Adam Torres and Behdad Jamshidi discuss marketing partners.
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Show Notes:
What does it take to measure labor productivity? In this episode, Adam Torres interviews Lee Rector, CEO at Embassy Data Logistics. Explore Embassy Data Logistics and measure labor productivity.
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About CJAM Marketing MatchMaker
Their vetting process uses decades of business and marketing experience to select only the best available marketing agencies. In fact, almost 800 agencies have gone through their vetting process and just 12% of them made the cut.
CJAM Network Partners are selected only if they are an ideal fit for their clients. That means they match the budget, growth level, ambitions, personalities, values, and culture of the brands we pair them with.
In order to hit that mark with consistency, they stay close to their partners every step of the way. When they become part of our vetted network, they receive coaching and support to ensure they can confidently recommend them to the brands that need their services.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and if you’d like to apply to be a guest of the show, just head on over to missionmatters. com and click on be our guest to apply. All right. So today I have Bedad Jamshidi on the line and he’s founder and CEO over at Sea Jam Marketing.
B, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. All right, man. So finally, we’re doing this. We’re getting on the show. I’m excited. I’ve been trying to have you on this show for quite some time now. We’re finally making it happen. So that’s a good thing. For everybody watching, we’re going to be talking about how businesses can find the right marketing partners, what that means, and also what B’s doing over at CJAM Marketing.
So just to get us kicked off, we’ll start this episode the way that we start them all with what we like to call our Mission Matters Minute. So be it. Mission matters. Our aim and our goal is to amplify stories for entrepreneurs, executives and experts. That’s what we do be. What mission matters to you?
Yeah. So on the personal side, the biggest mission that I have is that When I’m eight years old, I’m looking back on life that I don’t have any regrets. And so it’s all about like living, learning, growing, and then sharing that with and fundamentally just connecting with humans as I do that. So that’s like a personal goal at the, on the business front at CJAM.
And what we focus on is really just helping businesses get connected with the right people at the right time to allow them to grow and just making sure that we’re making those life changing connections. To help businesses move forward. Amazing. So how did you, how did you get into even before marketing?
I mean, how’d you get into entrepreneurship? Like where’d all that start for you? Yeah, I’m one of, I’m one of those accidental entrepreneurs. You can call it. So I started out as an engineer initially, and I used to work at a company called Telus, very similar to Verizon in the States where it’s a big telecom company.
And I used to work on the B to B side of things. So typically working with businesses, anywhere from about 50 to 1000 type employee range, understanding what’s going on from, like a C level perspective and I T perspective and then building out technology roadmaps that would touch all aspects of business and how you get from A to B to C.
And as I was doing that, that’s where a lot of my business consulting sales, leadership and technology experience came from. And I got to work with a whole host of different types of businesses, large retailers, lawyers, that kind of stuff. And then I started making a bit of a transition after a sushi lunch with a friend of mine we started kind of diving a little bit more into the marketing world six years ago.
And I started building out websites, Google ads, SEO, like most traditional agencies that kind of start out. But I very quickly hated doing ADR websites on the weekend. And so I started going, okay, I don’t really like doing this. I enjoy my full time job. Maybe I can find different marketing partners to work with and then help connect them with businesses.
And as I did that. I noticed that most marketing agencies didn’t really understand business and most business people didn’t really understand marketing. And so you’re putting people in the same meeting that didn’t speak the same language. And typically marketing agencies say they can do everything, but they’re only really good at one to three things.
And it’s very hard for a business to know what they should. be focusing on with this specific agency versus another one. So I built out a network and I thought maybe I just needed 10 marketing partners. To date, I’ve talked to 962 different marketing agencies and experts and I work with about 10 percent of those in my vetted network.
And all I do as a marketing connector is connect businesses to the right marketing partner. And that’s the journey. Yeah, when I heard those numbers before, like the 900 number to work to you and vet through hundreds of people and hundreds of agencies, I should say did anything surprise you on that journey?
And like on that, like, as you’re going one after another, like, what surprised you from that? It’s a huge experiment. Yeah, I mean, the number, the number itself now surprises me. I’m like, why did you not stop at like 200 to 300? Like, why did you keep going? And when I asked myself that internally, it was just like.
I was always trying to find that like needle in the haystack, like it’s almost like a bit of a dopamine rush where you’re like, Oh, I found that like really crazy agency that no one can find. And it helps this customer. And just that when you make a really good connection, it just feels really good. Like that’s, that’s been really, really cool.
The other thing that I’ve realized is like, I’ve become a super connector without knowing a super connector existed before. So I’m getting introed into these groups where people are like, Oh, you’re a super connector. And I’m like, what does that mean? It’s like, yeah, you just know a lot of different types of people and you know how to connect.
And Oh, there’s others like this. You know, and so this is like some of the insights that I got as going through this and it’s I think fundamentally, it’s just like certain people are built to be super connectors and like, how many people would you have to talk to, like, for example, you run a podcast and talk to many, many people, you have like a fundamental extroverted energy able to like, bring that out, right?
Not a lot of people can have that many conversations. Were you a super connector before business? I’m curious on that. Cause you don’t normally put that term with, and I’m not, I’m, I’m stereotyping a little bit here. Engineer. Like we don’t normally put those two things together, right? Like the, the stereotypes we’ll say.
Yeah, I think I was in like small ways, but I never really realized it. Like initially, like me growing up in high school, I was never part of like one group. I always be part of different groups. I’d go to different groups, find them. Oh, that’s interesting. So you didn’t have like your one click, you could go move in and out and do whatever you felt like.
Exactly. I would hang out with the cool kids and I’d hang out with the guys like physics and math and science because of the engineering background. I played soccer. So I had my soccer friends. And so I would pick and choose the people that I liked and connect with them one on one versus like connecting with a whole group of people typically.
And so that kind of like grew. And then throughout my life, I’ve gone through a lot of different things and learned a lot of different stuff. And I would just like someone says like, Hey, I’m having this kind of like back pain. Like, Oh, you need to go talk to this person. It’s like, Oh, I’m having this issue.
You need to go talk to this person. So I would do it. But I never knew that that was like, My superpower and it now over the last like year. It’s been like really like solidifying. It’s like, oh, this is my superpower and I am a super connector. And so I’m just embracing that at this point, man. That’s a that’s a great story.
And it’s, it’s, it’s interesting to me to see how you were able to connect before. And now that you know, it’s your superpower, like, leverage that even for your business. business and then to create what you’ve done over at CJAM Marketing. So what are like, what are you, as you were going through this process, what do you look for in that partner?
Like, how did you get to that 90 percent or 10 percent of that? So let’s say 90 or a hundred, a hundred agencies you work with, like what were you looking for? Yeah, there’s a, there’s a lot of things that I look for when I’m working with different types of agency partners and things like that. So typically the agencies or the experts that I get introduced into are within my own network now, like it just.
built a certain network where people are like, you just need to talk to B or when I’m asking them questions, like I’m getting people that are already like vetted and filtered. And then once that kind of happens is I start talking to people and try to understand their story. Like you need to understand the background of an agency or an expert to really understand how they got to where they are.
Because that plays into all of it, right? Like were they working at a big agency before and then decided that they didn’t like the way that things were being ran? They did the freelancing thing and then they grew their agency. Or is this another agency owner that has one agency and is building another one on the side because they saw a market and they want to amplify on it.
Like all of these different structures give you insights into like how the agency is like growing and being run. The other thing is time. Like I want to see like agencies or experts that have been doing things for like five years plus because When you look at less you have people that are like shifting.
So they’ll try something for a year and a half, end up not loving it and then just stop. And so you can’t build like my type of business around people that aren’t fully committed into what they’re doing for at least, you know, five to 20 years type of thing. Like they truly have to love what they want to do and the passionate about it.
That’s the other big thing. Like some people might be passionate about like Google ads. But not passionate about running their agency and for them to grow to what they want to do. They have to be passionate about running the agency. So you’re always looking for those types of things at a foundational level.
Yeah. And, and B, so you’ve made a business out of vetting these type of agencies to accumulate this. I’m curious what. The average business owner goes through when they’re trying to vet agencies. Because they’re definitely not looking at 900. I don’t care who they are, unless that’s your business. It has to be your business to do what you’re doing.
Like for the average business owner, what, what are some of the mistakes they’re making and maybe the things that they should be asking themselves as they’re vetting? Yeah, it’s a great question. So typically what what it looks like if a business owner is looking for a marketing agency, they only have a couple channels to go through, right?
They either go on Google, they’re using a different type of marketplace, we’re just getting an influx of all these different leads. And they don’t know who who’s good, who’s not good. People are hitting their emails. Yeah. And or they go into different business groups and just ask business groups like, Hey, does anyone know this type of person?
Yeah. And then you get all these referrals. Yeah. And the referrals are actually not a fit for your customer. Like, I just recently went through something like this myself, where I was trying to find an accountant, and I got, like, having the network I had. I had, like, 20 different people telling me, these are the people you need to talk to.
And I was just, like, sitting there. I was like, man, I have to go filter to these 20 different people. Some are going to be too small. The other ones are going to be too expensive. Some are not, are not even in Canada. Like, I don’t want to work with a US based agency in Canada because I’m going to pay 40 percent more.
And, like, it’s all this stuff that didn’t fit. And, like, on top of everything that I have to do in my business, I have to also go. Like that and find this, that drove me nuts. And so typically businesses will talk to three to five people at max and then end up choosing someone. Whereas in my network, when you know the 10 percent number, you know, typically I got to go through 10 to 15 different marketing agencies to find one that fits.
And so they’re already going through a third less of vetting before picking a partner. And that’s why they, Failed more often than not, you know, the success rate of finding a really solid marketing partner. The first time I would say is less than 10 percent Say most businesses need more than two to four partners at a time You basically have a zero percent chance of hitting it right for four different partners in the first try you begin It’s gonna take you years to do that.
Yeah, where do you find the best marketing agencies or partners? Where do you find them? They’re not on Google. Typically the ones that are on Google have just figured out how to do SEO and it’s mostly like bringing in a ton of people in and then just a lot of attrition and that type of stuff. The best marketing agencies are actually like really hard to find because they’re deep within networks.
Right. And so I’m part of a bunch of different marketing groups, right? Building relationships in those groups with other agency founders and things like that, and then using their networks to expand. For example, I know a lot of different fractional CMOs. What are fractional CMOs do? They work with a lot of businesses, and they work with a lot of different marketing agencies, typically within specific niches too.
And so, the value of where I find the best partners are within my own network, because I’ve built the foundational network to be able to find what I need to find, when I need to find it. And on top of that, I’m building out like a whole Slack marketing agency slash expert community, where I’m vetting every single person that’s going in.
And so that also amplifies, because you get the right people in your group that are going to bring the other right people into the group as well. Yeah, it’s interesting. You say that that you’re like, it’s not on Google. It’s not going to come up on your regular search. It’s not going to like come up because and I think about that sometimes because I’m like, okay, so if somebody wanted to even work with us, what we do and we’re known in the podcast space.
So to say if they want to work with us. Yeah, you’re right. You Google like launch a podcast. We’re not going to come up. We don’t run a bunch of ads to do a bunch of things there, but we’ve launched over 200 shows as an agency and we’ve, and we produce tens of thousands of episodes. And, but you, you’re right.
You would never find us if you were just going to Google, like how do I launch a podcast ain’t going to happen. That’s exactly it. And then like, like for example, like your thing, like how I would never be able to find you on Google. Yeah. And then there’s a lot of people that go through like. Websites and go, Oh, I want to know if this agency is good by going through the website.
Yeah, the website’s like the last thing I check because most of the solid agencies are getting so many referrals that they don’t even need to update their website. Like they don’t care, but like we have enough stuff on our plate, which is kind of funny, right? Like the marketing agencies are not doing their own marketing.
They’re just focused on doing good work for their customers. And that’s what people miss, right? They’ll go I have some, some providers that have no website. Mm. They were only found within communities and they’re like interesting and they’re good that are running stuff. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, B. How do how do businesses like it’s like we’re hearing a lot right now.
A lot of noise, some of it true, some of it not, whether it’s a I, whether it’s, you know, updates in tech, there’s a lot of a lot of things going on in marketing. There always is. But how should businesses right now? We’re live today on January 16 2025. How should businesses be looking at marketing to grow right now?
Yeah, the landscape is crazy right now. Things are changing so fast and people are having trouble keeping up. It depends on the level of business you’re at. So if you’re just like starting out as a business find a channel, try to like figure it out and just constantly test on it. Like pick one or two channels and just focus on those.
You can do the auxiliary channels, but your focus should be really on specific channels to try to get product market fit to get to a certain size. If you’re already a seven or eight figure business, At this point, like the days of just like throwing things on Facebook and Google and hoping for a crazy return, like you’re not going to scale with that.
You have to actually scale by bringing the brand messaging and everything holistically together and then making sure that that messaging and your brand is going out on all channels and all cylinders and just being in front of people as much as possible. So it’s really about integrating your marketing effort.
Which is really how marketing should always have been just during COVID. Things kind of just got skewed. So you have to just think about all the different touch points you need to be on. Right? Like that’s basically what you got to think about. And those, and why would you say that just throwing money at Facebook’s not working as the cost, is it like.
You know, hitting the right audiences and things like that, because at one point, you’re right. You could just run. It was pretty inexpensive, in my opinion, and certain things you could do. You could you could get something to work, right? You could do a lot of testing, maybe figure it out and not and kind of slack on the other side.
But I agree with you. But why do you think that now everything should be integrated and really just done the right way? Yeah, I mean, one, Facebook is a ton more expensive. It requires a lot more work to get it figured out, right? Like you need to have high level creative. Your messaging needs to be really dialed in.
Like it is a channel that you can scale to a certain point. But for people that are trying to get their business to eight figures and above, and really trying to scale the business, you have to have multiple channels, right? Like you see what’s happening with TikTok, right? They’re no longer going to be around.
So if you built your business on TikTok only, Yeah, you’re done. Yeah, how are you gonna get back to that seven or eight figures? But you have to like you have to have other channels working So my recommendation always is if you have one or two channels working really really well Like that’s cool, but 75 80 percent of your focus into that but take 20 percent start testing other things start hitting other touch points So let it by your email strategy or email this get in front of your customers more there’s so many different ways that you can do marketing and having a solid strategy that helps you expand and diversify and Which is good for any financial plan to diversify your marketing.
It just allows your brand to be so much more holistic and be on top of mind. Yeah, talk a little bit about about email because I’m like when I think about Tiktok and when I think about some of those huge influencers and I mean, this is one of the things we done by the way, just for full transparency for be watching this or listening to this.
We do not provide email marketing services that mission matters, nor do we want to. But I’m just a huge fan of email. And I think about some of those massive tick tock influencers whose businesses very well may go, you know, away overnight. Who knows, right? And if that when that happens, if that happens, then I mean, could you imagine if some of them would have done a giveaway would have done something to get those users that watch them religiously?
Some type of giveaway, something to collect all those emails, right? Like, what would the value of that be? Yeah, I mean, there’s people that have built insane affiliate businesses just through that strategy alone, right? Like they run multiple different channels, feed people into an email list. And then once they have affiliate offers, they feed the email list, right?
We know on the B2C side of Nikon, like email. Really comes for 30 to 50 percent of most econ businesses revenue, right? They pick up a customer, but then you’re constantly offering products and things to them to sell. So, email is, is huge. Like, I mean, even in my own business, my constant metric is, how do we grow our email list with the right business owners there so that I can continue to build trust so that I can work with them moving forward in the future, right?
So, this is why people give up all their lead magnet giveaways, this is why people have offers, and all those different types of things is, if you can control the email list, you’re gonna be much better off, like, There is the aspects of like email deliverability and all those other things that come into play, especially as the email gets larger, but it’s such a key channel because you can actually own the list.
Sure you don’t own deliverability, but you own the list. And so a hundred percent, it’s extremely important. And I think almost every business needs to have that as a foundation. Getting back to 2025, what, what trends are you following right now? Like what kind of trends, like what, what excites you about marketing or in your space right now?
Yeah. So for me, the biggest trend is like figuring out the content marketing game or like everyone is on the content train. So figuring out how to stand out from that explain that, by the way, for those that aren’t familiar with what, what, what you’re saying. Yeah. So if you, if you go on any of the social platforms, for example, like LinkedIn, Instagram not tick tock as much any longer you know, Twitter, all those platforms, everyone is writing content to be.
And a lot of people are using the same type of templates and those different types of things and I play around a lot of this stuff because I’m in marketing. I want to know like how things work, how things are worded and then bring my own authenticity into it, but the content aspect is huge. YouTube is a massive trend that people are seeing, like a lot of people are moving over to that for YouTube shorts and building out those types of things because it’s picking up especially with.
Competitors moving away. So that’s like one area that’s super, super big. Everyone’s talked about AI, so I don’t want to like, like, go nuts on it. But AI is constantly changing and it’s moving so fast. How should people be thinking about that, though? I mean, like, from your angle, because you do provide a new perspective, because you’re working with so many agencies, so many things.
Like, what angle should they be looking with that, at that from? Yeah, I mean, I have my own my own thoughts on it. And the way that I’m approaching AI is how can I use it to become more efficient at certain things within my business? Right? I am doing some testing on, you know, things like cold email outreach with AI just to see how the stuff works, because that’s just what I do.
But I don’t think it’s gonna be like a core core part of my strategy, because people are gonna get tired of it so fast. It’s just So inauthentic, doesn’t really align with different types of things. I think for me, it’s like focus on more of a human centric aspect and use AI to build efficiencies within processes and system within the business.
So something to make you more effective or to make your team more effective or to make like, you know, to leverage what you’re already doing to allow more time for creativity. Like, am I reading that right? That’s exactly it. And there’s people that are going down the route. Like, I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of like the AI sales calls.
They’re already like booking calls and people. So I actually talked to a software company that was doing that. And he’s like, well, we went from having 10 salespeople down to two. And so my question starts becoming like what level were the salespeople at that you replaced, right? Like maybe junior level.
Okay. That might make sense to me, but a high level appointment setters, like maybe an appointment setter or something. Exactly. Yes. It like that makes a little bit more sense to me versus like bringing on some that truly understands how to build a connection and communication. And yeah, no one likes going through the automations when they’re trying to get on a customer support call.
Why do you think they’re gonna like that on a sales call? Talking to AI is gonna get me an agent, get me someone I can talk to that’s human, that can understand me and that has some empathy. Maybe AI will get better at it over time. I don’t know. But for me, it’s, I kind of like just waiting to see what kind of sticks because all of these things are moving so fast that if I find something on a platform and a year later, they’re no longer around, it’s my business behind and so I’m just like watching from afar and using the things that make sense to make my business more efficient and then just what happens.
And that’s a tricky thing, what you just brought up. That’s a great point is that even though something may be good and it’s something that may be useful, but to be careful, especially if you have, don’t have a lot of experience adopting new technologies, be careful because you adopt that technology, integrate in your business and then it can happen.
One day, you know, they ran out of funding. I’ve even at times gone with a larger competitor that didn’t have the best thing because it was just a more sound company. Like I just, I was just thinking at the end of the day, this other company, it’s great. I don’t know. What do you think? Yeah, no, it makes a lot of sense.
And like, when you look at chat GPT today, like we just literally were talking on a call with a, with a few different agency owners and strategists and. ChatGPT is coming out with, already has come out with a feature where you can basically just build out different types of templates, like not just ChatGPT templates, but you can get a schedule like your news for you in the morning.
And so how many softwares were basically just trying to aggregate a bunch of different news sources like ChatGPT just added that as a feature? Yeah, yeah. Why would I pay more for your thing when ChatGPT now has it? I’m already paying a subscription for that. Yeah. That’s kind of like what I’m thinking is like we there’s all of these platforms that are building off chat GPT’s api’s But chat GPT can see which api’s are being called more what people are using it more for once they implement those features Are those softwares that we’re paying for going to be useful and the automations and stuff that we built?
Yeah, it’s going to just be gone. It is. I agree with that. And I’ve seen that in a couple of things. I’m not going to call anything out, but I’m like, what? They’re charging for that. They’re getting money. How like, Oh my gosh, are you kidding me? When is everybody going to wake up and realize that they could have did this already?
And they probably already paid for it with the chat GPT. It’s just a different, like a different, let’s just say site basically. Yeah. Yeah. No, a hundred percent. It’s interesting right now because everyone’s trying to make money fast. Yeah. It’s not like I don’t like the whole fast money thing. I want to build something that’s like long term, long term focused around relationships.
But like the AI space, everything’s like, how can we make as much money as we possibly can before we can’t. And that’s just not the type of entrepreneur that I am or the way they’re like running things. Well, B man, this has been a lot of fun having you on the show today. How do people follow up? How did they want to check you out at C jam marketing?
How, how do they get involved? Yeah, I mean, the two main ways one is the website, so www. cjammarketing. com. If you go to the bottom, there’s a ton of resources for different business owners that they can use there as well, and you can connect with me through there, or find me on my LinkedIn. The name’s on the screen, so beta.
jamshidi. And I’m there quite often, and so those would probably be the two best ways. Fantastic. If everybody watching, just so you know, we’ll definitely put all the links in the show notes so that you can just click on the links, head right on over. And speaking of the audience, if this is your first time with Mission Matters and you haven’t done it yet, hit that subscribe or follow button.
This is a daily show each and every day. We’re bringing you new content, new ideas and hopefully new inspiration to help you along the way on your journey as well. So again, hit that subscribe or follow button and be man. Thank you. Glad we could finally get together. Glad we could do this. Yeah, thanks for having me on the show, I’m really happy to be here.