Will Palmer is a seasoned Internet advertising and marketing specialist with over 15 years of experience in the industry. He holds a Journalism degree with an emphasis in Strategic Communications & Advertising from the University of Kansas and brings a unique blend of creativity, savvy business sense, and real world marketing experience to the table. He applies this skill set to help his clients reach their short and long-term goals faster and with maximized Return on Investment.
In addition to his deep knowledge around the Internet’s role in a changing consumer landscape, he has nearly a decade of business development consulting exclusively serving the legal industry. Blending these 2 specialty skills allows him to understand the big picture for his clients: growing profitability and top-line revenues. He is a technology and Internet lover and constantly challenge himself to gain a deeper understanding of legal consumer decision-making and search habits, and the impact a law firm’s Web presence has on their brand, reputation, and ability to generate new clients and cases.
His passion for Internet technologies and access to the most comprehensive suite of market-leading SEO development tools gives his clients the advantage they need to succeed and win big in a competitive digital marketing space.
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-Transcript-
INTRO: Welcome to In A World With Real Media. I’m your host, Brad Burrow. In this podcast, we’ll dive into the lives of the most successful people in business. We’ll learn how they overcame adversity, took advantage of opportunities and learned from their experiences. Learn from our experts. It inspired, then go live your story. It’s In a World with Real Media.
Brad Burrow: Hello and welcome to the In A World With Real [00:00:30] Media Podcast, and I have my really good friend Will Palmer with me here today. Uh, we are in a Vistage group together, which is awesome. And, uh, will is the founder and CEO of Growth Lab and Performance Content Partners. Um, a c an SEO expert, digital marketing expert. I mean, will, every time I’m around you, I feel like I’m a sponge and I’m, I wanna learn something about seo. It’s like the, the great unknown [00:01:00] to most marketers that are out there. You know, it’s like the, I feel like, uh, the SEO guys and the digital marketing guys are the, like the little guys in cubicles and, you know, hiding in the back Yeah.
Will Palmer: Calculator, watch, stuff like that.
Brad Burrow: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Got the deal in their pocket, you know,
Will Palmer: It’s like Exactly.
Brad Burrow: I’ve been working on SEO today, <laugh>. Yeah. You know, that
Will Palmer: Kind of thing. Big internet nerd. That’s what, that’s what we can call me. My wife would attest to that.
Brad Burrow: Is that right? Oh,
Will Palmer: Yeah. She’s like, I don’t know how you’re interested in this stuff, but I’m glad it’s working out for you. I, me
Brad Burrow: Too. Well, your knowledge of this, of this stuff is [00:01:30] just amazing. And so one of the things I wanted to do today is really, I mean, how did you get to the point where this was something that you figured out that maybe you liked, that you wanted to do more with that kind of stuff, you know, what, what were some of the things that made you go, yeah, this is awesome.
Will Palmer: Well, my background’s in sales and I was in legal marketing for a while with a national company. When I left that to start my own thing, I realized SEO was one of the most lucrative channels [00:02:00] for any small business or large business, for that matter, to acquire clients. The problem with most larger agencies is there’s, you’re kind of boxed in as a salesperson. You’re selling these sort of one size fits all solutions, and it wasn’t very effective. And when we, or myself being kind of the, the internet nerd I alluded to, started playing with different tools and doing it on my own and, and kind of hiring some freelancers into other industries like healthcare and med spas I worked with for a while. I realized the power of it if it was done the right [00:02:30] way without taking shortcuts. And so I kind of built a lot of, in a lot of ways, a business around that channel because it’s so exploited in the marketing world. Um, like I said, when it’s done right with transparency, it’s a whole lot of fun when you can, when, when results are attached to effort. And so that’s kind of how that became.
Brad Burrow: And it seems like it’s like this great, you know, unknown Yep. To most business owners. You know, I would say a lot of the businesses in our Vistage [00:03:00] group, including me, really don’t have a grip on, oh yeah, I need seo, I need digital marketing, but don’t have a real good idea of what actually is behind that, what they need to do, where they need to spend money. You know, so it’s like this, throw something on the wall and see if it sticks kind of approach, which is not
Will Palmer: Great. No. I mean, it just depends on, and a lot of people just don’t have a, a, a sort of wider view of what they need to do. Who are their clients? Where do they [00:03:30] come from? Is SEO and the real estate on Google search results something that is important for my business or not? And where should my money go? If there’s a dozen different channels on traditional marketing, digital marketing, paid ads, SEO and organic, where does that money go? And that’s why we’re so also niche with who we serve in the legal world in law firms, because there’s just a very specific sort of, you know, ratio of spend to return on investment. And I think that’s what’s tough for a lot of companies. They don’t have any idea on who to trust [00:04:00] to tell them the truth on where money should go and results they should expect. And are they being taken advantage of? It’s tough. It’s
Brad Burrow: A tough Yeah.
Will Palmer: Plus position. Not
Brad Burrow: Yet. Yet. We, we have to be thinking that way now, right? Yeah. We, we really don’t, I mean, if you want to be successful in business now, especially a small business, you have to be thinking about SEO and digital marketing or you’re, it’s, it’s no longer the, you know, and here I’m a own a video production company. You know, we do TV spots, but you can’t just buy a, a local [00:04:30] TV spot now and expect to have the success that you had 10 years ago.
Will Palmer: Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, it’s different. The Yeah. Users, I mean, consumers are, they’re, you know, our attention span is short. We, uh, are in a world of instant gratification, instant answers. You know, now that chat, g p t and all that stuff is out to the recent thing, I am obsessed with that. Right. I know it’s hard not to be obsessed with it. I mean, is that not just a great example of instantaneous answers to any problem you could conceivably think of? It’s unbelievable. And so, [00:05:00] yeah, I mean it, going back to your point on, you know, running TV spots or any kind of marketing, it’s like, how do I capture the at attention of my audience and how do I fulfill their needs and build trust and a place where it just messages are being blasted everywhere. Right. That’s, that’s a tough nut to crack.
Brad Burrow: I’m hoping video is a, is one of the answers to that.
Will Palmer: Yeah. Video, I believe is, yeah. I mean, if you actually look statistically at, I mean, video ties into seo, just looking at time on site and bounce [00:05:30] rate and how it engages people with Google’s, you know, core web vitals and what they’re looking at in terms of, um, how to build trust and authority on the site. That’s the one of the most underutilized things I think, not just for law firms, but for any business because the storytelling component is so powerful. A lot of people spend tons of money running paid ads, doing SEO or even doing TV spots and other things. And when they get to the site, the site and what content is on there is so either [00:06:00] dated, archaic, lacks any emotion, lacks any real value propositions, and it’s just these sort of boiler plate statements that every other competitor has. And when you have something like video, or even these podcasts that differentiate you and help people know who you are, know what they can expect when they have a consultation, or if they were to call your business whatever kind of business it is and what they can expect, there’s a lot of trust built before they even pick up the phone.
Will Palmer: Yeah. I mean, if you’re, if you’re comparing, you [00:06:30] know, let’s just take like home services, you know, roofer A, roofer B, roofer C and somebody’s got a, a professional video and assets like that that describe why people choose them and et cetera. It’s like, who are you gonna call? Yeah. And people don’t think about the conversion of traffic on their site to leads. And I kind of call that failing at the finish line. They spent, like I said, all this money and they’re not building any value. They’re not selling themselves. And that makes our efforts as SEOs or any other marketers efforts sort of fall flat. Cuz it’s hard to sometimes call [00:07:00] people’s baby ugly when you’re looking at their online assets and creative assets. And when they just don’t have the time they spend on it, it’s like, well, I can’t help you until that’s fixed a lot of time.
Will Palmer: I mean, I have a law firm I talked to yesterday where I was like, you can’t spend money on marketing to drive traffic or drive awareness to your website because it is hurting you. It’s not even helping you. It’s not neutral, it’s hurting you. It’s seven years old in the world of the internet. That’s like 20 years old. Right? Yeah. And he agreed. I mean, he was like, [00:07:30] you know, I thought that, I didn’t think it should matter too much, but you’re convinced you’ve convinced me that there’s nothing else I should prioritize before my website and video I think should be on there too.
Brad Burrow: So, so that clip’s going on our website as to see
Will Palmer: <laugh> Yes. Good sales. It should, that’s amazing. Everyone should be
Brad Burrow: Doing it. It really is. I mean, people don’t realize that, you know, I, I have those conversations that we’re doing a lot of, uh, kind of, um, retainer agreements for content creation for our clients. Now [00:08:00] the ones that get it realize that we need to be creating content over and over and over and over for things like you just said. And they’re immediately set apart from their competition. Cuz most people don’t think that way.
Will Palmer: They don’t, and the the reason they don’t, number one, most people fear being in front of a camera. They fear putting themselves out there. I get it. And, and that’s just something you have to choose to accept and overcome, I think is really number one from a sort of psychological perspective. But then two, it’s really [00:08:30] hard to measure the impact of a video on your website unless you really understand sort of the holistic strategy. I mean, you can look at things like I mentioned time on site and user engagement and bounce rate through Google Analytics, things like that. Yeah. But unless you are measuring, and very few companies look at lead management and when you have leads coming off of your website or leads coming from a podcast channel, um, how are you measuring that? How are you defining the quality [00:09:00] of those leads versus other channels? And there’s just work around it and it’s very intangible. And so they’d think, I’ll just throw this stuff out there and, you know, see if it makes a difference. But there’s no way to quantify it if you don’t understand how to. And I think that’s the other end of it is, okay, I’ve done this video, how do I quantify the results? And if I don’t know how to, who does know that isn’t gonna feed me a bunch of bs.
Brad Burrow: Right. You know, how many emails I get every day from somebody who says, Hey, uh, a lot from overseas, you know, we can You wanna rank hire <laugh>?
Will Palmer: I do [00:09:30] too.
Brad Burrow: You know? Yeah,
Will Palmer: I do too. All the time
Brad Burrow: Every day. That’s right. I mean, who are you gonna believe? Yeah. Is, I think that’s a big deal. But I, I want to, so I want to come back to the quantify discussion cuz that’s a big deal. You know, and, and that’s a, I think where a lot of people get hung up is like, well, if I spend, you know, $10,000 a month on, on Google ads, how am I gonna, how am I gonna see a return on that? So I want to talk about that, but first I want to ask you, I mean, you have a mind that’s [00:10:00] set up for this. I mean, you can, I can just tell from being around you. Um, what is it about this that like lights your fire, you know, I mean, you love, I I I sus suspect you like to research things, you like to get in and figure out how things work. Is that correct?
Will Palmer: Yeah, it is. I think, you know, as a problem solver, there’s a lot of gra, you know, gratification to see a problem and try to understand how to solve it. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, I think most entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs are that way. But I think there’s also [00:10:30] the other side that people don’t consider. There’s actually a lot of creativity in this digital marketing world, even as something as analytical as SEO or paid ads, which oftentimes are just data and formulas and split testing and things like that. Yeah. Unlike video or podcasts, which is more of a brand play and storytelling. And so the creative side on the, on the data and the analytical pieces of the marketing are, are vast in that it’s kind of like a giant puzzle. And with marketing, there’s always several pieces missing because internet technologies evolve at lightning speed. [00:11:00] You really are never totally buttoned up with what you could or should be doing to expand your presence, reach your target audience, and, you know, generate qualified leads if that’s your goal as a business.
Will Palmer: So it’s a constant problem that needs to be solved in the creative aspect. You can layer on a lot of different things, create creatively to get a better result. And by that I mean, you know, you have team members you’re hiring or people that you choose to work with that have really brilliant analytical minds. That’s one layer. Another layer is the tools that are out there like chat, G P T or [00:11:30] Surfer seo or any of these AI softwares that can ingest basically pieces of the internet or search results and give you sort of this, you know, I kind of call it senior competitor’s hand in poker, giving you a roadmap of what you need to do to succeed, to rank. Um, and there’s ways to layer on those sort of technologies. And then there’s the data. How does the data be interpreted with those layers? Um, you know, you can get really nuanced into long tail versus head term keywords and search and the volume. [00:12:00] I mean, there’s just so many creative elements that are at play there. Yes. And I’m being a little long-winded with my answer, but at least for me in our agency, and that’s why we call ourselves Growth Lab, is because we sort of view ourselves as constantly learning, constantly testing and trying to solve the new challenge ahead of us. Right. I
Brad Burrow: Just got a vision of your new, uh, promotional video, you guys in this lab and you’re looking at data and you smoke coming up. That’s how
Will Palmer: I feel. That’d be a good parody. Right. We like walk through the smoke, you know? That’d be fun. You
Brad Burrow: Want us working on your seo? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. That’s funny. [00:12:30] But yeah, I mean, so how did you realize, I mean, I, I feel like you’re kind of, there’s left brain and there’s right brain. I feel like you probably got have both. Would you agree with that?
Will Palmer: Um, I would say I’m much more right brain actually. Are you? Okay? My originally in, in high school, I was, uh, the art guy in other, in some other things, but mostly art. I mean, I was doing a lot of graphic design, a lot of actually pottery and scholastic art competitions really. I was actually very close to going to the Rhode Island [00:13:00] Institute of Art and Design. No kidding. Um, most people don’t know that about me. And they’re like, okay, well where’s that side of you? I’m like, yeah, I kind of, it kind of died and I miss it. Yeah. And I always have to fulfill the creative side of me. I hated math, I hated, you know, learning Spanish, but I ended up being a journalism and English major because I just didn’t see a big career path for me in just graphic designer art. Yeah. Even though that is a passion of mine, it just didn’t translate into what I sort of envisioned for my life. So I pivoted. But I would say I’m much more right-brained, to [00:13:30] be honest with you. That’s more visionary.
Brad Burrow: Yeah. You know what, um, just a little side note, when, when I got outta school, so I went to Wichita State, I got outta school and I, um, I was a musician, a full-time musician and, and a computer science, uh, minor, um, a business degree. And I got asked to, there’s a company called Eds, um, Ross Perro, I don’t know if you remember that name. He just, he ran for president back in the day. And, uh, they offered me a job because [00:14:00] sight unseen because of, uh, computer programming and music.
Will Palmer: So,
Brad Burrow: Isn’t that
Will Palmer: Interesting? Yeah, that’s a, that’s an interesting combination. Yeah. What, what kind of music were you into?
Brad Burrow: Uh, I, I was at, well, we were, we were traveling around the Midwest and I was, um, you know, we were trying to get signed, so I, at the time I would’ve called it College Alternative. Oh
Will Palmer: Yeah. So you were like an actual musician. Yeah. See, I was a band nerd in high school and Yeah. And did all that stuff, so,
Brad Burrow: Yeah. So, but, you know, writing songs is similar to writing a, uh, code.
Will Palmer: [00:14:30] I mean, it can be
Brad Burrow: For sure. Absolutely. I mean, so they, they, they had figured out that the way a musician’s brain works is very, very compatible with how our programmer would work. Isn’t that interesting?
Will Palmer: Well, yeah. I feel like that’s a,
Brad Burrow: That’s kind of what I’m, I feel
Will Palmer: Like somebody would pay a pretty penny for this, that, that kind of
Brad Burrow: Asset. So that’s smart. Right. I didn’t end up doing it, but, uh, you know, know, it was a, it was an interesting thing to me that they would, you know, that they would want to, um, hire somebody like me. Yeah. You know, I was like, you want, I’m a musician, [00:15:00] you know, that kind of thing. But, uh, I, I love the fact that you can dive into to the details of what’s really going on. I mean, how long did it take you to learn that skillset? Because that, that’s not something you just sit down and read an article and now I I understand this now.
Will Palmer: No, I mean, I’ve always been in front of a computer. My dad growing up was a, you know, either freelancing as an, um, graphic designer. He was an art director at an agency when he retired six or seven years ago here in Kansas City. But [00:15:30] he was always around, really, you know, he was always messing with the creative and the computer. And, and I remember, and I don’t even know what year this would’ve been, but like, building websites with, you know, geo cities on Yahoo and building websites with Dream Weaver and doing all these different things. I think my first,
Brad Burrow: Our audience is gonna go
Will Palmer: Dream Weaver. Yeah. Dream Weaver. And
Brad Burrow: Isn’t that, isn’t that a classic rock
Will Palmer: Song? Yeah. Yeah. <laugh>
Brad Burrow: Dream we, yeah, I’m not gonna do that.
Will Palmer: So I, I’m, I think I was a senior in high school when somebody a grown, I’ll say a grownup paid me money to [00:16:00] build a website. It was a friend of mine’s dad who basically owned a company that looked at call centers and analytics around call centers and how to sort of better create efficiencies within what they measured, whatever. And I created a website for him. I think I was paid like a hundred bucks, 150 bucks Wow. In high school and, and little things like that. So I’ve always been in that environment. I, I always loved sort of looking at code. I remember, um, if you remember Flash, do you
Brad Burrow: Remember that part? Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. We, we did a lot in Flash.
Will Palmer: Yeah. I don’t know why. I was obsessed with Flash and Action [00:16:30] Script, which is the coding language behind Flash. Yeah. And for whatever reason, I became pretty dang good at Action Script. I, I just, I just fell into the, again, it’s kind of mirror, mirror mirroring the creative side of code and computer stuff with the analytical side. So I’ve just always done it.
Brad Burrow: So that’s where your creative outlet was at that point, it sounds like. Yeah.
Will Palmer: Doing in a lot of ways, stuff like
Brad Burrow: That. Yeah. Isn’t it amazing how, I mean, you, so how you built a website then compared to how you built a website Now? I
Will Palmer: Laugh. Yeah. I mean, it’s tables [00:17:00] and <laugh>
Brad Burrow: Text. I’ve never been able to do that. I can, I built our website, you know, but it, you know, we use Divvy. Yep. I’m giving the secret sauce. Yeah. But, yeah. But, but I mean, it’s not that hard. I mean, once you figure out the kind of nuances of divvy, I can build stuff. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Most people can, I can put videos up and colors and all that stuff, but, uh, man, you couldn’t have done that 10 years ago.
Will Palmer: No, I mean, like I said, it’s a lot of tables and, you know, headers and, and if you could get some [00:17:30] animated gif images in there, you felt like a rockstar. And maybe that’s why I loved Flash. I actually built a couple full websites only in Flash, Adobe Flash, I think Adobe owned. Yeah, that’s right. Back then. And that’s right.
Brad Burrow: We had a Flash website for many
Will Palmer: Years. Yeah. It was so cool. Yeah. And, uh, I had one, I had a company I called Weasel Tech. I don’t know why I, I, I was just thought that was a funny name. And I had weasel tech.com and I had my Flash website and it was a bunch of gears turning and weird levers pulling, and I don’t even really know what the whole [00:18:00] purpose of it was, other than, Hey, look what I can do. Yeah. You know, so I just pretty, the just stuff like that I always did. So it’s
Brad Burrow: Pretty cool. Yeah. So now, now you’ve got, you know, WordPress and, and, uh, I mean WordPress is, I, I know there’s other platforms people are building stuff on, but that’s, that’s probably the main one now, right? For all websites.
Will Palmer: Yeah, for sure. I mean, that’s what our team uses. We use, um, Elementor, it’s sort of our backend block. I know Divvy pretty well. And
Brad Burrow: There’s, do you like Elementor? Is it, is it better than Divvy, do [00:18:30] you think?
Will Palmer: I, I mean, for us it is. I think, um, it’s kinda like Pepsi or Coke and a lot of those builders. Yeah. Um, there’s one called X Theme I used a lot. And then, you know, there’s, there’s some other builders out there that I think are really pretty good, like Webflow and, and some others that I haven’t worked a ton. It’s certainly Wick and Square Space are out there, but I think they serve their own purpose. So I, I would definitely say WordPress is, is the way to go and Yeah. To, to get what you need to have happen on there. So.
Brad Burrow: Yeah. Um, so I want to ask you, um, you know, [00:19:00] what were, when you were your first selling job when you were kind of learning how to sell, and was that in the legal industry as well?
Will Palmer: No. Um, I, I think in college I watched a movie where somebody was like a pharmaceutical sales rep. And I, I remember this in my mind being like, wait, you can make how much money in sales? I just couldn’t grasp it. Yeah. And, uh, I was like, maybe that’s what I need to do. I was an outgoing person and, and am, um, my mom always wanted me to be a lawyer cuz I was de a debater in, in high school for a little bit. And I’ll [00:19:30] just liked, I, I, I was, I would present my Christmas list on a PowerPoint to my parents in like middle school. I mean, I was just over the top. So I’m like, here’s why you should get me this, or here’s why help you should help me pay for a car. Just silly stuff like that. So anyways, in in college I had this idea of sales being a lucrative career path, just money moneywise, um, compensation wise.
Will Palmer: So I, so I, I knew somebody that worked for the student newspaper, the Kansas, I was at University of Kansas and I ended up getting a job selling advertising spots in the Kansas. [00:20:00] Really? So I’d go basically down Massachusetts streets and, and into these little small businesses, bars, um, you know, shops and basically say, Hey, this is sort of the, the student’s bible, you know mm-hmm. <affirmative>, this cans, everyone reads it every day. They get it outta the blue box and, you know, here’s where you should advertise. And I did that for two years there. And then that set me up to sort of interview for different sales jobs. You know, being from Kansas, I thought California culture would be really neat. So I only interviewed out there and [00:20:30] my shoeing job was the Orange County Register, which was selling again newspaper ads. But it, that was in 2008. And that industry Oh wow.
Brad Burrow: Was
Will Palmer: Collapsing. And it is evolving digital, everything, the digital collapsing digital. Right. That’s true. Yeah. I’m surprised I survived out there. Yeah. During that. And so I interviewed there, they offered me a job, and then what was interesting is there’s a payroll company, ADP, that I, I learned about, like, by Pure Chance, and that’s a whole nother story I won’t get into. But I, I convinced them to interview me out there. And they’re like, so [00:21:00] you wanna work here? What’s your sales experience? And I was like, well, I sold, you know, some ads in the student newspaper, like, okay, well where do you live? And I was like, um, I live in Kansas City. They’re like, okay, and you want to work in Orange County <laugh>? And they’re like, I don’t think this is gonna work. So I basically was put in a room with one of their VPs just as like a final, like, I’m sorry, kind of thing.
Will Palmer: And I essentially was like, if you don’t understand the necessity, I have to succeed. I can’t move back home. I don’t wanna move back home. I, this is like my dream to live out here. I will bust my, my tail [00:21:30] to make this happen. And I think they were just like, God, I guess you’re right. I could see that being the ca you know what, let’s give it a shot. So they no kidding. Offered me a job before I even had an address in California. And I remember calling my girlfriend at the time, now wife Melissa, and being like, you’re not gonna believe this. In fact, I had a video I took of me getting the offer in the parking lot. I look like I’m 12, I have this really baggy button up shirt on. And I’m like, I can’t believe I got the job. They only hire the top 5%, whatever. And I’m like, all high and mighty. And I just remember the joy feeling it. And now I absolutely despise [00:22:00] that job. And Yeah. Was like trying to survive the first year. And there’s a whole lot of stories behind that. But that’s kind of how my sales career. But that was part
Brad Burrow: Of your DNA now. Yeah. Right. I mean that’s part the story I think about the, the courage it took to go in and talk to a VP and convince them. I mean, that’s, that’s amazing.
Will Palmer: I just, it was just pure desperation, honestly. I’m like, I didn’t wanna work for the register. I didn’t wanna work for a newspaper. I’m like, this is my only other shot. I have all the eggs in this basket. And so I think they felt like, Hey, I have to challenge your decision on this. And I think if you’re an [00:22:30] entrepreneur, I think this is a good point. I think sales is the number one skill above anything else that an entrepreneur can have to succeed. Period. Man. So I just gotta throw that out there. I
Brad Burrow: Couldn’t agree more. I mean, um, you know, in the recent years we’re 25, I’ve been in business 25 years and recently I’m starting to work a lot more on, you know, kind of processes and, you know, some of the, kind of the backend stuff of running a company. But my number one [00:23:00] focus every day is how am I gonna bring in the next, the next revenue stream? You know? And if if I didn’t do that, we wouldn’t be here. Yeah. It’s an, you know, it it is, sales is such an important thing. Yeah. I mean, why, why do you think you’re good at it? Is it confidence? Is it, is it understanding what you’re selling? Is it, what is it? Well,
Will Palmer: To be honest, I mean, I don’t believe sales is some natural thing. I think anybody and everybody, I, I don’t think I know anybody can be successful at [00:23:30] it. And really the, the one thing you have to be willing to accept and to do to be successful at it, is to get over your own fear. Yes. And within the first few months of me working at adp, going basically door to door selling payroll, which one wants to mess with switching their payroll, it’s like the most get
Brad Burrow: Out of you every day. Right.
Will Palmer: I had a lady pull me out by the ear one time, like a child and pull me outside of her store and point to a, a no soliciting sign. And like, well, I’ll lose my job if I don’t get like a, you’d [00:24:00] have to get business cards from these people to prove you’re going door to door. But anyway, yeah, that’s the first few months of doing that. There’s this, um, a manager there named Nick and he’s like, lemme give you some advice. Will whatever scared you the most in this job, like cold calling people hated it. Like picking up the phone. Let me just bug you Brad, and like, Hey, I’m from adp, let’s talk about payroll. No, I’m good. Yeah. I got a busy day. Right. Just rejection, rejection, reject. Yeah. Whatever scares you the most. Going into that door with a no soliciting sign, that’s scary stuff.
Will Palmer: [00:24:30] The do that thing, the more you do it, the less you’re gonna fear. And that’s the difference between the people that make it and sales and that don’t, they’re willing to do what scares everybody else. And it scared the hell outta me. I hated it, but I did it so much that I just didn’t matter anymore. And it just took about a year and a half of just getting my ass kicked to do it. Yeah. But again, the necessity of not wanting to leave, not moving home. So you also have to find out what motivates you in that magnet that pulls you through all that crap. You have to define like your why to do the stuff that scares you, but [00:25:00] it’s absolutely doing what scares you the most. That anyone that can be good at sales, if you’re willing to do that.
Brad Burrow: Well, that is so true. And that’s, that’s a, a life lesson. Yeah. I, I mean, think so that’s anything in life. There’s things that scare us and it’s like we’re fearful of, but it’s like when you overcome the fear and you push forward, you grow, you accomplish something. I mean, it’s, it’s everything.
Will Palmer: And you get in the habit of it. It’s like those, like those cold polar plunge things that are all Yeah. The hot topics nowadays, which I’ve never done cuz I hate cold water. But I think part [00:25:30] of it’s the mental, um, sort of trigger of really hating and fearing what you’re about to do. Cuz it’s gonna be painful. Yeah. And doing it anyway. And sitting in freezing water for what, 60 seconds or something and then doing that every day and something that does to your brain to build this tolerance for pain and fear. Yeah. It, it’s kind of like that. And that’s kind of an extreme example, but, um, you can apply that to almost anything I think.
Brad Burrow: Yeah. It’s very true. Yeah. So have you ever done the cryo
Will Palmer: Therapy?
Brad Burrow: No. I’ve <laugh> you made me think about it. Is
Will Palmer: That where the folk [00:26:00] you’re like trapped into a tube in? Well,
Brad Burrow: So just a little side note, I’ve done the cryotherapy thing, but you go, you put on a robe, you know, you really don’t have anything on. And then you go into this chamber that is like, I don’t know, 10 degrees or something like that, but only for three minutes. And you get in, you take your robe off and you’re just standing there
Will Palmer: Stark naked. Naked. Yeah.
Brad Burrow: Yeah. But you come out of there and you’re like refreshed. It’s really amazing. And you can make it three minutes. [00:26:30] They put music on, you know, so you’re can be distracted, but you come outta there and you put your Rowe back on and it’s like all of a sudden you’re refreshed. It’s really amazing. That’s weird.
Will Palmer: Are you shivering and freezing at the end of it? Oh
Brad Burrow: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, you’re, you’re cold. Yeah. But you know, it’s amazing what that does for healing and stuff. And
Will Palmer: I, I do enjoy
Brad Burrow: It. Enjoy. We gotta overcome our fears, man. That’s a, yeah. Any entrepreneur, there’s fearful stuff that happens all the time.
Will Palmer: And that’s it. That’s the, that’s what separates success and not, I mean, it’s sales and [00:27:00] not for sure.
Brad Burrow: It’s mental.
Will Palmer: It’s mental.
Brad Burrow: Yeah. You’ve gotta you gotta battle through that. All right. So I want to talk about, uh, AI a little bit with you cuz you understand that. So this came up in our Vistage meeting. You and I had had talked about, uh, this just a little bit before that, but man, last month. Yeah. I mean, it’s exploding. I’m national news is covering chat, gpi I mean, I mean, it’s, it’s unbelievable. I, my wife is a, um, [00:27:30] CFO of a, a school and they’re concerned now that the kids are, are writing papers with it. For sure. You know? Yeah. I mean, it’s unbelievable. And so I’ve done some things, so I have two questions for you, but I, I’ve done, you know, I’m kind of obsessed with it and with the image generation side of ai, which is really amazing. Yeah. Um, but I, you know, the stuff that I put in there, like, uh, I’m, I’m working on a television show pilot for Demolition Derby right now. [00:28:00] So I, I I said ride, ride a, um, a pitch for this television show with this, this person and, and a redemption story. It comes back with the paragraph that I couldn’t have written that paragraph and it was amazing in the on point <laugh>. Yeah.
Brad Burrow: It’s unbelievable. You know, it’s like, so that, that’s one question. And then, you know, what, what do you think about that? And then the next question I have is, is are we gonna be penalized [00:28:30] for using content like that from an SEO standpoint?
Will Palmer: Okay. So yeah. Uh, yeah, AI chat, G P t I mean, it’s, it’s gonna be applied to nearly everything the internet touches and, and things outside of that too. It’s evolving so fast. I mean, I think just yesterday they came out with chat, g p t plus I believe they call it, which is 20 bucks. No,
Brad Burrow: They gotta start monetizing. It’s pretty soon, right? Yeah.
Will Palmer: Maybe it’s a hundred bucks a month. I I think it’s 20. But regardless, yeah. They started monetizing it. So, [00:29:00] um, it’s, it’s, it’s about how you, how you use it versus it, I think replacing people. A lot of people think it’s like every other technology shift. Oh, people
Brad Burrow: Are freaking out. I, I see on national news. Oh my gosh. People are gonna start losing their jobs.
Will Palmer: Yeah. And I mean, you know, Google obviously has, they’ve called it a red alert and you know, it’s just the Google killer. You’ve got Bing integrating it into their search since Microsoft was an early investor into developing it. And so
Brad Burrow: Who don’t should be worried. Don’t you think they
Will Palmer: Should be? Yeah. Um, [00:29:30] when you get better answers on a chat AI than you do on Google, that’s problematic. Do I think Google will find a way to combat it? Of course. Um, we don’t know what that’s gonna look like yet. And so to answer your question on will AI hurt SEO efforts if you rely on it, I think it can, but I don’t, it, it’s not a linear black and white answer either. Because the way my SEO team leverages it is not to just let it write the content and do all [00:30:00] the, the work for us, and then we spit whatever out and we plaster it up on a website. There’s massaging to be done. There’s a lot of, you know, the human element on how you prompt chat G B T and, and how you let it rewrite things and how you make sure it’s matching the tone of your client and all of those things is important.
Will Palmer: But they also, you know, open AI just released a way to detect AI written content. Do you think Google is gonna detect AI written content in search? So there’s gonna be, you know, Google’s gonna [00:30:30] have to understand that it can’t completely penalize AI content because it’s so prevalent and because it’s quality. If you, if it’s got human eyes on it and we’re making sure it’s accurate, you can’t penalize it because then you’re, you’re removing that good piece of information out of results. But at some point, I mean, if you think about it, this AI is reading the internet, it’s ingesting and consuming the internet. There’s ways to even block your website from allowing it to be read by AI Chrome. Oh really? By the way, that’s new if you don’t want your content to be [00:31:00] picked up by chat G B T. But at some point, if, if content Moving forward is written by ai, and AI is reading right now, at least non-AI content, as we shift and move that timeline forward, the AI generated content is being generated from AI generated content.
Will Palmer: So it’s like this weird negative feedback loop Yes. That I predict. And I don’t know how that’s gonna play out, but it’s something to keep in mind. I think. So like our content that we write for clients is not AI generated. We use AI for [00:31:30] different research around keywords and, and a lot of other things. But for that reason, um, we aren’t using ai co ai content cuz it’s smart, it knows what you’ve put in there and prompted before and it, and it’s, yeah, it dilutes over time pretty quickly, the content you even write as an account user because it’s known what you’ve prompted in the past and it’s known what you’ve wanted and what you are asking it to rewrite. And so at some point it’s sort of got this, you know, deteriorating effect of quality and that I think will happen and we’ll see how it’s combated [00:32:00] against. So
Brad Burrow: Yeah. It’s uh, amazing time we live in,
Will Palmer: Isn’t it? Yeah. And I could be completely wrong on all this, right? This is just Yeah. I mean, how I’m envisioning it Yeah. Everybody, my
Brad Burrow: Fear, everybody’s guessing. I, I have, I’ve heard that same uh, response that you gave as far as, um, maybe using it to answer a question or generate some content, but then going in and, and really making it your own Yeah. You know, in your voice and that kind of thing. Which, but still, I mean, half of my battle in writing content is getting [00:32:30] started. Yeah. You know, and man, what a great tool to come up. Okay, now I can take this paragraph and I can massage you. Now, I wouldn’t say this, I wouldn’t say this. I mean, I, I had to do a thing on the Demolition Derby project, you know, give me a, a list of characters for a, a reality television show around demolition derby. We’ve got the, with the promoter and the drivers. And it came back with, you know, here’s the, here’s the, the, uh, superstar, here’s the promoter, here’s [00:33:00] the, um, up and coming driver, here’s the comeback kid. God.
Will Palmer: So it’s building characters out from this thing. Yeah. That’s amazing. I’m
Brad Burrow: Like, where is it seeing this con It’s unbelievable. It’s
Will Palmer: Wild. I had a buddy <laugh>, a close colleague of mine and I were on the phone, this is just like 10 days ago. And he and I are just talking informally about some stuff. Had him on speaker and out of nowhere I’m like, Hey, by the way, have you heard of chat G P T? And he’s like, I have no idea what you’re talking about <laugh>. I was like, oh, you’re, I’m gonna send you this in a little bit. You’ll freak out. It’s, it’s this AI tool, blah, blah, blah. [00:33:30] He’s like, okay. So as we’re talking, he’s talking about he’s engaged and he’s getting married. So as I’m talking and I’m asking him, he doesn’t realize I’m asking him some questions around like his fiance, like where she’s from, like what she’s into and like what he’s excited about in the wedding. And as I’m asking this in real time, I’m putting the
Brad Burrow: Chad g pt
Will Palmer: Oh my gosh. Yeah. Write these wedding vows for my friend. I won’t say his name and his fiance, her name and include these things about her background, what they’re into, this and that. And it wrote this entire wedding vow. And I go, Hey, check your email. And this is like 10 seconds after this [00:34:00] conversation ends cuz I hit one button, boom, there’s the vows. And he goes, what the hell is this <laugh>? I go, I isn’t that crazy? He’s like, what? Where where did the, did you just have this written for some reason? I’m like, so I wouldn’t tell him what it is. And then he’s talking to me about, hey, I, you know, we’re wrapping up the conversation. He’s like, I gotta go. I have to write this quarterly business review for my boss.
Brad Burrow: Oh
Will Palmer: No. Then I go, what, what does he want in the review? And he starts telling me what he wants in the review. And of course I’m typing into chat. G p t write a quarterly business review for this person and this is what kind of data and what he needs and [00:34:30] his struggles, this and that. And I hit enter and then I send him, I’m like, Hey, check your email. And he go, I wrote your quarterly business review. He just goes, what the hell are you doing over there? So what wrote his wedding vows in his quarterly business review in about and it was fun
Brad Burrow: Minutes spot on,
Will Palmer: Wasn’t, well what he did was he actually wrote his quarterly business review himself. Then once he realized what I was doing, like the next day he actually used chat g p t to write it. And of course changed a few things. But yeah, AI wrote his quarterly business review. Wow. So there you go. Fun, fun story there.
Brad Burrow: And most people wouldn’t even have known Yeah. Known that that’s happening. Yeah. [00:35:00] It’s, it’s, it’s really amazing. Really amazing. Um, so I wanna switch gears a little bit. Let’s, let’s talk about your company. Talk about, um, what’s the actual, do you have a different brand that you use for the attorneys or Yeah,
Will Palmer: There’s like two thi two entities. I have Growth Lab is my legal marketing agency that does seo, paid ads on search and websites. That’s all we do. Okay. And then performance content partners, and this is not a derivative of chat G P T or any AI that we’ve been talking about. It, [00:35:30] it’s simply a content creation company that has, that creates website content in order to rank and drive traffic. That’s why it’s called performance content. It’s content and copy can be used a million different ways for a million different applications and marketing. This is specifically to put on your website in the navigational hierarchy as service pages, location pages, FAQ pages to drive traffic. And we use AI to understand what and how to write it, but not AI to write it. Okay. And so that’s performance content partners, and that’s not legal, [00:36:00] that’s anything but legal actually. Oh, okay. It’s any, any kind
Brad Burrow: Of small, is that fairly new?
Will Palmer: It is new, yeah. Okay. We, we had our first dollar of revenue come in in December of 2022 with our first two signed clients here in Kansas City. Awesome. And, uh, we’re kind of testing a few things with them and before we, we scale it too quickly. So Yeah. It’s exciting though that
Brad Burrow: That’s, uh, so you’re kind of embracing AI at least on the discovery side of things and but then do bringing in the human element to the content to make [00:36:30] sure that it’s, it’s right. Exactly. And it’s not gonna be, you know, like we talked about before with penalized or anything like that.
Will Palmer: Yeah. Cuz you know, like you mentioned earlier, Brad, people have a desire to create content or video or creative anything, but what do I write about? And then how do I get started? And so, you know, my team is no different, especially if it’s an industry where we’re working with a car dealership or you know, a home healthcare company or something like that where, you know, we need to understand what users, their potential clients are searching when they’re researching, you know, um, [00:37:00] a Jeep Wrangler or when they’re researching a home healthcare aid and, and all of these things. What are they asking? What are their fears and pain points? How can we write about that? So that’s where AI can help us to understand those things and then give us a launching off point to get that content created. You know what I mean? Yeah. So that’s what’s fun. It takes the guesswork out of it, like
Brad Burrow: I said. Yeah. It’s amazing. I mean it’s doing the learning for you. Yeah. And then you take it and, you know, put the icing on the cake basically, right? Yeah. Sort of. Well
Will Palmer: You just, yeah. It’s just knowing how to, [00:37:30] to craft all of those
Brad Burrow: And where to
Will Palmer: Put it pieces and how to make it put, where to put
Brad Burrow: It. I mean all those things. I mean, we don’t, as most business owners don’t understand any of those things. Yeah. So it’s a huge, I mean, I can’t imagine you can’t scale that idea with the need that’s out there. You’re gonna have more of a problem finding people to do the work, in my opinion, than I, I
Will Palmer: Think I, you know, like I said, we’re, we’re intentionally going slow in the beginning to ensure quality and consistency and process on the backend. But [00:38:00] I, I believe it’s, I believe it could scale and we’ve scaled Growth Lab really, you know, we had 89% year over year growth. This in 2022 to 21, I think this other one will, when it picks up steam will go even faster. Yeah. Because it’s so specific and so linear. Um, which is, you know, as an entrepreneur, again, it’s about creative ways to create enterprise value and stuff. And that’s a whole nother kind of topic that, that’s really where my head is now. I’ve gotten out of the tactical, a lot of the trenches and a lot of this stuff. And I can be, uh, more of a [00:38:30] visionary, more of somebody that can see the need in marketplaces and how to scale and what does create enterprise value if you were to sell a company in five years. Yeah. And that’s a whole nother world that I’ve, I’m really consuming and learning about because I find it very fascinating. It’s like bringing in an old car and restoring it and, and flipping it. There’s, yeah. You can do that with a business as well. Yeah. It’s fun. So,
Brad Burrow: Yeah. Um, so tell me, so I’m an attorney. I’m not really, but I’m, let’s say I’m an attorney and, um, I, I want to, I want to make a, a [00:39:00] splash in the market that I’m in. What, tell me what, what you would be able to help me with. I mean, kind of give me not a sales pitch, but kind of is mm-hmm. <affirmative>, I mean, I just so the, the listeners can really understand, um, growth lab, the concept for attorneys.
Will Palmer: So the, the, that’s a great question. The first thing I’m asking and, and, and I’m asking this because attorneys are, well the, the attorneys we work with are often great lawyers. They’re terrible business people and they know that. And the, and if [00:39:30] an attorney heard this, they would laugh cuz Yeah. He’s right. And so, uh, that’s because they’re not, and law school, you don’t learn about marketing, you don’t learn about business development and lead management and staff in hiring. You learn about the law and all of those things. Um, and how to win in court and in trial. So I’m trying to understand what’s their level of business acumen? Like, where’s their revenue? Where are they trying to get to and, and do they have unrealistic expectations on how they think they can grow? Because at the end of the day, no matter what you’re investing marketing in, it’s a system that can be placed alongside of your [00:40:00] business operations that should drive revenue outside of your referral network.
Will Palmer: So I have to make sure they understand how that system looks and works. And that way I can then confidently recommend, okay, I’m understanding what you’re trying to do. I’m understanding your clients who you’re going after. You know how your revenue and cash flow works, all of those things. Here’s what you should do if I were sitting where you were. And that’s kind of my approach. It’s not a sales approach. It’s really more of a, based on my experience, here’s what I would do if I were you where I would invest. Here’s how [00:40:30] do I prioritize that investment. And I just kind of lay it out there. And it’s always with the sort of understanding that even if you work with us or don’t work with us, my recommendation is, is gonna be, you know, pretty spot on. I’ve been in legal 10 years, um, even though I don’t have a jd I’ve seen it all.
Will Palmer: I know what’s out there. I’ve seen a million attorney websites, I’ve seen a million ad campaigns, I’ve analyzed thousands of rows of data. I know what’s out there. I know what works and doesn’t work. So I can define that for them. If they can afford to outsource it [00:41:00] and they trust us, great. I’d love to win your business. If they can’t and timing’s not right, I can send them to other places and resources cuz there’s more that we don’t do at Growth Lab than we do do. And I think people look at me as just a, a resource they can trust. Again, whether that means we they’re a fit for my team or not. And that’s kind of the groundwork for that.
Brad Burrow: So, and they, they’ve gotta appreciate that approach
Will Palmer: Though. Yeah. I, I hate to be sold. Yeah. You know, no one wants to be sold to Yeah. And pressured into stuff. That’s the worst.
Brad Burrow: That’s the, the whole uh, [00:41:30] Zig Ziegler approach, you know. Do you know who this Oh, is out here? Yeah. I spent a day with him. Oh, did
Will Palmer: You? Cool.
Brad Burrow: Yeah. Yeah. And uh, you know, he’s, one of the things he said is if you wanna be successful, help somebody else be successful. Yeah. Yeah. And it’s very true. And that, that’s the, that’s the way selling should be. You know, we, we just get hammered all the time with people trying to convince us, like, I’m looking at security systems and I’ve been with the same company and I’m ready to change here. You wouldn’t believe the different approaches that [00:42:00] people come at me with. Yeah. You know, trying to kind of pressure me into making a decision to, to hire them. It’s like, that’s not gonna work. Yeah. You know, I’ll make the decision when I’m ready, but you’re not gonna force me into anything. Yeah.
Will Palmer: I’m out here, this is, I got this one discount I can use right now. I’m like, no, you can use it if I wanna work with you. Cuz you know what I mean? You have leverage. It’s just knowing That’s kind. Yeah. It’s, it’s crazy. I get, as a business owner, you probably get a million emails a day that’s like, you know, found you online, found you on LinkedIn, here’s, you know, and it’s just [00:42:30] this boiler plate here. Here’s what we do. Is that of interest? You I need, if, if you’re gonna get my attention, this is just general sales advice, it needs to be specific about me. You have done some level of research to understand what could be my pain points. Yeah. And people that create like loom videos or anything specific and that have done even an ounce of research on me or my business that they couldn’t find just by looking at my LinkedIn profile. Yeah. I always respond to out of respect for their work. Even if I, it’s not something I’m interested in. ’em, I always say, you know what, I, I, I [00:43:00] appreciate how you tailored your message to, to what my needs might be. That took some work for you. It’s not a good time or for whatever reason, but good luck out there. But it’s the bombardment of all that. Just, hi, you know, first name comma business name. Yeah. Yeah. Like, no, that never gonna
Brad Burrow: Work. Um, so tell me about the future of Growth lab. I mean that I It’s gotta be just
Will Palmer: Great outside. Yeah. I’m so excited for it. Yeah. We just had our, we just got back from Charleston, South Carolina, um, [00:43:30] last week we had our all hands meeting, um, flew, you know, seven of my leaders out there had a great time and the future really looks really bright. I mean, we have dialed in what’s really working from a service offering perspective. We have ambitious revenue goals and client retention goals out there for 2023 that I’m confident we’re gonna hit. We’re bringing on, um, you know, a business development person that has a ton of experience in the industry, um, here in a couple months that is really gonna change things. And it’s gonna allow me to step out of some [00:44:00] more tactical business development roles that I, I love and I won’t completely Yeah. Forget, but it will allow me to, you know, work on other, other things that’ll help propel us forward. So we’re
Brad Burrow: Excited. You’ll be working on the business, not in the business.
Will Palmer: Right? Yeah. Yeah. That’s
Brad Burrow: Huge. And then, and then the other business, you know, the, the, uh, performance side. I mean that’s, so that’s gonna take, that has potential to take off as well.
Will Palmer: Yeah, I mean just yesterday I was, I finalized sort of our reporting dashboard and, [00:44:30] and getting all that stuff together. So that’s just an a, I feel like we’re kind of on a precipice with that. Like once we have these two new clients kind of calibrated in terms of, you know, our, our, our follow up cadence and reporting cadence and how we, you know, are transparent with results and some of those nuances. I, I think we have not been aggressive at all at, at finding people for that company yet. And I think that’ll happen in probably beginning of maybe Q2 of this year.
Brad Burrow: You know, the great thing about your business is you can have [00:45:00] a whole staff working from home, which is Yeah. That’s a big, big win for, for hiring people right now.
Will Palmer: Yeah. And it’s, and that’s one of the challenges with a place like this and like, I was so excited today to come to this space cuz I love it here. You’ve got all this amazing equipment in this podcast studio <laugh>, you know, your video stuff, which we’ve done, I did at the beginning with you when I met you. And I mean, anything to create is here, but it is a different circumstance in that you have to be physically here Yeah. To utilize it, which would [00:45:30] love to get this message out for people in Kansas City. It’s like this little treasure that I, I think a lot of people don’t know about that are needing what you have. Honestly.
Brad Burrow: I know that’s been, that’s my challenge. That’s been my biggest challenge, you know? Yeah. Been here for 25 years and still there are a lot of people that don’t know about us.
Will Palmer: Well and there’s so many people that knew, like young entrepreneurs like myself that would even see the value of a lot of this. Maybe more than some of the, the older generation possibly. Not to stereotype things, but they just understand the world of TikTok and all of that and just [00:46:00] all of these production tools that are professional that can be utilized. And I’m not saying you can’t take a selfie video and have it be effective on your phone, but if you’re really trying to create some brand equity, having this in your backyard in Kansas City is a huge asset.
Brad Burrow: I tell people all the time that you can still do that. But what we do is, is add a whole library of content that goes along with that. So I don’t ever tell people not to, to stop using that, that approach. Right. But what we do is [00:46:30] bring in the branding side, like you said, which is higher quality, better messaging, you know, focused, um, on a very specific target audience that kind of thing that now, now you’ve got this whole library of content that you can use. So that’s kind of, yeah. How, what, when people ask me about that, that’s what I say.
Will Palmer: And I mean, as a consumer, don’t you care about people that care enough about you as a potential buyer of whatever kind of business to put those assets together? Yeah. That just means you care about what my questions are and how to answer them and [00:47:00] what, you know, my decision making process. And for those that don’t have that, not to say they don’t care, but to be honest, do they care enough to actually go and do it? Yeah. And, and I don’t know that that’s are the things I think about when I’m looking at, um, for whatever I need to buy or whoever I need to hire. Like what is their, what’s that five second rule when I get to their website? Who are you, what do you do? How do I contact you? But who are you Yeah. Through what you’ve got here. I mean, boy, can you really, I probably
Brad Burrow: Could improve our website when it comes to that too.
Will Palmer: Honestly. We all can,
Brad Burrow: Man. It’s like everybody [00:47:30] never ending. I know.
Will Palmer: <laugh>,
Brad Burrow: That’s a necessary evil right. Process. Yeah. Yeah. Um, you know, it was funny. One last thing and then we’ll close. Um, I have a company that we’re, we do retain our work with, that’s a roofing company. And just this week we shot probably, I think close to 20 little, you know, 1 45 second to one minute videos on overcoming objections. Hmm. So, you know, commercial, it’s too expensive. Um, [00:48:00] what, you know, what, uh, how’s this gonna mess my business up when this is happening? And now they’ve got these little pieces of content that can go out on YouTube and on their website, their salespeople can, you know, put a link in a, in a proposal. You know, here’s, here’s some things to think about there. There’s nobody in their industry doing anything like that. I
Will Palmer: Love that. I call that squashing the grenades. Yeah. Like you, you, you, you blow it up before it blows up on you. Yeah. And it’s like you don’t realize how [00:48:30] powerful that is in trust building. Yeah. When you can squa squash those, that’s what we called it in sales back squash those grenades. How do you do that intentionally before they come up? Because in the back of people’s minds, as they make decisions, they’re there. And if you can eliminate that, that’s powerful. And that’s, I love that case study.
Brad Burrow: Yeah. See, we’ll have to maybe do a case study on that. So anyway, that’s great stuff. Pretty, pretty cool trying, I’m trying to think as you know, uh, out of the box as I can about the uses of video and, you know, content, you know, things [00:49:00] that we can do that really help help companies grow and help ’em, you know, bring in more revenue.
Will Palmer: Well, you know, I think you’re spot on with what you just said. And I’ll give you a personal example. We are, um, we bought a new house a few months back. We’re doing some work to it. We’re in the process right now of getting bids for this pretty big project. Right. And the person we’re leaning towards is somebody that has effectively communicated a lot of the concerns that I either knew I had or didn’t know I had, but they, with their [00:49:30] experience knew they would come up and have articulated them to me both in email, both in person. Their website is pretty well put together in in some of that stuff. And Melissa and I, my wife last night are talking about like, well there’s person A, there’s person B, and I’m not even kidding. Person B being sort of my first choice is because of how they’ve communicated sort of what they know through my buying and decision process would be a concern.
Will Palmer: And to me they’re like, that just says they know [00:50:00] what they’re talking about. They’ve been here before. And so, you know, I just think that is so powerful. So to take video and to have that, like I tell lawyers have, you know, six hours of production or even a few hours and, and just take every FAQ that you get asked, you know, how do I find the best divorce lawyer? What do I look for? You know, how do I win a child custody hearing? I’m taking really specific examples. Yeah. You know, what should I, does pricing matter when it comes to hiring a lawyer? Why would I pay [00:50:30] one price and versus whatever it is and have that on the site cuz they’re consuming it. And we see people spend 10, 12 minutes on a client’s website of ours that have those types of video players and those kinds of assets to answer those questions. That’s a massive amount of time to spend on an attorney’s website. 12 minutes. Yeah. Right. Time on site, on those pages. And it’s because they’re sitting there consuming all of that video getting and then they’re converting.
Brad Burrow: Yes.
Will Palmer: And then when they convert, they reference the video. They’ve heard my client speak
Brad Burrow: Yeah.
Will Palmer: [00:51:00] In a personal way. Uh, yes. And they know what to expect versus the unknown and attorney’s highly educated, am I gonna be made? Am I gonna be judged and feel bad if it’s a criminal defense lawyer or whatever. Takes all that away. Yeah. So that’s any roofing, any anybody, contractor like I just mentioned. Yeah, you
Brad Burrow: Gotta have that. Yeah. It’s powerful stuff. Yeah. That’s, that’s amazing. Yeah. All right, well this whole thing’s going on my website as a marketing piece now, so thank you for that.
Will Palmer: Yeah. I can’t wait to leverage it too. This has been so fun.
Brad Burrow: Yeah. All right. So couple things. [00:51:30] Um, somebody hears this and, and they want to, they want to engage with you. How would they do that?
Will Palmer: I would say just type in Will Palmer, Kansas City and Google. You’ll see my LinkedIn pop right up and connect with me. Message me on there. Uh, it’d be the best places LinkedIn for me.
Brad Burrow: And that could be an attorney. It could be any business.
Will Palmer: Any business. Yeah. I mean, we work in any, any industry. And so, like I said, reciprocity is big. Even if we’re not a fit for what people are looking for, I can absolutely put ’em in the right
Brad Burrow: Direction. And do you wanna give out the, the websites? Yeah.
Will Palmer: Growth Lab is just Growth Lab. [00:52:00] S e o, like search engine optimization.com. And then Performance Content Partners, which is a mouthful. Is that.com? Yeah. Is where you can
Brad Burrow: Find us. Okay. So the last thing that everybody has to do on, on the podcast, you have to <laugh>, you have to do your voiceover audition as a movie voiceover guy. Okay. Let’s see if I can do it. I would like for you to get on the, on the mic and say, in a world with real media. So the key is getting really close and airy. And so in a world with real
Will Palmer: Media, so you said I could smoke a cigarette first, right. <laugh>,
Brad Burrow: I’m [00:52:30] just kidding. Sure. All right. All
Will Palmer: Right, here we go.
Brad Burrow: This is your, your big chance
Will Palmer: Right here. Here we go. Ready. In a world with Real Media
Brad Burrow: <laugh>.
Will Palmer: Awesome. That’s all. I got it.
Brad Burrow: That’s awesome. You know what I love about it? This everybody, you did the same thing. Everybody gets that look in their eye like, you know, <laugh>,
Will Palmer: I’m gonna do this
Brad Burrow: Now. Okay. I’m doing it now. Sound pretty cool.
Will Palmer: Yeah, I guess I could go a little bit lower like this. That sounds a
Brad Burrow: Little strange. Yeah, you gotta get right on the mic. You know, I was the voice of the Miami Heat for four years cuz I knew how to do that.
Will Palmer: See, I need to hire you to be <laugh> [00:53:00] decent voice. It’s like the movie
Brad Burrow: Voice. Anyway, um, thank you so much for coming. I, this was awesome. I I learned a lot today. Yeah, this was awesome. I’ve really, I love talking about AI and all the stuff that’s happening. I’m kind of obsessed with it right now. But, uh, I really appreciate you coming on and, and, uh, man, I hope, I hope, uh, people will engage with you.
Will Palmer: Yeah, thanks Brad for having me. We’ll do it again soon. All
Brad Burrow: Right. This is the In the World with Real Media Podcast. You see my eyes right there. Thank you for joining us. [00:53:30] Please, uh, share this with, uh, other people. Uh, go out and, and, uh, look up Will maybe your LinkedIn, uh, profile’s gonna get hit a bunch of times. Um, and, uh, be sure to, um, subscribe to the podcast, which we have a whole bunch more content coming and we’d love for you guys to hear it. So thanks for joining us and we’ll see you next time.
OUTRO: This has been In A World with Real Media. Thanks for joining us. And be sure to subscribe on iTunes and follow Real Media on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. So you never miss an episode.