S3, Ep. 2: Your Reputation Is Your Brand, feat. Seth Tower Hurd of Manx Solutions

Layci (00:02.51)
Hello listeners and welcome back to Confessions of a Terrible Leader. I'm your host and former terrible leader, Lacey Nelson. And today with us, we have Mr. Seth Tower -Hird, who has an incredible background. We were just chatting a little before we hit record, learning a bit more about his path. And currently he is the owner of Mank Solutions. He is marketing guru.

I don't think you probably call yourself that, but I'm calling you that. And he is here today to share with us, of course, his confession. But before we jump into that, Seth, welcome.

Seth Tower Hurd (00:41.211)
Hehehehe

Seth Tower Hurd (00:45.403)
Hey, thank you so much. So you're out of town, I'm out of town, your producer's out of town, this is a cool setup. So it's a vacay. I mean, maybe you're only like 100 % vacation episode of the whole year, so that's kind of an honor, right? You know what I mean? Where everybody's traveling. So yeah, thanks for having me.

Layci (00:49.454)
Yes.

Neither one of us are at home in our regular studios.

Layci (01:02.318)
Yeah, absolutely.

Layci (01:07.086)
Absolutely, absolutely. So tell me a little bit about your path that led you to owning Mank Solutions. How did you get where you're at today? You have an amazing amount of depth and breadth of experience and I don't want to mingle it. So I'm going to let you share with us your pathway.

Seth Tower Hurd (01:11.963)
I lost you.

Seth Tower Hurd (01:30.555)
Yeah, well, I wound up here because I played college basketball. For some reason, I didn't wind up making the NBA, only because the scouts of my era had some kind of discrimination thing against players that only averaged like three points per game. So my pro basketball dreams died. I almost made it except for like a lack of talent and athleticism. So I got close, just missing those two key components.

Layci (01:54.798)
We're so close.

Seth Tower Hurd (01:58.683)
In all seriousness, I did blow out my knee and tore the rotator cuff from my shoulder within four months of each other and realized that I just kind of physically was not holding up to repeatedly running into guys that were seven feet tall. I'm six foot six, but once you get in the college basketball world, that's not that big. And I just physically did not hold up to it. So I decided it probably wasn't worth it to continually have surgeries throughout my late teens and early 20s.

Layci (02:17.262)
-huh.

Seth Tower Hurd (02:26.043)
wound up on a country radio station in Iowa from 3 to 6 AM because the last guy that was doing it was drunk on the job. So that's one way to get a job. And they're like, can you show up by 11 30 PM, stay till 6 AM, and not be inebriated? And I'm like, I think so. And so they gave me that shot. In all seriousness, though, I was helping my mom kind of pay the bills. And that was a

Layci (02:36.878)
Yeah, that does it.

Seth Tower Hurd (02:55.419)
often my third job by the time I got there, even on the weekends. So I was breaking up concrete in the mornings, actually selling high end women's shoes in the afternoon. And then I would go do the overnight thing, trying to get into media. By the time I'd go to bed, I'd normally been up for 26 or 27 hours straight, which you can pull off when you're 19 and not a whole lot of time past that. Could not do that at this point in my life.

Layci (03:05.39)
Mmm!

Layci (03:16.238)
my.

Layci (03:20.814)
Yeah, no kidding. That is not sustainable.

Seth Tower Hurd (03:26.139)
Yeah, oddly enough, when I was selling for Sex Fifth Avenue, I was selling high end women's shoes. I was making like $3 ,000 a week sometimes. And the company begged me to stay. And I was like, I hate everything about this. And I don't like anybody I work with. So I don't know how you're going to talk me into that.

Layci (03:34.958)
same.

Layci (03:43.534)
Yep, yep, good money, but not worth the trade off.

Seth Tower Hurd (03:45.307)
Yeah, I know.

Well, I know that this is not a story about juvenile pranks, but one of the things that helped me kind of further my career was that my coworkers that I used to, I would outsell just by being good at the job, would actually steal my lunch. And so I started bringing Oreo cookies with white toothpaste in the middle of them instead of the, instead of like scrape out the frosting. And so that did slow down after somebody ate a toothpaste cookie. So.

Layci (04:08.014)
my gosh, that's genius.

Layci (04:15.406)
That is genius.

Seth Tower Hurd (04:17.755)
I went from there, I was in Chicago media for 10 years and essentially worked 80 hours a week because I was on two different TV shows, one of which won five Emmys. I was writing for a half dozen different magazines and interviewed everybody from Gerard Butler to Barack Obama to Greta Gerwig, who directed the Barbie movie last year. And that's really fun and the perks are really cool, but it doesn't really add any meaning to your life. And by the time I was 28, I realized

Layci (04:34.222)
Yeah.

Layci (04:43.214)
Yeah.

Seth Tower Hurd (04:45.563)
that yes, I could go backstage at House of Blues kind of whenever I wanted. But I was single. I kind of had no prospects for dating because I worked quite literally seven days a week. And my friends had gotten married and started to have kids. And like, I just kind of didn't have anything. And I was, I would at that point, I would say I was pretty severely depressed. Wound up jumping over to like, I got to do something to like pay the rent. So

Layci (04:50.126)
Mm -hmm.

Layci (04:57.07)
Yeah.

Layci (05:05.518)
Mmm.

Seth Tower Hurd (05:11.675)
I was able to do grad school twice for free in my 20s, which I got to the very tail end of what employers would pay for that. So I did an MBA and then I turned around and I did a master's in political theory and studied the economic turnaround of regions, which will come in the story later. And so because I had two master's degrees, I could teach college. And so I did that. I worked for a bit at Travac Tech Startups.

Layci (05:18.766)
Okay.

Layci (05:28.494)
Okay.

Layci (05:32.43)
Yeah.

Seth Tower Hurd (05:34.843)
worked in nonprofits for a bit. I worked in the mega church and then I moved my wife and I decided to move to St. Louis to be close to family after having our oldest daughter. I was able to jump into the marketing agency world and work with Fortune 50 companies and really get some experience there that was really cool. And I also found out that just because people work for a bigger name brand company, they're not necessarily smarter. Like I thought that the level of talent would go up and it doesn't. And then I

Layci (05:56.142)
Right.

Layci (05:59.822)
Mm -hmm. You are correct.

Seth Tower Hurd (06:04.955)
Before going out on my own, I most recently was leading all marketing for an integrated practice, which is commercial real estate, private equity, architecture, construction, which sounds way more prestigious than it probably actually is, which is just buying ugly warehouse and hiring your own people to fix it, filling it back up with tenants and reselling it. Did that, and then I got laid off when the bank started to fail because the entire commercial real estate business is built on debt. And when you can't take out any more debt, you can't buy anything when you can't

buy anything, you can't sell anything. And so there's just kind of poof, it goes away, right? And so it's kind of one of those boom or bust industries. Had a lot of good, a really good time there actually. And then when I got laid off, I just started to get enough work that I realized that I could probably survive this thing. And, you know, 15 months later, here we are both on vacation.

Layci (06:40.526)
Yeah. Yeah.

Layci (06:54.766)
Yeah!

Layci (07:00.014)
I would love the freedom that working for yourself affords. I mean, we know there's a lot of other work that goes into it and it's not necessarily working any less, but it's working differently, working differently.

Seth Tower Hurd (07:13.083)
It really is the line that, I don't know who first said it, but the line that it's working 80 hours a week to avoid 40 hours a week is true many weeks, if you're going to make it go.

Layci (07:22.638)
Mm -hmm. Yes, absolutely. Well, thank you for coming on today and sharing your expertise with us, your story with us. I just want to dive in and start asking you so many questions about how now, you know, I've got like interview stage fright, knowing you've entered, like you're an excellent interviewer who's interviewed all these people from all over.

Seth Tower Hurd (07:48.059)
you

Layci (07:51.79)
I definitely don't have that level of interviewing expertise, which makes me want to ask the question for those of us that do want to improve our skills and get more comfortable interviewing. What do we how do we do that? Where do we even start to learn how to ask better questions?

Seth Tower Hurd (08:10.875)
I always taught people when I got this question and I was working in it full time, I would say have three to four questions to jump off with and then just see where it goes. Because way more people should be podcasting than are, first of all. Because everybody thinks if you're not getting to a million downloads or something like that, you're not successful. The reality is that the most crucial business conversations in whatever field you're in are happening right here.

Layci (08:18.926)
Mm -hmm.

Layci (08:27.502)
Mm.

Seth Tower Hurd (08:38.043)
I don't know when this is going to air, but LinkedIn is very, very close to launching like a tick tock style, feature on their platform. And so just everything is going to discovery is happening via short form videos. If you are not producing content like this, it's like not being in the flipping phone book as a local pizza restaurant 30 years ago, like you're dead. So get over your dang stage fright. That's the other thing that's so weird is.

Layci (08:46.382)
Mm -hmm.

Layci (09:00.398)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Seth Tower Hurd (09:05.627)
People who are so accomplished, who are brilliant and can, a lot of times can sell. You put it in front of a microphone, they're like, and it's like, just talk. You're good at it. Sit down and talk. Like, you know, I got lucky enough. Yeah, I got lucky enough that I did that. And, you know, I had people be mean to me and make fun of me and at one point stalk me and threaten to murder me. And I had to get a restraining order and somebody got arrested. I got all that out of my way in my early twenties out of the way. So.

Layci (09:13.838)
Mm -hmm.

Layci (09:17.774)
Yeah, yeah. Have a conversation.

Layci (09:29.422)
That's fun.

Seth Tower Hurd (09:35.419)
It's just a lot easier. Now when somebody says a mean comment to me on Twitter, I was like, somebody already tried to kill me, whatever. Your words aren't gonna hurt.

Layci (09:44.238)
You're like, you're not gonna hurt me. Sticks and stones, buddy, sticks and stones. Start talking murder, you're a wolf.

Seth Tower Hurd (09:48.667)
Yeah, and so I always say start with just a handful of questions and then stay really, really present in the moment. And the conversation is almost its own animal. Like you shouldn't try to control it. You need to, you obviously need to be talking about some stuff that's going to matter to your audience. But one of the ways to make sure it matters to your audience is to not fake it. And when you interrupt something that's genuinely happening to talk about something else, you'll have 32 questions to ask this guest and you derail it.

Layci (10:15.47)
Mm -hmm.

Seth Tower Hurd (10:16.603)
Like the audience feels that and they're just not into it. And so just, just be present. Go.

Layci (10:19.438)
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. When you were talking about having all of these different experiences and this being, you know, the podcast, a podcast about leadership and understanding how to become a better leader, I can easily draw the lines of seeing your leadership. But I want to ask you, how did your leadership get shaped throughout this? Did you have people that you were?

report that we're reporting to you, was it obviously you had to have a high capacity for leading yourself, which is where you got to start if you want to lead. How would you describe the formation of your leadership through this very winding, exciting pathway that got you to where you're at today?

Seth Tower Hurd (11:07.547)
Yeah, so let me kind of break that down into leadership and management because you got to be doing both, right? There are a lot of people who are really good at leadership that are not particularly good at management. A great example is Steve Jobs. He could cast a vision. He could make sure that an incredible product shipped. His employees hated him. And if he found out what you were working on, it was pretty much a death sentence at Apple because he would just start to tinker with whatever your

Layci (11:11.982)
Yes.

Layci (11:27.694)
Mm -hmm.

Seth Tower Hurd (11:35.963)
think your product was. And then he would decide you weren't good enough and he would fire you regardless of your talent. The dude had no management skills. He didn't have the ability to delegate some of the small things. Like when they were famously building the Pixar headquarters when he was over at that company, he was draconian about where the bathrooms went. Dude, those are not CEO decisions. They're just not.

Layci (12:00.302)
Hmm

No, they should not be.

Seth Tower Hurd (12:06.395)
Okay, you know, fine, you made money and you're remembered as brilliant. But he never was able to step out and realize that a company is more than one person. And so, you know, as far as leadership and management, I would say

Layci (12:15.918)
Mmm.

Seth Tower Hurd (12:23.675)
I was probably about 12 years into my career before I really started to kind of land on some people that were really able to shape me in a positive way. Because I started out in media, which I would say overall doesn't tend to have a lot of great leaders or managers. And then I was just kind of in the nonprofit space, in the startup space where the startup space is just about 26 year olds who convince somebody to give them $4 million and nothing I worked on.

Layci (12:35.662)
Mm -hmm.

Layci (12:43.47)
huh.

Layci (12:51.534)
Yep, yep.

Seth Tower Hurd (12:53.371)
succeeded. I would say not to my not due to my personal shortcomings, but just because most startups are going to fail. And I just saw tons of money get wasted. And I didn't learn anything there. It really wasn't until I got to the marketing agency world that I started to see people who really were talented, who really were on their game and who really wanted to invest in other people. Going back through kind of the media world, through the nonprofit world, when I look back and I say, as I'm growing a company, how many of those people would I hire?

Layci (12:58.158)
Right, right.

Layci (13:14.126)
mmm

Seth Tower Hurd (13:22.971)
into my own company that were in a leadership role? And the answer is almost none of them.

Layci (13:29.166)
Mmm.

Seth Tower Hurd (13:30.523)
Like, it's my money on the line. Who am I gambling on? Not you guys.

Layci (13:37.166)
What were those characteristics that were, that make you have such that visceral, like, no way, I'm not, I'm not trusting, it's trust, you're not trusting them. What, why? Why don't you trust them?

Seth Tower Hurd (13:48.443)
Yeah. By the way, I should have just given the disclaimer. If we used to work together, just check out now. Just turn this off.

Seth Tower Hurd (13:59.259)
Not a very good liar. You know, I would say that the biggest thing is those people had never really

Layci (14:00.686)
Ha ha.

Seth Tower Hurd (14:09.531)
been around anybody that was great in leadership. And they also were in arenas where you can kind of get away with not being good at something. And something will cover for you. So nonprofits, they talk a lot about being relational. And we're a community. We're a family, that type of thing. I am so sorry about that. Sorry, I'm making your, yeah.

Layci (14:17.966)
Mm -hmm.

Layci (14:35.982)
That's alright.

Take your time.

Seth Tower Hurd (14:39.067)
making your producer's job harder. Yeah. I may just have to do. My apologies.

Layci (14:49.07)
Nope, it's allergy season.

Seth Tower Hurd (14:52.859)
I'm just getting over something and I haven't had to use my voice as much. So let's go for it again. In the nonprofit space, in the media space, and in the startup space, you don't need to be quite frankly good at it because you have a lot of other things you can blame. In the startup space, it's like, well, we don't know if this is going to work.

Layci (14:54.734)
All right.

Seth Tower Hurd (15:16.795)
We don't, I don't know what I'm doing with, with hiring and firing, which is a huge part of leadership in the nonprofit space. It's like, we're relational, which I found to be by them being relational. It just means they like want to dig into your dang business. And I'm like, no, I just want to be here, do a good job, serve the mission and leave. Like I, I don't really need you to know anything about me. Like chill out. I don't need to hang out with you outside of work. and it's like, well, we're here to care about people. I don't want you to care about me. I have family and friends. I don't want you to play that role in my life.

Layci (15:29.902)
That was...

Right. Right.

Layci (15:42.702)
Ha ha!

Seth Tower Hurd (15:45.947)
Leave me alone. I'm good at this. Let me do the thing I'm good at. OK? And it wasn't until I got to the, yeah, you know, there is a moment where I was in the marketing agency world and I had gotten just a bit of negative feedback from my annual review from one of the client side people that said that I was too hard to understand on tech stuff. And I talked to my boss at the time. I was like, well, the clients, you just said the clients love me.

Layci (15:46.126)
Yeah. Yeah.

Right. They had like one playbook.

Seth Tower Hurd (16:15.547)
when I break down these complex processes and ideas in tech and simply explain to them how, you know, we're going to solve their problem and what this is going to do for their profitability. She's like, that's true. And I'm like, but our employees can't understand what I'm talking about. And she's like, yeah, that's what I'm saying. I'm like, you have a hiring issue. And I literally said, your client service rep is stupid. You know, I had a really good

Layci (16:35.694)
Mm -hmm.

Layci (16:39.598)
How was that received?

Seth Tower Hurd (16:45.211)
boss that understood and basically she asked if I was, did I test into like gifted when I was a kid? And I think that that label's often overused, but I tested it as reading at a grad school level in the second grade. And she very gently kind of guided me to say, you got to slow it down even more, because whether or not you think the true thing that this client services rep is

Layci (16:55.982)
Okay.

Layci (17:00.142)
Mm -hmm.

Seth Tower Hurd (17:13.435)
not the sharpest knife in the drawer, you still got to work with her. And I thought because I was right, because I was making my company and the other company money, that that would just sort of smooth things over. And I'm actually pretty relational and not real high conflict or anything like that. Like I wasn't just rolling over the room. But I was pretty offended at the time. I'm like, well, I don't know. This person needs to spend more time on this stuff if they can't understand me or ask me for help, not just throw me into the bus.

Layci (17:25.806)
Mm.

Layci (17:29.422)
Okay.

Layci (17:40.174)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

Seth Tower Hurd (17:43.099)
I had a leader that taught me that it was my job to smooth those things out. And then in the commercial real estate world, I had a boss that I may still want to do some work for in the future, who's now at a different company, but was just the probably best soft skills leader I've ever seen and could navigate really complex client and internal relationships. And it's hard for me to put a pin in one lesson there.

Layci (17:50.478)
Yes.

Layci (18:03.054)
Mmm.

Seth Tower Hurd (18:11.547)
But I think about those two people as really shaping me on the ability not just to influence people and be able to drive a vision, but also to be able to get things done in a timely manner. And nicely holding me to make sure I was truly doing my best without being an idiot.

Layci (18:14.926)
Mm -hmm.

Layci (18:31.854)
Yes.

Yes, that is great. And it is so interesting too, when you start understanding, doing the work that we do, when you ask someone, what does it mean to be a leader? And you don't give them any sort of context, you just pluck it out of the air. When you're asking it in an organization, oftentimes we go in and we'll get as many people in the room. That's the amount of diversity and answers that people have around what is leadership actually.

What does it mean? And it is often conflated with management and they are absolutely not the same things, but you do, you do need to exercise both skill sets or understand that if you have a tendency to be a Steve jobs, you need to stop and get someone else in that seat so you can be executing in your zone of genius 80 % of the time.

which for him, it was, you know, vision casting and let's create this great company and let someone else figure out where the bathrooms are and stop messing up everyone's projects. So yeah, absolutely.

Seth Tower Hurd (19:35.547)
Yeah. Well, and I think leaders are often blind to the Taylor Swift problem, which is, you know, and actually, except for Taylor Swift's last two records, which are garbage, I am a fan. But this like.

Layci (19:47.534)
I'm a huge fan, so I'm like, I'm into needles. What's he gonna say? Tell me.

Seth Tower Hurd (19:53.019)
I, okay. The fact that Taylor Swift is, you know, all of her albums are essentially like blaming the guy. It's like, if you can't find love with all these famous and very successful people, what is the only common denominator there? And it's the same thing with hiring. I've heard so many leaders say, well, we can't hire good people or they don't stay. And it's like, well, how many of you hired that have left in the last three or four years? And it's like 50. And I'm like, you have the Taylor Swift dating problem. What is the only common denominator there?

Layci (20:02.158)
Mm -hmm.

Layci (20:08.366)
Mm -hmm.

Layci (20:16.622)
Yes.

Layci (20:22.734)
Ha ha!

Seth Tower Hurd (20:22.939)
flipping CEO or VP or whatever you are. Maybe you should work on that thing, not on where you're getting your leads from.

Layci (20:25.262)
Yeah, yeah.

Layci (20:30.062)
A million percent, a million percent. Yes, we say one of the markers of being a top shelf, truly a leading organization is that you have top talent lined up and waiting to work for you. Like you should never have a problem recruiting at high levels because they've been waiting and watching and they've been following you, right? And I love what you said about if you don't have a presence on social media, if you don't have a presence on video,

that that's gonna make your job 80 million times harder, because you're not visible.

Seth Tower Hurd (21:04.699)
when I went into the commercial real estate industry, I was kind of down to two offers. And I kid you not, the tipping point was I watched a YouTube video of one of the owners of the business speaking at a conference. I was like, all right, that guy's cool. Let's do it. That was it. And I think that people that are hiring forget that your reputation exists because they think that they can put four bullet points on their website that say our culture is, and it means nothing.

Layci (21:19.598)
Yeah!

Layci (21:23.518)
my gosh.

Layci (21:32.974)
yeah.

Seth Tower Hurd (21:34.395)
Like you shouldn't, I don't know. It's not that you shouldn't internal, you shouldn't communicate your values internally, but as far as recruiting, nobody's going to look at that. What they're going to do is they're going to hop on LinkedIn or they're going to hop on something else and they're going to find somebody that used to work there and they're going to talk to them. Right. And so your reputation exists solely within what people are saying about you full stop. And you know, when you're just, it really is. And you know, companies

Layci (21:56.238)
Yeah, that's your brand. Your reputation is your brand. Yeah.

Seth Tower Hurd (22:02.555)
work so hard to control their logo and their visual imagery and all this stuff. And when you're just burning out a lot of people or when you've had, you know, contentious client relationships or whatever the thing is, that's the reason you can't hire guys. Like it's not that you didn't just do your hiring page and explain that you have this like fun outing to a winery and you know, it didn't, the language around the winery trip wasn't good enough and that's why they didn't come work for you. It's the fact that they found out what you actually are. And so

Layci (22:15.918)
Yeah.

Layci (22:28.942)
Yep.

Seth Tower Hurd (22:31.643)
If you want better people, sorry, you're gonna have to be a better person.

Layci (22:35.022)
million percent. I could not agree with that more. And it's not, I get tired of, I get really frustrated when employers are like, well, they're leaving for better offers. They're leaving for money. I'm like, to a point, but if you're hiring for a higher level job, once people hit about that 75 K mark, 65 to 75 K is the mark. They are not, that is not a top priority for them anymore for money. I mean, of course it's going to vary depending on where you're at in the organization.

But generally speaking, once people are comfortable and they can pay their bills and they're not scrambling every month, money goes way to the bottom of the list of what they're looking for when it comes to picking where they'd like to work. So, it's, they're not willing to what they often will deem. They're not gonna sell their soul. Like those days are over and two years is a...

normal tenure with the business. Two years, you're just getting started with an employee.

Seth Tower Hurd (23:34.843)
Well, I think that if employers want to be more abusive to their employees, quite frankly, which is what it used to be, you got to bring back pensions. Because if people realize they're going to get a full pension at the end, they will just let you treat them like garbage. But if you take that away, they're going to go work somewhere where they're happy. Because what's the difference?

Layci (23:42.542)
Mm -hmm. Right.

Layci (23:55.566)
Right. There's, there's, we don't have the same, golden handcuffs really that used to keep people locked in jobs. There was, there's not the a hundred percent dependence on your health benefits. It doesn't, you don't have to have a job anymore to be guaranteed to have health coverage. You don't have to, you don't, you're like you said, you're not getting a pension. There's, there's no long -term reward. That's just a win for them. And.

you're gonna pay for that. We're already seeing organizations pay for that that haven't figured that out yet. So absolutely. All right, before we dive into the confession, I have a question for you. When we are looking for a good marketing agency to work with someone, when you are a small, mid -level business,

Seth Tower Hurd (24:29.979)
Yeah.

Layci (24:51.054)
What are the markers? Like, how do I know I'm putting my money somewhere smart? Because I will tell you, I personally have lit an embarrassing amount of money on fire, working and attempting to figure out marketing and all own part of it was my fault. I didn't vet well, I wasn't ready, I put the cart before the horse. So I don't wanna say, it was the marketing agency because it was a lot of factors. But what would you tell someone like me?

Seth Tower Hurd (25:17.979)
Yeah.

Layci (25:19.662)
What do we need to do? How do we do this right so we're not burning cash?

Seth Tower Hurd (25:23.547)
Okay, so the first thing is, is that every marketing agency essentially has an A, B, and a C team. Okay. And you might think because you're hiring an agency that has these really big marquee clients that you're getting the best players on the team. Okay. So essentially to use a baseball analogy, you might think that you are hiring, because I live in St. Louis, the St. Louis Cardinals, right? 11 World Series. Like that's what you're getting. You are getting the best pitchers, hitters, and fielders. In reality,

What you might want to be getting as the smallest client is essentially their single A team. They're just testing out there to see who's going to actually be good enough to work for their really good clients. And so you want to be careful on the really big players in the space that you're just not going to be a priority. The flip side of that is the really small mom and pop shop. They may have

Layci (26:06.126)
Mm -hmm.

Layci (26:11.31)
Mm -hmm.

Mm -hmm. Yeah.

Seth Tower Hurd (26:20.923)
you know, four to seven employees or 12 employees or something like that. Sometimes they're really good and that's where you want to be. Other times, quite frankly, it is they have not grown because they turn over clients a lot. And you got to be really careful there. And so it has to be confusing as a business owner if you haven't done what I've done for like the last 20 years of my life to kind of look at some of these case studies and go, well, this looks good. Why is this not working out? I would say, first of all,

Layci (26:26.926)
Yeah.

Seth Tower Hurd (26:50.267)
If you want to have really good service, you need to be a good client. And part of being a client is actually showing up and paying attention into the weekly or monthly check -ins, however you're doing it. And then making sure that it makes sense in your head that this is leading to business. Because just spending a bunch of money on just branding, if you're spending internal money, is fine. If you have a tremendous profit margin or you're large, it's totally a good investment. If you're small to medium size,

Layci (26:54.35)
Mm -hmm.

Layci (26:59.47)
This is...

Layci (27:15.982)
Okay.

Seth Tower Hurd (27:20.603)
you know, you just probably don't have the cashflow to just kind of continue to spend on branding. So, you know, where are you actually putting this? Like I would be putting it into Google and social media ads, you know, email drips, SEO, that type of thing that are actually going after real customers and not just going, well, we bought a bunch of billboards in your market because they're working for a really big company. It's not like, well, we bought 50 billboards for this company in whatever market it's in. And, you know, really it's just to kind of get the logo out there so that you're familiar with it. That's

Layci (27:38.222)
Right, right.

Seth Tower Hurd (27:49.371)
Flip an amazing if you're Subaru, okay? It's worth it, okay? If you're not a, if you're under $10 million in annual business, don't do that. Put it into getting your next customer.

Layci (27:52.11)
Right, right, right.

Layci (28:01.326)
Yeah. Yeah.

Layci (28:06.83)
it. Thank you. That is helpful. It is. It does feel like the, well, and everything feels like the Wild West and it changes so fast, right? Like what worked two months ago even, maybe won't work today. So keeping on top of it also feels exhausting. What do you, what advice do you have for those of us that are in that, you were under the $10 million a year mark?

And we are growing, but we feel completely overwhelmed with just the amount of stuff to stay on top of, to, with the algorithms, all the things.

Seth Tower Hurd (28:47.643)
Yeah. I would say, first and foremost, just pay attention to your family and friends and how they're actually consuming stuff. I'm starting to do some consulting in the political space right now around the same thing I do for businesses, just because I realized how much money is being misspent in there. And so I've got a client at the moment that is in a congressional rep race in Missouri.

Layci (28:57.39)
Mm -hmm.

Seth Tower Hurd (29:13.915)
to where the opponent has, I believe, spent a million dollars just on the primary. And it's all been on TV commercials and radio commercials and billboard. Local radio still does have a place. But if you think that you're putting your commercial on Fox too and anybody's paying attention, like, you know, apologies to the TV industry, but it's just not true outside of live sports and news. Because a lot of those...

Like a lot of those ratings are actually people that are just sitting waiting for their oil change to be done and the TV's on mute. And they're looking at their phone. And so when they're saying, we have X amount of viewers, yes, you have X amount of people who were in the proximity of a television when your ad was playing. That's not it. That's not it. OK? I would really try to double down on.

Layci (29:51.406)
Mmm.

Layci (30:04.526)
the airport. Yeah.

Seth Tower Hurd (30:11.643)
The reality is that business and personality are intricately linked at this point. And so if you are looking for an agency, look for somebody that's going to help you put your own personality out there in every digital channel that you can to speak directly to your client. That's why I said, if you're not in podcasting at this point, you kind of don't exist. So it is you. It is someone on your team. Spend your money creating as much content as you can to get in front of people.

Layci (30:15.342)
Yes.

Layci (30:25.006)
It's great.

Seth Tower Hurd (30:39.195)
And then as opposed to depending on continually trying to get them on social media, because the algorithms change all the time, have a really good strategy to get them on an email list. Bottom line is email is still where the money's at. So reach them on social, reach them with ads however you can, figure out a way to get them on an email list so that you own the relationship.

Layci (30:49.038)
Mmm.

Layci (30:58.798)
Got it. Thank you so much. I'm taking personal notes listeners. I hope you are too. And we want to get to the juicy stuff now. Seth, are you ready to step into the confessional to tell us your story of a time you made a terrible leadership mistake and how it formed the way you lead today?

Seth Tower Hurd (31:25.435)
Yes, yes, I am ready for it.

Layci (31:28.302)
Welcome in. What do you got?

Seth Tower Hurd (31:30.011)
OK. I would say I was in a pretty large nonprofit, 100 plus employees. Part of me was to just say it because what the heck, I was a communications director at a mega church. Whatever, I don't want to be friends left there anymore, so I don't care. And I was coming in to replace somebody who wanted to step down from a leadership role but remain on the team. Don't ever do that. Do not ever do that.

Layci (31:44.494)
Mm -hmm.

Layci (31:54.83)
Mmm, that's tough. That is tough.

Seth Tower Hurd (31:59.899)
And that person had a lot to bring to the table, but was in a really, really contentious relationship with another team member. And I came in and said, we should fire this team member now. Like they're just causing problems. And it was, well, we're at church, we're nice, you can't fire that person. Okay. And I would say I worked 70 plus hours a week. I literally like if my then girlfriend, now wife, who went and saw like a movie on a

Layci (32:12.686)
I think.

Seth Tower Hurd (32:29.179)
Saturday at 2 p You know, I had my laptop in the car in case I had to run out and hotspot my phone and work because it was so dang dysfunctional. I couldn't get it there. And then the other people in leadership within the organization, because promotions are probably more there were a couple of people there who were brilliant. There really were. But I very quickly realized that people were out of their depth and or.

were able to just sort of tinker with things that didn't matter that you wouldn't do in the business world. So I remember specifically for one department, they were asking for a graphic for summer, like summer program for the kids. And they didn't let the lizard we'd drawn. And I was like, well, what's wrong with the lizard and what's wrong with the font? You can go more clean or grungy. We can go bright colors or muted colors. Like it's a grid, like pick. And it's like, well, I don't know. I just want it to pop. I want it to be cool.

Layci (32:59.022)
Mm -hmm.

Layci (33:06.126)
Mm -hmm.

Layci (33:17.422)
Right. Right.

No, no it is not.

Seth Tower Hurd (33:23.643)
That is not feedback.

Seth Tower Hurd (33:28.507)
And honestly, I should have ripped my name badge off the door, tossed it on my boss's desk, and gone and delivered pizzas, because the next six months were hell. And when I look back, there's very few people on staff that I respect to be quite forthright. And I realized that I was reporting to a s -

Layci (33:38.03)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Layci (33:47.502)
huh.

Seth Tower Hurd (33:55.003)
to somebody in very senior leadership that was not listening to what we needed to do to change it. And also that I couldn't get the respect of my peers or the trust of my peers because they thought my job was to just get walked on and do exactly what I was told to do. And the fact that I didn't quit and that I didn't just fire people or I didn't

Layci (34:17.07)
Right.

Seth Tower Hurd (34:24.058)
quit in protest for not being able to fire people is one of the biggest mistakes I ever made. And that I actually thought that I could fix it relationally. And I think I got sucked into the vortex a little bit of, well, if you're just more relational and you're just this, then this person who should have never been hired is completely misaligned, doesn't have the skill set that's messing up everybody else. They'll suddenly magically get better because we care about people.

Layci (34:53.198)
Right.

Seth Tower Hurd (34:53.243)
Sorry, but caring about somebody is offering a generous severance package at that point, because they're not going to ever move forward. They're miserable. I mean, give them four months of money and let them go do something they're going to be good at. And let me pull the dang trigger and fix this thing. And it's

Layci (34:59.118)
Absolutely.

Layci (35:08.206)
Yes.

Layci (35:11.95)
And they're not only impacting themselves and you and their projects, they're impacting the success of the entire organization. And I mean, that is the effect of keeping someone on that really needs to be let go. It's the sacrificing for the good of, sacrificing the good of many for the feelings of one. And unfortunately that's not it.

Seth Tower Hurd (35:20.763)
Yeah, yes.

Seth Tower Hurd (35:33.083)
Yeah, and to make it more personal, you know, and to not just offend like the people I used to work with, but the people who are listening to you regularly. The other thing that I got to kind of slap the audience in the face with a little bit, sorry, but this very often happens with blood relatives or, you know, your cousin's boyfriend or whatever it is. It's like, well, we can't let this person go. You got to hire for positions, not try to fit people into them.

Layci (35:48.11)
yeah.

Layci (35:58.67)
Mm -hmm.

Seth Tower Hurd (35:59.131)
You know, you can't say, well, blah, blah, blah is very talented. So we're just going to bring them on and we'll figure it out. You got to have a position description. You got to see how this fits into the overall strategic plan. And if you can't do that, even if they're great, even if they're nice, even if they're cool, you got it, you, you gotta make some decisions here that, are going to be painful. And quite frankly, the time to have saved the relationship was before you made the hire. And once that person is in the door,

Layci (36:08.398)
Yes.

Layci (36:17.486)
slowly.

Seth Tower Hurd (36:28.923)
Probably the damage has already been done. It becomes a matter of when and how much money are you going to lose and how many other people are you going to hurt by just lying, by lying and acting like this can work when it can't.

Layci (36:42.958)
Right, right. And how many people are gonna walk because the high performers top talent won't stay in that environment. They'll be gone. You won't hold on to them.

Seth Tower Hurd (36:46.715)
Yeah. There will never be economy bad enough that your top employee can't get another job like that. Bottom line.

Layci (36:55.918)
Absolutely. So true. So true. Okay. So what kept you there? Like bring us to your mindset. You were miserable. You knew that this wasn't great. You kept hanging on. You talked to it a little bit about like, well, they were telling me I should be more relational. Like what shifted in you? Was it like you didn't trust yourself entirely? I don't want to tell you what I'm thinking. I want to know from your perspective.

Seth Tower Hurd (37:20.518)
Yeah, there was a couple things. The first thing is that my, you know, kind of like right after I started, my wife and I had started dating and I think I kind of just wanted a paycheck, kind of realized like very quickly fell in love with this woman and was going to marry her. And I wanted a paycheck and I didn't want to go back into a job hunt at that point. And I just wanted to get through like a year or maybe two. And I did barely get through a year, but it was just

Layci (37:32.526)
Okay.

Seth Tower Hurd (37:50.075)
absolutely awful. And it was by far the biggest career regret I have. And I didn't, I wasn't able to protect other people who were good people because I couldn't make the necessary changes. That was tough. That was, that was really tough. I also, in my opinion, kind of saw after I left, I kind of think I saw the senior leadership be fairly abusive towards

Layci (37:52.11)
Mm -hmm.

Layci (38:02.062)
Mmm.

that hurts. Yeah.

Seth Tower Hurd (38:18.715)
the good people that I should have been protecting. And the worst thing was I was making additional hires in the middle of all this. And I look back and I'm like, my gosh, I like, I was bringing in such talent into such an area that was such a, such a situation that did not need more people. It needed, I mean, we needed more people for the labor, but we needed less before we needed more. And, you know,

Layci (38:25.742)
Amen.

Layci (38:38.99)
Right. Yeah, you had to strengthen foundations, do some resets and you couldn't do that.

Seth Tower Hurd (38:44.699)
I was overconfident to think that I could work it out. I could put in more hours, that I could care harder or something, and I could fix things that were unfixable. And I really believed it. I knew I was going into kind of a tough job. I thought I could turn it around in 12 to 24 months, and it would be easier after that. And looking back, it was a suicide run.

Layci (38:54.926)
Mm -hmm. Mm.

Seth Tower Hurd (39:09.787)
You know, it was just sort of like in war, it's like, well, who's going to be the pilot that's going to go drop this crucial bombing mission and there you're just, you're not going to make it back. You're going to get shot down. and that's what I signed up for. And, I, I have since really tried to, I think with my, my whole team since then, I've essentially tried to reach out and, you know, kind of make amends. Like I would have done things really differently, starting with, I wouldn't have taken the job. the job did have a weird, kind of entry point to where I think this is falling out of

Layci (39:09.838)
Mm -hmm.

Layci (39:18.478)
Yeah.

Layci (39:32.494)
Yeah. Yeah.

Seth Tower Hurd (39:39.835)
fashion, but they did a stress test on me, which is they literally put you in a room with a psychologist and have the person just basically scream at you until you're terrible and second guess every decision you've ever made to see if you can handle the stress. I mean, maybe if you're going into the CIA and you might get captured, that's appropriate. For like a normie American job, what the heck? That's not cool. You shouldn't do that to people.

Layci (39:53.422)
Yeah.

Layci (40:05.005)
Yeah, in a church!

No!

Seth Tower Hurd (40:09.403)
Yeah, and I will say, I'm a Christian. The church was reaching a lot of people. I still probably appreciate the, I haven't been there for years, so I don't know. I don't know what they're like these days. But I appreciate the people that were reached. And so a lot of things that happened while I was there, I have no idea if I had played a positive role in any of it, because I just was continually dealing with, that's the other thing is I sacrificed so much that year. And I.

Layci (40:20.462)
Yeah.

Layci (40:30.766)
Yeah.

Seth Tower Hurd (40:37.083)
I can't look back and say, well, it was really hard personally, but at least blah, blah. I don't know. I mean, all I did was deal with problems and they probably could have had another sacrificial lamb for those 12 months that could have been miserable in my stead and would have had the same results, same outcome.

Layci (40:42.67)
Mm.

Layci (40:54.117)
painful, painful lesson, but so important. I mean, I think how does that, what, how has that shaped you? How has that changed you today? Shaped your path? Like what did you learn? What are you carrying forward from that?

Seth Tower Hurd (41:10.587)
Yeah. I learned you probably ought to have the big, and I didn't learn it until I was in commercial real estate. And my boss was just absolutely brilliant. And she taught me that basically to have less fear around getting fired and to really go in and have the tougher conversations. Because I technically quit that job, but I got forced out because I had my weekly one -on -one with my supervisor.

Layci (41:26.83)
Mm -hmm.

Layci (41:38.67)
Mm -hmm.

Seth Tower Hurd (41:39.387)
And he's like, so how's it going this week? And for whatever reason, I just could not hold it anymore. I'm like, I hate everything about this job and I don't really like anybody.

Layci (41:49.358)
I love that.

And how was that received?

Seth Tower Hurd (41:56.347)
I got told I was quitting, which I shouldn't have done. I should have sold him to shove it and taken the unemployment. but they convinced me that it would be better for me or whatever. and I realized you're like, well, a religious organization, they care about people. They were trying to minimize their, financial responsibilities. They didn't want me on unemployment. They're like, well, it's going to look bad if, you know, we fire you because you said you don't like it or whatever. So you should just quit.

Layci (41:59.278)
Yeah.

Layci (42:15.31)
yeah!

Absolutely.

Seth Tower Hurd (42:24.059)
And it was nothing about anything of my betterment or my next step or anything like that. It was just like, it was just a bottom line thing. Yeah, it really was. Yeah.

Layci (42:33.39)
it was CYA. They were, they were working hard to keep their bottom line protected and their reputation intact. Yeah. well, my gosh. Thank you for sharing that. That is, I, I hope that someone listening, if they are in that situation right now takes, I mean, clearly they're still listening if they are because you just hit on like major reality for them and they're probably feeling less alone. What?

Before we wrap this up, or I appreciate your time, I don't wanna push this too long, but I'd love to know, for that listener that is identifying with you so hard right now, and they are where you were so many years ago, what words of advice or even comfort do you have for them right now?

Seth Tower Hurd (43:20.219)
Yeah. Realize what you fix and what you can't. Realize that if you have to cancel your Netflix and deliver pizzas, that's not that bad in the short term. And you need to realize that hiring and firing is simply a game of at -bats. You're not always going to get it right.

Layci (43:43.798)
Seth Tower Hurd (43:47.675)
Odds are in your career, you will be unjustly let go from somewhere. Odds are in your career, you will probably have either screwed up hiring somebody or screwed up not doing it fast enough, not letting go of somebody fast enough or how you handled it and that type of thing. But if you actually want to be in some form of leadership, which is, you know, having a team report to you, having people report to you, making the bigger decisions. So many people are just scared to make those

of personnel changes, those relationships, relational changes. And they, it is only going to get worse. You know, my boss that I told him that I hated, you know, I hated working there and everything else. I will say, virtually the only lesson that I learned from him is he said, if you get to work and you see somebody's car in the parking lot, like, they're here already, then it's time to make the decision.

Layci (44:37.166)
Mm -hmm.

Layci (44:46.862)
Yep. Yep.

Seth Tower Hurd (44:47.323)
like you already know, which is hilarious because he's also the guy that wouldn't let me fire people.

Layci (44:52.014)
my gosh. Yeah. Yeah. What

Seth Tower Hurd (44:56.991)
And the guy that weaseled me out of the job. Yeah, but you're not going to get it right. And you know what? People go on. They get other jobs. It's going to be OK. You need to, with as much integrity as you have, give it an honest try. And when it's not right, and sometimes it's not right because of you, sometimes it's not right because of them, it's

They say that, you know, in the, cause I've been around the entertainment business a lot, half of a director's job is casting, right? It's just putting the cast up there and then you only can control so much once the camera start rolling on how the movie comes out, right? Half of a leader's job is casting. And unlike a movie where it's really hard to swap out a lead actor or something like that, you got to make the decisions. And sometimes it's just sitting somebody down and just talking to them because I've also found that if you're just like, man,

doesn't seem like this is going great, seems like you're pretty upset. How are we? A lot of times, you can just kind of talk things through with people and everybody can kind of realize like, I'd rather do something else or it is for any other company. You don't have to fire them. You don't. You could just be kind to them, you know, let them hang for four or six or eight weeks as long as they're doing a good job. Don't have the discussion with anybody else and they'll find the door. They'll find a better life for themselves. They'll probably find more money in the process and that's okay.

Layci (45:56.53)
Yeah.

Layci (46:03.758)
yeah, absolutely had that happen. Yep.

Layci (46:18.318)
Absolutely.

Yeah, that's great. Great insight, great advice. Thank you so much for your time today, Seth. Where can people find you? If they want to work with you, if they want to learn more about you, how do we, and we'll drop all the links in the show notes, but where do they go?

Seth Tower Hurd (46:29.659)
Yeah.

Seth Tower Hurd (46:34.939)
Yeah, you can throw it in. So if you're looking to basically use AI to replicate yourself across the internet, to replicate your brand across the internet, the best thing you can do is start podcasting just like this. And then I can either have my team manage it for you or teach you how to use AI to win the algorithm on Google. So you're showing up there and to use AI to create a whole bunch of content that's going to go across all social media because you need to be posting.

really frequently. And then after that, if you want to do, like I've got New York Times bestselling authors as ghost writers, a lot of leaders need to be doing a book these days. We can do that. And then I've got a really, really good PR team and we can kind of book you on national media and that type of thing. You can find it at manx .solutions. And if you can't look that up or find the links in the description of this podcast, I probably don't want to work with you anyway, because you got to have a baseline of doing something.

Layci (47:05.486)
Yeah.

Layci (47:30.702)
there.

Seth Tower Hurd (47:32.635)
where people are like, repeat it twice. I'm like, I don't really want to work with clients that have to be told two or three times to contact me. Like, that's what I do. I love to work with the right people. And, you know, I'm around. So at least this is really cool. Thanks so much for... This was fun. You know, I... Probably there's never been a shorter period of time where I've lost so many relationships I didn't care about losing anyway. So, you know, thanks for helping me do that.

Layci (48:02.798)
That's what we're here for. That's what we're here for. Well, thank you. Thank you so much. It was a fun interview. I learned a ton. Your story's incredible. And I have a feeling this will not be the last time that we are talking together. So thank you so much, Seth. All right. Fantastic. Well, until next time, friends, go manage like a leader.

Seth Tower Hurd (48:17.819)
Yeah, for sure. I'd love to do it again.