{"version":1,"type":"rich","provider_name":"Libsyn","provider_url":"https:\/\/www.libsyn.com","height":90,"width":600,"title":"Structuring for the Personal Touch","description":"Flynn Zaiger, CEO, Online Optimism (New Orleans, LA; Washington, D.C.; and Atlanta, GA)   Flynn Zaiger, CEO at Online Optimism, started his agency on a laptop in 2012 by reaching out and offering SEO services to the 6 companies where he had interned while he was in college. Today, his remote, across the country staff of 23 supports businesses with \u201ceverything they do online\u201d \u2013 social, search, SEO, SEM, and website design. Clients are small- to medium-sized businesses (5 to 500 employees) that are either startups looking to rapidly expand or more traditional family businesses, that, in the process of being passed down to the next generation, are looking to expand.  The agency strives to contribute to the communities surrounding its three offices. A cadre of interns maintains a networking calendar, tracking the activities of fifty chambers of commerce. The intern program, built internally from the ground up, is the source of many of the agency\u2019s new hires. In this interview, Flynn discusses some of the key strategies he has used to build Online Optimism. He recommends that anyone starting a business: Figure out the revenue streams that are available immediately.  Set a good safety net of six months to allow you time to figure out what works and what doesn\u2019t. Recognize that, as your agency grows, you will not continue doing all those things you love . . . you will be managing other people who are doing those things. Understand the importance of knowing how to manage people. Build processes so new staff can get \u201cup to speed\u201d quickly. Never burn bridges. Flynn hired a business developer as the agency\u2019s seventh or eighth employee. He says it is important to work closely with new sales staff, not to expect sales in the first three months (because that\u2019s how long it takes to train and understand the proposals), and to build a solid sales process to facilitate onboarding. He did not have processes in place for the first five years and admits, \u201cIt was a mess.\u201d The agency\u2019s language around the sales process is pretty traditional. The language around marketing activities . . . not so much. Flynn and his early staff had no prior agency experience, so they built and \u201cnamed\u201d things with their own terms. No \u201cagency of record\u201d here . . . it\u2019s a \u201cpartnership.\u201d Flynn finds it interesting that other agencies are dropping agency of record accounts and hourly billing in favor of project-based billing and flat rates. He says, \u201cThat\u2019s what we did in 2012 because that\u2019s what I made up when I was coming up with how we structured our pricing.\u201d The agency is not organized in the traditional way, either \u2013 there a no account managers. Flynn explains, \u201cEvery one of our employees is both doing services and handling account executive stuff.\u201d He says this is a challenge for his employees (they have to be good technically and also skilled at customer\/account management), less efficient than an agency where functions are more \u201cseparate,\u201d but far better for clients who can directly contact the person who will fix their problems. Flynn says, \u201cPeople want to feel like there\u2019s humans behind it.\u201d He continues, \u201cPeople want to know who they\u2019re working with. They want to feel that human connection in the business relationship. That\u2019s helped us grow.\u201d Flynn can be reached on his agency\u2019s website at: https:\/\/www.onlineoptimism.com\/ Transcript Follows: ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I\u2019m your host, Rob Kischuk, and I am joined today by Flynn Zaiger, CEO at Online Optimism with offices in New Orleans, D.C., and Atlanta. Welcome to the podcast, Flynn. FLYNN: Great to be here, Rob. Excited to be with you and talk. ROB: It\u2019s good to have you here. Why don\u2019t you give us an introduction to Online Optimism? What do people know as your expertise?  FLYNN: I started Online Optimism in 2012. It felt like this internet thing was going to be pretty big. I seem to have lucked out on that guess. It was just myself and a laptop. I had graduated college, and 10 years later we have 23 employees, we have offices in three states, we have remote staff across the country, and we help businesses with everything they do online \u2013 social, search, SEO, SEM, website design. We usually say if it touches a screen, we can help you market it better. ROB: Got it. Did you start with such a wide aperture and then expand on the types of clients you could serve? Or did you start in one of those more core areas and grow it from there and add capabilities? FLYNN: When I was just starting, I always felt that I was pretty good at SEO. I had a sense that SEO is really a game where you don\u2019t know the rules and you\u2019re just guessing what Google wants. So, I started a digital marketing agency, telling people that I was great at SEO, and they\u2019d say, \u201cWonderful. I have a Facebook page that needs to be managed.\u201d I was like, \u201cOkay, that\u2019s close enough. I\u2019ll just do some social media on the side.\u201d [laughs] Then I\u2019d be like, \u201cYeah, but I really want more SEO,\u201d and they\u2019d be like, \u201cThat\u2019s so great. We need a website.\u201d So, I would learn to build websites. I think that\u2019s what you do when you\u2019re starting out: you expand and see what works and what doesn\u2019t. Now we do everything digitally. At one point we even did events. When we were starting in New Orleans, I threw a second-line parade. We threw a block party and a barbeque. As someone who started an internet marketing company, I should not be the person running a block party. But it went pretty well for a year or two. Then we decided it wasn\u2019t for us and we still focus on these main services where we feel people are constantly investing. We do social; we\u2019re not on any specific network. The networks are going to change, but at this point, people are going to be found on social media, they\u2019re going to be found on search, and we help them appear in both places. ROB: Social has certainly emerged, at least many people\u2019s expectations, much more around consistency than around creating huge spikes of activity, so that probably lends itself to some sense of normalcy. Flynn, paint for us a picture \u2013 is there any typical client, a typical vertical, a typical size, a typical buyer profile? Who comes to you most regularly that you can serve well? FLYNN: We work great with what we consider small- to medium-size businesses. It tends to be anywhere from 5 to 500 employees. Above that, usually you have a bigger in-house marketing team; below 5, you\u2019re usually not ready to work with an agency like us. We\u2019ve found a niche with two things. One is with startups who are looking to expand rapidly, so they need quick testing and making sure that social strategies are working and social content is working before scaling it up. Our other expertise is these more traditional companies who have been around for 15-20 years. We do really well with family-run businesses where the son or daughter is taking over the business. This company has been successful for a few decades, they have great word-of-mouth, and you log onto their website and it\u2019s built on GeoCities or something, there\u2019s GIF animations all around, there\u2019s music playing. These are businesses that have done well enough, and now they go to the next generation, and these are people in their twenties, thirties, and they\u2019re tired of running a family business. They want to grow and be more successful. That\u2019s when they usually bring us in, and we have a first meeting where we all make fun of their family\u2019s website and how terrible it is, and then we help them. They still run the day-to-day, but they trust that we\u2019re a digital agency that knows the business and has that sort of relationship. We still try to meet face to face with people \u2013 obviously more pre-COVID than now \u2013 but we really believe in the power of a handshake. One of our values is \u201cScreens will not replace handshakes,\u201d and I still think, especially in the digital world where SEO\/SEM can be sketchy, people want to know who they\u2019re working with. They want to feel that human connection in the business relationship. That\u2019s helped us grow. ROB: That leads me into something that was perhaps a little bit self-evident \u2013 having offices in three places, is that largely centered on that ability to be close to a customer, to go shake their hands? You\u2019re cultivating relationships in those places and nearby? FLYNN: Absolutely. We started off just in New Orleans, and we had ideas always to grow beyond. We started getting more national clients around the country, but a lot of those relationships were based off of connections that we made in person. Then COVID happened, and all of a sudden everyone was reconsidering what they wanted to do, some of my staff was moving, and we couldn\u2019t meet anyone in person. As a digital marketing agency, for the first time, we were on a level playing field with everyone who was down the street from bigger companies. D.C. and Atlanta are much bigger regions; they\u2019re much bigger economic centers than New Orleans. Not that New Orleans is tiny. It\u2019s a very large port city. It has a lot of deals there. But Atlanta and D.C. are much bigger. We had staff who wanted to go to these cities. They were willing to put in the time and investment to do the work of starting an office there. That\u2019s going to networking events, helping to recruit interns, going to colleges to recruit more staff, and really trying to make a name for ourselves, producing resources in each city. One thing we do is keep a networking calendar. We mostly do this internally because we have interns that will help us track 50 different chamber calendars and pull them together. We try to make sure we\u2019re actually contributing to these cities, each in their own way, rather than just having an office that happens to be located in them. ROB: I hear you saying there\u2019s a set of capabilities you expect from an office. There is a local engagement, there is an outreach on the business side, there is a recruiting component. A lot of a services business, a lot of an agency, is sales and talent. If you can do those and manage the accounts you have well and grow them, that\u2019s a pretty good formula. Do you have somebody who then runs each office? Or how have you structured that part? FLYNN: Yeah, that\u2019s pretty much how it\u2019s going so far. We\u2019ll send someone who leads the thing, and then we try to have exactly what you said: one salesperson, business development. Our team is really good at digital marketing, so our salespeople have never really had to do much outbound. We certainly go to networking events, but we\u2019re not pushing sales. They\u2019re usually busy enough with the leads coming in, and it\u2019s mostly qualifying and creating proposals that are custom-crafted. So, it\u2019s a salesperson and then usually an account executive or two that can handle the different work in the cities. I will say this is something that we\u2019ve only been doing for about a year and a half now, so we\u2019re still learning and still building out these channels. I think, long term, what we see is that each office will kind of function together, but they\u2019re going to help us by if one city has a downturn, which unfortunately will inevitably happen, the other cities can pull up the slack. And honestly, this was a lot because our main headquarters is in New Orleans. There\u2019s Mardi Gras and the whole city shuts down for a week. We needed people to work that week for our national clients. [laughs] So now we added Atlanta and D.C., who are thankfully sober and not at parades for that Wednesday through Tuesday. That helps keep the business going. ROB: [laughs] And you cut the other people off of Slack that week. I understand. FLYNN: Yeah. [laughs] ROB: It\u2019s interesting; that story is still largely unwritten, then. Over the past year and a half, here in Atlanta, I\u2019ve been very engaged in the marketing community. Most of the events, most of the local engagements that we used to do before COVID are not back yet for the most part. But on the flipside, I might say that most clients are more eager to meet in person than at any time in the two years before COVID. It\u2019s an interesting split of where the opportunity is and where maybe it will be. FLYNN: Yeah, I completely agree. I\u2019ve been seeing that especially in 2021, since the summer hit. There was a small decline from Omicron, but not as much as I think you\u2019d expect. A lot of business leaders, business owners hit the summer, they said, \u201cIt\u2019s been a year\u201d and \u2013 you can\u2019t just be done with a pandemic. My partner works in medicine and she\u2019s very much working in very intense situations this week, actually, which is wild to do that and then I\u2019m sitting in a coworking space. With a mask, but still. It\u2019s such a weird environment that we\u2019re both in at the time. But I agree. We still meet people outdoors as best we can. We\u2019ve all upgraded our winter coats on our team. [laughs] But it is certainly something where people want to meet in person. This is where you\u2019re seeing those conversations all around the world right now, which is most leaders feel that they want to see people back in the office, and they can\u2019t really give good reasons. There\u2019s collaboration and brainstorming, and to be frank, I would love to be able to turn around and ask a question instead of asking someone if they\u2019re free to have a Slack huddle and dealing with that. It\u2019d be so convenient to just be able to turn around \u2013 and I haven\u2019t been able to do that in two years \u2013 and ask people. I miss that. But we try to prioritize our individual staff\u2019s feelings and comfort. I think that\u2019s more important than anything. So, we\u2019re letting everyone do whatever they want, essentially, and trying to be the most supportive environment we can. ROB: That makes a ton of sense, and there\u2019s a lot to learn there. You mentioned some of the early engagements you did with clients. It seemed like a natural evolution of the services. But what led you to take the jump in the first place and decide, \u201cI\u2019ve had jobs, but I don\u2019t want to have a job anymore. I want to make my own job. I want to build my own business\u201d? What was that transition that led to the start of Online Optimism? FLYNN: One of the first things we always tell people, especially our entrants when they\u2019re job searching, is never burn bridges. It\u2019s been 10 years and I feel like I can say I didn\u2019t particularly love the job I had after college. I was pretty good at it, but it was a very corporate environment. They had those motivational \u201cTeamwork\u201d and \u201cHang in There\u201d posters. I was like, \u201cHaha, very ironic decorations\u201d on Day 1, and they were like, \u201cThese are serious. These are our values.\u201d I was like, great. It was just very corporate, so I didn\u2019t love it, but I was good at it. I reached out to all the people I worked for in college. I\u2019d done six internships. They were like, \u201cIf you had your own thing, we could probably hire you and keep you afloat.\u201d So, I got lucky. After 10 years, I\u2019ve learned I know what I know, but more importantly, I know what I don\u2019t know. But when you\u2019re 22 and you\u2019re like, \u201cI could start a company,\u201d you really have no clue how little you know. Someone should\u2019ve shaken me and been like, \u201cFlynn, what are you doing? There\u2019s no plan. You have a domain, but you don\u2019t know how to\u201d \u2013 there was no plan. But I got lucky. The companies that I worked for trusted me because I\u2019d done work for them, so I got like two clients from them. Then the company I was working for out of college, I increased their sales online by like 800% or something like that. So they became Client #3. So, I had three clients on Day 1, which was great because I didn\u2019t sign Client 4 until Month 7 or 8 because it took me seven or eight months to figure out how to actually meet someone and convince them to trust us with their internet presence. That was the most helpful thing, I think. If you are starting a business, you have to figure out what revenue streams you have immediately and then set a good safety net of six months. It\u2019s going to take that for you to learn what\u2019s working and what\u2019s not and figure it out. You have to be ready to \u2013 it helped that I was in New Orleans with three roommates, so my rent was $400 a month. That\u2019s also the key. If you want to be an entrepreneur, I highly recommend $400 a month rent. That\u2019s the way to go. [laughs] ROB: [laughs] Where can you find that now, I wonder? Maybe nowhere, I don\u2019t know. FLYNN: Not New Orleans, actually, now. I think you\u2019ve got to go somewhere else. ROB: It makes sense not to burn bridges. I\u2019ve certainly had interesting experiences where I\u2019ve had former clients and coworkers who couldn\u2019t talk to each other, and I\u2019ve always enjoyed being Switzerland. I\u2019ll talk to both of them and I\u2019ll be doing business with both of them concurrently while they keep talking trash about each other like a divorced couple. I don\u2019t even know. But that\u2019s certainly a good option. As you started to build, how did you think about who you brought on the team, when? What were the next couple of roles? What were some of the inflection points in hiring, where you maybe had to make a hire you weren\u2019t sure of? From a necessity perspective, not the person. FLYNN: Hiring is the most important and hardest thing about running a business. We always drill that into people\u2019s minds. Our interview process should be careful because it is incredibly difficult to terminate someone if you make the wrong choice or train them to get them up to speed. When I started off, in the services that I wasn\u2019t the greatest at, I added on additional staff in different digital marketing services so I had more time to bring in clients. We actually didn\u2019t bring in biz dev for a while. They were Hire 7 or 8. So my first three or four were designers and strategists and people to do account work. Biz dev was a major jump. One thing that we waited way too long for was operations. I was running an 11-12 person company and still basically running \u2013 if we were a normal company, that might\u2019ve been okay, but we were always employee-first. That meant every weekend, I would go to Costco and get like $400 worth of snacks for the office and come back. We were on the second floor of a building. It was a three-hour Costco run, which is such a waste of my time as CEO that I would do every week. Sometimes it\u2019s hard to convince yourself that your time is valuable, and that\u2019s really what I think about when we hire. Once you or someone else on your team becomes more valuable \u2013 that\u2019s what we always tell the staff. You should be working yourself out of your job. Whatever you\u2019re doing today, if you can teach it to someone else so you can do more important things, that is the most valuable thing you could do. I know a lot of times employees think \u201cI want to keep this process just me so there\u2019s more job security,\u201d but I\u2019ve always felt like if you have a good environment and they see that you\u2019re able to teach this to someone else, that makes you way more valuable to the company, because then you could help them scale up much quicker. I always try to teach that to our Optimists. ROB: Those sound like some brutal Costco runs. There\u2019s an element where, when you\u2019re doing that Costco run, it can feel \u2013 and I\u2019m sure it\u2019s even felt by your team \u2013 that you are, to an extent, intentionally serving them in that. I\u2019m sure they can see that and appreciate that. But it probably needs to have its limits also. There\u2019s a point where you\u2019re serving them less by serving the business less by doing this other thing more. We had a team retreat back in December, and I spent an hour making people steaks. I wouldn\u2019t take it back for the world, but I\u2019m not going to do that every day, either. It\u2019s an interesting balance of when and how you make those choices to serve. FLYNN: I\u2019m going to make sure my team doesn\u2019t find out that other people are making steaks, because I got the Costco pizza. [laughs] I was like, \u201cY\u2019all should be excited. This is great, came super quickly.\u201d If they knew that some other people were making steaks, they would\u2019ve gone for my head, I think. ROB: Do you like Costco pizza? FLYNN: [laughs] I do. I have the taste of someone who enjoyed the apartment where he paid $400 a month in rent. I haven\u2019t quite outgrown that yet. ROB: This is the privilege of the owner and the founder. We are completely distributed. We do team retreats right now twice a year. We\u2019re doing leadership retreats twice a year offset from those. But these are people I see twice a year, so if they get Costco pizza from you once every month or so and I get them steaks once a year, I think we\u2019re square. It\u2019s my own selfishness. I wanted to buy nice steaks and cook them and eat them, and if I make some for other people, and they feel served as well, then we all win. FLYNN: I\u2019m going to bring you in for when my team hears this podcast so you can negotiate with them over whether they\u2019re getting a fair deal or not. [laughs] ROB: [laughs] I\u2019ll go up to D.C. and we\u2019ll see what we can do with that. Flynn, when you reflect on building Online Optimism so far, what are some lessons you wish you could take back to your past self and learn a little bit sooner if you could help it? FLYNN: Like I said, staffing at the beginning is a crazy difficult thing to learn. I had never managed anyone in school or in any jobs, and that\u2019s really the first thing I would\u2019ve told 22-year-old Flynn. If you are successful in this business, you don\u2019t do anything that you do today. All that digital marketing stuff that you love? You\u2019re not typing posts, you\u2019re not making ads, you\u2019re not building websites. You are managing people who do that. That is such a change in mindset. I wish I had taken that more seriously at the beginning and learned more \u2013 even in college, when I did group projects. People hate group projects, but they are the best. They are so like real life, it is wild. You\u2019re going to be with people who you don\u2019t trust. You\u2019re going to be working kind of with each other, but someone\u2019s not going to keep up the slack. What I would do is reach out to my professor and be like, \u201cI\u2019d like to do this by myself,\u201d which was a good way to get a good grade but a bad way to learn how to manage other individuals. So, I would definitely tell myself, you have to learn how to manage people. You\u2019re only as successful as your team. From Day 1, that ability to think outside myself \u2013 and whenever I do a task, what I\u2019m really good at now is we do a task and we think immediately, \u201cHow could this be done by someone else? Let\u2019s write up the process. Let\u2019s have this ready to go,\u201d whereas we didn\u2019t do that the first five years. Every time someone came onto the team, it was a whole process to teach them. It was a mess. So, I think helping yourself manage people is key and also building processes so more people can join and do it. ROB: Right on. It\u2019s interesting; you mentioned that you feel like you brought on biz dev a little bit late, around Employee #8, but I would say in a different lens, I have seen 80-person agencies where the sales were still very much founder-led, maybe even to the point where they promoted someone else almost to a partner to get that level of authenticity in their sales. What do you think allowed you, and how did you equip someone \u2013 it may have seemed soon for you, but you equipped someone eight people in to not completely fall on the ground selling. What do you think allowed you to sell without being founder-led in that sales motion? FLYNN: I think the answer is that we spent a lot of time together that first year. We even did that with later sales staff. We don\u2019t expect them to make sales their first three months anymore. We even build that into their prospective commission structure, based off of them not making a sale in the first months, just because we know that\u2019s how long it takes to train and go through our proposals, and they sit in a ton of meetings to learn how we talk about things. I would also say the other thing is when we first built a lot of our sales process, the first individual who was doing it for us had actually gone to a much more traditional company where they did a whole month of sales school, and honestly that helped us a lot. I had no idea how to teach someone how to do sales, so we hired someone who had had that training. That was the one thing where \u2013 now we hire people who just have a college education because we have more processes in place, but that did help a bit. Even now, a lot of the language we use is still pretty official on the sales side, whereas all the processes we have for marketing, we tend to have different language. We never say \u201cagency of record\u201d at all at Optimism because we made up our own term for it, because none of us had any experience in agencies. Whereas the sales side, it\u2019s all like \u201cdiscoveries and intros and cold calls,\u201d and we use very much the language of the industry, which is interesting for us. ROB: What do you call the AOR relationship? FLYNN: We just call it a partnership. [laughs] It is odd, and I know this gets me into trouble \u2013 we pretty much run an ad agency, but we built it from scratch, which is good and bad. I went to an Ad Age event and they were talking about this revolutionary new thing, which was like \u201cAs opposed to agency of record accounts and hourly billing, everyone\u2019s doing project-based billing now and flat rates so you know how much things cost.\u201d I was like, oh, that\u2019s what we did in 2012 because that\u2019s what I made up when I was coming up with how we structure our pricing. It\u2019s been fascinating to see. We sometimes will meet people who run more traditional agencies \u2013 we don\u2019t have traffic managers at our agency, and until maybe two years ago I didn\u2019t realize that was a job. Which isn\u2019t a great thing to hear a CEO say, but it was built into other processes. I will say now that we\u2019re at 23, we\u2019ve talked to enough people and have enough staff that have come in that we\u2019re trying to fill these gaps that bigger agencies have and we understand why. But there are still some things we do that are unique. We don\u2019t have employees who just do account executive work at our agency. Every one of our employees is both doing services and handling account executive stuff \u2013 which honestly is a major selling point for us, but it is tricky for staff because they need to be good at Google Ads and get their certifications and also not mind dealing with the client that calls in during the day with a question. ROB: It\u2019s a tricky dichotomy. On the one hand, a lot of people gravitate towards 100% either of those responsibilities within another agency. They\u2019ll be 100% client-serving or 100% AM. That hybrid role, when you can find it, it\u2019s very authentic to you. But when you\u2019re looking for someone to hire in, a lot of times they\u2019ve gravitated further in one direction or the other, I would expect, than you might want them to be for you.   FLYNN: You\u2019re absolutely right. I don\u2019t want to say that it\u2019s a benefit for our staff. I\u2019m not sure. But it is certainly a sales point for us. A lot of complaints from people who transferred from other agencies to us is that they are tired of talking to an account executive who knows enough, but they\u2019re like, \u201cHey, why is this Facebook ad structured like this? Shouldn\u2019t the top of the funnel marketing have this creative?\u201d and the account executive is like, \u201cGood question. I\u2019ll get back to you.\u201d Most of our clients, you don\u2019t have to deal with that unless it\u2019s a very, very specific technical question, because they\u2019re talking to the person who made the ad. But it is stressful and our team does manage fewer accounts at a time because we don\u2019t have those efficiencies that a more separated agency has. ROB: I definitely appreciate the opportunity to \u2013 you don\u2019t want to reinvent language; you don\u2019t want to invent your own language from scratch for some of these things. But on the one hand, I would posit that agency of record, unless as client has a need to award such a relationship and their boss told them they have to, mostly seems a little bit selfish for the agency to claim that mantle. Almost like you\u2019re taking something from the client. And \u201ctraffic manager\u201d sounds like kind of a boring job. Maybe someone who\u2019s in their prime would really enjoy it, but I feel like there\u2019s a more robust cohort of responsibilities that is a more fulfilling role and less of a middleperson, if you will. FLYNN: I\u2019ll leave you on the line for getting the hate mail from the traffic managers on Twitter. [laughs] But I do agree. I think that because we started off small and have added positions as we\u2019ve grown, the major difference is that only like one person on my team has worked for more than two years at any other agency. We recruit so many people for our internship program and we\u2019ve built this from scratch. It\u2019s been an opportunity to really build things as we see them and as we want them. It does mean that a lot of our processes are very different, but at this point, a lot of the bigger and better agencies are really open about their processes. So, whenever we do have questions about like \u201cHow does HR staff work?\u201d or \u201cWhat benefits do people want?\u201d, there\u2019s a ton of research online. We\u2019re pretty receptive to even our staff sending us information about other company benefits to see if we can match it and things like that. ROB: That makes a ton of sense. Flynn, as you look forward, what are you excited about that\u2019s coming up for Online Optimism or maybe even for the types of services that clients are going to be needing? What\u2019s next? FLYNN: We love what\u2019s happening in social right now. I think it\u2019s been a fascinating turn from these really professionally produced videos \u2013 and I don\u2019t even know if this is good for agencies or good for Online Optimism \u2013 to being more authentic, individual experiences. You see that on the content that\u2019s trending on TikTok and Snapchat now; while highly produced videos do well, sometimes it\u2019s just a funny idea, something catchy, even for brands. People want to feel like there\u2019s humans behind it. I think you see that in the brands commenting on each other\u2019s posts on TikTok. People are excited. I actually feel like the people behind the brands are eventually going to catch on and start making names for themselves. Like, sure, you like Wendy\u2019s Twitter account and that\u2019s great, but there\u2019s not a Wendy back there. There\u2019s some probably bored stand-up comic in New York City and that\u2019s their job. I know there\u2019s going to be legal papers in the way, but I do think these social media superstars will start becoming famous in their own right rather than for brands. It\u2019s cool that Duolingo has that mascot that does weird stuff, but that\u2019s not Duolingo as a brand. That\u2019s some social media director who pitched that idea, somehow got it approved, and now everyone\u2019s trying to duplicate it. So that\u2019s cool. We\u2019re always looking more, like everyone else, at the Metaverse, seeing what\u2019s happening there, seeing all these bigger companies invest in it. I do have our design team working on messing around more in 3D space and doing VR\/AR. We\u2019re still looking cautiously towards it, but at this point, you have Microsoft, you have Meta or Facebook or whatever they want to call themselves, you have all these companies throwing tens if not hundreds of billions of dollars and staff at it. So, we\u2019re trying to get our team ready for whatever is next. I don\u2019t think we\u2019re a couple months away from every mom n\u2019 pop shop having a second location on Meta Boulevard or whatever, but I do think the bigger organizations are going to have a presence, and I wouldn\u2019t be surprised to see more medium-sized companies get into that space soon. We want to be ready for when that happens. That\u2019s at least what we\u2019re looking at internally on our side. ROB: That is an interesting highlight to contemplate. I think we have been without, to an extent, as many experimental channels as there were for a while. There were a lot and everything was emergent and new, and maybe TikTok is still experimental for some, but for some brands, they\u2019ve certainly operationalized it as well. But to highlight Meta, Metaverse, that world, maybe even some of the crypto and NFT world as the experimental opportunities \u2013 it\u2019s an interesting place to play for sure. FLYNN: It\u2019s been fascinating to see. We\u2019re taking it seriously because all these bigger companies are. But you make a great point that these more experimental networks are usually the ones who bring new mediums. You can\u2019t look at TikTok and not remember Vine. And I personally think 2013-2014, when Vine and Tumblr were where the entirety of internet culture was coming from \u2013 that was our peak. It\u2019s been downhill since then. That was the best the internet will ever be. [laughs] That\u2019s the question: Can these more organic decentralized networks exist and grow? I know that\u2019s what everyone wants to say but look where the money\u2019s going. It\u2019s going to Microsoft and Meta, and who knows what Apple\u2019s building with their headset. And these are the same companies and the same VCs that built the internet that we have now. It\u2019s nice to think there\u2019s going to be really cool, interesting ideas that will give more freedom to the internet, but they have a lot of 1,000-pound gorillas and billion- or trillion-dollar companies to overcome.  ROB: It\u2019s a lot to navigate and it makes a lot of sense. Flynn, thank you for coming on the podcast. Thank you for sharing the journey of Online Optimism. I will look forward to finding some of your people here in Atlanta. Come on down sometime. I wish you all the best. FLYNN: Yeah, we\u2019re great at Happy Hour. Let us know. Thanks for having me, Rob. ROB: [laughs] All right. Be well. Take care. FLYNN: Take care. ROB: Thank you for listening. The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast is presented by Converge. Converge helps digital marketing agencies and brands automate their reporting so they can be more profitable, accurate, and responsive. To learn more about how Converge can automate your marketing reporting, email info@convergehq.com, or visit us on the web at convergehq.com. ","author_name":"The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast","author_url":"http:\/\/spinutech.com","html":"