Episode 268 – Michal Fasone

[00:00:00]

Richard Matthews: Hello and welcome back to The Hero Show. My name is Richard Matthews and today I have the pleasure of having on the line, Michal Fasone. Michal, are you there?

Michal Fasone: Yes, I am.

Richard Matthews: Awesome. Glad to have you here. I know before we got on, we were chatting, you know, you’re in Kansas City, is that right?

Michal Fasone: Correct.

Richard Matthews: Awesome. Glad to have you here. I always start these shows off by doing a brief introduction for our audience who may not know who you are. So I’m going to go through your bio real quick, and then we’ll dive into your story. So Michal is the managing partner at Fasone and Partners, a full service advertising agency based in Kansas City, Missouri, founded in 1975.

Michal’s career in advertising started out as a production assistant while working for his father, Michal Fasone. From assistant to full time producer and copywriter, Michal eventually grew into the business, transitioning from production to sales and account management. After 14 years of working for his father, Michal and his business partner, Carol would equally take

Michal Fasone: Carol.

Richard Matthews: Did I say that wrong? Carol, sorry, Carol would take over the Sony and partners while their founder entered retirement. So 25 years later Michal continues to push himself and those around him for the freshest creative ideas, the smartest media strategies, and of course the next big idea with big [00:01:00] ideas with background in art architecture in his own podcast.

Michal is as media and art diverse as he is passionate. So the perfect combination of agility and experience, fan of the unique and awesome and taboo subjects, but mostly here to inspire creativity and media, creativity and business and life.

So that’s quite the introduction and especially being a second generation owner of a business it’s fascinating to see, you know, what do they say?

Most businesses don’t make it past the first couple of years to be in a business that’s going on generation number two. I always like to start off with what you’re known for. What is it that you guys do? What’s your offering in the marketplace? You know, just tell us that to start with, I guess.

Michal Fasone: So we call ourselves the little agency that roars because we like to say that we’re big enough to get the job done, but we’re small enough to do it right. So we don’t have layers of management, no layers of fees, no price minimums. You get to work directly with the people who own the agency. There really isn’t anything we don’t do.

What we’re known for is handling local and regional clients. [00:02:00] We don’t do a lot of national buys or national creative. That doesn’t mean we don’t do some occasionally, but most of what we do is going to be local or regional.

Richard Matthews: And what kind of companies do you usually do work for? Is it a, you know, is there a specific industry or you guys across the board?

Michal Fasone: It’s everywhere and everything in between. It’s B2B, it’s B2C. We’re probably right now, let’s just say safe numbers, 20, we’re probably in 20 DMAs at any given time. Designated market areas, instead of saying 20 cities, we’re in 20 markets.

Richard Matthews: Makes sense. And just all over the place. So how big of a company are we talking to you guys? You know, small team, four or five people, or you got like a hundred people? How big is

Michal Fasone: No, we’re, there’s 10, we’re 10 strong.

Richard Matthews: 10 strong and I just operate all over the place. So I always like to to start off with your origin story. And we heard a little bit of in your introduction, but your origin story is every superhero has their origin story, right? It’s the thing that made them into the hero they are today. And we want to hear that story.

Were you born a hero or were you bit by a radioactive spider that made you want to, you know, take over your father’s business? Or did you start in a job, which I know we [00:03:00] heard a little bit of that and made you want to become an entrepreneur, but basically where did you come from?

Michal Fasone: Oh, I came from Kansas City. I’ve born and raised in Kansas City, but it was really, this was not planned, my entry into advertising. I thought it was going to be an architect. When I realized the amount of math and science that involved, that became a big turnoff. And I was introduced at an early age to commercial production, video production specifically, and I really took to it.

And then from there, as you read in my bio, production leads to actually being a production assistant led to actually producing, led to handling accounts, then transitioning over to the sales side.

Richard Matthews: Nice. And so for our audience who may not be super familiar with the advertising world, can you talk a little bit about what those things mean? Like, what do you mean when you say producing or production assistant when it comes to advertising?

Michal Fasone: Absolutely. So when I started this was pre, I don’t want to say [00:04:00] pre-technology, because technology has always been around, it was pre-smart phone, it was pre, almost even email, you know, we’re talking 2000, 2001 were if you were running dubs. Station dubs to go on air or dubs for approval for your client to see their spots and approve it no matter what it is.

It’s long format, short format, audio, video. You would do those on VHS or BEtamax and hand deliver those to your client before email existed. So as a PA in my first days of advertising, I would arrange props for shoots, call studios and book talent time, confirm talent time, show up and just go for, do whatever I was needed to do empty trash, answer phones, you know, your typical production assistant job, moving sandbags, assisting with script edits, not allowed to do any script writing at that stage, but certainly allowed to do some simple edits, stuff like that.

That’s your production assistant stuff. [00:05:00] It’s, you know, you have producers directors of photography, you have cameramen, you have grips. And then you have people off to the side that go and get sandwiches. They go and make sure that everyone’s on time, go and do a lot of those things that we take for granted sometimes.

Richard Matthews: So when you’re talking advertising, you’re talking like legitimately the big ads that people might see on like the Super Bowl or on the local television stuff. Is that right? Is that what we’re talking about for advertising?

Michal Fasone: Yes. Legitimately big ads. We do legitimately big ads.

Richard Matthews: So do you guys any of the I know with the way that the world has moved more of the, you see more of like the YouTube video ads nowadays or Facebook ads, anything like that, or are you still doing exclusively like television and radio?

Michal Fasone: We’re running Facebook campaigns, meta campaigns. In other words, we’re running YouTube campaigns. YouTube has a great ad model between YouTube and YouTube TV. Those are two great places to put ad dollars along with all your streaming services. Hulu is another great place. OTT over the top television, which is an ecosystem that combines all of the streaming [00:06:00] channels that are free into an ad model that we can buy for on behalf of our clients.

So if you’re streaming from a Roku or a Fire Stick or direct from the network or from a Samsung smart TV, capturing all those impressions as well, and being able to serve them. So no, it’s not just old fashioned linear television network television or feed television. It’s streaming, it’s internet, it’s it’s everything.

Richard Matthews: So do you find that you have to produce a different ad if you’re depending on whether or not you’re going to YouTube or the streaming services or, you know, traditional cable, or can you use

Michal Fasone: not really.

Richard Matthews: the same media?

Michal Fasone: You want your media, you want your creative to be the same because you don’t want your audience to see your product and image in a different manner than they’re seeing it in somewhere else.

So for consistency sake, you want the same ad. Now, if your frequency is so high, we just had this conversation last week with an attorney.

If your frequency is so high, advertising is reach your frequency. It’s two things. If your frequency is so high, you know, those [00:07:00] commercials that you see every minute and a half, well, then you want multiple creatives running because your audience, the consumer is going to get real burned out, real fast, seeing the same commercial every minute

Richard Matthews: Yeah.

Michal Fasone: You know, that’s not fun for anyone. You get a bad taste as a consumer and as the advertiser, your advertising loses its effectiveness when it just glosses over you.

Richard Matthews: So I’m curious then, like, I know, depending on the network and like where you’re producing the ad, like you have different opportunities for calls to action, like where someone’s watching on YouTube, they’re generally like holding their phone or their laptop and they can respond to a call to action by like clicking on it.

But if we’re showing up on like on their streaming device, on the TV or on cable television, your calls to action are, you know, you have different opportunities for those. Do you guys switch calls to action out or do you guys use something that works across the board?

Michal Fasone: That’s a good point. You know, sometimes we do utilize like a QR code. That kind of directly answers your question a little bit because you’re right, you know, the phone isn’t always readily available. And if you’re watching on screen, we’re [00:08:00] watching everything on the screen, but if you’re watching it, you know, YouTube on a tablet or a laptop or a smartphone even, and the same goes for Hulu and other Streaming services.

Those are all, when you look at the post buy reports, 60 to 80% of your impressions are being served on mobile or tablet, the smallest majority of your impressions are being served on desktop.

Richard Matthews: Yeah. Absolutely. So I know you’ve gotten to play in all the different categories because you started off at the bottom and worked your way up to owning the company here, I want to find out what your superpower that you’ve developed over the course of your career here is right.

Every hero has a superpower, whether that’s their fancy flying suit made by their genius intellect or the ability to call down thunder from the sky. You know, the real world heals 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 energize everything that you do.

And so the way I like to frame it for my guests, if you look at the course of your career and all the things that the skills that you’ve developed, there’s probably a common thread that ties all those skills together. And that common thread is probably where you’d find your superpower.

So with [00:09:00] that, what do you think your superpower is as the head of the company now?

Michal Fasone: Man, maybe you should have given me some warm up time on that question, Richard. You said my zone of genius. Is that what you called it?

Richard Matthews: Yeah. The zone of genius.

Michal Fasone: My zone of genius. What is my zone of genius? You know, I like what was written there in the bio the combination of agility and experience.

Richard Matthews: Yeah.

Michal Fasone: Because I think that’s important in our industry and that’s important to have when you’re in advertising, working on multiple clients in multiple industries, we’re not a large agency, which means we do a lot with a lot of different types of companies.

Versus a larger agency you may only work on 1 category of 1 client, you know, if you’re working on McDonald’s, for example, at a large agency, you probably don’t work on all of McDonald’s. You only work on the beverage division of McDonald’s or you only work on the appetizer menu layout division of McDonald’s.

Here you’re going to work on a local HVAC dealer, then you’re going to jump over [00:10:00] to a kitchen and bath remodeler. Then you’re going to jump over to a casino appetizer. And it keeps things interesting.

So I would say my zone of genius is and my super skill, I’m going to say creativity, Richard.

Richard Matthews: Yeah. And that creativity comes from just having access to playing with a lot of different markets and being able to like cross pollinate the ideas and what

Michal Fasone: It doesn’t hurt because you know, what’s working in other markets and you know what other markets are doing. Not just from a media standpoint, because we’re media and creative, they both have to be 100% right.

But you see different flavors from different parts of the country, and it’s amazing how similar really every market is, but yet how some markets that you may think like a larger market, like, in California, somewhere, because we do a lot of work there.

You can see that on our website, but, at the end of the day, when you’re producing a cardular commercial in California, it’s no different than producing a cardular commercial here in Kansas City. We’re all human, we’re all the same type of [00:11:00] person, you know, in every state, no matter what we’re doing, even though we may talk a little bit different, be in different time zones and have different climate, at the end of the day, we’re all looking for the same thing, results.

Richard Matthews: Yeah, absolutely. I know one of the things I’ve always found interesting, you know, my audience knows this, we travel full time. So we go state to state and city to city pretty regularly.

And you’ll find that you mentioned car dealerships and in particular car dealerships will have you can always tell which Carla dealerships are using like the same advertising agency because the messaging will be like the same, cause if it works in California, it works in Kansas City.

And it’ll just like the same ad, except it’ll be with a different what’d you call them? A different dealership.

Michal Fasone: And that’s common. You hear the same voice, same voiceover, similar graphics, similar editing styles. You travel all over for the podcast?

Richard Matthews: I travel all over because we travel and you know, we run the podcast while we go, but yeah.

Michal Fasone: Okay. You guys just travel for fun.

Richard Matthews: We just travel for fun. Yeah. You know, technology allows us to travel. So we do.

Michal Fasone: Okay. you and your family?[00:12:00]

Richard Matthews: Yeah. My wife, our four kids, and at the moment we have two ferrets and a cat.

Michal Fasone: Four kids, two ferrets and a cat.

Richard Matthews: Yes.

Michal Fasone: How do you travel with two ferrets and a cat?

Richard Matthews: Well, the ferrets have a crate that they sleep in at night, and the cat has a, you know, he’s got his litter box and other things, but they all like traveling. The ferrets are they’re actually really like going places. So we have a little that they go in. I got a couple of leashes for them and you know, the kids take them out to the park and they really like splash pads for whatever reason.

So they take them to the splash pads and they run around and play and whatnot. They’re really interesting little critters. It’s like, if you’ve never had a ferret before, they’re kind of like having a really strange cat that really likes to play.

Michal Fasone: Man, I bet you get some interesting looks in public.

Richard Matthews: We do.

Michal Fasone: Oh, okay.

Richard Matthews: So, yeah, with,

Dar Barbarian had a ferret.

I know and it used to be, he’s not my superhero. I have some others, but I like ferrets. He actually used to be a thing that royal families always had. So you see a lot of like pictures of royal families, like portraits of them, and they’ll have their ferret in them. It was a sign of [00:13:00] wealth and other things, you know, over the last couple of thousand years.

Michal Fasone: Okay,

Richard Matthews: Yeah, they’re interesting. Their job used to be hunting mice and rabbits and stuff, and so like your grandparents, for instance, would probably have hired a ferret meister instead of like an exterminator. But then

Michal Fasone: Do you have them there? Can we see them?

Richard Matthews: They are probably asleep somewhere. I don’t know where they are.

Michal Fasone: Wake them up.

Richard Matthews: Wake up, I’d have to find them first. So that’s one of the things they free range like a cat does. So they run around and they only wake up in the mornings and the evenings.

So they are probably in a drawer sleeping in someone’s shirts and they’ll wake up this evening. Yeah and they’ll get all excited and want to play right around dinner time and they’ll play for a couple hours with the kids and us and then, they’ll sleep all night and get up in the morning and do it again.

Michal Fasone: Okay, so I’ve heard this before. I’ve heard this ferret smell.

Richard Matthews: Yeah, so they have a scent gland when they’re born and that’s part of their heritage as a mouse and rat killer. The smell actually deters mice and rats. But nowadays, since they don’t really have that job anymore, most of the time when you get a ferret, they get de scented.

And the scent gland is removed. So they don’t really smell any different than a cat or a dog. You know, you know, a cat smells a little bit different than a dog, [00:14:00] but unless you get them wet, you can’t really tell. So

Michal Fasone: Okay. What are their names?

Richard Matthews: We have Hercules and Calypso.

Michal Fasone: Okay.

Richard Matthews: So, my son, who’s very into Greek mythology named them.

We had a previously we had a different female ferret. And so it was Hercules and Xena but Xena passed away. And so when we replaced them, because they’re social there, they need to be in pairs, at least we replaced the female ferret. Couldn’t name her Xena again. So now she’s named Calypso.

Michal Fasone: See a ferret expert. You have ferret expertise.

Richard Matthews: Yeah. Basically only because we’ve we’ve had them for a few years now. And so, you know, travel with our ferrets. So

Michal Fasone: That’s too cool.

Richard Matthews: Yeah. I like them.

Michal Fasone: You have like a Winnebago or something or a travel trailer or

Richard Matthews: We have one of those big travel buses. So if you see the the class a motor homes are flat on the front and the back and whatnot, and it’s got the slides on sides and, you know, custom built triple bunks in it for the kids, I custom built my podcast studio here, so I got lights. And this backdrop actually rolls up on the thing.

And I’ve got a teleprompter here that I can see you and my questions.

Michal Fasone: Are you in it now?

Richard Matthews: Yeah, we’re in the RV now I’m in there where we full time travel. So we’re always in the RV

Michal Fasone: Do [00:15:00] you have a home?

Richard Matthews: We do not.

Michal Fasone: Oh, you live in that?

Richard Matthews: We do.

Michal Fasone: Okay.

Richard Matthews: So, we are in the process of changing from RV travel to yacht travel, so we’re working on finding a boat that we can have an office and other things in so we can start going port to port around the world with the kids. So,

Michal Fasone: Wow. Okay. Four kids, two adults, two ferrets, one cat.

Richard Matthews: One cat. The cat’s new, we got the cat over Christmas. So, he’s a new

Michal Fasone: That cat going to go on the boat?

Richard Matthews: We adopted him from my brother. My brother doesn’t have any kids. And this cat was one of several he owned that really wanted more attention than a single couple could provide for him and moved over here with us.

And he is in heaven because he’s getting all the attention he could ever want from you know, four kids.

Michal Fasone: Have a few more questions, Richard. I know this is about me, but by all means.

Richard Matthews: Yeah. You know, exchange of stories. That’s we’re all here.

Michal Fasone: What State are you in right now?

Richard Matthews: We’re in central Florida.

Michal Fasone: Okay. How long will you be there for?

Richard Matthews: We’re going to be here for most of the summer. So we generally pause for the summer and [00:16:00] then travel over the winter and go visit all sorts of places. And that’s just because we have a community of friends and family and whatnot and, you know, holidays and everything, we have plans with all of our friends.

Michal Fasone: Are you chasing warmth? Are you chasing climate?

Richard Matthews: Sometimes, yeah, we chase warmth, we chase we, we’ve seen all the states in the country now, so generally when we’re traveling, we’re going to visit people and that’s why we’re working on traveling, on transitioning to a boat, because we’ve seen all the things we want to see here in the U.S.

So our continuing travels, we want to start getting into places we haven’t been before, and eat food we haven’t eaten, and speak languages we haven’t spoken, and that kind of stuff.

Michal Fasone: See ferrets from other countries.

Richard Matthews: See ferrets from other countries. I have no idea how that’s going to go actually. Because like

Michal Fasone: Do they?

Richard Matthews: Most of the places, like they have rules for cats and dogs, but they don’t always have rules for ferrets that several States do but a lot of them, like a lot of them don’t. So they’re just like, yeah, we don’t have rules for ferrets, whatever and they just let you go.

We’ll see how it goes when you get to the international waters. Maybe there’ll be like, you know, you can’t come into our country because you have ferrets. I don’t know. We’ll find out.

Michal Fasone: This is interesting.

Richard Matthews: Yeah. Thank [00:17:00] you.

So, we talked a little bit about your superpowers, creativity, which, you know, one of the things we’ve talked about on this show before is traveling actually has some sort of an impact on creativity. We haven’t really decided what it is yet, but it’s something that I have theories about because our business has significantly grown since we started traveling seven years ago.

And I’ve been trying to figure out like, what are some of the things about traveling that have allowed us to do that? And when we were flatlined a lot for many years before, and I don’t exactly know what it is, but I have maybe an idea or two, one of them that like your routines get changed all the time.

And so you’re constantly in that creative mind state of like, you have to learn where the grocery stores are, and you have to learn where the gas stations are, and you have to figure out who the people you’re going to hang out with are, and introduce yourself to new people, and you’re just sort of always in this, like, creative mind state because your lifestyle is forcing you to be there, and that seems to have had a rollover effect into our business.

Michal Fasone: Do you have another podcast that focuses on [00:18:00] travel and your travel experiences?

Richard Matthews: I have the start of one. It’s called a days without incident.

Michal Fasone: That seems like a no brainer.

Richard Matthews: Yeah. I have five years of footage for that podcast that I have not gotten to putting together, but yes.

Michal Fasone: You need to get to it before it’s too dated.

Richard Matthews: Yeah. So I have, I need to hire someone to go through all of that footage and start turning it into a podcast for us, but yes.

Michal Fasone: Okay.

Richard Matthews: So. Well, I want to change gears a little bit and talk about your fatal flaw, right? Every Superman has his kryptonite or Wonder Woman can’t remove her bracelets of victory without going mad. So, you probably have a flaw that’s held you back in your business. For me, I struggled with perfectionism for a long time.

Still do sometimes where keeps me from shipping product cause I could always tweak it a little bit more before we take it out to market. And sometimes I also struggled with a lack of self care, which is like not having good boundaries with my clients, not having good boundaries with my time.

And, you know, I experimented at one point with seeing if you, what no sleeping would do to your work schedule. It’s really bad by the way, don’t do that. But I think more important than what the flaw is how have you worked to overcome it so you could continue to grow and especially get to the point [00:19:00] where you’re, you know, running a second generation company.

Michal Fasone: First of all, I want to know how long did you go without sleep?

Richard Matthews: Managed to make it about two and a half days before I was puking in the bushes. It was not good.

Michal Fasone: Puking?

Richard Matthews: Puking. Made me sick.

Michal Fasone: It did?

Richard Matthews: Yeah.

Michal Fasone: What were you doing?

Richard Matthews: I was in college at the time and I figured if I had more time to work on things you know, the best way to get time was no, I wasn’t drinking. I don’t drink.

Michal Fasone: You’re doing drugs.

Richard Matthews: No drugs It was just literally, let’s see if I can work 24, seven, three 65. And I made it two and a half days

Michal Fasone: And he puked.

Richard Matthews: And before it started making me sick.

Michal Fasone: You got sick. Okay. I can answer this, I think pretty easily. Mine’s patience.

Richard Matthews: And how does that impacted your business for like learning how to be more patient or, you know, that kind of stuff?

Michal Fasone: Yeah, it takes for me, at least I’ll speak for myself. It takes years or it’s taking years to just identify what the thing is. The thing is, it’s not working. That’s not clicking between myself and the things that are in the people and things [00:20:00] around me. And you realize that not everyone wants to work or can work at your speed or your level.

And it’s really just managing your own expectations. And, you know, the reality of the world around you and being okay with the fact that you know, you don’t have to do five and six things at once and complete them all. It’s okay to have, you know, lists and I have plenty of them all around me and behind me, but patience has been a big struggle, but it’s been a lot better.

Richard Matthews: Yeah, I know for me, patience is like, it comes across in two different ways. The first one is patience to actually get a result in the company, right? Like, I think, you know, we’re going to start this new project, we’re going to go this new direction, or we’re going to hit a new revenue target.

And I’m like, we can do that in six weeks, it actually takes six months or six years. Right? And being patient enough to actually do the work and to show up and to not give up on things when, you know, what is it like, you know, 10 feet before you strike oil kind of thing, giving up before you get there and [00:21:00] having the patience to just like continue through and know that like, if it’s worth doing, it’s worth taking the time to do. So that’s the first one.

Michal Fasone: Well with that comes managing your intensity levels. For me, you know, it’s a matter of dialing, calibrating yourself to where you need to be to again match the people and things around you, because I can run hot. I can run quick and that’s okay for me. And that’s transparent to my clients, but, I have coworkers and my business partner, she’s kind of, the same way.

But that doesn’t mean that everyone’s that way.

Richard Matthews: Yeah.

Michal Fasone: And it’s easy, especially when you are in charge, that’s the pitfall. It’s easy to think that everyone can run at your speed and you hear that a lot. And you see that a lot, you know, working with other industries and with other companies, you can see that, you know, they push their people too much, or they don’t push them enough, or they’re harder on certain departments than they are on other departments.

So I guess one thing I’m adding to this is it’s as much [00:22:00] learning about myself as it is watching other people. And seeing how they operate and learning from them too.

Richard Matthews: Yeah, I know that’s one of the things that I still struggle with as an entrepreneur is, realizing that like I operate at a certain speed, which is quite a bit faster than the normal people in the world which who are not non-entrepreneurs and I find that it’s pretty common among our peers here in the entrepreneur spaces as we tend to what did you call it? Run hot, right?

We can go fast and sometimes really fast and operate a lot of, you know, that quickly and then to manage your own expectations for what your people are capable of, because you definitely want to push them to be their best and to show up in the best way they can.

But to realize that their speed limits are different than yours and that’s okay. Right? Because reason you hire them is for the skills that they have that you don’t. Right? And to see that, you know, sometimes for the speed, you’re just gonna have to hire more people to do the same work.

Michal Fasone: Or you know, just put a governor on yourself and just govern yourself differently so that your [00:23:00] own expectations aren’t, because a lot of the times that speed, that pushes you or that pulls me, however you want to describe it. That’s just between you and me. That’s only you can feel that only I can feel that most of the time.

You know, before it gets transferred into someone or something outside of ourselves, outside of you and me, first, it starts here with us, and I think it’s being able to govern that and understand better how to self control that, because at the end of the day my internal speed isn’t going to matter that much to anyone in the outside world.

It’s just going to stress me out.

Richard Matthews: Yeah, that’s a good point. And the one of the things that I talk about all the time is giving yourself permission to play, right? And taking some of that speed and other things that you have going for yourself and just being like, so like, there’s two things to that is like, I call it a micro completions and permission to play that you have a thing that you’re going to get done and that you can take from start to finish and just get completed.

And then when you’re done with that thing, take off, right? Like go do something that is not work related [00:24:00] and use all of that energy you have to take care of yourself, take care of your family, to take care of your friends and your community and that kind of stuff. And then show back up at work more refreshed and more creative.

Michal Fasone: You’re just delaying your gratification. You’re earning it. In other words. You know, it’s no different than someone who doesn’t have a drink until work is over. You know, they’re going to earn the drink. They’re going to earn the smoke. They’re going to earn whatever it is instead of satisfying themselves throughout they go throughout the day.

Richard Matthews: Yeah, absolutely. I want to talk a little bit about your common enemy, right? And this has to do with your clients, but every superhero has an arch nemesis. It’s the thing that they constantly have to fight against in their world and in the world of business, it takes on a lot of forms, but we’d like to talk in context of your clients, right?

These are people that hire you for a specific result and it’s a mindset or a flaw that you have to constantly fight against so that you can actually get them the result that they came to you for in the first place.

So in the world of large media advertising, creative and advertising, what is that common enemy for you guys?

Michal Fasone: It’s probably no different than it is for any body in business right now. That’s the fact that there’s so much, [00:25:00] or it feels like there’s so much going on that’s new and different and that deviates from what we used to do. And that’s not just how we consume media, that’s turning into how we shop for things, how we physically go places, how and what we drive to get there, you know, like you’ve mentioned the way because of technology, you’re able to, I don’t want to say homeless, you’re able to have a

Richard Matthews: To Vagabond.

Michal Fasone: model home. There you go. You’re able to be a gypsy and maybe that’s derogatory term. If it is, I’m sorry, but you’re able to live in an RV and travel with your family. You know, 15 years ago, you couldn’t have done this show traveling the nation. Not the way you’re doing it now, at least.

Richard Matthews: No, not at all. And I said we started seven years ago and it was significantly harder seven years ago than it is today. The technology has dramatically changed what we’re capable of doing.

Michal Fasone: And I think when the client has a [00:26:00] lot of seemingly new information and new data and new medias and new everything. That one that spurs a lot of pop up growth from new agencies. So now there’s new types of agencies and different types of agencies. There’s social media firms, there’s TikTok only firms, there’s, you know, you name it.

So, it’s really easy, especially in times of change. And we’re kind of coming out of one of those finally, I think in 2024, after, you know, three or four years of COVID and disruption. And I think anytime you’re in a turbulent period like that, it makes it really easy for anyone, including ourselves on the agency side to jump to any one conclusion, like that data can solve all of our problems or every ad lead should correlate one to one with an advertising outbound message.

Well, no, not always, you know, ad revenue will never be 100% trackable. No matter what [00:27:00] Meta tells you, no matter what your friends down the street are telling you. Yeah. And you’re going to hear the stories about, Oh, well, all I did was $50 a day in Google ads and I grew my business by $13 million in one year.

Okay, maybe that’s what did it but I’m guessing that’s not going to work for everyone in your industry. Not everyone’s going to hit that gold vein and it just.

Richard Matthews: It’s one of those interesting things that I see a lot because, you know, I run a company that does podcast production. And so, we have an agency in that space and it’s content creation, right? That’s what we create is we create content in the marketplace.

And we have the same kind of like issue where people are like, TikTok is here this year, it wasn’t here last year. YouTube shorts is here this year, and it wasn’t here a couple of years ago. And, you know, Facebook reels are really important now. And they weren’t real important a little while ago.

And, you know, and like every time something changes in the marketplace, people are like, Oh, what do I need to know that I didn’t know before? And the reality is like podcasting is a storytelling platform, right? You have to learn how to tell stories. And the way that you [00:28:00] tell stories doesn’t change from generation to generation for all of human history, right? Like, the medium that we’re using to tell stories might change. Right?

Podcasting is really big now at what didn’t exist 20 years ago, right? That the medium that we use to tell stories doesn’t change. And I think it’s probably the same in advertising where human buyer psychology hasn’t ever changed what we buy for same reasons and it’s just the methods that you might be using to get that message in front of the market changes, but like the baseline of like, how do you put together a message that convinces someone to buy is probably very similar today as it was 20 years ago.

Michal Fasone: Changed. It hasn’t changed. Well, it’s all changed, but the foundation of how you get there has not, and that’s media and creative and being a full service agency, we like to say you have to have good media and good creative, because if you have good media and bad creative then all the right people saw a bad spot.

On [00:29:00] the flip side of that, you can have all of the wrong people see a good spot. So you really need your creative and media to compliment each other and they both need to be super strong and yeah, compliment each other so that they’re working hand in hand.

They can’t be disjointed.

Richard Matthews: Yeah.

Michal Fasone: That’s never changed, but you’re right. You know, something new comes along and it’s okay. Well, how do I maximize this? And now all of a sudden I’m going to jump onto this or latch onto this, but I’m going to do it by letting go of a legacy media, if you will, or letting go of something that you know has always worked, but your neighbor down the street is telling you he doesn’t listen to radio anymore.

Who does, or, you know, watch TV as much and they do more streaming. And that’s all of us.

Richard Matthews: I always tell people that anyone who tells you insert marketing method is dead is trying to sell you another marketing method, right? Email marketing.

Michal Fasone: Usually if you have a hammer, everything’s a nail, you know what I mean? And that’s [00:30:00] why and then again, that’s what makes being an objective full service agency valuable to clients and to clients who understand who and what that means. Because at the end of the day, we don’t care what our clients buy.

We’ll tell them if we disagree but if they’re adamant on buying whatever the meaning is, then we’ll do that. Cause at the end of the day, they’re the client, it’s their money.

Richard Matthews: Do you guys get into any of the offline media like billboards or direct mail or any of those kind of things? Or is it all

Michal Fasone: Out of home as you might call it?

Richard Matthews: Yeah.

Michal Fasone: Yes, we sure do. You’ll see a lot of samples of especially our casino billboards. They’re very cool. You should check some of those out if you haven’t. Yeah. They have big giant 200, 300 pound icons that are built out and we have a lot of full neon boards.

You know, so you get to have a lot of fun when you can, but absolutely. Yeah. We do a lot of out of home.

Richard Matthews: Yeah. And that’s just one of those things. Like as a full service agency, you really get to see like, you know, the agencies that specialize like mine, right? Like we [00:31:00] specialize in podcasting and that’s all we do that it’s really easy to fall into that trap of like, the only thing you should do is podcasting because that’s the thing that we sell, which isn’t true of course.

Cause like, you know, we actually, as a podcasting agency use direct mail to drive clients, right? And we use

Michal Fasone: You really,

Richard Matthews: Yeah, we do. And it’s interesting that like, you know, podcasting is certainly a powerful medium, but it’s not the only one that’s available. And there’s so much that goes into like, as I’ve learned to grow my company, we are actively looking at every channel that’s available that we put media into to drive leads for our own company.

And so I think one of the things that’s unique about us is that despite the fact that we are, we specialize in what we do is I always, I’m talking to our clients about like, Hey, podcasting should be a part of a much larger like thing that you’re doing. And how does it fit into your direct mail strategy?

And how does it fit into your email strategy and your pay per click strategy and your TV marketing strategy and all those kinds of things, like it should be. They should all be a part of this whole, and you’re using the pieces you have available to you. Assuming your market is there, [00:32:00] right?

Like if you don’t have a local presence, what gets the billboard kind of thing. Right? But as long as you, you can reach your market with that medium, you should probably have some sort of strategy to be using it to grow your business.

Michal Fasone: How long have you been listening to podcasts?

Richard Matthews: 15 years.

Okay.

Michal Fasone: What were some of the first ones you started listening to?

Richard Matthews: The Tim Ferris podcast was probably one of the first ones that I listened to back in 2007 I think. When I picked up his book on the four hour work week and I became a obsessed with building systems and whatnot. His was one of the first podcasts I listened to.

Michal Fasone: Okay.

Richard Matthews: Yeah. How about you,

Michal Fasone: So yeah you started early.

Richard Matthews: How about you? It was one of the first podcasts you listened to.

Michal Fasone: Yeah, dude.

Richard Matthews: Yeah, dude?

Michal Fasone: Yeah, U H Y E A H D U D

Richard Matthews: And what’s that one about?

Michal Fasone: It’s here it’s Jonathan Larroquette and Seth Romatelli. Oh, I do have it. My UID pin.

Richard Matthews: Nice.

Michal Fasone: They have a merch store and I’m very loyal to their brand and to their podcasts, but it’s just two guys [00:33:00] talking about Oh, look, and I have my own. I like flair.

Richard Matthews: There you go.

Michal Fasone: Do you have flair for your podcast?

Richard Matthews: We don’t. I need flair, but we should totally get some. I have a,

Michal Fasone: Email me and I’ll send you pens.

Richard Matthews: I have an idea. We have access to 3d printer and you can get, I don’t know if you’ve seen these Funko pops. You can get custom design Funko pops. I’m going to start making Funko pops for all of my guests and like send it to them, like, here’s a little, like a hero, like a superhero version of yourself to put on your desk.

Michal Fasone: Or call Funko and have them make them for you. That would be cool.

Richard Matthews: That would be cool. So. Awesome. So I want to flip side of the common enemy is your driving force, right? So if your common enemy is what you fight against, your driving force is what you fight for. So just like Spider Man fights to save New York or Batman fights to save Gotham or Google fights to index and categorize all the world’s information.

What is it that you guys fight for at the Fasone and partners, your mission, so to speak.

Michal Fasone: Results.

Richard Matthews: So what does that mean in the advertising world?

Michal Fasone: It means my clients win.

Richard Matthews: So they beat their competitors and get all the leads in the marketplace?

Michal Fasone: Sometimes it’s not about [00:34:00] competition. Sometimes it’s about beating your own goals or exceeding your own margins. And yeah, sometimes it’s about the competition. And sometimes it’s just about having a really good sales period.

Sometimes it’s just as simple as doing better than he did year over day because when they win, we win and when they win, my vendors win and when my vendors win on my client wins, I win.

And that’s our philosophy is do the right thing for our vendors ourselves and our clients.

Richard Matthews: Yeah, absolutely.

Michal Fasone: Cause when we do that, we can create a multi decade relationship with our clients and we can create a relationship of total transparency where there’s nothing to hide, whether it’s fees or the way we work or the way we communicate.

And yeah, the driving force is winning, it’s an internal feeling, obviously. And it’s an internal win too, because it’s not public. It’s not like you get an award for every time you win something or that you know, you get to pat yourself on the back and that’s what we work for.

Richard Matthews: So when you start relationships with clients, do you find out what [00:35:00] the win metric is? Because you mentioned several things, everything from year over year growth, or beating the competition, or getting leads, and so it’s like different for every client.

Michal Fasone: Absolutely. We absolutely have to, no different than you dealing with a family of what is it? Or there’s seven of you, including all the creatures.

Richard Matthews: There’s six of us and the creatures, yeah.

Michal Fasone: You have to listen. You know, as being a father, as being dad, you have to listen to the people around you and imagine, I don’t know, I’m not a parent, but no, I mean that, you know, and of course, so you have to listen to your client and you have to figure out what are your challenges, Mr. Client, what are your pain points? Who do you think you are and who do you want to be? And who do you think your competition is? Who do you think they’re trying to be?

You know, what are the realistic goals? What are the non realistic goals? And that’s the wrong way to phrase that but you know, what’s the immediate goal? Okay, great. We need to sell more trucks in the month of March because that’s truck month. Or we need more coin in the summer at our casinos [00:36:00] because it’s summer and we should have higher traffic.

And then what’s our long term goal? You know, three to five years out, we want to have our website function in a different way than it functions today or we want to grow into a second and third location. Just met with a client last week that’s opening up a second location here in the greater Kansas City metro area.

On the Kansas side, if you don’t know anything about Kansas City, that’s okay. Just know that we straddle Kansas and Missouri, but we’re called Kansas City, Missouri. So, okay.

Richard Matthews: Yeah, I had a best friend in college that lived there, so we were there all the time. So I’m familiar with the split there.

Michal Fasone: But you know, it’s just a few years now. What’s the immediate goal in need? What’s the long range goal in need? And work towards both of those while at the same time managing the expectations of your clients, because the client isn’t always one person, you know, one client can be four to six people that you have to, you know, manage personalities, [00:37:00] manage expectations, know their hierarchy within the four to six of them and how to communicate with them.

Richard Matthews: So, I have an

Michal Fasone: and again,

Richard Matthews: Interesting question that sort of pops up as you’re talking about that, which is, you know, you guys like to win and advertising is a thing that drives business. Have you ever run into the problem or how do you deal with the problem of advertising be able to outpace operations ability to deliver?

And how do you manage that an advertising agency?

Michal Fasone: Sorry, I thought this was turned off. I apologize. That’s that again,

Richard Matthews: Yeah. So as an advertising agency, you guys drive business. And so one of the things I know is operations can sometimes be a limiting factor on your ability to drive business. So as an advertising agency, when you’re talking about winning, do you ever run into the problem of being able to out advertise a business’s ability to deliver?

And if so, how do you manage that as an agency?

Michal Fasone: Yes. So COVID is a good example of that. You had businesses that had too much market share. There was too much market and they couldn’t get to them fast enough. And you saw a lot of that in [00:38:00] home services, home remodeling, home improvement, windows, siding, bathrooms, kitchens, that type of industry had too much market share and they couldn’t get to them quick enough.

I had clients calling me and pulling dollars and shifting dollars because they were booked so far out. You know, Hey Richard, I’m booked six weeks out, I can’t take on any more leads to the point where the advertising was choking them to where they couldn’t hire enough, they couldn’t hire and train fast enough to keep up with the inbound leads.

And, that’s not unique to me or my agency in this last three to five years, you know, COVID that brought on that challenge specific to most every industry. Then you had other industries where automotive, for example, where they couldn’t create the product fast enough to feel the demand.

So you had it across, a great time, but, you know, you had industries that had too much market share and could barely keep their clients fulfill their customers [00:39:00] fulfilled and yet other ones that couldn’t fulfill their customers because they couldn’t get product and services in. Does that make sense?

Richard Matthews: Yeah. So as an advertising agency, how do you manage that to help the clients continue to win?

Michal Fasone: So you become the client and that’s what we do every day is we act, we think, and we perform like the client. Because what we didn’t do during those times, during that time, during this time, because it’s still lingering here in May 2024 is you cancel monies, you shift monies, you move monies. What you don’t do, or at least what we don’t do at Fasone and Partners, is say, sorry, we booked an annual contract with you.

You have to keep your by, or I’m going to bill you my commission and bill you for the main, whatever my hours and can potentially burn that relationship as well versus standing by that client saying, okay, Richard, I get it. You have too many guests and you need to pull back.

Well, let’s pull back. You know, because in a few years, you’re going to remember that [00:40:00] Michael Fasone was there for you and he canceled X amount of dollars and shifted his creative and did all of this, you know, again, agility and experience was able to pivot with me versus just saying, well, sorry, we did this, we negotiated this, we planned on this, we bought it. I already have the hours in it. I need to get paid.

Richard Matthews: Yeah.

Michal Fasone: They’d be very easy to run my agency that way. For my partner and I to run our agency that way, that’d be the easy way to do things and it would actually be more profitable.

But that’s not how the agency was founded. That’s not how my father built it. So that’s not how we run it.

Richard Matthews: Yeah, absolutely. And it’s probably one of the reasons why you are a multi generational agency is because you have that sort of flexibility and the ability to adapt to the marketplace as, you know, it becomes more difficult or more simple to win.

Michal Fasone: Yeah. We pick up a lot of clients from agencies, our size and larger rarely smaller, who run into that situation. Well, why are you leaving this other agency? They’re a very good agency. We’re [00:41:00] glad you’re here talking to us. But what happened in that relationship? Well, we found out they were charging us a quarterly fee on top of a retainer fee on top of we don’t do that.

Or, you know, they made them a new commercial and decided they were going to retain ownership rights for whatever reason. Or they wouldn’t let them back out of the media contract, which any media contract is easily cancelable. But if you want to, you can tell your client it’s not, we don’t do that.

Richard Matthews: Yeah, absolutely. So it gives you that longevity and the trust in the relationship.

Michal Fasone: It does. It also gives me a lot of risk.

Richard Matthews: Yeah.

Michal Fasone: But, you know, if you understand what’s on the other side of that risk, that loyalty usually follows that type of mentality, then you’re okay.

Richard Matthews: Yeah. It pencils out to the positive.

Michal Fasone: Not all ferrets are smelly.

Richard Matthews: So you can remove the scent plant. I like it. Good callback. So I want to talk practical portion of our show. We call this the hero’s tool belt and just like every superhero has their awesome gadgets, like batarangs or [00:42:00] web slingers or laser eyes, or a big magical hammer they can spin around and fly with, I want to talk about the top one, or there you go, he’s got his, he’s got his nerf gun top one or two tools you couldn’t live without in your business could be anything for your notepad, your calendar, something you use for marketing tools, something you think is essential to getting your job done today, he’s like, it’s my nerf gun.

Michal Fasone: Well it is, and my Nerf ammo have my ammo kitty. Okay.

No, but seriously, let me answer your question. My pen, my pink highlighter, my other pen.

Richard Matthews: And what do you do with those?

Michal Fasone: Take a lot of notes, Richard.

Richard Matthews: So,

Michal Fasone: I write a lot. I still write a lot on paper. I like it.

Richard Matthews: My wife,

Michal Fasone: I have an iPad, I have an iBook, I have a MacBook. I have like four computers, but I prefer to write.

Richard Matthews: Yeah, my wife and you would get along well, she likes to write all of her stuff down and all of her planner stuff and I’m like, you know it’d be easier if you put it on your phone, right, and she’s like, nope, it’s way easier on the piece of paper, and I can’t do it, I can’t write on a piece of paper, if I write on paper it’s gone, like I’ve lost.

Michal Fasone: That’s because you’re young. How old are you?

Richard Matthews: 38,

Michal Fasone: 45, So get that threshold.

Richard Matthews: Yeah, right on the edge of digital versus not [00:43:00] and man, so my wife’s a couple of years younger than me and she has all, all paper all the time. She’s got a whole bullet journal. She keeps all her stuff in. And so, yeah, I get that. But is that what kind of things are you generally working on?

Like business plans or your work, like internal stuff or projects for your clients or what’s your use case?

Michal Fasone: It’s everything in between. I can give you today for an example. Today I’m scripting. I’m working on some scripts. I’m getting some spots sent out for approval to a client. I have some calls to make. I have some calls to receive. I have this, I have your podcast. I have my own podcast. I what am I doing with my tools as I’m taking them with me everywhere I go, usually.

Richard Matthews: So, I guess what pops into my head is, as you said, your team is about 10 people, do you find yourself still working, like wearing all the hats every once in a while, doing some of the creative, doing some of the production, doing some of the media buys, do you do a little bit of everything, or do you manage it from the top?

Michal Fasone: I get my hands dirty.

Richard Matthews: So, is that something that’s intentional, or are you planning to grow out of that, or what’s your sort of goal there?

Michal Fasone: I never want to, if I [00:44:00] grow out of it, it’ll be because it just happens. That’s not the intent. I enjoy waking up and working every day. I enjoy what I do. I’m not doing it just to do it. I don’t have to but to directly answer your question, you know, like for example, right now we have, I have a copywriter producer who’s been out sick for a while and it looks like he may be out for a lot longer and anticipated.

I will take on his workload. Which means I will be writing more and producing more. So, no I absorb and we all do when you’re as small as we are, you have to be able to pivot internally and, you know, it comes down to constant communication and how we communicate internally as a group.

We do work in office, we do not work remotely. I think that helps. And the way that we meet once a week, we meet on Wednesday mornings as an entire group, just to go over every single account and all the moving pieces of each one. That way we’re all on the same [00:45:00] page midweek as a group.

But yeah, does that answer your question?

Richard Matthews: Yeah. Absolutely. And I love that. You know, we are a remote team, obviously, cause I travel and we’ve got team members in several different countries and several different states. And so we do a bi weekly meeting that where everyone gets together and we do conference call kind of stuff and learning how to manage communication it’s a thing that is constantly being worked on and trying to be improved so that we can manage as a company, our size remotely.

Michal Fasone: How big is your company?

Richard Matthews: We just hired employee number 18.

Michal Fasone: Okay. And you manage multiple podcast platforms or the Hero Podcast is the main?

Richard Matthews: We have the hero podcast is a client of ours, right? So I am a client of our agency and we have 30 different podcasts right now, we’re in the process of trying to get up to 50 and then hopefully by the end of the year, we want to have a hundred shows under management.

Michal Fasone: You work for an agency that manages podcasts.

Richard Matthews: Yeah. So the company is called push button podcasts. And,

Michal Fasone: They would love my podcast.

Richard Matthews: Probably. So, yeah we can talk more about that if you want. But yeah, we we manage a lot of [00:46:00] shows in a lot of different industries. And

Michal Fasone: I got a sticker right here.

Richard Matthews: There we go. Was it the little agency that roars? I love that.

So self promotion for the podcast. If you haven’t checked it out yet, the little agency that roars we’ll get links to the in the bio.

So, yeah. I have one more question for you here, and it’s about your 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 Arkham Asylum. So as we wrap up the interview, I’m going to talk about the top one, or maybe two principles that you use regularly in your life that you run your business by maybe something you wish you’d known when you first started out as a you know, production assistant.

Michal Fasone: I’ll just repeat what I said earlier, because I think if anyone had one answer, that would be short sighted because in our industry, at least, you’re never done learning and if you are, then you’ve made a mistake, or if you think you have accomplished it, you’ve made a very grave mistake on behalf of yourself and the people around you.

But I would say it’s just doing the right thing. Just waking up and I always say that I could have done [00:47:00] anything in my life. I could have been an artist, I could have gone into acting, I could have been in it. I could have sold this company and the chance to buy it instead of owning it, I could have sold it, but I saw a chance to do something pure and for the client and that operates under the foundation of do the right thing.

And like I said earlier, when you do the right thing for yourself, your vendor and your client, you win. Your client wins and your vendor wins. And when you create that cycle of when your vendor can win and your client wins and you win, then you create a circle that should never really stop. And when I saw a chance to lead that, that’s really the guiding principle.

Because it’s nothing about me or her, my partner, my business partner, Carol, it’s about the client. And the minute it stops being about the client and it starts being about money, drop my pen and starts being about money, your view of what [00:48:00] the creative should be. Ego guilty you know, the process, patience, impatience.

When it starts to become something about that, then you maybe should go look for another job or be in another industry. Because what I’ve seen in the 25 years I’ve been in the industry let alone the 50 that my agency has been around, next year will be our 50th year, is that when you’re client focused, you will win a 100% of the time.

You’re going to lose a lot too, but at least if you out of the gate, your approach, you never have to second guess yourself, you’re never going to have to hear people say, or maybe you’ve heard the same before.

I don’t tell lies cause if I lie I have to remember a lie. As long as I’m telling the truth, I don’t have to remember anything. And I’m not correlated the two, but when I approached the business with doing the right thing, instead of approaching business with it being about money or about me or about who my people are, or where they are, or [00:49:00] what they are, or the campaign that we ran.

That campaign, that should be the client’s campaign, not something I’m doing for my own brag reel. And that happens a lot in our industry. Sometimes the creative isn’t done for the client or the consumer. It’s done for the agency.

Richard Matthews: Yeah.

Michal Fasone: So that they can put that on a brag reel, so that they can go get an Addy, or get an Omni, or get whatever the award may be, a Clio, you name it. We don’t do that.

So it’s just a way of simplifying your mindset and your power skill set, and a really easy way to organize the people around you and to remind everyone that the bottom line will follow, but if we can stick to our core principles of who we are as humans and people, no matter what we are, then we’ll get there.

But it’s getting there and mitigating all those things that get in our way, like impatience, being able to go twice as fast as most people, being overly worried, overly cautious, whatever it is, [00:50:00] and making sure it doesn’t bleed out to the people around you. Negativity, ego, I know I mentioned that.

So it’s really just staying true to what and who your company is and should be.

Richard Matthews: Yeah, so learning how to just operate from that place of integrity and that win scenario and always striving to learn and be better and to grow. And I was like that metaphor of a you know, a shark can never stop moving because it stops moving. It dies. Right? Like we have that same kind of thing, right?

You always have to be learning and growing or otherwise you’re dying.

Michal Fasone: Yeah,

Richard Matthews: Yeah. Awesome. I think that’s a great place to wrap our interview with that sort of thought but I do finish every interview with a simple challenge. And that is, basically, we call it the hero’s challenge.

Do you have someone in your life or in your network that you think has a cool 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? First person that comes to mind for you.

Michal Fasone: Of course I do. What would I, tell me again what I’m supposed to their.

Richard Matthews: What’s their first name? And why do you think they should come share their story with [00:51:00] us?

Michal Fasone: They’re not going to do it, but I’m very good friends with someone who created, who owns a patent to if I say the patent, you’ll figure out who they are, but I’m good, very good friends with someone who holds a very nice patent that they sold to 3M and they have a really neat story.

Richard Matthews: That’d be cool. Well, maybe we can at least ask. I don’t know if they’ll say yes, but sometimes we get cool stories out of that. But you know, in comic books, there’s always the crowd of people who are cheering and clapping for the acts of heroism.

So as we close, I always like to find out where can people light up the bat signal, so to speak, and ask for your help, right?

And who are the right types of people to ask for that help?

Michal Fasone: Just call me.

Richard Matthews: Do you have a number you want us to put on the on the screen here for people?

Michal Fasone: Sure. Call 816 753 7272. Ask for Michael Fasone.

Richard Matthews: And who are the right types of businesses to reach out like to ask for your help there.

Michal Fasone: Anybody who needs more traffic or more business, or someone who doesn’t need more traffic or more business that knows that some part of their business could be better, whether it’s the creative, the media, their training [00:52:00] guides, their white papers, their outdoor, their brochures. If they own a restaurant, maybe they hate the way their menu’s designed.

Maybe it’s just an interior designer who needs new business cards. No project is too small. No project is too big.

Richard Matthews: Thank you so much for coming on the show today, Michal, really appreciate your time and just getting to hear your story.

Do you have any final words of wisdom for my audience for hitting this stop record button?

Michal Fasone: Do not. I appreciate you having me, Richard. And I thank you.

Richard Matthews: Thank you for being here, Michal.

Michal Fasone: All right. Thank you very much.