augment your day-to-days, just to get you a baseline to get you going, because sometimes starting is difficult for many, and so using AI to kind of get you started and then be able to get the ball rolling and I think it improves efficiency so that you can focus more on the creative side now that it's built something for you as a starting point.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and you know, I listened to a really interesting podcast actually just about three days ago.
Speaker 1:About this. Is it us?
Speaker 3:About this about this yeah, it focused a little bit more on the role AI plays in education, so I won't go down that rabbit hole, because that's right, a topic in and of itself, but the conclusion of it, I think, is, uh, very relevant here, which is we really should not have prompt engineers running our organizations, or any parts of our organizations, through AI.
Speaker 3:We need art directors to run art through AI. We need real digital architects who know how to do this from the ground up, running the SEO and those components through AI. We need copywriters who know their own voice, who have, you know, harnessed that piece of the art for them to be running the AI that helps them build this, if that makes sense. So we really do need the skills behind it to run it so it's successful and it doesn't just all turn out the same or because then it's completely ineffective, right and and. So I just think that that was just a really good conclusion to that, but it just shouldn't be a bunch of prompt engineers that know how to ask these generic questions, because the output will all of a sudden start to, cyclical, be pretty much the same very valid point.
Speaker 2:You need to have the right people in the right position doing the right thing, because it's also the same you have some. Just because somebody can do something doesn't mean they should, or doesn't mean they're good at doing something else. You could be a great technical person who can build the space shuttle. It doesn't mean you can run a business selling space shuttles right. You need to have the right person in the right role. A couple of few an additional thought before we wind down here, taking up all the valuable time. I could talk with the two of you all night long, and we'll probably have to have a conversation.
Speaker 3:Yes, that's what I was just about to say.
Speaker 2:We'll be ready in Vegas to have many, many conversations, some impromptu, some will be coordinated. But we've talked a lot about marketing across jeez, across many different areas, with ai, with uh, where do you market, how do you market timing and such, and you work with many different customers and many different irsvs within dynamics, three, 65, stack or space. What are some of the biggest myths I guess you could call them myths that you hear from customers or that you see in the space about marketing for ERP software? We again, we talked about what's differentiate you or ISVs. What are some of the myths that some people come to you, um, that you hear that aren't so valid?
Speaker 4:I mean, I think the like the thing that we run up against the most often is is just the amount of your revenue that you should contribute back to your marketing engine. People really do think that marketing can be a discipline that's off the side of someone's desk, or we can just throw this little bit at it, and they don't. I think a lot of organizations struggle to understand the entire value and sort of input that marketing has on an operation. It's not just your campaign, it's your brand awareness, it's your employment branding. Does somebody even want to work for you? If you're looking for people who are great in the space, what does your company say about you?
Speaker 4:All of that ties back to marketing. What are your customer success stories? What are those ratings that you're getting? None of that is easy to obtain. It takes a lot of people, a lot of work to build those things up, and so assuming that marketing can be run as sort of an off the side of the desk function or sort of like a oh, we have a marketing coordinator, that is all we need is, I think, one of the biggest. I don't know if that's a myth or how you would call that, but I think that would be one of the things we run into like most often yeah, he's still mine, but I I see, that's what you get for having her go first all the time we must see it a lot, uh, but I think the product of that right brandy is is to your point.
Speaker 3:there they're hiring or employing like a single generalist right and thinking that that is all the marketing output that they need. That Joe or Susie can do graphic design, seo, build a website, do content, run LinkedIn and that's perfect. That's all we need, and then wondering why they're not making more headway on lead generation or brand awareness in the market and that sort of thing. There really are specific people that know parts of that work right, and you really do need, for instance, somebody that does graphics very well. Maybe you have senior and junior. You need somebody that knows overall strategy and organization. And, yes, marketing coordinators can play a great role administratively, especially when it comes to events and putting pieces together or connecting parts of the department. But there really is no unicorn out there. I just want everybody to know that Nobody can do absolutely every piece of the puzzle. Well, um, and and we've run up against that an awful lot- that's a great tips to have.
Speaker 2:Brandy. Tara, I did want to go through an exercise with you, but I don't think we have time. Hopefully we can do it in the future, unless you have time, because I know, a pod.
Speaker 1:You should do it for our website we're ready oh, okay should Navi join us for this?
Speaker 2:who's Navi?
Speaker 1:wait, you name your dog Navi. No, navi is.
Speaker 3:Navi is our on-chromosaurus. Yeah, we're.
Speaker 4:Solomon, solomon and Navi is our on-premis for us.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're Solomon is it like a talking stick?
Speaker 4:if you don't upgrade to business central.
Speaker 1:Navi and.
Speaker 3:Solomon on-premis for us.
Speaker 2:Oh, I like that well, if we can go through the exercise. I know these, these guys spread One premise for us. Yeah, oh, I like that. Well, if we can go through the exercise. I know these guys that have a podcast, oh, yeah, have we met them that they need help.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and they just put up a new website.
Speaker 2:They just put up a new website. I did not.
Speaker 4:Because they thought they could do it. I didn't know the help that was needed at all we just need progress.
Speaker 1:okay, hey, you made progress over perfection, progress over perfection.
Speaker 2:We have guest pages. Now we have a number of things that we didn't have before, so we've progressed.
Speaker 4:You did.
Speaker 2:It's not perfect and don't say it's not near perfect.
Speaker 1:And it's not on non-premise. I promise you that.
Speaker 2:So how did Navi and Solomon help us through this exercise of how we can have better brand awareness and marketing for this podcast?
Speaker 3:we're just going shooting out the general question, just how you just you heard my questions before to brandy when she told me they're very linear.
Speaker 2:So I know how to talk into a microphone. Maybe not well, and that's why I use grammarly. But what do we do make it work? Do I sound like a customer? A?
Speaker 4:little bit. Um, I mean, mean, to be fair to you, you have done a great job. I think just you had to build this base right. You're starting to get some momentum. People are looking at your podcast. They're interested in it. You're pulling in people from all sorts of areas and disciplines in the space. You're not just talking to CEOs of large bars and that kind of thing. You're getting the big perspective.
Speaker 4:I mean, this is a time-based exercise. I think right now is building that brand awareness. I think doing things like I have my pin up here that Chris gave me at Summit, doing more of those things this podcast is a labor of love for you two. Obviously, this is time-consuming and it is obviously taking something out of you to do it, and so that is the message that you need to put forward that you really are doing this because it's something that you love to do. Why are you doing this? Right? Let's get really clear on that. What is the purpose of this? Is it just because you like to talk to people all day? It might be, but I suspect there's something else underneath that. So, I think, continuing to build those relationships that you're building.
Speaker 2:I thought you were asking me a question, I was ready to answer. Sorry, I thought you were asking me a question, I was ready to answer.
Speaker 1:We're trying to make best friends, okay, that's the purpose, no it is a labor of love.
Speaker 2:As you say, we started off doing the podcast about four years ago and we took a different direction of it. For me personally, I enjoy talking with various members of the community to hear their stories, to hear what they do, because it is a great community, it's so large but yet so small, even internationally. So I enjoy this is me personally speaking with many members of the community hearing what they do, hearing how they do, learning their history. I enjoy the people aspect of it because we're all people every day working to try to be successful with implementations of Business Central across the D365. I can't even say Business Central because we branched out beyond that, like you had mentioned, brandy.
Speaker 2:So that's the passion for me. Behind it is just letting everybody tell their story, whether they're an ISV that has a product that helps somebody run their business. Again, it could be competing ISVs even talking with you from a marketing point of view, getting to know you, your people behind a marketing agency that does well with business central, isvs and customers, and maybe someone listening to this can go, oh, we need some marketing or we need some insights and let's speak with Brandy and Tara over at Big Room. So that's the passion for me is getting the community together, understanding who's in the community and everybody being able to talk about what they have and what they enjoy doing with others.
Speaker 1:So mine's slightly different than Brad putting this together. It's just really getting to know the human side of all the contents put people put out there. There's incredible content creators that puts out knowledge, right and thought leadership, but who are they you know as human beings and get to know them. Like I didn't realize this person played an ukulele. I didn't realize this person rode motorcycles, you know, and something that I can relate to.
Speaker 1:And and just getting to know the people behind the persona of what's put out there, and that also includes partners that we you know. That that's part of the show and I even ISVs, like including the both of you, and just getting to know. Like I didn't I didn't realize that Tara goes on vacation all the time, and so you know, and I didn't realize Brandy, you and I are practically neighbors, you know things like that. It was like that's really cool and in just that relationship aspect of it, not just the content, that's what I love about doing this podcast and then when we see each other, it's much more fun because now we don't have to talk about work all the time, we're just catching up and like be friends.
Speaker 4:It's true and it's. You know it is funny, right? We all get our like, I think, one of the things that's pretty unique about the space. Granted, I haven't worked outside of the Dynamics channel, but even the competitive people tend to be out there helping each other out right, like we would never hesitate to recommend one of the competitive partner marketing organizations in the space if it was. If somebody came to us and we didn't have the capacity to help them, or maybe they were looking for something that wasn't necessarily our sweet spot, and I think that's the same for a lot of the partners and the bars and the ISPs. You're cross competitive, they're all cross competitive, but in a fairly friendly way. I mean, I know there's obviously, like certain rivalries and that kind of thing, but I think to the degree that you guys can continue to, to use your love of the human story and exploit that angle a little bit more around the community is going to further your ability to get your podcast across mediums.
Speaker 2:So how do we do that?
Speaker 4:I mean you keep talking like you have been. But I think there's I mean we're still being recorded. I think there's ways to talk to people, right.
Speaker 2:You said we could do the exercise.
Speaker 4:And I don't know because I have never actually we have never gone down the path of looking at what it would take to get a podcast or something like this off the ground or, like you know, more, more proliferated across the market. If it was me, I would be cozying up to like the board, directions and the dynamics, user communities and seeing if you can't get yourself as like a media contact at some of these events Right and so we talked about that how, brad, because I'm listening.
Speaker 4:I'm listening, chris, you see those kinds of things, right. So how do you transition from being, you know, these two guys that that happen to work together right now and have their podcasts and they're talking to people? How do you become something more than that? How do you break outside of um, the concept that maybe you're looking for internal lead gen and so you're just doing thought leadership as a podcast? Right, like, how do we get around some of that and really focus on putting yourselves out there like you're a community place?
Speaker 4:You are going to naturally, or probably have become a hub of knowledge because of the amount of people you take the time to speak to on your podcast and in person. You're becoming a centralized place of knowledge yourselves because if somebody asks you a question, you've got four years worth of these conversations that you can drag on. So how do we harness that in more than here? Watch our podcast episodes. I can't watch four years of your podcast episodes. I can email you and say, hey, I was wondering about this, but I suspect you probably talked to somebody. So how do you get that a little bit more front and center?
Speaker 1:Yeah, we have a little corner of dynamics.
Speaker 2:And there's a chair.
Speaker 3:Your dynamics corner. I also really like what you said about what you do, a little bit more than what you have written about what you do, because I really love this angle this right.
Speaker 2:Here is where we need help, and I told you we need to pull it out Like this is like being in the therapy chair. I like this, yeah, well.
Speaker 3:I mean looking at your website, we could, we could probably help you with that a little bit, but I mean just front and center. Right, the concept that you're cultivating and humanizing the Microsoft Dynamics 365 community. Right, and it's not just business central, it's basically the Microsoft business application space. But I think that is the important part, right, and that's what you're ultimately out to do. And I believe I mean, based on the number of people I see at events and it's only a fraction of this community there's tens of thousands of people out there interested in this. They're spending, you know, a majority of their week in this space and so, um, I think humanizing yourselves a little bit more, um, as a part of the brand for this is, is so important because but I'm not sure your websites really don't.
Speaker 2:how do we? How do we do that?
Speaker 3:I'm looking for concrete, like you're telling me to do this, but yeah, I mean, I think, just how you know, I'm a, I'm a, get in it and do it. I can't necessarily do it verbally.
Speaker 2:So we'll do some negotiations, we'll give you some advertising space.
Speaker 4:You give us a little write up and then we, we can we have a big room shirt we have a vested interest in your success, so we're very happy to talk with you more about it, for sure. I mean, you know, like I think one of the things we go back to the beginning we're talking about big room and that type of thing. We're not we are not a a volume play at big room right, we are a. We are not a volume play at Big Room right, we are like a bespoke. Like you get a lot of attention from Tara or myself or whomever is running the account, and that means that when we work with people, we work with people that we believe in their product or their vision or who is working with them, and that is what gets us doing this right, because otherwise we could just sort of do the volume play and be like we want 200 partners to pay us this much money to do to cross compete you against each other, like that's not sort of what we do. And so, again, like we are looking, we are always interested in helping people in the community grow their space and get where they want to go, and what you guys are doing isn't that far outside of marketing.
Speaker 4:We would tell people who had robust marketing departments or had the ability to do this kind of thing, to do a podcast like this, you would have. You know, if you're doing it within an organization, you get some of the leverage from their website and their marketing. But this is not. This is marketing. You're just marketing yourselves and your and your passion for the community, right, and so I think we would. You know we, like you guys, we would have an interest in seeing you continue to lead right.
Speaker 2:Thank you, I appreciate that. I'm glad you like us. We want you to love us eventually. It's quality over quantity.
Speaker 4:Well, it's back to Brad and his best friend level with me.
Speaker 2:Oh no, we're back to best friend level. Well, I say with others that I've talked about it for Well, I say with others that I've talked about it. For me, this passion is the true passion. I'm the type of person that I'm doing it for that, and once I don't have the passion, I'll be done. It's just how it is. It doesn't matter what it turns into, because I enjoy the conversations with every single person that we have, and that's what drives me.
Speaker 1:That was the promise that Brad and I had. Like we cannot make this feel like it's work. Right, promise that Brad and I had. We cannot make this feel like it's work. We have to enjoy it and just love doing it. The moment it feels like it's work, it's like oh, it's going to be painful.
Speaker 4:You have an opportunity when my husband and I if we go to visit Tara and her husband, who also works in the channel we can't help it. It's so much of the conversation that it isn't even necessarily we're not talking tactical, like we got to do this, we got to do that. I mean, tara and I are sometimes doing that, but when we're talking, you know, more broadly, it's like you just can't help it.
Speaker 4:It's just because we spend so much time doing this and so that is like you guys are like the guy at the kitchen, like table, that would actually talk to me at a party, because I, that is like you guys are like the guy at the kitchen, like table, that would actually talk to me at a party, because I'd be like, oh my god, like this marketing thing and this channel thing and everybody else is just like very glossed over, because it you, we're all here forever and we spend all of our time doing this and we find it very interesting and I think that's just a special group of weirdos that we are right.
Speaker 4:Like my husband worked here very briefly over the COVID times and he and he's we've been, you know, he's been around this forever and he was like, okay, well, it took me all of the previous knowing you and then a year of working here. I think I've maybe figured out like what's going on a little bit in this group, right, because it's not like you can't explain it to people that are outside of the channel and so like you're like everyone's best friend I was told it's like a cult.
Speaker 2:We're all in a cult. We're in a big cult the, the community. I call it a community, so I guess it makes it sound like a cult. You call it a channel. It's uh, it's a cult. Okay, so we have to humanize ourselves.
Speaker 4:I like going through this exercise.
Speaker 2:I'm enjoying going through how you're helping a young organization such as a podcast, grow so it's basically we just have to record ourselves brad.
Speaker 1:That, uh, that's not like behind the scenes. You know, we don't brad and I'll try not to talk about work outside of this space sometimes and we just talk about, hey, what did you cook, what did you smoke in your smoker, things like that.
Speaker 3:But how do we do that, but how do we get?
Speaker 2:that on the website so that it's searchable. How do we get it to show up? How do we do this? This is where I'm stuck. I could go back to Brandy with my linear thinking how do I get it so that we market? Well, chris, to your point, we could have those conversations that we have. So we just record those conversations and just put them up as episodes, without guests, and just stay behind the scenes as just a portion of extending what you're talking about here, right?
Speaker 4:because outside of this, if we left this room and we didn't know you two at all, we don't know if you go and leave this and not to talk to each other until another guest comes back, or if you guys regularly hang it like you know, people don't know that no, we don't hang out. He's in the opposite side of the country. Well, but sorry, like text messaging or whatever it is right, right right but there is.
Speaker 4:You know, there there is ways. And this is where, like I I am, I don't have tiktok, I can't get there, I'm not going to. This is where people would be like, oh, you put those things on tiktok. I think it's better to kind of keep it in. You know your closed system, but I think you guys could talk a little bit more to each other on linked, for instance. You guys can do some of these podcasts. Why don't you interview each other? Why don't one of you sit on either side of this and just have these conversations in both directions and just see?
Speaker 2:Chris, you're taking notes?
Speaker 1:I'm taking notes.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 4:Theoretically, you're being a little bit more self-promotional. Which back to your no one wants to write a bio about themselves and all those kinds of things.
Speaker 2:I can't do that. I am one that I could not self-promote anything of myself period. I can sit and talk to anybody and do anything, but you actually have asked me to sit down and talk about myself or write about myself. I can't do it. I get stage fright.
Speaker 3:We can help you with that.
Speaker 1:It's recorded, by the way.
Speaker 4:I also want to know that oftentimes we'll get content from people.
Speaker 4:That is like you were saying you drive around and you rant it into your phone and then you have to get grammarly to fix it you oftentimes get just the straight thought, like stream of consciousness rant into someone's phone when they're driving around, and then we have to make it into something like there are ways to get the content to a place where it can be publicly shareable, while still honoring your issues with talking about yourself or your inability to write or your disinterest in sitting down in front of a computer and doing it.
Speaker 3:It's just about thinking about different ways to do that right yeah, we could definitely take a look in the under the hood of that, that website there I mean a few title tags, a long way uh say the game please the few title tags like you can.
Speaker 4:The seo strategy could be probably touched even microscopically on that site, like there are things to do with that. But back to tara's earlier point. What is the goal of being found like what, what, what do you get out of this podcast? What do you?
Speaker 2:I get enjoying again. Not to the chris, you can go first. Forget it, you go first next time. My goal is to talk with as many people and even have repeat conversations, follow-up conversations. We're going to cycle I don't want to say cycle. We're going to have a number of individuals come back on again as sort of a follow-up, because we may have talked to them a year ago, two years ago, just to talk to them about where they've progressed in their lives, in their careers or in what they're doing. My goal is to talk to as many people in the community as possible, so that is why you want to be found, so that more people will want to speak with you.
Speaker 2:In essence, I think it's more people want to speak with us so we can have the conversations about the different things that you can do within this space. Again, it could be an ISV that offers us a product. It can be consultants that offer services. It could be customers that are using the product. So we want anybody that's within this space to be able to talk with them about themselves, their lives and the technology. So how do you use Business Central? How has it helped you? What are the services that you may be able to provide someone to help them? What is the product that you have that can help them? Is that too broad for me to say that I want to talk? When I say I want to talk with everybody, but that's kind of. The target that we're looking for is to be able to talk with individuals across the different roles. So you have very similar like wait, hold on.
Speaker 2:I want to know what. Tara. Tara, you had something to say.
Speaker 3:Spit it, I could see it's okay, it's still being recorded, but I would, if we were off air, perhaps ask you if you think this is more valuable for professionals that do work in this industry on a day-to-day basis. Then potentially like so. For instance, I'll just go with my husband's industry. He delivers a business central to wineries, right. In the end, the people he works with are really mostly concerned about where their wine is going, what their distribution is, who's drinking it and and that. Right, they're not as concerned with business central all the time. Yes, it could be a core part of the CFOs or the inventory manager's job. Ask you, do you think your target audience, or maybe who you're cultivating this community for, is more geared to the tens of thousands of professionals that work within this space?
Speaker 2:Yes, because of the conversations we have. I hope that somebody and when we do the pre-podcast calls with everybody, we hope that the conversation I say what I say to everybody in the pre-podcast calls we want to have a relatable conversation and hopefully something that somebody can get something out of, because those individuals in this space I hope they learn something from it Whether it could be if a customer, if we're speaking with a customer, a customer can say how they're using Business Central, some of the challenges they have, so that maybe another ISV it's just, in a sense, it's bringing everybody together. See, now I'm getting passionate, I don't know if you can tell. It's how you can bring everybody together to be successful, whatever that success is for them, because rising tides raise all ships. I say it over and over again If Business Central and this channel, this cult or this community is successful, everybody in it is also successful.
Speaker 2:So if we can have a place where people can come talk freely, share information that somebody else may be able to listen to and get something from it, again it can be an isv, because they may have a solution that somebody can use to make their implementation easier. Or a partner can help with a customer or customers say, hey, this is there, even in an agency such as yours, the boutique marketing agency that if they need some help publicizing the isv or getting some more traction with their business central or Dynamics 365 implementation team or even a customer may have products that they want to sell. I know you target primarily the partners and the ISVs, but even some of the tips and tricks that we talked about here to me, I think could be applied to any business of how to become more successful. So that's my steadfast goal is to have a knowledge share.
Speaker 1:It's very similar Mine's very, very similar to Brad.
Speaker 1:It's just a volume of people who want to talk to from different industries and even, if I can, I can even extend beyond that where you know, when I first started my career, it was very difficult to find content, very difficult to find people to you know, bounce ideas and things like that.
Speaker 1:Maybe you have some local user groups and such, but it was always been limited to the regional area, and so what I'm trying to get out of this podcast is to be able to reach out globally where people can feel like, hey, I know I can listen to this podcast and I'm learning maybe someone that's changing careers or maybe kind of learning the industry or maybe trying to get into this industry and getting information from that aspect.
Speaker 1:And so if I can help in that capacity to get more people into this community, it's like our cult to get them to be part of this, the things that we're working on, the things that we're working on, that's perfect, because then it kind of reminds me, reminded me of myself, where I wish this existed when I was building my career, because it would have, it would have accelerated. Now I get to know the ISVs out there that I should be paying attention, or the tools that is solving problems and and instead of like Googling at that time and maybe only see the first five, now I can go to this podcast and maybe I'm searching for something and it's. You know, maybe we had a conversation solving a problem from different perspective and not just reading a content that someone put out.
Speaker 2:So this types of conversation, these exercises you go through with individuals that you work with, I like the way that you're pulling this out to be honest with you.
Speaker 3:I'm just saying it.
Speaker 2:I appreciate the opportunity to talk about the passion of it.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and I mean it is part of what we go through. And again, sometimes customers get really into it and they want to go down this path. And sometimes they think we're trying to run a meter and just talk. You know what I mean. And it's like, well, really like we're only as successful as the story that we can tell. And sometimes that is a point at which we decide that we're not a fit for a certain organization. Right, because some organizations are like I have lots of money to pour into paid media. I just want someone to run that for us. You can do it that way and that's fine, but that just isn't going. It doesn't go very well with our business process.
Speaker 4:We do like to have these conversations, we like to make people think about it in a different way and just like anybody's sort of craft right, like we forget that things that we know or that we might, off the cuff, suggest you do isn't something that you would come up with on your own in a million years, just because you wouldn't even think about it. Or I'm always like, well, it's like obvious, but it it isn't obvious to people, and so you do need to have the conversations, like having that context, that what you're really looking for out of this, beyond building this knowledge base, is to try to get more diverse people to come onto your podcast, is a really big differentiator in terms of when you say you want to be found, it's a lot easier. Like you, everybody in this industry will talk to you. They all want to talk. You run into them at conferences. They can't stop talking about their product themselves or company, their thing. Right, you just have to get in front of them and offer them the opportunity.
Speaker 4:And I would say like from my perspective and I won't speak for Tara like it would never have occurred to me that you would have wanted to talk to us on this podcast until I think you and I had like a bit of a conversation. I kind of made a joke like, oh, are you gonna have us on the podcast? When you said whenever you want, I was like oh, I didn't actually think that we would be somebody that you would want on here, and not because there's anything like I, just I was envisioning it really like you wanted more technical information or you wanted to talk a lot more with people who work with the product or those kinds of things. So I mean, just be unashamed about what you're trying to do.
Speaker 4:Tell people, hey, do you know somebody that you think would be cool on my podcast? Like, hook me up and then I'll take you for a coffee or we'll, you know, give you some accolades or say thank you on LinkedIn that you introduced us. Like. People are motivated, especially in this space, like about that little bits of recognition, about being part of something right, because otherwise we're all just this cog in this big machine that Microsoft owns. So giving people the opportunity to stake their claim is more powerful than you might be thinking about it probably Boom.
Speaker 2:This is great.
Speaker 1:This is a referral program or something? Here we are.
Speaker 2:We started off a little rough, but I think we're going to be BFFs by the time this is over.
Speaker 4:Okay, now we're acronyming it, we're going to get the tattoos. Don't time this is over. Okay, now we're acronyming it, we're going to get the tattoos. Don't get this Vegas man.
Speaker 2:Don't get too. There are no more tattoos going on this body. I would get one more, but now I think I'm too old for it, so I'm not getting any more.
Speaker 4:See, I figure the older you get, the less it matters. I don't know because.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, what you going for now? Well, it's.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I think it's just a matter of where and what. I think I made sure that mine could be covered completely if needed, but anyway, we digress, okay. So, chris, we need to talk to each other more. That might be a struggle. We'll have to work on that. We need to come up with some branding to talk about what we're trying to do with the podcast as far as bringing people together. It's not necessarily branded to your point. Thank you, see. This is good you pulled it out.
Speaker 1:By the way, for the record, Brandon and I talk a lot right outside of this. We just have to record it. Brad, that's the problem. We could be anywhere right now. We just be like, we'll just record this right now.
Speaker 2:You could be smoking your Some of those conversations I don't think we want to record.
Speaker 4:to be honest with you, you don't even have to necessarily record the conversation, throw a selfie up there or be like Brad and I were having. I mean, just you know, I think I probably, like I was way too into the Twitter era so I got used to very like everything was a quip. What can I throw out there? Right, and that's just like where my brain goes with this kind of stuff. It's just like that is the easy part. You're not selling FNSEM or whatever it's called today. Like this is you guys. Are just you just trying to get people to talk about themselves?
Speaker 1:Perfect. So we'll do the next conference that we'll all get to see each other. There'll be off-the-cuff conversation, yep, in person. So, for example, the directions, I think we're all gonna see each other.
Speaker 4:So you guys will be there, we will be the las vegas.
Speaker 2:We'll be there vegas is big, we may not see each other. I've gone to conferences. I have never been to a conference and not seen you too, so I think I went to some conferences recently last summit we we didn't see a bunch of people and I I swear I didn't know that people were there, was it in?
Speaker 1:san antonio, was it?
Speaker 2:yes, it was san antonio where there were a lot of people that I normally see at these conferences or events that I didn't run into at all, and then I talked with them afterwards and they were there. It was just weird for some reason.
Speaker 4:So some it's a different beast in all of their like individual parties and that kind of thing I mean directions is a little bit more oh, you'll see us at directions, you're right directions is partner, partner focused so it's a
Speaker 3:different type of we are always everywhere, so you I think it's a great place for us to continue the conversation about articulating your brand here getting you out there more okay perfect. All right, I think that's the next step I think you got to let everybody know you're here to cultivate the community grammarly won't write that for me, so I'm gonna send you some questions.
Speaker 4:You can think, have a conversation that'll be excellent, I appreciate.
Speaker 2:Okay, so we started the exercise. We will finish the exercise, just this. I think we have spent about 15 minutes, looking at the time, or maybe a little more than 15 minutes. Again, it's a blur for me, and just what we spoke about in those 15 minutes totally changed my view of how to get the message out. I don't know how to do it. I know what we need to do, not the how, and also it gave me an interesting perspective of what we're doing, fantastic. So I appreciate that.
Speaker 3:That's what we're here for.
Speaker 2:No, I think that was. I think I think it was enlightening for me to go through that brief exercise personally.
Speaker 3:Did you say we made progress today, Brad?
Speaker 2:We made progress, but we didn't make perfection. Yes, brandy's now a friend.
Speaker 4:Here we go Perfect.
Speaker 2:That's good. Well, brandy Tara, thank you very much for taking the time to speak with us today. We greatly appreciate it. I learned a lot from it and I feel energized about marketing the podcast.
Speaker 3:Awesome.
Speaker 2:I appreciate what you've done with us. If anyone's interested in learning a little bit more about Big Room or talking with you about some of the opportunities or services or help that you can provide for partners, ISVs or within the dynamic space, how can they get in contact with you?
Speaker 4:We are both on LinkedIn, or our first names at bigroomcreativecom are our email addresses, and, or you will find us at the conferences. We will be at directions in all of our swag for different customers.
Speaker 2:Excellent, excellent. Again, thank you very much. We appreciate your time and we look forward to seeing you in Vegas.
Speaker 4:You will Awesome. Talk to you soon, ciao, ciao, thanks.
Speaker 3:Chris, thanks, bye, bye.
Speaker 2:Thank you, chris, for your time for another episode of In the Dynamics Corner Chair, and thank you to our guests for participating.
Speaker 1:Thank you, brad, for your time. It is a wonderful episode of Dynamics Corner Chair. I would also like to thank our guests for joining us. Thank you for all of our listeners tuning in as well. You can find Brad at developerlifecom, that is D-V-L-P-R-L-I-F-E dot com, and you can interact with them via Twitter D-V-L-P-R-L-I-F-E. You can also find me at matalinoio, m-a-t-a-l-i-n-o dot I-O, and my Twitter handle is matalino16. And you can see those links down below in the show notes. Again, thank you everyone. Thank you and take care.
