Welcome back to the show—my fellow extraordinary Americans.

For today’s guest, we have Drew Donaldson. Drew is a serial entrepreneur, growth strategist, and founder of Gro•Haus, a new model agency designed to help exceptionally skilled professionals build and grow high-ticket businesses after over a decade of serving corporate America as a marketing consultant. Drew founded Gro•Haus in January 2020, on the eve of a global pandemic. 

During the shutdown, Drew spent his time perfecting what would become the Gro•Haus model by interviewing professionals about what they loved and hated about working with marketers, consultants, and their agencies. His dedication to understanding the needs of highly skilled professionals. It paid off, and as the crisis passed, Gro•Haus quickly became a force to be reckoned with, scaling to six figures and revenues in less than 3. 

Today, after just four years, Gro•Haus has helped hundreds of clients grow to and through the first six and seven figures. Drew’s innovative approach to marketing and willingness to challenge the status quo have helped his clients achieve unprecedented success, despite their sometimes-limited initial resources and challenging economic climate. Drew is what I would call an extracting American, and I’m glad and honored to have him on the show. Drew, are you there?

I am! Thank you for such a kind introduction. I appreciate it.

Jude, thank you so much for taking the time to do this podcast with me. I know you’re a serial entrepreneur and have been in the marketing space. Can you tell me in the audience a little bit more about yourself, your background, and how you got started?

Yeah, absolutely. I’m kind of a kid from the country at heart. I grew up in rural Pennsylvania, not more than 15 minutes from where I live right now. My dad was a vice president at an agricultural bank. AG banks are where farmers get their loans and capital to make improvements. 

We were surrounded by small business owners on that side, and my mom ran her insurance agency. So, I was in the heart of the small business world when I was very little. My whole family consists of farmers and small businesspeople. And so that became pretty foundational to my upbringing. What made me interested in working with entrepreneurs in the first place?

Well, Drew, can you tell me more about how you went from there to the marketing space and corporate America and what vision you had that ultimately led you to start growing houses?

It’s interesting because I graduated with a film degree when I first started. And you know, I graduated from film school back then; at least, it is a little different now because of the proliferation of digital media. 

But back then, You could move to New York or LA; that was your choice, and you had to make a pick. And if you were going to LA, you would most likely get jobs in film and television. And if you move to New York, you will get jobs in advertising. And I have always been a big fan of ads. I used to, you know, one of the parlor tricks that my parents would pull out of me whenever we’d go to, like, family fun. I could recite commercials by heart, so I always had a knack for advertising. I just thought that sounded more interesting. You’re kind of creating short films. 

So, I went to New York with the idea that I would work for an ad agency and create these films. But at the same time, I knew I wasn’t meant to work for anybody else. It didn’t feel like wearing somebody else’s clothes to go out with a resume and begging for jobs. 

So, while I was still in school, I started a production business, which carried over after I graduated, and I did really good work. We won some awards. We had some nice clients, but there was never enough. There was never enough of, you know, food on the table. 

So, to support us, support me and me and my—young or my girlfriend at the time, wife. To make it like, hey, we’re succeeding at this. It’s just we’re kind of just scraping by. I looked around at some of the other production companies that were doing well, and even people I went to school with didn’t do as good of work as I did, didn’t care as much about their clients, and weren’t as creative. 

And I was like there, there’s something different about how we approach this, and they are being successful. They’re where they lack and why I’m not successful in all my advantages, and I’ve distilled it down to marketing. I figured out that the way they were marketing themselves, the way they were pitching themselves, the way they were getting in front of people fundamentally differed from what I was doing. And the way I was doing it wasn’t working. 

So, I became obsessed with marketing, and over probably five years or so, I fell out of love with production and in love with marketing and decided. That was the pivot that I was going to be happy. I would be happier consulting with people and teaching them what I had learned about marketing and the skills I had mastered to make my business successful. 

And so, even though I never applied everything I learned to that production business, I have applied it to hundreds of others. Places and watch the effect of, you know, just that little bit of information that one missing piece plugged in and watching their growth explode.

Drew. Well, I like your story; it is so amazing. And it also brought up something in my mind, so, you know, there’s a huge debate worldwide between the market-oriented approach and the product-oriented approach, right? Where people say, oh, the product will sell by itself; the quality is to be so good. 

Others say that. No, you have to have good marketing, and it’s the marketing that. It’s perception and how you make something; how people perceive something becomes reality. But over here, in your opinion, the market-oriented approach was the edge because you had the same thing as the other guys, right?

Well, no, actually, it’s somewhere in the middle. The offer wins, that’s what wins, and it’s a combination of those two things: the service, the product you’re offering, how you’re going to describe that, and how you’re doing your outreach. And so that was the moment of aha for me. 

Once I understood that once I understood offer design, how to write an offer and craft it, and how to test offers, that’s what made me dangerous. That’s where I was like, OK, now I can print money wherever I go because I have this fundamental skill that most people lack or are not interested in or don’t design or they don’t. Or, you know, they don’t believe in whatever it is that one skill has brought me more success than anything else. And it comes down to the offer desk.

No, I mean, I couldn’t agree more. You’re completely right about that. It’s the balance between the product-oriented and the market-oriented approach. But it’s just like going to different parts of the world. I’ve been in three different cultures: India, the Middle East, and America. In the Middle East, until recently, a lot of it was just, oh, you want the product, you can get it. 

However, in the Western world, the market-oriented approach is there, especially in the New York area, but it’s ultimately a balance between the two. And yeah, so drew, what is the one thing you realized about marketing that makes something successful and not successful while you’re consulting others regarding it?

Oh, it’s the empathy you bring to the marketing, right?

So that’s the secret sauce. If anyone out there is looking at their ads and they’re like, why aren’t my ads converting? Why aren’t they working? It’s probably because they lack empathy. You don’t truly understand your audience’s pain, or you’re not. Even if you understand the pain, you’re not putting that pain into the ad. You’re not showing them that you understand their pain because when someone sees empathy in another person, it’s a really rare commodity. We live in a very unempathetic, cold, hard digital world. Where? No one cares about each other, and your best friend is more than happy to tear you down online behind the guise of, and you know. Anonymous Twitter handle if. If they feel like you know you’re, you’re getting too big for your britches. 

So, I mean, in a world like that, having empathy, displaying it publicly, and saying I understand what you’re going through, I get it. I can feel your pain. I know where it comes from. And here’s how we’re going to solve it together. That is incredibly powerful, and I’ve found time and time again that when you understand someone’s pain, show them empathy, and why you understand it, you provide the text is the secret sauce. 

That’s why some ads work, and some don’t. It’s how empathetic the ad is to the real problem. If you think about infomercials, which we all make fun of, about the exaggerated guy spilling the chips all over, no one does that. 

Some people feel that doesn’t happen. They don’t go all over. But people have done that. They’ve gotten up from the couch, tripped over the blanket, and spilled chips all over the floor. And that’s why those ads work: they’re not speaking to someone who never does that. Who doesn’t eat a big bowl of chips on the couch? Because there are people that do? 

They’re not speaking to the people who don’t use blankets on their couches. They’re speaking to the people who do so. And I’m trying not to drop them, like, brand name. But I think everyone knows the commercials I’m talking about. They’re so effective that people buy them because they solve a genuine problem, whether we all want to admit it.

Right. They understand their market and the pain someone’s going through, even if it’s a stupid pain—a little painful. It’s not a bone sticking out of your arm pain. There’s still pain there, and they understand it and bring empathy.

So do a lot of businesses like they do marketing, but then there are a lot of businesses that didn’t succeed, and then there are some that do, and you say that empathy is one of them. But what are the other traits in marketing that successful businesses do, in your opinion?

I mean, the biggest thing is not understanding your audience, and this kind of ties in with the empathy is that you know, so often as business owners, we get obsessed with the products and the and the and like what we like, right? We try to build a product for us. But it’s like that movie Joe Dirt. It’s, you know, there’s that famous scene where he’s at the fireworks stand, and the guy selling the fireworks only has sparklers. And like the snake. And he goes, you know, Joe Dirt says in his profound wisdom, it’s not about what you like. It’s about what the consumer likes. 

And that’s the key. Many business owners make the mistake of building something for themselves instead of for their audience, or they build something initially for their audience. Still, they get caught up in the ego of people liking that thing, and they think. Oh, all my ideas are good. Instead of testing and asking the audience, ” Hey, do you want? Is this a huge waste of time and time and again? I’ve watched CEOs of tech companies backtrack on feature rollouts because they realized that they took things away that people value and changed things about the approach that people were like. Oh no, I was using that. Don’t take that away. I wanted that, and it was simply because they never did the research. They never went and surveyed their people. They never met with the end user. They didn’t understand why people were buying their product in the first place.

Yeah, what you bring up is a very important point. It’s amazing how many companies don’t understand what their audience truly wants. That ultimately makes a difference between the average companies and the great companies. They know exactly who they’re dealing with in their customer avatar.

Yeah, I mean, you know, I think the most public example of this was Bud Light. And no matter where you stand on the politics of that situation, Bud Light has had a very specific demographic of drinkers that those ads and campaigns did not appeal to. 

And the idea of the market—the former marketing director or Mark CMO was fired over this, the idea that she wanted to shake off all that, you know, frat boy mentality. Well, that’s your whole lot. You’ve spent decades curating a frat boy audience, and now you’re just going to decide to abandon 80% of your market because of politics. It just doesn’t make any sense. Like, you know, one focus group could have pointed out that flaw. 

But too often, they’re blinded by, you know, this, this idea that. Well, we know better than our audience. We know better that this is what they need, even if it’s the bitter medicine. This is what they need.

It’s like that’s not how business works in a democratic society because we can just choose to buy another beer, and there’s plenty of other, like, go to a beer store, man. There are hundreds of beers. You don’t have to drink, bud. You can drink Coors Light if you want. Still want a cheap beer or natty light like there are a million choices out there to drink, and the idea that, well, we need to serve them the bitter pill and they’ll come back and keep drinking it, it’s like. That’s not how it works. That’s just not how markets operate, right? If you irritate somebody, tick somebody off, you lose their trust, you lose them, you lose the ability to communicate with them, and they’re going to go somewhere else where they feel more appreciated.

Do you bring up one of the most interesting phenomena in the last 1020 years? Until the early 2000s, they were all good movies, products, and everything. And it seems like in the last 20 years, due to what we call wocas, politics has been involved even in the marketing and business sectors. 

They’re trying to push their narrative and agenda to decrease sales because that’s what they don’t. They’re out of touch with what the audience wants, like the Bud Light, which was the funniest thing ever. Like, what are you doing? That’s a very interesting point regarding knowing your customer audience.

One company I think does a phenomenal job with its marketing, and it’ll probably come as a surprise to many people, is Dove Soap. Dove Soap knows its audience. Dove Soap caters to real women. Real women, and I don’t mean that in some political sentiments. I’m just your every day they don’t put supermodels in their ads; they don’t have, you know, Farrah Fawcett, you know, in their spreads in Cosmo magazine. 

No, it’s for real women who have to get up every day and take care of their kids, shower, go to work, and do everything a regular woman must do in the States. They reflect that in their advertisements about empowering women and telling them how beautiful they are. 

And all of this stuff is not to make a political point; it’s because they understand who uses their product. They do a phenomenal job doing it. You know, whether you like their product or not almost becomes irrelevant because would you rather buy the soap that promotes people that look like you, that promotes people that you feel a kinship with, or some supermodel who you think is probably, you know, jet setting around the globe, partying with you know. 

There, every time a woman in this country walks into the grocery store and decides what soap to buy. Those images flash in their head, right? So why, like it, is understanding the audience and having empathy for their struggles? Having empathy for, you know, what they go through daily is just the key to unlocking. A foothold that you can’t budge dove from their position like Dove will be around for. Or far longer than any of the generic brands out there who don’t pick a specific lane and stay in it like Axe Body, spray axe body spray is another example on the men’s side; they know who they’re marketing to. They know they’re marketing to the 13 to 18-year-old demographic. I mean, have you ever met? Like a 40-year-old that still uses an axe? No, but that’s OK because that’s not their demo, right? Their demo is for young teenagers. Boys, right?

So, they target young teenage boys and all their ads, and it works fine. They sell like crazy, right? Much to you know, locker rooms around the country. Chagrin. But it works. They know their audience. They know what kind of advertising they need to put out.

No, I mean, it’s true. It’s just the basics of empathy and knowing your avatar and customer audience. But in today’s context, it seems like many people have forgotten that regarding the narrative they want to throw out.

That is very true. I mean, a lot of people want it. It’s the same as the business owner wanting people to love their great ideas. Not everyone in your market is going to agree with all of your big ideas. And I’ve just never been promoted. I don’t think politics and advertising. Should mix. I think they’re very different things, right? I would be a big fan of banning all political advertising altogether. I’d be a huge fan of it because I don’t think it’s done particularly well and honestly. Do we want to see another political politician’s ad, or do we not want to see it? Like Show Me the Funny Frogs from Budweiser again. Like, let’s do that again. Like, that’s better, you know, it’s more entertaining. 

Any of the Super Bowl ads this year are better than, you know, pick one politician ad over the last 20 years; I guarantee you any of the ads from the Super Bowl were better. So. I just don’t. I don’t think advertising; I don’t think entertainment is the place to stand on your soapbox and preach your values, morals, or political alignment. It’s entertainment. It’s just supposed to be fun. It’s supposed to help you sell products, like save that for the pulpit. Save that for the places where it matters. Save it for the audience. Do you care about that stuff? Don’t invade all of the media with stuff that’s just going to bring people down and make people feel like I was enjoying this show until I got a two 1/2-minute lecture on why I’m terrible, right?

Yeah, I mean, I mean, yeah, that’s pretty true, right? But that’s basically what’s happening in our country today. It’s just like pushing a narrative and all that stuff. 

Drew, another point you brought up was the concept of the ego versus empathy. Right. Most of these companies want to have their idea of the product instead of understanding what the customer wants, and I bring it up again because I, yeah, I have to stress this to them. It’s more so that a lot of times, when creating a product, you are attached to a certain way it should be. Then you have your ideas for it. 

But in reality, that might not be what the customer wants. I read this book called Lead Starter, which discusses this concept where, like many companies, they fail because they have this. The egotistical idea is that they will create the best product, and it’s their idea and vision. 

But, like, when they put it out, nobody wants it. So, yeah, I wanted to tell you that’s a very interesting point.

Sure. So, I’m right down the street from Hershey, PA, where Hershey’s chocolate is made. So, for any of you listeners familiar with the Brown Hershey’s bar. But Hershey’s, you know, has been here forever. I mean, he came to this area to start this business because of the availability of one of the railroads. He could get cocoa and sugar, but this is also in the dairy capital, and fresh milk is a key part of the chocolate-making process. People don’t realize that Milton Hershey didn’t start making chocolate. He made cars. His first invention was caramel because he had had caramel, and he thought they were delicious. 

So he started making his caramels, and he found, I believe, it was in a French cafe or something that there was a person making chocolate drizzles on some pastry they had. And that was the first time he had ever had chocolate. Oh, I’m going to take that, and I’m going to cover my caramels in a drizzle of chocolate. 

And so he makes a bunch of these, and he brings them to a party, and he sees. Children run up, grab handfuls of them off this tray he had brought, run into a Bush, and they would just go back and forth. And he’s watching this the whole time. And he’s like, what are they doing with him? Like he, they’re taking so many of these caramels that they can’t possibly eat them like handfuls. 

And so after the children leave, he goes in and looks in the bushes, and there is a pile of caramels with all the chocolate sucked off. There’s no chocolate left on it. He thought he was in the caramel business, but he was actually in the chocolate business, and from that day forward, he said. Oh, there’s something here. There’s chocolate, which is a way better, way bigger thing than caramel could be. I should just focus on this now. He had a choice there, right? 

He could say those stupid kids. They don’t appreciate fine things; he could have kept doing normal for the next 20 years but would have never been as successful. Or he could see the market dynamics and say, huh? That’s interesting. I didn’t expect that to happen, but the markets tell me they want chocolate.

Let’s give them more of what they want. And that’s a perfect moment when you must put your ego on the shelf. Yeah. He had studied and tried to craft the perfect caramel. He spent years trying to create this recipe and was proud of it. But he was not proud or egotistical enough to look at the data on the ground underneath the pine tree and go. Yeah. 

Something’s different here. Something. This is not my expectation, but I can do something about it. I can create a product. And sure enough, like now, Hershey’s is arguably one of the most recognizable chocolate brands in the world because the man who created it didn’t have an ego. When people didn’t like his product, there wasn’t …you know… the like the Skinner moment. Am I wrong, or? No? No, it must be the kids. The kids are wrong. 

No, it’s not that at all. It’s You. Look at the market. You look at how they respond, and you take them seriously. You take them at their word. If they say they don’t like something or only use part of your product, Instagram is a perfect example, right? They realized they built that app for whiskey tasting when it first came out, and they realized the only thing people were using it for was the photo app. They were like, huh? They could have had a big ego about it and been like, we should just take that feature out. People aren’t using it correctly. We, you know it’s, but no, they saw the market was responding, they were like, OK, let’s forget all this other stuff that people don’t care about. Let’s just do this one thing that they do care about. 

And you know the storylines and business history go on like that forever. The winners are the people who can adapt to what the market wants and don’t try to force something down their throats.

Drew, you just nailed it in the head with that one. That is what makes a successful business and what does not. I’m so grateful that you are stressing out at this point. And I did. I had no idea about that regarding Hershey’s chocolate now because that’s one of my favorite chocolates. That’s a good thing to do.

Yeah.

So yeah, drew other than this point, like when you were consulting the other professionals and business owners and helping them get to 600 and Sam fares, what are the greatest challenges that they had in scaling their business and what did, what would they have to do to overcome that?

Well, I think the number one thing I start everybody with is offer development. I mean, offer development. I cannot stress enough that this is the key. It’s what makes people successful, and some people are naturally good at it. 

Some people fall into it because, you know, they’re just in a field that they can’t avoid being successful in because they’re just in the right place at the right time. But for the rest of us, we need to carefully craft an offer that is the one the market wants but attractive to the market because it’s one thing to say, like you know, if I go and bring you a chocolate cake and I say. What do you think this chocolate cake and you go looks really good. 

And I say, well, do you want a piece of it? You’re like, well, I’m on a diet. OK. That’s what you want. But you’re not going to buy it, right? Because you’re on a diet. I need to create something that makes you go, oh. Forget the diet. I’m eating the cake. Like that’s offer Creation, right? The only thing is that having a product that suits the need is just a want. The offer is the desire to buy it, right? 

And so I think that’s the. 1st place, I start with everybody sitting them down and saying, Right, what are the skills you’re bringing to the table? How are we going to deliver this? How do you want to deliver this? Are you going to do group coaching or one-on-one? Is there going to be a course component? Are you going to do a speaking circuit? Are you training at the corporate level? Are you training at the individual level? Who’s your market? 

For example, boil down the key components of what is inside this offer. Who is it for? How are we? How are we going to talk about it? What pain points are we solving? Once we have everything, it flows downhill. 

Right now, your ad script follows your offer. Your landing page follows your ad script, and your webinar VSL follows the same. Planning page: Everything is downstream from the core offer itself, and that’s where I spend most of my time with my clients. You know, my engagements are usually very intensive, especially early on, when working with people, and then over time, my team takes over and manages the day-to-day stuff. Once their leads start coming in and we’re in, it’s more of an optimization day, but getting started is the key to developing a solid offer.

I see. So, when consulting them over these last few years, what is your greatest revelation regarding how people do business and human nature in general about starting and expanding a business?

Funnel sales funnels are commonly thought of as long, complicated things. The longer they are, the more detailed they are, and the better they are.

And the inverse is. It is the reality that you extended your funnel because the shorter version wasn’t working, so you have to add extra steps, right? And when I say funnel, I’m not talking about a series of landing pages; I’m talking about your content marketing. I’m talking about your paid media strategy, ads, VSL, and e-mail sequences that go out to subscribers. 

Your e-mail sequences that go out to cold, all of that stuff. The more complicated that marketing ecosystem gets. It gets more complicated because the shorter version of whatever you were building isn’t working as well as it used to, and that’s natural. That’s a normal part of the business you build; think of the Snuggie, right? When did the Snuggie first come out? I did because I was trying to avoid using their name. But there it goes.

So, when they first came out. They just needed a goofy commercial, and things sold like hotcakes, right? But now everybody knows what. If so, now they have to be a little more creative about how they will sell this thing. Now, will they be more creative? Will they, you know, record different ads? Now, it doesn’t seem like they kind of rode the wave. The wave crested. Now they’re happy being on the shelves at Bed Bath and Beyond, or whoever bought overstock.com, whatever the new name for Bed Bath and Beyond is. 

But some companies look at that, and they figure out how to make it work. Flex tape, right? Phil Swift, I’m mentioning all these infomercials because they tend to be heavily bought. Everybody knows them. 

So, like the flex tape guy, right? I bought a boat in half. All that stuff they understand. What their audience likes, how to keep them engaged, how to put more content out, how to develop new products, and so over time, when flex tape starts dying out and isn’t as popular anymore. 

Well, now you have a flex seal. Now you have to flex this flex that you keep having new product iterations so they can extend. Funnel. But what happens is when you don’t have that product, when you don’t have new products coming out, like if you’re a professional services firm, you go through that initial excitement phase, and then over time, after people have heard about you and seen you. You’ve exhausted that initial potential, and you see your funnel start weakening, and that’s when you start adding. Things to it, right? That’s you. Don’t start with that. You don’t start with a 15-step funnel. You don’t start building out this marketing albatross. You start with a very simple short funnel that just watches a video that books a call on your calendar that’s it start with. 

Once you have that down, you can add other elements to it, as that no longer works from an operational point of view. Standpoint: you don’t have time to take as many sales calls. Or from a standpoint of, well, I’m getting too many phone calls, but they’re not the right people. They’re not qualified. I need to qualify those people down. Only once that initial funnel stops working to your liking do you add those additional things, whether that’s the case. It’s just a numbers game, Oregon; you need to be slower and spend more time with them to build a relationship with them. It doesn’t matter it. It’s all about making the shortest funnel possible, working first, and then growing.

Yep. Since we’re talking about sales funnels, one of the things that came to my mind was that since the advent of the Internet, the way we do marketing has transformed radically. Like before the Internet, we used to use newspapers, radio, and all that stuff. 

Now, more and more people can use marketing online, but it isn’t easy to get attention in this age of social media. 

And get people to like, look at your look at your product in the 1st place. So, from your perspective, how would you show contrast from other people who are online, like on social media, and who have compared products and then get them to the funnel in the first place?

So, it goes back to the empathy thing. It would be best if you had empathy in your ad script. But the other thing is that your ad needs to look authentic. But what I mean by that is not over. We used what we have learned in the advertising space, and I’m shocked that the big boys haven’t figured this out yet because you will still see overproduced ads coming out of the likes of Grey and BDO and these huge firms that should know better. Is that the more produced your ad is on social? 

The less engagement you get categorically, and the reason for that is simple. You look like an ad, and people hate ads like we have a chemical aversion to them in this country because we are so heavily advertised to. I mean, look at some of the studies that show how many marketing messages we are fed in any given day. It’s in the hundreds, if not thousands, depending on your media habits. That’s a lot of ads. If you were shown something 1000 times a day, you would probably hate it too. 

So why would you go out and create an ad that looks like an ad? It’s the worst thing you can do, so instead of trying to stand out and create something flashy, create something that. You know, it grabs people’s attention. It would be best if you did the opposite. It would be best to create something like all the other content they already consume. If you do that, people will lean in and see what? Well, this couldn’t be an ad that guys wearing a bathing suit would; who would record an ad with a guy wearing a bathing suit, right? They will sit through the whole thing. There was another one, a great guy was selling. He’s a business broker. 

So, to work with him, there is a 25 to $50,000 minimum investment. He’s a big guy, you know, your average Joe isn’t going to buy that product. Right. But he knew that his buyer was on TikTok. So, he put a phone on the end of a selfie stick and walked around his house. The guy must have, like, I have a small daughter. 

So, I know the feeling, but he must have like seven freaking little kids because of their toys; it looked like a bomb went off in his house. Right. There were just toys that were nice houses. Not cluttered, but his kids were just playing, and he shot them out of the rooms to do this show. And he’s just talking into the phone, looking up and doing his whole pitch. Hey, if you’re interested in, you know, doing what I don’t even remember what it was doing. This thing with me, it’s a $25,000 buy-in. This isn’t for everybody. 

And he’s doing his whole pitch. It doesn’t look like what a man in the right mind would be like. Oh yeah, record a video with your kid’s toys all cluttered. But it worked, and he ran that ad for months because it didn’t look like an ad. After all, no one, for a moment, saw that ad pop up and go. Oh. It’s another ad skip. They watched it long enough to get hooked and lean in and go. Oh yeah, I am kind of interested. I am. I am in that position. I want to do whatever he sells, so that’s the big thing. You’ll fail if you try to replicate what the big agencies do in advertising and creating shiny things. You should be doing what everybody else on social media is doing: just trying to fit in.

Drew, you blew my mind with that thing about it not looking like AD, but they’re buying it in the process. One of the things that caught my attention was what came to mind while you were talking about it. 

Wow. Like Drew, you know so much about these ads. And then right now, in this 2024 season, where politicians are paying millions in ads for 30-second ads, they’re just not getting any results. They should instead be like listening to somebody like you how on how to, like, go about getting and freaking like the attention and all that stuff. You know that? That’s just something that came to my mind.

Oh, the only politician I’ve ever seen on social media who does it well is a Democrat from Virginia. I want to say I think he was. He was on TikTok. He got famous during his campaign because he would just do these kitchen table conversations where he would. He would sit down and just tell people what was going on in a very unbiased way, unlike, obviously, he’s a Democrat, so he has his viewpoints. 

But you would just kind of tell it like. It is. This is what the Democrats want. This is what the Republicans want. Here’s what’s going on. You might have heard a lot about this issue. Here’s what that means. 

And it was for the first time that I was like, there’s a politician who understands social media. He might be the first in history to understand how to use the medium, and his account exploded; since then, he’s lost his seat because of redistricting or something like that.

I don’t think he’s in Congress anymore, and unfortunately, I can’t remember the guy’s name. But I’m sure people are watching out there if you just look up TikTok, Congressman. Or, like you know, the famous TikTok, Congressman blue shirt because I think he’s always wearing a blue shirt. You’ll find this guy, and he’s very calm and considerate. He just seems like a normal guy with whom you’re sitting at a kitchen table having a conversation. 

And it works because it’s authentic. It works because he’s shooting it on his iPhone at his kitchen table. It’s like he’s not in a studio with a suit and tying my fellow. No, it’s none of that crap. It’s. He’s gone. You probably saw in the news that we’re facing a budget shutdown. Here’s what it means. It’s very, very straight and to the point, and if more politicians did that, that would go so much farther than any ads they buy. That’s what’s always funny to me: they do a research poll every year to see how effective that advertising is. It’s the least effective advertising ever. No one listens to political ads. And yet millions are spent on them every year.

Exactly. That’s what I’m thinking of. What you’re saying makes absolute sense. These people are spending billions of dollars, which could be used for more practical purposes, such as helping others. You know, it’s just so ridiculous. But yeah.

Oh yeah. If I were a big donor to any politician, left, right, or center, I would be infuriated if I turned on the television and they ran political ads. I’d be like, what are you even doing? 

This is not earning like this, and it probably cost you my entire donation to run this one ad. And like. First off, who watches TV? Right. It’s like no one’s watching it anymore. And yet that’s still the main Ave. People are spending that, you know, people spend money on political advertising. The impact you could have for $1,000,000 on social. Huge. She has so many more eyeballs. 

So much more ability to produce content. You can produce longer-form content like I will. I will credit some politicians for starting to use live streams. Very few of them do it regularly or well. But it’s one of those things that I think will happen in the next 15 to 20 years. There’s. I think that’s going to change. People will realize that spending money on TV advertising and attack ads is a waste. 

The only people enriching us are the cable company and the advertisers that put those plots together. I don’t think it moves the needle because; I’ll tell you what, the guy sitting at his kitchen table telling it like it is, I guarantee you he swayed many more people than any of the political ads his opponents were.

No, I mean, that’s what’s coming to my mind. Like, I’m just shocked at how people are spending millions. They’re wasting millions of dollars on ads. And here I am, talking to you and listening to your words. And it just makes absolute sense. 

And then I just realized that it’s so cost-effective. What are your suggested verses? There are huge agencies just spending so much money, and it’s just. This made me realize that this should be taught in the American education system. 

When you go to college and university, right? Then they teach you all these degrees. I know they have marketing and advertising degrees. But what are you teaching to me right now and to the audience? It’s effective. 

And it works. They should be hiring you, and like the universities and colleges, there should be a course similar to this where people gain actual value. It’s practical. They can use it after they start their own business. But that’s not what I find in the school systems in America right now.

No, I mean that, unfortunately, when it comes to marketing. By the way, if there are any universities out there looking for an adjunct professor in marketing, I would take the interview. I’m not, but I think that would be great. 

However, the problem I see in higher education, in general, is that they are still teaching outdated marketing models based on Unattributable results from the 1950s, like there’s just, you know, and. And I ran into this same thing when I was in film school. You know, you’re learning the nature of college and always learning from the previous generation. 

But it would be best to learn from your contemporaries in something like film or marketing. I’ve learned more from YouTube than I ever learned at college. Ever. Ever. Because I’m learning from people going through it simultaneously, I’m going through it. I’m not reading a book that was published 20 years ago, and granted, some great marketing books were published decades ago and are still relevant today. 

The problem is those aren’t the textbooks. Those aren’t the books people read; the books people read are no longer relevant to the facts. Background, right? If your textbook still talks about America online, it’s not a good marketing textbook, right? It’s not if your marketing textbook still emphasizes direct mail as a marketing strategy for most businesses. Direct mail works. 

For very specific businesses, it should be treated like you would treat advertising on Pinterest. It works if you are a specific business with a specific product going after a specific market, but that’s not how much of this marketing is taught in schools. Now, it’s still taught as well. This is your traditional marketing plan. Like, newsflash, guys, we don’t do marketing plans anymore because marketing’s dynamic marketing doesn’t. 

Marketing isn’t a thing that you throw $1,000,000 at and then come back at the end of the year and see how you did. You’re constantly shifting and adapting and looking for what’s the new thing, what’s the new angle? It’s like the idea of setting a marketing plan. Like one thing about a marketing budget, OK, have a marketing budget. Say this is how much we’re spending, but to think that you’ll craft a plan in January and be on that plan in December is insane. As the world moves too fast, there are too many variables for you to waste that kind of time. It would be better to do what they’ve been doing in tech for decades, Sprint style. Here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to launch it. We’re going to see how we do. Great. It worked fantastic. Let’s build something even better. See if it does better. It did better. Great. We’ll go with that. 

Now, that becomes your control. It’s just a constant cycle of improvement. Instead of, you know, the old school model of, well, I think we’re going to do, you know, four major media placements this year. And, you know, we’re going to, we’re going to do a Super Bowl spot, and we’re going to do this. You know, I’m sure big media planners and agencies are, you know, rolling their eyes. Well, that’s just how it’s always been done. Yeah. 

And look at your results like, you know, it’s I. I guarantee you that the biggest winner at the Super Bowl was probably Timu. Like a brand that is brand new, but what did they do? They put together a catchy commercial with an interesting tagline. That made no sense. What was the ad everybody was talking about the next day? I wonder what this Timo thing is. Right, like this one was talking about the Coors Light ad or the Budweiser ad or any of that. They would just care about the weird. What is that? One person said, ” Oh, that’s how you say the word. That’s the first time I’ve ever heard someone speak it. I guarantee you that the people at Timo didn’t sit down and plan out their whole year. We’re like, you know, here’s the strategy for the. No, they’re adapting. They saw an opportunity to buy a Super Bowl spot. They saw that their market share was growing. They pulled the trigger on it. I think these new, newer companies are much more dynamic than people are giving them credit for, and they think everybody still applies the same stodgy 12-month marketing plan. It just doesn’t. It doesn’t work anymore.

All I’m saying, Drew, is, what are you discussing with me right now? This topic needs to be taught to the masses because it is relevant. What they teach in schools/colleges and universities is obsolete, but yeah, that’s something for another time, I suppose. 

But another question I wanted to ask you was, what is your premise? I know you started to grow houses sometime at the onset of the pandemic. How did that happen? What is your premise, and can you tell the audience a bit more about it?

Yeah. So, I mean, this started because I grew up in a small business community and have always liked it. I liked that you could go into a business and you could meet the guy that ran this place, and if you had a problem, you could talk to the owner, and you could try to resolve it with them, and they cared more about you, you know, walk into a Home Depot and see how quickly. You get served versus walking into an Ace Hardware, which is owner-operated, right like customer service, which is completely different.

I always had a passion for that space and worked with people in the small business space and entrepreneurs themselves. Unfortunately, I got swept into the corporate consulting world. Fortunately, unfortunately, I worked for people who, you know, I was just a line item on a budget, right? 

I wasn’t changing anybody’s life. I was just making suggestions based on my knowledge and what I thought. What kind of impact could I have? And at the end of the day, like, you know, the turning point for me was I had given a presentation to the company’s CEO. There were a bunch of vice presidents there, and my boss and it was this, this plan I’d been working on for like three months, and I deliver the plan, deliver the deck, and I asked for questions, and the CEO looks up and Goes. 

So, uh, what’s next on the agenda? Nothing. I’d spent three years or three months of my life working on this thing nonstop. And he couldn’t even be bothered to ask us a single question like it was just. It was so below his pay grade. He didn’t care. And I was like, I never want to work for a company where I can spend that kind of time working on something. 

And it feels like 0 impact from that was the perfect cherry on top. Was this the chief marketing? I think it was the Chief Marketing officer as she was walking out; I had had printouts made of the deck. She threw it in the garbage as she was walking out the door. And I was like, you know, now listen. Take it back to your office and like you.

Wow. Oh my God.

You don’t have to. You have to do it in front of me. And so it was. That was just kind of the moment I was like, I just. I have to get out of corporate. I don’t like this anymore. And so right like then.

I’m sorry that happened, man. That was very disrespectful, but.

8 But that’s corporate America, like when you’re consulting in corporate America. Your ideas are just an expense, right? So if they don’t have to apply them if they don’t like them.

That’s alright. We’ll still pay you for them. Good try. But we’re not going to do any of that stuff. And I was not too fond of that. I felt that, making it feel like I was doing all this work for nothing. I was never going to get any of my ideas implemented. In this case, I’m just collecting a paycheck, which makes me know better than someone who just now shows their job. And collects a paycheck, and I just. I couldn’t. I couldn’t live with myself doing that.

After that, I started thinking about why I should just take all this on. I should just start my consultancy instead of working full-time for someone else and consulting for them. I should just work with a bunch of different clients at the small business level, and that way, I can make the same salary, but I can work for ten businesses instead of one—that kind of thing.

So, what I did was in January, right before the pandemic, I started putting feelers out, and I started, you know, I got the logo and the domain, and we started putting a website together and like fleshing out, like, exactly what this was going to be. And then the pandemic hit. And I realized everything I had been building was null and void. No one was going to spend Money Marketing when everything was shut down, but I still knew I wanted to do this, and I was like, well. People are scared they’re lonely and don’t have much to do because there’s no business being done. I wonder if they will talk to me. 

I interviewed nearly 100 business owners in 2020 from all across the country, all walks of life, and all different types of businesses. And I just asked them what they like about Mark. What do you like? About working with marketers, what don’t you like? What do you like about working with consultants? What don’t you like? What do you wish consultants or marketers would do for you that they don’t? Do and I just went through this list of, like, I think it was like originally ten questions, and I just really listened to their responses, and it was fascinating to me was I saw such a clear path forward of this service model that was more people-centric and less stuff centric and more education-centric and less just. Just trust me. I’ll do it for you-centric. 

And I very quickly realized, like, there’s something here. There’s a lower ticket offer that I could develop that teaches people how to do this. It’s stuff; I just need to get the service model right. I just need to get the pieces right, so I’ve researched at the end of that year. I met two other people who were planning on launching a competing firm. We decided to team up and launch together, and one of the things that came out of my discussion with all these business owners was that they hated courses and them. They said I don’t want to take another, and this is mid-pandemic. Remember, this is when courses were hot. Business owners hated them. They told me all year long. I don’t want another. I don’t want to buy another. I bought so many marketing courses. I don’t take any of them. I don’t. It’s time to take them. 

So I told them that, and they said, well, that’s disappointing here because we’ve spent a lot of money building marketing courses. And I said we’re not going to sell marketing courses because it’s not going to work. No one’s going to buy it. They said OK, there was a lot of back. They shouldn’t just say, OK, we argued for three months about it, but eventually, they were like, alright, do it your way, do it your way. And so I came out with an offer. And I got my first client. 

So within the first three months, you know, the first three months were us arguing. We scaled the six figures in the next three months, which was easy. 

And I don’t say that to be glib; we only needed to give people what they wanted. We just had to listen to what they wanted. And once I saw you, I was like, this is. I can do all of these things. They want someone who can answer questions for them on demand. Chat. Easy. They want regular guidance that’s fit for their business. Please jump on a strategy call with me once a week. They want someone to gripe to and not feel judged if they struggle. Don’t judge them like these are. This isn’t rocket science. Putting this thing together was just doing everything that no one else wanted to do. Everybody else was more concerned with what they thought this market needed and not what the market needed, what they did not, and what the market wanted. 

Once I gave that to them, we closed one and two clients, and eventually, we had five clients. Then we got their testimonials on the website, and the week after we put the testimonials, we closed 13 clients in a week, which was too much. It’s like, and then you’re on your way, you’re growing. But that was the idea’s genesis and how we got to where we are now.

Drew, that is amazing. What you did and the way you went about it is just ingenious. You know, like most people like, like, that’s simplistic. It seems so simple. Just ask them the questions. Find out what they want and then give them what they want. But many people don’t do that when starting their own business. That’s amazing. You know, it’s pretty brilliant how you went about it.

It’s one of those things that I will give Marcus Sheridan, a mentor of mine in the public speaking arena. He wrote a book; he’s the godfather of content marketing. For example, back in 2008, content marketing was blowing up. He really kind of became the godfather of it. He also wrote a book called They Ask You Answer. And I just kind of took that and was like, well, they want it. Please give it to him; this doesn’t have to be complicated. It’s just, I think.

You make it so simple, then why don’t people do it? I don’t. I don’t understand. It’s.

Yeah.

Like.

Ego market research. I don’t know. It’s very hard to understand why people don’t just listen to people or ask questions. When I tell people to do market research, they get nervous about it. And yet, every time a client does it, I have a structure they follow. They say – That was the most eye-opening experience of my life. I didn’t. I had no idea these people wanted this. As they all told me, they had. I had no idea they were struggling with that. I can fix that. I can fix that in 20 minutes. I’m like, there you go. Give them that and charge them a bundle. People like it, and it’s amazing how. Because we’re all so used to, like, as entrepreneurs, being these kind of like lone wolves, and we’re building this thing in our basement, and we’re hacking this stuff together, and we have to learn a million different skills to be successful. We forget the fact that we’re selling to other people. We’re not trying to solve a puzzle. It’s not like that. Right.

 It’s a puzzle where the pieces move every time you look away. It’s like we’re dealing with humans. And I think so often we forget that there is that human element and forget to ask for their input. And yet, it’s the biggest unlock you could ever get.

I mean, do you? I have so many questions to ask you, but obviously, the hour is coming to a close, right? So, are there any projects that you’re working on right now that you want the audience to get a glimpse into?

Well, I do a live stream every Tuesday at 2:00 PM Eastern on Twitch and LinkedIn and all across different social channels where you can. Find us where I just build stuff in public for marketing. So today, I did an episode on Prompt engineering, and we built a bot that will take in inputs and spit out a person’s ideal business based on their skills, passions, things they want to avoid, and the skills they could potentially build. 

And so we build stuff like that we build. I do live copywriting so people can see my process for writing ads. And we do that every Tuesday. The other thing is that we’re partnering with a company called partnerhere.com, which is a platform that helps entrepreneurs find partners for their business skills partners. You’re an accountant, and you need someone who knows marketing, or you’re a mechanic, and you. I need someone who understands accounting. You can find each other on this platform beyond just finding each other. There are tons and tons of entrepreneurial resources to get people to start more businesses because that’s what we need in this country, and more people are taking the lead. And we’re trying to make it as easy as possible for people to take that leap.

So, if you are a new entrepreneur looking to start, check out partner here. And if you are an established entrepreneur looking for some help growing, especially in a professional services firm, I’d love to hear from you and jump on a call with you.

So, how can the audience connect with you, draw, and learn more about you, your work, and what you’re doing?

You can find GroHause.org. We’re growing house on pretty much all the social platforms. I would say I’m most active on X or Twitter. I talk about almost no marketing here besides my live streams, but I’m always a fan of jumping into a dialogue. They are on any channel, but the best way is to visit our website or book a call with me.

Dude, that is awesome. I am so glad you took the time to do this podcast with me and share your invaluable wisdom because what you told me in the audience is amazing. It’s so simplistic. And yet, most people don’t do it. It’s ridiculous, you know? I’m blown just thinking about it, but I appreciate this and hope you return to the show later.

Uh, absolutely. As I said at the beginning, I’m just a simple boy from the country. So simple. It’s as simple as I do.

Awesome, drew, and I want to conclude this show by letting Americans know my excellent story. Look, there’s an extraordinary within each one of us. We have to awaken it and unleash it until next time. Bye for now.