Jake Finkelstein 8:38
Oh, geez, how much time do you have? There’s tons of lessons there. So for context, I started Method Savvy 14 years ago and change. So you know, it’s a long, long journey, they’re very proud of, you know, what we’re able to accomplish, and in particular, the team’s efforts and in doing so, you know, I think there’s a couple of key takeaways that I have. One is that it’s very different running a business that has scale versus a business that is getting to scale, then they’re very often not the same skill sets. And that it’s really important to be self aware enough to understand what you’re good at, versus what you need people around you from a business operations standpoint to be really good at. So the way I’m taking that forward into 10cubed is, is that I’m making sure that I bring on operator for the business much, much sooner than I did and Method Savvy. I think the second thing is, is that early on, we were positioned as a data driven marketing company, which at the time was still innovative and and kind of interesting now it’s just kind of par for the course. But after the first three or four years of the business, it started to not be as well differentiated and we didn’t move quickly enough to clarify our position. So ultimately, we ended up as a marketing partner for ambitious leaders, and we found that that worked very well, particularly the way that we articulated and I’ll kind of spare the Schpeel here. but it really resonated well, because it blended all of our strategic and data driven capabilities in a in a really focused way. I think the lesson that I’m taking for their retained cube is they constantly pressure test the position of market. Because that evolves over time, it evolves over time for for every business, and there’s no problem with that, but you need to be really attuned to how the market shifting so you can stay ahead of the curve instead of behind it. You mentioned, I’m sorry, go ahead, keep going. I was just gonna say the last thing that I’ll say is the importance of reinforcing culture consistently. And you know, all of the leadership books will tell you that, so like, I’m not breaking any new ground there. But really making sure that culture is the lens that we’re hiring through and firing through. And doing that in a, again, a scalable way. So it really permeates the culture is another important value that I’m going to bring forward here.
Jeremy Weisz 10:56
I was gonna ask you, as you mentioned, you would bring an operator sooner. And you do focus on things you’re good at, what do you feel you’re good at? And then I’m interested in what do you look for in an operator?
Jake Finkelstein 11:12
Yeah, so what I’m most passionate about is product development and the big relationships. So you know, I have the typical visionary problem is that I have way more ideas and I can actually execute. So I like to play in the dirt, a lot experiment, you know, have these customer development conversations, see what’s gonna stick and then inspire people to go build it. That’s a lot of fun for me, and really, where I want to spend the bulk of my time. Also enjoy, you know, the big relationships, I’m a natural salesperson. So you know, it kind of comes with the territory, I get a lot of energy from that to a desire to spend my time primarily in those two areas. Now, to your question about what I look for an operator, not to be pedantic, but certainly experience and in the role, and when I say operator, I’m really referring to you mentioned ELS earlier, you know, the kind of prototypical integrator to somebody that’s done it before, that has the experience that understands how to, particularly for this business, operate in a technology company, because it’s very different than a services business, in my experience, and somebody that has loads of patience, and I would argue, probably, if not, most importantly, pretty close to the top is understanding how to say no to me in a way that I’ll actually listen to, because I think like a lot of founders, you know, I can be pretty passionate sometimes. And there’s an art to saying no to somebody like me.
Jeremy Weisz 12:38
Yeah, I did a there’s a interview with Mark Winters, who co authored Rocket Fuel with Gino Wickman, I think they have a quiz somewhere that you can see, where are you on that spectrum of visionary or integrator? So probably I think it was they were saying it’s definitely more common for the founders to be more visionary than integrators.
Jake Finkelstein 13:02
Yeah. Yeah, I think it’s what, 5% of leaders are are integrators. So you’re not not an easy role to fill, but a very, very important one.
Jeremy Weisz 13:12
So Jake, what do you think you will do differently in 10cubed from what you did in methods savvy in the previous agency?
Jake Finkelstein 13:21
Yeah, you know, I mean, I think that some of the key lessons are not unique to us or myself, you know, there are definitely cases where, you know, I want to hire faster and fire faster, you know, in using making sure the core values of the lens for that decision, as I already mentioned, being sure to be clear eyed about bringing in the right type of operator at different stages of our growth. Because, you know, getting from here to there is not always what was going to be the easiest thing. I also believe that, particularly for this business, because we’re technology first, we need to be much more intentional about our roadmap, because it just takes such an investment to build the tools and technologies that we are and that I envisioned that we will, it’s gonna be very easy to make expensive mistakes unless we’re intentional. But without being too rigid. You know, I think that you know, when you’re primarily a services business, he can ebb and flow a little bit more, more easily than then we’re going to be able to here at 10cubed.
Jeremy Weisz 14:27
You mentioned pressure testing, positions and market and I know one of the, you know, with 10cubed, I know you you help a lot of different types of companies, specifically b2b software, b2b SaaS companies and manufacturing. Talk about what you are doing and what you will do to to continue to pressure tests, let’s say b2b SaaS, for instance.
Jake Finkelstein 14:54
Yeah. So I’m actually going around and having additional conversations right now, with marketing leaders from across a very wide range of b2b SaaS companies, not because I’m trying to sell them anything per se, but because I really want to listen to what their current pain points are and what they’re concerned about as they move ahead. The other kinds of conversations I’m having are actually with VC and private equity firms, I’m hearing some really interesting trends around where their portfolio companies are running into trouble. Particularly in the private equity side, I’m hearing a lot of issues around building scalable flywheels and doing it in a structured way, instead of trying to reinvent the wheel all the time. You know, there’s a lot of folks that painting with a broad brush, but there are too many marketing folks that will come in and try to do something really innovative when something a little bit more blocking and tackling is required first. And that’s not bad, like, you know, you got to put those pieces in place. So you can be highly creative, and, you know, highly innovative, but you got to make sure that there are in place first. So, you know, right now, I’m exploring those kinds of issues on the b2b SaaS side. You know, also, we’re seeing some interesting trends and the hypotheses we’re creating. And, you know, the ones that we’re testing in terms of our campaigns, there is some movement in the market right now around hesitance on on spending. So you know, requires better storytelling, more personalization, better data, to make decisions, they were making sure we’re investing dollars in the right place to get the return that we’re looking for.
Jeremy Weisz 16:36
How does your team differ? Jake, you know, you were saying, you know, the, there’s a lot of behind the scenes, and, you know, the clients honestly care how it works. I mean, like you said, it’s kind of like magic happening behind the scenes, I imagine, there’s a lot more technology in this particular company than there was in previous what kind of teams you need for that, that you didn’t need in the past?
Jake Finkelstein 17:02
So the engineering team is, is bigger and, and it’s going to be funded much more aggressively. That’s partially because we need to build things that are going to be scalable, it’s also because I want to experiment a lot more with technology than they had previously. The way that we’ve structured our account management and Client Services team is different, you know, we want to be much more white glove in the conversation, but much more hand off, hands off in the execution. So you know, our strategies are not necessarily bespoke, like they’re built on these plays that have structure to them. You know, they have standard operating procedures, because we know that they work, that doesn’t mean that we can’t be innovative on top of them, we want to always test the 20% at the top. But you know, we need to make sure that from a client strategy standpoint, that, you know, we’re not trying to be bespoke, in terms of how we’re approaching these things. And it’s just kind of a little bit of a different structure than we’ve had before. There’s also many things that we don’t do here, which is different, you know, it particularly at Method Savvy, and we were positioned as a integrated marketing agency and consultancy, which means we had lots of different skills, you know, 10cubed, we’re much narrower, we’re focused on eight practice areas, because we believe that these practice areas are going to allow us to drive revenue, lower cost and increase the speed to go to market.
Jeremy Weisz 18:26
Talk about the eight practice areas for a second.
Jake Finkelstein 18:29
Yeah, so it’s brand strategy, campaign strategy, content marketing, digital advertising, email marketing, lead generation, search engine optimization, and social media marketing. I think that’s eight, if I remember correctly. And the reason why we focus specifically in those is we’re doing a lot of Hub and Spoke work. So we’re making sure that there’s clarity of position and market where the real value prop is who we’re talking to, and you know, what the pain points are? And, you know, the all the broad why questions, what to address and those that we have a central message map, you know, the central set of messaging and content that’s going to support that. And then we’re putting it out in integrated digital channels. Why? Because that’s where the audience lives. So a lot of the tools and campaigns that we’ve structured is really about making sure you know, we’re telling these compelling stories in the right places, but we’re doing it in an optimally efficient and, you know, test driven manner.
Jeremy Weisz 19:27
How do you decide sometimes is just as important decide what not to do, right? How did you decide what things you are not going to do as a company?
Jake Finkelstein 19:38
Anything that has enough complexity that are that we cannot build a standard operating procedure around it? So a good example of that is website design. So we have capabilities around landing page creation, but I’ve done enough web design in my career, to know that like unless you’re truly dealing with pure templates, which you can do, but most The kind of kinds of clients we work with would not be real satisfied with, you get into some pretty decent customization because that’s where the value is, I’m not interested in going through that that level of customization. There’s also a lot of work on the brand side, even though we do brand strategy, we do not do branding. And that is a very important difference. The reason why we have brand strategy at all is is that sometimes when you’re dealing with lead generation, or demand generation, the actual problem isn’t what you’re doing. It’s the story that you’re telling. Or you don’t actually know why you’re different, and why you’re valuable. So what we have to make sure that everything we’re doing is anchored there. So again, we’re trying to be very intentional about making sure that we’re doing the things that can build the flywheel instead of doing like the highly bespoke work because that’s where all the complexity comes in.
Jeremy Weisz 20:50
Yeah, branding is tough, People who do it’s, it’s difficult. It’s very subjective, also.
Jake Finkelstein 20:59
Yeah, I mean, if you’re doing it the right way, you know, it is defensible, because you’re doing a lot of work that is kind of research based. So again, Method Savvy did a lot of brand branding and brand identity work. So you know, I have some very good methodologies and approaches to that. But it takes a lot of human interaction and elbow grease. And when you’re dealing with that type of complexity, you’re dealing with a very different cost structure and a very different value proposition than what we have. However, if I have a client come to me with that I had some very good partners that I can direct them to. So you know, we’re certainly not leaving them in the lurch. But there are specialists and you know, that areas, while some others that you know, are going to be better suited for those types of problems that us, let’s get a little deeper on.
Jeremy Weisz 21:43
You know, what you do, and we mentioned the b2b software, I know you have helped b2b SaaS companies in in the tax base. What did they come to you with? What are some of the challenges issues and what you do with them?
Jake Finkelstein 21:55
Yeah, so you know, every company that comes to us once more sales and revenue. The proverbial question is how to grow. And you know, we’re, we’re no different in tackling those problems. And you know, other folks in our space, when it comes to that particular example, historically, the branded had a lot of success with digital advertising, and in particular, paid search and paid social, but it has become a very expensive space, I don’t know how familiar you are with digital advertising in general, but you know, is essentially an arbitrage game. And you know, when you have more dollars pour into these bigger channels, they just get more and more expensive, because that’s what’s best for the platform and not what’s best for the advertiser. So there’s an increasing amount of pressure to look at alternative avenues, both in terms of testing to learn on the arbitrage side. So like other digital advertising channels that may not have been explored as well or certainly aren’t as competitive, but have good audience profiles? And how can you lean more on owned and earned channels? Like how can you really create differentiated positions with content? And how can you be smarter about leveraging social media and search engine optimization and inbound marketing, you know, in ways that are going to lower the cost per lead or cost per transaction? So without getting into nitty gritty detail, some of the tools and resources that we’re using in order to do that that’s really been kind of the focus of that particular program, but also, you know, a number of programs like it.
Jeremy Weisz 23:32
And then how does it work? Behind the scenes? You were mentioning code concierge, is it your team is actually helping them use the platform, or, or and then or your team is using the platform or a combination?
Jake Finkelstein 23:49
Yeah, so our team right now is using the platform. And that’s very intentional. The initial plan with this particular product was to make it a user focused software as a service platform. And, you know, what we heard back is, is that the users, which are typically the marketing managers, and the organizations were already busy enough, and didn’t want to learn another tool to us at this point. So what the way that we treat our account managers is really as client strategists so they sit with them, they understand the pain points, the needs, they have training and skill set around, you know, marketing and digital marketing in general. And you know, how you can approach some of these problems, then we’ll come back and with our, you know, internal managers will say, okay, what are the right tools, you know, whether the right plays and the playbook that we’re going to use for this, to get approval on it, and then we’ll go and we’ll run them. So from a client experience standpoint, it’s pretty easy. You know, we have one 30 to 45 minute meeting with the client per week. They get consistent reporting and things go well, as long as we’re doing our job correctly. In the longer run in the longer term product roadmap, we do have products They’re going to be user facing in the end, we’re already starting to develop those. But in terms of this first product, that that’s how it’s structured.
Jeremy Weisz 25:06
I’d love to hear your thoughts on team in onboarding team members, right? I mean, they’re so important. They’re talking back and forth to your clients are on regular calls their clients, they’re maybe doing strategy, they may actually be doing strategy and doing some of the, you know, behind the scenes work. What do you do when you’re onboarding new team members? What’s that process look like?
Jake Finkelstein 25:31
A great question. And I’ll be the first to admit that I haven’t always been great at this over the years. So there’s a lot of hard learned lessons. And if what they do, right, and you know what, what to stay away from there, you know, at 10cubed, we do a couple of things. So first, is we make sure that for the first two weeks, there’s no client interaction at all. So if they happen to be client facing, we want to make sure that they’re focused on internal processes and procedures, that they’re learning all the plays in the playbook. If they’re less technical, how the more technical items go, they’re more technical, how to deal with people, you know, all this kind of fun things, then we’ll kind of slowly bring them into client conversations. So we’ll have them, you know, be involved in some of the weekly meetings just to hear the context of the conversations and the kind of pain points or questions that’ll typically come up. So even if they have a non client facing role, I think that’s important to have that type of exposure, and part of our kind of ongoing processes and make sure that like they can continue from time to time that that kind of exposure, just this stay close to the client. The other thing that we do is focus a lot on our core values. So we spend a lot of time talking about, you know, why we’re here, what we’re doing, why we’re actually doing it. And, you know, the entire onboarding process takes about a month. And then at that point, you know, they can kind of be off to the races and actually doing the work.
Jeremy Weisz 26:56
What are you mentioned, there have been learnings, mistakes, wherever you want to call them? Yeah. What’s an example of one of those that you definitely afterwards put a better process in place?
Jake Finkelstein 27:11
So a number of years ago, and, and this is nobody’s in particular, all it was, was a blind spot, you know, as typically happens in many growing organizations, you hire when you have pain, right? Like you have needs, particularly in a services business, like you don’t want to over staff because that get you into the cashflow trouble, and you might have to do layoffs. And that’s terrible. So your way, basically, as long as you think you can, and you know, by the time you open a position, it takes two to three months to hire somebody and get somebody on boarded at all. So, you know, in this particular instance, that I’m thinking about, we hired somebody and started bringing them into client meetings, that’s their second day. And they had no idea what was going on. Like they felt a lot of pressure to participate, and ultimately, the individual and thinking of resigned on day four, we very quickly learned from that. And we’re like, you know, we cannot throw people into these roles, even even if the intent is just to have them. Listen, it’s uncomfortable. Now, one of the other interesting things that we learned coming out of that is, is that we swung the pendulum too far the other way. We said, Okay, you’re not going to talk to anybody for your first month. Yeah, team members don’t want to get involved, like I want to start doing work, I want to talk to clients. So we had to find that kind of nice, happy medium where, you know, we were creating space for people to feel comfortable in their roles, but also, you know, making sure that I had MIDI, you know, good work that they could dive into.
Jeremy Weisz 28:44
Yeah, and people are probably very, you know, some, some, you know, you could have thrown one person in after four days, and then maybe they’d be fine. And some people not, but I’d like to hear your thoughts. And I’ve heard varying opinions in the agency world on this topic of, you know, hiring local versus virtual. And I know that you from the previous company had a lot of local staff in North Carolina. So what are your thoughts on hiring local versus virtual?
Jake Finkelstein 29:17
Yeah, no, that’s a great question. And I think it’s very contextual to the kind of work and the kind of culture that you want to run. So I am personally a believer that there is a huge amount of value in having people in the same room, particularly when you’re doing any type of creative work. And when I use the term creative, I don’t mean design. I mean, like creative problem solving. There are plenty of ways to approximate brainstorming or workshop sessions virtually and none of them are great. They’re perfectly fine but there’s not they’re not great because you don’t get the same energy. At Universal does intelligence which was my first agency and then methods happy was really second one. Any time time that we had something meaty and creative oriented, I got everybody into the same room, even if they were, you know, remotely located, I want to fly them in. Because I just thought it was that important. Thank you, it’s a little bit different because we’re much more technology and engineering lead, I think that we can, it’s not that we’re not doing creative work. But I think the type of creative work is different enough that we can support much more fully Remote Staff in a way that that’s going to be productive. I’m personally not a big work from home person. So I like to have some local folks that I can see, you know, interact with, but I think on the net net, there’s certain kinds of work that you just really have the best outcomes if if you can do it in person.
Jeremy Weisz 30:46
How did you get into being an agency owner in the first place?
Jake Finkelstein 30:52
Oh, yeah, that’s a long and windy road. So you know, I’m a serial entrepreneur, I started my first company as a teenager that a couple others before, you know, any ones that actually made me real money.
Jeremy Weisz 31:04
What was the company?
Jake Finkelstein 31:05
It was called 42 records. So as a record label, I think I was 16 when I incorporated back in the 90s, when people went to record stores and and still bought records.
Jeremy Weisz 31:19
What was the genre?
Jake Finkelstein 31:21
Punk rock, hardcore, alternative.
Jeremy Weisz 31:23
So who is your favorite bands, in general, are from the label?
Jake Finkelstein 31:28
Oh, geez. Replacements, Nirvana, No Effects. I mean, there’s a whole bunch of them. I could go on for quite a while. But yeah, so I actually cut my teeth, as you mentioned in the music business. So, you know, we’ve had, you know, an artist management company and a record label and then decided that, you know, I was really passionate about music and wanted to work in and professionally took a role with Megaforce records, which discovered Metallica, Anthrax kings X, and they had a jam band label as well, that disco biscuits, similar bands. And then I left there in 9798, and took a job with Sony music, entertainment. So one of the big major labels, working with Columbia, epic and aware of all these great labels. And then I got kind of sick of the corporate landscape. It wasn’t really where I was aligned, and decided that I knew better than everybody else. And my co founder agreed, and we decided to start a music marketing company called the Universal Buzz Intelligence. And it very quickly grew into television, film and video games. And then ultimately, after the first couple of years, we had larger brands coming to us because of the entertainment relationships that we had. So think folks like Pepsi, Diageo, and Nike, and like kind of those kinds of guys. And that’s how I ended up in the agency business. Like I really wanted to work with artists, and then suddenly the people paying the bills were the big brands. And then I was like, Oh, I like this, this is fine. And then you can continue with that trend over the next 20 years or so.
Jeremy Weisz 33:05
What was the transition from that agency to the next one?
Jake Finkelstein 33:10
Yeah, so Universal Buzz got bought by a company, actually, at Chapel Hill, I think it was in 2003, or 2004, the company called Zoom Culture, it’s kind of YouTube before YouTube. And then, after about 18 months or so we were the only part of the business making money. So we ended up buying the business back. And I was bouncing around a lot. So I had a place in New York City at a place down here. So my then wife was going to school down here and getting her Master’s. But I was also traveling like all over the country. So I was living out of a suitcase like two, three weeks a month. And I decided after a number of years that I just didn’t want to do that anymore. So I found a way to kind of exit University was intelligence. And then I actually got probably the sickest I’ve ever been in my entire life. Like I just got the worst flu was like my body just decided like, Okay, after the sprint, you’re done. And I spent two weeks rolling around with nothing but this idea for methods heavy in my head. And afterwards, I was like, Okay, I guess I have this idea. It’s time to move on and go do it and went through and did the customer development thing that I’ve done for every business.
Jeremy Weisz 34:18
What was the idea? The initial idea behind Method Savvy?
Jake Finkelstein 34:22
Yeah. So the main point that I had heard and Universal Buzz, particularly towards the end is is that and remember, this is kind of the 2007 2008 market crash is that everybody’s budgets was being cut. Everybody’s team was being cut in half, and they needed more accountability and transparency into their marketing and advertising investments. And you know, to be blunt, as much fun as it is to get paid a couple million dollars by Virgin to produce a concert tour. When I really pressure test myself. What I was giving back to them was pretty pictures and good press. I didn’t really understand how those investments were helping them achieve their vision, helping them move their business Bored. And that was the core idea, I had no idea how to do it. I had lots of thinking about ways to explore it. But I wanted to create a business that made allowed marketing to have a seat at the sea level table, because you could talk about the p&l, you could talk about the balance sheet, you could really prove the meaning of love the investments and work.
Jeremy Weisz 35:22
What did you learn Jake about the acquisition process?
Jake Finkelstein 35:27
In terms of just like going through the acquisition?
Jeremy Weisz 35:30
Yeah, exactly.
Jake Finkelstein 35:33
Well, a couple things learned a lot about valuations and how they work, particularly the first time that was a interesting experience, learned a lot about equity structure, learned the art of the dance around these conversations that they’re particularly when you’re dealing with unsolicited, you know, strategic acquires. There can sometimes be conversation, where they’re presented as a little bit more serious than it actually is. And you know, when you’re naive in the process, you can get excited before you’re actually need to be excited, learned a lot about how to have conversations with existing investors as well, and making sure that their needs and interests and wants are protected, because they are, you know, at least partial owners in the business. And you got to take care of all the stakeholders, you know, regardless of what, you know, one, or maybe a couple stakeholders actually want, say, you know, it’s a complicated but enjoyable process, I think, you know, for me, at least was a little hard to learn on the fly, because I didn’t have a lot of training in it. But, you know, ended up on the other side pretty well.
Jeremy Weisz 36:44
You know, we talked about b2b SaaS, a little bit, I want to talk about manufacturing for a second. And you worked with a package manufacturer. What were what were they coming to you for? And what did you do with them?
Jake Finkelstein 37:03
Yeah, so that was an interesting assignment and kind of take a step back for a second, what I really love about manufacturing in general is, is that it tends to be a laggard industry. So you can go in and do a lot of really great meaningful work very quickly, not not because they’re dumb, because, you know, they haven’t paid attention to this stuff. But it’s because the where the industry is, you can differentiate very quickly, just by putting into place, you know, some of these advanced tools and campaign structures. So that’s exactly what we did with the packaging clients, the initial pain point was around their, their e commerce structure. So they had moved into b2b e commerce, which is a fast growing segment of the industry, and they had never done it before, you know, the company had been around for for decades, and they had their, you know, standard operating procedures that involved a lot of people that, you know, there’s opportunity for efficiency around, and we were able to work with them to understand the efficiency of their process, you know, how to better you know, position themselves on the website, how to really do cross sell upsell programs in a meaningful way. Yeah, because a lot of, you know, they had a smaller group of customers that were driving a significant amount of their revenue, but there was still kind of under selling to them. And then ultimately, we put into place and Account Based Marketing Program that supported that as well. So you know, it’s kind of a fun adventure for us to go through and understand, you know, how their systems were structured, and the ways in which, you know, we could apply, you know, some of these more advanced techniques to help them achieve their goals in a meaningful way.
Jeremy Weisz 38:36
I love what you said there jiggle laggard industries that, like you said it, there’s, sometimes it’s just maybe more regulated. And there’s a variety of reasons why that could be. And I find there’s a lot of opportunities in that. I mean, I’ve recently went through some real estate stuff, and it’s like, they’re not even using Docusign. I mean, it’s insane. And there’s probably reasons why, because of the regulations, but there’s also a lot of opportunity there. What are some of the other industries you think of is like, they’re kind of lagging behind a little bit. You mentioned manufacturing, what are some other ones that?
Jake Finkelstein 39:17
Yeah, I mean, there’s a number of them. I mean, you know, on the more regulated side, you know, pharmaceutical is, you know, a typical example, I’m really interested in the agricultural space. I personally have some experience there. Thank you has not done a lot of work in that space as of yet. But it’s another industry that much like manufacturing, has done really well from a sales team standpoint, but hasn’t built broad technological, digital marketing infrastructure. So it’s an opportunity for those brands that are making those investments to really change the game within the industry. So I think that’s an interesting one. I think equipment is another very interesting industry, kind of quasi manufacturing, but I’m thinking more like fleet management, you know, type of industries, because again, like any any industry, that tends to be more sales lead than marketing lead tends to be laggards in my experience. So when you can go in and say, you know, marketing is sales at scale. So if you can put these kind of structural pieces in place, it makes your sales, you know, 10x performance, and you can just put the blocking and tackling in place in order to do that, then, you know, you create huge win wins for your clients, and, you know, across the industry.
Jeremy Weisz 40:35
I’m Jake, I have one last question. Before I ask it, I just want to point people, they can check out 10cubed.co to learn more about what their company is doing. And you can poke around and see everything from the resources to the platform. My last question, Jake, is about, you know, software and resources. What are some of the, as an agency owner, technology owner, what are some of the software you like to use and or resources?
Jake Finkelstein 41:12
Yeah, I’m a huge productivity tool nerd. And so like anything I can do to automate anything or get reorganize, I just love. So my typical tech stack is HubSpot. I’m a big fan of that platform, particularly those sales and marketing cloud side. I love things. I’m a Mac guy. So it’s a good kind of getting things done oriented tool. I’m a big Notion guy as well, for note taking. Notion can be pretty complex, if you want it to be because it’s very customizable, which I enjoy. You can also use it in a pretty, you know, turnkey, easy way if you prefer to. And then there’s a bunch of tools that actually, you know, we are I have built kind of behind the scenes that allow us to do you know, content marketing, or content creation, content coloring, big SEO nerd as well. So some good keyword research and kind of topical research, but none of those are public outside the organization yet.
Jeremy Weisz 42:16
What about from a productivity tool standpoint? What do you use other apps or on your phone or your computer?
Jake Finkelstein 42:24
Yes, the things in Notion are the two that I use the most. So you will use a Pomodoro timer. We do time tracking because we’re billing back to clients. But I just like to know where we’re spending time myself included. So I use Harvest for that. Because I think it’s a pretty easy way to to track time without getting into the nitty gritty, but those tend to be the big ones. Oh, I guess the other one is have a Google workspace person. So all the Google Apps there make make my day quite a bit easier.
Jeremy Weisz 43:13
Jake, I want to be the first one to thank you. Thanks for sharing your journey. It’s, it’s always an crazy winding road for people. I appreciate it. So people can check out more at 10cubed.co and more episodes of the podcast. Thanks, everyone.
Outro 43:15
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