055: The King of Paid Social’s Path from Harmony to High-Performance Marketing

Danny Gavin Host 00:05

Today we have a very special guest , Andrew Foxwell, co-founder of Foxwell  Digital, as well as Foxwell  Founders. What does it mean? He’s the co-founder of Foxwell  Digital? Well, Foxwell  Digital is a social media advisory firm focused on honesty and transparency through its membership offerings, online courses, account management and consulting services. Over the past decade, Foxwell  Digital has helped hundreds of business owners, agencies and brands grow and thrive through education, empowerment and unparalleled authenticity. Andrew runs the Foxwell  Founders, a community of 500 digital advertisers from around the world. They represent 27 countries and members spend over $300 million a month just on meta alone. Most recently, they have opened their doors to PPC marketers, in addition to those who specialize and paid social. Today, we’re going to talk about Foxwell  Founders, mentorship and, of course, social media ads. How are you doing, Andrew?

Andrew Foxwell Guest 01:24

I’m doing well, so glad to be here. Thanks.

Danny Gavin Host 01:27

Danny, it’s so cool to have you here. I think the first time I heard of the great Andrew Foxwell  was back when iOS 14 was happening and everyone was freaking out. And I remember my head of paid social, joseph Wolfs, like don’t worry, check this guy out, he knows what’s going on. So it really is such an honor to have you here. I’ve gotten to know you a little bit better over the past couple of months and, yeah, it’s just such a pleasure. Thank you.

Andrew Foxwell Guest 01:54

Absolutely, man. I appreciate the kind words.

Danny Gavin Host 01:58

All right. So let’s dive right in. Let’s talk about where you went to school and what you studied.

Andrew Foxwell Guest 02:04

Yeah, I went to St Olaf College in Minnesota, a little liberal arts college, and I studied political science and I studied management studies, which was like a business, essentially practical sort of business concentration there. So, yeah, and St Olaf is known for music, so a third of the campus is involved in music of some kind. So I was in choir all four years for private voice lessons all four years. Something I actually don’t talk about a lot anymore now that I’m saying it, but, yeah, I loved St Olaf and I loved being a part of that institution. I had the pleasure actually of serving on the board as the young alumni representative three years after I graduated then, so I got to see even more about how the colleges really run, which is, yeah, it was another fascinating journey. So, but I’m a big St Olaf fan and the school song is a waltz, so St Olaf people, we all say um, ya, ya to each other, which is in the school song. So it’s really, it’s really strange, honestly.

Danny Gavin Host 03:05

I never would have guessed that you were like part of choir. Let’s talk a little bit about that. You know what you love about singing. Did you ever do acapella? I’m so like, so interested.

Andrew Foxwell Guest 03:15

Yeah, I never did acapella. You know, I loved singing because it was just like a, it was a way to worship differently. And I didn’t grow up, I grew up in a congregational church. It was sort of like, you know, christianity light, I think is a good way to describe the UCC church that I grew up in and I loved going to St Olaf and being in choir. It was a way that sort of was a meditative time every day. You know, we had choir. We had choir three times a week and then we had a lot of performances on Sundays because we were sort of known as the choir that would be for worship services. So we, so we would perform and yeah, it was just a meditative time to get out of your head and into your body almost and do something else.

04:02

And I’ve I’m, I’m just always loved music. It’s always been a part of my life and it was a way to honor that piece of me. And yeah, I think over time, sometime in my life in the future, I will, I’ll get back involved in choir. But yeah, I was. I was not in an acapella group, I was actually in a freestyle rap group as well, at St Olaf, which is a whole other can of worms. Yeah.

Danny Gavin Host 04:30

Sounds like we’ll have to add a channel to Foxville founders. All about me singing.

Andrew Foxwell Guest 04:34

Yeah, yeah, definitely that sounds good.

Danny Gavin Host 04:38

So when you look back at your experiences both inside and outside the classroom and now look at where you are today, were there any experiences that kind of pop out, was like, ah, that kind of pushed me in the direction that I’m in today.

Andrew Foxwell Guest 04:49

There’s tons, obviously. I mean, you know, I grew up in the middle of the country, literal like out in the country, and you know, growing up around that, I felt like I was hungered for, for just a what it was like in the places where you know, as Hamilton says, the room where it happens. You know, I was always interested in that and I had a real fascination. I’ve always had a real fascination with government and politics. So you know, an experience that changed my life was I volunteered on a presidential campaign in 2008. And then I went and worked in Congress. For well, I worked on a guy’s campaign who then won, who was running for Congress, and he asked me to go to Washington with him and that experience definitely changed the trajectory of my life.

05:41

I mean, I met Gracie there, who was my wife and business partner in DC. But that was really like getting a mini master’s degree because I was, you know, like. I remembered like the third day I was on the job in DC and my member his name was Eric was asking me to like brief him on the legislation that was on the floor. I’m like 23 or whatever, right, I don’t remember how exactly old I was, but you know that’s pretty wild and I think the experience, one thing it really taught me, was you putting yourself into a place where you feel uncomfortable is going to be a really great vehicle for growth and it feels wrong. You feel like this isn’t right. I don’t know how to do this, but I admitted openly I don’t know, actually, but let me find out and I became. That became a really good gateway for me and has continued to be a gateway for me even in running the community. I mean, people ask me questions all day long. I woke up this morning and I had 17 direct messages from members asking me questions and I knew probably half of them and the other half I’m like you know what? I don’t know, but let me find out. And so that’s, that’s an experience that really changed me. 

07:01

I had a professor at St Olaf who I did an entrepreneurship course with and she also changed a trajectory of my life. Her name was Cian and she I kept telling her all these business ideas I would have and I was like I don’t know, but is that a good idea? And she’s like why not? Why not start it? You don’t know, and that kind of attitude you know that an entrepreneur has is something that is really beautiful. And when you see that unlocked in young people now when I talk to other people are thinking about it I’m like who knows? You know?

07:32

I remember one time a guy told me I was a mentor I met in college and he was on the board of regents and they said, oh, he’s a really successful business person than he was. And I remember he said, well, where do you want to work? And I kind of told him and he said why won’t? Why don’t you just walk into their office and drop off your resume, introduce yourself? And I was like I would never do that. Who would do that? And he’s like he’s like what, if you’re the CEO of the company and somebody walked in and did that you know that’d be huge. And now, seeing that, I’m like actually he’s right, he was right, that’s a good idea, you know. And so I think those are kind of these like taking those calculated chances, and we’re really important. In my life I have changed a lot of what we’ve done. I mean there’s plenty more, but those are some that come to mind.

Danny Gavin Host 08:16

No, those anecdotes are awesome. So how did you get into paid social?

Andrew Foxwell Guest 08:21

Yeah, you know, I was working, so paid social is really interesting. I was working in Congress for this guy and they had just changed the rule in the. So let me back up there weren’t. There were only the ads in the right hand column, okay, on Facebook. So we, there was a rule that had been changed, that had changed right when I came into Congress, and it was that you could use social media ads to put and Google ads. So it was like Facebook and Google were approved and you could launch an ad.

08:55

A member of Congress could use official money, so you know, taxpayer funded money to put out an ad and and this, the only answer for this previously had been putting out those glossy mail pieces. It’s like here’s what Congressman John Smith is doing, right, and so this was an answer for that. It was more effective and this guy thinks he would say something like my page to learn about my economic policies. So you had to submit these ads to a bipartisan committee on language and they would approve the ad and then cause you couldn’t like trash. You know this is, you know certain things and you couldn’t use negative language because it was taxpayer funded. So it had to be sort of diplomatic in its language. So we did that and then I realized, you know, there was a big technological infrastructure that kept Congress afloat in terms of vendors that would do certain things like constituent communication and all this. So I became interested in one of those companies and I went to interview with them and their office was directly across the street from my house and I only lived six blocks from the Capitol where I was working, but then this one was directly across my house and I thought, oh, whatever. So I took this job and and it was really, really interesting.

10:09

And then I noticed that there was this big gap for people, that members that need wanted someone to run the ads for them. They didn’t know they wanted to run ads but they didn’t have the time to do it themselves. So, like lunch and account and all this. So I started launching ad accounts. So we, I think over the two years that I was at that company I think we I built it to we ran ads for 125 members of Congress, well, of the house, which you know is 365. So that was big.

10:40

I was like I was running ads for Pelosi, I was running ads for you know. I mean it was crazy and it was bipartisan, so my I was friends with everyone, I would walk through the Capitol and I don’t know. It was really a wild time Anyway. And I ran. That’s how I got into Facebook ads. And then I started commenting on this blog for this, for this company named PPC associates, because they were on Cora and they said do you want to come run Facebook ads? Brands really need help. And that’s how I got into doing it on the brand side.

Danny Gavin Host 11:10

So let’s jump into mentorship. How would you define a mentor?

Andrew Foxwell Guest 11:16

I mean, I think a mentor is someone you look to for guidance on any number of issues, someone that you can rely on regularly, that can give you thoughts and feedback that you can speak freely with, that can hear you and meet you where you are, without judgment, and can give you guiding words, you know of where you are headed or where you think you should be headed. Yeah, I guess that’s how I define a mentor.

Danny Gavin Host 11:46

Yeah, and I think, in many ways, the community that you have built in our building although it might not be mentorship in the technical sense, but you’re basically creating a community of mentors that can help each other out, which is pretty good- yeah, definitely, I agree with that. So let’s talk a little bit about your most influential mentors throughout your life. I know you’ve mentioned someone like Peter Gosh. Wayne Glowak would love to know a little bit more about why they were important to you.

Andrew Foxwell Guest 12:14

Yeah, I mean, I think in early on I mentioned Cian Muir was a professor of mine in college and she was an incredible mentor because she didn’t say no, she didn’t say I mean any idea, was like okay, you know, like let’s check it out. You know, and fueling the dreamer within you is such an incredible tool that is so invaluable that I really needed at that point and somebody that was that believed in what I was trying to do, you know. So that was she was a huge mentor in that regard and I would go and meet with her and say, hey, I’m thinking about this or that. Oh, okay, sure, you know. And I remember one time one really valuable thing she told me was you know, you have to.

13:00

I was saying, well, I could take this product and then I could get this particular person to talk about it and validate it. And I could get this particular person to validate it and I would tell them, tell this potential client, I’m working with them. And she’s like you are only as good as the, as how you’ve built your network. And that integrity is really important, which is which I came back to thinking about recently in the last year. I’ve really been focusing this year on consistency and being the same person everywhere, which, as as the youngest kid, I learned to be a chameleon to some degree and would be oh, I’ll be this way to mom and dad, I’ll be this way to my friends, I’ll be this way to this friend’s parents. I think that’s okay, but I’m really trying to be consistent and and be the same person and be genuinely who I am to everyone and hold the same ethics and hold the same beliefs and all this and give people the benefit of the doubt. You know all that kind of thing.

Danny Gavin Host 14:02

I just want to say one thing about that, because sometimes you meet people like you watch videos of them and either one way, and then when you actually meet them in life, they’re totally different. I have to say, andrew, like we’ve met in real life and you really are like the guy, the awesome, funny, like smart, just nice person that you are. You know, let’s say, on social media or on videos, and in real life you’re really the same person.

Andrew Foxwell Guest 14:24

So Thanks, yeah, I mean honestly it’s tough, it’s been a tough journey but it’s good, it’s. It feels a lot better, it feels more genuine to me. So, seeing had that big, big thought. And then when I, when we launched Foxwell  Digital, I thought there’s no way we can do this on our own, like we need people to talk to. And we gave a talk in Madison, wisconsin, where we were living at the time at this co-working space and we had given the same talk what’s possible with Facebook ads at like 20 co-working spaces around the country and there was great for Lee, jen and all this. And we were traveling around in our car and we had like no money and it was awesome.

15:04

And I met this guy, Wayne Glowak, who was a director at a performing arts center, marketing director, performing arts center and he had said, well, I used to run an agency and all this. So I really leaned on him and told him about what we were trying and and told it I mean like open the book, right Of everything. And he gave such good ideas like building authority. You know how? How are you going to? How are people going to trust you? What are the ways you can do this? And he gave me so much great advice and then, and still does to this day. Actually, this last summer, Wayne and I went on a long 30 mile bike ride together and he looked me straight in the eyes. He’s always had such a conviction in his words and it’s like a real same thing, consistent. And he looked at me and is like I really appreciate our friendship. I’m like me too, man, and he’s like 65. You know what I mean. I was like this is awesome. And then my other mentor that was massive was that I learned a ton from as I sat next to him at every board meeting.

16:06

At St Olaf was a guy named Peter Gotch who was basically a venture capitalist or an angel investor and he had bought and sold all these businesses. And the one thing that I loved about always speaking with him is and I probably spoke to him every quarter for you know, good, good, three, four years when we started our business was he. I would tell him ideas and he would be. I remember I was like well, I think we should build a newsletter and become like the place for a newsletter and it’s going to have this and that and we’re going to send it out every week and he’s like first of all, nobody reads anything every something once a week, so absolutely no idea, it’s also not going to be good, so you should do it once a month, you should make it really good.

16:49

And he had, and it was like the dismissive nature of the way he talked about stuff was here, I am thinking about this high caliber thing, and he’s like no, like nobody has time for that, so pay attention to this. And then I would tell him another idea and he would be like okay, not a bad idea, but like, why don’t you do X, y and Z? And he simplified a lot of things. You know where I was trying to complicate it in business. And he was like he looked at so many businesses over the years and I don’t know thousands of businesses this guy had seen, and he had a track record of being incredibly successful, because he used to look at this and be able to turn things around. And he simplified. It was like well, what’s your, what’s your input? How are you getting customers? Well, how’s that working? What are you doing? And I’ll tell him and okay, well, that’s not bad, but why don’t? Why? Why, instead of continuing to grow the network. Why don’t you just focus on the people that are getting to know the people better, that are sending you the best leads?

17:42

I’m like, yeah, yeah, that’s a good point, you know, and he would, and he would laugh. He laughed all the time. It was sort of like I don’t know if you remember the NPR show, car talk, and it was like it was like these two guys click and clack and they would. People would call in with car issues. If you’ve never listened to this, there’s like archives and this is hilarious and they laughed all the time. They would be like making fun of names and make. It was just hilarious and it made you feel at ease. So that’s one thing that I loved about Peter was he brought a lightness to it and he also brought like a simplicity to it and is I just spoke to him this last summer a bunch as well and is still a good friend.

18:20

So, yeah, so I think those people were huge mentors for me for so many reasons, but it just warms my heart to talk about them now. You know because of like how much, how big and influential they were. I mean, when you give someone time, when they they I was like no one. But they gave me time and they were like yeah, you know, that’s interesting because Ultimately, as a mentor, you learn just as much as the person is learning from you. You know, it’s crazy I not now, I like mentor certain people. It’s insane how much I take away from that. Right, it’s like put, it’s like pouring, you know, love into your heart. It’s crazy. Or ideas into your head and you walk away and it’s like I feel like there’s branches sprouting from my head.

Danny Gavin Host 19:15

I love how passionate you are about this. That’s so cool. You said that you’re searching for another mentor. Now I’m wondering like, where, like what hole do you need to get Got filled now?

Andrew Foxwell Guest 19:26

I mean to be honest, danny, now we have this community and it’s, you know, it’s been, it’s been great and it’s been growing and I Meet incredible people and we help them and it’s it’s amazing what, what we have accomplished. What I don’t know with this now is what I don’t know, like I I mean it’s going well, but I also and I believe that we are I’ve, Last January I said to members you know, we’re trying to build a Bentley of community. It’s highly personal, it’s, it’s unlike anything you’ve seen. When you’re in it, you know because of how much it’s aiding you etc. Like it’s, it’s a, it’s a different experience and it’s kind of that like level of service, like if somebody a mentor actually are.

20:13

One of our members was getting mentored by somebody else and Another member on a particular issue and they said, well, I’ve been getting a lot of value out of this. But you know, I Don’t know if I can pay for that person because I’m still learning. I said I’ll just pay for it for them to mentor you for six months, like it’s that level of. Or coach is like a coaching thing, it’s that level of like I don’t like it, the cost is irrelevant. Like long-term. If I can help you, it’ll pay itself back. So, anyways, I feel good about it.

20:42

But what am I? But I also, you know there’s so much stuff. We, we in our own company as Fox, will digital. Now how do we do our own marketing? How do we continue to sell courses and build our brand? And you know, to me it’s how do I build, how do I continue to build wealth for Our employees as well? You know, how do we take care of the people that have helped to take care of us? How do we build programs that can be self-sustaining for them? So that’s kind of like what I’m looking for in mentorship now, which is To sit down and open the book and say here’s the books, literally, and then here’s how we run things operationally, here’s the way that we’ve changed it.

21:24

I mean, because the way we’ve grown this is I’ve really I really believe strongly in the kaizen mentality of the process of incremental change. And so we survey members every 60 days and we say what do you think and what do you want to, what would change? And we get these little tidbits and then we when, then we Micro Adjust off that and make changes off of that, and so you know that’s, that’s kind of how we’ve done strategic planning for the membership. But I feel like from the business side and the overall business, we even neglected it. It’s like now I’m like, yeah, let’s do a newsletter I have a lot to say about, like the things that we, that you can, you should do in 24 on meta add, so we write a blog post about it and then we put out a newsletter. It’s not like an occadence, it’s not strategic, it’s like I just you know. So I feel like there’s more, there’s a lot more we can do, right really I didn’t prepare this question, but just so curious.

Danny Gavin Host 22:23

between Fox will, digital and founders, how do you divide your time? Is it 50/50?

Andrew Foxwell Guest 22:27

I mean. So Foxwell digital. You know we have clients that we run and those clients have been with us for a while and those are fairly self-sufficient and our team is excellent because we learned how to know media by together. And so you know Shane, who’s our director of operations. Shane’s been with me for like eight, nine years or something.

22:47

Courtney, who used to be a client of ours and I she was a totally brilliant client and I was said to her if you’re gonna be, if you ever leave, just come work with us, because she’s so smart, just an incredible taskmaster. We’ll get like a hundred things down in one day. It’s unbelievable. And so that media buying arm gets taken care of. And then we have courses that we sell as well and we’re trying to do a lot more collaborative courses now. So my whole thing is like raising the tides of other members. So we’re putting out in Q1. We’re gonna put out three courses and they’re all collaborative courses with other members. There’s like seven members wrapped into those collaborative courses. So how do we market and sell those, that kind of thing?

23:27

And so splitting my time and and then there’s coaching we do with agencies as well, and so how do I split my time is like mostly it is on the membership because, talking to members, I just was on a half hour call with a member Having some he’s a brand owner having some issues with agents in agency he was working with.

23:47

So you know, that kind of stuff is like where I’m spending my time to make sure people are taking care of and things are connected there. So it’s probably that’s probably 80% of my time, and the other stuff is like the marketing of courses and things like that. I feel like it’s been okay, but it hasn’t been a Major part of it because I feel like it’s, yeah, hasn’t been as strategic as it could be. So I hope to adjust that a little bit. I’d like to spend a little bit more time being more Collaborative and making sure we’re putting more good things out publicly, because I think that just helps everybody anyway and it’ll help our brand and things like that too and I think that’s kind of how you started in the first place, right, putting out good things, letting people know.

Danny Gavin Host 24:34

Yeah, exactly, exactly. So last question about mentorship, just because so, you mentioned that mentoring is all about listening, breathing and intentionality. I love that concept of breathing and intentionality and it’s the first time I heard that. I’d love you to go into that a little bit.

Andrew Foxwell Guest 24:50

Yeah, I think that when you’re, I think, at anything and any interaction that you have, there’s a lot of professionally or personally. One of the things that’s common that takes place is, especially if you’re in a mentoring capacity, you, you talk a lot, you want to be the person that’s you. Your ego is like well, here’s the, here’s the things that I want to impart upon you. I’ll go little one type, you know, your ego is like wanting to do that, and I think that the best thing that we can do is Listen and breathe, and will breathe first and take breath and just understand what, listen and then be able to be with that person authentically and, you know, take care of them that way. A Lot of times it doesn’t have to be anything that you’re even saying. It’s concluded that that person can come to you by speaking about it outwardly as well.

25:55

I guess what I’m saying is I’m a talker. Obviously I love to talk. There’s like if, like I Know, if I was stuck in jail with like you know, I mean like I’d be a great person, I could, I could talk about anything forever, and so I could talk to a wall for three like years. So my thing is how do I be quieter In order to be a leader or a mentor that Helps the helps truly listen, so that I guess that’s where that’s where that’s like stemmed from now.

Danny Gavin Host 26:34

That’s very deep and I love how you explained it. So let’s Move on into Foxville. Founders, so what drove you to expand into also discussing PPC and Google ads more in your community?

Andrew Foxwell Guest 26:46

Yeah, so you know, Foxwell Founders was started. It was. It was two and a half years ago now, so we’re recording this in December of 23,. So it was in June of 21 and it, nora was born, our daughter In 2020, and then three weeks later, we went into lockdown. So it was an incredibly hard first year of her life for Gracie and I and for her. She had a lot of health issues, etc. So we really felt lonely on that journey.

27:13

So we came out of 21 and we’re like Came into 21 and I was like I just, and then I was 14 and I’m like what’s happening? You know, I’m freaking out. And so I thought, well, there was another group that I was part of of like 10 people I’m so neat to be able to talk about this with like 10 different colleagues and so I thought, well, you know what, like what, if we tried it, fired it up, fired up a community for people at about two courses from us? I remember that the list was 31 people we’re not million there course sellers here and I was like, alright, these 31 people, it’s like let’s like tell them we’re gonna launch this. And I think like almost everyone joined and I thought, oh, okay, that’s cool, there’s like a membership here. And so then I had a community. We had like 20 people or 20 or you know 28 people or things, something like that. And so it’s grown and, grown and grown and, as members have said, hey, you know, I could really use a little help on CRO as well, or I could really use a little help on talking about agency ownership. You know so many pieces of that, I mean my gosh.

28:14

So we just kind of continued to launch. Yeah, it’s like, you know, that’s a whole other can of worms. So then you launch all these other channels, you launch all this other stuff, and Then I realized we had a Google ads channel. And then I thought, there, there, there’s a, there is a need for For, you know, kind of getting into more Google ads, because I think that for a long time it was like only men ads, people did that, and then it was like only Google ads and there was more of this that members were saying, no, we do both and we, and so there was this massive overlap and I thought there can be more in here. So we reached, so we had the ppc community that we launched in April of 22, that was a separate community and now in December, where we’ve just rolled it into our main community Because as a separate entity it didn’t have the legs and the legit like the ongoing Legitimacy I thought it was going to have.

29:09

And I think it was because I was still thinking in that old model of separate and in reality we’re all kind of doing it all you know, to some degree. I mean, you even think about this one member named Joey that we have. Who’s a great Google ads guy, joey binder, and Joey said he came in and he’s, he muted all the other meta ads channels but he, but he kept the agency ownership stuff, he kept the CRO stuff, he kept the technical troubleshooting channels, and so it’s like we don’t need to have those things we separate. They can just live in the same place and we can actually support members better by having them there. So I I I don’t think I still think it’s predominantly for meta advertisers, but I think we recruited a lot of really good people that are PPC folks, that are Google ads, people that are brilliant, that have share, that share their knowledge there and you know members are able to get the support that they need. You know, I mean, I think it’s incredible.

30:08

A member had a question the other day about Something with lead gen, something extension, and I was like I don’t know the answers.

30:17

And you know we have Michelle Morgan in there, who’s, like you know, the co-founder of paid media pros is arguably the best Google Ads YouTube channel that exists, and so she answered you in like 10 minutes. It’s crazy, this is wild. So I think people, if you’re genuine with people and you ask them and you ask them to contribute, like I think it’s a good departure for some folks because it helps them to see what people are also thinking about, et cetera. So, yeah, so we started to do it because I thought, well, we can do this and we can see how it works and it doesn’t have to be a big group and it’s not a big group. It’s not a huge. It’s not a big. It’s not like a massive Google group of people you know it’s like, but there I think there’s probably of the 500, I think there’s probably 140 people or something that are in the dedicated Google channels more actively. Just pretty good.

Danny Gavin Host 31:11

It’s fine with me, and the crazy part is like at some of the world’s best. So it doesn’t have to be the quantity necessarily, but the quality is definitely there.

Andrew Foxwell Guest 31:20

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, oh definitely. Yeah, I’m not a big numbers and stuff. It’s irrelevant almost. It’s more about do people feel that they’re getting the help they need?

Danny Gavin Host 31:30

So how do you facilitate mentorship and relationship building within the group?

Andrew Foxwell Guest 31:34

Yeah, within the group, I mean, honestly, it’s really asking a lot of like what do you need, you know, what are you thinking about or what do you feel like you’re not totally great on, and it’s a myriad of things. And I usually lead by telling people what I’m not good at and they’re like well, you know, honestly, I’m not really good at this and so I got mentored by this other person to learn this piece of this. So then I’ll just connect members and we pay. In some cases, a mentor, a member, is happy to mentor somebody else and they have no problem doing it for zero cost because they learn. And in some cases I’ll say you know, look, I’m gonna pay for this if you want to do coaching and slash mentorship, and we pay.

32:22

Right now I think we’re actively paying, I think something like 30 members to mentor other members. So you know again, it’s like financially we don’t have to do that. It cuts down on the margins et cetera, but I don’t really care. It’s more about the person going to learn what they need to learn in the long term and ultimately that’s the right. That’s gonna be more lucrative and it’s gonna be better for them.

32:49

So that kind of thing launched in about a year ago and that’s been great, you know, cause people can get help and so, yeah, we just connect them basically, and if they the place where we fail and why people leave which we don’t have many people that leave, but they leave because they never got connected with a mentor or they never connected with me telling me what they need, or they never joined a call. You know we have five to 10 cohort calls a week and so if you’re not engaging in it, then you’re not gonna use it. That’s okay, my network and maybe it doesn’t work with your schedule or whatever, but the people that are involved, you know I hear where’s one member I hear from every day, probably asking me a question, asking me this or that, and I’m like he’s been. He’s had 10 mentor sessions in the six months he’s been in the membership, cause he’s using it.

33:34

You know so good for him.

Danny Gavin Host 33:36

It’s so cool how you make yourself available like that. It’s yeah, I don’t think there’s anything else out there like that.

Andrew Foxwell Guest 33:41

Well, I love it, you know. I mean, it’s so fun to meet people like you is incredible, you know. I feel like we do these member meetups in person and it’s like hanging out with my friends, you know. So I really feel like I feel very lucky to do this work in my life at this particular juncture and I feel like all the things that I’ve done right now and this isn’t an ego thing I mean I really believe this.

34:04

I think I’m uniquely positioned to do this right now and I don’t know how long it’s gonna last, but I mean, I think you look at someone like Andrew Uderian, who runs EcommerceFuel same thing. He is uniquely positioned to run that community, which is why it’s so great, cause he knows the business owner, store owner mentality so deeply, cause he was that person. Same, I’ve been a digital media buyer forever. I know what you’re going through and as an agency owner I’m really, you know, and so it’s really rewarding because I feel like it’s not hard for me to do this work. It comes naturally the way that I would. I’m just building it the way I would want it.

Danny Gavin Host 34:48

So how do you go about managing the different levels of experience within the group, cause I imagine there’s like beginners, there’s experts. You know it’s kind of like making people feel comfortable to ask a question. So how do you, how do you deal with that?

Andrew Foxwell Guest 34:59

Yeah, I mean, I think in some cases, if it’s a beginner level, you know we’re going to resource them with the courses that they get. So hey, you know you come in as a member you’ve got. If you haven’t taken this course, you should take this one course. It’s interesting, it’ll help you build it up. Also, there are no dumb questions here. Anything you have, that’s a question, you can ask it. If you feel embarrassed about asking it, I’ll ask it for you. You don’t have to even be tied to it. A member did that the other day on Google ads and so I asked a Google ads question and I probably look pretty basic to folks, but I could care less. That member got a lot of value out of it. So, meeting people where they’re at, and also if they’re a beginner, you know we will pair them with a mentor and say, hey, you should chat with this person more often. Courtney from our team does a lot of that. She’s really good at helping to people that are.

35:53

You know we’re not great, I would say, for media buyers of zero to 10 that are like below a four, like you know. If you’ve launched an ad, that’s good. If you’ve done a pixel installation, it’s like that’s probably like the minimum right, like, I think you’re not. That’s not a great place if we’re like total beginners, but I think people that are more novice or they’re learning on it, we can resource them up and then after a while it’s checking in with them. It’s how it’s going, what’s happening, what do you think? Are you still confused about this or that? Yes, I am Okay. Then let’s talk about this or that, let’s pair you with this other person, let’s give you some educational resources, and then you know the high end, the high end folks, people that are spending, you know, three million a month. I just talked to you, a member, the other day.

36:39

Those are my. They’re the hardest to deal with because they’re thinking in three dimensional chess and it’s a lot of stuff that I I’m like, oh, I never thought I haven’t thought about that, cause they’re literally the, they’re literally the world leading on this particular topic, and you know, and so they’re doing things that make sense to me, but it’s harder for you know, so it’s harder for me, to facilitate that. So a lot of times, with the higher end spenders, what I’ll do is I put them together a lot. We have a cohort that brings a lot of those folks together. So that’s one thing. We have a particular channel for high spenders, which is really interesting, and those people are back channel DMing, direct messaging each other all the time. I know I hear I can see it in the analytics there’s certain members that just send DMs all the time. So I think it’s sort of checking in with them and giving them a platform and a place to be, but also sort of leaving them alone until they really need something for me.

37:41

A lot of times where I serve with the higher end spenders I mean I can definitely have thoughts on sophisticated media buying, of course, but where I tend to find value with those folks and or where I think rather they find value with me, is in complex human relations questions, because if you’re spending three million a month, you have a team.

38:02

Usually you have executives are trying to present to. So I was just two weeks ago with a member walking through his Q4 presentation to the C-suite, how he’s gonna position the results and everything and how he’ll communicate that and presenting empathetically to solicit feedback, and it’s like that is where I live with those people more. So it’s trying to. You know it’s tough, but I think that I mean, I really am proud of that. Part of it is that there’s like such a huge breadth of experience in the group and everyone whether you spend 5K a month or you spend 500K a month is getting. They’re rating their membership nine or 10, is this valuable to you? So that’s huge and I think it’s because of just the personal listening and attention that I pay to these folks.

Danny Gavin Host 38:55

I’m really jealous of you because just to hear some of these conversations I feel like you’re gaining so much information personally. Just for once oh, totally, it’s so cool.

Andrew Foxwell Guest 39:05

Yeah, it is. It’s wild. I mean the stuff I’ll learn. I’m like what now? I never even thought, I never knew you could do that. I learned so much every day. I mean that’s why I love this industry. I feel like it’s so great getting older and realizing the older I get, the less I know. I’m like I don’t know that. I’ve never seen that, you know, and it’s like always like a flood of information, right, and I love drinking from that fire hose because it’s cool. It’s like it’s harder but it also gets better.

Danny Gavin Host 39:34

Generally speaking, so let’s pivot into social ads, specifically Meta and TikTok. So TikTok ads are relatively new on the ad platform market. What intrigued you most about it when it first launched, or even how it is right now?

Andrew Foxwell Guest 39:48

I mean TikTok. The thing to me that still intrigues me is how they set it up so quickly, so how someone can quickly go viral. That was really hard to say for me. Like the fact that you put a, the percentage of people that are going on TikTok and know the formula and follow it and within one month or two months we’ll have a video with a million views, is like incredibly high, right, and so there’s something about that virality and the dopamine hit that comes from that. That’s just absolutely wild. So that, to me, is intriguing because that engine is fascinating, so that’s one. I think on the ad side, it was definitely in 2020, it was like a feast or famine. It was crazy. It was so wild, right, like what you could do with TikTok. It was wild, and I feel like now it’s steadied out a little bit, but there’s still a lot of practical use for it, and I think the way that the targeting algorithm works with suggested content is unrivaled in the world.

40:55

Meta’s trying to catch up with Instagram, and I think they’ve done a great job with Reels. The thing with their numbers are you know what? There’s how many ever billion people in the world eight, and it’s like across the suite of apps. Meta has. I think, what is it? Two and a half billion DAUs. So I think if, even if you make Reels incrementally partially better, it’s going to be amazing for the bottom line. But I think TikTok still, I mean, you ask, you ask certain people what platforms are you looking at, and it’s. It’s amazing how many people will say TikTok and the amount of time that they’re spending because the content there is so good and just so relevant to them, and they’ve also incentivized people to create differently and so, yeah, I think it’s a very interesting platform for sure.

Danny Gavin Host 41:38

Dig a little bit deeper from an advertising perspective. You know TikTok allows you to have a choice of five different objectives or goals. So reach traffic app installs these conversions. Which do you prefer to use the most? Do you feel like is there one that kind of works better?

Andrew Foxwell Guest 41:51

I mean, we only do conversion ads on TikTok, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I haven’t done any of the other ones and I can’t speak to it honestly, but the conversion ads are good. I mean I think it’s generally speaking. The TikTok people that will convert are going to be lower quality over time as a cohort, they’re not gonna be as high of LTVs and things like that, I think, because it skews younger, but it does. It does hold scale well, which is a very hard thing for an ad platform to do. So if you say I want to spend $2,000 on LinkedIn, it’s like a disaster, right. But if you do that to TikTok, they’ll do it, so that’s a big thing. So the fact that the ad load piece is good, the fact that ad serving is good, the fact that it shows the DA user stable, that’s good. So, yeah, we just do conversion ads and they’ve done well. Spark ads have certainly been a great addition.

Danny Gavin Host 42:54

What about lookalike audiences? You know it’s a powerful tool both in TikTok and Meta. How did the two compare?

Andrew Foxwell Guest 43:00

I think the issue is you have data loss, especially on the Meta side with lookalikes. That just isn’t as good. I mean forever and ever, the the lookalike everybody used was the lookalike of your purchase event on the pixel, and the fact that is has a Jada loss that’s really affected a lot of lookalike audiences and so I still think there’s use of them. I mean you can use them and they’re okay. Depending on how much engagement the brand has, lookalike can be okay. I think TikTok is the same. It’s hit or miss For the most part. If you look at people that are really scaling on TikTok, it’s a lot of simple demo targeting or broad. For the most part, I don’t think a lot of people are utilizing lookalike audiences as much when it comes to, let’s say, the actual creative.

Danny Gavin Host 43:44

Do you feel like when you’re running TikTok ads, does the creative need to be very TikTok-y, or could you technically use, maybe, an ad that you would be using on Meta? Any thoughts on that?

Andrew Foxwell Guest 43:56

I mean, I think Meta ads have turned into TikTok-y style. You know what I mean, right? So I think it’s like could you use a Meta ad on TikTok? Is it like what it comes onto? Yes, I think I think they’ve shaped that in a significant fashion and I think that they’ve really shaped it in the problem solution framework. I mean, that’s like, you know, hey, like, do you have this issue? Do you have this issue where people are a problem unaware or they’re problem aware? That wasn’t really something we did before. It was so much about like, hey, here’s a product we have five stars and we started that. That they knew, they thought they might need that product, or that they, you know, had an intent to buy a shirt. And now we’re solving problems. You know, hey, you know, does this happen to you? It shows a water bottle rolling across the floor as for a water bottle holder right or whatever. So it’s, that’s. That’s definitely a change, a change in a big, big way. I think TikTok has has helped with that adoption over time and it’s helped. It’s helped with that shift.

44:49

I think, ultimately in the creative world if you look across both platforms and you look at shorts too on YouTube we as marketers early on got spoiled and did too many things. It was like you could launch a bad ad and it would do well and get a 5x return on ad spend and you were off and running. This was, you know, four or five years ago, and I think now where we stand is we’ve had to become marketers. A lot of us. We had to become better and we’ve had to create ads that actually are going to hook people, are going to be engaging, are going to capture their attention. So, yeah, I think you know, looking at what happens on TikTok and the frame and the framework that people are using there, the frameworks that they’re using there can be applied to meta and vice versa, and I think there’s a big overlap between them.

Danny Gavin Host 45:33

So, because creativity is key, now what do agencies or individuals who, like they’re used to doing all the technical side of optimizing and setting up campaigns but they don’t have a creative arm Do you feel like the future is? In order to be successful, you have to have a creative arm. Is it just about having a good partner, I wonder? I’m sure you’ve had those sort of questions come here.

Andrew Foxwell Guest 45:54

Yeah, I mean I think I don’t think you have to build a creative arm in your agency if you don’t want to. I mean, I think it certainly helps. It helps. People always love the all in one package, right, like if you’re. Like if you’re at the, you think about it. Like if you’re at the car wash and you go to the car wash and you and somebody were like, okay, look, we can wash your car, but then to get it dried you’re going to have to drive three blocks away and then they’ll dry it there. Like people are like why would I do this? I’m just going to sign up for the platinum package and get it all done now, right, and so it’s an attractive consumer standpoint. They want to have it all in one place and, um, rightfully so. So I think that will be beneficial to those people at one point, those people that want to do that.

46:37

If you don’t do that and you say, look, we have these creative partners, we go to um setting up referral, we have referral agreements with them, you know they’re good, we’ve trusted, we trust them, and you want to continue to focus yourself on agency and media buying the thing that you need to do as a media buyer then needs to become. You need or as an agency, rather is, you need to be really great at analytics and reporting and telling a story and you need to be really good at helping people understand their financials and being a good sort of outsourced CMO. So I think if you’re not going to do the creative thing, you have to do these other things really well. You have to tell, you have to help them make sense of what the heck’s happening. You have to help them understand from a creative standpoint, from an analytics standpoint, from a click standpoint, from a prospecting, a new traffic standpoint and from a business standpoint, and help them say look, we are.

47:28

We aren’t just a direct, we aren’t just an agency that’s going to run Facebook ads. We’re a marketing agency and we do. We’re going to help you think through your marketing. What else are you doing? How are we pitching you? How are we taking big swings with creative to help guide these creative agencies in terms of finding a new angle that maybe we haven’t tapped before? That’s, you have to do those things. I think that’s kind of what my advice would be for those people that are not wanting to build a creative agency in theirs.

Danny Gavin Host 48:00

Do you have any particular interesting success stories from TikTok ads, maybe a brand you know or something personally that you’ve managed?

Andrew Foxwell Guest 48:07

I mean, honestly, the craziest TikTok story to me is the ladder. I don’t know if you’ve ever followed this particular company, but there’s this guy, he’s a member of the group at Greg and he’s the CEO of this workout app, ladder, and they’ve scaled exclusively on TikTok and if you Google you can find some. He’s talked about this publicly on some podcasts and stuff and it’s wild. Basically the whole flow that they have built on their, on their app is amazing. So if you’ve never, if you’re a subscription service and you’ve never studied what ladder has done and how they go through cancellations and the flow of it all, sign up for a month and see what it’s like, even if you’re never going to use it, it’s crazy.

48:52

The other thing is they scaled by utilizing hundreds of creators to to help them, you know, through basically influencers to help talk about why ladder was the key for them, and they looked at the marketplace and looked at every like, every angle of a person they thought would be or is influential in the workout space. That was like a perfect fit for ladder and they brought them in. They took great care of them. They paid them really well, even going in not into the red but like making some decisions that you’re like whoa and they scaled that way by through influencers and so they use TikTok and in that way and it’s been absolutely incredible because they brought so many people into an ecosystem that they could then retarget and things like that.

49:44

So I think they’re my favorite TikTok Story honestly, just because of the scale and the forward thinking this that they brought to the platform and they’re, I mean, I don’t even know their multimillion dollar company now Right, like, and they came through the pandemic right when everybody was working out. They’re not the Peloton right of that story of everybody bought the bike and now everyone’s selling it like it’s maintained and grown. And so I think TikTok can be a great lever for growth. I think the issue is you can’t, with TikTok, do what everyone else is doing and expect it to add a lot to your bottom line. I think with TikTok, because of the way it changes and because of the rapid nature of which iteration is necessary, you have to be on the leading edge of exactly what’s changing in terms of trends, and if you can create trends, ads that feature the trends that are happening at scale, you can be successful. But you have to be ready to be really obsessed with it for a period of time as you grow. That’s really my TikTok advice.

Danny Gavin Host 51:02

So to think that you take experience with Meta and how you deal with Meta ads and just suddenly bring that on to TikTok would equal failure. You have to look at TikTok a little bit differently. Yeah, I think so. I really do. I do think.

Andrew Foxwell Guest 51:14

I think you have to approach it differently. I think you have to have a you sort of have to have things ready. You have to have a ton of creative, you have to be ready to know how it works, you have to be ready to follow the trends and I think, in a lot of time and I think if you can do that, it can do really well.

Danny Gavin Host 51:36

Love it. Last question on the matter: Are there any third-party automation tools that you prefer to use on either platform?

Andrew Foxwell Guest 51:44

Third-party automation in reference to optimization.

Danny Gavin Host 51:47

Optimization yeah, anything you like, in particular.

Andrew Foxwell Guest 51:51

You know I can speak more expertly to the meta stuff and there always been really hesitant with, like, automations and optimizing on its own. So at this point, no, but it’s not to say that there can’t be an opportunity. I mean, you know, for us utilizing a third-party measurement tool is huge, helping to see what we’re doing. For us using a third-party creative measurement tool is big, and so you know, if we have those two things, we’re pretty well set in terms of knowing what we need to turn up or down. And yeah, we don’t have any automation tools right now that I think have. Really, I mean like there isn’t currently an optimizer for meta ads that people trust in my opinion, not to say that can’t be built, but you know it’s not something people utilize significantly right now.

Danny Gavin Host 52:51

And kind of related to that AI. Are you using AI at all, whether it’s chat to BT or anything else, in particular when it comes to social ads?

Andrew Foxwell Guest 53:00

Yeah, certainly testing on, you know, landing page copy. Certainly testing on ad copy, even to get ideas. It doesn’t hurt, it’s such a powerful tool. I think AI in reference to, you know, image creation and things like that is getting better. Isn’t totally there, but is getting better. I think that over time the AI optimizations that will that meta will be making to your ads is going to be good and I do think that it will help. But I don’t think it’s there yet right away, so we’re not using it a ton, honestly, at this particular moment in time. But certainly in the next year I can see a lot more of that adoption taking place, because the PyFrom will just become so much more sophisticated.

Danny Gavin Host 53:40

Love it. So, instead of our typical lightning round, I found out that you’re a big mountain biker. I’d love to know a little bit about why you love it, how you train. Any cool race stories would be great.

Andrew Foxwell Guest 53:52

Well, thanks for asking. I love talking about mountain biking, yeah, so I started mountain biking like four years ago or so and started doing races a couple years ago and, yeah, I go up a lot of mountains and you get to bomb down. It’s the best thing, because you feel like a 10-year-old kid and so it’s really. I took it really seriously last year in terms of training and in terms of trying to get ready for races, and I think I did six races last year and I just got the Strava update, which is the app of cyclists use or people that you know work out, and I rode 2,400 miles on my bike in 2023. So it’s a pretty crazy number. But I mean, the best race story of recent is, you know, the last race of the season I always wear in mountain biking. You know you can wear clip-in pedals. You can not have clip-in pedals, okay, so most people at a racing you have clip-in pedals because people think that they’re faster, things like this and if you look at the pro circuit, everybody’s wearing clip-in pedals, and so I had clip-in pedals on my road bike, which I was using for a lot of training long distance endurance training but I didn’t have them on my mountain bike and so I put them on my mountain bike for the last race of the year and I rolled up and I had, you know, changed categories. I was in category 2, and I thought, alright, here I am. I rolled up to the start line and I fell over In front of all the people I was racing against and the guy goes first time in Clips. I was like, yeah, one of them actually, so I fell right over. But anyway, I took third in that race, which is huge because it protected my ego, which is awesome. But yeah, I felt like a total idiot for falling over. But you know what, like nobody I really knew was there, so it didn’t really matter that much. But yeah, it was good, that was a good one. But no, I mean, racing’s a lot of fun. It’s just like to me it’s just summing a whole myself accountable.

55:58

I feel better when I ride and, being in California, in Santa Barbara, where we live most of the year, it’s been so much fun cycling and I mean, like the other day, I rode up on Tuesday, dropped my daughter at preschool and she, of course, goes to this outdoor preschool and I took my bike to the trailhead and I rode up into the mountains and I had my lunch in my, in my, like bibs you know like and I got to the top of the mountain. I had lunch on top of the mountain, nobody around, and then I just came down. It was crazy. And then I went and took a picture from school. It was wild and like there’s service on top of the mountains.

56:31

I liked working, you know. So I mean mountain biking, I love it and it helps you really. It can take you so deep in the woods and it I spent so much time on the computer, right, that something that takes me into nature is just such a blessing. So I feel really lucky to do it and I feel really proud of my body that I can do it.

Danny Gavin Host 56:48

So you can work hard but also exercise hard. It’s a good balance, yeah.

Andrew Foxwell Guest 56:53

Yeah, I think so.

Danny Gavin Host 56:56

So where can listeners learn more about you and your business and your community?

Andrew Foxwell Guest 57:00

Yeah, Foxwelldigital.com or Foxwell digital.com/membership are good places. You can always email me if you have questions and that’s where you can find me and find out about our community. And yeah, but I’d love to hear from anybody that’s listening to this. So thank you for a great interview, Danny.

Danny Gavin Host 57:20

My pleasure. Thank you for being a Guest  on the Digital Marketing Mentor and thank you, listeners, for tuning into the Digital Marketing Mentor. We’ll chat with you next time.