Introduction
Shannon Donnelly (SD): Alrighty. Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Fully Managed Podcast, a podcast where we discuss marketing and business tips to help assist you on your business journey. I’m your host, Shannon, Penji’s Partnership Coordinator, and I’m joined here today with a very special guest, Tim Pruvy from Backslash Creative. Thank you so much for joining me today.
Tim Pruvy (TP): Yeah, happy to be here. I appreciate that.
SD: Are you looking forward to Thanksgiving?
TP: Oh, absolutely. We’ve still got some client work to do before the break, but yeah, we’re excited for it.
SD: That is very nice. I’m sure you’re also maybe looking forward to Black Friday. I think agencies love that day or they hate that day. It really depends. But yeah, so could you just start by telling us a little bit about yourself and kind of your journey up to this point in your career and everything that you think is relevant?
Journey into Digital Marketing
TP: Yeah, I’d be happy to. So I am forty six, which means I grew up in the eighties and nineties and I grew up with a computer, even though most of my friends didn’t have computer access back then or they didn’t have it at school. Right. They’d have those old Apple IIs with Oregon Trail and the green screen and that sort of thing. We actually had one at home. My dad was just retired a couple of years ago, an electrical engineer. So we had a computer fairly early on. Got pretty comfortable with that. Went off to college in ninety six and after my first finals week, I pulled an all nighter to build my first website, not studying at all, but did that. And of course, back then, you know, you had to have some kind of technical programming skill more so than you have to have today. But that’s what got me into digital marketing originally back in, like I say, in ninety six. And then I built my own website, did things on GeoCities, if anybody remembers that. Had a website hosted by AOL, again, dating myself. And then I bought my first domain. I’d have to look up what the year was, but sometime late nineties, maybe early two thousands, back when a .com was seventy five dollars a year. I remember paying that much for my first domain name. So the psychology and appealing to people and finding out your ideal target market and helping clients work through all that is something I really enjoy. And then executing on consistent marketing behaviors, consistent strategic marketing behaviors to get the most for their money and help get the word out there. I mean, what I really love is businesses and nonprofits. And so being able to get the word out of the mission, the point of the organization that really the people are passionate about. That’s my passion is helping spread their passion.
Working with Passionate Organizations
SD: That’s beautiful. So do you prefer to work with, so if you like working with nonprofits, do you also prefer working with a business that has a set mission that you kind of align with or enjoy working?
TP: That’s a great question. So for us, the most important thing is that the business owner or our primary point of contact, you know, nonprofit could be executive director, could be director of development, a business. It could be the owner, the CEO. It could be a VP of marketing. You know, it could, any number of things. But whoever our main point of contact is and really kind of all the way up the chain, we want to make sure they’re passionate, that it’s not just a job for them. We’re not really interested in helping people spread the word who aren’t passionate about what they’re doing. So even if it’s something that you might traditionally find boring, if they have a passion for it, then we get real excited about that. And so for us, that’s kind of contagious. And for me personally, that’s kind of a contagious thing. If they don’t have any passion, not super interested in working with them. But if they’re passionate about it, let’s get on board and help spread the word.
SD: Well, that’s sweet. I think that’s a really lovely, what’s the word I’m looking for, I guess ideology to go off of. I think that passion is something that’s infectious, even if you might not even care about it, but you care about it because someone else does, especially if you are a people person. I think that my favorite thing is to just hear someone talk about something they’re passionate about. It could be objectively the most boring thing ever, but to hear someone be excited about something is just such a wonder. And so I completely understand that. I agree. So do you, okay. So how did you get involved in wanting to work with nonprofits specifically?
Working with Nonprofits
TP: I really love. Yep. So a number of years ago we had worked with a couple nonprofits and this was maybe five years into the business. We’d worked with, you know, a nonprofit here and there. I say that, I think our first client may have been, or our second client may have been a church. But anyway, so we had worked with nonprofits, but hadn’t really gone after them. And so I’d have to look up the year, but about fifteen, sixteen years ago, I said, I really just woke up one morning and said, let’s do this. Let’s work with nonprofits. And so for how we jump started, that was for a year. We gave away a free website a month to a nonprofit. Now, we didn’t end up giving twelve websites away because we didn’t really know what we were doing back then. We had people recommending nonprofits. And then we would pick them as the winner. And then I would go to them and they would say, yeah, we don’t need a website. So there were a few like that.
SD: I understand that completely.
TP: But there are others that are still clients of ours now, fifteen plus years later. And so that’s really what jump started it. And then over the years, I ended up serving on boards of nonprofits. We kind of incorporated as part of our company culture, regular volunteering at nonprofits. And even now, to this day, we have sort of a pay what you can model for nonprofits, meaning I’ll talk with nonprofits just like they’re a for profit business client. And then at the end, if there’s a mismatch on budget versus or on what they can afford versus what the investment normally looks like, we don’t end the conversation there. We keep talking and see if there’s something we can work out.
SD: Oh, I really love that. Something that I’m extremely passionate about is nonprofits. I grew up volunteering a lot within the Girl Scouts, so it was a big part of the Girl Scouts. But something that I really loved about Penji and a big reason why I wanted to work for them is because I never really saw myself working in the corporate world. I always saw myself working with nonprofits, but something that I saw about Penji was that they do a lot of things for nonprofits. We have a similar program kind of like you have called Penji for Good, where we provide our services for a dollar a month to nonprofits, which is so lovely. It makes me really happy. And then we also get to do one of my favorite podcasts. No offense is the Unified Purpose podcast where we get to interview nonprofits. And I really, really like doing that. The last one I filmed, I couldn’t, embarrassingly enough, cried a lot. I’m just, I’m a very sentimental person. Their mission was just beyond me. So, yeah, hearing people talk about what they’re passionate about very much is impactful. But that makes me really happy to hear. I always, every time I come in contact with an agency that does work for nonprofits, it just makes me happy because you don’t see a lot of businesses wanting to give back. And I think a lot of people think that’s because, oh, if we do that, then we’re not making as much money. But I don’t think that’s always true either. I think there’s a very fine line of being able to make money and also help out. And I really enjoy hearing that. So thank you for caring.
Health and Wellness for Entrepreneurs
SD: So moving on then, I noticed, this is another thing that I thought was really cool that I noticed, is that you talk very publicly in regards to being an entrepreneur and that working hard is important, but also that your health and wellness is important. Could you kind of talk about some specific aspects of that? Because I’m sure people watching, they should really listen because I see even my boss is going a little too hard sometimes. And I think that’s something that’s really important to consider.
TP: Yeah, no, I’d be happy to. I mean, I’m a big believer in, number one, I myself tend towards workaholism, right? So if I’m not careful, I’ll let things get out of balance and can notice psychological effects. I can notice physical effects even. And so I learned over the years the hard way to really watch myself, right? I really have to keep an eye on if I’m tending towards burnout. And so ideally you get ahead of that, right? You don’t, if you’re, especially if you tend towards that or something that’s something you struggle with, then you get ahead of it. So that’s how I fell into it, and I’ll share some specifics here in a second, but the nice thing is now with it part of our culture, we attract people who that’s and clients. So team members and clients where they understand that’s a priority. And if, you know, heaven forbid, right. We’re late on a deadline or something, but we explained this is, it was a balance reason. And here’s what happened. Or, you know, I’ll have clients that I’m like, hey, this is, I’ll do my away messages on holidays or even at conferences or vacations that just say, hey, this is why I’m doing this. And I’m not going to check email or not respond to emails while I’m away. And it’ll even take me a couple of days to get back. And that’s so I can prioritize my family, so I can prioritize this work-life balance. But I also encourage my team to really keep an eye on it just from day to day and kind of know the signs of you’re feeling burnt out or you’re working too hard or literally sometimes it’s just, you were at the office late a couple of times last week. Maybe you should see if you can take off early some this week. But also if we do fun Fridays, we do those volunteer days. And so those things are important. But also just making sure our team takes time off for family, takes time off when something comes up. Sometimes I have to tell them to because they will, otherwise they won’t. And I do try to do my best to lead by example, right? Because if you say work-life balance, but then if you don’t lead by example. And so I literally to that effect have had meetings with team members and I’m listening to them and I’m engaging with them, but while I’m playing Minecraft on my computer. I just tell them ahead of time, hey, mental break today, this is what I’m doing, but let’s get into what you wanted to talk about. We’ve done that before. I feel like a lot of cultures will claim that, but then the leaders don’t model it. Even if the leaders are wired differently, your team is going to see what you’re doing. If you’re a good leader, they’re going to try to follow that. You have a responsibility to, I think, to model those kind of things rather than just say them and power through yourself. No, model them for your team so that they understand. Yeah, this is real. It’s not just something we have on our values on our wall or something.
SD: No, I believe in that so much. I think that I agree. Definitely, if you tend towards workaholism, as many people do, especially, I think that you can be a hard worker and not tend to, some of the hardest workers do, or have that issue where they fall into it sometimes. And I think that people who do feel that way, a lot of times it’s hard to not feel inadequate when you’re not working. And I think that’s why people tend towards it often. And I think it’s much harder to tell yourself, oh, I need a break when you’re watching someone who you’re working for actively not do those things. Because you’re thinking, oh, well, they’re working so hard.
TP: Yep.
SD: I should be doing this same thing or I should be working just as much as they are. Or, or they’re going to have to pick up my slack if I’m not, if they’re going to be working harder. And I really love the mentality of kind of, you know, act as what you preach because it just, it doesn’t feel right when you’re watching someone do so much more than you, even if you are doing the healthy thing.
TP: Right, right. Yeah. I mean, everybody’s wired differently, but it’s up to, you know, the head of the agency, the managers, it’s up to them to understand their team’s going to look at them for an example and not always fully understand the different wiring. And so you have to take that into account and, and for leader, it’s really ultimately leadership’s responsibility, I think, to be aware of the differences in team members, help them learn also. But you’ve got to be aware of that and compensate for that, even if it means adjusting what you might naturally do.
SD: And I think it’s certainly kind of up to each person, but to be able to see someone above you kind of doing something that you would personally feel healthy doing or you would feel comfortable taking a break because you’re watching this is really nice because I do think there’s definitely that everyone’s different. There are people there that are people out there that are happier working sometimes like they feel more comfortable getting things out of the way and then being able to, you know, relax or have fun and there are people that are that are different and that just feels better for them and it’s not a health thing or whatever it may be and but it’s nice to be able to see someone take breaks that’s notably in charge of you and your work as well.
TP: Yeah. We do unlimited PTO also. And again, I read up a lot before we made the change. And the risk that most companies fell into is that people wouldn’t end up taking it. Like they’d get unlimited PTO and then the culture would say, yeah, I don’t take any vacation. And so again, part of that is also the modeling of, okay, even sometimes when it’s busy, which I hate because it puts my team under more pressure sometimes, but I want them to feel okay doing things even when it’s busy. Right. Sometimes when it’s busy is when you need that time off. You know, even if it’s just a day, even if you’re just like, I need a three day weekend this week. Great. Do it. You know, and so you’ve got to model it even when it’s even when it’s hard or even when you feel for other people. But you’re like, hey, this is a long term thing. Also got to watch the short term. But it’s a long term thing to make sure that the team is healthy, that the team stays stays healthy mentally and physically.
SD: Yeah, of course. I think it also, to leave that environment open for people to feel comfortable doing that is so unbelievably important. I feel like when people are in positions like that, I see this over and over again in small businesses and agencies and anything that you will have a happy, loyal, healthy team when you set up an environment like this in which they feel comfortable taking care of themselves. I think a lot of people, when they even consider offering things like this, a lot of people assume that people are going to take advantage of it.
TP: Right.
SD: And I think that’s, I think people are grateful for opportunities like this more than anything else that they don’t want to take advantage of it because they’re so grateful that they have the opportunity to have it at all.
TP: And that’s a hiring problem. If you’re hiring the kind of people that would take advantage of it.
SD: Right. Exactly. Yeah. You do vet the people that come in as well. But yeah, I think that’s really lovely and that’s an ideology that I like to incorporate in life in general. I think that’s a lot of, you know, a lot of non-profits do work for populations that people think are taking advantage of things and I don’t know and that’s not true either and I just really love hearing that belief system. So again, thank you for caring. Thanking you for just being a genuine person.
Inspiration from Other Fields
SD: Well, so going into, okay, so we’re going into ideology now. I noticed another thing that you use your faith a lot as inspiration in your marketing strategy. And I really like to see where different marketers get influence from because I think that it’s kind of all over like marketing. You can kind of get inspiration from anywhere, which I think is really one of the coolest parts about it. Is there any other place that you derive a lot of inspiration from that’s kind of outside of the marketing field?
TP: That’s a great question. How I’m wired naturally. So this is not necessarily something I worked at or had to work at. So other people may have to work at this sort of thing. In my brain, everything’s just this massive pot of stuff. And so it’s really cross pollinating. And so I will. I’ll run into things in the business world that apply to my personal life. I’ll run into things at church that I apply to business. You know, I’ll run into I’ve had well, both of my two of my three boys have gone through. Well, that’s not true. One of them has gone through. One of them is about to. Some sales and communication training that I’ve done for, you know, thirteen years. And so my oldest son is twenty and my middle son is seventeen. Exactly. Exactly. So some people do that by setting strict boundaries, which I completely understand and respect that. For me, that would take away the benefit of all that kind of cross pollination between the worlds. And so, I mean, my great example, my first content client. So, like I said, I did content marketing years ago. But then when I started the business in two thousand three for us for about, you know, around a decade, maybe not quite a decade. We were nothing but websites. Essentially, we did some SEO and some other minor things, but no content marketing. And then it was literally I was at a doctor appointment complaining to my doctor who also went to church with me about the struggle of one off website and building a business around going out and killing what you needed to eat every month or whatever. And so he asked me to take over managing his social media at that point. I had never done that. I’d managed our own social media, but hadn’t managed for clients. And so really that for me, that kind of bleeding over of worlds, both in making connections between people, making connections with businesses, making connections with ideas, has really paid off a lot over the years.
SD: That’s really lovely. I mean, I think that leading opportunity for open connections that kind of, you know, worlds collide. I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. Of course, there’s overdoing it, I’m sure. But I think that’s kind of just being a people person, like all of your worlds inevitably collide, because you’re making connections for different reasons. And it makes him light up when he talks about it. And, you know, sometimes he makes connections with people who want to work where he works because they’re also excited about it from him talking about it. And then he makes a coworker by accident. And I think that’s just, I don’t know. I think that’s the beauty of connection is that, you know, worlds collide constantly. And I think that’s, I think that’s a wonderful thing. People are interesting.
TP: It definitely can be a wonderful thing. I do think, and I respect it kind of any, I respect any well thought out, you know, approach to, to that whole thing. Right. And so I think you got to know yourself. That’s a huge part of it. But also as long as you have reasoned through and thought through, hey, this is how I’m going to approach things. And this is why, and you got to watch out because there, everything’s a trade-off, right? There’s always going to be downsides to that kind of approach as well. So as long as you kind of become aware of those and have things in place to to handle that, then I think any approach can be good. Some people not social. They wouldn’t like that approach of your extreme introverts. Right. But I think any well-reasoned approach where you watch for the cons and embrace the pros can be good.
AI in Marketing
TP: Specifically kind of hit big. And so when she came back, she actually brought her team into us to train. And we’d been going all of like three months or whatever at that point. And so we embraced it relatively quickly. Now for us, I know there’s agencies that are like, hey, we’re an AI agency. For us, AI is another tool. It’s certainly a powerful one and maybe more game changing than anything else that has come before it, or at least quickly, maybe as far as speed goes. But it’s ultimately, it’s a tool and so it can be used. It can be misused. And so I think the best, so I actually had someone reach out to me recently asking for advice because she had recently graduated and basically was like, AI is replacing my marketing major. I don’t know what I’m going to do. And I said, well, you’re not wrong. The people that are not learning and not adjusting quickly. Yeah, this is a rapid change. So some of those people are losing jobs. That’s legitimate, right? Now, smart business owners, smart agencies are finding out, oh, it’s when we layer that expertise on top of AI that it can be truly powerful, right? Some business owners, some agencies are like, I will replace XYZ function with AI. And I don’t think that’s a smart way to do it. I mean, I have seen one draft blogs from AI and they’re not great. In today’s world, you know, whatever, they always start kind of cheesy and you can almost tell just by reading that they’re AI. And so, but layering that. And so that’s what I told this girl. I said, here’s the deal. And I gave her some other ideas. I’m like, here’s some ways to jumpstart a career. Faster. A lot of people don’t even think about professional networking at that stage in the career. So I said, here’s some things you can do for that. I said, here’s some I said, don’t get an unpaid internship, but here’s some volunteer opportunities. If you define the scope well that you could do, that would get you some experience for your resume. But then my other thing was hey embrace the AI. Right. If you have that marketing, even even a recent graduate versus someone with twenty plus years like me, regardless of what level you’re at, if you have some of that expertise and you layer the AI skills on top of it, you become super valuable. I mean, worst case, I say worst case, but you run your own agency, right? And use it to kind of multiply yourself. We’re also big, we’re super big on transparency. So we don’t hide what we’re doing in AI from our clients at all. We say, great news, we’re not going to increase your price this year because we are using some more AI, you know, things like that. They don’t get a decrease, but we’re not going to increase their price. So I think it can be super powerful. Now we have had some specific cases where we’ve made use of it where actually I don’t know what we would have ended up doing otherwise. So one of our nonprofit clients, we’re talking about nonprofits earlier. One of our nonprofit clients fights human trafficking and helps survivors of human trafficking in the country of Lesotho. If you’re not familiar with Lesotho, I was not. It’s actually sort of what Wakanda is based off of in the Marvel world. Not that they have any vibranium or adamantium or anything like that.
SD: I was unaware that it was modeled after Lesotho. That’s very interesting.
TP: It’s the fact that it’s circled by a mountain range. So it’s a landlocked country and it’s completely surrounded by South Africa, I believe. And so what they’ll happen is the job opportunities in Lesotho are very limited. And so they’ll hear about a job out in South Africa and they’ll go across the border. They’ll go and then it’ll be, it was a trick. Right. There was no job and they’ll be sold to slavery. And so they’re out there doing different things, working with the government, working with survivors. And what happens, though, is they want to share the stories of, and they’re almost exclusively women, not completely, but almost exclusively women that they work with. So they want to share the stories of these women, but they want to change the names. As we know, in marketing, people can identify more with the person if you have a picture of the person. Well, there’s actual safety issues. And so for a long time, we use stock images, but they didn’t really look like the women in Lesotho. Right. I mean, it just wasn’t that wasn’t what we were seeing in stock images. And the team over there that is actually in Lesotho, bless their hearts, they did not really understand stock models. And so they thought those women were then in danger.
SD: Like, no, they’re not.
TP: Yeah, I know. Completely respect. I mean, they’ve got to have that mindset, right, to be serving the women they’re serving.
SD: Yeah, of course.
TP: So now we’re using AI. And so the AI look like the women. They don’t look like the actual women, but they look like the women of Lesotho. They dress like them.
SD: AI. So I do really like it for that. I was hesitant of using it for a bit of time because I’m one of those people that is fearful of not using my brain enough. I’m like, oh, I’m going to get rusty if I ask Chad TVT about things. It is so unbelievably helpful, especially for writing like a summary of something. The podcast, I write three main points and I just upload the transcript and it has it right. I had written the three main points for the first many. And my boss was like, why are you doing that? You can just ask Chad GBT. Which was very lovely advice.
TP: I can only imagine it if I had it on my now defunct podcast from a decade ago. Writing show notes would have been so much easier. I mean, show notes were the bane of my existence.
SD: Yes, exactly. It’s like I’ve already been on this. I know all this has happened. Now I have to relive it again, which is not that bad, but it’s just.
TP: No, I get it. I get it.
SD: It’s very tedious. It’s very tedious. But yeah, I definitely agree. And I think that it’s another thing that I really do believe with AI is that the more that people rely on it, I think in the future, the more that I think people will want personal approaches to things. Because I think it’s kind of like that revolution of of kind of when something goes too far, people crave human connection again, like COVID. It was so many things afterwards. There was such a boom of personal connection, all these different things to implore that idea because of had the extreme lack of personal connection that we had during that time. And I think it’s something similar to that. And I hope there’s some kind of revolution that happens when AI goes too far because inevitably things always go too far. But yeah, I definitely think it’s a very helpful tool, and I do agree that it is it works for what it’s doing right now, so I’m just hoping that people are smart enough to not use it as a whole person.
TP: You don’t want to give it, you don’t want to give it, enough, what is it? Enough rope to hang itself or whatever the saying is. And I feel like, I mean, there’s, you know, and I, I kind of nerd out a little bit about it just and, and watch endless YouTube videos about it. But in marketing, you know, we see it just when you give it kind of full content control or automated control over a process, completely automated control over process. I mean, that’s one of the least dangerous areas that can be. And so I think as long as we rein in its control and kind of keep an eye on. I mean from a marketing standpoint I’m always like control the inputs then AI can do a bunch of work and then you’ve got to keep an eye on the outputs. It’s when you let go of either of those and it doesn’t matter if it’s marketing or anything, but it’s when you let go of either of those that I think is where you start to get in trouble.
SD: For sure or can get in trouble. Yes. You have to check its work. It’s like a child. It’s just, it’s important to acknowledge what it can and can’t do and it also is important to acknowledge that it’s not a person and you need to you need to you know check its work you need proofread you need to do all these things because it’s still not a perfect.
TP: Well, it’s like a really fast intern, right?
Conclusion
SD: Yes. Well, this is all the time we have today. We are a little over, but I think that that means just it was a really great conversation. So that’s always what I like. But I really appreciate you coming on today. I think I talked about a lot of newer topics that I don’t get to talk about usually. So I really appreciate all the knowledge that you’ve brought on today.
TP: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you.
SD: And thank you for all the inspiration of good, because I, again, I, talking about a lot of marketing topics on this podcast is fun and all, but it’s also nice to, you know, get advice on the other end of the spectrum. That’s also, you know, how to be healthy when in this space. And I think that that’s equally as important as marketing styles. And so thank you so much for giving perspective on that.
TP: Happy to.
SD: And thank you everyone listening or watching. Please don’t forget to like and subscribe to learn more just like I get to do every time I host this podcast. So thank you so much.
