From Ink to Innovation: Michael Flynn on Modern Marketing Challenges
In this episode, we welcome Michael Flynn from 12 Points. Michael talks about the origins and mission of 12 Points, a marketing umbrella startup currently in its launch phase. He discusses his unique background in marketing, PR, and print, and how his career journey led him to 12 Points. Michael emphasizes the importance of proactive marketing strategies, integrating digital and print media, and leveraging data to create personalized and effective campaigns. He also shares insights on the use of QR codes, personal URLs, and the power of print in today's fragmented media landscape. Additionally, Michael offers advice on career management and personal anecdotes, making the conversation both informative and relatable.
00:00 Introduction to Michael Flynn and 12 Points
02:02 Michael Flynn's Career Journey
04:51 Networking and Industry Connections
06:37 Strategies for Print and Marketing Integration
25:13 The Role of Data in Marketing
30:52 Career Advice and Personal Reflections
34:25 Conclusion and Farewell
Follow Michael on LinkedIn
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Transcript:
This transcript is computer generated, please excuse any typos
[00:00:33] Laura: Hello, welcome, Michael Flynn. Michael works at 12 point. Michael, , thank you for coming today. tell us a little bit about 12 point.
[00:00:41] Michael: Yeah, so 12 Points is really a a launch organization. So we are a startup. We have been in I'll say stealth mode. I am right now the only employee at 12 Points. it's a, it's a marketing umbrella organization that are. Owner decided to launch, and my, my job is to essentially not only go to market and build new clients for all, of the companies within our portfolio.
And there's five basically five companies that we own that do print and promotion and marketing services but to help individually, each of those companies to cross sell as well. you know, the majority of of our clients a they don't know, they've never heard of of 12 points. 'cause nobody's heard of 12 points.
And so we've got kind of a launch to go to them and say, Hey, we're a part of this organization called 12 Points. So, you know, their communication coming from AAA or from Quality Press or from PMA are gonna basically be able to say, Hey, this is, this is what we do now, but we're actually part of a bigger family of companies and we have a lot more resources available to you then we've told you in the past.
And so that's kind of what's gonna be going on. And you're gonna hear more from us than you've heard from us in the past, which is zero.
[00:02:00] Laura: Yeah. So how did you get started? First of all, in print and, yeah, let's start
[00:02:07] Michael: Yeah. So I mean, it's funny because I, my background is, is very much in, in marketing. I started as a sports writer. while I was in college, I worked for two years, two plus years as a sports reporter for the Bellingham Herald. You know, I worked just enough during the time that I was going to school that they didn't have to pay me benefits and you know, all that stuff.
And
[00:02:30] Laura: Hmm.
[00:02:30] Michael: decided that I did not want to go work an overnight shift on the sports desk, like the Pendleton Register or something, you know, crazy like that, the Wenatchee world.
[00:02:42] Laura: You can cover the roundup.
[00:02:44] Michael: I went into the world of pr. And so through pr I first at the Seattle Chamber of Commerce, and then I worked for a, a, local PR agency and, and got into the sort of the marketing arena through that.
But you know, all through everything that I've done, the titles have changed. My industries have changed, but the job has been almost the same all the way through, which is creatively finding. Ways to either help the organization that I work for or to help the clients that I'm working on behalf of to creatively find new channels of revenue to open new doors to tell their story better.
I mean, just sort of all of that stuff. And print was always a big piece of that. I worked for the parent company for the Puget Sound Business Journal for six, almost six years. And when I was very young and I, I launched a publication on the east side called the east Side Business Journal that essentially competed against PSBJ in that corner of the world.
And it was very much a pr marketing job trying to, you know, find a way to compete against PSBJ was really fun. but I was also then doing things like press checks at, you know, one in the morning for the paper that was gonna get mailed the next day. so I learned between the newspaper world and then also the, the jobs that we did for clients.
I learned quite a bit about printing. And and then I spent 10 years working in the gift industry, but I worked for a. Social stationary company. So most of our products, they're journals, notebooks, gift books, greeting cards, things of that nature. So most all of our products were printed. And so, you know, very familiar with the paper side of things.
And then when I left that, I took a flyer on a startup in the industry that didn't work out and was out on the hunt for a job and ended up going to work as the head of sales for. Sort of a mid-size local print company. And that's totally serendipitous very much by accident.
But that's kind of where I've, I've been for the last, you know, eight, nine years. So
[00:04:50] Laura: Nice. Nice. Well, there's gotta be a reason why you seem to know everybody. So you were born here,
[00:04:56] Michael: I was born here. You know, I, I think the combination of a couple things, Laura. I went to high school with a lot of people who ended up kind of moving on and have done very cool things in their professional careers and have sort of stayed in touch with some of them.
[00:05:13] Laura: Where'd you go to high school?
[00:05:14] Michael: went to Bishop Blanchet.
[00:05:15] Laura: Oh, exactly. Okay,
[00:05:17] Michael: Yep. By GreenLake. Yep. And so, you know, I learned a ton and got to meet a lot of really, really cool people and see who the movers and shakers of the city were when I was at the Seattle Chamber of Commerce. So I worked there for three years in their communications department and, I, I got to know personally and even get to be friends with.
Jack Ferris, who now is best known as Anna Ferris's dad, but he used to run Colin Weber in, in Seattle. And you know, Harold Carr, who was the VP of Communications for the Boeing Company, I'd run into him at Mariners Games long after he retired. And he is like, oh, Michael, how are you?
You know what I mean?
You kind of got to know who the players were and then and then obviously working at the business journal and, for the business journal, you, you are pretty plugged in. And I've also had the benefit to be fair of my dad was the 25 year publisher for PSBJ. And so I've gotten a lot of doors open to me.
From my dad's connection. So, benefits there. And then, you know, working in the PR world, I worked for a, a really amazing woman named Pat Fury. And everybody knew, Pat Fury. And so, you know, between Pat and my dad
[00:06:23] Laura: you were at the Fury Group. Okay.
[00:06:25] Michael: I was early days when, when Pat was still running it. Yeah.
[00:06:28] Laura: Gotcha. Wow. That is impressive background. And your dad too. Wow. Yeah. Good. I did not know that. So Michael, tell me what are you doing to try to get these in addition to getting them to come together? Because, you know, we, we do paid media here and I know we incorporate, you know, print pieces every so often into our campaigns and customer funnels to try to, you know, and we incorporate digital with that.
Is that something you are trying to do with these, is kind of bring some of these print shops into having more in-house capabilities or more offerings?
[00:07:06] Michael: I mean, I would say yes. I, I is a short answer. I think that the biggest piece of it is you know, I, I call it swimming upstream. I think one of the challenges, and you and I have even talked about this, Laura, is one of my frustrations working in the print world on the, on the business development side is that a lot of printers are, are very tactical and they're very good at getting their fingernails dirty with ink.
but being able to do more than just sit and wait for how do you solve this, this very specific print problem, I've already figured out exactly what I'm gonna do, sort of leaves you at the very bottom of the funnel with very little opportunity to truly impact or effect what the results are. All you can really do is, hey, we can make it pretty like most other printers can, and, you know, we'll get your project done on time and on budget.
Great. But you know, the, the bar at that point is, is pretty low. So one of the things is being able to be a true resource to your clients forces you to have something to say to them besides like, Hey, let's, I, I'll, I'll bring by some paper samples. Right?
[00:08:10] Laura: Right.
How can I make
Your business grow? How can I, those sorts of
[00:08:14] Michael: yeah. Yeah. And, when they don't think of you that way, so. one of the, the big pieces is there's a lot of data components that drive good mailing projects. And, and obviously you have to be able to do printing, to do mailing. But you know, I would sort of say that the options available to most marketers in both an integrated you know, digital and, and print fashion in terms of understanding what those capabilities are, is not very well known still.
But I would also say that that's, that's something that they might hear from their agency or they might hear from their media buyer like
yourself, but usually they don't get good advice from their print service provider. And, and so that's on us as an industry for shame on us, for being a hundred percent tactical and not enough focused on what the results actually could be.
But not selling to the what if possibilities, because there's a lot of them. And so, yeah. So that's a real goal of mine is to not only, you know, get out and, and talk in the market about those opportunities to the types of companies that that should be having those discussions, you know, frankly may or may not be having those discussions with the current print provider, but a big, big, piece of the job is to actually help.
Maybe be the conduit for our existing account teams with our current clients. Because our clients in, in most situations, and I, I said this at other printers that I've worked, but they usually don't know what you can do. They only know what you do for them. And so, you know, in our case, the big, big chunk of it is it's like, Hey, gosh, we have been doing the same thing over and over again, only.
For these clients, for this client for the last eight years. And it's amazing. And it's great that they've got that and when they have to order business cards, they think of us. Have we ever really gone back out to them and said, Hey, what are you doing relative to driving lead generation for your sales team?
Do you have a sales team? How many salespeople do you have? How are you generating leads for them? Do you do trade shows? You know, I mean, just sort of the basic 1 0 1. But that's a piece of I think an opportunity for, you know, the right print folks. And it's not that there's not people doing that, but I would say as a general rule, most of them are, are on the receiving side and very reactive versus proactive in terms of driving what their clients could and should be maybe doing with their marketing dollars versus just, yes, we can execute on what you're giving to us.
[00:10:52] Laura: Yeah, so it's really, really just one little piece of campaign, and they're just like, call us when you need that piece.
[00:10:59] Michael: Yep. Yep. It's very, and I'd say sometimes it's formulaic. And it's nobody's fault. I guess it is the, the fault of the, print service provider. If, if you're not going back to them and saying, Hey,
I saw that you're launching this new product. What are you doing on that front?
And you know, we've got some ideas. Can we come and have a meeting to discuss what those ideas might be? But usually print folks don't sell by ideas. They, they are very focused on what it is that their clients are driving. So that's kind of an area where I think that I would like and I do tend to like what I'm doing a lot more when I'm having those kind of conversations.
And, and getting invited to meetings where somebody is saying, Hey, you know, we've got this meeting and you had talked about this thing. Could you come and talk to the rest of my team and my management about this? Because I don't have enough background information to be smart about it, but I think it may be is something that we need.
That to me is a much more fun conversation. Then what's the best way to, to print this business card or this brochure, you know?
[00:12:03] Laura: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
[00:12:04] Lisa: One question that we hear quite a lot from our clients about printed materials, although frankly also digital out of home and connected TV, is around the inclusion of QR codes in their strategy. And I was wondering if you had an opinion on that.
[00:12:18] Michael: Yeah. So there's, you know, I think that there's a lot of people that are starting to do that, and between what's called you know, pearls, personal URLs, so you can do. You know, if you're mailing the 5,000 people, you can have 5,000 different personal URLs and, and they drive to a landing page, right?
So there's a company that works with a lot of printers around the country. That's a software company outta San Diego called Mindfire. And a lot of printers that do a lot of really integrated direct marketing work with Mindfire because They'll take your data and they'll generate the landing pages and they'll generate the QR codes and things that you're gonna put into your, into your campaign.
And there's a measurement tracking spreadsheet, or like a digital dashboard that, that they give you so you can sort of see what's going on. And I think for a lot of people when they're doing mailing, you know, their concern is like, did it actually get to the people?
Because I only heard from a couple of people and I thought I'd hear from a lot more and maybe it didn't get to them. And so being able to have some sort of trackability and there's, there's USPS products that they offered to do that you know, that work to, to varying different degrees. But the reality is, it, it's really about creating the right campaign so that you get the right results and you're, you're spending less of your energy figuring out.
What do we get out to people and did it get out to them? And you're really more track tracked on, okay, you know what, the right people are responding and we're getting this kind of response rate. And so, you know, with the personal QR code, for example, if you give somebody a second experience, which is if I, if I go from where that QR code takes me and it takes me to a personal landing page and there's some information that personalizes it for Lisa or Laura or Michael, particularly if you can do it beyond just the name. Right? So that's the piece that so many marketers, I think fall down on is it's like, oh, variable data. I can use your name.
like, no. You can say, you know, Laura, you know, we hope that you're enjoying your summer in West Seattle. Right? Or, you know, whatever it is.
I mean, you, you've got some data that tells you who that person is. And so that really will drive better response. And so one of the things with print is that there used to be a lot of like junk junk mail, right? companies would print 25,000 of the same piece, and they would buy a list and they'd send it out and they'd see what happened.
And the same offer went up to everybody. And there was no testing, there was no personality to it. There was no one-to-one communication today with the,
[00:14:59] Laura: Yeah, you better just have some kind of crazy offer
that, yeah, you had to really, like, everything had to be like cut it in half, half price, you know?
[00:15:07] Michael: Yeah. And it's, well, and I think you really wanna personalize the offer. So if I'm talking to you and you are, you know, the admissions director for a private school.
I should have some information based on, Hey, we work with, you know, 35 different private schools around the Puget Sound area, and what do I know about what's driving their business? Right? And so I can personalize it in some way, shape, or form so that I've got, you know, information that says to them, Hey Lisa, we know as a, admissions director for small private school.
These are the things that are probably keeping you up at night. And, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah. And you can, you can even personalize it down to, obviously the name of the school, the location of it, but some other variable factors including photography, right? So all of these things are available today because so many of these things have moved from offset printing, which is where you have to ink it and, you know, plate it and, and do all the setup costs.
And you really, if you do less than a thousand pieces. You're wasting money, right? And so in today's world, because of digital technology, you can do one. And really there's some setup cost, but it's, it's really viable to say, Hey, listen, these are the 25 people we wanna reach.
And we're gonna come up with a tailored, you know, yes, maybe the media is the same, but there's gonna be a ton of different elements of variable elements in that, that's provided because of digital technology today. So those are some things that I think are driving the, the ability to use QR codes, because then you can send them to an online experience and, and further that and, you know, get, get some additional data from them.
Right. And the other thing that people are doing that seems to be working is if you've got, you know, abandons for example, if I, if I go to that page and then I don't end up actually filling it out, I can get notified and, you know, we know that they went to that based on their IP address, we can actually send them a different mailing saying, Hey Laura, we, you know, thanks for, you know, your interest.
[00:17:12] Laura: Checking us out. Yeah.
[00:17:13] Michael: yes, we thought we'd give you this little push to get over the edge 'cause it might be an important, you know, thing. And so what if we did this? And so you can make an offer that's unique to that person. Right? And so those are some, those are some interesting things that, that, you know, mail in particular.
But that print allows in today's world that frankly, not enough marketers are, are taking advantage of from what I,
[00:17:38] Laura: I, yeah, there's, I know, yep. See, we, we focus so much on like digital paid media, but this is another solution that is really relevant.
[00:17:48] Michael: It goes, I think, Laura, to your point, they go well together because how you and I have talked about it before, how tailored your digital messaging can be, right? So I know that you are in this address, and I'm gonna send these messages to including. For television. Right.
[00:18:09] Laura: Yes. Yes.
[00:18:10] Michael: send that.
Yeah. I mean, it's, it's, it's amazing what you can do with that. Now, if you think about the fact that, you know, everybody's like, well, I never look at my mail, but that's actually not really true. And,
[00:18:21] Laura: Now we know it 'cause we can see these QR
[00:18:23] Michael: yep. And the amount of, of response rate on mailing since COVID has actually gone up in part because there are fewer things in your mailbox.
And in part because if you send somebody something that actually is somewhat interesting, right? You can't just send them crap. But if you send 'em something, they're at least gonna look at it before they put it in the pile to recycle, which is better than a lot of emails are gonna get in today's world.
Right? And so, you know, you, you get the opportunity to, you know, maybe even be kept. So somebody like my wife will leave things for me. From the mail that she thinks I might wanna look at. And sometimes they're actually marketing pieces.
[00:19:06] Laura: Yeah,
[00:19:07] Michael: So there's, there's interesting value there. So you get that and it goes to what I'm seeing online.
When I'm online and it's, and what I'm seeing in television. You know, all of a sudden I'm getting hit with five or six different, what media in some ways it, it really starts to feel like. I don't remember where I saw that, but I, you know, I'm telling somebody, oh gosh, I saw this and I don't remember whether I saw it on tv.
I don't remember whether I saw it in, you know, a, a printed piece. I don't remember if I saw it online, but I know that this is what it is. And so part of it is, yes, every marketer wants to be able to say, I got this person to come and respond because of this paid media. Right. Whether it was print or whether it was, you know, an ad on television.
But, but what they really want them to do is you really want to, instead of measuring just response, what you really want is like, I spent so many dollars on my marketing and I need to get this many dollars back
in terms of new business or, or growth of business. And paying attention to that metric is a really, really important thing that sometimes we lose sight of when we're talking to clients.
And sometimes marketing directors really lose sight of that.
[00:20:21] Lisa: We so often are talking about that last touch attribution point that Google Analytics loves to focus on, but it's not, that's not really the most important one. It's just the one that Google gets to assign itself.
[00:20:33] Michael: Well, it's, it's kind of, it's kind of funny because again, coming out of the newspaper world and things have changed so much through the years, but for a long time, I mean, daily newspapers. Made a big chunk of their money from all of the auto dealers. I mean, so a guy that I went to college with who he runs Dwayne Lane dealerships now.
His, his dad was Dwayne and, and Tom is really active in the industry. I remember having lunch with him a couple years ago and he was saying, he goes. Oh my gosh. I wish I could not do, you know, the, the print ads and stuff like that. But he goes, because I know that what's driving somebody's decision making is the advertising that we're doing on television at the brand level.
It's the magazine ads that they see that are like forming their opinion about like, this is the kind of car I wanna pay attention
[00:21:21] Laura: Seeing it in a show or a video game or
[00:21:24] Michael: And, and yet, and he is like, but they walk in and they're like, this is the car that I want, and they have the, the ad. And so it's direct response because of that.
And that's true, but the reality is the only reason that they paid attention to that one particular offer that got them to, yes, it got them to get onto the lot, but they were forming an opinion and, and working out what they wanted to do long before then. And only one media is getting credit for that.
[00:21:52] Lisa: Exactly.
[00:21:52] Michael: So that's the, that's the Google challenge.
I think that you know, historically has been the case. And, and I'm super excited about tomorrow night, Laura, because I think that that's changing, right? I
mean, and I, I don't know how it's changing, but by golly, you know, most of my search today is like, I just go to chat GPT,
[00:22:10] Laura: Yeah, I think that is what it's going to be.
[00:22:13] Michael: and, and
[00:22:14] Laura: we are definitely going there. Well, Gemini's doing a good job on Google as well, which is their ai but it is going that direction a hundred percent. It doesn't matter if it's Google or chat, you.
[00:22:26] Michael: and as searchers, I think that that's actually a liability, right? Which is when you have just a few, all that data gets congealed and so you, you know, you're not gonna have as many people putting as many things out there. There's not as many options for people when they're researching and it really all comes back.
And I use Gemini a lot too. I'll be honest, it's some somewhat laziness. It's like, Hey, I just wanted an answer.
[00:22:51] Laura: Yeah. Yeah, I mean I definitely, what I love about and Gemma, it just gotten better 'cause, but I'm a chat GPT, like GPT person, like that is where I go because I like the video. I like to be able to, and I know you can do this with Gemini now too, but just the voice to text and just saying, and just the, the scenarios.
Now I'm thinking about doing this and blah, blah, and I don't get a bunch of shopping. I get a bunch of. You wanna take these steps and you wanna think about it this way and, okay, can you offer some products that would fit my specs? And yes, they give me a list of, it's like, oh my gosh, this is so much more time saving.
I mean, it solves all of our problems,
[00:23:34] Michael: Yeah, I mean, to me it feels a little bit like what, you know, DVRs did to television advertising, right? I mean, my wife cannot stand having to, if she has to sit through a program where
we, you know, have to watch Commercials. she's like,
oh, this is, you know, driving me nuts. I'm like, hun, you know, somebody's gotta pay for it.
But, so that,
again, I the, I, I sort of throw in as a reminder on that, which is, it's like, and then there's still print. and, and print is humongous. , I've wanted for a long time to do this. Video series that I would post to my LinkedIn about, like, you know, talking to a friend about like, oh gosh, ISN isn't print dead.
No print's not dead. And you know, like you just walk down the street and you're like, print, print, print, print, print, print, print. You know, oh, I'm in the grocery store, print, print, print. It's like everything is still, I mean, it is still vibrant. It's just not, people don't do this.
[00:24:29] Laura: way, it's just not the only way. It's what now? Everything's just fragmented and we have just a ton more ways of getting that information out. But that doesn't change the fact that you're still, it's still important to see that, you know, in not on the screen.
[00:24:44] Michael: Right. and there's a lot of statistics and a lot of research done about, you know, the, the value of of kinesthetic.
[00:24:51] Laura: Yeah.
[00:24:51] Michael: if you actually are touching something, your recall over the long term is much longer than if you're just hearing it on, on audio or you're, you're just seeing it online or in print.
So,
[00:25:02] Laura: Yep.
I love this. No, you gave us a lot of tidbits. there's a lot of things I didn't know, a lot of morsels I didn't know, so
[00:25:10] Michael: well, the only thing I would throw in there is going back to like, you know. Everything comes down to data. Right? And so the conversations that, that you're having with your clients that I should be having with my clients are, you know, okay, where is your data? Right? I mean, I even
had, I had, you know, breakfast with a mutual friend of ours who's at the, the port of Seattle, and she's struggling with trying to, you know.
there's all these different data silos, right? So it's like, what are you doing with that data? How, how relational is that data? And I, would say that, I would encourage marketers to spend more time planning based on what data they are seeing and making sure that they have the data that gives them.
The idea of saying, this is what we should be doing, or we should be messaging A, B, and C, because look at how many of our clients you know, they used to buy this all the time and they haven't bought it in over two years. I mean, just something as simple as that.
Right? That's. I, I mean, it's amazing how many companies see their customers walk out the back door and there's no alarm bells that go off, and they don't have it in their CRM system that like you're sending me a trigger saying this person hasn't ordered in six months and they used to order every month.
I mean, whatever it is. So those are all things that you can. You know, apply to your, your media campaign planning. You can apply to your, your print campaign planning and being able to identify what are those variable items with your data so that you're, when you're actually doing a, a mailing campaign, for example, let you know, have a conversation about what you should be doing in your, your creative.
To get to where you need to be with that, because there's something called the 40 40 20 rule, which is 40% of your response and direct mail is gonna be the result of the list that you're sending to. And I would sort of integrate into that also, not just the list of is it accurate, you know, is it clear?
Is it somebody that might wanna buy from you? But also if it's, if it's an existing customer list, like what's the data that you're using? In your variable, you know, messaging to that person, right? So that, that would be 40, 40% of it is gonna be the offer or the call to action. And so, you know, being very smart about what, what do you wanna achieve, right?
So don't go into it going, Hey, we really need to do some mailing and add that to our, our marketing mix. No, that's not a great way you say your money. Let's figure out what you, what you wanna be doing. And 20% of it is actually only the creative, which is crazy, but you know,
[00:27:59] Laura: in it for that
person,
[00:28:00] Michael: right,
that's right.
and, but you know, being able to then. Use that 20% properly because poor creative is not gonna get you where you need to go. And you can have the best data and you can have a great offer. And if somebody is not interested in the packaging that you send it in, you're done. So, you know, just understanding all of those as as marketers is really kind of key, I think.
[00:28:24] Laura: I did not know that, those percentages, but it obviously makes perfect sense I agree I mean, I think about that and like what are they collecting from their current customers and you know, that they can learn from versus just. The basic, Hey, I have to call you back to set an appointment, or whatever we're
[00:28:42] Michael: Yeah, and I, I'm a white paper junkie, you
know, it's just like people, people hate those people, but I've got like this huge data file of things that I'll read, like when I'm on the bus, if I'm taking the bus or if I'm
doing something on a Saturday morning, but. You know, it's amazing how much attention gets paid to new customer acquisition, but really what, what customers should be spending, and this goes to my job right now at 12 Points, which is we have this entire base of customers that's 1800 strong between all of the companies.
Somebody that knows us, they didn't, in almost any kid case, they didn't fire us 'cause we made a mistake. They just either. They went somewhere else, they stopped doing it. You, you know, I mean, it's inertia, right? And so you get back to them and they're like, oh yeah, I remember you guys. I mean, that, that warmth right there is big.
But if, going back to what I was saying, like some sort of trigger, it's like. Hey, gosh, Laura, you used to order all the time and we've noticed that you haven't been ordering over the last eight months. You know, we'd love to find out what we could do to get you to order again, that personal touch, whether it's by a phone call or whether it's an email or whether it's, you know, in your case, even a television ad, right?
I mean, but whatever it is, and it's personalized to me, I'm gonna pay attention to it. 'cause I actually know that they knew that I didn't order.
[00:30:07] Laura: Right,
[00:30:07] Michael: I mean, and, and, and there's something, interesting about feeling like somebody actually cared. And so that, that's the piece that I think is really important like, I'm paying attention to it for us in the marketing aspect of my job.
But I think that that's a piece that a lot of organizations, even big companies fail to remember is it's like you're so attuned to lead generation, which is really important, but look at how many. Things are flowing out the back that you're, you're just losing.
[00:30:34] Laura: mining your own data.
[00:30:37] Michael: Yeah, that's right.
Your data is the best, information about what you should be doing. I think.
[00:30:42] Laura: Yeah. Agree. Agree. Well, thank you so much Michael Flynn for joining us today. I think Lisa, you have one more question for Michael.
[00:30:52] Lisa: Before we let you go, if you could go back in time and tell yourself at the beginning of your career one piece of advice, what would it be?
[00:30:59] Michael: Hmm. I think I've got a lot of advice for my young self and and my poor sons kind of hear it from me sometimes now, but
[00:31:08] Laura: Yeah, learn from My Mistakes kids.
[00:31:11] Michael: I mean, I think the biggest thing is I, I pursued what was interesting to me and I don't, regret it. I've gotten to do some pretty cool things and I, like I said, almost all of my jobs really were sort of the same.
They just kind of took on a different form. But I would say, and one of the things that I've shared with, with my sons is you should manage your career. Figure out what you really wanna do and figure out what really kind of lights your fire and, and be intentional about the jobs that you do take and don't take.
Right? So, I sort of always took a job 'cause it was usually like, oh, somebody wants me and it's more money, a little bit more money. And yeah, this would be cool. And, you know, sometimes it was the right thing and sometimes I should have been more intentional about what I was doing. That would be my, my one advice,
you know, for myself, which was, maybe pay really careful attention to how you roadmap what your career looks like.
'cause by the time that you, get to be over 50 you're sometimes in a place where you're like, oh my gosh. maybe I really wanted to be an architect, but it's too late to be an architect now.
[00:32:20] Laura: No, totally. I, I ended up, you know, working at an agency for media buying. For 20 years. Next thing you know, you take this one job and then 20 years later you're doing paid media. But I went to school for copywriting and that's in my heart too, right? Like, and I still naturally think that way I'm not gonna like make a huge change and be this, you know, I just do it for the clients that are doing media buys. But it's like, it's just interesting 'cause it was just a job at the time, you know, in my career field.
[00:32:49] Michael: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:32:50] Laura: I just gotta get a job in my field. And so I start, you know, did that and then, you know, a thousand years later, that's what I'm doing.
Like there's no choice. That's what you're doing.
[00:32:59] Michael: By the way, Lisa, it's not that I don't give advice to my daughter, but , she knew early on that she wanted to be in nursing, and so she's done great she's gone back to school at Johns Hopkins to become a nurse practitioner.
But, but that's a great example of managing, like, she knows exactly what she wants to do, and she's now paying attention to the, the world of healthcare around her and not just. You know, the specifics of it. It's like, you know, yeah. You gotta know the big picture and not just the, the small details.
So
[00:33:26] Laura: I get that. I think of that as a singer too, like. Don't take on, just don't just sing any, like songs can sing you if you're not good. So a job can work you if you're not, you know, you need to be selective of your job. you know, otherwise you're reacting to it and going, oh, I'll n yeah, least Lisa.
And I do karaoke enough to know I shouldn't have done that song.
[00:33:48] Lisa: Bail, bail.
[00:33:50] Laura: That song is, is singing me. I'm not singing it.
[00:33:53] Michael: My re is pretty bad in karaoke, so the next time we go there's about six songs that I'll, I'll sing.
[00:33:59] Laura: Oh, okay. What? Well, okay, my question. What's your go-to?
[00:34:03] Michael: Well, it fits my voice, so, like Friends in Low Places is kind of my my go-to.
[00:34:09] Laura: such a good song. It's like one of my all time favorite country songs. Thank you. Now that'll be in my head for the rest of the day, which is okay.
[00:34:17] Michael: It is. All right. It's all right. Well, this is a lot of fun, Laura. Thanks. I appreciate it. and Lisa, nice to get to, to see you
[00:34:23] Lisa: yeah. Thank you.
[00:34:24] Laura: Thanks, Michael.
And you can find Michael on LinkedIn Michael. How, where can I find you?
[00:34:30] Michael: you can find me on LinkedIn. I, I, that's really the the one social media that I am I'm active on, so.
[00:34:36] Laura: Okay. so you can find Michael on LinkedIn. We'll leave his link in the description.
[00:34:41] Michael: All right, thanks. Have a great one.
