What 200+ Outdoor Brands Taught Cole Heilborn About Storytelling That Works

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[00:00:00] Cole Heilborn: the audience has seen everything. They’ve seen every trick, they’ve seen every, every slide of hand move. And every brand has tried to pull. And so the only thing you have left is to be creative.

[00:00:18] CJ: Today we’re joined by Cole Heilborn. He is the founder and creative director for Portside Productions, which is a production studio team. I would call him a creative team that almost exclusively. Focuses on the outdoor industry and helping brands in the outdoor industry bring their content dreams to life.

[00:00:37] He’s also the host of the Backcountry Marketing Podcast, and he’s interviewed over 200 folks in the industry, so he’s been around a long time. He has seen a lot of things. He’s worked with a lot of brands, and in this episode we talk about what does it take to be successful when it comes to content production, not only for the outdoor [00:01:00] industry, but for any brand who’s looking to turn on a camera or a set of cameras and tell a story with video and imagery.

[00:01:09] So we talk about, you know, what budgets should you think about, what are the key things that you need to prepare before you engage a team to bring something to life, a lot of useful and actionable tips based on years and years of experience from Cole. I hope you enjoy. Great to get connected. Um, excited to hear more. Uh, and, and just for anybody listening and just how we’re connected is I posted a podcast thing on LinkedIn. You dropped a comment on there. I checked out your guys real and all your stuff. It looks amazing. We do a lot of work with outdoor brands and wanted to hear more.

[00:01:44] Tell me, tell me more, man, what’s going on?

[00:01:46] Cole Heilborn: Yeah.

[00:01:47] CJ: on?

[00:01:48] Cole Heilborn: Yeah, happy to. So, um, I run a creative production studio called Port Side. Um, we’re really led by two things. Um, really it’s all about creating strategic and emotional video [00:02:00] campaigns. Um, so we work with brands kind of in the outdoor active lifestyle industry, and that’s, that’s what we do. We get to collaborate with folks, um, and figure out how to.

[00:02:10] How to create campaigns, how to tell stories, how to create emotionally driven content, um, and, uh, how to help brands reach their customer, connect with their customer, um, and build a connection really, really with their audience. Customer’s a bad word, um, with their audience, with, with, with their guests, uh, so to speak.

[00:02:28] CJ: Yeah. Yeah. How did you get into that? I mean, the, the work looks incredible. And then like, are you direct like a director of photography or like, is that your background and then the, the business grew from there? Or like, it just looks, um, you guys are doing awesome stuff.

[00:02:44] Cole Heilborn: I, um, so I’ve been doing this for a while. I, I mean, I picked up a camera. Somewhere in high school and just started shooting mountain bike videos with friends, uh, up on the trails near where I live in Bellingham, Washington. And from there it was just kind of an obsession ever since, [00:03:00] uh, an obsession with making videos, with crafting, feeling like, with being able to impart that feeling and share that feeling with people who are watching the videos.

[00:03:09] That was a really compelling driver for me back in the day. And that’s kind of been a through line as the business has grown. Um, I’ve been, I’ve been running Port Side for. 10 years now this summer. I mean, but when we started, like we were, I mean, I was doing everything. Like I, I was the one man band running around.

[00:03:26] I was making wedding videos and shooting real estate and like finding odd jobs on Craigslist just to try and, you know, pay the bills. Um, and then over time, you know, we slowly grew and. Um, we’ve just been kind of piecing it together over the last 10 years. It’s been a very bumpy process. It has not been a smooth, linear journey.

[00:03:47] Um, but yeah, I, I, I still think we have a lot to learn. We’ve got a lot to grow, uh, in a lot of ways that we can improve and so we’re still very much in that. Um, we just went through a massive rebrand ourselves in the last three [00:04:00] months.

[00:04:00] CJ: Oh my God, those are so hard. It is so hard to brand yourself. It’s

[00:04:04] Cole Heilborn: Yes,

[00:04:04] CJ: it for other people.

[00:04:06] Cole Heilborn: very much so. Mm-hmm.

[00:04:07] CJ: tweak our logo. I don’t know if you’ve looked at our logo, but, Verizon rebranded and like has the exact same v and colors that we have. And it has been, nobody really cares, you know, and all things relative where small agency compared to Verizon, but it is killing me when I see people walking down the street.

[00:04:25] This just happened yesterday. Somebody walking with a Verizon bag, I’m like, oh, what? What?

[00:04:32] Cole Heilborn: is, it’s quite difficult. Yeah. Like you can’t, you know, as the saying goes, you can’t read the label of the bottle if you’re inside the bottle. Um, and so, yeah.

[00:04:41] CJ: to like outsource your own branding, but sometimes it’s like, I feel like we might need to, ’cause we can’t do it for ourselves ’cause no,

[00:04:47] Cole Heilborn: Oh yeah.

[00:04:48] CJ: we’re overly passionate about what our own brand should be. Um, and then it’s like it should come from inside, but we can’t agree.

[00:04:57] Cole Heilborn: A hundred percent. Yeah. You need someone to help you [00:05:00] extract that. So I’ve, I’ve worked with people to help me figure that out. Um, yeah, I think that’s the only way to do it, unless if you have a really, unless if you’re really talented and you can put aside all of your, your own, uh, attachment to your business and look at it from another perspective, I don’t know how you could do it without outside help and.

[00:05:18] Yeah, something like that.

[00:05:18] CJ: yourself from your own business. Oh man, I have friends that, um, of ver and multiple people who I’ve met in just like the production area where it’s like it start, I, my close friends were, uh, into like rollerblading back in the day doing tricks and stuff and it started like, we gotta create skate videos, you know, and then it’s just like, well, we should make these skate videos better.

[00:05:38] Let’s get a better camera. Oh, I should learn how to shoot and not, is that, sounds like that’s similar what you had going on with mountain biking back in the day.

[00:05:46] Cole Heilborn: Very much so. Yeah, it was like, how can we get better? How can we improve? Then it was how do we make money doing this so that we can continue to improve? And then somewhere along the way I was like, oh, I gotta like figure out how to run a business. [00:06:00] And, and, and it’s not all about just making videos anymore.

[00:06:03] And, um, I mean, that’s been a big learning curve for me. Like I, I. I love film. I didn’t set out to run a business, but I’ve had to kind of figure it out and I’ve made a lot of mistakes and I’m sure there’s a lot more to come. Um, but yeah, it’s, I mean, at the end of the day, like what’s driven us from the beginning is like just making stuff.

[00:06:21] And now the goal is like, well, how do you make stuff that’s actually effective and strategic? For clients, like how do you make something that is of, of value? Um, and that gets really complicated because there’s no one size fits all answer. Uh, it’s no longer just as simple as heading out into the woods with a camera.

[00:06:36] Some actually, sometimes it is, but there’s a lot more intentionality, a lot more strategy that goes into the work these days than, uh, we used to do.

[00:06:44] CJ: man. Tell me about that. So maybe we can get into your process. Let’s say, let’s say we’re gonna jam on a client together. What? Uh. What are some common things or the like, can, do you guys have put a process to together to be like, okay, here’s how we get to something that’s actually gonna be effective.

[00:06:59] What, what [00:07:00] goes through your head when I say that?

[00:07:01] Cole Heilborn: Sure. So I mean, for my first question is like, well, what’s effective? Like what are you, what are you trying to do? What’s your goal? What are you trying to accomplish? Um, and I usually like to start there. Um, the next step then I.

[00:07:13] CJ: say?

[00:07:15] Cole Heilborn: Oh, it’s all across the board. Um, sometimes, sometimes it’s really dialed and they’ve got it figured out and they, they know where content fits into their, their strategy.

[00:07:25] Um, other times it’s a little more elusive. Um, you know, sometimes it’s purely a brand awareness play. Sometimes it’s perform, it’s a performance marketing, you know, driven project. Um, at the times it’s more product focused. It just, it varies. Uh, so we do, we do a lot of work. Be because a lot of our work is emotionally driven.

[00:07:45] We tend to find ourselves working kind of at that brand awareness level. And then at that, that, um, bottom of the funnel level, that’s often where our work ends up, um, naturally, but it’s kind of all across the board. Um, so I [00:08:00] mean, once you know what they’re after. Um, then it’s just, so we, we do, we have a process that we walk through.

[00:08:05] So, um, something I haven’t mentioned is we have our own podcast, um, called the Backcountry Marketing Podcast, and we’ve done 200 plus interviews with in

[00:08:13] CJ: man. Yeah.

[00:08:14] Cole Heilborn: Yeah. Thank you. We’ve done, yeah, so we’ve, we, we’ve done 200 plus interviews. We’ve taken all of the insights that each of those guests have shared. And we’ve built a tool out of it.

[00:08:23] We call it the backcountry Marketing Filter, and it’s a filter composed of all the insights that all of the guests have shared. And so when we start working with someone, we take all these insights and we basically screen every project, every client, um, against this backdrop of insights to try to better understand all the components of their business and all the elements that are necessary to create great campaigns.

[00:08:44] So that’s everything from their brand. To their audience, to their goals, to their channels, um, to, to the creative that they have produced, maybe the creative that they’re bouncing around, uh, and then as well as distribution. Like what is their plan to get it out into the world? And so. [00:09:00] We kind of take all these insights that we have, we evaluate what do they have, what do they need help with, what are the red flags they’re not aware of?

[00:09:07] What are the opportunities where we could help them kind of dial it up and, and make it more effective, more strategic. Um, and then once we’re aware of what we’re working with, then it all starts with the audience. Um. Really digging into who are these people, uh, not just demographically, but emotionally and psychographically and, and trying to understand what are they, what are they watching, what are they not watching?

[00:09:27] What brands are they paying attention? What brands are they not paying attention to and doing. We can do a number, a bunch of, we can do a bunch of research on audiences and content behavior and things like that to try to understand who are these people. Then from there, it’s just a matter of getting creative.

[00:09:43] So it’s coming up with ideas, it’s coming up with concepts, brainstorming with the brand team to not only take the goal, but then take the audience information and then try to come up with something that’s gonna reach that, that group of people.

[00:09:56] CJ: That’s

[00:09:56] Cole Heilborn: Um,

[00:09:57] CJ: I mean, you guys are way more than just a [00:10:00] production company, so sorry for trivializing it

[00:10:02] Cole Heilborn: no, I mean.

[00:10:03] CJ: because like that’s, you’re not just, you’re not just waiting for a shot list and just shooting a shot list like robots. Like

[00:10:09] Cole Heilborn: I mean, we u we used to be that way and it’s only been very recently in our rebrand that we’ve really taken this much more comprehensive approach to, to the work. Um, because we kept producing work that would work and sometimes some of the work would work and sometimes the work wouldn’t work. Like a client would come to us, they’d give us a brief, we’d go out and make it, and sometimes it wouldn’t land.

[00:10:28] And we got really frustrated making work that wasn’t working. Um, that’s one of the reasons why we started the podcast, is to try and. Understand what happens behind the scenes. Um, and then, yeah, it’s a great tool to do so, and, and then from there, you know, five years of doing the podcast, we’re like, you know what?

[00:10:46] I actually think we’ve learned a lot. We can, we can help clients do this. Um, we can help lead them. We don’t necessarily have to just be the order takers. And so we’re kind of in this next phase of the business. We literally just launched our new website like this [00:11:00] two days ago, three days ago. So,

[00:11:01] CJ: Yep, I

[00:11:01] Cole Heilborn: uh, we’re very mu we’re very much in it.

[00:11:04] CJ: Yeah. So, okay, let’s get into it. What are some common things, like what are some pro tips that, uh, maybe like common things that brands miss or don’t think of, or is, you know, gimme the, gimme the secret sauce man.

[00:11:18] Cole Heilborn: So I think, I mean, it, it, I don’t think there’s anything secret about it. I think it’s really, it’s the basic stuff.

[00:11:24] CJ: Mm-hmm.

[00:11:25] Cole Heilborn: but I think it’s the type of stuff that gets overlooked and when, when, when brand teams are overwhelmed, they, um. They don’t think about it or they maybe don’t go as deep as they could, or they just need an outside perspective to help them see it all and see the picture and, and build the picture.

[00:11:41] Um, I mean, honestly, I am surprised how many clients have a hard time articulating their goals. So I mean, something as basic as what are we trying to achieve sometimes can have a clear answer. But sometimes it takes more time. Sometimes it takes a lot of time to really get to the bottom of what are we trying to accomplish?

[00:11:58] And so like, [00:12:00] that’s a huge stumbling block, right? If you don’t know what you’re trying to achieve, then how can you design something to, uh, to, to, to achieve that? So we spend a lot of time trying to get really clear on what is the goal, what does success look like? Um, what are KPIs? What are we, uh, what are we trying to avoid?

[00:12:15] What is not success? So like, that’s a really basic thing, right? But it can, it’s the foundation.

[00:12:21] CJ: Like, uh, that’s, it is so weird. It’s like so odd for me to talk to somebody who’s like, you’re so deep in the arts. That’s talking, speaking like that. That’s

[00:12:31] Cole Heilborn: Hmm.

[00:12:31] CJ: The um, I. How do you, when you guys get into work that’s like brand work, you know, we’re cre, we’re doing storytelling, we’re trying, you know, maybe I’ll throw around the word, like create a vibe and make us synonymous with like this feeling or this, maybe even the style or something like that. do you guys, you guys get into the conversation on like the return on investment where it’s like, it’s really hard if I’m gonna create a really cinematic brand piece, maybe [00:13:00] it’s even longer form. For me to justify that expense. You know, production budgets can easily go into the, you know, half a million dollars without even thinking about it, depending on what you’re shooting, how many locations and all that.

[00:13:12] Like, do you guys get into that of like, what does success look like and here’s how you’re gonna get your half a million dollars back. I.

[00:13:19] Cole Heilborn: For sure. Yeah. I mean, that comes up. All the time. And it’s a, it’s a topic we discuss on the podcast all the time. Um, yeah, I mean, there’s no one size fits all answer. Um, it never, it rarely, I shouldn’t say never, it rarely is as simple as we’re gonna spend half a million dollars on this film and then, and you’re gonna get half a million dollars back.

[00:13:37] Like, it, it, it never is as simple as we would like it to be. Um, because if you think about what brand is, if you’re, if you’re purely playing the brand awareness like card, if that’s your goal, um. Everyone knows this, but you can’t, you don’t build brand overnight. It doesn’t happen in one film. It doesn’t happen in one story.

[00:13:56] It happens over time. It happens over years. And so [00:14:00] you’re making an investment and that investment might not pay off. It might pay off in two years, five years. And that’s the, I mean, that’s the reality of it. Um, now there are a number of ways to make that investment. Um. More appealing, have more short term gains, like give you more bang for your buck.

[00:14:20] Um, that can help offset a lot of that, uh, that, that investment that feels like a big risk. Um, you know, you can, you can, with a film project for example, you can create so many assets out of one film. You can make tons of 32nd commercials. You can make tons of 15 second, you know, performance marketing cuts.

[00:14:41] You can do a whole bunch of, like, we’ve done this where we’re beyond shoots and. We’re filming with, you know, our cinema camera, and then someone’s like snapping vertical video and photo and we deliver that to the client. And so they’ve got a wide spectrum of, of, um, various types of content out there. So when we put [00:15:00] together a campaign, like, and if the film is kind of the anthem piece, it’s the center of it all.

[00:15:04] You know, there might be. 20 to 50 to a hundred additional cuts and assets that come along with that particular campaign. Uh, it just kind of depends. So that’s a big way to offset cost. Um, another way to offset your cost is to combine the brand shoot with your product shoots. Everyone’s doing product shoots.

[00:15:22] Uh, you have to do them well, most people do them. Um, and what if you just combine them and sure, it’ll take a little more planning. It takes some more logistics, but now you’ve got. A product shoot, which has to happen piggybacking on a brand shoot. And so you kind of get the best of both worlds. Um, and your product related content is actually kind of, if you do it right, you can, you can bake it into your brand piece.

[00:15:45] So it feels like the brand anthem hero video that you’re producing. Uh, and there’s some neat, I’m gonna use the word synergy as much as I hate that word, um, between the two,

[00:15:55] CJ: Yeah.

[00:15:55] Cole Heilborn: but I think, I think, um. I mean, there’s, there is risk no [00:16:00] doubt, but there’s an article that came out, um, maybe you saw this. It was put together by the, was it Kane’s Lion, the festival, whoever organizes the festival.

[00:16:09] Um, there’s an article about the concept of creative risk and how many brands take risks. How many brands are creatively are, are risk friendly. And it was only something like 13% of brands are willing to take creative risks and the. The, the, the thesis and the conclusion of this article was it’s actually more risky not to take the creative risk because if you don’t take the risk, where does that put you in five years from now?

[00:16:36] Um, it’s probably not where you want to be as a brand, if brand is a priority for your business. Um, and so I think that’s a really interesting thing to consider as well. Uh, like what’s the cost of not. Doing the thing that you’re nervous about doing. Um, and, and we try to voice that too. We try to understand, well, what’s the lack of opportunity cost?

[00:16:56] CJ: it’s so clear, uh, having, you know, worked with brands of all [00:17:00] sizes that the larger a brand gets, the more humans that are involved, the more risk adverse they get. It’s, it’s clear as day. Um, I. What the,

[00:17:10] Cole Heilborn: You’ve seen that?

[00:17:11] CJ: Oh, it’s not even, yeah, it’s not even up for, it’s not even a debate, it’s just, you just add, I used to work with a creative director and he gave the analogy like, know, imagine you have like a line and you have the bump in the line, and now you have everybody standing next to this line with hammers and everybody has their own hammer and they’re hammering like this. And that’s what results into flat. Work because everybody’s trying to appease or appeal to a different, you know, audience or a different bias or a different political thing inside the organization. And nobody wants to stick their neck out on the line or be accountable and um, you know, nobody wants to take that risk.

[00:17:49] ’cause their job at the end of the day, it’s like, ’cause people’s jobs are on the line, they don’t wanna take the risk. Um, and. The only way that I see that breaking that mold as [00:18:00] an organization grows is when the top, uh, executives, typically the founder or the CEO sets the culture. The culture only comes from the top down. ’cause it gives people permission to take risks and actually like sets this culture of like, if you’re not taking risks, you’re actually wrong. but if you have a conservative, not in the political framework, but a conservative leadership team. that just, we just see that especially it gets, it gets worse and worse as the organization or the brands grow.

[00:18:29] It’s really hard to get things done that are creative or make people uncomfortable or make people feel anything emotionally. Uh, ’cause, ’cause nothing emotional is safe. Like, very safe.

[00:18:42] Cole Heilborn: Yeah.

[00:18:43] CJ: we’re not gonna make anybody mad, you Uh, really, really tough. But, uh, so what do, what’s Ty, what’s a typical project for you guys looking like these days?

[00:18:55] Cole Heilborn: All across the board. So, um, like for right now we’re working on a big [00:19:00] brand film campaign for our client. So it’s a, you know, a 45 minute documentary with a, with a bunch of. You know, ancillary components and pieces of media that we’re actually planning for right now. Um, it can sometimes just be something, it can just be strategy work, content strategy work, um, where we’re actually not creating a deliverable, but we’re helping kind of think through how, how can the brand show up via content.

[00:19:24] Um, it also, those are really kind of the two main forms that we work with folks. Um. Either like full service, you know, from beginning to end or just the content strategy side of it all. Um, but the deliverables vary. We’ve done every, we, in the past, we’ve done everything from commercials to product videos to, uh, branded podcasts, to the, you know, documentary films, um, product launches, commercials, things like that.

[00:19:51] So the deliverables, all, you know, the, I, I used to think we had to limit ourselves or kind of niche down and. In terms of a particular deliverable, [00:20:00] um, that would, uh, but then I was like, no, actually that’s, that’s not true. We can, we can niche down in the process and in the results, um, the feeling of each deliverable, but deliverables can vary.

[00:20:12] So that’s all across the board.

[00:20:14] CJ: Yeah. How are you guys getting

[00:20:16] Cole Heilborn: I.

[00:20:16] CJ: feedback loop or closing that? Because I imagine sometimes, especially if you’re on a project. Where it’s a true project, not a ongoing thing. You kind of hand over your deliverables and then the clients are like, all right, thank you. Goodbye. And like, how are you learning?

[00:20:31] If it worked,

[00:20:33] Cole Heilborn: Yeah, it’s a good question and one we’re still trying to think, trying to optimize and figure out as best we can. I mean it, a lot of the clients we work with are, are repeat. You know, clients, so they, we’ve got a good relationship. So we’ll work on a project, we’ll come back, we’ll do another one. And at some point along the way, we’re doing a postmortem and trying to understand what worked, what didn’t work.

[00:20:54] Um, in the case of repeat clients, we’ll try and do that before we start the next project. Uh, [00:21:00] but, but usually we just come back to the success metrics that we outlined at the beginning of the project and say, okay, well did we meet those? Um, you know, did we exceed those? What did we learn? Um. What’s changed this time around?

[00:21:13] What do we need to be considering? Um, so that, I mean, that’s the way we currently do it. I’m sure we could be doing it better, uh, but we do, we do have to, we do rely strongly on our clients to, to help us, help educate us about what’s working and what isn’t working as well.

[00:21:28] CJ: that’s huge. Like, uh, probably not a lot of, uh, you know, service partners do that. Even after you deliver of like, hey, a follow-up, how to do, can we have a post-mortem meeting? Even if we’re, you know, we’re not, you’re not paying us anymore at this point, but can we just jump on the phone and then, know, a sneaky way to get the next project too.

[00:21:45] Not so sneaky, but Adam, by the way, do you need anything else? Um,

[00:21:50] Cole Heilborn: Yeah.

[00:21:50] CJ: yeah.

[00:21:51] Cole Heilborn: Yeah, I think it’s, I think it’s necessary.

[00:21:52] CJ: what’s the typical like, size of, uh, clients or brands that you guys work with? Or is it all over the place too?

[00:21:59] Cole Heilborn: It’s all over the [00:22:00] place. So being in the outdoor active world we work with, you know, the outdoor industry is, is pretty lean. Um, so we work with a lot of small brands, you know, five, 10 million in revenue. Uh, and then we also work with some of the bigger brands in the industry. Um, so it, it’s all across the board.

[00:22:19] CJ: In that. So like the brands that we work with are kind of in that same, I think we are. We. It was just a matter of time until our, until all our orbits cross coal, I feel like, ’cause we work with outdoor brands and it’s just like all in that same area. What have you guys seen? Have you seen any kind of like silver bullets occur?

[00:22:38] I know there aren’t No, there are no silver bullets. It’s brand building all that. But like is there anything that sticks out to you even in all the podcast interviews that you’ve done that. Just happens to be this like common thing that these brands have that helps them, you know, get from that few million, uh, you know, closer to the a hundred million.

[00:22:58] Cole Heilborn: Yeah, I, [00:23:00] um, I. I think it know. Yeah, it’s, it’s like the basics of business. It’s like have a great brand, know who your audience is and then get creative with how you build a relationship with them. I think that’s all. And like, I guess table stakes is you have to have a great product. Um, I think that’s all, at least in my opinion, that’s all that it takes.

[00:23:20] All that it takes. That’s a lot of work. Um. I don’t know if there is, I don’t think there is a secret. I don’t think there’s like some shortcut. I think it just takes time. It takes the hard work. I mean, I look at everything from kind of the creative perspective, like how are you showing up and meeting these people and building relationship and building an audience.

[00:23:38] And I mean, I think one thing that was said on our podcast by, um, Mike Lewis, he’s the VP of marketing at Bison Cooler. She’s like, the audience has seen everything. They’ve seen every trick, they’ve seen every, every slide of hand move. And every brand has tried to pull. And so the only thing you have left is to be creative.

[00:23:57] And we’ve kind of adopted [00:24:00] this mindset here at Port Side, and you’ll see it in some of our copies. Like the idea that the audience doesn’t care. They don’t care about what, what you put out as a brand, frankly, they don’t really care about who you are as a brand unless if you’re like the 1%. Um, and. And I think you have to assume that it’s presumptuous for your audience to want to hear from you.

[00:24:20] And so you’ve gotta figure out how to show up in their life and add value and add meaning. And there’s so many ways to do that, right? That’s entertainment, that’s education, that’s hosting events, that’s making them feel seen. It’s, it’s running film festivals and having, um, the community like. Fund and generate films, and then they take those films to the film festivals and screen them and like it’s all community building stuff.

[00:24:45] Um, it’s just how you do it. Like that’s, that’s the, that’s the fun part. Um, how you get there is different for every brand, but I think if there’s a silver bullet, I don’t think there is, but I’d say that’s it. It’s like, how do you, how do you be creative?

[00:24:57] CJ: yeah, yeah. It’s funny. I would add onto that [00:25:00] maybe, maybe there’s a number two, there’s creativity and I think the, like kind of what you were touching on authenticity. So like, I don’t know what happens to people. I’m, I’m sure I’m victim of it too, but like I. You clock in for work and then this like robot sales marketer brain like starts to take over and you start making emails that just read like marketing fluff jargon and it’s like, happened?

[00:25:25] Cole Heilborn: Hmm.

[00:25:26] CJ: it’s, and I think we deal with a lot of emails marketing too, and I think email is where I see it the most. It’s very, know, we’ll inherit a brand. Start running email from ’em. We’ll do the audit on their emails, uh, or, you know, get briefed by the client or just exactly to your point. Nobody cares about this.

[00:25:45] You’re talking to yourself. This is all inward facing. Messaging. No one cares. And and not only does no one care, no one remembers either. So the anything that’s, unless you are in that [00:26:00] 1% or you’re doing something special, anything episodic or any reference back to something that you did in the past in your marketing, in your performance marketing, nobody knows that.

[00:26:09] Nobody remembers that. Like, or you have to assume, nobody remembers that. So you have to give them, you know, the last, on the last episode kind of thing. An analogy. But yeah, very inward facing. We see a lot of inward facing language and tactics and like, that’s the first thing that we’re trying to do is like, hey, speak like a human.

[00:26:27] And that’s where, uh, I think you had commented on the, on the post with Peak Design. We’ve been working with them for years. would say of all the brands that I’ve worked with or even study, they’re just masters of that. And that also comes back from that top-down culture thing. So Pete Daring is a, you know, he’s just a very, almost to a fault, genuine and authentic guy, and so are his number one and number twos and that lead marketing, and they’ve never wavered from that.

[00:26:53] So they’re not trying to be anybody that they’re, that they’re not. So there is no filter and that just [00:27:00] bleeds through with everything. The challenge they’re facing and brands like them face now is as you grow and get bigger, how do you hold onto that? ’cause it’s very like for, to put specifically like we see, you know, Adam over there at Peak, he for a long time wrote all of their copy.

[00:27:19] He is the voice of the brand, his personality, his tone, his dryness, his sarcasm. So now as you grow and you have a now 1,000,001 things on your plate to write and to do and to produce and to create, you have to make clones of atom. How do you do that? That’s, and that’s really, really hard without losing the soul and the creativity of the business.

[00:27:37] So that’s where I go back to like, as we see these businesses grow, the creative creativity starts to go down because you just these layers and it can no longer come from that one spark or person or small group of people. has to just almost be franchised like. Like McDonald’s, but really,

[00:27:56] Cole Heilborn: Yeah, but at the same time, [00:28:00] the bigger brands have more money. That means they have more possibilities. That means, uh, if they play their cards right and. And protect the brand, but make like smart investments into creative, like they can do things that small brands can’t do. So, uh, it’s for sure a trade off.

[00:28:17] CJ: Yeah, that’s totally true. Um. So in the past life I used to work for Omnicom, working with like Fortune five hundreds, and I don’t anymore, uh, for the most part. And it’s by design, uh, because there’s all the politics and all that that go with working with a super large brand. Uh, but man, sometimes I miss having the huge budgets ’cause you

[00:28:39] Cole Heilborn: Yeah.

[00:28:40] CJ: lit, but also it’s often difficult from a creative standpoint where you have this blank slate and blank check and you’re like, oh, you can do anything. And it’s like, well, that’s really hard. And then how, you know, how deep do you wanna dig your own grave in terms of like, getting the thing done, you know what I mean? Like, you know, you come up with some crazy complex, world [00:29:00] changing idea that that’s the fun part. Doing it, executing it sometimes is the tricky part. But

[00:29:06] Cole Heilborn: for sure. For sure.

[00:29:08] CJ: any super fun, uh, projects that you guys have worked on that come to mind that like, hey, this one was a, a, a blast to do.

[00:29:17] Cole Heilborn: Yeah, for sure. Uh, I mean, speaking of like maintaining authenticity as a brand grows, we worked Witham a couple years ago to help them produce a podcast and the, the goal of it was we need to humanize the brand and we need to humanize the voices, the athletes, the ambassadors, and bring a little more personality to it all.

[00:29:36] So that was a cool project we got to do. Um, we’ve worked with athletic brewing comp.

[00:29:41] CJ: do to, to do all that, um, for producing a podcast?

[00:29:44] Cole Heilborn: FI mean everything from, like why, from the concept of why does this show need to exist to writing, um, titles and show notes and sharing content with all of the, uh, the, so the social teams at strm [00:30:00] for them to publish. So we took everything. It was like we, and we did all the brand work for the show. We did all the asset design for the show.

[00:30:07] Um, we did set design, we built, we built a, a physical set. Um, we built, you know, tech kits for guests to be shipped around the world. Um, we did all of the, the, the, um, post-production on it all, and then, yeah, all of the distribution up until posting. Um, so.

[00:30:24] CJ: was the, so going even deeper, like what was the reason for them to, to have the podcast? What were they doing?

[00:30:33] Cole Heilborn: Yeah, I mean it was, it was to build, um. Humanity and, and levity around the brand and really anchor it in people. And, you know, as a company like RA has access to so many incredible individuals, um, so many awesome athletes, and they wanted to give voice to those people. Um, and so the show was ho hosted by their VP of marketing.

[00:30:56] Um, and the goal was to interview people, share their [00:31:00] story, share how they’re making change in the world, um, either on the bike or off the bike. And, but really it was, it was, uh, it was to the point you were speaking about earlier, like as the company grows, how do we maintain kind of our soul and our personality and our humanity?

[00:31:15] And one of the ways to do that is through a podcast, you know, literally put people, um, on, on behalf of the brand, on the mic, and in front of a camera and let them talk. And so.

[00:31:26] CJ: never, I actually haven’t really thought of that or. Frankly recommended it to like an e-comm goods like consumer goods company. Um,

[00:31:36] Cole Heilborn: Hmm.

[00:31:36] CJ: and don’t know why, it’s kind of ironic that we’re here on a podcast like we haven’t talked. ’cause it’s so easy to just take the vo, the footage and then dice that up into clips, which feel very native into any social feed. now you’re not really doing. Yucky marketing, you’re just spreading stories and, and it’s [00:32:00] probably content that people would rather consume. The the one, the one other thing that’s kinda like, I’m getting a light bulb moment. God, I love, love podcasts. Um, I, our client, um, Haven tents, uh, Derek over there, the founder, he was on a previous episode. He does like very lo-fi content. He just with his phone and shoots it. The guy is a viral video machine. Like he, it’s almost like a disappointment. If his videos don’t get a million views, it’s unreal. I wish I could tell you how he has bottled this lightning. I know a few things that he is doing that are really smart, but like. one of his tricks is he does try to go on a lot of podcasts. He always makes sure that he gets the, the, either the audio and or the video footage and then he just cuts. ’cause on a podcast you always have to do your pitch right. So he goes, I just take my pitch that I did on that podcast, splice it up with some b roll that I have of me setting up one of my hammocks and, uh, that crushes and it,

[00:32:56] Cole Heilborn: Huh.

[00:32:56] CJ: like you

[00:32:58] Cole Heilborn: That’s cool.

[00:32:59] CJ: [00:33:00] TikTok and or Instagram, but.

[00:33:01] Cole Heilborn: Yeah, I mean, it’s really smart. I mean, but I think like the podcast format itself doesn’t guarantee success, right? Like it’s gotta be a conversation that people actually wanna pay attention to. Back to the idea that your audience doesn’t care. You’ve gotta overcome that. So you gotta, as your host, you’ve gotta figure out a way to make your show actually compelling.

[00:33:18] Give people a reason to listen, like analyze all the podcasts out there, like what’s our unique niche? All that stuff. But once you can do all that, and once you find your lane. And it’s a great tool. Um, I think about a company like Black Rifle, black Rifle Coffee. They’ve got a really successful podcast and it’s a key part of their business.

[00:33:36] Um, meat Eater is a, they’re a media company, but they’ve got a podcast. Um, yeah, it’s, it’s a very valuable tool for sure.

[00:33:46] CJ: I think it’s crazy too. I, no podcast episode would be complete unless we talked about AI today. where it’s like. It, it’s gonna be like, it’s one of the last frontiers of what you’re getting. [00:34:00] Actual gen, you know, real authentic content, you know, because it, it just, every day, every hour that passes, it’s just ai, what do they call it?

[00:34:08] AI slop, like just AI generated stuff in my feed. I don’t even know what’s real anymore. And not, and it’s like, okay, well if. Everything’s AI generated from every article I read to, you know, every image. It’s like at least we can create some new stuff based on actual human experience. Uh, God,

[00:34:25] Cole Heilborn: I’d like to. I’d like to think so.

[00:34:28] CJ: this is gonna be a sad video for the archives once the robots take over,

[00:34:34] Cole Heilborn: I guess we’ll find out.

[00:34:35] CJ: yeah. Yeah. Oh, what,

[00:34:38] Cole Heilborn: I.

[00:34:38] CJ: else, man? Okay, so if a brand wanted to work with you guys. you know, what’s, what’s kind of in your criteria if you’re looking for a brand that would be a good fit for Port Side?

[00:34:51] Cole Heilborn: I mean the, the first thing is, um, can they articulate their goal? Do they know what success is? Um, are they a brand [00:35:00] who I think is really honest with themselves? Like what are they good at? What are they not good at? I. Um, I’m also looking for the client or whoever we’re working with to kind of meet some of our core values of collaboration.

[00:35:13] So everything from communication, candidness, creativity, is it gonna be a good working relationship where we can both push each other to produce something that’s better than, you know, either of us could do by ourselves? That’s a big thing. Um, do they have budget? Do they have realistic timelines? Um, and I think I also just want folks who I.

[00:35:36] Are, are, are excited to, to do this work because, I mean, it is fun. It’s supposed to be fun. Um, and I think sometimes clients can kind of get bogged down and like in the weeds. And I think that’s an opportunity where we can kind of come along and be like, no, this is, this is, we’re gonna have a good time with this.

[00:35:50] Like, sure, it’s gonna be difficult, but at the end of the day, we’re making videos. Like it’s not, not, it’s not like we’re, um, you know, I don’t doing rocket science or, uh, you know, [00:36:00] doing a job that. Really matters, um, like saving people’s lives. So I just like to have, I like to have fun with it, and I think if you can keep that levity to it, it obviously makes the whole experience that much more enjoyable for everyone.

[00:36:11] So those are some kind of basic requirements, um, that we generally look for. I.

[00:36:15] CJ: Can we, how do we talk about, how do we talk about budget without you making you like, give away your guys pricing? And it’s also like, I know it just depends. It’s all over the place of what you’re producing. Like how can brands, how do you help them think through like how much they should spend on. like, and because what I’m trying to, what I’m trying to like help people with, it’s like I had this conversation on previous episode where it’s like, you can have a really great idea and then you get to like, now it’s time to produce it. And it’s like, oh, we have $10,000. Well, that idea is gonna be pretty crappy compared to what you have in your brain.

[00:36:54] Like how do we, how, how do you guys think through that and. Or [00:37:00] even recommendations, like just maybe take yourself outta the equation and we’re just talking to a friend that has a brand, like how much should they bank on, on spending or plan on spending? And I know that’s a wildly, it depends question.

[00:37:12] Cole Heilborn: Yeah, I’m gonna try to answer that without saying It depends. Uh,

[00:37:16] CJ: Good luck.

[00:37:19] Cole Heilborn: I mean, so when we do concepts, uh, we’ll often put together three or four different concepts for, uh, a brand, for a client, and each of those different concepts will have a different price. Range attached to it. And so, um, it depends where we are in the process and depends how we’re working with someone.

[00:37:39] But if we’re truly working with someone from the beginning all the way through the end, there’s a step where we’re like, okay, what are we actually gonna make? And this is where we sit down and we say, okay, well we could do this concept. Here’s an expected scope of work. Um, here’s what you could expect to spend.

[00:37:53] And then we do that for two or three other ideas, and then we kind of have a wide range of options we can pick and choose from. [00:38:00] So that’s how we go about trying to find a solution that works for the client’s budget. Um, but it depends. Like,

[00:38:11] CJ: Damn.

[00:38:12] Cole Heilborn: I don’t, I don’t think you can give it a one size fits all answer because every situation is unique.

[00:38:18] Um, I, I’ve. There are companies out there, and I’ve seen other production companies who offer a lot of turnkey services, right? You go to them and they’ll be like, Hey, we’ll make you an Anthem video, or come to us and we’ll take your product launch and we will make X, y, Z assets. It’s, and it’s gonna be a fixed amount and we charge this fixed amount for every single client.

[00:38:39] And I, maybe you could push back on this, but I don’t really like that model. I don’t think it serves the client very well because you’re trying to fit the client into a particular set of parameters. And there is a time and place for retainer contents, and I think that can work really well. But for those types of bigger lift projects, there’s a lot of nuance, there’s a lot of [00:39:00] variables.

[00:39:00] Um, and I don’t think anyone want, I think people like at that level, people are looking for a custom solution. They’re not looking for, um, come to us and we’re gonna fit you into this box and we’ll spit you out the back door. Um,

[00:39:13] CJ: Back

[00:39:14] Cole Heilborn: but it, it.

[00:39:15] CJ: it’s like if you wanna pierce through the noise, you don’t want an off the shelf thing either. Like that’s just gonna put you in a sea of sameness with all your competitors or oth or, or brands that are competing for attention online. You know, so you’re just gonna

[00:39:28] Cole Heilborn: For sure. Yeah. Yeah. But if that’s, if that’s the only thing you can afford and that’s the only thing that you can do, then like, go for it. Like, don’t, don’t let that stop you. Um, you’re probably just, you know, uh, an agency or a. Production studio probably isn’t gonna be the person you work with. Um, you know, there’s a lot of other resources out there that you can use and a lot of brands get creative with how they come up with stuff and how they produce stuff.

[00:39:53] Um, I think what’s more important isn’t what you’re spending. It’s, it’s the creative. It’s like, what’s the idea, what’s going into [00:40:00] this? Spend more to time, uh, spend more time and money on the creative and the strategies than you do on the execution. Like that’s an easy. Uh, rule of thumb to live by is you’re, as you’re spending, if you produce a film, like spend just as much as you spend on the film, as you do on marketing the film, don’t just forget to market your film because then it’s gonna flop.

[00:40:19] Um, like there are some rules like some.

[00:40:21] CJ: a quick, quick, like war story. I remember we in our past life had another agency. You know, we, we had this like. Big campaign that we worked on for like six months. Tons of different touch points. Creative. It was very, very cool. Um, we had talked to the client and, and had them, you know, earmark a set of budget to actually, you know, promote it, to do the ads and all that. Well, we got to the point where we were done with the production is already to launch, and the client was like. I didn’t, I didn’t save that money. We have no budget. We, we literally couldn’t run it. It was six months of work and they had no money to actually put behind it. I, [00:41:00] to I, I learned that I will never forget that lesson.

[00:41:02] So now I’m very, very loud about that. Like, if we’re ever doing that, like, okay, make sure you got that budget set aside like every week. You know, just don’t touch that. Don’t touch that

[00:41:12] Cole Heilborn: Yeah, for sure. But content can be cheap too. You know, like to your point about the one of your clients who just produces his own videos and they go viral, like it doesn’t have to be complicated. It just has to be creative. And, and to your point also, it has to be authentic. Um, there’s just a hundred ways to do that.

[00:41:30] CJ: episode. I think that there’s this sweet spot and we, we do this a lot with like peak design, uh, and other brands where it’s like. Sometimes if you don’t have enough budget to put towards the production and you try to make something like very cinematic or very cool, it actually is worse.

[00:41:45] Like we’ll often have this very deliberate conversation of like, guys, we can’t afford it to make it look, you know, like a Christopher Nolan flick. So like, gotta push the other way and, and purposely make it look lo-fi, like actually [00:42:00] intentionally shoot it on phones. Because it, we’re not gonna be able to pull off what we have and, and then it, then it just feels cheesy and cheap and like cuts.

[00:42:09] It pulls the rug out from under the brand quality, you know? But do you guys ever

[00:42:13] Cole Heilborn: That. Uh, a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. I mean I think that that can be a great strategy. Like how do we, how do we lean into the DIY ness of, uh, of what we’re producing? Um, there’s a great, I dunno, maybe you’ve seen this. There’s a great, um, what do you call it? Web series called 1 10, 100 that WIA put out maybe five or eight years ago.

[00:42:34] The whole concept was what happens if you gave a production company the same brief, but $1,000, $10,000 and a hundred thousand dollars. How does that money get spent and what does that actually do? And I mean, you can see the differences, but I think you also have to ask, well, what’s, is there any benefit, uh, if you’re purely spending on production?

[00:42:54] Now, I’m not advocating that you don’t spend money on the strategy and the creative and the distribution, [00:43:00] but production itself, um, that’s, yeah, I mean, there’s, there’s a lot of ways to approach it. It doesn’t have to be the biggest and the coolest and the sexiest thing. Um, it just, yeah, it.

[00:43:10] CJ: thing? What was the end? Should we

[00:43:12] Cole Heilborn: Oh, I,

[00:43:13] CJ: I mean,

[00:43:13] Cole Heilborn: uh,

[00:43:14] CJ: we can spoil it.

[00:43:16] Cole Heilborn: I don’t, there was, I mean, the conclusion was teach their own.

[00:43:19] It’s like, what do you, you analyze it, you figure out what you think. Um, I think the, the experiment in itself was, wasn’t entirely, I don’t know, I don’t wanna say accurate, but I didn’t like how they ran it entirely because all they did was spend money on production. They, they didn’t spend. If you have extra money, right, you’re probably gonna spend some of that on creative.

[00:43:40] And they didn’t spend any money, any different amount of money on creative. It was the same creative. The only thing that changed was production budget. So it was bigger crews, bigger cameras, more lights for each iterative jump, which was cool. But it also, I don’t think really encapsulated the real world where you’re working with small brands and.

[00:43:59] [00:44:00] You’re doing everything from strategy to distribution. Um, so I look at that and I’m like, yeah, that just kind of confirms what I have always believed. Like, you can spend money on production. It doesn’t always, it doesn’t always matter.

[00:44:13] CJ: Yeah. are the, um,

[00:44:15] Cole Heilborn: I.

[00:44:16] CJ: to just clients, the brands you’ve worked with, like, I’m kind of gonna rephrase the question I already asked, but like, what are the teams typically look like, uh, that successful with you guys? And, and where The, what’s in my head is. The brands that we work with that I think have, we have the most success, actually have a really good, whether it’s one person or a small team, a creative team on their side.

[00:44:41] So we’re a performance creative agency. I like to say that, you know, we’re, we’re taking what they’re doing at whatever stage, and we’re amplifying, you know, layering on creativity, layering on, you know, the breadth of assets and all that, kind of like a performance enhancing drug. Um, so I love and [00:45:00] also recommend to all our clients, like, don’t, don’t let us be your only creative team.

[00:45:04] We, you guys do that. So what, is there anything on your side that is similar that you’re like, oh, okay. They have this person or this team. This is gonna be great.

[00:45:14] Cole Heilborn: I think it kind of comes back to my answer originally, like what do we look for in someone that we’re working with and if they kind of have all those requirements or those. Attributes rather. Um, they’re generally a great fit. But yeah, I think, um, I mean it all starts with a great brand. Like if there’s not a great brand, then well, they’re probably not hiring you in the first place.

[00:45:33] But if it’s a mediocre brand, um, there’s not much you can do with it. Like you can, you can kind of go out and check the box, but it’s hard to push the boundaries. Uh, and I think having someone on the team who is aware. Uh, of, of self-aware of their brand and what they’re doing well, what they’re not doing well, how their brand is performing.

[00:45:53] Um, I think that’s really helpful for us and to figure out how do we, how do we meet them where they’re at.

[00:45:59] CJ: Yeah. [00:46:00] Yeah. What’s the, um, so let’s say, let’s use like peak design as example. Let’s say we gave you a call. And, uh, we’re like, Hey, we got a project. We got this idea. Let’s say it’s for, um, black Friday, our Black Friday campaign. We wanna shoot something. We’re gonna, you know, shoot some kind of more, call it longer form, not 45 minutes, like longer form thing.

[00:46:23] And then we wanna dice that up into some performance assets. What’s a typical like, timeline for you guys to work through that? And then where do you wanna get the baton? Do you, uh, meaning like. how early do you want to get involved and, and work with like our team, their creative team, things like that.

[00:46:40] Cole Heilborn: Earlier the better. I mean, the earlier we’re brought in, uh, the more helpful we can be, the more we can be strategizing from the beginning. I mean, in terms of timeline, it’s, it’s all over the board. I mean, you know, I. One to three months, uh, is, is, you know, that seems very doable. Some of our projects, you know, they take [00:47:00] six to 12 months for big stuff.

[00:47:02] It just, it kind of varies. Um, we, we have done a lot of stuff where it’s a lot quicker. You know, it’s like two, a two week turnaround or a one week turnaround if it’s, I. That sort of a situation. They need it quick. Like we can move fast. Um, but if we’re doing a lot of the strategy work and the creative work like that generally takes time.

[00:47:20] Um, production and post can move relatively quickly. Uh, but oftentimes that strategy and creative, if it isn’t figured out, uh, that can take a little bit of time to kind of sort through and develop.

[00:47:31] CJ: Do you guys do? What’s the range? Uh, I guess what’s your bottom range in terms of like complexity of productions to top range? I, you’ve already said that you’re shooting like a 45 minute film, so I, I’m consider that probably top range crew, all that. Uh, do you guys get like super scrappy where it’s like camera and sound, or like, is

[00:47:52] Cole Heilborn: Oh yeah.

[00:47:53] CJ: Yeah.

[00:47:54] Cole Heilborn: Out, out. The outdoor industry is scrappy, so, um, I think, I think we try to punch above our weight class [00:48:00] and, um, if you looked at our crews, you’d be like, wow, they, there’s a lot of people wearing a lot of hats. Um, we are typically not running around with 50 people on set. Um, I mean, I think the most, we’ve probably, the biggest set we’ve probably had is cumulatively of everyone working on a film, probably 20 people.

[00:48:15] Um,

[00:48:16] CJ: that.

[00:48:17] Cole Heilborn: but we, we generally operate pretty lean. Um, on, on a shoot in particular, it’s often director, cinematographer sound, maybe photo, um. If there’s a lot of lighting, like a gaffer or someone, but that’s generally about it. Um, we typ like two to three man crews are pretty common for the creative and strategy work.

[00:48:39] We have strategists, we have researchers, we have writers and creatives that can all kind of filter in and out depending on where we need them, when we need them. Um, but it just, it depends.

[00:48:51] CJ: Yeah. Yeah. As things do. Oh man. That’s cool. That’s cool. Uh, anything else that we should know? I wanna be respectful [00:49:00] of your time, Cole, or any questions for me? I guess.

[00:49:03] Cole Heilborn: What’s your goal with the podcast?

[00:49:05] CJ: Ooh. Um, I really set out to try to answer that question of how do you, how do brands go from a few million dollars in revenue a year to over a hundred million dollars of revenue a year? There’s a lot of milestones that we’re aware of and changes in businesses that seem to be common among the way. But at the same time, there’s seems to be infinite ways to do it.

[00:49:26] You know, whether you’re really pushing on retail or wholesale expansion, or you’re doing it direct to consumer, or you’re doing it through subscription, or you’re doing it through being super creative. So just trying to do exactly what I guess you’re doing on your side of talk to as many people as we can. Try to write a playbook if we can, which we know we won’t be able to because the playbook will change on the daily, uh, especially with ai and I can’t, I’ll be remiss if I didn’t mention ai. It’s changing everything, so I. some for the good, some [00:50:00] scary, some completely unknown. So we’re just trying to stay up on it and kind of create the resource that I wish I had when I was running a startup myself of like, how do I, what’s, what’s the playbook?

[00:50:09] What do we need to do? Um, and I think that the, what we’re finding and what we know from our experience of being, just being in business, is a very fundamental playbook that you can put into play to just get you to a certain level, and then at once you get there. Now you’re starting to deal with the problems that aren’t Googleable.

[00:50:28] Like you can’t Google this. Like you need to come up with your own answer. Um, so that’s, that’s the, just, you know, the endless curiosity then trying to answer the never end the, the unanswerable question,

[00:50:41] Cole Heilborn: Sure. Yeah, I respect that. Right on.

[00:50:43] CJ: Yeah. Yeah. And then networking, you know, love, talk, love having chats like this. Uh, sometimes it’s fun just drinking, you know, sitting here and pouring ourselves a cup of Kool-Aid, two guys in the same space, and I’m like, preach like you were cut from the same cloth, my friend.

[00:50:58] I’m like, all this stuff that you said, [00:51:00] I’m like, yes, yes,

[00:51:02] Cole Heilborn: It’s probably not healthy though. You gotta, you gotta jump outside your boundaries and talk to people who don’t think like you, at least I’d have to do that for myself.

[00:51:09] CJ: A hundred percent. Yeah, that’s, it can get a little incestual, I think. Um, yeah, so I’m, I’m looking forward to, we’re gonna have to, my plan is to talk to, uh, a bunch of tech partners too. I’d love to. ’cause they have a, a much different look at, at the world, um, whether it’s ai, whether it’s market MarTech or just advertising tech and all that.

[00:51:30] I think that they bring a very different and interesting way, more measurable perspective to stuff. um, anybody that can, is thinking about how do you help brands go to the next level. I’m very interested in talking to, so, but let me

[00:51:43] Cole Heilborn: Fascinating.

[00:51:44] CJ: if you, if you know anybody that I should, should chat with, I would love to,

[00:51:48] Cole Heilborn: Okay. Sounds good.

[00:51:49] CJ: yeah. Um, but, uh, cool. Thanks for, thanks for jumping on, man.

[00:51:54] Cole Heilborn: Yeah, it’s good to, good to chat, good to connect. Thanks for having me.

[00:51:57] CJ: So, one more time. Uh, if anybody wants to get in [00:52:00] contact with you or the company, where should they go?

[00:52:03] Cole Heilborn: Yeah, you can find us@Port Sidepro.com. Um, or you can find me in Bellingham, Washington, probably riding my bike on some bike trails. Um, I would love to chat.

[00:52:12] CJ: Love it. Good to see you, man.

[00:52:14] Cole Heilborn: Okay, bye CJ.