Smart CEOs Get Involved In Digital Marketing, Here's Why – Episode 88

One of the things that I think is really key is when you're in a conversation with a CEO who is engaged, you can ask them questions about, you know, the bits of the business that matter, the messaging that really resonates, stuff like that. And they will instantly be able to answer you in a way that other people really will struggle to answer you with. And the alternative to not having them in the room and sitting at the desk with you is you play a weird game of Chinese whispers where you say, these are the key words, and the marketing manager says, all those keywords look great. And then you build pages, and then the CEO takes a look at it and says, oh, why are we promoting this bit of the business? And not that?

Or I want those men, those women, I want them involved because having a meaningful conversation with somebody right at the top who gets it, yeah, means that everything else we do from there on in is going to be better.

Yeah.

Welcome back to Digital Marketing from the coalface. Um, this this shouldn't have been the next episode. We actually recorded a really good episode yesterday with Michael.

We did and then promptly deleted it.

And then, um, yeah, Zencaster promptly accidentally didn't record it. Um, so, um, we shall have to go and revisit that and, um, we'll leave it there rather than talk about what that was going to be about. Um, suffice it to say, it was fascinating. No, it was all right. It was great though, because it'll be even better next time when we redo it. Okay. So, so the subject I wanted to sort of play around with today is, um, broadly speaking, uh, I'm making a statement that smart E knows. I'm talking about SMEs. I'm talking about companies where.

There was a lot of acronyms.

Where the c e o is not like a God level type person, you know, I mean, I'm talking about people who are still in touch with the business and still very much kind of to a certain extent, they're involved in the running of the business. They're not just kind of at this place where, yeah, you know, they just is.

He.

On the golf course that's busy on the golf course? Yeah. So I'm saying that smart CEOs get involved in conversations about their website. I'm saying that the C-suite people on the C-suite, in the C-suite CEOs, you know, particularly should and smart ones do get involved in web projects. And that's because web projects are not about design and content management systems. And, and, you know, spinning logos and shit like that. They're about helping the business achieve its business goals. Right? So, and the reason, um, the reason I brought this up is. I went to a meeting earlier this week and a very well established, decent sized engineering company, and the meeting was set up. I'm not going to name them. Obviously, the meeting was set up at a time that made sure that the C, e o was going to be involved. He wanted to be involved. He was a smart c e o because he wanted to be involved in this discussion. He knew his website was rubbish. He knew it didn't generate any business. He, you know, he probably knew all of that stuff and he was going to be involved. Um, so I drove over there. Very pleasant drive apart from one or two dickheads who wanted to try and kill themselves. So I just tried to stay out of their way. Um, got over there and the meeting was on time, but the first thing the chap said to me was, oh, um, you know, the CEO won't be here. He's got tied up with something else. He won't be here.

Golf.

And you know, at that moment I kind of lost interest a little bit.

Yeah. For sure.

Because for me, it's it's like a big red flag. It's like a huge red flag. It's like, okay, so this company, well-established engineering company worked with some great clients, um, but have recognised they need to diversify, expand, get into new areas, be better known, they need to raise their profile, their website can do all of that and more. Didn't bother coming to the meeting. And I just thought, well, first of all, it's a bit rude.

It's yeah.

Well, my time is as important as anybody else's time. Yeah. Um, and I just thought to myself, is this really them saying to me.

We, we.

Don't, we don't really care. Now this is up for discussion. That's the point of this podcast. I thought we just have a little chat about it and we might run out of steam quite quickly.

Um, I mean.

Or maybe you'll like you did yesterday in that podcast, you'll, you know, you'll contribute between thirty and forty five seconds to the fifty minutes of the podcast and it'll be fantastic, I don't know. It's entirely up to you.

You are one day gonna find yourself without any podcast partners, and then where will you be a lot happier? All right, you can just monologue into the microphone. Yeah, yeah. The world according to Dave. No, I mean, I the first thing I'll say is I can sort of see it from their point of view, right? I mean, you, I mean, I think there's a couple of things going on. I think the first thing is probably we often talk to people like when they're at the very beginning of that, like little, I hate the word buyer journey, but you know what I mean. They've decided they want a new website. They're probably talking to four or five agencies if they're stupid, two or three if they're smart, chances are the CEO, you know, maybe does think, oh, after somebody else has vetted all these agencies, I'll swoop in and make sure they've made the right decision or I'll get involved. Then, you know, I get that they do have a lot of plates spinning. They do have a lot of places to be, especially to be fair, when it is kind of SMEs that we're talking about, right? Because the CEO is rarely in a position to just sort of, you know, take whatever meetings they fancy and do whatever they want to do. So I sort of get it from that angle. But I think the other thing that also plays into this is that maybe a lot of CEOs, I don't want to be ageist, but a lot of CEOs who maybe aren't really they'll they'll say they understand the importance of their website, but maybe they don't really embrace that. They don't see it as sort of the future of the business. They don't recognise that increasingly, you know, irrespective of whether you run a sort of manufacturing business or a cleaning business or whatever, online is where you're doing most of your business. They, you know, they pay lip service to the idea, but maybe don't fully buy into it, which is why they're sort of a little bit flaky when it comes to this kind of thing. And to be fair, you know, even the CEOs that do turn up to meetings still don't really sort of engage in the kind of nitty gritty, do they? They don't really necessarily get as enthusiastic or as interested in what the website is saying about their business and what it can, can do for them as, as some of the marketing directors and that sort of thing.

You see these headphones I've got on?

Yeah.

I'm not actually listening to you. I'm listening to the radio because that was tedious. No. I'm joking. You're absolutely right. Okay. Let me put an idea forward then that there are three three types of CEO, perhaps, and maybe there are more. So there's the CEO who tries to design the website. We don't see many of them anymore. You know, like my favorite color is green. Make it green or I don't know, I'm being facetious, but there are people who want to go on.

Well, I was gonna say, without naming any names, we are actually working with a situation very like that at the moment. And it's very annoying for a client who. Yeah. They're in the middle of in the midst of redesigning their homepage. And every so often, all the decisions that everybody else has made get kind of screwed up into a ball and chucked in the bin because the CEO has kind of walked down the staircase from on high and decided, oh, I don't like that color. I don't like that image. Why are we doing that menu instead of this one? And yeah.

So suddenly that person is a designer. Yeah. As well as.

A copywriter and a videographer and yeah.

Okay, so we've got the CEO who tries to design the website, thinks that a designer thinks they can write great copy everything else. You know, let's let's just step back from that. They are the people who might have started the business. They're the people who run the business. They understand the business, they understand what they do, their customers and everything else. Absolutely. They are the subject matter experts. But why hire a design team to design something and then tell them how to design it? That doesn't seem to make sense anyway. Second type of CEO would be not interested. Like the chap on Monday who didn't bother turning up to the meeting.

It's just a website.

He might say, hey, I was really busy, a potentially big contract and needed to go and deal with that. That's fine. Um, I rocked up and I was there. I did my bit. He didn't do his bit. So so he's, he's in the not interested just to finish this off. Then there's the last one that gets that digital marketing good digital footprint, great website, good AdWords campaign, good content, all of the stuff that makes up, you know, create a really good digital footprint, that type of CEO. They get it there. The third type is, is there is that it? So they're either let me just recap. They're either they'll try and design it and get involved in all the wrong stuff. They'll show absolutely no interest at all or they get it. Is it as simple as that?

Sort of a bit of a Goldilocks and the Three Bears situation? Isn't it too much, too little? Not enough.

You have to bring porridge into this conversation, didn't you?

Yeah. I'm a hungry man. What can I say? Um, but yeah, no, I think I.

Just bought you a Creme Egg.

I just I ate the Creme Egg. It's gone.

I've eaten my creme egg.

No one hundred percent agree. Yeah. I mean, yeah, there's obviously kind of millions of shades of grey in between, but I think generally those are the camps. They were, they fall into. And the thing I was going to say is that, you know, I know from past experience, we've been in meetings together where even though the CEO has rocked up and sat in the meeting, they've clearly been very disengaged from the process. So it's not always necessarily like the snub of them not turning up to the meeting. It's also kind of sitting in a room with somebody whose eyes are glazed over and they're the kind of staring into the middle distance while you try and talk to them about what you're doing.

Yeah, yeah, that happened to me with a rather large fish processing company.

Yeah.

Uh, it was like, it was just just the weirdest meeting, you know what I mean? We had, there was a young guy who was really subservient, and then there was this other guy who spent most of his time looking out the window and making sure that I realised how disinterested he was. I just thought, yeah, I didn't even get a cup of tea. I think I might have mentioned it before, I just thought, I just thought to myself, what a prick.

Yeah. I mean, yeah.

There's no need to be a prick, because.

If you're not engaged, just don't do any of it. Really. Yeah. And I think, you know, we're probably getting a bit ahead of ourselves. We'll probably end up circling back to this later. But like, the one thing I will say is like, if you're not one hundred percent on board with the idea of redesigning your website and what it could do for your business, just don't start the process, get engaged. If you're going to put kind of half of your energy into it because it's frustrating for everybody involved, really.

I think just to just to clarify, we're talking about Companies because we work with a lot of engineering companies and we love doing that. We I'm talking about companies who probably haven't got a, a CMO, a chief marketing officer. They might not even have someone who's head of marketing. It's possibly that their marketing is being dealt with by somebody else in their spare time. Business development people basically, basically from four o'clock till five o'clock on a Friday afternoon, potentially. Because if you know, if if you're an organisation who's got a team in place, then I still think in the early stages, the CEO can add incredible value to the process of creating the right digital footprint so that you, you know, use, use it to use your website, etc., to generate business. But I also get that they've got a million other things to do, and they've invested in a team of people, or at least a person who, whose job it is to understand all that stuff and to be the focus, if you like.

Yes. Although I'm you.

Mean. Yes.

But well, yeah, Because, you know, I still think it's one of those. I get what you're saying one hundred percent. I still think that, you know, if the person who has the hands on every part of the business who maybe started it or certainly has like the most oversight over everything, doesn't think that they can add any value to the process by getting involved. They are either wrong or there's something very wrong at the company, the CEO, no matter how busy they are, they still have something useful to bring to the table when it comes to designing a website.

Yeah, they are the ultimate subject matter expert for an organisation, for a business, I would have thought.

And you can successfully dedicate it to your marketing manager, but is it going to be the best website ever? I don't know, I part of me thinks if you're really serious about it, you should be involved.

Really? You know what? One of the I'm not going to name the guy, but one of the smartest people I've ever had the pleasure of spending any time with ran a very successful engineering company in Aberdeen, which he sold for a fortune and lasted about six months in early retirement because he wasn't an old guy and started another business. And you know what? When we got engaged to work with them, I went over there and he and I, this is a guy like, yeah, I mean, if I mentioned it, certainly people in and around Aberdeen would know who I'm talking about. And he absolutely engaged in the whole thing. He was he he wanted to know exactly how this website was going to help him grow the business. He wanted to make sure I understand where he wanted to take the business and, and what the business was currently doing and what was what was working, what wasn't working. It was it was I, I was just blown away. I mean, an hour and a half of this guy's undivided attention. Yeah. Um, and yeah, we, you know, we knocked that project out of the park. I was going to.

Say how much better was the project for his involvement? I mean, yeah, in fact.

We got less engagement with some of the people who were, um, not even in the C-suite. You know, they, you know, like maybe department heads and stuff like that. They were busy, busy people and it was difficult nailing, nailing their, nailing them down and getting some time with them. We found that a bit of a challenge, and in the end, you know, one of our team actually went in there and spent time physically and time with them in order to get what we needed. But, you know, that was a frustration for him. And it was, you know, in the end, you know, he, he again, got involved because we said, look, the reason this isn't getting finished is we're struggling to get the subject matter experts pinned down. And then so he, he then intervened because not just because of the money he was spending to get this thing done, but because he was absolutely engaged in the entire process. He went on to sell that business. And now I think he started another business. I mean, hugely, hugely successful guy. And like I say, one of the brightest guys I've ever had the pleasure of spending a bit of time with other than you, obviously.

Yeah. But no, I mean, it's an interesting point. I mean, certainly the point about, you know, the CEO kind of leading by example, I think is a really key one, isn't it? Because it's like if you're not engaged in the project, the people underneath you aren't necessarily going to be engaged in the project. If they see that it's a clear priority for you, they'll put their best work into it. And let's be honest, it should be a priority. So yeah, one hundred percent.

Well, you know, people at the head of large businesses because we're talking about SMEs, but SMEs can be pretty big. They can be I don't know what the definition is, but they can be, you know, fifty, sixty million turnover businesses, probably a lot more than that and employing a couple hundred people and still be kind of, broadly speaking, called an SME. Um, those people are often intimately involved in other aspects of business growth. If they're working on a big pitch, you know, for a big project, they'll get involved with that. They'll, they'll rock up to go and meet the, the, the potential client and try and understand what they're, what problems they're really trying to solve, etc. and they'll get involved in that part of their business growth. So why so why wouldn't they get involved, you know, in, well, why, why would they only get involved in a superficial way or not at all in something, um, something as powerful as a website. Not really sure.

Well, like I, I don't know. Part of me thinks it is somewhat a degree of nervousness. People are sort of apprehensive about putting themselves forward and sounding like a bit of an idiot, especially, I think, if they don't necessarily know what they want from their website and that sort of thing. And I guess the other side of it is just that they see the business, the website, as just a sort of promotional tool, like a pamphlet or something, rather than a living, breathing sort of representation of their business. And maybe that's a bit, I don't know, self aggrandising, but I mean, ultimately that is what websites are for. They're not just showcase your products and services, are they? It's supposed to be the message you send, the way that you interact with people, the way you engage new customers.

So yeah, and that's a nice segue because being selfish, um, I want those people and those men, those women, I want them involved because having a meaningful conversation with somebody right at the top who gets it.

Yeah.

Means that everything else we do from there on in is going to be better.

Yeah.

Because it's not just about the budget. It's not like, what are those web people doing? Why is that website not ready? You know what? If you know to try and explain to somebody in a document, which I think we do really quite well with our proposals, and we have a high success rate with our proposals because we take the time to explain in plain English, why do it and, you know, why do it at all. What we actually do and what the results are likely to be. Um, but you can't be sitting across the table like we are now having a conversation, answering those questions and showing them examples and seeing them move from, you know, websites, basically just an electronic brochure in it to, oh, wow, you mean like with these other customers of yours, they're getting enquiries damn near every day as a result of the work you do, which is helping them grow their business and. Oh, wow. Yeah. When I go and search for that, right enough. There they are. And then if I click on that, yeah, yeah, I get ah, right. I start to get it now. Um, that conversation doesn't come across as effectively in a proposal document, which in the, in the example of the company I went to see on Monday, if the CEO even reads the document, because he might have just decided, oh, you know, there's this BD guy who's dealing with it, I'll just let him deal with it. I know our current website's rubbish, as long as it's a bit better than that. I'm not really bothered, you know, and I don't know, I just go.

Yeah, well I was just gonna say it's like earlier on you were talking about the fact that they're the subject matter experts. And I think what one of the things that I think is really key is when you're in a conversation with a CEO who is engaged, you can ask them questions about, you know, the bits of the business that matter, the messaging that really resonates, stuff like that. And they will instantly be able to answer you in a way that other people really will struggle to answer you with. And the alternative to not having them in the room and sitting at the desk with you where you can say, you know, which bits of the business are really driving growth, and they can just instantly rattle off a list of products or services that really actually are going to turn the dial, if you can promote them better, is you play a weird game of Chinese whispers where you say, these are the key words, and the marketing manager says all those key words look great, and then you build pages, and then the CEO takes a look at it and says, oh, why are we promoting this bit of the business? And not that? Or, you know, why have we gone down this avenue when we don't care about that sort of revenue or we don't care about those sort of potential customers? And I just think that's the key, isn't it? It's not just that they're kind of subject matter experts about the businesses that we actually need, the insights that they can deliver. And I'm not saying that marketing managers are incapable of delivering those insights at all. Not for a second. But it's so much quicker and easier for everybody involved when you can just sit down and have a very kind of rapid fire, top level conversation about the business, what it does, how it works, why it's successful, that sort of thing.

Yes, yes, yes. I think, um, it's also very useful for us going back to the kind of slightly selfish point, um, to have, uh, a free flowing conversation with the people or the person at the very top. Yeah. Um, it certainly gives us way more insight than the conversation we were able to have with pretty much anybody else. You're always going to get other enthusiastic, enthusiastic people involved in an organisation, but even in a tiny organisation like us, like, like read evolution as ten of us, even in a tiny organisation, you know, ultimately nobody is going to care as much about this business and be able to answer any question about this business like I can.

Yeah.

At the moment, I mean, that's not always going to be the case as as time moves on and, you know, other people come through who are in a, in, in the leadership role and, and, and it's strange, but even organisations who are, you know, ten times bigger than us and twenty times bigger than us, that's probably still the case.

Yeah, absolutely.

And we're just repeating what we've already said that these people are absolutely vital, but their their lack of engagement is. Yeah, it's it's it's kind of it's bad.

There's also a sort of a natural limitation on what you can do without their involvement. Because a lot of the times when we're pitching, when we actually drill into what our business is doing wrong online, and I don't mean that in a particularly unpleasant way, but, you know, the opportunities are missing and the things they could be doing better. It's actually a lot of the time about sort of tearing up the playbook and doing something quite left field, isn't it? It's like we'll say, well, why don't you just completely redesign everything? Why don't we just change the messaging from scratch? And if you can say that to a CEO who has the power to say yes and the appetite for that risk, that's a very quick and easy conversation. And then you can dig into what the messaging should be when you're talking with somebody who then has to go and get approval from three different layers of committee or, you know, six different managers, you just there is no appetite for risk anymore. There's no way of taking those big risks. And I think, I genuinely think half the time that is what's missing. You know, people are playing it safe because they have to answer to somebody else. So when you say, oh, can we try this on the homepage, they're like, oh no, you know, none of our competitors do that. That's a bit weird. What if it doesn't work and you just get shut down? It looked like you were about to say something and then I bored you.

It's a recurring theme.

Isn't it?

I tell you, maybe one example would be, um, the public sector. We we do go after and have a degree of success going after public sector gigs, but with public sector gigs, they put an it out, an invitation to tender. And you have to convince um, a complete stranger who you never speak to that you're able to deliver what they need. And their priority is to not make a bad decision. And based on the information they read in a document, decide if you can or can't deliver this piece of work. And, um, and from there, you know, pick somebody to do the work. Um, the public sector for reasons that seem both obvious and stupid, uh, operate in that way. Um, I think broadly speaking, they get bloody awful value for money because they work in that way, but they have to be seen to be fair.

You mean having a sub chair to the chief vice president of liaisons isn't a sensible idea?

I think you know what I'm trying to think of the, uh, what is it called? The the the office of of Administrative Affairs I'm thinking about. Yes, Minister. Now, something like that anyway. But so if you think about the way public sector gigs operate, because they have to, you absolutely don't have to do that in the private sector. So why would you.

Yeah. And on the flip side, have you ever seen a good public sector website that just doesn't happen. It can't happen. You look, maybe I'm gonna somebody will call me out now and be like, what about this amazing website? But generally speaking, they're all pretty rubbish. And that is because they are designed by committee and and also just kind of relentlessly faffed into the ground. And I just think that's yeah. I mean, half the reason you want to be sat with the key decision maker in these meetings is because you just don't want your ideas to get slowly watered down by layers of different people.

But more importantly, you want to try and understand as much as you can what the current challenges are in order to figure out whether you're the right people to, to provide a solution to those challenges. Yeah. Okay. Um, anywhere else we need to go with this.

Well, I think it's worth pointing out because I'm sure there will be people listening to this who are like, yeah.

Nobody listens to.

This. I think I think everyone they do at least one person who's listening right now. Um, no, you know, people will be listening to this and thinking, yeah, but that's all good and well in principle, but I literally don't have the time. I mean, there have been very successful meetings that we've had quite recently where the CEO has literally dropped by, said, hi. Taking a quick look at what we're doing, made a couple of jokes about how complicated it all looks and then wandered off. But even that's enough engagement sometimes to just, you know, is this the right direction? Is this the correct flow?

I know exactly who you're talking about. And a lovelier guy you couldn't have met. And he was very apologetic, and he was basically up to his ass in alligators. Needed to, excuse me, sort something out, but he was engaged. He just he just it just happened that the meeting we'd organised with the marketing team coincided with him doing something within, with, with investors. So I totally get that.

And there is also as well, like in that situation, there is also a burden on us as, as marketing or web people to when a CEO does give you the time to very quickly be able to communicate what you need to communicate and to ask the questions that need to be asked. So there is, I think, a responsibility not to sort of waste people's time and faff about. And, you know, I mean, in that very same meeting, somebody made a comment about how glad they were that this wasn't a workshop with a slide show and post-it notes and that sort of thing. And I think there is a real, you know, when we're asking for a key decision makers time, we're not asking for it because we want to bombard them with useless marketing waffle. It's just let's extract the information we need to extract to make this project a success. So yeah, it does have to cut both ways, I guess. And it doesn't have to be a huge investment.

I take on board what you're saying. Absolutely. Um, and, you know, I think by saying some of the things we've said in this podcast, we are leaving ourselves open to criticism and people might say, who the hell do these guys think they are that they can command the time of the person at the helm of, of a, of a, of a.

Very.

Good business.

That's very sort of like there's an intrinsic sort of worship of capitalism at play, isn't there? It's like, oh, dare we ask for the CEO's time? It's like he's a person and he has useful knowledge. So yeah.

Actually, absolutely. I always think, and I can't think of a single example just now, but, you know, I think I think as you as you get older, you do recognise exactly what you've just said that ultimately These are just people. I watched a bit of the. This is completely off topic as usual for me. I watched just the first five or ten minutes of the new golf documentary on Netflix called Full Swing.

They make documentaries about that.

Yeah, they made a documentary about the life of a pro golfer, basically. You know what I mean? And seeing, um oh, it's the whole PGA tour. And I think some of the live tour guys as well. But they were on a private jet going home from a tournament and there was two, I think it was Jordan Spieth and Justin Thomas, you know, and they were just a couple of guys hanging out, having a can of juice, sitting on the on the private plane and just reminiscing about the. And we all know that famous people, famous golfers, famous actors, famous, you know, they're all at heart, just normal, ordinary people. Um, who did I meet recently? I can't remember, I'm sure I name dropped it, but I can't remember who it was. But I think what I guess what I'm trying to say in a really clumsy way is when it comes to businesses, we do put people on a pedestal and think, well, we can't possibly get an audience with whoever this person is. And it's nonsense, because it just makes perfect sense to try and at least get some time with them.

Absolutely. I mean, yeah, there's I can literally think of a couple of examples where people have been like, oh, I wouldn't want to bother the, the CEO with this or, you know, words to that effect. And you just think, well, you know, if they want it to be a success. And again, you cannot have a, I don't think you can really have a successful business in the twenty first century without a successful website. Like they're gonna have to get involved at some point.

Yeah. And, and even if all you get is, you know, an hour of the person's time to talk about the process, talk about what you do, why you do it, what the outcomes are going to be, answer some questions. And then they know that this thing's going on somewhere and they, as the head of the business, understand what's going on, why it's going on, even though they're not going to get, you know, you're never going to go to the CEO and say, oh yeah, we need you to write a blog post or we need you to, to approve these designs. I mean, you know, that's not what we're talking about.

No, not at all.

But it's actually getting them to understand that in, in twenty twenty three, you know, it's not building a website isn't about content management systems and design. That's, that's, that's.

Just.

Part of the process. But what the real thing is about is, is this business.

Growth. Yeah, exactly. That's it. And it raises another point, which is again, being selfish. The other trap you fall into when you can't get that hour of somebody's time is you end up in this loop of like relentlessly justifying yourself. And we see this all the time where we're dealing with a business development manager very well, meaning very good, very successful, you know, fantastic at their jobs, but they still have to go to the CEO and report, which means that we have to report to them and we have to justify the expenditure on the marketing spend. And we spend hours of their time and money pulling together laborious reports to show their rankings going up and their there, traffic going up and there, enquiries going up instead of just actually doing the work, which again, you can just kind of nipple that in the bud. If you can persuade all the, all the people at the top of the chain that actually this is worthwhile and they should stick with it for a couple of years and yeah. Okay.

Okay. Well, as the CEO of Red evolution, I think I've given you far too much of my time. And, and I think I spent too much time with my minions.

Thank you. Your minions.

Um, so I think we've covered that, uh, well enough. If you totally disagree with us, that's absolutely fine. Please come on and talk to us or shout at us about it.

Although it'd be interesting if any CEOs come to us now and tell us that they were too busy to talk to their agency, but not too busy to listen to our podcast.

Well that's right, absolutely.

You've got no excuse.

But they'll be listening to our podcast in their BMW as a driving home.

Yeah. That's true.

You know, probably or Mercedes.

Or Bentley.

Or Bentley. Aston Martin. Yeah.

An Aston Martin would be nice to be fair.

Do you know, the thing is, you can. I'm not going to go there. No, I'm not going to go there because I can. I can, although we can't see them upstairs. I know that I know that Julie and Caron are probably rolling their eyes thinking, what is he waffling on about?

Now, literally, we're contractually obliged to mention cars in every podcast. And if you haven't picked up on that.

There is that. Yeah, absolutely. Um, right. So if you want to come on the, um, podcast, give us a shout, you can get us at red evolution dot com. Pretty much every page of our website's got a contact form on it. Just go and fill it in podcast. The podcast lives at from the coalface dot com. Um, you've been listening to me, Dave Robinson and me.

Alex.

You've not got a second here. No, I don't I a bit like Sting. Yeah. Oh. Oh sure. Oh sure. Yeah. More like sure.

Actually, do you believe in life after love?

And on that note.

That wasn't a very good note, was it? Okay. Enough of the.