Welcome to The Career Advantage Show
I am your host, Tony Pisanelli
On this show, we dive deep with our guests to uncover real stories, practical insights, and proven strategies that will help you reclaim your career power, navigate transitions, and design what’s next with confidence.
My very special guest today is Kent Lewis ...
Lewis is currently Executive Director of NextNW, a non-profit trade association that unifies the Pacific Northwest advertising & marketing professionals interested in professional development, sharing best practices, and collaborative problem-solving. He is also Founder of pdxMindShare, Portland’s premier career community, with over 12,000 LinkedIn Group members.
With a background in integrated marketing, he left a public relations agency in 1996 to start his career in digital marketing. Since then, he’s helped grow businesses by connecting his clients with their constituents online. In 2000, Lewis founded Anvil Media, Inc., a measurable marketing agency specializing in search engine and social media marketing. Under his leadership, Anvil has received recognition from Portland Business Journal and Inc. Magazine as a Fastest Growing and Most Philanthropic Company. After selling his agency in March 2022, he became a CMO for the acquiring firm.
Beyond co-founding SEMpdx, Lewis co-founded two agencies, emailROI (now Thesis) and Formic Media. As a long-time entrepreneur, he’s advised or invested in a host of companies, including PacificWRO, Maury’s Hive Tea and ToneTip. Lewis speaks regularly at industry events and has been published in books and publications including Business2Community, Portland Business Journal, and SmartBrief. For twenty years, he was an adjunct professor at Portland State University, and has been a volunteer instructor for SCORE Portland since 2015.
Lewis tours nationwide, averaging 30 speaking engagements annually, including a regular presenter role with the Digital Summit conference series. Active in his community, Lewis has been involved in non-profit charity and professional trade organizations including early literacy program SMART Reading and The Entrepreneurs' Organization (EO). Industry recognition and awards include Portland Business Journal’s Top 40 Under 40 Award, American Marketing Association Oregon Chapter Marketer of the Year, and Top 100 Digital Marketing Influencers by BuzzSumo.
Transcript
[00:00.980 --> 00:11.960] Welcome to the Career Advantage Show, where we help you reclaim your career power and design your working life on your terms.
[00:12.540 --> 00:18.640] I'm Tony Piscinelli, and each week I sit down with leaders who have faced career-defining moments,
[00:19.300 --> 00:26.080] such as a devastating job loss, burnout, stagnation, or even workplace harassment,
[00:26.080 --> 00:33.100] and being able to turn these difficult circumstances into powerful and greater opportunities.
[00:33.400 --> 00:44.520] Welcome to today's Career Advantage Show. I'm Tony Piscinelli, and I am joined by Kent Lewis, all the way from Portland, Oregon, in America.
[00:44.800 --> 00:45.600] Welcome, Kent.
[00:46.580 --> 00:48.700] Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.
[00:50.120 --> 00:54.320] Kent, I read your profile with considerable interest.
[00:54.320 --> 01:00.100] You are a director of a number of companies.
[01:00.300 --> 01:04.020] You co-founded a company called Anvil, which is a marketing agency.
[01:04.900 --> 01:13.720] You're a thought leader in the world of digital marketing, and also you take a keen interest in the employee experience.
[01:14.220 --> 01:19.320] And you're a speaker and a prolific content producer. So welcome.
[01:20.440 --> 01:21.820] Thank you. It's a pleasure.
[01:21.820 --> 01:30.420] Now, as you would know, all career journeys have their ups and downs, and your story is no different.
[01:30.720 --> 01:40.640] And I'd like you to share with our audience, going back to 2000, where you lost your first job.
[01:40.640 --> 01:51.940] And if you could share what led up to that, the moment itself, and how you sort of pick yourself up from that event.
[01:51.940 --> 02:12.720] Yes. So in 1996, I was hired by one of my first major mentors at a PR firm where I was applying my PR background and my SEO, newfangled SEO background, pre-Google, at a large agency after being a small startup.
[02:12.720 --> 02:22.020] And my boss, Ryan, believed in me. He challenged me in ways nobody had challenged me. He supported me in amazing ways.
[02:22.020 --> 02:31.000] Then he left the agency abruptly, and I didn't talk to him for three months. So we worked together for more than a year and a half.
[02:31.000 --> 02:39.100] He came and talked to me after getting his life back together. And he said, I'm going to start an agency. I said, OK, cool.
[02:39.280 --> 02:49.720] So in late January 1999, we co-founded an agency together. So the first data point I want to say is that he wanted me to be one of two other co-founders.
[02:49.720 --> 02:56.080] He was funding it with his retirement plan, and he brought in a gal on the PR side to run the PR team.
[02:56.160 --> 03:06.840] And I was running kind of the Internet side, which was new at the time in 99. And I said, sure, I had my reservations about her, but she was very, very driven, hardworking.
[03:06.840 --> 03:12.340] But she was also a little bit of a train wreck. And I was concerned that things might blow up at some point.
[03:12.340 --> 03:18.820] And it turns out I was right. So we worked pretty well as a team together, despite the friction we had.
[03:20.500 --> 03:24.800] And the first problem. Oh, did you have a question? No. OK.
[03:25.060 --> 03:27.740] No, I thought I heard. Sorry, I thought I heard something.
[03:28.040 --> 03:38.540] So the first problem was that that we had this healthy friction that our boss kind of played us off each other to help us build an agency.
[03:38.540 --> 03:43.080] So we started with six original employees. And within a year, we were over 20 self-funded.
[03:43.460 --> 03:47.260] That's pretty. That was pretty good. It's still by my standards, pretty impressive growth.
[03:48.240 --> 03:51.620] And by the end of that year, we still had no equity agreement in writing.
[03:51.620 --> 03:54.440] And we were like, we're at a two million dollar company from scratch.
[03:55.100 --> 03:56.680] You know, I think we need to get something in writing.
[03:57.740 --> 04:04.180] And and my my the younger partner that was my age, our boss was about 15 years older than us.
[04:04.180 --> 04:14.600] And she was like, I'm going to go ask for more money. So, you know, about a year and a half into it, I went into his office and she said, you better start the conversation.
[04:14.600 --> 04:18.060] I said, we have helped you build what is going to be by the end of the year.
[04:18.280 --> 04:22.980] We're talking 2000, you know, a three point five million dollar agency.
[04:23.160 --> 04:27.960] And we have nothing still in writing. And so we thought now would be a good time to ask for more equity.
[04:27.960 --> 04:36.020] It wasn't it wasn't my idea, but I thought I had earned my part of it and I didn't think it could hurt to ask.
[04:36.080 --> 04:39.360] It turns out it did hurt. Two weeks later, we were both fired.
[04:40.120 --> 04:48.480] And I would say my fault was asking for something, not going through the thought process to think, how would he react?
[04:48.480 --> 04:53.800] He was going to he was going to fire the other partner because they weren't getting along.
[04:53.940 --> 05:06.640] And when I aligned with her and put myself in her aligned in her seat and asking for more equity, we're talking a couple a couple points under 10 percentage on a on a three and a half million dollar business that we built for him.
[05:07.300 --> 05:11.020] And he didn't like it. So he decided to fire us both instead of just her.
[05:11.020 --> 05:23.640] And I felt like I lost a job and a mentor. But what I the first reaction, because I knew I wasn't happy leading up to the three to four months because we were we didn't have clarity.
[05:23.640 --> 05:29.600] We didn't have anything in writing. I started, you know, emotionally thinking what else which I do to prepare for the worst.
[05:29.920 --> 05:33.160] And so I polished up. LinkedIn wasn't even really a thing yet.
[05:33.580 --> 05:39.980] Polished up my resume, started thinking about who I would talk to if things went south and then, boom, we were fired.
[05:39.980 --> 05:55.440] And so it wasn't a week later. And basically the first week of August, because I was mid late September in the first week of August, I founded Anvil Media as just a placeholder for consulting a shingle, if you will.
[05:56.120 --> 06:00.540] And I wasn't I was not ready to I was definitely not going to hire employees.
[06:01.100 --> 06:06.600] I wasn't interested in going full time as a contract, you know, as a consultant or building a formal agency.
[06:06.600 --> 06:10.260] It was just a shingle to do little projects until I found a real job.
[06:11.180 --> 06:22.420] And so that so the predecessor, the precursor was personalities and the friction and then the alignment was rocky and overwhelming and led to my demise the first time.
[06:22.500 --> 06:29.500] It wasn't my performance. It wasn't anything other than, you know, aligning with somebody that was already on their track to get exited.
[06:29.500 --> 06:39.040] And at that moment, I felt released and I felt deeply hurt and frustrated because I feel like I wasn't the problem.
[06:39.700 --> 06:44.180] But I paid the price. I even picked up the bar tab when the whole company came over.
[06:44.240 --> 06:49.800] We all had drinks at a local Irish pub and everybody cried and said, this is so terrible.
[06:49.800 --> 06:52.400] And then they all left and I got stuck with a four hundred dollar tab.
[06:52.840 --> 07:01.040] But be that as it may, I still have good friendships from my time, but I decided I'm already ready to move forward.
[07:01.140 --> 07:10.380] I didn't ruminate. Interestingly, the converse side of that is my business partner, the gal that was the same age as me, her identity was tied up to that into that agency.
[07:10.380 --> 07:17.080] So her getting fired, it really was the start of her decline. Professionally, within five years, she couldn't even hold a job.
[07:17.460 --> 07:22.720] And she I won't go into more detail, but just say it. It was a devastating blow to her that she could not recover from.
[07:22.860 --> 07:25.740] And I ended up moving on to the next thing.
[07:27.220 --> 07:33.620] Right. So it sounds like you already had a contingency in place, Kent, before that event.
[07:33.620 --> 07:43.540] Like, you know, you had that idea about Anvil and you saw some cracks in that situation.
[07:43.540 --> 07:47.660] You know, the personality conflict, they didn't have a clear vision.
[07:49.600 --> 07:55.400] So it wasn't your ideal job anyway, was it by the sound of it?
[07:55.400 --> 08:03.220] It was on paper and it was have had, I think I could have certainly done things better.
[08:03.320 --> 08:06.580] No question. I don't know what I would have done better, but I could have done something better.
[08:06.980 --> 08:13.220] But I think if the three of us had done it differently, we we would have hopefully stayed in business together.
[08:15.240 --> 08:22.380] Ironically, remember, in 2000, the bottom fell out in in April and the the dot com crash.
[08:22.380 --> 08:27.120] And then this was set to end of September. So our clients hadn't renewed their marketing budgets yet.
[08:27.660 --> 08:34.440] And so within three weeks of him firing us, thinking he was releasing himself and freeing up his mind.
[08:34.460 --> 08:37.800] And he had just taken on a huge lease on 20,000 square feet.
[08:37.820 --> 08:44.280] And he needed about three. That's ultimately what undid the agency after we left is client suspended budgets.
[08:44.280 --> 08:48.220] They they they left the agency. They're like, we don't have money for next year.
[08:48.220 --> 08:53.960] All the new business froze. So we went from 35 people when we were fired at our peak.
[08:54.680 --> 09:04.620] Nine months later, he sold the agency aqua higher, meaning what was left is 11 people went to another agency and brought the if they could bring clients, they got jobs.
[09:04.620 --> 09:09.360] And so that was that's how that ended was in in disaster.
[09:09.360 --> 09:12.720] And the worst part in terms of what we built was magic.
[09:12.720 --> 09:17.060] And I still have great friendships from that. And it's still the most fun I've ever had in an agency.
[09:17.680 --> 09:23.060] Honestly, it was the best of the best because ninety nine through early 2000 was a huge boom time.
[09:23.140 --> 09:28.680] We couldn't lose. And then when we started to lose was right at right when we were fired.
[09:28.680 --> 09:33.780] And I think that my partner, I could have helped save the agency, but we were kicked out.
[09:33.940 --> 09:41.500] And that was that. Tragically, our boss, Ryan, died of a massive heart attack the June of the following year in 2001.
[09:42.380 --> 09:45.760] And so he paid the ultimate price and I still miss him.
[09:45.820 --> 09:49.740] And I lost a mentor. I lost a business partner. I lost a friend.
[09:49.740 --> 09:57.760] And and we never really got to reconcile. I had some peace because his effectively his common law wife told me right before he died,
[09:57.820 --> 10:03.220] he had mentioned missing and wanting to reconnect with me. And that made the made the world of difference to me.
[10:03.780 --> 10:06.360] So I by that time I had moved on.
[10:07.500 --> 10:12.880] Ironically, the people that brought brought over, most of them were my team was highly cohesive,
[10:12.880 --> 10:20.460] whereas the PR side, which is three quarters of the agency, started to fall apart with or without my partner there to run it.
[10:20.840 --> 10:25.420] It ended up being, you know, four of my team and six or seven of the PR team at its peak.
[10:25.600 --> 10:31.180] That agency was 30 people of PR only and my small team of five or six.
[10:31.540 --> 10:35.240] So my team stayed together. But when he died, nobody was there to run my team.
[10:35.240 --> 10:40.820] So I ended up running my old team again, working with my crew a year later.
[10:40.820 --> 10:50.180] And that ended up resulting in the second time I was fired was because of the pre-existing condition of relationships,
[10:50.180 --> 10:57.140] even though my boss was gone. That second time was where I was just kind of a director level was about a girl,
[10:57.600 --> 11:01.940] a gal I'd worked with. I started dating when she moved over before I got hired.
[11:02.260 --> 11:08.120] And then long story short personalities, she started dating the creative director without letting me know while we were still dating.
[11:08.120 --> 11:13.500] And he had been there 20 years. So he just got me fired after about six months.
[11:14.280 --> 11:18.000] So after that, I had already had Anvil and only done a couple of projects.
[11:18.200 --> 11:22.780] And that agency experience of only six months proved to me I shouldn't be working for other people
[11:22.780 --> 11:29.960] because I can't handle working for, you know, bad people, stupid people, unmotivated, untalented people.
[11:29.980 --> 11:32.360] And that's what that agency was full of outside of my team.
[11:32.360 --> 11:36.380] And so I decided I'm just going to work for myself from here on out.
[11:36.500 --> 11:38.400] And that was April 2002.
[11:38.800 --> 11:44.840] So I went from starting my first agency, co-founding it in 99, to getting fired 18 months later,
[11:45.260 --> 11:53.260] to starting my new, you know, placeholder, to just being committed from having a legal entity
[11:53.260 --> 11:56.340] to committing to doing consulting in 2002.
[11:56.340 --> 12:02.520] And within a couple of months, I actually co-founded another agency called Email ROI
[12:02.520 --> 12:08.000] because our clients needed email marketing support as well as search marketing, which is what I specialize in.
[12:08.640 --> 12:11.800] And so a buddy of mine, a college roommate and a buddy of mine here in Portland,
[12:11.800 --> 12:15.380] we started this email marketing company in early 2000.
[12:16.080 --> 12:17.340] And I ran that for a year.
[12:17.740 --> 12:21.420] And that's what taught me hiring employees isn't as scary as I thought.
[12:21.420 --> 12:23.440] And I didn't really want to do email marketing.
[12:23.580 --> 12:28.180] So that's when I left of fall of 03 and started, I'm going to run my own agency.
[12:28.300 --> 12:29.160] I'm going to have employees.
[12:29.280 --> 12:30.380] I'm going to do this full time.
[12:30.580 --> 12:36.460] So it took me three years from originally hanging a shingle and then realizing I can't work for anybody else
[12:36.460 --> 12:39.940] I don't respect, to I could work for somebody with somebody else, my buddies.
[12:40.240 --> 12:42.160] But I didn't want to do the work I was doing.
[12:42.300 --> 12:47.740] So I decided to do what I knew and loved, which was search marketing full time, late 03 into 04,
[12:47.740 --> 12:51.020] and ran that until I sold it in 2022.
[12:52.100 --> 12:52.620] Okay.
[12:52.840 --> 12:57.700] Can I take you back to when you lost your second job, the relationship dynamic?
[12:57.900 --> 13:04.540] So if I read that correctly, you were in a relationship with this lady,
[13:04.540 --> 13:07.540] but then she started a relationship with this other gentleman.
[13:08.340 --> 13:13.160] Did he know about your pre-existing relationship and saw you as a threat?
[13:13.240 --> 13:15.480] Was that the catalyst for the demise of that job?
[13:15.480 --> 13:22.360] I, yes, I believe he, he had to know, you know, we were openly dating at that agency for only a couple months,
[13:22.360 --> 13:26.680] but she, she had told them don't hire him because she didn't want her boyfriend at the agency,
[13:26.680 --> 13:29.580] whether it was because she was already interested in somebody else or not.
[13:29.580 --> 13:30.880] She just didn't think it was a good idea.
[13:31.140 --> 13:35.180] They hired me anyway, and ended up being by far the worst agency job of my life.
[13:35.260 --> 13:36.540] That agency is long gone.
[13:37.440 --> 13:41.540] It had been around 30 years when I got there, and it didn't last another five.
[13:42.220 --> 13:44.000] It was completely dysfunctional.
[13:44.860 --> 13:48.680] Interestingly, when you talk about, you know, we'll get into the passion for employee engagement,
[13:48.680 --> 13:56.660] which I didn't feel until I became an employee in 2022 after signing my agency was that it was all personalities.
[13:56.660 --> 14:00.820] And I found that agency executives, in my experience of working at 10 agencies,
[14:00.820 --> 14:05.880] are some of the most damaged people that I've ever worked with or worked for.
[14:06.260 --> 14:09.880] And sometimes it's the most fun, but it comes at a high price.
[14:10.060 --> 14:14.900] But mostly it's just a drag when professional communicators can't communicate among themselves.
[14:14.900 --> 14:23.120] And that was my experience from 1994 at my first agency job up in Seattle to my first agency job in Portland in 1995.
[14:23.780 --> 14:26.480] There were these great, brilliant people that could not get along.
[14:26.600 --> 14:31.400] They were almost all partners, two people up to five people, and they had major issues.
[14:31.640 --> 14:35.800] And when in 99, I found out what that's like firsthand is I respected and, in fact,
[14:35.860 --> 14:39.460] maybe even loved, you know, my old boss, Ryan, like he was family.
[14:39.840 --> 14:42.820] And yet we couldn't see eye to eye, and it was crippling.
[14:42.820 --> 14:49.040] So that second time around was literally about a girl and about a creative director that was on the board,
[14:49.120 --> 14:52.120] decided I'm just going to torpedo this guy.
[14:52.980 --> 14:58.560] And much like the first time at Wave Rock where I was fired, I was actually miserable there.
[14:58.700 --> 15:00.000] Wave Rock, I had a great time.
[15:00.380 --> 15:02.420] And it was just the two people at the very top.
[15:02.620 --> 15:08.060] I had a – one I didn't respect, the other I love, but he decided you're gone too, no hard feelings.
[15:08.060 --> 15:11.920] And that hurt the most was the relationship we had there.
[15:12.160 --> 15:18.400] The second time around, this other agency that's gone was just a bunch of miscreant losers.
[15:18.400 --> 15:22.040] And I say that with absolutely no respect to the senior team there.
[15:22.800 --> 15:25.340] They made my life miserable, absolutely miserable.
[15:25.900 --> 15:31.100] When 9-11 hit, which was my second day of work, September 11th, my first day was September 10th,
[15:31.100 --> 15:37.420] I said there's planes flying into buildings, you know, all the air tropics locked down, fighter jets going over Portland.
[15:37.960 --> 15:39.520] And they're like, you've got to finish your orientation.
[15:39.820 --> 15:41.280] I'm like, how are we supposed to work?
[15:41.400 --> 15:42.300] America's under attack.
[15:42.400 --> 15:43.100] Like, are you serious?
[15:43.260 --> 15:45.980] This is my ninth agency, and you're telling me I've got to go through orientation.
[15:46.380 --> 15:47.580] You guys have no heart and soul.
[15:48.160 --> 15:51.600] And that's when I decided on my second day of work that that place was not for me.
[15:52.100 --> 15:53.620] And I stuck around for the paycheck.
[15:54.380 --> 15:59.500] And the obligation to my old team I cared about was I tripled our revenue.
[15:59.500 --> 16:01.120] We were crushing it.
[16:01.240 --> 16:04.020] Just my digital team relative to the rest of the company was struggling.
[16:04.480 --> 16:06.640] And I like to win, and we were winning.
[16:07.000 --> 16:13.260] But those personal relationships at the top were devastating to me, to my career, at least at that place.
[16:13.460 --> 16:15.060] A lot of these people are damaged.
[16:15.420 --> 16:19.480] Can you just give me three or four examples of what you mean by damage?
[16:19.480 --> 16:23.880] Because I see that beyond just the marketing world.
[16:24.020 --> 16:26.000] I mean, people are damaged everywhere.
[16:26.000 --> 16:29.680] But can you just give me some sort of snippets of what you mean by damage?
[16:29.680 --> 16:39.120] So my first experience at a PR firm that also was acquired by a large global firm a couple years after I started there in 96.
[16:39.360 --> 16:41.900] They were sold by 98 or 99.
[16:41.900 --> 16:56.120] My first interview with one of the five partners, he was a famous reporter for the Oregonian, the local paper, but he had no management experience, clearly.
[16:56.980 --> 17:02.800] He opened my annual review, my first real full-time paying gig with, what's your problem?
[17:03.240 --> 17:04.760] That's how he opened my annual review.
[17:05.700 --> 17:07.880] He's like, what is going on with you?
[17:07.880 --> 17:09.920] Like, I'm like, oh my God, is this how this works?
[17:09.980 --> 17:11.700] I don't know what is going on with me.
[17:11.900 --> 17:13.200] I thought I was great.
[17:13.340 --> 17:14.620] Am I terrible?
[17:14.960 --> 17:23.340] And so I was so distraught that one of the five partners who originally liked me, then I did some dumb stuff as a junior untrained PR person.
[17:23.600 --> 17:25.680] And then she still decided she liked me.
[17:26.040 --> 17:28.060] And she became, to this day, we're friends.
[17:28.060 --> 17:30.000] I talked to her.
[17:30.100 --> 17:33.960] I was like, Chuck is an asshole or he's on the spectrum or something.
[17:34.800 --> 17:37.400] And she's like, both things can be true.
[17:38.040 --> 17:40.680] And, you know, if you're not happy here, it is okay to leave.
[17:40.760 --> 17:41.780] You don't have to stick around.
[17:42.080 --> 17:44.900] And there were two other partners that didn't like me out of five.
[17:45.040 --> 17:47.080] So I didn't have a majority of support.
[17:47.560 --> 17:55.980] And within two weeks, I ended up moving to the sister agency that was building websites for big brands like Intel and Tektronix, big printer company.
[17:55.980 --> 18:10.880] And that next day, I realized that Chuck, the guy that gave me a really terrible in-person review that made me sour on not PR as a discipline, but PR agencies in general, he came down my first day of work, one floor down, said, Kent, I have a question about the internet for you.
[18:10.960 --> 18:22.680] And I realized right then, the guy that didn't respect me enough to treat me reasonably fairly and humanely in my annual review suddenly thought I was some sort of genius because I'd moved downstairs and had this internet marketing role.
[18:23.320 --> 18:24.500] And so I decided two things.
[18:24.500 --> 18:31.300] One is I might be onto something, and two is I'm not going to disappoint him or anybody or myself, and I'm going to become an expert on this internet thing.
[18:31.460 --> 18:33.860] And that's why I spent the last almost 30 years doing.
[18:34.820 --> 18:37.600] And so I look at opportunities and everything.
[18:37.720 --> 18:43.780] So he was a damaged person that he should not have been managing people, but he was good at what he did, I guess.
[18:43.860 --> 18:44.760] I was too young to know.
[18:44.820 --> 18:45.320] I was an intern.
[18:45.320 --> 18:51.380] But he had deep relationships with technology press people, and it was invaluable to our clients.
[18:51.900 --> 18:56.160] But he should never have been managing teams, you know, like HR from an HR standpoint.
[18:56.340 --> 19:02.400] Just guide them on their PR skills, but do not give them annual reviews because it was crippling to me.
[19:02.580 --> 19:04.060] It soured me immediately.
[19:04.060 --> 19:05.760] So that's just one.
[19:05.880 --> 19:10.600] Another one of the partners, we went to Palm Springs for a show called Demo.
[19:10.860 --> 19:13.260] And it was all the tech companies and all the tech editors.
[19:13.940 --> 19:18.100] And so our clients would pay to demo their products in front of these high-hitting analysts and editors.
[19:18.760 --> 19:20.440] And they brought the whole company.
[19:20.500 --> 19:21.500] This is my third day of work.
[19:21.600 --> 19:24.380] I had no real work experience other than an internship in Seattle.
[19:24.380 --> 19:29.480] And they're like, we're flying you to Palm Springs for the weekend, and then we'll stay, and you'll fly back.
[19:29.520 --> 19:30.180] I'm like, what?
[19:30.300 --> 19:30.960] This is dope.
[19:31.440 --> 19:37.100] And so I went down there, and one of the partners, she was young, extremely bright, like Mensa smart.
[19:37.360 --> 19:43.940] She was maybe in her mid, she was maybe 27 at the time, and she was going through some stuff.
[19:44.440 --> 19:51.820] And so we were going to a dinner, and at the end of dinner, she laid down on this 1950s Packard or something.
[19:52.240 --> 19:54.900] She's like, in front of everybody, wouldn't it be great to have sex on this car?
[19:55.020 --> 19:57.300] And I was just like, what am I supposed to do with this?
[19:57.540 --> 20:00.000] Like, in front of everybody, not to me specifically, just everybody.
[20:00.120 --> 20:01.760] I'm like, what is wrong with this girl?
[20:02.380 --> 20:13.460] And so that was the kind of profound immaturity that I was dealing with and that I've seen more sophisticated levels of immaturity, mostly in security.
[20:13.560 --> 20:16.200] I've found in the agency world, it might be a little different than corporate.
[20:16.340 --> 20:18.080] You can tell me I have very little corporate experience.
[20:18.080 --> 20:24.320] I'm an agency guy, is that most agency people, agency heads are undereducated.
[20:24.640 --> 20:28.840] I've only known one MBA of all the agency people that were partners or founders.
[20:29.700 --> 20:32.880] And even she had her own insecurities, but she was very smart.
[20:33.500 --> 20:37.300] Most of them felt like I could never hire an MBA because they're probably smarter than me.
[20:37.360 --> 20:40.920] My whole thing was, if I don't hire somebody smarter than me, I'm not hiring right.
[20:41.300 --> 20:41.720] You know what I mean?
[20:41.740 --> 20:42.520] That's the whole point.
[20:42.520 --> 20:45.080] But I've been personally disappointed.
[20:45.200 --> 20:46.780] I've hired half a dozen MBAs.
[20:46.840 --> 20:48.740] They weren't Harvard or Yale because I couldn't afford them.
[20:49.260 --> 20:56.660] But they were all deeply disappointed that my street smarts with a basic bachelor degree was, I would run circles around their MBA.
[20:56.860 --> 20:57.940] But I think it's a piece of paper.
[20:58.260 --> 20:59.600] You know, they could be smart.
[20:59.940 --> 21:04.960] I had one kid that never went to college and he was one of my smartest, most successful digital marketers.
[21:04.960 --> 21:12.680] So I judge based on meritocracy and performance and not try to, every time I leaned on experience, like we hired a Yahoo guy.
[21:12.780 --> 21:16.220] He was from the company Yahoo.com back when that was a thing.
[21:16.380 --> 21:17.440] And he was useless.
[21:17.780 --> 21:21.020] He had done one narrow thing and didn't know anything else about what we did.
[21:21.080 --> 21:22.360] And that was a mishire.
[21:22.760 --> 21:29.620] We hired a guy from, actually two from Yahoo, one from Google, a gal that never opened, had never opened a spreadsheet.
[21:29.620 --> 21:38.700] We learned how to hire, but my point is that there were these, mainly these, like, the broken part is, like, something traumatic had happened to them.
[21:38.800 --> 21:44.000] Or they had these massive insecurities where their lack of education or their lack of success.
[21:44.260 --> 21:50.600] More recently, one of the partners at the agency that bought my agency said, I'll never stop wearing a suit until, what, $10 million in revenue.
[21:51.020 --> 21:52.080] At first, I thought that was cool.
[21:52.080 --> 21:59.220] Then I was like, you are so insecure that you feel like you have to wear a suit to cover the mask, your insecurities, to mask your whatever.
[21:59.980 --> 22:01.360] And he's a smart guy.
[22:01.500 --> 22:02.380] I mean, he got his GED.
[22:02.460 --> 22:03.860] He never graduated high school.
[22:04.460 --> 22:06.100] But that's why he had that insecurity.
[22:06.100 --> 22:08.260] He was not even going on to college.
[22:08.980 --> 22:12.860] He got his GED, so he got his high school degree without going to high school.
[22:13.440 --> 22:22.380] But he feels profoundly insecure and needs to make it up in other ways by, you know, dressing nice and then putting other people down, is what my experience was.
[22:23.100 --> 22:23.620] Yes.
[22:23.940 --> 22:26.860] I think you've hit a couple of key touch points.
[22:26.860 --> 22:41.040] We work with people who are damaged, who have unresolved trauma from their childhood in terms of the way their parents treated them, or conversely, events that happen in the schoolyard, bullying or whatever, Kent.
[22:41.040 --> 22:43.920] And they carry that through into the workplace.
[22:44.340 --> 22:47.660] And some of them become bullies in the workplace.
[22:48.820 --> 22:59.800] And as employees, we have to interact with them on a day-to-day basis and often feel the brunt of whatever they're projecting out onto the world.
[22:59.800 --> 23:03.200] All right.
[23:03.200 --> 23:13.200] All those sort of events are interesting now because I think that sort of has culminated in you taking an interest in that whole employee experience.
[23:13.960 --> 23:25.100] I read some of your information that you feel that was important that as an employer that you help your employee map out a career path for themselves, one.
[23:25.100 --> 23:31.900] Secondly, it's they enjoy coming to work each day, something they look forward to.
[23:32.320 --> 23:44.920] And the third key one, which is something I talk about in my material, is your career should be an integral part of your life, not an intrusion to it.
[23:44.920 --> 23:53.220] It's something that Richard Branson talks about, Kent, when he says, I don't see work as work and play as play.
[23:53.620 --> 23:54.840] It's all living.
[23:57.020 --> 24:01.580] Whereas people today talk about work-life balance, which I think is a bit separate.
[24:01.720 --> 24:06.040] It's because you're in a job you don't enjoy and you have to try and balance that out.
[24:06.760 --> 24:10.340] Work-life balance doesn't become a big issue when you truly love what you're doing.
[24:11.360 --> 24:11.680] Correct.
[24:12.200 --> 24:12.620] Absolutely.
[24:12.620 --> 24:31.440] So can you share now how your experiences in those agencies have now resulted in terms of the way you manage people from the employee experience so that what that does for you, I believe,
[24:31.540 --> 24:38.860] is potentially attract high-end talent to your businesses and retain the talent that you have,
[24:38.860 --> 24:46.220] whereas a lot of other companies are continually turning staff over because they really don't understand the employee experience.
[24:47.560 --> 24:47.780] Yes.
[24:48.860 --> 24:54.720] And thank you for doing your homework on me and reading up on some of my philosophies I've written fairly extensively about.
[24:54.820 --> 24:59.380] But what I would say is you can read all the math and the science around it.
[24:59.380 --> 25:06.180] And like Tiffany Bova, I find her obsession with customer experience and her research is groundbreaking and impressive.
[25:06.360 --> 25:09.380] And you can find her in Forbes and Harvard Business Review and so forth.
[25:10.080 --> 25:13.240] But, you know, I know, I found the hard way.
[25:13.520 --> 25:15.480] I thought I was the best boss in the world.
[25:15.540 --> 25:22.280] I was committed to being the best boss in the world for 22 years, or I should say at least 20 years of managing and hiring and managing employees
[25:22.280 --> 25:30.320] and mostly losing them or firing them, is that I felt that I had made it pretty clear what our purpose was at Anvil
[25:30.320 --> 25:39.580] and just to help businesses grow successfully and prosper and using some digital marketing, you know, tactics and strategies.
[25:39.580 --> 25:49.600] When I connected with people's sense of purpose, when I aligned our core values with theirs, there's virtually no friction.
[25:50.300 --> 25:53.820] And that person can go on and be, you know, and be great, right?
[25:54.400 --> 25:59.260] The second, beyond just aligning on purpose in general and having to live that, you know, as a business owner
[25:59.260 --> 26:05.240] and showing that regularly to employees is allowing to have a sense of impact.
[26:05.380 --> 26:06.740] So I am not a micromanager.
[26:06.740 --> 26:13.780] My biggest fault, I think, was working on the business too much, getting away from the day-to-day and losing touch with what,
[26:14.320 --> 26:16.460] how they were doing the work, why they were doing the work.
[26:16.520 --> 26:18.120] It's just like, let's make the work better.
[26:18.260 --> 26:19.080] Let's do this and that.
[26:19.200 --> 26:20.240] It was, they didn't connect.
[26:20.680 --> 26:21.980] They felt I had lost connection.
[26:22.180 --> 26:26.260] This, we're talking after about 10 years in 2013, the wheels were coming off.
[26:26.820 --> 26:29.600] And so I had given them, I thought, purpose.
[26:30.080 --> 26:32.580] And I thought I'd given them a chance to create impact.
[26:32.600 --> 26:35.180] And I felt I was very underwhelmed by their ability.
[26:35.180 --> 26:36.720] I thought they were lazy millennials.
[26:36.980 --> 26:38.980] And that, I realized, was not on them.
[26:39.020 --> 26:39.720] It was on me.
[26:40.520 --> 26:44.140] Forgetting the right people, putting them in the right seat on the boat because you all work together.
[26:44.440 --> 26:46.100] You're not passengers on a bus.
[26:46.260 --> 26:53.700] That's the problem with that good-to-great metaphor is that if you're not all pulling together, it doesn't work.
[26:53.820 --> 26:55.500] And you're all actively doing something.
[26:55.700 --> 26:56.780] You're not along for the ride.
[26:56.780 --> 26:58.640] Nobody wants a shirt, tail, coattail rider.
[26:59.560 --> 27:01.760] And then that acknowledgement, right?
[27:01.800 --> 27:08.980] The roadmap, the path, but acknowledging the steps they're making towards their goals, the steps, the impact they're making towards our goals as a company.
[27:08.980 --> 27:21.360] I think those are kind of the three areas that I was doing with all intention, but the execution was not to the point where I had the riveted group in that first batch, 2013.
[27:21.740 --> 27:23.700] I spent six years rebuilding.
[27:23.700 --> 27:37.820] By 2019, I started talking to other agencies about potential acquisition at a time when I was reconnected with my work and my craft of digital marketing, reconnected with my team, reconnected with my clients.
[27:38.120 --> 27:41.360] I rebuilt my business, and I was totally happy.
[27:41.440 --> 27:47.880] And I wanted to, like Seinfeld, go out on a high note, not sell when you are, you know, like I was in 13.
[27:47.960 --> 27:49.280] I would have sold my business for a dollar.
[27:49.700 --> 27:51.680] And I'm not sure anybody would have paid a dollar for it.
[27:51.680 --> 27:58.840] But so it took me six years of pain and trudge, but I had a plan and I had a path and a vision.
[27:59.120 --> 28:11.520] That's what got me through 100% employee turnover two consecutive years in a row, which led to me losing 45% of my income from my five biggest clients in a 45-day period and didn't take a salary for nine months of the year.
[28:12.080 --> 28:16.460] So 2014 was really hard for me, and I came out on the other side.
[28:16.560 --> 28:19.580] It took a couple more years, but I'm glad I did it.
[28:19.580 --> 28:24.380] If I hadn't rebuilt the business, there would have been nothing left to fix a year or two later by that time.
[28:24.700 --> 28:27.060] So I did the hard thing and blew up my company and rebuilt it.
[28:27.740 --> 28:34.620] But that's when I started to get that I had the right idea, the wrong execution, that the team didn't see the authentic intent.
[28:34.620 --> 28:45.240] So that by the time I sold and was determined to be the best darn employee ever, and I saw all the problems with the agency that acquired Anvil, that I started to get disillusioned.
[28:45.240 --> 28:50.760] I instantly felt what it was like to be a disillusioned employee, which I hadn't felt for over 20 years, right?
[28:50.760 --> 29:03.640] And that's when it all came back, and by the time I was fired in May of 2023, I lasted 14 months there, I was like, oh, my God, employee engagement and retention is everything.
[29:03.980 --> 29:07.460] It's everything, and particularly in the agency business where it's not widgets.
[29:07.460 --> 29:10.500] It's not a manufacturing line.
[29:11.020 --> 29:12.060] It's not automation.
[29:12.820 --> 29:18.400] AI is obviously a big part of the future of agencies and marketing, but at that time it wasn't.
[29:18.860 --> 29:30.680] So I realized that I could have done things a lot better and that I wanted to help others do it as well based on my experience.
[29:30.680 --> 29:44.260] I think there's almost a headline there, Kent, employee engagement is everything, and very few organizations really understand that.
[29:44.440 --> 29:49.220] The way you treat your employees then becomes the way they treat your customers.
[29:50.760 --> 29:51.020] Yes.
[29:51.020 --> 30:03.060] And so obviously you've created a community, a career community, and is that something that you share with them in terms of how people go about managing their career?
[30:03.120 --> 30:11.460] Because I found in working in corporate, my observation looking down was people work their jobs.
[30:11.560 --> 30:13.120] They don't manage their careers.
[30:14.500 --> 30:19.180] And then all of a sudden one day they lose their job and they're totally lost.
[30:19.180 --> 30:27.820] And these are even battled, hardened, high-achieving executive professionals, and they really take a massive hit.
[30:27.920 --> 30:28.980] They lose their identity.
[30:29.540 --> 30:34.900] They lose their world, their networks, their perks, their benefits, their salaries.
[30:35.420 --> 30:41.960] And some of them really their life falls apart and they can't handle it.
[30:41.960 --> 30:50.640] And in some cases even their marriages and relationships break down afterwards because they lash out at the people they're closest to.
[30:51.280 --> 31:04.640] So can you just share the philosophy behind the employee group that you've created and some of the principles that you run that by and what you're trying to impart on that community?
[31:04.640 --> 31:14.060] Yeah, so back in 99, so a long time ago, over 25 years ago, I got some friends together during the dot-com heyday.
[31:14.380 --> 31:27.260] So early 99, mid-99, and it was mostly a group of my bros, my brothers in arms, mostly in digital marketing or sales or whatever, but not all of them.
[31:27.260 --> 31:33.340] And like, let's grab a bourbon and maybe we smoke a cigar and talk about the future because there's just so much money sitting there.
[31:33.960 --> 31:35.920] And, you know, I was running an e-zine.
[31:36.040 --> 31:37.800] That's where the name Anvil Media came from.
[31:37.840 --> 31:38.680] It was actually an e-zine.
[31:38.760 --> 31:39.400] I started in 96.
[31:39.400 --> 31:44.540] And so we got together, and I just randomly called it PDX Mindshare.
[31:44.600 --> 31:45.760] No website, no nothing.
[31:46.860 --> 31:48.500] And everybody's too busy making money.
[31:48.700 --> 31:50.460] And then the dot-com crash hit.
[31:50.460 --> 31:55.340] So by December of 2000, I realized, hey, wait a sec.
[31:56.980 --> 31:58.660] Maybe people need to get together.
[31:59.620 --> 32:01.740] And, you know, people are like, hey, when are we getting together?
[32:01.800 --> 32:02.520] Now we're all unemployed.
[32:03.020 --> 32:04.240] So I started this group.
[32:04.360 --> 32:07.380] I invited people to a different Irish bar.
[32:07.820 --> 32:08.660] Hey, let's get together.
[32:08.660 --> 32:10.420] There's people I know that don't know each other.
[32:10.540 --> 32:13.580] I just, I wanted to be in Seth Godin's parlance, a connector.
[32:13.920 --> 32:15.020] I love connecting people.
[32:15.420 --> 32:18.880] So I invited 20, 15, 16 showed up.
[32:19.040 --> 32:21.840] So pre-COVID, people actually would commit to something and show up.
[32:21.900 --> 32:22.440] It was magical.
[32:23.380 --> 32:25.260] And they enjoyed the conversation.
[32:25.380 --> 32:26.920] We were seated around a large table.
[32:27.360 --> 32:30.160] And like, at the end of the evening, they're like, when's the next one?
[32:30.220 --> 32:30.900] I'm like, next what?
[32:31.200 --> 32:31.900] What are you talking about?
[32:31.980 --> 32:33.440] Like, this was it.
[32:33.540 --> 32:35.440] And they're like, no, I think we should do this regularly.
[32:35.560 --> 32:35.900] I was like, okay.
[32:35.900 --> 32:44.160] So for 15 years, it was the third Wednesday of the month in a various, you know, one location
[32:44.160 --> 32:46.600] per year or two for consistency.
[32:46.740 --> 32:48.680] Same time, same place after work.
[32:49.000 --> 32:50.300] We have a networking group.
[32:50.440 --> 32:55.680] And one thing I learned, the first thing I learned was don't assume anything about anybody.
[32:55.680 --> 33:00.520] So I would simply ask, and again, I only knew a third of the people that would show up every
[33:00.520 --> 33:00.840] month.
[33:01.320 --> 33:04.240] I'd say to the people I didn't know, tell me, you know, what's your story?
[33:04.540 --> 33:09.340] Because they could be happily unemployed, happily employed, unhappily employed, or anywhere in
[33:09.340 --> 33:10.000] between, right?
[33:10.240 --> 33:15.760] So to say, I did not define people whether they, by their employment status, only by their
[33:15.760 --> 33:17.280] level of happiness, right?
[33:17.280 --> 33:21.560] So by telling, by asking somebody, what's your story, I allowed them to tell me what
[33:21.560 --> 33:25.860] they felt I needed to know to maximize their time with me and anybody else.
[33:25.920 --> 33:27.740] I'm like, they'd say, I'm happily employed.
[33:27.820 --> 33:29.140] I'm here to just network and grow.
[33:29.280 --> 33:30.100] I'm a salesperson.
[33:30.180 --> 33:30.720] This is what I do.
[33:30.780 --> 33:31.660] I'm like, got you.
[33:31.880 --> 33:32.960] And what do you sell?
[33:33.380 --> 33:34.720] Or what do you, who you're looking to meet?
[33:34.760 --> 33:35.780] I'm like, here's three people.
[33:35.960 --> 33:37.920] Go, you know, introduce them or appoint them.
[33:38.540 --> 33:40.200] BizDev people didn't need any help.
[33:40.280 --> 33:42.180] Like it's just a little thing, you know, here, here.
[33:42.180 --> 33:47.340] But most people, when the economy is strong, we had a smaller crowd because people were
[33:47.340 --> 33:50.560] happy making money and didn't feel the need to network and grow their network, which is
[33:50.560 --> 33:52.520] a huge mistake in my experience.
[33:53.180 --> 34:01.020] But when the economy crashed, so in 2002, and then a big time in 2008, when our, when the
[34:01.020 --> 34:07.080] marketing, the market, housing market crashed, I went from 25 people a month on average to
[34:07.080 --> 34:08.780] almost 100 a month.
[34:08.840 --> 34:10.980] And we crushed the bar we were at.
[34:10.980 --> 34:12.540] It became unbearable.
[34:12.720 --> 34:17.160] And even people, I got so used to 25 to 35 people that I could say hi to everybody and
[34:17.160 --> 34:18.060] have a quick conversation.
[34:18.360 --> 34:23.000] And I got a lot out of that, even though all I was trying to do was help others, is that
[34:23.000 --> 34:28.120] by the time there were 75, 80 people, people would come up to me and say, I'm really disappointed
[34:28.120 --> 34:30.600] again, or email me after and say, I didn't get a chance to talk to you.
[34:30.620 --> 34:31.300] I'm very disappointed.
[34:31.820 --> 34:32.960] I'm like, I'm sorry.
[34:33.600 --> 34:33.860] Right?
[34:34.060 --> 34:36.540] I don't have a model to address that.
[34:36.540 --> 34:43.180] And for years, in early 2000, the teens, they would say, well, what's the learning event
[34:43.180 --> 34:43.520] part?
[34:43.620 --> 34:44.540] And I'm like, I don't do that.
[34:44.580 --> 34:48.920] Because every other organization for HR professionals, sales and market people, they all have their
[34:48.920 --> 34:50.580] trade organizations, they'll do the learning.
[34:50.720 --> 34:51.600] I'm just doing the networking.
[34:52.280 --> 34:56.720] Eventually, I broke down and started doing workshops on career oriented ideas on how to
[34:56.720 --> 35:01.640] you know, killer resume, killer interview, you know, career building tips, and things
[35:01.640 --> 35:06.240] like, you know, self centered wellness, and this and that, that I agree, just to circle
[35:06.240 --> 35:10.620] back when you talk about world health, work life balance, I agreed, having been in a group
[35:10.620 --> 35:14.960] called EO Entrepreneur Organization, since 07 is is work life integration.
[35:15.400 --> 35:17.020] It's not sexy, but it's real.
[35:17.240 --> 35:21.400] If you don't, as an entrepreneur, integrate your work life into your home life, and you try
[35:21.400 --> 35:25.720] to keep them separate, you will break one of them will break a lot of divorces on
[35:25.720 --> 35:26.960] entrepreneurial side, right?
[35:27.400 --> 35:30.820] So I've always integrated, brought my wife into what we're doing.
[35:30.920 --> 35:34.700] She was an entrepreneur before I was, she, it's like marrying a cop, she knew what she
[35:34.700 --> 35:35.420] was getting into.
[35:36.100 --> 35:40.000] She ended up running my operations at Anvil for five years, did a brilliant job, but she
[35:40.000 --> 35:40.740] burned out on it.
[35:40.760 --> 35:44.200] It's like, I was here to help you not, I don't want to do this for a living.
[35:44.320 --> 35:44.740] I was like, fine.
[35:44.740 --> 35:48.920] So that's why main reason, a main reason I sold, even though she wouldn't want you to
[35:48.920 --> 35:53.100] hear that, it was important to me, it was easier to sell it than to find somebody as
[35:53.100 --> 35:53.840] good as she was.
[35:53.840 --> 35:58.180] So in short, PDX Mindshare had no business model.
[35:58.900 --> 36:03.560] It was, we get together once a month in person, and I try and help people, and that's it.
[36:03.780 --> 36:06.020] I come from a place of referral-based networking.
[36:06.300 --> 36:11.040] Like, the first thing I try to do, because I'm a talker, I don't listen enough, is I train
[36:11.040 --> 36:15.820] myself, listen, ask questions, be curious, and find out how, as quickly as possible, how
[36:15.820 --> 36:16.700] can I help this person?
[36:17.260 --> 36:21.360] And it was an invaluable tool that helped me be a better salesperson when it came to running
[36:21.360 --> 36:24.240] my business, was the curiosity of a five-year-old.
[36:24.880 --> 36:30.480] And that business model, all PDX Mindshare did was occasionally get a spiff for helping
[36:30.480 --> 36:32.140] place somebody in a job.
[36:32.580 --> 36:36.720] I'd occasionally get sponsors like the local Portland State University to promote their
[36:36.720 --> 36:38.200] classes for professional development.
[36:38.320 --> 36:39.200] That was a nice partnership.
[36:39.200 --> 36:42.760] I taught there for 20 years as an adjunct, so that was nice, too.
[36:43.660 --> 36:49.420] But in the end, I just told, I was talking to Seth Godin, you know, world's most famous
[36:49.420 --> 36:54.200] marketing blogger and a best-selling author, back in 2009.
[36:55.000 --> 36:57.200] Seth, I want you to come and speak at our conference.
[36:58.100 --> 37:03.200] This group that's now called Next Northwest, back then it was SEM PDX for digital marketers.
[37:03.320 --> 37:04.460] I was like, I want you to do the keynote.
[37:04.460 --> 37:10.720] I emailed him, but I know that we don't have $50,000, we don't even have $500, but I heard
[37:10.720 --> 37:14.520] if you're going to stop by Portland on a book tour, then maybe you'd be able to waive
[37:14.520 --> 37:18.300] your speaker fee because you're already getting paid for, right, by the publisher or whoever.
[37:18.980 --> 37:20.120] He emailed me back, called me.
[37:20.180 --> 37:27.640] I talked to him for a half hour, right before lunch, back in 2009 or 2008, and it was a transformative
[37:27.640 --> 37:28.400] conversation.
[37:28.400 --> 37:34.940] He, I said, hey, I can promote you through SEM PDX, through other, for their publications
[37:34.940 --> 37:38.160] and other, you know, a couple other associations and PDX Mindshare.
[37:38.280 --> 37:38.760] He's like, what's that?
[37:38.820 --> 37:40.000] I was like, well, there's no business model.
[37:40.760 --> 37:44.180] I just try and help people and I just evolve it based on what people need.
[37:44.260 --> 37:44.860] He's like, cool.
[37:45.340 --> 37:46.060] Hung up the phone.
[37:46.320 --> 37:47.600] Let's, maybe I'll think about it.
[37:47.920 --> 37:48.860] I'll do some research.
[37:48.860 --> 37:51.480] I come back and I had 20 emails, like, what did you do?
[37:51.540 --> 37:56.720] And he blogged about me right on the spot when I hung up the phone about PDX Mindshare.
[37:56.720 --> 37:57.580] And I sent you the link.
[37:57.880 --> 38:01.400] It's called, literally on Seth's blog, it's called No Business Model.
[38:01.740 --> 38:03.880] Just got off the phone with Kent, blah, blah, blah.
[38:03.940 --> 38:04.780] It's only three paragraphs.
[38:05.240 --> 38:07.880] But basically, no business model isn't a bad thing.
[38:08.100 --> 38:08.460] Evolve.
[38:08.620 --> 38:10.720] That's what he, you know, he's such a brilliant man.
[38:11.280 --> 38:13.900] And that led, incidentally, and I'll move on.
[38:14.800 --> 38:17.980] A year later, I was like, this is, he's one of my idols.
[38:17.980 --> 38:19.880] And it was a goal of mine to meet him in person.
[38:20.000 --> 38:20.720] It wasn't a coincidence.
[38:21.020 --> 38:24.400] It was not a coincidence that I reached out to him in the first place because he was on my bucket
[38:24.400 --> 38:25.620] list of people to talk to.
[38:25.620 --> 38:29.940] So I followed up and I said, thank you for considering making it to Portland.
[38:30.060 --> 38:31.280] They actually canceled the book tour.
[38:31.600 --> 38:34.100] That was the end of book tours, really, back in 08, 09.
[38:34.900 --> 38:38.880] And I said, hey, in three months, I'm going to be in New York speaking at a conference.
[38:39.000 --> 38:39.800] Can I take you to lunch?
[38:39.820 --> 38:40.320] He's like, sure.
[38:40.840 --> 38:45.760] So I had two hours with Seth Godin in a Midtown Manhattan vegan restaurant, which, if you know
[38:45.760 --> 38:47.360] me, is a huge sacrifice.
[38:47.760 --> 38:50.480] Because if I don't have meat with every meal, I get withdrawals.
[38:50.480 --> 38:54.220] And it was the most important two hours of my career.
[38:54.920 --> 38:57.320] At the end, he's like, you've got a book in you.
[38:57.760 --> 38:58.840] You should write a book, Kent.
[38:59.400 --> 39:06.540] And so I haven't, you read the articles in my compilation and there's a link in the chat.
[39:06.540 --> 39:10.280] But it's 30 years of business advice from an entrepreneur and marketer.
[39:10.560 --> 39:16.740] But the URL is, what's your story, which is my PDX Mindshare mantra, and write your book
[39:16.740 --> 39:18.260] because of Seth Godin.
[39:18.540 --> 39:20.260] So I've carried that with me all these years.
[39:20.340 --> 39:21.560] You said I'm a prolific writer.
[39:21.780 --> 39:23.060] I haven't written that book yet.
[39:23.320 --> 39:24.780] I still don't know what it would be about.
[39:24.860 --> 39:26.320] But it's probably not going to be about marketing.
[39:26.760 --> 39:29.860] It's probably going to be about entrepreneurship or the employee engagement.
[39:29.860 --> 39:32.940] But he inspired me back then.
[39:33.120 --> 39:37.820] And it's full circle that he's going to be, I'm getting to host a virtual fireside chat
[39:37.820 --> 39:43.960] with him in March through Next Northwest, my day job now, running a trade group for advertising,
[39:44.120 --> 39:47.200] marketing, and creative professionals in the Pacific Northwest here in the US.
[39:47.620 --> 39:52.080] I couldn't be happier with the challenge and the joy of running a nonprofit.
[39:52.340 --> 39:57.340] To your point of your passion, Tony, about employee engagement retention, I now have to prove
[39:57.340 --> 40:02.080] that I can use these tools that we talk about every day that you impart on your corporate
[40:02.080 --> 40:08.180] America folks, leaders, and senior marketers or managers, is I have to get a non-working
[40:08.180 --> 40:14.580] board in a 119-year-old trade organization, a nonprofit, to become a working board over
[40:14.580 --> 40:21.340] the past year, and then to stay aligned and stay engaged without any pay whatsoever, right?
[40:21.360 --> 40:22.900] It's 100% volunteer board.
[40:23.300 --> 40:27.320] So how do I use these tools that I'm used to applying to employees where I have some leverage?
[40:27.340 --> 40:33.680] To where I have no leverage other than aligned purpose and recognition, highlighting their
[40:33.680 --> 40:33.980] impact.
[40:34.060 --> 40:35.360] So I'm using those same tools.
[40:35.660 --> 40:39.440] And I'd say I'm 60% of the way there on a good day.
[40:39.600 --> 40:40.920] I have a lot of work to do.
[40:41.420 --> 40:46.380] It's hard work, but it's rewarding as I see progress.
[40:46.720 --> 40:53.620] It won't be my greatest failure, but I would consider if we pull this off where we have,
[40:53.620 --> 40:58.580] not beyond our financial stability, that we have a fully engaged, growing membership, people
[40:58.580 --> 41:00.420] begging to speak at our events.
[41:00.800 --> 41:07.260] That I will consider my greatest career contribution, more so than running an agency and employing
[41:07.260 --> 41:13.000] hundreds of people over 20-something years, is built to everything I've learned and apply
[41:13.000 --> 41:16.720] it to a nonprofit to help elevate our entire community of marketers.
[41:16.720 --> 41:17.720] Perfect.
[41:19.040 --> 41:19.360] All right.
[41:19.400 --> 41:28.160] In wrapping up, Kent, what's the one piece of career advice you would give someone in
[41:28.160 --> 41:34.040] today's turbulent, quick-changing, we know AIs hit the world?
[41:34.660 --> 41:37.480] What would be the number one piece of advice you would give someone today?
[41:37.480 --> 41:43.920] So my non-technical advice is to take the intersection of four things.
[41:44.120 --> 41:49.040] Your collective knowledge and experience over the years, whether it's five minutes after
[41:49.040 --> 41:54.480] graduating college or 35 years of whatever experience you have, that's one bucket.
[41:54.800 --> 42:01.280] Another overlapping circle is your areas of interest and growth where you want to go,
[42:01.840 --> 42:02.140] right?
[42:02.640 --> 42:04.600] And then there's your key strengths.
[42:04.640 --> 42:05.400] This is really important.
[42:05.400 --> 42:09.560] And that's the third circle is your superpowers, what makes you brilliant, what makes you stand
[42:09.560 --> 42:13.240] out, what's your red nose, and where's your fog in the Rudolph metaphor?
[42:13.780 --> 42:17.700] And the last part of what are your life goals, like your career goals, your business goals,
[42:17.780 --> 42:23.720] your financial goals, those four things, that middle of those overlapping circles is your
[42:23.720 --> 42:28.000] sweet spot, which you mentioned earlier, Tony, it doesn't feel like work, then you know
[42:28.000 --> 42:28.640] you've nailed it.
[42:28.640 --> 42:34.640] So if it's a sustainable financial model where you're like, I can put food on the table,
[42:34.640 --> 42:39.580] and we can maybe put a little into my savings, but I am rewarded every day by playing to
[42:39.580 --> 42:43.820] my strengths and my interests and my experience, and I'm mapping to my goals.
[42:44.480 --> 42:48.780] Every day you should leave, you should wake up ready to go and end the day, this is what
[42:48.780 --> 42:52.760] I've always said, with more energy than you started the day with, then you're in your sweet
[42:52.760 --> 42:53.120] spot.
[42:53.120 --> 42:59.520] And I would say, you know, if I can get Next Northwest where I want it to be, it will 100%
[42:59.520 --> 43:00.000] be that.
[43:00.180 --> 43:02.580] Unfortunately, we're an event-driven organization.
[43:02.760 --> 43:06.100] We do educational events and learning, and I'm not good at events.
[43:06.180 --> 43:10.580] I don't have a real experience or training in event planning and logistics, and it does
[43:10.580 --> 43:15.040] not play to my strengths whatsoever in that I'm not a detail guy, I'm not a project manager,
[43:15.040 --> 43:16.560] and that is totally what events are.
[43:16.560 --> 43:21.980] So I've built a team around me to mitigate the view of my valley so that we see mostly
[43:21.980 --> 43:22.520] my peaks.
[43:23.140 --> 43:24.400] But that would be my advice.
[43:25.040 --> 43:30.300] And then real quick, because AI has altered that, your knowledge experience can be completely
[43:30.300 --> 43:31.960] gamed by AI, right?
[43:32.940 --> 43:35.460] Your interests can be informed by AI.
[43:36.820 --> 43:40.100] Your life goals, maybe not so much.
[43:40.360 --> 43:44.800] Your superpowers can be heightened, or you can create a force multiplier.
[43:44.800 --> 43:48.240] Your strengths, your superpowers can be amplified by AI.
[43:49.120 --> 43:53.620] If you don't lean into AI, the person that does will get your job, right?
[43:54.320 --> 43:57.560] But I have two different kinds of boys that I'm raising.
[43:57.780 --> 44:00.520] One, a junior in college, is very data.
[44:00.820 --> 44:04.300] He's going to a business major with a marketing concentration, just like his dad.
[44:04.700 --> 44:09.040] And I'm telling you, you better lean in doubly hard on AI and become, you've got to train
[44:09.040 --> 44:13.700] the old folks like me on how to use AI brilliantly to have job security.
[44:13.700 --> 44:16.440] Create, carve a little niche out of this new AI thing.
[44:16.960 --> 44:20.100] Have a strong point of view about it and get as much experience as you can.
[44:20.320 --> 44:23.900] My other piece of advice for my younger son, who's been cutting his friend's hair for three
[44:23.900 --> 44:26.500] years, is a brilliant artist, like hand-drawn artist.
[44:27.400 --> 44:28.500] He's very creative.
[44:28.720 --> 44:31.340] He's decent in math, but he's very creative.
[44:32.000 --> 44:36.860] I was like, go to college for the social experiment, for the experience, for the discipline,
[44:36.860 --> 44:38.380] for the completion part.
[44:39.620 --> 44:40.760] It makes you worldly.
[44:40.900 --> 44:42.500] You'll be better at Jeopardy, right?
[44:42.540 --> 44:43.000] Or whatever.
[44:43.460 --> 44:47.720] But then I consider, if you still love cutting hair, go back to beauty school, put in two
[44:47.720 --> 44:52.180] more years of beauty school, and you are AI resistant, if not AI proof.
[44:52.380 --> 44:54.520] People's hair grows, no matter what.
[44:54.620 --> 44:55.360] Recession resistant.
[44:55.500 --> 44:56.140] People get haircuts.
[44:56.200 --> 44:58.680] Maybe not as many in the hard times, but they still get haircuts.
[44:58.680 --> 45:05.800] And there will not be a Flobie or a robot haircutting thing for another 30, 40 years for his career,
[45:05.940 --> 45:06.220] right?
[45:06.580 --> 45:10.080] So I'm giving them two different paths, and they can do whatever they want.
[45:10.460 --> 45:15.060] But I'm just giving them, from my experience, if I had his skills, this is what I would do,
[45:15.260 --> 45:15.960] right?
[45:16.220 --> 45:16.600] Perfect.
[45:17.420 --> 45:17.840] All right, Kent.
[45:17.840 --> 45:24.180] So if anyone in my audience wants to reach out to you, where is the best place they can
[45:24.180 --> 45:24.940] find you?
[45:24.940 --> 45:29.960] Yes, the very best place would be KentJLewis.com.
[45:30.340 --> 45:37.640] It's links to my articles, my speaking engagements, recordings on things like the employee engagement
[45:37.640 --> 45:41.660] and thought leadership, that if you're looking to build a career and become a thought leader,
[45:41.720 --> 45:45.680] I've got a great 30-minute webinar on that, and a 30-minute webinar expanding on my employee
[45:45.680 --> 45:49.560] engagement and retention, and tons of articles I've written about career work.
[45:50.180 --> 45:51.900] So KentJLewis.com is the best place.
[45:53.020 --> 45:53.420] Okay.
[45:53.420 --> 45:58.900] Thanks, Kent, for a really brilliant conversation and sharing so powerful insights with our audience.
[45:59.060 --> 45:59.920] Thank you so much.
[46:00.260 --> 46:00.820] Thanks, Kent.
[46:00.920 --> 46:01.380] It's been a pleasure.
[46:01.660 --> 46:02.200] Thank you, Tony.
[46:03.440 --> 46:06.340] Thanks for tuning into The Career Advantage Show.
[46:06.920 --> 46:12.680] Visit thecareeradvantage.show to subscribe and claim your free career confidential toolkit.
[46:12.680 --> 46:20.520] If you've enjoyed today's episode, I'd truly appreciate a five-star review on your favourite podcast app.
[46:21.240 --> 46:27.280] And don't forget to share it with your friends and colleagues who might need a little career inspiration.
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