A Conversation With Solomon Thimothy of ClickX

How do marketing agencies market themselves? Solomon Thimothy's company ClickX has a solution — they're an "agency for agencies", and a platform to help agencies grow and scale. Solomon shares some thoughtful observations about marketing in the digital space — the challenge of privacy balanced with personalization and marketing scale...the increasing role of digital 800-lb gorillas...the overwhelming amount of data companies juggle, and more. The changing notion of work also comes up, as talent of all sorts is critical in the agency world. Energizing, fun conversation with an innovator in the marketing space.

TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:00]

[00:00:09] Matthew Dunn: Good afternoon. This is Dr. Matthew Dunn host of the future of email marketing. Hey, my guest today, Solomon Timothy man, with a very long resume wall street journal USA today. Forbes counsel best-selling author and CEO of clicker. That is correct. And you're wearing the t-shirt and

[00:00:27] Solomon Thimothy: everything. I like, I like to be a startup founder as much as possible.

[00:00:31] You know, it's like either it's day, one or one day and I choose to

[00:00:35] Matthew Dunn: make it day one day one. Yeah. You, you, you, you, me and Jeff, tell us a bit about click X.

[00:00:41] Solomon Thimothy: Yeah, absolutely great. Thanks for asking. Thanks for having me. Um, so we are a, basically an agency for agencies. We have a platform, um, that we built to help agencies start and scale, grow their, you know, their, their customer acquisition lead generation efforts.

[00:00:58] The way I got into it is that. Been the agency shoes for so many years prior to this, um, with my first company. And I realized that it's really hard to scale an agency. Right. So yeah, you kinda kind of learn and then you use that. Right? So, uh, all the things that we had to build for ourselves, the tech, the process, the system, the cheat sheet that we just started offering to other agency partners.

[00:01:24] So they came asking for it. We turned it into. If that makes

[00:01:28] Matthew Dunn: sense, son of a gun. That's cool. So you've got the it's the plumber's wife syndrome, right? I'm a marketer. My bark. It was kind of lagging. Right? I do this for my clients. It's hard to do it for myself kind of thing.

[00:01:41] Solomon Thimothy: Yeah. It really is. I realized that every time I talked to a partner, it's like, man, I remember when I was like $10,000 into the business, you know what I mean?

[00:01:49] The struggle to get to 20 K uh, or when you're at a hundred K that's a whole nother level of, of struggle. So I get to have that empathy. Uh, give them strategies. I mean, it's just, it's been, it's been amazing. And our team is growing by day. Uh, it's just like, all right, let's go.

[00:02:06] Matthew Dunn: Wow. Now, how much of, how much of what you learned and are now applying for other agencies?

[00:02:12] How much of that is processed? How much of that is software and automation? How much of that is, you know, coaching and, and advice? I,

[00:02:20] Solomon Thimothy: I, I preach. That's a great question. Actually, I would, I would think that, uh, the biggest gap from where they are to, where they're trying to go is what I call the knowledge gap.

[00:02:30] Uh, so within click X, we built an academy. It's really free agency. There's a lot of resources. The partners find us at a different state. In their life sometimes, or like me when I started, it was the day after I graduated college. Sometimes they're leaving their corporate job and starting an agency.

[00:02:48] Sometimes it's a side hustle, you know what I mean? So they may not come from a marketing background. So our job has been educating, educating, educating a ton then comes the tools so that they can go execute. That was a great question.

[00:03:02] Matthew Dunn: Okay. Yeah. Well, yeah. Yeah. Give, give man who doesn't know how to use the power.

[00:03:07] Uh, power cell and he's likely to cut something off. So

[00:03:10] Solomon Thimothy: he has been so instrumental. I just talked to one of our partners. We're working on getting appointment setters for, for our agencies, then educating them on how to find them. How do you know it's a good one? How do you know when to hire a second one?

[00:03:24] You know what I mean? It's like constantly, uh, building up the curriculum so that they can go execute. We also support them in that, but first starts with the knowledge, right? If you knew what to do. And it's just a matter of executing. Do you agree?

[00:03:39] Matthew Dunn: Yeah, I'm not sure. I always know what I'm doing, but I absolutely agree.

[00:03:44] Solomon Thimothy: And we want to make sure that we give them the blueprint and then the actionable step and the mentoring so that they, if they screw up, they have a question, you know, we just got done with a five day challenge. Believe it or not. I don't know if you, you know, if you've ever seen anybody in a challenge, it was basically called zero to 10 K scale challenge.

[00:04:01] In five days, we give them the blueprint. The day one is picking a niche. They too is building an offer. Day three is lead generation day four is how do you take that sales call and day five is repeatability and scalability,

[00:04:14] Matthew Dunn: repeatability scalability. Wow. Wow. That's a lot to pack into five days. Yeah. It's like, I

[00:04:19] Solomon Thimothy: got to do it in five days and then you let them off.

[00:04:22] And then, you know, they go execute and uh, sometimes they want to work with us and, you know, take it to the next level. But the fact of the matter is we're investing. You know what I mean, into. You know, giving, giving, giving value. Uh, and then of course, if they find this valuable and they want to work with this, that's up to them.

[00:04:37] Yeah.

[00:04:38] Matthew Dunn: Okay. And I'm going to guess your batting average of continued work is, is, uh, is quite high. Well, that's like, that's a fascinating, that's a fascinating niche. Um, and, and it's probably got some really distinct challenges because you've got someone who thinks they're knowledgeable, but you really got to help them escalate that to the next level.

[00:04:57] So.

[00:04:59] Solomon Thimothy: Yeah. I mean, like I said, some folks that come from the marketing, it's easier. I'm sure. You know what I'm saying? That it's like, you can, you could, you could scale away faster based on your, your knowledge where your, where your foundation is that. So I think it's a little bit difficult if you didn't come in, but it doesn't mean that you can build a business that's in marketing.

[00:05:17] You don't have to be a marketer. A lot of people do real estate. They don't really know. Right. They just know that I have money and I'm going to buy this and we're going to flip it. I don't really know much. So I think there's folks that I'm working with that are just treating this as a pure business play.

[00:05:33] And there's other folks like me that are practitioners that love what we do. You know what I mean? We're so into it, you know, we're like geeked out about it. So it just depends on what you're talking to. I,

[00:05:45] Matthew Dunn: I, I do love genuine marketers cause they get lit up. Like you are getting, you get. Yeah, getting lit up about it.

[00:05:53] Like why, what, what, uh, what makes it so fun? In fact,

[00:05:57] Solomon Thimothy: Yeah. I, I think, I think the fact that it's always changing it is insane how fast this stuff is changing. I mean, I, I, we, we have a platform, so we get emails about the API APIs, this, the Facebook, the Google constantly it's like urgent, you know what I mean?

[00:06:12] You're using the outdated version. You need to change it. And just keeping up with the changes. Like, if this is what I tell my, my, my, you know, folks are in our Facebook group. And so it's like, if you want to scale anything, go figure out how to start an agency scale. You'll be on top of market and you can start a car wash tomorrow.

[00:06:29] You could scale a car, which means catering company, whatever you ever do, you will know how to grow it because you know how to do marketing. Right? We got to figure that out. It's going to be a tough ride. It doesn't matter what you're starting. Right? You watch you watch any, maybe a shark tank episodes is the biggest struggle is we don't know how to market.

[00:06:46] We don't know how to get the word out

[00:06:48] Matthew Dunn: to sit the, uh, the real commodities attention. Not. That's right.

[00:06:54] Solomon Thimothy: So, um, so yeah, so I think just having that inside of you, how do you not get excited every day? I mean, I, I could, you know, before my first job was like helping an actual company grow their business.

[00:07:10] That's how you learn, right? Yeah. How do I get a B2B company? Women are registrations. And back in the day, when we go to trade, how do we get so many people to show up? How about a lunch and learn? We need to get that. And it was always trying to run a campaign to get people interested, the hook, the story, and all of those.

[00:07:28] That's that's the, uh, that's how you figure it out once you know that it's just rinse and repeat another playbook.

[00:07:36] Matthew Dunn: Uh, what, what's not in the playbook now that was in the playbook a couple of years ago. Like what, what comes to mind is something that doesn't work as well as the. You

[00:07:46] Solomon Thimothy: know, um, since we pivot so much, we're, we're always trying to make it, you know, better than what we have it.

[00:07:53] Um, I could probably say, uh, you know, things that we've stopped doing or recommending or anything traditional, unfortunately I'm sure this stuff works is that we're we're so we're still in. Well, you know what I mean? We're still inside Facebook ads, Instagram ads, messenger ads, um, uh, YouTube ads that we literally don't have any other playbook outside of that, if that makes sense, Facebook group.

[00:08:18] Um, but anything that is, uh, anything that is working, I mean, cold email is still alive and, you know, working well. Uh, but we're not talking about, you know, Postcards if I may, right. Or something like that, there's elements where we're, we're using physical things with virtual, but I would say anything else if that isn't trackable measurable.

[00:08:40] Yes. It's probably not going to be an additional marketer's playbook. Yeah.

[00:08:43] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Okay. Um, okay. Yeah, that makes sense. And the trackability measurability is certainly one of the, one of the really pivotal differences about. The digital space, you know, marketing 30 years ago. God, it must've been a frustrating exercise.

[00:08:59] Like throw it out there to.

[00:09:01] Solomon Thimothy: I still, it's so amazing though, with all the trackability, I think we get really hung up on having to track everything that we almost forget what marketing is. You know what I'm saying? And I mean, now I'm in between. Like, I want to get the word out. I don't know how it's going to happen, but I know from a playbook perspective, we're not dropping 10,000 postcard to find out what's going to happen, but I'm still the guy that will tell you the biggest thing that you need.

[00:09:27] Is brand awareness. The lead gen will come once they know you exist because they can trust you. Like you, they're going to fill out your form, but don't do ads just for form submission because you're not building a brand, but how do you build a brand? I could still do that digitally. I don't have to do postcards.

[00:09:43] That's what I, yeah,

[00:09:44] Matthew Dunn: yeah, no, I got, I got ya. I got ya. And, and, uh, you know, in the particular domain of email, which you, you know, you mentioned when you mentioned cold email, I, I find myself frustrated with. It seems like a lot of, it seems like the actual content ends up being the, the caboose, not the engine in email marketing.

[00:10:06] Like I look at the stuff in my inbox and go really. You sent me that like you couldn't bother to be more interesting, more compelling, not so ugly. Like,

[00:10:16] Solomon Thimothy: I, I, I completely, I completely agree. And I think, um, w at the end of the day, the value is, has to be there, you know, in our YouTube campaign, in our, in our Facebook ad campaign, the moment that you stop doing that, Yeah.

[00:10:33] It's it starts to not work,

[00:10:35] Matthew Dunn: so it's not work. Yeah. Yeah. And you're, you're, you know, you're, you're, you're slowly getting unsubscribed, whether you realize it or not, or you're slowly losing your brand and reputation, uh, your like, and your trust are being degraded. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, this is a complete lateral, but I'm just curious about your reaction to it.

[00:10:53] I I've been intrigued watching the, the sort of rewrite of the email newsletter. And, and, and I look at the ones that I like, I've got a couple I actually pay for and yeah. And I'm happy to prove her like, and hop on it every morning and read it because the guy has insightful, smart stuff to say, and I'm thinking, wow, he's married his content and his marketing.

[00:11:16] They're literally one in this.

[00:11:19] Solomon Thimothy: Agreed. And I don't think it's just going to die. Just again, it's based on the person that likes it. I still like emails from Starbucks. You know what I mean? I want to know that I want to know the flavor of the month, man. I, I can't, I love the apple emails. Like, oh, there's a new version of this.

[00:11:36] So if you love the brand and they don't take it, you know what I mean? They're not just pushing things on you. I look forward to those emails, right? The brands. And that's because now they've really trained me. I liked the brand they've delivered every single time and they don't abuse their, you don't mind inbox because think about it.

[00:11:55] Apple is going to hide the email in every form submission. But this moment, this is terrible news for, for a marketer. We don't even know the email address or who we're emailing. Right. So we don't own that. That's T you know, that's not good. That's not a good feeling. Cause their list was the value. It was, it was the biggest thing we had was our list.

[00:12:16] Now we have a list with a budget, apple email address,

[00:12:20] Matthew Dunn: if you're, uh, if you're listening and you don't, uh, you don't swim in this pool as much as Solomon and I do, um, apple in iOS 15, um, added to male, private email, privacy related things. One is the ability to generate. Uh, a random address that goes to you.

[00:12:38] And, and Solomon's point is that, that we're losing that, that connection. I don't have, you know, solomon@clickx.com and my database I've got theoretically, at least some random looking apple, apple junk. Do you think, do you think people are going to, I found myself. I might not use that because I wouldn't remember the cotton picking address if I used it for assigning later for marketing emails.

[00:13:04] Yeah. For signing up for something. No, because I'm going to have to commit it to memory and I don't want.

[00:13:10] Solomon Thimothy: Right at, I think the way that apple is thinking about it is it's going to make your life easier because we're going to filter out the bad emails. It's going to go into your iCloud or we're going to store all your passwords for you.

[00:13:21] You can have to, um, I really believe that at some point, like you just can't get out of the platform because how intertwined it is with our lives. Really? Yes.

[00:13:31] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Well, I also think apple is making a brilliant play as the privacy. A hundred percent, you know, like if, yeah, it is, if, if a year from now Apple's basic proposition was sort of trust your digital life to us, right.

[00:13:50] There are a lot closer to me saying yes than any other company could be, because they've been consistent about that. Tim cook in particular has been vocal, but consistent about that stance, you know, FBI says unlock the phone. He says, Nope. Wow, good. Good for you, man. But it does, it does pose challenges as you pointed out marketers to marketers.

[00:14:13] Yeah.

[00:14:14] Solomon Thimothy: Uh, I think our, uh, uh, um, our tracking became a nightmare, uh, since, you know, the changes that Apple's making and just talking about

[00:14:23] Matthew Dunn: apple MP.

[00:14:25] Solomon Thimothy: Facebook ads and the ability to know what happened. It's going to affect Google ads. We have no idea, you know, we're not getting any data back. Great. So, uh, we're advertising to people that aren't really a fit anymore.

[00:14:37] So now we need other third-party tracking tools to track and measure. Uh, and PR get better attribution. And now we need more information, you know, putting into the Facebook platform, like your customer list, and rather than trusting the data that's already there. However, like you said, it's a, it's a privacy play and it's not going anywhere.

[00:14:56] I think it's only going to get worse. Um, so, uh, at the end of the day, we, as marketers got to figure out how are you going to attract the people to your funnel? What can you, do? You know what I'm saying? Now? You don't even have email addresses.

[00:15:09] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. You know what I mean? The address as well. I think you already gave the most critical answer, which is, you know, quality of content, uh, and quality of consistent behavior of your brand will keep people in the list.

[00:15:22] Even if you don't know their name. Yeah. With the, with the oncoming demise of the third party cookie, are we really headed to a new stage in the digital space where you don't get to you won't find a replacement measure to, to, to supplement what we used to have with pixels and cookies and tracking an email.

[00:15:44] Yeah.

[00:15:45] Solomon Thimothy: At the end of the day, I really, I feel like our jobs are only getting harder. That's the bottom line, because again, Chrome is going to decide to, like you said, there's no cookie, you can't track anything. You wouldn't have to do something inside your web. Right to say, log in. So you actually know who it is, do things.

[00:16:06] So like you said, get a text notification. So we now actually can give them value. It's all going to come down to us having an app so that, you know, have loyalty they're going to log in or register use or consume or watch or whatever. Uh, but we just simply can't like use, but back in my day, like, Give 500 people will show up to a webinar was easy, right?

[00:16:27] Email. Do this, do that. Push

[00:16:30] Matthew Dunn: push marketing. Yeah. Well, yeah. Well, w we're there's a book by David shank from about 2003 or maybe earlier called data smog. And then I remember then this is 20 years ago. He measured, it was like it's 3030, 3000 or 3,500 commercial messages a day hitting each. That was 20 years ago.

[00:16:53] I would love to see the measure now, like 20,000 many attempts to get my attention hit my screen in the course of the day, it's got to be crazy number

[00:17:05] Solomon Thimothy: same distraction too. It's the entrepreneur. We're trying to go do something and immediately we're like, stop watch. Does it add to, yeah, yeah.

[00:17:13] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. And I mean, on the one that.

[00:17:16] That's the economy of online. Like it's most fundamentally it's, it's add, add, and add, and monetization supported. Like most of the services I use, I don't necessarily pay for monetarily. I pay for them with that attention, but it's going to be a little tougher decision for the business if they, if they have no way of closing the loop and knowing what.

[00:17:40] I will be back to 30 years ago. Uh, was the Sam Wanamaker. I know half my advertising is wasted. I just don't want to

[00:17:48] Solomon Thimothy: make her most famous quote ever pull that one out. That's a good one.

[00:17:53] Matthew Dunn: It's a, there's a, there's a astonishing amount of wisdom from the mad men era. And I suspect we'll be going back to.

[00:18:02] Well, as, as digital becomes less a wild wild west and, and, uh, you know, track people anywhere and more of a, you gotta earn it. You gotta be clever. You gotta be on message. You've gotta be valuable to keep people. I

[00:18:17] Solomon Thimothy: I, a hundred percent believe that. And I don't think that these, the, you know, just spending your entire list or, you know, push, you know what I mean?

[00:18:25] Send email a day. Yeah, no, one's going to put up with that at the end of the day, because we don't have time. I mean, I, I unsubscribed more than I used to Skype. How's that? Yeah. Yeah,

[00:18:36] Matthew Dunn: yeah. And we're also, uh, we're also, uh, you know, perpetual, perpetual distracted. What's what's the phrase, um, constant. Constant partial attention.

[00:18:46] I think Linda's. Aye, continuous partial attention. I think Linda Stone coined that about 20 years ago. It was like, we don't we're, it's hard to focus on one task. We're sort of splitting inefficiently between about a hundred men at a time.

[00:19:02] Solomon Thimothy: Yeah. It's it's the world that we live in and at the beginning of my webinars, I'm like, Hey, first thing I have to tell them is to actually pay attention, like put it on airplane.

[00:19:11] Yeah, close all the taps. Like I feel bad saying this to a person, but I know they can't even get 10 minutes of something valuable. I'm going to teach them about how and growth and scale they're already being bombarded by the, the newsfeed and the, you know what I mean? The Instagram reels are going off.

[00:19:28] I'm like, listen, put the phone on airplane mode. That's for the next 10 minutes, I'm going to give you what you need to do to get to the next level in your

[00:19:35] Matthew Dunn: business. I was a. This is a few decades back, but having been a classroom teacher, I can't or prof, I can't imagine how hard it is now. I mean, I think if I were back in the classroom, I think I'd be that, that, you know, bossy pain in the butt who said, okay, we're starting turn it off, put it away.

[00:19:57] Or I'll take it for the duration of the class. Why? Because there's no point in you being. Right nominally to learn something. If you're attending to everything else in your, uh, you know, in your digital world, like, sorry.

[00:20:10] Solomon Thimothy: Yeah. That's what I had to say. Every single day, I'm having a challenge to go. First line was like, listen, shut it down.

[00:20:15] You don't pick up your phone or anybody. Anybody? Yes.

[00:20:19] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. It's crazy. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, we, we did, we did it to ourselves, but now we're kind of looking at it going, oh, crikey, what did we do? Right. What do you think, uh, in, in, you know, in, in, in the world of this many demands for attention, do you, do you think email is going to keep a footing of.

[00:20:41] I

[00:20:41] Solomon Thimothy: think it's going to be part of the bigger, right. It's going to be part of your marketing playbook. I can't think of a way that you can just throw it out, but I do believe that we still have to figure out what else can you marry with it? Right. So we're doing a big launch for a new feature update, a big, a big shift in our company.

[00:21:00] We're just having our planning meeting of all the things that we're going to be. You know, uh, and one of them is a multi-step blast to let our people know, to get ready for the day where we make the launch. Does that make sense? So it is part of, are we doing social posts? Are we doing Facebook ads? Are we doing YouTube ads?

[00:21:18] All of it is combined. Sure. So it's not going to be just, it's not a silo. It's part of the strategy. I don't see that going away. What I do see is like the email sending services, being much more prone to the engagement and then deciding to deliver or not deliver smart systems that we have these days.

[00:21:38] They're only engaged with my content in the last 30 days, they don't get an email, right? They're not even bothered by.

[00:21:46] Matthew Dunn: Right or they'll, or you're, you're, you're stuck in promotion tab, uh, oblivion and no one's ever going to see what you sent on. What do you think about, what do you think about the prospect of, of texting MMS is a marketing channel

[00:21:59] Solomon Thimothy: a hundred percent.

[00:22:00] Uh, if you get, I mean, there's some legalities around that and I'm trying to study that too, just because, you know, it's a new. I remember you sent a fax and you get in trouble. That's where we are. I don't know how long that

[00:22:12] Matthew Dunn: was, but the phone calls you're getting, you know, illegal phone calls, you get in trouble.

[00:22:17] But boy, I get about a dozen of those a day. I

[00:22:20] Solomon Thimothy: agree. But text messages, as long as you have it now, the way we use it, as we're just texting our prospect, who's opted in to get our content. But it definitely is because it's real time. Um, but at some point, just like voicemail. I was thinking of the past text message is going to be a thing that a basket is we're going to be all texting.

[00:22:39] I see Gary V says, is that marketers ruin everything?

[00:22:43] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. I think he tried. I think he's absolutely right.

[00:22:46] Solomon Thimothy: You're going to be texting your yeah. Yeah. He's going to text you old Davies. Gonna text you. Panera bread is going to text you at some point. You're like 100 text

[00:22:54] Matthew Dunn: messages. Yeah. I, I I'm. Prediction when apple launched a, this the stuff we were talking about, the privacy related stuff we were talking about, I, I committed a prediction to a blog post for an email or a guy said, you know what?

[00:23:09] I wouldn't be surprised if apple launched controlled. Commercial messaging access into the messaging. I messaged platform premium, specifically controlled, right? Like, like this is the commercial tab. You know, if you misbehave, we apple will boot you off the planet and marketers would be knocking the doors down to get to that because you know, you're going to pay attention when that stupid thing goes.

[00:23:37] Solomon Thimothy: That's very true. And I could see that. I mean, everything has become pay to play as an it like everything. Yeah. So, uh, I, if the app store wasn't paying to play at, you know, how many billions of dollars would apple be out of, right?

[00:23:51] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Yeah. And then yeah. Apps, app store. That's a, that's a, that's a good, good analogy to bring up.

[00:23:57] Yeah. Um, we were probably lucky enough in a funny sense that. Standardization of messaging platforms never came about, like, there's not one message platform. Right? I just mentioned apple. I messages. That's what Google has been pushing RCS and successfully. That's another one, Facebook messenger, another one, slack, arguably you know, messaging for companies.

[00:24:26] But there's not unlike email where there's really sort of there's one email system that we all kind of attached to. There's not one texting system.

[00:24:36] Solomon Thimothy: There's an Instagram DM, which is independent of messenger. Yeah, yeah,

[00:24:39] Matthew Dunn: yeah. Yeah. Like after then, after another, I don't know where to look anymore. Yeah. How many messages, how many messages gaps must your average teenager have these

[00:24:48] Solomon Thimothy: days, all that is inside Snapchat, right?

[00:24:51] Like that's another message.

[00:24:53] Matthew Dunn: Right? Run. Stop. I can't take is your messaging.

[00:24:58] Solomon Thimothy: Um, I don't know. I don't either. I try, that's a distraction. That's a big distraction. Like we're trying to grow something here. I mean, I started in when it started, but I'm like, listen, I got a million things going on.

[00:25:13] Matthew Dunn: Uh, it's a point, I think I don't have a sign of maturity or sign of crankiness.

[00:25:18] Like I I'm really trying to cut down the channels that, that get access to. You know,

[00:25:24] Solomon Thimothy: like a couple of apps I had to delete on my phone. How's that? Yeah.

[00:25:27] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Yeah. And I actually did, I did appreciate the fundamental stance that apple took when they, when they brought the app privacy thing in there. Cause I was, as, as a technologist, I was aware that there was an ungodly amount of data streaming off the phone with all those apps.

[00:25:45] And so when apple said, hang on a second, you should get to say yes or no explicitly. Yeah, I appreciate that guys. I think that's actually the right approach.

[00:25:54] Solomon Thimothy: Yeah. I mean, it's, we will have to deal with more apps and messaging inside it. There's no doubt.

[00:26:00] Matthew Dunn: Yeah, yeah,

[00:26:01] Solomon Thimothy: yeah. I think what everybody's building so they can keep you inside their little ecosystem, right.

[00:26:07] Or you're going to stay.

[00:26:09] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Or, or, or try to, um, uh, of all folks, I read

[00:26:13] Solomon Thimothy: another messaging app,

[00:26:14] Matthew Dunn: which, which one? Discord. Yeah, yeah. Discord. Yeah. You know, for, for, for more technical it's Reddit, right. There's another one right there. Um, I read a quote, I think this morning, Reese Witherspoon of all folks, who's very savvy business.

[00:26:28] I said, she said, you know, if you're not prepared for there to be a digital, you and a real, you, you're not thinking and I'm paraphrasing, but I thought she was right on the mark. Yeah, there's a, there's a digital, very convoluted digital me floating around out there. Um, if Google is really. Got ahold of all the searches I've ever made or all the web pages I've ever visited.

[00:26:53] They must hate me.

[00:26:57] Solomon Thimothy: That's a thought, right? Like it's, it's, it's being tracked somewhere. It's just anonymous. They're seeing all our activity. That's how they created Google trends.

[00:27:06] Matthew Dunn: Right. Well, and, and, and the data gathering Facebook's done over the last decade, right. With, with pixels and app, uh, API integration.

[00:27:15] Wow. Yeah. Huh. So what w how are we going to help people navigate this? Because businesses still need to find customers and customers still need to find businesses.

[00:27:26] Solomon Thimothy: I mean, I think that the big picture of these companies are already trying to do that. It's just that they've got to work with the privacy.

[00:27:32] They got to work with apple, right? Can that, I can't do it any other way. Uh, and also they also want to make sure that nobody else is going to come into their space. I think Apple's biggest worry is that nobody else is going to build another. Not that they're going to build it. They're going to want to build the biggest moat possible, the bottom line.

[00:27:49] Um, and same with Google. Want to make sure that there's not going to be a search engine coming out tomorrow that has anything more than a week, you know? So, so at the end of the day, there's a little bit of that greed. And also they're trying to solve for the consumer because the day we stopped searching as the day that Google dies, they make money.

[00:28:08] Every time we search, right. That is how they make money. So their job is to keep us. So for them to have me as a customer, a loyal user, they're going to have to deliver on the ads. They have to deliver on the algorithm. Right. They have to make sure this thing is top notch. And so they will forever push the envelope as far as they can to find me what I'm looking for.

[00:28:30] Okay.

[00:28:30] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. I have to say it sounds like you're you might agree that the quid pro quo equation with Google, I have found acceptable for a long time. I think. Act, you know, the access to well prioritized well-targeted information and data and knowledge. I'm willing to trade that off for the ad that shows up at the top or on the side.

[00:28:55] Okay. Um, I'm sure I'm fine with that.

[00:29:00] Solomon Thimothy: Fine. With pain, the Spotify to not have my ass.

[00:29:03] Matthew Dunn: Right, right, right. Yeah. Right. No, that's a good, good distinction. Right. Because I used to have a Pandora subscription. I just dated myself, used to have a Pandora subscription and they shifted to ad supported, like do not stop the music and play an ad.

[00:29:18] Like where do I pay? Why? Yeah. Why? Because. That, that that's too much and it's worth it. It's worth a relatively modest sum to make that that distraction not happen. But yeah, like if, if Google hypothetically said we've got a subscription version of the search engine, no ads, I don't think I'd bother. Cause I don't really tend to see the ads.

[00:29:45] I see what I'm looking for. At least I think I do. Right. But

[00:29:49] Solomon Thimothy: YouTube, however, you could pay premium and skip the ads, which we are.

[00:29:53] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. You get that damn pop-up right. Do you want to subscribe? Like, no, I don't. And then you have to put up with, you know, with the B roll or the interstitial roll ad. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:30:03] My, um, my wife and I were watching something. Hulu, which was relatively new experience for us. And in the ads popped up in the middle of the show. It was like, yep. That's the game with Hulu it's ad supported. It's like, it feels like getting into time machine and going back to the eighties or nineties to watch those ads.

[00:30:23] That's

[00:30:23] Solomon Thimothy: true. All of them have the limited ads or no ads. Limited ads.

[00:30:28] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Um, and would we be able, would we add yet another streaming media subscription to have the Hulu with no ads? Like, oh, I've already got, you know, more than one of those. I don't know if we need six.

[00:30:41] Solomon Thimothy: I agree. It's sadly has becoming or uni paramount.

[00:30:45] Plus you need a discovery plus you need,

[00:30:48] Matthew Dunn: oh, Disney, Netflix, Amazon. And could I possibly consider

[00:30:54] Solomon Thimothy: that will never,

[00:30:57] Matthew Dunn: right. Never. Yeah. It's a keeping, just keeping track of, of, of the things you committed to just keeping track of subscriptions is become a job in and of itself. Right. I agree. Especially like if you run a business like you do, like I do keeping track of all of the SAS signups in the business, is it.

[00:31:17] Solomon Thimothy: Right. You made profit.

[00:31:18] Matthew Dunn: Well, yeah. And it'll drown you, right? It'll it'll just kill your profitability. Wow. I can see why you're so pumped about marketing. It's actually it's, it's it kind of, it kind of emanates from you. It's great energy. Where do you, where do you see taking click

[00:31:34] Solomon Thimothy: X? You know, that's, uh, that's, that's, that's something that we're working on, on a launch.

[00:31:40] They tuned. Uh, but we, we see this being. The, the space that we're playing in is, you know, scaling the companies from a lead generation and then all the way to fulfillment. We're a completely behind the scenes white label. You know, you see me with a t-shirt, but the work that we do is all fully white label again for agency facing company.

[00:32:01] Yeah. But I think the world that we're seeing, especially in digital marketing is one of gig economy. So we're not seeing this being where agencies are going to be hiring $80,000. $120,000 account executives and ad managers. It is we're in a world where people want to work, where they want to work and when they want to work, they want a lapped up in Mexico for three weeks.

[00:32:24] Do you know what I mean? And make the same kind of money. So that's all I can tell you. That's the future of the agency world? Uh, there's never been a time where you got so much clients asking you about your can't find people, you know, what. Because people don't want to do what they used to do post, you know, post the pandemic then will was right before.

[00:32:47] So I'm seeing that shift. So we're taking some huge, huge, huge steps towards making the agencies happy and making the contractors, the freelancers, the future entrepreneurs or digital marketer. Finding work it's got to be there. There's a huge gap.

[00:33:04] Matthew Dunn: It's quite a dislocation we're going through, isn't it?

[00:33:06] Yeah, it's a little, I mean, those of us old enough to work for a while are going, what the heck is going

[00:33:14] Solomon Thimothy: on? I agree, and it's not going to change the shift. Isn't going to change. People are going to move out of big cities. So if they leave Chicago, your account executive is not going to be there anymore.

[00:33:24] You know what I mean? If they leave New York, it doesn't matter how big the agency is. They, you now need a, you need dump more than Danny G how's

[00:33:31] Matthew Dunn: that? No, I, I, yeah, I agree. And, and as, as someone who left the city went to a small rural town, intentionally 25 years. I'm like, great. I love this shift. I've been living this for a while.

[00:33:46] What you like? Well, it's not easy, but welcome to it. I, I think there are a lot of people who will find their way back into offices or live interactions with other, with other humans, whether that's work or not. I think the employer that says you have to come into the office is going to have a hell of a time.

[00:34:05] We're getting employees.

[00:34:06] Solomon Thimothy: That's what, that's what we're finding now. It's because we have hundreds of agencies that we're talking to right now where we're in the weeds of that space, but agencies aren't going away. They're still going to be an agency and every little time that you can, because they're serving their local market regional, but the way that things are going to be getting done, I think there's, there's just going to be a lot of shifts.

[00:34:26] A lot of shifts, consolidation changes, efficiencies have to be driven. These agency owners, I've never had this kind of issues. You know what I mean? So where do you go for quality, talent? How do you scale? Uh, all of that is happening. So we're making some huge investments, you know, working on how do we do this?

[00:34:45] How do we, how do we build that? You know, how do we build a bridge? How do we, you know, really see this so that all of the people in it are happy. That's the big part and employees are happy or contractors you want to call them. Uh, or the actual entrepreneur who set out to build something is actually able to scale it and not have some sort of a fulfilling.

[00:35:07] You know, nightmare.

[00:35:08] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah. That, you know, getting the end result, the end result that you're paying for, uh, is, is, is still, uh, an imperative. I'm curious what you think about,

[00:35:25] about the potential that remote work opens up for, uh, competition for jobs and skills across national. And cultural boundaries. You know, the account exec who know, needs to make salary X to live in place. Why in the U S will she or he be competing with someone in Nigeria who says, I can do the same job. I can do it better.

[00:35:54] I'll, you know, I'll even match the work hours, but I I'll work for a lower salary. What's the.

[00:35:59] Solomon Thimothy: Yeah. I think that shift has all worked. That happened, right? Like we've already shipped every job we can to India and Philippines. That that was so last. I don't know the last decade, I want to say where every it person pretty sick basically got displaced.

[00:36:16] Um, but I think the new shift isn't necessarily the ones that are going over there or that person wanting to do this. I think that's going to ever, that's going to be there. That's a us. For them to want to work with. Right. Everybody there, they would lose sleep all night to have a customer in America cause they could pay 10 times more.

[00:36:35] But I think the shift I'm talking about is the one where we, who we want employees, but they're not necessarily going to be where we want them to be. It's going to. Completely that person may not even stay in the state. They're in for another six months now they're going to go somewhere else and then another, another place.

[00:36:53] So as long as we need them, we got to learn to work with the slack, the base camp, right. A sauna. And it's no longer going to be punch in, punch out.

[00:37:04] Matthew Dunn: Well, what, what makes, uh, what are the attributes of a us employee that makes them worth hiring it? They're hiring.

[00:37:12] Solomon Thimothy: Um, like I said, the, the, the, when you and I call sprint, I have sprint, but you know, it's a nightmare.

[00:37:19] But when I talked to my person that works in Texas, they understand me, it's my relationship with them. They get me, they know exactly what I'm talking about. Language,

[00:37:28] Matthew Dunn: culture sharing.

[00:37:30] Solomon Thimothy: Right. They, you know, they're not going to know where. And so anything that's ever been outsourced before, they never understand, especially in marketing, the little things that literally that drives you nuts when they don't understand context.

[00:37:45] Yes. I think for me, it's, it's about quality and you want your customer to get good results. So you need to understand. So services of your customers, the product, and you try to do that from another world. You know what I mean? They're not understand. They don't understand snow removal. How's that? Yeah. I, I, I find that to be, people have done that and tried and failed and you have customer retention issues, right?

[00:38:15] So that's worse than my world is the worst world. That's the worst. Uh, for an agency can, can keep your clients. So we have to figure out how do we do both so that you have the customer who's willing to pay a premium to work with somebody in America. If not, they can just go to Upwork and save $3,000, but you're going to get what

[00:38:33] Matthew Dunn: you're paying, going to get, going to get what you're paying for it.

[00:38:36] Yeah. It's uh, th there that language, culture stuff is surprisingly pivotal. I mean, my background's more in the tech side. I got my fingers burned a few times with what we used to call offshore development. And I, I concluded that it was rarely worth it for the kind of projects that I was involved in.

[00:38:57] Because if you don't, you know, if, if you, if you don't have a mutual understanding of, of the widget being. Right. It doesn't matter if you're saving money on construction

[00:39:07] Solomon Thimothy: or if you have to spoonfeed, forget it, you know, aggravated cam is worth way more than the saving. So, um, but again, in the, in the context of the world, It's it's so like you said, it's very pivotal that my person knows, or the person that you're hiring to run your campaign, know what you're doing and where you're targeting and where you're not targeting.

[00:39:31] Matthew Dunn: And marketing is such a social, cultural, great job. Fundamental. That not, not living in the culture makes it very hard to do the marketing

[00:39:41] Solomon Thimothy: a hundred percent. I don't know everything either, but I kinda know, you know what I mean? So you gotta find people that get your prospects or your potential customers and put them in it.

[00:39:51] So that makes sense. Yeah.

[00:39:54] Matthew Dunn: Well, when we could probably do this all day, but you've got some big sales, like you've got a big jump ahead for click X.

[00:40:02] Solomon Thimothy: Yeah.

[00:40:04] Matthew Dunn: Exciting, exciting, well, shoot. This is, this is, I hope people hope people find this episode and listen to it because you've shared a heck of a lot of insight in a fairly short, a short timeframe.

[00:40:17] Wow. Any party,

[00:40:18] Solomon Thimothy: words of wisdom? Um, like I said, I think being in marketing is like the most foundational thing that you can do. Right. And you're already living in and you have hundreds of interviews that they can watch and listen to it from all walks of life, people from the, you know what I mean, doing marketing all the way to.

[00:40:35] C-level executives. I think that teaches you pretty much everything. And I think we talked about apple a lot, but we have to also remember apple is amazing marketing company. They're good. This is the greatest thing they've ever figured out is how to make things emotionally attached. So we were this thing, right?

[00:40:50] That it is not just a watch. I mean, they could have made, they could have made this 10 years ago, but now it means so much more to us. So I think understanding. That's literally it, you know, I'm so grateful that I took marketing as my degree. Not something else. Right. But I can build onto that consuming every book you can't read ocean, anything that you could use to make?

[00:41:14] Yes. Oops. That's that's that's my

[00:41:18] Matthew Dunn: party. Yeah. Yeah. Glad you ref. I love that book. Blue ocean strategy that. That's a very smart

[00:41:25] Solomon Thimothy: book. That's a 45 minute conversation right there. That's a

[00:41:28] Matthew Dunn: 45 minute conversation right there. Quick story about that book. Do you remember the case study about the wine

[00:41:35] Solomon Thimothy: that that's happened for me?

[00:41:38] Matthew Dunn: Uh it's uh, there's a wine called a yellow tail. Okay. And like chapter one or chapter two in blue us and strategy. And it's clear that at least one of the authors was, uh, was involved in the project. Hands-on was, was a wine that said, how do we sell wine to non-wine drinkers? It was amazing marketing structure, like where they sold it, how they packaged it, the label, everything was, this is not targeted at the guy.

[00:42:07] Who's going to care about Chateau Neuf to fill in the blanks. This is targeted at the much bigger market of non-wine. I love non-wine drinkers. It's like great, great case study. I hate the. Personally, but it's a great case study. So

[00:42:23] Solomon Thimothy: I get it. I referenced that because most of the people are thinking that what we're doing is right OCI and everybody else is doing it.

[00:42:31] It doesn't, you know, it doesn't have to be blue ocean. You can have a lot more players in it. We just got to

[00:42:36] Matthew Dunn: figure out our niche. We got our news. Yeah. Yeah. That's how you find the blue ocean. Well, Solomon, thank you so much. You're going to send me the recording when we're done, right. Cool. Cool. My guest has been Solomon Timothy at click X.

[00:42:50] Thank you.

[00:42:51]