A Conversation with Stu Swineford of Relish Studio
Veteran marketer Stu Swineford joined us from beautiful Colorado for a long conversation about marketing, work, people, non-profits and purpose-focused companies. "We're really trying to find people who have a company ethos that is a little bit bigger than just making money; it's about trying to do something else to help the world." Stu and Matthew are both small-town Colorado kids, which made the conversation particularly rich.
TRANSCRIPTION
Matthew Dunn
Good afternoon. This is Dr. Matthew Dunn, host of the future of email marketing. And my guest today is do swine furred from relish studios do our first time to talk. Welcome, and thanks for making the time.
Stu Swineford
Oh, thank you so much for having me on the show. I'm really looking forward to chatting with you this afternoon and hearing what kind of fun stuff we could talk about
Matthew Dunn
you Are you a pine Colorado somewhere.
Stu Swineford
I am I live at 9000 feet west of Denver, kind of west of Boulder area. We've lived up here since since 93. Partially because we love it because it's an amazing place to be even in the winters. I'm a Colorado kid. Yeah. At heart and and then also because we're too lazy to move so
Matthew Dunn
you're in Netherlands,
Stu Swineford
Netherlands area, yeah, Netherlands about eight miles north where I live. Okay, I'm about halfway in between Blackhawk and Redux.
Matthew Dunn
Okay. So we're gonna go off the rails right from the very beginning. I'm a Colorado kid as well. Although I'm in Washington state now. Have you ever been through To watch.
Stu Swineford
Oh, yeah. So I grew up in Ganesan swatches. Just, you know about an hour hour and 15 minutes, I think from Ganesan. Yeah, I don't go there a lot. But I've definitely been there.
Matthew Dunn
Why did you but still it or is the Netherland area? Like I mean, since 93, drier, hotter, more fires, all of the dire stuff.
Stu Swineford
Oh, in terms of, of recent developments, you know, yeah, I think we're all sort of experiencing that climate change challenge that we're seeing globally. You said you were in the North Pacific Northwest. Yeah, Melanie got up to 116 degrees, it says
Matthew Dunn
we're up here in the we're up here in the great big trees, and it was 105 degrees. And like, just yeah, just a jaw dropping experience. And hopefully,
Stu Swineford
yeah, all we're seeing that last year was particularly bad in terms of fires. Kind of in our area, there was a pretty decent sized one burning near Boulder. And then another one sparked up just north of us, you know, probably 15 miles as the crow flies north of us. But still, I had some friends who were affected by that one. And then we had, you know, three really major ones burning to the north and west of this area. So it was a really smoky and yeah, they shut down the forest at one point where you weren't allowed to go into the forest anymore, because they just didn't have the capacity of firefighters to, you know, to combat anything new. Yeah. So yeah, it was, it was an interesting summer. We're hoping it's been a little wetter this year. So we're hoping that things continue in that in that vein.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah, I hope so. I hope so as well. And we could probably start, we could probably spend the hour easily talk just about, you know, the macro issues facing us, but did a day jobs and stuff like that, hey, fill me in a bit on on relish studio, and you mentioned nonprofits, we were talking a bit beforehand, but broad strokes a focus for the agency and kind of stuff you'd like doing with them.
Stu Swineford
Yeah, so relish is a digital marketing agency, we've been around since the mid to what have you, you say that we were actually kind of founded, at least my involvement came about in 2008 was an existing agency, I had an agency of my own, and we kind of rolled them together, okay, at the time, we liked the relevant name better than the one that I was using. So we kept relish. And, you know, through the course of our, you know, our tenure here, we've we've primarily been focused on kind of website design and development, really focusing in that digital realm. You know, we still do some print work here. And there, I started out as a print guy, but but, you know, we, we primarily focus on digital marketing efforts, and, and really helping to create conversion focused opportunities for for clients, really making sure that that investment that they're making in their marketing and in their website is is, you know, creating a return. And, you know, primarily WordPress design and development work. And we've really started to focus quite heavily in kind of this purpose driven space. So really trying to find people who have a company ethos is a little bit bigger than just making money, it's about trying to do something else to help, you know, help the world. So for example, relish is 1% for the planet partner, so 1% of our of our revenues, go back to environmental causes, you know, just things like that nonprofits B corpse, people like that are they are the people that we really like to serve. I found myself working on a nonprofit site in it was a memorial day weekend, it was gorgeous. Here was two o'clock on a Sunday, and they had something that they really needed to get out that following week, and I'm banging away, you know, working for them. And I, and I stopped, I thought, Man, I'm not upset about this. And so at that point, I was like, oh, okay, if I could do more work with people who were making a difference, it doesn't feel like work. And that's really kind of what we're looking to do. I think all of us should be looking to do some Yeah.
Matthew Dunn
Nice. Nice. And and do your clients tend to come from Colorado? Or do you end up all over the place?
Stu Swineford
We're a little bit all over the place. But I'd say that we're 90% focused in state, it's just easier to sell here in the local area. But we do have we have clients running out of Montana and California and New York. And so we certainly have people from all over. We've worked with people all over the globe, in you know, in the past 12 years or so.
Matthew Dunn
That's, that's, that's kind of fun. We'll end up talking about email a bunch, but do other channels, social media, mobile, like do those, do those factor in the things that you help those clients with?
Stu Swineford
Yeah, we primarily focus on kind of the web experience. Obviously, all of those things kind of come into play. So when we when we talk about kind of this ecosystem, this marketing ecosystem, you know, The Hub is really your website. And then certainly we can get into the weeds in terms of there are multiple hubs within your website or there there should be. But you know, at the end of the day, you have your site, and then you have your content, which you need a place to put the content, the content is so important. And then the third overlap becomes kind of SEO. And so if you think of the Venn diagram with those three elements, the website might well actually the contents, probably the biggest website, you know, is is in there, because that's, that's super necessary. And then you have the overlap of SEO, which content certainly helps fuel. And then there's all the other stuff around that which is, which is all really important for driving awareness and driving, interactions and engagement. So that can be everything from you know, pay per click advertising, to social media, to emails to, in person events, which we think are are part of that ecosystem, and part of that, that support network that, that starts to drive, drive interest and help build relationships, we kind of look at marketing as, as relationship building at the end of the day.
Matthew Dunn
Nice, nice. And I would imagine for purpose driven companies like you described, contents even higher up the stack, because there's, there's got to be an emotional and a personal component to why you know why someone's going to connect with him or be a customer when
Stu Swineford
you're one thing about purpose driven in our minds. And certainly, I think that there can be a variety of, of ways to interpret that sort of bucket. But you know, in our minds is really just people who are trying to do something more than just make money, you know, it's great to one another yacht, but if you can put something else together, that helps fuel your, your company culture, that tends to be something that that you can message against, that really helps you drive all the people who are engaged, but all the stakeholders, so everybody, from your internal team, to your vendors, to your clients even can get really engaged with those types of activities. And so we encourage companies to do that we start a lot of our exploration and a lot of our our engagements with kind of the idea of value proposition as well as vision values and mission. And well, actually starting with values, you're really what are those things that that drive? everything that you're doing the vision than being that long term kind of play, like what's the aspirational future state you seek your company to create within the mission becomes kind of those day to day activities. And those are the day to day kind of ethos that drives toward that, that Northstar of your vision. And, and so really any company can be purpose driven, if you have some kind of component to it. That that enables you to do a little bit more than just just making a paycheck.
Matthew Dunn
Right, right. I have a friend, educator, now retired. But, you know, when someone starts knocking capitalism, he has this type of responses like Well, look, being a drug dealer is a perfectly legitimate capitalist enterprise. So don't don't lean too heavily on your rationalization, you could go sell that as well, why are you not doing that? If it's more profitable? Surely there's another reason to do what you're doing, which is sounds like the heart of what or what you're saying, I would think it would also help, you know, that purpose driven dimension would also help recruit and retain employees these days.
Stu Swineford
Yeah, particularly in, you know, what we're seeing in some of the trends for employment, particularly as millennials, and Gen, whatever they are, whatever the next one's the newest college are, and, you know, I, and I'm just thrilled to death of this is the case, but they are really starting to, to drive the narrative on on both sales and recruitment. Yeah. So, you know, people are starting to really vote with their dollar and, and decide where they want to spend their money and where they want to spend their time based upon the values of those businesses that they're contributing to. And, and likewise, in the workplace. People want to work for companies that have something bigger than just you know, go showing up to work and putting in your 40 hours and going home. And you know, if you can feel like you're part of something bigger than than just selling a widget, you know, if that selling that widget means something more than that, then I think that that's that's proving to be
Matthew Dunn
like your Sunday, right? Like you said about your Sunday afternoons like wait a minute, I'm not I'm not cracked by doing this. Like there's a reason to do it. That's not just demanding client and contract and stuff like that like exactly a lot easier. And I agree about the millennials in the generation following. It does seem I keep reading about various labels. But I keep reading about the great reshuffle, I think is the label like that the expected a lot of people are going to go hang on a second. Why am I doing this job? Why should I do that instead? You know, I had a year to think about it more than before. So now I might act on it. I might move to Colorado, I might change jobs. I might might mind like, whoo, that's a bit that's a nice outcome of a fairly difficult time for everybody. Yeah, it's
Stu Swineford
really, there's there's a lot of complexity, and a lot of interesting things going on in the marketplace right now. And it's fun to see. I think for some people, it's probably a little scary, because they never had to, you know, offer up your company culture as a as a selling point. Yeah. Past, or it was, you know, do you have a foosball table when I was
Stu Swineford
in the.com? era? right
Stu Swineford
in that? Yeah. And that late 90s zone? Yeah. Yeah. It was like our that is their free soda. And, you know, do you have a bob table, and that was kind of that company culture, but it's just, it's a step in that direction, where it's, it's, you know, the idea that, that it's more than just coming to work and, and doing your time and, and that being it. Yeah. And so it's been really interesting. I've been doing this for a while now. So it's, it's been fun to kind of see how things have evolved.
Matthew Dunn
Well, if you said 93. So, yeah, you read the press about work life balance, and you must be going. Yeah, yeah. I've been doing this for a lot longer than just this year, right?
Stu Swineford
Yeah. Well, you know, we, I held jobs for a number of years there. So I was working in Boulder when we bought our house up here in the mountains. So commuting down to Boulder every day, then I've committed to Denver every day, we used to joke that we're 45 minutes from everywhere. Because at the at one point, we kind of work. You know, I could get to downtown Denver from my house in 45 minutes, which is not a horrible bed. You know, that's pretty average really. You know, in Boulder was very similar. boulder is actually a little little more predictable. And that's why that's where relish is located. When we when we go somewhere. We're located in Boulder now.
Matthew Dunn
Right? good brand good for the brand to a boulder. Yeah, yeah. Great association to have.
Stu Swineford
Yeah, but um, but yeah, the work life balance. I mean, they, the thing I think I took to heart was the idea of either live where you work or live where you play? Yeah. And I chose the where, where I play. And then now it's where I work, too. So there you go.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah. And the the infrastructure enabling that is just, it's gotten better and better. I was talking with someone the other day, and I said, you know, we really dodged a bullet with the timing of the pandemic. And they looked askance and I said, No, you gotta understand, I worked with, I worked with this stuff for a living five years earlier, you would not have seen businesses, schools, and all sorts of ranges of organizations going, I guess we have to adapt, and for the most part, doing it relatively successfully. You know,
Stu Swineford
I was actually talking about this was somewhat earlier today. Yeah. Where if this had happened 10 years ago? Who knows what would have happened? It would have been chaos. I mean, it was chaos anyway. But can you imagine? You know, I mean, without the tools that we have, you know, you and I are talking with each other on a podcast here. Yeah. 1700 miles apart, is working just fine. Yeah, least I believe it is by ends working great. And,
Matthew Dunn
yeah, we wouldn't have been able to do that, you know, 510 years ago. And it was partially bandwidth and the sort of infrastructure pieces of it partially, you know, tool sets on it also just, you know, facility, ease, comfort, etc. You know, that I've been a digital adopter. You've been a digital doctor for a long time. Not everybody was in has I heard one school system say, apropos the pandemic, we had a 10 year plan for remote education and distance learning, and we implemented it in two weeks. Yep. Yeah. I hope I hope, I'm sure kids are ready to get the heck back in class. I'm not saying let's stay virtual for that particular function. But but at least at least there was a lifeline there not not necessarily great for everybody, but least offline there and it would have been would have been a lot different before. Lateral curveball. I'm intrigued that you're Colorado College liberal arts grad. I am Yeah. Wow. How is that? How is that background? I know that I know. I know. a reasonably good bit about the school. Terrific institution.
Stu Swineford
Yeah. I had a I was very fortunate to be able to attend cc back in the late 80s, early 90s. Oh, I'd waited in, in, in 1991. Okay, so there's, there's how old I am. Um, so cc was really great for me in a lot of respects it the block plan, yes, I'm a very immersive kind of guy. And so having that opportunity. And for those of those of the audience who aren't familiar with blog plan, you take one class one, one, specific class for three and a half weeks, some of them are longer, for example, organic chemistry or something like that would be a two block course. But for the most part, you're taking one course for three and a half weeks, and then you get a short little break, you get Wednesday afternoon through Sunday off, and then you go back and you take your next class. So instead of having to juggle, you know, five, or six, or however many I don't even know how many courses that people take at a at a standard institution. And, you know, figuring out how to study for each of those. And, and you get, you just get this immersive experience. And for me, it was actually quite good. I, I was, I was a sociology major. And so that has certainly applied to what I do with marketing, oh, yeah, quite a bit in a lot of ways. And then I was actually in pre med as well. So the pre med part, some of those classes were a real challenge. Like I mentioned, organic chemistry, for example, was, you know, two months of very intensive, you go to classes, at eight, you'd get out of class about noon, you'd have an hour to grab lunch, you then have to go back to lab from about one to four or so one to 430. And then you'd go study. And so you know, when it was funny, because you'd have friends that would just disappear for a while. It was like, Oh, they must be in something really horrendous. Yeah, yeah. physics or, or camera or something.
Matthew Dunn
So did you jump from gudnason? High School to cc? I did? Yeah. I graduated gudnason. So from a more you know, I'm a Durango High School grad. So like, same ol same ol right I wonderful small town public schools, but not a block system. You must add classmates from all over the world. serious, serious immersion, terrific faculty at cc like a real that's a real jump up and jump up in terms of perspective.
Stu Swineford
That was interesting. I mean, some of the kids who'd come from boarding school scenarios or, you know, really solid prep school scenarios. Yeah, certainly had a leg up on on some of us who may or may not have had that same sort of intensive experience. But, um, but yeah, I mean, cc was was really good for me. And then I was waiting to get into med school. So I applied to med school and didn't get in my first year. And was working as a salesperson at a bike company, a catalog company, back in the day. And one day, the the owner asked me out to lunch and I was like, well, am I getting fired here? That'd be kind of weird to take some of the lunch and fire them. But I had no idea what was going on. And they said, Hey, you went to school and you're, you seem to be pretty sharp, you want to write copy for us, because they had a catalog. That was their primary source of revenue, okay. And then they had a brick and mortar, but they were primarily catalog sales. Okay. And I said, Sure, I'll, you know, I'll do that. That sounds like fun. So I started writing copy for them in about six weeks later, the graphic artists just stopped showing up to work, she quit. And we had to get a catalog out. And people were kind of like, freak it out, because they didn't know what to do. And I said, Well, I know how to turn on the Mac, I'll, I'll do that. And so all of a sudden, I found myself kind of thrust into this role. at a very early age of a speaker or cork,
Matthew Dunn
one of the two
Stu Swineford
it was cork actually. Yep. And I thrust into this role of director of marketing for one of the top three catalog companies in the in the nation at that point. Wow. So ran that department for for a number of years and then went on to went on to work work at agencies did a whole bunch of calm stuff. Okay, all the ups and downs there. And then, at some point, I I lost my mind and decided I could I could do this myself. So I started starting my own business with with a partner and then we rolled. As I said earlier, we rolled that into relish about a year later. Yeah. And yeah, so it's been then I joke that I haven't been employed for years now. 13 years now.
Matthew Dunn
How does how does someone you know how to someone. Obviously good. Marketing is like the outside edge of the bubble in terms of communications and relationships, buildings. How do you stay current and I don't be technical. Current, I mean, marketing current, like, How do you stay in touch?
Stu Swineford
Well, you know, we use a variety of mechanisms, I think that I think that the thing that I have committed myself to doing is just having conversations. And whether or not those conversations lead to anything isn't the point. It's just the point of having them. And that's one of the things I love about the podcast that I started last year was called relish to this is that I was having those conversations anyway, I was talking with people about their businesses and asking them questions about where they were seeing challenges and how, how they had overcome them, and things that were working and things that worked and surprises and things of that nature all the time. And so flipping that into a podcast just seemed completely natural. Yeah, in that, you know, it was just work I was doing on the regular anyway. So, I tend to think of it as as just, like, I think I said earlier, just relationship building, where, you know, if you can facilitate a conversation in some fashion, and then be present, and, and be helpful and serve during that conversation, then good things happen. And those good things may happen, you know, directly in front of you in terms of filling your pocketbook, or they may happen elsewhere, where you've provided some people some, some good tips and insights, and they can go and kind of roll with it. But that's kind of the first step. And so, you know, the mechanisms that I use to do that, and, you know, back in, back in the day, you know, prior to last year, it was a lot of in person networking, events, stuff, you know, really making sure that, that I was out, having those conversations to start to kind of fuel filling up my my calendar with other conversations. And now, you know, being being remote and virtual. And we leverage, we leverage LinkedIn a lot, to just try to prospect and start relationships and start conversations there. We do hit you know, we we use our email list a lot, in terms of trying to create opportunities for follow up conversations. Okay. And, um, and, yeah, that's, those are kind of the two big ones. I mean, we're on social, I think, you know, LinkedIn falls into that, that bucket for sure. But those are, those are kind of the the starting points, I think, one of the things that we've been doing with with email in particular is getting away from that newsletter idea where people send out, you know, choose your own adventure newsletter once a month, that has nine different links, and, you know, three, maybe three calls to action. And yeah, and the expectation there is, if someone's a gonna open that, when it's clearly a newsletter, yeah, it's sent from a sent from an info at address or newsletter ad, or, you know, something that's not a person, it's, since you're the subject line is monthly newsletter or something. Yeah, you know, not fantastic. And it's just not taking advantage of a lot of the things that email actually affords, in terms of advantage. You know, email is, is great, because it because it, it's a, it's something that someone has opted into, for the most part, they've raised their hand at some point and said, Hey, I'm interested in this. Yeah. And so you've automatically elevated that, that conversation in that relationship to a different level than just, you know, blasting something out on social. So we love that optimized email in terms of really looking at subject lines, who it's from, who it's to, leveraging opportunities in that space is, is super helpful. And then what we've been doing, and this, this was my main point was getting back to this idea that you, you can actually just send out your blog, your posts in an email, as opposed to forcing someone to come back to your site, you can have that conversation, you can create that back and forth exchange within this mechanism that people are are using. And, and, and also you can have a very pointed, you have a you know, a single point, that's a blog post or whatever it is, you're not just allowing people to choose whatever piece of this thing they thought was interesting. Yeah. So you can have a little bit of control over that as well. And then in the nonprofit space, you know, the boomer generation continues to be the most philanthropic in terms of of donations, and money in those that generation is still very heavily steeped in email. So I would say, for any people out there who are in the nonprofit space that you're not, not taking Your email because you know, a lot of your potential donor bases is probably on that on the on that platform a lot.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah. And it's the it's the link, the link that you the link that you actually can maintain control over and Facebook can't yank that audience out from under you.
Stu Swineford
Yeah, yeah. Thank you follow all of your, your eggs were in the my space bucket. You know, I mean, you don't, yeah, you don't have control over these other platforms, anything could happen. You know, and I think Facebook is starting to see that a little bit in terms of backlash, where, you know, there are a lot of people who either were on it, who decided that they don't want to be or, and it's still the elephant in the room, I mean, you know, they have, they have a huge chunk of the population in their system in some fashion. But saying that you don't, you don't have any control over that.
Matthew Dunn
So you really don't on back back to your back your newsletter description, I'm gonna, I'm gonna guess you also, at least for some clients, or for yourselves advocate to shift, stop sort of talking in third person and go ahead and be direct and personal, even though you may be sending it to 1000 people?
Stu Swineford
Yeah, you know, I don't think it's disingenuous to, to approach email from the perspective that this is a one to one conversation, right? And even if you Yeah, you're you're sending this to 500 people or 1000 people. You're still wanting to connect with each of those people, right, man. So crafting your email and making it making a tailor to where it is, it is a one to one it is, you know, it is that feel, and you're not trying to spoof that you're really, if you come at it from the perspective of we're trying to provide value and, and just approach it from that, then I think you're in a pretty good starting place. In terms of like, Where, where you're going. And so if I'm sending a, you know, a bunch of emails, I think it's going to be valuable to those people. So that's the first step. And then yeah, tailoring that message, working in use and working in names whenever you can. Yeah. And but thinking about it. So starting from a perspective of this is an email to you write as a person, right, as opposed to how, how can I send an email to a whole bunch of people? You know, I think that that if you can just put yourself in that space. And in that mindset, I think that is really helpful.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah, change, change the change the author's authorial intention, or whatever the phrase is, I had, I had a friend of mine, April Mullen from spark post on early early on when we started this podcast in April, and I ended up I think that was the conversation, we ended up talking about the rise, this surprise rise of paid email newsletters within the last couple of years. Back being the prominent one, on Twitter, I think Twitter just bought a company that's in sort of a similar space, it was like, Pat is a surprise. Why is that? I mean, we're both speculating but that you know, what you own the connection was certainly part of it. The the success of actually getting that first person communication and not having to jump through extra hoops and clicks to get to it and read it makes a ton of sense as well. Like, you're kind of managing your paywall with the send it in a substack kind of scenario. And yeah, any any other thoughts to that on that space?
Stu Swineford
I was just reading an article about this the other day. And it is fascinating. I think that the the the word newsletter is being used a slightly differently in this context where what they've done and the name that pops to mind is Matt kalbi, Toby. I'm not sure how to pronounce his last name, but he's, he's a well known author, a writer from I believe he was with Rolling Stone, perhaps back in the day,
Matthew Dunn
and he just sent out a substack big bone. They cut a business deal to basically say, Come hang out your shingle, right?
Stu Swineford
Yeah, exactly. Okay. Exactly. And I think that some of that is in response to the perceived or, or experienced crackdown, on the platforms that they were using effectively. So for example, if you know if somebody gets banned from Twitter, yeah. And that was their platform, then what happens right and so I think that that was that was part of the deal. And then I don't know that these are actually have that same sort of newsletter connotation. I think that there's very similar I don't subscribe to one so I, I am sort of guessing here, but I'm guessing that there are that there, you know, as a single topic of discussion when they get At least that's how it sounds to me as opposed to, you know, creating a UI, what I think most people think of is a newsletter that has, you know, here's the last, here's, here's an excerpt of the latest blog post. And here's, you know, some news that happened to, you know, in the last three months, and here's a, you know, perhaps a resource that you might be interested in, that's just this mishmash of stuff. But again, I'm I'm sort of making some guesses here. But I, I do think that that you're spot on in terms of the ownership of the, of the of the platform, so to speak, and the email is a little bit platform agnostic, where if you're on, if you're on Facebook, you're on Facebook, and if you're on Twitter, you know, there's not, there's not a lot of other options there. That's the best channel.
Matthew Dunn
There's a there's, there's a gentleman lives up here in the Northwest. And actually, like we've been friends for a good decade plus fella named Mark Anderson. And he has put out an email newsletter called the strategic news strategic news service. For I think Mark's going on 30 years at this, that's awesome. And it was a it was a paid email newsletter way back when and I mean, he's definitely one of the smartest people I've ever had chance to be in a room with. And when you read strategic news is like, Mark sat down and wrote this, it was not a staff. It was not, let's outsource this. It's like, this is what Mark thinks about this issue. And that ends up his his issues are less frequent. The other newsletter that I've subscribed to for a good number of years now that that that helped me watch this space evolve in the last couple is Ben Thompson's strategic hurry. So on any of my 10 bucks a month, Mr. TECHO. Happily, and I pounce on it every morning to read it, and but it feels like it is in a bands like, okay, you saw the you know, Apple headline about blah, blah, blah, let me put it through my lens, here's what I think I may be wrong. Here's past references, and three days later, he may say, Oh, yeah, when I said, you know, it was pink, you know, what DME call on my part because I didn't know this, or now I understand. It's like, it's got a very one to one, not a newsletter feel it's a it feels more like a journal in public, if you will,
Stu Swineford
right. Now, I think that that's the approach that, that we recommend, in terms of what are you what are you sending out, and certainly, you need to send out something every once in a while that that speaks to news and something that asks for a purchase or, or an engagement or a next step type of deal. However, just being sensitive and thoughtful to how you do that, I think is what really sets the, that makes the difference between, you know, something that's gonna get opened on the regular and something that just, you know, maybe they don't unsubscribe, but they're certainly not participating with,
Matthew Dunn
yeah, and even if they don't, even if they don't read it, I hate to use the word authenticity, because it gets beat up a lot. But, you know, there, I occasionally will skip a, you know, astrotech hurry issue. But it's not, oh, I'm mad at that guy. I'm gonna unsubscribe. So I just didn't have time to read that right now. I will probably go back and do it later. But I sort of trust it. If I go to it later. It's gonna be smart, authentic, informed, and all that other stuff. So the fact that it's sitting there in the inbox, he won, even if I didn't happen to read it today. His perspective still, for him?
Stu Swineford
Well, there's a there's a consistency component to that, too. And that's one of the things that we find people, people either bite off too much, and then freak out and don't do anything. So I think, you know, setting SMART goals early on is really important. Yeah, it makes sense. Yeah, it can be a little bit of a stretch, or it can be a little uncomfortable. But if it's really uncomfortable, our tendency, as humans is to do nothing, as opposed to doing a little bit because it's so both of those feel like fails. Right link away. And I'll say, I'm going to send out one a day. And, you know, I can't do that. Yeah, I've failed. Yeah. Even if I send out for a week, right. Yeah. And so in my mind, I've, I've failed, and so I might as well do none, because it still gets into the L column. In terms of wins losses. Yeah. And so really, when you when you come out that first initial, like, you know, I think I want to do this, just setting your commitment to something that, you know, again, maybe a stretch but isn't going to break you. And then once you get good at that, you know, so if you say I'm going to do one a month and you're nailing it, then you can do two a month, right now, that can be your next commitment. And, and so there's a few other things in terms of consistency and cadence is people get used to that and they end so then they Start to expect it in not in a bad way, in a in a, you know, they're looking forward to it. Yeah. Or even like you said, if maybe you skip a couple, it's still there. And so it's still demonstrating that you're around and you're there to help. And you're, you're engaged, and you're thinking about these things. And, and that, like you said, it's just another win. Yeah. So I think, with anything we do, making sure that we set appropriate, appropriate commitments that are, you know, that are reasonable, is, is a good thing to take into account.
Stu Swineford
Yeah.
Matthew Dunn
That you'd think the difference between blogging and and the kind of email newsletter that we're talking about here, it isn't big, but I remember remember, when I remember one blog, he was big, and like, everyone have their dog jumped on writing a blog, and so many of them felt forced, and I've got to make up stuff to talk about. And and with the blog, you don't know what's gonna read it. Right. With email, you got like, Okay, then this set of people said, Yes, I do want to get that. That's a very different, that's a very different starter for the relationship, then random guy who happens to run across me in a web search and read that one blog post.
Stu Swineford
Yeah, exactly. I think that the so one of the other things I love about email, as well as, as taking materials and finding out ways to kind of repurpose those materials. So creating that content is. So I'll just mention, I'll mention LinkedIn to start. So one of the things that we noticed was my reach on LinkedIn was a lot higher than the web traffic that we were getting. And that started, you know, this was back in back in the day, and I was like, Oh, well, that's interesting. So I started thinking, why don't I make sure that I publish to LinkedIn? Yeah, at least as frequently as I publish on my site? Because that's where the people are. So instead of expect expecting people to come to you all the time, yeah, you just go to where they are. Yeah. And similarly, email has the same kind of capacity. You know, if you have 1000, person email list, you might not have you, you may, but you may not have 1000 actually interested people coming to your site, right? You might get plenty more clicks than that on any given day. But a lot of that is no just kind of organic junk traffic, which is still, you know, these are, these are not bad things. But ultimately, if you have 1000 people who've raised their hand and said, Yeah, I want this, then you're going to them, and you're, you're giving this to them where they are already participating. Yeah. So it just, it makes sense to leverage it as a as an opportunity for Yeah, yeah.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah. I talked with one gent at a at a fairly sizable non nonprofit Operation Smile, if I recall, correctly, like the help, correct on help correct miles all over the world. And he said, he was telling me how methodical they are about. He used the word curating, curating the stories that that come up through their work like that really became their marketing asset. And it wasn't a cynical thing. It was like, we need to communicate the difference this is making, whether it's a photograph, or a video or a written story, like we need to get that in people's hands, because really, that's a great deal about why they donated, supported, whatever, in the first place. It wasn't, wasn't just to have a tax write off, it was, you know, I can I can help change a kid's life and seeing that happen. Is is a heck of a thing. Like,
Stu Swineford
yeah, it's interesting. Yeah, that comes back to that whole persona exercise and really understanding why people are interested in what you're saying, or what you provide. And, you know, most of the time, it's not what doesn't have anything to do with what we do. It's how we make their life better. And, you know, ultimately, ultimately, you know, if that if making their life better, was just me, figuring out a couple things that were causing them challenges and going over and, you know, washing their car or walking their dog or whatever, that made their life better than then that's great that they you know, certainly we need to to differentiate and establish what things were best hat and do those things. But, but, you know, no one really cares how we get it done a lot of the time. Yeah,
Matthew Dunn
yeah. Yeah. No, it's it's a fair observation. Do you have I won't phrase it as a question because it'd be BS. I find myself wondering about our our load capacity in this in this content economy site. There are way too many things that I could Read, and I just couldn't possibly get to all of them. And selection criteria is often pretty flippin Harvard or, you know, like, I ran across this or like that. So I stuck with it and there's 52 others it'd be maybe more useful, and I just don't know about them. And even discovering the good stuff is a whole lot of work in time. Like, it really is, how do you get above the how to get your signal above the noise for the people for whom it's going to, you know, Speaker?
Stu Swineford
Well, I think that might come down in a lot of respects to not trying to appeal to everybody. And, you know, I, again, I think from a psychological or sociological standpoint, we all like to be liked. But sometimes we have to just pick a lane, and then decide this is what we're going to talk about. And, and really, there is an audience for pretty much everything. And that audience may be very, very small. But if you can inspire, and educate and bring value to that, even very small audience, you'll, you'll be the person that they go to, for information, etc. If you've if you've satisfied that that itch, and it's, it comes back to A. So a lot of people think we need an app. Right? And or I need an app or I have this great idea for an app. Yeah. And our, our inclination is to just rush out and build it. And then expect people to show up and then buy it, which sometimes certainly happens. I mean, yeah, that that does happen. However, if you can build a rabid fan base before you go out and build the app, right, you're going to save yourself a lot of money, because you have a you have this group of people that are that are automatically going to purchase this thing when it when it arrives. And, and so similarly, I think that we can, we can kind of take that same approach in terms of just you're really focusing on a specific niche, I'm really getting great at satisfying the challenges of that niche in terms of just the materials that we put out. And then, you know, and then that becomes this thing that that can grow and it can grow from, it's a lot easier to grow something that's specific than a general, the general thing. Yeah. And again, there are plenty of examples of general things that have grown quite large. But you know, if you can if to try and get through all that clutter, and to try and rise above all that all that churn. I think that that specialization is is part of that. Yeah. Part of that component.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah. niche down niche down niche down. Someone said the other day like, huh, yeah, probably. Right. Yeah. It's, it's a challenge. We we live in such a wealth of information access. And it's, it's, it's easy to lose sight of that in sort of dog paddling through it. You just go in and hang on a second. You have like the world's library at your fingertips. Tell me how this is not a good thing. This is a good thing means you have to sit down and read some of it. All of it, and that's okay. Right. But Wow, right, what a fantastic time was Louie ck, everything's amazing. And nobody's happy. He's right, huh? Yeah,
Stu Swineford
it's, um, yeah, we live in a really interesting age in terms of of that stuff. And, you know, the fact that we're carrying around, you know, a supercomputer in everybody is, it changes a lot of things, and there's a lot more competition. And that's where I think if you if you just stay consistent, and you and you focus on providing value, and you understand the challenges that that the people that you you are hoping to appeal to have in providing information and assistance and empathy. in that space. I think that you that you end up you end up with a at least a very engaged group of people who care very much about your success and supporting you.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah, you've got them, you know, willing to have further conversation, which is a much better footing to start on then. Hey, let me interrupt you and see if you'll marry me.
Stu Swineford
Exactly. I think that that we fail. So in the in the age of social media, we all are inundated with success stories all the time. This And everything seems so easy because we're only seeing the successes. And we aren't seeing the 99 failures that that contributed to that one success. And so, as marketers, we have to, it would behoove us to keep in the back of our minds, the fact that, let's say 97% of the people that you reach out to, in any given day are not ready, not interested in what you're trying to provide for them. Right, right. But three of them were, if you reach out to 100 people, three people were, and the next day, it's gonna be three different people, or, you know, maybe it's the next week, but at some point, there's, there's a natural turn on these activities. And if we can keep in the back of our heads, how that's just the game. in understanding that, we're going to get here, a lot of nose. Yeah, but some percentage of those noes are actually maybes. And some percentage of those nose are nose today. But there'll be maybes tomorrow, and the maybes, they'll shift to yeses. And just just keep at it and just keep churning and keep, keep providing good. valuable information. I think that that people come around. And that's just how, how it has to work. And then you just keep putting people in at the top. And they they could be noes, or maybes or even yeses at the start. But yeah, expecting the expectation that you're going to make 10 phone calls and, and nine of those are going to be sales is is not a good expectation to set for oneself.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah, it's kind of like it's kind of like your, you know, don't say I'm going to write a blog post or newsletter every day, because really, you're not.
Stu Swineford
Yeah, and and then just remember that everything we're reading out there is edited, and curated and polished,
Matthew Dunn
so algorithmically selected and filtered. And that
Stu Swineford
too, yes, everything. Yeah, yeah. But most people don't go on social media to talk about the, the, you know, 87 phone calls they made this week that they got hung up on, you know, they're talking about the 13 that, that they made that were sales or, or big wins, or whatever. And so just coming at it from that perspective of, of, you know, this is hard. It's hard. Yeah. And it's okay, that it's hard. But you don't set yourself up to think that you're going to win the first race that you that you enter. Yeah,
Matthew Dunn
yeah. Well, good. Good advice.
Stu Swineford
Well, I
Matthew Dunn
love when a conversation wanders like this. And that kind of saves like right on the mark stuff that you've had to say like, I hope some people get listened to this conversation, because I think there's some real valuable perspective there.
Stu Swineford
Well, I've had a really fun time talking with you today. And I like wanting to connect with a fellow Southwestern Colorado fella
Matthew Dunn
today and not many people from our little corner of the world who you say Ganesan and I've got like vivid picture and more than a few high school misadventures, I think that down, beautiful part of the country. You have you stayed in Colorado the whole time.
Stu Swineford
Well, we moved to gunnison when I was in early part of high school. Okay, so I finished up high school. Grew up in Oklahoma City, and I've been back. Let's see, we left in 85. I think I've been back four times. Okay. So I didn't really miss it too much. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, dad. There are lots of lots of lovely people in Oklahoma City, but I'm, I prefer to live here in the state. And then when I was going to college, I was looking at a few different schools and decided I really wanted to stay in state. Just because I just pretty much just gotten here and wasn't ready to leave. Yeah, yeah. And had been here ever since.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah. Well, why would you leave Colorado? I mean, come on. It's Colorado.
Stu Swineford
Well, the Seattle area is gorgeous as well. I had the privilege of climbing Rainier beach you a couple years ago. Yeah. Wow. Nice. And it was it's just a gorgeous area. And then my wife is from the Corvallis Oregon area.
Matthew Dunn
Nice as well, my, my, my older son summited Baker, which is close to us. Like Go ahead. I don't I don't do heights. So you can go ahead and climb the mountain. But I get the but I get the I get the appeal. And yeah, this on this corner of the country is the only place I could have settled that aside from home state there. My my wife likes to Northwest so here we are. Yeah. Nice. Well, it's
Stu Swineford
a good place to be. I always enjoy visiting.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah, yeah. Especially in the summer and winter. After sunny Southern Colorado. Ah,
Stu Swineford
well, cool. Thank
Matthew Dunn
you, Sue. What a delightful conversation.
Stu Swineford
I had such a good time. And I really hope you have a good rest of your week. Matthew and I will talk to you real soon.
Matthew Dunn
Dale, my guest again has been Stu swynford. co founder and cmo at rally studio where does someone find you online so
Stu Swineford
they can find us at relish studio calm so it's like relish like picaro Studio comm if you are looking to listen to the podcast, it's relish this. So you can find that anywhere that you go to listen to podcasts and I myself am on LinkedIn just at just search for Su Su swineherd swa n E Fo rd love to connect with people there as well.
Matthew Dunn
We'll do that I'm going to cut the recording. Thanks again.