(00:00) good afternoon everybody and welcome to another nacho Tuesday and today here I have uh Luke with exposure um and without further Ado we would love if you could introduce yourself and what your company does hi uh my name is Luke beard so CEO of exposure.co um I've been building stuff for like 15 years and building companies for about 10 exposure was my first real attempt at a company um thankfully still going this many years later but exposure is a storytelling space uh specifically built to be uncluttered and simple but it's

(00:40) supposed to make the most of visual storytelling so the original concept uh kind of before it had a business was a medium for photo essays so if you're familiar with medium.com obviously they really kind of um changed how people thought about what you see is what you get editors and being a photographer by Passion I was like why isn't it there so photo essays I want things to look like New York Times so uh that was like the kernel of the idea um since then it's grown considerably in feature set and

(01:08) application we now have the United Nations development programs to most of the MLS teams a bunch of college athletics most highered in the US um yeah it's a wide varying tool of use cases but um mostly just TR of make visual storytelling as simple as possible nice and what what inspired you toh start the company uh like I said I'm F fr photographer by Passion I want to retire and take photos uh so I went on a trip to Estonia uh to actually hang out with some original startup guys um that i' met and I came back with this set of

(01:41) photos and at the time it was kind of like Tumblr Instagram was only one photo WordPress blogs things like that and I was like I don't have anywhere to put these then I don't particularly want to start a whole website Squarespace I didn't want a whole Squarespace site so what if I kind of match together a bunch of good ideas from different different cms's into something as simple as I can get so yeah exposure was born purely out of the E for like I want to tell a visual story I do not have the tool yep

(02:07) that's a good point yeah estonia's got a really good startup scene as well too and you're Bas love when was the last time you went back there I just came back uh I went for a wedding for these same guys so it's actually I just posted a story about it so it's like 11 years later after the original trip that uh actually uh kind of like started exposure I went back again and got to see the same city through a different kind of lifelens I guess and yeah it was it's it's been developed considerably and I truly love

(02:34) it a hell of a town sounds like a second home yeah I wish so I guess what tips can you offer companies to uh better promote their brand through more visual storytelling if you will sure um I think a lot of companies right now aren't considering the wider story like we are constantly bombarded with the smallest version of story possible because people are spending 1410 of a second looking at their timeline so if you can get someone's attention it's like what is the wider story you want to tell about your company

(03:06) organization nonprofit and how can you invite the user on that specific Journey um there's the idea that you know you what is the key thing you want them to take away which is like a marketing principle but if you put that through the lens of like what can we tell them about our story that we they'll naturally osmosis that into them um so it's kind of more so like don't think in the short form as much as I guess the public wants you to and if you can invest in the long form like really consider like the bigger picture do you

(03:38) see a difference in the type of visual content Brands can produce like cpg products obviously you can do a lot more lifestyle imagery whereas you know maybe SAS products uh they might you know maybe they could do more data focused uh type visual imagery and infographics stuff like that do you have any uh insights on the difference between the two yeah it's really interesting to me about like how and where you acquire customers these days because again like you know everybody sits on Instagram and gets the ads they see the the attention

(04:07) editing style and kind of like the really grabby stuff but with SAS like obiously in general contract values is are much larger and people are much more considered around making that purchase decision so the more you can say about again the journey that you're on as a company and the journey they're on where the two overlap uh can really like power it and that's either like the founding story or the human istic nature of uh case studies like it's not about you know oh our you know it solved this

(04:36) particular problem it's about like how that particular person F solving that problem like there's so much human kind of uh emotion built into longer form storytelling and lots more option and much more opportunities to like grab a heart string and like pull it um so I think there's a lot of that again like it's not the it's not the case for every size company but again like if you can you can invest in the bigger picture should even for B2B there's an there's an emotional aspect to everything right

(05:04) people do business with people um you know and I've seen some really good brands on social media you know I got to call out Apollo for this but uh they've done a really good job I think highlighting customer stories you know featuring even team members uh you know covering their background for that team member and just really telling the more human side of of the business which I think is really effective no it's a it's one of my favorite Parts about kind of building a tool like this is just the

(05:30) the the big cross-section of like types of stories excuse me being told across this and it's you know I've I've tried to kind of push this on every company I've kind of dabbled with in the past but you know I worked on soft driving carser part and featuring those Engineers that were like really happy and like thrilled that they push through these algorithmic challenges and all this kind of stuff like and we total that with exposure it was awesome yeah a lot of people might say B2B is a you know supposed to be still on purpose but

(05:58) I think uh times are really changing and to really get ahead All Humans exactly at the end of the day least common denominator you know we're you know we're doing business with other people so you know you have to address that absolutely I think comes down to authenticity too right so you know being able to really connect with the audience I think authenticity is such a huge part of that um it's really at the heart of Storytelling I guess what tips would you offer for a SAS company to come across

(06:24) as being more authentic um and not just putting out content for the sake of putting out content yeah there's a kind of slide from Alex Tran who talks about kind of the I don't know the new way of thinking about customer acquisition and kind of customer relationships so you know he calls the customer form like culture hacking and things like that it's like there's abilities for Brands nowadays for people to sorry there's an ability for Brands and companies these days to really kind of Leverage the new

(06:57) Norm of a lot of things like points of view storytelling inspirational creative consistency all that kind of stuff like they we can we can this wasn't available really in the like in the past like 10 years when we just weren't exposed to as much so it's it's more so like pointing yourself in the right direction figuring out the bigger picture and what Journey you want to invite the customer on um because I know I I I there I really really kind of like latched on to this idea of like what Journey are you on and

(07:23) how can you bring the customer in like I'll probably say a few more times this call but like there is the overlap there like it's the vend ground your customer and your company in terms of like the human approach yeah yeah I think it's a it's always good to repeat the line right I mean that's how advertising works right just gonna walk away with one message from this uh interview you know let that be it um absolutely so I guess what are some other Big Marketing Trends especially in content Marketing

(07:47) in 2024 um you know including the type of content maybe um maybe the channels that people are promoting their content say Tik talk what are your thoughts on that um I mean it's hard to ignore the Mr Beast of the world like and his uh recent conversation around the age of attention editing is currently on the other side of the bell curve uh so I think there's at least from my per my perception there's going to be a lot calmer storytelling like nothing like edited purely to like grab your eyeballs and Trigger your brain is like paying

(08:18) attention so spending more time on the subject matter that you're trying to get across I think is more so the the where especially again brands with big contract values can spend more time sure hook them in with your Tik toks and your Instagrams about like the basics of it but like where do you send them after that like making sure you have that like slower more uh considered story at the end of that like interaction is where I see a lot of things happening um and realistically you know we have to create

(08:48) a devotion across a lot of your Brands and stuff like that especially on the on the DC cpg end of things but at the same time people love notion like notion is a really hilariously like dull tool if you really look at it but the devotion across their fan Bas has that has been created through brand and storytelling and like the way they talk so there's there's lots of lots of ways to like pick apart what's been trending but in my opinion we're we're over the bell curve of like slapping you around the

(09:15) face being like watch this watch this watch this it's like hey if you care about us like here's something we spend a all the time on to care yeah and I noticed a lot of people use notion for even external partners for a lot of onboarding purposes um you know this is how we do things here here's the links to all the folders you need content you need um tutorial videos you name it I think yeah aiding in that Journey when people are first interacting with their brand I think is really important to actually get them across the Finish Line

(09:41) yep yep yep the whole like you know I uh just the what the word I was looking for uh yeah I guess devotion is a thing you you end up creating icons like the the notion n and like the little illustrations like they all speak to the bigger storytelling here of like the brand but if you dig into their Twitter they're like weird and wonderful and then if you keep going down that funnel you end up with a longer form content that they put out and things like that so now what what do you think are some underrated channels I guess for for B2B

(10:08) content marketing these days uh I don't know everybody's like really hammering everything um well with the declin declining native reach of Instagram and I guess X Twitter these days like kind of building your own base is like hyper important I think like one of we can skip a few questions ahead but like one of the bigger features we're have we're building is be able to email an entire story to your uh subscribers which is completely uh separate from an Instagram following or things like that

(10:41) so building native building native followers that you can communicate to directly uh I kind of think about the idea of my favorite emails that I smooze to the weekend like a bunch of them are from CEOs entrepreneurs or and brands that I like I want to make sure I read this so like kind of focusing on something that someone car that much about is slightly underrated in my opinion because you know your inbox is a mess all the time so how do you create something that you actually want to read um and this has been done like a bunch

(11:10) of times but we're right in the sweet spot now of like people being frustrated that their Instagram followers can't see their posts or their stories and like how do you reach them effectively so you know bet it's it's the cyclical nature of like we're back to email we always come back to email exactly more emails what we need yeah if you see my email bucks on a Monday I don't want to um yeah and I think um yeah I just yeah I think things are coming back to email and Community especially with AI and the Advent of you

(11:43) know some of these new tools I mean everybody's launching new AI features and uh there's so many new companies launching left and right especially because it's easier to you know build software and deploy a product and bring it to Market more quickly than ever and with little overhead or costs um so I feel like we're we're we're going to come back to community as well as really a hot topic for marketing um can you build a community around your brand like you mentioned uh being able to tap into

(12:08) them and continually reach out to them uh directly because your reach and and the amount of noise overall is just it's becoming very limiting for your brand to really get out there through the existing channels so um you know growing a community is going to give you a strong base especially uh mode around the company to protect against you know new products that are launching all the time too as well yeah yeah I mean every company and their dad has a Discord now or you know that sort of like Community entry point but most of the time those

(12:35) are very hard to maintain um but you know uh there's a um uh I'm GNA forget every name under the sun now uh circle like those sort of tools to like build gated communities are almost say incredible but like you still have to build the good product first like that's the tougher part um so yeah making sure you like pay attention to where and what the community is like kind of naturally asking for without pushing too much on them so they don't start to like not care is like really important um exposure has never really done this

(13:06) until well it's we have a a strategy for this in the coming months so um but yeah I mean photographers and visual storytellers and Communications directors like you know I'm in a few slacks here and there and like they really care about each other and like they really want to understand the types of topics we're talking about right now so yes sorry outside of email probably Community you're you're on the money there and I just it's on that on the on the far end of my my thought process

(13:30) right yeah there's also Amity and tribes or is another or I think it's Tri there other platforms that you could use to build your own social Community uh right there on your website too yeah or just a good old slack or whatever you need like but again they have to have moderation so like it's kind of like a double-edged sword like you know the more people you invite into a like a open community in terms of like chitter chatter the more kind of uh like um what's the word I'm looking for liability a little bit so

(14:00) sure we're going to end up with companies that are like three people because the rest of it done through through large language models and things like that but like can those three people moderate a Discord with a thousand people in it maybe not if you build it they will come not always but then you have there right um I guess what are your thoughts on AI and how it's going to affect marketing going forward especially with content generation because you know again uh it's becoming easier easier than ever you know like like building a

(14:29) product and bring it to Market it's easier than ever to create content but I do think we have a Content quality problem now oh boy yeah yeah know I a strong opinions on this uh mostly recycled THM Ryan brck who writes garbage day it's a internet uh it's a internet culture email it's one of my few I pay for but he refers to uh as AI slop so any vertical like Twitter has slop Facebook has slop and people are becoming extremely attuned to this especially on the photography end of things so um the other day was like you

(15:00) know chatting to a friend he just like got connected with the CEO of a payments company to go and like give you know just get to know them and I went to their landing page and the first image was a generated photo and it was just like a hand handing you know it was like a kind of like a e-commerce type style photo but I had I wasn't really looking and I spotted it immediately and he was like I'm pretty sure this and like there's going to be a a much stronger um feeling towards that as the years go by

(15:28) yeah and I one of the probably more interesting takes I thought was like okay if they're skimping on that what else are they skimping on like consumers are very fickle in that kind of way so if you're not putting the quality into that level of marketing like the front page of your website people will start to clock it um but then again I don't know if the beautiful images on the front of github.

(15:48) com are generated but they you know they have like an air about them so I personally consider all these this current wave of Technology as like the best product productivity tools where we have right now and they will we get better you know I I skip hours and hours of coding like help from Friends by Just like chitchatting with Claude and things like that so I'm fully in in terms of that but in terms of generation like there especially when the you have a product that you need to show in use case and again connect to the customer

(16:17) you want to see you want them to think about themselves in that specific situation like a like a real photo and real illustrations and real art is going to make that work um so invest in you know making your life easier but don't in don't like skip on making the customer feel something because that's where they're going to catch it and eventually because of the the Relentless slop that the internet is Flowing out like people would just start skipping it I was like oh that's like a fake website

(16:45) like that's that's where we're heading in terms of like marketing materials being wholeheartedly generated by AI yeah just there yeah there will be a pushback and I I think there already is too right and to your point there's like a quality perception to it it's like well they didn't take the time or you know spend the money to get real actors and take a real shot with their with their product you know it's uh you know what else does this brand bring to the table is like their customer service

(17:10) cheap is everything else cheap like is when work is advertised it's um it's a weird one because I I don't know I've never seen or you know uh or experienced anything like this in my Adventures on the internet so there's a lot of like new ground for people here too but uh I think just pay attention like the best you can do is pay attention to the internet culture of like what people are responding to what people are laughing at and don't do that like simply do not do it you know I'm sure you're I'm sure

(17:40) you know your you know several series round deep stat startup is Relentless and like we need to hit these goals but like the the every time you add that little AI image that someone CLS and it you know it doesn't look quite right no one vetted it but it's like the the company likes the tool you're going to like chip away at the authenticity of the company so yeah I've seen it better as a productivity tool and we use we use AI for a lot of things we also have of course AI tools built in nacho of course uh for like SAS

(18:11) recommendations and stuff but it's really you know taking a lot of data and helping you know buyers really connect with products uh that that other people like them are using right so once again useful we call that one Shaman but um we also use it to condense these type of webinars into short little Clips right but this is authentic content you know us two talking here uh getting a lot of great tips out of you right we can't just AI generate that but we can take you know this 30 minute interview and

(18:37) really cut it down to like a minute and a half uh you know grab some great Snippets out of that and use that for Content marketing um and it's really powerful and I think you know what we're seeing with the AI generated stuff is kind of not too dissimilar to what you saw with cold email marketing uh back in the day used to be able to cold email Market people and they're like oh I got an email you know maybe I'll it's too Andy wow oh cool he says to Andy he's using the right variable this time you know um but now it's like

(19:05) so easy to spot which ones are cold emails even if they have all the variables they're seemingly doing everything right you could just sniff a cold email uh out right away and I think a lot of people are just even you know tuning out of those because they're they're like oh this guy's trying to pitch me but if you even took the time to personalize it just even a little bit you'll get a much higher response rate uh same same that goes with your content marketing right if you skimp out and

(19:29) just press the generate button you know for AI for an AI T you just get a cheap image out of it people aren't going to respond to it so much as if you put in a little bit more effort into it and that really comes across uh with the authenticity aspect that we discussed earlier yeah absolutely even the writing like it's you know very easy to clock like a kind of a AI written article these days and that that contributes to Google slop you know what I mean like it's we're g to end up in this you know

(19:55) snake eating its own tail situation if we don't like be more considered about it um I think you know we're we'll be fine in the long run but right now it's just such a delicate time for marketing especially across you know the way it affects SEO and like what people are seeing um just from like being wedged like your great content is wedged against garbage like how do you make that real connection there so yeah it's a it's it's a tough one but a fun one at the same time like what a world we live

(20:21) in like this is a problem like incredible exactly yeah it's a it's it's been a wild year we'll put it that way um four years I guess what are some other time proven advertising or marketing techniques that you think would never go away regardless of the technology um obviously we talked about authenticity and you know the tools might add productivity but they're not necessarily a replacement for some of the stuff that you're doing uh do you have any other tips there for you know having a marketing strategy that will

(20:47) work regardless of the technology that's out today um yeah I mean look to the people that have always been relevant like um Nike you know they took the human storytelling approach 40 plus years ago and that's a really core core value across their whole marketing initiatives like almost all Nike stuff is like next to a human story or directly integrated with it um so those things aren't going to budge in my opinion because again people want to see themselves in the story like that's that's really why they are looking at

(21:18) whatever you're showing them um but between that and just the idea personalization and like kind of going back to the cold email mention like how do we continue like to create or innovate on the idea of like making something for you it's like hey this human story Place yourself in it and then talk directly to you um and you know it's the the the easiest one is just talk to your customers right like that's it's that one comes back around every time I think I have a handle on anything and was like well the easiest

(21:47) thing I could do is simply email my 10 most recent favorite customers and talk directly to them H that always leads to like the best outcomes in terms of like you know they need another an account or they know someone who knows someone or I learned something incredibly informative that I wouldn't have gotten it through any other feeback method so just humanistic storytelling like personalize on like something that and be make sure there's like a channel open to you I think those things and you know you

(22:14) could probably wrap up really good customer service here as well like that is marketing in my opinion because like that's part of those screenshots of those tweets that go viral it's like look how above and beyond this and the other side of the coin is like look how garbage this St this um how garbage those customer service well those are marketing so um that's probably like my my you know my my ceiling for that sort of stuff as well as like trying to like innovate on all those principles yeah and I think it's easy to especially with

(22:42) all the data and all the tools available it's easy to get so distance and separated from the customer and you really lose connection with you know what their needs are and you know really who they are um you know and I've seen some of the best Brands you know they'll have like Starbucks CEO will go serve like serve coffees to people you know what I mean and see what the operations look like but you're not really going to understand that if you're just getting reports from people and especially with

(23:07) the the amount of data dumps that a lot of people are getting now there's so much garbage data and it's hard to really filter through it and figure out you know what the real story is here but if you just go on the ground there or if you talk to your customers like you mentioned you're going to get the you're going to get to the heart of the issue right you're going to see it live and really understand it so I think you know the Starbucks CEO example if you go there and you you uh serve coffee for a

(23:30) day you're going to start to see things right but I don't think necessarily A productivity report that goes up the ladder and says oh yeah no way yeah 2% sales of the store why sentiment is very hard to quantify for a lot of businesses like I mean inperson ones even more so because like you know they it's a transaction and then they go somewhere else but like there's a bunch of interactions and experiences that never get like really reported on from the customer um I have a text replacement that's like hash um

(24:02) uh where and it just prefills like where did you hear about us and that's probably my most like beneficial two keys I press every day because every time there's a sport email um if it's you know conet knew or I haven't talked to this person for a while or something it's just like getting that like oh yeah I heard from xXx and it reveals like magic a whole new channel you didn't even consider that's how I found out we were getting me the exposure was getting mentioned in a um in a video prod slack

(24:29) for sports I was like I had no idea that was there so it's like those sort of you know finding the channels is always going to be one of the harder problems around marketing like where does that funnel start um and yeah it's weird just simply asking tends to bring up the right it does or people just tell you you know if you listen like um I do a lot of customer calls um James on our team handles a lot of the buyer on boarding that sort of thing too but now I've joined a lot of calls uh you know still do uh just to kind of you know

(24:58) talk to people people about the offerings for Nao not and really understand what they're looking for and uh there's a lot of great stuff that comes out of that right like you mentioned you know marketing channels maybe that we should be in uh maybe their perception of our product offering and what what we do or maybe how we do things that we can improve upon right um and all those ideas and and uh tips that kind of come out of that conversation I'm able to bring back to the uh various teams and departments and you know make

(25:22) the product better uh or make the customer experience better right and that all leads to you know better conversions yeah it's kind of Well because most things are just well are better executed ideas in the previous generation like exposure is a CMS to put photos online that's been around for a minute but it's about the execution and about the way then the human feels using it and the way they can connect to the company and the brand and again the Loyalty like things like that so yeah like all you

(25:50) know it's if you don't have the money to spend on marketing like and but you have acquired a few customers and you know where they are like there's so much to be gleaned all the time yeah I think a customer experience is you know it's a game of inches these days right like you mentioned there's so so many other similar products this and that but uh really the experience that you build around the product really matters right so even if you have a onetoone uh featured comparison Apples to Apples

(26:14) between these uh you know various competitors uh it doesn't matter so much if you don't have the the the best possible customer experience when they just come to your website and they just really get what you're doing they you know they see a problem there that you could solve and they you know that entire onboarding process is just you know intuitive and you know answers all their questions that they have right um nothing could be said nothing better can can be said for that and if you place that against a story that has like real

(26:43) integrity and substance as opposed to attention edited Tik Tok about something dramatic or something but like you know that works for some of course but I'm saying like the bigger the bigger Contra are like if you like that's me like that's what you want that's like that key moment of like okay I'm sold like okay let's push this up the chain I can see where this is going I can I can Envision us implementing this and that's like if you can nail that like that's a real special spot to be in like these

(27:09) people get me like wow this is what I've been looking for these people are speaking to me you know yeah it's weird I that that Insight comes from um I again photography on the side is a passion like I I shoot like a lot of spirits and wines and whiskies and things like that I have a friend called Elliot Clark who that was one of the more interesting things you ever to me it's like I tend to shoot uh photo like Spirit photography kind of like Jaw down so you can place yourself in the photo it's like yeah that does look good

(27:37) I do want to be pouring that like what is the I want to be pouring that moment of your product is like very very interesting kind of metaphor true yeah you know how to capture the moment right and to capture the moment you have to understand the context of what makes a great moment and you could really take that and actually you know there are some similarities there with uh building a product right having that a if you will but 100% yeah it's you know any I think you build better products when you actually have

(28:04) like a diverse set of creative influences like it's one of my favorite things Rick Ruben calls it the awareness if you read the creative act but um yeah making sure you have a lot going on in terms of like consumption um I mean when I say a lot I mean things you care about but uh you know don't just if you want to build a product in a creative space like exposure like don't just look at products in the space like go look at the wonders of all photography and like what cameras are doing and all just

(28:33) everything like consume the and be aware of your environment and you'll actually make better product decisions in my opinion so that's a good point too because you could actually learn a lot from completely different products or Industries you can learn from those like uh now even for nacha nacha there's a lot of stuff we can learn from consumer marketplaces and the way they do things right um like you know for for Amazon and how excited their buyers get you know and like that entire customer experience they've really bu the

(28:58) marketplace around um but there's always something you can learn and you know as B2B companies actually it you know many times you can look outside of your industry to B Toc um because consumer marketing like a really good they really know how to connect with the uh with you know with the The Human Side um and I think they've really nailed that so as a B2B brand you could really you know especially if you're trying to get into storytelling and you know really having that empathy with your customer marketers and actually learn

(29:25) quite a bit from them and bring it in to absolutely yeah no n I think actually gleaned some of that from The Branding like you're a funl looking company like so many of the things in the space are tangentially connected to the kind of problem you guys are solving it's like that if you squint they are all the same website they are all the same brand um payment companies or you know Financial anything related all kind of feels the same right but yeah but but is like I'm weird and wonderful like what do you

(29:53) want to do and I'm like that yeah that's actually interesting like these guys are thinking way differently than everything else and I think that's it's very strong very strong aspect of like just don't build a boring looking company that's like half B to be um what so I guess uh what challenges did you guys face as a company when you guys were you know bringing exposure out there to the world and I guess was there any failures or lessons that you learned from that in the initial early stages that you kind

(30:21) of pivoted from or i' use to make the product better um well we grew up in a very like unconventional building environment so it was originally built inside a studio called elath which was uh one of the headlines was they famously raise money with no idea because it was just like we're going to hire a bunch of creative people kind of like you know let them build what problems they want solved in the world and see if any businesses come out um this was founded by Jak lowick he founded Vimeo College humer things like

(30:49) that so you know it was more on The Eccentric end of things if you compar to like XA or things like um but uh so we built the product very pure which is good and bad because we ended up with like this kind of energy where like it was very much for the photographer but at the same time we also skipped a bunch of like traditional um uh uh I guess analytics and like data driven decision making like I I speak a lot about the human stuff but like we all we did kind of skip a lot of like is this working and just built ourselves

(31:22) into some Corners a lot of the time um and then on spin out like we've had like various ups and downs over the years but ultimately I think uh I think I built too much in in some cases and I didn't make the things I needed to be AG agile enough like the payment system like we're currently redoing that because it's bespoke like there's no need for that right now like we could definitely just use strike checkout and strike billing and save ourselves a lot of time and be able to be able to um experiment

(31:49) a lot quicker like exposure struggles from that purely on the fact of like we just wanted to Pure product but if we if we raised it in a typical like having this you know let's start a business let make the money I think it would be a different story so it's kind of like come back around after years of like very Soulful building and in some cases the wrong in the wrong direction so overall like yeah I I wish that we'd spent a little more time like making it more um more agile in the in the business case in the business cases we

(32:17) need to know um but at the same time you know uh failure is just you know it's a step in the right direction most of the time yeah I've had some you know crazy projects over the years some worked some didn't but uh you always learn something right and you walk away from it you really understand how how the process works but uh you now entrepreneurship is really a career it's not like just a one andone type thing usually oh my God it's an absolute it's an absolute privilege to screw up like I don't like what an

(32:44) amazing world again to go back to this like I can kind of like make a mistake and like no one dies like it's incredible like keep doing that so yeah but you know I'm much more informed than I was over a decade ago when this was started so um it's still super well- loved and you know I think that's part of the part of the failure is maybe not kind of not capitalizing on the the pure like love that the customers have of the product like it's always been like a very light touch like don't send too

(33:13) many marketing emails things like that so we could have done a lot more there we will so yeah well sounds like a sounds like you've been around the block once or twice you keep referencing all these great books I'm you know I'm making a mental note for them but uh I guess what's one book that a lot of people should read this year that you're really excited about um it's been out for a couple years now but yeah I really like I kept I kept putting off Rick rubin's Book for a long time um and now I won't shut up

(33:41) about it um I think he's a Sant he uh obviously you know it's famous for being a music producer but if you create anything and even if you if you cut out the word artist which he uses a lot and inject entrepreneur a lot of these things a lot of these things are going to resonate with you um and yeah and again just like the awareness like half of the best half of the reason I love the best people I know is because of their awareness like they know what's cool they know what's coming they know where

(34:10) they've been they're like hyper aware of the whole thing and like that is a magical trait to have like being insular and kind of in your own vacuum will get you some places but not far as you want to go in my opinion but yeah go read the creative way uh the creative act sorry no the creative act a way of being uh it also just kind of puts your life in perspective in many ways if you create anything it's fantastic super easy read toe yeah I'm definitely getting that one uh yeah I've actually been a lot friends

(34:37) with a lot of you know people in fashion a lot of people in the music industry because I've seen the parallels myself and both in terms of our personality but also uh the stuff they do even though it's more conceptual and it's um you know it's not building software there's still a lot of parallels there right um to ABS direct parallels even U with how they do things and how you build software that actually connects with the customer and people like um so I guess what's next for exposure over the next

(35:02) five years and how could they learn more about your company um like I said um bringing emailing stories which will be will move move us closer to like substack kind of thing so imagine if suback was built just for visual storytellers like that's gonna be a very interesting aspect uh to us like you know I can imagine the sports teams we have having a lot of fun with that um internal distribution so I think one again to look at kind of the the the niche networks that have popped up over the years they have their own

(35:31) distribution methods outside and Instagram and like the the big Tech versions of that um so a lot more ways for you to discover work is important to me um and because you know I as a semi-working photographer and the amount of photographers that post like their work on uh exposure we're bringing out portfolio search to it so being able to like be like hey I would love a head shot photographer in Atlanta and then because of the magic of what we have with these models you can upload a photo and be like something like this and

(36:02) we'll be able to like match you with hopefully the right kind of people for that um which again if you try to like you know search for a photographer right now online it's pretty like lame sorry don't l c back sorry it's uh it's pretty tragic like there is no real way there's no real directory and yeah it's you know it's crazy to me Squarespace doesn't have a search like like a really good dribble but for pher something like that something around there yeah but um deeply integrated with your exposure so

(36:33) you can get a story of the photographer and then like a light portfolio things like that so a lot of work there um as well as kind of like continuing to listen to like the storytelling need so bringing you know uh new formats 360 videos things like that like you know this I my list is yay long but at the same time like making sure I don't overbuild at this point yep totally well you uh you've learned that lesson so you know faith in you and exciting actually too by the way um so people can learn more about you at is it

(37:03) exposure.co can you uh name your website again uh exposure.co um SL exposure on everything one of my crowning achievements is getting that handle 10 years ago uh and and I'm just you know Luke's beard on Luke's beard on every Network as well great and uh we also have you guys listed in our SAS Market plac as well too so uh go to exposure.

(37:24) co to check them out and learn more or uh visit exposure in nacho Nacho's B2B SAS Marketplace we have the best brands at the best prices um I believe we have a 15% cash back there um you know we're proud partners of the cool product that you guys have built and uh yeah today's been a great discussion Luke uh really appreciate it um I think there's a lot of key takeways that a lot of people can learn from this uh interview today and uh yeah looking forward to seeing your company grow and uh continuing to partner together with

(37:54) you guys appreciate you Andy have a good day man you too [Music]