Building Brands as a White Label Agency with Ozzy Garner

Chris: Welcome to We Built This Brand. I’m Chris Hill, your host, and today on the podcast, I’m talking to Ozzy Garner. He is the founder and CEO at Advirtis. And I just had such a good conversation with this guy. We really hit it off, and I really enjoyed talking to him about being a parent, being an entrepreneur, and what it means to start a business from scratch in the middle of a pandemic because that’s always a good idea as we’ve talked about to other people.

Apparently, the pandemic was just entrepreneur Central, if you’ll remember our Zack Roskop conversation or some of the other folks that we’ve talked to, you know, starting when you have a kid or starting during the middle of a pandemic—or both—tend to be a great time to start a podcast. I don’t know what it is, but it’s been fun. And this conversation with Ozzy was fantastic.

Advirtis, they are a white label marketing agency, and they do a great job of being able to help small agencies be bigger than they are and to achieve goals and to support their marketing teams with additional marketing resources, paid advertising, and things like that. So, I definitely think you’ll get a lot out of listening to Ozzy talk, I really enjoyed this conversation, and I think we should just dive in. Here’s my conversation with Ozzy Garner, founder and CEO at Advirtis.

Chris: Ozzy, Welcome to We Built This Brand.

Ozzy: Hey, thanks for having me, Chris. I’m excited to be here.

Chris: Yeah man, it’s great to have you today. We connected kind of randomly through LinkedIn.

Ozzy: Yeah, a little bit [laugh].

Chris: [laugh].

Ozzy: That tends to be the place I typically connect with people. For whatever reason, I live there, I guess [laugh].

Chris: Yeah. Normally, when we get those kinds of connections, I’m like, “Is this a real human? Is this a real person?” But thankfully, you were and this has been, it’s been a real pleasure to get to know you and your business, and so I’m excited to talk to you today. So Ozzy, we’re here today to talk about Advirtis and how you got to where you are today, and I’m really excited to have this conversation. So yeah, let’s just dive in. Tell me about where this company got its origin.

Ozzy: Yeah, that’s, I mean, the ultimate question [laugh]. When Advirtis was born, it was kind of near the end of 2020. You know, I was a corporate executive for a life safety company, but was also an investor, whether it be an equity partner or an angel investor in other startups. And, you know, I’m also a father of three kids and a husband, and in all these different variations of your, you know, work-life balance, if you would. And so, I was like, I would really like to start my own company and really tried to determine how [I 00:02:33] can help as many business owners as possible.

And so, you know, at the end of, you know, 2020 if you would, we were stepping into a unique—well, everybody knows about what that time was like for—everybody has their own stories there, but essentially, you know, we were building the company to serve an audience that were like, “How can we serve as many people as possible?” And so, we found that marketing agencies was a great place to be, but it’s a saturated market, and it’s like, “Oh, you know.” So, we had some agency owner friends at a time working through these other startups and there was a common problem across the board, and essentially we found that white label was going to be a really good solution to that problem. And the pro—you know, essentially, we decided to build a company to serve marketing agencies. And at that time, it’s the beginning of, you know—the end of 2020 the beginning of 2021.

Everybody knows… great resignation, right? That’s, like, that’s the hype of the industry. In the marketing specifically, it hit really hard because a lot of people could work remotely, and they decided, well, I’m going to go work for myself on Fiverr and Upwork, right? So, we just decided from there that we were going to start a company and help these agency owners find quality talent and deliver on this work, essentially.

Chris: That’s awesome. I mean, I know coming from working and building a business through the pandemic myself, that like, you know, finding people to help fill in those gaps as an organization can be a challenge. And I’ve definitely seen some folks be impacted by that great resignation, on both sides, you know, people choosing to leave, but also, you know, businesses where, you know, people choose to, you know, leave the company, and now the business owners having the problem, not the person, you know, leaving. So.

Ozzy: Exactly. And it’s interesting, too. It’s like, you know, when you’re leaving and doing all these things, for me in my entrepreneurial journey, it was trying to find intentional focus in what I was doing. I realized, like, “Hey, I’m a father, I’m a husband. I need to have a work-life balance.” And at that moment in time, I was really just trying to figure out what am I doing? Like, I was doing too much. I was running in red all the time and having no intention behind it, basically. I was just kind of throwing things at the wall to figure out what was going to stick.

And I finally realized with purpose—you know, I’m a Christian, so in purpose, I—you know, the way that I like to do things is I serve first. And so, for me when this idea came up to help other marketing agencies, it wasn’t just helping, you know, one business, it was helping two businesses with one service essentially. And for us, it was like, okay, we’ll do the work for the marketing agency, make them the hero, and you know, do all this hard work of the heavy lifting part of it for the fulfillment, and there you go [laugh].

Chris: That takes time to build. And you mentioned wanting a work-life balance. I say this kind of tongue in cheek, but becoming an entrepreneur is not normally what we associate with work-life balance, so how did that translate when you got started?

Ozzy: Oh, that’s a great question. You know, work-life balance is kind of what you make of it. And I always treat entrepreneurship as it’s a lifestyle. It becomes part of your life. And so, you know, you’re not the only one doing the work here. Your wife and your kids are also doing the [laugh] work in some sense, right?

So, the question to me and the way that I like to answer that, essentially, is that, you know, with intention. So, everything that I would do—that’s the best part about being an entrepreneur. You get to go for walks with your family, but also in the process, you get to solve problems in those moments that maybe wouldn’t come to you naturally while you’re sitting at a desk, right? And that’s the power of intention. So, you know, basically all that to say, diving out of that corporate life, diving out of all those investments, and putting all my focus into one thing, it really kind of multiplied the energy and the effort put into Advirtis when we launched because the intention, the intentional focus, if you would.

Chris: I could definitely see how that makes a difference and an impact and, you know, the benefit of being able to, you know, focus on family when you need to, and you know, not have a boss coming to you going, “Where are things at,” you know, I can relate to that so much. I mean, just yesterday, I was thinking, “Ozzy, we might have to reschedule again,” because my kids were home from daycare for two days in a row. But because of where the business is that for us, like, I was able to say, “Okay well, I know where I need to focus, and I can watch the kids and my wife doesn’t have to take time off of work, and we can make this work with family and everything else.” But yeah, having that freedom to do that, like, there’s a tension there, there’s a frustration with it because it’s like, I need to get work done—

Ozzy: Right.

Chris: But there’s also a great joy in that, you know, my kids will never be this young again. I’ll never get the chance to go and play with them and spend this kind of quality time with them. And if I was still in a corporate job, I absolutely would not be here right now. I’d be trying to figure out, like, can I take him to my office? Will my boss let me? And, you know, how am I going to deal with all this? And how many vacation days do I have left? And yeah, I totally, totally [laugh] empathize with that.

Ozzy: Funny because a lot of people will always see the hype of the entrepreneur where they’ve got, you know, the nice cars, and they’re driving around, but they don’t see the car seats in the back with, you know, the candy in the floorboard or whatever it is. And to add to what you’re saying, it’s really nice to have the flexibility in our time to be able to take our kids to daycare, to school, and go to soccer practice, and all these cool things that, you know, that’s the freedom we get to be a part of. And not every entrepreneur gets that, and I understand that, and one of the reasons why we built the company [laugh].

Chris: Yeah. I mean, I know at least personally, I spent the first, you know, the first several years, you know, really building it from the ground up, I was really heavily involved in the production and editing side, and as it grew, I found ways to move out of that, and you know, build it into something better. So, that’s really cool. And I’m sure you’ve felt the same as you’ve gotten started. So, thinking back on those early times, you know, when we talked the first time, you mentioned, spending a lot of time in the business and getting it started in the past few years, and finally getting to this place that we’re talking about now. You know, what were you doing to grow your business early on? Like, did you have investment funds that you could use to, kind of, float until the business built enough or were you bootstrapped? Like, how did you start?

Ozzy: I love that question. Bootstrapped all the way [laugh].

Chris: Nice.

Ozzy: Well, it was actually a risky jump, you know, leaving a corporate—a comfortable corporate job while also putting all my eggs outside of those baskets of investment, basically pulling out of everything I invested in—

Chris: Wow.

Ozzy: —and to say, “I’m going all in. I’m going all in to Advirtis,” and I kind of just follow that path. And so, we bootstrapped it. And with that—you know, at that time, that intentional focus—going back to that—I was doing so much in those years leading up to that in my journey of becoming an entrepreneur, I had learned time management like the back of my hand. Like, I had studied time management for years, and I still do, by the way because that’s what we have to do.

The best way to be the most productive is to multiply, right? Everybody has the same amount of time. And so, you’ll see that, actually, in the brand itself. And that’s one of my favorite things about Advirtis and our company is that you see that culture kind of formatted around all of our personalities, especially the founders. But essentially, to get back to the point, it’s like, I was heavily involved in one-to-one sales in the very beginning of launch of the company.

When I left that corporate job, I went all in, and I think we were doing, like, 6k in MRR at that moment. Like, it was like, ugh, it was so scary. And I wasn’t going to pay myself anything until we got to this, like, 50k in MRR, and I was like, “We’re going to do this. I’m going to do this in, like, few months, and we’re going to do this hard.” And anyway, so learn, you know, over the years of how to manage, you know, our time and multiply ourselves by using automation and learning AI before AI blew up to what it is today, and so leveraging these types of tools in the market with your tech stack, et cetera. So, we made some investment upfront in our tech stack, but the majority of it was just hitting—dialing for dollars. Is that the word? [laugh]. Is that the phrase?

Chris: Yeah.

Ozzy: And learning the problems in the market and creating, you know, what we call is that million-dollar offer, basically. And, you know, the way that we partner with our agencies—to break into white label, it was really difficult because we were compared to a lot of overseas white label agencies, and you know, we’re just not that. Like, what we were offering, we didn’t even realize it at the moment, but it was a premium service. It was like a done-for-you model and, you know, it was really highlighting this fact that agency owners needed help not just from a fulfillment, but from a business development from, you know, retention, all of these variations. And so anyways, we decided, we were just like, we’ll become a done-for-you model, a premium white label agency. And anyways, all that came about from the one-to-one sales and being heavily involved in creating process around what the needs were in the market.

Chris: Yeah, I think process is often overlooked with entrepreneurs. They just, they want the business to work, and they go into it, and they make it about their ego, and they make it about their personal brand, and they try to build this thing up, and then you get to a place where it’s like, “Well, I am doing all this work myself. What’s going on?” And building process is the outlet for the off-ramp, if you will, for that, I think.

Ozzy: Yeah. There’s a great book that I read, it’s called Buy Back Your Time by Dan Martell—

Chris: Read that this year.

Ozzy: Oh, really? Okay.

Chris: Mm-hm.

Ozzy: Yeah. You know how he talks about creating, like, basically a playbook of how you create process and then pushing that out to your team. And that really helped me a ton in Advirtis, honestly. You know, every single position in our company that we’ve hired for, Zack and I—the other founder—we have done [laugh]. So, it was very—in the first year of launching, him and I were very involved in the day-to-day, very involved in ops and in business development, et cetera. And so, how do you multiply that? You know, you have to kind of—there are so many cool, neat tools out there now that you can use that weren’t even around just a couple years ago. So, like Scribe and Loom videos and all these neat things that are coming about. It’s great [laugh].

Chris: Yeah. I’ve got Scribe on my plugin list as we’re chatting right here because it’s a neat program, and being able to do that and have it automate the way it does, I mean, it’s crazy. But yeah. I—we use that at HumblePod, and I think that book was really, really encouraging for me because it was like, “Okay, I’m already doing some of this, but man, this could get us so far.” It was a good book, it was a solid book for anybody looking for that. We’ll make sure that’s in the [show notes 00:13:28].

Ozzy: [Then to 00:13:28] add a little piece to that, talking about, you know, setting up those playbooks, he talks about driving from Canada all the way down to the US and using an old school camcorder to record himself, someone was recording and [laugh] take notes while he’s driving. That was great. It’s like, there’s so many better tools now you can use. But I agree, it helped me a lot in my journey of—a lot of entrepreneurs tend to do this, but—and I see this, especially in the marketing industry, but a lot of them say, “Well, I can do that. I can do that. I can do that.” And you’re like, “Well, you’re one person, so—” [laugh].

Chris: Yeah. And when you’re doing everything, you just get ground to dust. I mean, it’s hard. And it’s hard having to do everything. I mean, it’s nice to know that you can do anything in the business, but you shouldn’t do everything in the business. That’s just you—if you’re growing a business, that’s not how it should work.

Ozzy: Well, you’re an entrepreneur. You’re building a business to give opportunity.

Chris: Exactly, exactly. That’s a very rewarding part of it, too. To that point, like, what were some early successes that you had with this business as you’re building a brand, you’re building an image, you’re dialing for dollars. Like, what was the first one that made you go, “Man, we have an opportunity here. This is not just a dream, this is a real business.”

Ozzy: A couple of things, I think, really were huge pivoting points in our company. One was finding really good talent. That’s a really hard thing to do in startups is finding talent that believe in your mission and believe in your brand and what you’re trying to achieve. And in our industry, in what we do, it was kind of an [untapped-in 00:14:55] market at that moment because of the style of how we were approaching it. And so, finding a team of people to join us in scaling the company, that was a huge success point for us.

And hiring is probably the most difficult thing when it comes to your business, and finding good quality talent, it can cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars. It’s a huge investment. But when you find the right people, you know, it’s amazing, and it can really set the pace for your culture and for the brand itself. That would be one thing.

And then the second, I think, just solidifying what we built. When we—we actually met with a really large marketing agency nationally—and I can’t say their name because we’re white labeled for them—but [laugh] essentially, it was interesting to see that they had a need for what we’re offering, and to hear their pain points, was exactly what we built the company around. And it was just to hear that from a company who’s doing, you know, $200 million annually, and they need our help, it was like, “Wow, we do have something here.” And to be able to join forces with them and integrate our team into theirs and help them through selling these, you know, services through paid ads, et cetera, and then being on these calls with these people who have sold millions of dollars worth of stuff, and just to be there in support them while also managing that work was just, like, so rewarding for that team that we had created. It was just, like, that moment in the company where we’re like, “This is it. This is what we built this company for.”

Chris: That validation you get from having that first win of like, “Oh, wow. This is something. This is real.” And yeah, it’s just always a good feeling to me. I don’t know, every time I have something like that come up, it feels the same for us. But that’s awesome, man. That’s really cool.

Ozzy: We had a really interesting one happen recently. We partner with this agency out of the Netherlands, and he decided, like, last minute to bring this account on, what ended up becoming his—it was his best friend’s business just starting out. And he had never been an entrepreneur or business owner in the past, this client, and it was a chiropractor firm out of the Netherlands. And he wanted to do Google Ads, and he put a lot of trust in—you know, in a startup, investing in marketing is a big deal because it’s a big gamble, right? Like, you know, it’s a lot of money that maybe you don’t have up front.

And so, they decided to go all-in, invest in some Google advertising. Within two months, they decided to quit their full-time jobs. And our team was a part of that success to be able to make them feel comfortable enough to go all-in to their business. And that’s a huge move. That’s—to be a part of that growth and to see people’s dreams coming true through the work we’re doing is just everything. That’s so rewarding.

Chris: And I think that underlies another important point, which is, you’re serving people, you’re helping other people get what they—achieve their dreams, and it’s a more intrinsic value than just making money.

Ozzy: Exactly.

Chris: And I think, like, you know, if you don’t have that focus, like, that can be a real hindrance to you as a business because you become very self-focused on what the business can do versus, “Oh, I’m here, and I’m helping these people quit their jobs and get financial freedom.” And yeah, that’s just a—man, that’s just a really cool thing to be able to say. So.

Ozzy: Thank you. Yeah, and to be honest, like, that’s the reason we built the company is for those reasons, you know? With marketing agencies specifically, agency owners, you have different types, right, but the majority of them, the hiring is kind of—it’s a saturated market, there’s a ton of hiring opportunity out there, but a lot of it is so saturated. You don’t know what’s good talent versus what’s not. It takes a lot of time.

And then you’re investing in that, right? So, you’ve paid a salary of 60 to $80,000. That’s an $80,000 investment in your business, and you’re taking a risk, whereas you can partner with a company like ours, you ha—we mitigate all that risk, right, we have that on our team, and you don’t pay us until you have a paying client. Like, it’s just you alleviate overhead, you alleviate the risk mitigation factor there, and then you have quality talent that’s doing the work on your behalf, under your brand. Like that’s—what more can you ask for, right? And—

Chris: Absolutely.

Ozzy: —that ‘Buy Back Your Time’ principle, you’re the owner, you don’t have to be in the day-to-day. Like, you rely on us. And so, to me, that was the whole principle of being able to find these agency owners can finally breathe a little bit, and they can buy back their time. Now, they can spend more time with their family, and they can scale their business up a little bit more and feel the feeling of success without feeling like they have to be everywhere in the business, right?

Chris: Just in full disclosure to the listeners, like, we’re starting to work together some, and some of that value that you all bring to what we do is just that: it’s the fact that, you know, we’re specialized in a very specific area, but we get random requests for marketing. And marketing is within our area of expertise, but like, paid advertising and the things that you all cover, like, we don’t have experts in that. For me to go out and hire an expert in that, it’s 60 to 80,000, at least, you know, for those experts, and then you got to have a client that’s willing to invest a budget in that. So, being able to rely on you all for that and to know that I have the safety net here for us is really huge. So, I totally get what you’re saying.

Ozzy: It’s neat how, in the industry itself, like you know, when we partner with an agency, you’re basically adding five more people to your team. And that could cost north of $200,000 a year, you know, in overhead. And so, the value there is, it’s really, it’s amazing to see these agencies scale as quickly as they do when we do partner with them because of these value points. And we really got launched at the beginning of 2021, and last month, our team achieved over $40 million in revenue for all of our partners and clients combined, and—

Chris: That’s awesome.

Ozzy: Their clients. And it’s like, you can’t get [skill set 00:20:56] like that at the price of free [laugh]. So, it’s like, what more could he ask for, you know?

Chris: Shifting topics a little bit into the branding of the business. Advirtis: where does that name come from?

Ozzy: Oh—

Chris: Advirtis. Sorry, I said it wrong [laugh] again.

Ozzy: That’s okay. That’s all right. So, Advirtis came from basically this—in the very beginning, we were debating on just running—just doing advertising on Google, just Google Ads, pay-per-click. You know, Zack and I were kind of going back and forth, and I was like, “You know what? Let’s see what’s out there available first before we try to make decisions.”

And Advirtis really stood out because it’s a made-up word, the brand itself, like, we—because it’s a made-up word people want to know what it is, so they’re going to search for it, right, so it’s a really easy way to get that organic traffic. And it just kind of pops at you. So, we were like, “Well look, marketing, right? Marketing.” [laugh]. So, we decided to go with it. I’m glad we did. I really am. I like it. We actually debated with it—spell it with the E—the A-D-V-E-R—but we decided to go with the I because that’s different.

Chris: It’s definitely different and definitely stands out. And when you’re positioning a business, you want something that stands out in the customer's mind. You’ve positioned yourself as a white label agency and I feel like we’ve talked about this a lot, but just kind of want to reiterate again, like, why did you do white label as opposed to being Advirtis, just going out and selling marketing services to other organizations.

Ozzy: So, white label to us, it meant that we got to serve more than one business with the same service. So, when we partner with the agency, we’re helping them scale their business, but when we partner with the agency’s client, we’re helping them scale the client’s business as well. And for us, it’s all about servant leadership, so we’re making that brand look really good. So, for us, it’s, we’re helping our partners rise and that’s everything for us. That’s literally why we did it. And everything else just kind of molded as it was formed.

Chris: That’s great. I like a ‘rising tide raises all ships’ model. I think that win-win mentality is very good for business. So, what makes Advirtis stand apart from other white label agencies?

Ozzy: Kind of going back to the model of it’s a done-for-you model. So essentially, what we did was when we found this problem, a lot of problems were laid out—most agencies have outsourced some capacity over their years in their venture. And, you know, for us, there was a lot of problems when you first started a white label agency. One was communication barriers or culture barriers or timeline expectations and things, and the quality of service was always affected by one of those three. And so, we decided, like, what if we come in and help the agency set those expectations with the client?

We help set the expectations, so now we’re talking about building market strategies with their own market data for the client. We don’t charge anything for that with our agency partners; it’s part of our partnership. We want to help them sell. Well, come to find out, marketing agencies—just being candid—they’re not really great at client acquisition. There’s just not. Like, it’s just part of it.

And in the reason why marketing industry itself, the marketing agencies, they typically get a lot of business word of mouth or referral business. Which is great. I mean, that’s wonderful, but when we launched the business, we were cold. We did everything cold; it was more one-to-one sales, getting out there, talking with the agencies and learning about the industry and learn about their problems, et cetera. So, we kind of mastered—and obviously Zack and I both from our other startups we were part of, we got into cold and so forth.

But anyways, we come in, we help sell for the clients, we bring them new business, help them bring new business in—that’s part of the partnership—and then we maintain that business through paid ads, SEO, web development, we do all the work under their brand and then basically help set expectations for retention to keep that retention going. Because in marketing and in our industry, retention is everything. So, we do everything from point A to point Z, and then you have the can consultants on your team. So, we’re helping consult on the accounts to make them better, to help you upsell into new, you know, opportunity, et cetera. Lots of—basically, it’s that win-win mentality that you’re talking about.

Chris: So, you said that retention is everything. And I have seen throughout my career, that’s something that marketing agencies, like, being on both sides of the coin, I’ve worked for organizations that deal with marketing agency relationships and managing the operations of that, and then I’ve also been in smaller agencies that have been, you know, working with clients. And it’s easy to forget, like, why am I paying this much money for you? So, the fact that you all are doing that, I think, is a big value to the customer because it allows them to say, “This is why we mattered. This is why we’re important. We drove this much business for you. Don’t forget that.”

Ozzy: [laugh].

Chris: “We’re not just an expense here.”

Ozzy: Well, and add to that it, you know, in the retention side, there’s no better person to talk on what’s happening in the reports and in the account than the people who actually are doing it, right?

Chris: Right.

Ozzy: And so, that support is really important for the relationship, not just with us and our partner, but also the partner, us, and the client. Because most of the time—and most marketing agencies understand this—the client, they hired you to do it for a reason. They don’t really know what they’re doing in this, in marketing. That’s why they hired you. So, for you to break that down in their terms, it’s really important. So, we try to be very mindful of that and not get into too big of the technical weeds of what we’re doing, but also tried to educate. And so, I always tell our teams and our partners, like, we’re not in this to sell, we’re not in this to retain, we’re in this to educate. That’s it.

Chris: So, as you look at the market today, as you look at the industry, like, what is top of mind for you right now? What developing things you are looking at Advirtis and everything else? Like, what are you guys looking at there, as far as the industry goes?

Ozzy: Everybody talks about the scary acronyms of AI, right, in the marketing industry. And I’m an optimist. I actually think it’s going to do really great things. And there’s no better time than now, honestly, in the industry. And so, what that will allow us to do—I think, personally—is kind of what I told my nephew years ago when he first got his cell phone. I said, “Look, man. This device can be used in two ways. It can be a distraction or it can be a tool. Which one do you want it to be?”

And I think that AI, it’s a really good, you know, metaphor for how we can treat AI. And it’s not going to do a hundred percent of the job, right? You can leverage that. And so, basically what I’m getting to, the industry itself, I think, it’s going to become—AI is going to be married into the industry and I think that’s going to really help everyone get back to the bare bones of why we all go [into 00:27:49] business anyways: it’s to do things like this where we get to talk, and we actually strategize together and get to use our brains in a different capacity versus being in the weeds of every little detail of everything, right? So, I think, as far as where the industry is going, I think we’re going to get—increase our tech stack [laugh] and I think that that will allow everybody to get back to the more important things in building relationships and helping everyone build their business to be successful and buy back their time through these different tools, right?

Chris: Definitely. And I could see how that—especially for what you all do—becomes a very useful thing to leverage. I mean, even within paid ads, it’s very helpful to be able to say, “Okay, I’m going to use ChatGPT to create, you know, different variations on these titles and these keywords and things.” I could just—I already understand how that is helpful, and I can imagine for you all, it saves time and builds a lot of extra productivity into your day, I guess.

Ozzy: Definitely. Definitely, and it allows you to try to get a foundation of ideas and then kind of capitalize on the best idea. And what I always kind of look at it as a tool. It’s like, it’s a starting point and then now I have this opportunity to scale into what I think is the best idea and then test those few ideas out, right?

Chris: So, as you look at the future of your business, not just AI and the future of the market, like, what do you see on the horizon?

Ozzy: To be honest, we love working with marketing agencies, I want to continue to help these agencies scale. So, on the horizon, we’re looking at partnering with more agencies and scaling our team internally to fit the process that we’ve created now. I guess we’re at the point where we’re looking to expand more. So, we’re looking to partner with more agencies to help them in their scaling and help more clients in general. That’s it. And at the end of the day, like, if I help a business, a person—I should say, a person—in their business scale to buy back their time, to spend more time with their family, to bring them closer to their creator, than I’ve done my job.

Chris: That’s really cool. Definitely a laudable goal. Definitely a laudable goal for you. So, definitely [commend 00:30:06] in that. And we will—we’ll chat here in a minute about where people can connect with you, but before we close, we’d love to just ask you what brand are you really, like, admiring right now?

Ozzy: Yeah. Yeah, no, I love this question, Chris. This is a good question you ask.

Chris: Well, thank you [laugh].

Ozzy: [laugh]. You know, I’ve thought about this a lot, and I’m kind of a little biased on this brand, specifically because, you know, we’ve actually helped build this brand. We don’t do a lot of branding work, but this one was more of a passion project. And the company’s name is Coconoats, and the founder’s—it’s based in Maui—the founder is a Christian. She really puts a lot of energy into this company and, you know, what it means to her and what she’s trying to accomplish of giving Maui back, to help them rebuild Maui and all these different variations.

Like, the brand itself is so fun. Like, when We Built This Brand, it was neat because there was animation involved, we use a topography map of Maui in the color schemes and like, all this variation stuff, but the whole point of working with companies and brands, like Gretchen really stands out to me because she means what she says, and she’s executing on that within her brand. And it’s still a startup. Not many people have heard of it. But—

Chris: What is it exactly?

Ozzy: Oh, yeah, yeah. So—I should have said that, right [laugh]?

Chris: [laugh].

Ozzy: So Coconoats, basically it’s little granola bites. So, I grew up backpacking in the mountains of the Appalachian Mountains, you know, Smoky Mountains, out there near you.

Chris: Same here.

Ozzy: You know, my dad would always toss me, like, one of the generic, you know, major brand bars—I’m not going to say their name—and I would just be like, “Is this dog food? Like, this is terrible.” [laugh]. And it’s—hers is actually a really great product. It’s a really great quality, it’s made out of the honey there locally, and it’s just, it actually tastes phenomenal. Like, the brand itself is cool, but the product itself is even better. I’m just going to say it [laugh].

Chris: Nice.

Ozzy: One of the reasons why I love business is—and working with different types of brands; we work with a lot of different types of brands—is because you see the personality in the brand itself of the founders, of the people running the business, the culture. And so, her company’s specifically has always stood out to me because her culture, she puts a lot of energy into the brand itself and what she’s trying to achieve with that. And she’s a Christian-owned business, and she really stands behind that. And it just reminds me of why I do this, you know? Working people like that.

Chris: Sounds like I guess we could go online and buy from her on her website or something. We’ll make sure that’s in the show notes, too. But that’s really neat. I’m glad you didn’t say, like, Tesla or something like that. Not that would be a bad answer, but like, it’s very specific. I love how specific that is, and you know, elevating your own clients, I think, is really cool. So, that’s awesome, man.

Ozzy: Yeah. And I mean, I have big brands that I like, I admire—

Chris: Oh sure.

Ozzy: —and I follow, too. But, you know, I like what Alex Hormozi is doing right now, and I think, you know, with his brands and with acquisition dot co—I like that stuff, too. But—

Chris: Yeah.

Ozzy: —either way, I still think that, you know, hyping up a smaller business to me, is more important because, you know, again, it kind of gets back to the roots of why we all do this anyways. And those larger companies are great, don’t get me wrong, but I still love a smaller brand. It’s just something that it’s like… stands out [laugh].

Chris: Yeah. There’s that personal touch to it that makes it more intimate, more valuable. Yeah, I hear that. So, awesome. Well, Ozzy, thank you so much. Where can people find you? Where can people find Advirtis? Tell us: how can they connect?

Ozzy: So, you can reach out to me on LinkedIn, you can find us on our business page on LinkedIn as well, and obviously, on our website. Check out our website. There’s tons of videos of me and Zack, so just a pre-warning there [laugh].

Chris: [laugh]. Ozzy, thank you so much for coming on.

Ozzy: Yeah. Thanks, Chris. Thanks for having me. It’s been a good conversation, and I like what you’re doing here. So, thanks for having me.

Chris: Appreciate it. Take care.