Making Great Marketing Affordable with Andrew Weisz

Hello, and welcome, fellow Awsomologists, to Awsomology. I’m Sue.

And I’m Ben. And in this episode, we’re sitting down with Andrew Weisz, CEO of Finden Marketing in Duluth, Minnesota.

Thanks for being here, Andrew.

Yeah. Thanks for having me. I’m excited to chat.

Yeah. Well, we were more excited when we thought we you could be our fur you this could be a first for you, but now we know it’s a second podcast.

It’s gonna still gonna be good, but Still gonna be great.

You know, it’s not and that is fresh, and that’s okay now. No. Just kidding. It’s really great to have you here. We should start where we start with a lot of our guests, especially those we didn’t know. Now you are a friend of our friend, Scott, from our team, but we don’t know you, so we should get to know you a little bit.

Tell us what was your journey, and you can go back as far you know, you can go back to birth if you’d like. But what was the journey that got led you up to found FinDen Marketing?

Yeah. Yeah. So, I lived in an entrepreneurial family. My my dad owns a computer company that does, like, telecommunications and phones, down in Rochester, Minnesota.

And I always knew that I liked that, but I didn’t know what that was.

So I graduated high school and was like, hey. That must be computers. He owns a computer company. I like that rock and roll.

So I went to, Mankato State University, and that’s where I met Scott. We played the the drums together.

And Scott was a lot better than me. You can you can ask anybody. He he’s a legend.

And, I did computer classes and was horrible at them. Like, the the technical side of it, of all the numbers and the the math, it was not for me.

And I was dating this girl at a time the time, and she was like, hey. Come to Duluth instead. That sounded it’s it’s a lot cool cooler.

And I was like, yeah. That sounds amazing. So transferred for a girl.

Girl broke up with me, like, a week before we got to college.

Typical typical story.

But luckily, I I lost the girl, but fell in love with the city. So absolutely fell in love with Duluth. It’s a it’s a beautiful town, and, started going to UMD.

Within the first week, I realized, like, hey.

I don’t like computers. Like, computers are neat. Like, they’re great, but I don’t like building them. I don’t like the code behind them.

I like the other part about entrepreneurship, the the starting things.

And I bumped into this guy on my, like, freshman dorm floor, and he was like, hey, man. Do you like movies? And I was like, yeah. I like movies. Do you like movies? And we ended up starting a a club at UNB called the League of Extraordinary Film Credits, which is, just a bunch of people that got together and they watched movies, and then they complained about them.

And that really sparked my entrepreneurial spirit where I was, like, running I actually by the end of college, I became, like, the consultant for clubs where people would come to me when they wanted to start a club, because I knew all the rules because I had started, like, seven or eight of them.

And so that got me kinda known in the area as, like, this mover and shaker, and I started working at an incubator out of college that took businesses, like, stage, from idea phase to, like, stage a or b funding, kinda like Shark Tank where, an investor comes in, gives them money, and then takes a percent.

And we were doing a bunch of cool things, including an app that our big client was an app called Platonic, which was like Tinder but for friends, where, like, there was no romance, but you could connect with people and go swimming or go play pickleball, and then the pandemic hit.

So an app where you get together in big groups and have fun, did not do very well. Mhmm. And so it ended up the the incubator went out of business, and that started really my first entrepreneurial venture, which was, partnering with one of the other clients of the incubator, which super cool idea. It ended up getting acquired, but, it took an invasive species called the lionfish, where if you you’ve ever heard of them, they’re they’re destroying the Belizean coral reef and, created a mass food supply for it, where basically we started selling the food to, local restaurants and things like that, and then used part of the proceeds to restore the coral reef. So the problem became the solution.

And out of that, I met my, my good buddy and and the future business partner, a guy named Josh, who is doing, online ads, Facebook, Google, all that jazz.

Really, like, the managing millions, a month and just doing crazy things on his own. And then my other business partner is a guy named, Benjie, and he was, Chris Lindahl’s head graphic designer doing all of the billboards if you’re in Minnesota. If you’re not in Minnesota, you probably don’t know, but the Minnesotans out there are like, that guy’s he has, I think, over five hundred billboards in Minnesota, all the same thing.

And so that really led to the start of Fendon of, like, hey. You guys are doing these cool things. I really liked what I was doing, but after the acquisition was on my own. And so we just kinda came together to offer a wide range of services to small to midsize businesses.

Yeah. So that’s kinda that’s kinda the journey of starting. It it means to find in German.

And so we help our clients find their brand, their clients, their x, y, and z.

Awesome. You it is interesting, just so you know, you are not the first marketing CEO that we have talked to this year that became a marketing CEO because of a girl.

I just wanna I’m starting to see that there might be a trend out there.

A little bit of an alarming pattern now that we Right. Identify. So, when exactly was Finndon founded?

It was founded right, in the middle of the pandemic in twenty twenty. We all all three of us had nothing better to do with our days, so we’re like, why don’t we just start a marketing agency? Yeah. Why not? And here we are, five years later, and we actually just acquired another marketing agency. So we’re growing, which is awesome to see.

Super cool.

So a couple of questions.

First off, just, like, generally, how’s how’s it been? How’s it going since COVID, since twenty twenty? I mean, a a tricky time to start anything new, but, you know, a lot of the world was kinda getting you know, the paper was wrinkly, and we were trying to smooth it out for a bit there for a couple of years. You know?

So, like, yeah, what’s what’s changed maybe instead of how how’s it going? Because that’s a bit of a wide open question. But, like, what’s changed over the course of the last five years for y’all?

Yeah. Yeah. It’s kinda crazy. So our first, like, right when we started, we we had no name.

We were just three guys. So our first client, was this brand that just started. They they created a shower in a bag, and we were like, yeah. We’ll do all of this for x amount of dollars.

And we we just didn’t do the math right. So afterwards, we like, last year, we went back and looked, and we were like, we were making a dollar twenty five an hour for our work on that client. And it was like so big thing that changed was we figured out how to price ourselves.

That helped us dramatic dramatically, really understanding who we work with best. I I think a lot of marketing agencies, right, when they start, they’re like, anybody that will touch us, we’ll work with.

And we we quickly found out that, like, there are a lot of people that we just don’t work well with. Like, we’re not your traditional, like, like, there are certain brands, certain businesses that just don’t fit our marketing style and don’t understand what we do.

So that was a big thing. And once we figured that one out, we really started to scale.

And so we we we’ve really our main focus has been staying lean and mean as long as possible so we don’t get that crazy overhead where we have to charge clients a bunch of money just to survive like, just to have a swanky office and Mhmm. All of that stuff. So, we we’ve stayed really close to the chest on our on our budgets and have slowly figured out better pricing, but it’s still, a fraction of what some others charge. And, really, one big thing that we identified was that small businesses, which was who we wanted to target, like, didn’t have the time to, really, they care, but they didn’t have the time to care as much. So providing as much as we could do right in front of them where it’s, hey. Here’s a here’s an easy piece of paper that tells you everything you need to know.

And so that’s really helped us scale from the three person agency to, the bigger agency that we are today.

So Oh, go ahead.

No.

I was pausing because you look like you had a question for me later.

I was gonna steal your question is what was happening. That’s all. Formulated, but three days ago.

So okay. You you mentioned some of your some of your clients. Something that I found in doing my little bit of research about Findin was that you you had some specialty in marketing for millennials and gen z.

Now I have this is me. This is my perception of you, Andrew, based on what I’ve what I know about the fact that you went to school with Scott.

And, I am assuming millennials and Gen z, like, that those that’s your peer group.

Hundred percent.

And that that is really something when we started in our, like, Duluth area, we just saw so much bad marketing that was like, they were trying to do social, but the social was was like a billboard, and it just didn’t fit. So we wanted to create authentic based marketing that really hits the audience that is probably one of the hardest to hit right now.

Mhmm. So what what were some surprising insights marketing just to your peers? What did you learn? What have you learned from marketing to that group?

Yeah. A lot of business owners don’t care.

They they think, like, they think millennials and Gen z are between the ages of five and twenty, and they’re like, well, they’re not gonna be buying my product.

When in reality, millennials, I think they’re up to forty five now.

Like, it, like, it is the market.

But that was a big one where people were like, well, we we don’t really want to target them.

So, that was a big one. And then just I think, people understanding that post I actually, there was a lot of acceptance post COVID transitioning to digital. Like, digital had a a really nice opening when people couldn’t go out. They couldn’t look at billboards. They couldn’t do things like that.

And so marketers really started to invest in that online focus. I I think there’s a lot of over almost overinvestation, if that’s a word, investation, in, online marketing nowadays where people are putting their entire budgets and forgetting about your traditional media.

But I think those were really the three things that, like, surprised me was that a lot of business owners just didn’t know about how to market. They didn’t know why to market, and they really didn’t know, like and then they also just when they went in, they they jumped head first rather than dipping a toe in.

Sure. Yeah. I feel like that, like, ever present challenge of, like, the balance of your spend and your time and all of that digital versus traditional and stuff. And, also, like, what world are we living in where, like, we have to even separate those two, you know, as, like, digital is the new and traditional is the old or something.

Like, digital has been around for some time now. Right? So if it’s not traditional or feeling traditional to you, you’re probably just really behind. You know?

But that’s another that’s another point, I guess, what what I’m getting at, though, because that’s maybe just the easiest way to categorize certain kind of advertising versus another.

But, anyway, that that’s a constant challenge. And for me, when the question might come up like, you know, I’m not sure where my spend should go or where my effort should go or even as we’re preparing our own budget budget and we’re asking ourselves those questions, usually, one bit of information that can help get you to the answer is having an understanding of where your audience is. Right? If your audience is typically spending time in digital channels, well, you might wanna dedicate more of your time and spend there.

Right? Same thing other way around. Maybe it’s a nice mix, whatever it might be. Do you get that same question from folks?

Or as you’re helping, your own clients, how are you helping them create that balance or answer that question for themselves?

Yeah. Yeah. I I hundred percent. I think one of the things that we really tout is mixing good looking design with analytics.

Because once you dive deep in the analytics, you can find all of your answers of, hey. Your your market is mainly an older demographic. We should focus we should still should focus some on online to gain a new market, but this is where your people are. And really creating marketing where people are and understanding that there’s there’s multiple types of marketing where it’s not just, hey.

I wanna click on this ad and make a sale. There’s brand growth. There’s Mhmm. That long term investment to be the choice, for every time it comes up where, when when you have a leaky faucet, sure, you can go to Google and type in plumber Duluth or plumber insert area.

But if you’re the top of mind and you can beat out that search, you’re gonna win every time.

Yeah. Do you think, Andrew, that people have business owners have a hard time keeping those different types of marketing in their brain that they that that feeling, that you know, I did an ad, and I did not immediately get calls.

So your ad it must be your ad.

And not that you you know, the the person that that ad reached was getting, you know, more of brand awareness or, you know, or just wasn’t wasn’t in the decision making phase because right now, all of their pipes are fine, and I’m a plumber. You know?

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And I think a hundred percent where it’s like, even if it’s not, hey. There what what I’ve gotten a lot is, yeah, we tried that on our own, and it didn’t work.

Or, like, hey. I did I’ve done Google Ads in the past, and they just they they I didn’t get any leads, but it was this guy like, this random person doing it that has no expertise. It would be like if I grabbed a plumber wrench and was like, I’m gonna fix my toilet.

But I think with the low barrier entry that marketing is where anybody could grab a laptop and say, I’m a marketer, and, quote, unquote, be a marketer, that that those things that can set you apart are really what makes agencies thrive or agencies die.

But then for us kinda going back on that question, we actually created, like, an internal calculator that we use where it’s, hey. I have fifty thousand a month for marketing budget, and we have an a calculator that based on their size, how much they wanna grow, their target demo, it splits out into different spends so that we can give them a you should probably spend about five thousand here, two thousand here, one thousand here, Because like you’re saying, it is it’s insane how many opportunities there are for people with marketing from billboards, posters, to OTT, radio ads. You could even do a blimp ad. Like, the the amount of random advertising that the American consumer gets every day is staggering.

So finding that thing that breaks the void is is becoming harder and harder as especially the younger demographic starts to really fight that, where there are so many people that I talk to that are my age or younger that are like, yeah. I just skipped the first three on Google because I don’t I don’t want to like, I don’t wanna work with someone that pays. So it’s it’s it’s that weird thing where it’s like organic SEO might beat out that paid side because, the younger demographic’s avoiding it slash just the the transition of, younger consumers from traditional Google search to TikTok to Instagram where they’re not even getting information, from your traditional sources that were popular forty five years ago.

Right. Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, let’s throw Oh, sorry.

Let’s throw AI search and, you know, even AI supported results in Google into that mix. Right? I think everything that you’re saying aligns with something that you said earlier about, you know, kind of, like, being, part of the consideration or maybe even being the decision before the search even happens. You know?

Yeah. I think that that, you know, that’s right on the same page as those folks that might be intentionally skipping the top few listings because they don’t wanna support the company that just has the huge advertising budget. Right? They they wanna support the companies that are doing things that make them top of mind before they even open up the search browser.

You know? And, that’s that’s, like, the heart of, like, everything that we’re trying to do based on what we know about you. It sounds like it’s at the heart of everything you’re trying to do.

So For sure.

Yeah.

Sorry to cut you off, Sue.

That’s okay. The only the I was triggered by something else he said, where he was where you were talking Andrew about all of the different options.

And I had, I had a little bit of a flashback to when I was a purchaser of that stuff.

And my experience and I think this is probably one of this is probably something that is a real pain, especially to entrepreneurs.

All of those different types of media, billboards, and, you know, at that time, it was billboards radio, things scratched into a cave wall. I don’t know what it was. But it was traditional media.

They all had marketers on their team who would sell you their ads and tell you, like, that is the most important thing. That is where your audience is. We have this share of your audience.

And now that has, you know, that has grown exponentially. All of the different businesses that have marketers that are selling their product as the number one thing that someone should be doing. And, there and there’s this there’s a part of that that, for me reinforces what we in agencies are doing, which is, part of our part of our job is to cut through that noise and help explain to people, hey. You know what? They’re telling you, you have to do all of those digital ads because they only do digital ads.

So Yeah. It it’s crazy how many like, we do we do a decent amount of website design, and a lot of our like, our philosophy is we don’t wanna get people stuck in contracts. Like, we we want you to like us. So we’re not that one that’s like, hey. You’re stuck in a contract with us for the next ten years. We’re not gonna touch your website, but you can’t let anybody else touch it, yada yada.

And it’s crazy how many clients come to us and they’re like, they get those spam emails where it’s like, your website is x, y, and z. And they’re like, hey.

What what is this? And we’re like, it’s just like they trust almost anything they see online, as being like, oh, we need to do this.

So for for me, one of my favorite things that somebody was telling me is they’re like, yeah. You guys are like the declutters of of marketing. Like, you just help move things around to make it where it it actually makes sense.

Yeah. Love that. I love that. That must feel good.

Yeah.

So speaking of philosophies, we’re back. You can see how well, Andrew, that we get back on our notes. Something that struck me, when I was doing research on Findon, was that our two Findon and exclamation are really committed to this idea that marketing needs to be affordable, and you you reinforce that in what you’re saying today.

And you talked about some of the overhead, staying lean and mean. What are some other ways that you manage costs or build your services so that you can keep that stuff affordable to your friends and your neighbors and the people that really need it.

Definitely. Yeah. So the the first thing that we did right when we started was we we still accept the agency rate. So if we’re buying radio ads, billboards, things like that, we’ll take the agency rate, and then we just pass it along to the consumer. So working with us, you save fifteen percent off of normal box rate.

And, really, we’re getting paid for doing the work with our complete marketing packages.

Mhmm. So it’s no it it it just fits. So, the the biggest thing that we focus on are those, like, cost savers of, hey. Because you’re working with us, you also get bonus, bonus, bonus.

And we’ve made different partnerships with different local, news medias, things like that, that allows that to be a bigger and bigger chunk as we continue to grow. They give us better rates.

And then the other thing is just, like, once you’ve seen something, you know how to fix it. So rather than having one person do the website, one person do the ads, one person do that, We when we’re able to put everything together, it streamlines the process, give making it where it takes us less hours to do something so that we can, in theory, like, charge less because it’s taking us less and less time.

But, yeah, really just the the streamlining of processes. And then, with our complete marketing package, we’ve made it where it’s basically equivalent to, depending on the level, a three to six person marketing team, for a fraction of the cost. So you you get an the power of an internal team without the expense.

Yeah.

Yeah. That’s a a similar model to us. And, you know, I think, like, as the world continues to shift and, you know, people’s priorities and budgets and all of that, changes, like, there’s a space for agencies like us where, you know, small to medium sized businesses are I mean, they’re living on the razor’s edge of their budgets and deciding whether or not to hire someone. I think there is this wave.

Yeah, I don’t have exact years or any data to back up this point here, but, I feel like I saw it happening, and I hopefully all feel the same way. If not, check me. I need to be checked. Yeah.

There was this wave, like, from, I don’t know, like, mid to late nineties.

Andrew, you’re probably not even old enough to Before you were born, Andrew.

To, like like, four.

Yeah. Right. Yeah. You were advertiser for life. Right? Exactly.

From about that timeline to maybe when you were a bit older, maybe in those college or just after college years, where the solution to I need to do more marketing, I need to do marketing better is I need to hire a marketer. Like, have them in house, pay that person salary benefits, all of that. And there are plenty of instances where that’s exactly what that business needs to do. They need to have an in house resource.

They need or an in house team, whatever. And, of course, you know, some bigger corporations, they need more than one person. You know? But even some small to medium sized businesses, they need, you know, more than just one person that has marketing in their title, but they’re also doing, you know, HR and three other things too.

Right? You know? But I do feel like as, maybe, like, the outsourcing wave of, like, sending your, call center offshore and other aspects of your business internationally or anywhere that you could get it done cheaper, I do feel like more and more businesses now are open to at least having that second thought before hiring someone like, okay. Yeah.

I could hire someone and pay them, you know, after benefits and everything, sixty, seventy grand a year, whatever.

Or I could pay an agency fifty and, you know, have access to a broader team with more expertise and skills, maybe have access to things like you were saying, like discounts on the ad spend and things like that because of partnerships and everything else that an agency makes possible. So are you feeling the same thing? Are you seeing the same thing? Are you hearing the same feedback from your clients and prospects?

Yeah. No. I would say you’re spot on. And I I think the the biggest thing that this like, we were talking earlier, the the growth of just what marketing is is that one person can’t handle it all. You you can’t be an expert in SEO and online ads and design. It just like, if you are, like, we’ll hire you on the spot. But, like, it it just you can’t find especially at the price range, we’re talking of that seventy, eighty thousand.

So by the time you’re hiring someone, you’re hiring an entry level person that’s still, like, learning how to play the game.

And you you you you’re paying them to learn compared to hiring an agency that knows exactly what they’re doing and can has everything set that it’s just you’re running rather than growing.

Yeah. Right.

So, website also mentions that you focus on fostering authentic relationships. Can you describe, like, how how do you accomplish that? How do you keep it top of mind? How does that, focus of yours to foster authentic relationships stay in authentic effort for your team and not just something that lives on your website?

Definitely. Yeah. So one of the biggest things that we focus on is really implementing ourselves as someone’s marketing department. So there there are multiple people that just know me.

They don’t know me as Fendon. They know me as the North Shore Inline Marathon guy or the the roller, like, the, like, they know me as my client because we’re just we don’t care about titles. Like, it’s like we’re implementing. We’re doing exactly.

And so with that, we make it a main focus to understand the business almost as well as the owner. Owner’s always gonna understand the business more, but, like, we wanna be up to date on all the knowledge. We wanna be, really giving them options rather than them saying, like, well, this is coming up in the industry. We should look into that.

So, really, research and passion are the two things that we really focus on to implement ourselves, as that authenticity, and really spending when we’re onboarding, spending time to understand what the brand is, what it means, what’s it what is its words, what don’t you say, like, how is it what’s the vibe, and creating that copy around it, where I I think in the day of AI, it it it grinds my gears seeing multibillion dollar brands that just are copy and pasting chat stuff onto social and onto, like Mhmm. Seeing the little dash just irks me where it’s like, you’re you’re you have an entire team focused on this one social media piece, and you’re just gonna let chat make it for you.

So I think those are the things that I do, and we, right when chat started, we were definitely in that same boat where we’re like, wow. This thing’s amazing.

But and we we definitely use AI as a tool.

But focusing on that human voice, human touch, and the the special sauce that got that business to be where it is today and continue using that sauce to make a nice gumbo or stew.

Well, now I’m hungry. That’s an awesome analogy.

Yeah. No. It’s I mean, our work, would be more exhausting than it already naturally is if we weren’t able to keep the focus on the heart of what we do, the heart of why we do it, the curiosity that comes with, like, wanting to understand how a client’s business works, what their next steps are, what their vision is, and all of those things that can really help keep our work human and not just something that anybody could plug in the right prompt and get, you know, what they think might help them or work for them. You know?

For sure.

So stuff’s really important.

So we are getting very close to time to wrap up here.

What did we miss, Andrew? What oh, we I know what we missed. Ben, we were gonna talk about your restaurants.

Speaking of being hungry. Yeah.

That was the other thing. That’s what we missed.

Before we hit that for addition apparently, in addition to being the CEO of a marketing agency, did you say you own a few restaurants?

Was that Yeah.

At the moment, we have we have three rest a restaurant, two ice cream shops, a gourmet popcorn company, and a charcuterie company are Dang. Side projects. So the the beauty and hear me out. On on a marketing side, the beauty is when you fully own a client, you can do whatever you want.

You can test things. You can throw the spaghetti. And if it doesn’t work, all you have to blame is yourself where you don’t have to go back to the client and be like, hey. We we wasted a little bit of your money.

So that kinda sparked it a little bit in in, and, again, I’m I’m a super entrepreneurial guy. I also started a banana run where everybody’s dressed in a banana costume and and gets chased by a gorilla, raising money for charity, of course. And so, like, yeah, we just, we we it it was an already standing restaurant in Duluth, and it it the owner wanted to retire, and it just kind of fell into my lap. And, so I now own a bunch of random stuff off of it. It just kinda started the re the we started with two and then started a breakfast restaurant with the ice cream shop. Breakfast was a bad idea.

If anybody’s listening thinking, I’m gonna start a breakfast shop. Don’t do it.

And then we started a burger shop, which goes a lot better with ice cream.

And so we did that. And then, that kinda sparked the charcuterie idea. And then because of that, people reached out to us and were like, hey. Do you wanna buy our gourmet popcorn company?

And so it just it’s a weird thing where once you buy one, you start to get peep more and more people coming at you saying like, hey. You should you should buy my next thing.

Yeah.

It’s a good time it’s a good time for, you know, the those generations of people that are kinda getting out of businesses right now and, for people that seem to be willing and able to, take new things on and, try new things. So good on you for giving it a shot.

Hey. It, it’s been a fun adventure where I get to actually put my money where my mouth is, where we can tell people, hey. Our agency will do x, y, and z. But when it’s your own money and your own companies, it it makes it a lot more, like, tried and true.

Mhmm. Sure. Yeah. That’s awesome.

K. So how can people learn more about you? How can listen. How can we get ahold of some of this popcorn?

Why is there not charcuterie here? What how can we connect people to with what you’re doing, Andrew?

Yeah. So, Findon Marketing, you can find us online at Findon Marketing dot com or Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn.

Myself, Andrew Wise on on LinkedIn.

Chili Billies frozen yogurt are the two ice cream shops. You find those at chili billies dot com.

Madhouse Burgers is our burger shop. That’s at Madhouse Burgers dot com. I I love the good simple URL, so I’ll pull them up more.

Then we have Duluth Candy Co, which was the candy company turned gourmet popcorn company.

That one’s Duluth Candy Co dot com.

And then, North Shore Charcuterie, which does, small and medium sized charcuterie spreads. They I just got married, and they did my wedding. So, also a perk, we had my ice cream for dessert, the charcuterie board as an appetizer. So, gotta gotta save some major change on that.

Heck. Yeah. Perk of the job. Nice.

Yeah.

That’s great.

Well, thanks for all that.

We’ll we’ll definitely share some links out. Really cool to to hear your story and the the diversity of everything that you’re doing, both on the marketing side and the food side too.

For sure. Yeah. Well, thank you for having me, and, I look forward to listening to this in, in a little bit.

Yeah. Well, before we go, we’re gonna shift to our real quick, something awesome segment where we share a cool recommendation, something we’ve experienced lately, maybe a nice book you’ve read, anything like that, and, give our audience some extra brain food before we sign off. So I’m gonna kick it off speaking of good books that you’ve read. Now I did the audiobook, so I still count it as reading a book. But, I listened to a really cool book that I had, like, seen around town and heard people talking about because the author is actually local here in Central Wisconsin. We’re in Marshfield.

But, the author of this book called Tailspin, his name is John John Armbruster. He’s from Chile, which is a little town just west of Marshfield.

He actually graduated from Marshfield High School in nineteen eighty four, I think. Four, I think. Think. But he wrote a book, that’s the story of a World War two, gunner, who was, shot down, and he survived a four mile fall, into the woods in Germany.

And, the book is both about that incredible story, not only the fall that, everything about his life before, his military service and how his life was affected after, that, which is amazing.

And then, kind of interesting, no spoilers, but, he kinda weaves in his own story with his wife’s battle with cancer, alongside, this war hero story. And it’s just, it’s one of those stories that, like, there’s no even though there’s two totally different stories happening at the same time, there’s no trouble following. And in fact, like, hearing what both of them are kinda dealing with along the way, it almost, it’s like one of those things where even though both things happen at different, moments in time, they happen to two totally different families, two totally different people. It’s

almost like the universe has these people, like, connected. You know? So just, a really cool, easy it was an easy listen. I’m I imagine it’s a really easy read, and just an incredible story.

I mean, the fact that anyone can survive anything like that, is amazing and, you know, physically, but then, of course, everything that comes along with it mentally, emotionally, and all that. So super cool. It’s called Talespin. We’ll share a link.

John Armbruster is the name of the author.

Worth the read for sure. Perfect.

Alright. Andrew, you’re up. You got anything for us?

Oh, yeah.

I I just finished this show Stick, which is on Apple TV. It’s a golfing show. Super good.

If you want some, like, feel good karate kid, like, mentor, mentee kind of vibes.

But, like, my go to book that I’ve been reading is a book called, Purple Cow.

And I don’t really even know how to explain it, but it’s just a really a way of thinking outside of the box to, get get things done. And it’s kinda I read it first when I was in college, and it kinda guided the way that I have lived both my life and kinda my my marketing strategies for clients. So it’s like and it’s one of those perfect, like, sixty page books where you’re not, like, a five hundred page novel.

So it just gives you the stuff and, lets you go on with your life.

Yeah. That’s Seth Godin or Godin, however you say his last name.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. One of my favorite authors.

Yes. Yep. Very any marketer should, any book with his name on it is worth your read if you’re in marketing, for sure. Yeah.

Just buy it.

Yep.

You know what I okay. I I wrote this down. I don’t know why I’m saying it out loud, Ben. I I just occurred we get so many recommendations for books.

We need to get a we need to do a book list. We We need to publish a book list.

Yeah.

Yeah. Right next to Oprah’s?

Yes. Yeah. There Yeah. And I and I think it would be naturally next to Oprah’s. I think we’d publish it, Andrew.

And and we’d be like, oh, thank god.

We’re gonna put this here.

Yes.

Alright. My recommendation, is, you don’t have a lot of time because the weather the warm weather, I think, is gone, but is certainly, the season is ramping down. But next summer, go to American Players Theatre if you like if you enjoy theater.

So American Players Theatre is in Spring Green in the beautiful Driftless Region of Wisconsin, and it is they have an open air theater open air theater.

My brother and I went last weekend last week and saw a Midsummer Night’s Dream in this and you’re out under the, you know, under the stars.

And it was very cold, but it was an amazing show, beautiful venue.

You park at the bottom of the hill, and then you sort of go up through the woods. You can picnic there ahead of time. Just really great experience.

So and no more than going to, theater anywhere.

Yeah. So beautiful venue, amazing experience, and the show was excellent. So that is my American Players Theater. It’s been around a long, long time, but I have never been.

So Awesome.

Great recommendation. I’ve never even heard of it.

Really? Yeah. K. You were but you also weren’t a theater nerd when you were a kid.

I wasn’t. No. So Sorry.

You know, that’s for my theater nerds. But other people, they don’t check your credentials when you walk in.

Theater nerd ID card or anything.

Right. Right. They don’t make you show if you were in the thespian club in high school.

So, Andrew, thank you so much for that delightful conversation. So interesting. It was so great connecting with you today.

Yeah. Thank you for having me.

We really appreciate all of the time you spent with us and listeners. We appreciate the time you spend with us as well. You can always catch up and Andrew, you can catch up too, catch up on our, all of our podcasts on your favorite podcast app, or you can find them on our blog at exclamation cuso dot com slash blog.

Thanks, friends, for tuning in. Be awesome and see you next time. The Awsomology podcast is a production of Exclamation Services. Executive producers are myself, Ben Bauer, and my friend, Suzanne Campbell.

Thanks to Kylie Ganther for our show artwork, Scott Saager for booking our guests, and Alex Westerhausen for social media support.