Why Your Ads Are Failing Before You Spend a Single Dollar

**[00:00:00]** Hello everyone, my name is Armando Perez-Carreno and welcome to the Web Talk Show. Today with us is Sheldon Poon, he's a co-founder of Drive Marketing. How are you, Sheldon? I'm very good. How are you? I'm doing great, thank you for asking. Marketing is such a broad subject, so we're we might split it into different parts based on how the conversation goes, but before we do, you have an interesting background. You didn't start out with marketing. Is is that correct? Yeah, that's right. I I actually I'd say the company and what I do today is probably like my fourth career at this point. So I'm a little older than I look, but I I graduated computer science back during the dot-com bubble. So I had a really hard time because at the time I was trying to compete for entry-level positions and all of these guys coming in with 10 years experience that just got laid off from their companies were competing against me. So I had just graduated computer science, I had no job experience and I couldn't get in anywhere. So I ended up teaching high school for a bit in the meantime. So I I just got an opportunity to work IT at a school and then bit by bit I found my way in the classroom and then I just ended up teaching the the media course and just really really loving my time teaching there. Uh in fact the blackboard that you see behind me is kind of an ode to my past because I felt very very natural like writing on a chalkboard. So when when we're debating what to do with the office, I was like I want to put up a big chalkboard. I want to be able to draw things with chalk and just kind of go back to my teaching days. Nice. So once I once I kind of established myself there, unfortunately we're going through some budget cuts and with my IT experience they decide to move me to head office. So they moved me out of the classroom, which I absolutely loved. I love teaching high school. Uh but they moved me to head office where they put me in the IT department as one of the network administrators. This was before DevOps was a thing, but I was already because of my software **[00:02:00]** background writing software to make my networking job easier. And this is like back in the day where today people are spoiled, right? Like you want to play a server, you load up AWS, you press a button and it goes. I had to call Dell like a give them my number on the account. They would send a physical machine downstairs. I'd go down with a trolley and then load it up onto a cart and then like do the thing and shove it into a rack. So that was part of my job and well we ended up I was in charge of kind of the the network for the entire school board. I was working for the largest school board English school board in in Montreal. So we had a network that spanned I forget how many dozens of buildings with like a multi-million dollar network and I was that's all I was playing around with. So I did that for a few years and I kind of got got sick of all the politics and everything involved in the board level. So I decided like you know what I'm going to I'm going to I'm going to take a sabbatical. How do I get out of here? And HR said well if you get accepted to university you know you will we have to basically sign off like the union rules says that we have to give you a bit of time off. I was like okay great I'm getting out of here. So I applied for with my background I was like let me apply for computer science at a higher level at university. I got rejected because my grades were so bad. So that was no go. I was like well I've always been in business I like business let me try to get into business school. I got rejected because of my grades. So I ended up in philosophy. So I studied philosophy for a few years. And while I was studying philosophy my friend Vincent and I had been working together on freelance projects where I was doing web development and he was doing design work. And we came together and we decided let's let's build a brand let's build a thing for ourselves and we came up with the name Drive Marketing and we said okay let's let's build this this thing together. I was looking for something different. I wanted to get out of the the school board and we put together with People who'd already been working with us freelance, really liked that we were collaborating in a more official capacity. So then they started, you know, giving us a bunch of contracts. **[00:04:00]** And um at the time we were two freelancers, we just made up the brand Drive Marketing. It didn't exist as a company. Uh but people started wanting to write checks for the company. And we're like, well, we can't cash those. So what do we do? So we go to the bank. We're like, hey, can we get a bank account? And they're like, no, who are you? Like, you can't just have a bank account with a name on it. We're like, okay, so what do we have to do? And we're we're we're kids at this point. So we we didn't know how this works. They're like, okay, what do you have to do? And they're like, well, register the company and and you can get a bank account. So we did the incorporation uh on the advice of a friend of a son's who is uh an up-and-coming lawyer. Um and uh once we did the the the actual incorporation, then we're able to get the bank account. But because we incorporated um uh we realized that you can't just pull money and give it to yourself. So then we had to uh find an accountant to set up payroll and a fee structure and dividends and all these things so we can get money out. So now we had payroll. Uh at the time we also picked up this office because we want to be a little bit more legit and show that we're a real company. Um and people really liked it. So they just kept giving us more and more projects. Uh and then all of a sudden we had to say, okay, well, we have too much work now. So let's start hiring a couple of people. We have payroll. We have a bank account. We have a an office. Let's just set up an extra desk and and start hiring some people and and giving us a hand. And then bit by bit we looked around at one point. We're sitting in an office. There's people working. And we have like accounting and like uh accounts receivable and payroll and all these things. We're like, oh my god, we started a company. So that's why I say I've I've I've gone through a kind of a non-traditional way to get here. Um but um part of the reason I started the company was because uh I've always been interested in entrepreneurship and this is back in like the '80s and '90s when I was growing up where wanting to start a a business was very odd. It's not like it is today. Um and uh I just always wanted to know for myself whether or not I could do it. Yeah. It's a you've you listen to people like, you **[00:06:00]** know, the school of hard knocks, the guy that goes and interviews billionaires on the street, right? And he always asks, well, many times he asks people, "Do you think entrepreneurship is for everyone?" And most of them will say, "No, it's definitely not for everyone cuz it's not for the faint of heart. There's a lot of work involved." Like you said, in your case, you were you had some contracts coming in, you were able to expand and get people in and and all that, but then there's always ups and downs and especially when now that you have people and you have payroll, there's the stress level goes up because you now it you can't just say no to a project. Well, you can, of course, and you should if it's a bad deal, but there's more things involved, right? And so, a lot of times uh people from outside just looking at companies, they they think of the company as a thing. Like, "Oh, yeah, there's a company." But but I mean, there's there's always humans behind it and there's humans that are have invested sweat and tears into building this thing where from which you're buying, right? Yeah, exactly. And like like like to that point that entrepreneurship is not for everyone, I find it very uh it's almost unfortunate now that young people who are very talented feel that the only way that they can succeed in this world is by starting their own thing. Like I grew up in a time when not that not that things were, you know, that much better, but like at least there was a sense that you could work your way up in a company and they would take care of you and the deal was a little bit more fair where, you know, you you were loyal to the company and the the loyalty will be reciprocated. And that's why when I was growing up, it was very odd to want to start your own thing because it was easy easy I'm going to put easy in quotes relatively easy to to get a job, you work your way up, have a very stable, **[00:08:00]** very secure life, be taken care of by the organization and by the systems around you. And just just be content and just be fulfilled. Today, and this is the this is the type of thing I would tell my students. It's like this sudden interest in entrepreneurship to me is a sign that you can no longer bank on that because it's become a situation where everybody's up for themselves. And these companies no longer feel that sense of responsibility to their to their employees, to their staff. And I I I find that very very unfortunate. When I started the company, part of the mission that Vasan I had was to start the company that we would want to work at. And part of that is making sure that people who are loyal to us that we feel that sense of responsibility to take care of. And when I talk to a lot of my friends who run their own own businesses, that's very true of most of my friends because they're running smaller businesses. Where things have really kind of gone off the rails is like what I find these larger corporations. It's like once they hit a certain point, it's almost like all of a sudden their employees just become numbers and it's just another line item on their spreadsheet. And now with prolifer proliferation of AI, everybody's trying to like reduce their head count, reduce their head count, reduce and it's just become the situation where like, yeah, I I I really feel for the the next generation where I get it. It's like, yeah, it's become an every man for themselves type situation where you have to start your own thing to to feel like you're in any kind of control. And that's unfortunate. That's that to me is a sign that our systems are are slowly breaking down. It's a very interesting point. When people are sort of forced to fend for themselves in the sense that hey, I feel the job market is not there for me and I have to do something else or it seems easier to do it **[00:10:00]** which by the way it's not easier but but it seems easier. Then, yeah, I agree. It It It feels something is off especially because as as we previously stated, it's not for everyone and it's a great thing. I love entrepreneurship. Been an entrepreneur all my life and but at the same time it's a a could be a long like a lonely climb whenever you're starting something cuz you don't have everything around you from a business until you grow it until you make it and a lot of times I've spoken with other entrepreneurs that that have had success and find that they've had those same issues, right? And and and what some of them have said is well, what I do is is I get into groups like either coaching groups or like rotary groups or or things like that where they can have that interaction with other people that have had similar experiences that maybe are a little ahead or maybe with some people that are a little behind and they share their knowledge and and there's this I found a lot with with successful entrepreneurs especially that they want to give back. Our last guest one of the first things he said is his mission now is to pay it forward. Like cuz everything he had as help going up, he's now he's now sort of mentoring people to help them. Which I I find great but but I agree with your point. It's strange to have people feel that way especially with an education system that is sort of based on creating people who will work, not necessarily create people who will build companies cuz they don't teach all the stuff that you need to know to create a company. like nobody nobody taught me like I had to learn accounting rules and HR and legal rules and insurance and that that's not why I was studying computer science. That's not why I enjoy teaching. Like I I wanted to just kind of put my head down and do the coding thing or like be in the classroom and teach kids. I I I never wanted to be responsible for the **[00:12:00]** all the other stuff that that that happens. And and and to to your point, right? Like the reason I'm now CEO and I know like Vasanth, my co-founder, left the company was because as we were growing things, he got taken out of the day-to-day design work. And we had a long conversation and he was like, "Dude, this is not why I started this. I do I don't enjoy this. I don't like this. I don't want to be managing people. I don't want to you know And he just listed all of the other things involved. And you know, we had this was this went on for months and months. I think it took about a year and I was like, "Guy like you know, just think about it. Don't just take off. Like let's try to work on it. See what we can do to carve out a role and and all these things." But at the end of the day, he felt that that once he kind of like got past this idea of entrepreneurship and saw what it was like to run a small business day-to-day, he was just like, "Dude, I don't want to do this anymore." And and he stepped out. Like we're still friends today. Like we left on very good terms and this was a long process. But at the end of the day, he felt like, "Yeah, now that he saw what it really was." Yeah, he's like, "This isn't for me. I don't know why I would want to do this." Whereas my thing is I've always wanted to do this and I kind of went into with a more realistic understanding of like the reason I like this is because I like building. It's because I like that inspiring people. I like the the the putting together systems. I even the my approach towards accounting and and and legal and HR and stuff, I try to automate stuff. I try to use new tools and and and I find that stuff fascinating. But again, that's not for everybody and nor should it be for everybody. Um, so yeah, it's it's kind of a weird, uh, situation that we find ourselves in today. Um, and what I've noticed lately as well is because you have so many people who feel like they have to go and start something and they don't have a choice because that's the only way to move forward. Um, you know, we're a marketing agency. We do paid ads. Um, and what I've seen lately is that people think **[00:14:00]** that the bar is so low. All I have to do is just, you know, slap together a logo and call myself an agency. So, we are now competing against all these people that are kind of giving our entire industry a bad name because it's a low barrier to entry and everybody's presenting themselves as doing the same thing that we do. And it's it's making it difficult for us to stand out and say like, "No, no, we're like the real deal. Like, these guys are just like they they have nothing against them, but I don't think they they can compete on the same level as we do." Um, and it it just makes it harder for everybody. It's harder for the guy because he's trying to learn entrepreneurship while he's trying to learn a new industry while he's trying to fake it till you make it. Uh, it's harder for us because now we have this extra barrier where people instantly have their backs up the moment I say we we do paid ads. Um, and it it and when I look around, there's this idea of entrepreneurship that once you make it, that's when you can, you know, you can treat people like garbage and throw people away and you can hire overseas or replace them with AI. It's like the entire, uh, mentality of why you would want to start a a business, uh, to me has been so corrupted and like has become this weird toxic thing that I I I really this is not why I got into business. And, uh, it's frustrating when I see more and more of that kind of kind of coming up and like one of my things is I I hope that we can stand up against that and and be uh, kind of like a beacon against that. Like the way that we treat our employees, the way we treat our our clients, the way that we approach this as a craft, the way that we're very serious about like learning and and pushing our our own skills. Uh I I kind of try to embed my moral stance into what we do every day. Yeah, I I I I agree completely. It's a We recently were talking about ESOPs, right? Where in some companies can turn into employee-owned companies. Yeah. And you see in those a percentage of loyalty is much greater, of course, cuz people have a stake in it. And and they actually **[00:16:00]** are there for the long run because there's this loyalty and you see cashiers retiring millionaires. Like people in grocery stores, right? Because they stayed with the business and and and again, they had a stake in it. And so, uh I'm I'm totally on board with that. I think that needs to come back. We're not not only in employee-owned companies, which is a great thing, but in general, the same way we as entrepreneurs, when we have employees, we especially when it's a smaller business, we we we want to make sure they're okay, right? And and if you you know this and you because of you and your friends, an entrepreneur who has a few employees will many times like put themselves after their employees. Like they won't pay themselves, they'll try to pay everyone else, make sure everyone's taken care of and their families. And at the same time, they're like remortgaging They're refinancing their homes and things like that, right? And you don't hear that part. Uh people sometimes see business owners are the bad guy or the or the bad girl, right? But it's not true in many cases, especially if they wanted to be entrepreneurs. If they're doing it because they want to serve that industry or fix that pain point that people have, they're they're really in it and they really want to take care of other people. But like you said, there's a shift at some point sometimes especially when when maybe some private equity money comes in or or VCs or investments or anything like that, it gets tricky. It would be nice if if people kept that Yeah. right as as they grew such that we can go back to the days where people would say and and you don't have to create a massive corporation. I think there's a shift there as well. Before these these sort of massive corporations start hiring thousands and thousands of employees and yes, you sort of could stay there for a long time but **[00:18:00]** but they became massive and uncontrollable and and the whole bureaucracy of everything became messy. So what if it's just smaller medium-sized companies that really take care of their own and and provide that sense of belonging and also of security for for everyone involved. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. That would be great. I mean this is the thing too. Like a lot of the headlines that we hear about are all these mega corporations but when you actually break down the statistics, I I don't know what the exact numbers are but I know that in Canada, I think it's like 70 or 80% of employees work for small and medium-sized businesses. It's not the mega corporations here that are are kind of like the big employers but the problem that I see and I don't know if you've come across this talking to other entrepreneurs but I I do come across even in my circles guys that are running small shops and they've adopted this kind of like billionaire idea of what running a company is and it's all ego and they'll and they will actively go out and be proud out the fact that yeah, I got I ripped off this vendor or I got I got one over on this client or this employee like uh you know, I'm pushing this guy around. I'm like these are not people that I like to associate with, but I do see them even at the small scale and those people do exist. And unfortunately, like a lot of the times our system kind of rewards that kind of cheating. I I I was talking to a buddy of mine last night and over dinner and he runs things very much the same way I do. He tries to take care of his people and he said like, "Man, are we just idiots? Like are we just like suckers and we're just doing this on hard mode when everybody else is just cheating the system and they're just running ahead of us?" And I'm like, "I don't know, maybe, but I I wouldn't feel good about my company if that's how I ran things." Uh some people are just built differently and they can run like that and they're yeah, it it's just uh it's a mix, but what I've seen in the last I'd say 10 years is unfortunately, there's more and more **[00:20:00]** people that are getting into starting companies that I don't think are in it for the right reasons. And when you're not in it for the right reasons, it's easier for you to take those shortcuts. It's easier for you not to care. Um it also uh some of these people they're not as well equipped, so they find themselves in desperate situations. And when you find yourself up against the wall like that, you know, you sometimes do things that are a little bit like not like not necessarily in character. You do things out of desperation. So, I'm seeing more and more of that as things are kind of like tightening around us, unfortunately. Um but um yeah, that's just uh hopefully it's something that we can get to push back against. Like I'm I'm very uh my friends joke all the time because um when I started the company, uh I was very particular about like how we hire and what we uh who we take on um as employees. And uh when we're hiring, we make it clear that everybody on the team um is expected to be passionate about learning, especially about their craft, and constantly improving. But we also expect everybody on the team, whether you're uh heading up operations or you're just an intern for for the summer, we expect you to teach the rest of the team something, too, because everybody has a different perspective, and everybody's coming across different tools, and everybody's coming across different information. So, everybody learns and everybody teaches, and on our Slack channel, it's a lot of just people going like, "Oh, I found this really cool thing." Or, "Hey, I found a new way of doing this." Or, "Hey, like check out this piece of of news that just came out." And it's just a lot of fun because everybody's constantly like excited about information and learning. So, my friends often joke, they're like, "You could have built any structure, and you ended up building a school for yourself." Yeah, that's true. But, a school is great, especially if there's the interest of knowledge. I I think schools were originally created with a good idea. And if you look at the **[00:22:00]** history of the school system as it is, I'm a person, I don't remember his name right now, he was tasked to create this sort of structure, but then the people who tasked him to do it took part of it and just kept what they thought was the right thing and sort of transformed it into this monster of producing workers. And he himself stepped away and said, "This is definitely not what I wanted to make." Um and like what Einstein, right? And it's a it's a sad thing because so many people have gone through that program, and and it's not that learning is bad. Like, you evidently love learning and teaching, as do I. And when I've taught people in groups or coaching or whatever, they have a grand time. I have a grand time. When I've taken courses where where the people genuinely care about what they're teaching, I have an amazing time and I'm always learning, right? That's probably your heart as well. So, it's great, but then you ask people about it and it's like, "Yeah, yeah, I used to hate school because they got bad grades, because they were put in their place all the time, they couldn't because the teachers were not thinking of of them and and enriching them. It was just like doing following the program. So, school got a bad rap. Yeah, absolutely. Which is terrible. But nowadays, I mean, I think fortunately with YouTube and and all of that, we've got well, basically a new education system where there's there's a lot of trash there, of course, but but people who want to learn are able to find things to help them grow. They they they are I again, this is where like I'm coming from the lens of having worked in the education system and there's a lot of value and a lot of merit to the structure. Um **[00:24:00]** you know, I I uh I was in the classroom for I think like 7 years, 7 or 8 years, I always forget. It's been so long. Um so, I have had the pleasure of teaching hundreds, if not thousands, of students, right? And like not every kid is an independent learner and that's okay. Um and they need that structure, they need that system, they need that guidance. That's what school is for. Um at least at the high school level. Uh I wouldn't advocate for that uh like kind of independent learning to go out and figure things out at that age because they don't have the life experience to to ask the questions in the right way. They don't know what they don't know, right? So, it takes a structure for us to introduce them to these things in a way that's interesting and in a way that's engaging and in a way that has um uh a little bit of an end goal to it. Now, later on in in post-secondary, uh I think that's where ideally you have gained enough knowledge that you're now asking you go from um answering questions to asking questions. And that's the that's the gap that we see. So, we're very we're very proud of the fact that we have a very strong internship program. We work with uh a couple of the post-secondary uh education institutions here in Montreal. Um and uh when we're working with the computer science departments, where they they're looking to us to kind of give them an insight into what's going on in industries cuz even though we're we're an ads agency, uh we have developers on staff because uh ads today it's all data-driven, it's all about uh how you're collecting information, it's all about automation, it's all about like we we do a lot of dev work and a lot of AI stuff. Uh so, we're always taking on these computer science interns and they're always asking us like, you know, based on what you're seeing, like how do they how well do they fit into what the real needs of the company are and what would you what would you say we need help with in our our program? So, uh the thing to take away from that is one that these educators are aware that there's a gap uh and they are very **[00:26:00]** active and passionate about fixing it. They don't want to leave things status quo. That's not No educator uh that's in my circles uh wants to just say this is good enough and I don't care. Like every educator that I know, uh you know, they're not making good money. They're in it because they're passionate about this and they're in it because they want to to set up the future generation for success. And one of the things that we tell them is that like there's not enough critical thinking of asking those questions. Um and what we've seen recently is that the uh so, we have like a a post-secondary system between high school and university here called CEGEP. And when we're working with the CEGEP programs, they've started adding AI coursework. Uh they've started creating programs specifically for how do you use AI? And a lot of that is built around the idea of uh stepping away from And these are computer science uh classes, so right? All they do is learn about code, and they're stepping away from code and not only learning about vibe coding, but starting to understand context and say, "Okay, I need to understand at a higher level what is the business context to ask the right questions to get the thing to do the thing." So, they're starting to pick up on the fact that answering questions is only like good up to a certain point, but asking intelligent questions is where the future is going to be going based on how AI and all these new tools and technologies are shifting our our our um our way of working. And because from the beginning, right? Like we hire staff based on their ability to learn and to teach, part of that is critical thinking and asking smart questions. So, we see that come through in our work because when we're thinking of marketing strategy, we're trying to think of what is the question that we can ask that our competitors have not asked yet. Because that'll get us to an answer and a solution that has not been discovered yet. And then we can weaponize that in our ads and increase our performance, and it equals dollars. So, **[00:28:00]** uh everything kind of comes full circle. How the education system is approaching learning feeds directly into what those juniors look like at our company, which feeds directly into our processes and has an outcome on the other side, which is dollars in people's hands. Uh so, to me all of these things are all interconnected and all very important. Yeah, they they definitely are. And you touched on an excellent point, which is structure. While we do see like all the YouTube things and and thing podcasts and everything, all the information is there, but it's not structured. And so, you can take a long time to figure something out by watching a bunch of those, and maybe if you're uh very good at doing things on your own and and an independent learner, you'll be able to do a lot of things. But, if someone gives you a structured version of that, even if it's the same videos, but they structure them and give you the ability to to get feedback loops, it's a completely different thing. It just It just skyrockets you to the next place. So, I'm very happy to hear that that you're like you're you're connected with the education system in a way where you have that feedback loop even before they get into the workplace because it's Yeah, for me going out of college, it was like what There's you don't you didn't get anything that that actually prepared you for how business really works. Especially coming from computer science. Like definitely didn't see any business-related things. industry. Yeah, it's hard to keep up with. And uh but once you know how to ask the questions, and that is where if we go back a little to your comment about like people coming into the industry because it seems easy. I know the the advertising industry. I won't consider myself an expert by any means, especially now and especially compared to to someone like you. But I used to teach Facebook advertising. I wrote a book on the subject and then things like that, but **[00:30:00]** it changed so much so fast that that books didn't really make sense cuz it was like people loved the book, but then I have to do like a second edition, a third edition. Like it's it's a mess. But what I did learn throughout that process was that even back then, like maybe 10 15 years ago, it was easy to get in because there wasn't enough competition. So, the cost per clicks and the cost per actions were really low. And and in different countries, etc., you would get somewhere with little funds. Nowadays, it's very expensive. And so, unless you're like really good at narrowing your niche, which most people are not because they don't know how to ask the right questions. And so, to go to expand on your point earlier, I do see that a lot where where people I see a business owner, they want to they need to get someone marketing, they need to start doing some ads, but they're scared cuz they don't know who to hire cuz they don't know who is a scam. Because there's so many people offering the services either just offering them cheap because they they can, right? And or um like they just or it's too expensive. And what I tell people when they come and and say, "Hey, this person wants to do this and it's not not really expensive." I say, "Okay, here's here's the thing. Just something to think about." Yep. Once someone figures out CAC and LTV and they they realize how they can turn an ad into dollars repeatedly. Like once they they click, they're not going to be cheap. Like there's no there's no human way that someone's going to say, "Oh, yeah, I'm going to keep charging less." Nothing. Yeah. Because they know that for the business it's worth however, like depending on the size of the business, there's no nothing is not nothing is expensive. Like I can give **[00:32:00]** you $2 and you can give me four back. Like what's your budget? I don't have a budget. Just here. Like take my card, right? And so, it's it's that like just think about that if you're hiring someone. Like Exactly. So So, this goes back to my point, right? Like everybody is looking for answers. But that entrepreneur who is like, "I need somebody to run ads." They should be thinking of like, "Okay, what are the smart questions I need to ask to figure out if this guy is good or not." And they don't know, right? And this is where I'm like this is where the critical And it's hard because again, you don't know what you don't know. If you're an entrepreneur and you're very good at production or you're very good at engineering, but you've never done sales and marketing, you don't even know what to ask of a marketing agency to figure out whether or not they're good. Um and we that and that's the thing that I see all the time. The way that I see it is it's almost unfortunate to frame it this way and I don't think it's intentional, but the people who don't It's a blind leading the blind. So, the people who going into entrepreneurship who are starting agencies that don't know anything, they're almost taking advantage of the gap because the entrepreneurs that have the budget that need marketing also don't know anything about marketing. So, they'll believe somebody who has a little bit of baseline knowledge because they don't know any better and they don't know enough to ask the questions. Um and I and I see that constantly. Um and this is where yeah, to to to your point, right? Like anyone who who is smart who does this like well, like is is not going to be charging basement levels amount. Anyone who knows the industry well enough knows that to win, there's a whole bunch of work that has to do and that work is from people who are very skilled and they're not cheap either. So, there's a baseline. Anyone who's charging less than X amount for ads probably doesn't know what they're doing. And you're not going to get that return. So, then what's the point of hiring that person if every dollar that you spend, you get zero back? **[00:34:00]** Yeah. And I I really like how how Gary puts it when he's talking to the media and in his space cuz for those who don't know, Hung Gar Vaynerchuk owns one of the largest media companies in the world. And he sometimes he speaks at events like for media's industry and he calls them out and he says, "I mean, everyone you know like what we've been doing for years." Speaking not of like Facebook ads and things, but like real like original TV ads and things like that and our magazine and things that they would charge hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars for, and it was just a weird creative that somebody thought of in a boardroom, and then they didn't really ask people, and nobody cares, but they had the dollars to do it. And so, he calls them out a lot. So, that's the thing, like the industry has changed so much. Like, I was on I was talking to a buddy of mine, and this guy he's retired. He's he he's like CEO CEO of all these like big big ad agencies that since the world has shifted online, they they no longer exist. They all got bought up back in the '90s. But, this guy started in marketing in the '70s. And he I remember him telling me the story of when they were working on Volvo. It was a Volvo or Mazda, I don't remember, but there was the the tagline "Drivers wanted." And he was telling me the story of how like it the guy who came up with that was just driving home, and he saw on the back of a truck "Drivers wanted." Oh, yeah, yeah. For sure, on the trucks. So, that's where those inspirations come from. And what what I think happened, getting back to your point about just a weird creative, right? Like, back in his day, like he really worked towards the end of the Mad Men era. So, he saw those massive TV budgets because he was working with like Heinz and Coca-Cola, and like he's told me all these crazy stories of all these people that he's met. And they were basically just doing the Mad Men model where the creative would sell the ad space. So, whoever had the best idea that impressed the guy who was making the decision in **[00:36:00]** the boardroom, they would go like, "Yeah, we're going to go with you." And then, they didn't make money off the creative, they made money off the distribution. So, it was the opposite back then. So, cuz if they got national syndication, I think they took 15% of the budget for themselves. So, you fast forward today in modern ad agencies, and you still have ad agencies that are basically saying like, "Well, if you're spending $10,000 a month on Facebook, we're going to our fee is going to be 10% of that $10,000 or whatever the case is. That doesn't make any sense in today's world. But when you understand that the reason that model exists is because of a throwback to the Mad Men era and the TV and radio era, then it starts to click. And um what's changed today, right, is that um back in those days, uh and this is the miracle digital ads, is that back in the day they had to kind of go off of uh whatever the uh the network was kind of telling them or whatever uh I forget what the name of the company is that does all the tracking for the television ads uh that they used to watch all the time. Um uh the Nielsen Nielsen report? I don't remember. Anyways, they they That was the only way for them to track data. The promise of of uh online digital marketing was that I don't have to reach everybody. I can now target, you know, Armando because I know that he's going to buy my product. Uh and not only that, I can do it for cheaper because uh there's less noise. It's more efficient. I can tailor my message directly to that person. So, I don't need that weird creative that kind of gets attention. I can just go and programmatically just I know what Armando's interests are and as long as I target him properly and I get my brand in front of his face, it's going to work. So, what happened was um up until very recently. This is pre like AI. So, this is before PMax, before Advantage Plus. When you would go into and I'll I'll use Meta as an example because Google is **[00:38:00]** more like the setup of Meta uh Google's different, but back in the day it wasn't even Meta, it was just Facebook. So, on Facebook and Instagram, you go into Facebook profile manager or business manager. And you select, okay, I think I have Armando on my head. I think he has this interest and this interest and this interest. You choose a bunch of interests. I think he lives in Texas. I think he's more or less this age to this age. I know he's male. I know he's this and that. And you put in all the demographics. And because the targeting was so specific towards your ICP, you would almost And to your point back then there was less competition. You'd almost be guaranteed that, you know, Armando's going to see my brand a whole bunch of times. And it's the rule of familiarity. As long as he sees it, back then it was probably 30 times. As long as he sees 30 impressions of weird fun content, he'll likely take the action to to take a look at us. He'll go through the it will will get him at the attention phase. He'll go through interest. Hopefully we do our job well and he he gets that point of desire where he sees himself using our product and service and then he'll take the action to buy. Straightforward. Super simple. Um what's happened recently and during that time your creatives didn't really matter. You just kind of throw it up against the wall. Um I what happened recently uh is that they started rolling out Advantage Plus and they started moving towards AI stuff. So today the Meta platform works very differently. I think this is the thing that most advertisers are still struggling with right now. So in that last scenario, you did your ICP and your targeting inside of the Meta platform. Mhm. Today you can't do that. Uh ideally today, instead of going by interest, I'm just going to let Meta decide based on the 57,000 I I think it's 57,000 data points that they have on Armando. And I'm going to let the Advantage Plus system figure out how to get to the people who are likely to **[00:40:00]** buy my product. So then what happens is the segmentation, the messaging has to happen in the ad side. Okay? And the reason for that is because you have to flip things on its head now. So I need to know what is Armando going to be interested in seeing and what's going to get him past attention into interest down to desire. So, I now have to think my ad needs to show, "Hey, this is a really cool thing that'll make you more money. Every dollar you spend with us, you're going to get $12 back." I know that he's an entrepreneur, maybe he'll be interested in that, and maybe that'll get him to go like, "How are you going to do that? Prove that to me." So, now in our ad, we're we're doing the segmentation ahead of time, and then we're taking our entire ad library, so all of our assets, the the primary the title text, the description, the the the the carousel, the video, everything, we're dumping it into a library. And then we're telling the algorithm, "Okay, we're going to prioritize reach, clicks, scroll, and the highest one is conversion. So, these are the the KPIs that we want to target. Here's all of our stuff, go and figure it out." And now what Meta does is it'll just kind of run through, and it'll decide what combination to show you over what time period that will get you to take the actions and will go down the funnel. And we don't have to do anything other than just let the AI do its thing. But, the setup has moved away from the platform to the creative. So, it's kind of constantly shifting back and forth in terms of how you have to think about these things and understand how these algorithms work. Um but, it's just to me fascinating, and this is where we're going back to the idea of learning, right? Like, this is why it's important to understand where this industry came from, to understand how it's moved forward, to understand where we are today, so that we can stay ahead of the game of what's going on. And because uh I've not not formally I haven't studied marketing formally. I I went to **[00:42:00]** school for philosophy, but I've self-taught a lot of marketing. I know the attention-interest-desire-action structure, and I know that that is actually uh from 1898, That structure It first written about in a magazine and probably predates the term marketing. Uh and it was just understood that this helped people naturally come across brands and buy products. So, knowing that human nature hasn't changed that much, we can still apply that model today and it helps frame our thinking about uh you know, again, going back to framing, it helps frame our thinking. We need this many assets for interest and attention. We need this many assets for desire. We need to retarget people. We need to make sure that we're tracking our KPIs properly. We need to make sure our conversions are right. We know how the algorithm is going to try to target you. So, let's work with the AI, not against it. Make sure that the library is nice and complete. Make sure that the data attribution is correct. Make sure that we create that feedback loop. Make sure that the devs check that the site is working properly. It's loading fast. The data is complete. The data is accurate. Check with finance. Check with So, all of this stuff comes about and this level of complexity and depth comes around because of our approach towards learning philosophy, asking questions, understanding tech, understanding AI, understanding history, understanding that this is a craft and being passionate about what we do. So, to me, all of these things kind of come together and what what comes out of it is this nice machine where literally we have case studies uh of 12 to one return on ad spend, 181 return on ad spend uh for big companies because we've taken the time to think deeply about these problems and ask the right questions and think about how they work. And it it builds a machine where now we have $1 in, $12 out consistently. It's amazing. Now, Shalan, you make it sound easy when you say, "Oh, we just give the library to to meta and then we step back, right?" But I know there's two things, one that happens before and one that happens after, that I'd like you to if you if you can expand a little bit so that people understand the depth **[00:44:00]** that you go into before, like how do you do all that process now before even before doing that first creative such that it works downstream and then after that what happens after meta does its thing you've mentioned it briefly right now you have to track all the attribution and then make sure tags are like all that technical part that that your development background helps with that people don't understand as well. So can you can you give us a little perspective on those two sides just for for our listeners to see that it's it's easy but it's not that easy. And we still need you for sure. I'll caveat this by saying that at this point my my team like we have a team like we have a team with three different departments like head of like headed up by very talented people very talented team. I'm just a talking head of this point and most of this I learned from them and if you ask me to sit in front of computer and do it myself I probably couldn't. So it's to be fair this is my team that's doing the real work and the thinking I'm just a figurehead. Um So going back to basics this is the thing again this is where if you're just a kid who's starting a marketing company because hey digital marketing is easy and I can do it you're not going to be able to compete with us. Before we create the first creative we have to take this and this is a very standard model if you go to business school you have to do a SWOT analysis strength weakness opportunities threats understand what the competition is identify the market understand that if you're if you're a company selling widgets you need to know who are the other companies in your area selling widgets who are the companies that are overseas undercutting your widgets what is the option for somebody not to use a widget at all and what happens to your customer if they're not even if they're like off you know what widgets are too expensive this year I'm going to wait another year you have to identify all those different levels of direct indirect and replacement competition. **[00:46:00]** You have to do um an analysis of the brand and the company and be realistic. What are the strengths of the brand? What are the weaknesses? Right? What is it that we have What is it we can play off of? What do we have to fix? In the marketplace, what are the opportunities? What's shifting? Oh my god, widget manufacturing is going through a tariff situation right now. There's an opportunity here. What is the threat? Oh no, it affects our supply chain. Our widgets are going to be more expensive. Understanding all of that, getting that business contact, getting that positioning, understanding uh the competition. Now you have a lay of the land. So all that work needs to be done beforehand. Uh and the work looks different when you're looking at the entire business versus just what they're doing digitally. The The most interesting composi- uh conversations I have with clients is when we present our analysis and we're like, "So we we we see that you're competing against this guy." They're like, "No, we're not. We're competing against this guy." I'm like, "No, no, no. Your store, your physical store, is competing against this guy because he's This guy's a 2-minute drive. But when we look at your Google um Google allows us to pull some some details where they'll present like a literal pie chart of your market the way that we defined it, and it'll tell you what the pie is that belongs to you versus your competitors." And when we show them that, they're like, "Who are these guys?" And we're like, "These guys are the ones eating your lunch online. These guys are the reason you're losing sales online. Your store" And we tell them, "We don't know what the hell is going on with your store. That's That's you guys. You guys are on the ground. You guys are the experts. But online I can tell you this is the guy that you're competing against." Just by knowing that, right? Already gives us a leg up cuz we know who our who our competition is. And then at that point you get creative. Okay, let me check Facebook ad library. Is the What do their ads look like? What do your direct competitors' ads look like? What do Let's take their most successful ad. Let's do some analysis and decide more or less what are they spending on advertising? What is the bar that we need to to pass to keep up with their **[00:48:00]** competition and and outrank them? We do an SEO analysis. We do a geo analysis. We look at what they're doing on Meta and on and also what they're doing on Google. And we tear apart their competition. You can't do that until you know who the competition is. So, you have to do that background, right? Understand the market, understand the client positioning, understand who their their their audience is, but more importantly understand who their competition is. And when you start looking at your competition, it's great when we're working with a client who is number two in their market, because you can just rip off the number one guy and just do whatever it is that they're doing and just get up to the same level and then figure out ways to outcompete them. So, then at that point, we have a very clear direction. We know what your competitors are saying. We know what messaging works. We know what your strengths are. Let's focus on those. Let's build the ad strategy together. This is what we want to say. This is why your widgets are the best. Number one. Are you okay with that? Yes. Okay, let's put that together and then we start building the creatives based on what is the messaging at attention level? What is the interest that we have to generate? What is the desire when we're hitting these people up over and over again and retargeting? And then the final thing is making sure that the the price is appropriate for the market and that's competitor research and all these things. So, once we have all that, you can imagine how each one of those things is derisking your first dollar in ads. You're going in armed with so much information. It makes it harder and harder for you to lose. The The people who kind of say like, "Yeah, yeah, we're going to set you up. We're going to have you running ads in 2 days." They haven't done anything to set you up for success. All they're doing is they are taking your credit card and just feeding it to Meta and then hopes and prayers that it it makes sense. We try to take as much of that out of it as possible. And this is again, you study, you go to business school, this is what you learn to do. So, that's what we do. That's all the work we do before the ads. Then we have to do the setup and the technical and all that stuff. While we're doing all the business thinking, our devs are literally tearing apart their site. They're redoing all their tracking. **[00:50:00]** They're redoing all their analytics. One of the biggest mistakes that we see is that people take Google Analytics and they think that one that it's just a reporting platform. It's not. And two, that the default setup is good enough. What people don't understand about Google Analytics is that it is not supposed to be a reporting tool anymore. It was back in the Google Analytics like Universal days. But now it's Google Analytics 4, so GA4 that everybody hates because they're approaching it as a reporting tool. And if you read the white papers on what Google actually did and why they shifted to GA4, it's because they made Analytics go from being a reporting tool to being a data hub. What Google Analytics actually does is that it consolidates all of the the data that it's collecting from ads, that it's collecting from your website, that it's collecting from search. And if you notice inside of Google Analytics, you're supposed to connect it up to search console, to Merchant Center, to Google Ads, to YouTube, to all of these different platforms because all of these things feed information into Analytics. Analytics then takes that information, crunches that data, and feeds it back into Google Ads to know better who to target because now Google Ads knows how your your audience is performing. That's what it's really supposed to do. If you're using as a reporting tool, it's kind of garbage as a reporting tool. But that was by design. And this is the thing that people who talk about, "Oh, I hate GA4. I hate GA4." I'm like, "Are you using it for reporting?" They're like, "Yeah, it's garbage." I'm like, "Yes, because you're not using the tool properly. You're using a screwdriver as a hammer right now. That's why you don't like it." Um so, it's all of these little nuance things that that that go into setting up uh the system. So, our our dev team is very good at making sure I met us the same thing it the met is a whole different um uh different thing that's very similar. It went from being reporting tool to being a data hub for their AI stuff. So, our our team is basically making sure that all of that is set up **[00:52:00]** properly. Uh not only is the data are they making sure that the data is accurate, but they're making sure the data is complete. So, the number of times that we see setups that are just default that have no micro actions that don't track properly like scrolling past a certain uh a certain point. There's just tons and tons of data points that that are missing that are not there by default. You have to manually set them up. So, once all that is set up, then we can finally start running ads. So, all of that has to be done to set us up for success on the strategic side, content side, the technical side, which is why we have an ads team, a content team, and a dev team. Wow. Yeah, that's it we don't we don't hear that as often. You think marketing is just going to be marketing guys, right? But Yeah, and that's and we don't do marketing. We just do ads. We just paid ads. We're not even a full stack company. We're just ads. There's a lot. I remember explaining to people like what you could actually do with meta back when it was Facebook. Like the fact that you could target like you were saying a very specific type of individual with their likes and interests and all that. But then also that you could track all the way from them viewing it to then clicking it to then landing on the site to then filling out the form to then converting. And then you could retarget them in a period other websites so they see you again and again. And then you could track that. And then you could show them a different ad because you know they've seen all the seven other ads. And then you can call action to actually a purchase or something. And people would be mind blown. They were like, "What What is What is this sorcery?" Like now I understand why I see these brands everywhere. And it's like, "Yeah, they're not necessarily spending millions." They could. And and you should if you if you already have all your uh things in order, but like you can make real damage if if you have everything tracked and you're reaching the right people. Oh, yeah. And And this is the thing because like so I just kind of get a gave a very kind of like 40,000-ft view of our setup, but the amount of data and **[00:54:00]** thought that goes into it, it's the reason why we we typically get four times higher than the average return per industry. And I don't think that we're doing anything that's magical. I think that we're just putting in the work. And I think so in in fashion e-com, for example, uh we have a case study where uh we're working for a big national brand that everybody's heard of in Canada that they sell in Costco. And our we did the numbers for them for 2025 and our average return for that year uh with all the ups and downs was I think 12.something X uh for every dollar. And in industry that is used to getting 3.65 X as being a big win. And I don't think that we're doing anything special. I think that the average is low because I think people skip all of these steps that you're supposed to do. So, I don't know that we're amazing. I think it's just that the competition doesn't know how to do it properly. That's That's excellent because two things you touched on that are very very important I want to call out. The first is that Yeah, you see 12% sounds amazing, but but wait, compare it to what the actual industry looks like, and then it's really impressive. And two, yes, I think that's precisely it. There are many industries, specifically in the marketing and development, etc., consulting side, where, like you said at the very beginning, since people don't know what they don't know, these companies take advantage of it, and then they just do the bare minimum. And it might it works. I mean they're still getting 3% or whatever, but or three times higher, whatever you want. But they could be getting 12, 15, 20 if they actually put in the work, which many don't. And and we audit accounts that are doing that are doing well and the client is they're like, "Yeah, I'm pretty happy with it, but it's always good to have a And I always tell them **[00:56:00]** like it's always good to have a second set of eyes cuz ideally we go in and we're like, "Your team is killing it. No notes. Keep doing what you're doing." I've yet to do an audit um and not find at least like two or three big glaring red flags that show that the guy who's running this doesn't know what they're doing because they missed something obvious. And it's like, "Oh, you see this giant hole in your bucket? Well, that's uh 200,000 that you lost last year. That for no reason. For no reason. You could have You could have plugged that hole. That would have given you an extra 200,000 in sales." Oh. Well, they should have known that. I'm like, "I'm not saying that they should or shouldn't. I'm just saying this is what we found." Yes. And that's that's also a great thing. So for our listeners, if if you have someone doing the work, it's always like Sheldon says, it's always good to have a second pair of eyes, not to poach or anything, just to like just just to get an idea uh from someone who maybe is respected in their field, just just to get an idea. If the things look good and maybe they'll say, "Yeah, everything is perfect. You're doing a great job." That's what you want, right? Or maybe they'll give you some small pointers that you can give to your team and your team will be happy to apply them. But there might be some cases where you you'll you'll find So one of the biggest secrets is that we actually work with a lot of other agencies behind the scene like under NDA. And they're often asking our dev team like, "Hey, can you guys take a look cuz we're not sure?" And we'll find stuff and we'll do a little here, like, take a look at it. And then all of a sudden their their ROI goes up and they're you know, they they get to take the credit rightfully so. Um, but the dirty little secret is that a lot of agencies come to us to do that that technical work. Or they they'll ask us for a secondary SWAT just to get a better sense of what's going on and figure out why their ads are not working. Wow, that's that's a good to know. Like, there's there's yeah, there's a lot that goes on behind the scenes industries that we don't if we're not directly in them. We we just we just **[00:58:00]** don't know these things. But but it's good. That's that's amazing. If if someone is like they're they're running their business, they they think they want to expand or maybe they just want to reach another market or another demographic and they're planning on running ads. Maybe they are running very basic ads or maybe they haven't run ads at all. What do you suggest they do as a first step um, before looking to hire someone? Yeah, so one of the mistakes that I see is that there's a misunderstanding that ads is going to just magically fix all your sales problems and it'll magically fix your your company. It won't. Ads are a megaphone, right? They're an amplifier. And uh, if your foundation is not set up properly, that's what you're amplifying. So, that's the thing that we always warn people. Like, we we reject clients all the time because and and not not like um, not in a way that like is mean, but just to tell them like, "Hey, you're not ready. These are the things that we see. Fix these things first." And I tell them, "We would be doing you a disservice if we took your money and ran ads because we know that these are things that are broken." So, I make absolute sure that before you start running ads, right, that you already have organic sales, that you know what sells, what doesn't. You know how to talk to customers. Very, very important to identify and then these are conversations that you need to have with customers. What is the pain point that I solved for you? Why did you choose us? Uh if we were to disappear tomorrow, how would that affect your business? How would that or how would that affect your life, right? And what you want to make sure is that there's a real uh pain point that you're solving that people cannot live without and they didn't just buy your product or service because well, Armando, I don't really need it, but I really like you. Like that's not scalable for ads. **[01:00:00]** But having that conversation will save you probably hundreds of thousands of dollars uh just by knowing like, oh shoot, if I run ads to this, I cannot scale people liking Armando. As nice as nice as a guy as you are, I cannot scale that with ads. So, having that strong foundation, making sure that your sales process are are are solid, your supply chain, your service is working, making sure that your brand is on point, that you're well represented across the board, that you have good reviews and you've responded to the bad reviews, making sure that you uh know exactly who your ICP is, how to talk to them, what is your messaging, what is your what is the thing that makes you stand out as a brand, as a service. Just basically make sure that you have a very, very solid business and that you're already set up for growth. And then you add the cherry on top. And when companies do that properly, that's when you see that explosive number, right? The ones that don't do well are the ones that were like, hey, we're we're doing really well on the ad side, but your sales system broke. Your guys are not answering the phone, you're not responding to emails, you're not able to deliver or like all these bad like we will see it in the data as we run. We're like, these are all the reasons you're failing. It has nothing to do with ads. Uh so, as much as possible, fix that before you before you start. And be realistic, right? Like everybody thinks that they're the best and the greatest and everything. That again goes back to the idea of critical thinking. If you're thinking critically, you're going to ask yourself, what are the things that we're failing at? What are the things that we need working? What is my competitor doing that's eating my lunch that I need to get on board with? And those are the uncomfortable things that you need to kind of ask yourself before you start putting a megaphone to your brand. That's excellent advice, and I think it will resonate to a lot of people because you if you if you think about it, you're like, oh yeah, my sales system is broke. Or like you said, calls are being dropped, I'm not doing any follow-up, whatever, right? We've seen it happen firsthand, and we're like, and and those guys come back frustrated, and they're like, man, like it wasn't you guys, but I I can't like **[01:02:00]** we can't do this because of XYZ. I'm like, yeah, we we see it in the data. Yeah. And what would you tell someone who has a product or service that doesn't quite exist in the marketplace? Like they don't have or they think they don't have a direct competitor, you know, you know, that the type. Yeah, I come across that a lot cuz one of the things I'm I'm still passionate about teaching, and whenever I'm we have a second home in New Brunswick, and whenever I'm back in New Brunswick, I'm I'm very active in the in the local business community, and I I do a lot of teaching for marketing and how to think about these things to to up-and-coming entrepreneurs and to students. So, this comes up all the time. It's like, I I don't have competition. It's like, no, you do. Even if you don't have competition, you have to understand you have to ask yourself the critical question of why, right? There if there's no competition, it might be that there there is an idea that keeps getting tried over and over again, and there is no market. There's no competition because you cannot make money off of this. It is not sustainable. That's That might be one of the scenarios. The other thing is people think of competition only as direct competition. Sheldon is selling widgets. Let me look for John who's also selling widgets. Oh, John doesn't exist. I have no competi- That's not the right way to do it. You have to think about indirect competition and maybe it's a different geography, maybe it's a it's a slightly different solution to the problem. You have to think of replacement options and one of the things that people often forget in replacement is one of the viable replacements is not to do it. Right? Um and what does that look like and that might be fine. So our direct competitor is another agency that that is running ads. Uh our indirect competitor is probably a freelancer that's running ads and SEO. Uh a replacement option is uh probably just to not run ads and just rely on organic channels. Um all of those have to be factored in **[01:04:00]** when you're putting out a new product. And if you don't find anyone across any of those, then you really have to ask yourself what is your actual total addressable market? Is it zero? Is that the reason there's no competition? It's I've never I've been I've been involved in entrepreneurship in some form or another for the last two decades. I don't think I've come across a single scenario where no competition was good. Um I've never come across somebody who came up with such a brilliant new product that had absolutely it was just so stunningly incredible and new that he created a market from scratch and they were able to make a huge success of it because she saw something that nobody else did. Has never happened. Um if you want to make a ton of money, honestly, and this is where it's like you know, entrepreneurship advice, right? If you want to make a ton of money, find a saturated market that can't keep up with the demand. Uh become a a licensed electrician or plumber. Yes. electrician Yes. Uh do the jobs that have tons of demand. There's just there's just not enough supply to keep up. It's boring and just do that, do it well. You know, be an expert in your craft. Don't rip people off. You'll make a ton of money. If you want to start a brand new product from scratch, I question if this is an ego play and is this something that you're going to feel good about, but it may not actually make business sense. Like what are you in this for? Nice. That's super valuable advice right there. Thank you so much, Sheldon. I know we're a little bit over time. I don't want to take too much of your time today, but this has been amazing. I've learned a lot and I'm sure our audience is taking so much away from this here as well. If people want to reach out and learn more about Drive Marketing or or look at your content, etc., where's the best place for them to find you? Um so uh LinkedIn is pretty easy. I think I'm the only Sheldon Poon in in North **[01:06:00]** America. I think there's one other guy in Hong Kong, but he's like he's not running an agency. Uh otherwise, uh you can look up Drive Marketing. Unfortunately, there are many Drive Marketings out there. Uh we're drivemarketing.ca and I always joke it's like c a like the Canadian Yes. Yes. drivemarketing.ca is our website. Uh but yeah, uh look me up on LinkedIn. Uh I'm Sheldon Poon. I think I'm the only uh the only one that's active and you'll see my face, you'll see my videos, you'll see the the company and uh I'm on there pretty often. So, if you just literally DM me with any question, big or small, I'm happy to chat. Uh like I said, I'm very passionate about uh education and students. So, I always encourage students like, "Hey, like if you have a question, you're getting started in the industry, ask me." Like I I'm I'm happy to chat. Amazing. Well, I'll put that in the show notes as well so that people can find you easily. And uh for those of you listening, if you haven't liked and subscribed, please do so. That way you can learn whenever we have amazing guests like Sheldon here and please make sure to follow Sheldon's work as well and Drive at Marketing so that you can get more insights on how to make better ads for your business. Thanks everyone and we'll see you in the next one.