Heidi: 00:05

Hey everyone. Welcome back to the SlashTax Podcast. Today's episode is really fun for anyone who's ever wondered, my marketing actually working? We don't talk about marketing a whole lot on SlashTags since we're really focused on tax incentives and strategies. But today I brought Tom Hootman, the founder and CEO of Mixtape Digital.

Heidi: 00:27

So he's a marketing agency built on the idea that great marketing should actually feel human and authentic, and it's not just a one size fits all box. Over his career, Tom has led high performing sales and marketing teams, which I actually had somebody say to me recently that if you ever hire a marketing person, they should have some background in sales. And I thought that was really profound and something I had not heard or thought about, but I think great advice. So anyway, Tom has led high performing sales and marketing teams, driven triple digit revenue growth, and he's helped brands from scrappy startups to household names find smarter ways to connect with their audiences. And he's known for building teams that really care deeply about their craft, driving meaningful results, and then creating client relationships that really last, which is why I'm working with Tom.

Heidi: 01:19

So he's definitely helping us within engineered tax services and our companies, supporting us in some of our marketing efforts, which is why I really wanted to have this conversation and allow him to be in front of our listeners. When he's not figuring out what really moves the needle, he's probably talking tacos. So Tom, you have to tell me more about that. Or nerding out on mix tapes, which is nostalgia forever. So that's another really interesting one we'll have to talk about as to where your name came from, Mixtape Tape Digital.

Heidi: 01:53

But today we're going to dive into some hot topics, calculating ROI on your marketing, which I feel like is something that's not always talked about in marketing. And we'll explore the intersection of how marketing and business growth and tax strategy actually can actually link together and making smart marketing decisions for long term business growth and company valuation and where things are going in our ever changing world. And so with that, Tom, thank you so much for being our guest today.

Tom: 02:25

Thank you for having me. It's an absolute pleasure to be here. I've been looking forward to this for a while, so I'm excited.

Heidi: 02:31

Perfect. Well, I'm always so appreciative of people giving their time for conversations like this. I feel like I'm very selfish in doing it because I just love the conversations. I love connecting with people and having a little banter about our businesses and what we're building and what we're doing. Let's start with that one.

Heidi: 02:51

Tell me about mixtape. I love your story with what you've created here have really enjoyed our opportunity to work together. So tell me how you got here and what your role is.

Tom: 03:04

Thank you. I appreciate that. And it is lovely working with you and your team. I spent fifteen years so far in marketing, in digital marketing. And I came from outside the industry, so so many people in this business, they work as an individual contributor, and they're hired to manage, like, be a specialist who learns how to manage Facebook ads, and they move up, and then they go into leadership.

Tom: 03:28

I came straight in as a director of sales because I had an outside sales background, but I was I was I I sold chicken strips. I worked for a company called US Foods, and I was it's a very old school industry, and I was, like, one of the youngest people in the room, and it was kind of like an antiquated industry at the time. It hadn't really evolved, and I was I was kind of like the the kid that they asked to, like, we look at my laptop. Right? I was like the nerd.

Tom: 03:53

And I had a friend who applied to be a marketer with this company called Hannifin Marketing, and he didn't get the job. But I I was help co helping coach him through the interviews, not well, obviously. And then they they were looking for a director of sales. So I said, you know, like, let's talk to them. So I jumped from a a company with 20,000 employees to one with there was probably 12 or 13 of us, and everyone thought I was crazy.

Tom: 04:17

I thought I was crazy, but it's been nonstop ever since. I I've through the fifteen years, I started on the new biz team, helping drive revenue, moved into a VP of revenue role where I I kind of straddled between new biz and client services, and then we were acquired by a global agency called Brainlabs in February 2020. Great timing again.

Heidi: 04:39

Oh my gosh.

Tom: 04:40

Yeah. Just kind of rode the ladder up. For me, after fifteen years, it was an amazing run, but I felt like I needed to make a change. I I felt like my story in one org like, fifteen years at one company is a long time. So, like, the story, like, needed a new chapter.

Tom: 04:59

And I'd had the itch to do something myself ever since my restaurant and outside sales days. I always wanted to own a restaurant. And that evolved into just do what you're great at. And I realized I'm I'm I hope I'm pretty good at running agencies. And so I decided to jump out and start Mixtape Digital.

Tom: 05:16

We officially launched in April, 2025, and it's been I mean, I'm I'm I'm absolutely, like, astonished and blown away because I'm a paranoid type a type person at, like, the outpouring, and I we're already, I think, four x, five x what I'd forecasted for revenue this year.

Heidi: 05:37

Wow. That's amazing. Yeah.

Tom: 05:38

It's been the growth has been super fantastic, and I've been able to reengage and and hire some of those people that I've worked with over the years who had left years ago, and get to work with some of the best and brightest in the business again and do things our own way, which has been fun.

Heidi: 05:56

Well, I love it. It's one of the reasons in many, many conversations. As I stepped back into marketing, I've reinvented myself a few times. Really, technically I'm an accountant, but I've reinvented myself a few times having been in marketing in my career. Now I'm kind of back in this CMO role at Engineered Tax Services and really taking a fresh look at reinventing ourselves and how you evolve.

Heidi: 06:24

It's evolve or die. It's the epitome of everything we deal with every day. One thing I really enjoyed about our conversations when you and I connected, first off, you were referred to me, which is always lovely, from someone you used to work with, and that always says a lot. But I talked with a lot of marketing agencies that felt I hate to say it but just felt very old school. It was like, we can look at your website and make sure that your content looks great.

Heidi: 06:53

And you pull up when someone Googles you for this term, and we can do this post and all these sort of standard things. I I'm very driven by the change and the challenge and the innovation of what's happening, what's new, what's being on the forefront. Our company is hyper entrepreneurial, even though we're professional services. We've been in business for twenty five years. That's one thing I love about being here and actually why I think I've been here for twenty five years is because every day is a challenge and I thrive on that.

Heidi: 07:26

I see that in you with your teams. And so I would love for you to share a little bit about your perspective and how you look at marketing in a different way from maybe what I would call the standard marketing agency would be looking at.

Tom: 07:45

Yeah. That's a really, really great question and great perspective. And I think that there are a lot of agencies that have made their mark and gotten to where they are by being tactically the smartest people in the room. And that's how my my the first agency I worked for was really well known for the blog, PPC Hero, and the conference Hero Comp, because it was it was an agency run by people who authored the blog, and it was it was like the largest non Google owned paid search blog in the industry. Wow.

Tom: 08:18

And over time, I kind of got to see over those eight or nine years before the acquisition, how the business had been commoditized. And when the business is commoditized, you have to move faster, You have to be more creative. You have to be more strategic and less tactical. And there are, I think, a lot of agencies out there that are still relying on that. There's a lot of people that are relying on that.

Tom: 08:39

And in the end, as as Google and any other platform moves to more AI focused, it becomes more of a black box, and there's a lot less you can do. They used to pay us a lot of money to put really smart people in the room to tinker with the account to get them ahead of the the competitors. And they've they've nerfed that considerably, in my opinion. So for me, my perspective has always been, like, you you can win a client with expertise. You have to illustrate some level of expertise, but you also have to be able to be strategic, fast, and client focused.

Tom: 09:13

Client in versus agency out, and I think that the agency out piece is what a lot of agencies may not realize they're still doing, but they're still doing. And part of what made me really wanna start mixtape was, you know, where I came from is an amazing agency now, but there's a there was a saying that that used to get mentioned every now and again where the founder said anything we do more than twice, I wanna automate. And I think that's true for the brands they work with, because these are enterprise global brands. I number one, I I wanted to work something with smaller teams where I could have more of an impact and feel more of an impact, but also I didn't wanna automate everything we did more than twice. Like, it it's not a set it and forget it.

Tom: 09:53

There's a unique perspective. There's a curation that goes into it, which led me into the whole mixtape moniker. Each one is individual. Each client is individual. We see it in pitches because I'm not a subject matter expert.

Tom: 10:09

You can't be a subject matter expert across everything and still be a founder. I think it's hard. Yeah. But we can tell very quickly. Sometimes we pitch to teams who are the the two to seven people in the room are all really, really, really deep subject matter expertise people, And I just shut up because it's I know, like, hey.

Tom: 10:27

I'm not gonna be on stage much today. And then there are other times when we're we I have to pull the team out of the weeds because we've got slides that are, like, really in-depth and go really tactical, and you can kind of see the the prospect's eyes kinda glaze over because they're they wanna see, like, higher level, how's this going to impact my business? Yes. And I I think that that is, like, being able to read the room, high EQ, type a personalities are what I seek out. Those are the people I work with the best, the most, hopefully, because they can they can see the way that's going in a room and adjust accordingly.

Tom: 11:00

And, yeah, it's it's one of those things where it there are a handful of people I've worked with who have both. They can read a room client relationship. They can pull it to a higher level, and they can I like to say this at any time, they can raise the water level way up over everyone's head because they're smarter too? Those are the perfect weapons because they can do both, but most of us fall on one side or the other.

Heidi: 11:22

Yeah, that makes sense. Well, that's one of the things again, that I've struggled with, and I think is a reasonable struggle for business owners, is understanding how much should I invest in marketing? What are other companies investing? Where do you start? Where do you stop?

Heidi: 11:38

Because sometimes, like just for example, Google Ads gets a cost per click. Maybe the more you spend equates to roughly how much you're going to gain. So where do you start? Where do you stop? But the biggest issue is there's a lot of marketing.

Heidi: 11:54

That is, again, branding, building your exposure, having people comfortable with your brand, the website, the content, all of that. I feel like that obviously you have to have the foundation. Have to

Tom: 12:08

Yeah, totally.

Heidi: 12:09

But beyond that, okay, I'm an accountant, even though I've got this super strange mix of the marketing side, I want to understand ROI. If I'm spending X amount, where is the best place for me to spend that money to get the highest ROI on that spend? And I have always struggled with being able to really have high visibility of how that calculates. So I would love for you to share your perspective on that and how you help businesses understand where to spend and how it works and how you calculate ROI ultimately.

Tom: 12:49

Yeah. Talking about ROI is something that a lot of marketers avoid.

Heidi: 12:53

Yeah.

Tom: 12:53

Especially early. We used to joke about the team way back when. We used to say it was the it depends team because we just couldn't get them to nail down, like, where do you think the ROI will be for this prospective client? We need to give them an effing number. Right?

Heidi: 13:10

Yeah.

Tom: 13:10

And then I've seen the other side of it too where agencies walk in and say, we're gonna do this. This is gonna be your ROI. We're gonna deliver this amazing amount of return because they're kind of betting on the they're hedging the other way. Like, that they can say whatever they want in the pitch to win the business, it's not gonna matter once they sign, and it will, like, kinda get thrown out the window. And I think in betwixt is somewhere where it needs to be.

Tom: 13:32

Like, you need to be able to calculate ROI for a client. The whole reason that I was attracted to paid search, paid social in the first place was because it was immediate returns. Right? Like, I could tell you tomorrow what the campaigns did today, and that's something that's moved into like, everyone's trying to brand it more, and holistic search takes over because they want to I think there are a of agencies who want to muddy the water a bit about how it's all moving forward in general. I think you have to be able to say, is your your client, number one, it's on you a little bit, to say, where's your desired ROI?

Tom: 14:08

Come to a mutual agreement. And then being honest as an agency to say, like, hey, that's pie in the sky. Or here's where I think we can land, and here's the projections on where we wanna be after the first ninety days. Right? Give us some time to feed the algorithm and really maximize and and stabilize campaigns.

Tom: 14:24

But you have to be able to tell someone where you think that ROI is going to land and then be okay missing it. Like, it's it's this pent up thing where marketers feel like if they miss the goal that they're gonna get fired tomorrow. And I think that if you have a client like that, who is gonna fire you tomorrow, then news flash, they're gonna fire you anyway. Like, they're gonna find a reason. Like, those are just clients that aren't good fits, We've had clients like that.

Tom: 14:52

Go ahead.

Heidi: 14:53

Yeah. The bigger opportunity is in being super transparent with it and evolving. I think that's the difference is, okay, we recognize that's not working that well. Hey, we're going to tweak it. We're going to adjust it.

Heidi: 15:06

To that point, where do you see the most opportunity for lead gen? I want to preface that, that I believe marketing should be a large source of lead generation. And I don't think all marketing agencies or marketing teams internally focus or feel that lead generation should be big focus. So I would love to know what you are seeing, what's working, what's effective, and where things are evolving.

Tom: 15:34

I do think that marketing should be critical to lead gen. I think marketing is lead gen. For me, for lead gen clients in particular, really depends on the vertical, where they should be. You know, you and I have had this conversation. Like, you know, what should be the the ROI?

Tom: 15:54

I had a client yesterday who asked a prospect who was like, hey. Like, this is really valuable information on paid search strategy that we presented. Does this look the same for other channels? And it's like, no. It looks completely different for other channels.

Tom: 16:08

And a lot of people ask, like, what does it look like for other clients? Like, everyone wants to try to find the similarity, something to grab onto, and it's completely different for every client. And it's completely different for every industry, vertical, budget, region, million different things. But it's it is critical to each client in a unique way. So, you know, someone who's a CPA, if you're running a if you're doing b to b, let's say you're a B2B CPA, you just want to work with businesses, LinkedIn's probably going to be a very strong lever we can pull because that's where they're at.

Tom: 16:42

Right? They aren't necessarily you could drive a ton of leads on Meta, think it's part of the funnel, but they may be different leads or different types of leads that come through Meta, and I think a good marketer understands the the full funnel approach to where people find us on Meta, catching them when they're on LinkedIn, and then grabbing them when they're on Google. Right? There's the holistic search again of, like, understanding the pathway to how people search is so varied today. TikTok, right, is another one.

Tom: 17:13

Like, there's so many places people can see you, whether they see a reel, and then you remarket to them later, and then they are on Google search. And I had this conversation again yesterday with a prospect that it's a very established brand. It's it's b to c, but it's an established brand that does customized products. And they're rightfully concerned that they have a great organic presence, and would would any paid campaigns dilute that organic presence? Would they be, like, paying for leads they were going to get anyway?

Tom: 17:44

A great question.

Heidi: 17:45

Yeah.

Tom: 17:46

That could very likely happen, but I kinda see it the other way, that they are losing a ton of leads because people check them out, but then when they leave, they're nowhere they're they're nowhere else on the Internet. Right? So someone's shopping for tax services or they're shopping for a car or they're shopping for any type of service or product, we're we're trained to be chronic price comparison, like engines at this point. Yeah. And and we go everywhere to do that.

Tom: 18:16

And if you can follow people in their path, you can convert them by simply being present, even if they checked you out via an organic search, and then finally clicked on a Google ad. Right? Like, you have to be everywhere within those engines to be able to capture the attention at the the moment of intention, which I think is key. Gone are the days where everyone went to Google and searched and you captured intent and they clicked and they and they bought. The pathways are very different.

Tom: 18:44

So for me, I think that lead gen is critical, but it it lives across channels. Right? And it really is varied by the demographic you're going after. So conversation yesterday was again about one of their their biggest markets is Gen Z. Gen Z is not on Facebook as much, but that's okay because Meta owns Instagram.

Tom: 19:05

So we're also gonna be on Instagram, and and we're gonna capture so we're gonna be on Meta. They aren't gonna click or they aren't gonna be there. That's okay. But we're gonna catch them on Instagram, and then we wanna we wanna layer in an influencer campaign We can then take that content from the influencer campaign and boost it on TikTok and Meta, and capture that attention into not just where people travel, but where different demographics travel and spend most of their time.

Heidi: 19:30

Yeah. Well, it's been such a weird focus because in professional services, B2B, Meta was not We're going to advertise on Facebook. That just seems so bizarre. And thinking about CPA firms too, We're not advertising on Facebook. We're looking at high caliber business owners and all this other stuff.

Heidi: 19:52

What happened? I

Tom: 19:57

think a high caliber business owner, at the end of the day, whether they're a workaholic or not, a high caliber business owner is a demographic's going to likely be a little bit older, and they're still gonna go to Facebook to see how the grandkids are doing and to look at pictures of the kids' last trip and post some crazy wacko theory that they've got because they're likely a conspiracy theorist. I'm joking. But, like, they're gonna be on on Facebook, and you can hit them there and capture that attention where no one else is at. So, like, I think it's viable. It just might not be last click viable.

Tom: 20:28

Like, it's a part of a like, an overarching strategy.

Heidi: 20:32

That's so interesting. Okay. The other big change, obviously, AI. How crazy is this? We're starting to see people We always ask, How'd you hear about us?

Heidi: 20:46

And all of a sudden it's popping up. Oh, AI. We're like, GPT. Mean, what now, like there's this big shift. It's always been Google.

Heidi: 20:56

Right? And, you know, businesses were doing Google Ads because Google owns the world, and we to play their game in the algorithm to get an ad and populate and do our content right to be at the top. I feel like the whole game has changed now. Do businesses navigate that, and how are you navigating those changes?

Tom: 21:14

It's it's almost like how are we navigating what other agencies are saying. Right? Like, it's tough because it is it's the Wild West a bit. Yeah. And you you see this rush of platforms and agencies, like, I mean, we do it.

Tom: 21:30

Like, we're like, we I had a meeting this week. It was like, okay. Like, how are we gonna we have to layer in AI onto our site and talk about it because that people are vetting you for it. And Taylor, our head of SEO, he's brilliant. He's of this theory that's true is that if you have good sound content and you do a good job building out the right site and not getting into the gray areas of the internet, and not just over focusing on AI only, but if you do good work and build good content, and you're out there in the right way, it'll take care of itself.

Tom: 22:05

Yes, you can layer in AI, and yes, you can there are tools we can use that can ensure that we're that those results are coming from GPT and those AI tools that people are using, but I still don't think that there's I've looked at them. There's, like, a lot of these toolkits and the the AI tech that's being lauded by agencies. I don't think it I mean, I still think it's bullshit, a lot of it, because it's like everyone's racing in to create something that they they can sell to a PE firm. Right?

Heidi: 22:33

Yeah.

Tom: 22:34

And and it's it's it's the Wild West, as I said. It's just it's one of those, like, if you do good work and you you you leverage the best content and the best structure and the sound foundation of a site, it takes care of itself still. I think it's the answer no one wants to hear, but if you have good people doing good work and you have eyes on everything, you can maximize it.

Heidi: 22:57

Yeah. I appreciate that. We're seeing that because, again, we're having people tell us that's how they're finding us, and we haven't done anything for that to happen. It's just that we've been in business a long time and we have a lot of great content and exposure. Yeah, I think it's just a bit more organic with how that happens.

Heidi: 23:15

But how are you incorporating then that into your business model?

Tom: 23:21

Well, I would just say it's interesting because I use GPT as a search engine now, personally, because if I just need an answer I used to go to Google. If I just need an answer, I can go to GPT, and it'll give me an answer. I can and I can actually just tell it, like, no. No. No.

Tom: 23:36

More specific. And it'll give me a more specific answer. And as Google evolved, there's there's organic. There's shopping. There's there's paid ads, there's paid ads over here.

Tom: 23:46

It's harder to find. Now there's the Gemini answer that may or may not be right. And ultimately, when people search, GPT isn't going to want people to get bad answers, just like Google. Google's always wanted to deliver the answer to the question that's the most accurate so that people continue to use Google. That's been their model.

Tom: 24:06

If GPT were easily manipulated, if AI was easily manipulated to get someone up to this recommended first position on a GPT search and they weren't, then people are gonna stop using it. It becomes a fly by night product, and people, their attention spans aren't long enough to give people more than a couple tries that suck.

Heidi: 24:28

Yeah.

Tom: 24:29

For us, it's, like I said, it's consistently vetting the AI tools that are out there. It's ensuring that our focus from an SEO standpoint in particular and CRO is that AI is at the forefront of what we do every day, and that the the ways we used to do things don't necessarily work. It's about evolving how we do things, but at the same time, that we do things the right way. Like, that's part of, like, I think what sets Mixtape apart is our transparency and the vibe check, I call it. Like, our honesty should come through in what we say.

Tom: 25:03

Like, I never wanna be someone who touts a tool or attack that in the end is just out there to get a client to sign and they never look at again. There's a lot of there's a lot of that. I mean, I I I had a post on LinkedIn about how we we lost we were on a I we lost our first pitch that we really, really wanted. Mhmm. And it was gonna happen eventually, I think.

Tom: 25:23

You know, one of the reasons we we lost was because of the, like, the the the AI stack that another agency had. And these these I'd known these prospects for a while, and I said, hey, like, we're friends at this point. I would just say, like, hold them to hold them to that once they start. Because there are a lot of agencies who tout tech and they tout tools, and then once you sign, they hand you to a completely separate team, which number one, shouldn't do. But then that separate team just kinda goes about it the same old way.

Tom: 25:49

Yeah. So you kind of get hoodwinked. I don't wanna say hoodwinked. That's negative. But you kinda get there's no other good way to say it because the other the other way I wanna say is bait and switch.

Tom: 25:57

That's wrong. That's worse. But, like, there's there's an element of, like, here's all this cool stuff we can do for you, and then they hand you to a team that's just trying to keep up who's, okay. Cool. I just gotta manage this Google campaign.

Tom: 26:08

And they don't leverage that was one of the hardest parts of my previous job was, I mean, having a thousand team members globally and some amazing tools was ensuring that of my 120 indirect reports that every single person understood what the tools did and leveraged them for their clients because it's it's really hard to for that water to permeate all the way through to the ground and get everyone to to really leverage outside of what they learned in training.

Heidi: 26:34

Yeah. So do you think AI is gonna replace a lot of marketing jobs?

Tom: 26:39

I don't think it's it's a great question. I don't think it's gonna replace a lot of marketing jobs. I think that it will I think that if you if you're a tactician and you come in and just wanna follow a set guidebook and push the buttons to pull the levers, like, it's gonna be harder for you. I think that the people who are really truly gonna separate themselves are those that are having more strategic conversations about how your business is doing. Because those are the those lead to the moments that honestly happen when you're not sitting at your laptop or at your desk.

Tom: 27:13

And I think that those are the moments when, like, those truly strategic thinkers are going to be more inclined to say, I have an idea, and and leverage that because they're thinking about your business aside from just impressions and clicks and conversions. So I I do think there are elements of this industry that are impacted more than others. You know, everyone's freaking out about SEO, and is SEO dead? I don't think SEO's dead. I think if anything, SEO's a survivor because because AI kinda came for SEO first.

Heidi: 27:42

Yeah. Right. For sure. Well, so give me two examples of ways that AI is going to help tremendously, like just expedite, speed up, and make life easier, potentially replacing some job aspects, but then on the flip side, two ways that it can't help, and where having the human interaction and understanding of the business is going to be key.

Tom: 28:12

Yeah. So I the first thing I think about is audience intelligence and media planning. Right? So media planning and audience intelligence used to need a very specific individual touch to to diagnose the ICP, the demographics, and really build these personas. I mean, that used to take, like, a lot of time and a lot of work because it was it was a lot of digging by hand.

Tom: 28:37

And you used to have to go to these platforms like YouGov, right, and and really do a lot of dynamic comparisons on what's out there. I've seen platforms now that can do a full, like, media planning, audience intelligence, even a even a brand analysis through AI in, like, days, hours, what used to take weeks. So when I saw this platform, one of the first things I said is I remember, like, if I if you have a media planning team of eight or 10, maybe four of them might be worried. Right? Because you still need someone to manage that, but it's going to be easier to churn out really great analysis very quickly.

Tom: 29:22

So I I think it impacts media planners a lot. I think the other piece that we're seeing is going back to what I said earlier about the tinkerers. Right? You used to be able to to to really just deep dive into Google search, and you had more control. And when you had more control, you could, as an individual, make changes that would drive performance for a specific client.

Tom: 29:44

And these and folks became like rock stars because they were just brilliant paid search managers. You're seeing fewer and fewer rock stars now because it is more of a black box with Google and and with Meta. There's just less you can do because they want people just to throw money in it and spit out some leads. So that's, I think, the two ways that it makes things it it it impacts it makes it easier, I think it impacts the industry. Two you had two ways that it was easier for us.

Tom: 30:13

Is that

Heidi: 30:13

what you're so it was two ways AI was really gonna help, but then two ways, I think, AI won't. Things that you guys really, really the relationship is still important as ever.

Tom: 30:25

I I look at so AI has come a long way in the past two years. Like, I've mean, it's been a few years now that I've I've been in I've been working with AI, so it's come a very long way. But there it still it still gets a whole lot wrong. Like, you can't even get GPT to remove em dashes permanently. Like and that's kind of the telltale sign of, like, I see LinkedIn posts all the time, and it's em dash, em dash, em.

Tom: 30:48

Just like, come on. Like, this is all this is AI. So I do think that there's always going to be a need for the human element to leverage what AI is doing for the specific client, because there are nuances of your business, of any business, that isn't picked up by AI, that isn't picked up just from being in a room together and being in weekly calls and ongoing meetings and being face to face and working alongside your clients. You pick up nuances of their business that are so far outside the parameters of what AI can find online. And then there's also an element of I forget who's doing it.

Tom: 31:24

Someone just announced that they're going to start gating content for sites they host and charging AI to be able to to seek and search that content. So basically, if if you put content out, Heidi, and I think it's it's Cloudflare, think, announced this. If you put content out, Cloudflare will allow you to, like, gate it, and and AI can't crawl it at all. And then you can charge a a commission or a a royalty for them to so, like, if you think about what you do and you think about, like, the the resources you provide to the community, like, that that's that's a huge amount of resources that that the GPT just won't get to unless they pay you a royalty. The idea being, you're putting so much free content out there, but what you used to get in return was clicks.

Tom: 32:10

And it's something like like like a handful of years ago, it was like I'm making these numbers up because I don't remember them. It was like 20 piece eight pieces of content for one click, and then it was 20, and then it's a 100, and now it's like 50,000 or something ridiculous. Like, you had to put so much content out there to drive clicks because it's people aren't clicking through. Like, they're just getting the information they need and moving on. And I think what cloud Cloudflare's realized is, okay.

Tom: 32:37

That's that's like like, you've created that. Like like, that's your IP. Right? Like, you you should be able to gate that and charge for that. I think that if that takes hold, then there's a whole different ballgame that starts.

Tom: 32:52

And,

Heidi: 32:52

like Yeah.

Tom: 32:53

It changes the game completely. Well, so interesting because, wow, that

Heidi: 32:59

gets my wheels turning because we're a little bit unique. We've been in business for a long time. We are probably the leader in specialty tax. Our website is incredibly robust. We have thousands of pages of content, articles, very technical tax updates and advice, and so much input that's been there.

Heidi: 33:23

One of the struggles for us over the years is, what do they say, imitation is the finest form of flattery?

Tom: 33:30

Yeah. You get people clocking. Right.

Heidi: 33:32

But the difficulty is that we have seen True story. We had a client send us a cost segregation study, and the guts of the cost segregation study had our watermark in the background because they were using our templates.

Tom: 33:54

That's not frustrating whatsoever, is it?

Heidi: 33:55

That's pretty bad. But we've essentially seen the same thing on our content. We have seen people make websites that are almost exact replicas of what they've copied and pasted with minor tweaks to build a website that they can slap up in five minutes. Now, if you drill down, it's four pages. It's a four page website.

Heidi: 34:14

If you actually look, there is no depth or structure to it. Anyway, my point to that is that, okay, there's that and that's frustrating. But when you look at it on the ChatGPT side, it is a completely different animal because that was frustrating where you've got a few competitors that are doing it. Now, all of a sudden, in a way, I mean, I don't think that ChatGPT is a competitor, but I guess in a strange way, if it's grabbing all of that content and that data and that knowledge, and it doesn't really necessarily attribute it to us, And it's just knowledge and education it's providing to the public. And then they just go shop the cheapest provider or the guy who just slapped up a four page website.

Heidi: 34:59

It does make it harder for a business who has built the rapport and the history and the knowledge and all this stuff that now it's just sort of pooled into this world of data that doesn't really get the attribution.

Tom: 35:13

I Yeah. Think mean, hard to I mean, it's even when you find that result, sorry to interrupt. Even when you find that result, it's like the link is really tiny. Right? Yeah.

Tom: 35:20

Even if you are sighted. Mhmm. One thing we leverage a lot is social listening tools that will help pull the signals in on where your content is is showing up in GPT and in AI and helps us optimize the best content. It shows where your competitors are are also showing up, and it helps us optimize content to be able to capture more of that space. I think that is, like, an element of, like, practical use of the future versus, like, the the platforms that promise to do everything.

Tom: 35:51

If you can if you have good social listening tools that can that can pull in those, signal flares of where your content is being, interacted with on GPT or where AI is pulling your content, your competitors' content, then you back that into a content strategy for you. Again, this goes back to, like, sound practices, sound foundation, then you can, over the course of time, capture more and more of that share, and that leads to those 50,000 pieces of content to get that one click. I think there's a there's a lot of fly by nights that wanna, like, promise they can do that for you overnight, and it's like, I don't I don't know. If you can, like, wouldn't everyone know about you? Like Yeah.

Tom: 36:31

It's it's hard work. That's why, like, no one's really figured it out.

Heidi: 36:34

Yeah. Yeah. It's it's just it's a it's a strange it's a strange world right now.

Tom: 36:39

It's the Internet and all

Heidi: 36:40

these things. What's your biggest what would you feel is like maybe the most profound advice you could give a business owner right now that really is trying to scale? What do you feel like is the most effective or maybe a few things that are the most effective strategies they could deploy?

Tom: 36:58

That's a great question.

Heidi: 37:01

And I know that's tough because it's so different. There's a million different sectors. It's totally dependent on the business type and all of those things. But let's just focus, I guess, the sake. We listen, and I know a lot of my listeners are high net worth individuals or finance related, real estate related professional services, like CPAs.

Heidi: 37:24

So a little bit more soft than rather like a product type company. So if we're thinking about that type of a sector, is there anything you could sort of pinpoint that's really fundamentally powerful right now?

Tom: 37:36

It depends. I just wanted to say it depends because it's like a callback to what I said earlier. Actually, I mean, from personal experience, and I'll speak to me personally, and this is also true for clients. If you're in in that sector, as an example, and and you want to scale your business, and you touched on this a bit as well. Like, I think we're in a very strange time, and it's a scary time for a lot of businesses.

Tom: 38:03

Authenticity and being out there, being like, offering advice and being okay screaming into the wind forever, potentially, that helps build credibility because people are out there shopping you against others unbeknownst to you. And if you're out there, just be out there. It's amazing what will happen. Now that's that could be if if you don't pay for marketing, that's as as little as putting a video on LinkedIn or posting on LinkedIn or engaging in conversations on LinkedIn or, having a podcast. Like, there's so many different ways that you, if you're a small business owner, I'm thinking small businesses here, can get out the word about your business that is it's easy to do, but it's hard to make yourself do.

Tom: 38:55

And that was the big thing for me is, like, I always had FOMO. Like, I always, like, wanted to be one these people. I like, I could do that. And I love like, the first video, like, you probably the first podcast you ever did, you're probably like, oh my god. This is horrible.

Tom: 39:06

It gets painful.

Heidi: 39:07

Social media post, the being authentic

Tom: 39:11

converts

Heidi: 39:13

to what I feel like is super vulnerable. So it's a very scary place for business owners. I do think in professional services where it's always been, I am behind a suit and tie. I'm behind a suit in this fancy desk, and I have all of these fancy credentials. Is a very safe space to hide behind the credentials.

Heidi: 39:36

When you open yourself up to being this authentic human being, man, that's a weird feeling. But man, I think you are spot on.

Tom: 39:44

You think about injury lawyers, injury attorneys. Like, some injury attorney is gonna figure out how to be vulnerable, and they're gonna, like they're gonna be huge because, like, their whole mantra is, like, pull the hammer. You know? They've all got, like, the boxing nicknames, you know? And they're like it's like, put a fighter on your side.

Tom: 40:00

And it's like, that's there's so many of them that get lost in the shuffle. And I think that there's like it lacks the humanity. And I'll tell you, like, I when I started mixtape and I started just, like, sharing the the path I'm on and bumps and all, The the it's amazing the number of, like, messages and texts and emails I get from people who I haven't talked to in years who are like, dude, I love what you're doing. Like, it's so fascinating. I love, like, when your stuff comes up, I just wanna see it because I wanna hear the latest because it's authentic, it's humble, there's humility, and it's like shares the good stuff, and I've always been a little sarcastic.

Tom: 40:36

There's a little layer of sarcasm. I'm like, what could possibly go wrong? And I think that that is I think that's the new era of business and where business is moving, And then a component of that for for larger businesses is just the holistic strategy. I mean, I gone are the days of I mean, I worked for an agency that only did paid search and then moved into paid social in the early days. Gone are the days I mean, we had clients who were, like, just in Google search and ran hundreds of thousands through Google search every month, and it was, like, the lion's share of their revenue drivers, which is a scary place to be when you're that reliant on Google.

Tom: 41:10

I think not being reliant on one channel is easier than ever now because there are so many channels that people are on. And I think that it's agencies call it test and learn. We call it tune, test, and remix, where you just have to keep trying different things and finding those gold nuggets that tend to work, and then doubling down on what works. Mhmm. Which I think is, again, hard to do.

Tom: 41:32

Consistency. Yeah. It's consistency. Yeah. It you you have to I I think clients tend to wanna go all in for, like, thirty days and then kinda get itchy.

Tom: 41:42

And I think you I'd much rather they drag that out and be selective about where they I've I've had clients who wanna spend a little bitty tiny budget across, like, four channels. And we'll say, like, woah, woah, Let's learn in one channel, and then let's learn in another channel, and let's learn in another channel versus spreading it too thin. And then out of that, we know where we should be across those channels, and then we go back to testing some of the channels that didn't work. Like, that's the tune test remix piece of consistently moving forward and consistently testing and figuring out what works, but then learning from the stuff that falls flat on its face. Going back to, like, when we first started talking today, like, marketers have to be okay falling flat on their face with a test with a client because that's what they pay us to do is to figure out what works and what doesn't.

Tom: 42:28

And that's like, if if you if someone hired us and we only tested things and that worked If every test won, I would be like, where are the tests? You're not testing enough. Like, you're you're or you're you're just testing softballs. Like, where's the stuff that's gonna fail?

Heidi: 42:49

Yep. I think you're spot on. That's, again, why I chose you as a partner in this case, be able to help us calculate the ROI and to be willing to test and try and not fold. You just got to keep trying, if that doesn't work, it's like, Okay, on to the next thing, and continue to test and try. We just keep evolving.

Heidi: 43:17

It's been awesome. In terms of authenticity, talk a little bit about where people can find you and follow you and what tools and resources you're offering to clients.

Tom: 43:27

Sure thing. Mixtape Digital offers paid search, paid social, SEO, CRO, conversion rate optimization, and influencer marketing. Can find us probably the best place to find us, mixtapedigital.com is our site. In all honesty, I'm on LinkedIn all the time. I'm like a LinkedIn I never thought I'd be a LinkedIn junkie, but here I am.

Tom: 43:48

Right? Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn or any member of our team. I work with some amazing individuals who are just like the best people in the world. It's like getting a band back together with a lot of them. Find us anywhere.

Tom: 44:02

You could stand outside on your back porch and just start screaming our name, and eventually one of us will show up at this point because we are we are also, we I mean, we'll I mean, we're in the business of yes. Like, we just I mean, that's the beauty of why I did this. There's like no one standing over my shoulder saying like raise this and do this. And we can't do that. Like I can do whatever I want.

Tom: 44:20

It's fun.

Heidi: 44:20

That is so cool. Okay. Last question. Mixtape. Your logo is a cassette tape, which I love.

Heidi: 44:28

Why? Why? Why? Where'd that come from?

Tom: 44:31

The first w two, like, real w two job I had was at the mall, which, malls were shopping centers indoors with different stores for those of you who don't go anymore. Back when malls were a thing, was at a store called Musicland, also known as Sam Goody. And I was like a kid in a candy store because I loved music. I had a million cassettes, and I got a job at Musicland as a Christmas temp, and then I stayed on. And I ended up we're going into management for them.

Tom: 44:58

And this is before music stores died and people stopped buying music.

Heidi: 45:02

Yeah.

Tom: 45:02

And we used to make mix tapes for each other, and I still have some of them. And it's just kind of, like, in my DNA from, like, the nostalgia I mean, I have all these cassettes in my car back in the day. And I knew I wanted to start an agency, and I knew that it was about a little bit of a zig where everyone else is zacking in terms of, like, the right team, the right client approach, an individualized approach curated personally for each client. And it literally I was driving to work one morning, and then I couldn't come up with a name for what I wanted to do, and then mixtape digit mixtape came up in my mind. And I was like, holy shit.

Tom: 45:38

That's it works. Like, it's like that's how it works. That's what we are. So I sped into work. The URL was for sale.

Tom: 45:46

I bought the URL immediately for mixtapedigital.com, by the way, and it's been off to the races ever since. And it's hilarious. I love it because it really does resonate with people because it's it's it's for some people, particular demographic. Right? Like, those of us who remember cassettes.

Tom: 46:03

Because I I talked about, like, I still have a cassette that a friend made me. We used to cut out magazine pictures to put over the cover, like and and, like, you would like the pressure you'd be under to, like, write out the tracks in just the right way. Like

Heidi: 46:17

Well, yeah.

Tom: 46:18

Think about the level.

Heidi: 46:19

This You gotta go get the white out.

Tom: 46:21

The white out, and then you're screwed. Like, there's an there's an element of that care and and approach about something you care about that really, really resonates with me, like that passion, that obsession with, like, wanting to, like, even from the songs, like, the flow has to be right. And some songs have a literal meaning, and some songs, there's no meaning, and sometimes it's a hidden meaning. Sometimes you just want somebody to hear one lyric. And I I still, to this day, make playlists all the time on Spotify because I just love making playlists for, like I I have I have them by month of stuff that I'm listening to, and then I have them for situations and for people, and I share them.

Tom: 46:57

It's not the same, but no one I mean, that cassette player behind me is like do you know how hard it was to find that thing?

Heidi: 47:04

Yep. That's amazing.

Tom: 47:05

It was very hard to find, and it doesn't sound good. It's like you forget what a cassette sounded like. It's very Woah. Tinny. And like yeah.

Tom: 47:14

And you're like, oh, yeah.

Heidi: 47:15

You know, we Does Spotify have followers? I didn't just, like, go follow you, like, social media and, like, I don't wanna follow Tom and, like, follow all of his his playlists, his mixtapes.

Tom: 47:24

You can find me. I'm I'm under Hoopy Music because Hoopy was my nickname in baseball in fourth grade. But more importantly, Mixtape Digital has a Spotify. And Really? There's a launch playlist.

Tom: 47:35

There's a few playlists that we've created, and then there's, like, the team picks. So I had, like, you know, you used go to the video store and you had, like, the staff recommended movies.

Heidi: 47:43

Yeah.

Tom: 47:43

You had those. So, like, there's a playlist where every team member picked, between three to five songs and we just loaded it on playlist.

Heidi: 47:50

I have no idea.

Tom: 47:51

Yeah. We're gonna continue to do that. Like, I've even thought, once we like, we're still in the decisive phases of what to do with swag. Right? Because there's so much cool stuff you could do.

Tom: 48:00

Yeah. But also, it's it's a tenuous ground of, like, some weird stuff you can do. Like, no one I can't send you a cassette because you don't have a cassette player. I know you don't. But part of, like, the, like, ideas we've had of, like, we should make new playlists for new clients and send it to them on Spotify.

Tom: 48:16

Right? Like, to, like, building the community on Spotify that people don't normally think of as, a social media platform.

Heidi: 48:24

Yeah. I had no idea. Now you need to see if there you need to invent a cassette tape swag that has a flip out USB C. Just plug it into the bottom of your phone and it'll be like, oh, look, I've got my mixtape and you flip it out, plug it in, and it'll start playing.

Tom: 48:43

You know, there's a whole cottage industry on Etsy of people who will like, you can send them a Spotify playlist, and they'll record it to a cassette for you.

Heidi: 48:51

My gosh.

Tom: 48:52

And then there's also, like, there's a cassette that you open, and it's like there's it's not a it's like a cassette inside, it's not actually a cassette. I forget what it's like a speaker. You can put a QR code on the front of it that someone can scan to go to a playlist that you made them. So, like, the people are figuring out really unique ways to play with it. We're actually people talk to me a lot about the logo and how they love it.

Tom: 49:13

Like, we have some really cool merch we're working on. And then secondarily, Elena, our director of growth marketing, is building building a playlist builder that will live on mixtapedigital.com, where you can go and you can type in just about the day you're having. And you just it's an AI driven engine, and it will spit out a list of songs for your day. Like How cool. Really, really cool stuff.

Heidi: 49:38

So so for listeners, here's your challenge in the comments. I want listeners to put comments in the the the comments area of the podcast. What is your favorite swag or swag you wish that people are giving away at events or conferences or that as a business owner you have given away? Tom, now that's your new challenge, I want some ideas for us on things that we can do for super cool, innovative swag ideas.

Tom: 50:08

Love it. Fantastic mention. Please feed me good ideas because there's a lot of stuff out there, and I just can't I mean, literally, I have analysis paralysis. I'm staring at all these, like, ideas that the teams come to me with, and I'm like, I don't know. Like

Heidi: 50:20

Well, and it's all like, you know, we do quite a few events, and it's all pens and and, maybe some water bottles if they're super fancy, and there's a little bit of candy, and it's like all the same stuff.

Tom: 50:30

Same

Heidi: 50:30

stuff. There was a period of time where it was socks, and I'm not gonna lie.

Tom: 50:34

Socks everywhere.

Heidi: 50:35

I went to one conference, and I left with 20 pairs of socks, which actually I was so thrilled about because as an equestrian, they're perfect for under my riding boots. I don't know who else wants, like, cap my socks. But, yeah, I'm like, okay. I got the socks are over. Like, you gotta think it's out really cool.

Tom: 50:53

What's the next thing? Right? I one thing that I've loved that I want to have, and, like, this is this is high on my list is, I always loved, swag that was, like, for pets, like dog toys.

Heidi: 51:04

Yeah.

Tom: 51:05

And, there was a I was at, Shop Talk in Vegas, and this is a few years back, and they had, it was like a like a doghouse themed booth with, like, bright pink and bright green tennis balls that had their logo on them. And I brought home, like, a few tennis balls for our dogs, and they loved it. Right? Because those are things that actually get used. Yeah.

Tom: 51:25

You know, you bring home, like, a water bottle, you put it in there, and you might use it someday, you might not, or pens go in a drawer. The Yep. At least a dog gets to have fun. If a dog has fun, it's worth it for me. Worth the money Perfect.

Tom: 51:35

Right

Heidi: 51:36

I love it. That's a great idea. Well, Tom, thank you so much for the time. I love the conversation. I was excited to have you on.

Heidi: 51:43

Hopefully, find it enjoyable and interesting. It's a little bit of a different topic than tax specifically, but it's all about growing our businesses and evolving and keeping up with changing times and knowing really how and where to invest our resources in growth. And I think you're an amazing partner, so I appreciate And your again, thank you so much for being a guest.

Tom: 52:06

Thank you so much for having me. I had an amazing time. I appreciate it.