MTM Ep#0 – Welcome to the More Than Marketing Podcast

This podcast is More Than Marketing. Mostly marketing, probably. We’ll cover things such as sales, culture, training, business building at large.

Welcome, welcome! Welcome to the More Than Marketing podcast, video cast. There’s a video camera. I’m Arsham Mirshah. I’m the CEO co-founder of WebMechanix. I have with me the lovely Clare French, Director of Marketing. And we’re here, this is episode zero. I wanna tell you about this podcast, why you should listen, who we are and all that. To hopefully earn your subscription so to speak.

Yep, for sure. So it’s kinda funny because today I’m gonna be interviewing you and moving forward, you’re gonna be the host. So I get to play a kinda fun role today, huh?

A switch-a-roo. A little switch-a-roo for ya. Yeah and no, that’s exactly right. That’s our format. I’m gonna be hosting so to speak. Gonna be having guests come on and they’re gonna bring their subject matter expertise and I’m gonna pull it out of them. That’s my goal, pull it out of them. You do a really good job pulling stuff out of me, actually. We’ve done this before.

Yeah, we sure have. It’s fine. I enjoy, I always enjoy interviewing people. Like it hearkens back to my webinar days where I used to moderate everything.

Maybe you should take my role. I’ll just go somewhere else.

You do this.

You’re far more qualified than I, which reminds me, like tell me a little bit more about yourself. Yeah you’re CEO and co-founder of WebMechanix, but what’s the rest of that story?

Yeah, look, I mean that’s the current title and such but I have been doing entrepreneurial things since age 16. Right? So I would call myself a business builder. Most recently, for the last 10 years, been building this business, WebMechanix, a digital agency with my partner, Chris Mechanic. We’ll talk about him a little bit later. But I’m just a creative problem solver. I’m just a business builder. You know, if you want to talk about my formal training, I went to University of Maryland Baltimore County. I got a Bachelor’s of Science in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology. And a degree in CompSci. And everyone looks at me like what?

Nerd!

Yeah exactly. Exactly, just what you’re doing!

You know, it’s funny though, I’m giving you that look because I actually didn’t know that about you.

You didn’t know that?

No I didn’t! Which how crazy is that? Like I’ve known you for eight, nine years?

I’m a total geek.

I mean I knew that part, don’t get me wrong.

But people will also say you know, I’m kind of a people person. If you look at my personality it says

Who you?

Right? Like, I love people. I thrive on people. I can’t, like if I’m alone, it’s like… I’ll go out. I’m a guy who will sit at a bar by myself. My wife works evenings, I’ll go sit at a bar by myself just to be around people.

I get it.

Yeah, you know me. You are like that too I feel like. – The truth is yes. Yeah, for sure ,I like being around people. So tell me a little bit more about the podcast. Right? Like it’s funny because you know… From my perspective, this kind of comes out of a conversation that you and I were having about… You know you’ve been in business for 10 years. What are the top 10 lessons that you’ve learned? Actually, we were working on a piece that we’re going to publish soon that’s basically like Arsham’s top 10 lessons from his first 10 years of business. So like, one really important thing came out of that.

Well, you interviewed me on that one, so back to the interview. You did a really good job with that pulling the things out. But yeah, so what is this podcast about? Is that what you’re asking? Or what is?

So what is the podcast about? Like, what in your mind, does it kinda spring from for us naturally right? ‘Cause like people podcast. But what makes ours different?

So one of our core values here at WebMechanix is learn-aholic. So we’re addicted to learning, right? Well, part of learning, as you know, is teaching. I think the best way to learn is to teach. So I view these podcasts as a way to consolidate our knowledge and get them out to the world. Get them out to the public, to the world. So hopefully it helps someone. You know Clare, honestly, all I care about is helping people. I thrive– again, remember, I’m a people person. But you know I thrive when someone’s like, “Yes, that was helpful!” Thank you for that tid bit.” Or “Wow, that’s really good advice.” Or you know, “I followed that and it really worked.”

So this podcast is More Than Marketing, mostly marketing probably. We’ll cover things such as like sales, culture, training, business-building at large. Okay? We’re different because I think that… I think WebMechanix, we’re doing something right. How do I know that? You know we’re Inc. 5000 fastest growing company for six years in a row now I think. It’s five but I’m pretty sure this 2018 will end and we’ll get to six. And we got five stars on all the review platforms. 90% of our revenue comes from retainers. So our clients are sticking with us from month over month. You know I think our average tenure is like a year. It’s counted in years. So we’re doing something right here and I want to make an impact. I want to get what we’re doing right out into the world. I mean as cheesy it sounds, to make the world a better place, honestly. We’re doing something right and hopefully, the guests that I bring on will bring a tid bit of knowledge and will consolidate and pack it up in less than 20 minutes to get it out into the world.

Yep so two things. One, talk a little bit more about the kinds of guests that you’ll have. Because some of them will come from within our own ranks. We have lots of really smart people here at WebMechanix. Some of them will come from the world beyond. So talk a little bit about the kind of guests that you’ll have and also make sure that you cover kind of the “What’s in it for me?”. Like that’s the ultimate question that we ask in marketing, as marketers go, right? So go. – Okay, yes, so you’re on. Now, hurry up. So guests. We’re gonna dig deep within these four walls here at WebMechanix. But I think we have, I know we have tons of subject matter experts. So definitely, Chris Mechanic, my partner. My cousin, my best friend for a long time, he’s going to be a guest. I think a repeated guest. Some tenure on him. He’s a sharp cat. Okay he’s a sharp cat. He’s a marketer through and through. Direct response marketing I think is his sweet spot. He’s had some really unique experiences in his professional life. He’s done door to door sales. He’s done inside sales. And then, he did affiliate marketing. He started a website. He started building traffic to it. Then, built an information product, was selling it. And I’ll talk with him with the technical aspects of that. So I tell people Chris, he’s the kind of art, and I’m kind of the science. Hence the nerdy bioinformatics stuff and the yin and the yang. We balance each other and that balance provides something good, something magical. I’d say it’s something magical. – So he’ll be a guest. – So I wanna interrupt you for one minute to tell the folks out there this little story that Arsham is very often too humble to talk about. So he and Chris both have very entrepreneurial backgrounds. You mentioned that we’ve hit Inc. 5000 five years in a row. Pretty sure we’ll get it this year too. But here’s the thing. They actually started WebMechanix at a table like this. They started at their kitchen tables. – It’s true. – When they were young, when they were 22, 23? – I think three or four. 23 or 24 something like that. – And their parents were trying to kick them out of the house. And they were like we want to start an agency. So just a little quick… – Thank you. – A little quick anecdote there because I think that says a lot about you. It says a lot about your character, your hustle, etc. so. – Definitely yeah so that was 10 years ago. So you can derive my age out of that if you like.

Okay nerd.

Okay nerd. Yeah so other guests. Let’s talk about other guests. I want to bring people from the outside world in. You know CMOs, VPs of marketing, Even like Directors of sales because I think that there’s a unique thing going on in a lot of our clients’ businesses where marketing does a really good job and then, sales doesn’t do their job. Or sales is killing it but they don’t communicate the common objections they’re getting back to marketing. They don’t communicate how their sales processes could be accelerated via a marketing helping them through some automations so to speak. Right? Or for example. So we’re definitely going to talk about sales and marketing. And I’ll bring some experts in to talk about that kind of stuff as well. And what else about guests? I don’t know. Every episode I should have a guest because I’m a people person. I want someone next to me to pick their brain.

Where you’ll normally be doing what I’m doing.

Yeah and you know what? I promise also to challenge. Like if I don’t agree with something that someone’s saying or if I wanted to go deeper, I’m going to do that. You know? And I know Chris and I, you’ll see us fight. We’ll do it on camera because I think that’s where the best comes out. – Yeah, I totally agree. I mean we go at it all the time. – You will see Chris and I…

Even you and I do it sometimes!

That’s true. We do.

And your point about sales and marketing alignment is really important, right? But that said we’ll also cover a lot of more specific marketing topics. You know business growth, which I think you hit on. But as an agency our kind of core things that we’re really really good at, obviously you know that includes–

Yeah search engine optimization, pay per click, or paid media and paid advertising. Otherwise, conversion rate optimization. But now we do a lot of email marketing, marketing automation, measurement attribution. I think we’re some of the foremost experts in Google Analytics and tracking on this side of the Mississippi so to speak. So a lot of digital marketing will be here. So why listen? Well, if you wanna get the bleeding edge of digital marketing, if you wanna find some niche traffic sources. If you’re a B2B or B2C that does lead generation, if you’re a B2C that is an e-commerce and you just wanna hear some new ideas, some fresh ideas, some stuff that you can take back and try today, I think that will be covered, no doubt.

Yeah and so like, I’m probably giving away a little bit more than I should. But before we started recording this episode we were having a conversation about how we don’t want to be too self promotional. Like you even said, I’m not sure I wanna mention the Inc. 5000 thing.

Yeah I don’t wanna brag.

This isn’t meant to be–

It’s not bragging.

It’s not meant to be a hard sale. We’re not trying to get you to come buy services from WebMechanix or anything like that. It’s just that we’ve been doing this for a while and we’ve gotten pretty good at a few different things.

How will I know this is successful? I will know because people will leave comments or tweet or whatever otherwise communicate with us that, “Thank you. I took that advice.” Or “I learned this thing and I implemented it and it’s working.” or “You made my life better in someway somehow.” That is my metric for this.

Love it.

Yeah.

Mic drop?

I’m out. See you later. That’s the metric though, right?

Yeah I agree.

Because I mean, for me, personally that’s what I want.

Yeah, so you know when I start monthly reporting to you next month, it’s gonna be the number of comments that we got.

How many likes, comments, and shares on our podcast?

Welcome to the next slide.

I’ll take your advice. That’s fine. Add another layer.

Yeah cool.

What else we got?

Alright, so I think we kinda hit all the high notes. We talked about why everyone should subscribe. We talked about the kinds of topics that we’ll be offering. The kinds of guests we’ll have. How ’bout a joke?

A joke?

Come on you, have to know some jokes.

Knock knock.

Who’s there?

Orange.

Orange who?

Orange you glad we’re doing this podcast?

Wow!

The first one that came to mind! Horrible, so bad!

Wow, you brought it home. Alright, so on that note.

Please subscribe if you wanna hear more crappy jokes from Arsham because that’s all I got. Actually, you know that’s probably a good tid bit is to come with a joke every time.

Yeah!

Maybe I’ll try that to do that. It’s probably a good idea. I have other jokes, but some of them are dirty.

It’s joke, quote, or stat.

Yeah, or a quote or stat. Alright, I’ll try to do that. Well let me…

I’m gonna keep you to it.

We’ll hear from listeners. Look if you want a joke, quote, or stat, you let me know. But do me a favor and subscribe just so you hear when a new episode comes out. We’ll try to get them out. And feedback is always welcome. So do engage with us because that’s what we want.

Until next time.

Thank you!

Take care guys.

See you out there.