Nathaniel White-Joyal  on Building Scout Digital: Strategy, Data, and AI in Marketing

Episode Description

In this episode of the Agency Side podcast, Justin Levinson sits down with Nathaniel Whitejoyal, president and owner of Scout Digital, a revenue marketing agency based in Burlington, Vermont. Nathaniel shares his fascinating journey from documentary filmmaking to digital marketing, shedding light on how Scout Digital has evolved to focus on revenue-driven strategies.

The discussion delves into essential business development tactics, the importance of data and ROI, and how to effectively manage client budgets. Nathaniel also explores the role of AI in modern marketing and emphasizes the significance of achieving product-market fit. Tune in for insights on the books that have influenced his approach to business and learn how Nathaniel navigates the dynamic landscape of digital marketing.

Episode Outline and Highlights

[02:07] The Journey from Documentary Filmmaking to Digital Marketing

[05:02] The Evolution of Scout Digital and Revenue Marketing

[08:05] Business Development Strategies and Client Acquisition

[10:58] The Importance of Data and ROI in Marketing

[14:06] Understanding Client Budgets and Expectations

[17:05] The Role of Content Creation and AI in Marketing

[20:57] Leveraging AI and Technology in Marketing Strategies

[24:51] Future Goals and Growth for Scout Digital

[27:53] The Importance of Product Market Fit

[29:55] Books and Resources for Business Growth

[33:02] Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Nathaniel White-Joyal  on Building Scout Digital: Strategy, Data, and AI in MarketingNathaniel White-Joyal  on Building Scout Digital: Strategy, Data, and AI in Marketing

Today's Guest

Nathaniel White-Joyal

President & Owner

Nathaniel White-Joyal is the president and owner of Scout Digital, a revenue marketing agency located in Burlington, Vermont. In this episode of the Agency Side podcast, Nathaniel discusses his unique journey from documentary filmmaking to digital marketing, highlighting the evolution of Scout Digital and its commitment to driving revenue for clients. He shares valuable insights on business development strategies, the significance of data and ROI, and navigating client budgets. Nathaniel also explores the transformative role of AI in marketing and emphasizes the critical need for product-market fit. Throughout the conversation, he references influential books that have shaped his approach to business, offering listeners a glimpse into his philosophy and strategies for success.

Episode transcript

Justin Levinson (00:00.748)

Hey guys, my name is Justin Levinson. This is the Agency Side podcast. I'm here today with Nathaniel Whitejoyal. He is a Burlington, Vermont, fellow Burlington, Vermonter like myself. And he is the president and owner of Scout Digital, which is a amazing revenue marketing agency here in Burlington, Vermont. They've got quite a nice resume here growing business with a lot of really exciting brands.

like Nalgene and yeah, a couple other cool things I'll let Nathaniel kind of like get into. I won't steal the show over here, but yeah, man, thanks for hopping on and being here and being part of the podcast today.

Nathaniel (00:44.763)

Yeah, hey, it's my pleasure. You know, it's nice to, it's nice to be able to get out there a little bit and talk to some folks. Otherwise, I'm just stuck here in my guest room listening to the air conditioning.

Justin Levinson (00:53.934)

Yeah, man. Well, I guess I'll give the listeners a little backstory is that, you you and I had known each other in kind of a past life years ago. You know, back when I think you were a bartender and I was a musician, typically playing for several barflies in the back of the room who typically would enjoy listening to the football games more than me performing. But you were also a kind listener. You know, sometimes I remember playing a song and hearing that.

Nathaniel (01:07.409)

Hmm. I was.

Justin Levinson (01:24.098)

you know, that one guy clapping and it was, it was you, it was you. So I know you're, you're a good egg. But yeah, man, tell us a little bit about how you got into this particular space and, and opening Scout up.

Nathaniel (01:25.906)

It was me. Yeah.

Nathaniel (01:38.407)

Sure, sure. So I do like the egg comment, right? Cause it's reminiscent of the shape of my head. So that's nice. However, moving on from that. So scale is like kind of like the end of, I wouldn't say the end, but it's part of the journey, right? So my background is in documentary film and animation. I started out, you know, after coming out of grad school, doing documentaries, working on documentary films, doing animation.

Justin Levinson (01:44.248)

Hahaha

Nathaniel (02:07.715)

And pretty quickly after I produced my first documentary, was like, cool. So nobody's going to see this if I don't figure out how to do digital marketing. and so that was like, that was kind of my first aha moment. So I figured out how to, like, I kind of self taught myself, you know, digital marketing, did some, you know, some crowdfunding that was big when I was, when I was releasing my documentary film. And then, you know, from there,

I started working for a nonprofit, like doing their video production and animation, but a big part of that ended up being, fundraising as well. Right. Because it's just, when you're working for a nonprofit, everything is fundraising at the end of the day. And, and again, like I just started digging into the analytics, understanding like how we could reach more people, where were our viewers coming from and who should we be looking to fundraise from? and analytics provided a lot of that data.

After that job, I moved on to working in the startup community and really took on digital marketing as my primary role. Always bringing video and animation back in because it is such a powerful medium, but I ran digital marketing for a couple of startups and then ended up at the last startup I worked at before it gloriously crashed and burned.

I was overseeing the performance creative department. So that meant that we were putting out like 150, 200 videos every single month. And really what we had kind of sorted out during that is that we could create videos that had testable elements within them. And so I started kind of doing that out on my own. And as that startup, as I said, crashed and burned, I went out on my own and started doing the performance creative with a performance marketer from that startup.

for clients and it worked. It worked pretty well until I got some clients with some really bad websites and then I would drive all sorts of great traffic, lots of conversions, and then they would get to the website and it would be like, we have like a 99 .8 % bounce rate because this website is terrible. So we started working with another agency that was actually called Union Street Media Interactive.

Justin Levinson (04:25.9)

Mmm.

Nathaniel (04:33.017)

most burly to people know Union Street Media, but Union Street Media Interactive was their offshoot that kind of just took all comers, but really was focused on website development. And so we started partnering up on projects where we would do the digital marketing and the performance creative, and they would do the websites and landing pages. And that was the secret sauce. And eventually, you know, the owner of that business and I, Ted Adler, we decided, you know,

Justin Levinson (04:54.67)

Mmm.

Nathaniel (05:02.641)

The sum of the parts are sorry, the hole is greater than the sum of the parts. So we joined forces, started Scout and you know, Scout has gone through a couple of different iterations in five years. You know, as I came in, a lot of the leads were really focused on website. And so we did a lot of really big website builds that would then lead into digital marketing. But more recently, we've really pivoted back into revenue marketing.

And I say more recently, I'm saying the last two years that's been, that's been our, been our big pivot. And so we're moving away from doing the monolithic website builds and the big brand videos and really focusing on a revenue marketing offer, which we're calling alpha revenue marketing or arm for short. And what that is, is really a focus on building up performance creative that can be tested, iterated on owning the data.

and the attribution systems so that people actually are getting good data when they work with us. They know where the money is coming from. They know who is coming and who is buying and what that demographic information is. We run a ton of those tests across all different paid media platforms from the traditional ones like Meta and Google to Quick Commerce, like Instacart, and we do a little bit of TikTok, but that always makes me little nervous.

And then building out landing pages, running the same testing and iteration on those landing pages. And then picking up email marketing on the back end of it. we've had a lot of really interesting success with it. Like you mentioned Nalgene, that was, you know, that's a project that we worked on for a while. We built their website, we ran their, you know, their, performance marketing and saw really great growth with them. We did the same thing with, with Pennycakes, which is a Chick -fil -A brand.

Same kind of deal, Like owned the website, owned all the marketing, we're able to really increase their conversion rates significantly. And on the B2B side, you know, we've seen really great results with some very large clients that do that really big, really big engagements. And so it's a lead generation process. We integrate with the sales team and we make sure that, you know, the marketing is driving good results. And we've seen the same kind of growth with them as well.

Justin Levinson (07:23.372)

Yeah, how, how are clients typically coming to you? Do you guys do a lot of business development yourself? Or is it sort of like your reputation and work is sort of just sort of organically kind of bringing in new new clients?

Nathaniel (07:36.721)

So for the longest time, it really had been referral based, right? Honestly, for the entire time that Union Street Media Interactive was around, it was referral based. And certainly for the first few years with Scout, we were a lot referral based, but we really have been moving away from that because while referral base is great, you're kind of locked in to who the client is when you're referral based as opposed to

being able to go after like the right client for you. I spend and I mean, BD is me. Like I'm the one, there's nobody really else doing that.

Justin Levinson (08:23.052)

I watch it, I like it.

Nathaniel (08:53.883)

In a bit.

Justin Levinson (08:55.554)

And he's back. I do watch your LinkedIn content. So you go ahead and keep going from there. That's where I lost you.

Nathaniel (08:56.604)

You know, it could have been, yeah.

Nathaniel (09:08.178)

Well, actually, it's funny that whole thing crashed because I had too many LinkedIn tabs open. Because I'm prospecting.

Justin Levinson (09:14.818)

Yeah.

Nathaniel (09:17.746)

So yeah, that is a piece of how we do it. There is like a big outbound element. I go to events. I reach out to people who I think are good fits for us. I asked for advice a lot, introductions, a lot of networking. then just like, you know, I do some out bounds in terms of like email and cold calling. You know, that stuff works. That stuff works well, but you have to like, you have to do it.

Justin Levinson (09:33.059)

Yeah.

Justin Levinson (09:41.56)

Yeah.

Nathaniel (09:46.544)

as often as you possibly can for it to, cause it's a volume game. It's also quality, like you get much higher quality when you're doing the other activities more often and you're reaching out to your own network. and so even though it does work, we do it. It is something that we try to automate as much as possible so that I can be really focused on doing stuff like this, being in meetings. and then just, you know,

Reaching out on LinkedIn is a good way to go, especially when people have interacted with a piece of your content, asking them for feedback about that content usually results in at least a substantial conversation, even if it doesn't necessarily lead to a sale.

Justin Levinson (10:18.445)

Yeah.

Justin Levinson (10:28.973)

Yeah.

Justin Levinson (10:33.42)

Yeah, and in terms of like, just what fulfills you personally, you know, what what kind of gets you high these days? Is it the ditch? Is it the data? And like the analytics and the and the proving the return on investment? Or, you know, you were saying that earlier on, you were doing like animation and more that sort of thing. You know, and creating the documentary yourself, you know,

Nathaniel (10:57.683)

Mm -hmm.

Justin Levinson (10:58.638)

Has anything sort of changed? Are you more into the data side of things now, or is it really the whole 360 process?

Nathaniel (11:06.579)

You know, I mean, what really gets me high is, you know, some sativa and a couple of mushrooms here and there, but, Hey, it's mostly legal, right? So, it's Vermont. but, I kind of all of it, but really like the piece that really gets me going is when I can go back to a client and be like, what we did have a substantive results for you. Like,

Justin Levinson (11:16.182)

Vermont baby

Justin Levinson (11:34.796)

Yeah.

Nathaniel (11:35.772)

We're able to see dollars in the door. have a high ROI on our ad spend on our services because we really want to hold ourselves accountable to the revenue. that, that is always going to be the thing that we're like, Hey, this was successful or it wasn't is like, did we drive revenue? And look, you should have not every process is successful for a myriad of different reasons, but

Justin Levinson (11:46.924)

Yeah.

Nathaniel (12:02.302)

We do like we have gotten our system dialed in enough where I can say like, Hey, you know, after 18 months of working with us, you're going to like the payback period is going to be there. We're going to see a one -to -one on the ROI because it's a process that like, that if you follow it works.

Justin Levinson (12:21.004)

Yeah, do you find that some do I guess how much do people have to spend to get a return on investment? And do some people feel like they are what they want to try too little and then they don't get the result because they want to start out too little and they really kind of need to go big to really see movement.

Nathaniel (12:45.63)

So I would say yes. And right. And like, it's one of the reasons that we kind of, have, you know, guardrails for the clients that we work with, right? We're not going to work with clients who don't have the money to spend on this. So like direct answer to your question, clients need to be able to spend at least $10 ,000 a month to see the results that they want to see. And that includes our, like ad spend and our service fees. we like, we have worked, like we do have engagements that are lower than that, but

It's not the full package, right? Like, and it tends to be like more service, but just like services. we'll get brought into run an email program as a one -off or, you know, build a, build a website that still does happen or build some video. And those are smaller engagements and we do still take those. But if you really want to run a revenue marketing program, you really do have to be prepared to spend at least $5 ,000 a month on ad spend and be willing to spend, you know, $5 ,000 a month in service fees.

the more you spend on ad spend, the more tests we can run and like, the more you spend in service fees, right? Like the more, the more experiments we can kind of run across the board and actually the quicker we can reach like that payback period, just because you're getting more data and the more data you get, the more likely it is that you're going to reach, reach your goals more quickly. yeah. So it is an issue, right? Like I have worked with clients who are like, it's three months in, or it's a month in and we're not seeing.

Justin Levinson (14:06.541)

Yeah.

Nathaniel (14:16.126)

like a lot of sales or we haven't made our money back. And I'm like, well, remember like the first part of this conversation that we had, I said like the payback period is probably six months to a year and more likely 18 months. And those folks are probably not a good fit, right? And they're probably not a good fit to really be at the bottom of the funnel in terms of marketing, right? They probably are still at a point where they need to be at the top of the funnel.

Justin Levinson (14:29.602)

Yeah.

Nathaniel (14:43.046)

right where they still need to get eyeballs on what they're doing and they still need to be really scrappy about the way that they're they're running their marketing right they need to be in events they need to be you know they need to be in people's faces around what they're doing and how they're doing it and what they're like and what their narrative is because like the reason that they call it the top of the funnel the top of the funnel is the place where you need to start building momentum and once you've built enough momentum there

Then you can actually come and work with a bottle bottom of funnel agency like us. Cause we can take that and we can get you conversions in that audience that you've created. And, and I think that that's a piece that kind of can go by the wayside. A lot of people want to move directly to the bottom of the funnel. You have to take your time and do things right. Right. You have to be willing to build an audience. have to be willing to build a brand, to build a narrative around your brand.

Justin Levinson (15:30.947)

Yeah.

Nathaniel (15:37.606)

And then once you can start to build that audience, then you can start to retarget them. You can start to get them to buy your product. And honestly, it's the same for B2B, right? Like you have to have an audience and you have to then monetize that audience. And look, we've worked with companies that are new, but have raised a ton of money and are just like ready to go bottom of the funnel. And we have figured out ways to make it work. But when we're able to run top of funnel,

Justin Levinson (15:55.395)

Yep.

Nathaniel (16:07.336)

campaigns and bottom of funnel campaigns, makes your cost per conversion much, lower. Despite the fact that you're, you're having like a top of funnel spin, right? Because people are aware of you. It's that first touch. so like while your conversions in the top of the funnel, whether that's watching a video or following your page on whatever platform or giving an email address, right? Like that's a first step and you should be measuring that differently than

Justin Levinson (16:18.53)

Yeah.

Nathaniel (16:36.07)

the lower steps. like, and by that, I mean the bottom of the funnel. So like, as we build out that top of funnel, and usually we like to come and work with companies that have that top of funnel already built out. And then it just makes the whole thing cheaper. And a great example of this is like, with one of our big clients, B2B company, they were really only measuring everything by ROI or cost per, you know, conversion. And

Justin Levinson (16:48.428)

Yeah.

Nathaniel (17:05.776)

what we will call it lead or qualified lead. And they're like, wow, know, LinkedIn is so expensive for these costs per call and qualified lead. And we're like, yeah, it is. But it's making your Google ads much cheaper. So they stopped spending money on the LinkedIn ads. And you just saw the cost per conversion in Google go way, way up. And then when we brought it back, they were like, OK, like it went way down. So we're like, OK, like there is correlation.

Justin Levinson (17:19.32)

Hmm.

Justin Levinson (17:32.802)

Yeah.

Nathaniel (17:34.898)

They ended up producing a commercial and that helped as well. so like all of those activities do help and, being able to draw the line between all of those things and look at it a holistic way is really important. And you can't just do one activity within the funnel and expect the whole thing to work. You have to be willing to do all of

Justin Levinson (17:58.21)

Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah, I've always been fascinated with I mean, I from the recruiting point of view, I, you know, I enjoy all this. I do enjoy all this stuff. I mean, I used to be a musician, but it's also like interesting to hear all these different ways to collect data and how to how to target and and, you know, get people these fantastic returns on their investment. It's

Nathaniel (18:24.178)

Mm -hmm.

Justin Levinson (18:25.24)

I think it's kind of cool. Are you still doing content yourself as well? Are you still creating that? And how does that work within your company?

Nathaniel (18:34.76)

So I don't do any of the boots on the ground work anymore. My hands are not dirty. I do miss it a little bit, I won't lie to you. But yeah, we do a lot of content creation in -house. In fact, it's one of our big offerings. But it's not, you know, we're not the right company to come to if you're like, I want a brand video. That's not us. We are the company that you're like, hey, look, we produced this brand video and we wanna test all the different elements in it. Cool, bring that to us. We'll talk to you about how to do that.

But really where our expertise lies is in building out video, photo, copy that can be run out on paid media and that we can test different elements on. And so the way that we do that is different from like the traditional production houses. There are other agencies out there producing this way. They've changed their name from our day job to I've Got Dreams. And these guys, honestly, I can't say enough good things about Corey Way. He is a genius.

And like they developed this system really early on and they developed it kind of as I was starting to think about it. And then I got a chance to meet him and he was able to help me really get it dialed in. But essentially what it is, is like we look at the, what we call the reasons to believe our TVs or, or offers and say, okay, like, how do we break that up into different buckets that we can shoot? So we'll look at the different offers, the different reasons to believe. And we say, okay.

That's one bucket we're gonna shoot it. Then we're gonna break that into different buckets underneath. let's take Nalgene for instance, just because they're a good example, right? One of their value propositions or reasons to believe is that it's dishwasher safe. So we're like, okay, great. Let's make a bunch of content about these in a dishwasher, right? And so then we test different dishwashers, different water bottle colors, different actors, different actresses, different.

different setups, right? Are they putting it in, you know, is it like, is it commercial? Is it home? And we try all of those different ones because they all actually ladder up to the, the ICP or the ideal customer persona, because we're basically building the ICP into a funnel, right? And so let's say we're advertising to Justin and you know, you know, I see you've got a bunch of guitars cause you're a musician, right? Like we would probably build out a funnel that like

Nathaniel (20:57.466)

if we were advertising to a bunch of musicians that featured them in situations that they were really comfortable in, because it seems personalized. And when things seem personalized, people are much more likely to buy, because they feel like it's built for them specifically.

Justin Levinson (21:13.516)

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. How are you noticing the big changes in how you're doing your even doing this for a minute is is AI playing a big, big role and how how things are going and what is that looking like?

Nathaniel (21:28.178)

Huge.

So AI does play a big role. In fact, we have an AI tool that populates our landing pages. We probably can't talk about this on the podcast because it's actually still like kind of under wraps. But yes, we use AI consistently. We use it to like look at data. We look at it to create content. First drafts of content, not ever final drafts. Final drafts of content are, you know, you have to get a person

Justin Levinson (21:41.016)

Yeah, that's okay. Yeah.

Nathaniel (22:00.446)

involved in the situation to edit. You know, I saw this great piece on LinkedIn. You know, they have these two charts, right? It's like creating content without AI, you three hours of writing the content, 15 minutes of editing, creating content with AI, 15 minutes of creating content, three hours of editing. you know, it looks a little simplified, but the fact is, that like, that is where you end up spending your time is in editing.

Justin Levinson (22:06.561)

Yeah.

Nathaniel (22:30.05)

with AI and you know, look, I've built out some models that really have captured my voice. And so it requires less and less editing, but still not perfect. and you know, the thing with AI is it's not particularly creative either, right? So it had like, you, need to bring that creativity in. but it can be super helpful when you start to run tests and analyze data because it can do, it can multitask in a way that humans cannot.

Justin Levinson (22:49.71)

Totally.

Nathaniel (22:59.642)

And so that's really interesting to us when we're like looking to analyze data. We are, we use AI a lot because it can identify trends much more quickly. can also run tests much more quickly and let us know what is performing before we are spending all the money. Right. So.

Justin Levinson (23:20.258)

Yeah. Well, what, is there anything in your tech stack that you could tell us about that's not maybe not under wraps?

Nathaniel (23:26.75)

Sure. mean, and the only reason that one's under wraps really is because it's not client facing. We use it to build out the content and populate landing pages. But that is something that we're not like, we're not letting clients have access to. like we'll do it, but you know, and then, and then we edit it. but yeah, so we also, we've created a few different tools, our, our dashboards.

They are all built in Looker studio. So anybody who is a performance marketer knows Looker studio from Google, but we built them out in a way that is really, it is custom to the way that, that we run our marketing programs and it serves up the ads or the, I shouldn't say the ads. It serves up the data to the end user in a really digestible way that they can run up and down, the chain of command much more easily. We also,

We also have some some other. I can't talk about that one either shit. Okay. Yeah, but we do have some for. Yeah, and we do and we are VWO partners and we use VWO and content squares to run all of our like our multivariant testing on our landing pages. We use Claudio to run all of our email marketing programs though, you know.

Justin Levinson (24:28.888)

You

It's all good, no worries. But the functionality is interesting.

Nathaniel (24:51.11)

We still run into the occasional user of MailChimp or ActiveCampaign. We try not to hold it against them, but we still do. Then, you know, on the front end, really is, you know, it's all manual. We do work with a great partner, and they're actually, they're a partner and a client in Soundwave Digital to run a lot of our paid media campaigns. They are fantastic. They, like, they're...

You know the traditional aviaries but they're really good and they are really connected with us and with our clients and they do just a fantastic job so I love to shout them out whenever I can.

Justin Levinson (25:29.356)

Yeah, totally. Do you guys have any big, you know, big goals coming up in the next year? How do you see you? You know, where do you guys want to? Where do want to be?

Nathaniel (25:42.91)

You know, we're definitely in growth mode, right? Like, so we were just constantly looking to add pieces on. you know, I'd like us to get to a point where we're where we've got our system really dialed in, in a way that it it's providing value more quickly than 18 months. so certainly there, but yeah, we're, adding new clients all the time right now, which is great because I as every agency knows, right? Like spending.

took a little bit of a dip over the last couple of years, but we're really seeing it pick back up and we're working with some really exciting clients. We're doing some really cutting edge things. And so we just wanna keep adding in people who are doing who we love and who we wanna see be successful.

Justin Levinson (26:15.693)

Yeah.

Justin Levinson (26:23.96)

And I

Justin Levinson (26:31.798)

Yeah, I imagine just like in any business, if you're getting better, higher quality clients that the work is easier to sell and give it give them a better return on investment. If you're kind of marketing something that that maybe is, you know, you probably can't sell everything right with can't sell anything, everything with paid media, you have to sort of have a decent product, right?

Nathaniel (26:50.46)

No.

Nathaniel (26:55.846)

you have to have a good product. Product market fit is again, one of the requirements for working with us. We will not work with people who have a product that has not been proven out in product market fit. And so.

Justin Levinson (27:03.18)

Yeah.

Justin Levinson (27:09.56)

So you can't have a shit product and you can't have no money.

Nathaniel (27:15.174)

Right, and guess what? When you have a good product, you tend to have a little bit of money because people are buying it. Now come to us and we'll amplify it.

Justin Levinson (27:19.466)

I just... Yeah.

Justin Levinson (27:25.708)

Yep. Yep. No, that totally that totally makes a lot of sense. Yeah, I mean, in like music, you know, it's like, yeah, mean, record, you know, I always was wondering when I was younger, I was like, why, you know, why don't I have a record deal? Why didn't this happen? Why does this happening? But it's like when you, know, to get a record deal, you need to already be getting somewhere on your own before you get to that point, you know, you have to be generating money.

Nathaniel (27:51.24)

That's right.

Justin Levinson (27:53.206)

and getting some activity till that next level says, okay, yeah, we're gonna invest in you and take you to the next level. I mean, it's a little bit of a different thing, but I mean, essentially, like, yeah, you gotta kind of have the wheels have to be kind of moving for it to really make sense.

Nathaniel (28:08.798)

Well, it is and it's not, right? It is the same thing. And now, I mean, with musicians, obviously, there's definitely more opportunity for folks to prove out what they're doing, because they can build audience and that audience will justify their existence, essentially. And then, yeah. But you're also seeing just a lot of people go totally solo and be completely independent with Spotify and with other streaming channels. And I know that's not without its...

challenges, but it is interesting the way things are going.

Justin Levinson (28:43.788)

Yeah, it gives everybody a chance to make, know, to put something out, you know, years ago, if you didn't have a record contract, you couldn't make a record. Now you can do it like in your own home, which is pretty cool. But yeah, I learned a lot, you know, I used to be self submitting myself to a lot of places, I was my own PR person. So I'd be sending my music out to labels, to booking agencies, to licensing companies.

Nathaniel (28:54.258)

Yeah, it is cool.

Nathaniel (29:03.965)

Yeah.

Nathaniel (29:12.723)

Mm -hmm.

Justin Levinson (29:13.774)

And it's interesting because I don't think I knew really how to advocate for my own product and sometimes it's kind of hard to just be like, hey, I'm a really great songwriter, you should like me. know, sometimes it's easier to have somebody saying, hey, you should check out this guy, he's a great songwriter, you know, hearing it from somebody else. And now I'm in a very unique place. I know this interview is not about me, but as...

somebody who represents talent is sort of what I do now as a recruiter. I have the luxury of being able to represent those other people and say, hey, this is Dave, he's fantastic at this, this and this, you should check him out. And how you say those things and how you, you know, the sort of copy that you use. And I spend a lot of time when I'm clients, or pitching candidates, or pitching myself to clients still.

Nathaniel (29:42.846)

Right.

Nathaniel (29:55.229)

Yeah.

Justin Levinson (30:08.056)

you know, going through as we were talking about with the AI, getting a lot of different ideas through it, giving it a lot of good different prompts till I get what I want. And it, you know, kind of circling that whole conversation back, it's like, you know, there's that old saying, right, I would have written a shorter speech if I had the time. I don't know if that was an Abraham Lincoln said that or somebody said that. But you know, it takes time to...

Nathaniel (30:31.708)

Yep.

Justin Levinson (30:35.778)

you edit these things down and get the copy down and get something that catches people's eye and says, Okay, like I can, I can, you know, I believe in this, you know. And yeah, being believable is just important. It's even it's even important. I know you were saying how natural it is if you're advertising to somebody who's a musician, who are musicians, and they're they're in their natural ecosystem, that, you know, that, yeah, I'm rambling, but you get what I mean.

Nathaniel (30:39.453)

Yeah!

Nathaniel (30:45.928)

Yeah, absolutely.

Nathaniel (31:05.85)

I do. And honestly, like it is an interesting piece, right? It's like, know, but you have to be ready to call out the reasons to believe even when it's a person, right? And even when it's you. And you know what I'll say though, it's interesting, right? Because I think there is an inherent distrust of those who are self promoters, right? Like if they're self promoters in a way that is not subtle. So I know that like I've worked with some folks who have been like

Justin Levinson (31:18.051)

Yeah.

Nathaniel (31:35.074)

I'm so good at this and I'm so good at this and I'm like, and I'm looking at the work and I'm like, what you're good at is telling me that you're good at stuff. So I always have questions about those folks, but the people who, like who can come and tell me why they're good at something and have the social proof and can be like, Hey, I am good at this and here's why. And here's a bunch of projects that I worked on that show that I'm good at this. Those are the people like, and that's the same thing we're trying to do as an agency is right. It's like,

Justin Levinson (31:41.891)

Yep.

Justin Levinson (31:59.958)

Yeah.

Nathaniel (32:04.466)

Hey, we're great at driving revenue. This is how we drive the revenue. And look, here are some case studies that show that we drive the revenue. Right. And so like when you're promoting yourself, you have to think about it that way. You have to back it up with data. Right. So it all comes back to some sort of, some sort of data point that you have to be able to prove out. Look, I think there's some folks out there who are really good at also crafting a narrative that

Justin Levinson (32:14.157)

Yeah.

Justin Levinson (32:20.515)

Yeah.

Nathaniel (32:33.234)

that speaks to people and really gets an emotional reaction. that's something that is ubiquitous across kind of all creative, we'll just say all creatives in general. It's like you have to be an accomplished storyteller, whether you're a songwriter, whether you're a graphic designer, whether you're even a data scientist, you have to understand how to tell that story in a way that connects with folks. Now, what I like to say is like, that should be table stakes, right? Anybody who's at this table.

Justin Levinson (32:53.858)

Yeah.

Nathaniel (33:02.098)

should be able to tell a good story and should be able to understand how to construct a story that resonates with people. And I always go back to, you know, Joseph Campbell and like his, like the way that he built, like he talks about stories being built out over generations and generations. But, but the fact is, is that like, that's, that's the starting point. You can optimize every one of those steps. If you are looking at the data, if you are understanding like how you craft it for that,

Justin Levinson (33:09.154)

Yeah.

Nathaniel (33:32.22)

specific individual, if you personalize it, right? So all of those pieces are, you know, cause you wouldn't submit your music to, you know, somebody who's signing, you know, a hip hop artist, right? Like, like, and, so understanding like where, like who to, who to sell it to is such a critical piece of this and, and how they're going to respond to that story.

Justin Levinson (33:48.332)

Yeah, yeah. Totally.

Justin Levinson (34:01.506)

Yeah. Yeah. Getting the getting the right data, pitching it to the right person. You know, I think that's something that you know, we've we found in in in in some of our email marketing. It's like, you know, if you're not targeting the right people, sometimes you can piss them off to Justin, we're not actually a creative agency. We are a PR firm. So we don't need your hiring services. how did that piece of data get into our chain? That's pretty interesting. Yeah. Yeah.

Nathaniel (34:17.894)

Yeah, you can.

Nathaniel (34:25.374)

Whoops, yeah, sorry. Look, I mean, when you do cold email, you're gonna get that, right? But like, listen, I have gotten some very unpleasant responses from the right people, right? From some of my cold email outreach. And like, honestly, I look at it as a data point, right? I cool, all right, great. That was the wrong person or that message didn't resonate with them. Let me see if I can figure out why.

Justin Levinson (34:34.626)

Yeah.

Justin Levinson (34:41.197)

Yeah.

Nathaniel (34:52.444)

I've also reached back out to people who've been like, please take me off your email list to be like, totally completely understand will do. any chance you'd tell me why this didn't resonate with you. And usually I get the like, I'm not interested in sick. Okay, cool. But every once in a while I get back that actually we have a whole team in house that's already doing this or I, you know, actually like we're, really like this, we're not there yet. We're, still working on the top of the funnel. Okay, cool. Like at least I know. And you know,

Justin Levinson (35:04.611)

Yeah.

Nathaniel (35:23.12)

I can tune up my list so that I'm reaching less of those people who are not ready to work with me yet.

Justin Levinson (35:28.364)

Yeah, I sort of see it for us as recruiting firm is it sort of it works around it works in the background, you know, and and it's sort of a numbers game. But yeah, if you're able to sort of nurture those, there are some that, you know, we have seen quite a return on investment between cold email and and LinkedIn automation.

Nathaniel (35:35.912)

Mm -hmm.

Justin Levinson (35:51.074)

We leverage both of those tools in order to generate leads and conversations. And we use that with our virtual assistant team. And it's really cool. And when it does work, it's amazing. But yeah, you have to take some of those things where it's like, no, exclamation point, or take me off the list. Or you're like, God, what did I do wrong? And be able to roll with some of those and not sort of feel like, man, my reputation is totally shot.

Nathaniel (36:15.869)

Yep.

Justin Levinson (36:20.686)

call, I got caught in a cold email. It's like, you know, obviously that the idea at least for us is we it as natural as possible. It's not a sales pitch. It's usually a couple of sentences. We don't have our signature in it. We don't have lots of links. I mean, even but the idea is that you know, for us, you know, if it's a timing thing, if you if you catch a decision maker, who just lost a mission critical person, and you're sending an email saying, Hey, man,

Nathaniel (36:28.508)

Mm

Nathaniel (36:34.269)

Right.

Justin Levinson (36:49.228)

I've got three people in my pipeline that I think could do this gig, would you be interested in taking a look at them? Like, if you get them in that right time, they're gonna say, okay, even if they know it's a cold email, you know, so it is a for I mean, for us, it's we find it to be a very effective way to get leads.

Nathaniel (36:50.61)

Yep.

Nathaniel (37:05.918)

Yeah, honestly, you and I should compare notes on that some point offline, but yeah, you're absolutely right. And like you can find a lot of those. Like there's another good use case for AI, right? It's like having, you know, if you use Apollo or LinkedIn or any of those AI, you know, like the AI add -ons for those. And you can see, you can start to like, look at those data points. You can be like, okay, cool. This person just came on as this,

chief marketing officer of this company. Let's send them a cold email because maybe they're looking to revamp this and they want quick wins and this can be a fairly quick win.

Justin Levinson (37:46.466)

Yeah. Have you used clay very much? Are you familiar with that software?

Nathaniel (37:52.864)

No, I started following them. I'm aware of them, but I haven't dug in.

Justin Levinson (37:56.918)

Yeah, that's something we've been very interested in on our team and getting, know, one of our virtual assistants is working, taking some courses and learning about it. And our whole team is getting hip to it. really can, you know, I'm not an expert in it. It's sort of a new thing to us. So I wouldn't go telling you, offering a ton of intelligent conversation, but it really can enhance a lot of data. And it can really help you with targeting, you know,

Nathaniel (38:22.312)

Mm -hmm.

Justin Levinson (38:26.604)

real, you know, for us, can target not only the people, finding the people that are hiring currently, but also enhancing the data, finding out who are those decision makers, what are those roles and being able to have targeted pitches to those decision makers in order to offer a solution to say like, hey, we know you're looking for a trailer editor or a copywriter or a social media manager or whatever it may be. And we can go straight to them.

Nathaniel (38:33.918)

Mm -hmm.

Justin Levinson (38:56.078)

And it's like wow, how do these guys know that we need the social media manager? It's crazy. Well Yeah We just do and and I know we're not the only I mean this is like we're not the only Firm that's doing this. I mean, it's getting really a lot of everybody's getting hip to it. But You know those who are not getting hip to it or learning it you know, I think our

Nathaniel (39:02.654)

Crazy, right? Yeah, well, we just do. It's like we're psychic.

Nathaniel (39:16.957)

Yeah.

Justin Levinson (39:22.574)

are gonna suffer, the old school way of recruitment is gonna disappear. Because if you leverage these tools, you can take a firm of six, seven people like we have at our team, and it can be essentially doing the work of 25 to 50 people and working while you sleep, which is pretty crazy.

Nathaniel (39:26.771)

Mm -hmm.

Nathaniel (39:38.557)

Mm -hmm.

Yeah. Yeah, that's nice. That's how we're using AI too, right? It's like how many tests can we run? How many experiments can we run while our eyes are closed? That's usually a good sign.

Justin Levinson (39:52.438)

Yeah, it's pretty, it's a new world that we're that we're living in here. But so maybe we'll have a couple more minutes here, but I'm curious. Are there any Are there any books that have really inspired you? Are you are you much of a reading guy? Are you more visual? Or what any any books that have sort of float your boat?

Nathaniel (39:58.611)

Yep.

Nathaniel (40:15.748)

My favorite book of all time for business, of all time for for fiction, I'm listening to Stephen King, but for business is Mindset by Zweck. It's the book that I think that literally everybody should read, because it has applications across your entire life. I think about like, I use it when I'm parenting, I use it when I'm managing, I use it in...

Justin Levinson (40:19.661)

Yeah.

Nathaniel (40:44.348)

my sales process, like every growth mindset is such a critical piece to achieving success in the business world and understanding how to deal with other people, which is also a critical piece of success in the business world. So yeah, that one's a big one for me.

You know, I just finished up the Alex or Mozi books. And honestly, for Jim Rat and a frat boy, like he actually has some pretty good ideas, and I've implemented a few of them. And they do work. And you know, I get it, like he comes out and he says what his goal is right in the beginning. He's like, look, I want to acquire your company. So I think if you use this playbook, you'll get to a point where I can acquire you. So here it is.

So yeah, I thought that those were pretty good. I digested those recently. You know the one, the other one that I think is just like the most critical read for anybody and they should read it over and over and over and over again is Winning Friends and Influencing People by Dale Carnegie. If you're not applying the lessons in that, then I mean, you're really just leaving money on the table.

Justin Levinson (41:49.038)

Yeah. Yep.

Nathaniel (41:59.356)

And it's funny, right? Because like, I'll have those conversations with people. I remember this one in particular, I was playing basketball and I was talking to another marketing leader who I played with and you know, I brought that up and he's like, yeah, yeah, I guess. And then he like, he had this one play where he basically gave the ball to the other guy and he's like, but he didn't give it back. I'm like, yeah, you did it one time.

Also, and you're a pain in the ass to play with, like let's just call a spade a spade, right? Like you try to get every call you can and we're playing pickup. So like nobody believes you when you do that, right? Like that's months and months of building this in before you're going to start to see dividends from it. Don't come and tell me that the one time you didn't do it, it didn't work. And so it doesn't work. Like give me a break.

Justin Levinson (42:29.304)

you

Justin Levinson (42:54.266)

That's great. That book, How to Win Friends and Influence People, my mom has been preaching that book since I was a kid. She references that book all the time. It's a staple in the Levinson family, so it's good to hear that one. I haven't heard anybody on the show yet bring that one up, but that's definitely been one that I've been... It's in the Levinson playbook.

Nathaniel (43:24.434)

There you go. It's a good one to have in the playbook. It's certainly one that's in my household playbook. Although, my parents' bookshelves, when my mom was a psychologist, there's a lot of Young and Freud on that bookshelf, and it helped, but it's not the same.

Justin Levinson (43:40.728)

Totally. Cool, man. Well, thanks so much for being on the show today. yeah, since I've been back in Vermont, I haven't seen you in the flesh. maybe at some point we'll get together and hang out. But yeah, thanks for offering your insights and your conversation is great. yeah, hopefully I'll see you more.

Nathaniel (43:58.942)

Happy to.

Nathaniel (44:05.276)

Yeah, I'd love that. It'd be great. And listen, thanks for having me on. It was a lot of fun to get to talk about it and, you know, hopefully I didn't share too much proprietary information, but if I did, you know, it's all about execution anyway, so.

Justin Levinson (44:14.322)

Hahaha

Justin Levinson (44:17.928)

Awesome, Nathaniel. Well, have a great rest of your day and we'll catch you soon. All right, man. Peace.

Nathaniel (44:23.304)

All right, sounds good, Justin. Bye.

Agency Side host Justin Levison

Agency Side host and the creative matchmaker extraordinaire at Coming Up Creative. Connecting top talent with leading agencies by day, uncovering industry secrets by night (well, whenever we record).

Justin Levinson

Entrepreneur & Podcaster