053: Sometimes You Have To Jump and Trust That The Net Will Be There with Adam Greenbaum Founder of Greenbaum Digital

A big tip is, at some point, spend a little bit of money and automate what you can because you will find out very quickly, your time gets drained faster than you expect.

 #00:00:45-1# Neil : Hello its Neil Ball, thank you so much for joining me today on the entrepreneur way, the entrepreneur way is about the entrepreneur’s journey, the vision, the mindset, the commitment, the sacrifice, failures and successes. I am so excited to bring you our special guest today, Adam Greenbaum, but before I introduce you to him, I have a little quote for you. Gina Gershon said, ‘my best attribute is knowing when not to answer stupid questions.’ The entrepreneur way asks the questions, so we all get the insight, inspiration and ideas to apply in our businesses. Adam, welcome to the show, are you ready to share your version of the entrepreneur way with us? #00:01:29

 #00:01:29-9# Adam Greenbaum Founder & Owner of Greenbaum Digital : Hey Neil, thanks for having me, I am absolutely ready.

 #00:01:31-2# Neil : Well great, thanks for coming on the show Adam. Adam Greenbaum is the ceo of Greenbaum Digital, and ibostonterrier.com. He is an award winner, public speaker, entrepreneur, and loving father to two Boston terriers. Adam, can you provide us with some more insight into your business and personal life, to allow us to get to know more about what you do and who you are?

 #00:01:59-1# Adam Greenbaum Founder & Owner of Greenbaum Digital : Yeh absolutely, we are located here in Denver, Colorado which is booming City here in the States, and more importantly in the tech world, before I started my company which is an advertising agency, I was the head of digital, analytics and strategy for LasVegas.com. I was the head of marketing for a national healthcare organisation, I was the head of marketing for another big start up that’s been doing a lot of fundraising in San Francisco, working with 500 start-ups. And much like most of the people on this show, most of you listeners, I am a very bad 9-5, sit at a desk, go to meetings all day type of person. And it was finally time to start my own thing and so far, so good, I feel like my sort of laid back fun-loving personality has rubbed off on our employees, on our culture, on our clients. And I think that’s why a lot of companies want to work with Greenbaum Digital .. service advertising agency, we employ a lot of growth-hacking techniques and a lot of social media stuff and a lot of interesting advertising techniques and re-marketing techniques and not a lot of people do. And you know, sort of our aim is you know you could go hire a me, and three or four people at your company and pay and have a marketing department for $150,000-200,000 dollars a year, in salaries plus do not forget about benefits and managing people and all those type of things, or you can out-source it, to group of professionals who want to work on your stuff and do good work for you but do not necessarily want to sit with you for 40-hours a week and sit meetings with you 8 hours a day.

 #00:03:42-0# Adam Greenbaum Founder & Owner of Greenbaum Digital : So its a cool concept, we have got some amazing, amazing clients, and it has been a lot of fun so far.

#00:03:49-3# Neil : And what do you enjoy most about what you do Adam?

 #00:03:55-0# Adam Greenbaum Founder & Owner of Greenbaum Digital : Well I have been doing internet marketing since I was a teenager, I remember when I was a teenager, first getting into building websites and I built a football website that got so big the NFL sued me, I guess that is when I knew ‘ok I obviously know what I am doing in this space.’ You know for me its nice, like I told you, I am not a 9-5 sit at a company and sort of work on one thing all day, I am very much the ‘I like to jump around, I like to be active, I like to wake up and take my dogs for a long walk with some hot tea and do that for an hour, go work for two hours and then go to the gym for an hour and then go to a meeting with a client at a coffee shop.’ So its been fun, its very we call ourselves ‘the un-agency’ which has gotten us a lot of press but I really feel that’s what we are and I feel that’s what people like about us, we are not a board-room full of people wearing suits and showing you power points, and boring you out of your mind, we sit here with our laptop open and show you analytics and show you your marketing campaigns and how its being tracked and how its working and why we did it that way and how we are re-targeting people, and things like that, so.

 #00:05:05-4# Adam Greenbaum Founder & Owner of Greenbaum Digital : Its just been a wild ride these first few months and the future is bright.

#00:05:09-2# Neil : I like that phrase ‘the un-agency’ that’s a nice phrase. And what is it that drives you?

 #00:05:19-7# Adam Greenbaum Founder & Owner of Greenbaum Digital : You know what, I have been told this is an awful response, this is the third time someone has asked me that. You know what drives me? is being able to spend time with friends and family, being able to spend time with my dogs. IBostonTerrier.com which is a national dog rescue site that I have been running for five or six years now, and we reach 675,000 people a month, we help thousands of dogs in need, and me sort of succeeding in life and my company is doing better, is giving me the ability to donate more time to that, more money to that to help dogs in need. And sort of give me some freedom to go help and be some part of those charitable events when I can, so all of those things, the free time, the lifestyle and sort of being able to do more for the community that does not have as much as the rest of us is what continues to push me.

#00:06:14-0# Neil : And how do you relax when you are not working in your business?

 #00:06:19-4# Adam Greenbaum Founder & Owner of Greenbaum Digital : You know, I just want to make sure every person listening knows this, I am, we are not even a year in yet, there is not a lot of time to relax, fortunately. I wish there was, I think I sent a tweet out this morning that is ‘life as a business owner is waking up every morning and saying what now?’ because I feel that every morning there is an email, my website’s broken. This is, that’s just life and that’s the digital world but you know when we relax, I love photography, I love hiking, we like to travel a lot, so we have four or five trips booked this year, we are going to be going to Florida. We are going to be trying to go to Hawaaii, I am speaking at a couple of conferences. One in the East Coast, one in Skasdale, Arizona, so for us, its nice to get away and go see places we have never seen before.

#00:07:09-0# Neil : And do you have any entrepreneurial role models?

 #00:07:11-7# Adam Greenbaum Founder & Owner of Greenbaum Digital : You know what’s funny is, I have worked with a lot of people who maybe were not necessarily entrepreneurial role models, but people who kind of inspire you to be the best at what you are doing. You know one thing I have always had when I say I am not a good 9-5 person, its very true, and I feel like the sort of the culture of the work place has changed, and its not a culture that I love, its go to this meeting, go to that meeting, every 30 days we are going to do a one-on-one to talk about this. You know, manage these people, write this report, and you get 900 emails a day and I have never loved that lifestyle, that sit at your desk for 45 hours a week, and whoever sits at their desk the most, is the best employee, not the person who does the best work, so I have had people in my life, that have really inspired me to focus more on just being great, just getting great work done. Whether you do it in two hours or ten hours and as long as you have results, then everything should be great and I even say that to employees that I do not really care if you work 40 hours a week. Or I do not care if you work ten hours a week, as long as you have your list and you are doing good things and its quality and our clients are happy. Go skiing, take four days off, if you are done, you are done and that’s the sort of culture we have around here and so far so good.

 #00:08:33-Neil : Wow, that’s a, and that works quite well does it, working like that? You know what I think it does? You know even for me, I do a lot of writing online, and I just wrote an article that is not published at all, I give you all a sneak peek but I wrote an article that said the most important hour of your day, is the night before. The most important hour of your day is the night before, and basically what I mean by that is every night, 9.30 / 10 o’clock is we are getting ready for bed and kind of winding down. I pull up my to-do list and I pull up the things that are promised to my clients, and I give myself an hour every night, and I actually set a timer on my phone, and I go through and knock out as much as I can, its kind of interesting when you sort of add some gamification to your life that way and see how much you can get done in that hour, while obviously is trying to keep quality, and it is really nice because the next morning you wake up and you look at your to-do list and its 15/20/30% smaller than it was the day before. Kind of allows you to wake up and enjoy your day, get settled and get going and I tell our employees to do the same thing and its ‘hey, if you have these three things and they are due Friday and its Tuesday night, and you can knock out one or two of them, then guess what? Wednesday, Thursday, Friday is going to be a pretty nice week for you.’ For me, I do not care what you guys do with your time, you got those three things done for me, the clients are happy, I am happy, great, go live your life and so far, I think it has worked well for us.

 #00:10:06-9# Neil : Mmm interesting, interesting way of running your business, I have not come across anyone who said that before, that just sounds awesome if you can get it to work.

 #00:10:16-9# Adam Greenbaum Founder & Owner of Greenbaum Digital : You know that was my goal, being on your show today was to get you to say, ‘no one has ever said that before’

#00:10:21-8# Neil : Was it really?

 #00:10:21-8# Adam Greenbaum Founder & Owner of Greenbaum Digital : Yeh I had a feeling that would happen two or three times, so I am very unconventional.

#00:10:28-9# Neil : I have got two more coming have I? There’s two more coming up is there?

 #00:10:32-0# Adam Greenbaum Founder & Owner of Greenbaum Digital : You never know.

#00:10:34-5# Neil : Ha ha ha. Adam can we talk about the time before you were an entrepreneur? What difficulties did you have to overcome when you started your business?

 #00:10:46-6# Adam Greenbaum Founder & Owner of Greenbaum Digital : You know I think a lot of it is mental. I think you sort of build these barriers up in your mind, of how you think things should go, and how you want them to go, and sometimes you have to take the bad with the good. We actually landed in our first few months we landed an Inc5000 company, so think about it, here we are starting a new agency, this boutique agency, and at the time it was me and one other person. And we are out there, I am selling myself, I am going to networking events, and we meet these guys, and I am not going to give their name, and they sign with us, and that was huge that was the moment that made me say ‘hey we can do this.’ And you know, there are a lot of meetings where you go meet and you shake hands and you say ‘great, we are looking forward to meeting with you.’ And two days later it is ‘hey we decided to go in another direction.’ Or ‘Hey we just do not think we have the budget for this.’ Even more recently we had someone actually sign a contract, and a day later say hey can we please back out of this. We are sorry but we have interns and we do not pay them and we think that they can do marketing for free for us.’ Which you know, that’s life. And I think if you know you are able to sort of mentally stay positive, get past those hurdles that come along the way. And keep just celebrating the big wins, I am really big on celebrating any type of win, big or small. Whether we get a client in Inc Magazine, Forbes Magazine or we get a client in their local paper with a great photo and write up. Let’s celebrate every win, and I think that’s really helped with the culture between us and our clients is hey, we are always positive, we are always happy, we are always moving forward.

#00 #00:12:33-5# Neil : And did you have any doubts that delayed you starting your business?

 #00:12:40-3# Adam Greenbaum Founder & Owner of Greenbaum Digital : You know again, I think a lot of it was mental. You know you are sitting there, when I first started, we had a, we had sort of this half-assed website, it was like, am I going to do this? and I had seen this quote, this is not my favourite quote but I had seen a quote about sometimes you just need to jump and trust that the net will be there, and I kind of liked that, and I read an article about basically said you will never succeed as long as there is a safety belt, you will have to burn the boats. I really wish I remembered the, it was another entrepreneur who wrote it, and it was really great because here I was as the head of digital and basically head of marketing, at a pretty big start up here in Denver and was not very happy and had my finger on the button to start the company but I was just terrified you know, I have got a girlfriend, we have got three pets, we have got this family and I sort of support everything and what happens if I leave my job start this? and we do not sign any new clients. I am going to be in big trouble here, so it worked out where we ended up signed six clients in the first 30 days, and it was first sort of like, phew, but I think a lot of things that entrepreneurs need to think about is just ‘stay out of your own head, just be positive, trust yourself and you can’t go at it 80% you have to go 100% you have to just jump and trust that the nets there.

#00:14:08-9# Neil : Some good advice, and what mistakes did you make that slowed your journey?

 #00:14:15-3# Adam Greenbaum Founder & Owner of Greenbaum Digital : Yeh you know, its funny I have worked at two advertising agencies before, previously and the one thing I always learned was, no matter what, you are the bad guy, you are not an internal employee. You are this outside person that they are paying and when they sign up in the first ten days, if they do not have record sales, you are the worst, you suck. And I think early on I was so ambitious and so driven and so psyched, that there was a lot of over-promising, and not a lot of great communication on my part and through good and bad communication, in such a short time over 8 or 9 months, I have changed sort of the communication paths between my clients and myself as a CEO are clients and the people on my team. And I think we have set realistic expectations and goals, and I think that’s what really helped and what’s great about that is when we consistently beat and beat those expectations and they say, ‘hey we want to sell x this month and we beat it,’ then all of a sudden, there’s a much better relationship than saying, ‘yeh I think we can do blank’ and if you, even if you are 10% below blank but blank was there highest month ever. It does not matter, so I would say you know my communication skills with clients and partners has probably had to something I have worked very hard on developing over the last few months and so far so good.

 #00:15:50-1# Neil : Mmmm hmmm. And what are some of the things you did before you started your business? that would be helpful tips to some of the listeners who have not yet taken the first step on the entrepreneur way?

 #00:16:01-8# Adam Greenbaum Founder & Owner of Greenbaum Digital : Yeh well tap in your networks, you know I happen to have 40 or 50 social media followers and the first thing I did was I went and talked to people I have worked with, people I have trusted, people that know people and just said ‘hey here is what I am thinking about doing. What are your thoughts?’ Here is how we are launching, obviously have a good plan to show off, and that was one of the first things I did was I was hoping someone would say, ‘hey you’re crazy,’ which would have probably pushed me to go harder but you know its really nice to tap in your network because people are going to see things and say things that you may not be able to see because you are so close to the project. You know, do that, check, think of different names that are going to resonate with the crowd, check if there are any other companies out there with the same name, when you register your sights and your domains, .. if you are selling services or a product.

 #00:16:51-5# Adam Greenbaum Founder & Owner of Greenbaum Digital : Find, be so unique that you are not going to get lost in the .. the gigantic world that is the internet, do your research, make sure that all of the social pages with your name are available. Make sure domains are available, make sure any sub-domains are available, so go in, be unique, and sort of get your ducks in a row digitally that’s the world we live in now, maybe I am a little biased, being the CEO of a digital marketing agency. But a lot of things as I tell companies is you have to be diligent before you launch, so when you launch, you are minimising risk.

 #00:17:31-6# Neil : I think one thing you have just said there that is interesting and I think its something people can do, is even if you have not got a business idea, you could start working at building up your following on social media, for when you do have because obviously when you launch then you can actually tell quite a lot of people about what you are doing, so its probably quite a good idea to do that, which obviously worked for you. Adam, can we talk about the entrepreneurial journey a little bit? Do you think culture is important from the beginning in a business?

 #00:18:01-8# Adam Greenbaum Founder & Owner of Greenbaum Digital : I do and I think it sort of changes over time, I think you need to set boundaries, those boundaries will get broken, whether you like it or not. And sort of with my laid back way of doing things, you can tell people ‘hey as long as these three things are done by Friday, I do not care what you do but then guess what happens?’ Friday comes, they went skiing Thursday and Friday, and you did not get your thing, and all of a sudden its, ‘hey what’s the deal?’ so and I think its the same with whether you are selling a product and working directly with customers, whether you are selling services and working with clients like us, I think that culture is a big thing, I think its like anything, I am a huge sports fan, I am also a big Denver Broncho’s fan, so its been a good couple of weeks for me, but here you have an organisation with an owner who has made the superbowl more times than he has had a losing season, in his career, and what does that mean? that means that you have got a man at the top, who puts the right people in place, who brings in the right kind of people, and me being a sports fan, you will probably hear me make some other comparisons to sports but you know, I have always loved the way the Broncho’s do business and being a fan, I have sort of modelled myself after that, as if I at the top, can set sort of the precedent of how things are going to run and how we are going to act and how we are going to react at things that should trickle down in a way that works and I hope the number one thing that anyone that works for us or whether see as how passionate I am and how much I like to push myself and hustle because hopefully that rubs off on everybody.

 #0 #00:19:40-5# Neil : You mentioned at the beginning, at how you have got this different approach to how you employ people, I mean I can understand the concept of paying people for delivering the results effectively. I think that’s what you said, or you were implying from what you were saying, or its how I understood it. But how do you manage people in that kind of environment, because you could potentially be, people could take advantage of that kind of situation, couldn’t they potentially?

 #00:20:11-6# Adam Greenbaum Founder & Owner of Greenbaum Digital : And I get that, and even mentally I say ‘hey I have not heard from them in two days but a lot of the things we do, I made the decision when we were starting, this is probably
a good tip for a lot of people as well, its where do you want to invest your money? So obviously it was just me for the first 90 days and I had sort of set these goals that once we have x amount, I wasn’t even paying myself, so it was 90 days in, once we have received x amount of money, sitting in the bank and we have got x amount of clients signed, and like future money signed, I will then hire people. So the first thing I did was I brought in an art director, because trust me, and I really mean this and in my dreams I would have brought in an account manager who would email and be on emails all day because being an entrepreneur means apparently I did not know this ahead of time, it means responding to 900 emails a day. So in a perfect world I would not have brought that person in, but I felt that spending my money on an art director was sort of a more valuable sort of investment for our company. The second person I brought in was a developer, again, as we have grown, so has my email inbox at all hours of the day, but the developer does, they do things I can’t do and the third person we brought in, we ended up bringing in content people.

 #00:21:34-5# Adam Greenbaum Founder & Owner of Greenbaum Digital : So to this day, I have only brought in people, and invest in people who are doing big projects for us. So we don’t really have the account managers, or the interns or coordinators sort of, sending emails and needing me to stand over them all day, so we have got these very high level people, who are just sort of working on larger scale projects, as we move forward so its ‘hey we are launching this new website, so art director, you have all the art done. Programmer, you have everything ready and as long as everything is done by you know, we tell the client, it will be done, March 1st. If its done March 1st, I’m happy, if its done the week before March 1st, I’m even more happy.’ So that sort of, I have not had to spend too much of my days sort of managing people, looking over their shoulders just because its probably not the best use of my time and I would rather invest my money in these awesome, amazing, specialised people who can do bigger and better things.

#00:22:30-8# Neil : Ok thanks for sharing that. Knowing what you know now, is there anything that if you had known it when you started out would have helped you to shortcut the learning curve?

 #00:22:41-3# Adam Greenbaum Founder & Owner of Greenbaum Digital : Yeh I would say probably just creating better automated processes whether its our sales funnel as we bring in new clients or short of the way we manage things you know over time, the moment you changed your title on social media to ceo, you will immediately be sold thousands of times by thousands of software companies, every day. Which is fine because guess what we have those same ads running for Greenbaum Digital selling you our services so, that’s how that goes. But you know over time, we have sort of I have found ways to automate processes, automate our sales process, automate our email processes and it saves so much time. I was just doing so much stuff manually for the first 90 days, payroll was the big one. Managing how people pay us how we invoice them and eventually make the decision, I am going to invest in this software, its going to automatically invoice them, that invoice is going to automatically go into our company account and then payroll will be automatically sent to the employees and that was a big one that was taking up time so I will say that a big tip is at some point, spend a little bit of money and automate what you can because you will find out very quickly, your time gets drained faster than you expect.

 #00:24:01-3# Neil : Mmm that’s good advice there, and how much does gut feeling influence your decisions in your business?

 #00:24:10-1# Adam Greenbaum Founder & Owner of Greenbaum Digital : I am the sort of person, this might be number two that you have never heard of, I sort of do a lot of things by gut feeling, you know I will say and I do not know if this has been a good thing or a bad thing but we probably meet with 10-15 potential new clients a month, and we turn away 80% of them, and that’s mostly because of my gut feelings and you know when you are hiring people, obviously I am sure you could tell by this interview, I am not the type that sits down and says, ‘you know tell me how you resolve the workplace conflict and questions like that.’ I am obviously asking a little bit more in depth questions and trying to get to know people but I think as you jump forward you are going to have to take risks and just trust your gut, and do not be afraid to jump and take the big risks, because that is where the biggest rewards come but if you have got a bad feeling about something, walk away. Its just not worth it, trust me, we have had two instances that are probably hour-long stories themselves that both times I should have trusted my gut feeling and walked away.

#00:25:18-5# Neil : Adam, life is made of constant change, whether we like it or not, and some would say the only constant in life is change, how do you try to keep up with change?

 # #00:25:28-5# Adam Greenbaum Founder & Owner of Greenbaum Digital : Oh I love change, change is like my middle name believe it or not, I have had five addresses in five years, moving from Las Vegas, Nevada to Denver Colorado. And even us, we have had three offices at Greenbaum Digital sort of as we have grown and as our needs have changed, we have moved around a lot so, I think change is good, I think cycling through things is great, and I think change keeps things exciting and new, you know if there was no change, apple would not be apple. Every year they have to innovate and change something, otherwise we are not all going to buy another Mac Book or another iphone. They have to change things, they have to develop watches that pair with your phone and attract your health statistics so I think change is great, as long as you are able to manage and keep up with it and not get left behind.

#00:26:18-1# Neil : And how do you keep up with it?

 #00:26:20-7# Adam Greenbaum Founder & Owner of Greenbaum Digital : Yeh well in our industry, we do digital marketing and whether its google’s algorithms, or twitter is about to launch a new timeline that’s supposedly going to benefit advertisers. Those are things that we have to stay on top of, even things as small as instagram allowing you to have multiple accounts on one account now, sort of changed the way we manage our instagram accounts for clients because it was taking up so much time for our team and now its sort of an automated process. So you know, the digitial world things changed quick, clients changed quick, their needs changed quick, and for me, I probably cannot speak for all of my employees because they might hate it, often times we are in the services business, clients want this and then the next day they want that. For me it keeps it interesting and fun, for everyone else its crazy but I sort of like that chaos I guess.

#00:27:15-2# Neil : What is your favourite book on entrepreneurialism, business, personal development, leadership or motivation? and can you tell us why you have chosen it?

 #00:27:21-9# Adam Greenbaum Founder & Owner of Greenbaum Digital : Yeh absolutely, I, we are going back five or six years here, I used to have really bad anger issues and I would get frustrated, if I was that person I would not have been able to be in the position I am today. And I just had, I think it was a lot of communication issues, and I had read this book, named The power of habit – why we do what we do in life and business by Charles Dewhead. And it was a New York Times Bestseller and it really changed the way I mean I see and do everything. Its about how habits are formed from the day we are born, when you walk, your brain is not saying left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot. Your brain, as you have learned to walk has memorised and created a habit of those impulses, so now you can tweet while you walk, without thinking left foot, right foot, tweet and all of those things. So you know the power of habit, I mean they talk about in the board room of proctor and gamble, they are on the side lines for NFL teams. I think they had a whole chapter on Starbucks and how they empower their employees. I mean it takes you from individual people to companies, to coaches and how everything we do is sort of a habit that we have built and how you manage those habits, and they talk about how you have these triggers so for me it was, I would get frustrated, I would get upset, I would feel slated.It would cause anger or it would cause frustration, and maybe I over complicate it because now I am the most laid back person ever, which go find someone who knew me six years ago who has not seen me in six years and tell them I am laid back and you will probably laugh at their reponse but so yeh, the power of habit by Charles Dewhead is probably the best book I have ever read.

#00:29:11-0# Neil : Everyone, when you have a busy life, listening to audio books is a great way to expand your knowledge in the time when you may be doing other things, such as driving or when you are at the gym. We have a special offer for you of a free audio book of your choosing, to choose your free audio book, go to www.freeaudiobookoffer.com. As long as you have not already signed up then you will qualify. Adam, what I would like to do now is speculate about a few things about the future with you. What one thing would you do with your business if you knew that you could not fail?

 #00:29:42-3# Adam Greenbaum Founder & Owner of Greenbaum Digital : If I knew that I could not fail, well let’s see here I would probably open a Satellite office in Mawaii. Because why not, if you want a beach view in Hawaii, that would be great. But if we could not fail, I probably take more risks that our marketing, for clients. The thing we have been able to do for agencies, we had ads that when two people who own small businesses, and says your website sucks, call us and it worked. And you know we have been able to have those fun messaging’s, we used rap lyrics on one of the ads for agency and sort of our growth has come, because we have had sort of that free spirited, I mean we are the un-agency. We are not this politically correct agency, we get our clients a lot of press and its me on the phone with reporters saying ‘this is one bad ass product’ and they say, ‘well we also want to write about this one.’ And I say, ‘ah don’t worry about that one, this is the best one and I think the world needs a little bit more of that sometimes and you have a product and you know what old spice is doing or what Tac Obel is doing, sometimes you want to have a shark with a lazer punching a man in the face and I think if the rules were all taken away and we could sort of do marketing, if we could launch the campaigns that we joke about, at lunch in our board room as we are laughing and the things we talk about, we go grab a beer after work and sort of ‘hey wouldn’t it be funny if we could do this.’ or ‘wouldn’t it be great if we could do this.’

 #00:31:17-4# Adam Greenbaum Founder & Owner of Greenbaum Digital : If we could just do it, I think it would change marketing, If you are not old spice or Tac Obel and you have smaller brands like some of the brands, you know we have got a couple national brands, but we also have a lot of local and I just don’t always know how those things are received.

#00:31:36-7# Neil : And what skill if you were excellent at it, would help you the most to double your business?

 #00:31:42-2# Adam Greenbaum Founder & Owner of Greenbaum Digital : Probably the paperwork side and those type of things, if I was better at, you know I am a numbers guy, my backgrounds in analytics so, I look at our numbers, I look at pay .. what’s coming in, things like that. But I think if I was better at probably building out processes, and probably having a little bit better of a funnel, and I guess maybe that’s because we have not needed that, just from word of mouth or advertising in some of the press we have gotten, we have sort of that steady funnel of new clients calling us every other day, every day and but eventually at some point that has to get better and I probably would need to be better at building up processes for bringing in new business, executing and things like that.

 #00:32:26-2# Neil : Mmm hmm In five years from now, if a well-known business publication was publishing an article on your business after talking to your customers and suppliers, what would you like it to say?

 #00:32:41-4# Adam Greenbaum Founder & Owner of Greenbaum Digital : I would like it to say something, I would like it to say the un-agency model worked. You know here we are, I have had three clients, we have three local clients, We have got more than three local clients, but we have had three of them, here in Denver meet with two other agencies. Those same three said the exact same thing about one of the agencies, they said they brought us there, they had ten people sitting in a boardroom, everyone was wearing suits. They had a power point, they said they were intimidated, they were scared, they just wanted to get out of there.

 #0 #00:33:15-1# Neil : Mmm hmm

 #00:33:15-1# Adam Greenbaum Founder & Owner of Greenbaum Digital : And then they said, and then they came to meet me, most times I take people out to dinner, we have some food, we have a beer, we laugh and we talk, and we talk about their goals and I show them what I am thinking we do, we do free consultations for everyone, I kind of go through their website. Go through their analytics, go through their social feeds and say ‘hey this looks great, that looks awful, this looks great, that looks awful. Here’s what we want to do, blah blah blah, here’s my first thoughts.’ and you know what? I think people can relate to that, I think they like that and you know what, its a business model, I’m obviously not some innovator, I am not the first guy who has thought that way, when starting a business, but I think for an advertising agency, its a different way of thinking. I think that they want to portray that they are fun, the two that I worked at were very good at portraying, were very fun. Its great to work here, its very exciting and we have cotton candy, we have got beer in the fridge and things like that but if you can really be you, and be yourself with your clients and potential clients and not be the fake ‘I’m trying to sell you something version’. I think that will really work well in five years from now if and I know we will be continuing our success, I think that is what would be written.

#00:34:25-1# Neil : Great answer. We are now at the part of the show where you share three golden nuggets with us, Adam, what is your favourite quote and how have you applied it?

 #00:34:37-1# Adam Greenbaum Founder & Owner of Greenbaum Digital : Yeh I have never not owned an apple computer, so I have been told I am a lot like Steve Jobs, but I obviously do not scream and curse at people and do that stuff but he had a quote that I love, and it was be a yard stick of quality, some people are not used to an environment where excellence is expected. And I will tell you this, in my years working, I don’t know if I was ever at a job, where it was more important to do the best work, than it was to be there the longest, or be the person who is in an hour early and out an hour late. That is just not my personality, you know, I want to somewhere where its ‘you just did an awesome job, great work’ and that’s what I tell our employees, that was bad ass, the client is so happy, I am so happy, you have got it done two days early, thank you so much, I really appreciate it and I love that quote because I don’t think a lot of companies it gets stale and excellence is not expected, and that’s the one thing that will always remain constant at Greenbaum Digitals. Do what you want and manage your schedule, just you better do damn good work.

#00:35:45-6# Neil : And do you have any favourite online resources that you can share with us?

 #00:35:47-4# Adam Greenbaum Founder & Owner of Greenbaum Digital : Well obviously Greenbaum Digital Blog is great, ha ha ha all of our growth hacking tips, but we are on all of them. We read Inc., Forbes, Tech Cocktail, I write for Inc and Tech Cocktail. Mashable, Social Media Examiner, and these are all just great sites. But you know what is funny, everyone sort of has their own and you know the best thing I could tell people to do is not many people know this, go to Blog.Instagram.com. Blog.twitter.com, they are literally giving you updates to things, the moment they happen. So when you read that ‘hey Facebook has this brand new feature.’ Guess what yesterday, it was on their Facebook blog, they put it there or Instagram is now allowing multiple account log ins or twitter’s new timeline is going live which is going to benefit advertisers. They announce that the day before, so definitely keep an eye on those, watch those, its great to pull statistics and insights and of course Greenbaum Digital Blog is full of all your favourite growth hacking methods, and all of those fun things so we got a bunch of smart people writing a lot for that, so

# #00:36:55-0# Neil : Awesome, and what is your best advice to other entrepreneurs?
 #00:37:02-8# Adam Greenbaum Founder & Owner of Greenbaum Digital : My best advice and its funny because I was talking a little bit about this earlier and its ‘every day is a mental battle for you.’ Especially if you are new and this is the first time you have done it, and I sent out the tweet this morning, that said, ‘every day is like saying What’s next?’ and a guy sent me a tweet and he said, his exact words, ‘I envy people who have the fire in them to do this. I don’t and I am honest with myself about it so I work for the man.’ And that was honestly, I read that and I really liked it because it is not easy. You know, its fun and it is exciting, but I tell you, every day is a struggle. Every day something happens, and every day you have to make a quick decision on something that is going to affect the future of your business and you have to really, I have resorted to 5 am in the hot tub with tea walking my dogs and my first 90 minutes of my day are spent doing that so that I am so mentally relaxed and prepared when things, when this happens or that happens. And API calls for client’s websites or ecommerce sites go down or all these little things that happen in the type roll on a daily basis, and issues with employees, issues with your employees and the way they are dealing with clients or customers. I mean there is always something every day, and just be mentally ready and strong to stay calm and prepare for anything.

 #00:38:33-3# Neil : Everyone, if you did not manage to get a note of Adam’s favourite resource or his favourite book, you can find the links on Adam’s show notes page, just go to theentrepreneurway.com and search for Adam, or Adam Greenbaum in the search box. Adam is there anything else that you would like to add about your business?

 #00:38:54-0# Adam Greenbaum Founder & Owner of Greenbaum Digital : You know we are just a full service marketing agency, obviously we do things different. We don’t do power points like everyone else, we actually show you, I will literally whether you if you are next to me I will pull up my lap top, if you are across the country or we have a client in Germany, I will screen-share with you and I show you our analytics. What we are seeing and how we do it. A lot of companies fudge their numbers, or they do not provide numbers at all, everything we do is analytics based. So if you are not doing good, we know there is a reason and we fix it pretty quickly. And I mean yeh we are a fun-loving bunch here in Denver and we are growing every day, so its been exciting.

#00:39:32-3# Neil : Adam, its been an absolute honour having you on the show, hearing about your philosophies on business and life and your un-agency and everything, so thank you very much for coming on here.

 #00:39:45-7# Adam Greenbaum Founder & Owner of Greenbaum Digital : Thanks Neil, I really appreciate it, I am looking forward to telling everyone about the show, and I will make sure everyone listens.

#00:39:52-3# Neil : You are welcome, thank you.