Exponential Growth Through Digital Marketing with Creighton Wong

In this bonus episode, host Eric Dickmann interviews Creighton Wong. Creighton is the Founder of Exponential Clients, a digital marketing firm built on the belief that massively growing a business always starts with deep research and gathering the very best data.
 
He is a curious world traveler, an adventurous foodie, and a global nomad who met his beautiful wife while working in Da Nang, Vietnam.
 
Creighton is a former competitive Para-Triathlete who, while missing a right leg and several digits on his hands, has finished the New York City Triathlon (twice); Escape From Alcatraz; and Ironman Oceanside.

exponentialclients.com

We discuss how sports impacted Creighton's entrepreneurial journey, how deep research can yield big growth with digital marketing, and common mistakes businesses make online.

Listener Offer:  Exponential Clients have a free training called The Ultimate Business Growth Playbook which draws the parallels of running marketing for a business to competing in sports and running military operations.

You can check it out here: https://exponentialclients.com/registration

Eric Dickmann can be found on Twitter @EDickmann and LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/edickmann and my website https://ericdickmann.com

Creighton Wong and Exponentials Clients can found online at exponentialclients.com, and LinkedIn @creightonwong

If you'd like to contact us with feedback or guest inquiries, please visit: https://fiveechelon.com/the-virtual-cmo-podcast/

For more information about Virtual CMO strategic marketing consulting services, visit The Five Echelon Group at https://fiveechelon.com

Episode #20

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Transcript

**Please note, this transcript was generated by an artificial intelligence engine. It is intended only as a rough transcript and there may be some grammatical, spelling or transcription errors.

Eric Dickmann: 0:08

Welcome to season two of The Virtual CMO podcast. I'm your host, Eric Dickmann, founder of The Five Echelon Group. Our goal is to share strategies, tools, and tactics with fellow marketing professionals that you can use to impact the trajectory of your company's marketing programs. We have candid conversations about what works, and what doesn't, with marketing tactics, customer experience, design and automation tools. Our goal is to provide value each week with a roster of thoughtful and informative guests engaged in a lively conversation. So with that, let's introduce this week's guest and dive into another conversation with The Virtual CMO. This week, I'm delighted to welcome Creighton Wong to the podcast. Creighton is the founder of Exponential Clients, a digital marketing firm built on the belief that massively growing a business always starts with deep research and gathering the very best data. He is also a curious world traveler, an adventurous foodie, a global nomad who met his wife while working in Da Nang, Vietnam. He's also a former competitive paratriathlete who, while missing a right leg in several digits on his hands, has finished the New York city triathlon twice, Escape from Alcatraz and Iron Man Oceanside and I really enjoyed our conversation together and I think you will too. Creigthon and welcome to the virtual CMO podcast. I'm so glad you could join us today.

Creighton Wong: 1:41

Happy to be here, Eric. Good to see ya.

Eric Dickmann: 1:43

I know you're a traveler and you're coming to us today from Vietnam. Is that correct?

Creighton Wong: 1:49

Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

Eric Dickmann: 1:51

Chi Minh City. It's a small world when you do things like teleconferencing. So what I wanted to know, what is Hacker Paradise?

Creighton Wong: 2:01

So Hacker Paradise is actually what got me to Vietnam in the first place. So it's a, it's a cool little company. That, what they do is they set up your. Workstation and they set up your living space. And you have a group of we started out with, I think, 20 to 25 people and headed over to Denang, vietnam. And, it's just an awesome way to be a quote unquote, digital nomad. because you you know, these things are taken care of your basics are taken care of your your shelter, your food and your workspace. And then you just, you just get to hang out with these. really cool. Like-minded other digital nomads that have different different backgrounds. And some of them are our entrepreneurs like myself. Some of them are freelancers and, just pick up a remote jobs. And some of them are employees that are just working remotely with the blessings of their company.

Eric Dickmann: 3:03

So this is like a concierge service, digital nomad experience?

Creighton Wong: 3:08

Absolutely. And, and I gotta say, I mean, the thing that I liked is I wasn't just showing up. I was showing up in a group and so it's really nice that, When you go downstairs for morning breakfast, you see some familiar faces and you get to know some really cool and interesting people. And. You know, for starters. So, so because one of the things that, that you're at risk just going at it alone is that you get lonely. Because you're staring at the same four walls doing the same for things, even if you're checking out cool coffee shops. It's nice to. See friendly faces and have friendly, friendly conversations, and especially in Denang to where. There's not a whole lot of English speaking. It's, it's very Vietnamese. And so I could see where that would be a challenge if it wasn't with the group. And then lastly, They put together these little trips on the weekends that we got to take care of and. All we had to do was just sign up and show up in the lobby. And so life was made a heck of a lot easier. And so we got to experience things without, Without really having to put the effort of researching and planning and executing. Just, show up in the lobby. It's awesome.

Eric Dickmann: 4:28

That really sounds awesome. It sounds like an amazing experience. You know, we're at this time where people are being empowered to do more remote work. And so maybe that's going to be an option for more and more people to do things like that. Get out experience other cultures, other places in the world.

Creighton Wong: 4:43

I mean, I'm a committed world traveler. I think that. Traveling the world, learning other cultures, learning about other cuisines, learning about other history. It's just a wonderful way to expand your mind. And, learn about all these different things that you had no idea about. But the, the real value in it is. You learn more about yourself through learning about. Other cultures and other people. And, and that's been really, really wonderful because cause you start to see how, how similar things are, and then also you see the contrast. between things. I remember traveling in Spain and looking at the architecture and it was absolutely beautiful. And, and this is recently I, I had just graduated law school at the time. And I'm sitting there going, I'm like, Oh, it was horrible. I was sitting there going like, Oh, that's a lawsuit, that's a lawsuit. That's a lawsuit. you know, I run around Vietnam, you know, which is a developing country and I'm like, Oh, that's an ADA violation. That's an ADA violation. It's a. And then it's like, Oh, by the way, not everybody does it the way America does it. And you start to, you start to adopt things that, Oh, well that I like the way America does better, but this. I kinda liked the way they do it a little bit better and so it's, it's really fun I just think it's the best way to learn is to immerse yourself in other cultures.

Eric Dickmann: 6:21

I was going to ask you as a followup to that, when we're here in the U S we're often accused of being too us centric, too focused on what's going on within our borders and not enough about what's going on in the rest of the world. When you find yourself working outside the country, do you really see the world differently? Are you exposed to things in a very different way?

Creighton Wong: 6:46

Absolutely. there was a great Ted talk once upon a time and everybody should really look it up. and it was the it's called something to the effect of the danger of a single story. And, so when you're in the U S all you have is the U S narratives going out. But when you're outside of the us, then you see all the different. Narratives coming in, you know, to the U S and you start to think about it. I mean, people, people get scared going down to, I don't know, say, say South America, because there's bad guys down there, this and that. And, then I met somebody from Bogota, Colombia, and he sitting there going like, Do you know what we think of you when we see planes crashing into, buildings and things going down like that. And all of a sudden you sit there and you're like, Okay. Yeah, the perception of us as, as Americans. Isn't always as rosy as we would like to think.

Eric Dickmann: 7:50

I think it's a neat experience for you that you're out there getting to see things from the outside. And one of the things that I know attracted me to your particular story, is we share something in common. I have a lot of friends who are triathletes. In fact, my athletic circle, tends to be people who are into triathlons right now, or have done them in the past. And there were actually the ones that encouraged me to start running. So I know that, triathlons are part of your story. Tell us a little bit about that part of your life and how you got involved in doing triathlons and what that really means for you.

Creighton Wong: 8:26

Boy. my entry into triathlons was completely accidental and, And dare I say completely unforeseen I mean, as, as a kid, I. Loved playing. And, I love being physical. my sport was basketball. I mean you couldn't get a ball out of my hand. You know, if, if everybody was going to go down to the gym to play, I show up a half an hour early just to get shots in. I just, I love the game. I love the game so much. you know it doesn't help when You're missing a leg and, You're already only five 10, or if that might be generous, to begin with I just, I always love playing whether it was, you know, whether it was working out at the gym, playing basketball or lifting weights or. Whatever I could get myself into and. I was just minding my own business. Hanging out on my sofa, one, one afternoon. And The Ironman world championships in Kona, Hawaii came on and it's a nightmare. It's a 90 minute show. I don't know if you've ever watched that show, but if you ever watched that show, you can't get through 90 minutes without like bawling your eyes out because they do such a great job with all the drama and everything. And, you know, there was this gal. Sarah Reinertsen, who was also an above knee amputee and she was trying to be the first woman to complete that race. And, she timed out. She fell short of her goal and I'm sitting there, I'm a mass on ball and, and everything, but I don't do anything about it. You know, nothing happens. And then, fast forward a year, I'm minding my own business, hanging out on myself again. And. This. Iron man, world championship show shows up on, on TV. I'm flipping channels and it's there again. And so, so I don't know. I don't know if it was a higher power or God. But somebody who was sitting there saying like, you need to pay closer attention to this. You didn't quite get it a year ago. And so Sarah was on there again, I think she referred to it as unfinished business and this time. She crossed the finish line. And all of a sudden I was like, okay, all right. I'm getting the message. So, you know, I'm sitting there watching her and I think I figured out that the prosthetic she was using work Osuur prosthetics. And so I called down to Oser and I was like, Yeah, I don't, I don't really know why I'm calling. I'm just looking for this gal, Sarah Reinertsen. Cause I wanna know like how, you know, how she got all this cool equipment to do triathlons. And, and then they referred me down to, this nonprofit called the challenge athletes foundation, which raises money. And, You know, for people like myself to have adaptive equipment because that adaptive equipment isn't. Covered by insurance, regular insurance. And quite frankly, it's not cheap. And so, fast-forward three months, I'm going to a run clinic being put on by the challenge athletes foundation. And Osuur. And the, the, the person who is leading the clinic is Sarah Reinertsen. So imagine me, you know, seeing this amazing person on TV, and then all of a sudden you get to actually meet. meet that wonderful person a few months later. And so, from that moment, They helped me get a, Learn how to ride a bike. So I'm in my thirties, like learning how to ride a bike for the very first time. And, and they got me a running blade. And so it's, so, I'm going down to the track at 5:00 AM in the morning and trying to figure out all the. The, the angles and, and settings and trying to figure out how to run. And, somehow some way I, I parlayed that into a. I think, I don't can't remember. It was either like an eight or 10 year. Triathlon run that, somehow got me to the paratriathlon world championships. I got to represent the wonderful United States of America. I got to do smile. You know, Ironman, Oceanside. escape from Alcatraz, New York. Try. So, so got, got. You know, we could talk all day long about, about these events. Cause, cause it was just a great, great time and a lot of fun stories and a lot of fun people. I got to meet along the way.

Eric Dickmann: 12:49

This is a marketing podcast and I think that's actually a great segue because Iron Man has created such a powerful brand. You don't have to drive around very far before. You will bump into somebody with a little Iron Man guy on their bumper. The t-shirts the bags, the events aren't cheap. Right. And they, they started with a few events and now it's a global phenomenon They're all over the world. As a marketing guy yourself, talk to me a little bit about sort of being in that whole ecosystem of the Iron Man and sort of your perspective on what they've done, right in terms of establishing the power of that brand.

Creighton Wong: 13:34

Yeah. I mean I think that, Like you said. It's all about the brand and as they grew bigger, they started buying up more races. I mean, one of the challenges though, too, is for a long time, triathlon was really a local event. put on by local teams and. There's a lot that goes into it. Because, especially when you're doing iron man distances. And, you know, you're talking about 112 mile. A bike ride and followed by a marathon. Well, now all of a sudden you've got to shut roads down for 112 miles, and you've got to shut roads down for, you know, 26. You know, 26.2 miles and. To do that. You got to work with the local governments and you got to get that closed down. You got to get police out there to, to do their job. And so there's, there's just a lot, there's really a lot that goes into it. And I think what you're seeing is, is the progression of business where. Early on. It was a lot of mom and pops, a lot of local businesses and then Ironman. Kind of came in and not only did they build a great brand, but they also found a more economical way to make it profitable for them, because I know some of the local guys and, It's struggle because there's a big event. And, and it's hard, it's hard to be profitable, so, so they figured it out. And then of course, what they did, what every big brand does is then they raise, raise their rates. so get getting. Getting into Ironman. It's not a cheap one.

Eric Dickmann: 15:19

But they're a marketing machine.

Creighton Wong: 15:21

Absolutely.

Eric Dickmann: 15:22

You talked about how you were moved by the television special showing the race. And obviously that's edited very much for that emotional factor. We talk a lot in marketing about finding your niche audience. Well, that's a very niche audience, right? But it's also an audience that tends to spend a lot of money. So if you're looking for co-sponsors and people to participate in that broader event, they know exactly the demographic of the people who are going to be involved there. So it's, in some ways a marketer's dream, because a lot of the things that you look for, have come together in that brand. And I think that's one of the reasons that they've been able to grow and be so successful with them.

Creighton Wong: 16:01

Sure. They know exactly who their target ideal client is. And honestly, that really is the first brick and the Holy Grail to having a successful business is to know exactly who your client is, know them better than the client themselves and really speak their language. And, you know, Iron Man's built up such a brand that, that M Dot. I mean, you see guys tattoo it on their body like it's the Olympic rings! So, it's pretty important to them.

Eric Dickmann: 16:38

I'll know I've made it when people start tattooing the virtual CMO podcast on their body, you know, then, then I'll know we've really accomplished something here.

Creighton Wong: 16:46

Absolutely.

Eric Dickmann: 16:47

I'm curious as you've participated in Iron Mans and athletics in general, so many inspirational stories tend to come out of athletics and the discipline that goes into those. Have you found that things that you learn being an athlete have then translated into your business opportunities? You talk about being a serial entrepreneur. What lessons really from athletics helped you then in business?

Creighton Wong: 17:15

Boy. I mean, there's, there's a lot of them, but, certainly one of them is. you've got to. At the, at the very best that you can try to stay even keel because it's a synovial wave of. You know, peaks and valleys, you know, going through the, you know, going through the process now you're always improving. But. It's, it's not a straight line. It's up and down and up and down. Take take endurance training, for example, ah, you go really, really hard one day where you like, you can't just go hard every single day. That's not how it works. And so. You have to build in recovery and then you have to build in recovery workouts. I mean, it's. And that's really hard, especially when you're an, a type triathlete that you sit there. And it's like, really my workout today is too. Get on the bike for just a half an hour and lightly spin and flush out, you know, like you don't feel like you're accomplishing everything because it's like, I hammered for four hours the day before. And. It's like that. It's like that in business. I mean, I've had days where it's like, boom, you put in 16 hours and you're cranking and you're getting so much stuff done, but you haven't moved the needle in terms of bringing on more clientele or more, revenue. And then it always works out, you know, the day that, everything's going wrong and you know you feel like you haven't accomplished anything. That's when that prospect that you've been chasing around for six months. It's all of a sudden says I'm in. You're like, how does that work? You know, like, like I've only been able to spend 30 minutes on my business, but I've been able to go forward, leaps and bounds. And so I, you know, I think that that's. You know, that's one of them and, You know, there's, I mean, there's so many, there's so many lessons on it. I actually, in my free training, the, ultimate business growth playbook, I actually talk about the lessons from triathlon and I also equate it to a lessons from sports like football. You know, there's so many parallels. To drawing to business. So just to give you a quick, overview, you know, the first step is always research, research research. So whenever we're going, you know, I'm, I'm prepping for a race. It's like, okay. When's the race? How far it is? You know, how far out is it? How much time do I have a number one, number two. What's the race? What's the distance? where's it at? Okay, let's start. Let's take a look. Is it an open water swim? Is it, you know, it was at a pool swim. Is it a Lake swim? Is it, Is it a hilly. You know, hilly course, to bike, is it, you know, is, is it flat and fast or, you know, like you measure all these things and you gather all this data. Because the data drives the game plan. And so step two is then you lay out your game plan and you lay out your training plan. And it's the same thing. We've got clients that come in all the time and they think they want something. And we say, okay, let's do the research research research. And so we put them. Through the research and we say, Okay. We understand exactly what it is you're looking for and exactly what you want. But. Here is where the opportunity actually lies. Here's where you're going to get your greatest ROI return on investment ROIs return on ad spent. You know, the metrics that the client actually cares about, because if they're starting to pump out money in order to get clients, they want money coming back. You know, they want that flow coming back. As soon as possible. And then, you know, lastly, as you go and execute cool it's race day, you want to go in and. And start racing. But you try and stick to your game plan as best you can. But new data's coming in. I mean, you know, it's all of a sudden, Oh, this, this swim was going to be a warm water swim with no wetsuit. Oh, we're doing wetsuit today and Oh, by the way, the surf's up and, Oh, this is going to be a longer time. And so I used to always have this thing when, when I was racing. To not compare yourself with. Your past times or even other people's past time, you just, you are what you are on that day. you know, I remember I was doing, I was doing escape from Alcatraz and I had a fast way and we're talking a mile and a half swim from, You know, from the rock over to the Marina green. And I think I rolled up there and like 32 minutes, like it was fast, but I had a great current going on. And then I realized how fortunate I was the next year. I was expecting. I was a spectator and my guys were coming in one arm, Willy and Mohammad, and they, these guys were coming in and they were coming in at 43 minutes and 45 minutes. And I'm like, Okay, well, norm Willy. Swims about the same speed as one leg Creighton. So like we're, we're, we're about the same. And I'm like, he's 11 minutes slower this, this year, because again, it was just the current. So you are what you are on that day. And, You do your very best, but you know, again, as things change. As you get more data in real time. it's the same thing with any sort of, Whether it's a search campaign. Email campaign. You know, an ad campaign as the data comes in, you gotta make these little adjustments along the way.

Eric Dickmann: 22:55

After adapt. Yeah, I have to adapt. You have to change. So you, you made a, Oh, go ahead.

Creighton Wong: 23:01

Oh, yeah, it was just like you there's, there's no such thing as, as the old Ronco quote as set it and forget it like that doesn't work. In the advertising world, they might work for the, whatever that big rotisserie chicken thing.

Eric Dickmann: 23:18

Marketing is the engine that drives demand, but too often it takes a back seat to other priorities. Awareness, fails to materialize demand drops in sales falter. Don't wait until it's too late to build your brand awareness and demand generation programs. If your company is struggling with their marketing strategy, we want to help let's schedule a call to talk about your unique situation and what options might be available to get your marketing program back on track. To learn more text C M O two (407) 374-3670 that's C M ho two four zero seven. Three seven four three six seven zero. And we'll reply with further details. We hope to hear from you soon. So you made a pretty big pivot, right? You adapted you got a law degree and now you're in digital marketing. So what was the draw? What had your interest in digital marketing?

Creighton Wong: 24:17

Yeah. I mean, I sort of, again, you want to talk about a happy accident. I graduated law school in 2000. The economy had just gone in the tank. And, you know, we were all. We had all these graduates, we're all looking for jobs. and then I went to, help somebody with their insurance business and we caught fire and, make Delta business up pretty quickly and successfully. And then I was hooked on the entrepreneurial, mindset and really what it came down to is, In this, this took me a long time. And in hindsight side, I now understand it I have to be creating. It's just, that's who I am and that's my nature. And so I'm. When you're an entrepreneur, that's really what you do is your. You're creating, products that solve problems, you know, for, for clientele, you're creating, you know, different strategies and different ways to solve their problems. you know, to, to help them grow, to help them do whatever it is. And it doesn't have to be in the marketing world. It's whatever business you decide to go into. Your your ultimate thing that you're selling, you're not selling your service. You're not selling your. Product which are selling is. The feeling that somebody gets when they go through a transformation. So what's your product ultimately is transformation. You're taking somebody who's at point a and unhappy with it. Or wants to do better than where they're at and taking them to point B and you're taking them across that chasm. You're taking them across that gap. And so it's, it's so rewarding to me. You know, to see somebody who, you know, for example they've got their business up and running. They're doing really well. And then to be able to do the research research research, go in and identify and help them and say, this is where your opportunity is. And then, you know, five X, their business, 10 X, their business, 20 extra bits business that it it really does happen and to be able to think creatively in that way is, It gets me, it gets me juiced. It gets me excited in the morning and, you know, it. It makes the long days, much more palatable.

Eric Dickmann: 26:42

So you started this business, Exponential Clients. Is there a specific niche that it serves? What are the specific offerings that you offer to your clients?

Creighton Wong: 26:53

Yeah. we're actually in the, in the process of niche. So long story short. the name and the brand Exponential Clients is relatively new, but what it was, I had multiple businesses with multiple niches or whatever. However, it said, you know, serving, for example, the medical community and. E-commerce and attorneys and different, you know, in different businesses and finally I said, this is, this is ridiculous. The financial sector. Like I'm getting requests from different people. That are in all these different, You know, these different verticals. And I said I'm getting confused as to which one they're signed up, but I just gotta put it all under one umbrella. And so, so, the brand name. is now exponential clients and will, will niche down our, our marketing and focus in on, you know, probably one, one group. I do like the professionals because, the professionals. Have better things to do with their time. Quite frankly, you know, I mean, if you're, if you're an attorney and you're billing out at four or $500, you don't have time to make social media posts or go, study up on keywords and figure it out. And so. so we'll do that. And, really what we do is, you know, again, it's, it's, we do the research for you and we give you the blueprint. And, If you want to go the DIY route, you're welcome to if you want it. The DF, Why route, the done for you route? You know, we can, we can handle that and take care of that too. but we have a lot of different different, digital marketing progress, but our biggest one is getting your ranked first on Google. Because we're we're now. People just don't have an attention span. So if they're searching for you. I think it's, it's something ridiculous, like 75 or 80% never make it to the second page. Some like 93 or 95% make, never make it to the third page. So congratulations. You've got a website, but nobody sees it. And. You don't get any clients from it.

Eric Dickmann: 29:00

Those are crazy statistics, right? It's amazing the drop off rates past that first page.

Creighton Wong: 29:05

We're lazy. I mean, you start thinking about it, right? There's 10 results for page. Let's say you move into a new town and you got to find a new dentist or new chiropractor. You got 10 results per page. Are you going to call the 11th dentist because you're not satisfied with the conversation that you've had with the first 10? I don't think so. It's just not going to happen. And then even if you're on the first page, right, you're a local business. If you're not in the Google card, which is basically the top three positions, they get the lion's share of all the traffic. It's not, it's something crazy like 34-35% of all visitors will click on those who are in that card. So even if you had just a hundred searches for that keyword, that's 35 potential clients or potential patients, depending on what industry you're in per month. The search is higher, it's even more.

Eric Dickmann: 30:10

It's crazy.

Creighton Wong: 30:12

Totally crazy. But like, It, it, it drives me nuts too, because, there, there are so many businesses that are primed to just. Take off, like they're just sitting there ready, ready to launch.

Eric Dickmann: 30:30

One of the reasons that I started this particular podcast is because marketing is becoming so complex. I used to be, you know, you had a website, you do a few posts on social media. That was probably all right, but now it's complicated. Algorithms change the rules change in order to get noticed amongst all the noise out there, you really have to be focused. And that's why I love to bring guests on the show who really talk about the value that they can add, because it is complicated. And there's only so much time you have as a business and you might as well leverage the expertise of people who can help you get there faster because time is money and the money that you invest in these services is money well spent.

Creighton Wong: 31:08

Yeah. I mean, it's like, if you. You go buy an expensive car. Right. Maybe you're that guy that likes to tinker around with cars and you're willing to go underneath the hood. And once upon a time, that was much simpler than it is today. But I don't know. Do you have the computers to check all the diagnostics on a, I don't know. Mercedes E-Class I don't. and so what do you want to do you want, you want to take it? to The expert. That is checking Mercedes multiple times a day, all day, every day. And that way your car is running at its highest peak level that it possibly can.

Eric Dickmann: 31:53

We talk a lot in marketing about helping companies to grow and strategies for growth. And I know you mentioned a booklet or seminar that you had put together that specifically talked about growth. Tell me a little bit about what you've put together and how people could get access to that.

Creighton Wong: 32:11

Yeah. So if you just go to exponentialclients.com, there's a link on my website. That'll take, that'll take you over to the free training. It's called the business. The Business Strategy Growth Playbook. Business Growth Strategy Playbook. And, what it is. it just, we talk about how to build up. That strategy for you? And because the tactics are always going to change. But the fundamentals are still the same. And again I gave you guys a little bit or preview, you know, we always talk about. Research research research. I mean, you just start to think about it and our U S armed forces. What are they doing? They're constantly grandfathering Intel, Intel, Intel, before they set out. A plan for the operation. They want to know every single thing for them. It's literally. A matter of life and death. You look at professional sports teams. Film study. All, all the greatest athletes. What, what did they say about them? Oh, he studies film. You look at the teams. Come study is so valuable. If it is deemed to give you such a competitive edge that we've got a football team that she'll go nameless and a baseball team that they'll go nameless. Then have one Ambien ships by cheating. Or bending the rules. On on film study. So. no. That's why it's, it's, it's so important and that's why it's, it's so meaningful to, To make sure that you understand exactly what you're getting into because, if you just decide on a whim. These are my key words, are these. I want to do Facebook ads and you don't really look at the landscape of who you are, what your business is all about, which are competent. We study your competition. We want to know what's working for your competition because likewise, that's probably going to work for you. You know, what's the marketplace, if we don't check all those boxes and do a deep dive into it. How the heck are we going to know? Which plays to call when we get into the game. And so if we don't know what plays to call, we're just doing hope marketing and that's, that's just a recipe for disaster. It's just not gonna work.

Eric Dickmann: 34:40

I think you're so right. And it's great that you're making that training available. I'll definitely put a link in the show notes so that everybody has access to all that. And what do people wanted to track you down and get in contact with you? What's the best way for people to reach you?

Creighton Wong: 34:55

Yeah. So if you go to a exponentialclients.com you matriculate down to the bottom might my email address is, is a, Secretly hidden there on the bottom or, you know, look, look me up on LinkedIn, connect with me on LinkedIn. Cause I hang out there a lot and I try and add as much value. that's my social media platform. And, you know, I love connecting with, like-minded business entrepreneurs. I want to want to grow.

Eric Dickmann: 35:22

Creighton. Digital nomad digital marketer triathlete. I'm sure we could add a lot more to that list if we had more time, but this has been a fascinating discussion and I really appreciate you taking the time to join us here on The Virtual CMO podcast. It's really been a pleasure talking with you.

Creighton Wong: 35:38

Oh, this has been, been a ton of fun. I appreciate you inviting me and having me as a guest. And, yeah, we could, we could probably talk for hours, but for the sake of our audience, we'll, we'll keep it a little shorter.

Eric Dickmann: 35:49

Absolutely. Thank you again. And we'll talk with you all next week. that wraps up another episode of The Virtual CMO podcast. As a reminder, if you'd like to learn more about Virtual CMO, strategic marketing consulting services, or anything else discussed here today, please visit us at fiveechelon.com. There's a link in the show notes. If you'd like to send us comments, feedback, guest inquiries, and your five-star reviews on Apple Podcasts are always appreciated. If you'd like to reach me. I'm EDickmann. That's E D I C K M A N N on Twitter. If you'd like to connect on LinkedIn, please let me know. You heard about me through The Virtual CMO podcast. I look forward to talking with you again next week and sharing some new marketing insights on The Virtual CMO.