Chris/Andy Founder Accountability Session
Chris LaFay: The logo on the BLDR staging site, which is BLDR Corp. STG on WP engine. The logo has this line under it with the words under construction. And I don't know if you created that or if that's what we were given, but that line and those words need to be removed. And currently the logo is in two spots. It's in the header as well as the footer. One of them is white, one of them is black. Dude, you own collared shirts?
Andy Milligan: Yeah, I'm growing up.
Chris LaFay: Wow. Hold on, I gotta put my. I put my ears in.
Andy Milligan: No, I went to that conference and I was like, it's not a bad look, you know, And I went back home and I have like an entire tote of just my little golf posts. It's like, yeah, I could just wear athletic shorts and I can kind of have style, so. Yeah. Plus they all fit a lot better now that I've. I've gained weights though. It's good.
Chris LaFay: The. I've gone through a lot of phases and I. For a while I was doing the. The like, for a while I did polos and then I switched to like Old Navy button down shirts with like the sleeves rolled up. Then for like a year I was doing like nice button downs with like a blazer pretty much wherever. Not wherever I went, but like meetings and events and things. Did that for a while. And then I was like, screw that. And now it's just teachers. But the thing is, like, you're in rooms with a lot of like, healthcare professionals. Professionals. So you. You don't want to look like a kid, so.
Andy Milligan: Try not to still do it.
Chris LaFay: It's the. That's. I think that's the reason why I went. I dressed nice for a period of time was I was finally getting some traction with some like, CMO types and some bigger things, and I still felt like I looked like a child. So.
Andy Milligan: Yeah, you. You are a big child. You just don't look as young.
Chris LaFay: Exactly. The haircut helped, man. The haircut helped. You didn't. You didn't know me when I was Shaggy. It was.
Andy Milligan: I know. I found. I went back. I think it was after you came on the podcast. I was looking for like, photos of you for the, like, the thumbnail or something, and I saw that and I was like. With the hair helmet, huh?
Chris LaFay: Yep.
Andy Milligan: It's not a bad look. You pull it off. My hair grows like very thick and it's just not. I can't get. I don't have any flow at all. So. Envious.
Chris LaFay: Honestly, The. What was I say about my hair? And that was all, like, the. The fact that it's gone is happenstance because. Have I told you why I got rid of it?
Andy Milligan: Yep.
Chris LaFay: No. So all the way up through 2020, it was. It was like that. So this been a. It's been a relatively recent thing. And we were hanging out with. Hold on. Claude is being stupid. Give me one second. It's wasting so much, This image. Tingle berry, stupid head. We were hanging out with some friends during COVID Like, kind of during. Kind of almost like the lockdown. Ish phase of things. And we're having dinner with them. And this is what I see. So I'm sitting across the table from a dude. His name is Caleb. And I see him doing this. So looks at his phone, looks at me, looks at his phone, and I'm, like, sitting here shoving pizza in my mouth. I'm like, dude, what are you doing? He was like. And he pulls up this photo of this, like, because basically he was, like, looking up haircuts online. And so, like, there are all these, like, photos of models with, like, the. Less hair on the side, more hair on the top, and they all look like frat boy tool bags. And he's like, you would look good with this haircut. And he shows me the photo. I'm like, I don't want to look like that guy. Like, that guy looks like a prick. He's like, but you wouldn't look like him. You'd look like you with this haircut. I'm like, I mean, I. I understand that, buddy, but I don't want to look like him. And he was like, I'm gonna go grab the clippers. And he grabbed. Huh. Huh. I have went to the same barber shop my entire life. Not because I have this, like, innate desire to only let one person cut my hair. That's not the. Like, that's not the reason. It's just convenience. But I've never let anybody else cut my hair. And I also don't do on a whim, stuff like that. That's just not me. I let that man cut my hair, and it was one of the best decisions I've ever made in my life.
Andy Milligan: Yeah. Yeah, dude, sure.
Chris LaFay: Yes. All right, so talk to me about this document that you texted me about last weekend or this past. Yeah, like, two days ago.
Andy Milligan: Yeah.
Chris LaFay: So.
Andy Milligan: I went through basically, what's our, like, a sell sell diagnostic process. So he used to work at an agency. He still does. He works at an agency acquisition firm.
Chris LaFay: It's that big Google Doc that you sent me over like a month or so ago that had a lot of sub Google Docs in it and blah blah, blah. Right, Better.
Andy Milligan: Yeah, I'll send you. It's kind of a. It's. It's like an online thing here, but it's basically a road map to the next two years to become more fireable. So there's like a whole scorecard I might have showed you earlier. It was like a whole scorecard you go through that has you put in like your revenue, your profit loss, cost of goods sold, things like that for trailing twelve and last year and you earn certain deductions for like founder dependency, single stream of revenue, bad positioning, things like that. And basically we had those three nine, three three hour sessions. So like nine or ten hours plus a kickoff call of just like me getting all the documentation ready and discussing it and trying to create like a roadmap for the next X number of months and years. I think what you might have to do is. So if you go. This would be a lot helpful if you could just see it because it's just behind a login. But I'll share with you.
Chris LaFay: Did you, did you text it to me?
Andy Milligan: It's in chat right now. That's the login I'll forward you put in andymg Studio and then I'll forward you the login.
Chris LaFay: G Studio. This is one of the first times that I've seen somebody use like a vibe coded app for something internal. I realize that exists like don't be wrong, I know that. But I, I haven't seen a lot of people actually do it yet. Did you get a link?
Andy Milligan: Yeah, it's, it's kind of vibe coded. I mean you can tell it is, but at mmg studio.
Chris LaFay: Yeah, andy. Mmg studio. You're breaking up a lot by the way.
Andy Milligan: Yeah, you are too. Probably just the WI fi again. There it is. Yeah. Important it to you now, But there's, there's a lot of, there's a lot of AI uses just in the, the copy and creation of everything. But I actually do believe it is thorough and strategic in terms of.
Chris LaFay: Oh no, there's no, there's no judgment.
Andy Milligan: I think it's all good.
Chris LaFay: Yeah, no, I think, I think everybody should be building their own little internal apps. Here we go. I just got the link open platform. Let's hear. Oh, interesting. Okay, so this comes. Oh, so you don't get everything all at the same time. Okay. All right.
Andy Milligan: Yeah, it says four out of seven. That's not. But basically it's separated into like three different acts. Act one is assessment, assessment of the value today. Act two is like a year or so. But the really interesting one is the strategy map. So there's like four different phases, three different phases and four different elements of each. And like to pass each one, you have to basically have to do the actions that break it down. So what I'm going to do, I'm going to use AI to help like distill this down into like what are the actions that go into accomplishing all these goals and then go use that to like create a schedule. But this is by the end of next year. I know I texted you a million but it's 350k of enterprise value with 500 of revenue if you reach 2x.
Chris LaFay: So there's a lot but that you get that multiple really only if you. If you actually are not the one inside of the business though and doing everything. Like if you're doing everything at $500,000 and your business is worth nothing. So.
Andy Milligan: Right.
Chris LaFay: Yeah.
Andy Milligan: Okay. Ideally a lot of the stuff is meant to help get there, but at least now the biggest value for me is frame of reference. So the biggest thing, the biggest thing for me is like I could have gone in and done this myself just in terms of seeing like all the documents that we filled out. Like numbers I was already pretty aware of. But you. I didn't create any actionability behind them because I just. To me they were just numbers. But not framing them in context recommended dropping profit margin slightly to around 70, 75 rather than the current, you know, 85.
Chris LaFay: And I mean it's, it's a hundred percent. At the end of the day your profit is a hundred percent because it's not 100. But it's really close to it because the only people that you outsource to to work are those two. The two webflow people. Like that's it. And then you're doing literally everything else.
Andy Milligan: So yeah, yeah, I think it's. But biggest part is so demand is like lead generation conversion is like project to retainer work and then deliver is obviously client experience delivery that part of the business. So like phase one of demand is firmly up the positioning of the podcast because what we realize is 80, 80 some odd percent of people who are. And this could be. It could be not coincidental, but it could be like what's it called when something's related but not because of one another.
Chris LaFay: Like I've heard that correlation. Correlation doesn't prove causation.
Andy Milligan: Exactly. Yes, but 80, 85% of revenue came from either people from referrals from past podcast guests or actual podcast guests. And that could be a philosophy. Just because I'm interviewing people that I know, then that's where referrals come from, obviously. But still there's like Vincent Griffey. Like I didn't know him a whole lot before I came on. I actually invited him on the podcast because I wanted to thank him for. He sent a lead to like a WIX agency in Columbus. So the guy was one of my friends. It's like, hey, you want to. And we'd always just kind of chatted on LinkedIn. But he would be like the perfect ICP. So people who serve in a healthcare marketing function but don't touch web. And he's a lot of work. So yeah, that could be like the ICP for the podcast and then firming up that position if we could record, increase the frequency a little bit and obviously not get into position like we were last year with having 20 in the backlog because that was stressful. Went through that.
Chris LaFay: But you were also doing all the editing back then too.
Andy Milligan: Yep. So.
Chris LaFay: And now you're not.
Andy Milligan: Yeah, but yeah, now I just feel like I have, you know, action items because like beforehand, like it's so much easier to do podcasts outreach and you don't neglect direct. Direct sales entirely, obviously. It just, just divert time more so towards recording podcasts, building relationships. Kind of like what you were doing last year when you're like, I want to position more so towards working with agencies. As a subcontractor. Yeah. I'm not sure. But as a partner.
Chris LaFay: Yeah.
Andy Milligan: But yeah, it just makes it a lot more clear. And some of it too is I didn't 100% agree with like positioning. Like I'm reading Peter Kane's book right now. It's like the old CO guide.
Chris LaFay: And.
Andy Milligan: Just how important positioning is like, is massive. So I'm also worried about too, like there's so many variables just in terms of the industry as a whole. Like it's. You're never going to have certainty. The closest you can get is clarity. Right. So it's like get an outside perspective and have something to work towards.
Chris LaFay: Something. I'm, I haven't read this entire document. I'm. I'm shipped. I'm pivoting a little bit this phase two, 90 to 180 days, blah, blah. Your first strategic hire is the head of ops with an account management background. I, I don't know if I agree with that. Yeah, this is my. So this is all my experience. I mean like you know the name Dawn. I know you haven't met her before, but dawn is my operations person. She started with me as a bookkeeper, went on to project management. Thanks. Ended up being director of Ops and then I had to like downgrade her to a project manager. She did a great job in all those roles. Like she didn't do. She wasn't bad at all. But I did not need a director of operations running a roughly one million dollar a year business. So I would, I would challenge you that, that statement. Your first strategic hire is ahead of Ops. I think one of your first strategic hires is a project manager. Like when you start getting. So the thing is when you start, whether or not you treat the person as a head of Ops or not doesn't matter. Once the title is out there, it's done. I know people say they don't care about titles and this, that and the other and blah blah blah. I don't really care about titles either. Me not caring about titles got me into a position to where I had a director of strategy and a director of Operations at a million dollar year business where I paid them both a ton of money. But the thing is it didn't happen overnight. It happened over like a four or five year period.
Andy Milligan: Yeah.
Chris LaFay: So the. What takes a lot of time from you and I'm making a logical assumption is managing clients. And my. The way that this has worked well for me is that when I have brought people on to do project management and account management and stuff like that, I, I typically have hired folks that don't need full time work first off. Secondly, I basically have had them sit in on meetings and just be my note taker. And I realize how redundant some of that is when you have AI note takers and blah blah blah. But have them sit in on meetings, listen, take notes and be the person that sends the follow up. Even if they're a silent third party on the meetings. All you have to do then is just attend the meeting. That's it. You don't have to do anything else that happens with it outside of it. That is the first step because one of the. It's the. A very slippery slope is when you make the cognitive decision to not attend certain meetings because other people are handling it. That's not a bad thing. Not saying that's a bad thing at all. What I am saying is the moment you start not attending meetings, client relationships no longer fall 100 on your shoulders unless you are being intentional about checking in. And when you're busy with other stuff. You're not going to do it.
Andy Milligan: Yeah.
Chris LaFay: That's at least been my experience. So the, the pivot that I'm making with all the changes I made over the last six months, I attend a lot of the meetings. There's only about three or four clients that I don't attend the meetings of the one that's happening right now, but I've already earmarked that person as somebody that's not going to be a recurring revenue person. So we're building them a website. They're not going to be recurring revenue. They like Don. They don't need me. We're good. So basically dawn is project managing me. Like I built that site out. I did almost 100 of the work. So she's taking in the information, creating the task and saying, chris, go do.
Andy Milligan: These things.
Chris LaFay: That I think is one of your next hires.
Andy Milligan: Yeah.
Chris LaFay: Tell you what to do.
Andy Milligan: Yeah. I don't know. I think it's, I think it's a similar sentiment. I think it's. That's, I mean, that's what hiring yourself out of the business is, right. Is, you know, getting people not just to replace you, but honestly kind of boss. Not boss you around, but make it as unnecessary as possible for you to be there. And then you can focus on really, I mean, client acquisition, keeping an eye on things and keeping the glue together. But that's a big thing too, is that there's always going to be some level of founder dependency unless you have one, at least one rule, whether, whether there's an ops person or an account manager, you know, because that's what I want to use. At least one person is really good.
Chris LaFay: I would also recommend that this person is as close to being stateside based as possible. This is not a person that I would have on it. Like you want this person to be on camera, speak extraordinarily good English as if it's their first language to where people would not think that they are not within the United States like you don't want. Because even if it's not true, even if the person that is near short or whoever it is, even if they are really good at their job, they're really good at, they're really good at communication, they're good at all these things. If there's this sense of, oh, I got sold by Andy, but then again got shoved over to this project manager that can barely speak English, that's an immediate downgrade.
Andy Milligan: Yeah.
Chris LaFay: So, so just. You are probably going to pay a higher hourly rate for this person than you're used to. But that doesn't mean the person has to work 20 hours a week. They can probably get by four to eight hours a week to start off with.
Andy Milligan: Yeah. What would at this probably be like a. This idea at this point it would be like a sixty to seventy thousand dollar hire because by the time I've reached this much it would be we're hopefully doing at least consistent, you know, 20 to 30k months and then you know, whatever that sorry. Is 3k a month for I guess it would be more but 3 to 5,5k a month for a someone who's doing the majority of the work. It would definitely be something I'm not with but it would be. That's why like I've heard so many, I hear a lot like just how big of a pain hiring is and that's why I like the first one you really want to get. Right. But also there's a lot of, it's a lot of stress around getting it wrong. Because if something like that were to happen it would be a huge blow to just energy and morale and it would really, that would really set me back.
Chris LaFay: And it's going to happen like it, you will make a hire to where the person on the other like somebody is going to be ticked off with the person that they talk to because we're all human. At the end of the day it's gonna happen and that's just something.
Andy Milligan: Yeah.
Chris LaFay: You, you're not gonna be able to come to terms with it until it happens. But that also doesn't mean that you shouldn't do it. Just don't. Something that one of my mentors told me a long time ago, which I, I listened to him better on it is whenever humanly if somebody is doing client based work for you, the amount that you pay them should be directly tied to the revenue that's being brought in. So what I hear you saying, like I can pay this person between like three and six thousand dollars a month to do X, Y and Z. Three grand is not the minimum. It's not. If you have two projects that you're working on that you don't, that you don't want to basically be the communications person on. Give them an hour. Find a person that you can give an hour and a half or two hours of work a week to for two months and say will you manage this for me? Like there are people out there that do that. So you might pay 50 bucks an hour. So you pay a hundred bucks a week times four weeks in a month, that's 400. Times two months, that's 800 bucks. So you pay $800 to manage a $15,000 web flow project where all you have to worry about is just attend the meetings and being the smartest person in the room. That's it. And then you come back with a list of like there's somebody that has dumped your task to do inside of a project management system for you and the follow up emails. The whole 9 yards, like 3k is not the floor and it shouldn't be. Yeah, especially for your size.
Andy Milligan: Where'd you find something like that? That sounds like a, like a fractional operations manager, something like that.
Chris LaFay: I mean there's people out there that do part time project management. Literally like part time project management stuff. I met one at one of my lunches the other day. Not the other day, last month. Hold on, let me. May was in May.
Andy Milligan: That was a.
Chris LaFay: That was a lucky guess. Holy cow, that was good. Who was it? I'm so bad with names and faces. I suck. I suck, suck, suck, suck, suck. Is it Francis Riley? No, she was the alloy person. Mary Seed.
Andy Milligan: Let's see.
Chris LaFay: Dust off the old LinkedIn. Oh wow. I have not. Wow, that's interesting. My computer logged me out of LinkedIn. Let that sink in for a second. That's how long it's been.
Andy Milligan: Seriously.
Chris LaFay: Freaking. Yes, it's me. Okay, there we go. Mary seed. I don't think it was her. This is my problem, man. I host these events and I don't take good notes after they're done and I'm like, I don't know who people are.
Andy Milligan: Yeah, this is.
Chris LaFay: It might have been this person. Sir Golden. This actually sounds very familiar. She doesn't look familiar. Dag Nabbit. She looks familiar, but she was in Pantheon.
Andy Milligan: Interesting.
Chris LaFay: CLN wizard. What is clm?
Andy Milligan: I'll tell you what, man, cool project I'm working on. I had Rhoda. I gave Rhoda a list of 100 private equity backed healthcare websites. She takes a full page screenshot of them, puts them into a FIGMA file and adds a tile above it that has the link on it, the logo. And use the Codex MCP connector that connects to the FIGMA file and it can analyze everything, it can give me the data. Like what's like all this data? Like what's the main cta? What are. I have like a ton of different queries. I ran through it as putting it all into a Google sheet. How many use customer logos? How many have security or compliance messaging? How many Use AI. And the headline, how many have qualified case studies? Like a ton of different ones. Like 15 or 20 different ones out of 100 websites. And I'm going to put together like a, some kind of an industry report. I'm gonna go through and fact check everything.
Chris LaFay: Oh, interesting.
Andy Milligan: Yeah, Be really cool. I can just like.
Chris LaFay: That's nifty. What, how are you going to use that? So what are you going to do with it?
Andy Milligan: Probably just with a gated resource. So email and then see who the signups are and if they're ICP fit then. And obviously I want to do like I thought about using Quad to create like data visualizations and stuff like that. Like 30% have book a call as their main TA or whatever. And then obviously like keep it behind an email probably on the site and share it on LinkedIn.
Chris LaFay: Are you going to make it into like a big old like a PDF file?
Andy Milligan: Basically, I'll probably make it like an interactive. I'll probably make a web page out of it.
Chris LaFay: Oh, okay.
Andy Milligan: That's cool.
Chris LaFay: Nice. Even better. That was actually going to be my follow up to that. That's the better because then at that point you can get analytics on it and blah, blah, blah. So that's dope. No, no, no, I was switching topics. Go ahead.
Andy Milligan: No, I was going to say I've been using the Ship Studio 2 to build like connect a bunch of different MCPs and basically not have to use Google Analytics anymore. It's really cool.
Chris LaFay: It's on our brand. So how, how did you get it to. Did you. Wait, did you Vibe code your own analytics tool?
Andy Milligan: No, it uses the Google Analytics MCP and API keys.
Chris LaFay: Oh, so you don't have to log into Google Analytics, you just. It has. Oh, okay, I see, I see. I got you. So you created like a little mini data box for yourself. Yeah, I see, I see, I see, I see. Okay, yeah. Interesting. Okay, so what are you. I'm looking. I'm going back to this agency planning thing. What are you. What is your plan over the next 30 days.
Andy Milligan: Other than other than work? Well, when is the. It wasn't in October, the agency thing.
Chris LaFay: Oh, hold on, hold on. So the, you know, Mickey's event. Yeah, yeah, Mickey's event is the like last day in September and the first day of October. No, but what. I was referring to this agency packet, this thing that you have that you send me the link to.
Andy Milligan: Oh, yeah.
Chris LaFay: What is your plan for the next 30. Yeah. What is your plan over the next month to prepare to come down to Atlanta In October. Next.
Andy Milligan: The. So that I haven't laid out like an exact plan yet, which is like not great. But I spent all this weekend. Well the like the first steps are very elementary and some of them already done. So like double down on healthcare positioning. Like that's already done basically. But there are actions that like reinforce that. So like the. The. The weed magnet reinforces that. I did some repositioning to the languaging on this. The. The messaging on the website. I just said work with a partner who deeply understands healthcare podcast. So creating a queer SOP. He has an exercise that's called the Dream 100. So looking at the CRM and saying who are dream like 100 leads and then building the relationships with people at those companies and then inviting them on the podcast. I also firmed up the messaging on the podcast too. So if you look at the podcast homepage, it says where we learn from. I think it's marketers in B2B Healthcare and beyond. Marketing by Design is a spotlight podcast for high performing marketers, high performing marketing leaders in B2B healthcare and beyond. And then just. I'll probably record a. So what I thought about doing is for the video above the full. Just having John splice together like six of the most recent episodes with some of the intros and then having a voice override that. By the way, John just sent me this new episode.
Chris LaFay: Oh my God.
Andy Milligan: So good.
Chris LaFay: Is that the video editor?
Andy Milligan: Yes, yes.
Chris LaFay: What does he charge you per video?
Andy Milligan: 50. 50 Per podcast.
Chris LaFay: So dude, that's stellar.
Andy Milligan: But it's also too like the studio. The footage I get from the studio is already pretty much fully edited. Like it already has the auto switch. He really just focuses on like the 45 second intro and then ways in front and then. But I'm fine with that. It's good quality. He's also really easy to work with, really enjoys the work and he. For. For a full length YouTube video is 50 as well. So.
Chris LaFay: Dude, that's not bad. It's not bad at all.
Andy Milligan: It could. It could be worse for sure.
Chris LaFay: Like my podcast editor was charging me 150 bucks per episode to do all the like put it all in the frames, all that jazz. Which isn't. Which is not bad. Like there was a lot of crike. He had a. The people that I talked to went on a lot of rabbit trails. So he actually reorganized a lot of things and then also did all the. Did the reorganization and did the dynamic cuts all within the frame of my own like style that I had picked out. It's like, still 150 bucks is not bad per episode,.
Andy Milligan: Especially for someone on shore.
Chris LaFay: Oh, yeah, absolutely. It was really proactive too, which I was impressed with.
Andy Milligan: That's good. John's from Philippines, but basically, dude, Riverside. Okay, so even if we record in person, upload that footage to Riverside, and dude, you can script and create such a good brief from using the transcript. It is so much fun to do. It makes like seeing it for the first time makes it so cool because you're like, this is exactly how I thought this was turnaround. But for example, for mass podcast, this is the one I'm getting ready to show you the intro for. I basically used a transcript, uploaded it here, and I used quad to help me like, ideate on, like, what would be. This is. He has a book coming out. This is what I'm focusing on. Use the transfer. Help me basically ideate this packaging. I basically just said, okay, here's all of our footage. Start with this quote. I've had clients sign some of your contracts. Put the timestamp in there, then go to. I want to make something that was real then and create a proof crypt from our interview three years ago, which I just included the YouTube link in. And then ideas. Use B roll from this website. Then include these quotes at the end and go to a hard open. This was. Okay, this was the. The intro video right here. I think the audio will come through. But, dude, this is like this. This guy is a creative studio agency owner in Columbus and he's. He's. I think he's only sent us one project, but he was like one of my. My third guests on the podcast, like years ago, but after I got laid off, met him at an event and had him on a virtual podcast back when the show was under different branding. This is the.
Chris LaFay: Yeah, yeah.
Andy Milligan: This is only 45 seconds.
Chris LaFay: Does the audio come through? Audio doesn't come through. Send me. Just send me the link.
Andy Milligan: So not coming through.
Chris LaFay: Nah, there's a way to do it. I just don't know how to. And I. It would take less time. Oh, I realized. Sorry if I sounded weird that whole time. My. My main microphone.
Andy Milligan: Very good. I just thought you. The mic online.
Chris LaFay: Oh, hey, now you sound. Dude, it's so weird. If I set my air. If my AirPods are the microphone within Google me, my. My headphones sound differently. So I just moved it over to the. My actual microphone and now you sound so much clearer, which makes no sense. Makes no sense at all, but here we are.
Andy Milligan: All right, let me click this. It is really echoey in here, which is why it's doing that.
Chris LaFay: All right, hold on. I am listening to your podcast.
Andy Milligan: Gotta watch the video too.
Chris LaFay: Hey, no notation there. There's an edit here that I just saw on the. The. On the po. The. The podcast Retro, where it says the creative's journal. It says three year ago, not three years with an S. Yeah, I just noticed that.
Andy Milligan: Okay, cool.
Chris LaFay: I'm g. Keep playing from the Philippines.
Andy Milligan: He's. Is his. His English angry, but I don't know. Yeah, I'm not it.
Chris LaFay: Dude, that's Baller, man.
Andy Milligan: That's a fun one. That's so long ago. It's like a full circle thing.
Chris LaFay: Ah, that's pretty dope. That's pretty freaking dope.
Andy Milligan: Yeah, but like, stuff like that, that's like, he. He'll love that because it, like, shows his work. It's all about him. Like, he's the star of the show. And that's really, like. It's like the whole goal of, like, the podcast is, you know, if you send. If you send this to someone who can. Who's serving healthcare clients or has as like a cmo, then it's like, okay, like, how do I work with you more? You know? Sure. There's an.
Chris LaFay: That's why when I saw your freaking space at COT for the very first time, I'm like, you need to do all of your podcast episodes there. Like, it just looks like you just 10 xed the. The brand by getting a space like that, which is just absolutely absurd. What I. So hearing you talk about all the stuff that you've talked about recently. What I. What I feel like you have, like, the. The flywheel is getting closer and closer to being created. Like, you know, where you're, like, where your segments are going to be. Like, the podcast is mostly for partnerships. The events are mostly for potential, like, direct ICP customers, the emails or xy. And like, whatever you have, I. I feel like you're getting to a point to where the. You're creating a really solid loop where everything kind of fits in its own bucket.
Andy Milligan: I hope so. Yeah. I mean, time will tell. But here's the good part of, like. And this just comes down to, like, my vision of myself is like, I'm not the smartest by a long shot, but I will do. Like, I'm not gonna quit, you know, so it's kind of like pointing. Pointing the energy towards the right direction and not rushing into things. Like, I traditionally have just solved my problems by, you know, throwing time at them. So see how it works out. It's the long term vision. You know, who knows what will happen with the industry and tech and how valuable it'll be in a couple years. It's one of those things where you can't let that get you. Like, you can't let that stop you from taking action because what are you going to do in the meantime, you know?
Chris LaFay: Yeah. Yes.
Andy Milligan: What about you, man? What's. We talked way too much about me. But what's. You've been out and about the last couple weeks, haven't you?
Chris LaFay: Yeah, so. Well, we, we, we chat. We chatted last week, actually. We chat last week? Yeah, we chatted last week. Yeah, I, I was back. So your, your, your mental calendar is one week off. So I've been back a solid week. The week prior to that, I was at that convention with a guy named Josh Hayes. And then the week prior to that was when I was at the beach. So what, what I'm trying to. I've realized. Did I send you the video of me, of me creating that?
Andy Milligan: The last video you sent me on web stuff was basically just the, the system that you built for, like color scheme, typography, like the CSS files.
Chris LaFay: Okay.
Andy Milligan: Yeah.
Chris LaFay: Yeah.
Andy Milligan: Okay.
Chris LaFay: So I need to figure out how to not get distracted as much because last week I built out an entire content management system because why? I have no freaking clue. I probably dumped 20 to 25 hours over the last seven days into it. Now it works and it actually works pretty decently. I'm actually kind of happy about it. It's pretty great.
Andy Milligan: Yeah.
Chris LaFay: Why?
Andy Milligan: Because it's fun. So I.
Chris LaFay: It's fun and it's. I've never been. I'm realizing that I'm addicted to building things with Claude. Like, I, I think I actually have like, not. I'm gonna use the word addicted. I know people are addicted to worse things. I'm not saying that this is like I'm taking drugs here. That's not what I'm saying. But like, I have a problem. I have a problem and it's clogged. So. Yeah, I, I realized that last week where I was like, I could have spent this time doing reach outs with people, doing plenty of other things, planning events, doing all this other. And I spent time doing that. I'm like, that did, did not move the needle at all for me unless I was planning on using it as like an actual honest to God product. So I tried to write some more this weekend and I kind of fell into these like endless loop cycles. I was trying to write I'm hitting this point to where I am. I'm trying to aitize everything and I'm realizing that there might actually be a reason to not try to AI literally everything in my life. So I'm trying to figure out where the balance is because I, I have this mental gap of knowing that things shouldn't take as long as they have been taking me. And I think that some things are taking me way too long because I'm trying to shove AI into the program process where if I just freaking wrote a LinkedIn post, it would literally take me less time than trying to have AI write me a humongous blog post, derive content from it, go back and edit it, put it on. Like I could just write a LinkedIn post. So like I'm realizing that some of these things that I'm trying to automate, I'm just, I'm, I'm doing a poor job of it and therefore I haven't really posted anything to LinkedIn and weeks I haven't posted, I haven't done, obviously I haven't done email newsletters in a long time either. I haven't really hosted an event in the last month. So I've gotten off my rocker with a lot of those things and so. But I'm just, I'm also trying to figure out if I want to continue doing my entrepreneurs organization thing as well too. I'm not 100 sold on it, so I have a lot of like random stuff that was a lot of word vomit I realized. But I also just got an email, Just got an email from them. So.
Andy Milligan: Yeah. From you?
Chris LaFay: Yeah, for me because my dues were due last week and I did not pay them.
Andy Milligan: We talked about that too. Do you think you'll rejoin?
Chris LaFay: Part of me says yes. Part of me said like, this is my. When you're in eo, you, you feel like you're a part of the family and like the group that I've been with for the last like two and a half, three years, they've gotten me out of some really new gnarly stuff. But I also don't want to just do it because I feel like I have to. And I haven't really came up with my full blown read. Like I just don't. I'm not as excited about it as I once was. We're also like. But. And when I join versus now I have a lot better of like an agency network like you And I talk on a regular basis. I talk to David Feldman often. I talk to Anil often. I Talk to Mickey often. Like, I have a little cohort now of people that I go to and talk to about this stuff that give me that talk me off the ledge of a lot of things. And I'm like, is it worth paying $6,000 and spending an entire day, day every month with these people?
Andy Milligan: Yeah.
Chris LaFay: And I don't know, I don't even.
Andy Milligan: Individually reach out to the people that are most impactful there and say, hey, do you want to get. Have a recurring call like every month or every couple months and maintain, if not even grow a lot of their relationships? Because it's more one on one. But I understand there's a aspect value to it too, so.
Chris LaFay: And there's that, like, there's also, like, I also want to make sure that I'm doing. There is a. There's a very deep rooted aspect of having dedicated time to think about the business and think about life once a month with people that are not in the industry. Like, that is very, very, very valuable. And it helps. And also just helps hearing other people's stories. Like, it literally helps hearing other people's experiences of like, hey, this is what I'm going through. This is what I thought. Like, I had some ideas for stuff that I definitely would never have had if I just talked to my agency people. But there's also part of me that doesn't really want to. Part of me just doesn't want to do it anymore.
Andy Milligan: And so how long, how long has it been since you've been doing EO event on Event?
Chris LaFay: Oh, I haven't been to event. The New York one that we went to was the last one that I went to.
Andy Milligan: Since you've been to an EO meeting or your monthly ones just last month.
Chris LaFay: The. Oh, the monthly. Oh, the monthly things are a requirement. Like if you miss, you're not in good standing. That's a, that's overly simplistic way of putting it. But you have a limited number of misses every year. And then we actually have.
Andy Milligan: We.
Chris LaFay: If you show up late, you get charged money. Like by, like our group charges money if you're five minutes late. So like, timeliness is very important.
Andy Milligan: Do you feel, say it's been. Say if you were to miss one month, would you feel deprived of it? Having been such a long time between one meeting and the next, would you be like, oh man, would you, would you feel like you. I know that's probably a bad question, so I won't even go there. But like, do you feel like if you were to stop, you would be Deprived of anything that you previously associated the most value of it to. It sounds like the big value of it was community getting over hard times. I think to what you said, you're already getting that from a lot of other places. So I. I know it would be hard though, because it's like I was in a very smaller level. Not saying this is real the same at all, but I used to go to a referral group called BNI for. Oh yeah, every week for almost two years. And I was so dozed about not. Not missing it. And I was like, pretty good friends with a lot of the members. Some of them I weren't friends with, but I didn't want to leave. But it just was not productive to keep driving an hour there to get there.
Chris LaFay: And you know, is very, very different. Yeah, I'm actually not a big fan of BNI in general. I know what you're. I know I do. I know what you're talking about. Sorry I hijacked your thing. Territory. I took it the opposite direction. My bad.
Andy Milligan: It's just I. I was like really good friends with those people and it feels like if you stop doing it, it's. And also, like, I'm not. I'm not saying this is true either, but there was a perception that, like, I'm leaving because business isn't going well. And you're worried about people thinking about that when that's not true either. So you kind of have to. At least in that experience, I had to make peace with that.
Chris LaFay: Yeah. So I also know that if I decide to not renew, I'm not getting back in because my business isn't at the million dollar a year mark like it was before.
Andy Milligan: So.
Chris LaFay: Sorry, I just. I just. I just checked Slack and I should have done that, but I'm leaning towards no. I just know. I know there will be a lot. There will be. There will be a lot of people disappointed. And that. That sucks. Like, that sucks big. So I'm thinking about doing something. Thinking about doing. I'm trying to. I'm thinking about doing that agency leaders lunch thing more regularly. That does not fill that gap by any stretch of the imagination. But I do like the idea of hosting something where agency owners get together and actually talk about some challenges that they're going through and actually workshop stuff together. I don't think that's something I have enough people and enough interest in right now to do. But, like, if I were to stop doing eo, would I. Could I actually start up something that wouldn't be the same? I Wouldn't try to copy and paste it because copy and pasting stuff is a bad idea. But could I actually create something like that here with agency folks on a regular basis? I just don't know how that would exactly look because I do know some folks that I. That I've talked to have expressed interest in doing some deep dives together. So there's that, which is very interesting to me. It would also fall under the banner of winning Atlanta that I said is my like banner mission for the. For 2026. So. Yeah.
Andy Milligan: Are you talking about the. The agency leaders launch club with. With Tiven?
Chris LaFay: Yes. So there's. I want to get. I did one of them and I need to get back on the docket to do. I need to go ahead and just like pre schedule a lot of them so they're on my calendar and that way I know when they're coming up so that I can invite people ahead of time to them. And that's actually one of my first. Like, this is what. This is what I'm thinking. I need to be hosting the agency leaders lunch club once a month. It literally cost me basically no money. It cost me the cost of my own lunch. It's a good way to meet new people because one of my things that I do with it is I ask people to bring a friend with them. And so the goal is to have somewhere between 10 and 12 people there. So that means I only really need to invite five or six if people actually bring a friend. Two. I want to. There's a couple people that I'm interested in hosting the, like those video content days with that have space that also have a pretty decent size network that we could tap into most of their network. I want to. I'm in the process of getting one of them on the books and I have another person interested in doing another one. I would love to get both of those on the books soon. And then Sophie Brannon, the studio hawk person, has expressed interest in doing another like top golf hangout. So. Oh, and then lastly, I have a person that's interested in bringing back the video content day thing to his large event and he wants to get on the docket sooner rather than later so that when people are signing up for his event, they can check a box that says I'm interested in this. So we don't have to go back and reach out to a lot of people five minutes before the event starts. And then we can then pick the people that we want to actually have request record. So that's like four Major events, plus agency lunch club. And I know Mickey and Mickey's conference, like, that all feels good, but I feel like the baseline of my things needs to be the agency lunch club thing that just rolls all the time, no matter what, and I just need to pick different places to go and do it at. So.
Andy Milligan: Yeah. Is the agency lunchboat, is that all under your brand or is that something that they. That you're like a.
Chris LaFay: That's the weird. Like, it's technically Tiven's idea. And so, like, he created, like, a HubSpot link for people to sign up on it. I'm like, I want these people in my list. Like, I need the event invite coming from me, if you will know me. But he wants to grow, like, the agency lunch club concept. And so, like, I get it, but it's also nothing unique. So I want to do it with. I don't mind doing it with him, but I also don't need the event invites coming from somebody that's not me.
Andy Milligan: He's not that way.
Chris LaFay: No, he's in Boston, bro. Yeah.
Andy Milligan: Just. Would you. Could you name it something different and just do. Yeah, yeah, just do. Yeah, just do that, you know?
Chris LaFay: Yeah, absolutely. So it's a lunch.
Andy Milligan: I mean, the way it would make sense is it's like their brand adds more social proof that would then get more people, and that's not the case at all.
Chris LaFay: So, I mean, he definitely did get four or five people to come down. Like, my first one, he definitely had Atlantic connections that got some people in the door, which were great. He also goes to a ton of conferences, and his whole thing is agencies. So, like, he's going to. If he meets somebody from Atlanta, he would get me in touch with them. So, like, it's not a. I don't view it as a huge thing. I just know that. I know that he does bring some value to it, so. And, hey, maybe that's the reason why I haven't been as good with it, is because I'm like, oh, it's somebody else's brand. That's not mine. So.
Andy Milligan: Yeah, yeah, that's somebody I mentioned. I mentioned you. The guy I did this workshop with, he has a contact at webflow that'll fund something. I don't know if I want to save that.
Chris LaFay: Oh, yeah. Huh. Huh?
Andy Milligan: Yeah. I don't know if I want to save that for, like, a big event or. You know, I also need to follow up to get introduced to the guy.
Chris LaFay: But are you. Are you doing that event with. What's her name still Taz.
Andy Milligan: Yeah, it's. She wants to do it next year.
Chris LaFay: Yeah.
Andy Milligan: Like spring of next year. Ideally just like seven, eight months, 10 months. Yeah, it's a long time, dude. We need to do. I need to do something before then. Something. A lower lift.
Chris LaFay: Yes, you need to. So take what I'm like, take my thoughts and my ideas. But like, my idea is that the Lunch club brings in new partners on a regular basis that add to my list, my email list, the social events, add a lot of people to my email list, like the top golf and all that kind of fun stuff. And then when I host a content day, I have a much broader audience now to invite people to come get free video content for. And then I'm going to leverage Mickey's event to invite folks to as well too. So I wanna not. I don't like the flywheel quite yet, but it's getting there. So it's getting there.
Andy Milligan: For the Lunch Club, do you guys go to like a place to eat lunch? You don't have to buy everybody lunch. Or do you go to like a place where there's like a lot of different restaurants and then meet there? And everyone pays for their own.
Chris LaFay: So everybody pays for their own no matter what. And so I try to go to places that are more like quick serve style to where like you order at the counter and then you go find a seat sort of thing. But I, I really, I wanted. Next time I want to do like a food haul, which is what you're saying, go. I would get there early, go grab like a long table for us and then. And then do that. And so it's easier to. There's less waiters moving around because the first one that I did, the people that the restaurant that hosted it did not like us being there for more than an hour. They kicked us out. So. Yeah. Huh.
Andy Milligan: Imagine, bro, dude, you being comp. You're being confronted or anything would want you to be confrontational. I could see that in person.
Chris LaFay: I. I didn't know what to do because we. We put some tables together and we. I noticed that they're like. After we like all started eating, I noticed there was like two more people in line that were with us and there was one table right behind us that wasn't being used. And these are all highly movable tables, by the way. These aren't like heavy set tables. So I went ahead and moved the table so that we would have room for these two other people that were about to buy their lunch. And the general manager walked over and was like, Hey, I see you move that table. That wasn't a part of the original table set. Why did you move that table? I was like, because we have literally two more people coming, and this table will fit. Like, they would have sat at that table. We're just putting it with us. She's like, yeah, but we need that table. I was like, I unders. But we have customers right there.
Andy Milligan: Yeah.
Chris LaFay: And would sit there. We just put it with ours. She's like, you need to make sure before you touch any tables, you have to talk to me.
Andy Milligan: Oh, my God, dude. I can imagine. You're like, oh, no, no, no.
Chris LaFay: Like, no, no. You don't. Like, ma', am, you don't understand. I'm not stealing your table. I'm. I'm Literally everybody here has bought a 15 to 20 meal. Like, yeah, dude, you could.
Andy Milligan: You would never be. You could never say that. You just feel like, oh, yeah, right.
Chris LaFay: Oh. And then, of course, at the same time, one of our people left, and there was literally just one open seat. And I could tell she was very disgruntled about the one open seat. And then a little like 30 minutes later, we had a number of people that had left at that point, and she was like, I just need you all to go there.
Andy Milligan: There's a place in Columbus called Central Market where they have like, like, a dining area in the middle, and they have like, 20 different types of, like, food sty. And it's also indoors. I was like, like, 20 different, like, types of food vendors from, like, Chinese. There's poke. There's like, burgers and fries. There's like, a ton of different things and ideas to get people to go there over their lunch break. So that would be a great place. Sorry to do something like that.
Chris LaFay: Yes, it's easy. It's very easy. You don't have to call it agency. The agency lunch club. You can call it, like marketing leaders lunch club or something like that. So it's a little more are open if you wanted it to be. It's past 10. I need to go ahead and move. I got a meeting at 10:30 that I got to do a little bit of prep for.
Andy Milligan: All right, my man. I appreciate you. Make it a great week, man. We'll be in touch soon.
Chris LaFay: Okay, sounds good, man. Bye.