Stop Freaking Out

Frank on CNBC and The Pitch

Frank O'Brien (00:00.150)
It's cool. it's very cool to be on CNBC, because they typically call you with, you know, no notice and they're like, Hey, there's a car waiting outside to take you to New Jersey and then you get swept off to New Jersey and the car waits outside while you go in and you're ushered through conveyor belt of hair and makeup and then next thing you know, you're sitting next to the anchors and they a lot of times don't tell you what you're there to talk about because they want it off the cuff. So you just kinda have to be prepared and

Kevin Mooney (00:01.706)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (00:27.201)
Really.

Frank O'Brien (00:29.922)
You know, you see the big book image behind me, I go through some lessons in there about how to prepare for those situations and then the next thing you know, you're back home and you you were just on CNBC and your phone starts going off and then you've got all this media c you know, coverage and clips that you can post to the internet and things like that. So cool is a word that comes to mind.

Kevin Mooney (00:47.233)
Had you ever aside from CNBC and or maybe which one came first, CNBC or the pitch? And before that, had you ever been on TV or or or had any sort of live interview structure before?

Frank O'Brien (01:05.688)
So the pitch came first, probably probably about five years before C N B C and prior to that, I had had some media coverage. I don't remember what it was because it was so long ago, but it was th those those were the smaller building blocks that led up to getting the call to be on the pitch.

From Marketing Bands to Brands

Kevin Mooney (01:24.619)
Yeah. So what got you into agency life in the first place? Like how did you arrive there?

Frank O'Brien (01:32.970)
Yeah, so it's funny. The first word that comes to mind is money because I formerly worked in the music industry, lived my dream, marketing records, marketing bands, and you know, the person I was with at that time had gone to school for a career in advertising. And I went to school for marketing, specifically, you know, originally music business and you know, thankfully got my business degree so I was able to

Kevin Mooney (01:37.509)
Ha ha ha.

Frank O'Brien (02:02.645)
you know, pivot from the music industry from marketing bands to marketing brands. And it really at that point was because I couldn't afford to live in New York and I was going out every night with these artists to these free listening events where, you know, there would be a gin sponsor, but this one artist in particular, liked Johnnie Walker double black label, whatever the fifty dollar drink was, and I think he thought I had an expense account, but here I am not able to afford

living in New York City, buying these drinks for this, you know, Grammy Award winning, amazing artist in person. and I was like, all right, this is cool and all, but I need to pay rent. So I went and got a temp job and thankfully it was at an agency because I went to work for an agency that shares a name very close to a bank and I literally thought I was walking in to work at a in the marketing department at a bank.

Kevin Mooney (02:45.406)
Yeah.

Frank O'Brien (03:00.161)
And I I ended up at one of these big, you know, top four, top five agencies at the time. So, that's how it started.

Kevin Mooney (03:07.424)
Whoa, what does it feel like to land at one of these big agencies? And what is your first impression? Are you like, holy shit, this is huge. This is a machine. This is awesome. I hate this. What does it feel like?

Frank O'Brien (03:23.201)
definitely didn't hate it. It was very that fortunately the agency that I went to was one of the cooler agencies at the time. And being an outsider really kind of led me to where I am today. at first it was just a lot of learning. You know, what is a CPM cost per thousand impressions? you know, what is the production department? You know, why do we have

a studio and then an art director and then a creative director and wait, a copywriter. Like how do all these things work together? So it was very fun, very interesting. And again, unfortunately I I landed at a cool agency which was not that different than, you know, being in and working in music.

Kevin Mooney (04:04.822)
What was your first role there?

Frank O'Brien (04:07.723)
So having the business degree, I w fell into account management. And I forgot about this part of the story, but I worked on a Microsoft holiday campaign. It was called Digital Joy. And it was a collaboration with Intel and Intel inside the chip chip manufacturer. And it was called the I think I mentioned the digital digital joy campaign. but it was only one month. so I went from marketing

bands like, you know, The Killers, Fall Out Boy, worked on Outkast, Usher, you know, had a great run on music working on all these cool bands and artists. And then I went to work for one month on a cool holiday campaign. And then January hit, campaign was over, and I ended up on pharma, pharmaceuticals. So I had to learn about Menactra, which was a menin which is a meningococcal meningitis vaccination. and then Daptacel, which is like a

shot that you know babies get to immunize them against war tangs. So I went from working on like cool artists to a cool campaign to pharma. which was interesting.

Kevin Mooney (05:09.952)
Sure.

The Only Job You Can Lose by Doing Well

Kevin Mooney (05:16.990)
Is that just yeah, is that just I mean that's just gotta be how big agency stuff works.

Frank O'Brien (05:23.189)
Yeah, I mean the saying in the agency land is you're only as good as your last meeting and you know, you'd have three or four month runs with, you know, campaigns and it was like the set it was like the the old saying about buying a boat. It's like your best two days of buying a boat is when you buy it and when you sell it. And I learned very quickly, you get hired and then it's this weird culture of almost like clients nitpicking and nitpicking and nitpicking and it's like there's this weird chemistry that happens.

tends to happen more times than not, where it's like you're hired, everyone loves each other, and then like a week later, you know, you're late, you're a minute late to a meeting because you know the elevator broke. And they're like, well, why were you late to that meeting? It's like, why don't we focus on the creative and the great campaigns that we're running? So yeah, it's very interesting. The agency life cycle, I think everyone knows, I think chief marketing officers, they have like an 18-month life cycle or something like that. It's like the shortest tenure in the C suite.

Kevin Mooney (06:15.703)
Yeah.

It's so wild. Yeah, I've been bitching about

Maybe too much. I've been bitching about marketing recently and maybe it's just being in the the industry for so long and being kind of tired of it. but it's kind of funny how marketing is typically the first one to get cut in bad times as well as good times. It's seems like the only industry that you can work yourself out of a job for being too good. Like, hey, you guys crushed it.

We don't need you anymore. You're like, whoa, whoa, hold on. I thought that was the entire purpose of this. If we work hard, we do well, we do well by you, and we both enjoy the relationship, it continues. And it just turns out that that is completely bullshit and it doesn't work that way. That blew my mind.

Frank O'Brien (07:12.779)
Yeah, there's a there's a great video that I actually think goes back to, you know, my early days when I was at the agency, first agency I worked at. And it's called the client agency relationship in real life scenarios. And like there's all these things, like you go into a restaurant and you're like you the the client is like, I want the steak, but I wanna pay the hamburger price Or can you take me to the kitchen so I can see how you did this? And then it's just like the waiter's looking at them like, What do you what do you mean?

Kevin Mooney (07:34.783)
No.

Kevin Mooney (07:42.079)
Right. Yeah, you wanna see how the sausage is made or do you want the sausage?

Frank O'Brien (07:43.125)
Or hey, I'm gonna buy

I'm gonna buy this, but then I also want a little bit of that. Why don't we sprinkle in some social media?

Kevin Mooney (07:53.621)
It's so funny how the same problems exist at all the different levels of agency. We have we've had a small agency that is local and regional, right? And to hear about a larger agency in New York dealing with the exact same problems, why would a company hire an expert to do something and then tell them how to do it? Blows my mind. Or or try to get additional sides.

Stop Fighting Over the Same Keywords

Frank O'Brien (08:20.193)
Yeah, and that's one of the reasons Exactly. And that's one of the reasons why I pivoted the platform. partly in winning the pitch, I realized we had all this cool tech that nobody else had. So why not productize it? And then also if you want to argue with an algorithm, and I'll give you another example, like you can die on that sword, but if I have all the data in the world that shows you this is the right thing to do, do something close to it. Like don't

Kevin Mooney (08:48.609)
Sure.

Frank O'Brien (08:49.217)
Do the other thing that the data is saying don't do. And you know, the funny thing is, the year following the pitch, we went for twelve in these huge pitches. You know, we were in rooms that we arguably shouldn't have been in, but we were good enough to get into them. And in one of those meetings, there was an older gentleman, he was a chief marketing officer of a house of brands, so he oversaw, you know, like forty, I want to say.

Different companies and they all had their own chief marketing officers, but there was just one global CMO. And he's and he said, I want to lower my cost per click. And it was a very, very specific industrial brand geared towards architects. And it wasn't a brand that had a name that lined up with the product. So I said, Okay, in that case, if you want to lower your cost per click, you need to do a little bit of PR. He goes, I don't believe in public relations. And I said, Okay.

So, what you're gonna pay for is someone going and searching industrial carpet. And you're gonna pay probably $200 a click because at that point, you know, we did the research and that was what it was going for, versus the longest lasting best industrial carpet that ships to Atlanta, Georgia. Very narrow keyword. I mean, a string that nobody's gonna buy. But if you put that across the airwaves or you put it out in press.

This company won this award. It's the best industrial carpet in Atlanta, Georgia, for the last twenty years. You're gonna get a lower cost per click. You're gonna pay two bucks instead of two hundred because that's how CPC works, cost per click. And I think it was that meeting that I actually built the algorithm on the plane ride home and I'm like, screw this. And then put the algorithm into a platform where you could just type in three things and spit out a plan. And then that led me down the path of, crap, we have to build all this other stuff that we didn't have.

Here we are, here we are ten years later with you know, a platform that adds AI AI on top of it and we'll do all of that from a semantic search. So, you know, all roads led to surviving another day and you know, I'm having more fun now more than ever doing it. So I guess I'm grateful for that experience in hindsight.

Kevin Mooney (10:42.124)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (11:02.167)
So there's a couple of things I want to talk about. I want to say something and I want to ask a couple of questions and then maybe even go backwards a little bit. because we just briefly alluded to the fact that you were on the pitch, and then you went and built something different based on your experience at the agency. but I want to acknowledge the thing that you just said. It is, and I'm gonna apply it to one discipline, which is SEO. The

Bone that I have had to pick with SEO since I learned about it however many years ago is that everybody is chasing after all these little crumbs. How can I rank for these one, two, five big keywords that define my industry, my service, my product, my whatever? And what I never understood is why can't you manufacture?

Your own search term. Like, do you think Nike has a problem ranking for just do it? Absolutely not. And we're we're kind of bridging the line into brand and talking about a tagline, but the point is that nobody is really fighting over just do it. And so if you I'll show you or I'll tell you a practical example.

At the agency we were messing around and we were like, let's see if we can just get our search term to number one. It was chicken coops and kitchen sinks. And it didn't take very long to be number one. A nobody's searching it. B one little page with a couple of tags and a few words on it ranked pretty much immediately.

And so if we were known for that saying right there, we wouldn't have any competition on it and we would rank number one and we would be found. And the thing that you were just talking about is just sort of a clever way, whether it's CPC, whether it's SEO, whether it's brand and taglines, it doesn't really matter. It's just the way to kind of hack it and still to this day, including AEO and GEO and all of this new fedangled stuff.

Kevin Mooney (13:12.947)
Everyone's still fighting over the same space and the same crumbs, and it drives me fucking bananas. I don't even know what to say about it anymore. And so, anyways, what you were just talking about reminds me so much of that. And it's interesting that some of the bigger companies are still playing that game. They're still trying to fight over industrial carpet or asphalt insert town name here. It's so freaking crazy to me.

Anyways, going back, this transition from leaving the music industry to joining an agency to now doing your own agency and becoming a part of the show, The Pitch. maybe the question here is what are the struggles that you're having there that makes you want to transition into building your own platform, mining the data, doing your own thing there?

Why Big Agencies Sat on Work

Frank O'Brien (14:12.973)
Yeah, so outside of just the daily whatever you want to call it, gauntlet that is the agency business, watch wash, rinse, repeat. I think it was wanting tough because I d I had two more pivots. I had pivot from the music industry into agency life, and then starting my own agency, I don't think was necessarily a pivot, but I guess starting your own business is a change. And then

Kevin Mooney (14:41.547)
Yeah, for sure.

Frank O'Brien (14:43.179)
pivoted it into platform to solve more problems for more people at a lower cost with the same amount of you know effectiveness or arguably being even more effective. And then, you know, the pivot latest one was when AI came out, realizing that we had this 10 year old platform that was really known for doing one thing. You know, we built all this tech and going back to your point about you know, SEO and people chasing the same stuff.

Like we're very much a herd mentality, you know, from tribes back in the day, right? So to get people to move from like here in what is comfortable to over here is not easy. And I think AI presented an opportunity for me to stay aligned, which is the A in the VAPOR framework, with my core mission, which gets to the root of the answer to your question, which is problem solving at scale.

faster than anybody else, at a lower cost, with a high degree of effectiveness. Because that was the whole reason for starting my own thing. And when you asked earlier about, you know, the agency and learning the agency business, one thing that I didn't understand after a while is why do we have all these different agencies? Why do we have an SEO agency when we can do that in the digital practice at an agency? And, you know, the what I learned, and it's funny because I in hindsight learned this about the music industry.

Is that the big hold codes, holding companies, didn't have an incentive to be more efficient or effective. Because if you got everything done at a lower cost, faster turnaround, you couldn't bill fees. So a lot of times, and I I I I hope that there's not a, you know, someone coming after me for this next one, but a lot of times you would sit on work because if you could turn around work in a day.

you couldn't bill for a week. So, you know, in the end, when you look at my trail, I mean, even from when I was in music, I was building tech to help me do my job better. And then I was building tech for agencies I was working with. So even though I was technically in account management, I had two computers. I had my my Microsoft computer over here, my Dell, and I had my Apple over here, and I would do my, you know, business account management work on this. And I would update things that we would normally have to go to the studio for.

Kevin Mooney (16:42.197)
Yeah.

Frank O'Brien (17:09.323)
because I didn't want to stay until ten o'clock at night waiting for some producer to, you know, get back from their, you know, session that they might have had like down the street 'cause we're in the meatpacking district. So so it was always problem solving, better, faster with an eye to being effective and getting to that outcome on success.

How My Marketing Pro Uses AI

Kevin Mooney (17:32.191)
So you are building all of these things. You decide this is where I want to take it. So you start building your platforms. AI comes around. How do you now apply the AI? I know we're simplifying the term AI, but how do we apply the AI to the platform that you have built? And how do you continue to solve problems at scale even faster now?

Frank O'Brien (17:56.214)
Yeah, so t the two two parts of it. the first is semantic search. I don't know that a vast majority of people understand or know like what semantic search means, but when you mentioned AEOs and GEOs earlier coming and almost taking over what the search engines were, you know, those are answer engines, generative engines where you could just type in. and if you use it the right way, you use it as if you're talking to

A person because they're not structured on the back end to be A, B, C, or one plus two equals three. So the first is a platform that you can go in and say, hey, it's raining out today. You know, I'm not expecting a full restaurant. You know, what should I be doing to get more customers in or hit my daily number that I need to reach to make sure I don't fall behind this much?

So the platform will ingest that. And then the second part from semantic search is functional AI. And because we sit on top of all these relationships, all this data, all of these connection points, it will go ahead and then just build it for you. So it might come back and say, if it's raining, put out an offer for next week, or maybe do a two for one. Do you want us to come up with the graphics? Or do you want a landing page? And by the way, we should probably do a social media post. And then as long as you approve it, as if somebody

was to give that to you in a services business, in a matter of seconds now, not even hours or days, it's approved and then it'll create it. And then once you approve the creative, it'll go ahead and send the emails, create the graphics. I mean, go so far as to send to a print API and so that, you know, printed card show up at your door set the next day. So, you know, two parts of the platform, My Marketing Pro.

that benefited from AI. One is a semantic search and then two is the functional AI that can connect everything and get it done for you.

Kevin Mooney (19:55.315)
Pretty freaking cool. I've been looking to build similar types of things for myself and I haven't gotten it to work yet.

Frank O'Brien (20:06.305)
Well, we should talk have we've got a full white label program, we got a partner program, we got an aff affiliate program. That's the fun part.

What AI Is Doing to SEO

Kevin Mooney (20:12.832)
Yeah. I'm I'm definitely I'm definitely into talk about it. I you know, personally right now is a really hard time for the marketing industry. maybe it's due to some of my own laziness. but you know, I relied on Google for for pretty much all of my leads. I I understood SEO from from a very

Early phase in the internet. And you know, not saying I use any black hat techniques, but if you just put the right words in the right area and you have a little creativity instead of just letting the H1s, for example, be the biggest text on your page, you could just with some CSS, just make it the smallest text. You're writing for search engines, but you're allowing humans to see what you want them to see, right?

And so I pretty much dominated that in the local area and the phone would just always ring. And I would say soon as AI started coming around, I started to see that drop off a little bit. And now it's at the point where I don't even rank anywhere on any of the the front pages for any of the search terms anymore. And it's kind of a battle to try to get back from that and

Frank O'Brien (21:13.218)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (21:36.171)
It feels weird. It feels scary, but I'm also looking at it possibly like this is a sign that maybe your time in this silly little creative industry is done and maybe you need to move on. But I don't know if I'm gonna give up without a fight. It's something that either A, I wanna figure out, or B, I

wanna just fully understand because it's how my brain works. I just have to understand whatever the thing is that I'm interested in. I just need to understand it so that I can make a decision on my own to say either A, I'm done or B, I'm still gonna be here. but it's that full understanding in depth. And so I spend way too many hours trying to figure all this stuff out. You're further ahead than me in in the the AI data platforming world and

Frank O'Brien (22:03.575)
Sam.

Kevin Mooney (22:27.830)
So kudos to you for for building that. yeah, what

Frank O'Brien (22:30.423)
Thank you.

Well, I think the good news is one, you're not the only one. SEO, I think the search engines alone. I mean, if you look at Google's drop in traffic, so it might not be you. It might just be the larger world. And there's a huge opportunity in AEO, which is answer engine optimization and GEO generative engine optimization. and with a large language model that LM.

Kevin Mooney (22:37.452)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (22:46.496)
No, it is definitely not me.

Frank O'Brien (23:02.125)
And MCP servers, multicodor, all the acronyms are out there now. there's still time to get ahead of of things there, and I think they're gonna continue to optimize. And living and breathing in this world for the last two years, I never could have imagined. I would I would say the words, I would be at the forefront, but I I understand tech and I understand business, and I'm like, and I realize probably.

Kevin Mooney (23:05.868)
Yeah.

Frank O'Brien (23:29.835)
five or six years ago that that was where my biggest value came from. And I'll give you a specific example. we were building, I was building the technology that changes the Times Square billboards from a mobile device. And it came about because I was meeting with one of the built board owners, I was talking about my company, I was trying to get them to invest in the company and they said we're not gonna give you money, but can you solve this problem for us? And two days later I had the solution. So

Frank O'Brien (24:01.249)
The way I was able to translate between business and even just breaking down what costs per thousand impressions were on a Times Square billboard, and then translate it to tech, I found myself ping-ponging between high-level Stanford educated MIT grad, graduates, graduate degree coders who only understood like how to press a button and get an ad on a screen, and the business people that needed to build a pricing matrix around it.

And it was at that moment that I realized I was really in this unique space that could talk tech and talk business. And you know, two years ago I never would have imagined the speed at which all of these AI large language models were developing. And and it's literally sometimes by the hour. And I can see it because sometimes I'm in there and I see the way the responses are coming back. And if anyone uses Claude,

I don't think ChatGPT does as good a job of it, but you can actually click the button and see how it's thinking. And if you look at how it's thinking on a Monday, it might be different than a Tuesday, and it might be vastly different by the Friday. So right now, going back to the point, I would encourage you to maybe look at AEO and GEO optimizations because I don't think we're settling down anytime soon. And it's gonna continue to evolve beyond

Kevin Mooney (25:23.936)
No.

Frank O'Brien (25:27.411)
anything we can imagine. And I was watching something this morning actually that was talking about you know, the cost of going to college being a hundred thousand dollars across fifteen universities a year. And trade schools are actually getting a bump. but at the same time, right behind the code infrastructure, you have robots that are beating human world records. So I think we're only a matter of time before we're living amongst robotic things that are I mean we're already doing it with

Roombas and vacuums. but to see this stuff start to connect over the next couple years, two decades, two TO decades, not twenty years, I think is gonna be a wild ride. And I think people like you and I, and your listeners, in the audience for stop freaking out, are at the right age for to to experience it. And I was having a separate conversation about every generation there's a shift.

Kevin Mooney (26:19.468)
Yeah.

Frank O'Brien (26:23.709)
And if you're in your twenties, I hate to say it, maybe you're a little too young, or maybe you're forcing that shift and you're getting the herd to move. You know, happens to entertainment all the time. You know, if you're at the tail end of your career, you don't necessarily want to bet on something that's new. But, you know, when you're a couple of guys like us that have some experience and the the the guts, you know, call it balls to go out there and do it.

Kevin Mooney (26:43.884)
Yeah. Okay.

Frank O'Brien (26:45.293)
You can have lot of fun. Have a lot of fun, make a lot of money, help a lot of people.

Freaking Out About AI

Kevin Mooney (26:49.718)
I want to talk about Stop Freaking Out, but I wanna stay on this just a little bit because and this ties in perfectly, because there are days that I freak the fuck out. I cannot keep up with the changes in these platforms. And I do what you're talking about. I watch how it's how it's searching, what it's thinking. You know, I I I try to dive as deep in there as possible.

And one of the frustrating pieces for me is that I haven't seen the pattern yet. The thing that you're talking about that you can see, I can't see that yet. I don't see, you know, I don't I just don't see the pattern that it is growing within. And that's the frustrating part. So I freak out. So I get a different answer from day to day. And I'm like, shit, that's not what you told me.

Frank O'Brien (27:40.501)
Mm-hmm.

Kevin Mooney (27:42.321)
Shit, that's not how I thought about this. Like, am I wrong or are you wrong? Like, which one's stupid? And then, you know, you end up just beating the the chat bot up. And then it'll finally say, okay, Kev, you're right. Everything's good, you know? And I'm going, no, no, no, no, no. I I'm I'm just trying to have a a healthy debate with you, but you're trying to make me happy. And that's probably a side story. But the the point of it is like, what's that?

Frank O'Brien (28:04.493)
I'd love to see that chat. I'd love to see that chat.

Kevin Mooney (28:10.204)
my gosh. Yeah, my chats are kind of ridiculous. But I guess the point is like I still freak out a lot about this thing because it's changing. Listen, I was alive for the beginning of the internet, right? I had a landline when I was a kid with the old dial up modems. You know, I saw DSL come out.

But you know, you watch these things things happen over. I mean, I guess everybody felt how do I how do I phrase this? The way that some people feel about AI right now is probably how they felt about the internet when it came out. Like, holy shit, what is this thing? my gosh, we're all doomed. Everyone's gonna be staring at a computer, blah, blah, blah. And it's not that I agree with that or disagree with that.

I feel like this is the this this shift is so big and it's happening so fast that I'm having a hard time getting my hands around it. And to be fair, I'm trying to do as much AEO and GEO as possible. I'm implementing certain files on the website so that the they'll crawl it and all that fun stuff. Point is I don't even want to be like messing around with any of that stuff. I probably want to hop to another space, but

For some people, they're probably having a hard time understanding where this thing's going. How do we use it? How do we build? And the argument the argument for figuring that out is just go play and have fun and build stuff and see what works and what doesn't. But I'm curious from your perspective, because you've already built something A in the past, and now you've just amplified it using this this technology. So

I'm just kind of curious where you're at with with that.

Frank O'Brien (30:01.373)
Yeah, well I think it's funny and it goes back to something you said in that, which is, or hop to another industry, stop freaking out and like go do the thing that you really love to do or you always wanted to do. I think we're this is kind of a side note, but we're we're so wired to be a part of that herd I mentioned earlier, you know, to go out, work your nine to five, don't do things that are uncomfortable, but then you actually feel uncomfortable because you're not doing the thing that you like to do.

And it's very freeing when you have call it a mini I I I don't like using the term mental break, but there is a a crossroads that I think some people come to when I got there where I was like, you know what? I'm gonna see if this can run by itself. I'm just gonna go do this thing over here, which was right in the book. It was very therapeutic. And guess what? We're still here. We're still we're doing better than ever. We wouldn't have a white label program, we wouldn't have a partner program.

And part of it, I'm thinking of, you know, our publicist, was just being open. And when I wrote the first, you know, word for the book, I didn't know where I was gonna end up. But I ended up in this place that you know, everything clicked and it just worked better. And whenever I had that feeling by the way, of like, you know, I'm starting to go down that path of like, my god, what am I gonna do next? How am I gonna solve this problem? Like, why do I have this problem?

I go back to what I wrote about, which is something I've said for years. Challenges present opportunities. AI is here to stay. The internet, thank God, was here to stay. I mean, if you look at life expectancy from like the sixties, seventies and eighties like where we are now, like I think a lot of that is just stress based. You know, having to get in a car at in in the nineteen fifties and go work that nine to five and I I remember file folders and central filing and

Kevin Mooney (31:38.205)
Right.

Frank O'Brien (31:55.569)
you know, the the way the world was pre internet, I don't know. I still think the nineties were the best decade, but then again, I'm a nineties kid, eighties and nineties. but I wouldn't you know, I wouldn't be as I don't think, but I would be as happy growing up in the fifties and sixties or thirties and forties. But then again, you have to remember that everything's relative. So, you know, you get to this point or I got to this point where I started using taking my own advice and

Kevin Mooney (32:03.645)
I agree. A hundred percent. Yeah.

Frank O'Brien (32:25.573)
Either making a conscious decision to do the hard work and learn things like AEO and GEO. Dirty little secret, I was never good at SEO. I could tell you how to hack a website, but when it came to ranking, just didn't get my wheels turning. I'm more of a creative route. but then again, there's always that that pivot moment where you could say, F it, I'm not doing this today and go do something you enjoy doing and see how you where you end up on the other side. And you know, to sum up, when I've done that, I found that I've actually ended up in a better place.

than I would have been in had I just worked through something that, you know, felt uncomfortable or that I didn't want to do.

Kevin Mooney (33:02.078)
Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting. I've always been in the creative side of things as well. I just know that you have to have some of the tactical skills as well. there's not a lot of places, at least for a smaller agency or a smaller freelancer like myself to to just be purely creative. They're like, that's cute, that's cool, but you know, how do we do it? What does it do for us?

Or I don't get it, right? So I had to learn all of these other skills. And and the AI stuff is is definitely one of the the newer ones that I've been unfortunately banging my head against for the last two and a half years. Like I don't know. So many chats. What a I don't know. That's it's weird to to think about and say out loud, but you're just kind of constantly talking to it and trying to figure it out and figure out where I can use this, where I can implement it.

Frank O'Brien (33:47.757)
Mm.

Kevin Mooney (33:59.923)
You know, I do I wanna use it on the creative side or do I wanna use it on another aspect? Do I want it to handle, you know, outreach and lead gen? You know, do I want it to well, my dumbass just wants to own everything. I just wanna handle everything. I want my hands all over everything. And that's certainly not the way to do it. So, anyways, fasting fast forwarding to that freaking out part.

Frank O'Brien (34:22.653)
Yeah, well I've been accused of I've been a Yeah, I've been accused of trying to boil the ocean. And it's something a lot of the things we're talking about I wrote about in the book and I just I had this vision and you know, that's the V in the frame paper paper framework. Vision alignment, preparation, options, and research and development. Like always be learning, always be innovating. And I just

I just didn't make sense to me. Like the programmer side of my brain was like, why do we have all these things? Like, why is this data over here? But then we gotta export it and import it and like, what the fuck? Right? So, thank God, you know, we got here sooner rather than later where people are starting to see that things can be connected. by the way, shameless plug, frankspeakingfrankly.com/live. I actually have a one hour product building session.

Kevin Mooney (34:55.699)
Right.

Frank O'Brien (35:14.300)
where we'll live build any idea. Throw it at me. If we can't get it done in an hour, then shame on me. But I've been doing this now, it's gonna be sound crazy for so long, and it's only been like eighteen months, not even, since you know, we started or I started down the path of like learning all this stuff, that I mean, I've built wayfinding apps in fifteen minutes, you know, how to have your phone talk to you like as if it was Google Maps but you're in a building.

and the tech that had to go into that was crazy because you gotta be able to scan a room, know that have the application know that there that's a movable wall that might not be there tomorrow versus a fixed wall. So a lot of the things that we're talking about, you know, I I I grew passionate about during this process. You know, I I always loved music and that was my passion, which is why I went into it to begin with. And I I found that I've always kind of loved tech and it's

more so the output of it is problem solving that really kinda gets me out of bed in the morning. so yeah, if anyone needs help out there, check out frankspeakingfrankly.com/live. And you know, this is what I love to do all day, every day. And we can talk about it and I can tell you how to train the dragon, the the AIs. Or, you know, if you have something you've been wanting to build for years, you don't have to spend, you know, tens of thousands of dollars and weeks doing it. We can get it done in an hour and you'll leave with a marketing plan.

And a team to help you do it.

Inside the Book and the VAPOR Framework

Kevin Mooney (36:41.861)
That's awesome. Yeah, we'll make sure to link that in in the episode. So the the Stop Freaking Out book, where where's this thing at right now? Is this thing out? Can we all get our hands on it?

Frank O'Brien (36:47.293)
Thank you.

Frank O'Brien (36:56.451)
It is on Amazon. Check your local bookstore. We got paperbacks, we got hardcovers, audiobook is coming out soon. and yeah, also available on the website.

Kevin Mooney (37:08.243)
Cool. What's so what's the framework of the book? How is it laid out? You mentioned the vapor framework. That is inside of it. I want to know a little bit about how you came up with that, where yeah, where that came from.

Frank O'Brien (37:21.692)
Yeah, so the layout is I I mean, I don't wanna self sort of say it's amazing, but when we started I never never could have imagined that we would have an amazing book on our hands and so many people have read it and come to me and said they like the format. it has chapter takeaways for founders, executives, and creatives. so it's got

Kevin Mooney (37:31.550)
Just let it rip, Frank. Let it rip.

Frank O'Brien (37:50.691)
useful things that you can put into action each day. And the grounding vapor framework, which stands for vision alignment, preparation, options, and research development, is something that I find myself going back to on a on a daily basis. and then another big part of it, and we were talking about the internet earlier and AI, it goes through little vignettes and little stories throughout history. Like for instance, Edison and Tesla, and when they they went head to head, AC versus DC, and you know, when Kodak had

the camera, digital camera. And because they were in the film industry, they intentionally shelved it. and then, you know, Kodak went away. so there are are cool stories in there that kind of keep it moving. and then there are, like I said, chapter takeaways and another thing at the end of each chapter is reframing your reality, looking at things from different angles. and it's important to note that VAPOR very intentionally was used as the framework because you can morph

vapor and you can morph as a person into different things. You know, if you're freaking out, you just have to reframe things and maybe take stock of what's really going on. or, you know, if the the weather's bad one day, I mean you can obviously cover that up with a jacket. But vapor and the way that it morphed through things became a core part of it because you can be in certain situations and behave slightly different and get a much better outcome by just, you know, making that one little tweak.

But it's very important, focus on the A alignment. You don't wanna be a wolf in sheep's clothing. You've gotta figure out, you know, what's important to you in order to make those things work when you're in those those different situations.

Kevin Mooney (39:33.748)
How did you come up with the the framework for vapor? Did you were you just sit down and you just thought about this and you're like, this is the one, vapor? Or did you base it off of another framework?

Frank O'Brien (39:42.682)
So it's weird.

Nope, not based off of anything but my own experiences and things that have stuck with me for years, that really kinda came to light through the writing process. and it's it's weird to answer the question because you hear about songwriters coming to a line or like Paul McCartney used he said he wrote Hey Jude like in his sleep or overnight and then found it years later or something to that effect.

vapor, I can't even tell you where it came from. It it fell from the sky. It was like a gift from above, and it it sort of is taking on a life of its own and becoming more of a thing of its own, that's you know meant to be in the world. and again, getting feedback and hearing from other people that they've used it to change their business or the way that they work or the way that they just

get out bed in the morning and think positively has been eye opening and a breath of fresh air and I encourage everybody to find a way to get their creative side out, because it's it it really does help everything else.

Kevin Mooney (40:56.810)
That's awesome. I wish I could come up with a framework. I probably could. If I, you know, one of the things that I do, it's similar to what you were just talking about. I I think about stuff as I'm going to sleep. And it just happens in my brain while I'm sleeping. You know, my wife will say, Well, if you think about murder before you go to bed, you're gonna have a scary dream about murder. And so I basically think about.

Something, whether it's a framework or it's a piece of content or a website or a brand that I'm building, I think about that going into it. And it is kind of weird. Magically that stuff shows up in in that that probably the REM part of your sleep cycle. I got really deep into Patrick Lencioni's book, The Advantage. Have you are you familiar with that book?

Frank O'Brien (41:55.469)
I am not familiar with that book.

Kevin Mooney (41:56.786)
Mm-hmm.

me see if I can just look it up really fast. It's it says, Why organizational health trumps everything in business. And I remember being super fixated on that. And and what does that mean? And I went through the book and he's got all kinds of frameworks and and at one point I remembered what they were, but a lot of it

ironically mirrors a lot of the things that you're talking about. A lot of it is about alignment, a lot of it is about clarity, stakeholder buy-in through clarity and then communicating that clarity to the rest of the team, right? And that's how you kind of get everybody on the same train, on the same track, going all the way through. And so, you know, admittedly I haven't read your book yet. when we booked this, I didn't have enough time. I know.

Frank O'Brien (42:50.661)
Interview over. No, I'm just kidding.

Kevin Mooney (42:52.994)
When I when we booked this, I didn't have enough time to get it to my door and read it by the time, but it is on its way. So I'm excited to take a look at it and and what I think sounds really cool is the is something that we all forget, which is just repositioning whatever the fear is in your mind. Just reposition that.

Frank O'Brien (43:01.181)
Thank you for that.

Kevin Mooney (43:20.137)
He has this great video on the internet that probably went viral, something to the effect of, so you broke your leg? Good. Now you have time to get better. Right. And it's just this idea of whatever the bad thing that happens is, good. Good. I'm glad it happened to you. I mean, I don't want you to be hurt, but good. Now there's time for you to get better or learn something or get more efficient or whatever.

And so if I was, you know, crying and telling my story to him about my woes and and the marketing agency, he'd just be like, Good, good, do better, do more podcasting, you know, go do this, go do that, try this. So I'm super interested in reading this and and learning more about it. I'm curious if you have any examples off the top of your head of people who have used

Use your your writing, your frameworks, and if you have any of those stories to tell.

Tearing Down a 60-Person Agency

Frank O'Brien (44:21.379)
Yeah, two come to mind. one is an author friend of mine that restructured the way her organization worked and you know, that's publishing. So she like very directly said when she started reading it, she saw where she wanted to go. And one thing that I talk about in the book is how I was never afraid to systematically tear something down.

And when I say systematically, sometimes it wasn't all, you know, c as clean as it could be. But if I woke up, case in point, when I had the sixty person agency that won the episode of the pitch, I woke up one morning, I remember it was August, and I thought to myself, I am banging my head against the wall to get to ten million dollars in revenue. Somebody is gonna wake up today and start a company that gets to ten million dollars in revenue in the next four months, and here I am.

you know, however many years in it was at that point, and I'm struggling to get to a certain number. Tear it down, start over. And that became the platform. And, you know, then the platform did marginally better than the agency. Literally margins. Agency margins are like three percent. Platform margins are like a lot more. But it still never got to that place. And part of it was me getting in my own way and making the same mistakes again and again. and one of it was trying to raise money after you already had revenue.

Kevin Mooney (45:38.623)
Right.

Frank O'Brien (45:48.721)
You know, like it's tough to put a number on evaluation, you know, that that magic word when you have more than just an idea on a napkin. So we didn't raise any money for My Marketing Pro. take that back. We didn't drive any revenue for My Marketing Pro until we had investment dollars. because I still have companies running in parallel, you know, I have a responsibility to keep certain things going. But I knew that if we took even a dollar in, someone was gonna say, Well

You know, how much time did you put towards that dollar and the you know the finance people with the pencils would come in. So we made it a point to drive product, make sure we had product market fit, but we didn't take in a dime of revenue until we had investment dollars in the company. so point there is I tore down business number two in effect, because I saw that we were marginally chugging along, but we weren't doing anywhere near the revenue of the agency.

so you know, don't be afraid to make that pivot. it feels better on the other side, nine times out of ten. And that was what my one author friend said helped her. And then another friend of mine who's a friend now, but he was actually a reader first. He read the book, contacted me, and on a daily basis he's repeating things like the sunk cost fallacy. Like a big part of not wanting to tear things down is how much money did you put into it.

You know, I'm I'm fortunate, you know, having been in business on my own for close to twenty years, that I have ran seven figure businesses. And, you know, when you're looking at a seven or eight-figure business and you're like, I invested five million dollars in this code base. I can't just start from scratch. How much are you gonna lose by continuing to operate a f a business that's been around a long time and you spent all this money building the code?

You know, are you gonna lose more money by not just doing a small pivot and going to something that's gonna make a lot more money more quickly? Which goes back to my whole moment of realization back in probably twenty fourteen that someone was gonna start a business in August that was gonna do more than I was able to do in a year, in four months.

Why Kevin Shut Down His Agency

Kevin Mooney (48:03.755)
That just heads home so hard. I don't I don't think about it from a financial standpoint in the sunk fallacy, sunken fallacy idea. it's about like the time and the the ownership that I have over that thing. Right. It was so hard for me to shut the agency down. And you know, I don't know that at the time my partner wanted to shut it down.

But I was so done. I was so tired. I was just tired of chasing the clients. And this goes way back to the beginning that something you said I wanted to revisit, which is trying to convince people of change or that the old way is just the old way and there's a new way of doing it. That that thing wore me out in the agency world. but I guess what I'm saying is that I had put so much time and energy, which does translate to to money.

But it was more about this thing that I built. I put everything that I had into this agency. I mean, I built the systems, I helped build the team, I did the creative, I did so much there. I didn't want to shut the damn thing down. But at the end of the day, I knew I had to. And I was like, I'm gonna go try something different. And to be fair, didn't really try something different. I hopped right back into a personal brand and re

you know, rinsed and repeat some of the the same stuff. But that was out of the necessity for money. Now I'm in this transition period where I am trying to go to that next thing that at least bare minimum makes me happy. And the thing that we are doing right now, this makes me the most fucking happy. It would be really nice if I could figure out how to make money off of it, but I love talking to people. I love hearing their stories.

I love seeing trying to pick out the trends and and what you're talking about, where you've been, where you're going, and see how I can apply that to to myself. and I have

Frank O'Brien (50:08.987)
Do you have any do you have any swag? You need to monetize swag.

Kevin Mooney (50:12.999)
I you know what? I I I have some ideas for it. I would love to, as much as I love AI and everything digital, I love everything digital, but there's a huge part of me that wants to just go way back, go back to the nineties, go straight back to like grow.

Guerrilla marketing style, make stickers and t-shirts and put them up everywhere and posters, you know, and and do like some weirdo bay sticker that nobody understands, but it just becomes this cultural icon over time. And to your point, I would like to make some swag in something like that. I just don't know how to apply it to me and what I'm doing just yet. I will figure that out. and I have

Frank O'Brien (51:04.007)
We should put our creative brains together 'cause that's that's definitely something I still love love doing. Brainstorm storming things like campaigns, product ideas, product lines.

Kevin Mooney (51:14.066)
Yeah, that stuff. You know, I've thought about jumping back into the product world. That is something that I I definitely miss. There's there's it has its challenges. Let's just say it like that. Yeah, it's got its challenges. But I think a product would be really fun to kind of get back into and and try to do.

Yeah, I don't know. I guess I don't know where I was going with that. I was tying that to something you were saying. but

Frank O'Brien (51:46.353)
something about earlier, something I said earlier.

Kevin Mooney (51:49.149)
It was something that you said earlier.

Frank O'Brien (51:52.125)
About your great record collection.

Kevin Mooney (51:54.091)
Yeah, I need to get some more records. my son and I go down to the record store. It's just literally just downstairs here. And we'll just go down and grab a handful and come up and stick up here. And he loves it. He's got all kinds of weird shit. He he he'll listen to like Daft Punk. He'll listen to Charlie Crockett. He'll listen I mean any genre, it just does not matter at all.

it's a it's a fun little hobby that we we have that we share together.

Talking Heads and Talking-Head Content

Frank O'Brien (52:26.799)
Awesome. I I eventually will get back to music and that's my my goal. We actually are doing live event series here in New York at some of the music venues, kind of pairing TEDx with TED Talks type things with music. So during like the changeover, you know, weaving in some type of like educational or you know talking session.

Kevin Mooney (52:48.093)
Is that through Frank speaking frankly? Or is that through marketing pro? What is it where is that through?

Frank O'Brien (52:57.053)
So that's gonna be through Frank speaking frankly. And quite honestly, I mean you see me sitting here with a backwards hat. I never wore a hat until COVID. And when we started doing these segments and, you know, pull outs from the book, I didn't want to be in an office or on a stage. Like I've never really liked the idea of fireside chats. Did you just I mean the liter literally manufactured, not even figuratively. So, you know, I I was talking to someone I do content with and I'm like if music is a vein.

in this book or thread, why don't we d do live events and capture content there? Like, you know, get a room full of people, get some cool up and coming bands, and, you know, have me for like five seconds saying, Hey man, who had a bad day? Yeah, why? And then it's like, all right, let's problem solve right here, have some drinks, listen to some music and get content that way versus, you know, talking heads, which ironically, did you get did you pick up on the name of the book and the inspiration?

Kevin Mooney (53:40.501)
Right.

Kevin Mooney (53:57.779)
I didn't know.

Frank O'Brien (53:59.953)
So Stop Making Sense. And the song Once in a Lifetime by Talking Heads, as I said, where the VAPOR Framework came from, it felt like it came from above. And whenever I listen to that song, I think of its application to nothing in life is real. The whole song is about how history repeats itself, same as it ever was, same as it ever was. And all of that even kinda came into you know, existence, very

Kevin Mooney (54:06.982)
Yes.

Frank O'Brien (54:29.135)
Naturally. But yeah, stop freaking out. Don't wanna be a talking head, inspired by the talking heads.

Kevin Mooney (54:36.011)
That's that's hilarious. And you know, that's kind of

That I mean, that's kind of where this podcast fits in. And that same thing. I don't in the content game, there's a lot of people who do the yappy content as the young kids call it, or the talking head stuff. They follow the same framework. They follow the same visual hooks and content layouts and structures.

And not only is is AI amplifying that and making that even worse, even though it visually looks quite quite good, it's just amplifying

I think the internet has amplified dog shit, and I think AI is now amplifying dog shit. That doesn't mean that there's not good things within it. I think one of those good things is what we're talking about here and in the platform that you're building, and some platforms that others are building. But going back to simple events and just talking regularly and problem solving in real time.

Is is it's better content, it's the content for me, and I have a feeling it's the content for other people as well. And I wish that more people would do that. I wish they would have the mindset that you're having. Let's just get in a room, let's have some drinks, let's share our problems, and let's try to figure it out together. That to me, hands down, wins any day of the week. I love it.

Execution Is Cheap Now

Frank O'Brien (56:20.283)
Yeah. You just you just tied a knot off for me because I've been saying something pretty regularly that execution is cheap these days. It's a race to the bottom. And it's only gonna keep going lower. And the strategy that goes into it is what is going to make whatever the thing is better than anything else that's out there. So when I use the word cheap, now now I'm gonna use it

based on what you just said, two different ways. It cheapens it not just from a cost perspective, but from an output perspective. How good is it? You know, it becomes homog homogenized to an extent and it's like the same thing. Doesn't matter who you put behind the the camera. it's it looks the same, it feels the same. Until you get guys like us in the room, well compliment us both, that actually put the strategy into it that makes it better than anything else. And expensive doesn't mean need to mean monetarily

You know, you look at, you know, a Tom Ford piece of clothing and sometimes it's the brand that elevates the person elevates the brand. It costs the same maybe to make, but you know, it's gonna you're gonna spend a lot more on it if it's Tom Ford versus, you know, Kohl's. I'm trying to think if they ever did a collaboration, but I'm assuming not. no offense to Kohl's. But so it doesn't need to be expensive price wise, but expensive on the on the on the output. And that's one thing, like when people say,

Kevin Mooney (57:40.383)
Yeah.

Frank O'Brien (57:48.891)
Well, My Marketing Pro, why should we use My Marketing Pro versus Claude? Do you really want a tech guy building out your marketing stack? And like I said earlier, I have this dual sort of weapon where I have the business side and I have the tech side. So for 20 years, we've had all of these case studies loaded in. There's a database that goes back to all the research that we did for all these pitches that our AI sits on top of. And then the way the AI is trained.

To do anything from build a website to a full-on ad campaign is built from the brains of human beings that have been at it for years, and luckily are relatively still young enough to be at it for more years. but it's that training that you're not gonna get by just going into Claude if you're a local business, you know, running anything from a flower shop to a coffee shop or a services business, because Claude's gonna give you

I mean, when we first started training it a year and a half ago, not just Claude, but OpenAI and all the others, I mean, it was coming back with dog shit. And then it got better and it got better and it got better. And now I can run these one hour live coding sessions, frank speaking frankly.com slash live, with confidence because I know that it's been hitting home run after home run after home run only after being trained on the data that went into it.

Kevin Mooney (58:53.674)
Yeah.

Frank O'Brien (59:12.394)
at a very high level, not just, you know, out of the box. The same thing with with, you know, the the stuff that you have going on as well. Building a product or building a a brand, not just, you know, taking the dog shit that the generic out of the box product is gonna give you.

My Entire Career Has Been Made Up

Kevin Mooney (59:31.772)
Right. I mean, because at the end of the day, it is just it's just an algorithm compiler, right? It's just pulling all the shit on the web. And and I had this realization. I was telling my old partner this yesterday, and I was telling my wife a coup a couple of weeks ago, like my entire career has been made up. It's it's not fake.

It's just been made up, meaning I didn't go to school for what I do. I have no regulatory system that says I'm capable of doing what I'm doing. I essentially looked at what was on the web and I said, Well, I think I could do that, and I think I can do it better and make better decisions. And then I built my own.

I'm talking about just the creative industry here. Built my own website and essentially convinced people to pay me money to do it for them. And then I've just been doing that for the last twelve years. And so I think about it, it's a weird thing to think that that is a completely made up career. I didn't go through five steps to get to where I am. I just made it up and convinced people that I can do it.

Where I'm going with this is that it seems like if you're just a regular person and you're just using Claude without training it, you're just gonna get that other sloppy shit that's on the internet. It might look pretty, it might be wrapped in this really, really nice bow. there might be some really fancy design design decisions made that look really good. But without that strategy, and I I'm so done.

beating people over the head with strategy. But without that strategy, how do you know if the consumer's actually going to buy that product or that service? Or if the the marketing plan is going to

Kevin Mooney (01:01:46.750)
If that product is going to work within that marketing plan. Like is there synergy across all the products and and the offerings? And I don't know where I'm going with this once again, but it's interesting. There is a question in here. I'm gonna talk it out slowly. it's interesting.

Frank O'Brien (01:02:05.019)
I think I know where you're going or I've I at least have a a r little bit of a response to clarify, so

Kevin Mooney (01:02:11.060)
Yeah. Let me see if I can get this out. Like when you train it, when you train, let's maybe we can just pick something, for example, a website. And you use all the case studies from everything that you've ever done and you train it. Are you training it across all the disciplines that are that come along with a website? And then are you training it to your own

design principles or preferences in design? Or is there a larger part of it that says, no, here are general principles, please follow them? Like what does that look like to you?

Frank O'Brien (01:02:52.881)
Yep, and that's exactly where I thought you were you were you were going with it. So thank you for the thank you for the softball on the response.

Kevin Mooney (01:02:58.476)
It's it's it's a very long, long-winded question. but it's something that I'm battling with because I am trying to build my own systems in a similar way. but my preferences change because every client to me is different, and this probably makes me one of those those agency owners or freelancers that is bound to fail because you make everything custom.

And that takes a lot of time, takes a lot of thought. No font stays the same, no layout stay the same, so on and so forth. And I don't know how to train a machine on that intuition of being like, hmm, this feels right for that person. I I understand their audience and this is gonna connect with them. So, anyways, now please knock this softball out of the park.

How Frank Trains His AI

Frank O'Brien (01:03:51.111)
So there's two parts of it. And one are the guardrails that you give your particular AI so that no two AIs are the same. And so you can say whenever you do build a website or whenever you build a piece of creative, do these things. and don't do these other things. Like the dash, the extended long dash, has become a signature calling card of AI.

And, you know, I treat my AIs fairly, nicely. I always say please and thank you and they I give a shout out in the acknowledgments of the book 'cause I don't want them coming after me one day.

Kevin Mooney (01:04:27.788)
Are you one of the people that thinks like, you know, in in in another life or in thirty years when the AI takes over, you you you wanted to be nice and polite to them, say, hey, remember I treated you really well?

Frank O'Brien (01:04:40.807)
I want to be on the nice roll. Yep. Mm-hmm. Exactly. So, you know, when they do do something that I said absolutely 1,000% don't do this, I do go back at them and say, absolutely, absolutely 100,000 times percent. Like whoever's reading this somewhere in Silicon Valley or around the world is, you know, I'm I hope hope that they're getting a laugh out of some of my responses. the first thing is the guard guardrails. Do this, don't do that.

Kevin Mooney (01:04:42.422)
That's right. Fair. Okay.

Frank O'Brien (01:05:09.526)
and then going back to your question about the steps, you know, being in New York City with the biggest agencies in the world, Madison Avenue is known for, you know, the madmen. you know, I I d I don't like defending New York City, but a lot of times when New York City says it has like the best pizza or the best hot dogs or the best whatever, inevitably the people come out of the woodwork. But I think if they have a T V show about New York City being the capital of advertising, you could say it. or at least, you know, a show about

great time period here. and the reason I'm bringing this up is I'm prefacing the the fact that we go deep in color theory. You mentioned fonts, what font connects with the market. and all of that stuff is again going back over 20 years of data when we used to do it manually. So there are answers in there and answers that come from the AI that we have that nobody else is gonna have. And I'll say that, not even the big agencies. I think one of our strengths

Kevin Mooney (01:05:41.196)
Sure.

Frank O'Brien (01:06:08.387)
is the fact that I've stayed at the helm for so long and didn't feel comfortable to even come out with a book because I didn't want my name out there and I didn't want to be you know the the name on the door, but I did stay long enough to make sure that all of those steps are there. And when it's building a website, it it goes into the audience that's on the other side of the screen. You know, there's a book called Don't Make Me Think that used to be, I think, on every agency's desk 20 years ago.

And it talks about clicking and how eye tracking goes from upper left to bottom right. one thing that I've always learned, and it it's kind of you know another core thing to the book is like the world changes. So the R in vapor research and development, always go back to the well. Because if you know GPS is telling everybody with an iPhone that's driving on I-95 to take a route, it's gonna be it's gonna change because everybody's gonna follow it. And then you're gonna have a traffic jam and then it's gonna go someplace else.

So the same thing in things like designing the LLMs or designing those guardrails. You know, it's something like that that you're not gonna get off the shelf or from another AI when we're actually training it to be dynamic. and the other part of training it is the difference difference between structured and unstructured data. So structured data is you go through the alphabet A to Z, you know, unstructured data is

You throw all the letters in a bowl and you can still find the answer sometimes faster. the AIs and LLMs are all unstructured data. So if you talk to it in a structured way, it's gonna be like speaking Chinese to someone who only speaks English. So we have all of this stuff in our algorithms that talk to each other and also train each other. you know, I mentioned earlier that we use primarily Claude, Chat GPT, some Gemini. we put them against each other, put them in a room.

Kevin Mooney (01:07:46.337)
Mm.

Frank O'Brien (01:08:01.445)
imagine three people, and this is something I always do, like just put it in human terms. You have three candidates for a job sitting in front of you. Dirty tactic, maybe. I wouldn't recommend doing it to human beings, but to AIs, you can treat them a little differently. Take their three pieces of work and then say to the other one, this person did this better, or you know, why didn't you consider this? And then they challenge each other. And it's the same way you see it in a stock market, you know, they're gone or IPOs.

They're going up against each other, you know, head to head, trying to be the better, trying to win out. But, you know, they can all work together. And if you train it the right way, which we've done, it's gonna go through every step in the book quickly. You know, what is the strategy to get to this goal? I wanna sell more of this thing, or I just wanna be the biggest name and I don't really care about saying things, it's gonna get you to a different output. But it's all rooted in the research and the strategy and all that stuff that you need to even get to a point where you're putting a

pen to paper or you know code on a website. So first thing is gotta train it right, put the guardrails up. It'll it'll do the things that you're used to doing in your natural life, real life IRL. And the second thing is making sure that you have all the steps, which it's really hard if you've never been in been in the room of one of the big agencies to know even what those steps are. Things like communication architecture. Does somebody get an email before they see an ad?

what is the right time of day for a particular industry because it changes. It's so dynamic. And you know, those are all the things that have to be in place so that when you go in and say, I want to do this to get that, it'll just go ahead and build it. But it's really based on what the intended outcome is, if it's a sale versus awareness or even an action point or an education point. And you know, right there I'm going into agency training, proprietary things.

like the decision making continuum. Someone needs to know you before they'll even listen to you and you have to have a good enough offer to get them to buy. Don't forget about retention. Turn your best customers into advocates.

Predicting Cycles and Obsolescence

Kevin Mooney (01:10:07.798)
So have you been training or maybe this is part of the you know the continued research and development? do you train them on new frameworks that are coming out? I'm just gonna throw out a couple of things. there's a content guy named Caleb Ralston. He used to

You know, be head of content for like Gary V or something. And he comes out with these kind of new philosophies, the 7-11-4 rule, or maybe that's Daniel Priestley. Sorry, scratch that. But there's a couple of people that have these new things. And it's basically how much content has to be shown to somebody for them to know you. And they have to know you before they can like you. And they have to know you and like you before they can trust you. And I'm sure that there are similar ideas and frameworks that

that we've used in the past through different strategies. But I'm just curious, do you have it kind of

Trying to find these things and then trying to learn them and then maybe a guardrail to say, Hey, this is something smart or not. Like, do you have a loop that includes some of that? That's kind of an interesting thought because this shit changes all the time and it depends on what platform you're on and what day of the year you're in and who you're on in and blah blah blah. It just goes on for ever and ever.

Frank O'Brien (01:11:17.221)
Yeah.

Frank O'Brien (01:11:31.877)
Yeah, so I the word predictive comes to mind because we take it a step further and so there's the the world continues to follow a pattern. And sometimes it's a hundred year pattern, sometimes it's a twenty year pattern, you know, an annual pattern, something that you know you just mentioned. Like if you're living in the northeast, you do certain things in April and you do other certain different things in October, right? And you do it every single year, predictably.

So one of the things I love doing is going out and saying, all right, this is what worked five years, ten years, twenty years ago. Very specific examples. And if I don't know the industry or I don't know the examples, I'll ask it, hey, in carb carbonated beverages, what was the cycle from nineteen forty to two thousand twenty in carbonation, sugar?

low calorie and when do you think that that cycle's gonna change again and what were the things that were similar that led to these changes? And I've been I've I've I'm not an investor in the stock market. I've always invested in my own businesses myself. So, you know, but I've always wanted to test the predictive don't have to call them predictive markets, but how this would apply to the financial markets.

because you can see it and it's it becomes clear as day. It's like the sky clears. So we have a training algorithm excuse me, training algorithm that says, Hey, in this industry, can you predict what the next shift is gonna be? If somebody I mean you see it in baby names, something as silly as baby names. Like, you know, one year it's Olivia and then if you look back twenty years, the very next year it was like Janet. So part of our text

DAC algorithm, whatever you want call it, is not just training and saying, Look at history, but can you predict what's gonna happen next based on data that goes back far enough so that you can see the cycles? Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (01:13:42.006)
That's cool. Yeah, that's super rad. Well, I didn't necessarily mean to Yeah. Well, I didn't necessarily mean to just shift the conversation only to AI. It's just it's interesting because there's so many applications right now for it. And there's so much opportunity to use historical data to try to figure out where things are going or what things organic.

Frank O'Brien (01:13:46.289)
Yeah, it's like predicting the future.

Kevin Mooney (01:14:10.878)
are going to do and then

There's also this, like I wonder if there's planned obsolescence in this. Like whatever we're building right now at the rate at which things are changing could possibly be obsolete very, very soon. And so I'm wondering, like, if you're building this and you are looking for investment and you are trying to plan for the future, how do we how do we prepare ourselves for the obsolescence of this?

And I know that's not necessarily what planned obsolescence means, but there's you can apply that concept to this part of the conversation.

Frank O'Brien (01:14:54.833)
Yeah, and it's scary to think about. I mean, what immediately comes to mind for me is speed of being in market and effectively what we've just said, replacing, you know, mak making us obsolete and then a beach, because I want to get to that beach with enough money s sooner rather than later to you know, not not have not enough to spend, if that makes sense. But

Kevin Mooney (01:15:23.494)
Yeah, it does.

Frank O'Brien (01:15:24.236)
yeah, I think it's it's tricky and it the other part of it is challenges present opportunities and there I go, back to my vapor framework because you know, when you start to freak out about stuff like that, you gotta think something you said earlier, there's always gonna be something new or you can always kind of create something out of thin air and you know, reinvent yourself and and build this this new thing. So I would say the opportunity I get more excited, I just got excited.

about like what that could look like because who knows what good is gonna come about that's gonna, you know, make the world more fun or lead to even longer life expectancy or things like that. You know, who knows? Maybe I will build that financial model market thing or, you know, solve find a cure for cancer. you know, you never you never know. so for as much as it's scary and, you know, shit, what happens if we're w obsolete,

Kevin Mooney (01:16:10.989)
Sure.

Frank O'Brien (01:16:20.581)
The flip side of that is there's always going to be opportunities that come out of that and they might not be created yet either.

Scams, Blackouts and Doomsday Plans

Kevin Mooney (01:16:30.157)
Sure. Do you think no, that's not the right start. Do you see anybody using this for bad right now? This being this technology?

Frank O'Brien (01:16:41.721)
Unfortunately.

Frank O'Brien (01:16:45.501)
So specifically at My Marketing Pro, no, and we have rules against that. So there are plenty of marketers. I mean, if you think about the tobacco industry that targeted or the s the other industries that exist now that are currently testifying in front of Congress that are being called to task for not, you know, having people's best interests at heart. you know, we make sure that while we remain agnostic.

to different brands, different, you know, causes, etc. we're open for everyone that is using things with good intention. So that's the first kind of disclaimer I just have to put out there. We won't allow people to use our technology for bad. But I mean around the world, unfortunately, I mean, everyone knows about the emails that, you know, send five dollars to an Indian prince and he'll send you back five hundred. So, you know, that's probably the most, you know, benign down the middle.

Kevin Mooney (01:17:40.493)
That's the weirdest one I that's so crazy. Send a prince five dollars because he needs it for something, and in return he'll give you five hundred.

Frank O'Brien (01:17:50.769)
So it's so nonsensical. I mean I've never seen that, I just made it up. But it's so nonsensical. I mean it's y you hear of people being scammed, you know, daily. I mean, pfft I got five. Open this PDF with your social security, you know, thing and it's at some dot XYZ domain. So, you know, people are definitely automating.

Kevin Mooney (01:18:09.269)
I think about, you know, I hate to say this out loud, but both of my parents have have fallen for a scam. And it's crazy how clever they're getting at this point. my dad's was an IRS thing, right? You know, they're they call him a bunch of times and they're like

yeah, you know, you owe this much money, you gotta do this. You know, it was one of those scams. I need you to go to Home Depot and get a bunch of gift cards and send them into me because that's the form of payment that we'll accept. And my dad fell for it. And I was like, You are the dumbest person alive. This is bananas. But now with AI, the the cleverness is going to increase and the volume is gonna increase.

The stuff that I've been getting the most recently is just all these calendar invites. They just get it just shows up on my calendar. I wake up, I look at iCalendar, and there's 37 invites. And I'm like, what in the hell? How do they even get to this point? Because that feels super invasive. It's no longer an email that might go to spam. It's in your it's in your inbox on your calendar, and it takes up a spot on the calendar. And if you use one of those calendar

Booking Thingma bobbers, right? It takes up all the space on your calendar and now nobody can book your time. It it's just so invasive. It's so crazy. But you know, those are like the low-hanging fruit ones, and I'm sure somebody's making some money out of it. But I wonder if there's like some other like evil that's happening that we're not quite seeing, but it's like out there and it's

Maybe it's cool. Maybe it's branded really well. I don't I don't know. I was just curious if you had seen any of that stuff recently.

Frank O'Brien (01:20:04.923)
Yeah, no, fortunately, I mean it's it's definitely scary. I think the apocalypse is gonna come when someone figures out how to take down the internet or, you know, p pull I mean, the electric grid isn't the internet. So when that happens and people can't get to their bank accounts, you know, that's gonna be not a not a good day. And unfortunately I I don't think it's out of the cards. and it's probably gonna happen sooner rather than later. and again, ter terrifying.

Kevin Mooney (01:20:31.563)
What's your plan? What's your what's your what's your vapor plan for when someone takes down the electric grid and you have to find that beach a little bit sooner, but you don't have any money in your bank account because it's been it's been hijacked from someone.

Frank O'Brien (01:20:49.627)
Yeah. So I was here during

Kevin Mooney (01:20:50.593)
What's the silver lining out of that? Let's say it like that. How do you reposition your your thought?

Frank O'Brien (01:20:54.781)
Great question. Great question. And what I was about to say was I was here during Hurricane Sandy, and I lived in what we called SOPO, South of Power. So I was without power for you know, a week. And the silver lining was that.

People more people are good than bad. And everybody banded together. And the same thing happened during the blackout, which I think was like in two thousand three. So I think the silver lining was that you had more people that were willing to help and come together and lend a hand than you had looting, you know, stores. And I was also here during riots and protests and you know, things

Things tend to stay in hand these days more than they tend to get out of hand. but I actually had a friend, he's a boater, and he said when the apocalypse comes, he's going and and he's gonna acquire a boat. I'm not gonna ask how he was gonna get just he's gonna get a boat. And he's gonna do laps around the by where the Statue of Liberty is.

for three days and then anybody that he sees that he knows is gonna pick him up and he's gonna sail to he's from the Virgin Islands. He's gonna then just sail to the Virgin Islands. So haven't, you know, t really thought about that in while, but that's still in the cards. And then of course making sure my two two daughters are okay. gotta make sure sure the girls are are good. But how 'bout you? What would you do?

Kevin Mooney (01:22:26.037)
That's a fun strategy. Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (01:22:32.885)
It's I've been somewhat secretly preparing for it. I don't want to be a doomsday prepper, but I've been trying to No, not quite like that. I've been trying to think more about how you might be self sufficient.

Frank O'Brien (01:22:44.721)
You have a bunker?

Kevin Mooney (01:22:57.513)
We don't have a ton of property here, but we have enough property that we could grow more food than we would need in a year. I might become a vegetarian, but that's a different story. So I've been, you know, working with chat and quad and trying to find, you know,

What is it? it's like companion planting, right? So what plants I can grow here efficiently? what plants grow with those plants really well? What provides nitrogen to the other one? Cause this is a sucker and this is a giver and and things like that. so I'm kind of in that that department. That's also my early retirement plan is like, let's be done with this whole digital world.

And and marketing and trying to convince people that I know more about brand than you know the guy next to me or I'm more efficient at building a website and I just like get rid of it, I ditch it all and I go and I I work the the land. And that's that's potentially my plan. But if you think about it, everything is attached to the electrical grid. So guess what? I'm not gonna be getting water to my place if if that thing happens. So

You know, the plan's not flushed out. Let's just say it like that. if I had the means, it would yeah, it's pretty okay. I think it's I think it's it's it's a valuable skill to learn. And for me, there's a lot of trying to go back in time and what what made people happy back then? And what do they do out of necessity? And how do I bring that forward into my life? So we're always trying to get the kids out in the garden.

Frank O'Brien (01:24:15.933)
I think it's good start.

Kevin Mooney (01:24:39.853)
We're always trying to get the kids to do things that are just not re reliant upon electricity and devices and so on and so forth. That's probably where I would go and what I would do.

You know, there's already hunting and fishing skills involved in my life. So I'm not saying we'd be okay. I'm I could I can catch a fish. Get an getting an elk is a different story. but you know, how much of that is is my plan? Probably the majority of it right now. And that I don't want to think about doomsday stuff, but you know.

Frank O'Brien (01:25:17.075)
So one of my so one of my good friend good friends, musician also works in finance. I was talking about, you know, like next chapter. Like, you know, the book comes out, company does well. Let's say, you know, I'm fortunate enough to one way or another, whether it's an exit or it's just running itself, you know, do do the next thing. And it was always going back to music. And he said, Yeah, you know what I want to do? He's like, I want to start a resort.

where it's like all musicians and it's almost like band camp or school of rock, but you can just go with your instruments and play and jam and all that stuff. So your answer might have just given me my foray for foray? Foray into doomsday planning where I'll I'll start to maybe put that plan in motion so that, you know, if if doomsday hits before I'm able to be, you know, there some other way, that'll that'll be my doomsday plan.

Kevin Mooney (01:26:00.108)
Yeah. Yeah.

Frank O'Brien (01:26:14.447)
a farm with I don't hunt, so have to figure that part of the you know, diet out like like you would probably become a vegetarian.

Kevin Mooney (01:26:14.807)
Yeah.

Will the Agency Business Survive AI?

Kevin Mooney (01:26:21.858)
There's other ways. Right, right. That's what I was. I might be forced vegetarian at that point in time. yeah, I I mean, I don't think it's gonna go that way. I I I think you know, going back to coming together as as a community in these these weird, terrible situations, it's like what happened during 9-11. Like

The amount of American flags that were raised during that time was wild. Something horrific happens and we all just come together and we're like, no, no, no. This is our place. This is what we're doing. This is us. And we come together. There's no real division in that thing. And part of the concern in the I AI world is like, how much division is this going to create? Or is it going to actually bring us together? And maybe we're going to follow the Gen Z a little bit better.

And try to seek out more experiences in life as opposed to whatever is out there on the web. And it's a it's a very interesting thought. I think I know where you stand on that. It it seems pretty clear for most people what what would happen or what will happen. And I'm not saying there's going to be a mass rejection of AI or platforms. I believe that your platform's gonna be super successful.

My only doomsday thought is that we're gonna see a collapse of the marketing or creative agency industry for quite a lot of people. And I'm wondering how much impact that might have on your your platform or if it just excels, because it's like, well, hey, here's the go-to, and it's got all this.

history and data and algorithm built into it that it will withstand the the the test of time there.

Frank O'Brien (01:28:22.449)
Yeah, well we were talking about earlier. people age out of agency life fairly early.

Kevin Mooney (01:28:29.186)
Ha I just said this the other day. I was like, I I think I'm aged out.

Frank O'Brien (01:28:33.487)
Yeah. And it's like I always thought it was like forty. Like unless you're owning your own firm, or you've shifted to the client side. you don't see and it's just it's just my experience. Like I I don't see many account directors, account managers. I mean, I'm thinking of my EVP account director who was maybe mid thirties when I was just starting out. And she was out of the industry by the time she was forty. So

You know, I think the bright side of it is those people need to do something and I'll use my team. Like one of them started a t shirt business, one of them started a vegetable growth company before like HelloFresh and these meal plan things were were a thing were an industry. So they all started businesses and guess where all roads lead back to? Lower you know, lower costs, more effective, faster marketing solutions.

So, you know, if everybody goes out, starts a small business or finds something to do or produce that they love, you know, I think we'll we'll be okay. and as far as practitioners, people that love to do marketing, we let them focus on what they love to do the most. And if they're a domain expertise or a category expert, that there's more room on the My Marketing Pro boat, which is why we have the white label partner and affiliate programs.

Kevin Mooney (01:29:33.357)
Yeah.

Frank O'Brien (01:30:01.755)
You know, I don't know your market and you're I'm not gonna know from New York City how to set the guardrails for your market, as well as you're gonna know that. And the AI is not gonna know unless you you say, Hey, this is what people care about, or this is what I overheard at the you know local supermarket, or this is what happened in my community. And I wouldn't even know where to go to find what matters in your community as a news source. So I think if you look at it that way, you know, I never thought I was I was an outsider.

never thought I was gonna take on the marketing industry or advertising agency industry. I just couldn't live with the logic that you had to have five agencies around the table and then that grew to twelve. You know? And content is content, whether it's on social media or in the press or on a blog, like, you know, you don't need social media sorry, social media agencies. You don't need a five, ten, twenty different agencies to do something that can be streamed on, especially now with AI. and I just somehow ended up being the guy that

new enough on the tech side to connect to things and new enough on the business side to win business and put together strategies. So here we are. so I apologize to everybody else, but guess what guys, if you're freaking out, it's all good. You're gonna get to do the thing you really want to do when you wake up in the morning or if you wake up in the afternoon. Because, you know, this new world that we live in is going to create more opportunities and more abundance. I've been using that word a lot more lately. so that we can all just live as human beings and drop the BS and

Kevin Mooney (01:31:23.777)
Yeah.

Frank O'Brien (01:31:29.368)
make a lot of money, help a lot of people, and have fun doing it. Which by the way, my foreword is written by David Meltzer that's stolen from him. David Meltzer ran the real life Jerry Maguire's agency and then went on to do great things and he's chairman of the Napoleon Hill Institute, which is Napoleon Hill wrote the book that all of these books are built on. And that's his line. So I just gotta give credit to to to David there.

Kevin Mooney (01:31:32.334)
Like it, man.

Writing Stop Freaking Out

Kevin Mooney (01:31:58.072)
yeah. Thanks, David. Yeah. So what does the process of writing a book look like for you? I because I don't have a freaking clue how to write a book. I mean, I'm sure I could talk with Claude and figure out how to do it, but what was it like for you?

Frank O'Brien (01:31:58.321)
Make money, have fun and help people.

Frank O'Brien (01:32:14.365)
unexpected. because I didn't know what I was getting into and all the steps that it took or how long or how therapeutic it was going to be. but I would say it started with what do I want to write about? And it's in the acknowledgement, so I can say it, but book number two is on its way next year. And the it's called Don't Do It Cautionary Tales of an Entrepreneur or Entrepreneurship, which I'd love to interview you if you want to be in it.

And it's talking about all the things that you don't know when you decide to like press go on that train and then you find yourselves with 60 people, a lease on 23rd Street across three floors of an office building, and you're like, What the fuck did I just do? I thought I was gonna make a bunch of money, now I'm tied to this business, get me the hell out of here. Now's my freak out moment.

Kevin Mooney (01:32:44.268)
Yeah, heck yeah.

Frank O'Brien (01:33:13.050)
And when I was workshopping, you know, with a few friends, writers, you know, what my book was gonna be about, they all said, Don't do that one as the first one, because you're never gonna get anybody to start a business. And if your whole thing here is to get in rooms, why don't you do something different? And then we came up with what became Stop Freaking Out. So it's you know, how to prepare, pivot, and prevail and nothing in life is real. that line started with a business group I was in that I paid, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars to be in over the years. And this guy came in

Kevin Mooney (01:33:24.053)
yeah.

Frank O'Brien (01:33:42.161)
Promoting his book and he said, guys, you see this table? Not real. And it mind fucked me. And I wrote it in the book that way. Because I was like, I don't understand what you're saying. Like my existence isn't real. Like the table's not real. My bills aren't like nothing is real. It took me three, probably three weeks of like walking to and from work and just having like these mental moments where I'm like, I still don't get what this guy means. But he basically

Kevin Mooney (01:33:58.964)
Nothing is real.

Frank O'Brien (01:34:11.589)
to boil it down to challenges present opportunities. Every day you wake up, you know, you could your foot could hit the floor and you could twist an ankle, but if you don't get out of bed and put foot in front of the other, you're not gonna get that call maybe that you didn't know you were gonna get that says, Well by the way, here's a new client or here's a new opportunity. So so yeah, second book's called Don't Freak Out. Cautionary Tales of Entrepreneurship. But writing process beyond that, to make sure kind of answer the question, is you write an outline

Kevin Mooney (01:34:34.051)
Love it.

Frank O'Brien (01:34:41.529)
you then write the chapters, then go through proofreading, you then go through technical editing, you then go through through like three other rounds of edits, and then you spend literally two hours on the phone with an expert learning how to upload the thing to Amazon because that in and of itself is like an an expertise. so I'm very glad I did it with you know some people that knew what they were doing along the way with things like editing and uploading to Amazon.

Kevin Mooney (01:34:57.378)
Right.

Kevin Mooney (01:35:10.422)
Yeah, is it harder to write the damn book or is it harder to get it published and and out there?

Frank O'Brien (01:35:18.418)
So, there's a big trend in writing these days that leads to self-publishing. And self-publishing, from what I've learned and heard from other writers, even writers that have publishers, gives you all the flexibility to do what you want to do is stay true to yourself. You don't have to check in on anything. You don't have to check in if you want to adjust the pricing, which by the way, Kindle version is still just ninety-nine cents.

although the hard pack is really cool to hold. So but

Kevin Mooney (01:35:52.559)
I'm a big tangible person. I like to have them. I like to hold them in my hands.

Frank O'Brien (01:35:57.211)
Yeah, it's really good. I mean, talk about tech and AI. You don't have to print five thousand copies and store them to mail out. it amazed me that books are like printed overnight. Like literally you can order it now and it'll be on a doorstep in a hardcover tomorrow. so yeah, self publishing is the way to go. You don't have to ask for any, you know, approvals or forgiveness. which is why I highly recommend

building a team around you to keep you on the rails. You know, going back a little bit to the AI, like we need our own guardrails. There were things that I fought to have in there and there were things that I looked at that people push back on and I'm like, yeah, I probably should have just left that one out or it didn't add value. So recommendation is to self publish and have a team.

Kevin Mooney (01:36:45.549)
Yeah. No, that's super cool. I think the the way that you're ordering the two books are smart too. Cause if you came out with don't do it, it's all these like cautionary tales, horror stories. Like, why would anybody read that and then go, Yeah, I want to be an entrepreneur, you know, I want to start my own business. Not after that book, right? But if you kind of pair that really nicely with like, stop freaking out, like it's okay, it's all good. Here's a framework, here's how to reposition your thoughts.

you know, do this, do that, so on and so forth, then you can read the next one and it makes perfect sense. Now, will the public, you know, read the second one first? We don't know. We don't we have no idea what's gonna happen. But sure, sure you can influence that.

Frank O'Brien (01:37:20.924)
Thank you.

Frank O'Brien (01:37:26.366)
Third one I really hope. Third one I really hope we can look back on and like we're both on a beach. I'll have you over to my beach. I can come to your farm. And I I've I gotta figure out what that's gonna be. We'll hopefully back you know more into the the music or or entertainment vein, let's call it. But yeah, do do you have my my goal is to come out with three? and then yeah, the whole entrepreneurship thing, it's it's weird because like

Kevin Mooney (01:37:34.991)
Heck yeah.

Kevin Mooney (01:37:44.814)
Yeah.

Frank O'Brien (01:37:53.521)
I didn't intend to start a business. I mean that's you know, I didn't sit down and napkin it or come up with a business plan. It was just this theory that similar to what you know you had said, you could do the thing and you could do it better than when other people than other people were doing it. And then the next thing you know, you've got a team and a client base and you know, you're on that on that train. which to me it's like I almost feel like entrepreneurship shouldn't be taught. Like I took entrepreneurship in college as part of my business degree, but it's like

Kevin Mooney (01:38:19.075)
Yeah.

Frank O'Brien (01:38:22.693)
It's more of a disease than anything else. It's more of like, I'm gonna change the world. And then it's like you go out and the ones who really dive in, and I'm talking about, and then no offense to the side hustlers or the solopreneurs, but like you put everything into it and it's ride or die, like that's a different breed of crazy.

The Scooter Business That Broke Kevin

Kevin Mooney (01:38:43.759)
my gosh. When it comes time for that book, I've got stories for you. I do want to share one with you right now. I'll try not to make it too long. But when I got fired from my first job right out of college, you know, it was a terrible job as the it was in the down economy. The only time or the only place that would hire me hired me for some shitty job. I learned a lot. I had my eyes wide open.

But essentially I was like, I think I could make some money on the internet, specifically Amazon. So I would just go to Alibaba and I'd find some products and I'd order them and I'd try to brand them. I'd put a a logo on them and try to make a story. And I had a hell of a time getting them listed on Amazon, specifically dildos. That was one of the products that I bought. Why? I

I don't exactly remember why, but I bought, I don't know, fifteen hundred dildos because that was the MOQ and had them shipped. They lived in my garage. And when I went to put them on Amazon, I realized that there is a ton of hurdles to jump through. I don't remember what all the the regulations were, but somehow I got around them or filled out the paperwork well enough to get them listed.

and then they didn't sell. They didn't I didn't sell any of them on Amazon. It was pretty t I sold one. Actually I sold one. but the point is that there was a lot of products

Frank O'Brien (01:40:20.775)
So you got murdered in you got murdered in the dildo market.

Kevin Mooney (01:40:24.385)
I got destroyed. I was gonna be the the dildo king of the United States. That's what I kind of thought. But really, what I was doing was just testing this out. Can I figure out how to get a product? Can I figure out how to package it and ship it and get it to these fulfillment centers on Amazon? And that kind of rolled into kids' scooters. And basically I was just a retailer of kid scooters. It's a weird leap from dildos to kid scooters.

But it happened. And so I was just a retailer and I was selling the shit out of them. And I was funding it from my own credit card. I was essentially drop shipping them from the order would come in on Amazon. And I would I figured out through like a 3PL to to pipe it into the the drop shipper and then they shipped it out. And I I mean I was making money. I was making fifteen thousand a month at twenty five years old.

Drop shipping scooters on Amazon. And it was fantastic. And then I decided I wanted to be an entrepreneur. So I said, why am I buying these scooters for $125 and selling them for $250? I could go to China right now and buy these things for $32. Insert my entrepreneurship entrepreneur entrepreneurial journey. So I literally flew over to China and

hired a translator and started visiting these manufacturers and I figured out how to form those relationships, get the product, design it the way I wanted it, get it on a cargo container, get it over to a port, figure out all the international rules and the shipping and incoming customs duties and taxes and all of that stuff. And then I'd get them here.

And then I gotta figure out where to put them and I put them in a warehouse and I start relatively small. But now, just like you were talking about, now I'm a business owner. Now I have all these other hurdles that I didn't have before, where I just automated an order from Amazon to the drop shipper and off it went. And it was this uphill battle. And I've got to a point where I had to bring money in. And I brought money in, and then that money guy fucked the entire thing up.

Kevin Mooney (01:42:50.721)
I had built this Ferrari. At a click of the button, I could have a cargo container from China coming. Click of the button, the stuff was going to the consumer's doorstep in two days. I built the website, I built the brand, I did all this this stuff, and sales were sales were pretty all right. he wanted the price of the product to come down even further. So we bought 4,000 units.

Frank O'Brien (01:43:12.141)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (01:43:19.845)
So now I had to buy my own freaking warehouse, right? I didn't buy it. I still ran out of space, but you know what I'm saying? And all of a sudden you just find yourself in this position where you're like, whoa, I have massive overhead. The money coming in is not enough to support all of this stuff. I don't have any money for marketing. I don't have a team behind me. I'm still the one guy that thought this is as easy as a click of a button from Amazon to the 3PL and off you go. And that

That journey was so humbling. I lost, I ended up losing more like five hundred thousand dollars, but I kind of saved four hundred because I put a bunch of my money in and I was all in, completely in on this thing. Every dollar. And when that thing failed and we shut that thing down, it was it was terrible. It was heartbreaking. And I was broke. I had nothing to my name, nothing at all. Couldn't pay my bills anything.

And if you want to put a story like that in your book, let's do it because that that is that is what that journey feels like. Becoming an entrepreneur is that.

Frank O'Brien (01:44:26.183)
Yeah, and then let me guess the and then let me guess the money guys probably like, fine, I'll be over here. By the way, I still want my money.

Kevin Mooney (01:44:33.516)
yeah, a hundred percent. I mean, we were we were friends at the time and he inherited a lot of money and I tried to stay friends with that person, but it's hard to stay friends with somebody who you feel like screwed up your business and they feel like you lost five hundred thousand dollars of their money. so that that relationship deteriorated. and it was hard. We definitely went our separate ways. I

swore to him I'd pay his money back. I haven't paid it all back. I would like to eventually one day pay it back. just out of my own my own pride. Like I knew that the thing that I was doing was right and would work. And here's your money. That's my hope one day.

Getting Out of Bed the Next Morning

Frank O'Brien (01:45:21.531)
Yep. Yeah. No, I think intention I think intention is everything. And the people that play the legal games and you know, or are predatory. There's a lot of people who are predatory that, you know, take advantage of entrepreneurs or hustlers that end up turning into entrepreneurs. and yeah, we can include that story. What I wanna know even more though is how did you get out of bed that next morning? How what how what spark got you?

Because what I'm hearing or what you just said isn't unheard of. And I'll be honest, if you look into David Meltzer's story, he lost over a hundred million dollars. He literally just in his word, I I believe it was him. I know I know the hundred million dollar story, but I believe he had bought a house for his mom and the house got four clothes on as well. So here's a guy who goes from, you know, having nine figures to nothing. And, you know, for him I believe it was his his his faith, I think.

Kevin Mooney (01:46:05.220)
Mm-hmm.

Frank O'Brien (01:46:16.635)
But, you know, it's I'd I'd love to hear how did you how'd you pull yourself out of it?

Kevin Mooney (01:46:22.458)
There's a couple of things that come to mind. The first is I came from nothing, I had nothing, and I left with nothing. So nothing changed for me. I was just there. I mean, sure, money went in there and time went in there, but my brain works in this way. Even if I go back to that story of working for that e-commerce company, my first job out of college. I was fired from that.

And I basically walked away saying, good, I'm happy. Now I can go do something on my own. But I was a sponge at that company. I absorbed everything that that guy did. And I didn't yet have the opinions in like the branding and the marketing department. I just knew here are some of the things that work. This is what this guy does. I'm gonna go apply that forward. So how did I get up the next morning? very slowly.

And I was like, you know, a dog licking his wounds. And I said, I'm gonna go do the next thing. I'm gonna first first and foremost, I gotta get some money coming in. So I started building websites because I learned how to build a website. And then I went to e-commerce companies or I went to stores that sold online. And I was like, Well, I'm an e-commerce expert. Here's what I've done. Let me build your e-commerce store for you.

Then I started building e-commerce stores. And then I started messing with some of their marketing and their brands. And so it it went that way. But the thing inside of me was like, get your ass up and keep going. I don't think I realized it then, but that's kind of what I was doing. And I'm still that way now. And still in this spot where, you know, so many ups and downs in the careers. And I'm probably in a a down spot technically right now.

Frank O'Brien (01:47:59.239)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (01:48:15.598)
I could sit here and blame it on AI taking my job and and people not valuing the work, or I can say, I'm gonna go talk to other people who have done similar things and ask them questions and interview them and whatever. And I don't know if I'm fully answering the question, but there's just always been something inside of me that's just like.

Do what you wanna do. Do what you know how to do. And if you put it out there enough, somebody's gonna eventually buy it or invest in it or wanna bring you into their company or something. And that drive inside of me is what got me up the next day and just said, fuck it, keep going, man. And

Frank O'Brien (01:48:56.877)
Similar similar vein, it's failure is like really not an option, you know, and coming from nothing and building something and you know, the the stories of my hometown and my upbringing in the book. But yeah, my family, you know, you grow up thinking you're middle class and then you realize you're actually no offense, but like probably

Kevin Mooney (01:49:02.531)
Yes.

Kevin Mooney (01:49:14.608)
We were poor. Yeah. Yes.

Frank O'Brien (01:49:18.557)
scraping the bottom of the the middle middle class. And you know, I have a few wealthy family members that it's it's just crazy looking at the way people with money how they behave and you know what they care about. And but then also coming back to a common thing, everything is relative and it's very similar to what we're going through. You know, like and I did look up their relativity doesn't just apply to like

actual physics. It's it's it's relationships emotional as well. And I always have this saying growing up living here in New York, in the heart of man, you hear about the homeless guy who's like happy as a clam, has nothing, sleeps in a shelter, and then you hear about the billionaire who owns the place in the Hamptons, you know, jumping out of a window because of God knows what the hell's going through their head. And you've got to kind of sympathize with it a little bit. But yeah, I think that

Kevin Mooney (01:50:07.770)
Sure.

Frank O'Brien (01:50:13.361)
failures on an option kind of vibes probably you know if I had to pin we can get a we can get another story because I don't wanna I now that you've shared that story, I want a different story. But I think it's pr probably a a common common thing, you know?

Kevin Mooney (01:50:24.804)
Sure, share it. Well I got plenty of stories.

Kevin Mooney (01:50:31.236)
Yeah. I don't know that I've ever pinpointed it and said failure is not an option, but the mentality of that is is real and it's here. I wake up and go ahead.

Frank O'Brien (01:50:42.631)
So one story that

I d I don't mean to cut you off. Why don't you finish first?

Kevin Mooney (01:50:48.016)
That's okay. I was just gonna say, like, how do I frame it?

My wife sent me something and and it was just some guy on on on Instagram and he was like, Hey, if if you're one of those people who is a hundred percent dependent on yourself for for income and for putting food on the table and getting somewhere and dressing yourself properly, like you're you're doing it. And most people don't experience that because they they have a job or

They have wealthy parents or whatever the situation is. And she's like, that's how I see you. You just get up every single day and you go and do something. Whether that is strategic, whether that is going towards a goal, whether it's exploration or anything. And I just think I've never had the words for it, but that is me. I don't know. I mean, you go back to dildos and then scooters and then silicone wedding rings and

Screen doors, all the and stand-up paddle boards, all the weird things that I've just like tried to make happen, and and you kind of fall into a groove on one of those things, and it works for a while. And then the time runs up and you move on to the next thing. And that's the transition that I'm in right now. For the last 12 years, it's been marketing and creative and branding. And I think that's run its course. And now it's on to the next thing. And it's not unfamiliar to me. And I

To be honest, I think I kind of like that thing. It's always scary, right? 'Cause you never know when the next paycheck's coming in. But at the same time, something new's gonna happen. And I don't know what that journey is. I'm open to finding it, whatever that is. So

Frank O'Brien (01:52:38.141)
Yeah, that's great and I couldn't agree more. You put yourself in a position to have good things happen and you know, it happens. It's like if you didn't take that first step, then you know, you wouldn't be down the road when, you know, something something good's gonna happen. by the way, when you mentioned dildos, one of our clients is one of the top sexual wellness brands and they're sold C V S, Target, Walmart,

And I can't tell you how amazing those those client calls are because, you know, they're totally up with the vernacular.

Kevin Mooney (01:53:11.330)
Wild. Yes. Right. No, I think I think I might have watched a documentary and it might have been called The Dildo King. And I think it was a guy. Yeah, I th I I I might be making all of this up, but I I feel like this was a guy in another country somewhere. And he just started and he's now his zillionaire, right? Because he's just been in the industry so long and he's doing it so well. And maybe that's what

Frank O'Brien (01:53:21.725)
I think I saw the same one.

Kevin Mooney (01:53:39.685)
made my brain go, Yeah, let's get some dildos. Let's sell those things. I'm gonna be the the dildo king of the United States. I don't know. But I can only imagine having a client like that would be a lot of fun.

Frank O'Brien (01:53:51.291)
Yep. Great great brand, great company, great team. you just remind me that I've gotta check in with them. But but yeah, d definitely again on our on our platform, as long as you're using your powers for good. we have worked with hemp companies, cannabis companies, you know, we're we're not afraid to dip our toe into the different regulations that we have to abide by and full circle goes back to probably when I went into pharma, talk about being a sponge.

music, Microsoft, Menactra, and Daptacel and I think I worked on the all male team for Ortho Evra, which is a women's reproductive health drug. So yeah, making sure that we're in line with all the regulations, industry by industry, be it sexual wellness, cannabis, or anything else we we can work with.

Where to Find Frank

Kevin Mooney (01:54:42.459)
Yeah, that's awesome. well, Frank, author, speaker, entrepreneur, you're doing it. This is incredible. I'm positive that you've got a whole bunch of other stuff that you gotta get back to. So I'm gonna let you go. Thank you so much for the time. The conversation was was amazing. I I appreciate it. I appreciated hearing your stories, your process, how you think about all of this. It's the pleasure is has been all mine on this.

Frank O'Brien (01:55:12.925)
Thank you so much, Kev. Hopefully we could do another one soon.

Kevin Mooney (01:55:15.629)
Yeah, I'd like to keep the conversation going. is there anything else that you want to say? The the next thing I would advise is tell people how they can find you. And let's wrap this up.

Frank O'Brien (01:55:27.005)
Sure thing. So you can find the book at stopfreakingoutbook.com or at frankspeakingfrankly.com. And I'm available for chats, speaking gigs, live build sessions, frankspeaking frankly dot com slash live is where you can find that. And I just always enjoy a good discussion. Thanks so much, Kev, for having me today.

Kevin Mooney (01:55:47.437)
I appreciate it, man. Thank you so much. All right, stick around for a few minutes.

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