Austin Holmes 12:26
Gosh, I didn’t bring a whole lot outside of my military background and kind of that systems side of it. I learned alongside I, I remember one of my first business events that I ever went to. I was sitting I didn’t do this on accident, or I did this on accident. His book is sitting right next to me, and I was sitting across the table from this lovely couple, and the event leader was talking about him. I’m like, Oh, that’s awesome that you guys are doing well. And ended up, years later, I’m watching a YouTube video, and Heather’s like, oh, yeah, we were at the event with them. I’m like, eight clicks in my head of who they were, and that was Alex and Layla, which was an interesting life cycle to see their success. And it’s awesome to see what they’re doing now. But I didn’t have any idea when I was coming in about real entrepreneurship. I’d learned what I had in college in my business management degree, and so I had a good understanding of, like, financial statements and the super basic stuff. But so much of what I’ve learned is from since then, of digging in, reading books, podcasts, going to events, finding mentorship like currently, we’re working with Dave Meltzer on the mentorship front, and he’s helped us a tremendous amount with sales. So the other thing I would say is the mindset like the community that I was in, that I was involved with, DOD, is a pretty high level community in the military, and the mindset of winning and of being a champion, of definitely never giving up, making sure that You work so hard that you never get it wrong, because in that community, like we’re dealing with explosives, so if you get it wrong, either you or somebody else can easily die…. And so that level of proficiency and execution is another thing that I did bring to the business.
Chad Franzen 14:34
Very nice. So you you work with your wife, and you guys also have young children. How’s, how’s all of that? How do you kind of make all that happen and work?
Austin Holmes 14:46
That is a great question. We have two kids, one just turned two, one just turned one, and a third, one that is ready to come out any day. Been waiting for about three weeks saying, Alright, where’s this kid at? Because both the other ones were fairly early at 38 and 37 weeks, and I think we’re on week 40 right now. So it’s, it’s a waiting game. It’s, it’s a challenge. The idea of we’re. Life Balance is something that I don’t really agree with. I think you’re either focusing on one thing or the other, and so you have to be good with your time, and you have to make sure that you’re taking the intentional time for each part of your life, and none of it’s ever going to be in balance, but being intentional and eliminating the things that don’t need to be there is a powerful thing to make sure that you’re getting done what has to get done. And that’s what it comes down to at the end of the day, is doing what’s required. And we very much believe in that.
Chad Franzen 15:55
And you, I think you guys have kind of a unique lifestyle. Is that, right, like you live off the land or something.
Austin Holmes 16:00
So we have a property and a house. The property is 22 acres, and, you know, we have chickens, and that’s about it right now. We used to have a little bit more. And with building our now second business with the software, which is a PR software, a lot less of my time is available, so we’ve trimmed back a little bit. Still have a garden and all that. But we’re, we’re in the health and wellness space with our brands, for the most part, in consumer packaged goods, food, beverage, beauty and fashion. That’s primarily our avatar, and that’s something we both believed in before we ever started in that space. In the military, you’re around guys that are not obsessed about their bodies, but are working very hard to perform at the highest level…. That’s really what it is. And so we know that that’s a vital part of entrepreneurship as well, of playing at the highest level, is just getting your self right and making sure that, I know I just said the contrary, but making sure yourself internally is balanced.
Chad Franzen 17:12
yeah, you mentioned the your second business, Signal Raptor. I think that’s what you were referring to. Tell me a little bit about that and how it came about.
Austin Holmes 17:19
So the idea started sometime shortly before November, and we started development with our first two developers in November, and that was an whole adventure. About two years ago, I had spent six months trying to learn how to code, figured out I was terrible at it, and I had a different idea, which was our second software play at a minimum, because press demand was definitely still in play at that time, but press man just kind of phased out. It’s it’s just not even a concept anymore. Now that AI exists, it would have been great five years ago, but Heather had worked with a partner on that right before meeting me, and we actually ended up buying out that partner and running the software for a short time and then kind of shut it down anyway. I learned code, and so we had this idea, what can we do to make PR more accessible? Because one of the most common things that we hear on sales calls is PR is expensive because you’re paying for relationship time and experience, and so that’s an expensive proposition in the traditional agency model. And Heather’s goal for a long time has been to make PR more accessible. So we looked at how we can do that, and with AI, with some of the tech advances that we’ve seen in the past four years, it’s now much more practical to make that happen, and we wouldn’t be able to do what we’re doing there without the agency background, either. So having the coding background, having the agency background, having previous software experience slightly, and we started working on that in November, and we’re moving along. We’re up to 20 users at this point,… kind of a closed beta testing phase, trying to get stuff sorted and right and all the pieces in place, which doing it for the second time. You almost tell yourself, okay, it wasn’t this hard before, right? But now it’s just a lot to really start a new entity.
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Chad Franzen 19:45
Do you do you utilize something called the compare framework?
Austin Holmes 19:50
So, yeah, the compare framework is something that we came up with, and I’m writing out in my book now 90 day fame, that hopefully it’s about halfway done right now. So finding time to write during all this is also interesting. The compare framework is really every option you have in communications as a business. And it’s not that you have to do every single thing on the list, but you have to do some of them, and some people focus on one. Like there’s businesses that are completely successful and the only thing that they do is ads, and then there’s other businesses where they are purely built on the content they produce. Now Mr. Beast has moved beyond this, but Mr. Beast has built an empire because of creating content. And so you can take so many of these things and create massive businesses out of them, and it’s just, how do you communicate? And that’s to anybody, whether it’s your customers, your bankers, every piece of that we we have put into this framework, and so I already mentioned the first one of content, then you have outbound a large part of how we do our sales process is outbound communications, both on social and in email, media is the next one, which is what we specialize in. Like that is one of the most powerful ways for you to communicate your message. And it’s it’s definitely changed in the past four years, even longer, if you look back and you see how papers started to phase out, and they’re not gone, just like radio isn’t gone. I don’t think media even goes away over time, and maybe the eight track there’s definitely use cases, but it’s just shifted. There’s still media out there, and it’s still a great way to get third party validation of your message. The next one’s platforms. This both talks to social platforms and owned digital platforms, but it also talks to What are you talking about? We’re having the conventions politically here soon, and they have formed their platforms. They’re saying,… This is what we stand for. You have to do that as a brand, as an individual, and say, Hey, this is what I’m standing for. This is what I talk about. This is who I am really. Next one is advertising. You know, already mentioned this one. It’s, it’s a great business methodology to communicate. And you know, obviously you need to have that positive return, but you still get to reach a lot of people. It’s very impressive to me what Ty did a couple of years ago of being more recognizable than Obama for a short period of time, just because he had so many ads running, which is insane to me. The The next one is relationships. And this ties in, again, to a previous discussion of mentorship and getting out there and meeting people like we’ve absolutely gotten more business on the agency side from relationships than we have anything else, whether that’s referrals or just going out there being part of a community, and the last one is engagement, engaging in that community and building relationships with the people. When you have a relationship with somebody versus just somebody you’re getting an ad from, often, that relationship will make a huge difference in a buying decision. And the last one is engagement, getting out there, engaging in your community, engaging in the digital space. There’s so many opportunities, and I think this is where people fall short. Is not getting out there, not going to where people are at so that’s the conveyor framework. Okay,
Chad Franzen 23:55
very nice. How did you, how did you come up with that? Did you, did it kind of come together over time? Or was it like an aha moment?
Austin Holmes 24:02
It was pretty intentional work. We had been searching for our own platform, so to speak, for a long time, and Heather is very focused in on the public relations side, and she loves that, and she loves working with the media. And I’m looking at it as almost an outsider, if you want to call it that, and saying, Hey, how do we communicate? How it comes down to building a brand too,… like that’s that’s kind of the popular terminology for it right now. But how you build a brand as you communicate, and you can communicate in a ton of different ways. Like Red Bull built their brand through advertising. They spent 250 or three 50 million on that first campaign, and then were synonymous. And then they also, you know, added some vodka to it, and it worked out well in that regard. But there’s so many different ways to build a brand, and we wanted to set it down as far as, hey, this is everything that we can think of, that you can do, and you don’t need to do all of it. But here’s your options. And I think working from a framework in any area of life is so helpful. It’s. Making that mental shortcut, it’s saying, Okay, what are our next steps? There are so many business frameworks on how to structure your business, but there’s not a whole lot about what to do next. So when we’re trying to advise clients, let’s look at the framework.
Chad Franzen 25:33
How important is being able to tell a story when it comes to building a brand,
Austin Holmes 25:38
the first thing it is the most vital if, if you don’t have a story, there’s nothing to relate to. Fundamentally, as humans, we relate to stories, and I’m sure there’s a psychologist out there to explain why that is. But we relate to stories, and so if you don’t develop your story, everybody has a story to tell, and you have to take the time to develop that story, get your messaging in place before you can do any of the rest of it. It’s vital.
Chad Franzen 26:11
Yeah. So what do you mean? What do you mean by messaging when it comes to telling your story?
Austin Holmes 26:15
Okay, good example for messaging is storybrand, another great company out there. They take you through a process. And it’s saying this from a business perspective, there’s messaging from an individual level as well, but from a brand perspective, you know, you’re going to want to start with who you’re aiming to serve that can be developed if you don’t even have that done in your business yet. You can go out and talk to 100 people,… and you’re going to find out what people want and what their pain points are. And you can do that in any industry, and probably you’re going to get some clients out of that, while you’re going along say, hey, I’ll help you with that. And that was actually part of another framework that we had been taught was going out and talking to 100 people. But once you have that information, or if you have the personal pain point, like the software is partially from my pain point of managing an agency with software, we have, like, 15 different softwares and like, Why? Why isn’t there one software to roll them all? And so, at least from a brand communications standpoint, that’s what Raptor like features and benefits is, is, how do you manage your brand’s communications? But back to messaging, storybrand starts with, you know, who are you serving? What do they need? What’s the want? And then, okay, how are we going to help them? What’s the plan? And I think you can go through story, brands framework for free. I could be wrong on that. We did it a lot, while ago for PFG. And so it’s a powerful place to start. If you need to figure out what your messaging is, there’s also tons of professionals out there, and this is a different side of the public relations world that help you develop that messaging. They look at your backstory, they look at what you’re good at, they look at what your business is doing, and they help you develop that messaging. This is definitely more common when it’s a an established business that’s trying to re reinvent themselves and reach a new audience, or just, you know, stay current with the times.
Chad Franzen 28:21
Does a signal raptor kind of work with clients? You know, you set up the media appearances, but then do you kind of help them, like, get prepared or train them for the media appearances as well?
Austin Holmes 28:33
Yeah. So it’s still early in the project, but we have a fair amount of content at this point that allows or that trains people on that media training, the simple stuff of not wearing a green tie to an interview, because it’s probably not going to show up real well…. And Heather handles a lot of that. So I I don’t even know as many of the details there, but I do know we have that available.
Chad Franzen 29:02
I have one more question for you. But first, just tell me how people can find out more about both signal raptor and publicity for good
Austin Holmes 29:10
cool. The websites are what they say, signalraptor.com, and publicity for good.com. You can find me, A Austin Holmes on a lot of the social media platforms. LinkedIn is my most active because I do a lot of my hiring stuff through there, which is something we didn’t really touch on, but actually something I really love in the business, it’s about building relationships too. So but those are the main places to find us.
Chad Franzen 29:35
Okay, great. Hey. Last question, if somebody came to you, maybe a recent college graduate or something, and said they have this great idea for their own business and they’re going to start it, what advice could you give them for setting a vision for their business that they probably didn’t learn in business school or wouldn’t have learned unless they walked in your shoes?
Austin Holmes 29:57
One part of it that I could tell them is learn to code, or at least learn what it means to be in the software front. I, I am definitely a believer in the opportunity vehicle, uh, theory of if you’re in the wrong boat. Um. Yeah, it doesn’t matter. So pick the right boat. Software is one of the better ones, unless you’re a finance guy, and then your path is set for you. The other thing is mentorship. That’s made the biggest difference for for me, and it’s free. Now there’s tons of guys and girls online. Heather has her repertoire of people she follows, and I have mine, and that is so powerful, and you can get it in short, little snippets. Now you can spend 10 minutes a day and learn half of what’s going on in the world. So mentorship and making sure that you’re looking forward at what technology is doing.
Chad Franzen 30:55
Okay, awesome. Hey, Austin, it’s been great to talk to you. Thank you so much for your time and all of your insights…. Really appreciate it
Austin Holmes 31:03
absolutely. This is great being on
Chad Franzen 31:05
So long everybody.
Outro 31:07
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