0:01 - Todd Gagne  All right, Logan, welcome to the podcast, man.

0:04 - Logan Hughes  Welcome, Todd. I appreciate being here, man. I'm excited for this discussion, and hopefully we can shed some value here to your audience.

0:12 - Todd Gagne  You bet. Well, I appreciate it. So I'm excited to talk to you a little bit about your background and really get entrepreneurs thinking about like how can they think about digital marketing.

0:20 - Multiple Speakers  And so I think that's kind of the theme of today.

0:22 - Todd Gagne  And so why don't we just start off a little bit about your background. So today you have a digital marketing organization agency. And so you didn't wake up one day and say, that's what I'm going to go do. So how did, what was the journey look like from where, you know, maybe getting out of college all the way to kind of where you are today?

0:40 - Logan Hughes  Yeah, I love that question. You know, my parents always told me, you know, it's this, you know, college, get a job, that's the route you have to take, right? And I was like, yes, that's totally fine. I never saw myself as an entrepreneur or a business owner. And so I did all that. Went to school of graphic design, graduated, and I ended up working with my boss, not my boss, my cousin, who was my boss at the time, for medical device sales. And I did that for seven years in Boston. During that time, it allowed me to make some money and buy my own condo and things were going really well until about six or seven years later where I realized that I need to do something else.

1:25 - Logan Hughes  I felt like my soul was being sucked from my body. I graduated school with graphic design. I'm such a creative person. And I got to that point where I was just like, I need to do something else. I need to be able to be of service to others first and foremost, and then hopefully I can use my creative side to make a little bit of money. So during that time, part of the mindset stuff that I like to talk about is that during that time, the last year of working at that job, Every single day I wrote down in my journal, I'm going to leave my 9 to 5 job to start my own business.

1:59 - Logan Hughes  And I didn't really know what that was at the time.

2:02 - Multiple Speakers  So I wrote that down every day.

2:05 - Logan Hughes  I visualized it, so I ran my finger across it, I sat, and I kind of pictured what that would look like every single day, right? So during that time, I saw an old Tai Lopez Facebook ad talking about social media management, where I could create posts for businesses and help them out, and then that sort of steamrolled into learning about Facebook ads and Google ads, and then I found what my love is, is website design. But yeah, the end of that story is that At the end of the year, in January, I got called into the office by both my bosses, and I had not pulled the trigger yet.

2:43 - Logan Hughes  I was still there. I had not said anything to anyone about leaving, and they pulled me into office and just said, �Your job is being phased out. We have a month to find something else.� And to me, that was like, wow. I've been asking for this for a year. I don't know if this is God or the universe. It's being like, it's time to go, Logan. And luckily, at the time, I had a little bit of money coming in. And I was able to make that jump. My wife was fully on board. So yeah, that's a long story short here of sort of how I ended up in the agency space.

3:17 - Logan Hughes  I was a freelancer for several years. And then I finally found my way to Hype Digital, which has a great franchise model, which I thought was really impressive, and that's how we are here. Four years later, that's where I'm at, yeah.

3:30 - Multiple Speakers  Yeah, that's great.

3:31 - Todd Gagne  That's an encouraging story. So I think the biggest thing is that leap, and so maybe two questions. One of them was, do you think that if you didn't have that push where the job was being eliminated, would that have happened to you, or would there have been another, or would you have just realized it on your

3:46 - Multiple Speakers  own?

3:48 - Logan Hughes  Yeah, looking back, I look back at that situation a lot and I've come to the conclusion that I've come to the conclusion that things happen in certain times for you. I don't know if that makes any sense, but let me sort of clarify that a little bit. I think I was asking for that situation to happen over and over and over again, obviously, and I think the right time Um, happened for me to make that leap. Everything came together. I mean, uh, my, again, my wife and my family was on board. It just sort of happened.

4:26 - Logan Hughes  I think I probably would have made the jump. Um, but it probably wouldn't have gone all that well. You know, I would have been like, okay, I gotta, I gotta get. The hell out of here, you know, that type of stuff. And of course, I was working with my cousin at the time. So yeah, great question. I mean, again, I just I was lucky in the fact that everything just came together at the right moment to be able to make that jump.

4:49 - Todd Gagne  So And maybe the second half to it is where I think people look at this and they're like, it's a binary. Either I give up my day job and I go do this.

4:56 - Multiple Speakers  You kind of insinuated in that discussion that you had some revenue.

5:00 - Todd Gagne  And so how much time were you spending on your kind of side gig? What was it generating? What were the early indications that you got something here? That this is A, something I can go do. There's a value proposition here. It gives you confidence, right? And so I think that I really believe in a lot of these side hustles because you learn a ton. And then at some point in time, it gives you the confidence to say, I'm going to stop doing what I'm doing, the 95 that's sucking my soul and there's no creativity, and I'm going to go try to do something else.

5:25 - Logan Hughes  Yeah, great question. When I was before college or anything, I probably had every single job you could probably imagine. I've done it, right? So I bounced around with job to job. And looking back at this, having all these different jobs and learning from my cousin who, when I joined them, it was him and his partner, and they had two reps and just myself. They grew throughout the seven years to have around, I think at the highest, around 10 to 12 employees all across New England, right?

5:54 - Logan Hughes  I was able to see from a business perspective him growing his business and seeing what the finances look like and everything. So that was such an amazing learning experience that I was able to take away and had a better idea of what it would look like to go on my own. I got to a point where I was maybe making around $3,000 $5,000 the side and that was enough. Yeah, that was enough to definitely supplement that out. So at that point, I was confident. Now the one thing I was losing, which Again, luckily, shout out to my wife here, is that I was losing the 401k, the insurance, and all that stuff, the coverage.

6:36 - Logan Hughes  But we talked about that. We had a game plan in place. It's interesting because a lot of entrepreneurs aren't really in that situation. If their job is phased out, they're done.

6:48 - Multiple Speakers  They haven't started anything yet or thinking about that.

6:52 - Logan Hughes  I guess my tip here is to, yeah, to your point, to not think about the side hustle as something bad or anything along the lines of that. Like, you know, go out there and experiment. And if you generate some money, I think that's a good, definitely a good indication that there's something there. And for me, that was definitely something that I could definitely take this and run with it.

7:13 - Todd Gagne  Yeah, it becomes a hedge for you too, right? If your job gets eliminated, you got something that you could basically double down on.

7:18 - Multiple Speakers  So I think that's great. For sure.

7:20 - Todd Gagne  So now you're talking about like working with entrepreneurs and I think each entrepreneur, at least in my opinion, comes with different skills, right? You see some of them that are kind of sales focused, some of them are technology focused, some of them are product focused. And so, and then, you know, they almost have zero budgets from a marketing perspective. So maybe walk me through how you would think about talking to a entrepreneur that's basically saying, I need to do something in kind of the digital marketing space.

7:45 - Todd Gagne  I'm a little overwhelmed getting a website, talking about social media, like I got to get a logo, I got a brand. I don't know what a value proposition is. Walk me through like how you would start with them and say, how do I go from the foundation basics to something that's a little bit more complex over time?

7:59 - Logan Hughes  Yeah, and a great, great question. I always start with the why, first and foremost. It starts there. So we do a lot of digging into what that is. And it's not just, okay, yeah, I want financial freedom, right? Like any entrepreneur would basically say it's, Really getting down to the fact or to the point that you you get emotional over over what that is and that is What is going to keep you in this thing? For the long run because as you know, there's been Many indices that I have where I've this I wanted to stop this is just getting crazy but you kind of date back to that why and just go over it over and over again and and It's what keeps you in the game.

8:48 - Logan Hughes  Were you going to say something more?

8:51 - Todd Gagne  No, I was going to like, I just kind of totally agree with you. And maybe I was going to try to classify it a little bit differently because I think one of the things we always talk about is origin story, right? Like, why are you doing this, right? And it could be like, you're talking to an early prospect. It could be to an investor. It could be to a partner. It could be to a mentor. And it's like that why story of like, why am I doing this is super powerful. And it's like one of the few assets that I think are emotionally charged, when you get to be a corporation, you lose that soul.

9:18 - Todd Gagne  And so if you're trying to differentiate, but I do think it's like, at least for me, it's always describing in the origin story.

9:24 - Logan Hughes  I like that. Yeah, origin story for sure. Yeah, it's like I said, everything you said is 100% accurate. It's what's going to keep you in the game. Because again, you're going to be in situations where you feel like the whole thing's burning down and you just want to give up. It happens. It will happen. So it kind of keeps you grounded in that aspect. And then from there, once we have that established, I like to pivot and talk about product and offers first, especially from the marketing world.

9:58 - Logan Hughes  We have to be able to structure an offer that's going to be relatable or be wanted within your market. Now, as marketers, we're all in different niches. You know, you could say, and this is related to business owners as well, right? So, finding out where your ICA is living, not only in the community, but on the internet. And then packaging offers. What's really interesting about the marketing side of things, though, if I was talking to entrepreneurs who wanted to start a marketing agency, a really strong component of everything is the fulfillment part of this.

10:32 - Logan Hughes  Now, in my case, when I was doing it on my own, I was building websites, I could only handle three websites a month. It just took so much time. And it wasn't until after where I found someone else to help me out with that, that I was freed up to be able to do it. So yeah, I mean, starting off first, you might be... Doing Facebook ads for other companies and so forth, that you're going to get to a point where you're going to have to either outsource that or hire someone internally. So yeah, I mean, it comes down to the why.

11:00 - Logan Hughes  I think the branding part is really important too. And I know I'm skipping all the place here. But I think from a marketing perspective, the fulfillment part is really, really crucial in finding out your why and then really about where your ICA lives. Where are you going to reach them, whether it's a community-focused or it's more online.

11:24 - Todd Gagne  Okay. Well, that's good. And so do you kind of help them with, uh, everything from, you know, kind of what's the voice of this? Like, well, how are we talking to like, I mean, you've insinuated a bunch of things in there. Like, right. You talk about the profile of the person that's buying your prospect, right. Your ideal customer. Um, and really understanding everything from vernacular that they're using to, uh, their education level. Um, so that you understand like how to talk to them in it.

11:49 - Todd Gagne  And so that means what does their logo look like, What does the website look like, What problem are you really trying to solve? So value proposition. So do you feel like a lot of that is baked into how – because we're always working with startups that have a product idea and then they're trying to find prospects and they're trying to say, I know who the ideal prospect is, but I've got to find them.

12:09 - Multiple Speakers  And then how do I track them?

12:10 - Todd Gagne  And how do I keep – how do I get more of those guys at the top of the funnel so they end up going through a buying cycle?

12:17 - Logan Hughes  Yeah, I mean, all that is super important. And I'm really keen on putting yourself in a position of where your ICA lives. For instance, if you're a marketing agency and you want to target HVAC owners, you have to speak their language, right? Because otherwise, you're going to be... There's a vernacular. Yeah, exactly. And learning more about their pain points. So when I work with entrepreneurs or with business owners in general, it's funny working with business owners, too, because if I work with electricians or HVAC owners, it's almost the opposite.

12:53 - Logan Hughes  They're almost too sort of jargon heavy, and it's sort of their way or nothing else. So it's sort of to having them understand the fact that After looking through either Google analytics or any of the type of marketing strategies that they've done is narrow down who their audience is and that you know It might be you know, they might be looking to be focused more on communicating with males where you know females are the predominant audience and you know, they're actually between 38 and 45 years old, right?

13:25 - Logan Hughes  And a lot of that comes into fact of the community aspect is too, you know, who are you trying to target within the community for local business owners? So a lot of that comes into place. And I think we'll talk about this a little bit here too, but the personal branding component is also very, very, very important, especially nowadays, because that is the, what we're finding is the ultimate separator between yourself and the competition.

13:49 - Todd Gagne  Yeah, so that's exactly what I was going to pivot to. So you talked about the why, and I kind of wrapped it into more of the origin story. And so that's really around the entrepreneurs, why they're doing their things. And so maybe talk to me a little bit about how you think about personal branding, why it's important, and then how it can be an asset for an entrepreneur.

14:09 - Logan Hughes  Yeah. I mean, personal branding is... There's such a huge emphasis on it nowadays, and it's simply, for me, from my perspective, it's simply around the fact that it's authentic and it's personal. We are just inundated with BS, spam stuff all day long, right? And people who are doing things for not the right reasons, and you have an opportunity to step in front of the camera and share your story, share the ups and downs, share insight into your business. Some people like to share insight around their family and stuff like that.

14:48 - Logan Hughes  And that is, that message is so incredibly important. And another thing too is that, it's funny, when you go on Facebook, you will most likely see people who are doing that. And you're probably sitting back being like, you know, everyone's doing this, right? No one is really doing it. This really is like a small percentage of people who are actually taking action and creating content around their business, around their brand, and especially being consistent with it. Now, this goes up for any type of entrepreneur who, you know, multi-million dollar business, but also down to the small brick-and-mortar businesses.

15:26 - Logan Hughes  We have a great instance where in good old Portsmouth, New Hampshire here, we have a really mom-and-pop jewelry store. And we've gone so far as to get them on TikTok and get them on Reels and they're creating the stuff. But the biggest move we made in their business that still to this day, I've been working with them for a little over, I think, seven years now, was we added personalization to their website. Simple and plain. We had a photographer go in there. We had pictures of both Leo and Lisa added to the website.

15:59 - Logan Hughes  So when people to this day are walking into the store, they're like, I saw you on social media. I saw you online. This is who I'm actually talking to. And that in itself, to this day, they still get comments on that. Because if you look at jewelry stores for a weird thing, jewelry stores are very, it's very, yeah, it's just like, it's just stock images. There's no personalization. And that's a really good example that I just love to bring up over and over and over again. Personal branding gives you an opportunity to talk directly with your audience.

16:27 - Logan Hughes  There is sort of, in my world, from a marketing perspective, if I'm doing branding for myself, there is a delayed gratification part to this, right? It's not an overnight success thing. It's a slow roll and you have to kind of be okay with that. You know, once you start getting some comments and you're doing sort of the strategies around it, you will have a really great organic lead strategy in place. And again, this is, you know, from big time entrepreneurs to small business owners, this helps tremendously.

16:59 - Todd Gagne  So maybe dive in this a little bit deeper. I think it's one thing, and I think you'll see this a lot, and maybe this kind of goes back to your comment of lots of people are doing it, but very few people are doing it well, is what are they adding from a value perspective? At least when I think about this for myself, I'm probably not on video as much as I should, but I think what I'm trying to do is always any piece of content that I build, there's got to be some nugget of value of it, right? And so A, you're building credibility.

17:24 - Todd Gagne  And then B, you're trying to provide something of value for free, essentially, that builds like that, that if there's a call, or there's an opportunity, or you're just building a brand that's now associated with that jewelry store. And so do you think that like people really need to put some thought into what's the value they add with the package of being vulnerable and authentic?

17:47 - Logan Hughes  Yes, we always love to operate from the 80-20 rule, 80% value, 20% sales, right? I do think it's key, though, when you're planning your social media content to, when we plan ours, we have specific days where we know that if I were to share something family-wise on Fridays, that will do better than putting out a marketing post, right? So we have really gone into the data and really looking back at the last three years of posting on what does best on certain days. Now, I would certainly look into that if you've been posting randomly on Instagram or Facebook, LinkedIn, wherever, to take a look at the analytics and see when certain posts are doing better than others on select days, right?

18:36 - Logan Hughes  And then mix it up. Maybe you try adding a YouTube video to it or maybe you try talking about your family or your dog or something personal. It's so funny because nowadays, you've probably seen this too, you post something randomly on Facebook about family and it blows up, right? I mean, it's just one of those things. So you have to take that into account and I think a really good mixture I mean, I probably should be better at this, but I think my 20% sales is more like 5%. I'm really, really focused on the personality.

19:09 - Logan Hughes  I'm really focused on information, providing value and tips with my videos. I put out on the post the other day about how to create really great service pages for your website. And then I have some family stuff in there, because that's ultimately, I think, the driver that's going to get someone to reach out to you. It's not really about, I know their product. I know it could help, but do I actually want to work with the person? I think that personality is really what moves the needle a little bit with people taking that action to reach out to you about your business or product.

19:44 - Todd Gagne  Do you think that's a generational thing? Do you think that your grandparents saw it in a different way versus somebody who is 10 years younger than you are?

19:53 - Logan Hughes  I certainly think so. I do too. Talking with a lot of younger people, Gen Zs and everything, it's more emotional than really anything else. And I'm seeing it with some of the older crowd, but certainly they're understanding that too. And again, I think we just live in an age where obviously everyone seems to be doing everything and there's a lot of just BS around the sides of it. People want to do business with someone that they can trust and feel that is authentic. So yeah, it's it's interesting how that landscape is shaping but I will What I think will happen, especially from the social media side of things, is that behind the scenes content, Instagram stories, even shorter reels, is what is going to make a bigger impact coming forward.

20:48 - Logan Hughes  Because again, the more personal we can get, the more we can show our true side of who we are, I think it's going to affect a lot more of that. So yeah, just keep a lookout for that. I think stories, Instagram stories, that type of content is going to do really well here shortly.

21:07 - Todd Gagne  I'm curious, you haven't really mentioned much on LinkedIn, and so what do you think as far as a platform? It definitely has some pros and cons to it, but it seems like, I'm just curious on what you think the commercial viability for, let's say, a Gen Z type of audience as they kind of move forward. Is that something that they end up leveraging? Is it something you've seen some success with? Or do you feel like more of the traditional social media platforms are probably better tools to get to their customers?

21:35 - Logan Hughes  Yeah, I mean, it all comes down to where your clients live, right? And that is a starting point. That's gonna dictate where you start creating content on. So it really comes down to that. I truthfully have tried to leverage LinkedIn personally in my years. I never really had great success with it. I think LinkedIn is a really good example of How do you break through the noise of every single person out there being like, I'm a business owner, I'm doing this, I'm doing that, right? So I think the engagement part of this is key.

22:15 - Logan Hughes  You have to try to really try to build relationships and partnerships with people and be authentic. Because you probably, like myself, I get 10 messages a day on LinkedIn being like, Hey, great to connect.

22:28 - Multiple Speakers  I have this.

22:29 - Logan Hughes  And they sell you right there. That will never, ever, ever work nowadays. So it's how do you cut through the noise? And I think the same thing about personalization that works, I believe, works really well on Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, can be leveraged on LinkedIn. I do think that's the only way, so building great connections and being authentic in those connections. I have a great story. There's a person I follow who's one of the bigger SEO people out there, and he has a really amazing first message that he sends out, and maybe I'll send it to you so you can have.

23:07 - Logan Hughes  Obviously, it's important to build connections and send that message out if it's relatable, right? But his message is so – funny because it's nothing about business. It's about I have a child. I love traveling, blah, blah, and the call to action on that is not like looking forward to – it's talk to you later, right? So it's very funny. It's just cut against the grain of what everyone else is doing and what he does is that – He lets his content speak. So he does that initial connection.

23:42 - Logan Hughes  They see it. They might not respond But from there he's person, you know, he's posting a lot of personal aspects about him some great stuff that the business is doing his main connection is on the his main Communication platform that uses Facebook. So then he will sort of bring them over to the Facebook page by posting things like, you know I'm doing this on Facebook blah blah so they kind of find them on Facebook and that's when they get in touch with them. So It's interesting. Long story short, it's all about cutting through the grain and being personal and how to do that because everyone else on LinkedIn is going with the same old strategy that they've been using for the last five, ten years.

24:16 - Multiple Speakers  Yeah, totally agree.

24:19 - Todd Gagne  Yeah, I guess one of the bigger trends that even we've seen from our standpoint is just AI in general, right? I mean, I think there's been a ton of hype. And then, you know, I think over, you know, last year, 18 months, chat, GBT, and then a whole bunch of other things that have been coming out. I know, even for me, just building social media content. That's been a huge just amplifier, right? You still got to write the content. It'll help me wordsmith a lot of stuff. It'll help me make sure proofing.

24:46 - Todd Gagne  I used to have somebody that used to proof. I don't do that anymore. I think that you can do interesting things where, hey, look, I want a content that's like this guy. And if he's got enough content on the web, you can take a bunch of ideas and it'll format in his way. It's amazing. So I'm kind of curious from your standpoint on like, A, what tools or exposure have you been using from an AI perspective? And then how do you think or encourage entrepreneurs to think about leveraging these tools?

25:14 - Todd Gagne  Because we don't need more junk, right? And so to your point was you need authenticness, but it's like, I think the tendency with some of these tools is to build generic messages that just isn't very good and it doesn't stand out.

25:28 - Logan Hughes  Yeah, no, I think you nailed it in terms of using it to create templates for whatever it may be. Of course, the prompts you use to be able to create 10 videos of the select topic, perfect, right? And you can create the videos around it. Yeah, there has to be a separator between, man, it's still funny, because I know when people are posting posts that they have done from ChatGPT and they're just copying and pasting it, I know that immediately. And I don't know if anyone else, I'm sure people can understand if it's not real or authentic.

26:10 - Logan Hughes  But our team is using it for content creation from the SEO side. SEO wise, content creation, constant content to Google, really great quality content is key. It's absolutely necessary, not just from like Google My Business posts, but blogs and additional service pages. So our team uses it only as a way to outline specific things within an article, but then we always go in there and rewrite it personally. Google just put out an update, I think, yesterday that they are going to completely shut down or really throttle businesses that use AI-generated blog posts or service pages immediately.

26:56 - Logan Hughes  And I've seen this drop. There was a person I follow that showed the SEO that he was doing for the last, like, three years and the content and just everything skyrocketing. They let him go, said, chap, GPT is going to be a better source. We're going to save some money. Completely tanked within month one. And they're sort of like locked out from Google. Like nothing is being indexed. There's no traffic coming into the website. So again, to the overall point. If you're using this, and there's so many great things about AI that you can use.

27:26 - Logan Hughes  We use it for review management systems. We use it for booking appointments for local businesses. My wife's medical aesthetics office, we have an AI booking tool that's off hours that if someone's not there picking up the phone, You know, there's a great script in place, and then just, you know, scheduling leads, right? So there's really great opportunities in that for not even entrepreneurs, marketers, but for small business owners, for sure. But again, the bigger component of this, if you're using it for content creation, you have to take a hard look about that and add some, you know, authenticness to it, because otherwise you will lose out in the long term, for sure.

28:06 - Todd Gagne  Maybe I would just even share my own experiences with it. I think that if you can outline really well with a lot of detail, if you can tell stories that basically, like I had one today about Kobe Bryant and I was just listing out some of the stuff, it does a decent job of helping you shape it, but you need the content in there. You cannot outsource the content and the flow, right? And so I do think people think of it as an easy button. I think it just makes it easier. But it's not like a light switch where you just turn, you know, like, I'm just going to outsource all this to it.

28:38 - Logan Hughes  Yeah, you'd be surprised, too. I mean, again, it's so incredibly easy, if you can get it right, to have it create something really, really amazing. What we're also finding, too, which is kind of interesting, I forgot what the name of the platform is, but the picture creation for AI is being used more now for pictures, which I think is a good idea for certain businesses or entrepreneurs. There's a lot of times where we would like to maybe not use stock images, but there are resources out there where we could create really in-depth AI-generated photos that are really great quality.

29:22 - Logan Hughes  And I don't know if we're seeing anything happening on that side of the deal with AI-generated pictures, if it's hurting or anything around the SEO side of things. Certainly more content, but it's interesting. And we've been seeing a lot more use of that when sales funnels are built or even websites. There are small things happening where we can see that it's AI-generated. So it's an interesting time for sure.

29:47 - Todd Gagne  Yeah, the mid-journey stuff has come a long way. Mid-journey, that's the one. It's just incredible, the amount of photorealistic stuff you could do. It's so cool. It's come a long way. Shifting gears a little bit, I think one of the things when we were talking about setting this up that I thought was interesting is you have an offshore development team in Nicaragua. And so I do think this is a trend that's, you know, I think boomeranged a little bit. You know, I used to do some work in India, and this was kind of probably 15 years ago.

30:17 - Todd Gagne  And basically now I think you're starting to find more and more entrepreneurs that are starting to say, where are low-cost opportunities to work with offshore partners? And so maybe talk a little bit about why Nicaragua, what works well with them, what are some of the challenges and some of the things that you had to change from like working with somebody state-side to like working with somebody offshore?

30:38 - Logan Hughes  Yeah, great question. It's funny because when I was with my past agency, the one person that was building my websites was from India, Amir. Amazing guy, just an absolute killer on websites and just a tremendous person. There's a message behind the madness, I guess, with Hyte Digital. The owner was from, I believe, originally from Arkansas. So he grew up, graduated in the States, met his wife, who was Nicaraguan. And they moved down there. And they were not really in a good position, obviously pretty poor at the time, and worked their way up.

31:19 - Logan Hughes  But they're more of a faith-based business. And their goal, which goes into the values that a business should really ideally have, why are we doing this? They want to get to a point where they hire 1,000 employees, right? They feel literally that if they can hire 1,000 people within Nicaragua, that they can literally reshape the entire economy. The average salary is like $200 or something like that a week. So they're paying, obviously, a lot more. They want to get scholarships, be able to provide scholarships for the people who work there.

32:03 - Logan Hughes  So they literally want to reshape the entire area, which when they brought that to my attention, I was like, man, that is amazing. If I sell more, if I do my thing, I'm helping someone's family just have a better life. So that's so much more of a motivation. I was able to travel down there, obviously, when I first signed the paper. So I spent a week in there and just learning about the culture. We got to travel, eat some really good food, and meet the team members. And that was so incredibly important.

32:38 - Logan Hughes  Because obviously, the people I met were people I'm going to be talking with on a day-to-day basis. So that was really, really awesome. What's so funny, because we've, it's, you know, they, since COVID, everything, everyone has gone remote on their side. So they had this big, beautiful office, and it was mini Google, right? It was just really, really cool. But since COVID, it's, to your point, it's all gone remote. But I, in Missouri, we met with the owner of Sework. I don't know if you heard about this, but it's, it's basically like a Sims, thing where you bring all your employees onto it.

33:20 - Logan Hughes  You can build an office. You can meet with people. So it really brings that culture and almost like a gaming aspect to everything, right? Because I'm sure you, as myself, are just you know, tired of the Zoom calls and, you know, anything and we want to meet. But this gives you a little bit of that from a gaming aspect where, you know, if I needed to talk with someone, I can literally walk my person into their office and, you know, open up a chat right there where we can talk. But it's a really cool gaming feature.

33:54 - Logan Hughes  So culture is, again, super important. I got very, very lucky in the aspect that this business really, really puts such a bigger emphasis on the overall picture of everything. And that just gives us a lot of motivation to push forward. And again, even through the hard times, knowing that if I can just get through a little bit more, it's not just about myself. I'll be taken care of, but I'm also ultimately helping someone else.

34:16 - Multiple Speakers  Yeah.

34:17 - Todd Gagne  Yeah, going back all the way to the beginning, the why, that's a pretty powerful why, right? It's pretty powerful. Yeah, it is pretty powerful. And so especially when you've been to some of these countries where you see how fortunate you are and what you take for granted and what a little bit of investment. They want to work hard. And so if you want to give them opportunities to do that, then do it. Maybe more specifically though, Logan, I'm curious on when I was doing offshore work, The level of documentation to me just was much higher, right?

34:46 - Todd Gagne  You had to like write more things down versus maybe somebody who was in the office and you could infer some things. Um, I don't know if that's your experience. I mean, in a lot of cases I would say it was better because I had to think through what I wanted and then I had to articulate it. Uh, whereas a lot of times you just, you know, shot over a cube, you go talk to somebody in their office. Do you feel like there's any changes in the way that you do your work? Um, whether it's like doing it remotely, um, with somebody in Nicaragua versus somebody that would be in like an office kind of teaming with you.

35:14 - Logan Hughes  Yeah, I got really lucky in that aspect. I learned a lot through my freelance time that I was really bad about systemizing everything and having an exact process. And especially when I started getting more clients, it was like, okay, I have to really truthfully define what the onboarding and the process of website design is, right? So I did have my processes in place before going over and joining Hype. The beauty about joining a franchise is they have a lot of that stuff ironed out.

35:46 - Logan Hughes  Now, the other flip side of that is that as entrepreneurs, we always think that we can do it better, right? So there's a lot of communication that needs to be in place. And that's the one thing that I've learned. Even though that they have their own systems in place, and I had mine, it's the communication aspect and being open-minded and willing to, I wouldn't say make sacrifices, but make changes to what you think is the better thing to do. It took me a while as a website designer to be able to give out full control over someone else building websites.

36:20 - Logan Hughes  But the processes itself, yeah, I mean, it took me a lot of time to be able to build out everything. But again, really, the real reason why I joined Hai is because they have that all in place. And it made my life so much easier where I could just really focus on the sales aspect and and managing in clients. But yeah, I think the big tip, the big takeaway that I have is there's probably going to be several renditions of the processes in place. But if you are working with offshore employees, the communication aspect just has to be there.

36:57 - Logan Hughes  And I would even say, too, I think what Hyatt did really well was we have weekly check-in meetings with our teams and everything like that. But bringing it back to that culture standpoint, opening it up with the first five minutes of just like, how's your day going? How's your week going? What do you like to do? What kind of food do you like to eat? Learning about someone in that aspect goes such a long way. And it puts it in perspective, because I could be in positions where deadlines are not met.

37:33 - Logan Hughes  I have to get this content. And instead of just being like, I don't know this person, unload on them, being like, you're late with this, blah, blah, blah. Hey, Jamie, just letting you know that it puts everything in perspective, right? So taking that little bit of a minute or two minutes or five minutes just to learn about the person on the other end of the phone or the Zoom call is going to make everything a lot smoother and the processes go fast. They're going to be happier to get things done if you're not bombarding them with crap over and over again.

38:01 - Logan Hughes  So yeah, that was a really big learning lesson and a key takeaway that I took, yeah.

38:06 - Multiple Speakers  Yeah, well it's good.

38:07 - Todd Gagne  I mean, it's definitely an evolution. You were talking a little bit about being authentic and talking about the balance between your day job and what you're doing in your personal life. You brought it up multiple times. What does that mean for you from a work-life balance standpoint? I think all of us from an entrepreneur standpoint have this tendency to go, go, go.

38:25 - Multiple Speakers  We redline.

38:26 - Todd Gagne  We wait a lot of hours sometimes to the detriment of relationships and other things, passions that we have outside of work. How do you view that? Because it seems like being that authentic self, you have to have the balance.

38:40 - Logan Hughes  Certainly. So I learned this from an early age. My father was very much in a corporate role, big-time corporate role, and 7 a.m. To 7 p.m. At night. During the early years, he was a soccer dad and so forth, but he eventually got into a position in his work that supported all of us, got us through school, just incredibly grateful for the amount of work that he put in and supporting our family. But I saw at an early age where he was traveling once a month to Germany. He was all over the place.

39:17 - Logan Hughes  And there was just, he was being tired. And there was just no time for us. So in high school, I was seeing all this, early high school and in elementary school, I was seeing this. So I knew early age that I do not want to be like that. I wanted to, at some point, have time to be with my family and enjoy life. So that was a really big focal point of getting into entrepreneurship. Obviously, we all say financial freedom and blah, blah, blah. But to me, it was the ability to be able to spend time with my family.

39:51 - Logan Hughes  When I wanted to. And to your point, we're always on the phones, we're checking emails, and for me, what I've learned and what I try to instill is knowing when my day ends and then adding in like a 30, 15 40 minute barrier between work and transitioning into personal life It's hard for me personally to be able to go from work work all day and then family comes home and my son two and a half year old is looking for my attention and I'm checking emails right cuz I'm still in that work cycle I have to have a separator whether it's going outside for a walk walking my dog going to the gym doing something to be able to separate myself from business day to personal.

40:46 - Logan Hughes  Another thing that's helped me out a lot about that is ending the day and scheduling my next day before it ends, right? So I know my schedule looks like tomorrow. I don't have to worry about seven o'clock coming and being like, oh crap, I forgot about this. I gotta do that for this person. I try to sit down and have a full brain dump for five to 10 minutes of just Let's set the schedule for tomorrow. Let's close out the day, feeling good about it. Then I sort of decompress myself, and then I'm present and able to be there for my family, which again, it helps your relationship, your marriage, and everything with your child.

41:23 - Logan Hughes  So that's what I've learned so far, yeah.

41:26 - Todd Gagne  That's good. I think that's a that's good advice for everybody I think it's difficult sometimes to flip it off even like with you have that like Period where you're kind of like taking some time for yourself Sometimes we're engaging with people and we're still thinking about work and what about that problem that you got to do or hey What's going on? Yeah, it's just hard to do.

41:42 - Multiple Speakers  And I think in today's day and age, where we're always on, it's just difficult to find those boundaries.

41:47 - Todd Gagne  So I think that's really good advice. And it's good that you noticed that early on, and you understood what the negative consequences was. Your dad was doing everything he possibly could, well-intentioned, but you just knew that you wanted to do something different. So I admire that.

41:59 - Multiple Speakers  That's awesome.

42:00 - Logan Hughes  Yeah, yeah. And, you know, again, still to this day, I mean, yesterday, you know, phone, nothing, you know, I was working till about six, seven o'clock, right? It just, it just happens. It just, it is, it's life, but like meditation, any type of these, you know, self-reflection practices, it's always just about sort of being present in situations and realizing it when it happens. And getting to that point of realization where you're like, my son's looking for my attention, I'm on my phone looking at emails, I got to put that away ASAP.

42:31 - Logan Hughes  And I think those two exercises there can really help start to get you in a routine of being present in situations and acknowledging when things happen.

42:40 - Multiple Speakers  Yeah, that's good.

42:42 - Todd Gagne  Well, I was going to kind of close here towards the end with you have a podcast. That's how you and I got introduced. The name of your podcast is Get a Job, which I think is kind of cool. Why don't you talk a little bit about your origin story with that? What are you trying to really focus and kind of surface and maybe some lessons learned that you had from just doing it? It's a unique format and it's kind of cool to tell stories.

43:06 - Logan Hughes  Yeah, it really is. And I never saw myself as a podcaster. I mean, when I started this whole thing, I was like, you know, everyone has a podcast. Like, why, you know, why, why would anyone listen to me, listen to me, that type of deal? Again, personally talk about personal branding, right? Like, a big part of that, especially content creation and, and that whole aspect. Meeting Utah and meeting a bunch of other guests we had on. It's just that networking aspect is sort of like what we're all looking for, you know, get it within a community and these type of things.

43:40 - Logan Hughes  But podcasting is such a great way to to just find people who have amazing, just different aspects about their life. And every single time I leave an episode, I learn something. And it's funny, too, because there are situations where maybe I'm tired and I'm like, OK, I've got to film this podcast, film this episode. And after having that conversation with someone, the energy is just so much higher. You just feel so motivated to go out there and crush it. So I really like the aspect of it for multiple reasons.

44:16 - Logan Hughes  I think what I've learned, I guess, from the podcasting world – and again, I am super lucky that the team I have handles the edits, handles everything that goes in and out of putting together the podcast. So I just basically have to film it and it's done. So I'm super, super lucky in that aspect. I think what – think I love just having – It's coffee talk. I want this, for me personally, the Get a Job podcast is, you know, the phrase came from basically my dad as I was thinking about going into entrepreneurship, just being like, you know, you can always just get a job, you know, that's sort of like what it came from My guests have, again, all different walks of life and just provide a lot of great value just with work life and business and everything.

45:04 - Logan Hughes  I had a great conversation the other day with an owner of an HVAC company over 20 years, and we got into a great conversation about his why. Towards the end of it, we both got really emotional around it. He was telling stories about how he grew up. A lot of that stuff just makes such a bigger impact on not only myself, but hopefully the audience that listens. Yeah, and again, I take my process super simple. It's just a conversation. I don't really have any notes. I obviously have some due diligence beforehand to look at to know who I'm talking with and have some points and so forth.

45:38 - Logan Hughes  Yeah, I kind of let the conversation have itself. But it's been a great process. And hopefully, you feel the same way of having your podcast and everything. It's just a great tool to use to network and get some content out for yourself.

45:51 - Multiple Speakers  Yeah.

45:51 - Todd Gagne  Is that how you feel? It is. And I think in a lot of cases, what I'm looking for is how can you tell stories where people can see themselves in the guests or the stories that are being told? How do you inspire them to maybe do what you were talking about, where it's like, I write that thing out that says, I'm not going to do the nine to five. I'm not going to do the nine to five. And they make the jump. And that could be a side hustle. It doesn't really matter. But inspiring you to live the best life you have and basically giving people stories that are relatable.

46:22 - Logan Hughes  Yeah, 100%, man. Yeah, I love it. So hopefully, cheers to Levinist continue for both of us.

46:27 - Multiple Speakers  Yeah, exactly.

46:28 - Todd Gagne  That's right. Well, it's good. Well, Logan, this has been a great conversation. I really appreciate you sharing kind of your thought process and really kind of giving some ideas and things that work really well for entrepreneurs from a digital marketing perspective. I think there's a lot of nuggets in this episode that I think people will take and get a lot of value out of If they want to get ahold of you, or they want to do work with you, or they just want to follow you, what's the best way to do that?

46:50 - Logan Hughes  Yeah, Get a Job podcast, it's on YouTube, it's all over the streaming platforms out there. I'm pretty focal on Facebook, so reach out to me, just type in Logan Hughes, you see a green background with a goofy face, that's me. Just shoot me a message. We can talk there. My website is heightdigital.com slash Manchester if you want to go through that route. But yeah, just if you want to talk about anything related to marketing or just business, entrepreneurship, whatever, just find me on Facebook.

47:19 - Logan Hughes  I'll be there to answer your message.

47:21 - Unidentified Speaker  Okay.

47:22 - Todd Gagne  Well, thank you, Logan. I greatly appreciate you taking the time, man.

47:26 - Logan Hughes  Thanks for having me on, Todd. I appreciate it, man. Thank you so much.