Creating Efficacy Through Proper AnalyticsCreating Efficacy Through Proper Analytics

Creating Efficacy Through Proper Analytics Transcript:

Announcer: You’re listening to The Kula Ring, a podcast made for manufacturing marketers. Here are Carman Pirie and Jeff White.

Jeff White: Welcome to The Kula Ring a podcast for Manufacturing Marketers brought to you by Kula Partners. My name is Jeff White, and joining me today is Carman Pirie. Carman how you doing, sir?

Carman Pirie: I’m doing great. How are you doing?

Jeff White: I’m doing well. Because we’re Canadians we have to talk about the weather.

Carman Pirie: We’re not going to do that. Why don’t we do that? Everybody expects it. We need to.

Jeff White: I know it’s true, but we just had a massive snowstorm.

Carman Pirie: It is true. And nothing that Canadians like more than to talk about something that they, just a bit of weather that they just had over the weekend.

Jeff White: Yep. Yep. 

Carman Pirie: Alright, so listeners who need to know, I guess we had snow. 

Jeff White: Yep. And lots of it. 

Carman Pirie: But what you really need to know is the topic of today’s show, which is, I guess, what I like about these types of shows that they like as part of the ongoing world domination of marketers, really like this is what we, you know, as marketers, part of I think what we need to do is spread the understanding of what we do beyond the four walls of the marketing department. And today’s guest has been doing just that. Looking forward to today’s conversation.

Jeff White: Yeah, I am as well.

Robby Berthume: Thanks for having me. It’s it’s not snowing here. Definitely a little bit of the opposite, but I kind of wish it was. Get a little sledding in but no, glad to join you and your radio voices make me a little self-conscious about my own voice. But no I’m glad to give a voice to to marketers, but also to, I think anybody in manufacturing that just needs to come at it maybe from a different perspective and hopefully share some of that.

Carman Pirie: Well, Jeff, why don’t you introduce our guest? I’m going to change smoke a few packs of cigarettes and uhh.

Jeff White: Yeah, yeah, I know. It’s always important to have a better mic when you’re the host, I think. So joining us today is Robby Berthume. Robby is the head of marketing for Digitize Designs. And we’re glad to have you on The Kula Ring today, Robby.

Robby Berthume: Happy to be here. Happy to be here. Excited. Let’s crack the brain open and hope that that doesn’t scare anybody.

Carman Pirie: Well, you’ve been in the role for a little over a year now, yes?

Robby Berthume: Little over a year. Yup. Just had my one-year anniversary and got started young at 14 more as an entrepreneur, but have had kind of stints as an employee, employer and kind of pros and cons of both. But yeah, happy I landed it Digitize and excited about what we’re doing.

Carman Pirie: And what are you doing? What? Tell us a bit about Digitize Designs.

Robby Berthume: Yeah. So Bo is the founder and CEO. He doesn’t like the term CEO-like set of products. Sounds weird to him, I guess, but. But he founded the company back in 2016, so a pretty small, nimble team. But we focus on 3D scanning and metrology. And so we sell a range of 3D scanners for professionals. So that might be in manufacturing, aviation, automotive, health care, and lots of different industries and applications for the technology. But the work with scanner tech works with Ferro Technologies, our tech 3D, we sell a slew of 3D scanning software, metrology related software. Polly Works is a pretty popular application and then accessories. So scanning, spray targets, reference points, that kind of thing, which we do through ecommerce. And then we have a service side as well, which also is a way of kind of try to for you buy a little bit before, you know, some companies make the investment into building out their own 3D, scanning workflow. So that’s, that’s what we do. We made the Inc. 5000 last year. So we’re, we’re high growth the last few years. We’re number 1377 as far as you know, on the list which the list itself, you know, it’s just more PR but we’re proud of the growth and I think really spending the last year and going into this year just kind of resetting and, you know, rebuilding everything from our website, revitalizing our brand, just cleaning house and assessing what’s working, what isn’t.

Jeff White: And I think a lot of people are familiar with 3D printing, certainly more now. You know, those, the companies in that space have done a pretty good job of normalizing and making that a thing that just about everybody’s aware of. But 3D scanning is still a bit different, you know, and something that a lot of people need to learn about. So tell us a bit more kind of about your path into this company and what your background has brought to it.

Robby Berthume: Yeah, for sure. I mean, so again, I started my first agency when I was 14, so predominantly digital agency, moved it out to L.A., had an office out in Serbia, so built pretty large websites towards the end of it. That’s kind of the direction that we went. And then and then worked out a few agencies and leadership roles and then had a matchmaking company, a coaching company for agencies. So work with a lot of different brands and environments. But me personally, I had never heard of 3D printing or I’d never heard of 3D scanning. I had heard of 3D printing, you know, South by Southwest. Some of the bigger shows kind of us agency folks, marketers, attends 3D printing is going to be there along with VR and everything else that’s sort of breaking through. 3D scanning, never really thought about it. I knew about, you know, CAD modelling and some of the old school stuff, but I don’t think I really realized that you know, you could get a masters in metrology, you know, literally a master’s in measurement that it got that deep. But so yeah I joined I connected with Bo it’s been a really good said I’m a single father with full custody of three kids so I have my hands full. But it’s a role that gives me a lot of flexibility, autonomy, I think Bo trusts where my head’s at, my vision for the company and is glad to, you know, kind of, ah, let me take the stage in a way. And so he can focus on what he does best. I like the attention, so it works for me now. Just kidding. But yeah, so settling into my role, you know, it’s really been about just assessing where we’re at kind of present state and what we need to do to get to the next state. And that was a lot of last year, culminating with the launch of our new site and a lot of different initiatives. And this year I think we’re really getting into just measurability is our big theme. You know, we’ve got the tools, we’ve got the we’ve got everything we want to do. We know that we can do it. It’s a matter of Legos, you know, really putting all the pieces together. But I think that’s our biggest hole right now is measurement. And in order to do, you know, marketing effectively, you’ve got to be able to measure. It’s no longer just art. It’s a lot of science. So I think, you know, it’s shifting that.

Carman Pirie: It would seem to me in the company that you’re in, convincing them about the importance of measurement shouldn’t be that difficult.

Robby Berthume: Yeah, Yeah, exactly. It is, But it’s like with anything. I mean, I think, you know, you think about time tracking, for example. A lot of employers don’t like to track time. It’s just annoying. There’s real work to do, you know, that kind of stuff. And so I think it’s just shifting the paradigm to see it as, you know, not just another chore or not a way for, you know, everybody to keep tabs or be micromanaged or that kind of thing. But really it streamlines everybody’s job, it makes us more profitable, which benefits everybody, and it shows us what’s working and what isn’t. And I think sometimes there might be a fear, you know, subconscious or conscious of knowing what might not be working and having to kind of take responsibility for that and make a change. So I want to know. I want to know what’s working, and what isn’t. And that takes that takes some implementation work some time upfront. And I think that’s been the biggest thing is just how do you get by and with the full team on some of these initiatives, you know, without them coming at it from that same perspective?

Carman Pirie: Yeah, that’s what I kind of wanted to drill into today’s show is just kind of understand, you know, what it is that you’re doing to kind of have, you know, make that organization more of a marketing organization. And, you know, this notion of, as you mentioned, like part of the year of measurement is that you, fear learning that something isn’t working. And man, as it strikes me that a lot of manufacturing organizations that are engineer-led, you know, that fear of not getting it right seems awful, you know, deep-seated, isn’t it? So how are you encountering, how are you dealing with that? Navigating that?

Robby Berthume: Yeah, that’s true. I think that’s one of the one of the first things I noticed in my role is kind of a hesitancy sometimes to, you know, whether it’s responding maybe to some people, to big name clients and how to handle that response or handle a customer support inquiry, whatever it might be. It kind of comes in a lot of shapes. But I kind of see this hesitancy there. And it is the desire I think, for for perfection because, you know, they’re all about precision and accuracy and measurement. And so you get to kind of a perfectionist way of thinking and way of wanting to do things. And, you know, it’s the old saying, what is it? Perfection is the enemy of progress or perfect is the enemy of progress. And so I’m kind of trying to toe that line, I think, internally in terms of just getting people on board, you know, letting them know kind of what we’re doing. So it’s not all happening in a vacuum. On the other hand, you know, I try to push the envelope. I don’t always ask for permission once or twice. Maybe it’s nipped me in the bud by doing that. But, you know, I have to kind of be the one to push the envelope, but I kind of try to bring it back to, you know, marketing, first and foremost is really the product itself. You know, it starts there. And so, you know, whether it’s our engineering team, whether it’s our support team, sales team, I mean, we all have a role and, you know, every touchpoint that really plays out from a marketing perspective, whether that’s interactions, whether that’s a view to our website, you know, a visit to our socials, or whether it’s, you know, simply, when we’re working on our RM-300 our new OEM solution. So now as we build out our own products, as we start thinking in a different way, how are we doing that? And, you know, before I came here, you know, I think it was it was very it was from a technical perspective. So, for example, the RM-300, the way that it’s named is based on 300 being microns in accuracy, and it has a meaning to it. I’m coming at it thinking RM-300 Where did this come from? You know, like let’s let’s really and let’s think of the whole product line. Let’s think beyond this particular build and, you know, really do that now while it’s strategic. So I think that’s, that’s really a big part of it. And then getting people excited. You know, I’m the biggest cheerleader as far as if we’re going to share social content, put stuff out there. And some of it’s, you know, employees as well. You know, if we have, our after-Christmas party or pictures come out of that, get them involved, tag them, get them excited about what’s happening, Let them feel. We had an Inc. 5000 celebration party as a team. Let them feel kind of the results of things like press mentions or a win there. Let them celebrate some of those things because then they start to see, okay, there is some tangible value. And if I get pushed too much where it’s like, Yeah, but it’s all about revenue. Yeah, we can’t measure that. So that’s what it all comes back to, to that measurement piece. You can, you could do all these crazy beautiful, shiny, sexy things, but if you’re not measuring it, then it’s going to be hard to sell to anybody internally for so long. 

Carman Pirie: Robby, I don’t want to get too far past a comment that you made that kind of has my head spinning a little bit. This notion of the RM-300 and that example, you see that so much in really kind of high tech, you know, highly engineered categories where very smart people are making these products for other very smart people to buy. One of the kinds of debates that I have found entertaining over the years and that kind of category is on the one hand, you’re often in some ways inventing a net new category or trying to grow awareness of the category overall. So it drives you to want to speak about it in a way that is very accessible to people and that can often get you a bunch of consumer-level interest which can do things like blow your paid search budget out of the water and get you no leads in return. And that is kind of in competition with the RM-300 of the world, that kind of way of thinking that says let’s talk in very technical ways about a very technical thing. So only people with a serious buying intent are ever going to show up or find it in the first place. Do you find that to be a hard kind of tightrope to walk?

Robby Berthume: Yeah. And I think also it’s it’s kind of the the copycat syndrome. I mean, I see that in terms of even the 3D scanning and metrology world. I mean, it’s five 10% annual growth as far as market size and talking about a $1,000,000,000 industry. But even amongst a lot of the larger manufacturers of 3D scanners or software, anything kind of written related relevant to 3D scanning and metrology, there are a lot of similarities in terms of their websites, in terms of their content and their videos. And I think there’s a lot of cross-referencing happening constantly and saying like, Hey, they’re doing it good. Oh, we need to step up to that level. But it’s interesting because I’ve never really, like, since I started when I was 14 and I don’t know how I, like looking back and having kids now. I don’t know what I was thinking or how I pulled it off, honestly, because most 14-year-olds aren’t thinking that way. But I remember, you know, in terms of competition, I always felt like there was a risk of paying too much attention to the competition. And so measurement comes back. You know, it’s important to see what they’re doing and to see whether it’s, you know, social media volume of post frequency, what’s getting engagement, and so on and so forth. You can research search trends in terms of their AdWords buy. But I think if you pay too much attention to competitors, you begin to, you know, again whether you realize it or not, kind of emulate them and kind of play it safe. And I think, you know, a lot of marketers that play it safe. A lot of companies that play it safe have safe businesses have safe growth. I mean, that comes with, you know, maybe that’s attractive. You know, I think that’s one of the challenges as well as risk is one of the biggest B2B purchase decision-making factors, right? So something like our RM-300, you know, that could be perceived by a professional with metrology experience, you know, that’s coming in and, you know, maybe a direct target audience for us, it could be perceived, you know, well, because it’s technical, but also it could be perceived the other way. I think there’s always going to be different perceptions. And you can’t fully control, you know, in terms of that narrative anymore with the Internet and with just the combination of everything out there. I think it’s more about just consistency and congruency and finding the balance of providing the information, technically speaking, that people need and want to make an informed decision, but also doing it in a way that is that is easy. It’s easy to jump into and then dig a little deeper as you go and try to do that with a new website. I mean, I started off last February, you know, literally, I think February 9th was my start date. And, you know, I didn’t know anything again about metrology or 3D scanning. So the learning curve in terms of our full product line and what we’re doing and just everything that’s involved was pretty tremendous. But here a year later, we’ve got a 35-page, you know, 3D scanning guide e-book for free on our site. You know, 50 sets of frequently asked questions across all the different products and services and areas. And I think that’s where, you know, we’re trying to add value. We’re rolling out a new knowledge base. So basically it’s, hey, we’re here, you know, we can provide that level of expertise. We’ve got live chat, we can provide support, you know, whatever it might be. On the other hand, there’s, you know, layered in ways that are easy to digest and across our different channels, resources where you can actually dig deeper and make a better, more informed decision. Because, you know, let’s face it, when you’re talking about 20, 30, $40,000 on the scanner, it’s the price of a car and the Rm-300. To me, that’s that’s like a low six-figure build. Rm-300 that sounds like the name of a car, like the F-150. When I think about it more like the Cybertruck or Tesla. Like, let’s get into something that has a little more functional, useful value in it, or at least just doesn’t sound like blah, you know, like that’s, that’s kind of how it sounds to me. But I’m very opinionated, as you can tell, so and rarely take breaths. You have to literally interrupt me if I go on these rants. If you haven’t noticed.

Jeff White: It’s fine. You can feel the excitement and the interest in the product category for sure. I do think it’s it’s interesting, though, because, you know, you’re coming into this company that is obviously very technical. You know, they’re probably not as marketing forward or have a similar personality to you. You know, how are you finding, you know, helping that team overcome, not you know, timidity is maybe not the right phrase, but maybe they’re not quite as aggressive as you at going out and identifying those opportunities. How are you bringing them on board and kind of helping them, you know, see the results and get excited about it the same way you are?

Robby Berthume: Yeah, it’s a good question. I mean, I think, you know, ultimately, you know, in my role, I mean, in terms of like the engineering team or sales team or whoever it may be, and they don’t necessarily report to me in that sense. But I think anybody has an opportunity to be a leader. And I think, you know, being a leader is it’s really not about words. It’s like when I look at my kids, you know, who are seven, ten and turning 12 in a few weeks, you know, they’re not going to remember so much my words. And I give them plenty of words. They’ll tell you plenty of the same words and advice. They’re not, you know, paying attention or listening to my example in that way they’re looking at my actions, they’re looking at my decisions, they’re looking at the results of those actions and decisions. They’re feeding off of my energy. You know, if I’m stressed from work or whatever it might be, I don’t get stressed from work. If my boss watches this. But they can they can feel that energy. If I come home, there’s a transfer there. And so, you know, I think it’s very much the same when it comes to working with the team. They can feel if I have a positive energy, they can feel confidence, you know, if they’re a little underconfident in areas, I can make up for that a little bit just by being like, no, this is we’re doing this like we’re making this happen. And then I think it’s proof, you know, And so them seeing the output, them seeing, you know, something like our new website took about six, seven months to work through and create in terms of, you know, everything from the design all the way to the development copy and every aspect of it. And it’s hard, I think, for some to realize what an undertaking that can be to do it right and continually then improve from there. But when it’s launched, you know, when, when the team starts to see it, see our brand come alive and some of our new apparel, you know, we just went through and even, you know, did more t-shirts and long-sleeved shirts and dress shirts for our sales guys and new business cards and dot cards. And so some of those, I think more tangible areas really help just kind of bring light to, okay, this is what marketing is. And I think there’s a danger to that because then you start to confuse marketing with communications and it is different. Communications is one aspect of marketing, but marketing, you know, at its core, it is, you know, a science degree and you’re going to become educated because it’s about revenue, it’s about growth, it’s about moving the dial. It’s not just about making noise. And so I think, you know, sharing performance analytics, that’s also very helpful. So, you know, if I’m measuring everything across social, across our e-commerce sales and then working hard with the team they’re seeing some of these stats but know that, hey, if we started to measure these other areas, we could actually know what our cost for customer acquisition is for this product segment, for whatever it might be like, start to be able to do even more interesting analysis. But even in terms of the reports I’m sharing now, as far as site traffic engagement growth, e-commerce growth, you know, so on and so forth, it’s exciting, it’s motivating. You can see the numbers, you can see that things are working. And I think that that’s helpful just to bring that sense of confidence. But I don’t know, I also think that I’m a bit of an anomaly. I think that you know, I’m the guy that’s coming into the office probably not adhering to the dress code, wearing flip-flops in a manufacturing facility. It doesn’t take off his hat. You know, I’m I think my annual review, Bo, was a good annual review. But, Bo told me I’m pretty high maintenance in terms of you know yes it implies this is no news to me, but I think that that’s needed. I think sometimes, you know, luckily in terms of Bo and Kyle and Patrick and our leadership team, you know, I get along really well with mellow people and conservative people and good stewards. And so there’s just a good balance because they bring that. But I’m also going to push them. I’m going to push them hard to come against some of those comfort zones and some of that fear and not just push to, you know, jump over the cliff and hope that we’re going to land. But I jumped over some of these cliffs before so I can bring that confidence that, hey, we will survive, you know, and we will learn from this and we will get to the next level. So it’s a very I’m very different, but I think it’s also helpful. I worked with web developers for a very long time, and so it’s that logical. My dad also has Asperger’s, so that same kind of logic-oriented mindset I’m very familiar with, but that doesn’t stop me from trying to be as as a friend of mine calls me a peacock, you know, just shiny, glittery, you know, just but I think it’s that energy that I want our team to feel and I want people interacting with me to feel. I’m excited. I’m not here to, you know, sell 3D scanners and move them. It’s too boring for me.

Jeff White: Developers and engineers, very similar breed.

Robby Berthume: Indeed. And we have we have both. We have our head of engineering over here developing Python and working on the development side. But that’s also to where we can geek out, you know, we can connect is, you know, I can connect on a personal level to different members of our team in different ways. It may not always be about marketing, but, you know, Patrick and I will be talking about AI and ChatGPT and more on the technical side. So I think, you know, connecting with them on that level and it takes some time. It’s taken a year to, I think, develop those relationships and trust, Bo’s had a lot of trust in me from the beginning. But I think, you know, for the full team to really even understand kind of what it is I do, it’s taken some time and I think that’s that’s normal and just kind of be patient.

Jeff White: You should see if Crocs would make you some, you know, approved steel-toed flip-flops or something.

Robby Berthume: Probably. My daughter, I just bought some Crocs two days ago. My youngest daughter is obsessed with Crocs. Oh, man, I’m working. I don’t know any kind of stuff like that, But I mean, that’s what’s exciting, though, is I think, you know, we can all feel, you know, in looking at the future of the industry is bright. You know, there there are always going to be tailwinds. There’s always going to be things that happen. I think we’re really good stewards in terms of being well prepared for the future and making, you know, smart strategic decisions. And I think that the ability to forward plan all comes back to metrics. And so, you know, really I’ve been happy in terms of, you know, Bo leading by example by bringing on help in terms of consulting implementation with our CRM, with, you know, the email campaign sequences we build out and the measurability there, having that accountability with, you know, bringing on a vendor I think it is also very important. There are some battles that I, as you know head of marketing should fight and there are some times when it’s really nice to bring in a third party and provide that additional kind of professional opinion. We would do that sometimes with our studio and other areas as well.

Carman Pirie: I’m kind of hooked on a word that was said just a couple of sentences ago actually, and you mentioned patience and me wondering, because, I mean, you talk about this high growth environment and high growth environments aren’t typically what you associate with patients. You associate with them, you know, fail fast. You’ll hear these types of conversations. I guess how have you navigated that balance between kind of aggressiveness to fuel the growth and patience to understand that you can’t launch a proper website in six weeks, guys?

Robby Berthume: Yeah, I think that, so when I started last February, there was definitely an understanding that, look, it’s going to take really through the end of this year to get our house in order and to do sort of a rebuild. Not that it was horrible before, but in terms of our site, in terms of our brand and not just, you know, how we visually express our brand, but verbally express it as well, the essence of what we are, our audience really defined that, you know, it’s going to take time to really make that happen. And so I think what happened was, you know, we had a period of three years, go ahead.

Carman Pirie: Oh, so you negotiated that runway a bit in advance?

Robby Berthume: I did. And well, I just said that before. You know, essentially my fear was the previous website. We have an archived example, but, you know, I’m very hesitant to throw a lot of money driving traffic to that site. And it just was not built in terms of cause actions and engagement and on the e-commerce side, so much needed to improve. So I said, look, I mean, it’s better to really, you know, revitalize the brand, remap all of that, you know, fix all of our touchpoints, get our social machine going, build out our in-house studio. So we have a content machine, but also internally with SOPs for our team to follow and be able to create more videos, tutorials, that kind of thing. And yeah, rebuild the website. Inc. 5000, that was right. You know, February I was like, Hey, let’s submit for that. I see our growth. This is probably going to be a year of investment. And so that’s really how, you know, Bo and I and the rest of our leadership team we looked at last year was an investment into the company kind of taking a step back, focusing on building out, you know, actual real marketing, I think. But also in other areas, whether it’s, again, finances or CRM, just getting help in these key bottleneck zones so that we’re better prepared to continue to grow in the future. So I think, you know, last year’s growth was really year over year about the same, maybe a little bit more than the previous, where it was 420% the three years prior. And that was, I think, intentional in the sense that we did take a step back and said, you know, hey, if we continue at this pace, it’s going to be chaos. I mean, it is going to be chaos. And so we took on overhead. We hired more people always, you know, take the time to build out those processes. But I feel really, really confident about this year in years to come because we have taken those steps and Bo has not put, you know, any kind of pressure on me as far as, you know, like the website launch or taking as long as it did, I never felt a sense of, come on, push it, push it. There was always an understanding that, no, this is key. This is vital to our long-term success. It’s worth it to do it right. So I’m grateful for that. And, you know, I’ve been on the agency side, not always having always been the recipient of that kind of that kind of patience. But I think you know, that ultimately does empower somebody like me. And it’s going to keep somebody like me around and excited and doing their best when they feel that sense of empowerment. So I think, you know, other companies should always look for the same, you know, when it comes to, oh, we’re making our first marketing hire, you know, we’re because they’re getting into an area that maybe they don’t know a ton about. And so it’s hard to manage somebody when you don’t really know a lot about the role and what should be expected and personality type and all that kind of stuff. But yeah, I could go on forever, but you have to just edit all this into too many pieces.

Jeff White: I think that’s good advice for a lot of marketers in terms of you know I think you’re in a good position and in quite a fortuitous position there to have an understanding executive that gets that this stuff especially when you’re coming from a place where it didn’t really exist before, you know, like a 35-page e-book about your core offering doesn’t just happen overnight. The design of a conversion-focused website certainly doesn’t happen overnight. You know, now you’re in a better place to provide these assets to sales and for other people to understand kind of what you do. And then the, you know, the apparel kind of supports that internally and shows people that there’s connectivity between all these different pieces. But, you know, if you were offering some advice to other marketers for how to kind of communicate the importance of having patience around the production of these really important and long-term assets like a web property, what would you say?

Robby Berthume: Yeah, I mean, I would have said I’d put it in real terms first. So, you know, I think if you’re, you know, being hired or you’re hired to come in for whatever you know, if it’s on the marketing side, whatever it might be, director of marketing or whatever if you’re coming in, I think you should be pretty vocal, pretty real, pretty honest, forthright. And so, you know, I’ve always spoken with probably too much candour. It’s an overshare. And Bo knows this all too well. The good side is that you know, there haven’t been a lot of surprises when it comes to sort of how I think and how I’m envisioning, you know, kind of attacking a different problem. It’s, we’re very much on the same page without needing to check in constantly or just constantly keep him Apprized of what’s happening. You know, he’ll see it. We’ll have the right conversations. I think being able you know, part of that is just the grace of God, you know, being able to land in a relationship like this because I needed those buy-ins and to really have the time to build it out to the point where the full team could buy in. So that was really important. And to be able to have that, that trust and sense of responsibility there. But I also think, you know, coming in and, you know, I knew with clients from an agency perspective, like managing expectations was what it was all about. So I’m thinking more like a project manager and putting that hat on. I can get them excited and make all these promises and we need to work on all these areas. I mean, there were so many opportunities, particularly when I just joined, where it’s like, I mean, I don’t know, pick a number, any number. There are so many things that need to happen, right? So I think prioritizing that and just really again, just focusing on the look, I mean, if we’re doing all of these efforts over here, that costs money, that costs time and resources, but we’re directing it to a brand, a website, a storefront, you know, our place really and the new market in the new economy is our website, right? Then we’re we’re we’re taking a huge gamble here. Waste a lot of money here. It just doesn’t make sense to go on this way. So let’s do the status quo thing while we’re rebuilding over here. But let’s let’s get this done. Let’s put in the time and make it happen. And I think that part of the reason to why, you know, there’s trust and okay, that’s the right decision is because I’ve been doing websites really my whole life, you know, And so there is a track record there of, okay, this guy probably knows that this is a smart move, but really, I think it’s easy enough just showing the stats. That’s why I like metrics. So again, it’s like, here’s our analytics, here’s our engagement, here’s our time on site, here’s industry benchmarks, here’s our competitors. And we have these free tools nowadays where, I mean, you can run a few reports in an hour and make a compelling case for a lot of things. But particularly when it comes to something like the website. And I think it’s been hard because there again, is that anchor desire for perfection when it comes to the team that I’m working with. And so, you know, we’re doing a big video production here in a few weeks we’re excited about and that’s going to be just the calibre production that is going to appeal to everybody. We also have our in-house studio where we’re going to be churning out more and more product tutorials and things like that. And I know that I’ll get into something like reels or YouTube shorts or maybe like a little ten-second clips that aren’t long videos. Maybe they’re just more of the shiny stuff to mix things up. And I think there is, they probably look at that differently than I do. I look at it as just shaking up our content. We have all different types and so forth. They’re always sort of looking more at the substance piece of it, which is important. We need substance. That’s why I put together the e-book. I’m a big proponent of substance, but you don’t want to you don’t want to sacrifice personality for substance. And there’s a very, very fine line in terms of, you know, being like insert in our position Digitize Designs, equipping, empowering, providing our customers our prospects with everything they need to make the perfect decision when it comes, whether it’s us, whether it’s not us, but to make that decision and go all the way through to conversion. You know, I think that we have a responsibility to serve them in a way that that needs them where they’re at provides that information. But again, doesn’t become so technical that it, just turns into scary that just turns into boring. And at the end of the day, we’re all people. We’re not professionals we’re people or professionals and we’re people. So that’s the other thing that, you know, with Digitize, I really want to infuse more and more of is our people, our personalities. Our prior site didn’t even have an about us page or our leadership team featured or anything like that. And I think that’s important. It’s not just the machinery, it’s the man. it’s the women, it’s the behind the machinery and it’s the story, people love stories.

Carman Pirie: Speaking of stories, they look forward to watching this story continue to unfold over the coming year. And I think it’s going to be interesting to watch Digitize Designs in 2024. Thanks so much, Robby, for sharing your experience with us. Been great to have you on the show.

Robby Berthume: My pleasure. It’s been an honour. I really appreciate it.

Jeff White: Thanks a lot.
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