Storytelling, Algorithms & The Future of Community

Tom Nixon (00:01.516)
Welcome everyone to the final episode of season two of Bullhorn’s Bulls Eyes. Curtis, this is it. Have we been renewed for season three? Do we know?

Curtis Hays (00:13.229)
Well, we’re garnering sponsors right now. I think we’re gonna get some support for season three. So, so long as we get that support, I think we can put together another set of episodes.

Tom Nixon (00:16.462)
Excellent.

Tom Nixon (00:26.414)
Well, you heard the man. So if you’re interested in sporting, contact us for sure. so you and I have been looking back at season two and even season one, but season two was kind of a heck of a season. just went down off air, rattled off some of the guests that we’ve been able to get on this season. And I dare say it’s kind of a who’s who list of heavy hitters in the marketing industry.

Curtis Hays (00:50.742)
I would say also in the theme, so people are gonna be listening to this episode, it’s we’re gonna be a week past Thanksgiving. We’re recording here right before Thanksgiving. And so in the theme of Thanksgiving, I would like to put out gratitude to these great guests for coming on our show. We had some bestselling authors on the show, some, I’d say some big hitters in marketing who…

you know, gave up some of their time to come on and talk to us and share with their audience things that they’re seeing. Our biggest by views was Mark Schaeffer, who’s like going all in talking about AI right now, but from a very interesting angle. And so I think he’s striking the chord with a lot of people in the marketing space and what a treat it was to have him on the show.

Tom Nixon (01:31.862)
Yeah.

Tom Nixon (01:43.52)
It was two time author. Yeah, so I think he may have gone all in on AI. I don’t know, because he was thinking, you know, a lot of what I love about his content is he thinks out loud kind of in his newsletter, and he was basically thinking out loud whether he was going to write a book using AI and initially thought, no, that’s a dumb idea. I wonder if he changed his mind, though, which you sent me that book in the spirit of gratitude. Thank you. I’ve gotten through it.

Curtis Hays (01:43.91)
And what did you say? He published two books in like two months?

Tom Nixon (02:11.539)
all about AI and the human experience, how it’s re wiring our customers. That’s very interesting reads and very valuable. Go out and check that out as well.

Curtis Hays (02:20.892)
I’ve got it on audible and he speaks in it. It’s fun to listen to him. You know, tell the stories. He’s a good storyteller. Yeah.

Tom Nixon (02:25.364)
He’s got a very dulcet tone.

Well, that’s one of the key themes of season two. our very first episode was storytelling and authenticity. And we kept coming back to this idea of storytelling. And that’s one of the things I think, as I look back on 2025, it’s something that maybe sounds old school, but I think there’s a renewed emphasis on it. And we’re seeing it even with our clients, because we are both big advocates for storytelling techniques. Not always I say,

I always say, you know, less boring selling more storytelling. And of course that sort of rhyme. So I like it, but, um, we’re seeing this even, I mean, you and I were in a meeting today with a client that, um, we partnered with on doing some videos and they aren’t commercials. They aren’t come by our product. They aren’t here’s what, you know, do discount this week, hurry before supplies run out, any of that stuff. Um, and it wasn’t even a testimonial video. It was, it told the story and.

You shared some, I thought some amazing analytics numbers on how long people are watching the promoted paid placements for those videos.

Curtis Hays (03:37.823)
Yeah, I think it was, was it 36 seconds of a 45 second video was the average watch time. Average watch time, right. So, you know, you’ve got, right. So you can skip after six and they’re getting to like 36. And you, but you had a great reason why I thought your line was perfect. And you explained why. Do you remember what you said?

Tom Nixon (03:43.573)
Average. Right.

And people can skip after six seconds, right?

Tom Nixon (04:00.64)
Well, I thought it was because the the art commercials and they tell a story and when the story starts right away, it engages you in the outcome. Well, you’re to want to see how the story ends, right?

Curtis Hays (04:12.732)
That’s exactly what you said. People want to see how the story ends. You’re not trying to sell me and I picked that up in the first six seconds. The idea is to catch somebody’s attention and carry them along so that they see the end of the story, right? It’s why people watch like a fishing video, somebody going to, because they want to see what they caught, right? Or right? Yeah.

Tom Nixon (04:16.354)
They don’t care about you.

Right.

Tom Nixon (04:34.796)
Right. Or does it get away? Right. Yeah. So, and I think you just need to extrapolate that out metaphorically into a broader sort of marketing approach, which I think, will bear more fruit as we go forward in the age of AI is if you can tell stories, real stories with real people that are going to engage real viewers because they have real interest in the genuine outcome, you’re going to capture more people. think then.

AI slop that is just trying to get you to click a button, buy a product or whatever.

Curtis Hays (05:07.39)
And we’re going to do more of this in 2026, aren’t we? So I think we experimented. Well, you’ve been doing this for a long time, but in a written way. And you’ve brought me along for the ride now. And we’re starting to incorporate, as you said, some of this into video content for our clients. And would love to be able to do some more of that here in 2026 and see where that goes. Heck, the podcast here is a form of storytelling, isn’t it?

Tom Nixon (05:36.686)
Yeah, because we’ve had clients come on or, um, you know, Mario is back for his fifth appearance and he had a story to tell just last week. Um, but going back to applying the same approach, if you strip it all down to what makes a great story in the written word, what makes a great story in the video format, it’s still why, how, what, right? It’s still like, there’s a struggle. That’s the hero’s journey. It’s the, all right. There’s a struggle. Somebody’s been called to.

some sort of duty or action. And then we get emotionally invested in our, are they going to solve this problem? And then ultimately what’s the outcome? And so why, how, what it works every time.

Curtis Hays (06:15.774)
I had no idea. So I heard somebody recently I told you about I saw on a podcast marketing guru 30 some years experience and he had this line that most people in marketing he thinks that they don’t truly understand what marketing is until they hit about year 15 in their career. And I’m at about year 15 in marketing. I’m pretty close to that mark.

Tom Nixon (06:37.422)
Hmm

Tom Nixon (06:41.442)
Mm-hmm.

Curtis Hays (06:44.454)
And I’m just starting to get it thanks to you. So I was like very relatable that what I thought I was doing is marketing. I feel like was, was a lot closer to sales. We’ve talked about that, you know, lead generation and conversions on websites and those types of things. It’s so much of the marketing comes way before that awareness and interest and just, just reaching people and connecting with people and this empathetic side. And you know, there’s.

Tom Nixon (06:47.438)
.

Tom Nixon (06:55.018)
Yeah.

Curtis Hays (07:14.75)
There’s not a whole lot of empathy in the thought process that all you’re trying to do is get a sale.

Tom Nixon (07:22.162)
That’s exactly right.

Curtis Hays (07:23.824)
Right? So, and aren’t the best salespeople usually empathetic?

Tom Nixon (07:28.853)
absolutely. Yeah.

Curtis Hays (07:30.726)
So it’s like, don’t you know that Sandler training we use now, know, use that in your marketing and your thought process and marketing.

Tom Nixon (07:39.106)
Yeah, and Sandler’s, you know, trying to uncover pain. And if you’re trying to uncover pain, well, you’ve got to A, listen, right, which a lot of poor salespeople don’t do. And then B, be empathetic. So you can recognize when that pain’s being authentically expressed. And then, you know, the sales, Sandler sales trainer will tell you to lean into that and sort of pick at the scab. But to your point, before that even opportunity presents itself, I think the smart brands are the ones that

Demonstrate that empathy in their marketing, which again goes back to why, how, what, which you speak at a high level in awareness all about the people’s why, you know, what’s motivating them, what’s causing the pain, strife, whatever, or do they have wild ambitions, you know? There’s a why there. And if you can understand what that is and you can speak to it, then you’re going to get more people invested in the story you’re trying to tell going back to that. What are the other key themes?

Curtis Hays (08:33.19)
Mm-hmm.

Tom Nixon (08:37.728)
Ever since this came out, I wasn’t even expecting it. We were in a conversation with somebody. Maybe you can remember again. I remember what they said. I don’t remember who said it, but somebody coined the three A’s and it was attribution, algorithms, and arithmetic. And that stuck out as me as like both opportunities and both present problems attribution for sure, which we’ve

discussed, but algorithms was a key thing that hit me this year. And I think it’s only it’s because it’s only gotten worse where there’s this algorithmic gatekeeper between me say or us and the audience that we’ve already built and earned, right? It’s like I’ve got some group of following on LinkedIn say, but there’s an algorithm standing between me and the people who have said, I want to hear what Tom has to say.

and as a content creator, that’s very frustrating. as a content consumer, it’s becoming equally frustrating for me because I go to say Facebook and it’s the same 10 Yahoo’s in my feed at the top all the time. And that’s okay. I like those Yahoo’s, but like I’m following thousands of people. How are you only giving me 10 people, the same 10 people every time I log out of Facebook? And it’s gotten to the point where I hate to say this as a creator and a consumer, I’m seeking other options.

It’s like this is gotten to be stale. And so I think a big challenge for me for brands and I want to hear your take is what do we do then if these algorithms have become so tedious that they’re no longer tolerable then what?

Curtis Hays (10:23.058)
Yeah. Well, I think the algorithms have focused mostly on outcomes, right? So the algorithms are being trained on outcomes. So if your outcome is a sale, a purchase, a lead form or something like that, and then you think about top of funnel type content, like thought leadership or storytelling that we’re talking about here, if that doesn’t lead to those outcomes,

Tom Nixon (10:32.418)
here.

Curtis Hays (10:51.546)
Inside of what we would call the attribution window. Let’s just take Facebook for example seven day attribution window Alright, so if you’re using the new Andromeda Advantage plus campaigns you need like 50 conversions in a seven day attribution window Now you could put your conversions as views and it just optimizes for views in that specific campaign

But if your business goals are purchases or those types of things, it’s going to favor the ads and the campaigns that lead to those types of things. So I mean, I think there’s pluses and minuses to this. think in some cases, depending on the type of content, it’s taking, or depending on the type of business, it’s taken some of the guesswork out of what we have to do as marketers in order to build the right

campaigns and sort of create that journey. We’ve talked about that journey being nonlinear and that it can go off in a lot of different ways. And so if we could just come up with a hypothesis or if we could just create content that might be possible journeys and we just put that all into a central place within the platform and then the algorithm figures out the right order and that journey, it’s going to probably do a better job than what we can manufacture it on a whiteboard. And we’re seeing that.

Tom Nixon (11:51.086)
All right.

Curtis Hays (12:14.436)
actually play out successfully, both in Performance Max as well as Andromeda. I think LinkedIn right now is trying to figure this out and they haven’t yet. And it’s been a real struggle over on LinkedIn.

Tom Nixon (12:16.802)
Yeah.

Tom Nixon (12:24.844)
Yeah, I think.

I think so. Yeah. And I think they’re about to roll something out. It might be old news by the time people listen to this. But you mentioned one of the avenues. So if the algorithms are throttling your organic content, then one of your options is to pay for the reach that you thought you had already earned. And I think that’s one of the key messages. And this is not groundbreaking news or anything, but it’s like, all right, this is.

Here to stay. And there are, have been ways in the past. And, Brian Clark alluded to one of them being engagement pods as a way to artificially boost your own, own organic content. think those windows are sort of closing. So you need to be strategic about how much of your budget, if it’s not sweat equity any longer, how much of your budget are you going to attribute to paying for the reach that you need to get? then inside of that is the thing that you just unpacked, is

There’s a whole new way to do that and you got to get more sophisticated. The AI will be hopefully your advocate and your companion in endeavor. But the old days, again, quoting Brian Clark, the golden age of organic reach is gone in large.

Curtis Hays (13:37.823)
Yeah, it is. Yeah. It’s difficult, let’s say that, you know, to get the organic reach that a lot of brands used to be able to get. You got to work really hard. You know, I think Gary V said he has like 32 full-time staff members that are purely in charge of his social content. You know, it’s not Gary who’s like holding up his phone recording himself and he’s posting, right? 32 people.

Tom Nixon (13:43.854)
Mm-hmm.

Tom Nixon (13:50.86)
Yeah.

Tom Nixon (14:06.188)
Right. That’s just for, that’s for us commoners, right?

Curtis Hays (14:09.628)
Yeah. So, you know, people are asking this, I got a full-time job. I, know, I’m trying to do this and this and this. How am I supposed to be able to, you know, find time to create that?

Tom Nixon (14:20.206)
Yeah. Yep. So, um, I don’t know if there’s a trend or a takeaway from season two you want to hit on. I’ve got a couple others, but, uh, but wait before we maybe we segue off to that. No, I will put a pin in that. I will hold. Is there anything looking back at 2025 season two, um, that sticks out as either a common thread or a particular aha moment?

Curtis Hays (14:46.069)
You know, well, AIs was definitely, we mentioned was a hot topic. know, Mark Schaeffer, talked about, you know, really how to leverage AI from a marketing perspective, adding your own sort of touch of humanity with whatever you’re doing with AI. And then we had on Jesse with SuperWebPros, I’ve gotten a lot of feedback that

You know, that was more of the technical part of AI. I think there was a lot of acronyms, I think, in that episode. MCPs and APIs and A2A protocols and all kinds of crazy stuff. But you know, the future. Yes, it sure was. Not to be confused with the Sesame Street, letter C episode. Yes. So I, you know, I think that…

Tom Nixon (15:29.578)
It was an alphabet soup episode. like to refer to it.

Tom Nixon (15:38.03)
That’s right. See what’s for cookies that day.

Curtis Hays (15:46.751)
The future is quite interesting and everyone’s trying to, I don’t want to say predict, but figure out what the next year or two years is going to be, particularly when everything speds so fast this year from, there, you know, you’ve got maybe five big players in the AI space as far as the agentic models go. And it seems like.

Every week, one of those five is coming out with some new feature functionality. It is this race to whoever can put together the best, LLM and be the most helpful. It is really hard from a business decision to sort of make a decision because it’s changing so fast. You can, I made some investments in AI this year and I feel like that was just three months ago and it’s already outdated. So that you can’t even keep up with the technology right now.

Tom Nixon (16:40.322)
Yeah. Right.

Tom Nixon (16:45.122)
It’s amazing. And like you said, even those players trying to leapfrog each other, I think I’ve been fascinated by the fact that Apple is lagging so far behind in this area. And it’s hard not to wonder if Steve Jobs were still running the ship where they’d be in nothing against him, cook or maybe it is. I don’t know, but they just they’ve got they’re getting outpaced so quickly. And what’s going to happen to one or two things is that that could really be trouble for Apple, although they’re

Curtis Hays (16:54.322)
Yeah.

Tom Nixon (17:14.238)
iPhone sales are through the roof right now. Or what they’ve done in the past is they could take some massive leap that we don’t see coming. They’re working on something and they come out with it. It’s like when the iPhone came out and everyone was looking at their Blackberry saying, what? Why would I want this ugly thing with the buttons? So that’ll be interesting to see, you know.

Curtis Hays (17:22.003)
Mm-hmm.

Tom Nixon (17:38.339)
I wanted to go back to to pick your brain. So we mentioned, you know, with algorithms and arithmetic and attribution getting more challenging. One of the ways is to to overcome those is to invest some some budget and this is not either or because I still think you need to keep your organic strategy in place. You can’t abandon that completely. But then the third rail, not the third rail, the third Avenue is to go out in going back to

Own the land, right? Is this, we’ve talked about the dangers of building on rented land and, the, the, the benefits of it, but I feel like this is something that we’re going to look at in 2026 to kind of pull back the curtain just a little bit is how can you build something that is algorithm free to, for the most part and that you own. when, you know, LinkedIn decides to change the rules tomorrow and you’ve invested all your chips in there and now you’re like,

Now, what do I do? That’s portable, right? And so I think that’s going to be not only incredibly important, but I think it’s going to start to become increasingly attractive to brands. Again, the golden age of organic being done. think people are going to look around and say, I know I have to stay here because my audience is here, whether I like it or not. But what else can I go out and build for myself? So I’m curious if that was a signal you took from

the themes in the season.

Curtis Hays (19:09.116)
Yes. It’s something I noticed. I don’t know if it was so much from the themes. I think we got a little bit from the themes, but the more that we’ve been marketing our own podcast and we’ve been putting out content, the more that I’ve seen that we’re what we’re up against, I guess. And I’ve had three times in the last week, I’ve had somebody email me with a request or just corresponding with me.

And making a side comment, Hey, I caught this episode on such and such, or Hey, I’ve been following, you know, nice work, whatever. And I had no idea that they were, you know, so we’ve, we’ve talked about this concept of lurkers before. And I think that part is really frustrating for me. I feel like the numbers lie a little bit, like the actual views and view times aren’t accurate. In, in Spotify, I was looking at the numbers.

Tom Nixon (20:06.296)
Yeah.

Curtis Hays (20:06.494)
In YouTube, I’m looking at the numbers and I’m like, these don’t really match what other people are telling me. And I really just want to have that list. And I want to know that when I send that notification, people actually receive it. So we’ve been doing emails through LinkedIn and I was all hot on this a year ago, right? Yeah. Right, the newsletter, the Amplify and AIM newsletter.

Tom Nixon (20:26.958)
You newsletters? You mean newsletters, yeah.

Curtis Hays (20:34.91)
And so we asked people to subscribe on LinkedIn because it’s so much easier within the platform to do that. And we could syndicate and then I’m pushing out the newsletter and it doesn’t end up in people’s inboxes. And I have no visibility to know why. There’s nothing in the platform that could tell me. And so, but if I had a HubSpot or MailChimp or I don’t know if Substack does this, I could actually see, oh.

My email did get delivered to inboxes. I had a 40 % open rate. People actually clicked. I don’t even care to know who, just that there’s actual delivery. And I think that’s been the biggest frustrating thing for me this year is putting so much work into this and want to serve and make sure that our audience gets to see the content, but I’m afraid they’re not.

Tom Nixon (21:15.651)
Yeah.

Tom Nixon (21:29.39)
Yeah. And if they are like you’re getting anecdotal signals that they are that you’re not seeing. Like I said, that’s frustrating too, because I used to pour over. I had an email newsletter years ago and I used to pour over every single open report and click report. And it was not because all right, I saw so and so open this email three times and clicked on two articles. So now I’m going to stalk them and say, hey, do you want to buy? Do you want to hire me? Because you’re loving my content so much. I think that’s maybe a mistake that people make. But

just having the visibility into it is an encouraging signal to say this is at least doing the first thing, which is awareness. it’s hopefully obviously it’s doing the second thing, which is interest, because those are self opt in clicks. If I’m doing my job right on the content side, then that should be moving them into desire from there. Now it becomes a function of sales, as we’ve mentioned in the past. Right. So.

Curtis Hays (22:20.434)
Mm-hmm.

Tom Nixon (22:26.116)
I agree. And you mentioned substack. think that is, something I personally want to pursue next year. and maybe even for this podcast. So stay tuned for that.

Curtis Hays (22:41.244)
I’m excited. I have an account on Substack. I’ve subscribed to a few things on there. I wouldn’t say I frequent Substack very often. I think it’s untapped in many ways. And I don’t know, maybe there’s something there. I guess we’ll dig for some gold and see if we find any.

Tom Nixon (22:47.854)
.

Tom Nixon (22:52.686)
I’m the same.

Tom Nixon (23:02.818)
Well, what are their big selling points? If you could call it that is that they call it algorithmic algorithm free, which sounds really appealing. It’s actually better than that. It’s sort of to kind of make a long story short, they have skin in the game. If you start generating revenue from your newsletter. So the only thing that their algorithm is going to do is try to increase the exposure or your content to the right audience.

because they got skin in the game. That sounds really good. Instead of the algorithm throttling your content back, it’s going to try to get it out in front of more people who they think are genuinely interested in your content. that sounds like a business model for me. I signed it up literally. Well, I already signed up, like you said, but now I’m going to put my chips in, I think a little bit. So.

Curtis Hays (23:53.907)
Yeah, you said something to me that was interesting and I feel like is accurate. You know, the platforms want to keep you in platforms, so they penalize you if you’re sending people out. And that’s maybe part of the algorithm that throttles us, could be, that if people are clicking to go watch the episode in YouTube or go listen on Spotify and they don’t stay in the platform, then they just lost that.

user for that session. Now they can’t serve them ads, they can’t do anything else. At the same time though, I feel like social media is conditioning us, if that’s the case, and they’re awarding people who stay in platform, what did the users do? They just sit there and scroll. And we’re just becoming mindless attention, I don’t know, what’s the phrase I’m looking for here? We’re just…

We’re like bots ourselves, just scrolling. Yeah, looking for, you know, to get us out of boredom or something like that. And there’s something to be said for long form content. Like people are surprised that somebody can sit through a three hour Joe Rogan podcast. It’s like, well, it’s obvious people do. He continues to produce three hour podcasts. And I think people are learning from that. And so,

Tom Nixon (24:50.815)
times yeah

Curtis Hays (25:17.97)
I know people watch our shorts, but it’s not the shorts that I want them to consume. That short is really the gateway to the long form content where we have the opportunity to have a guest actually educate them on a piece of content and they can learn. And they’re not gonna learn very much in a 30 second short. So.

Tom Nixon (25:39.503)
Agreed. Yep. I think I would love to believe and I do believe what you said is, is true. I think it’s going to take some time. I even heard my kids talk about how this quick hit adrenaline, tick tock universe is starting to drag on them and that they’re seeking opportunities to have more enriched long form type of experiences online. I now

Time is a finite resource, so that means people will be doing fewer things if they’re doing longer versions of those things. So, and I think that’s what we’re going to see in the next, say, five year window is I think people are going to gravitate towards it. Maybe they’re already doing this deeper experiences with the types of content that they have deep interest in as opposed to what you said at the beginning, which is just the scrolling mindlessly hopes up. catches my attention. How much?

content goes past your eyes, but not into your brain. And I think what’s the value of that? So again, that might be old man Nixon, you know, shaking his fist at the clouds, but it might be, there’s something to that. The human brain is either, is not wired to process the way information, information, the way we are currently. And so do we, we, we, do we rewire our brains or do we take it back to its natural state? I think, and I hope

And I know for me personally, I am going to consciously make that effort. I’m going to get, you know, listen to longer podcasts, spend hardly no time on acts, which I was a huge time suck for me in the last five years, because of that very reason. So what does that mean? Now let’s just suppose that I’m right or you’re right. And we’ve observed something that is going to be the trend content creators need to think that way then. Right.

And they need to create going back to these longer form immersive stories that aren’t just looking for a quick hit sale, lead gen adrenaline hit attribution, blah, blah, blah. It’s like, all right, let’s, let’s build an audience. Going back to what Brian Clark said in his episode audience first. Right. So, um,

Curtis Hays (27:51.037)
Yep, yep. And like you said earlier, have it be story driven so that people want to see the outcome. And there is an art to that. There is an art to that, you know, putting together a piece of content that has an arc where, you know, you can, and every movie has it, right? The beginning, the middle, and the end. And that hero’s journey.

Tom Nixon (27:58.158)
.

Yep. Yeah.

Tom Nixon (28:12.824)
Roof.

Do you ever find yourself binging a show that you had no intention of binging? So we just, my wife and I just last night watched the last three episodes. like three hours and 45 minutes of content on a 10 episode story that we have been watching for probably three months. But all of a sudden we got so invested going back to that into how this turns out. We couldn’t put it down. We couldn’t walk away. We couldn’t hit escape. We couldn’t hit skip on the plate. Right. So

That’s the, that’s the trick to affect the storytelling. And that’s also the trick again, I think that’s boring selling more storytelling is going to be the theme going forward. And if you want to know what show that was. Well, we should, because there’s right brain and left brain applications for this. Yes. That’s show, by the way, it was department Q if anyone’s looking for a recommendation on Netflix.

Curtis Hays (28:55.356)
Maybe, maybe we should teach people how to do that or you should teach people how to do that on this podcast.

Curtis Hays (29:05.927)
All right.

Tom Nixon (29:15.33)
So they’re our sponsor for season two or three rather their season two. so what else? So any other key themes or observations as we look back on a really fun season two.

Curtis Hays (29:17.848)
you

Curtis Hays (29:29.958)
It was fun. I think there was just getting out of themes. There were some fun conversations we had. We had a great conversation with Ginny Dietrich, inventor of the peso model, and a little bit of storytelling there was how I purchased, went through the process in an attribution window of buying a gas can, did buy it, changed my life. Love it.

Tom Nixon (29:55.01)
Yes.

Yep.

Curtis Hays (29:59.359)
Absolutely love it. I’m going to have to record a video of it.

Tom Nixon (30:00.759)
What caught your eye? Do you remember what caught your eye initially? How you got into the attribution window? Trying to remember.

Curtis Hays (30:07.122)
Yeah, was a Facebook ad and it was a video and it was the simplicity. They showed the application of how it’s used that solves my specific problem.

Tom Nixon (30:21.346)
So they lead did the pain. told a little mini story, right? And they showed a happily ever after. And you were hooked.

Curtis Hays (30:29.564)
Yep. Yep. Yeah, well, I went and watched a few other videos just to confirm. I did a little research just to confirm it was, I wanted to make sure it wasn’t too good to be true. And then I did wait for a coupon and I was, and there was a specific color I wanted that never did come in stock. I wanted to match, I wanted an orange one to match my Kubota orange, but I ended up going with Hunter green with an orange cap.

Tom Nixon (30:34.456)
Yep. Of course.

Tom Nixon (30:43.63)
Yep, little life hack for you.

Tom Nixon (30:54.03)
That’s

Curtis Hays (30:59.484)
So I know those are diesel, right? Because you can’t mix up, when you’re on the farm, you can’t mix up your diesel with regular gas. And so you got to use different colored gas cans for that. But no, it was revolutionary. The first time I used it, I mean, no more finger pain, no more awkward trying to hold the thing above the tractor for five minutes, the whole thing drained out in like a minute. It was amazing. It’s like, where have you been my whole life?

Tom Nixon (30:59.694)
There you go. Yeah.

Tom Nixon (31:07.211)
Understood. Yep.

Tom Nixon (31:24.546)
Did you, when you were, when you were in the shopping phase, did you consider other brands or products, competitors?

Curtis Hays (31:33.038)
Not really, no. I don’t even think I looked.

Tom Nixon (31:37.198)
That’s how you market before the sale, right? When you understand the pain and you’re the one that can clearly articulate that not only do you understand the pain, you empathize with that person experiencing the pain and you’d like to guide them away from it, you’ve got that customer already. You’re not on the bid list. You are the vendor. So now it’s just negotiating price. So you did a little research, right? And then you said, all right, it’s not too good to be true. It’s worth X amount of dollars. Let’s go. And even if I think if you’re in the B2B world,

Curtis Hays (31:40.286)
Mm-hmm.

Curtis Hays (31:55.73)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Curtis Hays (32:04.018)
Yep.

Tom Nixon (32:06.976)
That is, I think the mindset that you need to have is that you’re doing marketing now, not for a sale today, but so that when the right person comes in market tomorrow, they’ve already eliminated the competitive field. It’s you. Right. So that story was told in a seven day attribution window and we had a happy ending.

Curtis Hays (32:19.528)
Yep. Yep.

Curtis Hays (32:25.374)
But that was a fun conversation. We had a fun conversation with Janet Tyler, who goes way back with you. then it ends up turning out, I knew her as well from a previous life. And we had cross paths at one time. We had a fun conversation about the disruption of AI, what’s happening with agencies. And in the middle of the episode, you guys got me really thinking about

Tom Nixon (32:39.362)
That was, yeah.

Curtis Hays (32:54.418)
family businesses. And, you know, I posted this here recently, a clip of it, but it’s stuck with me since then and thought about it a lot of this. My children, speaking of children here and wanting to get off social media and those types of things, my kids don’t want to go to college. You know, and I remember in the 80s and 90s, like that was everything, right? You go to college and then it’s like, where can I start my life? I’m one of four kids, all of us left, small town, Illinois.

Tom Nixon (33:17.474)
Yeah.

Curtis Hays (33:24.21)
Two ended up in California. One was in northern Wisconsin and I ended up in downtown Chicago and then here in north of Detroit, Michigan. None of us stayed home. My kids, and I’m hearing this from other people, their kids want to stay home and they want to learn from mom and dad. What do you guys do to make money? What’s your business all about? Hey, you know.

Tom Nixon (33:34.316)
Yeah.

Curtis Hays (33:48.627)
What do you think about me learning that? And could I learn that without putting $150,000 into a college education? That more and more people, I think, are thinking about that. And are we going to re-enter an age where kids don’t leave, that communities stay close tight? We can work remotely if we need to.

probably a lot of the jobs you had to be in person are going to be replaced by AI if you went off somewhere. And maybe it does become more financially viable for you to stay in the family business or to start a family business. And that’s what I’m thinking about now based off what my kids want to do. I don’t know we start a family business because they’re not interested in marketing. I at first was like, hey, maybe I could get them in the marketing, but they’re not in marketing.

Tom Nixon (34:33.09)
I mean, yeah.

Tom Nixon (34:40.246)
Yeah, but that’s interesting though, because that appeals to you as a father too, right? To raise your kids in a family business. I’m the same way. I think I’ve kind of shared sort of my idea for doing something similar, but it’s interesting because of AI. Do we need and this sounds horrible, so I fear that this is true and it’s not entirely great, but do we need to learn?

facts. Do we need what used to come out of a typical college education? Now, if you’re going to be a doctor or a lawyer, yes, absolutely. But you need to learn how to learn and I learned more on my first day in PR, right? When I got thrown into the fire that I did at four years of college in terms of what my career was going to be, right? I had no design and that’s what I’m doing now. You know, I got into marketing, you know, by

chance, right? So, it’s interesting, especially now at AI, we don’t have to memorize things, right? I mean, we still should be studying history so we learn from it, but we don’t need to know what, you I don’t even know what year the war of 1812 was. So, I’d have to ask chat GPT, right? So, it’s interesting, but I think there’s business opportunities, family business opportunities for things that humans can uniquely deliver.

And my idea is, think that, so it’d be interesting to see what you and your kids come up with. Now you have one on the horizon. Is she seriously considering not going to college?

Curtis Hays (36:19.954)
Yep. Yeah. mean, so she would still take online classes, not from a college, but in a specific skill set. So she’s considering health, like her mother who’s in, Stephanie’s in health. And Stephanie over the last couple of years has gotten some certifications that you can do online. And so Brooke is thinking of starting that and seeing if she likes it. And then if she does,

Tom Nixon (36:29.122)
Interesting.

Curtis Hays (36:49.158)
She could continue that path. Like you just said, you know, in health doctors, you know, certainly we’re going to need trained professionals. So this isn’t a skill that she’s going to learn from chat GPT or something like that. She needs to, she still needs to learn the skills, but the skills are offered in the training. Many now are in apprentices. So she’s had two offers already. I believe two, one for sure. We’ve already talked to one physician who has a functional medicine practice in Utah.

lives on a farm and he has an apprentice apprenticeship program on his farm. So how cool is that that you know people can sorry I’m having some problems with my camera here for some reason. People can go and visit the farm and learn from him. They don’t go visit they actually you know live there stay there and he he trains them. But then they learn more than just

Tom Nixon (37:44.428)
Right, yeah.

Curtis Hays (37:49.727)
you know, health and wellness from a body perspective, they learn nutrition and raising animals and growing food and all these other things that are part of that cycle of life that we really should all know about and our ancestors knew about.

Tom Nixon (38:07.126)
Right. Yeah. Fascinating. Well, I will tell listeners that this young lady is brilliant. So if you think she’s trying to get out of college because she doesn’t like to learn, that is not the case. That would be the case with my son. But so that’s fascinating. So anyways, yeah, that’s going to be interesting to see how that plays. I think people are already kind of, like you said, discarding in many cases the old model, which was just we did it almost automatically without thinking.

Curtis Hays (38:17.009)
No.

Tom Nixon (38:34.306)
Get good grades, go to college, get married, have a family, get a good job. You know, it used to be stay at that job for 50 years, get a golden parachute, but so much has changed. That college dynamic is I think going to change very quickly. Not as quickly as AI, but very quickly where that’s going to

Curtis Hays (38:51.966)
Yeah, I think the cost associated with it and then the return and this perpetual cycle, think of being in debt and then forever staying in debt. you go and let’s say you go to Denver or you go to Chicago or San Francisco, somewhere where there’s a job opportunity. A lot are going to Texas. You’re paying rent till you’re 35. you know, you’re finally when you get a mortgage, it’s like, you’re still, you’re getting your mortgage and you’re still paying off your college debt.

Tom Nixon (39:20.44)
Okay. Yep.

Curtis Hays (39:21.746)
Right? Where my, and I know my grandparents, they bought everything with cash. You didn’t buy that new car until you could, you had the two grand to buy it. And so, you know, I hear young people are reading Dave Ramsey and taking Dave Ramsey courses and just, think, thinking about things differently, which is good. And I think these cycles probably happen.

Tom Nixon (39:46.348)
Yep. Yeah, for sure.

Curtis Hays (39:46.847)
in generations, right? We maybe learn from our past and try something different. Sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn’t, but AI is certainly pushing our youth into a direction and it’s going to be interesting to see where that direction goes.

Tom Nixon (40:01.461)
Absolutely. Well, and speaking of being interesting in terms of the direction we go, that’s pretty much a wrap on season two. But what should we be thinking about for season three? You got anything in mind other than getting the lead sponsor so we can turn a buck? Just kidding, of course. No, but so looking ahead, I told you mine, I think community building is going to be a theme for next year.

And then we’ll get into more detail on that storytelling. Of course we’ll continue. you mentioned, in Drabona is it, and some of the, just the new advertising platforms on LinkedIn, Facebook and others that’s going to be interesting to watch and study. else would we be expecting next year?

Curtis Hays (40:38.706)
Mm-hmm.

Curtis Hays (40:47.878)
Yeah, I would like to put together a series of episodes on one specific topic that actually does educate on how to do something. So again, just thinking if somebody wanted to binge watch 10 episodes, you know, let’s give them that opportunity to do that instead of random topics. And they’re not random. I mean, we’re staying in our genre and our niche of marketing. But…

Tom Nixon (41:03.522)
Mmm.

Curtis Hays (41:17.672)
to actually show, yes, yeah, to put together a sequential sequence of content, hopefully with different guests who can bring their perspective, but that if somebody wanted to follow that, that they would have the tools to actually put in practice maybe. That’s a goal for me. Like, could we educate that they would have the tools to put in practice if they wanted to sit through 10 episodes and to put the work in to accomplishing something? Could they do it?

Tom Nixon (41:17.912)
But they aren’t sequentially serial, right?

Curtis Hays (41:47.26)
That’s what I would hope to be able to do. Yeah. Yeah.

Tom Nixon (41:47.414)
Like a mini course. Yeah. The mini course. All right. I’m down. Do you have a topic identified? Now you’re really pulling the curtain back. I hear I am playing dumb, which is, course, the part I was born to play. But yes, we’ve got something up our sleeves, ladies and gentlemen. So you’ll have to come back for season three with our lead sponsor. We don’t know if it’s going to be Coca-Cola or Pepsi. Have I said too much? The last question remains, Curtis.

Curtis Hays (41:53.84)
You do.

Tom Nixon (42:16.926)
Season one was white hat. Season two was black hat. Are we getting a new hat for season three?

Curtis Hays (42:22.974)
I am planning a trip to the Booth Barn here with my daughter, my youngest daughter, a little shopping spree. And so we will look and see what we find.

Tom Nixon (42:36.494)
That’s about as good a cliffhanger as I can imagine. Should we leave it there?

Curtis Hays (42:41.138)
Let’s leave it there. Other than to say thank you, partner, for season two, coming on this journey with me, inviting me on this journey, which you did. I appreciate that.

Tom Nixon (42:42.518)
Alright y’all.

Tom Nixon (42:46.915)
Yeah.

Yeah, think I guilted you into it, but yes, that was a mere semantics. Thank you for having me on for two whole seasons and I think you’ve agreed to season three. Thank you to the listeners and viewers and commenters. Um we appreciate it and um last cliffhanger, you will have more opportunity to comment and let your voice be heard next season with that. Happy holidays everyone. We’ll see you in season three of Bullhorns and Bullseyes.