Meredith Olmstead from FI GROW Solutions

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

And I’m Ben. And in this episode, we’re welcoming Meredith Olmstead, marketing and sales leader, CEO, and founder of Fi Grow Solutions and fellow podcaster bonus there. Thanks for being here, Meredith.

Thanks for having me. I’m excited to, to I usually have the guests on my podcast, so it was exciting to be a guest on some of the podcast.

The tables have turned. Be ready.

Yes. Yes.

This is where yes.

Everything that you’ve done to other people in your podcast now, it all gets revisited over to you.

We’re gonna exercise the beans here, Meredith. Let’s get going.

Well, yes. Welcome, and it’s so exciting. We’ve not met, so I’m excited to meet you and talk to you.

I do a little bit of light LinkedIn stalking when I haven’t met someone. So what I have learned about you so far is that on top of being currently the CEO of if I grow solutions, you are a former social studies teacher.

So what let’s start there. What is the journey from teaching history in Ohio to where you are today?

Yes. It’s really funny. I’d I’ve never taken a business class, never taken a marketing class.

I have three degrees, two master’s degrees and an undergrad in social studies education.

The the two master’s degrees are from, from Columbia up in New York City, so I finished school in Georgia in Georgia State and then went up there and was thinking I’d be a, did a social studies and also administration, school administration. Did a did an internship, was thinking principal, all those things. Started working, you know, I’ve I’ve taught in two states, Georgia and Ohio.

And then I started having kids, got married to have kids. And after three kids, I realized I never wanted to work with children again. So I kind of had to regroup and was living abroad and had some really good friends who were also kind of with their third children, working moms, but who were kind of at in a transition. And one of them was really, really, big in Microsoft before she left and, knew a ton about SEO, social media marketing.

This is back, like, in the early two thousand, like, tens. Yeah. You know? Like, two two thousand twelve ish.

Facebook’s just really getting going, Facebook ads, all that kind of thing. And so she and I were kind of putting our heads together, and she was teaching me a lot of stuff. I was learning stuff online, watching. I mean, I basically self taught.

So kind of learned social media marketing and digital ads and, Facebook ads and all of that. And then when we moved home, instead of trying to get a job doing social media marketing, I was, you know, with these little kids at home, and I said, well, let’s see. Let me let me get some let me get some some a couple clients, and then I had a partner for a while who I eventually bought out. But, I grew up in the credit union industry, so both of my parents worked in credit unions.

My father is still a CEO, down in Georgia. They’re probably gonna have to pry him from his he will probably die behind his desk, honestly, but he absolutely loves it, very dedicated to the movement. And so I really knew this credit union industry my whole life. And so as I was coming into social media, credit unions are a beautiful fit because they’re so authentic, and they actually do care about their their members and their customers.

They don’t have to pretend to care like a lot of businesses do online or on social media particularly.

So around two thousand fifteen, we decided to narrow our focus as a company to just credit unions and community banks because community banks often act very similar. Small and community banks act very similarly to credit unions. But, so that’s kind of like how we how I got here. Funny funny that you that you dug that up. Yes.

But, you know, we think of ourselves as a, I’m still a teacher and, like, the curriculum and the training and all of that is so valuable for me and has been so valuable for me.

And we think of ourselves it’s even in our, like, our, you know, mission and stuff that we are a teaching agency. We are the best we wanna be the best teachers of what we do for our clients.

Love that.

And, so we don’t gatekeep. We teach we’ll teach you how to do everything, but often they’re they don’t have the the capacity, so we end up with a lot of the responsibility anyway.

Yeah. I think that that’s, like, one of the most, like, underrated strategies for agencies, freelancers, whatever. Like, they’re folks that have this need to, like, keep their knowledge and information behind this big barrier. It’s really more limiting than it is, like, helping you, you know, store information and keep it from people because Yeah.

We find the same thing. Like, we’ll show you exactly how to do it. And, you know, the first time that you try it, you might get close. You’re probably gonna need our help the second, third time.

And, you know, we’ve actually we we just had a client that, we’re we’re not gonna be working with next year. But for five years, we helped kind of, like, get them up to speed and lay a lot of great groundwork, show and teach a lot. And then there’s a new member on their team that can do a lot of the work that we were doing. And, you know, that’s that’s part of what we’re here to do is help people work independently outside of an agency and things like that too.

You know? And so that’s kind of an odd success story because, you know, like, nobody ever wants to lose a client. But also, like, that’s kinda why we’re here too is to almost, like, make us not need it anymore. You know?

I mean, we have some former clients that we’re still very close with. You know? At, at Mac last year, or this year, you know, in September, Nida, one of our team members, presented with the former client, a c a a chief experience officer at a credit union down in Arizona, and they presented a breakout together. We’re still very close with them. So it’s funny that you would say that. Yeah.

Well, you’re oh, go ahead, Sue.

I’m I’m moving on to just a quick tangent. I just have to I have to spend a moment and bond over this idea because you only have two kids, Ben. There is a difference between two kids and three kids.

And it does, I mean, in the most delightful way, just break you.

I had when I was pregnant with my youngest and I had my other two, So my my two youngest are fifteen months apart, and so I had a toddler and was very pregnant. And a woman walked up to me in the store, put both hands on my stomach, and said, once you have three, you might as well have a thousand.

Well, there’s a data on it that actually says the most stressed out parents are the parents of three, and that as soon as any more doesn’t actually bring any additional, like, dresser capacity or, you know, like, whatever. They start to kinda, like, take care of themselves, I think, after you get past three. Because I yeah. I used to see I knew new people who had lots more kids than that, and I was like, wow. But they are three is a lot is a lot. My youngest is, fourteen today is her birthday.

Oh, my son.

She is going to break me. You know, going to break me a hundred percent.

Well, as you two have been talking, I’ve scheduled my vasectomy, so thank you for the Yeah.

Advice. Now. Now is your shot. Got it.

So, Meredith, your talk about, like, education and teaching being in your mission and stuff, awesome segue into a question we’ve got for you about can you just talk a little bit about, the similarities and maybe differences between teaching and marketing or education and marketing and maybe even, you know, knowing that you were on the path to, like, administration and stuff, you know, what was that experience like, and how do you see similarities and differences how it applies to the work you’re doing today?

Yeah. It’s it is a lot. I mean, I think it’s there’s a lot of overlap.

I find, honestly, and I’ve talked to a lot of people in different industries, not just in marketing, that teachers tend to be actually really good in a second career in other industries because they have had to do so many different kinds of things as in education, like wearing a million hats and be multitasking and dealing with large groups and managing, you know, not a team, but, like, a classroom full of kids. You know? It it it takes a real specific skill set to do that. I was very good at it. I just didn’t wanna do it anymore. You know? And, honestly, the other thing I did I mean, I jokingly say I had three kids and I never wanna do it again or I never wanna work with kids again, but it’s having three young kids and not living close to family makes teaching a very inflexible career because while it’s it seems like, oh, I bet the summer’s off.

I taught I taught secondary ed, you know, middle or high school. Well, that starts earlier than elementary school. Who’s gonna put my kids on the bus if I have to be, down the road an hour earlier? So some of those kinds of things got to be very difficult, just the logistics of it. But the way that it’s similar, I think, is, is it’s all it’s like, helping people. Like in teaching, you’re kind of helping somebody learn something, learn how to do something, learn a new piece of information, a skill, like whatever.

And in marketing, good marketing is exactly the same. You’re just trying to help. So, like, in social media, we always used to tell people and I would still say this, you wanna be two things, either entertaining or helpful. You know? Like, that’s if you’re a business, you’re not gonna be, you know, the jerk at the party that does nothing but talk about themselves.

You wanna, you know, offer some help, offer some, you know, some extra information, some tips, tricks, whatever, or entertain somebody. Be funny, be cheeky, you know, whatever. So I think a lot of that is very similar to teaching. You’re kind of entertaining your these the kids, but you’re also trying to impart information or knowledge that is authentically something that they can do something with.

And I mean, look, you know, in history in eighth grade, maybe that’s not all the kids are probably gonna disagree with me on that. You know, why do I need to know the president of you know, during this time and blah blah blah, whatever. But, you know, it’s kinda like a means to an end. It’s like you’re trying to help them get through content in a way that they can digest, that they can retain, that they can be impactful to them at the time at least because it’s something they you know, it’s a box they have to check or whatever before they go on to the next phase of their life.

So, so I think yeah.

Like and even in our agency, like, Danielle, she’s our director of sales. She says good sales is service.

Exactly the same. You’re not really trying to sell anybody something they don’t need. You’re trying to give them something that that would be helping them.

So it’s the same, you know, and so it’s the same kind of idea.

Yeah. So I totally agree. I’m, I have experience in corporate training, so adult education and that kind of thing. And it is, there’s this responsibility and I, you know, I think the best the best marketers, the best teachers, the best corporate trainers take the responsibility to connect that information to people really, really seriously. And I think let me let me put it this way. I think that teachers, it is ingrained in them and by you know, you you learn that as a professional. If you’re a corporate trainer though, and you don’t come from teaching, I I think that there is a there’s a, trap you can fall into where you say, well, my my job is to present this stuff, and you all need to pick it up.

And I think marketers do that too. My job is to put this thing somewhere, and you all now have to do your half of this equation.

But it it is not that simple. It is much more nuanced. It is about taking responsibility for connecting things. And, probably, one of the beauties of both of those things are that you can move relatively quickly in training and in marketing. And if the thing that you have already put out isn’t connecting, you iterate, iterate, iterate until Yeah. You know, you you get that proof of what you’re if what you’re doing is working. And until you see it, you keep changing.

So Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, I was definitely that kind of teacher. Like, I don’t think there’s a you know, a truth is relative. Right? Even in history, you can see so many different perspectives on the same event, you know, based on whose eyes are looking at it.

So I think it’s the same with marketing as well. Like, we always say, like, part of the other thing besides we say we wanna teach is we can always do better or be better, and and we always can learn, from our mistakes, and we’re very you know, super transparent. So not everything goes right. But when it goes sideways, you, you know, figure out what you learn from it, and then you share it.

You know, just yesterday, our digital one of our digital ads team members, realized that they there was a huge mistake with a daily spend for a client, and they adjusted it very quickly within two days. Spent a lot not not all they didn’t overspend their budget, but they did spend more than they than had been planned.

Rare mistake. I don’t can’t remember if we’ve ever had done it before, but, they immediately shared it with the client.

The takeaways, the learning, you know, everything, the benefits, the, you know, and, move right on. You know? You can’t pretend like we aren’t human. We don’t make mistakes sometimes.

We can’t do something better. You know? So I think that’s something that definitely our clients really appreciate is that they know that no matter what, we’re not gonna flush their budget and pretend like we didn’t or, like, whatever. You know?

I mean, we never did that. You know? Not flush it, but, like, you know, it’s like if you make a little mistake, you own it, and you share it, and you move forward, and you learn from it, you do better the next time.

Yeah. Little mistakes, little learnings, things that we do that we just, at the end of the day, can prove we’re ineffective. Like, it’s just part of the gig. I think whether you’re talking about marketers or teachers or any other kind I mean, probably many other industries too.

You know, it’s like it’s like baseball, you know, like, the best hitters bat three hundred or above. And, you know, that’s, like, three in ten at bats. They get a hit, which is, like, relatively a pretty poor percentage, you know? But Yeah.

It’s, like, that’s pretty darn good in that sport.

And I think, like, a lot of what we do as marketers, like, you know, I bet you if we could look back at stuff that we’ve put out over the years, if I knew that three out of ten things, like, hit and stuck with people, I think I’d take it. You know what I mean?

But that means, like, it’s twenty five percent twenty five percent.

Yeah. Twenty five percent of of the average twenty five percent marketing emails get open. You know? And, I mean, like, it and you can’t even track it accurately anymore. Right. So, yeah, it’s right in that neighborhood. Absolutely.

Yeah.

Another thing that I just have to, acknowledge that you talked about, you know, you’re, like, not wanting to teach anymore even though you were good at that. I think I think that, as we’re all, you know, navigating through our professional lives and stuff, I think it’s important to, I don’t know, embrace opportunities to acknowledge and learn stuff like that. You know? Like, we’re all passionate about a lot of things, but that might not mean that we have the desire to do them.

You know? Like, I think I’m a pretty good cook. I I actually really enjoy cooking at home. I would maybe even say I’m passionate about cooking a good meal, but I have no desire to open a restaurant.

I have no desire to, like you know? You know? And there’s, like, a difference there. Right?

Like, I think you can be passionate about something, but also have no desire. Or you can be really good at something, but no desire to make a career out of it or do it long term, whatever. I think it’s important to acknowledge that. Realize that.

Yeah. I think as you get older too, you get a lot better at doing things because it’s where your priorities are or where you need to be or you think you’re should be spending your time and not because you think you’re be or not because that’s what other people want you to be doing. You know? Oh, I should be do that should do something out of guilt or whatever. Yeah. I’ve gotten pretty good at saying no to things. Yeah.

Sometimes even without explanation, honestly. Yeah. Sure. So it’s pretty funny.

Oh, that sounds magical. Maybe It is. Maybe after this, we can we can connect and you can explain to me how to do that without explanation.

I think it’s the is the big Humor usually is the is the best way.

Now the first line in your LinkedIn profile, as I mentioned, lightly stalked you, says that you believe traditional bank marketing is broken. So what is broken? How do we fix it, Meredith?

Well, I think banks, and credit unions particularly, you know, because they’re a little smaller and a little bit more. There’s a lot of reasons, but they’re very they’re notoriously slow adopters when it comes to new technologies. I mean, it’s a security thing too. You know?

It’s just about trust. It’s about being dependable. It’s about people’s money and their, you know, their Social Security numbers and all this. So they have to be their their compliance and all the regulations.

So there is a lot that slows down trying new things in that industry, which is part of it.

But I think that so I think they were a little behind the times as people as the consumer moved online.

And that’s really where a lot of that, like, the traditional bank marketing is broken. But I think, the things that I still run into with, with our you know, during sales and talking with potential new clients is that they still, even though they know now where they need to be, they have not often, oftentimes, they have not shifted their budget priorities. Mhmm. And it is, forever, like, I feel like sometimes I’ve banging my head against a brick wall to try to explain to a marketer and then potentially that person’s boss or the the c suite that oversees the department, why they need to spend more money on a website.

You know? They come in I mean, I just had, couple months ago, we had a lead come in. They were a pretty sizable, CU. I think it was a CU, that was, you know, seven to eight hundred million in assets.

Not enormous, but not tiny by any stretch.

And she told me she would be she would be stretched to find fifty thousand dollars for their new website. And I, like, almost laugh. I I know I laughed out loud. And then but I was reading an email, so I wasn’t rude about it. But I, like, laughed out loud when I read the email, and I was like, well, I’m glad she told me this because she’s not gonna waste my time anymore.

Like Mhmm.

It just I was, like, shocked. I’m like, you that you would these people, you know, these institutions will go out and they’ll build a branch, and they’ll spend two million dollars buying it, building it, renovating it, staffing it, everything. They spend more some of these places will spend more on utilities throughout the year than they wanna spend on a website. And it just blows my mind because I’m like, you have, you know, hundreds of times the traffic, maybe even thousands of times the traffic to your website that you do to any brick and mortar.

And that they they don’t they don’t wanna dedicate staff. They don’t wanna put lending staff behind it. They don’t wanna, you know, spend six figures on it. They don’t wanna optimize it regularly.

They don’t wanna pay for core integration. They don’t wanna hire a digital lender, you know, like, all these things. And I’m like, but you’ll do all that for a branch. What is the difference?

I don’t understand.

So that’s what I mean when I say traditional bank marketing is broken. The other thing I see sometimes still is spending six figures on traditional marketing placements. I have we have a client we still butt heads with that spends over, you know, hundred, two hundred thousand dollars a year on radio and TV ads.

They spend two thousand dollars a month on digital ads. You know? And I’m just like I just throw my hands up, and I’m like, I don’t even know. I can’t even, like, can’t even have a conversation with you about those priorities. It’s like you cannot track anything from radio and TV. General lift. General lift.

Yeah.

And it there is a place for it. Don’t get me wrong. But, like, you get so much for so little in a digital space when it comes to ad spend. And so those kinds of things, the prior the budget priorities need to follow, like and it’s, we I I think I’m gonna I’ve made I’m dedicated to this, to being more vocal about this in twenty twenty five. And I’ve, told my team too, like, we are not doing proposals unless we have executives on calls to review them anymore because what ends up happening is you have people who want they need to get their compliance requirement.

Oh, I need three proposals, five proposals for this project.

Mhmm. But I’m not gonna spend what I know you need me to spend. It’s on your website. My our price is on our website for our work for our website. You know, our price is there. Very not. We like to put it out there so that there’s no question.

So, you know, unless I can get the right decision makers who have the budget, you know, control, I’m not doing it anymore because it’s just such a waste of time and it’s silly.

So Yeah.

Did I answer the question? Yes. Do we, as marketers, need to do a better job explaining as marketers and teachers and trainers convincing people, the c suite, anyone, that your website is a branch?

Is that are we still not have they not caught that yet? Is that part of this problem?

I mean, I think what happens is well, the other thing that we’re really dedicated to in twenty twenty five is connecting all data into marketing efforts and marketing channels from the core, the new account data, so that you can close the loop on reporting and show with definitive, you know, definitively where leads have come in through the marketing funnel and ended up as new accounts or new members or new loans or whatever.

Because I think part of it is the revenue, you know, that people look at marketing as an expense versus as a revenue generation. But the other thing is just, like, I tell people when marketers and this is why you need other people, other departments and the executives involved.

Why in the world would a would a website only be a marketing expense? Why should it come out of only a marketing budget? Like, does the branch down the street that you just paid nine hundred thousand dollars for the piece of property come out of marketing? Absolutely not.

So it’s about it’s about re relook looking at their how they’re accounting for other dollars and whose budgets are coming in because it is a digital branch and it very much should be coming out of, operations to some extent.

Mhmm. Yeah.

Mhmm.

From a security standpoint, you could probably tap into some IT money. I mean, there’s a whole whole lot of ways to get creative with it. Right?

Yeah. I mean, marketing doesn’t pay for the core. Does marketing pay for the app? You know, like, it’s all these things that are about, user experience, about member and customer service.

Mhmm.

I mean, if you screw up your customer’s experience getting to your details online on your website, you have lost that customer.

You know?

Why that would only be a marketing considered a marketing expense is crazy. Mhmm.

Yeah. I do think part of it is still, you know, maybe a bit of old thinking in a couple of ways. Like, one, just not that acknowledgment of, you know, the the digital digital branch, that that presence.

And then also, you know, maybe the flip side, like, when, websites first started being built and credit unions first started having them, you know, it was essentially an online brochure. Right? Like, there wasn’t a connection to product banking. There wasn’t a connection to, you know, loan applications and all this kind of stuff that, you know, now is like, why would you have a website without any of that stuff?

You know? And so, yeah, getting getting past all of that is not easy. And, you know, yeah, at the end of the day, like, this kind of work isn’t cheap and, you know, like, value needs to be proven. So, of course, like, you know, think anything that we can do to prove ROI, anything that we can do to show that marketing is, you know, assisting or maybe even, like, the direct contribution income, like, it’s crucial.

Yeah. I mean, when we track the hours for a website project, we probably have two to three team members touching every single finished page of a website. The average credit union project that we do will probably launch with sixty to eighty finished pages. Not all completely SEO optimized because they don’t all need to be. Some of those are system pages or whatever, but a lot of research goes into those pages.

We do the hours on it, and it’s, you know, it’s like forty hour week times eight. Like, it’s crazy amounts of work to do it right. Yeah. And so but I think, you know, that’s where I think people don’t understand.

Like, you can’t just throw stuff up and expect it to work like that. You know? I think it’s it’s much more work than a lot of people who’ve never done it realize that it is. Mhmm.

Well, Meredith and her team are on a, on a mission to fix credit union and bank marketing, and we’re happy to know. And we’re happy to be on that same path with you, because we do we do some similar work for sure, and we oh, you’re just preaching to the choir and singing our song here because we we hear a lot of the same.

Alright. Left turn. You ready, Meredith?

I don’t know if you’ve heard. Maybe we’ve talked about this, maybe not, but we’re writing a book. So you and I are writing a book, that’s all about purpose in marketing and purpose even outside of marketing and lots of aspects of purpose baked into this. And we’ve got the opportunity through the podcast and through events that we’re at and stuff to talk to so many awesome people like yourself. So my question for you, because why not learn from awesome people like yourself, is what would you say is your purpose? Do your best to describe that, and, I’m sure whatever you have to share will be very helpful as we’re writing.

I mean, my, absolutely well, I’m gonna be fifty in February. And, so I’ve got fifty years of, you know, experience behind me. And I will say, like, you know, the sticky in front of me right now says lead with love. And, of course, this next one down here says, if it’s not a yes, it’s a no. So but what I will say is that, I my kids and every like, everything. Everybody I ever come in contact with, what I try to say is that, I treat people with love, kindness, and respect.

And, that’s it. You know? And it’s and it’s the smallest things, like so for me, I think, building a life with the people around me that I love, where I’m treating them with love, kindness, and respect, building a fam like, a family of my company, you know, where I treat my employees and our team members as with love, kindness, and respect.

And just if you come with that, like, perspective, I mean, maybe it sounds a little bit cliche, but, like, we can disagree, you know, we can not have the same opinions about things, like, it take I mean, almost nothing can get me angry anymore about politics and, you know, all these things because I just understand. Like, people are coming from their own frame of reference, and they’re doing the best they can with circumstances that they’ve been handed the vast majority of the time. And if I treat them with love, kindness, and respect, we can kindly and respectfully disagree, you know, on things, and that’s totally fine.

You know? It doesn’t mean that I don’t, like, drive down the road and sometimes, like, scream at somebody because they, you know, know how to drive or whatever. Of course not. You know?

But, but I think it’s really just about being going, you know, treating people with that kind of, that kind of thought process and giving back to them and doing doing for others. You know?

It makes everything better so much better. And I learned a lot of that from my parents and my dad, especially.

He’s incredible. He is, like, the incredibly generous man and, has learned, you know, a lot of a lot of times the hard way, but he’s he does a lot for others, and it’s literally his purpose in life now. It’s like he just cries and talks about how good it feels to give things to people, to help people, to you know, all the time. He’s just constantly helping people when he comes across them, and it’s the same. You know?

Yeah. I love that. That’s all awesome. I don’t know how many times as you and I have been in a writing session or as I’ve been either of us have been, like, bouncing ideas. One of us have said, like, I don’t know. It feels a little cliche or whatever.

But I think, like, as you’re, like, you know, kinda like diluting all the information and people’s life experiences and things that we’ve researched and heard, like, it it all just comes down to some of that air quotes cliche stuff, like Mhmm.

Kindness, love, respect. You know? And Right. I think there’s a reason that it sounds cliche.

It’s because it’s truth, and, you know, the world operates on those things or should anyway. But Well and I think too, it’s when you stop thinking you have all the answers, so as you get older in life, you realize how much you don’t know.

Like, I and so then I don’t come to most of the time, on occasion, I’ll really get on a high horse, like, about budget priorities around a website, you know, but, most things, you know, most things I don’t pretend, you know, to know all the answers. You know? There’s so many other things. So it’s like I think part of life too is realizing that, nobody’s any better than anybody else and that we all have our own opinions about things, you know, and just, you know, just because that one person has, accomplished x and the other person has accomplished y, you know, they they can be very different, but we every takes everything to, you know, for, for our society to function. We need all kinds of folks, you know, so nobody is better than anybody else. And I think that makes it easier to treat people who are different from you with love, kindness, and respect, you know.

And also I grew up in families and I still where people disagreed very vehemently sometimes about politics, but I still love we just still loved each other unconditionally.

And I think when you surround yourself with people who only agree with everything that comes out of your mouth, it’s dangerous. Right? But if you were raised in a situation where you love somebody who has completely opposite beliefs about things than you do, it makes it a lot easier to be like, well, you know, we can still you know, we can be respectful because I love you even though I think you’re an idiot. You know?

Whatever whatever it is. You know what I mean? Not really, but you know what I mean. Yeah.

So That’s excellent life advice.

And, I do I do wanna make sure that I just pause long enough to say, and it is a shame that this is just an audio medium because I am furious that you’re returning fifty. You do not you for a second, I thought, did did she say fifteen? Just turning fifteen?

Because, it and none of that external stuff matters, Meredith.

But Oh, I mean, you know, it’s always nice to Doesn’t hurt.

Gracefully, you know, but, you know, I stay out of the sun. That’s my key. That’s the key.

There you go.

There it is. Yeah.

No smoke. No smoking. Stay out of the sun. That’s it.

K. Keep it clean. Got it. Got it.

So how can people learn more about you? What other things do you want people to get connected to? We’ll definitely share your website.

And anything else I found is I lightly stalked you.

Very cool. Yeah. I mean, we’re pretty active on LinkedIn.

I website’s pretty is is we do a podcast very a little bit different than this because there is short tips, tricks, like how to kind of podcast for marketers, really.

Sometimes about it can be it may be applicable to executives or in sales as well, but we like to keep them super short. One main tip we kinda cover for people. So we do that, like, you know, a couple times a month, and, so we have a lot that’s pretty active, a lot of case studies.

I’ve been getting involved in going back to in person events more next year and last year, and, you know, it’s been nice getting back out there to see what that’s how I connected with Ben.

So but yeah. So connect with me on LinkedIn, Meredith Olmstead with an o o l m, or figro, f I grow dot com. Either one works, and, you can connect with us there. We have lots of great great resources. We do webinars once a quarter, stuff like that.

Awesome. Awesome. Stuff to check out.

Yeah. Alright. Well, the time has come for us to transition to our something awesome segment, and, this is where we share recommendations for cool stuff we’ve read, seen, done, experienced, whatever it might be. And, Meredith, your mention of in person events, has me thinking of when we saw each other in October ish. Right? Which was that your first time in Wisconsin?

It was.

It was? Okay. Cool. So you have to come back because my something awesome to share today is about the Milwaukee Art Museum, which just received a ginormous, three point five million dollar gift. And the purpose of that gift is to keep admission for people twelve years, old and younger, to keep admission free for them in perpetuity.

So a huge gift Very nice.

To that museum, a huge gift to the community, to the state, to the country. So when you get to come back to to Wisconsin sometime soon, if you, fly through Milwaukee, which I think you did last time too, maybe. Yeah.

I think I did. Yes. Yes.

I can’t remember if it was you or your teammate who maybe both of you had to fly through Milwaukee and drive up and there was a horror story, but that’s for another podcast. Uh-huh.

But Yeah.

But, yeah, just if you haven’t, then get it on your bucket list. It’s an amazing museum. The design of the museum alone is an art piece. It’s beautiful and amazing, and there’s just a ton of stuff, inside to see.

And I just think, you know, as the world changes and people’s priorities shift and we’re more and more online and all these things, these kind of in person experiences, especially with stuff like art and music, is just more important than it’s ever been. So to keep that free for people at a young influential age, I just think it’s so important. So, I don’t know if the article I don’t believe the article mentions the name of the person that made the gift. Oh, it’s anonymous, actually, now that I reread the link. So Mhmm. Thank you to whoever you are. I’m sure they’re not listening, but, good vibes out to the universe because a really important gift of to a an amazing place on the planet.

So That’s awesome.

Yeah. Yeah. Very cool. That’s one of the best things about DC when you go is the museums being free.

Yeah.

Being accessible. Or, like, in New York, the MET is donation requirement, the suggested donation. If you don’t have your twenty five bucks or whatever it is now, you can still go in.

Yeah. That’s amazing. Alright, Meredith. You’re up. Do you have something for us?

You know, the one thing I’ll say that I have been doing a lot of, well, I think that I’m gonna definitely continue is really pushing forward to, like, do things, and with family and, that people might otherwise be like, I don’t know. Maybe not. Oh, that’s gonna be too much. So especially with my parents as they’re getting older, I’m really, like, we’re just pulling the trigger on things.

And so, like, I think it was yeah. It was end of October, her first week of November. My mother, who’s seventy seven, and me and my daughter, who’s nineteen, all went to a Tennessee football game. She goes to the University of Tennessee.

And my dad really couldn’t do it physically, but my mom and she was like, I don’t know, you know, whatever. Like, but, like so really pushing her to say, mom, you’re going. I got you a ticket. We got the Airbnb.

You’re going. And just have a wonderful time. And, like, we’re doing the same thing next week and with a trip to New York City. Both my parents are coming up.

Well, I don’t know. Should we? And I before they could even start to overthink it, I booked the plane tickets, booked the hotel. Now you’re coming.

So I think, just really trying to kind of push yourself to do things, not so much outside of the outside of your box, but, like, you know, things that you initially your first instinct is that best instinct. Right? And then you kind of everybody then reels it back in and says, no. I’m not going to.

I’ll do it next year or maybe I’ll do it next time or whatever. And then when there’s not a next time, it gets a little bummer. It’s a little bit of a bummer.

So Right.

So yeah. You know, just keep going and keep doing the things that you’re that are gonna bring you surprises, maybe, that you haven’t done.

And I think also those, those in person experiences, getting back out with people, getting off your phone, not so much digitally connecting with people, but connecting with people, really connecting with them.

Right. Love it. Great life advice.

That’s that’s the thing that, we my husband and I did with our kids to try and prioritize, especially when we didn’t have much money to try and prioritize experiences over his like, presence, physical things, toys, and things like that.

And, now that it’s just my dad, we really try. He’s and he’s eighty one.

We we tried to do and the same thing you’re doing there to get him out and say, no. We’re just doing it. We bought your ticket, and you’re just gonna just get in the car, and you’ll be fine.

Yep.

Love it. Well, that your two things make my thing very silly. But listen, this is the thing that made me happy in the last two weeks, and I’m still gonna share it.

I found out I have a I have a Google Pixel phone.

I know. Android, please.

But, one thing that my Google Pixel phone is very good at doing is telling me how wonderful it is and sending me little notifications about all the wonderful things that it does. And a new feature that I did not know existed on my Google Pixel is the now playing feature, and this is one of the most fun things that I have I don’t know. It just gave me great joy. It’s a silly little thing.

So it picks up, ambient noise, ambient music, and it can tell you.

Oh, yeah.

At it, and it can tell you what is playing. You don’t need an app. You don’t need anything.

And That’s cool. We we were in the car. My husband and I were in the car actually driving back from Milwaukee, and my my recommendation was almost going to be the Milwaukee County Museum, so it’s interesting.

You brought you brought them, and but we were listening to SiriusXM, and I I literally could not stop watching my phone to see what songs it was picking.

That’s awesome. And and yeah. So in that context, not the most useful thing, but Yeah. Very I think it’s a very fun little feature.

Yeah. That’s pretty cool. Cool that it just shows you without having to ask it or whatever.

Right.

I mean, you know it’s listening. Yeah.

That is cool because there are apps that do that, but, like, it’s cool that it’s built into the phone.

Right. Yeah. So that is my just one little thing that made me happy, that I’m happy to share.

Well, Meredith, thank you so much for joining us. What a wonderful conversation.

For sure.

Got my That’s great. Got my blood pressure up thinking about websites, though, but that’s okay. Got it. We’ve got work to do. We got a lot of people we gotta talk to.

That’s right.

Yeah. It’s all about educating them. Right? Right.

Right.

And thank you, listeners. Thank you as always for joining us. You can always catch us on your favorite podcast app, or you can find our episodes on our blog at exclamationcuso.com/blog anytime and check that stuff out.

Awesome. Thank you, Sue. Thanks again, Meredith, for being here. Thank you, listener, for tuning in. Be awesome, and see you next time.

The Awsomology Podcast is a production of Exclamation Services.

Thanks to Nick Malovrh for sound production and Kylie Ganther for our cover artwork.

Executive producers are me, Ben Bauer, and my friend, Suzanne Campbell.