Zen Moment, Episode Two: Just the Right Amount of Chaos

In the second episode of Zen Moment, the RevenueZen podcast, The RZ marketing team assembles to talk flowers, performance, marketing, writing, content, and the evolution of the company from a sales-focused agency to something much broader. Come for the insightful commentary on marketing strategy, stay to learn about dahlias and sous vide short ribs.

Rob: Hello everyone, friends, listeners, customers, clients past and present. This is Zen Moment, the RevenueZen podcast where we talk about growth, marketing, content, revenue, all things in those realms. Today I have with me Amanda and for the first time, Jake. Please say hello.

Jake: Hello everybody, this is Jake.

Amanda: Hi. Amanda. If you listened to our first episode, you’ve already met me! If you haven’t listened to our first episode, go listen to it. It’s great! It’s just me and Alex doing the co-founder huzzah.

Rob: That’s right, please listen to the first one if you haven’t already. This one, we’ve got the marketing team on the pod, such that it is, all three of us in our immense glory and power. First time, we were just talking to the co-founder team and getting a feel for what RevenueZen is about. This time, because I am a marketer and podcaster, I wanted to do what I felt like doing, which was talking about marketing and content and getting the marketing crew together.

To begin with, everyone knows me—well, the handful of listeners who’ve listened to the first episode know me—and they know Amanda, but Jake, tell us a little about yourself. What’s your background? How did you come to be at RevenueZen?

Jake: How did I come to be at Revenue Zen? I actually met Alex at my first job out of college, and Alex was the leader of my team there. I always just valued the way he taught and led, and after that company I actually went to work at a flower shop. I spent a couple of years there, loved it, and it’s really nice because I get to flaunt that flower knowledge a lot and be like, “Oh those Ranunculus look lovely,” and get to do that to people quite often.

And then when I was ready to be done with that, Alex was starting RevenueZen and I was at a bridal shower-type thing. Alex was there and he was like, “Can I tell you about my new project?” I was like, I’m ready to listen. And then I joined, and that’s almost three years ago now.

Rob: Awesome, that’s a great story. Jake, you don’t know this about me because I don’t know why we would ever talk about it, but I also had a floral job once upon a time. And it’s probably a little different from the one that you had, but I was responsible for managing the bulk orders for a local flower distributor here in Wilsonville, Oregon. Which meant that I was empowered to do exactly one thing, send bulk shipments of roses to people, but then I would get mostly mothers-in-law calling me and making extremely demanding specific bouquet arrangements, which I absolutely could not do because I was not a florist, I was simply somebody on the other end of the phone. Anyway!

Amanda: I have a question to piggyback off of that. Jake, what’s your favorite flower and why?

Rob: Good question.

Jake: My favorite flower? And why? Well, not to be too basic, love a peony. Love a classic amazing, giant gorgeous peony. I love how short the window of time is that you can get them. I love that they’re just expensive and worth it. And every year in the middle of June, I tell everyone it’s peony season and we need to get peonies! And this year, I didn’t get any peonies, and I was devastated. Love dahlias, good August classic flower. And I love weird flowers, I love Protea and Kangaroo Paws, which are a really really fun flower. I love Crocosmia, which grows in Portland like crazy. They’re the red wild firework looking one.

Amanda: Oh, is that what’s in my front yard? There’s so many of those in my front yard. I said, Google, what is this, and Google said, I don’t know, a firework?

Jake: They’re a Crocosmia. Don’t know how to spell it, but you can cut them and they’re amazing. I love them.

Rob: Great! Jake, this is Portland, things grow everywhere. Do you have your own flowers that you grow, or are you lucky enough to have your flower garden yet? I’ve been trying to plant things this year, and I’m 50/50 on flowers. Basically if they were already there when I moved in, they’re fine, and if I tried to plant them, they’re so-so.

Amanda: Yeah, same.

Jake: I get that. We’ve planted a lot, I’d say mostly vegetables is what we attempted to do. I’ve been trying to grow dill this year and have destroyed it every time, or the cats have eaten it. I just can’t do it, I can’t grow dill. But that’s OK, they sell it at the store.

Rob: We have some vegetables that are growing pretty well, some zucchini and broccoli and other things that I’m happy turned out. Though my herbs, like your dill, are just not thriving.

OK, we have a podcast where we are supposed to talk about things that are relevant to our listeners…which is marketing! I wanted to talk about this because, Jake, you started out doing something different or something where you were focused elsewhere previously. I wanted to talk to both of you specifically about how you’ve seen RevenueZen’s focus change, how our approach to marketing has changed, how our own internal marketing has changed. What have you seen? You’ve been here longer than I have, so I would love to get your thousand-foot view on the changes that have come down the pipe since you started here.

Jake: Yeah, it’s a totally different place. What’s been really nice in the last six months or so, it really doesn’t feel like we’re winging it anymore. It doesn’t feel like we’re attaching band-aids to things. We’re at the point where we don’t need band-aids because we know what we’re doing. We have a concrete mission. I think when you’re starting out as a new company, you’re like, what do we want to do? What do people need? I think we’ve gotten to a place where we know what people need and what we’re good at.

Starting from this outsourced sales-type organization with general umbrella term of marketing as a backburner, it has totally moved up in its importance, and that’s been really nice because—I had a CEO that I actually despised, but she gave me good advice once. She said always try to put yourself out of business or someone else will, and I think we did a really good job of really pivoting when necessary and not getting scared. Which very well we could have gotten frozen and then we didn’t, so it’s been a nice purposeful shift that’s been necessary.

Amanda: Yeah, if you all listened to the first episode, we started out as a sales agency, that was what we did. And I remember chatting with Alex and Darren, and I was like, well what about marketing? How do you all feel about marketing? And they’re like, we do sales. I’ll never forget that “we do sales and that’s all we’ll do” kind of mentality. It was really charming at the time, so we just quietly did inbound really really well. For clients who were coming in for sales, we would just bolster them with a really good inbound strategy and grow them organically on that front, until suddenly it’s like, hey, this is working really well. We’re tracking a lot of people because we do inbound so well now, and just exploring other ways to broaden our marketing umbrella.

We were doing more than just blogs, we were suddenly doing white papers, we were doing social styling, we broadened to lead gen. It was a very natural transition for us because we had always been kind of doing it. It just shifted more and more into it. It’s funny because I’m thrilled that Jake made the switch from sales to marketing when he did, because realistically we didn’t take a lot of time to do our own inbound marketing for a bit. I was kind of the army of one for a while, prior to you, Rob, where all we did was hustle really really hard for our clients. Suddenly, I stepped back and was like, well why aren’t we doing it for ourselves? The biggest thorn in our side was timing and bandwidth and finding enough moments in the day to focus on doing what we do for our clients, for ourselves. And Jake said, hey I might be interested in this marketing thing! And I’m glad that he was because we’ve just really taken off, like flowers…probably more like weeds. We’re more like weeds in how quickly we’ve grown our inbound. So, Jake, make of that what you will. We’re weeds.

Rob: Weeds is a purely subjective descriptor. Anything can be weeds, so we’re good weeds. We’re one seed that you want to grow. One thing I love that, Amanda, you say to me all the time, I appreciate this—it is very wise—that we never offer anything to our clients that we don’t test on ourselves. And I have been watching this happen specifically with our own inbound, our own content marketing. We’ve been trying out new techniques, new approaches, and new services, and I think it’s been going really well. Like you said, we just didn’t have the bandwidth to do a lot of inbound ourselves. It was just you and then it was you and me, but now Jake has jumped on and has been doing a ton of great content for the website.

Jake, I was wondering if you could tell me about your process there, how you come up with ideas, how do you get there. What’s your strategy when you’re coming to our own internal marketing and inbound approach?

Amanda: I’d also love to hear really quickly if I can—sorry, I love the story of Jake coming in as a salesperson into a marketing world. It’s such a different lens, and I was wary of it at first, I was like, you usually deal with the leads that come in after marketing has done all of that nurturing. And now suddenly you’re on the other side of it. I just love that and would love to hear about how sales brain applies to marketing.

Rob: Actually, let’s come back to process. I’m going to ask you about your strategy for our marketing, but I would love to hear about the sales to content transition. Tell us about your transition, Jake.

Jake: It’s interesting. When you’re doing sales, you’re having these conversations with people, and so often you’re thinking, I wish I had a piece of content to give them, or I wish I was just a little bit more informed about how to answer this question. And sales is really tough, it can be very energy draining, and in ways it’s interesting, it very much does feel like a performance and putting yourself out there, being subject to a lot of no’s. You’re really, more often than not, grabbing at anything you can find. There was a point where I just thought, I don’t love this, and I don’t want to do this anymore, and I’m going to find a way to take every skill I have learned and transfer it into something I do care a lot about. This kind of ties into the next question about how I came to doing it at RevenueZen. 

For me, it could have very easily been, oh I’ll dabble in the blog and maybe it’ll be important. But I had to tell myself, this is important, you need to prioritize this, and you will be naturally drawn to what you want to do. Just make it the first goal, and if it means some other things have to get shuffled around, so be it. That’s how this all happened. It’s a lot of questions and a lot of Googling (what I then learned) are very simple answers, but they’re not simple when you don’t know them. And I have no problems asking quote-unquote “dumb” or “obvious” questions because it’s not obvious sometimes. 

There’s so much in sales to take into marketing. There’s so many different types of buyers, there’s people that like visual things, there’s people that like talking on the phone…you have to have a little bit of something for everyone. I would rather be creating those types of things and figuring out how to get them to people than being the actual person who hands it to them and have to do that whole sale. I didn’t want to have to convince people to listen, I wanted to create something worth listening to…instead of having to beg for that opportunity. Because if there’s more good content, then it’s not as hard for the sales person, and I think that’s what I wish I had. That’s how it all came to be.

Rob: That’s a great answer. I hate to sound like Tyrion Lannister in the last episode of Game of Thrones, but I do think there is a relationship between sales and marketing because they’re both about content, they’re both about telling stories, Jake. Sales is about relationships, but it’s also about crafting a narrative, presenting a story to your potential customer and selling them on an idea. I think there are a lot of transferable skills. Jake, you are in my opinion, more of an outgoing and social person than I am. My sales ability is limited because I can talk, but only for a little bit before I get tired. And so making that my entire career is challenging, but I do think there are a lot of transferable skills. I totally agree with what you said about how you got here from there.

So, with that in mind, how are you approaching RevenueZen’s content marketing strategy? What is your driving purpose, I suppose?

Jake: It’s very rooted in storytelling. I think that’s my favorite part, is how to tell what we do without feature spitting, just painting pictures and illuminating for people: this is what your world could look like, and this is maybe what your world looks like without. Letting people take themselves on the journey, that’s my back of mind. Never be overtly promotional, really just paint these pictures for people and let them insert themselves into the story. Because the marketing I love, broadly, that’s what it does. It makes you think, how could I be without this? How could I envision a world without this logo? That’s what I really strive to do. 

And keeping it lighthearted and fun as much as possible. I think we are definitely well-versed experts in a lot of things. Being able to show on top of that, to me, what’s more important, is that we’re human. We will listen, we will make it work for anybody who needs anything RevenueZen offers. And just getting to be fun. 

When we started this, I wrote a bunch of social posts, and they were very stoic and pretty bland and very, here is a statement and here is a hashtag. I sent it to Amanda and Alex, and they were like, no, make this fun. Make it a little sassy and younger. And I was like, great, that’s what I wanted to hear! I got to do that, and that’s been fun. I’m a performer, and so I have a stage presence that’s, in its own way, a total alter ego. I have the RevenueZen and the Jame Doe Instagram on my phone. I love character play, I love inventing characters, and getting to bounce between the two is really something I enjoy. It’s something that is such a treat for me to do, that there are parts of it that don’t feel like work in ways, which is really lovely, and what I didn’t feel in sales. So it’s been a lovely shift. To me, it’s a form of absurdist character theatre, being the voice of a brand, and I love that part of it.

Rob: [laughs] I like the absurdist theatre idea of it. I’m so glad you said “having fun with it” because I love the content that we put out. One of my favorites from the past few weeks is you did a post on Enneagram types, which, I mean, we can go back and forth about how accurate or useful they are…I happen to be a believer, but I thought regardless of your approach, I thought it was a fun and interesting angle. What’s always been cool to me about RevenueZen, we’re small, we’re innovative, we’re scrappy, and we get to try to do different things. I love that you’re taking the opportunity to do something interesting, to approach the content from a unique angle. That’s one of our unique value propositions, the things that we can do that others can’t.

Getting back to the idea that we can finally walk the walk, we can finally talk the talk. We’ve been doing inbound content for our clients for a long time but finally have the bandwidth to do it ourselves…Amanda, what’s your experience been? I know this is a bigger question for Alex, but has it been easier, has it been different? Have we started to get good numbers for ourselves rather than just being able to show the numbers for our clients when it comes to inbound?

Amanda: Yeah, totally. It’s funny because we did inbound briefly at the beginning. We built ebooks, we built blogs, we optimized our site, and then we got completely swamped with marketing deals. So I’m always of the opinion that client work has to come first, so that’s why our focus shifted away when it did. But now over the last quarter that Jake’s been really focusing on building RevenueZen’s content strategy, we’ve really benefited from it. It’s the kind of thing I always tell our clients to budget for three months to see your returns on inbound. Inbound is not an overnight win. Inbound is something you do methodically, and it pays off tremendously over time. We have clients who we’ve parted ways with, and I still check in with them every few months or so, hey how’s it going, and they’re like, well our organic is through the roof. It’s because if you do it right, and you set it and forget it, it just continues doing well for you. Inbound is invaluable in my opinion, whenever it comes to a marketing strategy. It’s not an overnight win. We get a lot of people who want leads tomorrow, and I tell them, hey, inbound’s not right for you, but if you’re willing to dedicate some time and some effort and trust us to really build and execute a great strategy for you, you’re going to continue seeing qualified leads for a long time.

If you think about the way people organically make purchases these days, people don’t want to be sold to. Now more than ever, especially whenever everyone’s looking at this playgrid world and wondering, where am I going to spend my next dollar, they want to go out and reach the decision themselves. They want to do the research, find it organically, and make the decision from there. That’s where content is beautiful and has a lot of strength. On our side, we’ve seen, gosh…organic is definitely our leading traffic driver at this point, and when we doubled down on our inbound strategy, it was right around the time—it was mid-March, whenever COVID was really surging. I’m really glad we invested in it when we did because by focusing on it, we’re respecting the inboxes of people, we’re respecting the social spaces of people. We’re luring them to us by investing in us.

In terms of numbers, probably about half the time when we meet with a lead that has been sourced through organic, of those that are qualified (to be fair, we get a lot of unqualified leads—organic is a strategy that is not foolproof, you will get some unqualified leads)—but of the qualified leads that are coming in, we’re going on to win about 40% of those. It’s working, and it’s exactly what we want to be doing. About 20% of the people who come in through organic and Alex goes out and meets with, become a customer of ours because the journey just works for them. They find what they need. We foster trust through our content, through our brand, and they choose to work with us. It works out really well.

Jake: I think there’s also this subconscious thought that if they’re coming to us to look for a service, if they found us through organic searching, we clearly are doing it well. So they’re already invested in the idea because they’ve been on the journey that they want to produce for themselves. It was such an interesting time to start doubling down on our own marketing efforts, but right around mid-March we were telling all of our clients, now is the time to invest in content. It will pay off. And we could have very well told people that and not done anything on our own, but we didn’t. We wanted to make sure that statement was true, and we were right, it was true.

Rob: I actually had this exact conversation with a founder recently, and a lot of people are pulling back their marketing budgets, a lot of people are trying to hunker down for potentially a rough recovery or a long down period. Like you said, now is the time to be building those long term relationships, now is the time to be respecting your customers, treating them as if they know what they are doing, and they’re trying to make decisions. Over the long term, they’re trying to be careful just as you’re trying to be careful. Investing in content now is preparing your firm, your company for the long haul. 

Sometimes it can be a little hard to talk through that like Amanda said. Sometimes people want leads right this second, but if you educate correctly and tell them the value, you show them the value to something…. I used to work in advertising at an ad agency, and boy, they threw an awful lot of money at all kinds of flashy newspaper ads and magazine ads and TV spots and whatever, and that’s fun, that matters, but I love that we can point to the numbers, and I can say listen, this is what happens. This is the number of visits you can expect, this is the number of leads, etc. etc. etc. It’s not always perfect, but it is consistent, and it is demonstrable, it works. What’s great about this type of work is it’s not guesswork, it’s just work. If you put the hours in, you do the hard work, you do everything you’re supposed to do, it’ll pan out, but you’ve got to put in the effort.

Amanda: If I can throw out one more quick stat, because I’m actually creeping in our Google Analytics while we’re recording this podcast. In March, whenever we really started hammering hard on our SEO, organic made up just under half of our traffic. Since then, as of June, organic is over 70% of our traffic. And our organic numbers since we’ve been publishing—and I believe we’ve been doing four to six posts a month, so it’s not a big grand eight to twelve post-a-month push, it’s absolutely manageable for brands—mind you, that is alongside guest posting and backlinks and all of the other things that we’re doing behind the scenes. But on our personal blog, we’ve only been doing about four to six per month, and since March compared to June, we are up 544% in terms of organic traffic. That is phenomenal! Those are the kinds of results that we see for our clients whenever we really put our head down. To apply it to ourselves and see even better results, it’s just wonderful. It works, you guys. Inbound works! You just got to give it time.

Rob: That reminds me, obviously the strategy is broader and deeper than that. You don’t want to cast too wide of a net, but if you’re focusing on content, if you’re trying to build an organic audience, there are a lot of different angles you can approach from. For example, you could start a podcast where you interview your coworkers. Then use that to drive listens… But no, I’m serious! We are working on a number of different things, and I know we don’t want to give the game away, but I’m just curious, Jake and Amanda, is there anything you’re working on that’s cool and interesting, anything else we’re thinking about for the feature near or far? Anything you’d like to do?

Amanda: Wherever you are…?

Rob: Wherever you are! Anything you’d like to do for RevenueZen as we are building up this part of our marketing effort?

Jake: You know, we’ve really been helping a lot of, not only founders, but sales leaders or product leaders. We’ve been helping a lot of people find their own voices and find what makes them unique, and helping people gather the skills and the storytelling ability to be a thought leader in their space. So many people use that term a lot, and I think it’s in the tech vernacular a lot more, but it’s a really valuable concept. Because people don’t want to just purchase from a company; they want to purchase from a person, and they want to purchase from an idea, and they want to purchase from someone they trust. And to do those things, you have to put yourself out there. 

I do our own marketing, which I do like, but I still do some client work. I have a few clients that are sacred to me, getting to work with their founders, tell their stories and figure out how to communicate what they can do. It’s something that not a lot of people do. And the people that do put in the effort to tell their stories and share them and make them interesting—you have to make it interesting, I think that’s the general rule—but that’s been a really big focus of my client work that I think more people should do. I have no plans on stopping that. It’s how we’ve gotten a huge chunk of our own business, from just thought leadership content. It’s not meant to be forced or coerced, it’s just meant to be honest little anecdotes. People love that, people love a good story, and everybody has a story to tell. And to be relatable—I think that’s been a huge, like personal marketing for the masses, but for the person.

Amanda: Yeah, making things approachable. I always tell people, with this whole storytelling offering we have, it seems obvious. It seems like, why would you ever offer that as a service? And I try very hard not to roll my eyes when I get that question, because if you think about it, most founders, most people who are out there and have these fantastic ideas, they are very busy people. They are not the kind of people who have the time to sit down and think, oh gee, what makes me a thought leader? Oh gee, is this something worth sharing with the world? They need, like all of us, they almost need a springboard for their ideas. They need a space where they can talk through what they’re thinking. As a founder myself, I know that sometimes I’m too close to something to think about it objectively. I tell my whole family, I can’t edit myself. I write my content and share it with Jake or Rob or someone else on the—Alex and I edit each other all the time because you can’t—

Rob: Nobody can edit themselves.

Amanda: No one can edit themselves!

Rob: And if they say they can, they’re lying to themselves, and they’re lying to you. You’ve got to have someone else look at your work.

Amanda: Right! So it’s the same concept with the storytelling offering. It’s a very valuable form of marketing. It’s giving founders and sales leaders and people a space where they can talk through what they’re thinking. People like me and Jake, we can help them think through it in ways that they might not have seen. That’s a wonderful thing. And we’re trying to do it more for ourselves, as well. Unfortunately we suffer from the same problem of founders and partners being very busy and not making time for things like, let’s write down our thought leadership. So it’s a very relatable problem. If you’re listening to this and you haven’t done anything on social media in the last six months, reach out! It’s hard. We get it. Social is a finicky space, and regardless of where you’re trying to establish yourself, we’re happy to help you find your voice.

Rob: You know, listening to this, I feel we’re probably going to have to do a whole separate podcast on just social and social selling because it is related, but there’s an awful lot going on there, and it’s a big part of the work we do. It’s really interesting. What you said, Amanda, is absolutely correct. When we’re trying to make the pitch for what we do, I hear a number of different objections. One of the ones is sometimes, “Well, I can do this myself.” And I’m like, you could theoretically do this yourself, but will you? Do you want to? Will you actually? And most of the time, it doesn’t always work, but the truth is most of the time they won’t. If it were easy, everybody would do it, but it takes effort, right?

Jake: Yeah. I totally agree. It’s funny you say that. A few years ago I was in New York with my boyfriend, and I think we were at the MoMA or the Guggenheim, and there was just one big ol’ canvas, it was all just super perfect squares, and it looked so simple. And I said to him, “Oh my god, I could do that.” And he turned to me and said, “Well the point is that you didn’t.” And that’s the point! The point is that it seems easy, but if you don’t do it, then it doesn’t matter, you didn’t do it. It’s so easy to fall into that trap of just looking at someone and being like, oh I can spend ten minutes and do it. If you haven’t done it yet, then maybe you aren’t going to without a little help. And that is absolutely fine. It’s also a validation game in its own way, helping people realize their ideas are good and should be talked about. We get to probe them and ask those questions to get them to really give us the nitty gritty. Because something I find with a lot of clients that we help with storytelling, they want to tell every single aspect of everything they do and love, every single time. And that isn’t the way to approach it. And whether you turn to us for help or if you’re trying to do this on your own, make those stories about something super specific. Just think about when you Google something, if you’re looking up how to make sous vide short ribs in a curry broth. You don’t just go Google “meat recipe.” You’re looking for something—

Rob: That was a very specific example, Jake. Did you make that recently?

Jake: That was dinner last night. Yes, it is. I invested in a sous vide machine. I am of the bourgeoisie. And we have sous vides.

Rob: That sounds delicious.

Jake: But you look for something specific, and so when you’re reading someone’s story, you don’t want these blanket statements. You want something interesting and to the point. Otherwise, you don’t want to just add to the noise. It can go very well or it can go forgettable, which is worse.

Amanda: When can we expect to see your short ribs exhibit at the Guggenheim, hm?

Jake: Oh gosh, the point is, I did it, and you didn’t do it. [laughs]

Amanda: There you go!

Jake: Sous vides for everyone, RevenueZen branded on the side.

Amanda: Ooh, that’s a big swag investment right there.

Rob: Ooh, yeah, good swag. The other thing is, not to get all Smithian economics on you, but founders understand you don’t have one person at your company do everything, your entire process from start to finish, right? You’ve got the pin factory making different parts of the pin for a reason. Sure, you could be in charge of all of your content and your storytelling, but why not let the experts, why not let the storytellers do that? And that is a service that we offer because the founders are not experts at storytelling, they’re experts at founding or technology or leadership or any number of other things. That’s not a shortcoming. They are much busier than we are most of the time, insanely busy. Try getting them on the phone or to respond to an email anytime promptly. It’s great with RevenueZen because the people who get it, get it. We have some really terrific clients who are a delight to work with, and we have the freedom and the bandwidth to work with them, which is one of my favorite things about working here and not somewhere else, like an ad agency with a single monster client. That’s one of the things that I love about this company specifically.

Amanda: We’re a bit of a grab bag of clients. They’re kind of all over the place. [laughs] We love them so much though. I was talking with one of our partners the other day about the variety of people we work with. Not just in terms of character but in terms of verticals and industries. We’ve got people in services, we’ve got people in telehub, we’ve got people in genetic counseling, we’ve got people in basically every form of software you can think of at this point. I understand what all of them do?! I’m just frazzled sometimes, though, whenever I see a new thing. I’m like, ooh, this is something new, I’m never going to understand it, but let’s figure out how to market it. It’s very exciting as a marketer. Rob, whenever we were onboarding you, I was like, hey, just so you know, no two client will ever be the same, so you’re going to have to thrive on some organized chaos. Jake, I’m glad that you’re still managing clients in addition to doing our marketing just because I think there’s such a benefit in having that exposure across all these different spaces doing all these different things.

I think the one industry that we aren’t doing anything in right now is pets? We love dogs, we love cats. Some of are allergic to cats, but Jake has some cute cats, so we make exceptions. But yeah, bring us everything.

Jake: I would love someone to join in the pets world.

Rob: Yeah, it would be great to work in that industry. Well, we’re coming up on close to time. So much still that I could talk about, and there’s a lot that we didn’t dig into, but this was a really great, enlightening conversation. I love talking about marketing and content. Before we go, though, Jake: you mentioned previously that you’re a performer. Would you like to plug your performance? Tell us a little about it. You listeners are going to be subjected to a treat. There will be a little outro by Jake at the end of this. Tell us about your alter ego, as it were.

Jake: I’m always open to plugging my alter ego. I perform under Jame Doe. That’s J-A-M-E D-O-E. I write and perform pop music and my songs are about getting older and boys and being confused and being a little lost sometimes and just having fun. We just put out a music video actually that was made entirely on The Sims 4, which I am extremely proud of. I got to download, really get into the nitty gritty of deep, deep Sims world. I spent 45 minutes the other day watching a video called “I Built A Tiny House With 100 Sims” and just watched those Sims kind of go crazy for 45 minutes while I made some pom-poms out of yarn for my pom-pom wall. That’s what I’ve been up to as a performer. I will definitely send some music for you to play. You can find me on Spotify at Jame Doe or anywhere you listen to music.

Rob: Those links will also be in the show notes if you didn’t catch that. Any final thoughts, friends, before I let you go to get back to our labors?

Amanda: My favorite song by Jame Doe is “Criminal.” I would recommend everyone listen to it on repeat. And also follow Jake on Instagram. I think, I’m assuming that you put your costumes up there too?

Jake: Oh yeah, it’s all up there.

Amanda: This guy live is such a treat. Would recommend.

Jake: Lots of fabrics, lots of cloaks, lots of swirling around.

Amanda: Chiffon, lace, it’s just grand.

Jake: Just the right amount of chaos is my aesthetic.

Amanda: Mm-hm, that’s actually pretty good for RevenueZen, too. Just the right amount of chaos.

Rob: I love that. That can be our tagline for this episode: just the right amount of chaos. Well thank you so much Jake and Amanda. I thank all of you listeners out there. If you haven’t already, please if you will, like and subscribe, share this with your friends. Leave us a rating, or even better, a review on iTunes as people will see it. 

And until next time, this is Team Zen signing off.