The Best of Content Marketing with Proven Examples with Andrea Fryrear

Welcome to the podcast. I am Shane Barker, your host of Shane Barker’s marketing madness podcast, I’m really happy to have an expert content strategist and president of Agile Sherpas, Andrea Fryrear with me here today. She’s a true agile marketing evangelist who runs a lot of training courses and she’s helped many marketers boost their campaign results. Listen as she talks about the brands that are crushing their content marketing initiatives, along with her favorite campaigns to learn from. Also discover what she predicts about the future of content marketing. You’ll definitely find this podcast interesting and valuable.

I’m on a call here today with Andrea Fryrear, super excited about the interview today. We’ve been trying to connect the last few months, and because of just life, business and everything else. It’s been a little hard to connect, but here we are today. I’m excited about the interview. (Yeah, me too, glad to be here) Absolutely, absolutely. So why don’t you kind of tell the audience just a little bit about yourself, and you know how you’ve gotten into the space and stuff like that, where do you live? I just want to get kind of a little background on you.

Ooh, Boulder. I’ve only been out there once, and it’s phenomenal.

Right to all Texas fans out there, no hard feelings, but I would have to say Colorado. It’s like, there’s, I’m in Sacramento, California, and I tell you, Colorado is one of those states where I’m, like, to me, that would be an even, if not, maybe a move up. I love California, but it’s like, Colorado is just, I don’t know, just everything about is awesome.

Well, you can tell from my white skin that I’m not a huge beach fan. It’s not that I don’t enjoy the beach or the sun, it’s just that the sun doesn’t enjoy me. I can literally talk about the sun and potentially get burnt. So, yeah, I’m Irish, and that’s what happens sometimes.

The good old default. Well, you know, it’s so funny because I would have never thought about this when I was in college, but having that English background—it’s so beneficial. You wouldn’t necessarily think of that in the beginning, but especially in the content space, it’s huge. I’ll be honest, I’m not an English major, and you can tell from my early posts. I’d send them to my wife, and she’d say, “Oh my God, did you write this in crayon?” You know, kind of like that. English is obviously my first language, but I’m just not that great at writing. I’m an okay writer, I would say, but I can’t compare to someone like you who has a degree in it. I think it’s such a nice foundation to have.

Mom and Dad, I told you! That’s awesome, that’s cool. So what college did you go to?

Nice, and then, when you say when you were in Texas, was it Austin, Texas?

I like the name because it leaves a little bit of mystery, because I’m like, from California. I’m highly confused, but I get it, though. It’s the reason why I was asked about Austin, because I’ve actually never been to Austin, which is crazy, because I have startups I’ve worked with there. I have a lot of friends that live there, and in fact, one of the instructors that I teach a class at UCLA, she actually lives there, and she got to come out to Austin. So I didn’t, I was going to ask you about Austin a little before he jumped in the content side of things. But Dallas, I’ve heard is – I’ve been to Dallas a few times.

Yeah, yeah. And that’s why I can’t believe I haven’t been to Austin. Anyways, I’m going to go, and by the next time this podcast goes live, I will have visited Austin. Watch. How about that? So cool. When you were in college, you obviously focused on the English side of things, and then you got into content marketing by default, right? You had a company that said, “Hey, she seems really intelligent. We think she can handle the English side of things, and now maybe she can start doing this PPC thing.” It was kind of like, “Hey, this isn’t your background, but you grinded it out, looked online, and educated yourself.”

Well, and that’s the thing, though, it’s funny. Most of the people that I interview have been in the space for 10 plus years, and there’s really nobody with a background in content marketing, because it wasn’t even around for the most part, right? It really wasn’t. I mean, it was a concept, I guess, but now it’s obviously become very popular in the last 7-5 years, or whatever that is. But, you know, that’s what’s funny about the evolution of us as marketers. When I started doing marketing about 20 years ago, content marketing wasn’t even a thing—we were doing SEO before it was even called SEO. And now, with content marketing, it’s a thing, and you’re like, “Oh, thank God I got the English background.” I’ve been writing content, and you know, it’s just one of those things. We started investing in my website probably about seven or eight years ago, focusing on the blog, just saying, “Hey, I just wanted to write on the blog,” even though, like I said, I wasn’t a phenomenal writer. Now, because of those early days of doing that, content marketing is obviously a huge thing. A lot of B2B and B2C companies want this as a service, and so we have that background now. So, once again, there aren’t too many people who went to school for content marketing, because that’s more of a recent thing, right? Probably in the last four or five years, where someone can say, “Oh, I can go to a school that teaches content marketing.” I’m not even sure if there’s a school that teaches it, necessarily.

Yeah, see, down under. See, that’s what it is. Australia always has the stuff that’s awesome. It’s kind of interesting to me because, like I said, it’s just not—I kind of stumbled into it the same way that you have, right? And it’s like, okay, this is kind of awesome. You have that background, and now it makes sense to move forward with that with your clients. So tell me a little bit about your company. What’s the name of your company? And give me a little background there, because obviously you’ve been around for a while.

That’s awesome because it’s a really interesting angle. A lot of people don’t understand this, especially when it comes to content creation. There are efficiencies you can implement. If you reach a certain point, you can decide, “If this happens, then this happens, and if that happens, this happens.” At that point, you probably shouldn’t go any further. But if you keep moving forward in the right direction, it makes sense to continue. Can you talk a little more about that? I think a lot of people struggle with content creation, or even running a company with that kind of methodology. For example, companies like Toyota have used a similar approach. Their methodology is simple: “If it doesn’t make sense at a certain point, we just cut it.” It’s all about having a system and clear processes in place to guide those decisions.

Yeah. Well, that’s interesting to me, because I’ll tell you, I mean, I’ll be honest, my team doesn’t do that. We don’t do that, right? And it’s not, I really think that’s some place that we could improve, because for us, it’s, you know, we look at content, we look at keywords, we look at some, some people have put some stuff out there. We obviously look at, like, the, you know, the key that the KD of like, how competitive that keyword is. Not every blog post we do is always keyword driven, but I think that is something that where we could improve upon as an as an agency, is like going and testing some stuff ahead of time. So that’s interesting. So I might have to talk to you off that, off camera about that, because that’s that’s definitely an interesting thing. That’s something that I think we need as an agency. So tell me a little bit like, so how does that work? Like, when you guys bring in clients, like, give me kind of a rundown of, like, who would be your guys’s perfect client, right? And somebody that you guys can bring in and say, Hey, this is the type of company we work with here. And what we look at is their processes. And how does that like, kind of give me a little more breakdown then?

And then you guys actually meet with the client in person. Is it like a two day intensive type thing? How do you guys run things?

Yeah, I was going to say, I can only imagine how difficult it would be to do something remote because, one, people are going to be kicking and screaming a little bit due to the change, right? That’s never easy. So, if you’re not there, you know, guiding them—I’m not saying “whipping” them, but you know, being there to say, “Hey, you’ve got to do this,” showing them how to do it, and educating them—that’s really the key to this whole process. It’s about going in and revamping everything they’ve been doing, reevaluating and redoing it. Change is rarely comfortable for people. In fact, it’s usually uncomfortable, right? So, that’s interesting. You guys usually do it in two days? I guess it just depends on the size of the company.

Yeah, well, that’s the thing—it’s a behavioral thing, right? It’s not just a process, but the idea that when you come in on Monday, it’s going to be totally different from what you were doing on Friday, right? I was gonna say, and I just think that’s always tough for people, because, you know, not everybody, but a good amount of people want to stay complacent. Like, “Hey, this is okay,” even if the results aren’t as favorable, because it’s easy to come in on a Monday and just do the same stuff. When you’re disrupting that, I think it becomes a situation where people are like, “Oh, this is uncomfortable.” But obviously, I’m sure after a few weeks or months, they start to see that change, start to see the process in place, and see things improving. I think that’s when the value happens.

Well, and that’s, I think it’s a great point, because that’s the thing—a lot of people take their work personally, right? But what they feel like is that you guys are coming in and saying, “Hey, this thing’s all messed up, and we have to revamp it because of what you’ve done,” right? Which is really not the case. It’s like, “Hey, maybe there are some processes, and maybe some things, that we can help to make more efficient.” And it’s not something to be taken personally. The whole idea, at the end of the day, is we just want to improve things, right? Isn’t that what everybody can agree on? Yeah, we all want to make things better. So, what we’re going to look at is that some of these processes can be tweaked, and that’s what we’re here to do. Not necessarily say, “This was wrong, don’t take it personally.” It’s that kind of thing. So, I totally get that. But it is that, you know, I see that a lot of times, especially if we do joint ventures. And sometimes, with other marketing companies, when we were a younger agency, it was always kind of like—you don’t really want to step on anybody’s toes. You don’t want to tell them, “That’s wrong,” but we’ve seen this work a little better. And it’s been different, we don’t do that anymore. Now, it’s like, “Hey, we have to take the reins.” You can’t really have two chefs cooking the meal, right? You’ve got to have a sous chef. You’ve got to have people doing desserts and stuff. It’s the same kind of thing. I was raised in the restaurant industry and the service industry, so I always think of it like that. It doesn’t make sense to have that many people, and it’s like, really—who’s in charge of this? You guys coming in and saying, “Hey, I’m going to give you guys the reins for a few days and then help educate you,” just knowing that what we all care about is this process being better, that we have more sales, that the efficiencies are there. And I think everybody should agree with that, right? I mean, at the end of the day, it’s like, your bonuses might be higher, you can increase productivity, and there are all kinds of benefits if we work on this together.

And I think you’d think, if they can’t take it personally, the idea is that you’re also growing as an individual, right? So, you can take this on to any company, and that’s obviously a valuable resource to have—to know that, “Hey, we worked in these kinds of conditions, and this is what I learned.” And you’ll take that with you. I mean, really, you’d have to think of it as, “Hey, this is huge value. It’s like the company is investing in me to be a better person for this company, and maybe for a future company as well,” which, you know, if they can think about it the right way, there’s huge value. That’s beautiful. That’s awesome, that somebody’s willing to do that.

Wow, that’s awesome, because I, once again, understand the value in it, and I understand what you guys are doing, but I don’t know if I’ve heard about it that much. And obviously, you said it’s up and coming, but I think that’s what’s really cool—that you obviously got in a long time ago and were one of the first people doing it, or at least the first I’ve heard about doing it, which is awesome. So, that’s cool. Is there a lot of other companies doing things like this when it comes to the Agile methodology?

Yeah, that’s awesome. So that’s cool. Once again, I think that side of things is interesting for me because, once again, there are always processes. And when you have processes in place—or you have bad processes in place—it obviously affects everything, right? So now, the fact that you’re able to go in there, recognize that, and change it is interesting to me. I mean, that makes me want to reevaluate my own processes. Like I said, we’ll probably talk offline about that. So, tell me a little bit about your books. You had a book—was it Death of a Marketer? Which title? I took that very personally because I was like, “Oh, I didn’t know if there was something I didn’t know about or that I wasn’t in the know.” But anyways, tell us a little bit about that—your inspiration, what the book’s about. Give us some intel there.

Gotcha. And so just to confirm, but no marketers were killed in the making of this book, right? Because –

I just don’t want, like, you know, there’s PETA for animals. I just don’t know if there’s like, marketers, like, if they’re gonna get some people picketing at your house or something. I’m just trying to keep you safe on that side because, you know…

All right, that’s good. That’s good. Okay, just want to make sure; that’s awesome. So you, I mean, you did the book about two years ago, which is interesting to me because you’d only been in the space for about two years at that point, right? So you’re like, saying, “Hey, listen, there’s obviously a need for this, right? And there’s, hey, we’re doing this.” But also, I think, let me explain why the Death of the Marketer, and why we need these processes to be put in place.

All right, well, my butt needs to be saved. I’m with you on that. I guess if I had $1 for every email I got that said, “Hey, you want to do content together?”—so much I appreciate it, like, anybody sending people. I love it. But it is like this: I look at it and I’m like, “Wow, that’s cool. 500 emails on a Monday. Yes, this is awesome.” You know? And I’ve put some efficiencies in place, nowhere close to what you guys create by any means, but I’ve used VAs and all that fun stuff, where it’s caused, you know, a little less stress when it comes to that. But that’s definitely something I think I need to look at in regards to that because there are processes that are in place that could be improved. I think that’s with anything you do, though. I mean, it’s, you know, it’s like—always have, especially to have an outside source, or, you know, their set of eyeballs, take a look at your process. Because you always, well, I don’t always feel this, but other people might, “Oh, I think it’s a good process.” It’s like, well, but it never hurts to have a third party take a look at it.

So, let’s talk about your courses here. I see that you do a lot of courses. How many courses do you have right now?

Yeah, well, that’s funny. So, where I have my office, there are obviously other people in the office space, but one of them is Kai Partners, and they do a lot of this. They do it for the state of California, but they do some scrum stuff and other things, and I’ve always been really intrigued by what they do. But I’ll tell you that, like, they put up these crazy whiteboard things, and I look at it, and instantly, my brain hurts. I get a little anxiety. I’m not even in the meeting, but I’m looking at it going, “Oh my God.” Like, I think it’s, you know, to be able to make it palatable and a little bite-sized, and you say you have a course—that’s what seems like the beginner, like, “Hey, let’s get you some framework or foundation on some of the different things we have going,” I think is a good idea, because it can be daunting. I mean, I don’t know your guys’ process, but here, when I look at it, and they’re working with the state of California, so there are hundreds of people, thousands of people. I mean, there’s a lot of different stuff, but I look at that and go, “That looks like it’s gonna hurt my brain.” But I do, I like that. I understand the value in it. I’m like, “Hey, once you’ve really figured this whole thing out and drilled down deep, I think the origami thing is a great example, because then it’s real hands-on, and people go, ‘Oh, I see. Oh, that makes sense.’” Because a lot of the things we don’t know, right? We don’t know if there’s a bottleneck, or maybe you do, but you don’t understand how it happens or how to get out of it even better, right? Like, there’s a bottleneck—what do I do instead of, like, “Do we just fire Larry, or do we give Larry an assistant? What do you do?” Right? It’s like, how do we take care of that? Like, for you guys, when you do those types of systems, are you looking at, like, “Hey, once again, the efficiencies,” right? Of saying, “Hey, listen, you have a 10-person team. You don’t necessarily need to give 15 people. What you need to do is figure out how we can, you know, cut down on what people are doing,” or like, what are the—like, what would you recommend for something like that? I guess that’s kind of what I’m asking.

Yeah. And once again, as we talked about this, I just think about our processes and some of that stuff, because, you know, when you’re… I think, you know, this always changes, right? Each year, every few years, it changes, like, hey, you know, having ADHD, which was super awesome for me because I was like, “Oh, look, I can put up 1500 windows and do 1500 things,” and now you’re realizing, like, hey, maybe it’s a little better to focus a little bit on some stuff getting done. You know, back in the day, I would have 10 projects going, and we were at 20% and 25%, and nothing was really getting done because we were, you know, chipping away at them, and that was great. But it’s like there were just so many different things that would have to happen instead of focusing on one project, finishing that project. I mean, unless it’s client-related, obviously, because then there are all these different levels. But for our own internal projects, we’d say, “Hey, we need to finish this one because this is a high priority, put all the team on this one, get this thing to where it needs to be, and then go move on to another project.” So, I think that’s important, and allowing that time, right? I mean, when I was younger, I was working 18-19 hour days, long, long hours, seven days a week, and I was killing myself literally because I didn’t have processes in place, right? I was just grinding, grinding, grinding. I was making great money, but who cares about the money if you can’t ever use it, right? I’m like, “This is great, my son’s gonna have money in the bank, and I’m gonna be dead at 40 years old or something.” So that’s obviously not the goal here in life. So I think that’s, you know, when you look at those efficiencies and what you need to do to be able to cut that down… I’m gonna work smarter, not harder, right? Being able to do that. So it’s really interesting to me, because, like I said, I think of that transition of my agency, myself as an individual, from 20 plus years ago until today. I feel like we’re definitely better, for sure, but we’re nowhere close to the thought process and how you guys put things together. So once again, very intrigued by it, for sure.

So, and that’s the way we run my teams. I have a 31-32 person team now, but we’re all remote, and that’s the way I run things. It’s not, I’m not here to micromanage anybody. I’m not here to, that’s just not the way I do things, right? Because I don’t want to, I don’t have time to go see, “Hey, what are you doing here? What’s going on here?” Like, if you are more efficient and you can get your stuff done in three hours when it should have taken eight, I don’t have a problem with that. I mean, as long as the work is getting done. I think another thing is, if you thought about selling this, is that the Agile angels, do you think those are? And you buy those? Because, I mean, I’d probably take two right now, because I’d want the angel ones, because the devil one always seems to be louder. Yeah, the devil one is always like, “Hey, no, do more. Come on, man, show them what you got.” I’m like, “Dude, leave me alone. I’m talking to the other angel real quick. Call me later or something.” Do you guys sell those angels or anything?

I mean, why not, right? Everybody needs that little, like, what is it? I was like, “Oh, it’s my angel. I forgot about that.” You know, awesome. Let me know if that works out, because I’d, like, I don’t really care about a cut, because it was a little bit of my idea. But, I mean, you brought it up originally. If you could send me a free angel, I guess, or two, or whatever, maybe they can help me out throughout my day. Bet I look forward to the angel coming in the mail. So, tell us a little bit. So when we talk about, like, you know, let’s say I’m an aspiring marketer and I say, “Hey, I want to jump into the marketing space.” I mean, obviously, I think a first step would be, hey, you obviously have your course, right? Your baseline, your foundational course, where they could go take a look at. What are some other books or things you’ve read that you might recommend? I mean, because if I’m a marketer, like, for me, you know, there are a lot of things that we would have to change, and I get that. But if I was starting off and said, “Hey, I really want to jump into this,” I know there’s training and stuff you can go through as well. Like, touch on that a little bit as well.

Well, that’s why I was excited about today’s conversation, because the agile side of things is something we don’t necessarily do, but we should. I love these kinds of podcasts because they let you start learning about it. These days, there’s so much information out there, and it can be hard to funnel it in and make it palatable. For entrepreneurs like us, or anyone who produces content, it’s good that people can consume that content. But it’s difficult for us, and for the people who follow us, to figure out how to filter through all that information. That’s why I try to recommend books to help. If they read them, they’ll get a better understanding, even if they don’t go full-blown agile. They’ll at least have something in their toolbox that they can use. It’s about getting enough information so they can talk fluently about it—not necessarily becoming an instructor, but having enough knowledge to be dangerous.

And who is the author? Do you know? Oh, if you don’t remember, I’m just—every time you say a book, I go to write it down. So, you duck out for a second. I just want to add it to my list.

That’s all right. I’ll look it up, and we’ll put it at the bottom of the podcast or something like that. So, what are the things—let’s talk about this. Over the years, obviously, you’ve been building up efficiencies and doing that kind of stuff. What do you think your strengths and weaknesses are, maybe as a marketer, but also as an agency? What do you guys need to improve upon? Not to talk about the bad things, but just looking at the good stuff—obviously, there’s a lot of good things—but what have you guys had to change, I guess, from an agile perspective in your agency? Because obviously, you’re teaching other people how to do it. And there’s always, you know, what usually happens is you go and teach everybody else. Like, for me, I teach everybody else how to do stuff. Like, I just started optimizing my blog a year ago. I’ve done it for everybody else, and they all got great results, and everything was awesome. But I was looking at mine and thinking, “I’m getting like 100 people a day. This is ridiculous. I should be getting more.” Now we’re getting 2,000-3,000 people a day. But, you know, tell me a little bit about that process. What did it take for you guys to take a look at your process and say, “Hey, we need to make some improvements here as well”?

Yeah, I’m gonna switch gears on you a little bit. So you guys have a full remote team. What do you guys use? Because, obviously, I have a form of team too, right? It’s taken a long time to get it to a point where it’s efficient, but now I feel like it’s very efficient—well, very efficient until I talk to somebody like you, and then you’ll look at it and go, “You’re like 30%, buddy.” And I’m like, “Okay, I thought I was maybe closer to 70, but that’s okay.” With the remote side of things, like, what software do you guys use and stuff like that for people who have remote teams or are looking to develop a remote team?

That’s awesome. So we use Trello as well. We do a little bit of Slack, obviously, Google Drive docs for stuff, and then Dropbox for files. Yeah, we like Trello. I mean, it’s funny because we’ve used a lot of different tools—Basecamp and Asana—and I haven’t really felt that there’s anything that’s just perfect. I mean, because everybody has kind of different systems, but it’s always like, “Oh, this one’s good here, this one’s good there.” Another one we actually just started trying is called Griffin. A friend of mine, Marcella, actually put this together. She’s been working on it for about three years. I did a thing here with SEMrush, doing a live workshop, and she was one of the speakers. She came up and said, “Oh, I’ve got this software,” and I was like, “Let me check it out.” I looked at it and thought, “Wow, this is really good.” So, it talks about processes. Like, you know, once again, it’s like, “Hey, you have this to do. Somebody ordered some content from you.” Here go the 15 things that need to be done, and then it’s done. They have something like Process Street, and there are some other ones like that, right? You can go, “Hey, this happens, and then this email gets sent out,” and stuff like that. So I’m trying that right now. We’re just kind of putting the processes in place to streamline some of those and make things more transparent for the client and for us internally. There are just a lot of moving pieces when it comes to the stuff we do. Anyways, it’s always interesting. The process side of things can always be improved.

That’s the beauty of it all. Yeah, I’ve used CoSchedule. In fact, I was just on the podcast with Eric and those guys over there at CoSchedule. Awesome, awesome team over there. We do a few different things. We use another tool called Quuu, just for you and maybe for people out there.

Then QuuuPromote is another one that we use, so, you know. What they do is they have two different sides to the service. One side is where you can put content that you want to get promoted, and you pay monthly for that to distribute your content. The other side is for marketers—this is the type of content you want out there—and they hand-read everything and curate the content for your audience, which is interesting because, once again, we’re always looking for time-savers, right? Like, I could spend all day long reading articles and sharing them, and then I haven’t done the 5000 other things I was supposed to do. So yeah, that’s CoSchedule we’ve used, and we’ve also liked them as well. They’re obviously a great company.

Yeah, it’s Q-U-U-U, so there’s Quuu and then there’s QuuuPromote. So there are two sides to the company, yeah. I know, I’m not sure what Q.que is, so I just want to make sure you don’t go there. It sounds like it’s pretty safe, though. Well, cool. Let me see… So, talk to us a little bit about some of the brands you guys have worked with. I mean, it could be big or small, and some of the results you guys have seen there, because I’d be interested. I know everybody’s results are different, right? It depends on the organization, how the process is set up, the people that are hired, how well they adapt the processes, and all that kind of stuff. But give me a rundown of maybe some case studies or some stuff you guys have done.

I’m just like, instantly, when you said 300 marketers, I instantly wanted to duck out and start crying. I mean, I can only imagine, because you have 300… So, I used to own a company where we had 130 employees, right? And I know running that was tough, and that was just 130 people. And if any of those people are listening to this podcast, I love you guys all, so don’t take this personally. But there, you know, I always felt like I was the fireman, putting stuff out, and I couldn’t really work on the business. I mean, I had great people in place, especially my management team, but there were probably processes that weren’t perfect. I mean, what processes ever are? But when I think about 300 people and getting them all to buy into it and to view it, and obviously, the education side of it is important—everybody wants to keep their job, so they’re in—but I just think, man, just to be able to put something like that together for 300 people is really mind-blowing to me, because obviously I haven’t done it. So, I look at it, and I don’t even know where to start with this thing. Like, you know, obviously, you guys have been doing it for a while, so you get that, but I just think about it: a five-person team all day long. Like, I feel like, hey, we could figure some stuff out. But 300, because, you know, you get whatever the percentage is: you get 60% or let’s say 40% that are excited, 60% that are like, “This is…” or 40% that love it, 40% that say, “Hey, I’m not worried about it,” and 20% that are like, “This is ridiculous. I hate this.” You know, it’s like, how do you… And then, being able to—because you’re obviously not going to be there the whole year—and then being able to, like, I mean, it really has to feel like you’re a PR company for when something bad happens to a client, and you’ve got to get it out to the media and change the perception of what’s going on. I mean, you really have to get people to buy in. You’ve got to get them to start making those changes. 300 people… that’s just… it’s like moving a herd of drunk elephants. Which, I don’t even know if elephants get drunk, but I just feel like that’s how slow the process could be.

Find the evangelist. Yeah, that makes total sense. I just, you know, I just look at that, man, 300 people, that’s just, that is quite a feat to take on.

No, it’s… I mean, I understand that. It does make sense, like, hey, those small wins. And for those people to go tell others about the small wins, because it’s easy for you to come in and say, “Hey, this is the best thing since sliced bread.” They’re like, well, obviously you’re gonna say that, you’re getting paid to be here, you know? It’s like, you want to get some of the people internally who are saying, “Wow, this is really awesome. We started using this and had some small wins. This is what we’re looking at.” And then people kind of get intrigued and start asking some questions instead of being opposed to change, which, you know, I would think in the beginning a lot of people are that way, right? I mean, it’s just kind of human nature.

Yeah, the buy-in, right? It has to trickle down. That’s definitely it. Yeah, that’s a tricky thing, like you said. It’s a big ship to move, for sure. So, let’s talk about content marketing a little more. What do you think about the future of content marketing? Where do you see it going? I mean, you already killed all the marketers two years ago in your book, so now that those people are out of the way, where do you think it’s going? I want to know what’s next because I missed that first wave of deaths and stuff like that, which I think is good. But I’m just trying to figure out for that second wave—what do you see? You’re kind of on the cutting edge of this, so I want to know. I mean, I’m trying to survive here in this land of milk and honey. It’s 2019, and I just want to keep going. So, what do you see in regards to the future of content marketing?

Yeah, I think that’s the key. People always want things faster, right? Everybody wants a seven-second habit, three seconds, right? And because you have these bigger companies that are able to do that, right? They’re able to adapt, and they have these processes, and these people are looking at the processes on a daily basis. How do the smaller companies—how can they put some efficiencies in place, where they don’t have to respond in two minutes, but maybe it’s two hours or three hours, so they’re not missing the opportunity? Because people are very quick to jump with the other guy or jump to the other person if you don’t respond quickly or say something bad on social media or whatever. How do you mitigate that?

Yeah, man, those selfish customers everywhere, and they’re having kids, so their kids are going to be the same way. So we’re going to have to learn to adjust. So, let’s flip this on you a little bit. Tell me a little bit about your favorite vacation. I know we’ve been talking about the agile thing, which I’m really intrigued about, but tell me about your favorite vacation. I know this is a total switch of gears, but I’m a huge traveler. I was just in Sri Lanka for a keynote and some other stuff, and now I’ve been bit by the bug. So I’ve been asking everybody this on the podcast: where have you gone? I think it’s mainly just for me being selfish, because I want to know about a cool place you’ve been to, so I can go there—other than Austin, which is absolutely on my list with my other three books that I’ll be reading here soon. Tell me about a cool vacation you went on recently, or maybe not recently. Could be whenever.

On purpose?

He didn’t like disconnect the internet or anything, or sabotaging and cutting wires or anything?

Just straight, you said, I want to spend some time with my hubby.

I hear you, I hear an angel. That’s awesome. My wife and I try to do some stuff like that, but it is the total disconnect. Actually, let me take that back. I am leaving for Lake Tahoe in seven days, six days. So that’s supposed to be my total disconnect. That’s going to be my, like, if my wife sees me on my phone or trying to pull my laptop out, she’s going to slap it out of my hand. The funny part about that is my wife actually calls my laptop my girlfriend. So when we go on vacation, she’s like, “Are you bringing your girlfriend?” And so anybody around is like, “What do you mean? Are you bringing your girlfriend? I thought you guys were swingers or something.” I’m like, “No.” So my laptop is my girlfriend, and usually, I bring my girlfriend, right? Not all the time. I used to be really bad about it. I told you before, it was 18-19 hour days, and I was like, really, when I was 30 pounds heavier, just wasn’t mentally right. Now, I have a better balance when it comes to work-life balance. It doesn’t sound like it when I explain it here because I bring my girlfriend everywhere, but yeah, it’s always been interesting. So this next trip is supposed to be three days of disconnect. And I shouldn’t because people can email me, and I’ll email them back, and they’ll be like, “You lied, you said you were disconnecting.” My wife will probably set up a few people to do that to see if I do it. It’s going to get tricky, so I gotta, maybe I do need to totally disconnect.

Yeah, hey, that’s a good one, because it probably won’t. Maybe I’ll have the team push it out a little bit, and so I can still be bad, not disconnect, and then that will –

Thought we said two, because one is kind of like, I mean, I think it’s kind of committing, but I need to… I’m the guy that I’m the management type that you need to tell, “Hey, this is what you’re supposed to do,” and I’m already looking for a way out of not responding to people, right? So I’m like, I’m that guy already. Like, damn, I just realized I’m that guy. That sucks. Oh well, a lot of reality there, so that’s okay. I’m okay with that. So, okay, so France… it sounds like that was like, I mean, it sounds like it was like an influencer’s dream. Like, that’s where all influencers want to be—with fields, wine, and running around. Except you’re not documenting it, which is fine too, or maybe you did, I don’t know, but…

Sometimes those are good too, you know? Sometimes that happens. I, like I said, I was just in Sri Lanka for a little keynote thing that I did. And I’ll tell you right now—this, all my people from Sri Lanka watching are going to love this—it was the best vacation because, since I was a keynote there, they were like, “Hey, you want to come out one week early and travel the country?” And I’m like, “Yeah, hell yeah, I do!” So that was my disconnect, only because the internet wasn’t phenomenal. But anyway, I went out there, and it was the craziest trip I’ve ever been on. Now, it was all paid for, VIP. And I’m only saying this, not because I’m used to this, but it was just the hospitality. They wanted to show you a good time. There were 52 influencers from all over the world who flew out there for this, and it was the largest hotel chain, Sentiment Hotels. So, it was just a—I mean, this experience was like, kind of sounds like yours. It was, I mean, yours was awesome as well, but this was just like, I didn’t— I barely spent any money on the whole thing, and just the people were so nice, the food, the drink… There was one day—this is how much fun we had, and this is terrible to say, but I’m going to say it out loud for the podcast—there was one day we had lobster all day long. This is terrible, I sound like a diva right now. And by the end of it, when it was dinner time and we had lobster again, we’re like, “Oh God, not lobster again.” Literally, I said it. It was just, I mean, the food was phenomenal, and the people were so nice, but it was like, “Oh, lobster.” I don’t even know if I can finish this. And I’m like, “Who are we right now?” Like, you know, I get lobster. Usually, with my family, we’ll have it twice a year, you know, maybe around Christmas or New Year’s Eve. And we usually do it, and so I was like, “Oh, I’m gaining weight and all this kind of stuff.” But it was a phenomenal trip. It was just, I think, because somebody else was footing the bill, and the people were so nice. It was just such a good trip. But, then I went to India, had an awesome time there, and blah blah blah. So, anyways, it was a good trip, for sure, but yours sounds more like a personal trip, just you and your husband being able to connect. I think those are always good. My wife and I try to do those, like, seriously, at least once or twice a year—where it’s like, “Hey, let’s just go spend a weekend, or go do whatever, go hiking, or whatever that is,” and just have some fun to revamp the relationship. You know, how long have you been married, if I may ask?

Okay, see, we’re right about 13. Right about 13-14, so about that, you know, close to the same, close to the same. It’s always, you know, anyways, my wife’s an absolute angel. And I mean that, other than the Agile Andrews that you’re going to be sending me, she’s like a real angel, like, you know, puts up with me and deals with me. So if my wife’s –

Pray for them. Give them three little agile angels they can take with them. Well, cool. Well, good. I think what we’ll end on here is, is there anything that the world doesn’t know about you? Like, give me a fun fact. One of the fun facts that I gave was that I didn’t finish college until 10 years later, not because I failed out or was on drugs or in prison or anything. I can’t say whether that’s true or not true. But anyway, the point of telling you this is, it took me 10 years to finish college because I was traveling and doing all this fun stuff, and I didn’t want to be a full-blown adult. You know, I was trying to avoid that whole thing. So give me one fun fact. It doesn’t have to be anything too crazy, but the crazier, you know, obviously, we’ll use that as a clip and send it around the world so everybody can hear it. But give me a little fun fact about yourself.

Oh, man, I’d say so Spartan used to be one of my clients, the Spartan Races. And I’ll tell you we did, and we went to the one in Tahoe, and I saw those people running up that hill. And now, obviously you’re doing triathlon, which is like, you know, the preparation, if anybody under, if you don’t understand, the preparation is for that. It’s like, insane. It’s like, all the people, which I think, from a mental standpoint, is saying, hey, I can do this, but jet lag, I can’t. I can’t imagine doing it without jet lag. And with jet lag is like, like, your odds of making it are, like, I don’t care if you’re an athlete, its like, 1% or something. Like, it’s..

Another thing people don’t realize, or maybe they do, is when—so one of the guys I was working with on the whole Spartan thing, he was from California, but not from the mountainous areas, right? It was more of a valley-type thing. And you know, obviously, Boulder is a good example—running a mile in Sacramento, a nice little flat valley, compared to Boulder… not even on the same page. Like, those aren’t even in the same category. So, a lot of these people going up and doing the Tahoe thing, which is obviously up in the mountains, they weren’t trained for that. They weren’t acclimated to that. It’s a whole different deal. There were guys going up that mountain. Now, mind you, I was down at the bottom of the valley, safe, doing content and that stuff, but you’d see people coming down, and I mean, they looked like they got attacked by wolves. Not really, but it’s just the mental strain, everything—the strain on your body—and not really being prepared for that elevation change. These were literally Spartan elite champions. You know, they’re the guys who fight wild wolves on the weekend, and, you know, would love to fight a bear if they had the opportunity. Not really, but kind of. And they’re going up this hill, and I’m looking at them thinking, “Man, I’m tired just watching them.” I literally had to use my inhaler watching them go up that hill. So, I can only imagine. But they pulled you out, and obviously you were safe, because we’re on the podcast today. But no other triathlons in the future? What are we looking at here? Have you…

Yeah, I hear you. But you know, the thing is, and I know this is… but at least you tried to do it. I don’t know if it was the jet lag thing. We could probably talk about it off-screen and say, “Hey, you know…” But the idea that you at least still tried to do it, right? Because we’re always looking to push ourselves, I think it’s awesome. I think it’s awesome that you tried it, and even though you did get pulled out, and you’re still alive and able to talk about it, that’s awesome for your kids, your husband, and all that other stuff. So, we do appreciate you staying alive, so we thank you for that. Easy wins, yeah? So, okay, let’s talk about this. We’re at the end of this thing. This has been an awesome interview. So, if anybody wants to get in contact with you, why don’t you give us your email, your website, how they can reach out to you, a little description, anything else you want to share at the end of this thing?

That’s awesome. I have one last thing. So, Fryrear, how many people in the US have that last name? Do you know?

Yeah, yeah. You guys are gonna be taking over the world, I heard. So, this is funny. My wife’s original last name was Padillac, and they’re the only Paddilacs in the world because when they came over from Ellis Island, they changed it from Padaluci to Padillac for whatever reason, because the spelling wasn’t good. I didn’t know if there was a story behind your last name, because, you know, like I said, there’s literally two Paddilacs in the world. We’ve looked it up. But you guys are a little bit… you’ve grown a little bit. You guys are obviously going to take over the world. So that’s good. Well, that’s awesome. Well, hey, thank you so much for taking the time. I know you’re really busy with your schedule and everything, and once again, we’ve already passed the holidays, but have an awesome 2019, and I’ll let you know when the podcast comes up.

Awesome. Have a good day.

Bye.