Nate Kennedy - CEO, Builder of Funnels, Master of Ads, King of Conversions and Doctor of Marketing

 What I was willing to do at that time, was at the work.
 I had nothing, but I was willing to do the work.
 I think a lot of people go in and they just build a funnel because someone else built a funnel.
 Right. Let's go hack this. Let's go hack that.
 If I were to give someone a third click in the build a funnel, it's like,
 I know it's not sexy. I know it's not exciting, but you got to understand exactly what the
 prop, who exactly you want to work with and what is their problem.
 And if you do that, you can write copy. Oh, and I would 100% invest in a copy rate.
 You're listening to the rad cast.
 If it's radical, we cover it.
 Here's your host, Ryan Alford.
 Hey guys, what's up? Welcome to the latest edition of the rad cast.
 We've got a doctor in the house today, folks.
 Dr. Marketing, the marketing doctor, the nakedity. What's up, brother?
 How much, man? How you doing? Excited to be here?
 Hey, man, when I said, all right, well, I got to get a title for you here,
 you know, serial entrepreneur. I'm like, no, you said marketing doctor. I'm like, all right,
 I'm going to go down that path. I like it, man. I'm glad you're here. I'm glad you're in the studio.
 Yeah, me too. I'm excited to be sitting in here and, you know, face to face conversation.
 I know. We have been getting back to more of these with, you know, just the craziness of
 the world and people getting, you know, out and about. No matter how you and I may feel about it,
 a lot of people have been, you know, probably more stuck than we have, but it's cool to have you
 in a little, a little short drive from Charlotte, right? Not too bad. Just like Norman all the way
 down. So I know, like Norman is beautiful. That's pretty sweet. Live on the lake. Yeah, I'm excited
 to, excited for boating season here to start. Yeah. All that pollen season pass and then get
 the boat out. Yeah. We're on like Kiwi. We keep a boat at the Marina there. So that's over by
 Clemson. Yeah. So we just stayed there. We went down to a Clemson game and just stayed there recently.
 Yeah. There's the lake right on the campus is Hartwell. And then Kiwi's like seven minutes up.
 And it feeds Hartwell. Kiwi's, it's just, it's the one that feeds Hartwell. So it's a little
 prettier because it's got the mountain water and everything. It's like super clear. So we get the
 Marina there. So yeah, we keep a boat. It's a live aboard boat. It's just like a two bedroom,
 two baths. Oh, there you go. I'll stop short of call it. It says yacht on the side, but I'll stop
 short of that. You know, I don't know if I'm like in the heart. Let's limit like 34 foot or
 something makes it 40. Yeah, it says it's a motor yacht, but this is a Tiger Woods. You know,
 it's nice. Don't get here wrong. But yeah, man, it's all good. So Nate, let's, uh, let's
 tee things up for one. I know you're sure you're a entrepreneur marketing guy. We were talking
 pre episode, you know, kind of the differences. I came up from the branding side. You've come
 up through, you know, funnels and performance marketing. But, uh, let's give everybody a little
 bit of that background of you. Who, man, how far do we want to go back? Hey, man. As far as you
 want to take it, brother. So for me, it's, you know, I grew up in an entrepreneurial family watching
 my dad start a company. So I think that's something I was always going to do. It's kind of built
 into me watching that and seeing it and I ended up starting my first business when I got out of
 college, you know, the first, first one first go at it and it was marketing. The marketing piece,
 we put out was a direct mail piece. I had no idea what I was doing, but we wrote letters to all
 these houses in the outer banks where I was living at the time and trying to do security
 for him because I was like, Hey, you know, the problem is no one's looking at their house.
 Yeah. Right. And the winter time someone's got to look after your house. So found a problem and
 wrote the marketing piece. Now that I understand the value, what that means. From there, I got to
 end it up actually getting into the mortgage industry in real estate did a bunch of that 2008
 built a multi-million dollar company. At least I thought it was because on paper, I looked awesome.
 But after the industry started just plummeting that paper value just dropped and that's
 what I learned that cash in the bank is more valuable than some other things, right? And values
 in a home that you can't extract. So lost everything. I actually went bankrupt and at that time,
 in 2006 is when I first started getting into internet marketing, but my mortgage company,
 real estate company, all that kind of, you know, we went through that bankruptcy there. And I,
 that was in 2008, fortunate enough, it like kind of started dabbling in internet marketing of
 met a buddy of mine. And he was right in his first book and he had been doing online marketing
 stuff and traveling in 2005. He left Columbus, Ohio and started traveling around the world and
 selling products and doing real estate deals. So we met, wrote a book with him. He started getting
 into marketing. He called me up one day and he was like, hey, I'm going to a Dan Kennedy info
 summit. You got to come with me. So I flew out to LA, went to that thing and he was like, you're
 going to want to buy everything from everyone on that stage. I don't know if you've ever been
 of those events. And he was like, just buy one thing and execute. Yeah. I mean, thankful for,
 for my buddy, Mark, for doing that, you know, that really me in and saying, just get something
 and execute great lesson in that. But I take it, Dan's not related. No, he's not. He wasn't
 brother from another. No, but he is closer than you probably. Right. So, so he, we both are from Ohio.
 Yeah. And it is. So yeah, so I, you know, I started getting into marketing and then after that,
 he then he called me up and he goes, Hey, you need to, what you need to do is like, I'm doing a
 lead gen program. We're going to rotate leads. We're going to do some email drops. We're going to
 go get leads. We're going to be able to sell products on the back send emails. And I was like,
 I did that. And I was like, holy smokes. And I was like, I just made money sending emails.
 Yeah. So it was game changing for me at that point. And then, uh, so, you know, fast forward,
 the bankruptcy happens. I'm like, man, I might just, I can reinvent myself now. I can do something
 different. I don't feel so like wasn't so like in that environment anymore. I had to be in the
 the office and all that. So started doing online marketing stuff, got back into just flipping
 real estate and doing that kind of stuff and started building internet marketing companies and
 built some smaller brands up and sold them over between 2009 and 2010. I ended up building up
 seven different companies and selling them, which was kind of cool. Some small sales, one low end
 seven figure, right? Okay. But one mostly smaller six figure sales, which is still one year.
 Yeah. Well, no, it was a three year period. Okay. I'm sorry. No, 2009 to, I'm sorry, 13.
 Okay. So still seven, seven deals or four years. It was an internet based man. It's
 rapid speed, right? And what I learned during that process was I had to, uh, and I had to learn how
 to run paid traffic. I had to learn how to build funnels and I was self taught. So, you know,
 I luckily had some great people in my corner. And I've never had a problem asking questions
 on how to do things. And so that parlayed in 13 and 2011, I started a company funnel architects
 before like the funnel, I guess branding thing became really big, right? With all these things
 that are out there. Russell Brunson. Yeah. I think that was, so I was three years ahead of him.
 Yeah. But I'll tell you what, he's done an amazing job building that, building that system and
 that software and everything else. You know, he, he solved the problem, right? I was doing it all
 manual. He created the solution. Yeah. But, uh, yeah. So, and then from there, people started
 hiring us to do stuff for him, right? Because we had funnels and paid traffic and ended up having
 an agency for many years. And then in 2020, I decided I was like, I got to get back to my roots.
 I want to send, I want to wake up, send an email and be done with my day. And so by May of 2020,
 I had launched a media company. And I also, in 2020, I had a bunch of clients. I basically,
 that I'm going to go to them and say, Hey, look, you know, we need to transition away and find
 you someone else to handle what we do. I'm going to start building our own brands. And so that's
 what we did. And that's been on a whirlwind since then building our own brand. So it's not only,
 uh, I would say marketing, that's all the, the, uh, happy side of the stories, not the, not the
 bad side. We got plenty of roadblocks along the way, but maybe we'll come back to this. Yeah.
 Well, yeah, that's it. That's where I'm at today. So now I own a media company. I've got, uh,
 you know, we do traffic and conversion stuff as well for some people and we're launching,
 always trying to launch something new. So I got a coffee company. We're trying to get off the ground.
 And, you know, it's, that's pretty much it. You know, like just trying to create brands that we
 can grow into, you know, eight figures to nine figure. Hopefully is the goal. I like it. Definitely
 a serial entrepreneur. I'm hearing that a lot more than anything. I think you're out of the
 definition. Uh, I do want to ask that I heard media company a couple times. And I think media
 companies becoming a complicated name, you know, like, so I'd love to know what, for you,
 what your media company exactly means and kind of that interpretation. Yeah. So for us, we have,
 I guess what I labeled as a conservative media company, right? So we, we've identified a demographic
 and we're building websites, news based websites for them to read content and access content
 that they want to read. And then what we do is we generate, we turn them into newsletter subscribers.
 And then from those newsletter subscribers, what we're doing is, you know, we now are, so we,
 we sent, have about 70 to 75 million impressions per month right now. So for me, on the media side,
 it's, it's, I guess the boil down is like, we own eyeballs, right? Yeah. And we own the audiences.
 So with that art, what we do then is people come to us and buy those impressions from us
 for different fees, right? Depending on where they're at or within the system. Are they in the
 newsletter? Are they on the website? Are they dedicated email? Like all these different things.
 So if I own conservative, conservative business, whether it's a T-shirt company or whatever,
 and it's, and my audience is conservative based, I can come to you and the media company
 and buy audience essentially. Exactly. So you're going to go to Facebook and buy those audiences,
 but you're also most likely in the conservative side going to run in a couple of roadblocks a
 lot of ways. Yeah. We just, you know, it's like best ways, you know, Facebook's kind of a media
 company itself too with all the ad space they got, right? So that's really, we're just, you know,
 going to say we're on Facebook level, but we're a very small version of that with a very targeted
 audience, right? Yeah. And I think that's really key and for audience, you know, I'm glad you teed
 that up. You know, everyone in that thinks about these and they think about places like journals
 and magazines and all this stuff, but all of these people exist to do a couple of different things.
 One, collect data, you know, build audience or self subscriptions, you know, but a lot of it
 comes back to data now, right? It's all about like, you know, and look, when you aggregate content
 that they're interested in and you give them value, they don't mind sharing that data, right?
 And I think that's what's key. And it sounds like you guys are kind of tapping into that conservative
 mindset. Yeah. It's in what it's a larger audience and they're an audience that are interested
 in multiple verticals, right? So we're not pigeonholed into like one small piece, right? So we've
 got tactical survival financial. There's gold out, you know, like gold industries very big. So
 there's all these different types of verticals that they're interested in coffee shirts, right?
 So it doesn't limit us to only doing one thing. Yeah. I like it. I like it. So I want to step back
 because you talked about, I want to talk about the learning lessons, you know, I mean, you know,
 I talked to a lot of entrepreneurs as kind of the nature of this show where we go and telling
 stories and personal brand stories. And look, it's so cool to be an entrepreneur now, you know,
 at 21 and 20 and everybody wants to be an entrepreneur or own their own thing, which I don't, I don't
 throw shade on it as much as I think it's glamorized a bit, you know, let's talk about, you know,
 your growth in that perspective. I mean, you talked about it with the real life bankruptcy,
 I mean, like nothing more real than that, right? Yeah. Yeah. Well, when I lost everything,
 I'll tell you what, I was sitting in my condo that was being foreclosed down only because all
 my other houses right already disappeared. My car was reposed. And he had, and I had my wife,
 plus her heart, she's still with me. You know, so she saw me at my high, she saw me at my low,
 and now she sees us where we're at today. So her and I were actually literally like counting change.
 I don't know. I grew up on a house where my family always, like we always had a change bucket.
 And that change bucket was like the money we would take on vacation every year, like my day when
 I was sort of changing it. So I always, I still to this day have like a change bucket. I just,
 one of those things from childhood, right? If you came into the offer house and you look next
 to the stove, we have a glass jar about that tall with change in it. I can relate, brother. Yeah,
 I still got it. So we were rolling that change. We really rolling that change. And I saw a mouse
 run across the floor. I was like, oh, you got to be kidding me. So I was depressed for about two
 weeks, probably, you know, just going through that process of my failure. I failed. I'm never going
 to recover and feel sorry for myself and all that good stuff. But in little that I know,
 that was probably one of the easier moments I was going to go through, right? Looking back on it.
 And, you know, more money, more problems. Yeah, exactly. When you don't have money, it's funny,
 though, you only have one problem. You know, when you don't have money, I mean, I'm not,
 I'm simplifying it. But I think you know, sure, you got one problem on your mind.
 Yeah, because you're getting out of that hole. Yeah, you know, and then once you get out of the hole
 and you get somewhere, then you got all these other things, right? Bigger, bigger problems,
 produces more money, though, too. Exactly. So bigger problems. Yeah. So yeah, I mean, I went through
 that. That was one of the probably my first real like hardship, right? Going through that and
 then figuring out I had to rebuild. Like I had no choice. It was like, I got to do something.
 I'm not going to sit here and wallow in my misery. It's either you either move forward or you stay
 where you're at. And I think, you know, I think that's one thing entrepreneurs that you talk about
 that it's glamorized, but what I was willing to do at that time was the work. I had nothing,
 but I was willing to do the work. And I knew that there are a lot of people who weren't willing
 to, you know, a lot of people get into it and they got this idea and they're excited about
 being an entrepreneur, being able to build a business and they get in and they're like, oh,
 I got to do this. I got to do this. I got to do this. Like, let's go down and on and on, right? So
 I think entrepreneurs are great, which you got to be willing to work and you got to be competitive
 at the end of the day, too. It's a game business is just a game. So that was one hardship.
 The next hardship was through all of that, the bankruptcy and losing real estate and everything
 else I went through and I've always been very hesitant over years to tell this story and I've
 just recently started opening up about it because it was a tough one is the I got a I traveled
 around, got back and I'm a doorstep in North Carolina. So I lost my real estate license, too,
 right? During that process, I lost it because I made a mistake and I got made an example of if I
 had money to hire an attorney, I'd probably still have my mortgage license but everything works out
 how it's supposed to work out. So I'm happy for that. Yeah. And I co-worker to deal and paid a little
 too much to the to the other company and because I did that, they were like, oh, give us your license,
 right? Yeah. All right. So I can't be the mortgage space anymore. So let's go green vent. Yeah.
 And I ended up later down the road after this couple of years later, they come back. They go,
 my doorstep is that same commissioner bank and an FBI agent. I'm like, what is this?
 Can I help you? And he was like, oh, the guy says the name is I know exactly who you are.
 Why are you here? I got it. I just instantly went on attack mode. Yeah. And I was like, here's
 my attorney's info and I get that off my doorstep and slam the door in his face and that did not
 go well over for me. So it's funny. I was so mad. And I was like, I just finally got out
 all this stuff and I'm back in it. But you know what I've learned? Like, I want to hear
 the rest of the story. I know. But I think it's a good learning lesson and a good point.
 What I've learned and I'm that I'm you know, a lot of like I think and both entrepreneurs
 probably pretty pretty base level. But when we get hot, we get hot. And what I've learned
 though is rarely even when you feel like you're in the right, even when you feel like, okay,
 you've paid your dues or you've done whatever, it just rarely goes well for you or as good as it
 could have when you kind of lose your shit. You know what I mean? Like even if like you feel like
 you got all your ducks in a row, you've done what you're supposed to do and like, you know,
 you want to just tell it like it is and you're ready to let that out and you won't let that
 frustration go. It seems to always put you in a more of a deficit than maybe you were to begin with.
 100% and that's exactly where where the story goes too. So yeah, I just I every time I'm like,
 damn it. I got created. I dug the whole deeper than it had to be. Yeah. I'm a pretty even
 cute guy like one of my clients years ago. He would get so mad at me because we'd have a huge win.
 And I just like awesome. And we did what we're supposed to do. He's like, are you not excited?
 I was like, yeah, I'm excited. Next, let's go. I think it's an entrepreneur. You can't get too high
 and you can't get too low. I think the best ones are have a little bit of, I don't know. I don't
 want to say your flat line, but it's just a few because if you go too far on either level,
 it just doesn't seem to work. It's a rollercoaster, right? Emotional rollercoaster. It's super tough
 and they just beat yourself up mentally because you're so high one day and they're in the dumps.
 Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. You got to be even keo for sure. Yeah. It helps to be. It does control.
 Yeah. Control it. That's right. So yeah. So anyways, that story ended up with a going through
 a couple of years like legal battle and the FBI switched over basically because they knew there
 was nothing there, but they had to start there on the criminal side and then they went to the
 civil side over to the DOJ and basically when it all came down to it, my attorney, they said,
 hey, we can find you millions of dollars right now, but we'll settle instead. And I told my
 attorney, I was like, well, let's fight them. I was like, I don't, I want to fight. He goes,
 you can't fight. He goes, you can, you can pay me to fight, but you're not going to win because
 you're fighting them with it. They're using your money to fight you. Yeah. If you're tax dollars.
 Yeah. He goes, he goes, I recommend that you just settle and be done with it. And so
 supposedly they're going to find me millions of dollars. Instead, it was a $75,000 fine. So it
 was just that it'll be in a financial shakedown in my opinion. But you know, so I had a couple of
 years of that process going on while trying to build my companies and doing all this other stuff.
 So you can, I couldn't be too high. I couldn't be too low, you know. So having a lot of success
 on the business side. So here's what it was. They actually said, hey, you know, you're, you're,
 we decided this whole video, right? It's marketing video called the billionaire boy for this real
 estate product piece that we were launching. And the billionaire boy, it's like his little kid,
 he's walking around, he's talking, oh, he's a billionaire and my buddy owned like a 16,000 square
 foot house. So we shot some of the video there. We had him looking at houses. Like it was just
 just like comic video, right? And they went to that video and said, we see that you're making tons
 of money because of this video. And I was like, that's just a, that's a, that's just a joke. It's
 a parody. It's a parody. Right. And so that's actually what you two, you two video. That's what sparked
 it. That's what sparked it. That's correct. All the whole FBI. Well, I think all of it, I think
 there was already there, but they brought that up in the, in the meetings, right? And saying, well,
 you have this video. So we know you've got money and it's this and this. And it's like, oh my
 God. It was, it was a process. But hey, I mean, at the end of the day, it's part of life. Yeah.
 I think that's maybe an extreme example. If you're an entrepreneur and you're building a business,
 hopefully you never go through something like that because it is a challenge. It's not a lot of
 fun, but it's the world's worries, right? It's the battle loons we get. Yeah. And if I, you know,
 I try not to harp on this too much because I think I start to sound like, you know, like you know
 it all or something, but it's like you do, the scars do make you better. I mean, it, you learn
 something, you know, and I don't know if you aren't challenged, you aren't growing, they say,
 you know, there's no growth in the easiness. I don't know if you found that true.
 Oh, 100%. I mean, if you're not growing and not learning, one of our core values in my company
 is growth. Yeah. Like you got to be getting better. Yeah. Whether it be professionally and
 personally. So talk to me. It's always fascinated me. We talked about this a little bit. The brand
 versus performance marketing. And I kind of came up to that brand lens and bigger campaigns and
 you self taught performance marketing. Now the marketing doctor. They might stick. I like that.
 I like that. The MD. And but talk to me about the fundamentals of funnel building and stuff
 like that. I just find it fascinating. I think our audience does because it's still highly relevant
 with building leads and those kind of things. Like when you're talking about it or you give advice
 about, I mean, what are just some of the cores of performance marketing? Yeah. I think the performance
 might is you really got to re-engineer what you want. So I think a lot of people go in and they
 just build a funnel because someone else built a funnel. Right. Let's go hack this. Let's go hack that.
 Yeah. And so I try and stress right out of the front. Like what do you want out of the business?
 Do you you want it automated delivery? You want to be able to run traffic?
 Just generate sales or do you want to have? Do you want to do coaching? Do you want to do master?
 Like what's your high ticket end going to be because your margins are going to be slim if you don't
 have something bigger on the back. Right. So it's trying to figure out like what do you want out of
 the business? Yeah. Because some people they want to build a coaching funnel and they love coaching.
 They love training. They love having that environment. Yeah. And so that that model is a lot
 different because you're charging more money. Yeah. As opposed to maybe you're selling a $97
 training course. Right. So I think for me the number one thing is like what do you ultimately want
 out of the business? And what's the lifestyle you want? And how does your business fit?
 Because then you can design the funnel and the system all around that lifestyle that you want.
 Yeah. And I think a lot of times people just go out there and say, hey, this guy's got a funnel.
 It looks like he's killing it because he's running ads. So I'm going to go ahead and just do the same
 thing. Yeah. And the biggest challenge is I think that's the biggest challenge why there's so
 many people who dive in and fizzle out so fast. Also be ready to spend money and lose money.
 Yeah. I don't know if that's if that makes anyone feel good. No, it doesn't. I mean, it's true.
 But it's like that in everything. Yeah. Even like that on the branding side and it's not
 on the branding side though, I don't call it lost money. I call it investment. Yeah.
 Because you're building awareness. Yeah. And even on the performance marketing side, if you plan to
 stick with it, it's like you're going to be a coach or you're going to be selling courses.
 They're going to be doing something. You plan to do it for the next five, 10, 15 years or whatever.
 Then every ad is building an impression in a 100%. Yeah. And that's always been the balance for me
 with like, okay, we all want leads. We all want sales now. And certainly if you're a coach,
 every dollar you spend, you need to be trying to get our way. What's I understand?
 But it's also like that people don't know who you are. And why are they going to buy for me?
 And so it's like, how do you how do you balance the brand versus the performance?
 You know, it's always been fascinating to me. Well, and that's I think when you're there,
 it all comes down to performance, right? Because you can build your brand in the performance. No
 one knows you, but they got to know you eventually. Yeah. And so I think you're speaking heavier on
 that. You're speaking heavier to their problem. Yeah. Because you can see there's I'm sure you know
 people, I know people, they can go, you know, a buddy of mine just made a post recently and did a whole
 yacht trip, filled up a yacht trip, did like $100,000 from one Instagram post because he is invested in
 that brand and people want to be around him. Yeah. And then there's also, but at the same time,
 before all that, he was doing, you know, more performance, like getting people into his
 pain to get people into his system. And it was fun. It'll follow up. And then that brand was built
 over time. Yeah. So for me, on performance side, if I were to give someone, they're looking to build
 a funnel. It's like, I know it's not sexy. I know it's not exciting. But you got to understand
 exactly what the pro who exactly you want to work with and what is their problem. Yeah. And if you
 do that, you can write copy. Oh, and I would 100% invest in a copywriter. Everybody thinks they're
 a good copywriter. Everybody I ever talk, oh, I could write copy. No, you can't. Yeah. I was like,
 there's a reason copywriters get paid big money because they're really, really good at what they do.
 But if you pay a copywriter or when you pay a copywriter, just make sure you know who you want to
 attract. Yeah. Because you can have I built a business one time through a funnel. And I found
 that I ended up attracting all the wrong people. Yeah. And we were generating sales and everything else.
 But I wasn't enjoying the conversations and the issues with the business because it wasn't people
 that I wanted attracted in that in that model. Right. So you can get off track very quick too. Yeah.
 And then there's a disconnect like once you start delivering maybe the product of the service.
 It's like, it may not boil itself up to the to the forefront beginning, but you know,
 getting repeat business or the next round. Okay. If it wasn't as mismatch, right. You kind of
 get off the wrong foot. So talk to me about, you know, the here and the now and the kind of like
 the businesses that you're, you know, what's what's today look like? What are we up to? Oh man,
 today's I'm hanging out here. Yeah. I think you've got to you start botan's old businesses.
 Sounds like that's still part of the plan. But what all's kind of in the day to day life now of,
 you know, where you want to take that. Yeah. My goal a few years back. I just said I really wanted to
 I started focusing on becoming a better leader. Yeah. Because for entrepreneurs like you're either
 in the trenches and in the grind or you're becoming a better leader to help people with you build and
 grow. So a big challenge I had my agency was people I was a hired gun. People were hiring me,
 not my company. So on Saturdays, I'm getting a phone call. Or if I had my account manager call
 and they're like, well, no, no, no, we won't talk to Nate, you know, so even though they could have
 done the same thing. So I knew going out of it. Like I had that's because I don't I didn't do a
 good job leading and growing those people. So my big focus, you know, day to day is improving my
 leadership skills to help, you know, build great people like I want to build up awesome people
 within our companies and help them get better, help them produce impact. So I think day to day
 wise, that's what I'm spending my time on. That's what my goal is. Company wise on the marketing
 front, I'm just trying to build bigger audiences, you know, more of the properties bigger audiences
 because it's, you know, there's so much value. And if you can own the eyeballs, there's value.
 What do you think about what's going on, you know, you have back to that with building audience,
 building that and you smart owning and buying, you know, and those of you listening out there,
 you got to have your own first party data, you got to build your own audience, uh,
 because leading on the Facebooks of worlds we talked about, but I just don't see that getting
 better, you know, what's going on with some of the social platforms and some of the, you know,
 the ability to kind of own your audience because you're, let's face it, you're rent,
 it's own land versus rented land is what I call it, you know, when you own your own site and own
 data, you know, and media companies, you own it, you know, um, when you're on social and other
 platforms you're renting and you just never know when the, when the, the clothes signs going to
 turn like first metaphors. Sort of. Yeah, no, but it's just, Tarty's gotten a lot harder on the
 social platforms, hasn't it? Yeah, it has, which is Tarty's got way harder, so you've got to
 have your message down in. Yeah. Know who you're trying to track, right? And let your ad and copy
 and all that do the heavy lifting. But I agree with you, it's getting harder, it's getting,
 it's getting harder, it's getting more expensive, but it's, people should still do it and use it.
 Yeah, you just got to be a better marketer and continuously improve, but more importantly,
 you got to add other other channels. And if you own the audience, so the reason for me that's
 big on that is because if my Facebook ad account goes down or my Google ad account goes down,
 I still have over two and a half million people I can send an email to in day one and generate
 revenue, right? So if there is, if you have an email list, you might only have a thousand people
 on your email list or 500 people on your email list, but if you can, you're like, I'm not going to
 mail them because they don't, uh, you know, I have an email to me for email. Do it right now.
 Stop now and go do it because you're going to generate traction and revenue. Yeah,
 by doing it. I know you're a big email fan. Oh, I was, I was waiting for you to tee that one up.
 Okay, people out there listening, I think they go, email's been around for, uh,
 yeah, I just delete the emails. Uh, that's not true because a lot of money is being generated
 every day from email. I know you're a big fan of it. What's your perspective on email marketing?
 I think it's a must. Yeah, for online companies. It's an absolute must. It's, it allows you to do
 a couple things. Uh, if your coach or consultant or product owner, whatever that may be, if you have an
 email, you can send an email and pre-launch a product. You can send an email, uh, and test a message
 to see if, hey, did this message work? If it did, all right, well, let me go to put some money towards
 it on ads, right? So there's a lot of things that you can do with an email list, but you're always
 going to be able to communicate and you're going to be able to communicate and consistently with
 them. Stay first of mine. Not everyone buys right out of the gate too. So they might subscribe
 and then buy a year later. I've, and my big lesson on this was when I started growing an email
 list in 2006 and kind of understanding the power of it, uh, over that time was I still have people
 from stuff I was doing in 2009 that are still around that message me. Oh, Nate, good. You know,
 I noticed you got this new thing going on. That's awesome, right? So I don't email
 nearly as much as I used to to that list. I used to email every single day and, you know,
 working on getting back to it, but we got that going on. So I haven't. So there's my excuse. Yeah.
 But, uh, there is, uh, it's, it's one of those things where there, those, those, they may come on
 or your list one year and buy two years down the road from you. Yeah. But if you're communicating
 and staying in touch, they're just waiting for the right time, right? And it's a way to bond.
 And people want to do business and we all know everyone wants to do business with people they
 know, like, and trust and email allows you to build that bond. What's the, uh,
 talking about late lead magnets? Like what, what do you see is in this day and age,
 where people have kind of been barbed in different things like that. And obviously having a media
 entity and newsletter and all that is certainly one of them. I don't want to steal your thunder
 there, but like, but what, what, what does it take to get them an email these days?
 So I, so we do stuff a little different, uh, for me, I kind of got a way from lead magnets
 and I, what, and so what we do is what we call the one step funnel. Okay. So we've just rebranded
 a squeeze page. Uh, so, but, uh, so, but it was step funnel trademark, uh, marketing doctor.
 Is that noted? You got that noted neck? Got that now.
 Well, what we do is polls, right? So our goal is we want to go to a hyperactive audience,
 or a, not hyperactive, but a larger audience that's passionate about something. Okay.
 And whatever that passion is, and then we, we do polls and we like to get them to vote,
 yes or no, and then we send them the results and email. Uh, so we like to do stuff along those
 lines and come over the right phrases and ways to do that because it's more engaging,
 because once you get them on the email list, the problem with lead magnets, lead magnets
 themselves is so many people are doing them. So as soon as they opt in, here's fatigue and people
 opt in and then they don't go and you're like, oh, I sent it to an email, then they never go check
 it because they wanted on the page there. Right. And they only opted in because they needed that.
 So you're getting a lot of bad email addresses that in opt in because I want to hear from you.
 Now granted the, uh, the polls, the one thing the polls solves for us is people really want to know
 if they're right, if they're right. Right. You don't want to be right. And so whether they vote,
 yes or no, or whatever the vote is, they want to, they want to understand that answer. So
 are you doing these polls like within like the media platforms you have?
 Correct. All right. So, and so that's why we do larger audiences though. Yeah.
 And now you can sift and sort them and push them where they need to go through different
 engagement, right. But the biggest thing is when you get an opt in is get them engaged on email.
 A lot of times people just send one email and they never mail again. Like you got to really get
 them engaged. Yeah. Because it clicks matter, right. An email. So we do a lot of personal
 branding at the agency. Um, I have a lot of guests on that have personal brands and leverage it.
 What, what's the Nate Kennedy personal brand? Like, you know, when you think about yourself,
 it maybe it's what you're hoping to convey, you know, what you convey. Like, and when I'd
 like your perspective on personal branding, you know, overall, and then to what you feel like
 yours is. Man, I think, uh, well, one, uh, personal brand is a must. I think these days, um,
 if, and even company brands are, right, uh, for long term. And it just depends how you grow it.
 I think, you know, for me, uh, the, my goal, I guess, I don't know what the brand will be.
 I'm a family guy, right? Like, yeah. You know, big thing for me was, you know, faith in family,
 because I was first, uh, I'm definitely unapologetically American, you know, I've got not hiding that.
 Love you some American. Love me some freedom. Yep. And, uh, you know, and I think on the marketing
 side, man, I, I just, you know, brand side, I design campaigns that make it rain, you know, like,
 so it's, it's one of those maybe as for personal brand, I'm still, I'm hoping I can get some insight
 from you because I'm really, you're the expert. I know how to build, build and generate leads and,
 make money out of thin air through marketing campaigns. But when it comes to, uh, the personal brand,
 I'm really going down that avenue these days. And I think time will tell. I just think, you know,
 just being myself. Yep. You know, showing the stuff I do with my family, I'm constantly,
 I'm, you know, I'm into sports. So, you know, like a lot of my analogies, I'm coaching my son and
 his teams and stuff and my daughter wants nothing to do with sports. So, uh, she puts, she loves horseback riding.
 So it's like just being there for that. And I think it's, you know, those are some of the big things,
 like, uh, you know, that I, me as a person, they, family, that kind of stuff. And, and I think
 I want to inspire entrepreneurs, right? To, to not have to take the, the hard way, not have to
 make the mistakes. That's, you know, yeah, that I made. I think you've got it pretty nailed. I mean,
 your personal brand is, I'm distilling this now. It is amplification of your reputation.
 And your thought leadership, you know, like, and you just described, you know, faith, family,
 things are important to you and freedom and liberty and, you know, conservative media. It's,
 you know, all that plays together. And personal brand is just the amplification of that.
 The, the circle of influence growing. And because at the end of the day, everyone has a story.
 Everyone has a reputation. Um, and when you're wanting to activate that for the good of others,
 you see, there's, I've been having this debate, um, Christopher Locke, who's a genius in marketing
 and branding. Uh, he's, when I look up to written books, he's, he designs categories. He believes,
 which is true that in marketing, the way to break through is not to come into a category that
 has a bunch of players and try to compete and be better. You, you create a new category.
 Which is pretty brilliant to make sense. It's difficult to do. Um, but he hates personal brain.
 And he calls it the disease of me. And, but here's the thing. I disagree with him all the time
 because I think personal branding is the opportunity to amplify the good and the reputation and the
 inspiration that human beings can be to other human beings. And I think that's where it starts.
 And so, you know, you certainly find your categories, but I think, you know, you trying to be an
 inspiration of the entrepreneurs, if people don't know that, then you can't help but so many people.
 And so it has to be amplified. It's just like running an ad for a funnel or for a business or
 anything else. If I'm trying to sell widgets, I need more people to see it more often. And I need
 to motivate them to make a buy. If I'm trying to inspire others, I need other people to know who
 I am and to know my story. And we need amplification of that so that it happens. And I think that's,
 you know, it's, that's the 80,000 foot. I like it. Yeah. I got a nail. I'm good.
 So I think that's what some, I'm an introvert. Yeah. I always have been. I like being behind the
 scenes, which is probably why I really enjoyed the agency and being the hired gun and out the guy
 in front. And so it took me a long time to start getting out on front of the camera. And what
 really set kind of pushed me was what legacy am I leaving? And I think if I've had the ability to
 have all these experience and a good buddy of mine is really kind of pulled me out of this. Like,
 look, man, you've got, you've got some crazy stories. You've done some amazing things because
 we and ourselves are very like, I find like, and I'm sure you're the same way. Like you do something
 we toss as normal. There's other people looking in. They're like, Holy smokes. How did that
 happen? Or how'd you do that? Yeah. And so I don't know that I'm doing my legacy
 justice by not sharing. Yeah. And I think, and like you just said, you know, we have to amplify it
 so we can impact more people. That's right. And you know, I might not, the one thing, there's a guy
 in my house, a guy in our neighborhood that started a painting company, a young guy 23, 22,
 something like that. He was in our house for something. I gave him my book that I wrote.
 And I just, Hey, man, here's a copy. And he read it. He shot me a message the other day. He's
 like, thank you so much for giving me that book. He goes, I just did a, he's like February is always
 our worst month every year. And he's new. And it's like his second or third year. And he knows
 and we just had our best month ever. And he was like, we did 140,000 revenue. And he was so stoked.
 And I was like, I need more, I want more of that, right? Yeah. I want that impact. It's the
 expired people to do more, right? And that's work and do more. Yeah. And that's what people
 will get so stuck on. They're like, they think they're going to be judged, you know, with
 personal branding or they think, like, you know, we're all shy or what whether you're an intro
 or not, like it's not easy putting yourself out there like you're doing on the show. Like
 and everybody kind of gets, you know, hung up on all that stuff. But the only way,
 but once you start feeling the impact, like, I'll tell them, I'll tell my wife I had this story
 because I've been building my personal brand for like the last six or seven years. And
 you know, it was she didn't get it at first. And then I started reading her like some of the DMs
 that I was getting. You know, she's like, okay, I get it now. You know, like, like that feedback.
 You know, and it wasn't, oh man, you're so successful. Congratulations. It was, hey man,
 you really inspired me with this or that together. And I heard you hear it. Yeah. Which is awesome.
 I know it is awesome. So what's Nate Kennedy.com? Right? What's what we trying to get done?
 I'm trying to, I know you're trying to buy some businesses. You're transacting and things
 like that. What else can we tell the audience? But what's your, you know, I think, you know, for us
 growth, growth through leverage. Yeah. So got the knowledge, got the experience, got the team,
 and add more consistently to it. And it's, you know, you know, one thing that's been exciting to
 me is, you know, last six months, we each last quarter of last year. And then this quarter,
 yeah, this is not even yet. So Q4 and Q1, each, each, we've acquired companies. So that's
 exciting to acquire companies within the verticals that we're in. Yeah. To be able to, and then I've
 also done two partnership deals, which is exciting to me to be able to bring our some money and
 knowledge into other companies that we know we can help, yeah, help them grow and help them get
 over those, those hurdles and grow. So that's really kind of the stuff that I'm most excited about
 going forward, I would say. What's some of the media company? What's the like media websites and
 stuff like that? American Conservatives.com is one. Okay. Modern Patriots is another one that we've
 got some plans for. We got right now. It's content, but we're going to grow it into some Ecom stuff.
 Liberty coffee is something we're working on right now. We're making coffee great again.
 So coffee that's so right. Nothing's left. So I like it. I like it. So yeah. So we are, I mean,
 I'm excited about those things, you know, like really just taking all this experience that we've
 had from over the years and just, you know, leading a great team to help us grow these companies.
 So yeah, I can't do it all myself. And I think that's the biggest challenges. If you're in the
 trenches as an entrepreneur and you're in the trenches and doing all the work and you're trying to
 run three companies, it's never going to work. But if you're going to run multiple companies,
 you got to put the right people in place to run them. And I think that's the big learning lessons
 I've learned over the last couple of years to help them. You think and we could have spent the
 whole podcast and if we're not a politics part podcast, but, you know, is it, is it going to ever
 get any better? Like are we ever going to ever find this common ground again? Or is it just
 going to be hard right and hard left for the, for the, to the end of days here? So I don't think it's,
 I think if what's hard right and hard left is what you watch. Yeah. I think in real world.
 It's a little more than I think you got center right, center left. People that have very
 all agree that freedom is a good thing. So, you know, it's funny. I was interviewing a guy yesterday,
 well, got to come in and do some content and brand management. And he was, I make it very clear.
 We are a conservative company, Christian values. These are the brands we work on, right? Yeah.
 Only because it is so polarizing for some people. Yeah. And I at least want them to know what they're
 walking into. I don't want someone to come in and go, I, I completely disagree with everything
 that's being said here. So I don't like it here. Like I don't want that because I want people
 to come in and can thrive. Yeah. And so I just make that known. And the guy was like, I got no
 problem where he goes, I'm libertarian left. I was like, that's cool. I was like, I got to each
 their own. Yeah. Right. So, but I think that, I mean, I don't know about the libertarians maybe
 could take off if they had a better name. But so, I don't know. I think most of us, I think most
 people are in a center, you know, and I think, but the media doesn't want you to see that, right?
 Yeah. Because then we get along. Yeah, exactly. But you have been the last time you walked down
 the street and someone was like screaming at you. Yeah. Yeah. No. And it's also, I mean, I was
 watching Tucker Carlson last night and kid rock. He didn't interview. And so like, that's what's
 interesting. He's like, conservative is a little edger than it used to be. You know, like it used
 to be, you know, button collars, all that now. And I mean, I know that's cliche. But like, I feel
 like there's a, I don't know, Andy for sale, I'm like, oh, that crowd like, yeah. And then he
 probably gives some concern to stuff more in the middle, too. He wasn't. I don't know if he goes.
 I would call him the freedom party. You know what I mean? Yes, I'm saying. Yeah.
 Well, if you look at Bill Maher, right? He came out recently. He was like, the liberal party's
 not what it used to be. Yeah. Yeah. You know, like even they've changed it. Yeah. And so like,
 it's, you know, you even hear him. So it's, I don't think, I think eventually there's got
 the pendulum swings, right? And everything you do. So I got hope.
 Me as well. Well, cool. Nate, we're going to keep up with all things. I think we mentioned
 your website, NateKennedy.com anywhere else. Instagram. The best place, NateKennedy.com. And then
 all my social handles, Instagram is probably where I'm most active. Yeah. And that's Nate's Kennedy
 MD. Okay. So Nate Kennedy marketing doctor. How to get you there? Right. Right. I really
 appreciate you coming on the show. I appreciate you having me. Thank you so much. Yeah. It's been
 fun. It was fun. Hey guys, go follow Nate Kennedy. I like this guy. Hey, conservative or not,
 it doesn't matter. We know all of you need to get along and be in the middle a little bit. And
 you know what? You might just learn something from him. Go check him out on Instagram. NateKennedy MD.
 Hey, you know where we're at? We're at theradcast.com search for all our content. Search for Nate Kennedy.
 You'll find all the highlights clips from today. You know where I'm at. I'm at Ryan Alfred on all
 the platforms. We'll see you next time on the radcast.