Cold Open & Intro

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Whether it's a Google review, Yelp, whatever, see what people like and talk about it. If you're running a restaurant and people talk about how crispy the tacos are, talk about that. Like that's something that you now have content that you can go create around.

SPEAKER_00 0:18

If you wanna hear about Saint Louis, tune into the Bucket list show weekly. Hear what Marissa and Luke say. It drops every Wednesday. Got a dope new guest every single week. Buckle up for the ride. Who's it gonna be? Who's on the show today? They rap Saint Louis. What to do in the loo on a late night? I maybe what to do on a date night. Yeah. Bucket list has you covered, they know what's going on. What's going on? They'll give you 18 different things to do on 19. If you need one more to choose, yeah. The city, city, city is a place we call home. A place we call home. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 0:56

The STL Bucket List show is brought to you by our presenting sponsor and the official banking partner of STL Bucket List, Royal

Sponsor: Royal Banks of Missouri

SPEAKER_02 1:02

Banks of Missouri. Royal Banks is a full-service, independent community bank, locally owned, locally run, and proudly investing in St. Louis since 1964. That's more than 60 years of taking care of the people and businesses who make this city special. From checking and savings to mortgages, business banking, and wealth management, you get real personalized service from neighbors who actually know your name. With 16 locations across St. Louis, St. Charles, Illinois, and Northeast Missouri, there's a branch right around the corner. Royal Banks of Missouri, proudly investing in our communities. St. Louis, welcome back to another episode of the STL Bucketlist Show. We got something a little bit different for you this week. We're going to be learning and listening. I'm here with Logan Ice,

Logan's Path to St. Louis

SPEAKER_02 1:42

uh, Meta Google Advertising Wizard, locally based, right here in St. Louis, founder of the Growth Den. We've been working together for the last couple of months from a consulting standpoint, and we've learned so much from you just in two or three sessions. So thank you. Grateful for you to be in the studio today. And I wanted to take this time for our listeners that are either small business owners, local business owners, um, or you know, we live in a community of such entrepreneurship that there's so many things that we can share today that I think might help these business owners. But before we get to that, I got to figure out how you got to St. Louis. So when I was reading about you and when we met, you went to Washi U. So landed here in St. Louis. All your classmates ended up scattering after graduation. What made you stay?

SPEAKER_01 2:23

Man, it's a great question. I mean, so I I made it to St. Louis because of Washiu, right? It's a great school. And it it I came in looking for a school where I could do research, where I could learn kind of technical things, but also a community that I could be a part of. I I grew up in the middle of nowhere, grew up on a farm in Alabama. And I didn't think I could make it in like a Chicago, a New York kind of place. It was too big for me to jump to. And so St. Louis seemed like a natural fit. So I interviewed at the school, like talked through kind of all the scholarship options, everything like that. And I I liked it. But then my dad and I went to a cards game. Uh, it ended up being a cards cubs game. And we were there late and we scalped tickets. It was five bucks. Literally, the two of us. Oh, the OG days when you could actually buy a ticket on the street. Yeah. We like walked out there, five bucks for the two of us, and it was standing room only. Yeah. It was outfield. They had this like yellow tape around where you could see where you could stand. And we got to see a poohse walk off Grand Slam, crush the Cubs, and the entire stadium went nuts. And like that was the moment, right? You feel that energy, you feel that community, and that's not something you're gonna get in a huge city. Something that there's a big enough crowd that you can fill a stadium. You pack 42,000 people in there. And that was the moment I knew St. Louis was right. So we um I was here. I I graduated from Washu. I did physics and psychology there. I met my wife here. We got married on Washiu's campus at Graham Chapel. And uh I was here for a while after graduation, and I spent one year in Seattle. Oh, really? Moved out to Seattle to help varsity tutors, a St. Louis business, start a Seattle branch. So they brought in a couple folks that were executives at Amazon and I helped them found the Seattle branch. Nice. We were there for a year, and it just wasn't home. St. Louis had grown to be home at that point, where it just wasn't right to be in Seattle. Wow. I still visit, I still love it. Yeah. But St. Louis was home.

SPEAKER_02 4:25

And St. Louis like welcomes transplants like you, and like you've been able to build this whole community now. You're married here. Is your wife from St. Louis?

SPEAKER_01 4:32

Yeah, she grew up in Jeffco, just south of the city.

SPEAKER_02 4:34

Okay. So that that you guys at least have close family there from that connection. You've been able to raise kids here now and and build your career here. Um, so the moment that went from this is a city I'm going to school in, were you in school when you went to the Cardinals game?

SPEAKER_01 4:46

Or were you I was choosing. So I had I'd interviewed at Duke, I'd interviewed at Georgia Tech, Vanderbilt.

SPEAKER_02 4:51

That was like when you were right out of high school. Yeah. I was I was 17. That would have been almost 20 years ago now at this point. 19 years ago. Yeah. 2007. Yeah, 2000. That was a golden era for baseball. It was. It was wonderful as Molina and all those guys. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:04

It was awesome.

SPEAKER_02 5:05

Um, yeah, being from a small town like that, and then just getting to experience like that stadium atmosphere. Like, we take that for granted. I grew up in St. Charles, which is only 30 minutes outside of the city, and we used to go to 10 or 12 games a year. And like you just take it for granted because you're like having access to be close to all those things. Like we had the zoo. I grew up going to the magic house, the science center. I grew up playing at all these public parks. And it's like where you're from, it's like just to go anywhere like that, it would have taken hours. It would be like a yeah, you're like it would be like a this is our family vacation. We're going to for sure.

SPEAKER_01 5:34

We literally had to drive an hour to Walmart.

SPEAKER_02 5:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:36

Like it was a full hour of driving to get to Walmart. We had to pack like freezer bags and everything like that. So the groceries didn't go bad. We couldn't go out to eat after because we had to go home with all our frozen stuff. Yeah. It was nuts. And then coming here, it's everything you need. It's all here. There's stuff for the kids, there's stuff for family. I love it.

SPEAKER_02 5:55

Yeah, I know that's awesome. So was there a specific St. Louis neighborhood that made you feel like home? I mean, obviously you were spending time around Wash Us campus.

SPEAKER_01 6:01

So Yeah. So we after graduation, we moved to South City. So we lived like Holly Hills, Coronda Led area for a while. Yeah. I spent some time working at Anizer Bush. Yeah. And my wife actually at the time was working at the beer garden. She was a server at the beer garden when I worked supply chain at like corporate. Yeah. So South City is home. We have a lot of friends still there. Uh like kind of around the haven and like that area around there is like the place.

SPEAKER_02 6:27

For over 150 years, SSM Health has been providing hope, healing, and opportunities to the St. Louis

Sponsor: SSM Health

SPEAKER_02 6:33

community. With over 40,000 employees across four states, they're not only delivering exceptional care, they're one of the region's largest employers, shaping the future of healthcare. We're proud to present SSM Health as the official healthcare partner of the STL bucket list show. If you've dreamed of a career where you're truly making a difference every day, SSM Health can help you take that to the next step.

Building The Growth Den

SPEAKER_02 6:53

Learn more at their website in the link in the show notes. I lived on Brandon and Lansdown and Chippewa, like right at the intersection of Chippewa and Brandon on Macklin for nine eight years from like 20 to 28. Um, and that neighborhood is really like kind of what helped start STL bucket list, like living in that area and and uh and stuff like that. So before we get into all of the fun stuff that we're gonna talk about with local businesses, walk me through some of the experiences that you've had that led you to the growth den because the growth den, well, first give us give us a little background on what the growth den is because it's is it's not an ad agency, it's not a you know, mark I mean, it's all these different things, but I don't want to put it into one box. I want you to, I want you to tell me what the growth den is.

SPEAKER_01 7:34

Yeah. To put to put it simply, the growth den is helping people do what they do best better. The idea is that I embed as a fractional head of growth or head of demand, whatever the case calls for, within businesses, be they small businesses in the St. Louis area or multinational corporations. And I help them gain the tools to be successful on their own. The idea isn't that I'm there for two, three years. The idea is that we set up an engagement where I can help build the structures with people to teach them and their team how to be successful from a growth perspective.

SPEAKER_02 8:10

Interesting. So uh from the traditional model of just, you know, you know, retainer-based and SaaS and like all these different models of just you pay all every month. Yeah. Why did you choose to go with that model?

SPEAKER_01 8:21

Because I like people and I want to be a good person, right? Like I don't want to be the person that hooks you with a retainer and then three months later you say, what the hell has Logan done for you? Yes. Right. I want to be at this place where it's mutually beneficial. And sure, there's financial benefit to me, but that's not the end state, the end goal of what I'm looking for. I want to be able to help people. I like being creative, I like solving problems together. And I find that when you have a model like that, referrals go through the roof. You have people that actively want to work with you. I literally last week had an engagement from last year that reached back out that said they raised a round of funding. They raised a series B funding of a couple million dollars, and they want me to help come in to help them figure out what to do with that, where to allocate. That's great. Like I love re-engaging because it's an engagement that I already know. I know these people, and now I can go in and help them figure out with additional capital what are we going to do?

SPEAKER_02 9:15

I know, and me, I've been in agency for seven years, and it's like the traditional retainer-based model, we're shifting that a little bit to more campaign focused too, because there's multiple reasons. It becomes there becomes an awkward moment there where you do a lot of work up front, and then it like there's there's never an even exchange of work done. It's hard to like quantify. And then you're right, like from the referral-based model, like when those retainers end, there's no like smooth ending. So it's harder to get the referral, and it's hard, even though you did a good job, it's just the model of how that works, and people are so torn on agency, just because every single business owner I've talked to has had at least one bad experience.

SPEAKER_01 9:51

Well, for sure.

SPEAKER_02 9:52

Maybe more.

SPEAKER_01 9:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 9:53

So and then also everybody wants to go in-house, but then it's like people have had bad experience with in-house. So it's like, what's the solvent consultants? So would you say you're a consultant? Would you say you're because you're actually doing work too? It's not like you're just advising. You're doing so consultants, consultants do work as well, right?

SPEAKER_01 10:07

So I spent I spent time with slalom consulting here. I I worked in experienced strategy and design. So I worked with Enterprise, Edward Jones, Centen. I worked with some of the largest businesses in St. Louis doing consulting. And I built things every single place, right? So part of consulting is advice, but part is building things to show people how to build more things. So for myself and my current business, I'll build AI models for places, right? I'll go in and build an incrementality model to be able to show people if I put more money in Meadow or mut more money in Google, which one is better served, right? So if I build a model and hand that off to them, they can fish for themselves now. They can go and run their own ads after I'm gone because now they know what a good ad is. Now they have a platform that they can go in to see how to allocate their spend.

SPEAKER_02 10:59

Yeah, that's very interesting. I love the new model.

Family, Flexibility & Redefining Success

SPEAKER_02 11:01

So it seems like you have a lot of energy about it. I know we just met about it. You've worked in corporate America, you've worked at other jobs. What's been the what's been the your your most rewarding part about entrepreneurship so far?

SPEAKER_01 11:14

It's been the flexibility to spend my time how I want. Like I have I have two kids, they're small. One's three and one's six. My son just started preschool, and my root my first grader, my daughter just started first grade. I I can spend time with them, right? I drop my son off at preschool about half the time now. I pick my son up every single day from preschool. And that ability to do that and then flex time wherever I can, have my family travel with me to meet people has been amazing. We went up to Chicago. I work with an agency out of Chicago that literally we met one of the partners there for coffee with my family. We walked around the park, literally letting him meet my family, and my family meet who I talk to every day. And it's that's what life is to me. I don't want it to be me siloed in an office. I want it to be my family. Like that's that's what St. Louis is. It's why I love it because it's all communal and all family driven.

SPEAKER_02 12:14

Yeah, I agree with that so much. And there's times where I'm family, there's like the the hundred percent sways every week, but like there's weeks where I'm 90% in business, and then there's weeks where I'm 100% in family. And building a team, I think, has been a huge factor in that. But also, my wife um built well, she founded STL Book at list. Like we started it together, and we've gotten to do this podcast. We've done a hundred episodes together. I I'm now hosting it because our family's continuing to grow and it's like we're in different phases of our life. But we've had conversations on the podcast. You know, she's a writer, she's helped with writing and all these different things that we've done. But then seeing my kids get to come in here and sit in the studio, and then like all my clients, uh, the partners that we have locally, like will invite us to their kids' bar mitzvahs or birthday parties or whatever it might be, and like we're bringing our family there. And it's not even a money thing at the end of the day. It's like, can I take care of my family? Am I making an impact on what we're doing? And then, you know, am I seeing my kids every night when they wake up or every day when they wake up and every night when they go to sleep? And that's success to me. And for sure. Being able to not miss things and you know, every dance thing, every it's like just the little stuff that just adds up and it it like they're like little needles that poke you. It's like, oh, you can't get off this Friday for this. Oh, you can't do this on this day. And it's not I know that's shifting in the world a little bit, sure, but still there's so much pressure. Um, but to to keep it a hundred, you know, not all entrepreneurs have that flexibility that you have. You've created that system for yourself. I'm still working on that. And I think a lot of us are all still working on it. But it is being able to balance, like I can work when the kids go down and get stuff done, or I can, you know, get in here early one day.

SPEAKER_01 13:46

And it's it's not about lowering the amount you work necessarily. Like maybe some people want to take a little bit off that, but for me, it's more about optionality. Yeah. Right. I I want to be able to flex my time where I need to. I want to be able to say, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna do a lot of client work this Friday because my daughter is off school. So let's go to the zoo. Right. I I want to be able to have that option more so than cutting down the amount I work.

SPEAKER_02 14:12

Exactly. No, I love that. So let's get to the font stuff. I want to, I want to talk to some local business owners. So um, let's start with a lot of the ones that listen to our show, restaurants.

Marketing Advice for Local Businesses

SPEAKER_02 14:21

It's a tough time for restaurants right now. And I know a lot of the restaurant owners are listening to us. It's a mix of a couple things. Obviously, the pandemic set them behind.

SPEAKER_03 14:29

Sure.

SPEAKER_02 14:29

You know, the amount of times people go out, rising costs of things, you know, people are choosing where they're going out a little bit more. It's not just like, oh, every Wednesday we go here, every Friday we go here. It's like quality is just as more important. Ingredients, health, people are eating less, people are doing drinking less, all these different factors. Like we can go on and on about it. If you're a local restaurant, you know, where would you start with advertising? I mean, a lot of these restaurants, they have Yelp, Open Table, Google, Squarespace, Square, Toasts, email. Like they're getting nickel and dime on every SaaS possible. And they're like, even just to make a reservation, they're getting like percentages taken from that. Like there's so like restaurants, I feel like get hit with the most SaaS fees.

SPEAKER_01 15:12

Everywhere, right? It's every single time they turn around. There's a fee.

SPEAKER_02 15:16

The STL bucket list show is proudly sponsored by Suede Dispensary with 11 Missouri area locations.

Sponsor: Swade Dispensary

SPEAKER_02 15:22

Suede does so much for the St. Louis community. We've been working with this team for a couple of years back since Medical was here, and we're excited to support their new product launches, events, and community initiatives. We couldn't be happier to work with this premier cannabis brand, and we're excited for them to sponsor the show. Enjoy the rest of the podcast.

SPEAKER_01 15:40

Yeah, I mean, so if I was running a restaurant, right, I you have to understand the fundamentals of marketing, right? You have to understand that there's kind of two ways to advertise. There's demand generation and there's demand capture. Demand generation is all the stuff you do to make yourself known. Right? That could be organic posts, it could be showing up at Food Truck Friday, it could be showing up in the community, whatever the vehicle to that is. It could be running meta ads, whatever that is, that's demand generation. You need to do that to be in a city like this, right? You have to have some form of demand generation. And then there's demand capture. For a restaurant, that could look like reservations, bookings, it could look like butts in seats, it could look like literal sales at the end of the day. And there has to be a mechanism that you choose to do demand capture. Some people choose to do that on Google ads. You can run your own ad or work with an agency. Some people have a robust Google setup, right? Maybe you have your local business, maybe you have uh this, that, and the other to be able to show when people search for your brand. But you just have to look at the two in concert where you're building that demand becoming known. And then you have to capture it through a good website, a good social presence, and actual welcoming restaurant once you get there.

SPEAKER_02 17:05

So let's talk Google first, because I think a lot of restaurants and in I still search Google for a lot of my recommendations. I still read Google reviews. And um, you know, I know I don't think the full shift to AI platforms have been hitting restaurants quite yet. I mean, I know people definitely use them when they go to new cities, but it's really just like what pizza spots open near me and making sure that you show up in those spots. And I think that there's a a lot of different things that we talk about with restaurants. Organic social restaurants have a unique ability to be able to build organically. Right. And a lot of local places have done that. There's good examples of like what Katie's Pizza is doing, what High Point and Sugarfire have done, build their big brands, what um there's so many brands in St. Louis that have built these amazing social medias, but it doesn't stop there. It's like, is your website converting? When somebody goes to your website, are your hours up to date? I mean, all these little things matter before you even run a Google ad if you're gonna run a paid campaign. So let's just say, I mean, we talk to business owners all the time. They're like, I want to spend $500 a month on an ad. Sure. Where do you start there? I mean, that's I mean, obviously it's not a big budget, but it's something.

SPEAKER_01 18:06

I mean, the amount doesn't really matter to me. It what you have to have is a website that operates, right? To your point, make sure the hours are up to date. Make sure that there's something someone can do on your site, right? You don't want to show just a menu on your site because that that doesn't show them anything. Make it visual, make it something appealing before you put a scent into advertising. Once you have something that's set up and you know what you're gearing towards, you need to choose whether you do that generation or that capture. So for a business that's been around, call it a sugar fire or a high point kind of thing, that's known. There's not a lot of generation that has to occur there. The capture side, if you're someone like that, you would start advertising at low budget daily on terms that are high intent. What I mean by that is somebody's showing that they want to take action. Barbecue near me, restaurants open now, things at a certain time, right? Things open after 7 p.m. Those are the type of terms you start with if there's already demand for your business. If you're a new business, if there's not that demand, then you need to go what's called up funnel. It means people that haven't made that choice yet, and you need to get your idea out there. So if you're doing Google, those would be more broad terms like barbecue restaurant or restaurants near me. When you go more broad like that, you're better able to show new restaurants versus someone that's more specific. That needs to be more of your established demand capture.

SPEAKER_02 19:39

And the cost there with those broader terms are going to be a little bit more because a lot of other places are also bidding on those same exact terms.

SPEAKER_01 19:45

Honestly, you'd be a little surprised. It's quite a bit cheaper. Yeah. Because most of these platforms, Google, Meta, et cetera, they want you to use their algorithms. Broad matching is technically an algorithm. May not seem as like robust as OpenAI or GPT or anything like that, but it is algorithmically driven. So the more you do a broad approach like that, the less control you have over it, but the lower your overall costs are going to be.

SPEAKER_02 20:12

And I think it's a full circle approach. I mean, obviously, influencer marketing were in that game. That's very valuable for immediate impact, but then also long-term SEO. I was just reading last week that Instagram now implemented the SEO feature where you can tag, you can have alt text tagging photos and tagging videos. So now that's all going to show up.

SPEAKER_01 20:29

Well, it's it's a double effect too, because that's where Chat GPT, Claude, everywhere is Gemini, all of those are pulling from SEO-driven features. So the the more robust your Instagram approach is, the more you're mentioned on Reddit, the more you are technically sound in a way to show up on Google. Yeah, all of that will make you show up on all these chat AI chat features as well.

SPEAKER_02 20:53

And then the more likely that in, you know, people that make videos about food will want to feature you because they see that you are active on Instagram and they want to act like use that collaborative feature. So I think a lot of the stuff with restaurants go beyond just ad spend. Um, I know a lot of restaurants that spend money on events. And like you mentioned, that's that's a um top of funnel events. Right, you know, like obviously, like the taste of St. Louis and all these big events, like you're giving away little tastes of what you do to try to bring people to your brick and mortar. Um, but I think that the same strategies that work in home service and you know, dental and chiropractic and car dealerships and all these different services, at the end of the day, is everybody eats every single day. Are they gonna choose you when they go out? And a lot of that has to do with quality. Google reviews are just as important. Um, you know, optimizing all the platforms that I I just think that, you know, is there any mistakes that you see? You know, I mean, you you're an ads guy, so you see stuff all the time. And I'm sure every time you look up something, you're like looking at, oh, like let me just check this out real quick. But for sure. Is there any mistakes that you see specifically in hospitality and restaurants that you think this is a quick, easy fix that they can do themselves?

SPEAKER_01 21:58

Yeah. So people. Tend to fall on one side of the spectrum or the other. They either are working with an agency that is building an incredibly robust system on Google Ads. Sometimes that's worthwhile, sometimes it's not. Or they're on the other side where they try to do it themselves, they set something up, and then they set up a budget of 10 bucks a day and walk away. And you check in three months later, and you've spent almost $1,000. The best thing you can do is just check in on what's happening. Because if you're using broad terms, you need to see what terms are matching. It's called your search terms. That shows you exactly what people looked for when your ads triggered. Sometimes you'll get crazy things. Like when I when I worked at varsity tutors here, we would get searches for tutor, T-U-D-O-R, Tutor homes, British style homes. That has nothing to do with education, nothing to do with tutoring. You can go in and negate those terms. You add those to your negative list, and that makes everything that you show for what you want to be showing

Ad Budgets Across Industries

SPEAKER_01 23:04

for. It helps save you money. It helps make the things that you're advertising for more efficient. Yeah, that makes sense.

SPEAKER_02 23:10

So let's shift um a little bit to some other industries. So, what are some common industries that you see advertising in your normal life?

unknown 23:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:20

So I I work a lot with direct-to-consumer brands. I work with, you know, companies that are gonna spend quite a bit on meta to go get that demand generation. Uh I also work with a lot of like home remodel groups, a lot of like repair types, type situations, because advertising has to exist there, right? There's very little differentiation outside of an offer that happens. So I most of what I've built my career focusing on has been this D2C direct-to-consumer side of things.

SPEAKER_02 23:53

Yeah. So direct to consumer, whether it be a product or whether it be a new deck or new kitchen, exactly windows. And those are some of those high-ticket conversions. And I think that, you know, if you look at home services 25, 30 years ago when I was growing up, you just used who your cousin used or your friend used. Now there's so many contractors out there. And it's like, how do we how first of all, how do we hit them when we when they need it? How do they see the ad at the right time? And then how do they think of us? And I think that, you know, when we think of big groups in town like the Hoffman Brothers of the World or, you know, these huge legacy brands that have been around. It's like when I think of an issue with my HVAC, it's like I automatically know that because they're everywhere. And that's where it's like when you show up. So I guess my I want to talk a little bit about what we talked about in our workshop. So, you know, where to spend what? So when you're looking at budgets, I mean, what so when somebody comes to you, what's the first? They're just like, hey, like I read online that I need to spend seven percent of my top line revenue. I do a million dollars a year, I should be spending seven, seventy thousand dollars a year on ads. And you're like, okay, wait, hold on. What like how does that cause that's what everybody reads online.

SPEAKER_01 24:58

Yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_02 24:58

And that was always traditional knowledge. Like if you're you should spend seven to ten percent.

SPEAKER_01 25:02

Sure. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, so it it comes down to this question of looking at your funnel, looking at where people are coming from, whether that is people that are coming online to your business, or whether you have a brick and mortar seeing, you know, run a survey, check where people are coming from. Once you understand a baseline of what that traffic looks like, then you can begin to distribute it a little more intelligently. So you start to look at uh do they have a lot of competitors bidding on their brand terms? If you do, then you should advertise in that space to reclaim that, right? Because you may have a competitor that's out putting money against people actively searching for you. You've done the hard work of branding. You've gone out, you've put your flyers out, you've put your postcards everywhere, and someone searches for your brand and somebody else swoops in at the last second. You may need to put some money against that. That's the first place I'd look. As a brand gets more robust, you may not need to spend as much there, but that's a great starting spot. Then I'd start to look a little more up funnel, meaning a little more broad. I'd start to do these non-brand terms on Google. Like in the home services space, maybe it's siding repair. Maybe it's uh windows are drafty, something like that. Maybe it's the compensation on the windows. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_02 26:20

These things that don't need somebody who looks it up. They don't look up like I need new windows. Exactly. Why is there wet spots on the corner of my window seals?

SPEAKER_01 26:27

Exactly. It's all problem solution. Yeah. It's you think of what the person is looking for and what is the problem they have and how can I solve it. Maybe that's through search. Maybe that's through social. Maybe you have some photos or videos that you want to run paid ads behind. Go do that. That's great. As long as there's a point to it, right? It can't just be a sample organic post that you put $100 behind and you boost it, and then you say, I just wasted $100. There has to be intention behind it. You have to be asking for something and showing value in the ad that you've put together.

Sponsor: Upshot Coffee

SPEAKER_02 27:04

The STL bucket list show is fueled by Upshot Coffee. My friends at Upshot Coffee have some of the best beans in town. I got some of their new packaging here. Look at this bag. Look how big this is. Um, they have four St. Louis locations: their flagship in Coddleville, the break shop over by Lindenwood in St. Charles, their Clayton location called Hi-Fi, um, and then Flyby over in Tower Grove, their newest location. Um, and they also sell their coffee online everywhere. If you guys haven't added Upshot Coffee to your STL bucket list, it's time to try it. Some of the my favorite people in the industry and some of the best coffee in the game. Yeah, that makes so much sense. And I think this year specifically, I've been diving deep into those, you know, the AI overviews, which is different than paid, because what I really like about one of the things that I love about AI is it's basically consolidating this information and giving you a simple answer at the top of at the top of the um message.

Content, SEO & Knowing When to Get Help

SPEAKER_02 27:58

So, you know, when you're looking at that, that kind of goes more towards SEO, you know, and paid search, but like those are those commonly asked questions, those FAQs on the page. And then those FAQs turn into Instagram videos that also are posted on YouTube and TikTok and all those work together. So when I ask about why, you know, why my window is drafty, it pulls up an article on a website or an FAQ page from Blank Windowmaker in St. Louis that shows like we help people that have these same issues and then just shows you up. And that has nothing to do with paid. So it all has to work together. It's not just running ads at something. Is that is that kind of the case for what you guys look at too?

SPEAKER_01 28:33

100%. I mean, it's the easiest place to get content, whether it's organic, whether it's paid, whether it's for your own site, is looking at these FAQs, looking at comments you get on your own posts and looking at reviews that you're getting, whether it's a Google review, Yelp, whatever, see what people like and talk about it. If you're running a restaurant and people talk about how crispy the tacos are, talk about that. Like that's something that you now have content that you can go create around.

SPEAKER_02 28:59

We're doing that with sauce a little bit. Instead of being like, hey, look at this restaurant, it's like, hey, this, you know, this swanky wine bar. And like, don't even say the name. It's like this new swanky wine bar just opened in blank neighborhood. And then people are like, well, let me click that. Yeah. Instead of being like, hey, you know, blank wine bar is now open. It's like they just we just gave them all the information. We didn't drive them to something to like then put an email in to sign up to our email blast and all these different things that we're doing. But when should a business owner, I think this is an important question for me as an agency owner, and then also, you know, some of the businesses that are listening, when should they stop? Because I see the value in DIY because you need to have an understanding of it before you hire somebody. I feel that with anything, anything that we do, we do videography and podcasting. I need to have an understanding of that service before I start selling that service to someone else.

SPEAKER_01 29:42

And yeah, and you have to you have to understand if if you're going to an agency, you have to be able to know that they're doing the right thing, right? You don't want to just put your full trust in them.

SPEAKER_02 29:50

Exactly. So when is the moment that a business owner should stop DIYing and actually hire someone, whether it's in-house or agency? Is there a certain signal that you had that you've had in your career?

SPEAKER_01 30:00

It's when you run out of time. It's all time, man. Like it when your time is being taken away from the business and you're not able to focus on building the business, you're focused more on running the ads. Now you need to look at somebody else. Agencies are lightweight, right? It's it's not, you don't have to pay benefits. You don't have to bring someone on as an actual employee. But obviously, that's something where you're gonna have to teach them about your business. There is an upfront cost in terms of time to do that. Bringing someone in-house that may be able to do it, that's also a great option. But usually those folks are uh specialized. Usually you'd hire someone for social, someone for search, something like that. Someone for in-person events. Exactly. It is. It is. That's the benefit of an agency is you get all of that in one. The downside is obviously the initial onboarding does take a bit of time.

SPEAKER_02 30:57

So it's all time. And I I agree with that because there's things that I can do, but I'm like, what is my time worth? And I think as a business owner, we need to understand where is our time, what is our time worth? What's our hourly rate really worth?

The ROI of Showing Up & Rapid Fire

SPEAKER_02 31:08

And then also, where is the biggest ROI that I have on my time? So every second that I'm sitting here recording this podcast is a second that I'm not out talking to a potential client. Now, this podcast is reaching thousands of people every week. So now I'm talking to a thousand people all at once. Yeah. So it's like, where, where am I hitting people? And that that's what I'm saying. So, like, but there's value here, even though there's not a direct ROI, there's gonna be somebody that listens to this conversation that sends an email and wants information about something. Maybe love that. And maybe not, but we do it every single week. So eventually it will. And uh, you know, that's where I think that, you know, I understand what you're saying, but I understand I think DIYing it to is helpful to actually learn it and then being able to actually offload it and be able to manage it properly. Because there's a lot of business owners that just have an agency that they just let run with things and then they don't have control of their domains, their website, their ad accounts, and then they're just lost and we can deal with it all the time.

SPEAKER_01 31:59

Founders and owners are the voice of a company, whether it's a restaurant, home services, whatever the case may be, yeah. You started that business for a reason. Yep. You are the best person to tell the story of your business. If you're just outsourcing that to an agency, it's the same thing that people are doing with AI where you just outsource your brain. Yes. That's not how it should operate. Yep. You should use that as an extension of yourself. Use that to help free up your time, not just give them carte blanche to go do whatever they want.

SPEAKER_02 32:29

Exactly. This has been great advice. I want to, you know, hit some rapid fires to close up here. So Google or Meta, pick one for a brand new local business.

SPEAKER_01 32:37

Brand new, I'd go Meta, so you get that demand generation.

SPEAKER_02 32:40

Okay. Favorite St. Louis lunch spot?

SPEAKER_01 32:43

Blue City, Delhi.

SPEAKER_02 32:44

Okay. Yeah, it's a great one. Yeah, it's old school. No ads needed for that spot. Everybody knows about that spot. Uh, one word to describe your first year with the growth in.

SPEAKER_01 32:54

Exhilarating.

SPEAKER_02 32:55

That's a great one. Best piece of marketing advice you ever got in a in a sentence. Or something you discovered on your own.

SPEAKER_01 33:03

So early in my career, I was told that any story you tell needs to leave the person wanting popcorn. Make sure that you're telling a story that leaves them on the edge of their seat, that makes them wanting popcorn and waiting for that next statement.

SPEAKER_02 33:17

Wow. And how does that so that's marketing, but like I want to think about it from like an organic side of point of view. Like we talked a couple weeks ago about organic, like we're gonna shift our organic strategy. So leave something that somebody wants a part two or part three. And that's like the new shift of social, too. Is like you see it all the time in these videos. It's like watch the video and then you click their feed to go find the other one, and that's the popcorn. Like I want to spend time.

SPEAKER_01 33:38

It's all the attention

What's Next for The Growth Den

SPEAKER_01 33:39

economy. You want to get them on the edge of their seat, paying attention, eating popcorn, waiting on your next statement because they their whole focus is on you.

SPEAKER_02 33:46

What's next for the growth then?

SPEAKER_01 33:49

That's a great question. Uh I've built it to a point now where I have to grow the team. Right. It's I've done a solopreneur journey for about 18 months now, and I have a lot of demand. There's folks that are talking to me about merging with other agencies. There's folks that are talking about whether I take this to the next level and truly form an agency behind myself. And then there's folks that are talking about putting capital behind building AI-driven solutions at scale. So what do you want though? What do I want? I want to scale this business while having all the time that I have with my family.

unknown 34:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:28

And that's everything else is second.

SPEAKER_02 34:30

That's the challenge. Um, but Logan, I appreciate you for coming on, man. Thank you for giving us so much knowledge. And hopefully that the people that are listening here um got knowledge from this as well. If somebody were to want to reach out to you, what's the best way to get it get in touch with you?

SPEAKER_01 34:42

Reach out to me on email at logan at throwthden.com or check out my website, thegrowthden.com. There's contact forms there.

SPEAKER_02 34:50

Sounds good. We'll we'll see you guys next week. Thank you, St. Louis.