Transcript

Bennie F. Johnson

Hello, and thank you for joining us for this special episode of AMA’s Marketing And. I’m your host, AMA CEO, Bennie F. Johnson. In today’s episode, we explore life through a marketing lens, delving into conversations with individuals that flourish at the intersection of marketing and the unexpected. We’ll introduce you to visionaries whose stories you might not yet have heard of, but are exactly ones you need to know.

Through thought-provoking conversations, we’ll unravel the challenges, triumphs, and pivotal moments that have been shaped by marketing. Today, our special guest is innovative CEO, Daniel Khabie. Daniel is the co-founder of Court Avenue. Before starting Court Avenue, he’s been a founder of multiple digital agencies, serving clients with employees of over 2,500 employees across 27 countries. It’s in these roles and founding leading digital agencies that he founded one of the first West Coast digital technologies that was eventually sold to WPP. DK, welcome to the podcast.

Daniel Khabie

Great to be here, thanks for hosting me.

Bennie

You know, it’s, I promise you when we stopped in your hallway in San Diego a few months ago, I said, we’re gonna have to talk for real. We’re gonna have to talk so everyone else can be let in on these conversations. What I love is, it’s not often that we get a chance to talk to a founder who’s been a founder, who’s been a founder, right? So much about your work has been how do we innovate agencies in the digital space? And you’ve had success over the last, you know, couple of decades of building these dynamic companies. Talk a bit to me about what it means to be, to not just say you’re an innovator, but kind of live in that space of being a three-time founder, my friend.

Daniel

You know, it’s interesting. was talking to, was, by the way, first, thanks for hosting me. This is a fantastic podcast. It’s an honor to be here with you and the, in just your kind of, your overall just story and brand. Thank you. Number one, you know, number two, was with, I was with this, I was with an entrepreneur at this event at that consumer electronics show. And he came up to me and he asked me, said, Dan, what does it like to be an entrepreneur? And it was a pretty relatively dark room, but it wasn’t dark enough. So I told him, said, listen, come follow me over here. He’s like, where are you taking me? I go, let’s go behind these curtains over here.

I go behind the curtains. He’s like, why are you taking me in here? I go, go behind the curtains. He goes behind the curtains. I sit there with them and I just sit there and he goes, why am I here? I can’t see you. I’m like, this is entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship is when you walk into the abyss, you don’t see anything and your job has come out of there with an answer and people want quick answers, but you only arrive at the answers when you ask a million questions. And so I’ve kind of found myself being incredibly curious.

I want to learn about people and how they achieve certain things. And I want to learn how to build great companies. And a part of that is feeling really insecure. Part of that is being really humble. And a part of that is just constantly being very street. And what I mean by that is being on the street, asking the right questions and really, really listening to people and listening to their stories and journeys. So I’m a collector of journeys. I’m a collector of stories and that’s what I do. And I do it. All in the very, you know, in the abyss. I do it in places where you just wouldn’t expect it.

Bennie

Well, it’s so interesting to give that metaphor that it feels like the entrepreneurial journey. But in the last few years, it’s kind of like that’s expanded to be everyone’s journey now. You know, some of that comfort level with being uncomfortable and having to ask questions for many who went to school and got degrees and certificates to say that they know the answers. Taking this pivot to be in an open learning mindset is a stretch. What advice do you have for your marketing manager now, who we’re tasked to think like an entrepreneur.

Daniel

Yeah. You know, and I call them, you know, entrepreneurs, right? I use that a lot. And I think there’s a couple of things, you know, if I’m on the inside and, and, and I’m thinking about how to reinvent myself internally, I’m spending a lot of, I’m spending a lot of time with my customers and really understanding where the puck’s moving for them. What are the problems they chant? What are the problems they’re dealing with? How do I finally reach them differently? How do I be mindful of their time and the changes around them? Then I’m working backwards and understanding my business goals and my dreams and what I’m trying to achieve.

And then looking for bridges. You know, I like to be around bridge builders, people that understand how to connect from a brand to a customer. I call them the bridge builders. And it’s really important to constantly be there between that center ground between where a customer is raising their hands with a problem or need. And you as the marketing leader, thinking about ways to get there. And your job is to think about how to do it differently? How do I think differently? How do I use our technology to achieve our goals faster and quicker?

You know, Court Avenue, the brand, the company that I founded with my core founder, Kenny Tomlin and business partner, Michael Stich, Court Avenue was named after the first paved road in America. And the first paved road. When the first road was paved, it didn’t show in the distance to AB, but it did remove all the friction because the road was smooth. And so I also people were in the business of removing friction between a point A to point B. And so as a brand communicating to its customers, you’ve got to find ways to remove that friction and, every solution is different for every brand and every customer they meet with. And I think that’s what makes it so unique today is the hyper personalization of content, conversation and connectivity.

Bennie

So I’m gonna ask that question. With the reduction of friction, what is it that keeps you moving so fast? Adweek recently named you one of the fastest growing agencies. And I love the fact that when we often think about fast growing agencies, we think of the big markets and the big cities. But you, my friend, are taking over the world from San Diego.

Daniel

Yeah. So I mean, a couple of things. mean, one of which is, you know, we’re spread out geographically. So, you know, even though the company was founded in a garage in San Diego, we spread our wings quite a bit. We’re in Dallas, we’re in Cincinnati, we’re in, you know, Minneapolis, Chicago, we’re in Latin America. We’re now expanding into Europe. And so I think number one, divide and conquer. That’s number one, I would tell people you got to divide and conquer. Number two, you got to put together a good team and you got to know your role in that team. So I’m very much, me and my partners are very much about how do we win? It’s a week.

And we’re not about, you know, personal brand. We’re about company brand. We’re about surrounding yourself with really good people and people that can make us better. And so if we’ve grown as leaders, each one of us have learned to remove things that we’re not great at and surround ourselves with people that can make us better. So my success is driven on the shoulders of a lot of amazing human beings and talent. And, I try to surround myself with people that I want to spend time with. And I think that’s what’s interesting about the culture of Court Avenue. You know, we’re decisive but we’re curious. We’re curious and we’re decisive. And we do it all with a smile. And I think when you’re around great people that have these unbelievable superpowers, it allows you to do really great things. And I think that’s been a part of our growth and our expansion.

Bennie

I mean, that’s something that’s on the poster, it’s on the mission statement. But I can say, as a testament, I’ve walked the halls in your organization and you see that permeating. Before you even told me that, that’s what you get hit with, with the amazing people that are working there and the work that’s coming through. It’s oozing out of the space in there. Now, you know, it’s incredible to see because, as you said,

Daniel

I appreciate it.

Bennie

You’ve got to encourage and challenge people to take risks in ways that in some spaces, if it’s not a safe space to fly, then the organization can’t take off. When you think about innovation today, what would be the three skills that you think are invaluable for professionals to have if they’re going to adopt this innovator’s mindset?

Daniel

I mean, one of which is, you know, kind of going back to curiosity leads to education, leads to practice. I think if you’re a leader, you got to be a practitioner. And what I mean by that is, you know, I look at LLMs, right? So I’m constantly working across, you know, I’m working across Gemini and I’m working across a Claude, right? Claude coding. And even though I’m not a coder, even though I’m not a designer, even though I’m not like a developer, I’m trying to understand those tools. So I think number one is curiosity should lead to education, which should lead to be a practitioner. I think that’s number one, really important. Number two. It’s really interesting. I have a theory about this. Beautiful things that never really happen. They’re born ugly. If you look at the greatest innovation in the world, they come out ugly. And we, many people who have a brain like myself, more of a left brain, we look at the ugly thing and realize, think, that’s not going to be great. That’s not going to be amazing. And we overlook it. And I think that when you see something really ugly, embrace it because it could be incredibly innovative. That’s number two. Number three. Um, I think, I think the other thing I would tell people is, get lost around you. You know, there’s one thing dreaming up something really big. And another thing is where, you know, meet your audience, where they’re at. I always say you want to be, you want to be one click away. Like you want to be just ahead of them, but not too far ahead of them or you’re to lose them. So, you know, that’s the way I think about it. And I also just constantly talking to young people, young consumers, how they consume stuff, because the youth will inherit the earth.

And so you can’t be blinded by the fact that like the people underneath me and underneath them and underneath them are never really going to take on our roles. So listening to them and where they’re going, what’s interesting to them is how it’s humbling. And so I always tell people they are 27 forever, because I feel that’s like our average age. And so I get this chance to be around, teach at San Diego state, I do different things around the community. I’m constantly being around young people to understand their perspective on life.

And that’s how I learn a lot. So all that kind of equals this innovator mindset in my mind. It’s a lot there, but it all brings it together.

Bennie

Right. So what I love is you’re not the first of my friends to speak about this being a teacher and a practitioner at the same time. And that your practice informing your pedagogy as a teacher, and then that work as a teacher with the students informing your innovator mindset is the work that you do. And that virtuous loop, I encourage those listening, this is one of the things to keep you sharp, man. Being able to give and engage and then have to lead through that, right? Because those are the questions you’re going to ask your team. If you’ve got young consumers in your classroom and they’re challenging every step of the way, that’s going to make your agency better, right?

Daniel

Yeah, sure. My biggest thing is this is like, I wake up so afraid every day about like not trying, you know? I get so scared every day for not pushing myself, not trying to be a better human, not trying to, you know, ask the questions. I think that we, I think it’s sometimes people just become okay with just being okay. And I think you should be afraid of being okay. I think you should be afraid of not trying and not pushing yourselves. And I don’t know where it all leads everybody. Everyone leads in different places and that doesn’t really lead where you end up, but it’s really the journey, man. It’s all about the journey and where that takes you.

Bennie

Yeah. Yeah. I just had an interesting conversation last week, and it was a conversation about risk. And it was interesting that the perspective that the person had on it did not include that there is even more inherent risk about not doing anything. And it was fascinating to listen in on this conversation. And I was like, you do realize that standing still is actually worse than trying. If you’re conservatively trying to mitigate risk, especially in a world that we’re in.

Daniel

I had some guy point this out to me, you when I was at WPP, I was running a big global company at Miram. I was at a gym one day and this young guy came up to me and he says, Dan, go, listen, I know that you’ve done, you’re doing amazing things. You’re doing a great job. You’re running Miram now. You, you, you, went from an entrepreneur to an entrepreneur. You’re building all these things. He goes, I got to tell you something. He goes, we need you out here more than they need you inside there. And he goes, I want you to give it some thought.

And at the time I was like so happy with my job. I liked doing great. I had the best job in the world, traveling all over the world, doing things. It is my dream. But I realized two things that he was saying to me and I realized about myself as I became really good at saying no. I became really good at playing defense. And I realized that I’m a goal scorer, not a goalkeeper. And when I realized I was a goal scorer and not a goalkeeper, I knew it was time for me to leave because I was getting too good at defense.

Bennie

Right, right. So let’s talk about offense in a dynamic world. You know, at one point in time, you had employees across 27 countries. So I say that because you don’t have to say anything else about your certified as being a global business leader, right? 27 countries put you square in that space. But so much has changed, especially in this past year and a half. What is your advice for business leaders who are trying to navigate both clients, customers, staff, and realities across such a large global portfolio.

Daniel

Yeah, I think number one, what I learned about running global companies is you need to find those brand igniters, not brand ambassadors, they’re gonna carry the torch, the brand igniters, the sparks. And I chased down sparks. And I went after the sparks all over the world. And I tell people in today’s world where it’s very bifurcated.

You know, there’s zoom calls, half calls, everyone’s all over the place, barely in offices, some offices, some, I mean, you need to find those brands. You need to find those people, right? You need the people that are going to be the few igniters that give people this vision and they’ll rally behind you. So I really believe in that. Number one, number two, there’s no right answer. You know, when I took over the job at Miram, I was a young man. I was a young adult, you know, I was a young kid, man. I was like 38 years old, 39 years old. There was no playbook and running a global company. No one gave me a playbook. And so I think that you have to just ask more questions and there’s more questions or answers. I’m still processing everything I learned because we’re in 56 offices, 27 countries, 3000. I’m still processing everything I learned. I’m still wondering about when I was in China, why this person did what they did. I’m still wondering about when I was in Dubai, why they ate something differently. Like I’m still processing it. I just think that there’s no right answer, but if you find those brand igniters, the people that are the spark and let them go, they can do amazing things.

Bennie

Right. I love it, you know, it leans to a metaphor. I love this notion that you just said of still processing. A lot of times people think that we have an input, we have an interaction, and then we know all we need to know at that moment. Right. But I think it’s the power of time and pressure and other realities that gives us growth, that gives us strength, that gives us insight. Because you look back, how many times have we come in, and walked and seen something and it hits you two months later. That was the breakthrough, right?

Daniel

All the time, all the time. The other day I was in Santa Monica and it was amazing. My dad just moved to Santa Monica and they have a massive homeless community issue. And I was actually sitting on the side of the car, I was making a call and this guy was walking by with a stick in his hand. I mean, it was a big dude scaring people around and the guy was just kind of walking in a circle. And I sat there and he came by me again, I gave him a $20 bill and he goes into the alley. And I, you know. I’m like, on my phone call and I see him in the alley and I think to myself like, who can give me advice about like safety in Santa Monica than this guy? Like who’s the person I can ask about the most valuable product I have, which is my daughter about it. So I go in that back alley. I stop and I say to him, I go, listen, I’m so sorry. I never introduced myself. My name is Dan. And he looks at me and he goes, Dan, nice to meet you and introduce himself. And he said, you’re the first prince ever introduced himself to me.

And I got to know him and it was fascinating because at the end of the day, what I learned was he taught me and I was when my wife comes in and my daughter’s there and he’s telling her how to be safe. What streets to walk on, what streets not to walk on, what to think about. And in his hand that everyone’s afraid of, I asked him, what are you doing with that stick? He goes, I just use it to pick up litter. And that’s the irony of everything. The guy that everyone was so afraid of was not only giving me advice about my daughter and her safety, but was using the stick to pick up dirt on everyone else behind them. And I think that people underestimate what we can learn. When I walk places, what I think about is all these people I don’t know. All these people, all the stories I don’t know. And that’s what gets me excited about life. I feel so blessed to be alive, to be breathing. And I feel like as a human being, it’s our job to not assume things about people, but to ask things of people. And that’s what I tried doing.

Bennie

I love that we have lots of conversation and marketing about storytelling, right? But we never really have conversations about story loving, story collecting, and story living. And that conversation, those are each different things that are part of that space, right? We started off by talking about how you love collecting stories in the journey. And if we take that input in, it makes our storytelling better.

Daniel

100%, 100%. And I think good stories are real stories. I think the reason people don’t connect is because they’re not real stories. But when they’re real stories and they feel real and they feel meaningful, people connect.

Bennie

And when they remind us of our humanity and challenge our perceptions, I love that story in there, right? It led everyone into thinking harm and fear, but it’s really a story about community and generosity, whether you’re ready to receive it or not.

Daniel

100%. And I love that. And I think that’s how I live my life because I’m just, I’m just, I’m so afraid of not asking the question. I’m so afraid of not tapping on someone’s shoulders and asking questions. And by the way, when people ask me questions, I spend the time talking to them. They ask me questions about entrepreneurship, young adults, and I spend the time talking to them. I don’t have all the answers, but I have insights I’ve learned along the

Bennie

So tell me a bit, how is it for you to walk the halls, both virtually and physically, in your company now as the CEO?

Daniel

Well, so first of all, first of all, just to be clear, I’m not the CEO of this company. We’re all partners, so there’s no CEO title. So just to be crystal clear. So how we do it is we have basically three partners at a senior level. We just hired a new president. Her name is Robin Frey. She just joined us. Super excited about having her there. And, you know, we divide and conquer across the different coasts. So like I’m sitting on the West Coast, Kenny’s South region, Michael’s Eastern region. And then Julie runs the kind of, Julie kind of runs the Northern region with one of my name, Alyssa, who runs out of Chicago. And so. Between all of us, we’re kind of responsible for our regions. So we’re responsible for bringing love and happiness into our regions, number one. Number two, so we are constantly gathering together. I have, in the area that I work, that I spend my time most in on the West Coast, is we have San Diego, we have LA, and we’re constantly working back and forth. So what I do is spend a lot of time in person with the team, and we congregate around key clients and key relationships. And then we then have key meetings across offices, whether it’s executive meetings, leadership meetings.

So we show our faces. So Michael is coming out here this week, he’s gonna be here on Tuesday. I was there recently, we’re all gonna go out to Dallas. And so we’re constantly swarming people, clients, and there’s no shortcut for being in person. There is no shortcut. So there is no Zoom meetings with clients, there’s no Zoom meetings with employees. There are in-person meetings with people. That is how we roll at this company.

Bennie

I love the dedication and the energy into that. I also love this finding stories of innovation and making them your metaphor, whether it’s the name of the company, which sparks me back to that conversation, or the way you’re thinking about one of the things we were preparing for our conversation is your notion of looking at the future as now, not tomorrow.

Now, that can be scary for the end. There’s not a conversation that we don’t talk about AI, but it’s often AI in an arms reach space, right? This can happen, this may happen, this other space in there. How have you internalized this AI innovation moment as now versus waiting for tomorrow?

Daniel

So what’s interesting, you know, I had my first look at AI about two years ago, and really got into it. We hired a, you know, kind of, believe that AI is so instrumental to our business that it’s the center and the core of everything we do. And we invested in it very aggressively two years ago. We brought in a CTO, David Denver, never worked in the agency business, never worked in the services business. And we brought him, said, David, put us out of business. So we know what business we’re actually in. Come in here and help us rethink about our business. And he got to work, hired team, made a huge investment in him and his team. And he began building the baseline of what our new company is going to be. And it touched everything from the way we deliver work, from the way we service our clients, from the way we think about digital experience. And we started getting things to market. So for example, we created a product for Kia where it allows them to connect tier one to tier three and allows you to buy cars all through an AI chat bot that actually brings up inventory management for you right there. We’re actually hijacking sites. We’re presenting really good thought leadership to clients around the future of experiences. This is the year that AI will equal action. AI will be an action. So we’re not going to think about AI as a technology. We’re to start thinking about outcomes that AI delivers to us. Better service, better experiences, smarter ways of working, better creativity. So I think that AI will fall behind. It will be in the backdrop. And I think it will be more the outcomes that the technology allows to deliver. On top of it, we’re building brains for people.

So we are brain surgeons and I that sounds really crazy, but because we got so ahead of the job, like the head of the jump on this, some of our clients, we’ve gotten to know, we’ve worked with LLM so closely and their brand so closely that we’ve been training our bots. We’ve been training their brains and they want to take our brain that we’ve created. They want to put into other things like robots and other features and other things. So we are becoming brain surgeons. so, so, you know, we just kind of navigate, man. just kind of, we just, we just, we’re looking at outcomes. We’re looking at business outcomes.

And we are in it. are so deep in it. I can’t begin to tell you. We are at the forefront of where AI is meeting services and marketing unequivocally. We’re working with the top technology companies. We’re working with some of the largest brands in the world, and we are disrupting ourselves and our clients along the way.

Bennie

I love the embrace in there. We’re having conversations all the time about disruption in the broader industry, but it’s never a disruption ourselves. That was a conversation 10, 20 years ago, and it seemed like a safe conversation to say. It’s really hard to say it now in the face of such epically powerful technology and change. The same voices that were saying, we’re going to disrupt ourselves 10 years ago, aren’t really that loud today. I love this embrace of…

Yeah, we’re going to disrupt this and we’re going to lean into what these outcomes equal.

Daniel

Yeah. When I talk about the ugly, I talk about the ugly just showing up and you got to embrace it. It’s here. And, and, and I’ve lived, I’ve lived, I’ve lived, I’ve had, I’ve been in this business long enough to watch it. And, you know, I’ve had a chance to watch our teams, you know, become brain surgeons. have the chance to watch them grow these little babies, these little LM babies into full blown PhD professors.

I just got to tell you it’s incredible. It’s just when you think it’s mind-numbing, then you actually see real professionals, real people that are hired, like people that do this for a living and they’re working with data. like, it’s just such a, it’s just such an amazing moment. And so I’m just really, I’m just really just shocked. Now here’s the question. Here’s the question I’ll have to ask ourselves. Imagine, so I’m a big basketball fan, right? So I play ball. I love basketball, although I got this little ankle issue that’s besides the point. But imagine, imagine.

Bennie

It’s beside it. You still got some still got some eligibility, my friend.

Daniel

Imagine if every team, and their first draft pick was Michael Jordan, every one of us, five of us on the court, everyone has had a Michael Jordan. What happens when everybody has the smartest person in the room when they start a company? What happens when they all have the smartest person in the room when they think about ideas and concepts? I don’t know what that does. I’ve no idea because when I started my first company it was like I hired the best engineer. I had a diverse tech person, the best strategy. What happens when we all have access to the smartest person on the planet?

So it’s a foot race. It’s a foot race because now you got to surround that smartest I guess from MJ with the best talent I can find but I still got MJ. I’m still winning that chip.

Bennie

Yeah. So now the question is, are the intangibles that separate individual performance from team performance in winning to championship caliber to winning the championship? And that continuum, because we’ve all seen great teams with great stats and great players make it all the way to the playoffs and never raise the championship.

Daniel

What are the enhancements? Yep.

Bennie

To our conversation, our metaphor of winning, what are going to be the intangibles?

Daniel

I think high EQ, number one, high EQ, because it’s going to, when you have the smartest person in the room and everyone starts away, you need really strong emotional intelligence around you to work as a team. I think number two, I think people that understand orchestration layers, you have to be an orchestrator because, because it’s like union station, man, it happens super fast, man. You land in New York city, central station, union is going. And so you need people who can orchestrate, people that could move data in and out of things. I think that’s number two.

I think number three, a really strong PMO because you got to be able to deliver the work. That’s going be really important because it will become way more tactical, really tactical PMOs. And then you have to have the dreamers, people that are willing to push the smartest person in the room to think differently and to think beyond what we ever imagined. And those are kind of the, that’s kind of the team. That’s kind of the team I’m thinking about surrounding, now, MJ with, right? MJ 2.0 with.

Bennie

Right, right, because you need a Pippen and a Rodman, right?

Daniel

You need Pippen and Rodman and they all play a role. So I think that, I think this is great, I think my kids will, they won’t, I really believe they’re going to be closer, closer to being raised in the fifties. And keep in mind, these were digital kids. I grew up with iPads and phones and social media. They’re going to, they’re going to look closer to people in the fifties than what we’re going to see ahead of us. I think we’re about to see the biggest of our life.

Bennie

Right. So expand on that a bit. So why, for those who aren’t familiar with the 50s, why would you make that statement? It’s a really provocative one. I think it’s great.

Daniel

Because the reason I say that is because it is so different from the way kids were brought up today. That when you see what’s ahead of us, the 50s are closer to them than what’s in front of them. That’s what I’m saying. I’m going to use the statement that it’s so different culturally. What they’re about to see happen in front of them is going to be far as far surpassed them how different growing up in the 50s is today. It’s going to be unimaginable. And I think we are about to hit the greatest innovations that we’ve ever imagined. What would happen? You know, I have a friend whose son has a disability. What would happen if his disability became an ability? All of sudden, that kid learned how to use AI as a way to express themselves because they can’t express themselves today. We can learn about things we never thought about. would happen if everyone on this planet could be a creator and a designer? It’s incredible. I mean, it is incredible. We are at such a shift in our society, in our world that it’s incredible what’s ahead of us.

Bennie

Right. So when you think about that, you think about the young DK starting out now, what advice would you have for a student who’s coming out of school now, who’s going into business? And I’m trying to limit even putting names and titles and framing around it. What advice do you have for somebody starting off a career?

Daniel 

Hmm. So you need four people in a room. You need the smartest one in the room, which is what we’re all gonna have. You need the promoter. You need the person, the promoter and the visionary, someone that’s willing to go out there and tell and sell the story. You need the operator, someone that can make sure that the trains are running and you need the person that can deliver the work. Excuse me, you can deliver the work. And that delivery is gonna be working with the smartest person in the world.

And you get those four people together in a room. That’s how you’re going to win today. So my advice to people is put together your team. Don’t be I don’t think you can do every, don’t think that because AI I can do, I can be the designers and the coders and the correct, like people tend to do that. And they’ll go in a circle. What I’ve learned by AI, just makes you do whatever you do better, faster and quicker. So surround yourself with the right people, put together your team and put together people with high emotional intelligence, really good collaborators and are willing to venture to the unknown.

And target a space, disrupt something, find your enemy, find who you’re going after, find your religion and go after it, man. I was a very young age. I found a muse and I wanted to be that one company. And I did everything in my life to be that muse. You know, I mean, that’s why I still watch MJ tape. Cause I still think today, even today when I go on vacation, I watch MJ a lot. And the reason why I like Michael Jordan is because the way he changed his game, the way he vault, he started the game being like Mike Tyson, man. People were terrified of him. They switched it to turn on shot and the way he went off the hole. And then he learned how to win and he learned how to win at a rate that no one else has won ever since then no one else has won. And he had that instinct, he had that killer instinct. And I think if you surround yourself with all those type of personality traits, that’s what I look for, man, when I’m putting together teams. I want killers, I want high emotional intelligence people, I want people that can change their game, people that can work with people and they’re not afraid of trying, man. That’s why I wanna be around.

Bennie

It’s really exciting to have the energy and talk of how we break through and how we win. This is a space and we’ve got lots of agencies going through an identity crisis right now. We see it in marketing space in there. But clearly, you’ve built an agency in which it’s not about the individual parts of the work that you do, but it’s about you’re here to help your clients win.

You’re here, and by that, it’s establishing the win. I want to talk a little bit about evolution, because what we’ve seen is that on the consumer end, customers’ expectations have evolved. I’d love to talk about, from your perspective in a B2B agency to client space, how have you seen your clients’ expectations evolve?

Daniel

Yeah, I think it’s a great question. I think a couple of things. I think that number one, our customers are trying to make sense of how AI is going to impact the workplace. I think that’s number one. They’re generally, generally really confused by that. I think that people are now looking at data as a vehicle to feed into AI and they’re realizing their data isn’t clean. So everyone’s focused on data again. Like if you’re, you know, like that’s a big focus, right? Because AI doesn’t work unless your data is right. So data integrity is becoming really, really important. They’re looking at their Martech stacks and they’re saying, Hey, I built these big invested Martech stack. Who’s evolving quick enough. You know, you look at, you’ll be with a Gentic, sales for the Gentic, know, optimize with the Opal. Like who, who’s evolving their AI stack. And I think that becomes really important because you need people that understand orchestration layers. And I think number four, they’re trying to figure out how to better communicate to their customers who’s rapidly changing the way they look at things, the way they consume things, the way they do things. So I think there’s a lot of shifts that are happening. I can tell you, we hold events. We hold the big AI Summit just two months ago, and it was a very well attended event. And we had Google there, Amazon there, we had some UnitedHealthcare, some of the biggest clients on the planet. And there were more questions than answers. And I think that the way we play is, we try to find our ways to be helpful. And we’re just trying to be helpful, man. We’re just trying to show up and be a partner with really smart people around us and help them make sense of the world that they’re navigating through. But I will tell you that at the end of day, our clients are, they’re shifting and they’re navigating and they’re evolving like all of us. And, ultimately they’ll continue to be successful and the brands that haven’t evolved. We’ll, we’ll lose like any situation. They won’t, they won’t be here. So my advice to people is evolve, evolve your product, evolve your conversation, evolve your customers and find new opportunities and that’s what we’re constantly pushing our clients to do.

Bennie

I’ll ask you today, what’s the most attractive new client for you? What do you and your team get excited about that’s like, yeah, we’re ready to run with this client.

Daniel

Man, we have a big client house right now that we’re working on and we’re reinventing their entire digital ecosystem. And they want us to throw AI at it. They want us to think about new ways of creativity. They want us to think about media. And I mean, when you can take all, there’s five things that Cordova Avenue does. And when we can throw all five of our skillsets into something, we love that because it brings cross-functional thinking with people that are really experts at what they do. They could be standalone companies, but when we all get together, we become a massive superpower. So we get excited when clients say, hey, we want to deploy all the five things that you do.

Bennie

It was fun. asked that question and I could see your eyes light up like a kid. Christmas, my friend. It is so true. You can see you get excited like, wait, you want us to do everything?

Daniel

Yeah, it’s it’s I love it. I and by the way, we can’t be everything everybody but but when we’re doing our things integrated with their teams, and we’re all working together, it’s harmony, man. It’s like a perfect run. Like I always use the analogy of a bicycle. Like a bicycle works because everything works. The pedals are at the right time, the chain is working. I look at optimization, and then I look at velocity. So optimizing, I just love it, man. I just love living with a team. I live with a group of people. I live with a client who is just humming and I just sit there and I smile. The fact that I was able to help bring that together is pretty awesome.

Bennie

Well, it’s so fun to look at your portfolio of clients and they’re so very different. But the impact you’re having on them is universal, right? This is innovation impact that you see. But I go from Kia to like Epson and there’s no, right? I just want to go and like the Air Force.

Daniel 

So different. Yeah. Use the Air Force. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It’s pretty, it’s pretty incredible. I mean, and I’ll tell you a part of it is just that like the way we pursue clients is we want to be challenged with new things. Like we already have a big automotive client. We’re ready to do work in the military. Like we want to just keep pushing our boundaries. You know, we haven’t done a lot of financial services. That’s an area we want to do more in healthcare. We think that’s an area we can impact. You know, we look at areas where we can disrupt things. And so we’re constantly out there trying to figure out

Who’s the right match? And we have a very high MPS score. It’s one of the highest in the industry. So net promoter score for those who don’t know what that is. But like the MPS score means everything to us, both internally and externally. A client, like we have long-term relationships. So we do our best to get really sticky with them. We get our hands dirty with our clients, but ultimately it’s about finding just different clients and just solving new problems. That really gets me excited.

Bennie

Different clients in new problems. Wow. What a way to kind of think about that space in there. And do you ever get the moment where you have some of your early clients who now come back to you for a refresh in innovation? You know, because say, nice, nice.

Daniel

Oh yeah. I have built a whole client to get back to us. Oh yeah. Yeah. It’s super fun. I mean, let’s say you build relationships over a long period of time and a lot of what you need to do is trust. know, when you take someone behind that, current, that dark curtain, that in that, in that dark room, they got to trust you. And so a lot of that is, uh, you got to have trust. so trust is built by relationships and no bot, no AI, nothing could, could, could humans want connectivity. And so it’s so important to be a connector of people and be right with people and spend the time with people. And so we’ve done that over a career. know, our success is a, a company is, is careers worth of work by Kenny, Michael, myself, the team, like careers worth of work. And you see it, know, Michael, business partner, Kenny, like they have unbelievable relationships, man. That doesn’t happen overnight. That happens over a long period of time. So I also want entrepreneurs to be patient. People want success really quickly. You know, I, I look at it, man. I want failures really quickly.

I’m not worried about success. I’m worried about failures and I’m worried about long-term relationships. So I tell people, plant seeds, plant a lot of seeds and be patient. Go through the hard stuff, go through the journey. Cause the journey is what makes it fun. had this one guy, he developed the generic drive for brittle. And the guy was like a billionaire. gave me, was one, was very named Lee, check. He gave me lot of business advice when I was young. He’s no longer with us, but Lee, when I met him, he said something to me, it was very profound. said, Lee, during my most darkest times, you could have cut me a check. You could have wrote me a check and you never did that.

Instead you share with me the most valuable asset you have, which is your brain. You share with me your mind. You share with the most important thing in the world. Why did you do that? And he said, Dan, you want to know something? I missed the journey and you allowed me to do that journey through you. And it’s so important that people are so focused on the end product. They’re so focused at where you get the cars or the homes or all these things. Nothing matters unless you experience the journey. The journey is all that matters. So I tell people, get dirty with journeys. Feel it. Go up and down, feel the emotions. Don’t be afraid of it, embrace it. And so I’m a big fan of that, man. I love the journey, I’m addicted to it.

Bennie

You know, it comes through. I’m thinking about this conversation, you know, where else do we start talking about going behind dark corners, going literally in dark alleys, talking about going through the abyss to come through on the other side of trust and innovation, right? So seeking advice, seeking counsel that’s about taking you through the journey, opening up yourself and collecting stories on the journey for trust getting yourself to work with other peoples, to trust others around you so it’s not just an eye on the journey. Each of those are valuable lessons that have been a part of this space, my friend. What a…

Daniel

It’s very true. Very true. You know, one of the questions I ask various people come across and I tell them, what are the three things you learned about your parents growing up? What are they taught? What, what thing did they do that you now could convert into a business lesson? And it’s amazing hearing the impact that parents and family had on people. And I think one of my reasons for my success is the love of the people that raised me and the belief and the unwavering support. And it’s a blessing to have that because not everyone has that. We didn’t have anything. We didn’t have money. We didn’t have dollars. We grew up poor. We didn’t have anything. But what I had is we had love and we had hope. And I think it’s so important that you surround yourself with people that are your supporters, that are there for you, that believe in you and want to see you be successful. And I think if you have that behind you, those winds behind your sail, you can be unstoppable. And that is what has allowed me to be successful over a long period of time.

Bennie

What a beautiful, poetic, timely, and powerful way to end our podcast, my friend.

Daniel

Listen, that’s great to be here. I appreciate the opportunity to share my story. Listen, you know, thank you for the opportunity.

Bennie

My goodness. Thank you for reminding us that as we live in stories, it’s not just our voice to tell, it’s our opportunity to listen, internalize, and embrace all the stories along the way. DK, this is an incredible journey. We’re still rooting for you, and we don’t want to play against you, my friend.

Daniel

I appreciate you. Thank you so much and thanks for the opportunity and all the great questions and thanks for sharing my journey.

Bennie

And thank you all for listening. And once again, this has been a profoundly special episode of AMA’s Marketing Inn. I’m your host, AMA CEO, Bennie F. Johnson. We encourage you to look for ways to challenge, embrace the journey, build, innovate, and bring your marketing world to life. DK, thank you and the entire team at Court Avenue for your model and inspiration. And thank you all for joining us.

Daniel

Thank you.