Challenges and Triumphs in Agtech and Biotech

So Angela and Travis, it's fantastic to meet both of you.

I was just talking in the green room, to Angela while

we wait for Travis to join us.

Angela and Travis are Oregon and Idaho.

So we, we, I established that, Angela was the one that was in

Oregon and Travis is in Idaho, and you're slightly different time zones.

So really good to meet both of you.

tell me a little bit about, your, your business and how you

ended up in business together.

Yeah, absolutely.

So, first of all, I'll get started and just share that Travis and I are cousins.

So we share a set of grandparents, so that's how we came to

know each other, obviously.

but we've both, both have been in marketing for quite some time, and

I had my own copywriting business some years ago, and Travis has also

had his own business that he was running, and we decided that we wanted

to get into business together and figure out that, what we could do.

We specialize in working for biotech and ag tech companies.

And Agtech is agriculture.

Is that right?

Agricultural.

Technology.

so yeah, so when I was reading your bios, I mean, again, it sort of looked

like you, you technically were sort of microbiologists and farmers, right?

I mean, that's kind of how it read to me in, in, insofar as the bios, but, but I'm

sure there's a lot more to it than that.

So,

so,

Yeah, yeah, just a bit.

So, so obviously in, in agricultural technology and

biotech, I mean, it's clearly, a, a kind of fast moving industry.

so I'm, I'm guessing you guys need to kind of really be on your toes as far

as the clients that you work with.

How, how does the kind of typical engagement work for you?

I'll let Travis start with this one, since I took the last one.

Yeah, you bet.

So, yeah, so, you're right.

It's definitely, fast moving, yet at the same time, things seem to be very, slow.

Like, decisions still take time depending on the process you're going through, so.

typically the clients that I'm pushing on the ag tech side.

So my background is the farming, grew up on a farm in Colorado.

And, eventually kind of evolved into the marketing space, over a long career.

but yeah, typically engaging with the client, we really like to bring

them in and really understand the strategy first, like that's especially

what I'm, I'm most passionate about.

I've spent a good chunk of time working on the, the, the Hell of the

nitty gritty tactics in my life and seeing what works, what doesn't work.

And, I wanted to bring that, that ag background, agricultural background

into the tech space and, into the, like really help them, move into it.

So, what we typically will do is, come in and, and really do a kind of a deep

dive of where the company has been so far, what type of collateral that they're

using, the channels that they've been on, do they have any reporting, do they

understand why they're doing what they do?

I think the biggest, the biggest issue I see happening is that people will

have, they'll do something because they saw it on, another channel.

They saw someone on LinkedIn or they saw someone doing, pay per click,

like, oh, we have to do that too.

But there's never a reason behind it, right?

So it's, they don't know, what is a, what is a good performing ad look like?

Are they writing copy for LinkedIn or doing videos for LinkedIn

that really engage their buyer?

Or is it just to put content out?

one of the, one of my favorite clients Is a trailer manufacturing company.

I can add trailer manufacturing company.

and they really went all in on like the visual of the trailer has nothing to do

with, the specs, why they're doing it.

It's, it's about the, like that visual appeal and that's, that's their LinkedIn

strategy and it's worked out great.

You wouldn't just do that because you saw something online, right?

Like it's, there was a reason behind it.

They knew that.

I mean, buying an agricultural trailer can be really, spec heavy, you want

to have weights, you want to have strength and, the type of material

and the way it flexes back and forth.

That's hard to put into a LinkedIn post, but just showing it out in the field and

driving and bouncing around, that's where you get some pretty, pretty amazing shots.

Yeah, it's funny.

I've got a friend who, he lives in Starkville, Mississippi and

him and his brother, they, they own a, a kind of a gun dog supply.

Bye.

Store, right?

So they basically sell, equipment for people that go out sort of hunting and,

people that have gundogs and, and what they've done, I mean, he's, he's become

a very, very proficient drone pilot.

He's become a very proficient photographer because what he does is he

basically follows his brother around.

His brother's become like the, the kind of the face of the brand, the brand, right?

He does all the sort of videos where they'll take pictures.

Pieces of equipment out into the field and show the usage of

that equipment out in the field.

And I think for people that are in market for that, it really sort of

resonates with them because that's the sort of thing that they're looking for.

It's like, well, what does it actually look like from a practical perspective?

Oh yeah, absolutely.

And I've, I follow another, guy on LinkedIn, especially that's,

that focuses on the ag side.

the, the way that drone photography has, has evolved is incredible.

like back when I started, like, you're out there in the cam in the fields,

with, with an old fashioned camera, and, and then you're having to go back to

the film and develop it and all that.

Today it's, instantly and they can, they can set up AI to

edit the program on the fly.

And so, the time from that.

The drone taking that shot and the zooming in and the panning and capturing all

that really like what you wouldn't have thought of as really kind of sexy looks.

It's, I mean, it's amazing and, it's getting to market a lot faster

with those ads, which is, I love it.

Yeah.

I mean, you've, I mean, I've seen, businesses that use camera to cloud.

So basically the cameras are out there.

And as soon as they've finished recording video or taking pictures,

they're uploaded to the cloud.

So their editing team can start working on them straight away.

They don't even need to get back to the office to kind of like do anything.

It's like it does it all sort of automatically.

So, again, I'm, I'm always amazed at the evolution of technology.

I mean, I look, I look at sort of when I started out in the industry

and the tech that we had at that point In terms of where we are now, I

mean, it's, it's changed dramatically.

what, what are the big changes that you've seen in sort of ag tech and,

and, and, biotech in that time?

I'll take this one.

There have been a lot of changes that I've seen just in my career, and that's

one of the things that gets me really excited about the work that I do.

And so I focus a lot more on the biotech side, and kind of by default,

we're doing a lot of technical work.

We're focusing on what is new and most innovative, and what is going to help

us get an edge for that next thing.

And there's been a lot of changes.

I think one of the biggest changes that we've seen in recent years

is the big growth of AI, and especially what you can do with it.

It's fascinating, the things you can do, starting with chat GPT.

We've come a long ways just even since then, and that's only been a few years.

The things that you can do with your marketing strategies, with

how you can pull in different AI capabilities, there's just so much.

And I know Travis has actually experimented with it in ways that

even I haven't at this point.

So I've been learning even more from him, which is great.

Travis, I don't know if you want to talk a little bit more about some

of the AI tools that you've seen.

Sure.

Yeah, I mean, like you said, there has been so much change in,

in the AI field, in, in over the years, just in technology alone.

So, what used to take us forever, we can automate really quickly now.

one of the things I really have found useful is, is the

agentic side of it, right?

And I'm not.

What I've found from an AI perspective is that it's so easy to get distracted

by the newest thing and the latest challenge and, and all that.

I try and stick to some of the core pieces, right?

So, like you said, Chad GPT is really powerful for, building out,

whether it's simple code or testing out the different, platforms.

You can create A B tests.

and then you take it into an automation solution like, make.

com or I don't, I don't spend the money for the operational

side of ChatGPT, right?

It's not, 200 a month is not worth it to me.

especially when someone sells those.

But yeah, you can, you can automate your workflows.

You can, tell it to, to, go out and pull resources.

for kicks and giggles, I did one, that I just built a, a tool that

analyzes, I'm a big fan of super cross racing, motorcycle racing.

And it goes and analyzes the, the last events on it, all on its own, and then

comes and pulls that back into, and does like a prediction of where the, your

races will finish on that next Saturday.

And, it's, it's just been really interesting to see

how you can play with that.

did another campaign where we set up a, an email that it would monitor the

individual's email box when that when a certain subject line came in, AI agents

would go out and research that person's company, they would pull from Chad GPT

to draft a bio of what that's going to look like, and then send it back to me.

And I can look at that and say, Hey, here's some information

to prepare for the sale.

what that person needs when they're talking on their, next call.

and it's just, you're able to do that so much more quickly

and at a, fraction of the cost.

You don't have to have the, the researcher on your team anymore.

You don't have to, spend as much money on some of these research platforms.

It's, it's just fascinating.

Yeah, I remember whenever you, you'd go into a meeting, you would say, right,

your job is to take the minutes, right?

And then the person would have to collect the minutes and then, subscribe,

transcribe everything and send them out to people and everything else.

whereas again, you look at AI now, I mean, in most cases, I think Google just pushed

out the capability for transcriptions, and, and meeting notes, right?

So basically you have a meeting, you don't need to worry about

anyone taking the notes.

It'll give you a title for the meeting, who's in attendance, give

you a summary, action points, all that sort of stuff, send it out to

the, the, the attendees, and then the transcription will also go out as well.

Right.

So, so, that gives you the ability to, to, again, I'm, I'm using, like

Notion heavily in my business to try and sort of do the collation of things,

particularly around the podcast.

I mean, I've, I've had, a reasonable number of podcast guests so far,

but it's only going to grow.

And what I want to be able to do is To go and interrogate the information

to pull out the, the points within the individual episodes of each

episode might be, between sort of 30 and 30 minutes in an hour, right?

I want to be able to say, well, I can't remember really, I mean, I can't remember

what I had for breakfast yesterday.

So I can't imagine what I'm going to be thinking about episode

two and what we discussed.

So I can kind of get the transcription from.

the YouTube video that's uploaded, get it into Google, Google Drive, that

then becomes something I can go and interrogate it and say, show me all the

podcast episodes where we talked about AI or where we talked about, Google,

Google Ads or whatever it might be.

And it will, it will give me all of the, the kind of context of

where it was, which episodes, where it wasn't in the, the transcript.

So I can go straight to that point and kind of pick up where

I, where I go, where I'm at.

What I can then do is obviously summarize that and potentially

turn that into a blog post, right?

But I'm using the automation aspect of it.

I mean, it's interesting you mentioned Make.

I mean, I played around with Make for quite a while.

The moment I'm playing around a lot with NA10.

that's another one, which is really kind of cool.

And, and, and it's given me the great capability again with, with

YouTube, when you upload a video and I want to be able to go, right, I

want to be able to get a transcript.

I want to be able to get, the title, the description, the ID, the link.

So I can kind of, instead of having to go to YouTube and go to studio and

then find the video and click it, I can just click on it and do it that way.

Right.

So, for me, I just think it's, it's, I think AI for good.

It's fantastic, right?

But I think equally, there's also sort of situations where.

I, I, I mean, there's a big AI summit going on at the moment, or I don't know if

it's just finished, but you know, I think the, the, the problem I see with AI is all

of these individual countries are going to want to control it themselves, right?

And there's, there's always this challenge of, well, who's actually,

who's governing this, right?

I mean, DeepSeek came out, everyone was up in arms about that, right?

And, and, you go, well, Okay, if it'd been any other country but

China, they'd have gone, Good on you, well done, that's fantastic.

But because it's China, they just assume that there's a nefarious, kind

of underpinning, deep state kind of reason why they're doing it, rather

than, it's just, they've got good tech, they've got good people, and they've

kind of worked out a better way of doing it than everyone else has, right?

So, what are your thoughts on that?

I think that AI can absolutely be used for good and, and it can be used for bad.

And I think there's been a lot of discussion in recent years

about who controls it and why.

And.

What sort of laws are going to be around it?

And we simply just don't know right now that the technology is still so

new and it's growing faster than we can even keep up with it at this point.

So I think it's one of those things that we'll have to make a decision about.

And I've been seeing companies make a decision about, yes, we're

definitely using this, or no, we're definitely not using that,

or we're only going to use this.

But we're not going to use that.

So I think right now, what I'm seeing is that companies and individuals are

making those choices for themselves about what they think is going to be

best for their corporate strategy, what is best for their employees, and what

is best for their security as well.

Those are all considerations.

And right now, we don't know what we don't know, and I think that

at some point, yes, governance will catch up to the technology.

Maybe at some point.

Right now, it's going so fast that it's hard to keep up with, and we'll have to

contend with that at some point, too.

We'll have to adapt to whatever those new laws are or those new rules are, and

we're still figuring a lot of that out.

I do think it's good that that will happen at some point.

What exactly that's going to look like and on what timeline.

I'm still not sure.

I think there's still so much of that that remains to be decided, and we're just

not sure on what that future looks like.

But at some point, yes, I do expect that to happen, and I

think it will be a good thing.

It's just yet one of those other things that we'll have to adapt to.

Yeah, I think that, that goes back and on the marketing side, especially, but

the strategy behind why you're doing it.

it's not just, you don't want to just have AI because you have AI and

you can push that, messaging out.

It's more about understanding how you intend to use it as a marketing

department, as a company itself.

And then, to the point of good or bad for it, like what

risks are you willing to take?

and you have to have checks and balances in place.

we had someone a while back that was, writing a blog post, changed things up.

using an AI tool and, tried, started to publish it like, well, let's, let's

double check and the links were wrong.

Like, there was literally nothing in there.

So, that's, that's something you have to be, prepared for, from, like,

understanding where it's going to go.

You also have to be comfortable, as a brand.

Like, do you want to have your brand associated with AI content?

Do you want to have it more human structured?

I think I was reading an article the other day that said, as, as more and

more companies adopt AI into their marketing planning and their content

creation, there's an opportunity for others to niche out and actually

only use human generated, materials.

So it's going to be a little more expensive.

It's going to take a little more time, but you'll be different.

And, and, that's what we all try and do in marketing is just to be that a

little bit different than someone else.

I think we need to get to the point where there's the

transparency and disclosure, right?

So I think, but for me, I, again, I don't have an issue with people using AI.

Again, like you talked about agentic AI, again, most people are looking

for answers to questions, right?

So again, if I wake up at two o'clock in the morning and I have a burning

question for a company, if I have to wait until two 9 o'clock in the morning

to be able to call up and do something.

That's like not, not a good experience, right?

Whereas, if I can kind of go on to some sort of, whether it's a chat

bot, whatever, and actually have a conversation with somebody that's

kind of pulling their, their knowledge from a vast pool of, of information

that that business has, right?

There's every likelihood that that particular, answer will be,

accurate, and relevant and, and, satisfy me as the customer, right?

It'll give me the answer that I'm looking for.

Right.

And it saves them having to kind of employ people to sit there on a call center

through the night, just in case somebody happens to do what I do and wake up at two

in the morning to kind of ask a question.

Right.

And that's one of those things, too, that can even be a strategic advantage.

If you're taking advantage of opportunities like that really

thoughtfully, really strategically, you can focus your headcount, your

employees, and your strategies on things that are going to be more

meaningful and, and in addition to what you're doing in your business, right?

Things that are going to drive value for your business and help you grow.

So it's one of those things that companies just have to decide, is this

going to give us a strategic advantage?

Is it worthwhile?

Is it worth those risks?

Because, yes, there are some of those risks, and are we

willing to invest in that?

So it's something that every company has to decide, and they have to be very

thoughtful about whether or not this fits into our strategy for marketing, for

business growth, and for anything else,

Yeah.

I mean, like I I've worked with, a lot of businesses in lead generation and, and

I've always maintained, I mean, ultimately people say, yeah, I'm looking for leads,

but they're not really looking for leads.

They're looking for.

qualified leads and leads that turn into sales or, inquiries or whatever it

might be, and, and for me, I've always kind of say, well, I'd much rather work

with people that will, allow me to, to understand a little bit more about

the sort of backend in terms of what specifically the, the kind of the criteria

to, that makes it a good lead, right?

So, so it's almost like I can do some pre scoring of the people that are coming

through call centers or what have you.

Right.

I want to be able to.

Ask questions of those people as they come in.

So that at the point in time that it gets transferred across, I know that

they've met the validation level, right?

And you can, again, you can kind of use lots of IVRs and things like that to

get to that point, press one for this, two for this, whatever it might be.

but again, I think we're, we're at the point now where, the IVRs

of ones and twos and threes.

probably not the right way.

You could probably use like a, an AI bot that will actually understand

kind of what those, what the questions are and how those responses are.

And then that way you can kind of field it to the right people in the

right way without having to kind of incur a great expense of having

people there asking the questions.

right?

yeah, that's, that's great.

Yeah, that's interesting.

I haven't had a chance to do it.

I don't, and maybe you have, I'd be curious to know, but I've heard that there

is, as we build these chatbots out, there is the opportunity to look at keywords

that they're, referencing in the chat that the customer is referencing and score the

individual based off that, all using an AI platform so that when you wake up in the

morning, you've got this person that's pre qualified based off of an AI conversation.

Have you, have you had a chance to do that in the lead gen side?

I mean, in some cases we have.

I think one of the challenges is that, in some of the verticals that we

generated leads in, there's this kind of, the regulation that kind of applies

to it just really doesn't really make that viable as a proposition, right?

So, again, we've kind of worked with, Sort of, at risk credit cards.

So, so credit cards for people with adverse credit.

And, and we, we kind of say, well, when we, we process the applications,

we can see, we capture the information from people as they come in, we can see

the, the applications that ultimately get You know, validated and approved

by the company that we were selling the leads to and we could see the ones

that were being declined and we could kind of work out based on that, we

could work out based on our data what the underwriting criteria for Google.

eligibility was, but when we said to them, can you tell us what your

eligibility, your underwriting is?

And no, no, no, we can't tell you, we can't tell you that

that's proprietary and, and, and confidential and so on and so on.

It's like, well, in that case, we're just going to continue to send you leads that

aren't going to be good enough, right?

We know, we would know that, that, they're going to be declined, but

because you won't tell us what the underwriting criteria is, we'll

just carry on sending them, right?

And, and ultimately that, that, that credit card company, I mean,

every single lead that they were processing by a person, right?

was costing them something like 25 to 30 dollars to process every application

regardless of whether it it you know was an immediate like no right so things

like people that were under the age of 25 or something like that living at home

with no credit history 100 percent were going to be declined right so it's kind

of you know we could we could see that but they we couldn't actually build that

into our Sort of, catchable information.

So we, we needed them to kind of, we still needed to send them the

leads, even though we knew the outcome was going to be like, a no.

Interesting.

Yeah.

That's like, I mean, as you, as you talk through that, even it's, it

would be so easy for them to adopt some sort of an AI, It would scan

maybe initially those applications and quickly acknowledge, Hey, this is good.

This one's not as good, or this one, maybe take a human look into it and save.

I mean, just think about that.

If they could, if they processed, I mean, I don't know how many applications

they got in a, in a day, let's just say a hundred a day, if they were able to

do half of those, with human, instead of having to do all of them, they

would have saved, a whole lot of money.

And then you multiply that times every day of the year.

I mean, that's an incredible amount of expense and the, the AI platforms

now, yes, there is risk and, there is the anxiety of what happens with

that data, but most of the companies anymore are, are providing some sort

of a security, notice ahead of time.

They're saying, Hey, we know that you're, a little anxious, trust us.

We'll, we'll back it up with our, our bond.

and yeah, I mean, safe companies, thousands and

hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Yeah.

I mean, I remember like back in probably, I want to say it

was like the year 2000, right?

So at the time I was selling websites, and, I would go and

see sort of various websites.

And I remember going to see this dentist and, they, they had a dental practice

and I said, so what's your process for kind of getting people to come in and,

come and see you on for regular checkups.

And they said that they would send out like letters, with stamps.

So they'd kind of write a letter out.

Put a stamp on it, go down to the post office, put it in the, in the

post box to send these letters out.

And I, I basically said, look, we can kind of set up a CRM.

When people come in, they register on your, your system.

As soon as they kind of, come in to see you, you go, have

you got an email address?

Give us your email address.

and then we can send auto, automatically, we could send them a checkup reminder

every six months is six, six months.

And we said, and it would.

Reduce the number of people that you would need to kind of do it.

And it would also save you a ton of money in postage, right?

I mean, the amount of money that they were spending on stamps was crazy, right?

And, we were obviously trying to sell them a website solution with

this CRM and everything else.

And, and they just, for some reason, they just couldn't see it.

But you look at it now, and you think, even, and that was 25 years ago.

And you look, Even today, there are still companies that are still doing

things in such an old school way.

I mean, you, you, you're working in ag tech and biotech and, and that must be

so, so much further advanced in some respects, but probably still deeply

rooted in old school ways of doing things.

I mean, is that, is that, is that a kind of accurate assessment?

Yeah, it absolutely is.

And it's really funny that even working in tech fields, that you still find

these really old systems or that we're so rooted in these old ways of doing things.

And that's just what we continue to do.

And, and I think part of that is culture.

And sometimes it's easier to just do what you have known to work in the past

and adapt to something else, right?

So, and there does have to be a balance with that.

You don't have to necessarily get rid of an old system if it's working well.

For instance, maybe Those letters are way more effective.

Maybe they're much better at getting people to return to the office and

to remember that, Oh yeah, I do have a dentist appointment or I

need to make a dentist appointment.

so there's a little bit of that too.

And that's the case too in the biotech space is that we have some old ways of

doing things that are still working well.

We can adapt some of those ways to some degree, incorporate some new

technology where it makes sense.

Just a really simple example is I used to work day in and day out, And lab.

And plating micro, microbiological samples is one of those things

that you do on a day to day basis.

And that is sometimes still the best way to get the results you're looking for.

Now there are ways to automate that.

There are ways to, Incorporate new machines and new technology

that can make that faster.

Those are sometimes just as good, sometimes not.

So sometimes you'll still use those old methods alongside a new method

and compare them side by side.

Sometimes you can go away from the old methods entirely

and just use a new method.

And that's something that I've seen in the biotech space is that, yes, we do adopt

new technologies pretty readily for the most part, but we also have to make sure

that we're validating those methods, and that takes time, and being in the world

of science, it's very, very important to be able to validate the work that you're

doing, because if you can't, then you can't trust the work that you're doing.

So that's something that It's really important to be able to do, biotech,

while yes, we adapt new technologies pretty readily, we're also very cautious.

So it's, it has to go both ways.

You have to have enough of that old that you know is working well, but be flexible

enough to adapt to the new when it's going to help you work more efficiently.

Yeah, the the ag tech space is definitely the same, the the challenge that the

providers have is that, you you develop a Let me say that this, when I started

out in farming, we had, we were driving the tractors like Pam, on the wheel,

watching the crease below and making sure that you weren't going over crops.

Today, there's technology that's telling me, how much, grain is being

planted, how much, how deep it is.

I can adjust it all with these computers and dials.

The individuals that are having to do that, that are producing

that equipment and producing that software are trying to sell it to.

family farms that have done it the same way for generations.

At, well, at the same time, they're trying to make sure that they have it, as, as

prepared as possible for these, kind of corporate farms where there's just

going to be workers coming in and out.

They may not have a whole lot of experience.

So, like, trying to make sure that your technology adapts for each one

of those is, is really challenging.

And, and trying to communicate You know, a different message to each one

of those about the benefits to the family farm versus the, the mega farm

is going to be completely different.

and, and the adoption is going to be different too, right?

And is it a generational thing?

Do you think eventually the generations, the, the, the older generation that may

be kind of like, well, we've always done it this way, they'll kind of pass on.

And kind of the, the, the, the, the younger people that inherit the kind

of family farm will kind of like bring it into the 21st century, in some

respects, or is it kind of like, is, is that not what the sort of barrier is?

that's a good question.

I think that it's, it's going to be a little bit of both.

this, this goes into more of the philosophical side, but as as

farming costs increase, you're seeing fewer and fewer family farms being

passed generation to generation.

So the, the institutional knowledge that comes from that, the older

generation is not being passed down, because they, they can't afford to keep

the farm up or there's just so much change, it's easier, to pass it along.

so I think that you'll have a generation that.

That is willing to adopt it right away.

there's, there's new farmers coming in when they can, and they're starting

small and they want, they're, they're, younger, they're in their twenties

and thirties, and they're like, how can I make something different based

off of the tech experience I have?

so I think you'll have that.

The, the corporate farms, absolutely, they're just going to be willing

to adopt it because they're always on the, look out for a quicker

and more efficient way to do it.

So your, your new, your new president has obviously got a very different

view on Things like climate change than probably most of the other sort

of world leaders, and again, things like fossil fuels, like we're trying

desperately to kind of like not have it and he's like, well, we're just going

to go and drill it and what have you.

I mean, again, as an outsider looking into kind of what's going on in the States, I

mean, to me, it's sort of like, I don't know if, if just generally speaking, the

kind of concerns about climate change are.

Well, India's not doing it, China's not doing it, so we

shouldn't bother doing it anyway.

Or, or, should we kind of be more watchful about what's going on in kind of the rest

of the world and try and lead by example?

We have to do something different, and I, I say this as, I think, If I was a fourth

generation farmer, people, our, our family came over from Germany back in the 1800s

and, and started farming really early.

The change that has happened from when I was first on a farm to what's

going on today, it's undeniable that there's something going on.

And it's clear if you follow the science of what's, what's causing that, right?

It is the fossil fuels.

It is the, the pollution that was kicked out into the, in their, in.

Those checks and balances are very important, and there's a big risk for

pulling those off, and I think that, I mean, I could, yeah, I have to be careful

on what I say because I don't want to just sound like a, I know it all, but I really

do feel that if we don't make some sort of a, Focused effort to make sure we have,

improvements in place on the way that the, the fumes come out of your tractor.

we used to laugh about, as a kid, we used to laugh about the studies being

done on the methane gas produced by cattle farms that, there's changes

that you can make that actually do cause those, improvements, right?

You, the, the.

Way that a exhaust flume came out from when I was a kid.

And we had these, old tractors from the twenties and thirties

versus what they are today.

It's completely different.

The fuels are better.

There's, there's better filtration systems from the, the animal side.

There's new technologies that are improving the type of food that they have.

There's, we're, we're, this kind of plays into some of the biotech side too.

Is that we're, we're improving what.

is being fed to the animals.

we're making it you know, less likely that there's going to be methane gas.

The politicians don't see that, like, they don't, they're just voting what happens,

from the lobbyist, and, and, like, the farm lobbies are, are struggling to really

communicate some of that change, because, yeah, they, they balance that, right?

The old school farmer is gonna say, this is the way I've always done it,

quit telling me how to, to, run things.

Whereas there's change that needs to happen, and that's being pushed by

other individuals that are new into it.

And,

Yeah, I mean, the politicians are going to go talk about, the cost of a quarter

milk and it's gone up by, certain number of cents or dollars or whatever it

might be, but as you say, like if the, extra cost is, is because of things that

have been done to kind of improve the environment, then that should really

be applauded rather than punished.

Right.

It's sort of like, To me, it seems like this, you're being punished for

caring about the environment and, and now people are going, well, let's

just, let's just not bother about it.

And I, and for me, again, it's sort of like this, I think, as you say,

the, the science is undeniable.

I don't think that the kind of the data is, can be anything other than,

it's, it's, It's valid, it's verified, it's, it's impactful and we need

to do something like now, right?

I mean, again, I've got like,

absolutely.

I've got kids, grandkids, and I'm thinking, I don't want them to

kind of grow up in a world where things kind of go to, go to pieces

because, we, we didn't pay heed to what was there all along, right?

We had, we had all the data and we just chose to ignore it.

And for me, it scares me that, that's what's,

It's such a short term focus, right?

Like, we can't, we can't just look about what's happening today or

tomorrow, but we need to be thinking about what happens a year, five, ten

years from now, because to your point, the, we're passing on something to

these future generations, and we don't want to give them a, overheated head.

Unusable climate.

You don't want to go, here's my house, here's my money, oh, and I apologize for

all the mess that has been left in the rest of the world as a result, right?

So,

Speaking on the, the biotech side, we, we know what the science is, is telling us

and this is actually one of the reasons why I got into doing the work that I

do is that I started on the science side and as a scientist, you learn

what you're being told by the research.

Research is not political, right?

It's just posting something in a journal article that's been peer

reviewed and is trusted and is something that you can rely on.

It's one of those things that's very frustrating for me as a scientist

in my past life, a past professional life, to see how political it's become.

It's very frustrating to see that, but it's something that I also recognized

is a sort of a responsibility for myself, and that's to speak truly about

what I'm seeing as a scientist that understands what is going on, to be

able to help people communicate that.

And that is one of the biggest struggles that I've seen in the world of biotech

and science in general is that it is so hard for scientists traditionally to

communicate in ways that are clear and understandable and make sense, because

to be honest, science is so complicated.

There's so much happening behind the scenes that just doesn't always make sense

unless you're really deep in the weeds and doing that work on a firsthand basis.

So it can be a struggle to communicate that in a way that

everyone can understand and not to.

I'm not going to speak down about anyone's intelligence, but when, when

you've done it so long, you understand the nature of what you're, you're doing.

You have to become so specialized in the work that you're doing that

you really do become an expert and to be able to speak to that in

a way that everyone understands.

Every pocket of science is like that.

So if you just imagine that there are so many of these specialists, they're

really, really good at what they do.

It's hard to share that knowledge jointly and for everyone to understand that.

And that is why, one of the key reasons why I got into marketing is because I love

the world of science and what it's doing.

I truly believe it's making the world a better place, but it is so

hard to communicate that, and that is something that I can help with.

I can help.

explain that world.

I can help share the struggles and the triumphs and the exciting

things that are happening in that space and communicate that there are

some really great things going on.

And I think it is our responsibility to do that at least as much as we can.

It's not easy, but it's, it's so important.

yeah, it's funny when you, when you look at the, the states, I mean, there's 50

states and you could always say that there's, environmental and societal

issues, probably state by state, you can say, well, that happened there, that

happened there, that happened there.

you've got Hawaii, you had the, the, the problems of fire in Hawaii.

Fire in California, you've got like floods in New Orleans and

you've got floods in New York.

And, there's so many, so many different sort of environmental and societal

things that, that have happened.

And I think, again, I think so much of it is because, I think a

lot of states are inward looking.

So they just, well, it's just like, if it doesn't impact us, it doesn't matter.

Right.

Whereas I think, again, I think the countries that are I think, yes, there's,

there's some, I guess some, some religious and ethical kind of concerns around

the, the whole, the, the Arab states, but again, if you look at what Saudi

Arabia, UAE, I mean, what, some of the things that they're doing in terms of

technical, technological advancements.

and I think the reason that they're diversifying their portfolio is they

all realize that the, the days of being just drilling for oil are probably

not going to last forever, right?

Eventually that, that should in theory stop.

and they need to kind of have alternative sources of income to,

to kind of, Make up for that, right?

And, that's why they're investing so heavily in some of these big

infrastructure plans that they've got for, cities that are out in the

middle of nowhere that you can go on a really high speed train to get to

and everything else and, but again, I think they're looking at it longer term.

They've got a much, much longer term view of things rather than let's just look

at what's happening Just today, because today, yeah, I mean, it matters, but you

know, it's like, really, it can have a knock on effect to, it's the first domino

in a big sort of sequence of things that happen as a result of that, so.

Yeah.

And Aon, I'm not that old.

I'm, so I'm pushing 50.

And in the last, that, that small, amount of time, what has

changed is incredible, right?

I mean, the, I yes technology, but from an environmental perspective,

I mean, growing up where we had all this, snow to where it's dry and not

as, as heavy, and, and that impacts us.

Very soon, right?

Like, we're, to your point, the fires, the, the way that, the floods are

happening, like all this shifts and what Angela was talking about is the, is so

That's what makes me so passionate is that I'm not, I'm not a really good, speaker.

I can't get all of my thoughts out into a really good and crisp story

until I start to, like, write it down.

Ange is really good at, at taking the stories of the experiences that people

have had and turning into that, into something that's, that's interesting.

That, that takes the, for, for kind of a smarty pants style, like the, the nerdy.

the very scientist language or the very research like I can't understand

that, but Ange takes that and puts it into such an interesting

story like, Oh yeah, I'm suddenly passionate about why that's happening.

I see how, this, this modification in this, Brute or the

modification in this feed style.

Actually is going to impact my life.

And, and I, I feel a lot more personal than if, to do that, than if I just read

it in a scientific journal that I would not have understood in the first place,

Yeah, it's like, again, here in, in the, here in the UK, there's

so much more discussion now about the state of, of young people's,

particularly, mental health, right?

So yeah, I mean, we, we had the pandemic and all the schools shut and people

have to kind of do, do schooling from, from home and everything else.

but you know, but again, I think the fact that more and more people are aware

of it, I mean, I keep thinking, you What was it like when I was a child?

Did we have mental health issues?

We probably did.

We just didn't, it wasn't talked about.

People just kind of got on with it, right?

And but I think the fact that it's being talked about now

is, can only be a good thing.

And I know that some of that is driven by social media.

There's been loads and loads of young kids have taken their own lives and

the parents are blaming the social media companies rather than taking

some responsibility themselves.

But you know, again, I don't know, kind of, Who's, who's to blame?

I don't know whose job it is to enforce it or police it, right?

Because yeah, I mean, if it's a TikTok is a Chinese company, Chinese funded

company, but you know, it's like, is it TikTok's fault that children have taken

their lives or is it some, some other environmental or societal thing that's

kind of caused that to be the issue?

And,

it's.

It's, it's all of that, right?

I mean, there is, as, as parents, we have a responsibility to give our, our kids

the best, resources and to make ourselves open and willing to talk about any sort of

a challenge that they're going to have so that they can feel comfortable talking to

their parents and their, their peers about this and not just, going darker and darker

on some sort of a social media channel.

It's the responsibility of these companies to put checks and balances

in place so that, there's not the, the promotion of darker and darker things

that make that, that individual go just down such a terrible rabbit hole.

And, and as marketing professionals, we have a, ethical and moral

responsibility to, to not be pushing content and material that feeds

that, that darkness or that division that, like, There's no need for it.

There's so many good things that can be done.

If we would just focus on that instead, that makes the, it

contributes to a better world.

It contributes to better mental health.

It makes, company's bottom lines are actually going to improve if

they can show that they are doing something for the right reason, not

just to pad bottom lines and send.

billionaires to space.

so

Yeah, I think that's important.

And I think that the key thing really is that we're, we're talking about it, right?

It's, that's really where you have to start.

You have to be open and honest about it.

And you really can't.

So, I, I do think as a society, as a world society, that we are getting better about

speaking about these challenges, and it's uncomfortable at times to do that, but,

that's the thing that gives me hope about the future is I think we're a lot more

open to talking about these things, and if you can start by talking about them,

you can address them and be honest about the solutions, and there's no shame.

everyone has challenges.

They look different for every single person.

So, I think it's really important to be able to speak openly about those

things and help others understand that they're not alone in those struggles.

So, I, I do think it's good, but to Travis's point that yes, we have

a responsibility to make sure that we are being that light, that we're

being positive and optimistic, at least as much as possible.

We, we know that there are challenges in the world we live in.

But we can also speak to the things that are going well and going right and

promote more of those things as well.

So it's an ongoing battle.

It's something that we have to constantly revisit, but I do think it's on the

responsibility of each of us, especially as marketers, it's important for us

to be open and honest about the things that we're sharing about and, and take

an honest reflection on ourselves and those that we're supporting as well

to recognize that, okay, this is doing good or this is causing harm if it is.

Yeah, so in terms of like the, the, the marketing of the, the, the stuff that

you, the clients that you're working with, and the marketing campaigns that

you sort of set up for them, what sort of, what sort of challenges do you, do

you typically sort of come across when it comes to, finding clients and, and

trying to get stuff off the ground?

think the, the most common pain point I run into is that people want to grow

their businesses and they want to grow it yesterday and they have this grand vision

of what that looks like and trying to be honest about the situation can sometimes

be hard and when it comes to marketing strategy, you just have to take an honest

reflection to what Travis had mentioned earlier on in our discussion is you have

to look at where you're at right now.

Take stock of, okay, what is our.

What are our current systems?

Do we have our CRM up and running?

What, what are we doing right now?

And then make improvements to that.

And marketing is one of those things that you have to test and experiment.

So you have to have budget to be able to try different things to

see what is working and tone back on the things that aren't working.

So it takes time.

It's, it's a process.

When you invest in your marketing strategy, you're probably not

going to see overnight success.

I mean, there's always a chance that you could go viral on social

media, things like that happen.

So what does, what does success even look like?

What would success look like?

What, in terms of like, how do you define or how do you sort of validate whether

a particular initiative or campaign.

I just kind of met the criteria.

I mean, cause again, I work, work primarily with e commerce businesses where

it's sales and I work with, B2B businesses where it's leads that we generate.

And those are the kind of two easy to kind of measure validations that we have.

But I would imagine in your line of work, it's so much more complicated.

it is, it is, and it does depend on the business and what it's doing.

In the world of biotech, it really does vary.

sometimes it's leads, but what we try to do is, before we start a marketing

campaign, is that we want to get really clear on what our metrics are

and what we're paying attention to.

Sometimes it is the number of leads we generated.

Sometimes, It's the awareness that we're getting.

Sometimes it's the click through rate we're getting on our email campaign.

So it really does vary depending on what kind of tactics we're rolling in.

all so much for joining us today, and we hope to see you again soon.

Check back on that performance and see how it's doing and we figure out, okay,

did it perform as well as we expected?

Did it do better?

Were there certain areas of it that didn't perform as well?

And do we need to make some changes to that?

So it really does vary considerably for biotech businesses.

Biotech especially tends to be one of those industries that is has a longer

lead time, so you're not usually going to get someone to buy your system

or your solution within the week.

It's one of those things where you really do have to have, multiple

touch points before you get a sell, a sell at a certain point.

so generally you need to have a really well developed marketing funnel

where you're touching on different points throughout sometimes pretty

long periods of time, but it does depend on, the different biotech

business and what we're selling.

And is it the same in ag tech or is that kind of like completely different?

It is, it's, it's a little bit different.

but, but the concept is really the same, the, yeah, and it depends

on the type of tech, right?

Like if it's, if it's a machine that is helping the farmer, guide

their tractor or monitor, software that's monitoring the rate of.

plant, germinations, et cetera.

Like that's, that's going to be a very expensive purchase and it's going to be

something that companies are going to be spending a lot of time researching.

So you have to have, your content, your, your KPIs that you're, you're

building, like it might be, you got 10, reviews of your, blog or white paper

that you just wrote, but those 10 are really, really good, solid individuals.

So you have to decide, okay, how do I want to measure that?

How long am I willing to see that cycle?

That cycle can go anywhere from, three months to, I think the longest that

I've seen so far is about an 18 month purchase cycle, depending on how you're

selling, what the price of it is.

So you have to set those in advance and make sure that

you're comfortable with that.

And is it, is it your job to kind of manage the expectations of

your clients in terms and make sure that they're realistic?

Because again, I think, I think, if they go, Hey, I want to have like 500 leads

a week, it's like, well, the size of your universe is probably not that big.

So let's kind of be a little bit more realistic about it.

I can get you 500 leads a week, but they might be completely,

irrelevant to anything you want to do.

So, that's it.

You have to go in with a clear mindset and, honestly, there are companies that

I won't work with simply because their expectations are so unrealistic that I

know I will never be able to make them happy and it's not worth my stress and

I don't want to give them false hope.

so that's, there's definitely, from our side, the marketing of our agency, like,

that's definitely something we have to think about, too, is like, can we really

work with them to set expectations in advance that are going to be, achievable?

And, I think that for the most part, people are willing to listen, and

I have enough background now that we've seen and experienced some of

the problems that can go on if you don't have realistic expectations.

and I've driven some of those unrealistic expectations before.

So I know what to expect.

I know how to, to talk through those challenges, and, and go from there.

And I would agree with that, too, is that I've, in the past, yes, I've, I've made

those mistakes where I wasn't clear with the client that, hey, this is what I think

we can do, this is what is possible, and our goals are aligned, and I, I can meet

your needs, so I've learned some of those lessons the hard way, but I think those

lessons have also informed me and been a good part of my educational journey to

help me understand these are the kind, kind of clients that I can serve, these

are the kind of clients I want to work with, And these are the ones where I feel

like I can really push the needle for.

And I think it's really important to be clear on that.

And, and all that to say is that, yeah, we don't work with anyone and everyone.

We only work with people that we feel like we can truly make a difference

to and who we can have a bit of an impact on their businesses.

And that's really important to us too.

We want to have that impact.

We want to invest our time.

Resources and energy on the businesses that we feel as though

will benefit from our services.

So we are selective about who we work with because we are mindful that we

want to have this kind of impact.

And we want to help people that we know are going to be able to not only, align

with our goals, but also are going to be able to achieve potentially beyond

what we set out for ourselves as well.

Yeah.

I mean, that's one of the biggest, the biggest, mistakes I see new agency.

Owners make is they kind of go chasing, they go chasing the money.

and eventually I'm, I'm guessing most of them eventually work out the, the mistakes

of that, like we all, we all have, and, and realize that the, it's much,

much better to kind of like vibe with, again, I always say I want to work with.

Clients I get on really, really well with, right?

Like they're, they're, I don't consider them to be clients.

I consider them to be friends.

I know they're, they're partners, they're families.

I, I kind of really go, go deep into the relationship side of things.

And for that, I want to make sure that whatever it is that they're involved

with, whether it's B2B or B2C, that, that the, the ethics of the business

kind of align with my own beliefs, right?

I don't want to be selling things that I know are going to be nefarious and not

really sort of received that well, right?

I saw, I saw, that, that Shopify took, Kanye West or Yee or whatever his name

is, they took his, his site down, his shop, his store because he was selling.

t shirts with swastikas on, right?

And it's like, well, why did it even take so much outcry for that to be a thing?

I mean, like, don't just take some money just for the sake of it.

I mean, that, that to me was, was so much a much easier decision for them to make

then that it seemed to be at the time.

Right.

But, but I guess it was the pressure from outside people

that we eventually made it work.

they had some sort of checks in place to say, well, this is not the

sort of thing that we would be cool having people setting on our platform.

Yeah.

And the, the challenges, I mean, to your point, it's, it's the outcry, but it

shouldn't have to come to that because there is still companies selling through

Shopify, they have some pretty hateful things on those sites and it's, it's.

It's unfortunate, but it is, I mean, this goes back to the philosophy a little bit,

but it's our responsibility to call that out when we see it and not, not support

it and, and encourage those companies to, to change their thinking a little bit.

Yeah, but, and it all starts with like, just you, you can kind of,

people say, well, I can't influence too much, but I really think you can.

I mean, I think if you have a strong belief system, you can kind of, you

can achieve a lot by, by doing it.

I mean, again, that's part of the reason I, My podcast is kind of, I want

to try and help bring more marketing people's brains to the table, right?

To enable us to kind of educate and train and help the next

generation of marketers, right?

So that when we decide to kind of move on and, sit on the porch in a, in a rocking

chair, we know that we've kind of left what's left of the industry in decent

shape to kind of move forward with, right?

So,

Right.

and so much of it is like, well, we'll, we'll all learn from mistakes

that other people have made.

I mean, I learned from mistakes that, my old bosses made and, and they told

me, well, don't do this, don't do this.

and you go, great, I'll, I'll learn from that and won't make those mistakes.

But, but I think, yeah, but it's, it's sometimes, like I said, it's

a bit of a challenge to do that.

This, this has been phenomenal.

I've really enjoyed the conversation.

at some point in time, again, I'd love to kind of revisit this and

see what progresses in terms of the technology side of things,

any, any new stuff that's come out.

but, yeah, just remains for me to say, thank you so much

for being fantastic guests.

I've loved having you on.

Thank you for having us.

It's been great to chat with you.

It's been a lot of fun and absolutely happy to revisit

these conversations later on.

Sounds like a plan.

definitely.

Thank you for your time too.