IAM480- Podcast Host Runs Chicago-based Digital Agency

As an in-house and agency digital leader for more than 20 years, Dave Rohrer has solved problems and increased revenue for companies both large (Internet Retailer 100 & Fortune 500) and small (start-ups & small, local businesses).

Dave is the co-host of The Business of Digital Podcast and runs Chicago-based digital agency NorthSide Metrics. Dave is an internationally recognized speaker and can be found sharing his digital marketing wisdom at conferences like PubCon, Midwest Digital Marketing Conference, and the Craft Brewer's Conference.

• CEO Hack: Knowing when to say no, asking questions and showing up
• CEO Nugget: Don't forget to do my own marketing and focus on your own team
• CEO Defined: Owning the good and bad

Website: https://www.businessof.digital/

https://www.northsidemetrics.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bizofdigital/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/bizofdigital
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bizofdigital/

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Transcription:

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Intro 00:02

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

Gresham Harkless 00:29

Hello, hello, hello, this is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast. I have a very special guest on the show today. Dave Rohrer of the business of digital podcasts and Northside Metrics. David, it's awesome to have you on the show.

Dave Rohrer 00:40

Thank you for having me.

Gresham Harkless 00:42

No problem. Super excited to have you on and what I want to do is just read a little bit more about David so you hear about all the awesome things that he's doing. As an in-house and agency digital leader for more than 20 years, Dave has solved problems and increased revenue for companies both large and small Internet retailers 100 and Fortune 500 companies to start up in small and local businesses.

Dave's a co-host of the business of digital podcasts and around Chicago-based digital agency Northside Metrics. Dave is an internationally recognized speaker and can be found sharing his digital marketing wisdom at conferences like PubCon, Midwest Digital Marketing Conference, and the Craft Brewer's Conference. Dave, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO Community?

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Dave Rohrer 01:23

I am.

Gresham Harkless 01:24

Awesome. Let's do it. So to kick everything off, I just wanted to hear a little bit more about what I call your CEO story. And what led you to get started with a business?

Dave Rohrer 01:32

So my story goes back to college, I kind of bounced around trying to figure out what I wanted to do for a job. And then you fast forward, I was working for multiple companies or multiple bosses at an agency, I'd always kind of kept changing my career a little bit. And I almost cut out some bosses along the way, in a weird way, not realizing it, until I realized that probably I should be my own boss. And then I kind of started consulting while I was working for another agency, and slowly grew up my own side business and then left and became my own CEO, my own boss.

And then more recently, in the last year or two, a good friend of mine, and I can talk a lot without owning problems. Realize that we both are horrible. We're both good writers, but we hate writing. And we're much better at just talking and chit-chatting and digging into something kind of like what we're doing right here for 15-25 minutes. We started a podcast. And so we just hit 100 episodes earlier this year. It's once a week. It's the business of digital podcasts, and we just dig into digital marketing stuff.

Gresham Harkless 02:49

Nice, I definitely appreciate that. And I've always found that and I don't know if you've found the same thing is like, especially when you have the opportunity to have different experiences and work on different things. All of it kind of helps you out when you're running a podcast or even running a business just because there's so much involved with it that you have to have a lot of those kinds of different skills.

Dave Rohrer 03:06

Yeah, everything that we do, and we've actually been talking, I just spoke at a conference earlier this month on building a podcast and one of the questions. That's always what it's like, what is your story? What are you trying to do? What makes you different? And a lot of people can't write content on a site, let alone think about that from their own brand story, their own company story. I think it forces people to really sit and think through what is their unique story. What is their unique position for their brand, their company themselves? It's kind of tough, actually, if you really want to sit down and think about it.

Gresham Harkless 03:51

Yeah, absolutely. But I feel like I don't know if it should be a requirement. But I feel like it's a really good exercise. Because if you're able to kind of articulated that and speak to that and even write that I think it helps out as far as being able to communicate your messaging communicate what it is that you do, and I think that helps out with like the end user or client or who are listener in that case.

Dave Rohrer 04:10

It does and it doesn't require, we just recorded, actually I just recorded earlier today. We were talking about this one company, I think or not, it was a country in Switzerland and spent probably a couple of million dollars on rebranding. And they came up with the tagline Welcome to Switzerland. Like sometimes it's the most obvious you know, what your unique thing is or what your positioning is. But I think you have to go through that process and talk to your customers, talk to your prospects, talk to your employees, and figure out what we stand for and what are we what is our goal.

Gresham Harkless 04:46

Yeah, absolutely. And I think Steve Jobs has a quote where it's something along the lines of You have to work really, really hard to get to simple and you think that simple is just something that happens but a lot of times you have to cut through, you know, like all the noise all the different distractions. and get to the essence of who you are. And you have to actually work to do that. Which sounds counterintuitive.

Dave Rohrer 05:04

If it Yeah, if it was simple, everyone would make, you know, simple UI simple websites, everything would be simple. Nothing is ever simple. Really.

Gresham Harkless 05:14

Exactly. So I know you touched on it a little bit with what with your podcasts and what you guys are covering. Can you tell us a little bit more about that, and of course, North Side metrics and what you're doing with clients there?

Dave Rohrer 05:23

Yep, the podcast is once a week, we're just two years in, and we do about 45-50 shows a year. We do have some guests on but we focus on social media reviews, local search, paid search, Facebook ads, LinkedIn, the running of business on, you know, in dealing with the online stuff, it's usually about 15 to 25 minutes long. And we try to, we try to take one topic and just dig into it for 15-20 minutes or so. And, you know, let you go back to finishing your run or go back to your work or whatever.

My business itself is just me, a small one-man show, you know, I've 10 years in house 10 years working at an agency with large clients, I then kind of transitioned to myself, I now work with medium-sized to large companies on small basis if they need help with their SEO and digital marketing. And then oftentimes, I'm doing a lot of stuff for smaller companies.

So a startup that doesn't have any digital presence or has questions about you know, who should we use Squarespace? Or should we use WordPress? Or what should you know? What kind of content? Or what kind of stuff? Should we be producing for our blog? Or should we even have a blog? Or should we have a podcast? I work with them on as much digital as I can that makes sense for them. I try to lead them not to care about what Google's doing, or Facebook, but where are your customers where are your prospects, let's figure out how and what you should be doing to get in front of them.

Gresham Harkless 07:00

Yeah, that makes so much sense. And I'm glad you broke it down like that. Because I think just as we were kind of talking about with Switzerland, and that example, a lot of times she could be so externally focused on certain things. She talked about Google, Facebook, and algorithms, what's changing and what's not that you sometimes forget why you're doing what you're doing and serving your clients and providing awesome products and services. And you get back to kind of focusing on that, and then that, and then the rest will kind of follow from there.

Dave Rohrer 07:24

Well, and when people come to me, they're like, oh, we need someone for technical SEO? Like literally, the first 15 questions I ask is, what is your business? what does your typical prospect look like? What is the size? And who is your client? Like? What does the rest of your marketing look like? What else are you doing? What is your, you know, unique position? What is all this stuff? And they're like, well, we just want you for SEO, I go, but that's all part of it. It's like, you might not really need me for SEO, and that's fine. And I will find you, you know, the consultant or the agency that you really need to work with. But I go, but I need to understand all of this other stuff before we actually dig into what you think you need.

Gresham Harkless 08:09

Exactly, yeah, it's like the both of them are symbiotic in that like one without the other, you need to have all that information and data. So that helps you to do you know, SEO better, or even, you know, each aspect of digital marketing really.

Dave Rohrer 08:21

Well, and people have come to me, and they're like, oh, we need you to help us with our paid search. And I walked through them. And I was like, your prospect is actually on these industry sites. I was like, you can spend three grand or five grand or 10 grand a month on Google ads, and Bing, I go, but honestly, the best ROI for you is this other thing. I was like, you the best ROI is not to work with me, honestly, it's to you know, keep doing what you're doing over here. And I think they were quite confused about that. But I was like, in two months, we're gonna have spent a bunch of consulting fees with me and a bunch of money that we've spent on the search engines. And it's not, it's not in your best interest.

Gresham Harkless 09:00

Absolutely. And a lot of people who may be even listening to this, you know, might not, you know, realize that a lot of times we get attracted to things that we hear, Oh, you need to do SEO, you need to do pay search, or you need to do LinkedIn ads, or Facebook ads, or so on and so forth, that you're really not again, like we kind of talked about, you know, starting from the inside and starting from your business and your target client and your goal and going directly from there.

Dave Rohrer 09:21

Yep, it's shocking. They're like, Oh, someone said XYZ, or Instagram suddenly has new users or there's a new fill-in-the-blank social network. We should be on there. No, you shouldn't.

Gresham Harkless 09:35

Exactly. That makes so much sense. So I know you've touched on this a little bit as well to talk to me, I think more so towards clients, but I want to ask you for what I call your secret sauce for you or your organization. But what do you feel kind of sets you apart and makes you unique?

Dave Rohrer 09:50

I've worked in the house I've worked at the agency. I've worked with some of the largest companies in the world, if not, at least the US. I've worked with their digital teams I worked with their social teams, I've also been in-house and I know how you get stretched with politics with every resource with writing resources with a budget. I also don't outsource anything, for better or worse. So if something is coming from me or my agency, it's me working on it means doing it.

And if it's outside of my wheelhouse, and I can't do it, or I don't think I can do it to the level that we'll need, I will recommend you to work with someone else. It, I don't have a payroll. So it's not like I need enough work for five people. And for me, I'd rather you get the best results possible, even if it means working with someone else. Because for me, you'll probably remember that more so than us trying to figure something out for three months, and it just not going well.

Gresham Harkless 10:54

Yeah, that makes so much sense. So I appreciate you for sharing that with us. And I wanted to switch gears a little bit. And I want to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be an apple book, or a habit that you have, or something that makes you more effective and efficient.

Dave Rohrer 11:08

Asking lots of questions and shutting up would probably be one of them. And knowing when to say no knowing when it's not a good fit when the partnership isn't going to work.

Gresham Harkless 11:20

Exactly. Now, I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget. So this is a word of wisdom or a piece of advice. Or if you can happen to a time machine. What would you tell your younger business self?

Dave Rohrer 11:33

As an agency owner, don't forget to do my own marketing. The cobbler shoes, you know the kid, the cobbler and his kids never have shoes, because he's so busy. And I think internally, always focus on your own team, whether that's your own sales team or your own customer service, I think a lot of companies focus on the client or the customer. And then they wonder why their entire sales staff is turning over. Or why their customer service people all leave, or their developers or their marketing team. I think a lot of companies are so focused on driving business, and not keeping their internal people happy.

Gresham Harkless 12:11

Yeah, I definitely appreciate that nugget. And now I want to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And we're hoping to have different, quote-unquote, CEOs on this show. So Dave, what does being a CEO mean to you?

Dave Rohrer 12:24

Owning the good and bad of whatever choices were made up at that, in that office. You know, whether it was the outcome was what you wanted, or whether your team executed or didn't, I think just owning the direction, just owning it, owning whatever comes from whatever was decided.

Gresham Harkless 12:53

Yeah, absolutely, in our decisions that we make a lot of times have a lot of ramifications, whether it be good or bad, as you mentioned. And I think a lot of times, we have to be able to accept that we have to own that. And I think sometimes when there are bad decisions, you have to accept that you made that decision. And that's the first step towards correcting it. And a lot of times if you skip over that part, then you have a whole set of other problems going on.

Dave Rohrer 13:15

Yeah, and it's maybe not the best story for it. But I did just see this the other day. So if anyone is listening watch the Masked Singer show T Payne, who I think won it last year. Yeah, I think he won the first one. He just canceled his tour. And most music artists that canceled tours will say, there's someone going to rehab or someone was sick, or there was an accident or something like that. He actually did like this long video on Instagram where he basically owned that he screwed up and that it was his team.

He gave them a bad direction. Like he's the CEO and he owned that they screwed up. Right. I just don't hear that a lot. The quarterbacks, they always take and say, Oh, I shouldn't have thrown that interception. But they won't leave the fact out that their receivers dropped eight passes. They donate. Yeah, and I just don't see that a lot. You do see it from time to time. But I think just owning it. Whether it's good or bad. It's tough, though. You always want to everyone wants the accolades when things go, right? But it's tough to want to own it when it doesn't.

Gresham Harkless 14:31

Yeah, absolutely. And I think that you know, in hindsight, I mean, as you said, it's super hard to do, but I think it develops that, to me that respect and admiration for people that are able to do that. And kind of a reminder that we're not all perfect, and we all make mistakes. We all can literally be standing up or do our Instagram stories and say, Hey, we messed up in X, Y, and Z and I think that, you know, the more that people do that the more kind of connected we feel because we understand that nobody here is really perfect.

Dave Rohrer 14:57

Yeah, if you ever see a product on Amazon and there are 5000 reviews they're all five stars. Do you believe it? Like everything is flawed a little bit. It's not always going to work. It's tough, yeah.

Gresham Harkless 15:10

That makes so much sense. So, Dave, I truly appreciate your answer attribute. Appreciate your time even more, what I want to do is pass you the mic so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional, you want to let our readers and listeners know. And then of course, how best they can get ahold of you. Subscribe to the podcast and find out about all the awesome things you're working on.

Dave Rohrer 15:28

Don't forget about your digital marketing teams and marketing teams. They need love and budget, too. That's it. And as far as getting hold of me, I'm @DaveR on Twitter or you can follow my podcast @BizofDigital, it's on Instagram, Twitter, or you can look us up in whatever you're, wherever you're, listening to this one, you can find our show.

Gresham Harkless 15:50

Awesome, awesome. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for the reminder about the digital agencies. I think that should be like a T-shirt or something. We will make sure to have the links and information as well in the show notes so that everybody can follow up with you subscribe to the podcast and get in contact. But thank you so much again and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

Outro 16:08

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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