S1E16 - Anton Shulke From War to Web - A Journey of Survival and Influence

So welcome to this episode of Bad Decisions with Jim Banks. I'm absolutely delighted to have as my guest today, Anton Shulke, who is the Head of Influencer Marketing at Duda. I've known Anton for quite a few years. He used to do a similar role when he was working at Semrush.

He was involved with webinar management and podcast management. he was also helping Jason, Barnard, who was my guest on episode two of Bad Decisions with Jim Banks. And in actual fact, I think it was Anton that said, Hey, you should have Jason on as a guest. He'd be a great guest. And he absolutely was.

So Anton, welcome to the show. And thank you for inviting Jason to come on as a guest for me. Thanks, Jim. I'm absolutely thrilled to be on your podcast. Yes, I did suggest Jason, and I think Jason is one of the most entertaining guests. He's singing songs and all do all kinds of things. Unfortunately, I cannot. I'm much, much more boring, boring guest, but I'm absolutely happy to be here.

So, so Anton, obviously, I knew you originally, like I said, when you were Semrush, at that time you were based in Ukraine, You've now moved on to many countries. Talk, talk to us a little bit about that journey, obviously, all that's happening in Ukraine and where you are now.

Uh, well, uh, war is more than two years old, uh, started at, uh, February 24, uh, 2022. Two years, a little bit. And, uh, because of the way we left country, we left country. I still remember the date, April the 8th, 2022, so, um, just, just over two years, so we stayed in Poland for one month, because we wanted to get some, some documents for our daughter's passport, but it didn't happen, at that time it was completely just, just chaotic, so we decided, okay, and we went to to, uh, eventually to Spain because I used to live in Spain and I speak Spanish.

I have still friends. So it was much easier for us. We stayed in Valencia for a year. And after that, we moved to  Bratislava Slovakia because our daughter got into university here. She already dropped out. Unfortunately, she didn't like it at all. I mean, just completely. So it was kind of a waste of journey.

But anyway, so now we're in Bratislava. And actually, my family wants to go back to Kyiv, which I disagree with, because it's still war zone and who knows, but we might try to move to Kyiv temporarily in June and see how it

one of the things that kind of struck me in that period, like it was not long after the pandemic had finished, so we'd gone from one major catastrophe, another major catastrophe. we were watching it all unfold, couldn't believe what we were seeing really.

I think the community, all the people in the search community, PPC, SEO, influencer marketing. We're relying on you to be the the guy who was on the ground able to talk about What?

I wasn't really in a war zone, no combat. Uh, anything like that, uh, where, where I was. Yeah, I remember when war started, uh, I, I received literally a hundred messages asking how I am, so I decide, uh, on the Facebook, just, just, just, you know, to not, uh, answer a hundred messages personally, I just put this coffee shot every day, so every day I was, uh, making a picture with, with the coffee, with the coffee like that, and saying, saying something, so just, just, just, uh, Just say, okay, I'm still alive, guys.

Yeah.

Yeah, and for me, again, I, I used to kind of wake up and that was one of the first videos I would go looking for was you with a cup of coffee to kind of make sure that one, you were still alive and two, what was going on. So yeah. yeah.

Yeah. It was, was a first war for me, and I guess it was a first war for almost everyone.

So I know that the context of my, my podcast is bad decisions with Jim Banks, but one of the good decisions that you made was you set up a charity to help support animals, Cause again, I mean, we all hear of the human impact. So tell us a little bit about the charity.

Okay. Uh, it's, it's not official charity. I don't have any license or anything, but I, I believe me, all money go goes to a small shelter. I did. We have no over cost in anything like that. I, uh, in Ukraine. Ukraine is, is a poor country. It's not. Uh, much of a government or any, any other support for people who run small shelters.

When I say small shelters, it's usually they're running their own flats or houses. And it's between usually like 30 to 100, 30 cats or cats and dogs to a hundred, something, something like that. You can imagine it's small, but it's not really small. Uh, most of the time, even before the war, uh, those people.

They rely on a charity money. People donated money to them, but it's usually just a personal donation. But when the war started, there became many more stray animals, or animals without home. And, uh, on the other hand, people had much less freedom. Spare money, put it this way, to donate. So I decide we can help and at the beginning of, two years ago, the feeling was on the West, where you are, United States, United Kingdom, rest of the Western Europe, people really wanted to help.

And it was very, very, very easy to collect money and help. Now it's a completely different story. People were, It's in third year, people get used to or even tired of the war, so people donate much, much less money, so it's more, more difficult. Uh, we tried, uh, last, no, February 29th, we done a marathon, four and a half hours of SEO and PPC, actually talk.

I was not talking about, um, charity, but, uh, we, it was a charity, uh, uh, stream. So we tried to collect money and, uh, we had, uh, uh, actually sponsors. We collected about 6, 000, which is a huge amount of money for, for shelters.

Again, I think the one thing, you know, I don't think people are giving up on, on kind of Ukrainian issues and everything else. I just think part of the challenge is that the kind of the spillover into other countries of the impact of things like the war. I mean, the war has been very harmful, kind of the global kind of experience.

and, and so more war since then. We, we had war in Israel as well. So always attention partially goes there and understandable.

Yeah, so let's turn things back to, um, to kind of work for a little bit. So, so you're Head of Influencer Marketing at Duda. So, Um, what, what does that kind of like that that entail? Because again, I mean, a lot of the people listening in are probably new to the digital marketing industry, right? And I think influencer marketing is one of those things, a little bit of a kind of unknown entity.

I think a lot of people talk, see, they see the Kardashians and assume that that's what influencer marketing is all about, but there's more to it. So perhaps you can kind of tell us a bit more about influencer marketing, and specifically what you is.

Yeah, exactly. Uh, um, mainstream of fulfill market right now, today is exactly this Kardashian, uh, example. When you have someone usually in, in Instagram who's got an audience and you, and you have, you have your product. whatever your product is and you're saying, Hey, uh, this is my product. This is money.

I'll take my money, make a video and, uh, and put your video, your video about my product on your channel for your audience, because you think the audience is relevant. Uh, it's, it's, it's a mainstream. When I started, I set That was 2015 it wasn't really like that. At that time I think influencer marketing wasn't really a thing.

So, but, uh, what I do, what, what we do is slightly different or maybe very much different because I would call what I just just explained. I wouldn't call it influencer marketing. I wouldn't call it. Creators Marketing. So creators make a video, uh, and, uh, you basically buy it, buying it. Uh, it's so good. If it, if it works, it's fantastic.

I usually create it, doesn't care about your product. He just, just he or she just paid money, get video done, go to the next, next, next product, maybe even to your competitors. Uh, and it's how, how it works. We work different way. We work, uh, way of trying to establish a relationship, uh, with particular influence.

So we should know who influencers are. Uh, uh, when I work at Semrush, it was very, very easy. Easy, because it was very clear community of SEO and PPC. PPC probably at less extent, but still clear community. People, uh, you can, you can see them on Twitter. Nowadays we don't have a Twitter, so, but it's still probably community there.

Uh, you can see who. Support whom, uh, and, and, and, and, and everything. And you can clearly see, I dunno. Uh, for SEO, um, you can say, okay, Barry Schwartz is obviously an, an influence, an influencer, uh, for SEO and for for PPC. Okay. We have top PPC heroes, ev every. Top 10 PPC, or top 10, 25 PPC here or there, and we know, for example, Jim Banks, one of the influencers for PPC.

And you try to establish, I try to establish personal relationship with influencers, and then after convert this personal relationship into slightly more institutional relationships, so convert from you, from me, being my personal friend. Okay, friend, maybe it's just too big, but, but, uh, uh into Brand Advocate.

But of course, if you like my brand, so for example, it's talking about, uh, Semrush. Uh, you could be Semrush, or you could be Ahrefs. If you're Ahrefs, you probably would never ever move to Semrush. It's fine, no problem about that. It's like your Android or your Apple. Uh, whatever you choose. If you, if you stay with Apple, you probably will never go and buy an Android phone.

Uh, so if you are generally open to work with Semrush and you are an influencer like yourself, uh, Jim, I was, I was trying to establish a personal relationship and after that moved into, uh, institutional to make it out of, out of view, uh, making, um, brand advocate. And, uh, I use. Uh, webinars, live streams, podcasts as well, but usually podcast with a video like your one, uh, uh, as a main tool for, for this, uh, because some ways it would be much, probably would be much better if we could sit down and, and drink a coffee with you today, uh, and have your podcast just, just, just sitting, just sitting, uh, uh, together, but it's, I much more difficult, more costly, and a lot of limitations.

Doing it online is much easier, uh, and cheaper and everything, and so it's why this is the way we're doing it. We try to give influencers a possibility to speak up, to give our own audience, to bring more audience, to give extra exposure, uh, to sell influencers to our customers. Uh, audience, and this way kind of to steal your soul.

This is the idea.

Yeah, so I mean, it's interesting. So to where. I always remember when you first were working with Semrush and you invited me to kind of come along. I think you invited me to do a webinar or something like that, or maybe a podcast. Um, again, for me, it's like, as much as I, I, I liked Semrush, I really liked you.

I mean, for me, it was about knowing, liking, and trusting you as a person rather than the brand that you were representing. And I think so many companies, that's where they make the mistake. They think it's all about the company and the brand. And it's really about the people that are representing the brand.

Right. And again, you've always

This is,

a phenomenal advocate for the brands that you've represented. So.

yeah, but this is, this is very, very interesting point. Uh, and the Semrush at certain point, uh, they can see which way we go. We as a Semrush. Uh, so, uh, and the way would be, for example, keep people like me, who would have deep, deep personal relationship with influencers, and be known. Or go into team, team mode.

So using templates, sending, uh, and have as many influences in the database as, as possible. Sending templates and basically, uh, Semrush or whatever, uh, would work with you and you don't really care who is it. You just send it, send it. Semrush, Team and everything. Which way to go? And Semrush, as many big, Semrush, it's, it's a corporation already.

Many of them choose the second way, doing it through team. Why? Because it makes a corporation much less vulnerable. Because, for example, just imagine, you have people like me, for example. And I know, I know. A hundred of influence and I have personal relationship and as you said, you joined it because you knew me personally.

Just imagine I will, I will, uh, move from, from, uh, from a team, from a company, I will be big hole.

Yeah.

And the company, big company, decided, okay, we will, we're going to go safer way. Uh, we, we will try to arrange a team. And you, as an influencer, you don't really care who, who, who is that. Is it Jim? Is it Mary? Or is it Jon?

Whoever. It doesn't matter. You only remember it's me. It's Semrush, and it's much safer. It's maybe less effective in terms of particular one, because this way you don't create personal relationship. And personal relationship, I think, is incredibly, incredibly powerful thing. And in our industry, or in all digital marketing, it's very important who know whom.

Yeah.

I think it's extremely important. Uh, so, but if you're a big brand, probably think, you know, I prefer to put it in a safer way. Uh, that, so if, for example, if Anton Shulke, tomorrow we will go to another company, who cares? We, we, we won't really feel it. So this is a thing.

that was, that was always the thing. Like I remember when I worked with Google, when they first started, the pre IPO Google was very different than the post IPO Google. Google. So once they sort of become a publicly traded company, all of a sudden things changed, And I think in some respects, the same thing happened with Semrush.

I mean, I still love Semrush as a company. I think they're phenomenal. Um, but again, I think the, the dynamics of the business changed significantly once I'm a publicly traded company, because all of a sudden their main, if you like, their main kind of commitment was to the shareholders and adding value to the shareholders.

Um, rather than necessarily the kind of the influencers and people that help to get them to the size of the company that they were to enable them to kind of become a public trading company. So, um, and again, I mean, at the end of the day, ultimately, when people sort of start up in business, they're, they're looking to kind of to grow it.

Some people are looking to grow it. to give themselves a decent lifestyle. Some people are looking to grow it to sell it, um, some people are looking to kind of grow it for other reasons, And, and clearly Semrush as a, as a business did incredibly well to kind of grow from like a fledgling company to kind of the size that it is now.

Um, but you know, but at the same time, I think the, the community, the, the influencer marketing community can make a huge difference. The impact that you have, and to your point, I definitely think that, um, you know, it is to kind of get it, get it going, It is important to have people that everyone knows, likes, and trusts to help get things off the ground.

Yeah, I think, I think it's incredibly important, but we, we've seen different examples. We've seen most. For example, Rand Fishkin, everyone remembers that, because I'm pretty sure during the Rand Fishkin time, most people, Moz and Rand Fishkin, they thought it's the same.

It's funny. I've got a funny, like I say, a funny story. It's not a funny story at the, at the time. So way back, I think in probably like the very, very early days of SEO Moz, uh, we were pitching, so I was working with a company and I literally just sold my agency to a company in North America. Um, I think it was like 2006, 2007.

Um, I sold a business. We were trying to win a piece of business and we were in the sort of final two, for the pitch, And we ended up losing that business and the company we lost it to at the time was SEO Moz, So this is before Moz, the software company. This was SEO, we were doing SEO. So I phoned up the prospect and kind of said to them, well, why did, why did you choose them over us?

And they said to me, and this is like a really, really important lesson that I learned out of the process. They, they said, the reason that to SEOmoz and Rand rather than to you, was Rand took the time and trouble to actually get on a plane, come and see us, and actually spend time with us face to face.

And for me, that was such a, an insightful, uh, thing that, that for me, I've made that part of my, go to strategy. Now, if I'm trying to win business, keep business, as much as it's expensive to do it, sometimes it's, it's important for you to be able to kind of go and, and physically, as you say, sit down and, and have a cup of coffee, have a, have a drink, whatever it might be, but make, make the effort to kind of go and win it.

It's not just about your PowerPoint, your deck, your case studies, your testimonials. Yes, all those things are important, But they're not anywhere near as important as, as forging a strong bond relationship. So for me, I, again, I, that was 2006 and I've used That story, ever since then, to kind of try and ensure that I'm not losing business by, not being personal enough to go and take time to make the prospective customer feel important to me.

I absolutely agree, as I said. Very clear. And

for that.

I agree.

What?

And it's classical example of, uh, make it build, build your things on a personal relationship, which is a much stronger and probably, uh, Probably people, in terms of journey and everything, if people have a personal relationship, they probably will approach you and say, Look, we're not happy because of this and that.

And if they have no relationship, they just cancel it and go to another company. Uh, but How many personal relationships you can handle. This is another thing. So if you're a big, big, huge company and you just, just go for it, you probably won't be able to. If you, it's a reasonably small team, it's a completely different matter.

For example, talking about Semrush, when I joined them at 16, they have 400 people. When I left Uh, five years later, uh, they have thousand plus and already been trading on Nasdaq, already did publicly trade company, completely different things.

Um, so, I mean, obviously we talked a little bit about, um, influencer marketing, kind of a holistic level, but we kind of like drill it down specifically into Duda. So tell us a little bit about Duda and what Duda does as a business, right? Because again, I've got, I've got some people that I knew from back in the day when Duda first started.

I'm sure it's a very different company, uh, then to now, but, uh, tell me a little bit about Duda and what, what Duda is all about.

Duda is a CMS and the website builder, which is not the same when they moved. I thought it's the same, but it's not. But Duda is both, uh, similar to WordPress or smaller, of course, but, uh, Duda it's not a new company. Every company is startup, but Doda is not a new company. It'll be be 14 1 4 years this year, which probably a veteran company in our industry, uh, main audience for Duda CMS as as a software.

You actually. Produce websites, uh, use using software. This software, uh, Rand main audience for a long time was, uh, still is, uh, agencies, digital agencies. Uh, usually it works this way, digital agency use to the, to, uh, create websites for clients. We're talking mainly this, not about boutique agency, but agency who works with small, medium sized businesses.

So, for example, if you, uh, if you agency and you work with a. local clients like, uh, I don't know, plumber in, in Houston, if you're in Houston. Uh, so, uh, and Plum doesn't really want to deal with website or anything. He goes to your agency saying, Hey, I need a website. So you build them a website using Duda.

Why using Duda? Because There are some, some advantages of WordPress. I'm not saying Duda is better than WordPress, but for agencies, probably Duda is, agencies who deal with reasonably simple websites for small and medium sized, Duda is probably better, more, more effective. You can do websites three, five times faster, and you don't need to search passwords and everything.

Okay, but I'm not gonna, gonna try to sell you Duda right now. I'm not in sales. Uh, so, uh, this is, this is the main, uh, uh, and, and this agency says they're not only doing website designs, of course, after they're done with websites, it's, it's, they say, they're saying to you, okay, we've done websites, fantastic website, do can just give it to you, you can, you can handle, you can maintain, you can maintain.

change everything, or you want to pay us small retainer and we keep you and we will be updated. Oh, there's a plumbing in Texas, in Houston, Louisiana, I'll pay retainer. So it's how they build, build the client base. And after that they go and say, okay, you have a website, but you know, You, we, we, we can get you some visibility.

SEO local, SEO PPC, content marketing, you, you name it, as they upsell it. And eventually, uh, they get some substantial amount of money from client. But of course they help the, help the client as well. So this is main do specialty and main, main, uh, client database. But now, uh, Randy actually. I wouldn't, when I joined, I wouldn't think about it, but if you look at the vertical source, uh, uh, for example, you're a sales company and you're producing, uh, scheduling software for dentists, just, just over the top of my head, dentists.

Uh, you know, you go, when you go, when you go to dentists and so on, can I have an appointment at that time? Just, just. No, we don't have as a stock on that time. We can get it to that. Okay, fine. But most of them, funny enough, most of the dentists either don't have a website or have very very And, uh, uh, very baasic website.

Yeah, yeah, I was looking for what. Basic website which is not, which you cannot integrate with the software. Which means some people goes on to search, they see that, and they use the telephone and, you know. Now there's still no telephone to, uh, make an appointment. So, as I say, look, we, we will just add to your package a website, uh, we'll do your website, and it will be integrated with our software, and people can just, just, just do it online. And, yeah, why not? So, uh, and Duda can see, uh, Duda is doing a business. Now we have about 200, uh, clients like that. 200 sounds great, but if you're talking about Duda has like 20, 000 agencies as a client, you can see still, still, still big, big difference. So Duda goes into, uh, uh, this, this niche, and I think it's, it's a plenty of business.

Because surprisingly enough, so many small, medium sized businesses, they don't, don't have that. I don't have a website. They use Facebook or something like that.

Yeah, because I think that the whole concept of digital marketing scares a lot of traditional businesses and dentists. Funny enough, way back in 99, when I was working as a sales manager for a web design company. Um, we were talking to dentists back then, And I, I basically was trying to pitch somebody on, um, like basically having a website built, 

And they, they, they agreed to have a website built because they didn't want to be the only dentist in that particular location not to have a website. That was their motivation behind it rather than it being efficiency and effectiveness, So what we ended up, we, we built them the website and we said, look, this, what this, this website could do.

I mean, like, like dental. Practices. One of those is a classic business where basically you want people to go and have like checkups probably once a year and see a hygienist once a year, right? So that's typically two appointments minimum every single person should have to do once a year. And what would happen is that this dentist would would send out postcards with a stamp on, right, or six month period, they'd have somebody that would sort of sit there and write the cards out and say, you need to come in to see the dentist.

I still get it now from my dentist, They still send out a letter to say, you should come in and have a checkup,And I'm thinking, we have, we are so far past that. And I think so much of the, the decision making is based upon the sophistication of the person actually doing it. And, Again, you can't blame dentists for not understanding it, because they're dentists, 

I don't know the first thing about teeth, They know everything about teeth and fillings and so on and so on. I know nothing about that. But they should defer to people who are experts, And I think that's where I think a lot of people, they try and do things themselves, I mean, I'm sure I could pick up a pair of pliers, grab a tooth and give it a good yank and it might come out. Won't be the best way to do my dental work, So I kind of defer to an expert in that particular field.

Yeah, absolutely. A lot of them, they don't understand, but they probably shouldn't, as you said. Uh, the question is if they listen. Uh, I'm pretty sure many of them listen. And for me, for me, it's absolutely clear. For me especially, because, um, I I, most of the time I'm a foreigner, sometimes I don't speak local language, so for me it's much, much easier to do things online, where I can check, change the language, or translate, for example, then try to call, and depends on the country, obviously, if you're in the U.S.

And, uh, but for example, here in Slovakia, uh, when I have to call, it's, it's a problem. I don't speak Slovak and they usually don't speak good enough English to, to do it over the phone. So, uh, I would, I would definitely prefer, well, of course I understand the business as well. Mostly for local people, not for foreigners who doesn't speak local language, but it's, it's just example.

I do understand importance and, and I think it's, it's very easy for people who understood importance, who goes with, with this marketing, uh, things, they, they get more money. Also, they just survive from people who want what they want.

I mean, sometimes it's there once, make more money but sometimes it's they'll save a lot of money again if you think of a dentist 25 years ago that instead of sending out let's say they had a thousand patients right thousand patients twice a year two stamps times so that's two thousand you know basically two thousand postcards per person per year right that that's a huge amount of money that they would be spending on posting that they didn't have to pay anymore.

It's just literally an email that would get automatically sent out every six months to say, you need to see a dentist, you need to see a hygienist, done, And you could do the same thing. You need new tires, you need a kind of winter checkup, you need all sorts of different things. So much of it is about efficiency and effectiveness, and understanding some of the technological capabilities that exist now, 

I mean, again, I'm a, I'm a huge, huge fan and proponent of using Notion, right. I use it kind of like as a second brain. So it'll be for like my tasks and all sorts of different things that I'll, I'll just put it into that. I can walk around and make recordings and it'll put it into my database and sort of set a flag and remind me and all that sort of stuff.

Cause again, I don't want to be walking around trying to remember. What, what I need to do. I mean, I kind of went shopping with my wife this morning and we couldn't remember where we'd parked the car, I mean, I'm thinking, wow, we must be getting really old, you know,

Yeah, I'm very, very, very, very bad with the parking car. And I always, when it's a huge one, I always make a picture, uh, with a number, uh, and everything and send it to myself. So just to make sure, you know.

It's funny, I do that quite often if I, if I go traveling, um, one of the first things I do when I check into my hotel room is I take a picture of the door number so I know which room I'm in, because then that way If I do end up kind of sleepwalking and walking in the corridors at night or something like that, at least I know kind of which room I'm in.

We're getting old.

Yeah, we are definitely getting old. Well, I am. I don't know about you, Anton. Um, so, so obviously the future for you could be that you may go back to Ukraine. You're not sure kind of like if that's going to happen or not. Um, again, if you do go back, I wish you kind of safe, safe passage and hope it all kind of works out okay.

And hopefully this horrible war will kind of end at some point in time. Where do you see the, um, in terms of the influencer marketing kind of arena, where do you see that being in the next three to five years? Let's not, let's not talk about a war. Where do you see kind of influencer marketing heading?

I think it would be two, uh, two different things. Maybe they would even change your name because as I said, I would call it creator marketing. It will obviously go. Thrive, and it will stay, its future is there for sure. So we will be asking, uh, Kardashian to wear, uh, our products or sell our products.

Surely it will stay, but I think, uh, this old school relationship will be even, uh, better. Even more, even more important in a way of, uh, AI, because AI can, at least not now. I don't believe in five years time AI will be able to build up a relationship with people. I hope, I hope it won't, but I don't believe it's, it's gonna happen within five or even ten years, even ten years.

Who knows? So, which means, Personal relationship would be very, very, very important. And so people who can do that, uh, as, as they probably will be still doing influencer marketing very well and everything. Actually, the interesting thing is a bad decision. When I thought about bad decision, I asked myself, can I, can I think about really bad decision what I made?

And I thought. Maybe, maybe one, when I start doing marketing things in 2015, I talk to Craig Campbell, who is a, he is a friend now, but I was a friend at that time. And actually, he told me, don't do whatever you do, webinars and everything, go and I learned SEO and probably wasn't was I wasn't technical enough or something so I didn't and I said maybe it's a bad decision because for example right now for me because you can you can see how many people looking for for good SEOs and it's so easy I'm not saying easy to do I'm saying it's It's easy to sell yourself.

You say, okay, I'm SEO with 10 years experience, for example. And, uh, when I, when I thinking about selling myself, I have a very, very, a lot of difficulties because I can't even tell what I'm doing because most of the people, they don't understand. So you have to spend what, what we've been doing for 40, 40 plus minutes.

I was trying to explain what I'm doing. Most of HR won't have 40 minutes for that. So I thought maybe it was a bad decision. I don't know, maybe I should just learn something, which is, I'm not saying easy, but it's easy to understand and sell.

Yeah, it's funny like you're talking about Craig. I mean, so I've known Craig for many, many years. Again, he's, I don't even know if he's a good SEO. I'm assuming he is right. But, but it's sort of like he's a really, really good creator. He's really good at personal branding, like PR. Um, and obviously building, building his business and he's speaking, which, and again, I mean, he gets invited to speak at lots of conferences, 

But he does a very good job of both promoting his own involvement in the conference, but the conference itself, So again, as a conference organizer, you want your speakers, to do that. You want them to kind of help put the, the,

Yeah, it's like a webinar. Yeah,

the map, Because ultimately, if you have a person like Craig, who's got maybe 120,000 subscribers on YouTube, if he puts on a thing and says, hey, I'm kind of headlining a particular event, 

Then that's good for, that's good for the event, I mean, you know, people might sort of watch it and say, hey, I like Craig. I like his content. I'm going to go to that event. So they'll buy a ticket to go to the event. And that's, that's a person that they wouldn't have had, had he not been. putting in the effort before he gets to the show to actually, tell people about it.

So

yeah, absolutely. Craig is a great businessman as well, so.

yeah, and, and again, he doesn't spend a lot of money on clothes because he's, he just has his, his, uh, vests and his, his shorts and his tattoos. And

Yeah, he's got, he's got, he's got his own style.

That's his personal brand. That's, that's what he's all about. In the same way that, again, you know, with Jason, he's got his red shirt. I always see you, you're pretty much always wearing like an orange shirt.

I don't know if you

Yes.

you work for based on the color orange, Because like Semrush, like orange was their kind of primary color.

And Duda as well. Duda as well has an orange color. Yeah, it's a joke. And before Semrush, I was working for a very, very little known web promo Ukrainian company. It has an orange color. Uh, Orange as well, so I hope with you being English and if I sell, uh, the future, uh, uh, is bright, the future is orange, you know what, what I'm talking

I do, I do know what you're talking about. So Anton, thank you so much for being a guest on the podcast. Obviously in the show notes, I'll include all the information about your, uh, your, your charity, where people can kind of go to kind of donate.

That would be fantastic.

You know, again, like if you do, if you do nothing else other than that from this particular episode, then fantastic.

But I think Anton's given us some fantastic insight. And there will, there will be all of the information about how you can reach out to Anton, how you can kind of catch him. Anton, just like I said, just remains for me to thank you for being a fantastic guest. And hopefully at some point in time, we'll [00:37:00] Uh, when the, the kind of climate permits, we can kind of have an actual coffee across the table and maybe pick up the, uh, the conversation where we're off.

Yeah, it would be great. And thank you, uh, for, for having me here. Fantastic. Fantastic conversation. I like to do it.

And we'll speak soon.