(Final Video) Kurt Uhlir

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Daniel : Hello and welcome to another episode of the You Should Talk to Podcast. I am Daniel Wiener, your host. Your sponsor, your Everything. Today I am super excited to be joined by Kurt Ule, who is CMO at Easy Home Search. Kurt, I usually ask how to pronounce the last name, and I forgot before we even talk, did I get it right?

Kurt: Uh, you actually got it closer than how I pronounce it. I do not pronounce it properly. I pronounce it Eller. Okay. But everybody who's ever worked for me in Europe or Asia, they, they say You don't pronounce your name properly. Kurt. 

Daniel : Okay. How do you want 

Kurt: to pronounce it? Eller is how we would 

Daniel : say, how I would say.

Okay. Kurt. Kurt Eller. Uh, Kurt for those who don't know, 'cause I didn't know, uh, up until many months ago when I think we first got connected. What is easy? Home search. 

Kurt: Easy Home search is the fastest growing real estate portal in the [00:02:00] United States, um, and the only privacy focused, uh, home search. Most people don't think about.

When you go to, uh, Zillow or Redfin or one of these many agent websites and you enter your information, that's kind of the equivalent of like going on somewhere online and filling out a form that says, Hey, I have a $750,000, uh, IRA and I'm gonna change brokerages in the next 60 days. Please sell my information.

So we take a different approach to that and we say, Hey, that's your information and there is somebody good for you to work for, but you should be in control of 

Daniel : that data yourself. I like that as somebody, I put my home search on hold, but I was looking for a new place for a while and yeah, I was inundated with nonsense, uh, a ton of it, uh, while doing my search.

So, uh, that sounds like a, a welcomed place in the market. It, 

Kurt: it seems to have connected quite well, and so we've branched out from then. Um, so we have a couple subsidiaries where, uh, we just announced we're launching, um, uh, a real estate CRM, uh, coming out in December. And so there's not a lot of good options out there.

The two good options got purchased a couple years ago, [00:03:00] so we're, we're coming out into that space now as well. 

Daniel : I love it. Uh, we'll dive right in. What is an unpopular opinion you have in the marketing world of sorts or a hot take? Your hottest take. 

Kurt: Ooh. For me, I think that my hot egg would be that, um, I actually think 95% of people that call themselves marketers are not Marketers.

Love it. I would agree. At best, their salespeople who are scared to make cold calls and they hide behind dashboards and campaigns. 

Daniel : Say more. Say, 

Kurt: say 

Daniel : more. 

Kurt: I like it. Yeah. So I think with that, for, for me, I think, I mean, most marketers are out there. I mean, I've stepped into SaaS companies that are mid-market companies that are spending 200 to $400,000 a month in pay-per-click ads, and I've literally just shut it off.

Entirely to zero, and I've not seen lead gen change because what those marketers had done in those companies, while the companies had grown, they, what they were able to do is they had been shipping, uh, fluffy top of funnel content. They had been basically using ads. What is Google really good at? Google knows who's going to [00:04:00] convert.

And so the marketer's able to show, Hey, these ads show that the last click attribution. Was from somebody that we showed an ad to, but, but the real journey had been set well before then, maybe by marketing. But usually so many marketers and agencies I find gravitate towards. Things like that where like they're taking credit for work that was done by other people.

Sometimes it's done by an aggressive sales team or the product team, and they're not doing things that actually like modern demand generation. They use terms like brand building, which means something to marketers, but means nothing in the boardroom as opposed to saying, Hey. We can improve the trust, and since we're not one of the top three in this category, we're gonna lose 70% of the deals because of that.

And if we put in place these things, which a marketer might call brand building, it'll improve trust and we can increase our, you know, our, our sales by 40%. If we do that, most marketers can't have that conversation because they're not marketers, they're just, they're salespeople who are scared to make calls.

Daniel : Do [00:05:00] you think that the vast majority, do you think that's a leadership problem? I find in many companies that I'm helping, um, there's a, a, a fear of, uh, going against the data or going against what, you know, the dashboard says in favor of trusting your gut. Do you think that's, uh, leadership not empowering the, the marketing team to do what they think is right if the data says otherwise?

I'm curious. 

Kurt: It's usually a failure for me of, of leadership, both the marketing leadership when they joined, as well as the CEO and the board. And I say that 'cause a lot of times it does start at the board level, especially for, um, later venture stage companies, uh, mid-market companies. Because most of these PE and venture capital firms that are running playbooks that are outdated, they're trying to bring in A CMO or a VP of marketing or head of marketing, whatever they may call that person that is from the industry.

Like they want, they think they're reducing risk by saying, we need, somebody that he or she's been in [00:06:00] this industry, in this role for the last 10 years, and then they're wondering why everything sounds generic and bland, just like all their competitors. So it sometimes starts there. So the, the board thinks they're trying to reduce risk when they're actually imposing risk and they don't realize that.

But on the other side, it ultimately is a conversation between the CEO and the CMO at the beginning that says, Hey, before we talk about anything else, let, the first discussion we should have is how do we split up the budget between short term, medium term, and longer term? And after that, we can talk campaigns and strategies within that, what agencies we work with.

But if you don't have that conversation upfront. What I found is the CMO is always chasing to your point, dashboards. And no matter what happens, if you haven't set those expectations up front about how you're allocate allocating funds, and six months later when the CFO and Board comes and they start asking questions, unless you just miraculously through the dart at exactly what their expectations were, anything that comes out of the mouth of the CMO is going to sound like justification for what I'm [00:07:00] doing and, and trying to avoid risk at that point.

And you can't come back from that. So you do have to do it almost day one. 

Daniel : Yeah, I think a lot of, I say it often with, uh, brands is there's so many decisions made that make people sleep better at night, but have no, uh, material effect on guaranteeing success oftentimes with agencies, to your point, you know, people will say, oh, we want experience with, you know.

10 of our, uh, 10 other people in our industry are essentially saying they want, you know, experience with their competitors. And I have to remind them like, that makes you sleep better at night, doesn't promise success. And often to your point, uh, the same playbook. So yeah, I agree with your hot tick. I like it a lot.

Uh, it may, may piss some people off, but I'm, I'm here for it. Uh, I'm curious, you've had a unique, in my opinion, a set of experiences. You've got CEO roles, you've got CMO roles, uh, you're on the board of directors for a CEO community. So you presumably see, you know, a, a wide swath of the industry, I would say.

Tell us a little about that journey and then I'm particularly interested, what's the biggest evolution you've seen in terms of consumer behavior [00:08:00] over that, you know, time period? 

Kurt: Yeah, the, uh, I now, I'd say I have much more of that operator lens, uh, very often. Like I had a mentor years ago. Uh, a private equity fund wanted to basically put him in place for a large company, but he hadn't been in that, that real sales role, which often a CEO role is as well.

And so they, they helped him start a large outsourcing it depart, uh, company that ended up having like 300 people throughout Eastern Europe and Russia because they were like, we need you to prove yourself with that sales, uh, with that, that sales drive that, uh, that you don't have right now. I've been at kind of that other place.

I, I've been the cmo, I've been in many of these roles. I've had that CEO role and head of sales, and I've realized I'm one, I'm a better king maker or queen maker. Um, but I have that thirst for actually sales at the end of the day. And so I've really evolved from, initially I did care much more about campaigns and, uh, just good brands and things that sounded well, and as now where I've shifted much more is like.

Marketing should always be tied to the p and l. We should always own a number. [00:09:00] With that said, I, I've shifted where I actually, it's not that I don't care about dashboards and reporting, it's just I don't care about the credit for it. And so what I care much more about is contribution. I know that at a SaaS company.

You know, when, when a new customer closes at a hundred thousand dollars a month or $5,000 a month, that very rarely is there only one or two touchpoints. Likely. There's gonna have been 17 different touchpoints. And, you know, sales might try to get credit because maybe the decision maker went to high school with the, uh, you know, with the head of sales possible.

But still, there's probably a whole bunch of other points within there. And so I've shifted much more to that contribution, uh, place. And my, my biggest shift has been more to kind of realize that. The decisions are taking place, especially with LLMs and all these communities right now. They're taking place much more from peer reviewed proof and useful systems, which requires the sales team, uh, and the marketing team to care less again, about just like who gets credit on a [00:10:00] dashboard and care much more about the compounding systems.

The concept of topical authority, Hey, not just that we wrote a couple pieces of content, but we, we, we wrote like. All of the content. And that's hard to do, but it's easier with ai. Um, I care about the category point of, of view I care about right now from what works is I've shifted to, I want everybody on my sales product and marketing team to be able to tell me what does the day in the life of the users of our product to actually look like.

'cause maybe they're only using our tool for 15 minutes a day. And maybe it's saving them two hours, but still we need to know what else are they doing and what else by, by name is on their budget. I'm not selling features anymore.

What I'm selling is part of a system to solve overall issues that's going on, which means everybody that's touching the customer in some way has to know what else is going on in that person's life. And if they don't, then they can't be good at their job. And my just real belief is you think sales should know [00:11:00] that and they do, but, but they're really focused on quarterly numbers as they should be.

And so the person that where I'm at is I'm trying to guide and make sure we all have and agreement on that, and I'm gonna help shepherd that common belief between product sales and marketing. 

Daniel : I think the interesting part of that, that stood out to me that maybe, uh. Some teams don't want to hear, but I would always recommend, especially as it pertains to agencies, is so much of that.

Uh, time would probably be better focused to your point of figuring out who you went to high school with than complex demand gen plays, in my opinion, because I think the influence these days to your point of community and getting, you know, shortlists for sales and software from LLMs and search engines, and then asking peers before trusting Google and stuff like that.

Uh, the, the more complex the play, it often comes down to, I don't know, a, a popularity contest in, in my world at least. Do you see that 

Kurt: for, uh, for some of the [00:12:00] decisions, especially the people that are trying to make a very short decision, but I, I think the, the, the kind of popularity move. That's where companies from a, a modern demand gen perspective, for me, I, I think where they lose so much of real momentum or growth is they're, they're focused on things that are gonna drive the numbers in the short term, which is why that early conversation about where are we spending time in short, medium versus long, that that makes sense.

But somebody like my, uh, a friend of mine, Cora, who kind of like coined the term topical authority after reading like 400 Google patents and did all the coursework on it, like, we're, Cora and I are always going to beat somebody from either a, a enterprise SEO perspective or a demand gen perspective because we're looking at how do we build things.

Uh, we're not worried about the noise or the popularity, but it's like when I'm trying to build topical authority, well, the, you can't do that in 90 days. And, and you can't even really do that in, in, in 180 days. And so to, to put in place the systems that you're gonna have to do at the scale to actually do modern demand [00:13:00] Gen, I will always win in nine months, 12 months, 18 months over somebody who's focused on the popularity contest of the next 90 to 180 days, because we're just playing very different things.

Daniel : I like it. What's your best piece of advice to other folks in your seat, other C-suite leaders, uh, on how to finish 2025 super strong and kick off 2026 and, uh, in good fashion as well. 

Kurt: Oh, to your point about what, what, what'll make people upset, especially if they're having to any board members or CEOs, stop hiring people that are purely technical or, uh, from the same industry clones or that tightly fall solve the exact problem you think you're trying to solve right now.

I just say that of. Um, you know, I'm only 49, but like the, I've been around, first of all, I've invented some of the technology in the B2B and B2C side that we, that we all use every day. But it's like we, whether the.com, uh, bubble or cloud computing, where we're at now with ai, the people who have always outperformed from an individual contributor and a [00:14:00] leadership perspective have never been the people that are technically skilled at what, what the per company thinks they're hiring for the people that succeed.

Are the systems thinkers, the people that are data literate operators, the people that, uh, can prove that they're chain man change managers over time, and they're okay with uncertainty. I mean, the best thing for anybody is if they've not, not read the book range, why Generalist Triumph in a specialized world is by a guy named David Epstein.

Go read it because it, it will, it blows apart any of this concept of, Hey, we need to hire this specific person with a skillset because things are moving so fast. Now, that person will always. Under deliver compared to the generalist who's deep in 

Daniel : many different areas. This is good. You'll just piss off different people at different stages of this podcast, which is good.

We'll get, we'll get some more. 

Kurt: I, I, I would, I would rather, I would rather people realize, I'd rather I know that I'm wrong now than have figure out in two, two years and go, gosh, I could have known that in three months. 

Daniel : I would rather somebody say, what's, what's up with that guy, Kurt? Then, nah, that was a boring interview, so [00:15:00] I'm, I'm here for it.

I am curious most folks with your title, uh, just call it the C-suite in general. I could lump in VPs as well. Uh, in my world, they get hit up 700 million times a day. Agencies, vendors, uh, folks who wanna do business with you in, in some capacity, uh, give a PSA of sorts to agencies out there who presumably see CMO, they see the company they wanna work with you.

Uh, I'll, I'll give you a follow up in that vein of. Is there anything an agency can say or do when you are not in market that could get you to take a call with them? 

Kurt: Ooh, yes. We'll, we'll definitely come back to that second question. Um, it is kind of, my answer will be a little bit opposite of what I'll give for this first one, but I think the first thing is should, we shouldn't have to say this anymore, especially even with AI now, but stop sending generic cold outreach.

I mean, like this, this shouldn't be hard anymore to, to, to do that and, and people. Especially now, I think they, they, they think, Hey, I can templatize something in AI and then [00:16:00] just turn that loose and it'll be better than the mail merge that pulls somebody's name. Different, but, but it's actually worse.

What I find the hallucinations that are happening are so much more, so maybe 80% of your messages will go out. Okay, but for those 20%, it's not only will you lose the, uh, the, the opportunity right now. If it's me, you'll never get the opportunity with me because I don't do not hit delete on my LinkedIn messages.

I hit archive so I can search for your name or your agency or company later and go, oh, four years ago you sent me that generic thing. Do I really think that you're, you've changed who you are on the outreach right now, and, but yet still we see the mass templated messages go out. Um, and, and very similar to that, the.

Like, it doesn't even have to be, uh, from an agency perspective, there is a very large, uh, private equity backed enterprise SEO tool that's out there, tens of thousands of dollars a month. I've had two different rounds with different people on their sales team. They are the worst salespeople I've ever seen.[00:17:00] 

I, I, I, I almost want to name them. I won't, but it's just, they're so bad and, and I actually think I might want to use their product. But I cannot get real answers about the product, and it's clear that they have no understanding. Not only do they not have an initial understanding of what my problems are, I'm trying to solve when I tell them, you're wrong here.

Here's what I'm concerned about and how I'd want to use you. They do not alter their scripts that come back because they're hiring generic salespeople as opposed to somebody who's even trying to understand what my company's doing. 

Daniel : I like it. Uh, yeah. Don't name 'em. I don't, I don't know how to, I don't know how to bleep something out in real time, and I don't, I don't wanna forget to tell my editor.

So, uh, now I think that's interesting that to your point of mentioning like, you're gonna eat somebody's lunch on the SEO front, I'm a, a solopreneur one person company, and I'm pretty confident that I will eat the lunch of, you know, most people because of sending, you know, my, my stupid. But, uh, you know.

Tailored, uh, LinkedIn messages and emails that I send not at scale are going to win. And I see incredible [00:18:00] success as seen here by you being on this podcast. So. 

Kurt: Yeah. And, and there's nothing wrong with using the tools for there. I mean, right now it's like I, I, I do use in many of my even personal workflows, I, I will, I will use chat GPT to go research the person, draft the message.

I'm just, I know it's worth putting in the extra stage of doing shallow work to give me the time to re each one of those messages before I hit approve and like, Hey, I do not always get approve for that. And so, like, for that executive committee, uh, community you mentioned. I sent like 460 one-on-one cold outreaches to new potential members.

I probably could have sent 1800 over the time period if I had just, you know, hit spray and pray and let it go. But I'm really glad I checked those. 'cause of the 460 I sent, there was probably three, four dozen that, I mean, I would've been, I would've been crushed if I knew that that message had gone out and read somebody based on what it said.

Daniel : Sure. No, I'm curious on the second part of the question. Anything an agency can do if you're not in [00:19:00] market to, uh, you know, get on your radar. 

Kurt: The actual touch points are really well, uh, are, are good for reaching out. Um, but also what I do like it is that deeper, it is that deeper research when people will send me something that's not generic.

Um, it, but I don't have a problem if they mention competitors or if they say, they mention with competitors, but I do really like when they say, Hey, I'm not working with anybody in your space, but I think you're similar to X, Y, and Z in these other industries. Uh, I'd like to have that conversation. The the other side is I'm really big on people that are looking for kind of affinity points, which should be easier with AI right now.

Um, like, do we have something in our personal connection background that may be of interest? So I had somebody reach out to me recently that it was a little bit, uh, a, a little bit belittling the way that he reached out, but he was like, Hey, I saw you were division one athlete. Uh, I was only division three.

Like, could, could we grab time? I, I, I was like, still, like you were still part of like the 0.01% of, uh, high school athletes. That became [00:20:00] something. But, but he, it was clear based on the rest of his message too, that he found something that was different. And he was acknowledging I, uh, that he might not have the right solution, but he wanted to grab time to see if it made sense or not.

I really appreciate when, appreciate when that happens. 

Daniel : What was your sport? 

Kurt: Uh, I ran cross country, indoor and outdoor track, so, okay. 

Daniel : Alright. I've seen a big shift, uh, especially since COVID a little before. 'cause I came from a smaller agency, which was trying to steal business from a bigger. Agencies, but the trend I've seen is bigger named companies moving towards smaller, independent, specialized agencies who are good at, call it one to two services, or a cluster of services.

That make sense? Uh, have you seen that trend? What do you think of it? 

Kurt: I've seen it in some cases where, um, I haven't, it depends on this, uh, this, where the company is at, which as the agency you may not necessarily know. And, and hopefully for the, the CEOs and CMOs that are listening that, that if they do not already think this way, that they will ask the questions of their board.[00:21:00] 

Um, and so if, if you know that there's an exit coming up, that's one that, that's when the, the companies are usually not going to want to hire in-house. And so I'm going to wanna shift and usually less to the larger agencies, which are gonna have longer lead times to be able to cancel those contracts.

But if, like, I was talking to a private equity company recently just kind of coaching their CEO and some things and he was looking for a new CMO, not me. I was giving some guidance on that. And he was, he was talking like they were gonna be hiring this big team. And I went, wait a second. You, you mentioned at the beginning of this conversation that there's a number year private equity fund wants to hit in two years to sell this thing.

So you might hire people over the next six months, but you're talking like you're gonna keep growing this team and you're gonna have, it's gonna affect your valuation if you're gonna have to go through and lay people off, or you're gonna be the boss that I don't think you want to be and I don't think you are, that's going to let people know.

Where you should have known that they were gonna lay off a bunch of people when that exit takes place because they say two, uh, two years. It might have been 18 [00:22:00] months out. And he kind of thought about it and he was like, gosh, like I really can only hire for the next six months. Otherwise I may be hiring people only for six months and not, and not telling them that.

So that, that's part of it is, is thinking through and asking the questions, where do we see potential exits? Because with that, also, to your point, if it's no matter where they're at in the timeframe, if it's more specialized and it's a single headcount or less, I may outsource that very much. But especially if, if somebody is within that timeframe.

And so for smaller agencies, if you can look and see when the company was funded last, you can start to make hypothesis about, hey, they're likely looking for an X in this timeframe. And if you solve a niche there, you may not call that out on the table. But, but that's where I see a lot of people saying, well, yeah, I do want go to an agency.

'cause one they're gonna, I don't have the ramp time that I would have bringing somebody in house. But, um, there it's gonna be much more. Effective from my valuation perspective to be able to bring somebody in right now. And, and it may shift as well, like at Easy Home [00:23:00] Search, we, because we, we have millions of people coming to our platform.

We send an an insane amount of emails. So you can imagine not just transactional emails, but newsletters and we co-brand with, uh, even across the country, well, almost every platform in any industry is built on Google's email platform, Amazon's email platform or something like SendGrid. Well, we got through that for a little ways and we hired a consultant to come in with it, but we knew based on where the company was going, we needed to completely build that ourselves.

So we have our own email deliverability platform. We didn't hire a consultant for that. We didn't like everybody that we have that's working on that is in-house because that was a long-term play investment for us. Sure. 

Daniel : Yeah. I've truthfully seen a big trend with CMOs, uh, wanting to, regardless of what's going on, just wanting to sign six month contracts, uh, if possible mitigate risk.

I think it's another one of those things that makes them feel better sleeping at night to know that it's maybe easier to, to get out. But, uh, yeah, of course agencies still push for year long. Contracts [00:24:00] plus, but uh, I've seen that regardless of state. So interesting to hear that from the exit perspective as well.

Kurt: Yeah, I do have one other small tip, uh, that I'll give there for, uh, for both, uh, the, your agency owners that are listening, but, uh, it's something that will be very productive. I think for the CMOs that are listening is, um, I, I personally will not work with an agency that is also pitching fractional CMO work, unless it's very clear that says we will do fractional CMO work.

But not if you're an agency client, because that's nepotism to me. But what I've seen for, um, for companies bringing in a fractional CMO or sometime they'll treat an a, uh, an agency this way as well, is they'll bring in somebody not as a true fractional CMO, but somebody who's capable of that as a smaller company, because the CMOs often have, especially at at growth stage companies.

We often will have one or two projects that we just keep putting in our back burner that we would like to deal with, but it's not priority enough for me to take my time with, but yet it's also too important, um, or needs too much leadership [00:25:00] and strategy for me to put somebody else on my team on that or pull 'em off of something.

So I'll bring in a fractional CMO or I'll bring in an agency and I'll treat them as a fractional CMO, not as necessarily an agency because I know that you're senior enough to actually run this project. As if I was gonna do it myself. I have a friend here in, uh, Atlanta, Sam Dev Divine, that's a fractional CFO, and he has a huge number of corporate clients that they come to him because they're like, oh, like I have a project maybe completely redoing in their case, like audit for, uh, for, for the company.

I have this audit revamp that needs to take place. I don't wanna hire, you know, one of the, one of the big account, big or mid-sized accounting firms, but I can't deal with myself. Sam, can I just give it to you? Well, I'm like, oh, wait a second. Like I could do that from a marketing perspective. So I've done that as well.

Daniel : That's great. On the, on the, in the vein of agencies. Tell me about a great agency experience you've had in the past and what made it so great. 

Kurt: The, I've had a number of great agency experience. In most cases, they always, even though we will [00:26:00] still have a contract as we should for outputs and whatnot.

They're, how they show up is always aligned to the business outcomes I'm trying to reach, not what I've just hired them to do specifically. Um, they'll work with my cadence, which is going to often vary. Um, and, um, they have very clear owners on their side and what, uh, the best agents experiences I've had is.

 they're not usually trying to upsell me, even though they often do get more upsell stuff in there because they will ask to integrate into my team to sit in on team calls and things like that. so often they're the flying the wall in there, but, they're never gonna come and pitch that back.

But what they're doing is, Hey, we wanna hear what else is going on struggling so we can know if we need to adjust. Our outcomes, our cadences. and then they're with that, they're often leaving behind playbooks or capabilities so that there's not a dependence they deliver well. And they'll be like, here's our SOPs, here's how we're running things internal.

We can take over more of this. We can give some of it back to you. But they're trying to be long-term partners for that. And [00:27:00] that's why I often will go back to the same people time and time again, no matter which agency they go to. I find a lot of times good agency owners will sell. 

Daniel : I agree. Yeah. I think the biggest, uh, in that vein that I see is the, one of the most common reasons I see CMOs telling me they're letting go of their current agency is feeling nickel and dimmed, uh, that they're not, the agency is only doing what is in their scope when the world is moving fast and you should be doing what.

Needs to be done to adhere to business outcomes versus saying, we did the 10 things in this scope, which of course agencies often push back and say, well, that's what you hired us for. So I think you mentioned at the beginning, talking to the CEO at the beginning as A CMO. I think at the beginning of an agency and brand relationship, they need to have a very honest conversation that.

We need to do what makes us both successful, whether or not it falls in there within reason, and if one side thinks that they are, you know, being taken advantage of, that's a conversation. But, uh, yeah, just adhering to the scope in 2025, I think unfortunately is a recipe for, uh, getting let go as an [00:28:00] agency, uh, of 

Kurt: eventually Absolutely.

And, and, and being willing to say. When, when I ask you to do work, um, this the best experience I've had. I'll ask somebody, I'm like, Hey, I think you all could take this over as well. So you already have part of my business and maybe it's on your site, it's part of what you've pitched. And when I ask for that, uh, that additional work, you will say, yeah, I actually we're not the be like, we could do that, but based on what we know about your business, you don't wanna do that, uh, with, with us.

And maybe they have a recommendation, but what I really respect much more than too is I'll keep you for the piece. You're doing really well if you say. Hey, I do have somebody I can, uh, refer you to or. I don't have somebody, because usually as an agency owner, you do have other people you could refer business to, but you also know my business at that point and you know, is that person gonna be a good match for me or not?

And so rather than taking, especially if, uh, that, that referral fee that you might get, but holding it back and being like, actually no, I don't have somebody. That would be great for that, that part for you. I, I, that's what I want to hear. I do not want to hear yeses all the time and so [00:29:00] again, I'm trying to reach business outcomes and so if you wanna be my partner.

You're gonna help me reach those business outcomes and not try, try to make money in the short term. 

Daniel : I like it. Uh, tell me about a negative agency experience you've had in the past and what made it not so great. 

Kurt: Ooh. I was at a mid-market public company a couple years ago. Had, um, a couple of different actually, uh, outsourced agencies writing each one, writing hundreds of pieces of content on a monthly basis, AI optimized stuff.

Um, but this one, they, they would hit their numbers here as we kinda talked about. They would hit their numbers all the time. Uh, every once in a while we would have an update kind of call about how things were going on, but they were never asking about the outcomes. They were never asking about the results.

They were never running their own reports to see how things were delivering. Um, as they would hear from me other things I was doing with my team, because in my case, I was spending about 5% of my team is cmo. Literally trying to put the rest of my marketing team like out of jobs, being like, Hey, I'm gonna rework everything.

If I find a new way to produce content, I'm gonna come back and restructure everything you all are doing. Um, [00:30:00] and they ignored, you know, modern tools that they knew my in-house teams and other agencies were using like phrase. And surfer and, um, they just would not engage in like the concept of topical authority.

And so they, they knew what I was speaking about in conferences and podcasts, and they just kept dumping out basically, you know, regurgitating content. I'm like, you're so focused on activity, you don't, you do not care about my impact. And, and frankly, they just, they were not curious about my business.

Daniel : That's a very good, uh, reason, uh, part of what I preach often, uh, usually on the front end during the pitch. That is if you have a product, uh, buying the product of the brand you are pitching is such an easy way to show that you're curious about that, their business and the process of buying something. So that sucks to hear you ultimately let them go.

Kurt: Uh, did ultimately let them go, uh, brought another one of those agencies with me to the next company, um, as well. And so, yeah, I just, I think the thing for everybody to think about is like, hey. Playbooks and SOPs like your [00:31:00] agency, like that's that. That's how you succeed. But they age what doesn't. Age is outcomes.

And so if you do not adapt or are not curious, then you've just become a cost center to me, and that's not what you want to be 

Daniel : viewed at. For me, I'm slightly more blunt about it. I tell agencies, you can be a, uh. Not a, not a terrible agency, but you can win a lot of business by giving a shit, uh, about the brand and in particular the, the CMO and the VP of marketing, in my opinion.

And taking a, a, you know, an opinion and a, taking it from the lens if we wanna make you successful and look like a hero. So I think a lot of agencies win business and then wanna make it about them, um, to try to win awards and all that sort of stuff. Yeah. And you can, uh, you'll, you'll win many clients. Uh.

Uh, in the future from the amount of jobs that folks in your position will have over their career, so, mm-hmm. I agree. What are you most I'll say outside of ai? 'cause I can tell you're very enthusiastic about it. What outside of AI are you most excited about in the marketing sphere? Most pumped about. Yeah.

Kurt: I mean, AI is 

Daniel : [00:32:00] just a feature to me, so it's like where you apply. That's good. 

Kurt: Uh, three things I'm most, uh, most excited about, uh, demand Generation. 'cause just so few marketers know how to do it. There's been some featured articles with me and a few others where, um, they've written about how like most teams aren't even capable of considering a true modern demand generation.

Uh, it is ai but LLM and AI search overviews, um, it is when you can own them, uh, properly. It is such a, um, huge increase for, and I think it will continue to be for driving people to actually sales. Um, which is a great thing. And then, um, uh, increasingly, uh, topical authority that the concept, I mean, I said Corey and I have both read, you know, 400 plus Google patents and Bing patents.

It's like, that is how you rank in the LLMs and that's also how you actually rank in Google right now. So. 

Daniel : Okay. I'm curious 'cause I find, uh, a lot of people say they are AI experts, uh, agencies in particular and stuff like that. Is there any outside of you and Corrie who you said like, or maybe it is that the, the, the two of you?

I'm curious, is [00:33:00] there anybody you can point folks to that you think is, uh. You know, an actual thought leader in the space, 

Kurt: the not for AI as a whole, because I think it's too generic of a category. So like, as it pertain on to 

Daniel : marketing and potentially, and how to use it for, call it a, you know, call, I'll, I'll narrow it down in something that comes up in a lot of conversations.

Uh, how to show up well in LLM, who do you think is doing some cool stuff there? 

Kurt: I mean, there's a lot of people that, like, you know, Matt Diggity and Kyle Roof, that, all that, that speak things that, that are, are good for PR and may work in short boosts and I, I don't know. We'll see if their, if their concepts work long term.

Um, for the most part I would say no. Um, it, because it, it to, to be successful today, it's not just volume. It has to be such a depth that actually works, but not regurgitating stuff out. So very few people that are practice, like I know a dozen people, but none of them are too public about what they're doing because they're intentionally choosing not to be.

So they're working for [00:34:00] counseling, some of the, uh, fastest growing companies because. Very few people can produce this sheer amount of content. Like I'm running like three different levels of content stuff, like an easy home search. We do have traditional content teams are using AI for optimization, but I have two other categories that we do not speak about very much for how we're doing content, because if people even knew the scale that we were creating stuff at, they would start asking questions that might point them to the direction of what we're trying to solve.

Yeah, 

Daniel : I like it. Uh, on the flip side, what keeps you up or stresses you out from a business or marketing standpoint? 

Kurt: The, probably the biggest thing that keeps me awake, there's a couple, but is companies making unwise AI decisions. And so kind of to your point, like people asking questions, they're either under the boards and the CEOs are drastically underestimating or overestimating what is gonna be possible with ai.

So like on the content side. I, I know a mid-market company that, uh, literally just laid off 32 of like 34 people on their content team because AI's gonna be able to solve [00:35:00] everything. That wasn't a decision from the CMO. There was no real rationale. I, I, I, there was more, more thought than they, uh, than the board or the CEO read something on TechCrunch, but I, there wasn't much more of a much, much deeper of a level than that.

Like that's over, over, over, uh, going on it on the other side, people, um. They're, they're not hiring like we talked about before, the right type of team players, they're not, they're not open to their teams taking time to actually try stuff that might not work. But there's so much changing right now and so much that's working for my team right now that we've, we're always running experiments and everything that we're doing right now came from 80% of the things that we tried 12 months ago and nine months ago, and six months ago.

That didn't work, but we found the 20% that did. 

Daniel : Um, that's awesome. 

Kurt: So that would, that would be the biggest thing. The, um, the other thing that really just keeps me up is, uh, high performers are increasingly, um. Leaving companies if they don't have the flexibility. And so the [00:36:00] return to office stuff that we just continue to hear from people.

I, I would love to have a close office I could go into all the time, but I also have little kids at home and so there's not a dollar figure that would make me go into an office five days a week. And so that, that applies for everything down to. Uh, junior straight outta college people that you've hired.

Some people, they want them, they crave it, and it's okay, and you should adapt to that. But, but your true high performers, they can work anywhere. And so if you don't give them challenging things and the flexibility to go for a hike on Tuesday if they want to because you are expecting them to work on Saturday at time, like if you're not, you're not building that flexibility and cadence in, and it's, it's hard to have that discussion with a lot of companies right now.

Daniel : I agree. I was actually having this conversation with somebody right before we started recording here. Uh, that it, honestly, I can't even like the notion that at one point in my life I did go to an office and sit in traffic five days a week. Uh, now it is like a fever dream seems in insane, not because of anything else, other than, yeah, the flexibility of like, I couldn't, I can't [00:37:00] believe I didn't have flexibility to do those things in a pre pre COVID world.

So. 

Kurt: Yeah, well, I'm, I'm not hiring people to work 40 or 50 hours a week. I'm hiring people to go to war with me. I, I only work at companies where we're either defining a new category or we're taking over and redefining a category. It's just like what we're doing at Easy Home Search. Well, that does mean that, that people, you know, need to love what they're doing, and there's a crap ton of work to be done.

So like. It. I work most Saturdays and Sundays at, you know, at times. And so when I'm not sleeping, I don't wanna watch Netflix. I wanna come and work on something that we're doing well. I expect that from people on my team. But to do that and to avoid the burnout, then, then you do have to have the flexibility that says, Hey, you work Daniel at different hours than I may work.

And we do have to have overlap in that, but, but accommodate that. And it comes from the top, like it's not just coming from me, like at our company. Um, our founder and CEO Preston, his, uh, one, uh, one, one of his sons, his, uh, his a high school golfer and really good, like will go to college unequivocally for it.

And it's like [00:38:00] Preston is gone most afternoons being a caddy for his son. Preston also works more hours than you could ever imagine for anything, but, but he's modeling to people that says, look, I need you to work more hours because we're changing an industry right here. But then again, if the building's not on fire at three 30.

Please leave me alone because I'm with my son right now and, and, and so like that permeates through everything else that makes me wanna show up and work more on a Saturday when I have downtime. 

Daniel : I like it. Uh, that's very, uh, a, a trendy topic right now. What is it? The 9 9 6, uh, calendar going on in, uh, in Silicon Valley.

So, 

Kurt: yeah, but see, even like that, that's still the push from the Silicon Valley says you just have to put in more hours and it's like, it's, it's not like if I just try to hit more hours, I'm actually gonna be usually less efficient if I'm doing the 9, 9 6. Then, then if like my best hours might be hitting three hours today, that might be equivalent of me working 12 hours tomorrow.

And I like, I know that like my deep work early in the morning in writing. If I put an hour that I should never spend time before noon answering emails or Slack messages [00:39:00] if I can help it. 

Daniel : Yeah. Some of my, I mean, I know, uh, I would say I'm not lumping myself in with you necessarily, but, uh, I'll give us both.

This my favorite time, like Saturday morning and Sunday morning with my coffee doing, you know. 45 minutes of stuff to set myself up for success for the week, uh, is some of my favorite time. And I used to feel guilty for enjoying it and, uh, I lean into it now. So, but different as a solopreneur, I love what I do so, so much.

So, uh, incredibly passionate about it. So I think that's the cliche, but, uh, you know, true takeaway of if you do find something, you're passionate about it, uh, it doesn't feel like work, even if it is. 

Kurt: Well, I think most leaders, what they miss too is the moment they expand beyond just a couple of time zones or especially out of an office, then they have other people on their team that are working different hours.

Especially if you have people working for you in the Philippines or in Europe and whatnot. And so there, there's no 9, 9, 6 where it's like it's gonna cover everybody working unless you expect people to work at two o'clock in the morning to make, to meet your hours. Yeah. At which point then I can always step up and, and, and, and show [00:40:00] things.

And so I do need to adjust my personal cadence so that I can mentor you today. And somebody in the Philippines tomorrow and somebody based in Paris, the, uh, the, the next day. And so like, that's gonna shift maybe based on my intention of how I'm trying to coach you or what your needs are right then. And so too many people get locked in the viewpoint of, oh, I just have to have everybody here right now.

And like, yeah, until you get to multiple offices. Like, I used to think that until I started, had people work for me in Singapore, and I was like, oh. Like one of us is gonna be awake at one o'clock in the morning. Sure. Like if we really wanna overlap or we can build that into our system. And the moment you go asynchronous and output based, everything just flows then.

Daniel : I agree. Uh, we'll finish with some fun ones. What was your very first job? 

Kurt: Paper route at 13. Uh, but then at 13 I started a lawn care business and uh, like had to form an LLC 'cause I had more than a dozen people working for me 

Daniel : at 13. Very entrepreneurial, maybe illegal, who knows? I don't know the labor laws back then.

You know. Anything you've, I always ask anything you've taken away [00:41:00] from that into your current role or that you see that you, you learned back then that, uh, you know, matric or, uh, you know, comes into play today? 

Kurt: When people wanna give you money, you always say yes and figure out how to deliver on it later.

I mean, I, that, that's why I was able to hire so many people and they weren't just like friends. Some of them were actually, you know, dads of my friends. Um, because very quickly I look back and went, I have sold more houses and lawns than I could fulfill myself. Um, and very few people are, are okay with that.

So it's kind of the same thing with sales or marketing. It's like, as long as you know you can, you can build the backend system, go and do it. 

Daniel : When you were talking about the, I believe it was the SEO platform that won't take your money, essentially. I was thinking in my mind about how many people are allergic to money, truthfully, who just cannot figure out just saying yes or figuring it out and stuff like that in many cases.

So yeah, 

Kurt: I was part of a big organization that, um. Well, uh, Walmart had come to them wanting to, uh, in industry organization, I'll leave it at that, but was wanting to come and support them and they kind of had viewed Walmart as a negative for what they were trying to do in the industry. And I was like, Walmart's trying to give you a $10 million check [00:42:00] to support what you're doing.

Your response should have been, yes. And then you can have follow up conversations about what that would look like given how vehement you are towards them. But the answer is yes, when somebody steps in. Unexpectedly says, I have a large check for you for this year and probably another one next year. And like, maybe they are evil and you do have to say no, but I bet you could put guardrails that would still support what you want without being true to that.

Daniel : I like it. Uh, my final question, maybe the best one, who's someone who inspires you personally, professionally, or both? 

Kurt: Uh, I have to, it may sound trite, but my wife, she, uh, 

Daniel : that's not trite. 

Kurt: Yeah. She, um, also earning, 

Daniel : also earning some points, you know. 

Kurt: Yeah. Hopefully, hopefully, uh, she, she's always a giver, um, on things, but, uh, she does, she was a vice president of marketing, ran a very successful agency.

Um, still does some of that work, but, uh, has applied all of that in different industries and including to our multiple households that we have. So it's like we literally have Trello boards set up for running [00:43:00] our mountain property versus our house versus homeschooling, and she runs all of that. Uh, much like I, I would want, you know, when I've been a CEO, so I can step in when I'm asked to or need to, but I don't have to worry about work being done because I know there's trusted systems in place that somebody's running.

Daniel : I love it. And I also lied. I do have one more. What would your final meal be? The best, the, my, my favorite question. 

Kurt: Ooh. I'm a, I, I'm a hundred percent carnivore, so I, I'd have a sampling platter of, uh, grilled steak, rabbit lamb, and grilled octopus. 

Daniel : I am, I have gone through phases of a hundred percent carnivore.

Uh, I'm very low carb, uh, but ICII couldn't stick with just the carnivore. You love it. How long have you been doing it? 

Kurt: Uh, almost two years at this point. I have in the last three months, kind of come back a little more whole food. I'm open to some other things like in season, but um, you know, if there's grapes are in season or we have blueberries that are property, like, I'll eat that.

But still, like even then, 95% of my calories are gonna come from butter, beef, fat. 

Daniel : [00:44:00] I love it. Uh, you putting butter in your coffee yet? Uh, I'm not, I'm not okay. Hear, I hear it's, uh, all the rage these days from the TikTok crowd, but, uh, no, this was awesome. I appreciate you joining. And, uh, before we go, anything new or exciting you want people to check out from Easy Home Search?

Kurt: Um, easy Home Search. We have a, uh, a new AI home search actually that people are using. So not trying to put, uh, real estate agents and brokers outta business. 'cause I mean, they're, they're who we work with. But, um, it's, uh, it's been really interesting. We're on our like third version that's come out where.

It's not the traditional, Hey, find me a three bedroom home in Roswell with a pool. It's much more of talk to it how you want and um, we'll help find you, uh, the perfect home. And it's been incredible to see how people are actually using it, uh, in ways that almost feels like counseling at some point. 

Daniel : I love it.

That's awesome. Everybody go check that out. And Kurt, thank you so much for joining and we will chat with you soon. Thank you. [00:45:00]