- [Announcer] Funding for "Working Capital" is provided by the Friends of KTWU, the Raymond C. and Marguerite Gibson Foundation, and Go Topeka.

(bright music) - Many of us have found good colleagues and even friendships while at work.

It can be a great thing when you find cohorts within your work family.

A few of my old advertising colleagues have done just that.

Today we welcome Alissa Menke and Angie Grau from Cohort Digital.

Welcome to Working Capital.

- Thanks for having us.

- Thank you.

- Yeah, it's good to see you both again.

I mean, it's been at least a decade since I've worked with you.

- It's been a hot minute.

- A little bit's changed in the Topeka advertising scene and in general, but first off, I did meet both of you in the advertising world, and that's kind of where this new business that we're gonna talk about today got its start for you.

So let's talk about your journey, Alissa, and where you come from, your hometown, and your journey to JHP and where we get to cohort with.

- Yeah, well I grew up in Lebo, Kansas, which is about an hour south of Topeka, and I was a multi-sport athlete, and I had watched a little bit about advertising agencies, and it seemed so glamorous and wild, but also I had no idea, right?

And so I had always thought it would be cool to work at an ad agency, but ended up at Jones Hewitt Partners just sort of out of sheer luck, answering phones, welcoming people in, offering them coffee, and just doing basic office admin stuff back in 2005.

- Kind of a point guard...

I mean, that position for them is kind of a point guard in the office 'cause you are the first contact and you are helping everybody.

- Well, and also, not to date myself, but in 2005, we still weren't using email as primary communication.

So there was a lot of phone calls.

There was a lot of people just dropping by.

I had to really perfect the small talk.

- Yeah.

- But then as my tenure there grew and I just kept asking for like, "Hey, what about this?

"How can I help you with that?

"Do you have anything I can do?"

I just got opportunity after opportunity and always was excited to make the most of it.

- Yeah, it was one of those places where they do kind of foster your ideas.

They like you looking outside the box 'cause that's how you stay ahead of the curve.

So they really do push their employees, if it's something you like, we'll kind of look into it too, you know?

Where can we go from here?

- The thing that will forever stand out to me about that company was if I would come to them and say like, "Hey Jake, what do you think about this?"

They'd be like, "You know what?

"I don't know, how about you look into that?"

And they would open this door and really let you run with an idea until you'd either determined it really wasn't feasible or they would say like, "Okay, well let's give that a shot."

- You couldn't be there unless you really did like to keep learning.

- Oh, absolutely.

- It seemed like everyone there, we weren't just coming in and doing the same thing every day.

You're like, what are these new avenues?

What are these new tools?

I mean, you couldn't ask for a better ad agency, especially for that size in this kind of market.

- I don't think that I would have thrived anywhere else.

I really need that ability to continue to learn and look and discover.

And so, yeah, it was the perfect place for me.

- It was a crossover, you know, it was big enough to have some really huge clients, but small enough where we all could pitch in and someone working in accounts, may learn a little bit of graphic design 'cause they're helping out with the flow downstairs or whatnot.

So any business, I think, that fosters their employees that way, I think in the long run, it's a great investment.

- Yeah.

Well, I think it keeps people happier there, right?

You're not going in and just doing the same things every day.

- I mean, Angie, you've been on before.

- Yes.

- You know, you are an entrepreneur.

You've now come back here.

Tell me a little bit about your journey there, 'cause I think it might have been kind of a key place to pick up a lot of business students.

- Very similar to Alissa.

So I also started at the front desk just four years later in 2009.

And August is when I started.

I started as an intern, I'm pretty sure.

And then when I graduated, was upgraded to the permanent position.

And I was so excited 'cause I, in high school, had discovered ad agencies.

I grew up in Scranton, not far from Lebo, so we're both small town girls.

And I had seen something on TV and I was like, oh my gosh, that looks so fun and glamorous and cool.

Again, no idea what it really meant.

But I knew I wanted to be at an ad agency, so I was really excited and happy to be at JHP.

Started at the front desk.

I was not encouraged to make coffee.

(panelists laughing) I did not do it well.

But everything else that Alissa had done, and same kind of situation of just reaching out and saying like, how can I help?

You know, who has a need or maybe just is struggling a little bit to keep up with everything.

And in my experience, that was Sherry Wilson in the media department because she was our only media buyer at that time.

So I started working with her and kind of learning the ropes there and expanded into that position.

But then I also would do some research and stuff for Alissa with social media, like random little upstarts that we would look into that never went anywhere.

- Yeah, yeah.

- All of the different things.

- So four or five years after you start, when hardly using email, how big were you pushing the digital there?

'Cause I mean, that's where we're getting to down the road here, so.

- So when I initially started, it was when Facebook was just rolling out of being a for college kids only.

And because I was just out of college, I was constantly asking about like, "Hey Jake, what should our clients be doing?

What should we be doing on Facebook?

What should we be telling people?"

And it only took a few conversations before they're like, I don't know, go figure that out.

Come back to us, tell me what you think we should be doing.

And so, inadvertently, it gave me the opportunity to kind of become like the social media person.

And then as that grew and company, major brands started to see, oh, social media's not gonna go away, right?

That was the first thing.

Like, oh, this is a fad, it'll go away.

And then it was like, oh, we'll have my college niece do it for us, right?

- Yeah, yeah.

- As we got through those growing pains, and we were doing like full-on social media stuff for clients, then digital ads started to become a thing.

Where like, we were now spending a lot more time in the internet and the local media companies would come and say like, "Hey, buy a full-page ad in our newspaper and we're going to throw in 10,000 impressions."

And initially they were free and then they were like, "Okay, well, now we're going to charge you for those."

And they were like, "I have no idea, is this a... Like do we want this?

Is there any value to this?"

And so, literally walked into my office and said, "Hey, you're on the internet all the time.

What do you think about this?"

And again, like, inadvertently, it kind of like drove me down this path of digital advertising.

And the more I learned about it, the more I was like, oh, that's the thing.

Because with social media, we could build this robust plan and have all of these ideas and things would tie in, like goals and strategy.

But there was always some rando on the internet that would wake up today and be like, I hate everything, and just put a giant kink.

- So this, at the time, kind of new digital advertising, it really was a divergent stream compared to the old, decades old, newspaper, television, radio, let's get those by.

So, with it being new, a new area, how much was it more of a blue ocean strategy where you're trying something to get away from everyone else as opposed to following what someone's setting up as the curve?

- I don't know, that's a good question.

It was so new that there wasn't a guide somewhere out there that I was able to like, I'm gonna go take this class.

- More like a wall of balloons and you have a whole thing of darts and you throw in five at once, see what sticks.

- And then you would be having a conversation with somebody that worked on the coast or somewhere else, that it may be done a thing before.

And so you learn something from it, and then you add to it.

And so what I was able to determine was with the digital ads, we could add little bits of code to the back end of a landing page URL.

So I click the ad.

It's got this extra code at the end.

I was able to then see that in my analytics and understand I placed ad A, and ad A drew someone to the website and when they were on the website, they did this and I was like, whoa!

We can't do that with TV- - No, you can't, I mean- - We can't do that with newspaper- - You could actually see if a different color just change as a click-through rate.

- [Alissa] Absolutely.

- There's so much extra data now because of the way you map them to the final end and it may be a final landing page you may have five ways to get there that's spread out, but you can definitely see percentage wise which pays off better and even for which stream.

So you may have an outdoor outfitters, but you know, you may have a hunting ad that leads them to they're a different way, but someone who may not like hunting, but is totally outdoors, you have a totally different way to get them to that same landing page.

- And so, I go from the social media background where you lay out these plans and then like once you lay out the plans, it's kind of out of your hands.

To now, this very clear-cut.

I put together a plan and if my plan sucks, within a few days I'm gonna be able to see it because it's not doing what I expect it to do and I have data to prove that- - Instant results.

- And then we pivot and we go to the thing that is working and it's, I mean, that was like this giant light bulb moment for me of like, I don't have to have the answers I can make really good plans based off of what I know, but we also know that what I know is sometimes not enough.

- Yeah, and the capital investment that someone's coming in and having you help with, so they're bringing their money and to help get more audience on them.

That money is more flexible, to me it goes farther because all of a sudden you didn't pay for 10 grand of a mailing that after, you know, three weeks when they're not all out yet, you know you're not getting enough buyback that, well, that was kind of just out there.

You're more adaptable and can switch kind of on-the-fly, so that that ROI is much better for that other business out there.

- As we're talking with clients about things, we basically say like, hey, this plan is like, this is a starting point But this is this is a marathon race and we are constantly going to be tweaking.

Our work, really begins once those campaigns turn on.

And so- - 'Cause you have to find their audience also, they may not know their audience first.

- Yes.

- So, I mean, you're, like you say, you can't have a whole plan till you know who you're catering to also.

- And we've got lots and lots of experience.

We know where people can be found, but we also know that if I can test four different approaches to get to that person, I'm gonna be able to find you of those four which was the most cost-effective and which actually led to our end result we were looking for as opposed to just sort of putting it out for the masses and hoping that that one or two right people decided to, you know, step up and make a purchase or whatever.

- Yeah, well, we found out the great foundation forward and talk about in the next segment, Cohort Digital.

So stick around you've been watching Working Capital.

(light music) Welcome back.

We're here with Alissa and Angie from Cohort Digital.

Okay, so, this new business.

I'm gonna say new.

You've actually been- - Five years.

- Yeah, so not new, but- - But it still feels- - It does.

- Like it's new and also, in a way, not real to me because it is sort of this lifelong dream I've had, and every day I wake up, I'm like, "I can't believe I'm doing this."

- Yeah, it's like you're in your own television show, You know in a way, you know, because it's it just it feels right every day.

- Yeah.

No, every day, I wake up and I'm thinking, wow, pinch me, I'm doing exactly what I want to do.

- Tell me how you took this this experience and expertise you grew and started this.

What what was your first client?

How did you strike out on your own with Cohort Digital, not strike out because you're doing fantastic.

- No, so as JHP was closing, you know, Jake pulled me aside and said, "Hey kid, what's next?

"What do you wanna do?"

And I looked at him, I said, "I kinda just wanna keep doing what I've been doing.

"Like, maybe I could just pull out the digital team "and we could continue to do work for our clients."

And he was like, "I think that would be great."

And then we went and we talked with the other shareholders and obviously Gary Jones, and everyone was incredibly supportive.

And so then as we went out and we were having conversations with clients about JHP deciding to close our doors, that we'd had a great run, but it was time, they then basically gave me the softball to hit the home run and just say, "Hey, while we're closing, "Alissa's starting this new thing."

- You were in a very unique position at that point.

'Cause most places- - Yes.

- unless you're the shop closing down in a good way, if you're leaving on your own and that shop's still doing that, do not go poach your client list 'cause you will be in a lot of trouble.

But you already built that relationship.

- I had already built the team, all of the clients already knew us, we were already executing digital plans for them.

That 6-month window where I knew that JHP was closing and I was getting this opportunity, like my emotional range was so all over because I was crushed.

I had loved every minute at JHP.

I loved the family we had there, but also I knew that if they weren't closing, I would not get this opportunity that I was so excited about that was really like my lifetime dream.

- And there's still lots of growth there.

- Yeah.

And there was so much potential.

And I got the grace of being able to like just grab the ball and run, right?

Like I wasn't out hustling for people or trying to find, you know, someone to work for me.

That was already built.

- Yeah.

- And so we just kept it, we literally just got continued to work and then build from there.

And yeah, I mean, at this point, five years later, we're like tripled in size.

- What size are your clients?

What's the scope of that?

Are you a single entrepreneur that's starting up to someone that has 20 or 30 employees, I mean, what's your scope of help?

- Literally, all over the board.

Yeah, we've got clients that spend $500 a month in ads.

I've got clients that spend $100,000 a month in ads.

So we really work all across the spectrum.

We do work with clients that don't have a marketing person.

We do work with clients that have an entire internal marketing team.

We do work with agencies that don't have a digital team, but are doing all of the other execution for their clients because we are set up to kind of slide in and be that partner for them.

- Kind of a white label service.

- Yeah, I mean essentially, yeah.

- So you are that department.

Yeah, like you say, you're that department if they're lacking it, because instead of trying to grow something from scratch, it's better to kind of hit the ground running with something like that.

- Yeah.

- And actually with that, with Angie coming on board, I think you've added a few other services now too, to where you're a little more full service.

- I mean, the way that I'm kind of talking with people now is if it's an ad that you see anywhere, not just online, we can help you place that.

And I think it's really important, because of all of the things that are going on with the economy, budgets are getting pulled back, the marketing departments aren't having the opportunity to backfill when someone leaves their position.

And so you've got these folks that were already busy that are suddenly down a person, taking more on, and they've got marketing dollars, they know they need to spend them, but they don't necessarily have the time to do all of the research.

And there are so many options, right?

There are so many options.

And so to be able to go to one place and have someone basically say like, we will be your media team.

We understand your target audience and we will hit them wherever they are at on any channel.

And Angie brings that expertise that we just didn't have before.

And so I think it's gonna be a real advantage to the clients we already work with.

But I also think it's gonna open up opportunities for us to grow overall.

- What's one of the biggest growth opportunities you've had in the past five years?

What's something that you really saw, we knocked it out of the park and this is a great-- - Ooh, I mean, just the world of digital, there's always new tools, new channels, new things.

And so, you know, as connected TV became a bigger driver, we can place connected TV ads.

As streaming audio and podcasts became a bigger driver, we can place those ads as digital out of home, billboards.

As that became more digital, we can place those ads.

And so it only makes sense that we get that other half and we marry those things together.

- So you have a client that really wants to reach out and now they can get ads in any of the markets, or any of the spectrums of the media market.

Are you guys able to place ads, say nationally or internationally?

What kind of scale can you help them grow out to?

- Sure, probably not internationally because purely from the I run a business, I pay taxes standpoint, things start to get pretty tricky there.

Nationally, for sure, we've been doing national campaigns for four of the five years that we've been- - Wow.

- Yeah, as Cohort.

I think on the traditional media side, it's probably gonna be more Midwest, at least initially, because that's literally our backyard.

So we have those contacts, we know those folks.

But also at the same time, it's not difficult for Angie to say like, "Oh, we're looking to expand in Chicago and we go and do a deep dive and get all of the data for Chicago and come to you and present a plan for Chicago.

- That's awesome.

You have a great, like you say, you've grown your team.

Great team there.

Female-owned business and all-female employees.

And like you say, you've known them forever.

Tell me how having that core that's been with you now, I mean, how important is it to really find that core and how much do you foster their growth?

Or Angie, I should ask you- - That's what I was gonna say, I don't know, Angie, tell me.

- How much is she pushing?

- No, I think because, like Alissa mentioned earlier, she herself likes to be challenged and to continue learning and so I think she can identify that in other people, and those are the types of people who she wants to bring on to her team, because it's really hard to find, and to work with somebody who's stagnant when you're constantly pushing, and in an industry that is constantly evolving.

So I think she just has a keen sense of identifying those of us who are never satisfied, and always pushing ourselves.

- How much did organized sports play into your team?

You know, looking back now, because to me, you're still playing point guard.

You may be running the place now, but you're finding people who are probably better than you in some of these other areas because that makes your team better.

You're not trying to be, you're the top dog and you're just helping me also.

- Oh, no- - How did sports and how does that team build?

- Sports has been huge in my life, all right?

Like in volleyball, I was like, you know, one of the go-to players if we needed a point and I could run middle, the ball was coming to me if we gotta get a pass.

When I got into college, if we needed a block, I was the person that was trying to do it.

But then you go to basketball, it was not me.

I was a great role player.

And so I understand that.

But I really know, and I believe so much in the communication that has to happen on a team, the friendships and the bonds that have to happen on a team.

And to me, running a business and having this really tight knit work, family is not any different than what it was when I was in high school and- - Let people start where they can start and know if you're the backup and the role player, know where you can help fill in and help them be their best.

- Absolutely.

And give them all of the tools that they need to be able to go out and succeed and understand that everybody's success looks different and the areas that they're gonna do that are different, but as a whole, that makes us very powerful.

- Do you have any advice for anyone out there starting out, whether they're starting at a big company which they think they want to be a part of, or they're taking that leap and they're starting their own business because both you have done both of that.

So what's your take on these new entrepreneurs out there?

- My biggest piece of advice is find mentors.

I would not be where I'm at without Jake Hewitt and the endless amounts of advice and things I've been able to ask him from super important stuff to what was probably ridiculous.

But he's always steered me in the right direction and Michelle Cole and Michelle Stubblefield.

And I mean, the list goes on and on.

And without those folks, I would not have the confidence to be able to understand that I don't need to know everything.

- College gives you a good base of knowledge.

It gets you where you think you wanna go.

But really, once you get out there, it's finding those mentors, 'cause then it becomes an apprenticeship to me.

And that exchange, and really, you're both teaching each other, 'cause I know when some of the younger generation came in, even at JHP, they were like, "Hey, have you tried this?

"Oh my God, you saved me two hours "every time I edit a photo, oh my!"

You know, it's that kind of exchange.

But a lot of business where it's dealing with numbers and it's not tangible products, they don't treat it with mentorship and apprenticeship where there's that knowledge exchange.

It's more scared and don't want people to take my job.

There's not good growth.

- [Alissa] Get out of that environment just hurts my heart.

I would not survive well.

- Angie, any?

- No, I would definitely mirror that.

I mean, I had Alicia VanWalleghem who was previous owner of Leaping Llamas and she was a huge mentor.

I met up with her through some programs through the chamber, through Greater Topeka Partnership, and that made a huge difference, especially when I started my business right before COVID.

- Yeah, it was- - Yeah, COVID businesses, yep.

- Yeah, a huge, huge part of the success that I had.

- At least we know you guys can take that big leap.

- That's right.

- I mean, that was a great time.

So, it's been great catching up.

We could go for another hour talking about business and strategies, but it's been great seeing you both.

- Thanks for having us.

- Thank you too.

- Find those around you who inspire and push you to be your greatest.

Who knows, maybe you'll forge a new future together.

Thanks again for tuning in today, and we'll see you next time on Working Capital.

To catch up on previous episodes of Working Capital, scan the QR code with your phone or go to www.watch.ktw.org.

(bright music) - [Announcer] Funding for "Working Capital" is provided by the Friends of KTWU, the Raymond C. and Marguerite Gibson Foundation, and Go Topeka.

(bright music)