Jeremy Weisz 12:47
Then people started asking you for money. I don’t know if you want to do that. It’s only $1,000. So now to nonprofits. Also, the education sector. There was Triose. What do you do with them?
Jessica Li 13:03
Triose, it’s a community, it’s a private college, it’s a community college with eight campuses here in the Greater Toronto Area. And there are programs that are not the most fancy programs instead of their programs offers personal support workers, or digital marketing specialist, the program’s as rooted in the community. So one of the challenges that they have is that people want to be close to where they live to go to the college, but they really don’t have the awareness to know which college they should really go to. And for us we’re working with them is mainly on the lead gen side. So we get our proposition, right. And we target those students who are more likely to apply for a community college like this with a very reasonable cost.
Jeremy Weisz 13:56
Yeah, I wanted to talk before we hit record on this. We’re talking about your approach as a company to digital advertising in the digital industry in general. Just talk about that and how it’s a little bit unique.
Jessica Li 14:13
Thank you. So when it comes to our approach in digital in the industry, there are mainly two things that we considered we did it right. One thing is the operational efficiency, many of the agencies are still using the manual way in terms of building reports to fill out the Excel files. And I came from a technical background so we built our entire system to ensure that everything is automated. We want our clients to hire us, by our brain instead of by our hands. We don’t really build clients by hourly rates. We build clients by how much value we can bring you.
So that’s a difference. And based on the efficiency, and the deed automated reporting system that we built, we basically reduced our workload by 30%. As I mentioned earlier, that no one wants to be a full time reporting specialist and doing excels all day, every day. We wanted to get insights, we don’t want to just get numbers, we want to get insights. That’s one thing that we considered we did, we did it right, it put us in the place that the client truly value our work, instead of paying extra before just a report.
Jeremy Weisz 15:45
Some companies actually come to you for this piece. I don’t know if that’s kind of like, in a different way. I don’t know if what you’d say it’s more kind of B2B, but like, they are coming to you for operational efficiency help to reduce their workload. And there was a company in the manufacturing industry, what were some of the things you did there to help them with their operational efficiency?
Jessica Li 16:18
That’s a great question, Jeremy, when it comes to efficiency, especially when it comes to reporting efficiency, we all know that when we build a report, we get one number from here, Facebook, we get another number from there from Google and one number from Bing. And we’ll put them in the same chart. And that takes about 10 minutes. But if there’s a backhand, everything that’s connected to via back end, that we build our own API to grab all this information. And then we just click one button, and everything will show up on the screen. So in that case, the client doesn’t have to go to different platforms to see all their numbers. They just go to one place and the click a button and they can see their entire company’s performance.
Jeremy Weisz 17:04
So do other maybe it’s not just agencies, but other companies? Have you build them integrations and automations based on that for them?
Jessica Li 17:15
Yes. And I’m having another conversation with a brand new client that tomorrow. And he reached out to us because of his awareness of how we build things. And so we’re having a conversation with him tomorrow.
Jeremy Weisz 17:30
What type of companies are good for that? I mean, I could, obviously, digital agencies, right, they’re trying to create reports and collect data, what other type of companies are good for that particular type of service?
Jessica Li 17:47
Clients as well. There are a lot of traditional clients from traditional industries, that they’re not necessarily — they’re very good at what they do. But they’re not necessarily always data savvy, or digital savvy, but they’re looking for solutions to reduce the complexity of their day-to-day operation. So those clients are also looking for solutions like this.
Jeremy Weisz 18:12
So they may have an internal team handling marketing or other data. And you can kind of go in there and help them integrate and automate some of these things. Exactly. So you come from operational efficiency, I’m kind of wondering from your background, and you can kind of choose which lesson maybe was impactful for you, but I mentioned the front of the interview, Alibaba, Yahoo, China, Under Armour, HP Home Depot, which one of those sticks out is like a big lesson you learned when you were working with one of those brands?
Jessica Li 18:54
I think that two brands that really stood out when I think about this questions, one is Yahoo. One is Alibaba. And we all know and we don’t have to hide the fact that the brand Yahoo, it’s no longer the one that we knew it was for. And from an insider perspective, I was working there for the longest time. And we kind of felt it at the time, the company was not wrong based on the internet mentality, the company was wrong, but more so like a traditional industry. So that’s a part of the lesson that internally we enjoy the time there, but there are some lessons to be learned.
Jeremy Weisz 19:49
So with that, would you say they weren’t being as agile or how would you kind of categorize it or think about it.
Jessica Li 20:03
Innovation, I think one thing is innovation. Another part is to try to focus on process too early. So we had a really well established the process at a very early time. So we basically limited the creativity, and the limited the willingness to be more innovative. And the people are following rules way too early at that early internet stage.
Jeremy Weisz 20:38
So what would you go and thinking back maybe have done differently? Because you’re a very processed and operational-oriented person in general. So what would you have thought maybe you would have embedded more into the company looking back?
Jessica Li 20:54
Looking back, I think we knew there’s nothing really not anything that a specific we want to change. And I think more so it’s the mentality we want to change. The mentality is that what is the best thing for the business? We’re building process for the benefit of the business? We’re not a building process for building the process. I think the biggest difference that we really go back and rethink why we did it.
Jeremy Weisz 21:25
Yeah, so there was process built around the thought of how do we make more innovation and creativity, that would be the mentality of going in? It’s still process, but it’s more of the thought of creating it for a specific reason to increase the company. Right? Got it. And what about Alibaba?
Jessica Li 21:47
Alibaba, we all know, such a successful endeavor and effort and work on the same floor with a Jack Ma, and it was a rewarding experience. He’s really, really nice. He’s short, but he’s nice. He’s short.
Jeremy Weisz 22:09
Short on answers or how tall he is.
Jessica Li 22:16
Pretty much my same height as me, so I’m five, three, and it’s probably five, four.
Jeremy Weisz 22:26
I mean, maybe observing him or talking to him? What were some of the things you learned.
Jessica Li 22:30
He’s a very open-minded person. And he has the charisma of being a leader. And he has vision, and everybody gives him that. And he’s very convincing.
Jeremy Weisz 22:47
So what did you see him do?
Jessica Li 22:51
So many, like, I can’t recall a specific case at this point. But whatever, when he started talking, the things just make a lot of sense now. The same point, if I’m talking about it, it doesn’t feel it was too meaningful, too bright. But when he started talking about the same thing, and now it makes sense,
Jeremy Weisz 23:16
He had a compelling way and a convincing way of just kind of explaining things that sounds like. Talk about from that end, from Alibaba, anything else any other lessons?
Jessica Li 23:30
One more thing that Alibaba just sort of embodied into the entire company. One thing that everybody always go back and reference it is embrace the change. That’s a Alibaba mentality many of us are afraid of changes. And we generally I don’t think that human beings love changes because no changes make things a lot easier. But embracing the change, embrace changes, it’s a model in Alibaba. And I think that that’s probably one of the key things that made the business successful, is that the internet industry is evolving every day. And if you don’t embrace the change, then you’re gonna fall behind.
Jeremy Weisz 24:31
What, as president of Advertience, what are your responsibilities?
Jessica Li 24:38
So I had a joke about it with my business partner Raymond Reed, and I said, I’m responsible for making money you’re responsible for spending money. So my responsibility here is the business development side product development, and the team and erase responsibility. It’s more on the operational managing the other side of the business. The other side of that, uh, you don’t see a lot, but it’s equally important.
Jeremy Weisz 25:10
I mean, sometimes, you need to spend money to make money, but I’m sure there’s some friction between those two things. Right, a natural friction. What are some things? Maybe it wasn’t like a heated argument, but the you had to debate whether okay, no, we shouldn’t spend on that or no, you got to slow that down because of the operations. Right. So what were some of those debates that you had to have a clear decision?
Jessica Li 25:41
Oh, it’s been quite fortunate. We don’t have a lot of disagreement.
Jeremy Weisz 25:47
Because you win. That’s why.
Jessica Li 25:54
I’m quite unfortunate that to well supported by my business partner, and himself was spending money to make money on that approach. So whenever we consider we need to pay our staff better. We need to offer promotions just because they did. Really well. All those things that we are most of the time on the same page, exactly the same page. And he always 100% agrees.
Jeremy Weisz 26:26
Yeah, me because I have a business partner, and we get along, but we definitely don’t always agree. There can be I mean, I think couple weeks ago, we’re like brothers. Right? And so we’ll dicker and there was a staff member on the meeting. And they were like, it was a couple staff members, and one was newer. And they were like, and afterwards I’m like, don’t worry, like, we still love each other, it’s fine, because they’re like, “oh, my God, like what I get myself into.” But there’s always stuff, maybe he is more passionate about than me. And two, we have to convince each other. Right? So from a leadership perspective, what are some of the things you do as a team that help you run?
Jessica Li 27:14
Thank you for asking that question. A couple of things we do differently, than, at least to mine and not my awareness, then other agencies that we care about our people, I’m not necessarily saying that they don’t care, other agencies don’t care. So one of the things that we started two, three years ago, is that every quarter, every three months, we’re gonna carve out one entire week. We call it our agency Development Week. We don’t take client calls in that week. We don’t reach out to clients, we don’t do business development for that entire week, we take care of two things, one, mental health. And the second that we will organize trainings, we will collaborate, and we will have fun together. So in every quarter, we have our week, we call it the Agency Development Week.
Jeremy Weisz 28:17
So what are some things you do then you’re saying agency clients make the people crazy? Because we need a break for mental health.
Jessica Li 28:27
I’m gonna lie.
Jeremy Weisz 28:30
What are some of the things you or the team do during that week to help?
Jessica Li 28:34
Yeah, one of the things is training. So I’ve benefited from professional trainings in my earlier career. And I think of the training, we outsource some trainers to provide trainings to us, we also develop trainings from one team to another as well. So that’s one training and another one is, when we get together, sometimes when we can get together for an in-person event we can for many of the times it’s hard, especially during COVID. We have this thing called the cloud launch team lunch. So, Zoom lunch, basically, everyone just pop up on the Zoom, and we will have a lunch ticket and team lunch together.
Jeremy Weisz 29:20
I Like that. You also really encourage, like a cross-department collaboration. So just talk about some of the things you do there.
Jessica Li 29:30
Yeah, absolutely. I can give you a very specific example that we hired a very strong candidate as account manager, managing client relationship. And after a while we realized that his true capability and the true passion is actually on the system side, not on the people side. So after several conversations that we identified, then we really saw him gonna shine on the other side. And then he actually was thinking exactly the same thing. But he didn’t get a chance to share yet. So, and after some arrangement that the team members started working on completely different departments, and then the account management side.
Jeremy Weisz 30:17
You encourage that even from a proactive standpoint. So how do you encourage that with the team so it’s not even necessarily up to you or someone else to say it?
Jessica Li 30:30
I think that creating that culture and environment is really important. We have morning huddles every day. So it takes about 15 to 20 minutes, and everyone will share what did they really want to do and how busy they are. So if someone is not busy enough that they can volunteer and say that I saw a client calls in that happened today, I want to be on that client call to see if there’s something that I can learn. And so that happens on a daily basis.
Jeremy Weisz 31:04
Yeah, so something like the morning huddle kick is visibility to everyone. So if something interests them, you encourage them to participate and learn. What are the other types of meetings you have? And maybe the cadence is because I know the use of a morning huddle, 15 to 20 minutes. I think before we started that you talked about you have one-on-ones, how does that work? And what’s the cadence of those?
Jessica Li 31:28
We have a one-on-one study is a monthly base and every month that we make sure that we have a one-on-one session with each individual, on the team, trying to understand several things, the most important thing to see if they’re happy, and need my team to be happy. So when I know that they’re happy in terms of their compensation, and in terms of their responsibility, and if they’re taking on too much. So those things and I think I truly believe that if it is a one-on-one environment, it’s much easier for anyone to share. If it is a team environment, people just mostly pretty shy and don’t want to express their concerns or issues.
Jeremy Weisz 32:14
How long are those meetings? And how do you run them?
Jessica Li 32:17
A half an hour, most of the time. And so basically, it starts with my questions, opportunities, apps and the dams in the most recent month. And a blindside that I have, that they see that they can help me address it. And if there were a couple of more questions we asked during those calls, is if you have helped a teammate, or if any teammates have helped you. So it’s so important for me to know that between the team teammates that they are having a great relationships of helping each other instead of just the competition.
Jeremy Weisz 33:07
Yeah. And then are you doing all of them? Are you kind of split them up among different leaders as well?
Jessica Li 33:14
I’m doing all of them.
Jeremy Weisz 33:17
Are there any other so you have those monthly one-on-ones, you have the morning huddle and any other meetings that are important?
Jessica Li 33:27
We also have manager calls on a weekly basis. And for those who are interacting with weather, either clients or team members, that we call them, they manage people. And when managing people. It’s important that we share if they have any challenges, experiences and learnings. And what is the approach to address problems without hurting anybody’s feelings?
Jeremy Weisz 34:04
Jessica I have one last question. Before I ask it, I just want to point people to advertience.com to learn more about what they do there. And my last question is on resources. Some of your favorite resources, it could be technology resources, your tech stack, it could be books, it could be mentors that you’ve learned from what are some of your favorite resources that people should take a look at.
Jessica Li 34:39
I have a really good resource that I want to share, and I’ve benefited from it a lot. It’s an organization called Tech Canada. It’s an organization for entrepreneurs to form small groups and every month we get together and as the same group of people 12, 15, sometimes we get together and we share how we feel, as a business entrepreneur, also as a human being. So many of the times we feel different as a business owner, and it’s a very lonely place to be now, entrepreneur. But when you sit amongst the 16 others, you don’t feel that loneliness anymore. And we can be very open minded, authentic, and I really value that organization.
Jeremy Weisz 35:40
Amazing. Jessica, I’m going to be the first one to thank you. Thanks for sharing your journey, your knowledge, your stories, I will check out advertience.com more episodes of the podcast and thanks so much and we’ll see everyone next time.
Jessica Li 35:52
Thank you too. Thank you, Jeremy.
