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Kenneth Kinney 0:16

Hello and welcome back to A Shark's Perspective.

Kenneth Kinney 0:18

I had the pleasure of speaking at a new conference for their inaugural event, Lead Generation World. They also asked me to podcast live from the halls. So earlier I released part one with the opening keynote. And now it's time for parts two, three and four, with people involved in the show as host and presenters.

Kenneth Kinney 0:34

So during the week of the show, I caught up with the master host Mike Ferree, the CEO and founder of lead generation world a conference whose mission is to help companies and individuals navigate the lead generation ecosystem; Rich Kahn, the CEO and founder of Anura, a benchmark sending ad fraud solution; and JT Benton, the founder and CEO of Workbook Six, a partner development firm for customer acquisition and engagement strategies.

Kenneth Kinney 0:57

And on this episode, we'll discuss putting together a new show networking speaking in the final stages of getting over the flu as you can clearly hear my voice roll tides lift all boats to Tonka Bubba Gump, shrimp, ad fraud, fishing, supporting entrepreneurs who take a risk, the flavors and sizes of conferences, figuring out the ROI, the conferences you attend, or sponsor, and a lot, lot more.

Kenneth Kinney 1:18

So let's tune in to parts two, three, and four, with three more of the lead generation world attendees with a sharp podcasting live with conference on this episode of A Shark's Perspective.

Kenneth Kinney 1:30

First up is Mike Ferree, the CEO and founder of Lead Generation World.

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Kenneth Kinney 1:35

Alright Mike, thank you again for joining us on A Shark's Perspective. Your conference is amazing. So far, it's been it's been great. What are your thoughts so far on the conference as a whole? What are you proud of seeing your your baby grow up and, you know, start from an idea you worked, you've worked in lead generation, you worked in helping a lot of events get pulled together in this industry. And now you sort of birthed an idea created your own show at a major event?

Mike Ferree 2:03

Yeah, wow. It's been, it's been a good couple days, I think, you know, there's, I think the show has been great, I think there's a lot we can improve on, I think we're going to be able to really take what we did here the last couple of days, and look for those things that we can optimize, and, you know, improve on I mean, I kind of look at this, like, Legion, frankly, we did a test, we put out an event. And now we're looking at where we got to optimize this thing, because there's always optimization, you know, opportunities, whether it's marketing, or whatever business, whatever it is, and we're gonna look at it, we're gonna have a lot of feedback from a lot of people and take it in and improve on it. So what did you love so far? You know, what I hear people say is that the invite or the vibe, sort of the atmosphere has been really, really great. People are having a lot of good conversations. And the way we have this sort of main session on exhibit hall setup, that it's just keeping things very organic and conversational. So that's been really, really great. I know, people have been getting business done. I just had a conversation with Leeds pedia. And they said, they haven't got this many enterprise prospects at a show in years outstanding. And that's crazy, actually, to say that, and I can't, I'm so happy for them.

Kenneth Kinney 3:19

What do you attribute that to? Is it just because the event that, you know, we're the venue in keeping people closer together?

Mike Ferree 3:26

I think we have a really good group of people here, ya know, and they're all decision makers. And not only that we were at a good size. Yeah. Because when you get too big, it becomes a crowd versus a group, you know, and you're not able to, you start trying to hide in the corners almost, versus actually walking on the exhibit hall floor, because well, it's the hub of the show here. But walking on there and not feeling like you're gonna get attacked. Because you just let the dogs loose in the exhibit hall floor. I think it's I just think there's a conversational aspect to a certain size of a conference, that really leads to a lot of business, a lot of quality conversations. I don't know what that number is, right. I don't know if it's yeah, you know, 3000, where the tipping point is, or it's 1000 or what, but I think that's what's happening at this show. The last couple days,

Kenneth Kinney 4:17

well, they're, you know, they're speaking a lot of events that are anywhere between 1003 1000 that are large conferences, and a lot of them that are done in convention centers with this one group. They are they're great, the experiences great, feels great. But I noticed people in the hallways, you know, they run into a lot of the same people that they run into at other shows, but they run into him in the hallway in between hundreds and hundreds of other people crowded in that same hallway. So they don't really get a chance to network. And that's one of the reasons why I've always really liking it for speakers. It's great. Those are the ones where you get paid when you get 100 or 200 people because you're gonna have an intimate conversation with it. Luckily, we're in an industry where a lot of the people know each other, you've just got to give them a conducive place for them to one offer the attendees value. And then as well offer the people that are exhibiting here, yeah, that value as well.

Mike Ferree 5:12

Yeah, I think so I think, you know, I think when the when the people have an opportunity to really have a conversation and not be rushing across a hotel a half a mile away, you know, thing to something else that they're trying to get to another meeting, or whatever it is. And that's just inevitable when you have to get to a certain size, you know, so bigger is not always necessarily better. It's really about getting a good quality of people in a room and a community together and facilitate that the best we can we do things a little bit differently. But that's our focus. You know, it's, it's really about this community, the buyers, the sellers, and service providers all coming together to help each other. Because as I said earlier, is that, you know, we are a community, we there's no one single person that can do this, the process from start to finish without the help of another company, or service provider, or agency. I know we'd like to be able to do that. But that just doesn't make sense. There are experts out there from an agency standpoint that know how to drive traffic, there are products and services that help you convert more of that traffic, there's, you know, and all the way down the line, you have people that can help each other you know, and that's what this this event is about. It's about bringing the community together so that we can all improve together. It's that you know, what's that saying? The

Kenneth Kinney 6:35

rising tide lifts all boats.

Kenneth Kinney 6:37

Exactly.

Kenneth Kinney 6:38

Or tIhe Roll Tide? Something like that.

Mike Ferree 6:40

I don't know if that's it.

Kenneth Kinney 6:41

Southeast Conference. So if you had to change one thing, once you forgot, yeah, either left the oven on? You forgot the cranberries. Or you forgot one thing to add to the conference. Yeah. What do you think it would have been?

Mike Ferree 6:56

We probably didn't give you enough stage time.

Kenneth Kinney 6:58

Thank you. I heard that so often. So so often.

Mike Ferree 7:04

Yeah, we you know, we'll get you as if you don't talk enough. Right.

Kenneth Kinney 7:09

You're Yeah, it's a big you're welcome to all the attendees that don't have to hear me more than well, especially battling the flu and then getting your slides late. Thank you. Oh, man, that was a that was a that was one of my resolutions for this year. What's that to be on time or be on time with you to be here? I'm sorry, to be on time with with slides. And then I get the flu. Wow, everybody, except the dog had the flu. So, of course, of course. Yeah. So this is a reminder to take get your shots, which I did. And don't send your toddlers to school, if they're sick. Because it gets everybody else. Let me

Mike Ferree 7:42

say yeah, it's miserable. But no, we there's a lot of things we're going to improve. I don't think there's one thing that I can think of at this very moment, because it's been a whirlwind of a couple of guys. Yeah. But there's one thing for certain that we will we this is not perfect. You know, this is not a perfect show. And I really look forward to hearing the feedback, and especially the negative stuff to figure out how we can make this show better.

Kenneth Kinney 8:07

You know, so how do you go about selecting speakers? I mean, obviously,

Mike Ferree 8:13

we knew hate a lot of money to speak. Right? Yeah,

Kenneth Kinney 8:16

money? I don't have. So. But But Well, no, that's that's a fair point. There are a lot of speakers that do pay for those sponsorships. But I know this, that's a new, that's a revenue line for you. But how do you go about selecting speakers? You know, for your in Angular, your inaugural event? I mean, so often that a lot of groups will put it on autopilot. But obviously,

Mike Ferree 8:39

oh, man, it's so easy to do that. Yeah. Because you get all the spiritual sessions and you just pop them into an agenda and you're done. Right?

Kenneth Kinney 8:46

Well, then it becomes the logo, and it doesn't matter who the person is. Yeah. And then that person has no speaking experience whatsoever. Yeah, they just happen to work for that agency.

Mike Ferree 8:54

I'll tell you what, we don't certainly didn't master it with this event. And that is going to be probably on the top of list of things. How do we continue to like, drive good content. Because we want actionable content, you know, we want stuff that people are really going to get value out of and that's tricky. That's really tricky to evaluate, at least initially, to, to know if a piece of content or speaker is going to be great. But you know, it's really about understanding the the industry and what's happening on the ground and trying to facilitate the answers for those questions. And, and being me being a lead gen guy. And having so much my finger on the pulse with what's sort of happening. I hear and I have a lot of conversation that and I try to just answer if there's a problem. Those are the those are the sessions we want to have, you know, whether it's I you know, 111 example is a lead buyer from an insurance he was like, No, I really want to try to start our own call center internal call center. Okay. Well, we have sessions here that are going to help you do that. You know, I got people that want to do So, you know, so it's really just figuring out what are these people want? And what are they? What are they struggling with, whether it's regulations or compliance, or whatever it is, let's tackle those, you know, and so we try to keep it obviously, within the realm of lead generation. But you know, I think that's, I think that's how you go about and then you find the experts in that space. And then you and then you go from there.

Kenneth Kinney 10:18

Well, I mean, for me, that's, that's mine. Everything I speak about typically, is about some sort of growth focus. Yeah, I'm talking about audio. But I'm not talking about audio in the sense of, I can make you a jingle. Or let's do a fun podcast is strictly about helping a business grow, not wrapped around the fluffy stuff only. And I think that's sometimes there's, you know, there's a mix of that, because some speakers can be too tactical to direct response. I've done one where I did like, 100, or 200. It was in within like, an hour, I think I did minimum 100 slides on lead gen tactics. And I thought, you know, I'm not getting to tell a story. Yeah. And that that hurts sometimes. But you also don't want to be telling just a story, and they get a wonderful story. But they don't, they don't go back and then get the tactics. And I find that to be something I've had a conversation with a lot of speakers on, because so many people want you to have actionable tactics. But you also have to be Info training.

Mike Ferree 11:17

Yeah, yeah. And that, and this is at its core, what makes it hard? Yeah. Right. It's not easy. You just can't plop it in there and think it's gonna work. You really do have to figure out who are those speakers that are good and and you know, you're not gonna you're not gonna get it on the bull's eye every time. You know.

Kenneth Kinney 11:33

Yeah. Well, you did with your, your keynote, how did you find Jeff Chrysler?

Mike Ferree 11:38

So I'm a big behavioral science? Oh, yeah. I love that kind of stuff. I went to school initially, with the idea that was gonna get a psychology degree. That lasted for a couple of years, until I found out that I really couldn't make any money without getting a PhD. Also, watch my sister go through. So I went into business marketing and got a marketing degree. But really, they're one they're very similar. And behavioral science in that is the overlap of really the two in my opinion, is how do you get people?

Kenneth Kinney 12:10

What's a fancy way of predicting what we do in lead

Mike Ferree 12:13

gen it very much. How do you how do you either predict what they're going to do based on what you show them? Or how do you get them to trigger them that way? Yeah. How do you persuade them? Right? And so Jeff, wrote a book with a another guy, Dan Ariely, which is does a lot of great stuff, and really interesting stuff. So I came across Jeff, and he's a good guy, funny, smart Princeton guy, and just really enjoy that. I think it applies to lead gen, but it's not directly and I think I hope people sort of got the overlap and understand, okay, these are things that I can apply to my own processes to get people to do things one thing or another, and take what human nature items that they can that that can, you know, help them persuade their prospects to do well, you know, down the path that they want them to go.

Kenneth Kinney 13:03

My favorite behavioral science story from presenting was the last conference I did I presented behavioral science. They the confidence monitor, did not have a timer. So the gentleman in the back stood the audio guy. He stands up about 15 minutes into my speech. And he's looking directly at me, he holds his hands up both hands 10 fingers out. What does that mean? I got 10 minutes left. Yeah, he's looking right at me. And he holds two hands up. And so I had I had a much longer allotment of time then than that to speak. But all I got in my mind is 10 minutes. So I blaze through the rest of my slides. And I get done about 15 minutes early. Yeah, I go back there and ask him, when I've got this speech on behavioral science, I need more time talking about I thought I had plenty of time you you held up your your hands, and he goes, Oh, no, I'm talking to the guy. Next two, we were talking about whatever the story was, I'm like, so that's, that's a reminder, anybody putting on event, if you gotta get your hands in your pocket, if you're the audio guy, you know, I speak a lot of conferences. Some of them are small, some are huge. You know, there's one that's huge, where I see a lot of people networking, but it's basically only when they're walking down the hall, and it becomes too much of a cattle call. A lot of the smaller groups, it's very intimate. It's just It's, well, you know, it's just a good group that you can get to know the people they can ask you questions and feel more comfortable, but this is this has got a lot of that part to it. It's the right feels like the right size of event as opposed to some massive undertaking that can become too big.

Mike Ferree 14:40

Yeah, I think I think that's kind of at its core. Why you know, leads pedia just has gotten maybe five really big deals in one day, because it's not so the conference isn't so big people are hiding. They walk around they have quality conversation with people that walk in the exhibit hall floor. and they just can have real conversations and really get business done. I think it's, you know, the saying, you know, bigger is better isn't isn't always true. And it's really it really is quality and quality over quantity. And this this sort of all the overlap of my point of view of buying leads is very similar you know, it's not always buy the most amount of leads, is just buy the best leads you can and you know, work from the same thing here. It's not necessarily about making this the biggest show ever. And in fact, I don't I don't know if the big shows are always the best. You know, it's about really quality and having good people at the show. And, and those are the ones that people walk away with. Oh, man, I just got a lot of business done.

Kenneth Kinney 15:42

Yeah, so 2020 lead generation worlds in Denver, then you're having the event later on in London, but 2021 lead generation world. Where's that one gonna be Denver as well? Yeah, we're gonna be right back here to roll the dice on that whether

Mike Ferree 15:55

we're gonna roll it again. And yeah, we're gonna come back here. This is a great hotel. Oh, yeah. A good venue. And

Kenneth Kinney 16:01

it's just as big as a convention center. Yeah, I mean, considering it's next door. That's hotels got amazing space. Yeah,

Mike Ferree 16:08

and Denver's great. There's a lot of restaurants around here, we're not going to ever be in Las Vegas is just not not what we want. Again, it goes back to the sort of the vibe and the atmosphere of the show. I love Vegas. My wife lived there for 18 years. But from a show perspective. You know, it's the same thing over and over in Las Vegas and this fun, but we really, really want to focus on quality conversations. And we think that not being in Vegas is the way to do that.

Kenneth Kinney 16:35

Well, look, you're across the street from Bubba Gump shrimp, so I'm good. So there's a

Mike Ferree 16:40

lot of restaurant options here. I'd encourage you to look beyond Bubba Gump.

Kenneth Kinney 16:45

Well, I had bison last night. I had some tacos. So yeah, so it's awesome. So we've asked this question before. What's your favorite kind of shark and why? Oh, yeah,

Mike Ferree 16:55

well, has it so I can't say it's changed. Because last time I answered a soup, soup fin or No, I did not. I said a sevengill sevengill. Which are they actually very similar. I think the super long tail as well, very much like rescue shark and yeah, yeah, so I'll go with soup this time.

Kenneth Kinney 17:16

Okay. There you go. Super. So all right. Are you ready for the five most interesting important questions? You're ready for that? There you go. All right. So Denver, San Diego.

Mike Ferree 17:24

Ah, you know what? That's actually pretty tough. I liked Denver. Yeah, Denver's a nice town was pretty darn nice. But I live in San Diego. It's got the beach a little bit warmer most of the year, so I'm gonna stay with Sandy Yeah, with Yeah, with

Kenneth Kinney 17:35

two for conference. Oh, it's Denver's again. Denver is an underserved market it's centrally located. Yeah, well since really West for well number two Batman or Aquaman

Mike Ferree 17:54

I have absolutely Batman. I Batman is pretty awesome.

Kenneth Kinney 17:59

Yeah. That are backstory here

Mike Ferree 18:01

yeah the the superpowers and all that sort of or the you know the the underwater and all the strength of Aquaman is pretty impressive. But I'll go with that

Kenneth Kinney 18:11

man. Yeah, like Batman story. I just I mean Aquaman was like riding a shirt like that.

Mike Ferree 18:15

I mean, if you really think about the Batman story is just some rich kid you know, it's another rich kid coming up in the world.

Kenneth Kinney 18:21

Yeah, but it's the only one that relates to normal people. I mean, he was fueled by hate Yeah, after his parents get killed he has no superpowers. Yeah, he's just got a cool outfit a ton of money and ton of money and Yeah, another time to learn. Exactly. Alright, number three. Okay, hit me with it. A performance marketing conference or a digital marketing conference?

Mike Ferree 18:48

Well there's so darn close I would have to go with performance of course just with Legion you know being at my passion so yeah, performance marketing

Kenneth Kinney 18:58

it is but it's it's still a very different Yeah, it is level of thinking when you get there because so many digital although so many of our tactics and performance Yeah. Live in digital the way people think and digital is not always performance. I like performance

Mike Ferree 19:12

and I just think that's the way all marketing is going anyways and may already be there frankly but yeah,

Kenneth Kinney 19:20

well the problem is we just got you got to make certain that a lot of the guys that come to these kinds of shows Yeah, that are especially in the Dr. Space. Still understand the humanity Yeah, to value the customer. Not just lead, lead, lead, lead lead so number four, Joaquin Phoenix and the Joker or Robert Downey Jr. in Avengers endgame.

Mike Ferree 19:42

Okay, I gotta go with I got I mean not River. Joaquin Phoenix. I gotta go with him. That was an amazing but but um,

Kenneth Kinney 19:48

that was the Robert made me cry. You can't kill iron. I bought him a favor. i The

Mike Ferree 19:52

story made you cry. And of course you know, he's

Kenneth Kinney 19:56

the reviews for Dr. Doolittle made me cry.

Mike Ferree 20:00

Uh, ya know, I listen to that end game was a good movie, but the Joker when you start rooting for the guy, you know, and he start going well, I shouldn't be okay with him killing these people. But you know, but

Kenneth Kinney 20:13

and he didn't talk Heath Ledger it was a different man. I mean, he was looking for a differentiator, if you will, for me he could not have done a better job of giving a different an amazing type of performance he performed. It's amazing when you think of the guys that have played that role as well. Jack Nicholson. Yeah, I mean, even going back to the Adam West days, Cesar Romero, yeah. Play the Joker. It's crazy. It's crazy how impressive. Some of them are. But number five, and I've asked this question before biscuits or cornbread.

Mike Ferree 20:43

I wonder what I said last time because that's something that's definitely depends on the weather.

Kenneth Kinney 20:46

Exactly. So, so frame of mind. Yeah, it's like performance marketing or digital. Yeah,

Mike Ferree 20:52

it really is. Yes. I'm gonna go to cornbread. Okay. Yeah.

Kenneth Kinney 20:56

Michael, amazing conference. Thank you for inviting me and putting on an amazing show. Absolutely. And we'll see at the next lead generation world.

Mike Ferree 21:04

Thanks Shark.

Kenneth Kinney 21:08

Next up is Rich Kahn, the CEO and co founder of Anura.

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Kenneth Kinney 21:14

So Rich, welcome to lead generation world 2020. So good to have you here on A Shark's Perspective. And good to meet with you here at the conference. If you will tell us a little bit about your background and your career today.

Rich Kahn 21:27

Personally, I've been a developer for years. I mean, I wrote my first game when I was nine, got published when I was 12. Love programming world, worked my way through college selling. So I ended up having the unique experience of selling and programming at the same time, which is a rare, it's a rare, very rare, I got into the internet marketing sector in 1993. So I've been doing this about as long as you could, yeah. And I've done all kinds of stuff and was buying traffic from people and had issues and decided to write my own software to solve the problem. And that's where I am today.

Kenneth Kinney 22:02

So why not go into Mar tech, or something like that is a that's generally the kind of themes generally,

Rich Kahn 22:09

our source software is really focused on his ad fraud. So like performance based marketers benefit greatly from our software. Companies like this, you know, events like this, where you talk about everyone's, here's a performance based marketer. It's all about the lead generating that lead or E commerce transaction. And it makes sense for us to help out and be here to be in front of right people.

Kenneth Kinney 22:29

So I speak a lot of conferences in the marketing realm. And ad fraud is not talked about very often. I think there's a lot of confusion. And I like that you're speaking at this conference, about ad fraud growing at an exponential rate, how does this affect your leads? And your client cannot impact what you're seeing as far as the state of the insurance industry today? What are the what are the things that you think we're hearing marketers and advertisers in general, are hearing and then what is really going on?

Rich Kahn 22:59

Well, you see, a lot of a lot of people are talking about how fraud is declining, it's dropping, it's, you know, the tools in the marketplace are solving the problem. And I don't see that at all. I see quite the opposite. I see it's getting worse. In fact, disputable reports quoted this year, that's supposed to be a 43. Or last year, it was a $43 billion problem. And that's a lot higher than the numbers that I've seen quoted before. So. So I pulled together some some research from the marketer, Juniper research and at age to try to find and pulled all the numbers of where, you know, numbers quoted in the number of dollars spent into global marketing, in the digital space numbers quoted in ad fraud, and try to layer them together to find out is it growing like it was shrinking like everyone else says, and in the last few years has grown 200% month over month, year over year. So we went from like about $6 billion, then went to one 19 billion and lashes for I think it's 42 or $43 billion. Do you

Kenneth Kinney 23:57

attribute that to the AI and automation more or more sketchy networks out there?

Rich Kahn 24:07

I tried to I did something a lot of thought on that. Because as I'm speaking on it, I wanted to come up with a solution. Like why do I think it's growing? And I came up with a couple ideas, and it's probably a little bit of everything. But at the end of the day, I honestly think it's the fraudsters are getting more aggressive. Yeah. They're realizing they can make their own AI and automation. Yep. And they got teams of people that work for peanuts that will get this stuff done.

Kenneth Kinney 24:27

Well, they built a network for years now on, you know, on display ads, I mean, they're converting at less than 2%, which is deplorable. But we've gotten conditioned in the sense that 2% is okay, not literally okay. But the people that are sketchy, are going to like, as you said, they're gonna get smarter, more deep, deceitful and devious, if you will. And if you're trying to figure out a new mousetrap,

Rich Kahn 24:55

and you're looking at it from a standpoint, you got the buyer, the one paying for it. is kind of gotten used to what they get, yeah, exact matter what tool they put in place no matter what they do. They get a certain level, and they're just accepting saying this is what the status quo is. The guy selling the traffic, a lot of times doesn't want to know what's under the hood. Because if he does don't open the kimono, he's got to do something about it. Yeah. And that's a big problem. Because, again, I talk to people all the time, and some people like Well, so far, I have no real big complaints, that being proactive about it. So my question is, Well, right now, according to the numbers that I researched about, I think it's about 12% fraud, which I think is really low. I think it's about double that. And by 2023, it's supposed to be over two rounds. 20%. So that's, again, it's growing, it's continuing to grow. So that continues to grow, at what percentage does your company shut down? Yeah, it's not a question of when? I mean, if it's a question of when, when will it actually fit? Because, again, if you had 10%, fraud, Hey, your clients, maybe don't spend as much with you as that you would want them to, but they're okay. 20%, they start to question 3040 50. At what percentage do they stop buying from you?

Kenneth Kinney 26:06

So where is that fraud existing? Is it all over the board on? I mean, kind of paint that picture, if you will.

Rich Kahn 26:14

So we see it from a variety of places. I mean, we see it from organic search. So we see organic fraud, we see tier one fraud, like Google Facebook, you know, it's less there, because they're billion dollar companies who spend money to actually target fraud, but they still have fraud, affiliate fraud, programmatic fraud much higher on the scale. And it ranges. I mean, I've put networks on our network, when we turn them on and find you know, 90% fraud. And they're not customers of ours today, because I would literally shut their company down if they followed our advice, because they couldn't absorb a 90% reduction in revenue.

Kenneth Kinney 26:50

Well, so much of this industry is based on buying more leads, and cheaper leads. And everybody's now media company, if you will, for an advertiser that goes to this conference, or any conference, or if they just on the phone day to day, what advice do you give them to start putting in so that they can control better the problem?

Rich Kahn 27:13

The problem has gotten so sophisticated, that it's not a simple fix, right. So in my speech I talked about, you know, how to look at click logs, you know, and they're crazy, when you're looking at an IP address and a user agent, you start sorting those and looking at those in different ways, it helps you to start to understand where fraud is, but the sophisticated fraud, it's hard for a company unless a company can afford to invest a lot of money in the right data scientists, and the right logic and the right platform, have their own and build her own. We, you know, our business is all built on people using us, we've been doing it for the last 15 years, use our reserve platform, we'll walk you through the data will show you the actionable data. And it is really, if you're gonna try to go out on your own at this point, it is difficult.

Kenneth Kinney 27:57

So for the agencies, though, does that also are you running into that a lot, because, you know, a lot of the smaller marketing teams, which again, form up the larger, the greater bulk of all the business combined, they're going to be the least sophisticated, if you will, their work working on solving their, you know, 10 or 20, or 30 customers, making sure they're buttoned up. So maybe they third party it to an agency, a lot of the agencies are not all created equal. So many of them aren't sophisticated enough as well, either. You said that several times about it being an advertiser problem, but I'm assuming that also you're seeing that a lot of that education that you're having to help with is also exists in the agencies as well, it is and

Rich Kahn 28:41

ultimately, again, the agencies a lot of agencies I talked to, don't want to really look

Kenneth Kinney 28:46

at, they have to be by nature, there's somewhat defensive about it, because it's their product, it's their product. And

Rich Kahn 28:51

I'm telling them that there's junk in it. Yeah. Now, the ones that get it are the ones that start to have the problem, starting to get callbacks and complaints from their clients starting to see signs on the wall, that there's something going on, that they can't now ignore. So then they get on the phone with us, we help them get set up, all of a sudden, chargebacks go away, client demand goes up, because they're getting a higher ROI. And they start to grow their company even faster. So the ones that get that premise, and take advantage of a company like ours, start to see that lift and start to see that growth and always question themselves why they didn't do it sooner.

Kenneth Kinney 29:24

So if they don't work with you, where do they start?

Rich Kahn 29:27

It clicks on click, click loves the first good place to look at because it's obvious stuff. Like if you're getting a tremendous amount of clicks from an old browser, girl browser, those are not things that you should be getting a lot of if you're getting a lot of clicks from the same IP addresses. Again, obvious signs. These are the basic levels of fraud you want to look at. The next thing you want to do. You start taking performance based data, like elite like call just disposition reports and back those up back to your leads, so you know that those were good leads, and then the ones that came fact that human verification said we're no good, go back on what made those leads, there's there's something about those leads that stood out that you can then start seeing a pattern in that. So you can start recognizing that and future leads.

Kenneth Kinney 30:12

See, I'm trying to remember a lot of clients that I've worked with over the years that I've helped with to grow their business. Most of the time, they're so focused on the growth, they forget about what they've wasted in that fraud type, since you know what I mean. Yeah, you know, so often, we're not trying to see what didn't work. And it's an unfortunate problem with attribution. I wish more marketers would spend more time on it. But they don't question why it didn't work. They simply question Why didn't we meet our numbers, and then they think the fix is to put more money in, or another agency or, or another person driving it or whatever. And I don't think people truly understand the amount of fraud that's out there. And it's one of the things I'm running into now. Especially because I think most people, like you said, they've accepted the idea of, they understand there's a lot of fraud in the digital space, especially with display ads running everywhere. TV now is becoming a little bit of a problem as well, because there are a lot there are a lot of fraud in video, where instead of somebody running a banner ad, they're running a video, thinking that was going to show up, and then it's on, you know, watching to doodle dot diggity dog.com. And it's another again, a higher waste of money. But somebody was just looking to make certain they had enough impression somewhere. So

Rich Kahn 31:33

there's a lot of fraud out there. And it's it's like anything else. The number one thing I hear from from marketers here at the show, is scalability. They're trying to figure out how to scale their business scalability, they're not focused on the details that got them from startup to successfulness. You know, when you're doing a start up, every dollar counts, every attribution counts, you look at the details, you focus on the details. Once you get past a certain point, and you're covering costs, and you're starting to make a profit, you starting to grow. Next thing is okay, great, I built a successful machine now let's just ramp it. And then they lose sight of some of those basic details. And fraud is one of those things that they miss out on. And that can cause issues down the road.

Kenneth Kinney 32:10

Well, this is not the best example. But if you knew your service was going to cost $100. And it costs me 80 or $90, to invest the time into the problem. Again, for this example, do you find those kind of clients look at it that way to where they think, maybe $10 that we're losing, instead of 100? They're evaluating how much they would they're losing on the fraud versus how much they invest in fixing it? Because that's not necessarily that's a horrible example. But I think you get the idea. Sometimes it's, they're just chalking it up to a cost of doing business builder

Rich Kahn 32:48

by Right, exactly. And you see that a lot. So, some, some companies are so small that they can't afford service perfect. So they have to try to build something internally, which is what we did back in the day. Otherwise, companies are so big, that they have the resources, they can dump a ton of money. Even if it's a lot more money to do it to build it than to buy it, they'll put a ton of money into doing it themselves, because they want to own everything that they do. So you see that from time to time. And then you have the companies who have the funds don't have the time, they don't have the time to build themselves or the expertise and just need the problem solved. Here's the money solve my problem. If you solve my problem, you can have my money. And that's yeah, that's a client that you know that those are three types of clients that I run into.

Kenneth Kinney 33:31

So with the technology going forward, and with the AI and automation that's propelling this so much faster, if you could wave your crystal ball if you were an advertiser, not and we knew we didn't want your service, what's the fix for this? I mean, what is going to fix it to where companies don't need you. Now, that toothpaste is out of the tube, you'll be you'll be in business for many, many years to come. But what would fix this? Because there's no way to get rid of all the sketchy, sketchy con artists out there.

Rich Kahn 34:04

There's no silver bullet. There's, for example, we found a bug in Chrome that allows people physically to commit fraud and be on traced, we've reported it to Google hasn't been fixed. They don't consider it a serious enough bug to actually put time behind it and fix it. That's one aspect that we found that I don't think anybody else has found yet. But how many of those little things do the ad fraud or the fraudster is focused on to take advantage of you? So maybe there's no browser? That's got a loophole? They'll take advantage of that loophole. As long as that browser is still a prominent browser in the marketplace. Usually the next browser knocks out that the little loophole that they have and they can't take advantage of that. But how many of those exists with a marketplace that they're able to take advantage of? Sure. So as a silver bullet, if I had to say if, if somebody wasn't using a company, to to help them solve fraud but it really comes down to micromanaging every aspect of your campaign internally, trusting yourself to do it, looking at the data, looking at the performance that it has better attribution follow the money, right? Yeah, where's the real money being made? That's not being charged back, that's not coming back as a problem. Go back. That's the traffic you want more of. And the traffic that's, that doesn't meet that criteria, you want less.

Kenneth Kinney 35:22

So you're part of Leeds council got a mutual friend, Rob, that runs the show, they're talking about another component. And this is also compliance issues. I mean, we know what people can lose, if they're not watching the money closely enough. But what about also how it runs into TCPA? And other things like that? I mean, um, you know, you're still on the hook for fraud, if it's your if it's your fault, as an advertiser or as a brand. And you run into something caused by I mean, good luck going after the sketchy, you're not gonna you're not gonna get them. But you're on the hook. I mean, is that part of the conversations you run into a lot today as well? What happens

Rich Kahn 35:59

is, give an example how ad fraud affects TCPA compliance. In the lead space, since this is where we're at right now, you talk about a fraudster coming along, using a human to take stolen information, fill out a form, check the TCPA compliancy box, and off they go. Now, because it was filled up by a human bot detection doesn't pick it up, nothing else picks it up. They use stolen information. So it's a real information they use. They'll use the checkers to check is this the right person's name, phone number, email, and all comes back good. Then your client gets on the phone calls that lead and all the guys where's he never fill out the form? Gotcha. You just broke TCPA compliancy.

Kenneth Kinney 36:40

You're speaking at a lead generation type conference? Or what other conferences are you typically speaking from? Who are the audiences you're speaking to? Generally, because, you know, they're all the conferences are a lot different. This one has a lot of the ad buyers and ad sellers. So it makes sense. But that is, you know, one small sect of the base that's out there buying so much of the media today. Yeah, so

Rich Kahn 37:02

the other spaces that make a lot of sense is anywhere where there's a performance based marketing components. So it could be affiliate based marketing, like Affiliate Summit exactly leads con. Like I said, you know, lead generation world, those are the markets that tend to work the best. I also like the ones where they're heavy on the buyer side, because at the end of the day, they're the ones paying for it, right? They care more about it than the let's just call it the average, you know, marketing agency, sure marketing agency is there to spend the money, they got a budget, they got to spend it, because if they don't spend it, they don't get it next time. So their job is to spend that money. And sometimes they start buying places that don't have the best traffic. And you end up with an issue where the buyer, he's the one ultimately paying for that fraud, he cares more to make sure that it's clean than anything else. So so whenever there's a great like a buyer Summit, or a place where there's a lot of brands that are showing up, it's a great place for us to be as well.

Kenneth Kinney 37:55

So how does this appeal to the person that's not necessarily looking at the logs, but somebody higher up on the food chain, who may hear you hear? He's got to go tell or she's got to go tell their teams. We just listened to rich give this presentation, we probably have a fraud problem where you know, what do we need to know about it? I mean, how do you sort of give advice to help those teams start prepping that conversation?

Rich Kahn 38:20

The biggest thing that I asked them First off is what are they doing internally to solve fraud? Yeah, and when they say nothing, nothing, yeah, I go, do you understand that there's a fraud problem in this digital marketing space? And they all say yes. So my next question is, okay, what do you what do you plan on doing about it this year? You know, because obviously, he knows the fraud problem, you're not doing anything about it, and you should be doing something about it. So where are you starting? What do you plan on doing? And like I said, the probably the biggest advice of their performance base is tie that performance based data back to what's actually going on, to try to identify good sources of bad. But ultimately, you've got to come up with a game plan internally. Because I've seen I've seen a number of companies go under because of fraud. Yeah, it got to a point where the fraudsters realized they were a target. They weren't doing anything about it. They just racked up the fraud put until the coins went away.

Kenneth Kinney 39:12

Rich, you live not far from the East Coast waters. You're on A Shark's Perspective. Is this of all my guests. What is your favorite kind of shark and why?

Rich Kahn 39:23

Well, we have a special attachment to a hammerhead because we did go down to a summit down in Florida. And it was a complete bust. There was I think, 20 attendees. Oh no, I mean, complete bust. And meanwhile, I had my whole team at about six of us down there at the time. And like what are we going to do? I mean, we've got two more days here and what are we gonna do it's more efficient. We soon as we pulled out one of my guys got sick. So the guys like, if I turn around, we can't come back out. Because I really don't wanna turn around because we literally did this whole season. We have been skunked yet. And like I said, last thing I want to do is get skunked because somebody got sick. I said, Well You're gonna have to go back and he goes, I'll throw it back slowly. Maybe we'll catch something on the way back. We snagged a 82 inch Hammerhead, which is now hanging in my office.

Kenneth Kinney 40:08

Oh, no, I hate that. We cut the line and let them go,

Rich Kahn 40:12

well we originally had planned was to have because normally what they do is they take the shark guy, he took a couple pitchers measured out thrown in the water, and then they build you a replica of it, they all look the same. So we that's what we thought that was gonna happen. And that never happened. And that's we feel bad about that.

Kenneth Kinney 40:30

Well, Richard said special time in my show. Are you ready? For the five most interesting important questions you will be asked today? Oh, boy. All right, number one. And this was because of our conference organizer and where he lives versus where this show is. Denver or San Diego.

Rich Kahn 40:47

I love San Diego. It's my first time to Denver so I haven't had a chance to really roam around the streets but Denver in January in San Diego is gonna be better place.

Kenneth Kinney 40:56

Now the weather's pretty outstanding here. I'm shocked how great we got it. I'm enjoying it. Yeah, number two. Plus, once you stay in the conference room, it's you know inside the conference hall, it's it's you walk into the Uber gets to call that's about it. Number two, Batman or Aquaman

Rich Kahn 41:16

I was always a Batman fan.

Kenneth Kinney 41:17

Good man. Good man, except Aquaman swim with sharks. So that's why I love Yeah. Number three, a performance marketing conference or a digital marketing conference? performance marketing conference. Yeah. I do think though, that ad fraud could be better served with more sessions on ad fraud. I'd love to see more digital marketers start to think about it because I don't know that there's enough education in that space. Alright, number four, Joaquin Phoenix in the Joker or Robert Downey Jr. in Avengers endgame. Robert Downey Jr. and Avengers end. Thank you. So he was amazing in that so number five and the most important question you will be asked today is biscuits or cornbread, cornbread. Why so?

Rich Kahn 42:03

I don't know. Just the I think the butter on it just holds it better. The better taste to it. Yeah, no, I just like to taste better

Kenneth Kinney 42:09

now. Bad rich. Where can people find out more about you, your company, your thought leadership in the app fraud, space and

Rich Kahn 42:15

more. Just go to rich@anura.io Find me on LinkedIn, or Twitter.

Kenneth Kinney 42:20

Awesome. Rich, thank you so much for being with us today on A Shark's Perspective.

Rich Kahn 42:24

Appreciate it. Thanks a lot.

Kenneth Kinney 42:27

Finally, it's JT Benton, the founder and CEO of workbook six.

[music]

Kenneth Kinney 42:34

JT Welcome to lead generation world first ever Good to have you back on the show. So tell us briefly again just to recite for those who didn't listen to the previous episode a little bit about yourself.

JT Benton 42:45

Oh, sure. Yeah, it was first of all, thanks for Yeah, of course having me. Big fan. You did an awesome job. Thank you. It was it was well done. And very insightful,

Kenneth Kinney 42:53

but not as good as you because you started off with a tattoo of a fake tattoo a slide with a fake tattoo on your neck. Yeah, I should have shown him my real tattoos. Yeah,

JT Benton 43:02

I mean, look, sharp

Kenneth Kinney 43:03

tattoos are big. I hear than I need to get one on my neck though. Like you're gonna

JT Benton 43:06

get yourself a neck tattoo. Listen, for all your listeners at home. My advice is not to get a neck tattoo, guys. He's rolling up his sleeve. I'm getting it. So I'm JT Benton. I'm the founder and CEO of workbooks. Six. My company provides partnership development services, largely focused on us enterprise brands.

Kenneth Kinney 43:26

Yeah. So why do you choose this kind of show other than to support the guy that started it? But what do you get as far as business for you for coming to this kind of show? This is a very heavy networking. Sure.

JT Benton 43:37

Yeah. Well, I guess the first thing is, if for no other reason than to support an entrepreneur who I have a lot of respect for. agreed I'd be here. And and I just want to say this kind of for the record, taking risk is hard. If you have a friend who's taking risk, and you can support them, do it. Because being vulnerable and getting out there is a difficult thing to do. And I'm super, super proud of Mike and thrilled to be here just for that reason. Yeah. Now that said, look, a big chunk of our business involves bringing performance marketing partnerships forward from this ecosystem. There's a guy on my team named Justin Guido, who leads that effort. He's been in, you know, nonstop back to back meetings, bringing tons of value forward for our clients. So we get that right. For me, I don't come in with the expectation of ROI. But we've already blasted way past it. It's been a great event for us. And it's going to be lucrative for us to be here. But again, for me, it was it was all about being here for Mike's first event and supporting him and supporting Justin on my team and then anything else that happened beyond that is just sort of gravy. Well, you

Kenneth Kinney 44:44

know, I look at the conference landscape and there are well over 400 conferences. I remember looking at it last year just sort of mapping out the year initially. And there's a blend there's performance marketing, there's digital marketing, there's content marketing only shows Social Media Marketing He shows there are not a lot that are that are really heavily focused on lead generation growth, those kinds of businesses, there's just not enough growth strategy conferences to me, when you start considering the ones that you go to, because you attend a lot of new speaking a lot of moderate panels that Allah, how do you break down? What's an important conference to you, other than just when it's just a friend, for those that don't know, if they're considering the Legion world, or any other kind of conferences? How do you sort of peel that onion apart, figure out which one's the best one for you.

JT Benton 45:34

Every dollar that we spend is an investment in our clients success. So workbook, six is business is all about driving partnerships for its clients. We don't have a corporate market marketing budget, we don't have a corporate sales budget, we don't even have a salesperson beyond me like, and, you know, more often than not, we're not selling at these events as much as we are developing business. So I am 100% focused when I underwrite the expense of attending a conference, whether that's opportunity cost and effort, or actual travel and attendance and registration, that sort of thing. 100% focused on how much value I think I can drive for our clients. And you know, just to be really specific, that means how many scalable partnership opportunities I can bring to our growing network of clients.

Kenneth Kinney 46:23

So a lot of the partners and vendors that I've spoken to here, and they talk about the you know, what they got out of the show? Do you find that you get more out of your year in a partner relationship business? Do you get that much more out of a growth type conference, as opposed to say, a typical marketing conference, maybe focused on content marketing, maybe you went to the Content Marketing World might have 4000 people there, right, this show has less than 1000? Right? So you're gonna get, you know, a 4x return that Content Marketing World? Or does it need to be if you're, and that's one of the things I run into a lot is trying to figure out? There's interesting value on stage. Yeah, versus what you can translate into business or take back to work and things like this different ways of looking at it. Yeah.

JT Benton 47:11

Yeah, I think it's all wonderful. Yeah, my answer is yes. To all of it. Yeah. And, you know, obviously, we're a small business with a big reach, but we, like we try to, we try to make an effort to be it, you know, in a lot of places. What's so great about this ecosystem for me is I came up in it. And so I get to see a lot of my friends and keep them appraised of what's going on in our business, because we've just grown like a weed. And it's fun to tell those stories, and also, to celebrate their successes, see some great friends and that sort of thing. But also, look, there's just a lot of commercial value for our clients in these rooms, that said, you know, the, the the more sort of broad, you know, higher attended, you know, our higher attendance, marketing and digital content, and those sorts of things. Conferences are great opportunities to learn. It's not something I get to do a lot is to sit in and, and hear content from folks I don't know, gives you an opportunity to broaden the network. But there are lots of kinds of entrepreneurs, I am not one who says, Okay, we spent X number of dollars this month. And and I'm and I'm watching that return come in over the following months, and I'm making, you know, sharpen pencils, pencil decisions. I am one who's saying, Are we getting our message and are just good energy, right, our love out into the ecosystem as broadly as we can. Because I just kind of fundamentally believe that if you push it out, it'll come back. But it'll happen in sort of an undisclosed disclose timeline. So there's not like this reconciliation, for me that there might be for lots of other folks. I'm just thinking about it more broadly.

Kenneth Kinney 48:59

Yeah. No, I mean, I, I agree. I like all kinds of conferences. Yeah. I think there's a value to every one of them. I think it's very easy, especially in this place that we're in this type of conference. We're in to where it's, it's caramel flavor. People here only love caramel flavor. Oh, sure. But you've got to be able to trust strawberry and chocolate and vanilla. And a lot of people, especially in the performance space, tend to focus too much on just caramel and it's good that you've got that mindset, just like a lot of people that are say content marketers that only love certain types of digital marketing conferences. They need to explore these types of conferences. So I do, there's a lot of education. There's a lot of ways that people need to learn. And I just wish their people had enough budget to go to all kinds of conferences or there was just one super conference and everything but at least this one has a lot of the same flavors. But I mean like today I spoke about audio, audio from a performance standpoint, not from a fluffy content standpoint. I couldn't cover too much of that on slides. But right, I'd like somebody to also think about that part of it. And so I think, to your point, I think the appreciation of being able to all of them are great. hope people are more conducive to being open minded, looking at other types of conferences like this one as well. So

JT Benton 50:23

well, I mean, our business is, is really, really industry agnostic, we represent exactly a bunch of different industries. And we also form partnerships of lots of different flavors to use your, your lexicon, the truth is, we have to be in lots of those places, because we have a fiduciary responsibility to go develop these markets absolutely all over the place. And so content is great, right. And, and so are lots of lots of other things. The other thing that's nice is it's there's a component of, of culture and team education. We want to give our people, our team, you and I have talked about the way that we support our team, it's really core to me, we want to give them the same kind of resources, a parent would want to give their child and expose them to different education, and different sources of of learning, and also broaden their network, because that's a big part of why people take a flyer and work for a little company like ours, right, we don't have, you know, nap pods, and you know, a sprawling campus and you know, everybody gets their own bicycle, but we send our people out into the wild, and they get to see and do some really, really interesting things and take in a lot of really fascinating content. So for me, as long as we can kind of directionally see the path toward benefit for our clients. Oh, my gut is let's get some people out there.

Kenneth Kinney 51:50

Well, you're in Phoenix area. So you've got Adobe pods. Yeah,

JT Benton 51:55

we got. We got we got a an embarrassment of riches in our little company. And we're very, very blessed to have it all. So I don't mean to say that, you know, we don't have wonderful, wonderful things. I'm just I'm pointing out that, you know, we're not, we're not Google or Facebook. Exactly. But we definitely get our people where they need to be

Kenneth Kinney 52:12

looking at this conference particular over the last few days. What did you like about it? As opposed to not name the others, but some of the other conferences that you go to? What did you like about this particular show?

JT Benton 52:26

It's a great question. I, first of all, I loved that it was in a city, like Denver. Yeah, lots of really fun, cool things to do here. That afforded opportunities for folks to get into town early and go skiing, I had to turn down an invitation to go on a CEO skiing summit over the weekend, because I had a kids basketball game to attend, which I was thrilled to be at, but that afforded people to get some kind of fun recreation out there. Last night, I got to be a guest to have a whiskey distillery tours. That was really cool. And so I love that it's, you know, it's in a different city. Love that. Really like, the venue? Right? Yeah, I think it's a fantastic venue. Everything's so walkable here in Denver. So that was really great. That some of the stuff I've already touched on. I like that the the speaker roster was really robust. I think that there's some opportunities to, to optimize that a little bit. And I think that Mike could be the first one to tell you that. But I think he did a really good job getting great speakers forward. And lots of different learnings. And I, here's the other thing, I love that the guy is using this as a launchpad to learn, you know, when you talk to Mike furry, Michael furry, who is the founder and is running this event and put this on, there's such a humility about him to say, Look, nobody ever gets it perfect on their first one. So let's just take in that content, and then do a debrief and learn from it. And so I know he's going to use those learnings towards London, I can't wait to have some people at London, I'm not sure if I'll be able to get there. But I know that at least a member of our team will be there. And I think, you know, an object in motion stays in motion. And so many people have Grand Designs to launch something big. This guy did it. Okay. And that takes nothing away from other industry industry conferences that we have great partnerships with. But just the spirit of entrepreneurship at this event is wonderful. The early stage of it is wonderful. It's just a nice vibe. It's a great cultural feeling.

Kenneth Kinney 54:28

Yeah, I couldn't agree more, you know, some amazing venue and it's got all the blood. I mean, it's a massive hotel next to the convention center. It feels like you're at the convention center. Yeah. It's so you know, the types of of people now that you're working with in partnerships that consider these kinds of conferences, a lot of them are large corporations to work with. But are you seeing a big influx of entrepreneurs, he brought that term up a couple of times, you seeing a massive number of entrepreneurs that are reaching out to you now?

JT Benton 54:55

Yeah, I love it. I mean, we don't always get to work with them as clients hence, we can often work with them as partners we can, we can often leverage the very, very large enterprises we work with, and their reach to be able to kind of be a rising tide for those entrepreneurs. Look, it is scary as hell to go start your own company, even if you've got a great idea. There's doubt there's financial considerations, there's opportunity cost. So I always love when when other entrepreneurs reach out, because I just want to because I am one and I have empathy for that I have walked a mile in their shoes, and I want to support them, right, that the community aspect of that is a really, really wonderful thing. We're here to support each other.

Kenneth Kinney 55:40

So what would you like to see different about this event?

JT Benton 55:45

I want to see Mike and his team, take the results of this show, and make more of the good happen and less of the things that they were less happy with. And I just want to support that process. Yeah, I know, they'll figure it out.

Kenneth Kinney 55:58

Yeah, for anybody putting together a conference, it's hard enough. I mean, I don't know, I don't think nearly enough people. It's hard enough being the entrepreneur, and trying to figure out how to finance this stuff, and do everything else behind it totally. The sausage making process of when the attendees walk in the door, though, trying to line up the sound to be correct. The lighting, the tables, the chairs, where does everybody mingle in between have the opportunity to network? It's not just something that happens by default, right? It's something you've got to tweak and optimize with every event and every venue because every venue is different. But I mean, hats off to him to pull it off. Because it is no, I mean, this is a large undertaking.

JT Benton 56:41

Huge, absolutely monstrous to for this to be the first one, in a venue this large with this many people. You just got to take your hat off to the guy. And the other thing is, it's so clear that he's really, really reached to add value to every attendee. And so I want to see him double down on that. I mean, I just am I've got nothing positive to say,

Kenneth Kinney 57:01

well, you run the Partner Summit a lot. And another one of the conferences and, you know, we were talking with us earlier about it being pretty good group of people 250 ish. In in a room, almost like a like a masterclass for four hours. Having those kinds of conversations. Do you prefer those kinds of events? Or one where you spoke to a much larger room? I love it all. There's one, it's a packed room, and then there's one that's a massive convention title Hall?

JT Benton 57:29

I'll tell you what, I try to take something great from all of it. Yeah, look, there's no question. It can be really intimidating to stand in a room with, you know, five 600 seats in it, right? And to see people you don't know, and to know that you've got to kind of, you've got to fight for their attention with a device can literally deliver anything, like seriously, like, you know, if you said if you told Siri to show you a picture of a narwhal. Right? It would do it, I can't do that. It's kind of a random example. But that can be intimidating, but also can be really, really great for confidence building and just like messaging, and there's so many things you can learn from that. And then at the same time, what's great about you know, what we'll do later in later in March and early April, with our Partnership Summit, is, you know, there's the opportunity to maybe not be the presenter, yes. But to pull the content out of others. If I have to, like, kind of pick the the kind of public speaking I like to do the most. I like to celebrate other people's successes and content, and just be a conduit. I'd like to enable commerce without being commercial. That's just a nice feeling for me. But this was really fun, too. I like it

Kenneth Kinney 58:47

all. Luckily, though, this is a pretty heavily engaged business leaders, this is sure, not your your junior folk,

JT Benton 58:55

it's much easier as an emcee, the wonderful half of your speakers, right? And so you know, the message can be look, give these guys a break and give them your full attention. You came here you may as well get your money's worth the when you're a speaker. And you're and you're and you're staring at a group of people who are who are half in the room and halfway there. It's very, very interesting. Here's the message. You got to up your game. It's not fair agree sucks, right? You know, nobody ever expected that they'd have to compete with with a device that is so powerful. They are double edged swords. You know, as a parent, I worry about this whole time but like, if you want people to pay attention to you, you got to bring a bigger energy and more valuable content than you plan to or then you then you have before. You've got to be more than enough. Yeah, and that is hard. Now, if you don't want to do that, don't do it. Don't, don't eat. The last thing you could ever do is build an adversarial relationship. Exactly. Relationship. with your audience, because I've seen that too. I've seen people go like, Hey, listen, I'm up here. I want your attention. I deserve that. Well, no one's gonna pay attention to you then. So it's like, it's kind of like,

Kenneth Kinney 1:00:09

you know, I'll give you an example. Yeah, I talked about it on stage because it came from, from a conversation I had with Tom Webster, when he was talking about audio and podcasting. Yeah. Today, you're competing, if you're doing podcasting, it used to be it was okay. It was just two white guys talking about routers. And, and a few nerds would listen. Yeah, now they're not, you know, you're not competing. Your fear in the tire industry is what he said against other people in the tire industry. That's right, you're competing against Joe Rogan, regardless wood industry, and so you've got to step up your game, or it's they want to watch Netflix. So you got to produce better content?

JT Benton 1:00:44

It's right. So look, it's you're totally right. And maybe it's not for everybody, right? Because it just some, some faction of the audience is just not going to be with you. Yeah, just not gonna focus. And you can't take it personally. You got to believe in what you're building. And you and what you're talking about and speak to the people with whom there is for whom there is value. But there are some tricks, right? Yeah, I agree a minute ago, and I'm not saying I do this better than anybody. But I asked people to interact with me during the show, during the event, and during during my talks. And the reason I do that is not for any other reason, then I need to pull them, right. It's those are like trial closes, trial closes in a sales process. You've got to like, get people to engage, right? You know, a lecture exactly, is not going to be as popular as a call and response kind of deal. Now there's risk there, right? It's just, if you want engagement, you've got to engage. And if you want engagement, you've got to create content that people want. And sometimes it doesn't work. Sometimes it feels awkward and vulnerable. But I have a personality that you know, I feel good getting up there. And I don't hold myself accountable if it if it flops, and that's kind of part of it, too.

Kenneth Kinney 1:02:07

Well, I don't know if you remember this before, but I'm gonna ask you some of the same question. Oh, here we go. And some of them are the same questions that I've asked everybody. All right. Well live it lead generation. So do you remember what your favorite kind of shark is and why? I think I do. I think I remember,

JT Benton 1:02:22

my favorite kind of shark is actually a specific shark. I have a home in Nova Scotia. My kids sail in Mahone Bay and Mahone Bay is home to Hilton. Or at least she was there last summer. And so we're pulling for Hilton as long as she doesn't eat eating any of those sailboats. We're really pulling for Hilton. What I said last time was just awful. So you know, if you want to remind the audience of what I said, it's fine, but I feel badly but yeah, I'm a fisherman. Yeah. So I said whichever ones on my line. Yeah. An old shark over here. He didn't like that. And he was you know, I

Kenneth Kinney 1:02:58

even use sales. I mean, a hook has a reference. I had to back it up immediately. Yeah. So yeah, I get upset yesterday when somebody was talking about hooking a hammerhead. I was like, No, I got it, let it go. I get it. But alright, so five most interesting questions you're gonna be asked today number one, so this is based on where bikes from and where the conference is because we're doing this conference in January. He's from San Diego, and we're having it in Denver, where we turned out to have amazing weather Yeah, but Denver or San Diego

JT Benton 1:03:30

you know what, it's all about the people. I think they did great in Denver. I think San Diego would be a lot of fun too. I you want you want a binary like I want to binary Well, you know city you prefer we're wrapping up Denver, so Denver, Okay, sounds good.

Kenneth Kinney 1:03:43

Number two, yeah. Batman or Aquaman. Batman. Number three, a performance marketing conference or a digital marketing conference.

JT Benton 1:03:55

Look, marketing is about investing toward some end goal, right? So performance marketing and digital marketing and every other kind of marketing are the same thing in my opinion.

Kenneth Kinney 1:04:09

I think it's conferences are different. Okay, so if you had your money to pick yet performance 1000 bucks to put on one conference tickets market. Okay. Number four, Joaquin Phoenix in the Joker or Robert Downey Jr. and Avengers endgame. Oh, Robert Downey Jr. Thank you. Yeah. Let everybody know, he made me cry like a baby. So okay. It was it was a powerful moment. Ya know, until your wife laughs at you while you're watching a movie. So number five and the most important question be asked today like before biscuits or cornbread.

JT Benton 1:04:42

biscuits with gravy. Good man. Has anybody ever made you do five questions?

Kenneth Kinney 1:04:46

Yeah, they had on other shows. I

JT Benton 1:04:48

could totally ad libbed it totally ad libbing you ready? All right. Plain colored socks are patterns,

Kenneth Kinney 1:04:56

patterns with with sharks patterns with sharks. I've got them underwriting there they

JT Benton 1:05:00

are I see him all right okay. Trade Show footwear dress shoes or sneakers

Kenneth Kinney 1:05:06

sneakers all day long

JT Benton 1:05:07

okay in a high rise hotel by

Kenneth Kinney 1:05:14

the way I wore my new vans Yeah, I saw that are sharks. They're hot. Yeah fly.

JT Benton 1:05:19

All right, cool. I like that. Huh? I'm only two in and I'm already blank and we're gonna keep going here okay do you prefer to be cold

Kenneth Kinney 1:05:27

or hot hot in give me the summer all day long summer all day long

JT Benton 1:05:33

sushi or cooked fish

Kenneth Kinney 1:05:38

had some damn good sushi two weeks ago and I had good fish last week. Damn good sushi is hard to beat.

JT Benton 1:05:44

Damn good sushi is hard to beat. All right. Let's come up with one last one here.

Kenneth Kinney 1:05:50

Number fives the big one you get five is the big one. Something impressive. Okay,

JT Benton 1:05:54

so it's biscuits. Right? Your biscuit man. You go in butter and honey or gravy? Gravy. All right,

Kenneth Kinney 1:06:01

get my order from the start and my great aunts gravy. And she owned a diner and used to smoke and I'm sure that secret ingredient was added to the six inches of ashes hanging off the cigarette love it. I don't you know for my for health reasons. I don't want to know maybe that would explain some things. But it was the best gravy I've ever had on the planet and it changed the world. So

JT Benton 1:06:23

yeah, totally. I mean, biscuits and gravy are like hangover helper me.

Kenneth Kinney 1:06:26

Oh, I you know, I know. They talked about dates and camel milk being able to sustain life. Yeah, forever. For human but I kind of think biscuits and gravy would would be the same thing.

JT Benton 1:06:37

Alright, commercially.

Kenneth Kinney 1:06:39

You're from Memphis? No, but I live there.

JT Benton 1:06:41

Sorry. You live in Memphis? Who's got the best biscuits and gravy in Memphis?

Kenneth Kinney 1:06:52

Probably my wife, your wife? Yeah. Can we all come over? No. But that's that's probably, you know, there's, there's certain things of why you marry somebody. And yeah, cooking biscuits and gravy was one of them. Dude,

JT Benton 1:07:04

I'm with you. Man. My wife is such a good cook. And. And I love it because she always cooks for more people than than are there. Do you have one of

Kenneth Kinney 1:07:11

those? No, but she always cooks more than I should eat, which is part of the portion control problem that I have. So where do you want people to find you? JT at the next conference or combo? Sure. Yeah, absolutely.

JT Benton 1:07:25

Look, we hit a lot of industry shows within the performance marketing space. You can always find me on LinkedIn. You can find me on Twitter. My email address is just JT at workbook. six.com I'm easy to find I'm tall and goofy. Please reach out and say hey,

Kenneth Kinney 1:07:44

beautiful. Thank you so much for joining us at sharks respective live at Lead Generation World.

JT Benton 1:07:49

All right, man. Thank you.

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Kenneth Kinney 1:07:57

So there were my conversations with Mike Ferree, the CEO and founder of lead generation world; Rich Kahn, the CEO and co founder of Anura; and JT Benton, the founder and CEO of Workbook Six. Let's take a look at three key takeaways from my conversation with them.

Kenneth Kinney 1:08:11

First, I asked Mike about what he wants to do next, and change with his event. Again, it's the first one and as he said, No one gets it right the first time. Now whether that's true or not, to me, it's more important for any big show, big or small, to continuously improve too many conference shows in series, like other businesses, put it on autopilot and don't do anything to really improve and evolve. Remember that, especially with conferences, that people have choices, and a lot of them, so be humble enough to be able to change. But kudos to the organizer for starting his own event, and pulling off a pretty impressive on it that well done.

Kenneth Kinney 1:08:48

Second, ad fraud is still such a big problem. But it's becoming so much more sophisticated to find all the bad actors, rich brought up having the right data scientists to look at it, but it goes way beyond that. The bigger problem to me, sadly, is the fact that we've discounted this to the point where it's someone accepted. Agencies way too often buy in places to get reached impressions still, instead of on quality networks, because it's the easiest solution to them. Many marketers and advertisers don't look deeply enough at this and other stick their heads in the sand because either they don't know or don't want to invest the time looking at it. All of this need to look more deeply into this because money is being wasted on fraud.

Kenneth Kinney 1:09:27

Third, JT said something that really helped me frame my appreciation for the types of conferences, or rather the sizes of those that you can and should consider. I use the ice cream flavor as a reference point simply is that you've got to try other flavors. You can't just stick with the same thing over and over and over and don't necessarily think of the biggest conferences is the best, nor the smallest is the worst or least informative. You'll get something out of a lot of different flavors, but you've got to be curious and try more.

Kenneth Kinney 1:09:56

Got a question send me an email to Kenneth at a shark's perspective.com.

Kenneth Kinney 1:10:00

Thank you again for the privilege of your time.

Kenneth Kinney 1:10:02

It's time to grow your business. And it's time for you to join us on the next episode of A Shark's Perspective.

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