How Psychographic Marketing Transforms Wine Sales and Mental Health Practices With Drew Hendricks
- Rise25 webmaster@rise25media.com
- 14 hours ago
- 39 min read
Drew Thomas Hendricks is the President of Barrels Ahead, a wine and craft marketing agency that accelerates company growth through content development, SEO, and paid search. Drew is also the President of Nimbletoad, Inc., a digital marketing agency specializing in web design, SEO, and PPC. He is the Founder of VineCat, which allowed users to inventory and track their wine through a cloud-based cellar management application, before closing its doors in 2010.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
[3:54] Drew Hendricks shares how he developed Nimbletoad, Inc. for mental health and training institutes
[8:26] The wine industry’s downtrend and how psychographic targeting can narrow marketing strategies
[15:54] How Drew’s background in philosophy shapes his approach to marketing and web design
[18:52] A philosophical approach to couples therapy and how Drew helps therapy providers convey their value
[25:54] Drew’s definition of success and how to find fulfillment
[29:13] Drew talks about his daily journaling and planning habits for productivity and reflection
[33:45] How AI has transformed content marketing and consumer behavior in search
[39:16] Innovative uses of AI in the wine industry
In this episode…
Businesses in industries experiencing downturns, like the wine and mental health spaces, struggle to connect with their ideal audiences, often relying on outdated marketing tactics or one-size-fits-all messaging. When these industries face increased competition and changing consumer behavior, how can brands create deeper, more authentic relationships with the people they serve?
According to digital marketing strategist Drew Hendricks, psychographic targeting — understanding customer identity through lifestyle, interests, and values — can help businesses break free from generic demographic segmentation. For wineries, Drew emphasizes moving beyond age-based marketing to identify a shared cultural ethos. For mental health providers, he recommends crafting websites that guide potential clients through complex therapy options using a Socratic funnel approach.
In this episode of The Tao of Pizza Podcast, Mark Hiddleson welcomes Drew Hendricks, President of Barrels Ahead and Nimbletoad, Inc., to discuss building human-centered marketing systems. Drew talks about using AI-powered agents, crafting therapeutic websites that educate clients, and how to find fulfillment.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
Specialized Storage Solutions, Inc. contact phone: 707-732-3892
Mark Hiddleson's email: markhiddleson@aol.com
“The Art and Science of Storage and Distribution With Mark Hiddleson of Specialized Storage Solutions” on Legends Behind the Craft
“Heavy Haul, High Standards: Desmond Clark on Creating a Logistics Company That Dominates” on The Tao of Pizza Podcast
Quotable Moments:
“Most websites are toads. We make them nimble.”
“People aren't demographics, they're psychographics. You need to find your tribe, not just their age.”
“It's not this one or that one. There’s different schools of thought in couples therapy.”
“Your definition of success is going to change the more you work through whatever you're trying to work through.”
“Writing it down does not have the same emotional and physical release that typing it out does.”
Action Steps:
Shift from demographic to psychographic targeting: Understanding customer lifestyles and values creates stronger emotional connections and marketing alignment. This approach helps brands reach people who genuinely resonate with their story, regardless of age or background.
Apply the Socratic method to your marketing funnels: Guiding potential customers with questions allows them to arrive at their own buying decisions. This builds trust and creates a natural, value-driven customer journey.
Clarify your brand’s value proposition through storytelling: A compelling narrative differentiates your business in saturated markets like wine and mental health services. It also fosters loyalty by aligning your message with what matters most to your audience.
Use AI to support human-powered engagement: AI agents can identify client behavior patterns and provide actionable insights for follow-up. This empowers your team to make more personalized, timely, and effective connections.
Establish a daily journaling and planning habit: Writing down goals and reflections boosts clarity, accountability, and personal growth. It also provides a historical record you can revisit to assess progress and stay aligned with your mission.
Sponsor for this episode:
This episode is brought to you by Specialized Storage Solutions Inc.
Listen...
I have been in the logistics and storage industry for several decades. I know I don’t look that old, but it's true.
We provide industry-leading warehouse storage solutions nationwide.
So basically, if you have a warehouse that needs Rack, Shelving, Carts, Conveyors, or Mezzanines, we help with....design engineering, installations, inspections, and repairs to help clients optimize their logistics operations.
Sometimes people don’t even realize that we can actually help with permit acquisition services.
We take a holistic look at your entire business supply chain ecosystem to develop the resources for continually improving your operation.
To learn more, visit specialracks.com or give us a call at (707) 732-3892. One of the best ways to learn more about our products and services is to follow us on Instagram. And there’s a link on our website to do that.
I will even give you my personal email address for podcast listeners, so email me at markhiddleson@aol.com if you’re ready to take your warehouse storage and retrieval systems to the next level.
Episode Transcript:
Intro 0:00
Mark, welcome to The Tao of Pizza where we feature top logistics leaders, entrepreneurs and supply chain innovators and share their inspiring stories with a holistic twist.
Mark Hiddleson 0:14
Mark Hiddleston here, host of The Tao of Pizza Podcast, where I talk with top industry innovators in warehousing, logistics and supply chain business with a holistic twist. And before I introduce today's guest, Drew Hendricks, this episode is brought to you by specialized storage solutions. Now I've been in the logistics and storage industry for several decades, developing and building the systems and solutions that evolve with our clients growing needs, we provide industry leading warehouse storage solutions nationwide. So basically that means, if you have a warehouse that needs rack shelving, carts, conveyors or mezzanines, we help with the design, the engineering, installation, inspections and repairs to help our clients optimize their logistics operations. And it's funny, Drew sometimes people don't even realize we can actually help with the permit acquisition process. So yeah, we deal with the red tape so that you don't have to. We take a holistic look at your entire business supply chain ecosystem to develop the resources for continue improving your operation. To learn more, visit specialracks.com or give us a call at 707-732-3892. And just for podcast listeners, I give out my personal email Markhiddleson@aol.com. Yes, I still use AOL, and yes, I'm proud of it. If you're ready to take your warehouse storage and retrieval systems in the next level, drop me a line. And there's one more thing I always love to get love to give a shout out. And I want to give a shout out to Dr Jeremy Weisz of rise 25 he introduced me to today's guest, and what they do rise 25 is they help their clients contribute to their top 200 business relationships with strategic partners through podcasting, Jeremy introduced me to Drew Hendricks, and coincidentally, last week's guest Desmond Clark, 12 year NFL veteran author, motivational speaker and the founder of Bear Down Logistics. And you can check out that episode too. So thanks, Dr. Jeremy. So today's guests, we're joined by Drew Hendricks. He's the founder of Nimbletoad and Barrels Ahead, two agencies that help brands grow through smart digital marketing and storytelling with a background philosophy and a deep history in the wine industry, he brings a rare blend of critical thinking, Industry Insight and technical expertise. He's also the host of Legends behind the craft, a podcast spotlighting innovators in the beverage world, and he actually hosted me on that so welcome. Drew Welcome to The Tao of Pizza.
Drew Hendricks 2:54
Oh, welcome. Well, thank you so much. Be on this side of the podcast. It's so honored to be on your show. Yeah. So yeah, people listening, Mark was actually on our legends behind the craft show few years ago. And so happy you reached out again. Yeah? So I run Barrels Ahead and Nimbletoad. Barrels Ahead is a wine and craft marketing agency, and Nimbletoad is in the mental health and behavioral health space. So I kind of like to say that we handle both sides of the mental Happiness Equation, depending on how you need it, the projected outcomes are the same on either. So you figure out storytelling and marketing message. That's how I justify the two agencies.
Mark Hiddleson 3:38
I love it and so share a little bit well, share a little bit of how you got into into this industry. And I'm curious specifically about the Nimbletoad. And I'll turn myself in. I didn't do enough homework on nimble to realize, Oh yeah,
Drew Hendricks 3:54
yeah. No nimble to the main agency. So is the iteration of a few. And to go back, way back in the storytelling. When I graduated from college with a degree in attic Greek and philosophy, my goal was to be a professor, but I found myself in San Francisco biding some time while the person I was with was in law school, and ended up getting a job at a wine store as a stock boy. I was 21 and ready to go, and turned out I had a really good palette. Ended up staying there for 1012, years, and became a wine buyer, and then developed one of the first wine auction sites that predated eBay, using Pearl scripts. And yeah, it was, it was incredible. And then started working building websites for independent wine stores, which then just progressed through one agency into another, and then Nimbletoad became in its current or was, is the latest iteration back in 2008 that just started as a general agency to just help businesses across the board, especially small businesses, to compete with the better leverage chain stores. So we've always really tried to um. Support the underdog and support the um, support that kind of just entrepreneurial quest. So that was the evolution of Nimbletoad, and the name comes from at the time I was Google. This predates Google, but at the time I was searching around for a trademark, and I did a search for Nimbletoad, and only one um, one search result came up. It was a quote from Wind in the Willows. So it seemed like it was a good, good name, and it was a little whimsical, and we came up with the tagline, most websites are toads. We make them nimble. And now split. 17 years have gone by, and we've kind of really focused niche down into that mental health, mental health, and also training institutes. So it's not we deal with, deal with we help therapists grow from a single practice to a group practice, or from a like a solo practice to a multi location. So that's and then from there, helping those therapists set up training programs and institutes. So we have the pleasure of working with some of the top EMDR Institute, synergetic play therapy Institute, and some some of the better ones, helping them promote their trade, their training programs, and helping them just really just disseminate their message and their story. On the other side is Barrels Ahead. Barrels Ahead. Since I never left the wine industry, it's always been a passion for me, and I just can't shake that bug. So about six, seven years ago, I spun off another agency that still sits under nimble nimbleto, called Barrels Ahead, where we help wineries craft their story to sell more wine direct to consumers and really, just really, the one thing that's similar between the two is most wineries are pretty they don't embrace technology quickly. They really into just making their wine and just doing their craft. So we help add that technical aspect and help them bring that story to a digital
Mark Hiddleson 7:02
life that is awesome. And you're right. I love the way you framed it. In a way, it is across industry that I've learned, and I think it's in the wine industry there's so much focus. I mean, it takes so much energy. A lot of our friends are winemaker, and we just went for two weeks on a wine tasting. I didn't realize it was like a wine tasting class trip for two weeks in Argentina,
Drew Hendricks 7:27
but I would go to Argentina,
Mark Hiddleson 7:30
but there's so much involved in and there's tech in that. I mean, they're high tech when it comes to the science of the soils and the water systems and ecosystems, and then the technology. It's like, well, don't have the bandwidth to figure out the new stuff. So that's a great, a great niche. And the DTC, we do a lot in, in direct to consumer and, well, I think a lot of the markets are shrinking. I think that's going to grow. So, so that's enough. So would you mind saying, and I want to jump back into the mental health thing. I love that. Oh, yeah, you got me excited about Nimbletoad in the mental health because, wow, what a what a need for that. But on the direct to consumer side, say a little bit about trends you see happening or ways that you know things are slow right now. I've heard the wine industry is slow, and I never like to perpetuate that story. But where's the opportunity?
Drew Hendricks 8:26
The story is true. Wine, we are. We are in a downtrend. We are first, for those of us that love wine, the good thing is, there's me a lot of cheap California wine, because there's so much. They planted so much. Yeah, and people are drinking less, but those people that are still drinking are going to have access to this supply of grade, a surplus of grapes. So for 20 years, the industry just kept growing, growing, growing, and now we're in a downtrend, and we're and then I think it's very, very healthy, because there's a lot of players in this game that really have no business being in the game. So if we see a little bit of consolidation, or we see just some people hanging up there, hanging up their hat saying, This is not for me. That's not a bad that's not a bad thing. We need to have it. The industry refocused. And what I've seen the trend being, is that in this is where we're helping people. The wineries is finding the right person, because the people are still there. But we're trying to do. And I have to actually give a shout out to Polly over at five forests. There was a seminar she gave last year at the wine sales convention talking about the shift between the shift between targeting demographics and targeting psychographic profiles. And that's really, that's really what wineries need to grasp. And we've, I've expanded on that, we built on that, and I try to enthuse that, infuse that, and all of the kind of websites and marketing we do. And what that means is, very short, is the last 20 years, we always talked about the Boomers, Gen X, millennials, Gen Z, and we just talk target eight. Groups. But in reality, most individuals transcend an age group you have. We're both Gen Xers. Yet I identify with a lot of the themes and just fun that Gen Z and millennials are having. Conversely, there's a lot of Gen Zs that might be identifying further up. So the idea is really to figure out who, who your tribe is, who your core audience is. And forget about the forget about the age group. I mean, I went to a Metallica concert a couple years ago, and, I mean, the age group spanned the whole gamut. They were there to see Metallica. Metallic isn't targeting 20 year olds, 50 year olds or 60 year olds. They're targeting the people that like Metallica,
Mark Hiddleson 10:42
yeah, and we saw him at bottle rock in the lead singer, he doesn't look like a rocker anymore. He looks like a conservative like contractor. He's got the same haircut as me. He's like, short, clean cut shape, but he's still rocking it like and that was, did you go to bottle rock? Or do you see him somewhere
Drew Hendricks 10:58
else? I've never been. It was, it was down here in South Southland, LA area, okay,
Mark Hiddleson 11:04
yeah, awesome. We just had that last weekend with every year, it's right across the street from my office, so we always go all in for bottle rock. Every year,
Drew Hendricks 11:13
I had a couple colleagues that were there. I saw their their social posts. Looks like a fantastic time.
Mark Hiddleson 11:18
It's a it's a great venue. So, so the opportunity in the Psycho and I love that you're bringing up. I don't know why, but the generational, Gen X, Boomer thing, it hasn't been coming up a lot, but it's come up in our family, and our kids tease us because, like, if I ever can't figure out how to use my phone or do an app or something, he's like, okay, Boomer. And I go, I'm like, I'm not a boomer. I'm Gen X, I'm Atari, um, iPhone. It's like, we had Walkman ghetto blaster. I'm like, Star Wars dump. Gen X, okay,
Drew Hendricks 11:48
I have to push Yeah, I completely agree. I don't want to. I mean, not that I have anything against boomers, but either for a millennial, anybody above them is a boomer.
Mark Hiddleson 11:58
So, so my youngest is really clever. He's 21 so he looked it up, and he looked and he goes, Okay, he goes, so you're 63 to 85 and he's like, Oh, he goes, so you're younger than the boomers. He goes, so you're the baby boomers. And I was arguing with it for a minute, and I realized he knew it wasn't true, but that it was funny, and we just got so that's our family. So what? So share a little bit more. I like the the psychographic because like me too. I'm like you, I like to identify with like, I still look, there's a picture of me when I was 27 and somebody was like, wow, you used to be really different. I looked at that picture, and I feel the same when I was 2728 we psychographic. Well, here would
Drew Hendricks 12:42
be an here would be an example. And this is a different project that we're doing. Um, you figure out your Sophie. I come from the California Surf Skate culture, and I still try to surf as much as I can. Haven't skated in a few years, but also snowboarding, and, you know, lot of live music and stuff. So there's that certain something called California culture. And you go out and you're still surfing. Most of the people in their 50s, they're in their 40s. We're all hanging out where we go to a live band or we go to a skate contest. You see across the board, people have not stopped skating Tony Hawk. He's still, he's still rocking it. There's a psychographic profile, and you might see it in body, in like, 805 beer. It's really they're not targeting any real age group. They're targeting the person that likes to fish, that likes to surf, that likes to skate. That's that tribe. That's the people that are buying 805 beer. The wineries need to start thinking about that without sort of thinking about, why are 21 year olds not drinking alcohol anymore? Or why are or how do we target 40 year olds to make them buy our beer? That's that's the wrong that's the wrong question. The question is, who do we align ourselves with? Because you've got to go a little bit beyond just being a small family on winery or a small local brewery. You need to have some sort of a foundation beyond that, and it's there is the very rare case where you got wine for wine sake, where you're just evaluating the wine and in a vacuum, and then suddenly, that's your tribe. Is the Psalms and the in the people are geeking out on it. But not every winery can fit that tribe. You can't just create a 99 point wine, and have it be a success, most people are in that trying to figure out that 10 to $30 bottle of wine and who to get them to buy it. And they can't just talk about the wine in the glass and the specifics of the vineyard and the event. You need to make the whole the whole wine and experience that someone wants to add to their life, to help them further solidify their kind of lifestyle and who they're presenting themselves as,
Mark Hiddleson 14:47
Wow, and it is in the wine does come with way more energy like so I've lived in the Napa Valley for 27 years, and before I moved here, I was like a Bud Light guy, right? It was either Bud Light and then. I i was bud, like, because then you could look down on the Coors Light guys. I was 26 years old, and so it was, there's that kind of a competition with living here. And I would have never considered myself a wine person. And now it's like, by living here, it's almost you don't have a choice. Like, I've just embraced it. People ask me if I'm in the wine industry, and the question I usually ask is, I'm on the consumption side, which I think is the most important side. And we do do a little bit. We deal with more of a distribution and we help, not really wineries, but their warehouses, their distribution system should be. But what? What are some of the things? The question I wanted to ask you is how, and I can kind of see it. I would love to hear this answer. But how does your background in Greek philosophy translate into figuring kind of some of these things out? Well, it helps with that.
Drew Hendricks 15:54
Well, I actually attribute all the everything I know, or all the skills that I have with marketing and setting up the organizational flow of a site to philosophy, because if you go back to you know, you read, let's just even go back to the simplest case of Plato and Socrates, where you have a dialog, and Socrates walks people through he know, he knows the answer. At the end, he plays dumb and asks a bunch of questions, and the people answer the questions, and then suddenly, at the end, they've realized their own answer. But he guided them. He his his conversation guided them. And that's the core tenet. That's the core that is funnels, that is top of the funnel to bottom of the funnel. In its essence, the idea is when, just like Socrates, when he's meeting somebody down at the Piraeus, and he starts a conversation with them. They're at the top of the funnel. They don't know where they are, and he can't just immediately tell them, This is what it is. He has to guide the conversation down and bring them through it, where they come to that self visualization and marketing is the same way, and storytelling on a website is the same sort of fashion, where suddenly the person, as they go down, it all makes sense, and they've come to the decision themselves.
Mark Hiddleson 17:08
And so that's it's just an underlying flow. And I love it that you say, let's start with the simple stuff. And because that's it is kind of complicated. It's funny, it's the it's the simplest stuff, but it is the Socratic method. I mean, most we learn in, like high school, I don't think most people really get it like, you obviously get it like that's just a pattern of flow of how we communicate developing. You use that same model for developing relationships, right? You get to nobody. You ask questions like, How can we align with our value? Or do our values align? Is this going to be a good time? Do I even like having a good time? Like, sometimes I'm too much of a good time. People go like, Oh, this guy is too far off the map, you know. So what? How does that now? So the same thing, I want to go. So that's a good segue, I think, into the Nimble tote. So as you use that craft, I think in mental health, I think that's really important, because, like, if you're finding a provider, and, you know, I use coaches for everything, and I've hired coaches for my business for everything, the hardest thing it's been for me to do is to reach out and find, like, a mental health counselor. Like, it's easy to find a business coach, or at least for me, yeah. So when you get into that mental health space, which is probably it's the most important, I mean, I would say it's probably the most important, it's the beginning of your physical health. Really starts with your mental health. And it's hard to find, you know, from somebody who's done the exercise. I was shocked, because, like, oh, I can hire a coach, I can do this. I can find somebody. And it's maybe because it's more personal, but but share a little bit about that. How does that Socratic dialog work in that and help?
Drew Hendricks 18:52
Very, very similarly, in fact, there's two, there's two different, two different things. So you've got a mental health. So let's just take couples therapy. For example. Most people, by the time they are trying to go to couples therapy the decisions being made, and they're just really looking for someone to validate their decision, one way or the other, to get a divorce. So people need to understand why they're actually going to couples therapy and what the different outcomes are. But it's also educating. Like for couples therapy, the top of the funnel would be, are you going to go with Gottman style therapy, which would be more of an evidence based, scientific approach, or you're going to go with Imago, which is going to be more emotional? And there's all these different modalities of couples therapy, and the idea is that you're not hiring a therapist. You're, you're, you're finding a guide to guide you through that modality. And the idea for the top of the funnel there is to educate those couples, to make them understand that it's not this one, this one, or that one. There's, there's these different schools of thought, and then, and then bringing them down. So once they've decided that who's the next, who. Is the best person, and then they submit a lead. But on a another level, is the kind of the institute work that we do, and a lot of these modalities, and I call them modalities, different schools of therapy, we'll stick with, you know, a couples therapy, but there's also EMDR therapy, and a lot of these modalities of therapy were founded 3040, years ago, and the in the founders have since passed or moved on, and then they've grown in popularity so much so that if you're a say, You're a therapist just graduating from college and you want to add a something like EMDR therapy to your practice, you don't know all these schools of thought. You don't know the original one. You don't know one from the other, because they're all proclaiming the best, the best, the best. So the idea is to try to take them through that same thought process, down the funnel, make them vendor aware, make them service aware, so that they can make an educated decision on which path they want to
Mark Hiddleson 21:00
go down. That's That's brilliant. And so what you're doing, and to me, is like you're educating your your client, and it's fun. So my my limitation is, I do have the background. I have a master's degree in holistic health education, and so one of those things was taking different schools of psychology. And you know, to me, transpersonal psychology is a way to kind of integrate all of the psychologies, and really all of the ologies and but each one, there's a really famous author called Michael Murphy. He's the founder of Esalen, one of the great quotes, because they posted millions in the original like, Fritz pearls, and they've had Alan Watts as a guest, and earner warhard from S was there. And he goes, the one I've heard him ask, like, what was the one thing that kept Esalen going, kept people curious? He goes, No one ever played Capture the Flag. And that's what you're talking like. Everyone goes, like, well, you have to do this, and this is the best. Like, we've developed it. And it's like, really, none of them are the best. It's like, what works for each individual person, because we're all so different, yeah? So like, I'm looking for someone I want to do EMDR act, and, you know, some other and involve some Jungian transfers, or maybe even so, like, I'm looking for a therapist that has this rainbows. So what you're doing actually helps people figure that out, helping
Drew Hendricks 22:24
the companies that we work help them present their value statement. Very similar to a winery. You go down a wine road and there's 20 wineries. Which one do you pull into? The one that resonates most, it's the winery that presents itself in a way that aligns with what you're looking for. It's helping all the the therapists and the institutes align themselves, so that those people that are evaluating them can see their full story and make the decision that way, versus just kind of proclaiming, SSS, or we're the best, or whatnot.
Mark Hiddleson 22:54
Yeah, it is. I've have that, because there's a lot of things that we are the best in and, like, everybody says they're the best, so it's hard. It's like, well, where's the evidence, right? And I think in therapy, it's hard to point to the evidence. And then another thing that I've, you know, just read the statistics, is, like, it works 20% of the time, or there's some really low like you were saying is because couples go in thinking, like, just justify the decision I've already made.
Drew Hendricks 23:22
Yeah. I mean, 20% of the time it works 100% of the time,
Mark Hiddleson 23:26
right? That's a good way to me, it kind of it always like, there's no way to say it doesn't work. I mean, it just if you've tried something, even if it doesn't work, then it worked because you tried something. And so that's off the table, because a lot of people never try anything, then you get a zero, yeah. I mean,
Drew Hendricks 23:45
I mean, yeah, you go into therapy. And I mean people, we ask this in business all the time, when we're talking to new clients, what does success look like for you? I mean, in therapy, I don't know if you can come in there going, what does well, we want to stay together, or we don't want to stay together, or I want to resolve these on there. That's the underlying ideas of success. But that's not really the focus of what therapy is. The focus of therapy is to take you down that path where you're going to figure out success as you go down that path, because your definition of success is going to change the more you you work through, whatever you're trying to work through.
Mark Hiddleson 24:19
That's a great your definition of success. Because I was just asked, somebody asked me a question, like, how, you know, how did you get to where you were in the industry? And it was like, Well, I started with the idea that I wanted to get here. I wanted to be in the top 1% of the best people with facility, layout, warehouse and design. If I hadn't had that as a goal, I wouldn't have gone through all this stuff. So would you be willing to share a little bit about your journey and what you wanted to create, when you when you created this, and what your version of it was and in and where you're at now, like and what you're looking that's the other thing too. I have a book coming out, so I'm kind of looking for the next five. To 10 years. I've been working on this project for So You had me on two years ago. So what? Yeah, we're talking about it, and it was done. So I've been saying this project took me eight years to complete, and I've been saying that for two years. What that means is that it took 10 years because I thought it was done when I was on yours, because I had a finished manuscript. I get three publishers I was talking to, but there's just a lot of work, and at some of the times, what kept me going is just like I said I was going to do this, whether it was hard or whether it felt good, or like, there were times it felt good and there were times it sucked, but that was a goal. So to share a little bit about with with your companies, and then the success you had, like, what was the original? What did you call it? The definition of success? That wasn't the word you use. A great word for the result, the result you want to create, the result you want to generate.
Drew Hendricks 25:54
Yeah. Well, I think your definition, your definition of success, evolves as you go down that road, yeah, part of the part of where you need to find the fulfillment and the happiness is, it's the road, it's the journey. It's always the journey. There's never an end point, because anytime you reach an end point, there's still a horizon. So you're always, you're always looking towards an official, an infinite horizon. And the biggest mistake a lot of people make is they're like, one day I will have a $10 million agency, then I'm going to be happy, or one day I'm going to do such and such, and that's just a milestone. And the idea is that that's a false sense of success, that's a that's a milestone, that you should definitely take happiness in and consider it a success. But it's not. Most people have this ephemeral idea of success that is attached to a tangible thing, and they're never going to realize that. So mine, for me, my idea of success is if I can, maybe not every day, but most days, if I can finish the day knowing that I actually helped someone, I actually took a business and moved it forward, or helped those people on their journey go forward. I had a good day, and if I can just keep on doing that, that I'm doing what I like. It's solving problems. It's it's seeing other people that are stuck get unstuck by whether it's a website campaign or a marketing campaign, achieve their goals, that's where I get that's where I'm happy.
Mark Hiddleson 27:18
Nice. I love that. One of the things I wrote my book in the marketing pieces. I wrote this book to help people unstick stuckness, because we all get stuck. I mean, like you said, I love the way he said some days too, because it's every day is a it's unrealistic. I read this thing one time that there's a this guy was keeping track of a lot of statistics. He was a scientist, but he was keeping track with good days and bad days of his whole life. And he said there's usually, like, 27 good days for every 23 bad days. Was the way, like, hey, look on the bright side, there's four more good days than bad days. And so, you know, a lifetime, it kind of makes every day okay, or whatever, except it is.
Drew Hendricks 27:59
And I had a lot of thought about that good days and bad days. So I mean, talking to my wife about it, I mean, I have a lot of bad days, but I've kind of pinpointed exactly what is a bad day and what is a good day. And the good days for me is when I can go through the day and actually did what I set out to do. The bad days is when I set out to do something and then I end up reacting to everybody else's stuff the whole day. And I finished the day, I did help people, but I didn't move any of anything I wanted to do forward. Yeah? So as long as I can have more days than not doing pushing what, what I had planned to do, that's a good day,
Mark Hiddleson 28:37
yeah? Because those are the days that you lay in bed like this at two o'clock in the morning. I didn't do this, I didn't do that, I didn't do this. Awesome. So share a couple things. So what? How do you do? You have some ideas, processes, practices you do to keep you from getting sidetracked, because everybody gets saturated, right? There's there's emergencies. And I even went through a phase where, like, I'm really good at dealing with emergencies, so I created a lot of emergency I can come in and save, but then you're living in crisis mode. Is not really healthy. But share a little bit about about things you do or practice or process for
Drew Hendricks 29:13
I try to so people probably can't see this unless they're on video. I'm a big believer in Michael Hyatt, full focus planner of all the digital stuff that I do. You can see them all back there. Yeah, one thing I do is the day before is I write down my big three things that I wish to accomplish. Then I write down all the tests, and we have a full project management thing through clickup. So everything's digital too. But I like that the tangible writing it down, I write down my schedule, and then on the left hand side, there's blank today on the left hand side, every day, I try to do I reflect. So I say I have a section reflect. I write everything that I reflected about, and then I did what I learned. So I have two or three cents about what I learned and what. Change, and so I have three or four sentences on that, and top success, so right at the end is that kind of the daily win, and I force myself to write a full page every day, and that prevents me from going back, or it prevents that cycle of where you start thinking about the same things every single day. Yeah, at least you got it on paper. It also allows you to go back to times in your life when you felt like you were doing a lot more, and read that journal and see what, um, the daily win was like that day, or times that you were like, I used to feel like I did a lot more, and then go back and read and you're like, No, I wasn't. I just hind sight seemed a lot more productive.
Mark Hiddleson 30:39
Yeah, I love that about journaling. It's one thing. That's another thing we talked about. I think before we were on, we were talking about the more we content we create online, whether it was blogs or journals or podcasts to use AI. But before we, before we go in that, I want to say something the journaling process and writing it down. I mean, isn't there something like, I don't believe in magic or anything, but there is something magical about writing.
Drew Hendricks 31:05
It is that pen, pencil to paper, the tactile feel, the fact that it's coming from something that is intangible to tangible on the page, you can't duplicate that by just typing it out. Yeah, typing it out does not have the same emotional and physical release that writing it down does, yeah,
Mark Hiddleson 31:25
and it was as I've read, I've done a lot, there's a lot of research on too, about writing things down. Like, I've geeked out on that, because, just like, I know I'm the type of person, if I hear something's a good idea, I just start trying it, and it's like, well, let's see. I'll do it for 10 days, and you know, the journaling for probably 20 years at least. But it was 24 years, because when my daughter was born, I had this state change of my life. It's like, there's people you try to you can't explain. You
Drew Hendricks 31:50
have kids? No, no, I don't three, three dogs. Yeah, well, then it's
Mark Hiddleson 31:55
hard to explain. But I just when I had, first of all, the radiologist had said it was going to be a boy. So I was expecting a boy, expecting a boy, and then I was in the delivery room, I actually delivered my daughter. Oh, wow, girl. And I just started bawling. And it's like, I'm going to be and now I hear it's like, popular to be a girl dad, but I'm like, for two weeks I was just on a cloud, and I'm like, I have to start writing this stuff down. I mean, because there's no way it's going to last, I'm like, This is great. And I I still have that journal. I can see it. It's right over there. But that, just while she was growing up, I started doing that, and it just evolved. It evolved into taking notes in business, doing stuff like, do you do? Writing things. I have a gratitude list that I write out, but there's nothing I love hearing you settle. But I had somebody I was coaching on time who goes, well, that doesn't work for me. Like writing down, I'm like, well, either it's kind of like the 20% thing you like, right? It might be a 90% for me in a 60 or 70, but like, it just it changes something when you write it down. For sure,
Drew Hendricks 32:59
it does. I mean, all the task lists, there's people that love to follow them, and we follow a digital task list, but there's, there's something that's once removed from you, than to have some actually have the list in front of you that you can actually physically write an X I did that, yeah, versus checking off the bullet point in in clickup, yeah,
Mark Hiddleson 33:19
there is some satisfaction. I go back and look at some of the x's are a lot bigger than the other one. That's awesome. So I'd love to hear because in your business, AI must be changing as a rapid pace. I was surprised. I've been studying it for, like, probably only probably since I got into podcasting. So, like, two years. Share a little bit about what you see and how you're using that to serve your clients.
Drew Hendricks 33:45
It is absolutely just upended the digital marketing industry, especially content marketing, and for that matter, even the way people search right now on the internet. They used to be all go down through the list, but now Google thing they're going to suggest, AI is going to suggest the answer for you. And people aren't even going down to the content. AI is pulling content from different sources and giving you the answer. Okay, I just Googled how to how to build a support wall. I've got to take out a load bearing wall, and I got an AI answer on how to do it. Is it right? I don't know, but it kind of gave me the steps. And I didn't. I knew. I knew enough to have it subconsciously think about it for the rest of the day. And I didn't go down to the to the construction company's blog article about how to do a support wall. When I actually do one, I'll probably go to one, right? But a lot of people are getting those answers, or physical therapists near me, or best flat fee Realtor in California, AI is starting to suggest those answers. So that's just being pervasive, writing that content, but then this whole overflow of content, it it's, it's finding the right content and actually not discounting what AI comes up with. Because if you can, over the course of the last three years, you're now can. To fully feed a full project into chat GPT with every single previous article that was written, and the whole website, all the data. And you train the if you train the prompt under the proper writing style, you're going to get a piece of web copy that is as good as a editor. And then what you then do is hire a we have a human editor that goes in and refines it and make sure that it is is on tone. But what it's done is it's increased the amount of content coming out, through wineries, through just across every industry, by, like, 2030, fold before it was, like, used to be a big deal to publish a 3000 word blog article. Now you can publish one in five minutes if you wanted to. Yeah,
Mark Hiddleson 35:49
yeah, if you've put in, if you have it set up right, and you've put in, you and I, like, I talked about with the like, I've, I've used it to upload podcasts and then ask chatgpt to write, do a write up on the pot. Like, that's how I used to write mine all out. I turned myself in for that, and then I thought they were pretty good. That's my thing with with AI emails, and now I'm using it on emails. Like, only the people who listen to this podcast are going to know it. But I just think, Oh, I'm a writer, you know, I can write this better when I have I think it's Gemini. One of them's just hooked up to my Gmail account, and they'll say, Do you want any suggestions? And depending if it's a good day or a bad day, it's Wow, it's, this is better. It just automatically pauses it, and I can't that's really more. What I wanted to say was that
Drew Hendricks 36:33
it's, it's, it's becoming pervasive, like, I'll hammer out an email, then I'll put it through chatgpt make it, make this clearer, and say it better. And then I'll give it through a few revisions. Then I'm going to go, then I go paste it into Gmail. Then Gemini adds their three cents on to what it's supposed to be. Oh, yeah. And then then Grammarly is telling me, nope, nope, nope. That one's not good. Do this one? So now I've had three, three versions. It's there's like, too much, right? But each one takes it down the path and there's a human that's making a judgment call. Yeah? No, I actually wanted to say that. No, I don't want an M dash like the funny thing is, chat GPT loves to put that M dash in everything. Then you paste the email into Gmail, and Grammarly hates em dashes. They're going to turn every m dash into a period or a comma. So I don't know it's we're there's a little bit of an AI war going on with how content should be written. But beyond con, beyond content, though, I do want to say that AI has done tremendous work in the wine industry for like, helping identify and like nurture club memberships. Like you can use an AI agent to and we're using agents to analyze club membership, to figure out who might be at risk of leaving the club, who might want an A down seller upsell, and then send that list to someone in the someone in the tasting room who who maybe can make 25 calls that day, because it's a slow Day, and try to just say hello or say just want to see how things are going and keep that nurturing contact. So then AI is a valuable tool on that to to help, to help the humans run their winery better and identify issues. And then
Mark Hiddleson 38:16
if you get that phone call, it's more of a human touch, because we're getting texts from the wine clubs were involved in, or some of them sometimes phone call. The phone calls a nice touch, especially today, and especially if it's something you want. Me, most of the ones we're involved in we want. We had one. It's funny, we did have one. Winery called us the next day. We it was kind of a fundraiser thing, and people had a lot to drink, and they said, like, three quarters of people who signed up didn't really want to sign up. Are you sure you want to sign up? And my wife laughed, and she loves like, No, we really we like winery. It's, I should mention them, it's Reynolds. It's a small family winery, and that's kind of how we've connected with the people. And we like the smaller brands. Like, it's great, the ones people have heard of, like Camus and silver oak or whatever. But we love kind of, like you were saying the niche, the small entrepreneurs building something, you know, really cool. So what
Drew Hendricks 39:16
I'm gonna go 111, more story about AI and a funny use case that I heard. So I just came back from the commerce seven Developer Day, and somebody mocked up a model of how it might be used within so commerce seven is a wine point of sale system. It's what we use to sell wines online. It's also used in the tasting rooms, and they're big on having an app store and bolting things on. So one of the developers for commerce, seven, integrated commerce, seven with chat GPT that was then linked to the the consumers profile page. So imagine yourself in a tasting room, and imagine you're working behind the taste room. They can't always have the most quality. They have qualified people, but you. You walk into the tasting room, the person behind the tasting the person behind the counter, needs to figure out some way to identify with you. They can pull up the list and based on the age, psychographic, demographic and tasting history, the this prompt will then suggest to three or four intro, Intro statements to say to the person,
Mark Hiddleson 40:22
wow. I
Drew Hendricks 40:23
mean, it does that lead in conversation that you can also tweak it to say, like, if it's a Gen Z, it'll like, throw out some Gen Z comments that you can like,
Mark Hiddleson 40:32
I don't know what they mean. I that's the other reason my son calls me a boomer is they have these word things that they say or I say, by accident. They're like, Dad, you don't realize that means something else. Now, something else. Like,
Drew Hendricks 40:43
I thought it was, it was, it was a fantastic idea, because so many times we go into the room, it click with some people, but a lot of times it's just awkward. And the person behind the counter, they need to be empowered to be able to interact, because once they get the conversation going, it's usually flows nicely, but there's you need that kind of Kickstarter, and to have that, that kind of tool behind for tasting room managers, will be very powerful and help get their their team
Mark Hiddleson 41:12
up to speed quicker. That's brilliant, because that's one of the biggest complaints I hear about the Napa Valley. And now there's other like the foothills, as a growing of California foothills has a growing Washington, Oregon State, Southern California, and people will complain most about the Napa is the tasting room experience where they felt like they were being talked down to or
Drew Hendricks 41:33
that Napa's got a huge issue. It's riding on the fact that it's such awesome wines coming from there. Yeah, they're, they're, they need to pivot if, if they want to continue, I and I'll say that very boldly, you need to be able to purchase a glass of wine and not just sip. Most people when they're deciding to go out, most consumers, I mean, people go travel the world to go to Napa and have the $200 tasting, but every other wine region, if you're going to go to a winery for the day, you're usually going with a group of people. Well, probably only half the group actually likes wine. The other people maybe don't like wine. Maybe they're just they want to do something, so the winery has to offer something for all the people in the group. Otherwise, they're going to pick a different place. They're going to pick some place, like a brewery that has cornhole, that has soda, that has pizza that can accommodate children, whereas a winery standing up in a tasting room and having three sips is only going to resonate with the true wine geek.
Mark Hiddleson 42:35
Yeah, who wants to be put down? But one of the wineries I love, and I was, I wasn't on board at first. I've been here 27 years, and we had family from Arizona. They're super like cowboys. They're not wine, but they're in Napa. They wanted a wine taste. And my wife, well, let's go to visa tui. I was like, that's the one with all the limos and picnic and target like, that's always packed and everything, like, let's go to and but we ended up going right, because any time my wife ever said something, I took her advice. And there's a reason. It's packed. It's awesome. It's like you said, they have an awesome Deli. They don't put you down. It's a culture. And I had the chance about five or longer. I met the president, Tom Davies, and he, like their culture, is his DNA, like the kind of person he is, the kind of atmosphere they created. And it's just like a magnet. And people go and they have something for everybody, like they have a BuJo lay my Tina from Arizona loves we send her a case every year. But they create the experience from the moment you get there, you're not being put down, but you're not being put down, but you're like, put on a pedestal
Drew Hendricks 43:44
and lifted and that's they're creating an experience that people can latch on to and want to belong to, versus just the Wine, wine just out of context, wine in a vacuum is one of those issues, or wine in A wine in the context of someone, someone else's really fancy mansion, where you feel like you're tasting wine in their their their private little testament to themselves, yeah, yeah. Or a friend of
Mark Hiddleson 44:11
ours, Dave Brown, they have a root cellar. They call it a root cellar. And on the outside, it just looks like a hill with grass and like there's some old tools and kind of a crappy, wooden, old door, and then you open it, you walk inside, and it's just amazing cave. And you look down like 200 feet, and you see all the glasses set out, and there's this awesome chandeliers and tables all just in the side of a mountain that look like nothing. And then it's got this cool underground,
Drew Hendricks 44:37
oh yeah, no, that's, that's a great that's, that's, I mean, that's a perfect example of an experience. The counterpoint to that would be tank garage, winery that has its whole other psychographic profile. They're, they're up in Napa and doing just some incredible things with identifying with that kind of California culture.
Mark Hiddleson 44:56
So we're getting close to the end. I want to, I want to keep going. I. Got to think of my final question I usually like to ask, like, about a morning routine, or if you have new technology you're using, but I'm really curious, like, what are you working on? Like, what's driving you right now? Like, what's what's motivating you to to charge boldly ahead.
Drew Hendricks 45:22
Really, a lot of it has to do with the with AI agents. And we have a another sub company called a to my which is AI driven, human powered, or AI powered, human driven. I've got my own tagline. The idea there, the idea there is using that same sort of logical structure that you would find in philosophy, in building AI agents to actually take, take an intake flow. So we're working on one of the biggest things in the medical side. So that idea is building these not products, but building these systems that can be, like, ramped out. And that's where I'm finding a lot of the key things that that's what's getting me up in the morning to do that. We're doing a like an AI intake service for a malpractice firm. And when you run an ad, and we're working with another agency that when we're running an ad, the people call up for thinking that try to get candidates for this class action, they may have to a human usually has to interview 200 people before they get a lead that's legitimate to add to the class action. Now, an AI voice agent can take them through the same sort of questions, score it, and then send the lead that they make, so they can easily scale up and the the actual subject matter isn't what it gets me, but it's like seeing the agent actually go through that kind of Socratic dialog is what really kicks gets me going. I mean, it's not, I'm not making a virtual Socrates, but making a, um, making some just following that dialog. It's, it's incredible. Wow. That is,
Mark Hiddleson 46:59
and that's one of the things, because one of the big concerns, concern I've heard this in conversations to people who are using is that people were thinking, AI would lack empathy, but it seems like it's built in that it's more empathic than the regular humans, because it doesn't have its own stuff to get caught up in. I mean, it is, yeah,
Drew Hendricks 47:17
oh, I've completely found that. And the other big pushback that I get, especially in the health space, is like, Oh, our patient data. We're aim to be HIPAA compliant. We need to we need to be sure that nothing is ever said that's incorrect, that could be in violation. Well, think about who they're hiring at their front desk. They're going to be someone in their early 20s that is taking intake calls that may have the human condition, may ask a question that they don't know, that they shouldn't ask, or may give a comment, or may give a prognosis, just because it's in our human nature to help, the NAI agent can be put on rails, and you know, it's going to remain HIPAA compliant.
Mark Hiddleson 47:55
Wow, yeah, I never thought about that. That's the you want, the human in health care. You want that human element that's to me and like healing, that's the most important part. But you're right. We also make a lot of mistakes.
Drew Hendricks 48:05
Yeah? I mean, in an extreme case, it's someone calling up a therapy office, and they're they're clearly about to do bodily harm to themselves, right? And they need to call 911, and it to a human it's very easy. You should do this, but then the person says, but I do that, but I do that. And then suddenly the human starts kind of doing a mini therapy session on the phone, which is completely contradictory to what actually needs to happen,
Mark Hiddleson 48:30
yeah, especially if you're the receptionist and not the doctor. Yeah, wow. So those are some great man. This has been awesome. Drew I fun time. Yeah, I can't wait. I think you're gonna love me the themes you've said you're gonna love my book. Yeah? So I put you on the list to get an advanced copy, so you should have got an email from the publisher, but,
Drew Hendricks 48:56
oh yeah, no, I've connected, and we're I'm waiting for my copy, ready to read
Mark Hiddleson 49:01
it's awesome, and then we're going to connect again. Thank you so much. This has been awesome. I knew it was going to be good, but it was above my expectations of this is really cool to connect again
Drew Hendricks 49:12
like this. Yeah, this is awesome. Thank you so much.
Intro 49:15
Thanks for listening to The Tao of Pizza Podcast. We'll see you again next time, and be sure to click Subscribe to get future episodes.
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