Episode 373: Merch Meets Hybrid Marketing with Kirby Hasseman

[00:00:06] Bobby: Kirby Hasseman is the CEO of Hasseman Marketing, a branded merch agency that has added digital services, web, social, content, and ads right alongside merch. He's the author of Delivering Marketing Joy, The Give First Economy, and Hit the Target. He's been a commonsku customer since 2014, and his new book is Hybrid Marketing.

[00:00:25] Join us as we talk with Kirby about the six moves in Hybrid and the one he thinks our industry keeps leaving on the table; random acts of marketing, the villain of the book, and why he traces it back to looking in the mirror; and a topic Kirby and I both love, AI and creativity. Today's episode is brought to you courtesy of us at commonsku.

[00:00:44] Over 900 distributors powering $1.8 billion in network volume rely on commonsku's connected workflow. Process more orders, connect your team, and dramatically grow your sales. To learn how, visit commonsku.com. Oh, one more thing before we start. We built a new AI tool called Ask skucast. It lets you access nine years of wisdom from every guest who's been on the show.

[00:01:05] So bring it your challenge, whether that's building a team or creating differentiation. Answers come from what guests have said on the podcast, and each one links you back to the original episode. Try the call feature to chat with my AI voice. It's free at commonsku.com/ask-skucast. Now, here's my chat with our good friend, Kirby Hasseman.

[00:01:27] Bobby: Welcome back to the skucast.

[00:01:28] Kirby: Oh man, thank you so much. This is always a highlight of my day and my week when I get to talk to you.

[00:01:34] Bobby: And it's great to have you. Same way. It's great to have you back. It's like having an old friend that you haven't seen in a while, and you catch up.

[00:01:39] Kirby: 100%.

[00:01:39] Bobby: I have to say, this book, we're gonna get into the details of this book, but the first thing I have to talk about, and I couldn't wait to talk about, is random acts of marketing. So that's one thing we're gonna unpack here today. You've written a lot of books: Delivering Marketing Joy, The Give First Economy, Hit the Target. So what made Hybrid the one that you needed to write next?

[00:01:59] Kirby: Yeah, I think it started with an inkling that there was a trend. It's something that Jade and I were talking about on our podcast a lot. We're seeing the best organizations doing a bridge between the two. I think sometimes there's a separation of church and state on digital and physical.

[00:02:15] Bobby: Yeah.

[00:02:16] Kirby: And you're watching it not only in the branded merch industry, but also I'm seeing it with other organizations. The ones that are getting it right are looking for ways to bridge that gap. And I started saying it was a trend, and then I was like, "Oh, but a lot of people still aren't doing it, and if they are doing it, they're not doing it consistently." And so that's when it really started to hit me.

[00:02:36] You and I have talked about this in the past, Bobby. Once I get an idea like this, it's really hard for me to let it go.

[00:02:42] Bobby: Yeah.

[00:02:43] Kirby: And that's when I know, "Okay, I need to get this out of me." And the feedback so far has been pretty fun.

[00:02:54] Bobby: We're wired to think in binary ways, good or bad, whatever. I think it's a part of our innate beings as human beings, you know, good, bad, positive, negative, and so we pit those things against each other. The reason why I'm gonna almost leapfrog some of the topics over to random acts of marketing is 'cause you and I have done a lot of education in our own industry. Something that really resonated with me from you in the book is that random acts of marketing, through the years, you'll go through an event, and you'll be like, "Oh, I need a newsletter. Oh, I need this. Oh, I need that." And it becomes this sort of ad hoc thing that you put together. It's not really a plan.

[00:03:27] It's just ad hoc responding to market demand, responding to hype, responding to whatever AI is right now. And a lot of people can feel overwhelmed and not have a seamless plan. But you lay out something far more cogent and something you can tap into, which is this is a part of an ongoing campaign that you can run, but not just a campaign, a way to do marketing that's different.

[00:03:50] Kirby: Yeah. Well, it's funny, random acts of marketing comes from looking in the mirror, right? As an entrepreneur, I was exactly what you're talking about. I'm like, "Okay, I like to write, so I'll do a blog. Oh, well, hey, let's take the blog and we'll do a podcast, and then we'll do this, and we'll do this."

[00:04:05] And for a long time I really struggled to get traction on any one thing, 'cause I was so sporadic. And one of the things that definitely happened with Hit the Target is I started meeting with clients and I'd find that I'm saying the same things over and over again to everybody, and then I'm like, "Okay, I need to put something into place."

[00:04:21] I was fascinated by how many times I would meet with people, and we'd be talking about merch or digital marketing, and they'd be like, "Oh yeah, we did a Facebook post and we boosted it and it didn't work. Oh yeah, we did email that one time and it didn't work." And this was literally from a meeting that happened, and I was like, "Okay, but what about this?"

[00:04:37] "Oh yeah, we tried yard signs once, but that didn't work." They tried all kinds of stuff one time, right? And I was like, "Well, you never gave any of it time to work, and you never did it in an intentional way." It resonated with me, 'cause I've done it, and then I was watching it and I was like, "Gosh, you guys are not able to reach the people you want because you just haven't given yourself time."

[00:05:00] There's no such thing as an easy button, and I think we're all looking for it. It's like, "Oh, I'll just do these really cool pens, and once I do these pens, then I'm done marketing," right? And so that's where it all came from, and that's how random acts of marketing became a villain.

[00:05:14] And I'm like, how do we put it in a way that it's like, "Oh, yeah, this is just a journey that makes sense to me for our customer"?

[00:05:20] Bobby: Yeah, because especially random acts of marketing in the hyper-social age that we're in, you see someone drop something really cool, and I can hear buyers go, "Hey, we saw this," and it's a competitor or something, "and we wanna do this too." And that becomes a random act of marketing. You've worked with folks and consulted with folks and coached them through this. Diagnosis is a big part of this, right?

[00:05:41] Instead of folks saying, "Oh, that's a cool thing. We should do that too," step back and diagnose. What is it? How do you diagnose that? I'll just give you an example of where I'm coming from. In a business life cycle, you will have a bigger retention problem than you have a growth problem.

[00:05:59] Kirby: Mm, yeah.

[00:06:00] Bobby: You'll have different aspects of what your business is going through and what you're struggling with. And so how do you diagnose that with folks before you can apply some of the marketing solutions?

[00:06:10] Kirby: Yeah, I think it really does start foundationally. And I'll tell you, I think of the skummunity as one of the places where I learned this. One of my rules of business, and it's still a rule of business, but early on, was never get in the way of somebody who's trying to give you money, right? That's just my rule.

[00:06:25] And so I remember coming to skucon or skucamp and people being like, "Well, they wanna reorder these pens." And people were like, "Wait a second. Why?" And I was like, "Are you out of your mind? They wanna give me money," right? And so what I evolved that a little bit to is, "Okay, love it, but what's the objective?"

[00:06:45] So just pushing back just enough. Because I think there's a dance to say, sometimes your customers know that that pen or that mug or that whatever resonates with their audience, and they understand it, and they know what they're doing. And sometimes it's just, "Well, would you be open to additional ideas?"

[00:07:02] Now, the thing that I really like about talking about bridging the gap between digital and physical is that there are very few people doing it. And so whereas when you go, "Hey, you like that tumbler? Why do you like that tumbler?" It almost sounds like, well, you don't know what the hell you're talking about.

[00:07:19] But when you say, "Okay, cool. How are you utilizing that piece of branded merch to create a digital relationship?" Most people go, "Well, we're not." Okay, well that's an open-ended conversation we can have. Now, you may not even want to, but when you look at it like that, I find that most people are not thinking of it like that, and they're like, "Well, I hadn't even considered the idea of doing it."

[00:07:42] Bobby: Does that map to build trust physically? How does that map to that?

[00:07:45] Kirby: Yeah. So real quickly, the HYBRID methodology is an acronym, right? It starts with H, hook digitally, and we can dig into all these if you want. Y is yield the spotlight. In other words, make the customer the hero of the story. That's a Donald Miller thing.

[00:08:00] And then B is build trust physically. And I do it in that order specifically because I think that's the new customer journey. They have to know who you are before they come to you and say, "Hey, I want to buy the pens," or the mugs or whatever it is. And so I think that build trust physically is the way that you can go, "Okay, I'm actually gonna create a physical, real-world relationship, something with weight."

[00:08:24] That might be with branded merch, it might be a physical event. And those are the kind of things then that you go, "Okay, but then how does that tie back to the digital?" You know what I mean? How do you capture their information so you can continue the relationship further down?

[00:08:38] I think that's the piece where people miss on both sides of that.

[00:08:42] Bobby: Yeah. And the others in the acronym?

[00:08:44] Kirby: Yeah. After B is R, which is reinforce across channels. Essentially, make sure you look like the same company whether you're at a trade show or on a Facebook ad. It's amazing how often that's not the case, right? Because you have different people often doing the things.

[00:09:03] Forget brand guidelines. Sometimes people are doing different things across those platforms, so they don't look the same, and it degrades trust. I is inspire reciprocity. That's actually one of the places where the branded merch space does that really well. But you can do that digitally, too, right?

[00:09:18] By answering questions with PDFs and lead magnets and podcasts and that sort of thing. And then the D is just drive action. Ultimately we have to ask them to do the logical next step. That might be buying from us. It might be, "Hey, sign up for our newsletter." It might be, "Come to skucon."

[00:09:35] Whatever that thing is, is driving them to some sort of action. So that's the HYBRID acronym.

[00:09:40] Bobby: Where do you see most distributors, since our audience is distributors, and you have a broad range of clients, and as I mentioned in the intro, for folks that don't know Kirby, they've run a successful distributorship for years, but also agency coaching. But for our audience in particular, where do you see them struggling in the list of those acronyms the most?

[00:09:59] Kirby: Yeah, I think the digital side of it. A, I don't think that most people in our industry are consistently doing give-first content where they're providing value to their audience outside of, "Hey, we've got a special on pens," right? And again, that's important to do, but I do think that's one of the places. Most of the folks are not doing digital ads.

[00:10:20] But to simplify it, it's just a matter of saying, "Hey, I want to take the physical experience, the build trust physically. That's what we do really well. How do I translate that?" When I ask people in our industry, "What are we doing to build your list?" I often get sort of glassy eyes.

[00:10:35] They haven't thought of this. I got a really cool text message, and I hope he's okay with me reading this, from our friend Andrew. He was one of the people that got an advance copy of the book, and he literally sent me this big, long text that was so cool 'cause he was like, "I'm getting ready to do a trade show, and it's made me rethink what I'm gonna do with the trade show so that I can take that physical experience and then capture that data, capture that relationship so that I can move it forward in that sense."

[00:11:02] And that's the thing I think we miss, whether that's for our own businesses or for our clients, right? What can we do to take that and drive them to the digital next step?

[00:11:13] Bobby: Yeah, that's great. I love that. Andrew's such a great guy. That he would hit you up and say, "Hey, I'm trying to think about this more holistically," as merch people, and that's the only part of our campaign that we're doing right now, is huge. Digital. It's funny, I was just on a call before we hopped on, and we were talking about the struggle that the industry has had through the years with their own digital experiences online.

[00:11:38] You and I being content people, we've been preaching this for years, but one of the scary things that are happening right now for a lot of businesses is that the Google search is just changing so much, and AI search mode has changed so much, and the way we get our answers and the way we find our solutions has changed so much.

[00:11:55] So ironically, where we're an industry that likes to pit promo against digital, we're also an industry that hasn't traditionally invested enough in marketing and digital.

[00:12:06] Kirby: Yeah.

[00:12:06] Bobby: And I'm thinking about specific brands and distributors and things like that. So as you apply that hybrid to a distributor that comes to you, let's say they're running three to five million, and they have a decent retention rate. Customers love them when they get them, but they have a problem capturing them. Where would you start with this, and how would you sort of layer hybrid in?

[00:12:29] Kirby: Yeah. That's a great question. Well, it's one of the things that, just real quickly, you had said one of the things that we struggle with as an industry, and I've said this for years, is when I first got in the industry, I thought we were a marketing industry, and I think most people in our industry are not marketers, they're salespeople who sell marketing stuff, which is different, right?

[00:12:47] And nothing wrong with that, it's just understanding what it is is important. And so for me, where it kind of rolls in is just understanding at a very core level who their customers are and, you know, what problem they solve for them, and that sounds so foundational that people skip it.

[00:13:05] And I think if you know that properly, then you can create better content for them. You can yield the spotlight better. So in other words, you can look at it and go, "Okay, they're the hero of the story." And then you can start to give first and provide value in a way that you've got their attention.

[00:13:22] Because that's the thing, breaking through. We're getting more and more noise. You mentioned AI, and I think it's one of those bad news, good news things. The bad news is there's gonna be more and more and more content out there.

[00:13:34] Bobby: Yeah.

[00:13:34] Kirby: The good news is you can create content utilizing AI in a way that speaks to that target market in a faster, better, all that sort of way. But it also, to our industry, it makes the physical side so much more exciting.

[00:13:49] Bobby: It's so true. Yeah.

[00:13:51] Kirby: Right? So I think I was talking to Danny Rosin about this, where it was like, "Hey, I think there's gonna be a resurgence in real in-person events and concerts," 'cause people are gonna want that physical experience again, and that's where we thrive.

[00:14:04] But the key there is that once we get them at the trade show, at the concert, at the event, what can we do to add some value, to capture some data so you can continue the relationship and the conversation six months, a year later? commonsku does that really well, right? And that's why every time you guys do an event, there's FOMO around it and people wanna do it.

[00:14:26] Bobby: Yeah. And kudos to our marketing team. There really is a multi-touch marketing experience thought about through the whole client's journey. One of the things that you just said is a powerful unlock for distributors, and I was talking with a distributor. We were walking through how I use agents to build the trends newsletter, The Backpack. Now, The Backpack is meant to inspire merch people. It's not for end clients, but it easily can be transitioned to end clients because it's inspirational merch.

[00:14:54] We were talking about what it would look like if a distributor... The scale is easier now and you can create these things, and when I say that, I don't mean slop.

[00:15:03] I mean, before we ever send out a newsletter, a human edits and reviews everything. But the scale is now possible to a level it wasn't before. Getting to the idea here and the question is that distributors sit on a host of unique solutions for verticals. So you might be serving the insurance industry, serving the finance industry. I know a distributor who has done this. They work with so many banks that they've created sort of a merch solution just for banks, and they're uniquely tuned into their problems.

[00:15:34] We're facing a part in our industry's history where if the tools to go to market are more scalable than before, we can now create more bespoke experiences based on the verticals we serve. Is that something you see as a potential land for us to explore?

[00:15:52] Kirby: Hmm. Oh, for days. Back to your point, not AI slop, I think the big challenge I see people making, at least this is my take on it, is that we see AI do something really cool, and then we're like, "Okay, cool. Now AI is our CMO." No, AI is our marketing intern.

[00:16:11] Bobby: Right.

[00:16:11] Kirby: There still needs to be... You would never turn over the keys to somebody who's brand new. And I think that's the distinction. It's like, well, yeah, you can ideate with it. You get better at it. You get better at being a director rather than a creator, and that allows you to create better content. And back to your point, it allows you to create more, because then you can really dig deep.

[00:16:29] I was having this conversation with Jade, my daughter, about this. People say, "Well, it's gonna devalue reading books and education." I'm like, "Oh, no." I think that those people who have insights into that vertical will be able to create prompts, content, questions, lead magnets, and then merch so much better, because they understand the audience more, so they can ask better questions and create better sort of content around it.

[00:16:57] So going deeper on that is, to me, that's the play. Because I think where AI is bad is where it's generic, right? Because it's trying to be everything to everybody. And so to your point, understanding your client and being able to go deeper is almost always better.

[00:17:11] Bobby: Yeah. And the tools we have now, to your point, so you and I are gonna show our age here, but you can remember this. When we were kids, our universe was limited to our classroom in terms of learning. So we had National Geographic, if we were lucky, we had the library.

[00:17:30] And I think most listeners know how many books I have. I'm not advocating digital versus physical. I refuse to get in binary conversations around that. But learning for you and I today is so much more expansive and incredible now.

[00:17:44] Kirby: Yeah.

[00:17:44] Bobby: Where I'm going with this is tapping into that vertical idea. You can learn more now about your verticals than ever before. So if you go back to that finance example, you can dig into what are their problems, what's the market like. You can create your own newsletter fed to you every day that talks about the financial market and who the big players are and what's changed, who bought whom, and acquisitions. I mean, the learning resources that you can then turn into a vertical solution are, to me, an interesting blue ocean.

[00:18:13] Kirby: It's so funny, because you start saying that, it gets me really excited because I'm like, "Ooh, I hadn't thought about it just like that." And that's exactly it. Wherever we get in trouble in life, it's always when we say the words, "Oh, yeah, yeah, I know." Like, "Oh, yeah, yeah, I know AI," whatever.

[00:18:30] As long as we are constantly becoming a student around it, it's like, ooh, what else could you do? And not because you wanna create AI slop. But man, as you're playing with stuff... I'm going down a rabbit hole here, but I had a Delivering Marketing Joy conversation with somebody on our podcast, and he was a Hollywood producer, and he was creating ads for Google and Volkswagen and big, big brands, all digital, 100%, but he's doing it with the focus.

[00:19:03] What I loved is he's doing it with the basics of creating an actual ad, because he's done that. So he started with storyboards, he's created characters, and he showed me two or three ads. After the conversation, I was like, "Wow." But you are learning and getting better about a tool and doing it in a way that you couldn't do before.

[00:19:24] Bobby: Yeah. One other thing that you and I totally agree on too is that as marketers, we've been trained to think in terms of personas, but with storytelling, it's not a persona. You almost have to dismantle the persona and think about the individual stories and the journey.

[00:19:40] And so we as distributors have this really unique opportunity, I think, in time here. Merch has risen to a respectable level that I've never seen before. To your journey here with hybrid, digital has become... If you can blend those together, you've got a bigger audience than if you treated those as separate binary solutions. Then if you get to telling those customer stories in a creative way, you're gonna win.

[00:20:06] In your new book, we'll link to this in the show notes, what do you want distributors to leave with tactically? As a broad principle, I know it requires a diagnosis, but as a broad principle, you would say, "I encourage you today to do these one, two, three things"?

[00:20:20] Kirby: Yeah, absolutely. Now, I actually think starting with one, two, three things is the best way to do it, because then once you see it, you can't unsee it. And so what I mean by that is look, whether it's at your own marketing or at your best customer, the last three or four projects that you've done.

[00:20:33] Just go back, look at them, and go, "Okay, how did we utilize this to touch digital?" My guess is there's gonna be just opportunities on the table that you're like, "Oh, yeah, I guess we could've put a QR code on the back of that coffee mug, and it would've driven them to the new customer."

[00:20:48] You're working with a college. Okay, cool. So you handed out the notebook. You do a URL or a QR code that drives them to... You mentioned financial. Some place to open up... Sorry, but, like, this pen, love this new pen. That little QR code, a bank should hand that out, and then this should be a QR code that drives them to open a new account, right?

[00:21:09] Be thinking of ways that you can just bridge the gap. To me, that's the thing, and then if you wanna take it to the next level with your own marketing, just go, "Okay, cool. If I'm doing digital marketing, if I'm doing social media, if I'm doing content, how am I driving them to physical?" Right? How am I saying, "Okay, if you do this, you get a T-shirt.

[00:21:28] If you come to the store, you get this." Whatever it is, but driving them to a physical relationship. In the book we call it the H factor, where you've got the silo over here, which is your digital, and this one is your physical. That center bar is the H factor, that intention between the two, connecting them.

[00:21:44] And so I think if you just look at what you've done, that's a good place to start.

[00:21:48] Bobby: Yeah, I love that. You know the other thing I love about your advice too is I wouldn't have thought this as a distributor, but you know how the distributor's life is. It's very busy, it's hectic. You're basically in sourcing demand all the time. You're trying to hit a deadline for next week. A client calls you and they say, "We have this event coming up.

[00:22:02] It's this fall. It's September 27th in Montreal." I'm not pitching skucamp because it's sold out.

[00:22:07] Kirby: But you should.

[00:22:08] Bobby: You know the event, right? "September 27th. Like, we're almost to mid-September, but I need these items by then." And you as a distributor will jump through hoops. You'll be a hero to your customer.

[00:22:18] You'll get it. You'll hit the deadline. But the thing that I learned from you is that if I would just pause for a minute and go, "What are these hats for that you're giving away? Can you just tell me a little bit more about what you're doing there?" Or if it's already passed and you just hit the deadline, you can go back to your buyer and just say, "Hey, I'm just curious, what was going on in your business?

[00:22:36] What was that for? I wanted to take care of you, and we did that, but I wanna learn more about what you're doing." In that case then, you're entering in as an ally with your customer, and in our case it'd be like, oh, skucamp is our most important conference of the year because it features some of our best customers that come together and share advice and tips, and we just love it and they love it.

[00:22:54] You know what I mean? It's just like you're entering into a client relationship at that point as opposed to a sourcing solution.

[00:23:01] Kirby: Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And it was funny, I was literally just having this conversation with somebody yesterday about the idea of the in-person event and how if you do it right and you do the cool merch, and you capture their information, then for the next week, month, six months, you can be communicating with them and reminding them of the amazing time that they just had, and encouraging them to post on social media, keeping that story alive.

[00:23:27] So you did that one, two, three-day event, but you now have nine months of content. And I say nine months of content for new customers, but those repeat customers, those people who came to the event, you continue to solidify that relationship, and those are the people that it's easier to sell to again, that will buy more, that will forgive your mistakes.

[00:23:46] And continuing that relationship is what both of them feed together to do.

[00:23:53] Bobby: Yeah. There's two recent merch stories. You'll be familiar with both of these, both from AI giants. So Anthropic had their hats that they were giving away in LA, I mean, in San Francisco and in New York City. Thousands lined up to get a hat that just said, "Thinking." That's all it said was, "Thinking," and several thousand people lining up to get this hat, right?

[00:24:12] But it's one of the biggest companies in the world that has suddenly created this fascinating experience there. Then Granola, about a month ago, dropped their Granola app that you can just have on the face of your watch if you want. You don't have to drill down and dig into it. But they also built these beautiful custom watch bands that went with the drop, and the watch bands created the buzz that they needed to talk about the launch, because launching a new tech product is just, you know, an average day in the life of a tech company.

[00:24:43] And that was so cool because these companies are intimately tied to what's going on digitally, and they knew they had to create something that was gonna create buzz.

[00:24:52] Now, I know I'm talking to a lot of pros who do this all the time, but do we pause enough to ask that conversation about what's going on, like with Granola? "I know you want these wristbands. We're gonna do that. Tell me what's going on, and why is this drop so important?"

[00:25:06] Kirby: Yeah. Well, it's funny, because the cool shift I'm seeing, and there's still not that many people doing it, but I find that so many more people are open to the conversation around it. You mention it. These are tech giants. They should be living in the digital space, and yet they are, it seems, so in tune with doing merch right.

[00:25:28] As you said, we were showing our age earlier. Sometimes our generation wasn't necessarily making that connection. I see Jade's generation seeing that much more together, and to me, that's exciting, because as a pro in the branded merch space, people are open to the conversation, right?

[00:25:44] When you say, "Hey, do you wanna put a QR code on this," and da, da, da, people aren't going, "What in the hell are you talking about?" They're going, "Ooh, cool. I hadn't thought about that. How could we do that and implement it?" And then if you can take it to the next level and go, "And here's what I'd use it for," then all of a sudden you show up differently than the person who's hawking pens.

[00:26:02] Bobby: Yeah. 12 years ago, if you and I jumped into a conversation and said, "You should do a hat," they'd be like, "Are you kidding me? Who's this guy?" Now it's, "That is a cool idea. We should really consider how to do this."

[00:26:13] So, Kirby, before we leave this topic, I wanna ask about your business and different things about agency work and things you're doing. But any other tip you wanna leave before we close out on hybrid marketing itself, and then I wanna jump into your business?

[00:26:25] Kirby: The big thing is just what we talked about. Consider how it connects for you. And maybe it's just, when you're doing your next marketing, your self-promo, that sort of thing, be considering how you could utilize that to build your digital footprint as well.

[00:26:39] I think, like I said, once you see it, you can't unsee it. Every time I'm meeting with a client now, I'm like, "Ooh, but what are you doing to build this long term?" So you do build those relationships. I would just take a minute to look at that.

[00:26:52] Bobby: Yeah, that's great. Let's talk a little bit about Hasseman Marketing and what's going on with you guys. Share more about this full-service agency work that you do. You do digital services too. So what's interesting about you, Kirby, is you're sort of doing all of these things, so you're speaking from a voice of authority.

[00:27:08] People are familiar with you on the merch side, but then you're also doing digital as well. How has your business evolved and changed to adapt to more media?

[00:27:15] Kirby: Yeah. Honestly it's fun, 'cause I still love the merch. Merch is probably, I would say at this point, 75%, 70% of our top-line revenue. That's still what we lead with. We still consider ourselves a branded merch agency. But it's really developed because clients have requested it as we've developed it.

[00:27:36] I almost always develop things for ourselves first. So, hey, we're gonna do this event. I look at our events and we're like, "Okay, we're trying to show clients how to do it." So we're gonna run digital ads. We're gonna do landing pages. We're gonna create automations. We're gonna do those things. And I had this happen one time where I was at an event, somebody came to our booth...

[00:27:54] And this was years ago, but I tagged them in a thing. They got an email by the time they got back to the booth, and they walked back and they're like, "How did you do that?" Right? So a lot of our business comes from us executing on things for ourselves.

[00:28:06] Bobby: That's great.

[00:28:07] Kirby: And so we started doing social media because it was requested. We, for a long time, wouldn't play in the digital ad space, because we just didn't think we would be very good at it. And then we started to develop that skill for ourselves, and now we've developed it for others. And the cool thing is there are clients who we have a monthly retainer with that buy very little merch.

[00:28:31] We just manage their digital footprint. And so it allows us to kind of look at things a little bit more full-service, and honestly, that's when for me it's pretty fun, 'cause you can start to really look at it from 10,000 feet and we can add value, you know?

[00:28:46] Bobby: Far more holistic approach in that sense. I have to ask two things. I have to ask an AI question, and I'm going to ask a commonsku question. You've been a long-time commonsku customer. How has commonsku helped you and your team evolve as you've grown through the years?

[00:29:00] Kirby: Yeah. I mean, it's funny, we've been around, right? We started with you guys in 2014. Our business has evolved much like yours has. When we first started doing the digital side, as a great example, we would do this stuff out of QuickBooks and this stuff out of commonsku, and now everything flows through commonsku so that we have one sort of point of truth.

[00:29:22] Even our digital stuff, we tag it as digital, so we can still pay attention to it. What I like about it is that then I can dive down. Before, it was like, if this was over in QuickBooks, I had to do this, and the reporting was over here and this was over here, and me having to ask, "Oh, what's the latest with this client?"

[00:29:38] All of our digital clients are in commonsku as well. So when we do reporting, I can tell you what they've spent, but, oh, well, hey, they only do a monthly retainer with us, and it shows where they show up in our overall. So for me, it's about flexibility, and being able to do all things in one place is really valuable.

[00:29:55] And then we still love our Shops, right? It allows us to do those pop-up shops and things like that, which is still really cool.

[00:30:03] Bobby: That's cool. This is me putting my Chief AI Officer hat on. What AI tools are you personally or professionally enjoying using and utilizing, either for the business or just having fun?

[00:30:14] Kirby: Okay. So I love this. I could talk AI all day. I'll rapid fire. Ask me anything you want. So number one, I have created custom GPTs in ChatGPT as my personal business coach. Built in all of my goals and the things that matter to me about my family and all that stuff.

[00:30:32] I actually have a fitness coach that is AI. I report my sleeping data, what I've eaten into it, my workouts every day, and it coaches me on different things, and that has been surprisingly cool. I'm actually kind of addicted to that one. Using Claude for more writing samples.

[00:30:49] I like what it does in the chat, and then I'm blown away by Claude Cowork. We're utilizing Claude Cowork to go ahead and build out landing pages and then have us fix them. And then we're using Claude Cowork to do audits. So let's say I have a prospect that is a digital client. We've kind of trained Claude Cowork to go and do a digital marketing audit of them before I meet with them, so that then I can go, "Well, you don't have much of a Facebook presence and your competitors do, and you're not running digital ads."

[00:31:19] I know all that before I walk in the door. And so that's just a great tool for me to do a better job. And I actually haven't executed on this, but I'm like, "Hey, we need to fix our website. Why don't you look at our website and tell me all the things that you think we need to do better?"

[00:31:34] And then personally, Suno. I'm having so much fun with custom songs.

[00:31:39] Bobby: That's great.

[00:31:39] Kirby: If I have a golf trip, we have a custom song for my guys at the golf trip. I created a custom song for my workouts where I created the lyrics, and it's called Keep Stacking Days. And so, yeah.

[00:31:55] Bobby: That's great. Oh my God, you're a beast, man. That's fantastic.

[00:31:58] Kirby: It's so fun.

[00:31:58] Bobby: As a runner, you used to use BPMs to run, and I could see now where you would go, "Oh, I'm gonna go create my own track to run." And the amount of time I had to put together songs to get me through a marathon once, the only time I ever did it, was brutal.

[00:32:11] I have so many questions about this.

[00:32:13] Kirby: Yeah. Anything.

[00:32:14] Bobby: Something you and I are big into is the creative side of anything, so we both love the creative side of the work. How do you think AI's changing that? And here's my POV, and I've got a strong POV about this. My POV is that we're in the middle of using these tools. We're not yet experts in using them, and there's a lot of awkwardness when you're trying to use new tools. So therefore, you're going to put out stuff. There seems to be this tendency to pit AI against humans, and again, this is my anti-binary status coming out. I just refuse to do that, and I am seeing, as someone who's tapped into the AI development over the past couple years, the development getting better and better and better.

[00:32:55] Kirby: Of course, yeah.

[00:32:56] Bobby: What's your take on creativity and AI?

[00:32:59] Kirby: I love this. So I think we're probably gonna be kindred spirits on this. This is gonna be a weird analogy, but go with me on this. I think AI right now is a little bit like religion. Because people are like, "The way I'm doing it is great. The way you're doing it is wrong." And I find, if you go to church and you do traditional stuff, we're like, "Okay," but if you have a rock band, that's terrible.

[00:33:22] And I see the same thing with AI. There are people who are utilizing AI on a consistent basis, and they do a good job, but it's like they're the only ones who can do a good job, and everything that they see that everybody else is doing is terrible and slop, and you can tell, right?

[00:33:35] I think that, of course, you have to do shitty work in order to get good work, right? So we have to iterate through the things that we're not as excited about. This is true when we were writing blogs the first time. This is true when we did videos the first time. We were a little more forgiving 'cause it was Bobby doing the editing, but now that it's an AI, we can insult it all the time. It's like, guys, you gotta be bad at it before you can be good at it.

[00:34:01] That's just in every area of your life.

[00:34:04] Bobby: Totally.

[00:34:05] Kirby: So stop judging everybody based on them learning through the process, right? And so now I think it can be a little bit not truthful to act as if you're doing stuff when... But there are times where it's like, okay, once you've trained AI through all of those things...

[00:34:23] I've had several conversations where people were saying, "Hey, I like the way you do this. I don't like the way AI does this." And I'm like, "AI did mine." But that tells me I'm better at seeing it than you're seeing it now. It's an evolution, and we have to do the work, just like we do in every area of our life, in order to get better at the work.

[00:34:46] And so I'm pro-AI.

[00:34:49] Bobby: You've exemplified what I'm about to say, but you and I both know that the only way to get good at creative production is to put in the reps and publish.

[00:34:58] Kirby: Yes.

[00:34:59] Bobby: You and I have published stuff that wouldn't have gotten past our radar today, that wouldn't have passed our level of "that's good."

[00:35:07] But you have exemplified this both in your physical life, the way you've handled your health, but also in your professional life, where you've taken a lot of risks. And putting in the reps and publishing is a part of it. For some reason we have this really big gate right now on things with AI, and I'm sort of like, "No, you just gotta try and test and publish."

[00:35:25] Kirby: Yeah. I actually think we are treating the AI thing as if it's a different journey, and it's not a different journey. You have to be willing to be bad to be good. I remember, and I think you and I might have had this conversation 10 years ago, where it was like, "Well, is it quality or is it quantity in content?

[00:35:45] Is it quality? Is it quantity?" And I remember, and I don't think I articulated it very well, but I remember saying for years, you have to do quantity in order to do quality. You don't know what the hell quality is yet. Just because you spent three months writing a blog post doesn't mean it doesn't suck.

[00:36:03] You gotta get it out there. And both of us have had that experience. I will go through spells where I'm like, "I'm gonna write every day," or, "I'm gonna do this every day," or whatever. And there are times where I'm like, "Oh my God, this is my favorite one. This one's really good," and no one cares.

[00:36:21] Bobby: Yeah.

[00:36:22] Kirby: Then you do something and you're like, "Oh, it was really quick and trivial," and that one does really well. And I think so many times you gotta let the market decide. Back to the workout thing, I did that song, and I just did it for me.

[00:36:35] I literally created the lyrics. It was all based on things I wanted to hear. And I thought it was super fun. It was like a hip hop song. And so I sent it to a buddy of mine who was working out, and he's like, "I don't really like that style of music." I was like, "Okay, give me 30 minutes."

[00:36:50] And I literally was on a run and I'm texting him. I ran back to the house, took the same lyrics and said, "Hey, I want it to be a heavy metal song," 'cause that's what he likes. And I created the same concept and sent it over to him and he was like, "You're blowing my mind." But it probably sucks, and you have to do the one that sucks in order to get good at it.

[00:37:08] Bobby: I love that. I love it. You just have to try things. We're in this infinite experiment stage right now.

[00:37:14] And one of the hard things that you and I can both admit to, 'cause we've done content for so long, is that there is this period where you have to put in a lot of time and do the reps, and that's kind of a hard thing to reconcile, especially for business owners. They're running a business, they're busy, and now suddenly you have to learn AI. It is intense.

[00:37:32] A couple more personal questions.

[00:37:34] Kirby: Anything you want.

[00:37:35] Bobby: Then we'll close out on this. But you and your dad published a murder mystery that you started writing back in the '90s, and then you let it sit for a while, and then you went back to it. What was the most rewarding part of that experience?

[00:37:45] Kirby: Yeah, it was a funny experience. Dad was in North Carolina at the time and I was here in Ohio, and the way that we'd communicate, it was early. Like, email was early, you know? And so I would write a chapter and send it down to him and he'd fix it and send it back to me, and it was our project.

[00:37:58] And it just sat there for 20 years in a notebook. And speaking of AI, I had to scan it back in and retype it and all that stuff in order to publish it. It was such a cool thing to kinda go through it, and then I had one of those moments where I'm like, "Neither of us are gonna live forever," and it just doesn't make sense in today's world, back to that idea of hit and publish.

[00:38:17] Dad would say, "Ah, it's not ready." And so he not-readied it for 20 years. I was probably halfway through digitizing it and I said, "Hey, just so you know, I'm publishing this." And he's like, "What?" I'm like, "Yeah, I'm publishing it." "Well, it's not ready." "Hmm, it's being published. You can either be a part of it or not, but it's happening."

[00:38:38] Bobby: I love it.

[00:38:39] Kirby: Once he kinda got that, I was like, "This is being published by X date." And he was like, "Oh. Okay." And so we all have that voice in our head sometimes, and I think sometimes somebody has to hit you with a hammer to overcome it.

[00:38:51] And the thing is, I would say he's so excited it's done now, you know what I mean? He's so proud of it.

[00:38:56] Bobby: Yeah, yeah. I forgot who said it. It was a famous writer who had a famous book that's successful now, but he said, "Honestly, if it were up to me, I would still be writing it." And this is like a 20, 30 year ago success, right?

[00:39:07] Kirby: Yeah.

[00:39:07] Bobby: Okay, Kirby, last question. You are a voracious reader and learner, and I just want to pause for a minute and say how much I have learned from you through the years watching you produce work. The repetition, the volume, the quality, you just keep doing it, and that takes a tremendous amount of energy, and it's become this expertise, so I admire the hell out of that. But is there something you've read, heard, or viewed that has made a huge impact or changed the way you think?

[00:39:34] Kirby: I love it. This is a tough question for me because there's been a lot.

[00:39:37] Bobby: Yeah.

[00:39:37] Kirby: As you said, there are people like Alex Hormozi, I'm constantly paying attention to him. Codie Sanchez, excited she has a new book coming out. Dan Martell, I'm paying attention to him. I know you probably like Dan Martell.

[00:39:49] He's an AI guy. But the one that pops in my head is actually kind of an oldie but a goodie. I'm re-listening to a book called Awaken the Giant Within with Tony Robbins, and it's funny, I do a coaching session for my team every Thursday morning. And so the next coaching session is gonna be all about one chapter about questions and the questions we ask ourselves, and how we feel about ourselves, how it affects our energy, how it affects our goals.

[00:40:13] All those things are based on the questions we ask ourselves, and Robbins does a great job with this, where he's like, "Whenever you say, 'Hey, I need to think about that,' you just mean you need to ask yourself questions about that and see how you feel about that." And that's what thinking is.

[00:40:29] And so understanding that, and understanding that the questions we ask ourselves unlock not only what we can do but what our team can do, that's a big thing that literally I've been noodling on a lot.

[00:40:40] Bobby: That's phenomenal. And yet again, another great use of AI, right? Just have it ask you questions if you can't come up with the questions yourself.

[00:40:46] Kirby: I love that.

[00:40:47] Bobby: Kirby, my friend, it's always a delight. Congratulations on the book. You've done many of these. This, to me, feels like a book that has hit the market at a time when they desperately need it, and I think everybody in the merch industry especially should be reading this book and integrating this into their approach with customers.

[00:41:04] But thank you, my friend. It's always an honor.

[00:41:06] Kirby: Always great to talk to you. And obviously I mentioned commonsku in the book because you guys do this right, so thank you so much.

[00:41:12] Bobby: Thanks, Kirby. Take care.