Law Smith on The Life Of A Marketer Podcast

Episode Description

via Jared Berryman: On today’s “The Life of a Marketer Podcast” we have Law Smith! Frankly, this podcast was our most entertaining one yet. Law moonlights at night as a comedian, and he left me laughing the entire time. Truly, Law has a unique business. I’m thankful I wasn’t drinking anything, I probably would have spit it out on my keyboard. Law owns a marketing agency and is a fractional CMO. He helps companies figure out their marketing, and does it with style! If you are looking for some laughs, this podcast is for you. You’ll also learn some things about working with clients as a marketer, too. If you’d like to check out Law’s business, you can find him here: https://www.lawsmithworks.com Also, I remind you to like, subscribe, and share our podcast!

About The Life Of A Marketer Podcast

Hello marketers! I'm a marketer myself, and I created this channel to help marketers! As a media buyer for twelve years, in this podcast we will work together to get better results. Each week, I'll interview a number of marketing professionals that are experts in their respective fields. We'll all grow together, and learn about new tech and new strategies. Want to see my own company? Visit us at https://www.hiveleadmarketing.com

Jared Berryman | Hivelead 0:17

Welcome to the life of a marketer podcast. And I'm really excited today because I have a very interesting guest that has been different from some of the guests that we've had so far. This is law Smith Law has kind of an interesting career In, in marketing, I'm gonna let him introduce himself. So law tell us about what it is that you do and your marketing and also your, your job at night as well.

Law Smith 0:46

So, yeah, there's a duality to my life, like a really poor man's Batman. I have, I have a day job where I own my own small to medium business advisory meets a marketing agency. I run that and president of that do a lot of digital marketing stuff, as you know, kind of player coach sometimes you gotta get in there, most of the time managing specialists. And then, at night, a bit of moonlighting moonlighting career is a stand up comedian. And I hope I'm funny on this, but I can't promise anything. Because I was I tell clients that in a discovery meeting, and I, I used to keep those rules separate, but the the preface I give them is, whoever your favorite comedians, like, I'm probably not like them. Because like, they're like, Oh, I love Jeff Dunham. And I'd be like, you're not gonna like my stuff. And then, and then in between those two things, I have a show called sweat equity. If you go to sweat, equity, pod.com it's where we interview. The idea is to interview people smarter than us, or who have experienced things we haven't we come at, at the beauty of like, I'm kind of smart and dumb at the same time. So the beauty of Eric, my co host is the same way. And so, you know, we could help some marketing to look at things as a dumb guy, sometimes, you know, where you're like, No one's gonna respond to this, it's got to wait too much text on the hat, something like that. Right. But also have, you know, be a super dork for, for anything I'm working on. So sweat equity is kind of it's the number one business comedy podcast in the world. Mostly, because there's no one else in. But, but

Jared Berryman | Hivelead 2:39

I've never heard of that before. So yeah, I can see that.

Law Smith 2:42

And we're the number one comedy slash business podcast, because, you know, just for for I have, we have to, we have to, you know, you have to self promote a lot. And we're back. We're horrible at promoting our own show, we're working on that. You can only you can use the cobblers children has no shoes. dilemma, excuse for only so long. And then you're just lazy. You know, it's just I don't want to hear myself on video and cut up clips. And I we know. And the sad thing is, we do this for everybody else as a client, right? So it's like, we know the integrated marketing touchpoints do it. We just, it's just icky to do for ourselves. We got we're getting over that.

Jared Berryman | Hivelead 3:22

Awesome, awesome. So believe it or not, I've actually had another cmo on the podcast that was also does at night does stand up. So you're the second

Law Smith 3:34

person that is not funny. No, no, she was

Jared Berryman | Hivelead 3:37

funny. She had her she was funny. But not not not as nearly as dynamic as she was more serious, you know, on the

Law Smith 3:44

Yeah, I know, business people that do stand up, you know, professionals that they're into it. Right. I, I moved to LA at 21. Right after I finished at Auburn University. To, to pursue stand up, you know, so that was always like, I kind of think of myself as stand up first, even though I'm probably way better at the day job. But, you know, people will get into it later. Just because they need a creative outlet. They usually stink. But I don't know her so I can't say anything about her. Yeah, she kind

Jared Berryman | Hivelead 4:21

of kind of said I don't know though. She was funny in the podcast a couple of times. So well, business

Law Smith 4:25

business is the business Life is funny, like when you're that and that's kind of the crux of the podcast is kind of like hanging out with feral cat comedians, you know, at night that are saying the most crate the craziest stuff on stage and then you hang out, you know, I go in clients offices, or I was for a while for a couple of years recently, I was plucked up to be in house for a couple agencies and it was like, you know, the the office thinks I'm a little kooky and the stand up world thinks I'm like, Mr. Business. So you know Well, it's kind of one of the things a lot of my Republican friends say, and the Democrat, my Democrat friends, like, I'm a Republican, I don't know, I kind of exist in this weird kind of middle ground.

Jared Berryman | Hivelead 5:09

Alright, so a lot of tell us about who you work, who do you work with? You know, it sounds kind of like you're kind of like a little bit of a fractional CMO, and you can implement some of the strategies that you put in put in as an advisory. Who is it that you would like to work with that? If you know, if they contacted you today? What companies? Would you say no to and what companies would you like to work with?

Law Smith 5:34

Yeah, my, my niche became law firms. And I think that's because my dad, maybe my dad was an attorney for 35 years. I'm in Tampa, I'm based out of Tampa. My uncle is the president of a law firm that has 100 lawyers, that all their best friends are lawyers, they all hang out together. All a third of all my guy friends I grew up with are attorneys, which I didn't realize was weird. Until recently, I was like, oh, yeah, that is kind of strange. Tampa Bay Area's the most marketed for per attorney area in the country like Metropolis, which I find fascinating. So that became my niche, and I kind of fell into it. And most people don't want to have attorneys as clients, because I don't want to be challenged by them, or have to fit, I feel like stand up helps leverage or stand up as leverage, in a way in my professional life, because I feel like I can take things that are complicated to explain and find a through ground, you know, through line with whoever I'm talking to the audience, and be able to explain this thing and kind of a way they can understand. And I feel like a lot of people in the marketing world don't focus on communication a lot. And then I'd say, we've worked well with any professional services, companies, logistics, private equity, starting to hit us up a lot more, because they just want us, they want to sign us and then do the work for everything they acquire, which is great. So any, any PE firms and VCs out there, angel investors, you know, I'm around, because those are great, because then you get a good working relationship with one person or entity. And you don't have to kind of restart that the psychological part with everybody. And then things I don't want is clients, restaurants, one restaurant owner, you know, restaurant groups, those are cool. The single restaurant owner, or bar owner, that's why Bar Rescue will always have people on the show, because they're just insane. You know, like, most small businesses, they start a small business because they're really good at one thing, but they don't ever realize a lot of owners don't ever realize they got holes in their game. Like I know, I hate doing accounting, right eye and legal. While I understand a lot of business legal. I feel both of those out because those are not, I just need to know enough to talk to them. Right? I feel like a lot of bar owners and lawyers are this way too. I feel like they think of themselves as the specialty first, because that was the skill that brought them there. But they never go okay, now I need to be a business person. You know, like,

Jared Berryman | Hivelead 8:27

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And then

Law Smith 8:31

yeah, those two and then anybody with like a Etsy store that's selling like turquoise jewelry, or something I don't want I don't want your mom's cookie friend, as a client. I'm very picky about e commerce because that's a whole other, I do a lot more lead generation with service companies. E commerce, I'm very picky with because that's a whole other beast. And you like, you really have to get into the operation side with them. Because if you're marketing a lot, they and they're sloppy about automating their, their ERP system, or, you know, whatever they use to checks that have supplies reported to you. You can stock out really shoot yourself in the foot or the products are too. They don't do enough volume and they're too cheap. So you don't really have that margin. Yeah,

Jared Berryman | Hivelead 9:18

right. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. You know, working with lawyers, I was I was thinking about that. That's always what lawyers are. So they have no time. And so you have to like just be verbally very clever with them in the way that you say things I can see that you got to be quick and summarize things and so I can

Law Smith 9:39

consent to be you have to be more like I treat it more like a football coach to them because they respond to that. That's how they're taught. I kind of have that naturally. I'm kind of intense. If I'm like we're building a model and a whiteboard. I'm just because that's my favorite thing to do is build a whole kind of, I have a lead gen model. called, I call it the totem pole model. And I build it out in front of them. Because it's, it's kind of a neat parlor trick. But I start with strategy. That's my approach. Every time I go macro to micro, people want to get caught up in tactics, you know, they go, I need to hire you to do our social media. And you're like, Okay, what does that mean? You don't even know what service you're asking for. And be, you know, that I don't do that I'm not, it's got to have a lot of different tactics that leverage off of each other. Right? If you don't know who you are, and your goals, you know, I don't want to I don't I, or you don't want to work on it with me, I can't work with you. Because I tried to take them on, I tried to take on these pet project people, and like, show them an outline of a business plan because no one writes business plan for some reason. And so lawyers, you just have to be very curt with them very blunt, you got to challenge them to, because they, in whatever reason, they kind of like that, and or, you know, personal trainer, college football coach, whatever kind of metaphor you want to use, but they, you know, and just know that they're going to be very stick late. They're going to be they're going to get focused on, hey, there's a grammatical error on the copy on the site, a tiny one, that may or may not actually be incorrect, right. But they're gonna, if you don't fix that, first we can't talk about anything else. Right? Very details, because to them, it to them their philosophy is how you do anything is how you do everything for someone they hire. Yeah, I think that's a theologian, month, Richard, we're kind of talks about how you do anything is how you do everything. And they I think they believe that anybody, they're paying for outsource stuff. But at the end of the day, my biggest thing is to show ROI. Everything's ROI driven. I, when I report if I have a client on a kind of Legion monthly basis, the firt I do like a doctor's vitals, right? You know, like an ER doctor will go around. They'll check the vitals, what's the first thing on the on the report of the person? It's vital, right? So I just put ROI. And if we're pretty early in the game, I'll go, here's the projected ROI. Here's what it looks like. And then I put, here's something no one else does. either. I put the adjusted ROI, which is my fee with all the other expenses, because agencies think they're, they're tricking people, a most don't show ROI, which is insane. Be the business owner that hires you or the CMO that hires, that's how they look at it anyway. They don't look at you like, Oh, we're getting this ROI. Back. They go. Okay, yeah, but what are we paying them to? So you're not they think they're kind of skipping around it, but they're just kind of delaying the inevitable if they're not doing the performance? Right. Most, most marketing agencies are great at business development. They're terrible to actual work.

Jared Berryman | Hivelead 12:59

Right, right. Yeah, I find that to be true. Yes, I agree with that.

Law Smith 13:04

I'm the opposite. I'm bad at bizdev. I'm working on that, though.

Jared Berryman | Hivelead 13:10

All right. Awesome. So what sort of advice do you offer to people working in the marketing and industry right now,

Law Smith 13:19

if you're young in the game, you know, let's say I'll try to talk to age groups, if you're young, like you're in college, high school, college, or right out of college, like, best thing, you know, best thing to do is, you know, do whatever your if you want to get marketing, you know, do whatever other job, like being a waiter or something. And then go be an intern, you know, eat crow little bit, every marketing agency will take an intern that is hungry. And, you know, you can tell them to hire on character, not talent, I'd say if you're in that middle group, where you're an adult, you're in the middle, you're a professional, you need to like LeBron James coming in the league, where he he would work on one skill every year and add it to his game, like a, he started as like a single blade, swiss army knife. And then he added, like, post up game, and then he added his three pointer. And then your four he had, you know, being a point guard, you know, bring the ball down, back down the court. So like, start adding, because there's so many specialties. And if you're, I'm not a programmer, but I know enough to talk to a programmer. You know, like, if I'm not a graphic designer, but I concept, all all the design, and I just I have people execute the grunt work of it. Sure. So those kinds of things. And then if you're older, you know, the adaptability is number one. If you're kind of in a rut, and you think it's you that you're probably you're not adaptive.

Jared Berryman | Hivelead 14:58

So, awesome. Thank you. All right. So what other successful people in marketing like yourself, would you like to acknowledge that should be on the life of a Marketer Podcast?

Law Smith 15:10

My co host, Eric Readinger, who he came in to my agency is just kind of looking for something to do, you know, stay home dad, and then he's better at me at a lot of stuff I taught so. And he's, he's a different animal than I am. He's not as mannequin. And we're, he may wear a tank top two on the show, though. I can't promise. We are in Florida so we can kind of get away with it. And so, let's see other people. Dean Akers is my mentor. I call him business dad. You can find him through our episodes. And then my BFF and business power business attorney, Steve fantatic would be a good one because he's an entrepreneur as well. But he knows corporate business law. He can tell you everything he he's like a robot. He's like aI robot. You can ask him anything. It's like, his callback is like Will Ferrell at the end of old school and the debate. He can just reel off an answer. And it's like, Is he reading Wikipedia in his own brain? You know, so I think it's because he's Canadian. He's he's got a better disposition the most.

Jared Berryman | Hivelead 16:29

Awesome, awesome. All right, one final Fun, fun question. And I've been looking forward to asking this question. So tell me the oldest technology that you remember using.

Law Smith 16:43

So I, I kind of want to what, what age do people say on this show? Like they remember because I, for some reason, I don't have a lot of memories before maybe five years old. You know, some people are like, how do you not? And then some people are like, Yeah, I don't remember anything before age 11. You're like, okay, cool. You had you had a trauma filled household. But you blocked out a lot of your life. But I grew up in a good house. My dad was NFL running back then was a attorney for 35 years. And so my parents are still married now. And so I don't know, I'm trying to say my initial at first blush, I'd say Gameboy, but I really think it's two things. It's either a pink boombox, that was a tape recorder were my sister's making mixtapes and I would just dance in a room like a five year old. And they might both my sisters would dress me up in like, girl clothes. Because I was their doll. And maybe that's why I do stand up because something messed me up right then. Well, and then I had to I had to wear like my sister's hand me downs in school like a spray shirts in splatter paint white. And like, the socks with the little frillies on the outside. Not all at once. Not all of that comes at once. But like if, if stuff wasn't clean, I had to like so there's that and I remember making mixtapes on that with my sister Anderson. But the other one I had was we had a Zenith TV I was born 1984. So say 1989 We had the zenith TV, we had it until probably 2001 had no remote. I thought remotes were like fancy. I thought you had to have like a fancy, like TV to have a remote. I didn't know if they'd been around since the 1950s. And so we had a 19 inch color Zenith you know, with the fake wood panel on the outside that was plastic. And then since we lost the remote, you have two couches, and one one was perpendicular to the TV. And my dad used to change channels with his toe. But and then we all started kind of doing that it's real lazy. She is right there. But we'd have a remote and he didn't want to get up and so we would change the channel with the remote and I think or maybe on the TV. And I think I'm the only kid to ever get athlete's foot from Xena I swear that's a true story.

Jared Berryman | Hivelead 19:32

We've had people answer that question. You have no idea some people were talking about a Commodore which is you don't know what that is. It's really before my time I think yeah, like this really old thing and oh,

Law Smith 19:46

I have another one. I just remember. We had we bought a Macintosh brand new in 1989. I only but I've only heard this story. I don't remember doing this Apparently I was playing Oregon Trail floppy disk dial. I thought it was an arcade game, right? And so I've kept feeding it quarters. I kept finding quarters and feeding it into it you know, the green screen. And then just that I broke, I broke the computer, like, maybe within a month of getting a brand new one. Like we're Mac, you know, Mac went before Windows came around 90s Mac was was what it is now. Like, it was the leader. And my parents are so low tech, it was like a big deal that they they went out of their way to buy this thing. I just recorders in it. I yeah, I but when we got to Compaq, Presario 95 I, I learned I taught myself a lot of stuff, you know, taught myself how to program Visual Basic, all that corral. Right, all that stuff,

Jared Berryman | Hivelead 20:54

right one of our other person that she's had the stand up comedy as well, she mentioned that her parents told her that they had an Atari, but they told her that it would only work at night that it wouldn't work during the day. So she wouldn't play tennis today. So she would only played at night and totally convinced that that's the only time that it would work.

Law Smith 21:15

The smart, smart, I was the third kid so I was kind of left alone. And I got a TV in my room. And just obsessively watch TV or listen to love line every night on the radio. Probably bad for me, but whatever.

Jared Berryman | Hivelead 21:31

Brother the dumbest answer to this question was, for the first podcast, I interviewed my mom who works for Cisco. And she said a pencil.

Law Smith 21:40

Technically, correct. I mean, it's like, that's my favorite kind of comedy. By the way. It's dumb and smart. It's, it's like, Are you being a smartass? But technology doesn't is not just gadgets, you know, it's it's true. The wheel or building a fire learning, like whatever, or furnace, I should say, you know, those are technically technology. But I think you're talking about more, more of modern technology.

Jared Berryman | Hivelead 22:10

Right? Right. That's, that's what the question kind of implies. But that's okay. She wanted to answer like that. That's cool. Probably no one even watched it was the first episode.

Law Smith 22:17

So well, the we do a stock answer on our show. And it is it is a Rorschach test like yours. We asked everybody, what advice would you give your 13 year old self? Feel free to steal that if you want another podcast?

Jared Berryman | Hivelead 22:30

I might I might add that in.

Law Smith 22:34

And so the answers we get are wild it and really we just we used to ask it at the end. Now we start at the beginning because then it basically it don't tell me what I business is psychology, right? If you really break it down, right. And so navigating those waters, I realized that like with stand up with an audience, you can feel an energy before you get on stage. And so if I can get that vibe of how the crowd is, before I get up there real tight. I'll say something just ridiculous. Up top. That's crude, just to see if I can, if I can pop them, you know, or I'll just tell them to their face. Like I didn't know we're at church. I didn't know. I didn't know this is a sad a meeting. And but no one's talking. This one apparently a meetings everyone Blabs. But it's one of those things where you're like, you know if I can break it open or kind of challenge them. But now I can kind of go oh, you entered this way. Here's choose your own adventure. I'm going to ask about your childhood that. Got you there. Yeah.

Jared Berryman | Hivelead 23:38

That's interesting. All right. Awesome. Well, we're running out of time here. We tried to keep this podcast or law, but I really enjoyed having you on the podcast. You're definitely a funny guy. Appreciate it. You made it super fun. Sometimes we're a little more a little bit drier and more serious on this podcast that was glad to have somebody break it up a little bit.

Law Smith 23:57

Short man to be serious all the time. Right. That's right. That's right. taking yourself too serious is a bad thing.

Jared Berryman | Hivelead 24:04

Yeah, I agree. I agree. So we if you are watching this podcast for the first time, we stream this Tuesdays and Thursdays on social media central standard time at 11am. You can also catch it we release it at the same time on YouTube. So if you subscribe to the podcast on YouTube, you can get it when it comes out there as well. Watching me at any time and this is life the life of a marketer podcast like and subscribe give me some blood love with the Ergo please. And once again, thank you law for jumping on our podcast

Law Smith 24:39

and tell your people to share it with a friend like you got that you're listening right now. If you made it all the way to the end of this episode, pause it or finish it out. But hit that little square with the arrow button, send it to a friend that likes marketing, you know or is in the field or just that person that you like you want to gab like that Those were

Jared Berryman | Hivelead 25:01

awesome. Thank you. I appreciate that. All right, buddy.

Transcribed by Otter.ai https://otter.ai/referrals/AVPIT85N