Marrying Data & Design Ft. Weaver & Fraser Ellard | S2 Ep3

Ian (00:01.866)
Hey guys, welcome to the Optimize Your Marketing podcast. My name is Ian Binek and today I'm joined by two of my really good friends, Weaver and Fraser Hey guys, how are you doing today?

Weaver Ellard (00:15.068)
Great, happy to be here. Yeah, excited to do this with you.

Ian (00:19.338)
I'm really excited to have you guys on. We've been working together for a few years now. So the fact that we're doing a podcast together and actually being able to make some content together is something special. Really excited to have you guys on. For my listeners, we are going to be talking about Dodeka Digital today and what they do and how they serve their clients and some really cool case studies that they may have or some things that they're using to basically bring really great results to their clients.

We're also going to talk about my three favorite questions, which are what are the most overrated, underrated things in marketing and how they deal with stress as entrepreneurs. So we have a freezer. I know we just kind of hit the ground running here. You guys ready to get started?

Weaver Ellard (01:02.492)
Let's do it. I'm ready.

Ian (01:04.042)
Awesome cool. Well, so I want to start out Can you guys tell us a little bit more about the Dodeka of Digital who you guys serve what you guys do? That would be awesome

Weaver Ellard (01:15.228)
Yeah, yeah, I'm happy to start and Frasier chime in with anything I missed, but yeah, so Dodeka which is 12 in Greek, that's where the name comes from. And Fraser and I are two of 12 kids. So we have 10 other siblings and yeah, that's kind of our name. But we started Dodeka together probably about three or four years ago, kind of as a side business for both of us, but we knew we wanted to work together.

We both were in marketing. Fraser's amazing at design. I do a lot of like analytics and marketing strategy. so we knew that would be a great kind of combo and, and also like always wanted to build a family business together. So, yeah, during kind of right after COVID it's all the opportunity to do that. Had some people who were asking about getting some marketing help. And so, we didn't really know what we were doing, but we're like, Hey, we'll, you know, we have some patents that we're happy to try to help. So, that was how it started. And then we've both been,

doing our own thing full time for the last couple of years. And I'll let Fraser speak to his cause it's unique, but, I've been building businesses, or helping grow businesses, at rule one, which is like a venture capital studio and lots of startups there. And that's really like getting to take some expertise that I gained in like corporate and working for like a tech unicorn startup kind of took, all that digital marketing background, which is what I've been in my whole career and to get to these startups. And I always knew I wanted to.

be around startups, be with startups, help grow them. And yeah, got to do that. Got to help build websites, do advertising and same things I was doing for Dodeka on the side and realize eventually like, you know, I think it would be really fun to go full -time on this with Fraser and help serve clients in a full -time capacity. And kind of now that I had seen it work really well for a lot of startups, it was like, let's, let's go kind of democratize this, bring it to a bunch of other businesses and help them grow through marketing. So.

We primarily do business to business, software companies. We've done a decent bit of business to consumers, some e -comm companies, and we like those as well. But I would say our specialties like on the, or my specialties on the demand gen side. So PPC, you know, LinkedIn ads, social ads, as well as just like digital strategy to help people drive revenue through marketing. That's what I'm most passionate about is like, I think marketing is a revenue driving function. I don't think it's always been viewed that way.

Weaver Ellard (03:34.78)
I think it, especially with digital, should be viewed that way and can be viewed that way. And so as long as you kind of have the right tools in place, have the right analysis and data and know how to interpret it, I think you can drive revenue through marketing. So that's what we strive to do. We do it and it looks really cool too, which is Fraser's portion. So I'll kick it over to him. Yeah, I think one of the things that was really fun when we first got started is we were working in kind of the corporate side.

working with a lot of agencies and things like that. And then my first job as a designer was actually working for an agency who were still good friends with them. But we just saw like, man, when you do a really good job of putting the client first and like thinking about their goals rather than what your bottom line is, like what's easy for you, that's when something really powerful happens. And so for him and myself, it's like, man, we work with these agencies, we work in these agencies.

Like, can we do something maybe a little bit different where we really focus on like something that's tangible and getting them to a spot that like, we're all working in the same way instead of this kind of vague like, we need marketing. We don't like, we don't really know what it is. And so even from a design standpoint, that's kind of the way that we focus on things is like, I like to think our stuff looks cool, but the main goal is like, what are, what are we trying to achieve and what's the easiest way to get there and the best way to the.

convey that information. And so I think like for me being in baseball still, so I started doing design stuff when I was in college and then had a chance to get drafted by the Chicago White Sox for baseball. And so I'm still playing with them in AAA right now. And seeing a little bit of that, it's gonna sound like a big leap, like seeing the connection in baseball with.

Like when you do a really good job of focusing and like honing in on very specific things, that's when you see a lot of improvement. When guys are trying to focus and like, I need this better, this better, this better. We have a saying, it's like, you can only focus and get better at one thing at a time. And so when we're working with the clients, man, what can we do to, it's like just really hammer home what their, like their big drivers are for being in relationship with us in the first place.

Weaver Ellard (05:56.253)
and then giving them the invisibility and the power to see that and to act on that. So that's what gets us really excited. That's why we started this. And it's been really cool to see some of those relationships grow and feeling like we're part of other teams, while part of our own team. It's this really interesting dynamic that's been really fun and I enjoy a lot.

Ian (06:20.074)
That was an awesome answer. I feel like we just learned so much about both of you guys, but then also Dodeka A few things stuck out to me really. So like on Weaver's front, talked about the revenue driving function. And essentially that's key, right? Nowadays with digital, everything you're doing, you can assign an ROI to it. So everything you're doing in Dodeka, you're always trying to factor it back to revenue. And then.

with Fraser and talking about how you put the client first and you're putting together these custom solutions and actually augmenting on their team and basically being a part of it. This is really cool. So yeah, it's a power duo here for sure. Not to mention you guys are brothers if that wasn't clear. You guys are brothers. So it's a really cool mix here. It's like a family run business at the moment.

That's so cool. So I would love to hear more about maybe some case studies you guys had or just what you're seeing success from right now in the solutions that you're bringing to your clients. So is there anything that sticks out that you'd like to talk about that you think other people might find useful and maybe want to work with you as a result?

Weaver Ellard (07:36.284)
Yeah, I think there's definitely some interesting case studies that we can dive into. I think at least the ones that I'm thinking of kind of are a good example of like a marriage of where my mindset of like driving towards revenue and Fraser's mindset of like creating a great brand and making things look good visually kind of like marry and help drive results. Because I think...

Yeah, I think generally like one of the reasons that I wanted to do a DemandGen agency and something that's been affirmed a lot more or so DemandGen is like a big part of what we do. One of our three main offerings is like websites, DemandGen and content or branding. But one of the reasons I wanted to do it is because I've worked with a lot of agencies on the client side when I was at NCR, my first job at QGenda.

or with a lot of different agencies. And generally I would say had not great experiences. There's some great agencies out there. We worked with one or two of them, but the vast majority of agencies that I've worked with or that I've seen other people work with or heard about, it's usually horror stories or a lot of people, it's like a curse word or like a necessary evil. Like, yeah, we have an imagined agency, but we hate them and we would love to get rid of them, which is just sad, because I think the whole...

reason for an agency to exist is to bring extra value to a customer, right? Like they're paying for an agency because they see a need or they see a gap in something that they want to be able to do. And so they're hiring, they're paying extra typically to go get experts and bring them in to kind of augment their team. So that should be something that I think that should like, you know, elicit a lot of excitement, elicit a lot of joy and be like, yeah, this is, we love this agency because like we couldn't do what we do without them. And I just don't hear that a lot. And so.

I've, again, I saw some great examples of agencies and so we wanted to obviously try to be that kind of agency that was like, Hey, we don't care if we're the biggest, we don't care if we're, you know, the highest profit margin. We just want to be like an agency that does things the right way that people enjoy working with. and that does really good work. So.

Weaver Ellard (09:37.084)
That was kind of like at our core or ethos. And so an example of that, I feel like is we've had a couple of clients that we've had for a few years now or a little over a year, year and a half. And I think that's relatively long in the agency space, you know, in the sense of, especially the demand gen side where people kind of turn and burn agencies because they're not delivering results or.

They deliver results at first and then kind of got hands off and got stagnant. and so they, one of our clients is in the kind of, insurance technology space. And this was a cool one because it was, is both, like I said, the branding aspect and the demand aspect. So they had a great, brand they had been established for awhile and there's some new kind of incumbents in the space, new, new emerging brands that were coming into the space that were newer and more modern than them.

But didn't have the same offering, but people couldn't tell because this brand hadn't really prioritized marketing in a while. So their website was, outdated. It was like a one page website with, you know, a very old picture of their product on it. not a lot of information about them and they just kind of been able to cruise on the initial market share they had and the good reputation they had. but that was starting to erode.

because of all the competitors and people doing good marketing. So anyway, so we got to come in and Fraser got to take a look at the brand. We took a look from like, you know, a overall like strategic perspective or messaging perspective. We're like, hey, we don't, we think that there's a better way to talk about the problem that you're solving. There's a better way to talk about the benefits that you're bringing to your customers. They had a lot of amazing case studies that were just not showcased anywhere. And so we really got to help for them, like build a whole kind of a whole new website. We went from like one page to...

30 pages, 40 pages, readed the brands, like Fraser did some awesome mockups of all of their software, made it a better representation of like the modern look and feel of it. And we built a lot of content for them. So a lot of thought leadership because they have the expertise, they've been in the space forever, they're really sharp. But we kind of put that on paper so that customers could go find it. And then, yeah, partnered, worked with you along the way and we've like released a lot of great.

Weaver Ellard (11:47.036)
ads for them as well, once we kind of had that new foundation. And we're like, all right, we got the content, we built the field, now we need to go get the people to come to it. So, so then we started the kind of demand gen side of things and started running PPC ads for them on Google and Bing.

doing LinkedIn ads and really working to drive that interest. And because we had set the foundation right and fixed where people were coming to our conversion rates were pretty high. So people who did click the ads who came to the site were actually interested in the story that they were reading and the software that they were looking at. Yeah. And so inbound has become a pretty large portion or good kind of revenue driver for that company. And.

was a brand new thing for them. So that's been a cool case study and getting to see that continue to kind of evolve and grow.

I don't know if you want to chime in on the brand side of that, but yeah, that's been a really, really cool example of like, Hey, not only can PPC and demand and drive things, but like there's another really important component. And that is the design side of things, the content side of things, like having a good story to tell when people actually come to you from those ads. Otherwise they're not going to convert. So I'm going to talk about that. Yeah. I think it's been cool to see that evolution because so when we started working with them, they had a pretty outdated brand and it was very, very basic. Like they had a logo. And.

and like a little favorite con and that was basically it. And like, they didn't really know what they wanted to do with fonts, colors, et cetera. And so now we're kind of at that point where like they have a really strong identity in the space. And like when we're putting out content, when we're putting out ads or anything like that, it's like, this is clearly.

Weaver Ellard (13:20.636)
Like their brand. And it's also been cool some back and forth with them. Like they're taking ownership of that now as well. Like they previously didn't really have a standard of what their design was going to look like, things like that. And now like we'll work with them on whatever it is. Like, Hey, this isn't really up to like the, the bridge, you know, the brand, like, can we, can we get you guys to fix this? Or in like, Hey, we need to update this. Can we get this on brand? And like.

Seeing the evolution of a client from something of, yeah, like this doesn't really matter into, wait, I'm starting to see the value in this. How can we like be excellent in everything we do? And that's something that we were and I talked to each other about all the time is.

We want to be not just like an agency. We want to be an excellent agency. And that's, that's in branding, that's in ad work, that's in websites, whatever it is, is how can we maximize that impact? And so, yeah, one of the things that's been really cool for us, I think with them and with other clients as well as a lot of them come back to us for design work anyway.

in a, hey, like, we don't know what we're missing, but like, we know that like, this isn't what our brand is supposed to look like, like, how can you help us? So it's been, it's been really fun to like have those experiences and feel like we're doing something like in each space that is like hitting the mark for, for our clients.

Ian (14:44.746)
That was an awesome answer. And I just wanted to say is, you know what I heard whenever you were talking through the whole process was that it was just generally speaking, what every marketing agency should be doing for their clients, but they don't necessarily either have the scope to do all of that or they just don't really do it. And,

The thing that was really interesting to me, and I know this about you guys just because I've worked with you for a long time, is that you're not afraid to offer things that are a little bit above and beyond because you value that relationship more than sticking to the contract and saying, this is a little out of scope, so we're not going to do it. You've always been super generous with your clients, and I think that's a testament to why you guys have such a long client engagements.

and why you're augmented in those teams and you're not just a churn and burn agency, you're an excellent agency. So really cool to just hear the whole process. And I think just the way it was painted is very clear for anyone who's not in marketing. They understand, yeah, like if we run ads, it makes sense to have really well -designed websites and really well -designed pieces of content. Otherwise, they're not going to convert. They're not going to want to work with that client. So really cool.

I love the way you painted it.

Weaver Ellard (16:09.98)
Thanks.

Ian (16:11.85)
Yeah, of course. So now we get to go into a little bit, I would say more fun questions. I mean, obviously it's been fun so far, but I want to hear about the overrated things, especially from you guys, people that are very meticulous, really care about quality. What do you think is the most overrated thing right now in the digital marketing world?

Weaver Ellard (16:14.524)
Thank you.

Weaver Ellard (16:42.364)
Yeah, this is pretty, pretty top of mind for me because I just had a conversation this morning with a prospective client about this and this is like semi -controversial. So I'll, I'll preface it, but I think that like PPC is pretty overrated in general. And because I think that is very poorly utilized in general. So going back to like what, what.

kind of like the curse word of demand gen agencies and how like PPC agencies, like people have a real love hate relationship because most PPCs become popular. People know that it's a good way to potentially drive revenue. And so most companies who are gonna invest in marketing know that their first dollars are probably gonna invest towards PPC or something that they're gonna see immediate potential results from.

That said, I think, you know, there's a lot of misaligned incentives, oftentimes between agencies and clients, where, you know, in order to get a client, you need to like pitch that you're going to give the best results. Right. So it's like a lot of agencies are promising a lot of things from PPC, without really understanding the business or the margins or whatever. So it's like, Hey, we'll give you way more clicks than the other agency that you talk to. and you know, we'll, we'll make sure your ads like.

or optimize, optimize the heck out of them and they're going to be so good and they'll drive a ton of clicks. but because they don't like really understand the rest of the business, they don't understand kind of the, how the CRM works or how once someone does click and come to the website, if they're not helping on the website or landing page, like a lot of times those leads are going or those clicks are going to a page that no one wants to see and they're dropping off. Or if they do control the website, it's like, cool. Lead gets there.

they have a good landing page, maybe they fill out a form, but the agency doesn't care after that. They're like, hey, we gave you X number of leads, so that's what we said we would do and we're done. But I think a really good agency is an agency that cares about the next step, which is, hey, where did those leads go and were they good? And if they weren't good, we want to know that because we want to go fix our strategies and kind of adjust and work accordingly to make sure you're getting leads that are good and that convert. And that might not mean pouring more money into ads.

Weaver Ellard (18:44.572)
But again, there's some misaligned incentives where a lot of agencies are paid based on ad spend. So it's like, we just want to tell a good enough story to get you to pay a lot more money towards ads so that we get paid more money. Anyway, so I think that ultimately that leads to like PPC having all this hype around it. But I think when you kind of look under the covers, I think a lot of the time, maybe 80, 90 % of the time from what I've seen, like there's not really tangible results to tie back, like actual revenue to tie back to those PPC efforts. And so I think it's like flushing a bunch of money down the toilet.

because you know it could work, but people aren't doing the necessary work to like make sure every step of the process is actually set up for that PPC effort. So like we're just focusing on this one little piece and forgetting about all the other important things that should be in place to make it work.

Ian (19:30.09)
Yeah, Fraser, I'll let you speak to yours in a second, but I want to answer on Weaver's just because it's so close to home for me because I do PPC a lot for clients. I 100 % agree. I think misaligned incentives is a great way to summarize it, especially just calls I get on with prospects particularly. They're asking for price immediately. It's like the first thing they ask, which is just crazy to me because...

Yeah, like I might know your industry, but I don't know how much you charge. I don't know if you're considered quality or not, especially if maybe your website's outdated. I can't really tell if you're trying to establish yourself as a premium brand or not. So for me to understand how efficient the, or you know, how your, what your ROI is going to look like is really hard to just put together a quick report for you and like that 30 minute call and then say, okay, do you want to work with me or not? But I think that's what a lot of PPC agencies do.

So I weaver what you were saying about what happens to the leads after they come into the CRM. Yeah, that's what I really try to focus on. And it's frustrating when you get on a call with a prospect and they don't even have a CRM or they don't listen to you and think that they don't need a CRM, especially in the B2B world. That's just crazy. I mean, it takes long times where people sometimes close deals. And so yeah, I think...

I agree. I think PPC can definitely be overhyped and I've been just seeing a lot of agencies pop up and just offering Google ads and they don't even know what they're doing and people will work with them. And those are the churn and burn agencies, which yeah, obviously no one likes those. and that's really tough. So I love that answer. That was like a very hot take. And I think that people will definitely.

agree with us, at least if they know what they're talking about, and then there will be some people that are pretty salty that you said that, but that's the name of the game right here.

Weaver Ellard (21:27.816)
Yeah, like I said, I think it's an important qualifier that like, I think PPC is also one of potentially, and depends on the industry and everything else that we talked about, but like potentially one of the most valuable marketing tactics. But I think it's like probably the most commonly done and typically one of the most poorly done efforts that people think is like a magic cure. When there's no feedback loop or any way to like actually validate it's, it's working. So yeah.

I love PPC, I'll clarify that, but it's super overhyped as far as the impact it's going to have on a business without all the other necessary foundational work being done.

Ian (21:57.834)
Yeah.

Ian (22:06.634)
For sure. Fraser, did you want to add what you think your overrated marketing tactic or strategy is nowadays?

Weaver Ellard (22:13.948)
Yeah. Yeah. I think from a web web standpoint, it is looking at the norm. Like you hear people say like the industry leading standards or whatever, whatever. And like looking at that to determine how you're going to structure like sites and content. I think a lot of people.

look at, look at that and they either say, okay, we're going to follow this like to a T and this is the formula and we're not going to deviate. Or they look down like, all right, how do we break this? And it's getting away from the central idea of like, neither of that, none of that matters because sometimes your industry might be terrible marketing, right? And sometimes your industry might be really good, whatever, but it's really like, what is the user experience that you're trying to create? And that should inform everything else. I think a lot of people just get away from like, especially designers, you know, we kind of live in this bubble sometimes of, like this look,

super cool or this has great animation or whatever and does that help the user experience and if it doesn't then don't do it you know and like a lot of times it'll just get confusing if you're like if you're trying to break it too much and then like the familiar familiarity is gone and they don't know how to navigate.

and like get to where they want to go. Or it becomes like forgetful because you're just following what everybody else is following. It's like, man, how do you just engage the user for what they're trying to do and build everything around that first?

Ian (23:37.93)
That's a great answer. I feel like that's close to home for me as well, just because conversion rate optimization is so important. And it really is tough sometimes when you work with a client and they have a designer on staff and maybe they're the ones that are making the landing pages and they don't have that mindset and they add some weird animations that slow down the page like crazy and then people don't convert.

And at the end of the day, although you are in the creative space, at the end of the day, you really want people to just sign up and take a call with you or buy the product or the service. So I love that you have that idea in your head of like, Hey, we're not going to follow everyone else. We're going to do what we think is best because we know what works best. And we've done this before. So regardless of your industry, we're going to make this the right way. So I think that's it. And I think establishing that with your clients upfront.

is really smart. So that's a cool thing to say.

Ian (24:42.026)
Cool, guys. Well, I want to get into underrated things now. We've kind of like dabbled in this, I think, the whole time. So maybe we can make this one a little bit brief. But what do you guys think that underrated digital marketing strategy or digital marketing tactics are nowadays that people just aren't really focusing on?

Weaver Ellard (25:02.14)
Yeah, I think this will probably not come as a surprise to you and I know it'll hit near and dear to you too, but I think A -B testing in general, like testing I guess as a whole, I think is super commonly referenced. A lot of people know what it is. A lot of marketing teams do it, but I think it's seen now as like a little bit outdated or it's like, yeah, we do it.

But there's a lot less emphasis on it than there was when it kind of was first introduced, I think. And I think that's a huge mistake because I, so I think, I think the issue is that a lot of people confuse, and this is outside of marketing life in general, but a lot of people confuse like, activity for like productivity or activity for impact. And so it's like, Hey, I need to focus on marketing. So I'm going to go produce like a hundred blog posts or put out a thousand ads or put $10 ,000. Like the more I do, the better the impact I'm going to make. versus similar.

to Fredridge's previous answer, like really thinking about strategically, like, okay, where should that effort be going? And what is like the most efficient use of that spender? What is the most effective way, like rather than writing a hundred blog posts, what's one blog post that I can get, you know, 10 X the traffic from?

that if I put a little more time into making this and I make it in a way that's really adding value, that I'm gonna get my target audience. And it's really hard to know those things. It would be awesome if it was just like, yeah, if I put a little more thought into it, I'm gonna figure it out. But I think the great benefit of digital is everything's super measurable and you can get data really quickly. So it's super easy to test these days. But I think when it comes to testing, a lot of people don't...

really have like a clear hypothesis in mind. It's like, I like blue, but I kind of like green. So I'm going to test the blue button versus the green button. and in two totally different ads, like everything's going to look different, but it's blue and green. and so then you get a bunch of data and you're like, this one got a lot better engagement, but I don't know if it's cause there's a blue button, the green button, or because I use an entirely different picture and a totally different headline and totally different description, you know? And so there's like not really clean AP testing. or it's like, I get data back and I did a clean test. I was like, I just tested this versus.

Weaver Ellard (27:06.894)
this A versus B, but I don't really know what a significant difference is. Like this one got 10 more clicks. Is that enough for me to feel like it worked or is it not enough? And so, yeah, so I think that it kind of comes down to like,

Just like, you know, if you wanted to get into, working out and you're like, Hey, I'm just going to go spend 10 hours in the gym. And I think I'm going to get super jacked because of it versus someone who's really intentional ahead of time. I was like, I know what nutrition I need to do. I know what kind of workouts I'm going to do. And they're going to go spend an hour in the gym, you know, three times a week and get.

triple the results of the other person, you know, because they had that direction. They had the clarity of like, I know the inputs I need to do and I know what I'm going to measure as the outputs and I'll kind of tweak along the way based on that. Anyway, I think the same concept when it comes to the AB testing. And I think that really thoughtful AB testing can completely transform your marketing efforts, completely transform your business in a far more efficient way than most other marketing tactics, I would say. So just using what you already have.

and putting a little more thought into what you're testing and why you're testing it.

Ian (28:11.21)
For sure. Yeah, A -B testing is close to my heart. And yeah, Weaver, I know you know that. So yeah, I don't have much to add there. I think the only thing I'll just point out, which I think is a comical thing, and we see it all the time, is the ads that are completely different. And that, you know, different intro text, different image copy, different image, different headline, different CTA, and then people call those A -B tests, and it's not.

It's not, stop doing that. It's not, you're not learning anything. So yeah, I love that you mentioned that. That's funny. Fraser, do you have an underrated marketing tactic or strategy?

Weaver Ellard (28:41.244)
Thank you.

Weaver Ellard (28:58.476)
no, I think we were kind of hit it up, hit the nail on the head on that one. I think that was, I kind of agree is like from a design standpoint too, it's you're just trying to do too much and trying to differentiate things too much. It's like, leave, leave things how they need to be to like get the end result again. You know, it's all, it's all result oriented. and so like, unless you have a specific reason for changing these things out, like see, see what works best and like optimize from there. No pun intended.

Ian (29:24.938)
Nice. I love that you guys keep saying optimized. It's funny.

Weaver Ellard (29:30.876)
We're marketers, we're just plugging your business for you.

Ian (29:36.49)
Yeah, well, I will say that the thing that's cool about Optimize, but also really bad about having the brand name is that it's really hard to get that brand traffic. When someone types in Optimize your marketing, I can't tell you how long I've been trying to just show up organically for that. And like we're starting to run brand related PPC just to show up for that. But a lot of people are bidding on that, like the Mailchimp's of the world and the data boxes of the world are bidding on those terms. So it's tough. It's tough.

Weaver Ellard (30:06.044)
Yeah.

Ian (30:06.058)
But it's cool at the same time, because I could use this funny pun that just interjectively in any conversation that someone says optimize, I'm like, yeah, that's my brand. So yeah.

Weaver Ellard (30:16.028)
Yeah, it's a little hard to get through that everyday conversation. Yeah.

Ian (30:19.402)
That's fair. That's fair. You gotta be talking in Greek or something.

Weaver Ellard (30:23.804)
Hahaha.

Ian (30:25.77)
Cool. Last question actually, really. This one's really important. I really feel like it's been talked about a little bit in the past few years, like mental health, but for entrepreneurs specifically, coping with stress is such an important thing because if you're not, if your mind is not in it, if you feel like you can't do it, then you probably can't do it. But if you feel like you can, then you can. So,

I guess at least that's the way I look at it. And so how do you guys handle stress on a daily, weekly, monthly basis?

Weaver Ellard (31:05.372)
Yeah. Yeah, I can go first on this one. I think so for me, it's a little bit twofold, right? Because with baseball, you you're such a performance sport and profession where it's really hard to like let things go when they don't go well. And it's really easy to get anxious about things going forward. And, you know, same with business when you when you decide to.

build something like you take on that risk inherently. And it's hard for you to stop your mind from like going, just going and going and going. And then I think the unhealthy thing a lot of people do is they seek distractions. So whether that's like social media, whether it's video games, whether that's TV, whatever it is, is like, okay, well, the only way for me to stop thinking about this is to like, just do something else.

And in the past year or so for me, what's been really important is actually like just stopping and just sitting there like with my thoughts and letting myself like have no agenda and just have moments. So it's whether it's 15 minutes, whether it's 20 minutes, whatever, like just reading or just literally just sitting there and thinking through and just like taking a nature going on a walk, stuff like that. And, and I guess.

not being afraid of my own mind, right? And like not trying to numb myself, but letting myself process. I think a lot of people...

Want to just like go dive into something that's going to make them numb. It's like, Hey, give yourself a moment to understand like what, what you're feeling there, why you're feeling that and just be like, be at rest. I just, like, we just don't rest enough. so yeah, I'd say mentally just take breaks, right? Give yourself 30 minutes every morning for, for me, what I try to do is like, as soon as I wake up and wake up, I go sit, like stand on the balcony, stand there for about five or six minutes, go inside.

Weaver Ellard (33:00.398)
read my Bible, it doesn't necessarily matter like how long, it's just I'm gonna read and like try to focus on this first because it's really easy to try to jump into work and try to jump into these things. When you constantly build a habit of as soon as you wake up, you want to just get to work, you want to do these things, then the like the bleed from where your life begins and your work ends, there's not a difference and your life becomes your work and that's where you find your identity with it. It's like, all right, where...

Where can you find your identity and other things that are actually like have value and more importance, right? Because at the end of the day, yeah, we're helping people and we're doing these things, but like, it truly is just a job. it's really fulfilling and I love it and it's great, but like it is so far down the totem pole of what's important in life and like what's important to you as a person. and so giving yourself moments to disconnect completely and just be, be at rest. I think it's really, really important.

Yeah. Do you want to answer? You got anything in there?

Ian (34:03.21)
I was just going to say, I mean, I love that. I'm very guilty of waking up in the morning and getting right to work. And I totally understand that it, yeah, it definitely becomes hard to differentiate those parts of your life whenever you do that. So I've been trying to segment my life a little bit more. And so we walk to work now, currently in Utah. So we walk to work.

and we walk back. So it's a really, you know, it's nicer than driving, right? When you're driving, you have to like really stay focused and traffic. But walking is really nice because you can just be at ease with your thoughts. And what's really cool about being in Utah is you see that mountain behind you guys in that picture there.

I see that in real life when I walk back from work pretty much every day. So it's really cool to just see that there's something bigger out there. And obviously from a religious standpoint too, you can think that way too. And so just be a little less stressed. I love that. I love that answer, Frasier.

Weaver Ellard (35:10.204)
Yeah, yeah, it was a great answer. And I think it's intertwined with mine. But so I would say like for me, when I, when I feel stress or when I'm starting to feel stress, which is more frequently recently, as I've started to go full time into this and like, feel the pressure of being a full time entrepreneur and like knowing that my, you know, family's like livelihood kind of depends on my success in this job. for me, it's always like super important to just take a step back and think to like the why.

And I think both from a personal and professional perspective, those are close to intertwined, but it's like, you know, if I think about this job, it's like, why am I doing this? And for me, it's like, I love marketing, but I'm not doing marketing for the sake of marketing. Like I'm doing it because I love my family and I want to be able to like provide for them. I want to be able to spend more time with them. I want, you know, to be able to, yeah, just like provide for them, be able to get, be generous, like my friends and those around me go take cool trips, like, you know, have the time to go do these other things that I'm passionate about. And so work.

is like a means towards that kind of balance in my life of, hey, if I do good work and I get compensated well for it, then it allows me to go spend more time with the people I care about doing the other things that I care about. So that's an important thing for me to remember is like, I'm not working for the sake of work. And so like that stress is like, what is my end in mind that I'm working towards here? And then it also helps me like remember, cause sometimes when I get stressed, I just pour myself into the work more. It's like, hey, you're not doing this to,

to do more of this. You're doing this to be able to go spend time with family. So that allows me to like also be able to take a step back in the evenings and be like, hey, even if work's not going well, like I'm, I need to go spend time doing the things that I really care about. And oftentimes that's a really beautiful thing happens where that time with family or that time with friends, that time stepping away from that stress, like allows me to come back and do the work way better anyway. And I have the same mindset, like, with stress through my whole life, but like in college, as an example, like I know,

I knew objectively, like I don't do well without a lot of sleep. I don't do well cramming information. So when it came to finals week, it was like quality over quantity for me. It's like, Hey, I'm going to study hard during finals week. But like when 10 o 'clock rolls around, I know that all the extra cramming I'm going to do from that point on is going to do less benefit than the sleep that I could get. And so like many times I like didn't study as much as other people for a final because it was like, I'll benefit more from like going to get some sleep. And then the same way with work, it's like, Hey, I'm stressed.

Weaver Ellard (37:35.836)
I will benefit more from stepping away from the work, which seems like super counterintuitive at the time. Cause it's like I'm stressed because I'm not, I need to do more work. Cause I'm going to step away from that work, go spend time doing something that's refreshing for me, like Fridger is saying, which is spending time with family or playing games or playing sports, like a lot of things that I really enjoy.

Yeah. And by doing that, I'll be refreshed so I can come back, have less stress and do a much better job anyway. Like I don't believe in a 40 hour work week. Like I don't think that's the most effective use of people's times. I think sometimes you need to work a hundred hours. Sure. I don't think that's a very like effective way. I don't think most people have like a super effective hundred hours in them.

And so I think, yeah, I think quality over quantity when it comes to work. And I think that when it comes to stress and balancing it, it's really important to just like step back and go refresh from the other things that you care about. And you'll actually probably do a lot better work if you take a chance to just like take a step back.

Ian (38:34.794)
That's awesome. One of the things that stuck out to me with that was the end in mind. Everyone has different goals. Everyone has different things that they're actually doing this for. And so there's all the influencers out there that are preaching, working 60 to 80 hours a week, like every week in your 20s, so that when you're in your 30s, you're rich and you don't have to do anything anymore. But that's someone else's dream.

That's not everyone's, right? So you don't have to do that. You have to do what you want to do, which is spend time with your family, grow a business, help people genuinely, help them. And so it's really cool that you can always go back to that and have that in your head and say, like, this is what I'm doing this for. Let everyone else do whatever they want. I'm going to do what I want because this is going to help me the most and the people around me the most. So I love that. I think that's awesome.

Weaver Ellard (39:28.092)
Thanks man.

Ian (39:31.018)
So guys, how can our listeners get in touch with you? If they want to work with you or connect with you, pick your brain on anything. What's the best way to reach out to you guys?

Weaver Ellard (39:42.044)
Yeah. so Dodeka is, is hopefully not that hard to spell, but it's Dodeka digital .com. that's our website. So you can see all of the work. Some of the people we talked about some of the work we've talked about, if you would do want to chat with us or whatever, there's a form there. our emails is just our name at Dodeka digital .com. so yeah, we would love to chat and, you know, figure out if you guys just want to chat marketing or.

talk anything about like demand gen design. We're having a lot of kind of fun conversations recently and would be super open to chatting.

Ian (40:20.938)
Awesome, awesome guys. Well, for our listeners, hopefully you enjoyed today's episode, learned a lot about Weaver and Frasier, their backgrounds, Dodeka Digital as a whole. And if you found it useful, be sure to leave a five star rating. It takes two seconds and two clicks of a thumb and then that's it. And it really helps the podcast grow. And we're gonna be trying to do at least like one to two of these a month, obviously quality over quantity, as Weaver and Frasier would say. So,

We're really trying to bring quality episodes to you every week and it's not going to be spam. So hopefully you guys enjoyed it. And if you did, be sure to check us out in our next episode. They'll be coming out in the next couple of weeks. And with that, we'll be signing off. Take care, everyone.

Weaver Ellard (41:03.964)
Thanks again. Thanks guys.

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