Gibsons Restaurant Group’s Steve Lombardo on Hospitality as a Craft, Not a Slogan

Anthony Codispoti (00:00)
Welcome to another edition of the Inspired Stories podcast, where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from their successes and be inspired by how they’ve overcome adversity. As you listen today, let one idea shape what you do next.

Today’s guest once spent his first semester of law school producing a nationally syndicated college football TV show, editing highlights through the night, then showing up to class the next morning like that was normal. That kind of just figured out wiring shows up all over his story. He watched the family business rise, fall, and rebuild. Then he built his own parallel track and high stakes corporate ⁓ &A before stepping into the arena where reputations are

one or lost one table at a time. Steve Lombardo is the CEO and General Counsel of Gibson’s Restaurant Group, the team behind Chicago institutions like Gibson’s Bar and Steakhouse, Hugo’s Frog Bar, Luxe Bar, Cortino Ristorante, Gibson’s Italian, and more. GRG is built around four core values, hospitality, quality, value, and family.

With an engine built around the customer, GRG’s purpose is that every customer must leave happy. This episode is a masterclass in what happens when you treat hospitality like a craft, not a slogan. But before we get into all that good stuff, today’s episode is brought to you by my company, Adback Benefits Agency. Listen, if you run a business, you’re likely stuck in the cycle of rising insurance premiums. You’re paying more, but your team is getting less. And many people can’t afford coverage at all.

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Results vary, but gains like that can change how a business is valued. And the consultation is free. So see if you qualify today at addbackbenefits.com. All right, back to our guest today, the CEO of Gibson’s Restaurant Group, Steve Lombardo. Thanks for making the time to share your story.

Steve Lombardo (02:22)
Thanks for having me.

Anthony Codispoti (02:24)
So Steve, you grew up surrounded by entrepreneurs in a blue collar to white collar town. What’s a childhood moment that made you think, ⁓ this is how business really works?

Steve Lombardo (02:35)
Yeah. And you know what? It’s funny because I didn’t think of it like that growing up. It’s just you’re around what, which you grew up with seems like normal. Right. And so I, in my graduating class had a number graduated class of grade school, had half the kids, dads were entrepreneurs and they could have been electrical subcontractors or had a little meat packing company or independent truck driver or a,

even a doctor with his own physician practice that he, you know, a few doctors. And of course I grew up with my father in the restaurant business. One of his good friends who was in the restaurant business, who lived in the town, had an invention, an idea that he had an ice cream cone shaped like a baseball bat. And he was selling it to Dean Foods and I was probably nine or 10 years old. said,

How did you do that? Like, how did you get this big company to buy your thing? He said, well, I called them up. I said, ⁓ and a light bulb went off in my head. Like, there are no rules. know, our education system trains you to think a certain way. And it’s very kind of, you know, you’re in the box. And, you know, that idea of like being outside the box, you know, that was the first kind of light bulb moment that, you just, there are no rules. So.

Anthony Codispoti (03:46)
in the box. Yeah.

I can just call somebody up and have a conversation about something, right? This is accessible to me as well, kind of a thing.

Steve Lombardo (03:59)
Exactly.

Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (04:04)
So I understand that your dad used to challenge you when you said what all kids say, right? I can’t, right? I can’t do that. I can’t do that. And he would challenge you with, if I paid you a million dollars? Could you figure it out? Yeah.

Steve Lombardo (04:12)
Right. Right.

Could you figure it out? That’s what he would say. And he would do that

a lot. And then, you know, I would respond being the smart ass kid that I am, you know, well, you he asked me to fly. can’t grow wings. And he said, no, but you could spend money and take flight classes, pilot lessons and learn how to fly. that’s, you know, so it was just also force you to, you know, always ask that question to force you to think outside the box. Like, is it a matter of can’t or won’t?

Right. So.

Anthony Codispoti (04:50)
So really helping you focus on putting in the extra effort to figure something out, not kind of being lazy and copping out. Yeah, it sounds like your dad had a big impact on your mindset and the way that you grew up.

Steve Lombardo (04:56)
Yeah. Yeah.

For sure, for sure. And that spills over into our business. mean, one of our business superpowers is the, you mentioned it before, just figure it out or even just sort of brute force, get it done. ⁓ And that’s a, there’s pluses and minuses to that, but ⁓ we just figure out ways to figure it out. And that directly comes from him. Not accepting no for an answer.

Anthony Codispoti (05:27)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I think we’re going to see that spirit ⁓ kind of recur here in our conversation as we get through more of your story, Steve. So before you studied law, you studied accounting. What happened in that season of life that made you decide that law was actually a better arena for you?

Steve Lombardo (05:40)
Yeah. Yeah.

So this is one of those, ⁓ who’s the author? ⁓ John Grisham wrote about American law schools as being the great American babysitters for 20-somethings that don’t know what they want to do with their lives. And I fell into that bucket for sure. And my father pushed me towards law school. in hindsight, I understand why he did so. He’s very, ⁓ he doesn’t like lawyers.

Anthony Codispoti (06:04)
I haven’t heard that before.

Steve Lombardo (06:18)
He doesn’t trust them. He wanted someone he could trust who could speak their language and who could not get the run around from. law was something I was good at it, but it was certainly not my calling.

Anthony Codispoti (06:37)
not your calling, but you’ve followed through with it anyways. Yeah. So I want to talk about that first semester when you were at Georgetown Law, ⁓ talk about this sort of not being your calling. Because at the same time, you’re also producing a nationally syndicated college football TV show. Tell me about that. How did that come to be?

Steve Lombardo (06:39)
Yeah.

Yeah.

So it came out of my last semester of college. There was an entrepreneurship class that I had taken. ⁓ And one of the students, we had a team ⁓ that came up with this idea. And one of them was working with the local regional sports channel, which was Home Team Sports in Washington, DC. And if you think of like Madison Square Garden Network and ⁓

New York and Nesson in ⁓ Boston there’s there were these regional channels all over the country at the time and ⁓ It was fairly easy to get on they were desperate for content and so ⁓ To put a show together was not very difficult ⁓ We actually hired a former NFL player to be the host Which we paid him a couple grand a week

⁓ We actually had Melissa Stark, if you’re familiar with her on ESPN, she did our pilot. She then got hired by ESPN and so we didn’t get to have her on the show. But, you know, it was very simple to get access to the ⁓ players and the coaches ⁓ because it was based around college football. You just reach out to the sports information departments and they would set up interviews, no problem. And so our only limitation was actually

Anthony Codispoti (07:51)
sure.

Steve Lombardo (08:17)
physically getting to the campuses. So we were on the East Coast, so we were sort of focused on the East Coast, SEC, ACC, New England, and some of the Big Ten because being from Chicago, I would come back and forth occasionally. But we had Lou Hummelt’s. Yeah, there was some interviews. It was just informational about the

Anthony Codispoti (08:36)
And so what was the content? It was like an interview style, like, Hey, tell us about the game.

Steve Lombardo (08:47)
best plays of the week and interviews with ⁓ players and coaches and, you know, just some sort of slant on opinions on the various teams. ⁓ was weekly, so we would have to ⁓ write the show ⁓ kind of midweek, planning it out. We would watch all the games on Saturday. We would have total access to the studio on Sunday from about

11 p.m. To 4 in the morning where we had total free reign over their editing equipment and whatnot and then ⁓ We had to and then we would film I think the next Monday or Tuesday and that would show on Wednesday So it was was about five days after the the previous week’s games

Anthony Codispoti (09:36)
So you’re stretched thin time-wise, it sounds like you’re loving it. So you’re putting in these extra hours, getting access to the content, not a problem. What was the hard part of

Steve Lombardo (09:45)
Yep.

Hard part was selling advertising. This was, ⁓ because it was a regional channel, they required you to get your own sponsors and sell your own commercials. ⁓ even though we were on, they didn’t have the cable channels, didn’t have the Nielsen ratings at the time. They just had the number of households you had access to. And so we were in reaching 66 million households in the country.

but we had no idea how many were actually watching our show. And we were also 22 years old. We had no contacts. We had no idea what we were doing. So I was picking up the phone and calling people. I mean, had, this is very early internet. There’s no video on the internet. There’s no streaming. So I’m sending VHS tapes in the mail to people. Are they gonna watch it? It’s so…

We got a couple of sponsors, not many. ⁓ And again, those were actually relationship driven. ⁓ But other than that, ⁓ we ended up showing a lot of PSAs.

Anthony Codispoti (10:55)
And so how did that affect you? You’re calling these folks up, you’re trying to get sponsors and they’re saying no. What’s the impact on you and your psyche?

Steve Lombardo (11:04)
I mean, it was a learning experience. you force yourself to learn how to sell, even though I had no idea what I was doing. ⁓ You know, in hindsight, it’s one of those things where I’m very happy we did it, but I ended up having to take some of my school loans and to fund the company, you know, so to fund the shortfall. ⁓ But it sounds crazy. We produced an entire season worth of shows.

for about $50,000. And it was something that we probably had about 15 to 20,000 of revenue. So we lost 30 grand and I had to pay that back out of my law firm earnings later.

Anthony Codispoti (11:58)
Okay. So what was the driving point? What was the decision factor? And okay, it’s time to shut this down.

Steve Lombardo (12:05)
Well, it wasn’t our decision. ⁓ the whole premise behind our show, or the idea behind the business premise was there’s this lack of content. And by going through these regional channels, you could syndicate, they’re so desperate for content and we could get national access. Right. And so what happened the following year was Fox bought up most of the regional sports channels around the country with the same thesis, but from a network level instead of a television

single program level that they were going to buy all these regional channels and it became Fox Sports. It later became Comcast Sports. ⁓ And ⁓ we tried to sell the show to Comcast or get, I mean, not even sell it just to get it on the air. ⁓ The whole, what they, they decided was they were going to keep all regional local programming, you know, in that, case, they, featured the Baltimore Orioles and the Washington Wizards.

You know, those programs stayed with the local network. Fox did all the national stuff. And so, you know, I’m a 22 year old kid calling up Fox trying to talk to somebody, anybody, and I couldn’t even get to something. You know, I didn’t know who to talk to. So. ⁓

Anthony Codispoti (13:20)
Okay,

so this kind of fades into the background. I guess the silver lining is it gives you more energy to focus towards finishing out law school. And then you move into corporate &A for a couple of decades.

Steve Lombardo (13:29)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. That was, you know, just doing deals and representing some companies, you know, from a corporate standpoint and boards. But for the most part, it was just, you know, you’re buying or selling companies. I wasn’t doing the buying or selling, but I’m representing the buyers of the sellers.

Anthony Codispoti (13:52)
Can you pull out an early career moment that trained you and your judgment under pressure in a way that you still lean on and think about today?

Steve Lombardo (14:02)
Yeah. So, you know, I was thinking about this, you know, early in the career, you don’t have a lot of judgment. ⁓ You know, you’re just doing what you’re told to do. ⁓ But I did have a few moments where I had, you know, there were two learnings, big learnings. One is just, again, sort of the brute force. You just work and work and work. And the expectation is, you know, you got to get it done no matter what the, the, the, how much time it takes to do it. You just got to do it.

⁓ and I had one partner tell me one time there’s 24 hours in a day. I suggest you use all of them. But, ⁓ no, the other lesson was a lot of these clients that I had, and I, I, we represented a lot of entrepreneurs that sold their businesses. There was a lot of psychological handholding, ⁓ with these guys. you know, they weren’t just selling their business or selling their legacy and that sort of thing. And sometimes you had to,

I will tell you, I was a young associate and there was a guy who’s selling his business. He had built it up over 25 years. He was, you know, going to sell it and make a few money. Right. And he was, ⁓ we had to close it by year end and the holidays are coming and he’s in Florida and he is literally counting the money before it’s in his hands. And I had to call the guy up and I said, Mike, ⁓

You built an amazing business, didn’t you? He goes, yeah. You know, said, do you remember those long nights when you first started it you were, you’re just burning the candle at both ends and you’re doing everything possible to just make sure this you can meet the next week’s payroll and et cetera. And he goes, yeah. And I said, run through the goddamn finish line. You need to get your ass back to Chicago. If this deal is going to close because there’s stuff you got to do. And he was like, you know, and I I’m half his age. I’m 26 years old. I’m telling him this.

Anthony Codispoti (15:55)
Ha ha ha ha.

Steve Lombardo (15:58)
And he’s like, oh, okay. And he did. And we got the deal done in time. And there was all sorts of tax reasons why we needed to do it before year end. But there was a few times I had to have those types of hard conversations with clients.

Anthony Codispoti (16:15)
Did you ever run into a situation where either consciously or subconsciously an owner is actually trying to sabotage the deal because they don’t know what they’re gonna do next and the thought of not having their legacy, their company, their baby under their wing is too disturbing to them?

Steve Lombardo (16:38)
No, that never came up. I will say there were a couple of occasions where I thought the deal was a bad one. ⁓ That they were getting into bed with somebody where it wasn’t just a clean break, right? There was one deal in particular. I remember counseling the buyer actually ⁓ that the seller was no good. This was a bad deal and you

Lawyers generally get paid when deals close, right? You eat a lot of fees when they don’t close. And it’s rare to find a lawyer saying this is not a good deal. And he went ahead with it anyway, and it blew up a couple years later. ⁓

Anthony Codispoti (17:20)
And how did they receive that news from you at the time?

Steve Lombardo (17:24)
They didn’t, we didn’t know what we were talking about. You we didn’t, we didn’t know the full story, right? So that was his, his thinking.

Anthony Codispoti (17:28)
Okay. Yeah.

Yeah. Where do those, I’m gonna use the word scruples. Where do those scruples come from? It’s like you said, lawyers not making money unless the deal closes, right?

Steve Lombardo (17:41)
You know, I would say not just as an attorney, but any sort of consultant advisory role. Um, if you are going to be good at it, you need to be more than just the lawyer or the accountant or the banker. know, you, you have to get yourself to a level of being a trusted advisor where you can have those conversations with them. Like the one I had with the earlier story, which is, you know, get your ass back here.

Even though I’m a 26 year old kid and you’re the one paying me to do what you tell me to do, this is, you you have to get to that level of trust.

Anthony Codispoti (18:16)
And it, I’m kind of, you know, following the trail here a little bit. And I can see how your bravado, your confidence, your skin is getting a little bit thicker as you, you know, not very old, but you know, it’s a 22 year old kid. Let’s go back to the early days, right? The, makes the deal and you know, it’s like, well, how did you get that, you know, that ice cream cone sold? Like, how did you get them to buy it? Well, I just called them.

this light bulb goes off. So the 22 year old kid trying to sell the advertising, you know, for the TV station, you know, I’m calling folks up, I’m trying, but I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how to get to folks. But now by the time you’re 26, you’re talking to guys that are twice your age, and you’re laying down the law with them. Like it sounds like there is a pretty quick maturity process that took place there.

Steve Lombardo (18:56)
Yeah.

⁓ I probably didn’t see it at the time. I probably consider myself pretty immature and you know, there’s always the, you know, the imposter in your head that’s telling you that, you’re, you’re not good enough for this, you know, that sort of thing. What I will say is that what served me well was, you know, I did work in the restaurants when I was a kid and, you know, I believed in that customer service and the, you know, that, translated to when I was practicing law, right?

It’s not just, you know, it’s easy and we’ve all, you you were in your business. I’m sure had lawyers tell you, you know, you’ve asked them a question that, no, you can’t do that. No, that’s not the answer. It’s maybe we can’t do it that way. Let’s come up with a solution to get you where you want to be. It may not be the way you’re thinking, but we’ll figure it out as opposed to just a straight. No, you know, I mean, all business forget about lawyers, restaurants. It doesn’t matter.

customers don’t want to be told no. Right? That’s not what they’re paying you for. So.

Anthony Codispoti (20:14)
So you gotta find a creative solution to get from point A to point B. So let’s go back to this conversation years ago where your father calls you up one day and says, hey Steve, figure out how we form our own import company.

Steve Lombardo (20:16)
Exactly, exactly.

Yeah. Yep. So he was in the process of opening a restaurant, ⁓ still around today called Cortino. the whole concept is based around good, inexpensive wine. And the idea was borrowed from, you know, what you see in Italy with the crafts on the table and, know, it’s good, inexpensive wine, but very drinkable with the food. And he went out and talked to a lot of different importer distributors and the wine that was.

the right price wasn’t good and the right wine that was good enough was the wrong price. So how do find, how do we do an import company? So I don’t know anything about ⁓ the laws surrounding alcohol at the time. It’s just not my area of expertise. But for just shorthand, with some exceptions, you can basically either make booze, you can import distribute booze, or you can sell it retail and never the twain shall meet. ⁓ And the whole idea is

and that’s all post prohibition and it’s you get taxed every level of the way. ⁓ And so, you know, it’s a system that won’t go away because the government makes too much off it. And like I said, there are limited exceptions, but I didn’t know this at the time. So I look it up and it’s very apparent. My father’s in the restaurant business. He’s retail. You can’t do the importing distributor. So, but I talked to a few.

liquor attorneys. And literally it took this all about 10 minutes of it was not it was not a long deep dive. And yeah, yeah. And you know, the family business had liquor attorneys and so talk to them. And so you know what, what’s common in the industry is you have family members that represent the different pieces of the tiers. And so, you know, there are families that make one member

Anthony Codispoti (22:06)
Because you probably had some contacts, some lawyers, friends that you knew that were specialists in that area.

Steve Lombardo (22:27)
owns a vineyard, another has a distribution arm, another has a restaurant. And that actually does happen ⁓ in the business. And so I said, it’s totally illegal. You can’t do it. But here’s the ender out. And he just turns around and goes, OK, go start the company. And I’m working 60, 70 hours a week. I’ve got three little kids. ⁓ But there’s an element of duty and responsibility.

your father telling you to do something. So we did it. it was one of those, ⁓ just, had, you said I practiced law for a couple of decades and I did, had this not happened, I probably would have left a lot sooner because I was exercising this entrepreneurial gene while I was practicing law. Right. Exactly. So we just, and this was literally just dialing up Italy.

Anthony Codispoti (23:16)
So you get to scratch that itch while you were still doing the corporate &A stuff.

Steve Lombardo (23:25)
Italian Trade Commission, the Chamber of Commerce. I knew a couple of other importers unrelated to wine, but did some stuff with imported other goods. And you you’d call somebody and they’d refer you to somebody else and refer you to somebody else. And all of a sudden we had two, 300 samples of wine to taste. you know, we just did what was a focus group. We weren’t calling it a focus group. It was just a bunch of people in the business that we would

taste the same, you know, we taste like five or six whites of the same variety, like five or six Chardonnays and then five or six Chianti’s at a time. And then ⁓ just everyone just said, which one you like best. And ⁓ it’s shocking how much people will coalesce around the same one, even when we were doing it blind. And so we started bringing stuff over. ⁓ And it was just, you figured it out. You learned by doing, I mean, it’s,

One of the things I think that a lot of people can get hung up on is trying to get all the answers and to try and perfect it before actually moving forward. And if you do that, you’ll never move forward because there’s no such thing as perfection.

Anthony Codispoti (24:37)
Yeah. So were you bringing in wine just for your restaurants? Were you distributing to other restaurants as well?

Steve Lombardo (24:43)
It started that way,

yes. We started that way the first year. It was just bringing in wine just for that one restaurant. great story was the house red and house white, which were amazing. ⁓ We were selling three, we sold 3000 cases of this wine in one year. And that’s an enormous number. ⁓ And we don’t know, we don’t know it’s an enormous number. It’s just, okay, this is, we’re doing business. This is.

We go to Italy that year for their big trade show and the producer of that wine meets with us and he goes, so you have conquered the state of Illinois in distribution. What is your plan to go national? And I said,

I don’t I ⁓

their platform nationally, we couldn’t grow with them, but they carved us out because we were doing such huge numbers.

Anthony Codispoti (26:08)
Amazing. So in those early days, I want to go back to something that you were saying, sort of this idea of, you know, perfection is the enemy of good, right? You’re figuring something out. A lot of folks make the mistake of saying, you got to have it all figured out before you actually, you know, pull the trigger and do something. You’re a little bit more of a fan of, okay, let’s do some research. And at some point, we just got to go. And so taking that mindset, what were some of the things that you ran into along the way that, you know, surprised you from a logistical standpoint, some of the

Steve Lombardo (26:17)
Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (26:37)
the hurdles you had to figure out.

Steve Lombardo (26:40)
Yeah, I mean, we probably went through three different warehouses and storage issues within the first two years. You know, want to get it temperature controlled is important. ⁓ I think we used two different shipping companies ⁓ at the beginning. We switched fairly quickly to get better pricing. And, ⁓ you know, we did talk to a lot of people who were in the industry to learn, you know, and sometimes it’s just, you know, at certain times of year.

You want to have the wine shipped up to a northern port because then it comes over rail on a, you know, when it’s cool, right? You don’t want to ship to the southern states where it lands in Norfolk, Virginia, for example, and it’s going through a hundred degree heat ⁓ on the way to Chicago. ⁓ You it’s just, you figured it out by doing it. You can’t anticipate all the little details, right? That come up. So.

Anthony Codispoti (27:37)
So

3000 cases a year. You didn’t know this was a huge number, but ⁓ you’re a producer for a single wine.

Steve Lombardo (27:42)
For one, why? We were selling about 10,000

cases a year overall.

Anthony Codispoti (27:50)
How were you guys going through that much wine? Like, was it the only wine you were selling?

Steve Lombardo (27:53)
I mean, it was,

no, was, um, we probably only, the wines we brought in probably were only about a third of that menu. Um, but it was just, the whole concept was driven around wine. so, you know, the, whereas the typical, our typical restaurants probably have a 45 % wine, 45 % spirits, 10 % beer. It was 90 % wine in terms of the sales.

Anthony Codispoti (28:21)
because you guys were pushing that or it was just sort of the culture that kind of.

Steve Lombardo (28:23)
Yeah, I mean, the concept

was built around that. it was, you know, they would, you know, they would pair it with the food and it was just, that was the whole, and the wine was inexpensive. It was very easy to get. And it was one of those, one of the other thoughts behind the project was behind the restaurant was to make the restaurant, the wine at the restaurant inexpensive enough so people wouldn’t feel afraid to make a mistake. You know, when you.

when you’re a young person and you’re buying a $60 bottle of wine at the time, you know, that’s a hugely expensive outlay and you don’t know if it’s going to be good or not. And instead they’re serving it by an eight ounce carafe and you’re getting it for 15 bucks. so, okay, that’s, or, or at the time that that house wine was only $5. So.

Anthony Codispoti (29:09)
Well, so those more affordable prices, people are going to drink a little bit more too, right? Let’s get a second round. So you’re doing all this, you’re building up this import business at the same time that you’re working 70 to 80 hours a week. You’ve got three little kids. Was there anything during that time period that you had to say no to, that you wanted to say yes to?

Steve Lombardo (29:13)
Right, exactly.

you know, you just, you burn the candle. I burned the candle at all ends. ⁓ I probably wasn’t home enough. ⁓ you know, ⁓ but, you know, I think, ⁓ that that’s probably a regret, you know? Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (29:53)
Yeah. Is

that something you still carry with you today?

Steve Lombardo (29:56)
No, not

too much. I mean, I think I’ve spent enough time with my children. I did coach them a lot, you know, in various sports and didn’t make time for that. you know.

Anthony Codispoti (30:09)
So let’s shift to Gibson’s now, right? What was behind the decision for you to eventually get a lot more involved with the family business?

Steve Lombardo (30:12)
Sure.

Sure, so I was outside counsel to the company. ⁓ There was a group of three decision makers, my father, the founder, his partner, who was really the operating partner, and then the CFO, who were the decision makers in the organization. And fairly early on in my legal career, I was at the table for all the big conversations. ⁓

opening a new restaurant or raising money. ended up getting involved in the fundraising as well. ⁓ And so I remember, and they were all the same age ⁓ and they’re all probably 83, 84 today. So 20 years ago, they’re in their early sixties and I’m advising them not with myself, you know, at the, in the thought process, but like you guys have to start succession planning.

You know, like a lot of entrepreneurs, the first generation entrepreneur is just not very good at succession. And my father’s response to my bringing this question up was to work out an extra hour every day. So he’s just going to live forever. ⁓ And I was pounding him on it for a while, especially one of the operating partner ⁓ was

making noise about retiring at some point. I mean, they ended up spending about 10 years trying to negotiate a buy sell deal between them that never ended up being coming to fruition. We ended up buying him out 10 years later than that. And ⁓ after that, but ⁓ it was, you know, that was what they were focusing on. They weren’t focusing on who’s next and training who’s next. ⁓

But I was on him for quite a while. And then finally he had done a lot of thinking about it and said, and earlier in his career, he had had ⁓ relationships or his partnerships in his prior restaurant business were with guys he grew up with, all good friends. And it went very sideways, ⁓ causing him to have a lot of trust issues. And he said to me, I can’t trust anyone else other than family to do the business. So I want you to

come in to take it over someday. So a year goes by, another year goes by. And finally I look at him and I say, dad, you you’ve got this great plan. He’s probably 70 at the time, 71. And I say, you know, how much, when, when do you think you’re going to bring me in? And he goes, he goes, I figured out another five, six, seven years at the law firm. I go, and, his, his, and his mindset was, you know,

because my brother had joined the business at this point, my sister had joined the business, ⁓ my other one sister had not joined the business at that point in time. And in his mind, it’s like there’s this concentration of risk in this one business and that’s supporting the entire family as opposed to, you I think that’s what he was thinking. He never said that, but that’s his, it was his mindset, I believe. ⁓ And

You got, I turned around and I said, he goes, I think he had six or seven more years. go, so you’re the man, you’re the boss. You get to decide these, these things I said, but if you think it’s in the best interest of the shareholders, the family, the employees and the business, um, for your successor to come in after you’re dead, I said, And I, and I said, if however, I said,

Anthony Codispoti (33:52)
That’s a very blunt conversation.

Steve Lombardo (33:57)
I may or may not be the right guy. said, you may after six or seven, you know, six months or 12 months, you may decide, you know what? I made a mistake. We got to bring somebody else, you know? So I said, you might want to do that sooner rather than later. ⁓ and he brought me in about six months later.

Anthony Codispoti (34:16)
Okay, and so how did that initial transition go? Bumpy, smooth, fit perfectly from the beginning.

Steve Lombardo (34:23)
Bumpy. mean, it was here, you know, you other than busing tables as a kid, I wasn’t in the operations. And so, you know, to build credibility, you know, I spent the first 90 days. I didn’t do anything other than just talk to people, you know, didn’t make any orders, didn’t tell anybody what to do. And, you know, at the same time, my father is still in the picture. So it’s not like it was this sharp cut off and

I took over immediately and he’s pointing to me. Don’t, don’t bring your problems to me. Go to him. ⁓ so it wasn’t this neat, ⁓ you know, ⁓ ending, but, ⁓ I went through our management training program in the restaurants, ⁓ to, know, more to build credibility. mean, yes, to understand a lot of what is going on in this specific day to day. Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (35:17)
So you guys have an internal training program for

your own employees and you went through that yourself.

Steve Lombardo (35:22)
Yeah,

exactly. ⁓ Although, you my father kept trying to make me into a mini me of him. Right. And he is a phenomenal restaurant operator. He is I mean, I’m very biased, but I would consider him one of the top five restaurant operators in the history of restaurants in America. OK. ⁓ But that’s I’m his kid. I’m

I give him C on a good day as a CEO of a company. ⁓ And so he kept trying to make me a restaurant operator. And I said, my job is different from yours. I’m running a company that runs restaurants. And that’s a different thing. And so ⁓ that took some time for him to get his arms around.

Anthony Codispoti (36:08)
Explain

that difference between a good restaurant operator and a good CEO.

Steve Lombardo (36:14)
mean, the restaurant operators in the restaurant, know, I mean, the great ones live in the restaurants. ⁓ At the time I joined, we had 10 restaurants. Now we have 15. And so ⁓ it’s not possible to be in the restaurants all the time. And, you know, one of the, I’ll tell you a story here that, ⁓

defines sort of why he wasn’t a good CEO, but also the importance of the role, which is we opened up three restaurants literally the moment I had come into the company, like right as I had come in, we had just opened three restaurants. All three were management deals, meaning we were just getting paid to operate them. We didn’t own the restaurants.

And the way my father had set up the compensation structure with the senior executive team was they got 100 % of those management fees. And so we went from a thousand employee company to a 1500 employee company, a hundred million dollar revenue to 150 million dollar revenue overnight. And we didn’t spend one money, one dollar, excuse me, one dollar in the back office.

and it almost tore the company apart. And everyone’s pointing fingers, things, balls are getting dropped, everyone’s running around with their hair on fire. And it is plain as day, it’s obvious to me what happened, but nobody else can see it. And I had to bring, we had to do an offsite meeting, bring an outside advisor to say what I would have said, but that was the, you know, it was to build the credibility. ⁓ You know, I can’t.

Anthony Codispoti (37:50)
you felt it

need to come from a third party voice.

Steve Lombardo (37:52)
Exactly

and said, yeah, here’s here’s the founders kid coming in and telling us what to do He he wrote a list of it was funny he wrote a list of about ten We’ll call him symptoms on the board, you know

lack of communication, micromanagement, and half a dozen others. And he asked everybody in the room, where did that come from? Where does this list come from? Every one of them said, well, you talked to all of us before the meeting. You interviewed us. And this comes from the conversations. He goes, no, this is from a textbook. Every company hits these points, these thresholds, where if they don’t change the way they operate, they fail. And he said,

you’re already way past the breaking point. And the fact that you haven’t blown up yet is a testament to the brute force that is in our culture, right? ⁓ But it was about to blow up. ⁓ so, you know, that was the…

Anthony Codispoti (38:52)
So what were some of

the big things that needed to change as you guys were going from a hundred million to a hundred and fifty million dollar company?

Steve Lombardo (38:56)
Sure. So,

you know, the entrepreneur starts the business, it’s founder driven, everything revolves around the founder. If the founder dies, the business dies, right? A business gets to a point that then it becomes a person business where they’ve cloned themselves usually with a few people that are like-minded or think like them and they can get to another size.

And then it’s, have to become systems and process-based and we are not, we were not systems or process-based. would say we’re 75, 80 % down that journey of becoming a systems and process-based company. But you can’t, you cannot leverage your culture, your, your, your, your, self without, without systems. So that’s, that’s what we’ve spent the last 10 years doing since I joined.

Anthony Codispoti (39:44)
Yeah.

and you

feel like you’re about 80 % along that path, which…

Steve Lombardo (39:51)
Yeah, yeah. And there were

there were things like I mentioned the, you know, my father and the other two people are in their 80s now. Well, our CFO, who is wonderful, ⁓ he only retired at 80. So 81 maybe. And so none of the finance and accounting thing stuff was going to get fixed until he was gone. Not fixed, upgraded. And a better way to say it is, you know, the things that we did at the times we did them were the right things for that time.

Anthony Codispoti (40:13)
updated.

Modernized.

Steve Lombardo (40:21)
but they’re not the right things today, right? Just because of size, scope, everything else.

Anthony Codispoti (40:27)
You know, and for folks who haven’t been a part of significant growth like that, I think it’s easy to miss exactly the point that you’ve made here is that what gets you from A to B is not always what gets you from B to C, right? As you go through these different stages of growth, you need new tech, you need new process infrastructure, you need new management infrastructure.

And that can be really hard to do, right? Because you’ve got a team in place. They’ve been really great at getting you from here to there. And now sometimes you have to upgrade that team in addition to the tech and the processes.

Steve Lombardo (41:00)
Yep.

There were 10 people in that original room where we had that meeting that first year of that 10, there’s three people left. So, and the people that were in that room were great. I mean, there’s nothing, wasn’t, know, some went on to do other things, some retired, but, and I can’t say anything bad about them. It’s just, they’re not what we needed right now.

Anthony Codispoti (41:35)
Need a different skill set now. That’s all. Yeah. So Steve, let’s talk about Gibson’s restaurant group today. Paint a clear picture for our audience. What are the core experiences that you’re trying to create across all these different concepts?

Steve Lombardo (41:36)
Yeah, that’s exactly right.

Yeah.

Sure. As you said in the introduction, every customer must leave happy. And that’s our mantra, our core of being, so to speak. ⁓ I tell people in our new management orientations, if you don’t get off on the idea of serving other people, you are in the wrong business. This is about making other people happy. And that’s a cool thing, right? mean, people spend…

they’re some of their best moments and really create memories in our restaurants. And that’s a, that’s a really awesome thing. And so you have to treat it with that kind of respect and reverence. ⁓ but in terms of the hospitality that we try to provide, it’s that concierge level of it’s not just food on the table. It’s not just what’s there. It’s, mean, we’ve got people who will call us and they’re going to another city. And they said, you know, do you know this restaurant, you know, can you help me get a reservation there?

Of course we do. we go, you I’m going to be over here and, know, looking for tickets to this game. Well, we can figure that out. We’ll help them try to connect them to something. You know, like it’s a concierge level of service. So, and we try. I mean, I’m not saying we succeed all the time. That’s the goal.

Anthony Codispoti (42:54)
Really.

Wow. Is there.

Yeah.

Yeah. Tell us about the food. Are all these Italian concepts?

Steve Lombardo (43:07)
No,

no, no. So we have Steakhouse, a seafood restaurant. have a ⁓ hamburger bar, ⁓ pizza and wine concept. We have a high-end Italian steakhouse. we have several partnerships. ⁓ We partner with Jose Andreas with two of his concepts here in Chicago, Bizarre Meat and Bar Mar. We partner with Ralph Lauren.

We operate their restaurant RL here in Chicago. We actually opened two their restaurants for them also in New York, the Polo Bar, which we operated for six years. And then their restaurant in Paris, we helped them open years ago. And then we have a partnership with the founder of Rainforest Cafe. Steve Shussler is his name, is a great guy and genius. We have a restaurant called The Boathouse at Disney.

which is our largest restaurant. And I think, we won’t know until probably the end of the year, ⁓ it was probably the highest grossing independent restaurant in the United States last year.

Anthony Codispoti (44:17)
Wow. Okay, let’s talk about that. How? What are you guys doing there?

Steve Lombardo (44:17)
Yeah, we were number two the year before.

I mean, to be very frank, if you go back, you know, 10, 15 years ago, know, Disney is not, was not known for having good food. ⁓ people went there, they spent what they spent. the restaurants that were there, I think even the ones that were operated by outsiders, treated it like a concessionaire, right? That they’re, they’re going to come rain or shine. So we can cut on the cause here. can skimp on the quality there.

⁓ that’s just not who we are. ⁓ and you know, by providing a better level of food and service. And by the way, there’s since have a number of good operators have now come to Disney and have opened there and are doing a great job. ⁓ but, ⁓ you know, to treat people not like they’re just, you know, like they’re just a concession customer walking through the door, ⁓ really went a long way.

And I think our culture there is very good.

Anthony Codispoti (45:29)
Is there a specific hospitality story that you can share with us? Maybe you even tell internally because it sets the bar for your employees better than like any kind of written policy.

Steve Lombardo (45:42)
Sure. And we tell lots of stories. ⁓ And there’s a book that came out about two or three years ago, Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Guadera. ⁓ It very much describes what we believe. And I got to meet him ⁓ shortly after he wrote the book. And he knew our restaurants. And I told him that after I finished the book, I was angry. And he started laughing at me. And he goes, I know why you’re angry. And I go, why? He goes, because you wish you would have written it yourself.

Anthony Codispoti (46:10)
Hahaha.

Steve Lombardo (46:12)
That was it. so ⁓ the but here’s a story. So it’s the level. So the idea is we want to make sure every customer leaves happy. We know in our business that it’s impossible to be perfect. You know, the idea of like six sigma manufacturing where you reduce the error rate to one part per million, you know, widgets manufacture. We can’t even do one per hundred.

Right? It’s just, there’s too much of a human element and too many other variables going on. So, and there’s things that are just outside of your control. Like you could have a hundred people sitting outside and all of a sudden the clouds open up and it rains and it’s not your fault. You didn’t make any mistakes, but the customer’s not happy. Right? So what are the lengths we will go to? And so the story of this happened during COVID, right at the tail end of COVID.

We had a group that came in from Wisconsin. We found out later they traveled about three hours to Chicago. ⁓ During COVID, we had reduced our menus. We had to in order to survive, right? ⁓ She had wanted a particular dessert that wasn’t on the menu. And, you know, most of the time, if it’s something we can do,

We’ll whip something up even if it’s not on the menu. I mean, we’ll get ingredients, we’ll borrow them from other restaurants, we’ll send a busboy down to the grocery store, like whatever we can do. This particular thing required, you know, full days worth of prep. It’s not something that could be done in an hour. She wanted a banana cream pie, okay? And we didn’t have it. The manager recognized it, comp dessert, you know, try to do everything to make them feel good about it. She goes upstairs to the restroom.

And she’s saying everything, it’s fine, it’s fine, you But her table mate tells the manager, you know what, she is just, you know, all she wanted was that banana cream pie. You we came from Wisconsin, you know, she just had her heart set on it. She’s really disappointed. And so when ⁓ he took down her ⁓ information, got her address from the friend, and his next day off,

He had told the chef to prepare a banana cream pie and he drove it up to her place. Now our desserts are, you know, a single slice feeds about six to 10 people. So it’s like, it’s like, you know, eight inches tall. The whole pie is like around, you know, it’s got a, you know, 18 inch, it’s like a pizza size, but you know, eight inches, 10 inches tall. So he went up to her house.

And she actually owned a bed and breakfast and he comes, he not, he rings the doorbell and has this giant box. And she immediately knew what it was. And it was this, you know, it was the pie and she was just blown away. And so when we talk about it with our new hires, it’s, know, think about the, what that creates in her, right? When she comes back to Chicago, is she ever going to go to another restaurant? Right. She’s going to come back to our restaurant. When she hears her friends.

we’re taking a trip to Chicago. What’s she going to, she’s going to tell that story a hundred times. ⁓ and think about the, and more importantly, she was just amazed by it. So that’s the kind of thing that we want to do. Now, those opportunities don’t always present themselves. You can’t do that with every single table, but every single day there are opportunities that come in. doesn’t have to be such a grandiose gesture. It has to be tailored to what the customer wants and,

to show them that you care. That’s really it.

Anthony Codispoti (49:57)
That’s a phenomenal story. Now, I’m curious, is there a finance or a CFO person in the company who hears that story and pulls their hair out? Because they’re like, you gave a whole pie away and there was three hours of drive time each way.

Steve Lombardo (50:09)
No. ⁓

What I will say is yes and no in that people join our company and they come from other places and they don’t, it takes them a while to get it and to understand that that’s okay. that, we would rather them do that. One other and very short story, our first Mother’s Day for one of the restaurants, they overbooked it.

They weren’t ready for it. The kitchen crashed. People were on an hour plus wait for Mother’s Day. We ended up comping $60,000 worth of meals.

and didn’t blink an eye. And, you know, that was the right thing to do. And so, you know, obviously you don’t want to do that. You don’t want to put yourself in the situation to do that. But those situations happen and we tell our people, buy your way out of it. Just buy your way out of it. And new people don’t always get it. ⁓ We had a COO here for about four or five years. It took him a year before he fully understood.

that, you know what, it may not make financial sense in the short term, but in the long term, you know, we’re playing the long game. We’re going to be here. We’re now in the second generation, hopefully many generations beyond. So exactly.

Anthony Codispoti (51:36)
It’s your reputation and

it’s those stories that get told and retold and retold like delivering this pie to somebody three hours away. Love it. Steve, what’s one of the hardest things you’ve ever had to overcome personally and what did it teach you?

Steve Lombardo (51:43)
Mm-hmm. Yep.

So I talked a little bit before about the TV show, law school, that first year. I also happened to flunk the CPA exam that year. I didn’t do very well in that first year. My grades weren’t that great. ⁓ The show was a failure by all measures, right, other than I was a 22-year-old kid and accomplished, you know, put this stuff on the air. ⁓ And so that was a real setback. the lesson there was about focus.

Really. ⁓ but the other lesson I would say I, other thing that I think was probably the most difficult for me was COVID where, you know, we were existentially at risk, right? The, the whole world was against us at that point in time. ⁓ and you know, it was, you know, had to fire 2000 people by zoom. ⁓ you know, that, that’ll

do some, you that does something to you. The, think we did a lot of really good things during COVID ⁓ to help take care of our employees and other things, but at the same time, and even though there was nothing I could do about it, it’s still one of the hardest things I ever had to do. ⁓ But the learning there was, ⁓ I was fanatical about, and this goes back to the figure it out, do whatever it takes mindset.

⁓ When the PPP was first announced before it even before it even became law and now of course I have the legal background so that helps ⁓ I was reading the bill that was going before Congress I called our banks and was telling our banks listen You need to get out in front of this Learn about it because this is coming. You know, we bailed out the United States bailed out the banks 12 years ago in 2008

I said, I don’t know if it’s going to be the banks or the insurance companies, but one of those industries is going to end up bailing out the rest of the country this go around or be the conduit. I mean, is the government did the bailout, but and so I learned everything I could about it. I had. So the bank got involved and actually two banks and we were doing it with both of them and I had all of the information.

it wasn’t clear how the information was going to be processed or presented. And so I think I had it about 10 different ways at my hand, at my fingertips. when the portal opened, I would be ready to do it. And I remember my controller saying, well, you know, why don’t we wait until we understand what the,

you know, how they’re going to want, how they’re going to want the information. said, because it might be too late then we didn’t know that they were going to extend it and add to it and add to it. Right. And so I remember it was a Friday night and it was the portal’s opening at seven o’clock. And do you remember as a kid, you know, dialing up for like concert tickets where you just hang up and dial, hang up and that’s what I’m doing on my computer. ⁓ you know, refreshing the screen 10 minutes before the portal opens it like

6.55 and I have seven applications in before seven o’clock even happens. found out we were the ⁓ through our banker. I found out we were literally like within the first five applications in the entire, you know, of their entire client base. And so we got our money, you know, the idea was you might not get your, the longer you waited or where you were in line, you could get the money later. So we got our money.

right away and that was, you know, we became and then like the banks became the bailout, we became the unemployment office for the, you know, the, the, people. So that’s, that’s what it was.

Anthony Codispoti (55:54)
And

so had your people been let go in between? Yeah. And so now you were able to bring them back and put them on payroll.

Steve Lombardo (55:56)
Yeah, yeah. So we brought them back,

although we couldn’t really operate. So we were paying them. We did do a little bit of a, we did do a vocational survey. And we, cause some people, some people didn’t want to work. Some people based on their age, we didn’t want them to work, right? Because the older people were, you know, had, had higher risk. ⁓ There were a few of our people who were in their sixties and even seventies. I, I,

I mean, they were saying, well, you don’t want us to work? I said, no, I want you to live. And so, you know, I’m sorry, tearing up a little bit about that. ⁓ But so we did this vocational service. So we did get people to do things like paint the insides of, you know, tend to some of the gardening or do some administrative stuff, things that needed to get done. Like we took it as an opportunity to refresh the restaurants. And so if anybody had any skill set. ⁓

I mean, we had people who were refinishing furniture for us. so, you know, that’s, try to, and you know, some people just wanted to be feeling useful. So, and of course we’re paying them regardless, but yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (57:13)
When was the moment where you felt like we’re gonna make it through all of this?

Steve Lombardo (57:23)
You know, I would say it’s hard. It’s hard to gauge the when, and you know, it all sort of flows together. Looking back, I do remember, you know, we made a lot of, took us about two or three weeks to make all of the important decisions that we wanted to make. And we were, you know, aligning with our core values and everything else. And then I was bored.

I had, you know, and so now I’m thinking there’s opportunity. What am I going to do? Is there opportunity to hire good people, gain market share, even though we weren’t really open? Is there opportunity to, for real estate because although that never really came to fruition because the PPP sort of bailed out the landlords too. ⁓ the, we did get one really good hire out of it. a senior person who was, you know, a lot of people took the time during COVID to reevaluate.

their own lives, right? What they wanted. we got a guy who was probably, we outkicked our coverage in terms of his, he was, think the number three guy at Hard Rock. And he took a pay cut, significant pay cut to work for a smaller business because he enjoyed the idea of our brand and the idea of being a little bit closer to the restaurants that he had been in his previous role. So, ⁓ but.

Gosh, I would probably say it had to be at the tail end of 2020 that I thought like we might be okay. Maybe early 21. Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (58:56)
okay. Still relatively early in the whole COVID debacle. Okay.

What’s the future of Gibson’s look like? What’s coming?

Steve Lombardo (59:06)
Your guess is good. We’ve got one restaurant that is definitively opening at the end of this year in Chicago. We’re actively looking in other markets, working on deals in Tennessee, in Florida. We have, like I said, these partnerships that exist with that.

Anthony Codispoti (59:08)
What can you share with us?

Steve Lombardo (59:33)
also provide some opportunities and we may have some things with them going forward. ⁓ You know, we want to, I talk about it as the Gibson’s gospel. Like we, take care of people. do, we serve people and we treat people well. And so why wouldn’t we want to do that in more locations and more places, right? People, the number of people who I said this before celebrates some of the most important moments of their lives with us.

And that’s really cool. So want to want to bring that out to more people.

Anthony Codispoti (1:00:07)
So how do the partnerships work? You mentioned, ⁓ was it Ralph Lauren? ⁓ So you do a partnership with them. Is it basically licensing the name and then you guys kind of take over all the operational aspects?

Steve Lombardo (1:00:13)
Yeah.

So it’s actually

the other way around. ⁓ They pay us to operate the business. So we take a management fee for that. ⁓ In the case of the operation at Disney World, it’s a partnership. We’re both equity owners, ⁓ as well as we both get paid a management fee for that. And then our other operation, the partnership with Jose Andres, is a joint venture. So it’s a 50-50.

split all sorts of yeah yeah and we’re talking to somebody else about a license deal where we would be the licensee and pay them you know so it could could be a lot of different ways

Anthony Codispoti (1:00:48)
So these partnerships can take on lots of different structures and flavors.

fun stuff. ⁓ Okay, I think I’ve just got one more question for you today, Steve. But before I ask it, I want to do three quick things for the audience. Anybody who wants to get in touch with Steve Lombardo got his email address right here. Steve3 at grgmc.com. Steve3 at grgmc.com. We’ll have that in the show notes in case you missed it.

Steve Lombardo (1:01:07)
Sure.

Yeah, and by the way, I had a different email address early on and everyone was confusing my father and me, so I had to do the Steve 3 ⁓ to make the distinguishing. Yes, but that’s not his email. He doesn’t even look at email anyway, so.

Anthony Codispoti (1:01:33)
Okay. Is your dad Steve too?

Okay. All

right. Fair enough. And also for the audience today, if you’re enjoying our show, ⁓ please take a quick moment to subscribe wherever you’re listening. It sends a signal that helps others to discover our podcast. So thanks for taking a quick moment to do that right now. And as a reminder, you can get your restaurant employees access to therapists, doctors and prescription meds that counter intuitively actually increases your company’s net profits.

real gains that can change how a business is valued. So contact us today at addbackbenefits.com. So last question for you, Steve, a year from now, what’s one very specific thing that you hope to be celebrating?

Steve Lombardo (1:02:21)
Yeah, so I would say I would really hope that our restaurant in Florida is the number one highest grossing independent restaurant in the United States, which would be great. And then the other is a successful opening of the location here, which is going to be called the Gibson’s Tavern. ⁓ we have, you know, our opening restaurants are always difficult. It’s never, never easy. And there’s always, you know, hurdles, but ⁓

We figure them out, but it’s good to figure them out sooner rather than later.

Anthony Codispoti (1:02:55)
You know, actually, lied. have one additional question for you because you brought up before, kind of early in your career, ⁓ you you had these doubts, of, am I, you know, this imposter syndrome kind of thing. Now here you are, you know, man, you guys are kicking butt. And I wonder, do you still have some of those doubts or are you fully confident in everything that you do?

Steve Lombardo (1:03:14)
yeah.

No, of course. ⁓ You know, this is a very people intensive business and people are both imperfect beings. I, know, the older you get, the more I think I can understand people. But at the same time, everybody’s unique and it’s easy. I screw up all the time.

I mean, like I said, our employees, they’re going to make mistakes. It’s okay. How do you recover from it? How do you learn from it? Same thing. But as I get older, I don’t dwell on them as much other than what’s my takeaway, what I learned from it. I don’t like living in the past too much.

Anthony Codispoti (1:03:59)
Yeah. Well, lots of exciting things on the horizon. I think Steve, we’re going to have to schedule a follow up interview for a year from now just to check in and see how all those things are unfolding. Yeah. Steve Lombardo from Gibson’s Restaurant Group. I want to be the first to thank you for sharing both your time and your story with us today. I really appreciate you being here.

Steve Lombardo (1:04:09)
That’d be great.

Thanks so much. Thanks so much.

Anthony Codispoti (1:04:22)
Folks, that’s a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories podcast. Thanks for learning with us today. And if one thing stood out, put that into action today.

Intro  

Welcome to another edition of inspired stories where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from their successes, how they’ve overcome adversity, and explore current challenges they’re facing.

Anthony (host):  

Welcome to another edition of the inspired stories podcast where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from their successes, how they’ve overcome adversity and explore current challenges they’re facing. My name is Anthony Codispoti.. And this episode is brought to you by my company AddBack Benefit Agency, where we offer very specific and unique employee benefits that are both great for your team and fiscally optimized for your bottom line. One recent client was able to save over $900 per employee per year by implementing one of our programs. Another client is going to save over $1,200 per employee per year by implementing a different program a patented construct that we offer. Results vary for each company and some organizations may not be eligible to find out if your company qualifies. Contact us today at add back benefits agency.com. Today’s today’s show, our guest is Ryan Whiteside, who is the Digital Marketing Director at two wheels marketing a firm based in Columbus, Ohio that provides SEO, PPC and paid digital advertising. Ryan, I appreciate you making the time to share your story today.

Ryan (guest):  

Yeah, great to be here.

Anthony (host):  

So let’s start not quite at the beginning. But I see you went to Ohio University and Athens from graduation. What was that path into digital marketing? How did you first get started in the field? And what did your path kind of look like to get you to be where you are now at two wheels? Yes.

Ryan (guest):  

So I went to college in 2003. And my freshman year I was in like multiple majors, I could not figure out what I wanted to do with my life.

Anthony (host):  

Sounds like a traditional college freshman.

Ryan (guest):  

But in my spare time, I started building websites. So my first start was a poker website. So Parker was like very popular at the time. So I created this website that like reviewed all the poker sites, and I earned a commission affiliate program whenever someone would sign up for these services and made money that way. So like I was my first intro into making money out of wine. So I was like, very addicted to that. And you know, from there, I created multiple websites all throughout college, and made a nice side income from that. But my degree was in computer science. So I learned to program and do all this stuff. And I really did not like it. But by the time I really figured out that I really didn’t like it, I was like it was into my third or fourth year of school. So I was like, I might as well just finish because I’m so close to the end. But once I got out of school, I already knew I did not want to be a programmer and do that my entire life. But I always had that passion of marketing. So that’s kind of where I started to look for jobs was in digital marketing, which, at the time I started my career with, well, the worst times was 2008, you know, economy crashed. There weren’t just a lot of SEO or digital marketing jobs in general, like it was kind of starting to become an up and coming thing. But one company finally took a chance on me and you know, the rest is history.

Anthony (host):  

So who was that company that took a chance on you.

Ryan (guest):  

They’re not even around anymore. It was called Web Marketing. I was employee seven there. And it was it was a wild company to start at. I mean, I remember like, one of our first couple months it was Halloween and like, instead of working for a day we like sat around and drank like it was it was a wild time. I

Anthony (host):  

think we’re we’re understanding a little bit well, maybe why they’re not still around. No,

Ryan (guest):  

actually. That’s not an accurate picture like they are. The two owners were fantastic people some of the best people I’ve ever worked with that they’re still very, very successful today. And actually the company grew from like seven to 30 very quickly. And a couple of years later, we got acquired by a company that was 150 people. So yeah, the company itself was a success. We just just in the early days of a startup it was just like you know a lot of excitement, constant change that type of thing.

Anthony (host):  

I want to go back to the poker website Commission’s because it sounds like that’s where you get your first bite of the digital marketing. Apple in it, and it worked pretty well. Can you give us an idea of what kind of side income you were able to generate from that while you were in college?

Ryan (guest):  

Yeah, I mean, I was making anywhere between. I mean, it wasn’t like crazy money. But I mean, between 500 and a couple $1,000 a month I was making in college, which I remember, some friends would like, work at, you know, the local fast food place making like $6 an hour. And like, the money I was making was, like, completely passive, like, my website was just sitting there. And I was collecting checks. So like, it was, it was pretty nice. And, you know, paid for some of the college funds. That’s

Anthony (host):  

awesome. Yeah, I think I was making about $4 an hour when I was in college. So that shows a little bit of our age difference there. But, so I know your career, you know, you, you did the computer programming thing in college, you came out, you got into the digital marketing field sounds like you worked at a agencies a variety, different sizes. And then in the last, you know, what was it two or three years ago? You’ve been a part of two wheels marketing, which is this small, scrappy, firm in Columbus, Ohio? How does that compare to the experiences you’ve had at some of the other organizations? What, what do you prefer about it? What’s, what’s worse about it? Maybe?

Ryan (guest):  

Yeah, so I, you know, looking back on my career, the times I was the most frustrated were the times where I had the least control over things like, especially with the company that was 150. I mean, just so much bureaucracy, like to get anything done required, approvals, overtop of approvals, etc. And, like, those kinds of situations I, I just really struggled with and was frustrating. So yeah, I kind of come to the realization, I’ve always kind of preferred, you know, having more control, and two wheels, you know, it’s very small company. So, you know, the thoughts opinions, I have, like, really matter, and, you know, we kind of run with so simple, I’ve really liked compared to, you know, some of the other companies, you know, on the other side, in, in theory, you know, a bigger company, you may consider that, like a safer job where, you know, like, if you lose some clients, like the company can technically absorb that. But, you know, what I found with two wheels is just like, we have a very stable set of clients. And, you know, we, even though we’re not a big company, we are able to, you know, sustain even if a few clients drop off, so, there’s really, there’s really not a lot of downsides, just with the way to his business structure set up.

Anthony (host):  

Yeah. You know, I hear this from a lot of my entrepreneurial friends who maybe had had some experience in corporate environments. And there is this high degree of frustration of the path to a solution or to success is relatively clear, like, we need to take these steps here, but there’s so much red tape, there’s so much bureaucracy that it becomes paralyzing and frustrating, you feel like you’re beating your head against the wall, you know, spending time on things that don’t really matter.

Ryan (guest):  

Yeah, and I mean, that kind of applies to clients as well. I remember one of our clients was this major health organization in Columbus. And, you know, we’ve put together this pitch deck and like, we propose this like, very creative idea. And, you know, the marketing director would pitch it to is like, Oh, my God, this is fantastic. Like, yeah, we should definitely do this. Like it was an absolute no brainer, what we were proposing and like, there’s going to be clear, deliverable successful results. And, you know, she had to pitch it to her boss, then her boss, and then her boss, and then four bosses later, eventually, someone was like, hey, it’s not a good idea. And then we ended up not even doing it, even though it was like, you know, a no brainer thing to do. That’s

Anthony (host):  

so frustrating. And that, that actually makes me wonder what have you found from your experience is sort of your, like, ideal client, like maybe the big corporate structures like that are appealing on the outside because it could be a very valuable contract for you. It could be nice, steady work, but having to jump through all those hoops to get there can be a waste of time is there, like a mid tier to a smaller client that you find is a is typically a better fit. I

Ryan (guest):  

mean, it’s definitely not smaller, the better, you know, more medium sized companies do have additional funds, and they are able to take more chances. So necessarily the size of the business, I guess, like the ideal clients is where you know, the worker do is going to make an impact, like a big impact, like for some clients, like whether they’re small or medium. It’s like, okay, like, what you’re doing now is already pretty good. And yeah, we can come in and do like a little bit of optimizations here and there, but we’re not going to make a drastic change, whereas some businesses, it’s like, okay, yeah, what we can do for you, it’s going to be like, you’ll immediately see it like, it’s, it’s definitely going to make a big impact. And, yeah, I mean, as those tend to be the most rewarding clients where they say, a year from now, like, yeah, we’ve had to hire more people on staff, because of, you know, the work you’ve been doing, or, you know, one of the recent clients like they, they literally doubled their digital marketing revenue from one year to the next. And the only difference was like, we were working with them for that whole year. So you know, things like that, where we know, it can make a big, big impact. Those are, like the clients I really like to work with.

Anthony (host):  

And you can probably get a pretty good sense of the ones that you’ll have the biggest impact on just by going in and kind of looking at what they’re doing now. What, what is the SEO structure on their site look like? What are their PPC campaigns look like? You probably my right, get a pretty good sense pretty quickly, like, Oh, this is somebody we can really move the needle for? Yeah, definitely.

Ryan (guest):  

Mark, you know, founder to wheels, like, he’ll send me the website, and we’ll, we’ll kind of talk about it. And, yeah, I mean, there are some times where it’s like, yeah, we could take this over. And, you know, we’re gonna do a good job, and we’re gonna give it our best efforts. But in reality, like, I don’t know how much of an impact it can make. And I mean, to give a little more specific, like, in digital marketing, some of the clients I struggle working with our businesses were like, the businesses, customers might only be like, 50, or 100. People, like, their target market is like, you know, CEOs of major companies, like, you know, to do digital marketing, and to try to find those 50 or 100 people is a bit challenging, where, like, for those types of businesses, they really just need to find those businesses and call them, email them, send them postcards, send them letters in the mail, like, it’s not necessarily like running a Facebook ad to those 50 or 100. People like that doesn’t work very well. Whereas, you know, like, an easier fit for digital marketing is like, everybody needs us, like, everyone needs blood, like to buy flowers, or everyone needs a dentist or something like that, where there’s like a big market, it’s easier to target those people and and make a bigger impact when you have a wider audience like that.

Anthony (host):  

You want to be able to cast a big net, rather than trying to throw a line in for a single fish. Yeah,

Ryan (guest):  

well, I Yeah. I mean, I mean, you can do, you can do a good job with digital marketing, if it’s not a massive audience. But you know, it’s just really hard to do digital marketing. And we’ve had a few clients where like, like I said, there’s literally only 50 to 500 people in the entire world that would even be a good fit for this business and to do digital marketing on that as can be a bit challenging.

Anthony (host):  

What is it that sets you guys apart from your competition? When somebody is coming to you from one of your competitors? Why? Why are they doing that? Why are they more likely to see success with you guys?

Ryan (guest):  

Yeah, we definitely have a lot of clients that are working with another, another digital marketing company and they’re disgruntled with the work and yeah, I mean, one of our advantages right now is just we’re, we’re very lean, not a lot of overhead. Like, you know, I’ve worked with a lot of digital marketing companies, like I said, and you know, a lot of times you’re your point of contact as an account manager, and that account manager doesn’t know anything about digital marketing and that’s like frustrating where you have to talk to the account manager, the account manager has to kind of try to tell the people are actually doing the work what needs done and there’s like miscommunications and all kinds of problems. And you know, kind of similarly, like, someone might get sold by like a real really great salesperson who, again, doesn’t know anything about digital marketing, but they kind of over pitch services and promises. So you go into, you know, a relationship with like, all these extremely high, like impossible expectations. And then when the people actually doing the work are in there, they’re like, yeah, there’s no way we’re gonna be able to do this. So, you know, the benefit with us is, you know, the people you’re talking to, are really the ones in there doing the dirty work as well. So it’s going to be clear transparents, right out of the gates. And, you know, because we don’t have as much overhead, as you know, some other companies more time is get getting spent doing the work, that’s going to make a difference for you.

Anthony (host):  

Well, in your company, right, they get to come and they talk to the account rep, the sales rep, the the owners, the operators, all on the same conversation, there aren’t those different layers where those conversations sort of get lost? And this guy promised one thing, and it didn’t get passed on to the other guy. So

Ryan (guest):  

exactly. And, and yeah, I mean, between Mark and I, like, we both been in this industry for one two years. And, you know, you’re getting a very senior level person, that that you’re working with, at all times, which you know, another thing with, like, bigger agencies, like, you might be working with a team, and they might be doing a good job, but one of them leaves, and then you’re working with a different person, and that person has to relearn the accounts, and maybe they’re not as senior level as the other person. And you’re like, Oh, I wish I was working with that other person when things are great. And, you know, your account can just get passed around by person to person, and there can be a lot of disconnect there.

Anthony (host):  

No, no, most business leaders that I meet, have at least one, if not multiple stories, where they had to overcome a big challenge at some point in their career, you know, maybe there was a lawsuit or a firing or a big accounting mistake, or, you know, something that that, you know, almost really derailed things, or maybe didn’t derail things for a while. We don’t often get to hear so much about these stories, because people are embarrassed to share. But for me, these are some of my favorite conversations because it inspires other people to be resilient in the face of their own challenges. What can you think of in your past, it’s a, you know, a big challenge that maybe you had to overcome.

Ryan (guest):  

Yeah, it’s there was a kind of a lull in the middle of my career was very frustrated. And it just kind of seem like I was doing the same thing, year after year. And that went on for two to three years where I was just like I was, I was managing the same team, we were doing the same stuff. You know, digital marketing is always changing. But like, there wasn’t any major things going on, we were still kind of doing the same process. And that’s where I was starting to get kind of frustrated. And at the time, I was only doing SEO work, which was just one aspect of digital marketing, where there’s multiple aspects. And I always wanted to be multifaceted, where I could do SEO, I could run Google ads, I could run Facebook ads, I could do email marketing, etc. And I think with my career, it was it was hard to transition. Because, you know, it’s hard to start doing work that you have no experience. And whereas, you know, your career role, like you have years and years of experience and and, you know, you have more knowledge there. So, to be able to finally break free and get to an opportunity where I could do multiple aspects. It was it was a real struggle for a couple years. But eventually, I did get through it. And now I’m at a point where my level of learning is so much more rapid than it used to be. Which I feel like there’s like a Steve Jobs quote, or something where he said something along these lines, but if you’re not really learning on a daily basis, and you’re just kind of, in a rut, doing the same things over and over, like, don’t wait so long to make adjustments to where you’re more fulfilled, and you’re learning.

Anthony (host):  

Yeah, I love that. It’s a message I try to communicate to my kids on a regular basis. You know, they, they think that at some point, they’re going to reach, you know, a stage in their life where they’re, they’re sort of they know it all they they’re done learning. And the line I like to give them all the time is if you’re doing it right, you are learning something new every day. And so I want to hear a little bit More about that stagnant period, because, you know, I think a lot of people can probably relate to that, you know, it’s like, you know, it almost feels like Groundhog Day like, you know, you’re getting out of bed, you’re you’re going through the same routine, like, like you want to shake it up, you want to learn you want to grow. And like you pointed out, you were sort of in like a catch 22 Because you wanted to do something new, but how do you get a job and that new thing without having, you know, some experience in it? So how did you sort of navigate that? How did you get from this place of I want to be over here? It’s tough to get over here without having some experience. How did you cross that? Yeah,

Ryan (guest):  

yeah, I mean, not every profession can do this, but with with our industry. I mean, people take sidekicks, it’s just kind of like it, maybe it’s a little more secret at the time, but it’s pretty normal to, I guess, have a full time role, but then understand that you might be doing a little bit of work on the side. And that’s how I was able to make the transition was, you know, my full time job was doing SEO for company. But, you know, 510 hours a week, I was also moonlighting siding with another company. And that’s where I got no opportunities to start running Facebook ads get first firsthand experience. Same thing with Google ads. That way, whenever I was at the point where I wanted to do another role, it’s like, okay, I have, I have done this type of work before, these are the type of results I got. And, you know, that’s kind of kind of the way I was able to transition was to be able to actually get experience, it just wasn’t in a full time role. Got

Anthony (host):  

it, you took a side gig, and you were able to build up a portfolio and some experience that you could then kind of leverage in getting some of those new opportunities. Another interesting thing that you said is that your level of learning is a lot more rapid now than it was before. What do you credit that to?

Ryan (guest):  

Yeah, I mean, being a small team, like, you know, we have a set of clients. And you know, we’re every day trying to figure out what’s best for the client. And, I mean, whatever that is, like, whatever idea I have, like, oh, maybe we should try this new thing. It’s like, Hey, Mark, we should do this. Yeah, I agree. And then we do it. So it’s like, there’s not a lot of friction from, Hey, I’ve learned this, or I have this idea to let’s try it. Let’s go. Whereas again, like if you’re working at a bigger company, it’s like, okay, I have this idea. Well, that’s not my department. So someone else has to do it. And then maybe they think it’s a good idea. Maybe they don’t, or, yeah, like the account manager doesn’t want to do it, or the client doesn’t want to do it. Like there’s all kinds of possibilities where you don’t go from idea to implementation as quickly. So that’s kind of where the, the learning happens is in the doing and, you know, there’s a lot more action taking in our current setup.

Anthony (host):  

Got it? So we talked a little bit about the sort of the professional challenge of getting stuck for a bit. What about any personal challenges that you had to overcome that you look back on maybe had, you know, a formative influence on who you are today? You know, for some people, it’s, you know, maybe there was a death of a loved one or you stuttered or undiagnosed case of dyslexia or anything like that, that you know, kind of earlier on in your life that you think maybe helped to shape who you are today?

Ryan (guest):  

Ah, yeah, when you when he first asked that, like, as far as, like, things that impacted me was probably getting fired a couple times. Like, you know, that’s not early in life that’s like in my career, but like those things really set me on a much better path where, you know, getting stagnates you know, sit working for the same company for many years getting fired because things that were outside of my control primarily, like they lose a bunch of clients and everything’s kind of tailspins from there. But yeah, when you get fired and you’re really scrapping to find your next opportunity, you you grow thicker skin, you get more, more different experience. Yeah, like having that happen twice in my career, like really shaped me considerably to where I am today. Whereas if, if those things which seemed like horrible at the time, didn’t happen to me, I would not be the person I am today. Like, I just wouldn’t be so yeah. Tell

Anthony (host):  

me a little bit more about that. What’s it feel like in that moment to get fired? And how does that eventually turn around to be this good positive force in your life?

Ryan (guest):  

Yeah. Yeah, the time it happened, it was just completely blindsided. Yeah, I’d worked at a company for eight years, like, I never really looked for alternative jobs, just because it’s kind of like a loyalty thing. I guess. Like, I felt like, hey, you know, even though I have all these frustrations with this company, like, I’m loyal to these people, for whatever reason, but then getting fired, just kind of like, wipe, you know, wipe the dust in my eyes and realize, like, hey, there’s greener pastures out there. And like, immediately, like, the next opportunity I got, I was like, oh, yeah, there’s like, so many new and different things here. And I’m meeting a bunch of different co workers. And yeah, like, Why did I spend the last few years like in a position that just wasn’t working for me when I could have went elsewhere? So yeah, it’s,

Anthony (host):  

it kind of forced you to shake up the snowglobe in us, in a way. Exactly. Yeah. That’s great. Any specific books or mentors that have helped to shape your professional career?

Ryan (guest):  

Oh, gosh, I really got the personal development kick my seat around my senior year of college. I even so one of the websites that I started was a personal development website, which went away but I mean, I read hundreds of personal development books. So anything from like time management to goal setting, to you know, investing all these things? So yeah, I definitely went through quite a, a book journey. But I don’t read as much as many books now. I tend to do more courses, podcasts. But um, yeah, I mean, I, like my senior year, like a couple books, I can think of, or like, thinking Grow Rich, for our work week. Summer, like Ryan Tracy’s, like, eat my Eat, eat the frog, or whatever it’s called. Yeah. Richest Man in Babylon. Like, there were a lot of books that really kind of opened my eyes to like, oh, yeah, you can be a better person. And you can, you know, learn to use your time more effectively. And, you know, reach towards, like set and resource goals, like, all these things were like, you know, never really learned at school. And it was like, something that I feel really helped, especially as I was entering, you know, the real world and the workforce.

Anthony (host):  

It’s something that I wish that schools were able to do a better job of is sort of the making learning fun. And I get like, they’re trying to, you know, you’ve got to have this sort of foundation in place, right? You have to know how to read, you have to know how to write you have to know, math skills. But yeah, for me, it wasn’t until later in life when I got out of college, and I own my own company. And I was in a position where I needed to learn in order to advance my career in my company. And but there was a lot of fun and being able to apply that knowledge where I felt like in school, I was spending a lot of time learning things that were sort of theoretical, and it was like, Maybe I would use this someday, but I don’t know is do you find that as well? Like, is it more exciting and motivating for you to sort of pick and choose the things that you’re interested in that you get to learn more about?

Ryan (guest):  

Yeah, I’m definitely yes. I mean, so many people in life, like, once they get out of school, they, I mean, stop learning. Like, I know, there’s like stats were like, I forget like 50 like at least 50% of people once they graduate never read a book again, or something like that. So it don’t quote me on that, like, look it up on the internet, and how could they even come up with that stat, like, that’s another sidetrack. But I remember that was a stat that I read at one point in time, but yeah, I mean, it’s it. Yeah, I mean, the school systems, I guess, like, you know, a lot of it is like rote memorization, and you’re learning this just to pass the test where, you know, the real world is more about like What can I learn that I can apply? That’s, I mean, that’s something, especially with digital marketing, like you can really go down the rabbit hole of education where you’re reading a million different blog posts and doing all this stuff. But a lot of the learning, like, comes from being in the weeds and like really digging in and doing the stuff that’s, that’s where you get a lot of the learning not not that like blog posts and courses aren’t valuable, but that they contend to be a trap with a lot of people is just like learning, learning, learning, learning, but never actually doing. Yeah, so you kind of have to make sure that balance is in place.

Anthony (host):  

What’s something you wish you could teach the 20 year old version of Ryan.

Ryan (guest):

Yeah, I mean, like a constant. I guess the constant theme is like.

If you’re not learning, and you’re kind of stagnant like. It’s time for change. I’m sure there’s a million things. I tell my tell my twenties like so many things about the golf swing I’d be like, come on, man, like all you have to do is this, it makes it so much easier.

Like a and so many different subjects. But yeah, II mean it for me, like when I’m happiest and most fulfilled is like when I’m on regularly learning. And yeah, they were just kind of points. And micro. You know, as I mentioned before, that things a little bit stagnant.

Anthony (host):  

Yeah, there’s a regular theme that is is coming up here, and it’s one of continuous self improvement and learning, which I think is great. What’s a challenge that you’re currently working through in your business?

Ryan (guest): 

So in with with digital marketing agencies, you can kind of go a couple of them or pass. You can be good for a lot of different industries, or you can go niche and like only work for one type of company, like only dentists or only flower shops, etc. And there’s kind of pros and cons to both. The pros with going super niche is like you can become the best of that industry, and like become very good at servicing that particular type of client and all this types of thing. It makes the sales process easier, because, like, Hey. you know, we already work with 20 other businesses just like you. And we have all kinds of the testimonials and stuff, and it makes that process easy. But the problem with going super niche is. it could be economic factors like, if all of a sudden, people don’t want to use this service anymore, or something to that effect. Like, well, okay, you’ve built your entire portfolio on one industry. So if that industry gets shaken you’re in a lot of trouble, whereas, you know, working with a bunch of different types of industries. You’re more resilient to outside factors. And in a way, you can also learn faster by working in different industries. So you can learn something in one industry that applies to another industry, etc. So I think the question was like, I forgot where he landed on the question, but what’s what’s a challenge that you’re currently so business. So you guys trying to like, yeah, so the challenge with us is, yeah, we are starting to find some vertical that we’re already good at, like we have some verticals where we already have a dozen or so clients.

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and the challenge is, how can we get more of those clients? So specifically, flower shops? We have a lot of different flower shops. And the challenge with that is in the sales process. So in a lot of industries, you might be able to send emails or follow them on Linkedin, or, you know. go in Facebook groups and kind of meet them. But with flash up owners like what we found is they’re they’re kind of old school like they’re not as tech savvy? So the challenge being a digital marketing company is, how can we kind of get in front of these people that aren’t necessarily digital people? And you know something we’re exploring this year is going to conferences, sending them postcards and stuff in the mail. You know, reaching out via phone. So kind of doing offline sales activities, even though, like our wheelhouse is all the things you could do when people are are online.

Anthony (host):  

That’s what’s something fun or interesting that most people don’t know about you, Ryan.

Ryan (guest):

Yeah, every time I do an interview. And I get this question, II say the same thing. So here it goes. fun. Fact about me is, I have 7 published novels. So I’ve written 7 fiction books. There’s like a a couple years before my first son was born, like once my son was born. This kill killed my fiction writing career. But yeah, it was in a span of like, about 2 years, 2 and a half years. I wrote 7 fiction novels, which, yeah, was pretty cool. Pretty fun at the time, were they? Kind of all part of a series? Was there a common theme to them. Yeah, there were. So there were 5, 5 of them. or 4 of them were standalone. And then there was a trilogy. So yeah, that made up the 7. And what’s like is this like, I don’t even know. Comedy was this like murder? Mystery like, what’s more thriller, thriller mystery. All them are kind of in the thriller mystery category, which is kind of like the movies and shows and books that I like to reader. And so were these all like digitally published. Did you do any? Yeah, I mean, they’re on Amazon and Barnes and noble and apple, and I can buy a physical copy of these books. Yeah, I’ve yeah, I’ve got the physical copies in my basement. There’s probably a box of books. And yeah, I’ve every now and then I’ll like hand them out to coworkers and stuff. So yeah, there’s physical copies now. My name is Ryan Whiteside, but I used a pen name, because I’m super cool writer person like that. So if you search like Ryan Ryan Wiley was my pen name. So if you search Ryan Wiley on Amazon. I think I still come up and search results for some of my books. So you still get some sales from that. Yeah, I get like, yeah, few dollars royalties every year, which it’s actually a pain with my accountant, because, like royalties have to be classified as something else. So it causes like a couple extra emails explaining what this income is, because it has to be like. I don’t know. It’s an accounting problem that they have to deal with.

Anthony (host):  

And what’s what’s the most interesting evolution or innovation that’s happening in your industry right now?

Ryan (guest):

Oh, yeah, I mean, like a lot of industries like AI machine learning, you know, makes makes a huge impact in digital marketing. And I mean, even before, like ChatGPT era, like machine learning. And AI, it was still a pretty big part or impact on what we do. I mean, specifically like you take Facebook ads, for example, something 5 years ago that we as digital marketers, it was super important was to like find the right interest audiences. So if your trying to think of an example

like, if you’re into Catholic books, for example, like in Facebook, you used to have all these targeting options. So you would set people that are interested in Catholicism or people that are interested in the Pope, or people that are interested in Richard Roar. Which is this very popular Catholic author like you had to find all these like very niche pockets and and manually type them in. Whereas now, like more and more, Facebook has just like taken away a lot of the targeting options that you can type in because of privacy. And all these reasons, but also confidence in their algorithms where a lot of the time the targeting we set is what we call catch-all, where it’s just like Facebook. Go after everyone between the age of 21 and 65, and find the audience for me. And that’s all done by AI and machine learning. And you know what we find as like Facebook’s algorithms, just really good. Now, at, you know all the information they have already on your customers. So they yeah, you know, with digital marketing, you can add like a pixel, it’s called a pixel on your website. So they’re tracking you. So they know everyone that’s coming to the website. They know if you purchased or not. They also know other websites you’re visiting. So like Facebook and Google, they have like millions of data points on all these people. And because of that, their algorithm is very smart. So once you say, Hey, Facebook, find this audience who’s most likely to purchase these books. They’re very good at doing that, because they have all all those data points on people.

Anthony (host):  

Right? Yeah. So it used to be like you were saying that. You had to be really good at picking out these individual audiences. And but now with the pixel that tracks everybody Facebook and Google’s algorithm is better than choosing those individual audiences which you don’t even have the ability to do as much anymore. You know you might have to spend a little bit more and add spend, I believe, upfront to to be able to help train the pixel and get some of that data into Google and Facebook so that they know the audience that’s converting. But it’s it’s it’s much more effective in the long term.

Ryan (guest):

Yep, yeah. And yeah, I mean, as far as like digital marketing, we just we kind of have to pivot and what we’re doing so, whereas before we were spending all our time like finding those audiences and keywords and stuff where now we have to focus more of our time on other things because of, you know, some of that’s done for us. So you know, for example, you know, that frees us frees us up to spend more time on talking to the client about like what offer they’re doing like, hey? Maybe we should run this promotion during this time, or you know things like that where maybe before, we wouldn’t have had as much time to to be able to do those things.

Anthony (host):  

Got it? Ryan. You mentioned before that a lot of times in digital marketing, you know, you’re you’ve got some side gigs going on any interesting side gigs or projects that you want to give voice to. No, I don’t.

Ryan (guest):

II really don’t do as much side gigging as I used to. Part of that is just. you know my personal life. I’ve got a 8 year old now, and he keeps me pretty busy, whereas you know Pre Pre Evan, my my son’s name Pre Evan, like I used to wake up at 5 and write some fiction books and do some side work until, like 110’clock on a Saturday or Sunday like it was no problem like 5 h of free time to just, you know, do this type of work, whereas now like we wake up the same time he wants to play soccer in the basement, or go outside, or something which which is great. You know, I definitely wouldn’t change it. So yeah, as far as like side work. Yeah, it’s just yeah. II don’t do it quite nearly as much as I used to.

Anthony (host):  

Evan is your side work now.

Ryan (guest):

Exactly. Yup

Anthony (host):  

I wanna be respectful of your time. But let people know, how can they get in touch with you?

Ryan (guest):

Yeah, I’ll don’t have a big following on Instagram or Tiktok, although I did demo Tiktok videos for a little bit. Yeah, I mean, you could look me up on Linkedin Ryan Whiteside. You can connect with me there. Message, me or yeah, I mean, if you wanna learn about digital marketing stuff. Yeah, you can go to 2 wheels marketing. I also have a few courses on you to me. If you actually want to learn how to do this first hand. You can search for my name on you to me and see some of the courses I’ve done.

Anthony (host):  

That’s U-D-E-M-Y.com

Anthony (host):  

Yeah, Ryan, thanks for making the time. We really appreciate being able to hear your story. That’s a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories Podcast. Thanks for learning with me today.