Episode 254 – Adam Akins

Richard Matthews: [00:00:00] One of the things

that makes heroes heroic

is that they live by a code

so I want to talk

about the top one

maybe two principles

that you use regularly

in your life

that you run

your business by

maybe something

you wish you had known

when you first started out

your own

entrepreneurial journey

Adam Akins: Can I tell you 5

So it’s communication

respect

integrity

excellence

and discipline

Communication by far

the most important thing

we can do

it just happened yesterday

it’s so hard to read emotion

through email and text message

so we had someone

send over an email

Someone else read it

and just took it

to complete

a complete 180

from what the email

was even about

and so had we not

have communicated immediately

it could have spiraled

so far out of control

so communication

first and foremost

can eliminate

so many problems

but then

it’s respect

and then of course integrity

and the excellence in discipline

but communication

integrity

respect are massive

because if we don’t have those

I don’t know

really what the point is of

doing [00:01:00] business?

​

Richard Matthews: Welcome back to The Hero Show. My name is Richard Matthews. And today I [00:02:00] am glad to have on the line. Adam, are you there?

Adam Akins: Yes, sir.

Richard Matthews: Awesome! And before we get too far into the interview, I always like to start these interviews off with just a little introduction that you guys send over.

So my audience knows who you are. So we’ll get into that. So you are the founder, what’s the name of your agency again?

Adam Akins: So, it’s Inhouse Advertising. And no, I’m not the founder. My mom actually founded the company in 2001 and then I took the reins in March of 2017.

Richard Matthews: So, over 20 years of advertising experience, Adams, the leading expert in media, you took over the agency in 2017. You’ve grown the agency by over 5 million dollars in the last five years, which is crazy. You focus on results first and foremost, and the rest fall in place. I think it was credit to Jesus for the success that he’s had and knows without that personal relationship, he would not be where he is today.

So what I want to start off with, start the interview off with is what is it that you are known for, right? What’s your business like? Who do you serve? What do you do for them?

Adam Akins: Yeah, thanks [00:03:00] again for having me on. And yeah, you’re correct without, I tell people this every day. They ask me, and how have have you guys grown so much? And yes, there’s been a lot of hard work, but without God’s favor, we would be nowhere, right? So, back to your question.

I tell people all the time that we really work with anything brand related from, we have a website division. We have a in-house production team. We have three graphic designers. We have seven salespeople. We have a five person digital team. So, there’s really not anything that we don’t do when it comes to advertising. Our bread and butter is digital media and then traditional media placement, which as you guys know, that is on the downward trajectory.

And a lot of markets, it’s still very healthy and in Tulsa. So we, we were founded on a [00:04:00] traditional media buying agency. And thank God, we have morphed with the times and jumped on the digital train. So that’s kind of what we focus on. We do have a lot of brand guides, and website builds, and getting into the app development game. Really, anything our customers need, or our new clients need, we have the capabilities to do so.

We’re very diverse in our client base from health care, to event entertainment venues to restaurants, and oil, and gas being in Tulsa. There’s really not an industry over the years that we haven’t touched. And I think that’s why we’ve been very successful, especially going into COVID when some of the industries, kind of tanked to the bottom are other ones. The RV industry, for example. We [00:05:00] do a lot of RV advertising and that skyrocketed, right? The demand our, well, you know, better than anyone, That industry has just exploded. And so, we’ve been on kind of the forefront leading the charge with a lot of the digital tactics and, and media placement for that category of business.

Richard Matthews: Yeah, it’s actually, it was really funny because we’ve been traveling in an RV for seven years and pre pandemic. We didn’t really have to plan. You could just drive around the country and stop where we want to stop. And there will be places for you to stay. And now, we have to plan like three months in advance, because there’s so many people are being that every RV park is always booked all the time.

So, there is significantly. So, if anyone’s listening to this and you want to get into a space that there is more demand than supply, RV parks. Good business tip right off the bat for uh, people who are paying attention.

So, I want to talk a little bit then about your origin story, how you got into this agency? I know you took this agency over from your mother. So every good comic book hero has an origin story. Whether that’s the thing that made them into here they are today. We want to hear that [00:06:00] story where bit by a radioactive spider that made you want you to buy into the uh, family business, or did you start in a job and eventually moved to become more entrepreneurial? Basically,

Adam Akins: You know,

Richard Matthews: What’s your story?

Adam Akins: I t’s funny I would say I was bit by the freedom and money bug. Watch growing up in, in this business. My mom got into television advertising in the late 80s, early 90s. And while my dad was always kind of a blue collar worker, he could never get off to come to any of my sports programs during the day or school programs. And my mom could, so she had a lot of flexibility and a lot of time. And after a few years into it, she started making really good money. And it always intrigued me. And we always had tickets every concert, and every, just every cool event we got to be at. And then we would be in a lot of TV commercials. Little did I know it was [00:07:00] because she was too cheap to hire and pay it actor and actresses.

So, she kind of pimped us out for free of charge. But people would come up all the time in grade school, and middle school, and high school and say, “Oh my gosh, it’s so cool! You’re on TV commercials.” And I’m like, It’s really not that cool. I promise you, by all means, if you want to be on one, I’ll get you on one. And so, fast forward through high school, going into college, I knew I wanted to be in sales. I knew I liked freedom and flexibility.

And I wanted to kind of go that route. And I actually, I got to do an internship here in Tulsa in 1999, whenever the WB came to Tulsa. There is a brand new in Tulsa. And so, I got to go from when it was nothing to signing on a new TV station. And at that point, that was kind of the apex where I said, “You know what? That’s what I want to do.” So [00:08:00] I did my internship there and I did from everything from master control to behind the scenes, and how TV commercials work, production, and sales, and it was always a sales people that had nice vehicles and got to go to all the fun lunches and stuff.

And so, it just, that’s when I knew. That’s what I wanted to do. So, after graduation from Oklahoma State, I go went to work for one of the former sales girls that sold at the WB and she was a general manager of a radio station. And so, she hired me and I had a lot of quick success in radio. And then, from that point, moved to another radio group.

I was there for about eight years. Dip my hand in management. Realized really quick, I did not want to be a manager. So then, in 2015, I made the move over to television. Sold there for two years. And then, started over at the agency in [00:09:00] 2017 my mom was ready to scale back and somewhat retire.

No, she wasn’t retired. I don’t think she’ll ever retire. But now, I’m running the day today and we have 26 employees. And, like you said in the introduction, yeah, we’ve grown by over 5 million dollars in the past five years. And it’s been a very fun ride. I’ve learned a lot. I failed a lot, which is good because I think without failure, you lose the opportunity to grow. So that’s kind of my origin story. I grew up in the industry and just through, watching and learning, my mom, and her friends, and their lifestyle, and they never seemed to be too stressed. Like when my dad would get home from work, he would be stressed or angry or dirty or whatever it was.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I live out in the country and I like to get my hands dirty, but I like interacting with people, and watching [00:10:00] businesses grow, and coming up with concepts, and ideas, and making someone’s business better than it was prior to a strategy or a concept.

Richard Matthews: And so, you’ve got a fun story. Because you got to watch the business grow up as a child. And so, this is the business is like second generation now which we

Adam Akins: It is.

Richard Matthews: lot of second generation businesses. So, they say what it was an average business, like doesn’t even make it past five or 10 years.

And here you guys going on a second generation for the business. Do you think there’s anything special or unique about what you guys are doing, that’s allowed you to have a business that passes from generation to generation?

Adam Akins: From the outward looking in, no. There’s advertising agencies are everywhere, right? Again, I think it’s our foundation of being a faith based company, and putting that 1st and foremost. And then, yes, we are customer centric and customer focused. And we don’t have a lot of turnover in [00:11:00] our client base.

I mean, our average client has been with us 10 plus years. Whenever I came over from the agency, I brought over customers that had been with me for my entire career. So, it’s doing what we say we’re going to do when we say we’re going to do it. We pay our bills on time. We treat our, reps with respect. A lot of agencies are notorious for being jerks, and not paying their bills on time, and beating the reps up, and just the old adage, you get more flies with honey than vinegar is as true today as it’s ever been. And so, we just do the right thing. And I call it leading red with relationships, excellence, and discipline. And that I think is what sets us apart.

Richard Matthews: And it was what’s allows the company to survive long term is actually providing real value in the marketplace, showing up well for your clients, like it’s a mutual exchange of value. And you guys are just [00:12:00] keeping that at like the forefront.

Adam Akins: Yeah, correct.

Richard Matthews: Absolutely! So, I want to talk then about your superpowers, right?

Every iconic hero has a superpower, whether that’s their fancy flying suit made by their genius, or their super strength, or the ability to call out thunder from the sky. In the real world, heroes have what I call a zone of genius. Which is either a skill, or a set of skills that you were born with, or you developed over the course of your career that really sets you apart, and allow you to crush the villains in your client’s life, right? And the way I like to frame it for my guests, is if you look at all the skills that you developed over your career, there’s probably a common thread that ties all those skills together. And that common thread is where you’d find your superpower. So with that framing, what do you think your superpower is in running this multi generational agency?

Adam Akins: Hands down adaptability. There’s a saying in the movie, Moneyball, that I just love. It’s called adapt or die, right? So, whether that’s with technology, or employees, or clients, if you don’t adapt to the atmosphere that you’re [00:13:00] in, then you won’t, it’s not sustainable. So, going in, whether we are pitching an oil and gas company, a surgeon, a hospital, an auto dealer, an RV dealer, if we don’t adapt to their terminology and to their personalities, to be able to read a room, and redirect conversations, and ask the questions in a way that they understand it, we’re going to lose every time.

So, the ability to adapt and build relationships is what I would consider my superpower. And I go on a lot of sales calls with not only myself, but with some of my sales reps, and I’m amazed at how different everyone’s pitches. And it’s very easy to see how inexperienced fail, right? They don’t have it. Whether they didn’t research it, [00:14:00] they didn’t understand the audience they were talking to.

It’s very evident on those appointments. And then, also being on this side of the desk, where now the, sales people call on you from TV, and radio stations, and newspapers, and billboards, you really find out who has it and who doesn’t have it. And so, it’s been very interesting. And I’ve learned a lot about people, which again, has helped me and molded my superpower, so to speak, as I go out and meet with potential clients on a daily basis.

Richard Matthews: Yeah. Yeah. And I like adaptability too, because it’s very reminiscent of like, every person has, and especially in the business world and B2B, and you guys aren’t all in a single category, right? So, you guys operate in multiple different categories, and it’s a language skill, right? Cause every category has their own language of like how they talk.

And then, if you go further down than that, like the individual company level, the [00:15:00] companies will develop their own jargon internally. In the way, that they communicate about things. And in order to actually sell to them, and get them the results that they know they need, you have to be able to speak that language, right?

You have to be able to speak to them so they can, uh, so they trust you really.

Adam Akins: Right, no, you’re, I mean, you’re 100 percent right. If we were to walk in and start throwing out jargon, like cost per point cost per thousands to a brand new advertiser, we’ve lost trust immediately. They have no idea what we’re talking about. But if we can break it down to their level to where they fully understand it, then that’s where trust gets. Formed at that point, because now we’re a true teammate, rather than just another vendor that is trying to get their dollar.

Richard Matthews: Yeah. And I was like, I’d imagine if you’re talking to a chiropractor, they have patients. And you talking to a car dealership, they’re talking about people that are coming through the door to buy a car. Like they’re different like modes of talking as you were talking, [00:16:00] if you started talking to a automotive dealer about increasing their patient counts, it would.

That’s like, That’s like super obvious, but that’s really the point is you have to know, what are they talking about? Like restaurants, talk about the number of covers, right? The number of tables that are being covered. And so you have to understand the jargon of the industry that you were talking to, if you want to help them grow.

Adam Akins: Yeah, no, I mean, you hit the nail on the head. Yeah, you have to be able to talk the language of the customer you’re working on.

Richard Matthews: So, how do you teach that or train that to your salespeople in an organization? You said you have seven salespeople, which is a pretty large sales organization. How do you make that a, I guess, a baseline skill set that your team has, since you guys operate in so many different verticals?

Adam Akins: Yeah, so there’s a lot that goes into it. It’s not, hey, my way is the highway. But, going on and then offering, Hey, if I think if you would have said it like this, we could have turned that into a yes. And so, it’s just [00:17:00] a lot of coaching and a lot of just hands on learning. I don’t, I’m not one of those guys that holds a weekly training in my office and not that like, let’s get out in front of the customer. Again,

it goes back to, it’s okay to fail. There’s nothing you’re going to do that is going to kill us. We can fix any mistake. So to speak of. And so, it’s just a lot of hands on approach that I have found that has worked the best for us, and how we train our people. But also, I don’t hire a lot of rookie salespeople either. Most of the people that work for us have worked at a TV or radio station for 15 or 20 years.

And they’re ready to move their book of business over because maybe they’ve been with a media conglomerate for 15, 20 years, and they keep getting their commissions cut, right? And they’re [00:18:00] billing more than they’ve ever billed before in their career and corporate keeps cutting commissions to save costs. Which again, I also understand now that run a company. So, it’s getting those guys over in having them adapt to this side of the business, versus a TV station or a radio station. And it’s a learning curve. It takes a full year to fully grasp it. But once they do, again, I don’t try to change them as a person, it’s more their approach to each call.

Richard Matthews: Yeah, that makes sense. So, when you’re talking about you guys have an organization large enough to support seven salespeople, I’m curious, do you guys treat yourself as your own client for Legion purposes?

Adam Akins: We do. Yeah.

How

Richard Matthews: How do you guys manage that to like, is it a seven people salesperson team requires a large amount of lead flow?

I would imagine.

Adam Akins: So it does. It’s funny you asked that. Until about [00:19:00] a year ago, I would say, our web presence was terrible. Our advertising budget for our company was non existent, right? It’s the old, the cobbler’s kids.

Yeah. Yeah. Finally, it just, I sat down one day and looked at what we were doing and it’s like, we’ve got some mouths to feed. We need to start putting our money where our mouth is, and building our brand. So, we’re actually building out a podcast studio right now that we will do ourselves. We will offer it to our customers. We run social media ads. We run targeting to specific categories of businesses that we want to target. We do a lot of lead forms and landing pages. We market our production arm of the company. And so, just as leads and call ins come in, we get a ton of referrals. So we pass those out quite a bit as well.

Richard Matthews: That’s really fun. We’re in the same [00:20:00] boat, right? We run my audience knows we run a podcasting agency. And it was just this year, we’re like five years in that we started our own company podcast, right? We’ll call it or something. You’re like, we should probably have a podcast for our podcasting company, which is now. But yeah, it’s one of those things that is, it’s always funny that our own business seems to always get uh, the last sort of like effort.

And I realized for myself, that’s why I asked, I framed the question that way. It’s like, we had to start treating ourselves as our own customer. So, we took our company, and ran ourselves through our own onboarding process, and through our own, put ourselves in our project management system as a client, like the whole bit.

And I was like, nope, we are a client. It’s just a client. That’s not paying us money, right?

Adam Akins: Right, it’s actually costing us money.

Richard Matthews: It’s actually costing us money, which is fine. But we need to do that work. So, and you guys same way, you guys drive leads and whatnot. You have to do all the same work for yourselves.

Adam Akins: Right.

Richard Matthews: Well, then I want to, flip gears, right? We’ve talked a little bit about your superpowers. I want to talk about your fatal flaw, right? So, every super hit man has his kryptonite. Every wonder woman can’t remove her bracelets [00:21:00] of victory without going mad. You probably have a flaw that’s held you back in your business.

Something that you struggled with. For me, it was things like perfectionism. I struggled with perfectionism for a long time, kept me from shipping anything. Which then you don’t actually have a business. Or lack of self care, which really came out for me and not taking care of having not good boundaries with my time, not having good boundaries, clients, stuff like that. But I think more important than what the fly, is, is how have you worked to overcome it?

So our audience might learn a little bit from your experience.

Adam Akins: Yeah, man, that’s that’s a really good question. I could probably list 10 of them off the bat. Again, it goes back to the failure thing. I think, I’ve always been ingrained in sports, and early in business, like failing is bad. And I’ve learned over the past, whatever, seven years since 2017 that it is okay to fail. And so, kind of what you mentioned, perfectionism is probably something that is my biggest kryptonite. I try to be something for everyone, and I’m a yes man. My wife tells [00:22:00] me all the time, ” Adam, you’ve got to learn to say no.” And I even hate to admit this, but, I would say yes to the detriment of my family’s time, a lot of time.

A client could call it six o’clock at nine and say, “Hey, I need this, or this.” And I know it’s not urgent, but because we are a customer centric customer first agency, I would stop what I was doing. And if we were in the middle of dinner or a birthday dinner, I would do it. And I learned really quick that I need those guardrails. I need to learn to say no. And it’s still, it’s a struggle I deal with daily, quite frankly. So, I would say that would be my biggest you know, kryptonite is that.

Richard Matthews: I had that for a long time. Work 15, 16 hours a day because I could, and I always figured if you worked more, obviously you’d get more done. And realize actually that’s not true. The obvious part of it wasn’t so obvious until you start actually putting up the guardrails and realizing, [00:23:00] hey, if I, actually restrict the amount of time that my business gets, then it increases the productivity that time has. And so, it’s like if you have, I don’t even know how to describe it for people, but it’s if you have this much productivity during the day, and you give it this much time to do it in, and then you like, you squeeze the amount of time that you have, the productivity goes up, right? So, it’s actually the obstacle you might think.

And that, it is help to, help me with that. And the other thing of what you said that learning to say no, I actually found, It was interesting.

So, it was two sides of it for me. One was learning to say no to my business in relation to the amount of time I allowed it to have. And then, the second one was in our business, learning how to say no for what we took on for business. And, learning how to say no to things that weren’t a great fit for us. Cause I know early on, and I don’t actually know, cause you took over a successful business, one of the things that was like really interesting in like my earlier career is young [00:24:00] business that doesn’t have this not established. We said yes to a lot of things that weren’t in our core competency because they would add revenue.

And it wasn’t, until we started saying no to things that were outside of our core competency that our business really started to explode. So, it was like learning how to say no was a growth was, is a growth hack.

Adam Akins: Yeah, and that we deal with that daily, right? So, our sales people are contract sales guys, right? They’re all 1099 employees. And so, at first, we would say yes to budgets at a thousand dollars or more. And then, realizing those people with a thousand, if all they had is a thousand dollars, they took up so much time and energy, and the guys with 5 to seven to ten, fiftteen plus thousand required so much little time. And so, it was learning to say no to the low hanging fruit of these guys with a thousand dollars. [00:25:00] And teaching myself and the reps that, “Hey, it’s okay to turn down business for the sake of a bigger piece of business.” That’s been an interesting lesson that we’ve gone through really over the past three years is establishing minimum spend, and having to tell no to people. Honestly, it’s a struggle sometimes. But at the end of the day, it was the right thing to do for us.

Richard Matthews: Yeah, absolutely. And I know what was interesting for us is, once we started saying no to things that are outside of our core competency, and realizing that like we could actually survive saying yes to just the stuff that was good. It also allowed us to say yes to more things inside of

areas. And then, we’ve able to grow our business a lot because it was like, now we have a really clear line of does this fit or doesn’t it? And if it does fit, we just say yes to it, and figure it out. And it took learning how to say no before we could learn how to say yes well.

Adam Akins: Right. Yeah, that’s good.

Richard Matthews: So, I want to talk then about your common enemy, right? Every superhero [00:26:00] has an arch nemesis. I think it’s a thing that they fight against in their world. And in the world of business, it takes a lot of forms. But we like to talk about it on this show, in the context of your clients. And it’s a mindset, or a flaw that you are constantly have to fight against to actually get them the outcome that they came to you for. And so, what is that common enemy that you’re constantly having to fight with your clients in order to actually get them the results that they pay you for?

Adam Akins: So, that’s it. That’s interesting. I would say, there’s 2 of them. So, it’s the clients that think they can do it themselves because they’ve watched a YouTube video in like social media ads, for example, right? Adam, I’ve been learning how to do this. I’m like, then if you can do it, save some money and do it yourself.

I’m all for that. Nine times out of 10, they come back because they realize there’s a lot more that goes into it. So, it’s one, the people that feel like they can do it themselves is a big enemy. And sometimes they can, and [00:27:00] that’s great. I never want to be in the way for someone for growth, and if they can save revenue and do it themselves. But the second thing is time. So, some people, and if we don’t set up clear expectations, then they’re like, hey, it’s been 30 days, and my, phones aren’t ringing, or people aren’t coming in. Well, you’re running a branding campaign, and you’re expecting immediate results. So, that’s where we have failed, by not setting expectations with the client, or the client, their expectations are way too grandiose for their budget, right?

They spend $3,000 a month, and they’re expecting $30,000 in revenue and they’re selling cell phone cases. Well, that’s a lot of cell phone cases in one. And so, [00:28:00] that is probably the biggest hurdle we have to go after.

Richard Matthews: I had a client that we no longer work with anymore. But we worked for a number of years that the head of the company would always be like, I want to spend a dollar and make 10

Adam Akins: Yeah.

Richard Matthews: I was like, that’s, it’s nice that you want that, but that’s not the way it works in advertising.

He’s like, it used to work that way when back in the 80s, when he started the company, I was like, but it doesn’t work that way now.

Adam Akins: No, yeah,

Richard Matthews: And so, that was a big struggle all the time. And I know, like in our agency now with the podcast stuff, but the podcasting is definitely a branding authority, like trust building play in the marketplace.

And it’s not a kind of thing where you’re like, I put out a podcast episode today and tomorrow I’m a millionaire like Joe Rogan, right? Like it’s just, but

Adam Akins: We wish we could be.

Richard Matthews: A lot of times that’s the expectation is that I see really successful podcasts. I start a podcast. How come I’m not really successful yet?

And I’m like, it’s the same sort of like expectation setting we have to do up front, where we have to talk to them, okay, this [00:29:00] is the kind of thing that you start putting in the content. I’m doing all the work. Now, you’re going to start seeing the benefits from it. Six months down the line, a year down the line, like for our company, like when we started, like our other podcasts that we run, we started that in 2017 and it wasn’t until year four.

Year four, we ate ex to our company off the back of the podcast. But it’s like flat until it’s not. And that’s where we have to, we talked to a lot of our clients about, okay, how are you making money now so that you can invest in something that will compound over time? And return a lot of value, but you have to be able to afford it.

During the first part of it to actually get the work.

Adam Akins: Yeah.

Richard Matthews: Because branding and authority is different than almost any other type of advertising. It takes time.

Adam Akins: Oh, 100%. It takes time.

 

Richard Matthews: It takes time. I was like with Facebook ads, at least if I put the ads in now, I can know in a little while, whether or not I’m at least getting views or clicks and you can work on things, but still it’s a,

it’s just a different game and people I think don’t understand, like the different categories of advertising, and you have to be really good at learning how to manage [00:30:00] expectations if you are selling in any of those categories, whether it’s cold generation or advertising, or I imagine even TV because you said you guys do TV as well.

Adam Akins: We do.

Richard Matthews: Yeah, that TV is I would imagine it’s more difficult to track, and just to see like how it’s actually working, and what the ROI is, and managing expectations for that would be way outside of my ball field. I have no idea.

Adam Akins: No, and in fact, I had a speaking engagement today over training for some real estate agents. And talking about content, and lead gen, and just advertising in general. And I said, I literally, we were talking just about that, and it was the thing about television and radio, it’s so hard to gauge results. Especially, if you’re running on multiple stations, right? You don’t know if your radio drove them in or the TV drove them in or what, if it was ABC, or NBC, or CBS. It’s just so hard to tell, but with social media or with programmatic [00:31:00] advertising, we can tell in real time, who’s engaging with your ads, and where those people are coming from and did they fill out a form?

Fill it, or AB testing two different ad groups, which one are they engaging with. So, it’s interesting, but it goes back to setting expectations. And that’s something that we try to do with every client. And sometimes we have to, again, say no to certain clients that much like you said, they, want to spend a dollar and make 10, when they’re selling a product for 25 cents. It’s just, it’s hard to do that. And our reputation means way more to us than to take a quick dollar from someone and then have the reputation that, Oh, they just took our money and got rich off of it. And they didn’t care about [00:32:00] my business.

Richard Matthews: Yeah, and what’s interesting about what you’re talking about being able to track results in some of the more digital advertising, like the programmatic advertising, you can get really good data. And the really good data can be attractive to the business owner.

And then, sometimes they’ll take that and be like, I can’t do that with TV and advertising, or you can’t do that with podcasting or maybe even blogging. Some of the other things that aren’t as programmatic, it doesn’t mean those things aren’t valuable. It just means you can’t track them the same way.

And so, one of the things that I found really interesting is like, for podcasting in particular and this probably applies to almost anything content marketing that, what you’ll find is it’ll actually reduce the cost of your direct response ads, because you’re getting more audience and whatnot.

And so, while you don’t, while you’ll never see any, like if this is like really nerdy terminology that you’ll understand, but maybe some of our audience won’t last touch attribution, go to the ads, it’ll never go to the podcast. But if you take the podcast out of the [00:33:00] equation, the last touch attribution costs go up.

Adam Akins: Skyrocket.

Richard Matthews: Yeah, they’ll skyrocket. And so the guests will never get any attribution, because of the way programmatic advertising does attribution. If you take it out of the equation, it doesn’t perform as well. And so it’s hard to, it’s hard to gauge that with people and actually help people understand those, understand how these things work together.

I would imagine the same kind of thing happens if you’re doing TV and advertising all over the place that your Google ads probably perform better, if you’re on the TV all the time.

Adam Akins: Oh, yes, a 1000 percent, the using mass media to drive a lower cost per click. Yes. All that comes into play and if we don’t do a good job of explaining that strategy, then we have failed that client. So, we’re really big on expectations. And walking that customer through the journey of being fundamentally committed to advertise, and what that [00:34:00] looks like.

Richard Matthews: Yeah. And that includes like some of this stuff, you’ll be able to do direct ROI stuff for, and some of it you won’t. But that doesn’t mean it’s not valuable or it’s not doing its job.

Adam Akins: Right. Yeah.

Richard Matthews: Which I, as well as I do, that’s sometimes a hard conversation to have and to help people understand. Cause if they’re not in the world of advertising, I mean, you’re talking to a car dealership or a lawyer, like they’re experts in their area.

Adam Akins: Yeah, no, it’s very hard and it’s, gets harder with everything that comes out in technology, right? Being early adapters, it just, it’s a very difficult conversation to have.

Richard Matthews: Yeah. That’s one of those things. And I’m still on I don’t know how to deal with this as a company. Yet, there’s things like the technology is changing all the time. And so, as someone who’s doing advertising and marketing and content delivery and all these things that our clients pay us for which technology do you have to pay attention to, and which ones do you not?

So, the most, the biggest, like real example right now is [00:35:00] everyone’s talking about the Apple Vision Pro, which we’re a content production company. We help businesses produce content for all the major platforms. Obviously, the Apple Vision Pro is not a huge platform yet, but it’s Apple. And every platform that they’ve developed over the next 10 years, they become big platforms, right?

So, how early do we need to pay attention to? Are we building systems for this? Do we understand it? Those kinds of things. And I imagine, it’s the same in a new social network comes out for you guys, or different ways to distribute things. There’s always something new.

How do you guys manage that? Keeping eye on what’s coming down the pipeline so that you’re ready for it when it’s comes out for the clients. Cause you guys are all the way back to your mom started this company in the 80s, right? So, you’ve been through this a lot.

Adam Akins: Yeah, so we, I surround myself with a lot of people smarter than me. First and foremost, that pay attention to the trends of the latest, greatest media companies and [00:36:00] programmatic websites and all that stuff that’s out there. But like some of the research we do, and then we follow national companies and trends who have way bigger budgets than any of our customers have. And seeing their results from it, and reading case studies, and just really following the numbers, and we do that first before we ever think about recommending it to someone. I’m trying to, I think of

Richard Matthews: a,

probably, the most recent one is TikTok, exploded onto the scene in the last couple of years.

Adam Akins: it

Richard Matthews: Advertising, you guys have to at least pay attention.

Adam Akins: You know, you do. And in the, ads are different on TikTok than they are on Instagram. And so, it’s, we have to have different creative because a TV commercial is not going to work on the TikTok platform.

Same thing on Facebook and [00:37:00] Instagram, with the, how reels have really taken off, and a more organic video. How, versus a very high end production. Consumers are smart.

We do not give them enough credit. And so, it’s really finding out how they’re engaging with the latest technology. if we can get in there with excellence, then we’ll do it. But if we can’t, and we don’t, can’t speak to it with authority and wisdom, then we don’t recommend it.

Richard Matthews: I giggle with my wife regularly about TikTok, because there are you can tell as someone who does advertising. You can tell when the companies are, I don’t know how to say this, because it’s a strange phenomenon. They are professionally producing videos to look not professional.

Adam Akins: Yeah. Oh, a hundred percent.

Richard Matthews: Right. And I’m I can tell, because I know the difference between a smartphone [00:38:00] camera output, and a professional camera output. And when professional lighting is being used, when it’s not being used, and that’s a professional set. But a normal person wouldn’t know that.

But I’m like, but they’re, but it looks like a home set, and stuff like that. I’m so, it makes me giggle because as someone who’s in the industry, that is in no way an organic video. That’s, it’s an ad that was produced by a really smart advertising company to make it professional.

Adam Akins: Yeah. So we, on a lot of our production shoots, we will use cell phone, an iPhone and shoot in 4k. But it still looks a little not fully produced.

Just to capture content for the client, so we can then post it on the channels, because we know that if we put a high end production on there,

Richard Matthews: Yeah, on TikTok.

Adam Akins: People can see it through.

Richard Matthews: But go to YouTube and you don’t do a high end production, people won’t watch it. So you’re like, you know those things.

Adam Akins: Yeah. And that’s, again, if we [00:39:00] weren’t on the forefront of change and the trends, it goes back to what I said earlier, adapt or die, right? If we’re giving advice and saying, yeah, you need to run this cell phone video on YouTube about your new Mercedes dealership, you think anyone’s going to pay attention to that?

No, but if we run a really high end, beautiful video for that Mercedes dealership on TikToK, it’s not going to work. So, it’s just learning those trends, and what that research shows, and the consumer behavior when it comes to engagement on that stuff is really what we have to be on the forefront with.

Richard Matthews: That’s where, I was like, I took my son, and we went and demoed the Apple Vision Pro just to go look at it. And after we played with it, I was like, this is going to be one of those devices that I’m going to have to like expense to the company and buy at some point, because

people are going to change the way, a lot of the way computing is done over the next 10 years, [00:40:00] and at some point we’re going to have to figure out as content producers, how do you produce content for those form factors, right? And so, we’re obviously, it’s obviously we’re early in that game.

And so, it’s nice to be early and be ahead of curbs. But, everything changes so quickly now, that you just have to pay attention. You have to keep up with those things. Especially, when your role as a company is to help other companies stay on top of the current trends in advertising so they can get in front of their markets.

Adam Akins: It is, but then, it’s also knowing when to punt and not get caught up and still be operating on MySpace.

Richard Matthews: Yeah. This stuff that is like flash in the pan or stuff that’s dead.

Adam Akins: Yeah.

Richard Matthews: Yeah.

And

they just don’t, they don’t last. I was like, what is it?

Adam Akins: That’s what I love about traditional television and radio. It’s been around

forever,

Richard Matthews: Yeah.

Adam Akins: and it’s still has hundreds of thousands of eyeballs in each city. [00:41:00] And it’s still, and, people tell me all the time, I don’t watch commercials, or I don’t listen to the radio. Guess what? You don’t have to. They’ve got 80,000 people that watch it that could be buying your product, but because of your own ignorance, you’re missing out on those guys.

Richard Matthews: You’re not your own

customer. That’s one of those things that I like, it always, it makes me giggle in the advertising world. One of the things that’s really common is to talk to when people are trying to convince companies to advertise with their particular way of advertising, right? If I was going to go out and you should do a podcast.

A lot of times, you’ll see other agencies be like, email marketing is dead. Try podcasting. It’s dead. Try podcasting, right? Radio is dead. And I’m like, the first fight in my thought now is anytime someone says insert some sort of marketing thing is dead, they’re trying to sell you something. Trying

Adam Akins: To sell.

Richard Matthews: They’re trying to sell you something. Because the reality is direct mail pieces, still work. Still works. TV, still works. And it [00:42:00] was like, I don’t know about the Yellow Pages. It may or may not still work. Maybe might case probably doesn’t work. But, there’s a lot of email marketing is still huge, right?

Even though it’s 30 years old now, if you don’t have an email marketing position in your company, you’re probably leaving money on the table.

Adam Akins: It’s one of the highest ROI marketing tools you can use,

Richard Matthews: Yeah, absolutely!

Adam Akins: You know? It’s funny. Yellow Pages about five years ago, my 12 year old daughter, we pulled up to the house, and there was someone delivered Yellow Pages, and she was like, what is this? I go, it’s for your little brother to sit on. So he can be high on the dinner table.

I mean, was blown away, that it was that thick. I’m like, Oh my gosh, people are still doing this. So yeah, it was fascinating.

Richard Matthews: What’s funny to me is people tell you Yellow Pages doesn’t work anymore. You know who Yellow Pages works for? The one company that’s [00:43:00] still in, in that category in the city. They’re the one that’s getting calls from all the people who actually still use Yellow Pages.

Adam Akins: Yeah.

Richard Matthews: Working for someone

Adam Akins: It’s working for someone.

Richard Matthews: Working

for someone.

So, I want to switch. So we talked a little bit about your common enemy. I want to talk about the flip side of that, which is your driving force, right? Just like Spiderman fights to save New York or Batman fights to save Gotham or Google fights to index and categorize all the world’s information.

I want to know what it is that you fight for with your company? What’s your mission, so to speak?

Adam Akins: To brand the name of Jesus and all that we do. And it really is just to deliver incredible campaigns for our clients. To do it with relationships, excellence and discipline. And by doing that, we fulfill our mission of what we were called to do as Christians. And I tell our employees it’s how we interact with each other.

It’s how we interact with this, our sales reps that call on us. It’s how we interact with our customers. If we’ve got to [00:44:00] treat people the way we want to be treated. And do unto others as you would have them do unto you, type of mentality. So, that’s really our core values of why we get up and do what we do is to do that.

Just like just that.

Richard Matthews: to make the best damn tents on the planet, right?

Adam Akins: That’s right.

Yeah.

Richard Matthews: Nerdy joke there. For those of you who are not in the religious space, Paul is known as a tent maker in the New Testament. And uses and builds tents to build his income where he can continue to do with his work for the Lord. So in our case, you run your company, your advertising agency is your tent making.

So, I want to talk then about something really practical. We call this your hero’s tool belt, right? And just like every superhero has their awesome gadgets, like their batarangs, or their web slingers, or their laser eyes. I want to talk about the top one, maybe two tools that you couldn’t live without in your business.

It could be anything, your notepad, your calendar, your marketing tools, something you use for your product delivery. Something that you think is essential to doing your job as the CEO [00:45:00] or the one who’s running the company day to day. Something you couldn’t live without.

Adam Akins: Cell phone, as much as I hate it, it is my lifeline to the world. It has my calendar because if it’s not on my calendar, it does

nothing,

right?

Richard Matthews: Yeah.

Adam Akins: But then, it’s the way, obviously I engage, it’s how I research, it’s how I find new customers. It’s everything. That is probably the biggest tool that I have in my warchest.

Richard Matthews: That’s interesting to me. Something I, ran an experiment with this, and as a, like a C-level in the company, your job is not usually to deliver work product to clients, right? It’s to manage the company. And to make it go forward, and to manage uh, the team and the staff, and the, processes, and all the things that are like C-level type stuff.

And I realized a couple years ago, that one of the things that my laptop does for me that my phone doesn’t is my laptop allows me to get into the work product. And my phone [00:46:00] doesn’t. I challenged myself to do, I think, I can’t remember it was like six months or nine months where I was like, I’m going to keep my laptop closed, and only work from my phone, because it’ll force me to delegate, it’ll force me to build systems, it’ll force me to just think as if as an executive, what should I be doing to unlock other people so they can actually deliver the work product, instead of delivering work product myself. It did, actually.

It helped. It forced me to do a lot of things, and to really think through how I was delegating, and how I was building systems, and some of those kind of things. And go back to being able to use my laptop regularly and whatnot for other things. And I use my laptop for things that I had to use it for.

I couldn’t do this podcast without the laptop. But like, for the day to day managing of what’s going on in the company, I was, it surprised me, how much I could run the entire company from my phone.

Adam Akins: right.

Richard Matthews: It’s nuts.

Adam Akins: Yeah, we utilize GroupMe, for internal messaging, and things like that. So, I don’t have to really pick up the phone and call one of my [00:47:00] employees, unless it’s a private conversation. But, if I need to get out a mass message to someone, we can, I can text, I can obviously call.

So, I have everything on that device. And as much as I despise it, if it’s not with me, I hate it. However, when I get home, I really do. I try to put it up on the charger. It goes back to what we were talking about earlier and being present for my family and learning to say no. And having clients respect my work hours, which is still very hard. And I’m not saying I’m, perfect at it and that I I don’t check it, but I really try to, when I walk through the house, set the phone down.

So, I’m present for my wife and my kids.

Richard Matthews: I’ve done two things that have helped with that. One for me was being really clear still get on or interact with a lot of the sales process still. So I talked to the clients [00:48:00] early in our process. I’m working on doing less of that, but it’s still a big part of what we do.

And one of the things that I tell all of my clients is like, Hey, I’m going to tell you our company priorities, or my, our personal priorities. And it’s profit first, right? If we don’t have a profitable company, we can’t do anything, right? We can’t actually serve you. So it’s like profit first.

And then, it’s our family, and our team, and our clients. And it’s in that order. And so, and I tell my staff, the same thing. It’s your family comes before our company does, comes before the rest of the team. And I was like, so, I tell all my clients, I was like, if you’re not okay with being fourth priority, we probably won’t be good fit. And I was like, it doesn’t mean, we won’t do an excellent job for you, cause we will. But the only reason we can do an excellent job, is because we know our priorities. And so, what’s interesting to me is I thought starting to communicate that to our clients would actually lose us business and it’s done the opposite.

We’ve gotten more clients that have been like you telling me that on the sales call has actually given me permission to start doing the same thing in my company. And so, I found that really interesting. And then, [00:49:00] the second thing is just more technical. Getting one of these Apple Watch things, and then, setting up the notifications to be really strict on only emergencies from certain people are allowed to get through on it, means that I can take my phone, and stick it on the charger, and leave it there, and know that if something is dire, I’ll still know.

Adam Akins: Right. Yeah. It goes back up to the guardrails, right? And setting those so you know, you can’t drift too far right or too far left. But you have those warning things on the side that shake you to death, before you hit the guardrail.

And so, I think that’s great. I love that idea. Cause I don’t, I have, again, I have everything that just beeps at me. So, if it is an emergency, I can run up there. So, I’m cheating that whole thing.

Richard Matthews: Yeah. So just switch all of the notifications off on your watch. You can do it on your phone. Just go in there and just turn everything off, and then see which ones you miss and turn those ones back on.

Adam Akins: Love it! Advice. I love it.

Richard Matthews: Yeah, that’s my little secret to that. And the other thing that I just wanted to call out, because I think this is interesting. It’s really common. I asked that [00:50:00] question, how many people respond with my calendar? If it’s not on my calendar, it doesn’t exist. And

I don’t find that outside of the entrepreneurial world. Not as much, anyways. And so, it’s really fascinating to me how important it is to run a company, to manage your time.

Adam Akins: Oh, time blocking is massive for me. If I don’t like this morning, I’m working on a big media campaign in Scottsdale, Arizona, right? There are two hours behind me here in Oklahoma. So when I get to the office at seven, It’s 5 AM there. So, I know I can’t call anyone, but it allows me to put together all the media plans without the craziness of the office, and people coming in, and phones ringing, and things like that.

And so, by the time I finish that, it’s 10 AM. So, it’s 8 AM there, and now I can start calling them, and put that to bed really quick. Because I’ve done all the work from 7 to 10. And then, it’s just plug and play at that [00:51:00] point.

Richard Matthews: All sense.

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And now back to the Hero show.

Richard Matthews: So, I got one more question for you here, as we get to the end of the hour, and that’s about your own guiding principles, right? One of the things that makes heroes heroic is that they live by a code. For instance, Batman never kills his enemies. He only ever brings them to the Arkham Asylum. So, as we wrap up the interview, I want to talk about the top one, maybe two principles that you use regularly in your life that you run your business by.

Maybe something you wish you had known when you first started out your own entrepreneurial journey.

Adam Akins: Can I tell you 5 really [00:53:00] quick? And they’re on my wall. So, it’s communication. Respect integrity, excellence and discipline. Communication is by far, the most important thing we can do. It just happened yesterday. It’s so hard to read emotion through email and text message. So, we had someone send over an email. Someone else read it and just took it to complete. A complete 180 from what the email was even about. And so, had we not have communicated immediately, it could have spiraled so far out of control. So, communication, first and foremost, can eliminate so many problems. But then, it’s respect. And then, of course, integrity and the excellence in discipline.

But communication, integrity, respect are massive, because if we don’t have those, I I don’t know, really, what the point is of doing business?

Richard Matthews: Yeah, absolutely. I [00:54:00] know, the communication is one of those things that I didn’t realize as a CEO, I needed to coach my staff on until recently in my journey. I just thought it was like, people would just pick up on it or they would just learn it. It’s not that way you actually like it’s roles as the leader to teach communication, and how you want to communicate as a culture, and like to actually build a communication into your culture.

So, I just realized that recently. And what is funny to me is as a principle, it’s one of the things that I tell my kids all the time. I was like, communication is one of the few superpowers that you can develop. You can learn to become an excellent communicator, and becoming an excellent communicator is one of the most potent superpowers that you can develop in any category, right?

It doesn’t matter if it’s business, or elite athleticism, or any category you wanted to. Communication is, it’s a superpower.

Adam Akins: It is. And there’s so many bad communicators. And yes, part of our job as leaders is to teach communication and [00:55:00] it goes across the board from all genres and walks of life. If you can communicate, you can do a lot more than half the people out there. And to be known as a good communicator is one of the best things that you could be known for.

Richard Matthews: It’s the one thing as a parent that I spend more time on my kids with than anything else. My wife and I both. And it shows in the way that the rest of the world interacts with our children. And hey go, they’re just like, wow! Your kids are incredible communicators. And I was like, it’s ’cause we put a lot of effort into teaching them how to be incredible communicators.

And where it makes me giggle is I didn’t realize, I should do the same thing with my staff . I teach them how to be communicators. ‘Cause that’s, it’s an important skill. And it’s an important skill everywhere. Whether you’re a toddler who’s trying to tell your mom why you’re mad right now, or you’re a project manager working on your client’s project. It doesn’t matter where you’re at, like, communication is the skill.

Adam Akins: Right. Yeah. And not assuming, that’s another thing. It’s very [00:56:00] important. Especially like, when we’re doing creative briefs or something, assuming the client’s going to like this versus that. We’ll communicate it with them, and don’t assume it. Because assuming can cost us a lot of time and money. So, let’s just nip that in the bud and communicate it first, and then, everyone will be way better off.

Richard Matthews: Completely agree. I think that’s a great place to the interview. And I do wrap every interview with something I call the heroes challenge. And I do this to get access to stories that we might not, otherwise, find on our own. So the question is simple. Do you have anyone in your life or in your network who you think has a good entrepreneurial story?

Who are they? First names are fine. And why do you think they should come share their story with us here on the hero show

Adam Akins: Oh, man, I could tell you 20 different people right off the bat.

All my clients, right? So, one of the best is Joe Davidson with Oklahoma Joe’s Barbecue.

Richard Matthews: He haven’t had any restauranteurs on here yet.

Adam Akins: Oh my gosh, the guy he was a welder by trade in college, and built a smoker. Actually five of them and took him to the Oklahoma state fair and sold out [00:57:00] in the first day.

And now, he’s got a massive company and sell smokers all over the world. And is a world, he’s in the barbecue hall of fame, and has won every barbecue competition you can think of. He has one of the coolest stories of any of my customers and friends. So, he’s the first person I think of when you ask that.

Richard Matthews: Awesome! We’ll see if we can reach out and maybe get an introduction to him. Maybe he’ll come on the show. We don’t always get a yes, but when we, sometimes the stories are really cool. So, our last little thing here is in comic books, there’s always the crowd of people at the end who are cheering and clapping for the acts of heroism.

So our analogous to that here on this show is, we want to know where can people find you if they want your help? If they’re looking for help in their creative agencies, where can they light up the bat signal, so to speak, say, Hey, Adam, we really need your help. And I think more importantly than where is who are the right types of clients to reach out?

Adam Akins: Yeah I’m not going to say a certain category because again, we’re really diversified. We work with so many different categories of business. But if you are someone [00:58:00] that has fundamentally committed to advertise, and what I mean by that is you’re ready to invest your money and your time into growing a brand, then that is first and foremost, one of the biggest things.

Because it happens, people have the money, but then they don’t have the time to spend with us to do a full needs analysis. Or they have all the time in the world, but no money. So, those two things, then they can reach out via our website InHouseAdvertisingTulsa.com, or they can call me personally on my cell phone at 918-361-6128. We’re also on Facebook and Instagram. You can find us on Google or, anywhere, really that you can type in a search bar InHouseAdvertisingTulsa.com.

Richard Matthews: Thank you so much for coming on and sharing your story today, Adam. We’ll make sure that information is in the show notes below, for anyone who’s watching the podcast or listening to it. You’ll be able to [00:59:00] find those things so they can reach out to you if they want. And again, just thank you so much for coming on today and sharing your story.

I really appreciate getting to hear what you do, and how you do it. And just getting to hear a little bit of how a multi generational company is put together. Because all of us in business want to get to the point where we can have a company successful enough to pass on to our children.

So that’s a cool.

Adam Akins: Thank you very much. I appreciate your time and your research into the company and just all your good questions. I really appreciate you taking time to get to know me, means a lot.

Richard Matthews: Awesome! Thank you very much today and we’ll see you soon.

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