Episode 052 - Sam Keywanfar, Founder & CEO of MilkMoney

And we go

there. It is welcome to out-of-home. Insider today's episode is brought to you by led truck media led truck media specializes in hyper-local street-level campaigns that get your message in front of the right people. Whether your campaign is a day or one month with nationwide coverage, your campaign can be live in any major market within 24 hours.

If you want to reach a perfect audience in a truly engaging way, visit led truck media.com. Led truck media out of home advertising 2.0, thanks again for making today's show possible. All right. Without further ado, let's meet today's guest. Today's guest is Sam . Sam is the CEO of milk money. The marketplace that makes buying out of home, like shopping on Amazon for some of the world's biggest brands, an outsider to out of home salmon, his team represent a who's who of not only taught musical talent, but the record labels and personal brand.

Bring a unique vibe to the most powerful medium in the world with their award-winning campaigns from Jay Z and rock nation to Travis Scott and Miley Cyrus milk money is attracting a whole new clientele to out of home with a mobile app that offers last-minute deals on premium. And we covered the most recent campaign, a campaign for Bumble that involved more than 20 vendors in 15 cities as being regarded as one of the biggest wins of the year for out of home.

And the story we'll unpack here today for some of the key lessons that we can all learn from Sam. Thanks for being. Of course, man, that was quite quite an intro. I think that everybody deserves a great intro. So that's it. That's the episode folks. Thanks for coming out. Let me know when I can come back again.

Well, listen, everyone's a buzz and a about the Bumble campaign and no one comes here for the jokes. So why don't we start there, man. Cause that, that was a pretty amazing campaign. And I'm going to bring some pictures up on the screen here, but talk to me about how that came together. Now you're fully prepared.

Um, yeah, I mean the Bumble one it's been, it's been kind of like a work in progress. We've actually been working with Bumble, um, for about four years now. Um, they've had, you know, a bunch of different agencies over the, over the last few years that they've worked with. Um, but they've always leaned on us for some of their remnant buys.

Um, you know, and then this, this time around. I believe about a year ago, they, they let all their agencies go and decided to do most of their planning and buying in-house and they approached us and they said they got, uh, an upcoming campaign and it was going to be their biggest to date. And they wanted to basically work with milk money and, uh, give us a shot to handle the big campaign.

So they came through. You know, the rest is history and talk to me. How did it come through? Was it traditional RFP process? How'd you guys get to see the. Yeah, no, it's not really. We didn't really have like much of an RFP. I know they were considering a bunch of different traditional agencies for this, but ultimately because of the ease of use of the platform and actually their timing happened to be within two weeks of their start date.

So it fit perfectly in our remnant window anyway. So, you know, they had had history of working with us and they were familiar with, with the platform. And they knew that we had comprehensive coverage, uh, for that short, short flight that they were looking for. So, uh, they came through, they had access to the platform.

They went through and put their own settings in and, uh, they knew what areas they wanted to be in. Um, the vendors didn't really matter so much. They just knew that they wanted very unique asks. And the self-serve platform really does that allows them to pick their markets. It allows them to pick the, their costs, their, their frequency.

It allows them to pick a different types of formats that they're interested in. And to be honest, they, they, they kind of put their own plan together, utilizing the system. And we definitely loaned our support. Uh, and our assistants and our strategy team, but they did most of the heavy lifting themselves.

And that's pretty amazing. It's, it's not an uncommon conversation. Uh, in fact, I had a conversation with an advertiser earlier in the year who is going through sort of the same thing of, Hey, we've had an agency for a long time. We felt like we were missing the market of where we really want it to be. So we brought it in house and.

That's what we found is that we were not seeing specific types of inventory. You're not being shown certain markets. What was the feedback like for Bumble out taking this campaign on internally? Uh, in terms of just the experience overall, was it mostly by differently? You know, I think most tech brands, a lot of DTC brands, these guys already know their audience and they know better than anyone else.

And most brands go to agencies so they can help them figure out who their demo is. But to tech companies, they already got that nailed down. So really for them, and it becomes a matter of getting the avails and showing them the inventory. Um, and then they can do, they can do, you know, they can do the planning themselves, right.

They know the zip codes they want to be in. They know their target demo, uh, as long as there's a system that allows them to filter for that, um, you know, it's a pretty self-serve platform and it's really meant for people that are pretty intuitive. Um, and have already the big data at their fingertips. So maybe let's talk about that for a second, because, you know, even admittedly by myself, before we really started to talk, I wasn't sure what milk money did or did differently.

How, how has, how has milk money different than maybe some of the other, uh, you know, tech companies that we talk about? Not at home. You know, I think the biggest thing is that we're not an agent. You know, I think the industry qualifies anybody. Who's a buyer as an agency and they kind of like pigeonhole all of us together.

And anyone who has a technology of sorts to be a platform, we really believe ourselves to be a true marketplace, you know, no different than like an Airbnb, right. That the point for us is that we're giving all vendors big and small, right. And the opportunity to have a seat at the time. Um, you know, they're not going to be limited by their Salesforce.

They're not going to be limited by their inventory, um, and, and or agency reach, right? So any advertiser that wants to come to milk money can search freely, they'll have access to anything that's available and through pretty easy filters, there'll be able to narrow it down the inventory to fit their prices.

Um, we're, we're the only platform, if you will, right. That mobile, mobile enabled, right. So that people can actually do their entire plan, their entire, uh, their by, uh, end-to-end from viewing it, planning it, buying it, and then tracking it end to end all the way to pop through their mobile phone. Um, and that makes it really, really easy.

And by, by not having to pull RFPs and already having inventory turned on by vendors in this system, very similar to like someone who's got a house and they want to make it available on Airbnb. They just found on the dates that it's available. They make it available to us, um, for whatever the length of time, uh, that those gaps.

And I, and innate, you know, a client can go in there at their own discretion, pick their dates, pick their time, uh, and, and book the book, the unit, right? They put it in a shopping cart and they exit it, contracts it. Then they upload their creative. The creative gets sent to the vendor, automatically vendor, uh, approved.

It then goes to one of a number of printing printers that we have in our network. Usually at farms it out to the closest printer, closest to the end delivery location. That way we cut down on time, delivery, time and cost. Um, and it ultimately gets installed a lot faster cause we're working with such short, uh, time periods and the client gets attract the whole thing, no different than like Postmates or Uber eats where you can track your driver journey.

So you're like, where's the driver. It's the same thing. We never want them to ask the question of where where's the, where am I in the process? You know, when is it going to get installed? You know, hasn't even gone to the printer yet. Has it, has it been installed? All of that's been alleviated and not just for the, the client, but also for the vendors involved.

So the, the printer, the, the media owner, the installer, um, and ultimately a photographer, who's going to shoot, shoot the pop, um, and make it available for the client. So that's pretty much like what, what milk money does. It's an end-to-end solution, it's a marketplace. Um, and the beauty about the marketplaces, you know, and what, what really, you know, is a significant for me.

And I would think most of the industry is that it gives the independent guys an opportunity to play in the, in the space, uh, equivalent to all the big guys. Right. So they don't get lost. They don't get lost in the shuffle. Let's talk about that a second. Right. So the Bumble campaign was obviously big. If you had to give em a split, how much of that ended up going to independence?

Oh, I would say like at least 95% of it. That's significant. Yeah. Yeah. At least 95% of it. And again, we didn't choose the. So they, you know, they went through, they picked what they wanted. They were brand agnostic. I mean, it didn't really make a difference. They weren't playing favorites to anyone. Um, and a lot of the little guys got to play, you know what I mean, little guys like ICU art and city outdoor and, um, you know, rolling ads and skyline and seen, you know, all these guys got, got a piece of it.

And then you got like the mid-size guys, like big and new tradition and capital. Um, they got their fair share of it. And then out front got a little bit, but they didn't pick anything from like JC to co they didn't pick anything from clear channel. They didn't pick anything from Lamar. Um, you know, which again, not, not surprisingly.

Right. And it wasn't because they didn't have great inventory in the location. But they were looking for unique assets, right. So they didn't really go for the 14 by 48. Right. They went for the wall scapes, they went for the murals, they went for transit. They went for. Unique, uh, faces things that look different for you, and you just pulled it up on your, on your screen, but, you know, everything looks completely unique and different.

So the whole idea was that, you know, every, every person on the app is different, right? Everyone's got their own vibe, um, and they want it to, you know, showcase the uniqueness of their campaign with unique ass. Right. It's clever copy. It is a brilliant use of each one of those locations. And to hear like the 95% of it going into independence and really understand the significance around that in a time where the industry has been hit so hard.

And some of these smaller guys don't have a sales team, or maybe they did, they had one or two salespeople and sure. Maybe they're down to. So late it just trying to get through to next month, like, Hey, high five, we made it to the first again, that really matters. How do you see milk, money fitting into the ecosystem overall with agencies with the smaller independents?

How does it all, how does it all work together in your mind? Yeah, I mean, look, since day one, we knew that. Um, we were just going to be a piece of the pie, right? There's no, there's no one person or one, one, um, one part of the pie that's going to really dominate more than anyone else. There's, there's going to be room for everybody, right?

You're going to have your traditional agency buyers, the brands that use use agencies for planning and strategy and creative, and potentially be buying other sorts of media. And they're really reliant on them. And that's. Right then you're going to have people that are going to look, um, to do things on their own and lean on marketplaces, like ours, to be able to kind of like have a self-serve, um, system.

And then some, you know, of that, we'll also be looking for remnant or incremental or short flights. Um, and there's a few different platforms that offer a variation of sorts that they can choose from. And an offshoot of that will also be digital programming. Um, which a different subset will, will participate in.

And, uh, and the reality is we as a whole, as a community, have to elevate out of home. Right in its entirety. And before we got in, it was either you went vendor direct or you went through an agency and there really wasn't room for new players. Right. And historically, most of the ad buys were happening from like the same typical advertisers that just the money would switch from this agency to another agency over, over time.

Like every few years it fall under another. Um, and it was like really the same dollars going back and forth. And the main, main thing was that, you know, the barrier of entry was really difficult. People didn't know who the vendors were. They didn't know how to access these people. They, they, they didn't want to wait, you know, weeks on end for an RFP that.

Um, you know, they, they, the pricing in some cases were really high. They didn't want to buy for weeks on end. They wanted to be able to maybe buy for, for a few days or a week or two. Right. Um, and also it wasn't easy to share the. The opportunities internally, right? You have to have like multiple spreadsheets from multiple vendors with multiple PDFs.

Um, and then, you know, you have to compile them together at some form of a proposal and then share it internally and then look, look at a spreadsheet and then look at a PowerPoint and try to like, make sense of it. Whereas with ours, it's no different than any other shopping cart experience. Right? You, you, you just pick all the units that you like.

You can see it on a map. You added it into the shopping cart. We've got an impression calculator, um, thanks to geo path. Uh, you know, we're going to have accurate impression counts. Um, you know, we've got a CPM calculator, although I don't really advocate for CPM for out of home. Some, some clients really like that, and that's just what they're used to doing.

So they, they like to have the CPM calculator. Um, obviously you have your total. You can filter by market and see how much of the market you're saturating. Um, and then we've got, you know, some of the other benefits too, like, you know, being able to look at, um, you know, how much of the market you're saturating with, with the units that you've picked, um, reach and frequency and things like that.

And then ultimately they put a great plan together and they, they check out and the other great thing too, is like, we all know, like out of home was limited to like a nine to five for the most part. And then sometimes even less than that, because you've got. People playing golf and, you know, wining and dining and networking and you know, doing what they do to get the business, right.

So everyone's not available at the time that people need them. But with milk monies app, you got 24, 7, 365 access and we're finding and not surprisingly, a lot of our clients do their planning after hours. Right. They do it, they do it. Um, you know, they do it on their phone. They do it on the weekends.

They do it during times where, uh, most, most at-home people may not be aware. Right. And, and they're able to control the experience, right. They don't have to call or send an email, wait, and, and then maybe I'll get it later. And right. I could sit down with a glass of wine or a beer, and I've got some free time that kids are in bed.

Let me, let me just play with this and see what it looks like. Right. And if they can it's real look, look at Miley Cyrus when we did Miley's, uh, global campaign for, for, you know, her last campaign that we did. She did the entire by herself, on her phone from a tour bus. Wow. So she had never bought out a home before and she was on her tour bus in between, uh, cities.

And she sat down and she picked the one she wanted, she put in her cart, her team got to sign off on it and they, you know, they, they verified what they wanted and they ultimately just checked out and that was it. And the campaign went live and that was, uh, that was a global game. And we had stuff across the United States and we had some stuff in Europe.

Um, cause she was in, you know, in traveling to Europe and wanted to have her, her creative up there while she was doing some shows. And it was as easy as that, you know, and we, you know, we, we, we wanna, we won an award for that campaign, which was pretty cool. Um, and in terms of like attribution to that particular campaign had, um, a mobile number that people would, would either text or call.

So we were able to. To quantify how effective out of home was. And we had over a million phone calls and text messages a week. Wow. Wow. So. You know, I mean, there's a power of celebrity there, obviously. Sure, sure. But it's also just shows that, you know, Mark's clear call to action. You buy, you buy it the right places and you you're gonna add homeworks is super effective.

And I mean, I think that's the hot take of, of the, of the year. Uh, Miley Cyrus can buy out of home from her phone on a tour bus. So how many other Miley Cyrus's are out there? How many, like in terms of new business, a lot of the brands that I see associated with milk money were not always traditional out of home players.

Are you seeing a lot of new entrance? As of last month, about 84% of milk monies, customers had never bought out a home before. Wow. So it's a net positive. So that's a, that's a pretty staggering number. I mean, we've got some of the usual suspects, you know, We'll have like a Spotify and a Postmates and Casper.

And, you know, we just recently did a campaign for YouTube and Netflix. So we're getting some of, you know, some of the regular play, you know, usual suspects, but a majority of our clients are newcomers to this space and they're super excited. Um, most of them had expressed that they've been looking and eyeing out of home for quite some time, but the other, you know, Tried to give it a run before, and it was just too difficult or too time consuming or, uh, they just didn't know how to do it.

It wasn't, you know, it was, it was too difficult of a bet, right. To gamble that much money. And, uh, and, or they just never had, they never thought they had enough money to try it in the first place. And with that, that's it. I hear that a lot. Oh, I thought it was more, I thought it was more expensive. I mean, look, it is pretty expensive.

Sure. Yeah. It's relative, right? I mean, you've got. The power of out-of-home extends beyond, uh, you know, you know, a little, uh, you know, a little square, a little box on your phone. I mean, it's larger than life. It's, it's always on. I mean, when you, when you, you know, most of our clients happen to be millennials, so they, the IRL experiences like a big turn-on for them, they, they, they like to know that they can actually go see the billboard, take a picture in front.

A majority of our clients use it as content for social smart. So we ended up seeing a lot of our, our creative actually live online. Um, and, and that's great. Like it's super shareable. So, you know, people take advantage of that. I mean, I don't know if you remember, like we did our, our buy for Rihanna for Fenty.

Um, earlier in the year I pulled up to here, I put up the Kendrick Lamar and a, and Jay's you guys did something big with Jay Z and Beyonce, right? We did. We, we, we, we did, uh, we did a pretty, uh, pretty cool campaign for their, yeah. That one jumped out to me. Yeah. Those are people that everybody know. Talk, talk to me about like this, this is significant for out of home in a lot of ways.

Not only is it a big campaign, right. And that's, that's great, but these are, these are household names. These are. Transcend pop cultures. So how important is this to out a home to have them? I'll tell you that this by in particular was actually pretty exciting because we, we got the request from Jay on Sunday.

And we had them live on over 500 digital units on Monday. Wow. And this is before programmatic. So there was no digital programmatic platform used on this and we literally helped them buy 500 units in 24 hours. And they, I mean, this is, this is the shocking part, but their creative team literally turned around.

All the different creative, creative assets in a day. Um, and, and it went live. So yeah, that, one's pretty, pretty exciting. And also from what I'm told, it broke a world's record for largest time square takeover. No kidding. And, uh, in, in the history of, of, out of home and times square, so. I don't know if we've been dethroned since last year, but, um, we got to start the, like, get his book of, out of home records.

Yeah. That would be heard it hear you heard it here first. If you can get them out there to, to, to actually verify that and get us some formable plaque would be, that would be great. First rounds on me. Send that over to the rock nation office. Yeah. All right. So, so I mean, that's, you, you bought a ton of screens, programmatic.

Wasn't a thing. You're not from out of home, but how did milk money come to be? Like, was it, was it out of a need? Did you see an opportunity? Uh, what, what's the origin story? Because I think that that's, everyone's already been told the story has not been told, and I think it's on everyone's, but like I was texting a colleague today and she's like, who is this milk?

It's yeah, people are genuinely interested. You're getting, you're getting this out of me. Let's do it. Um, yeah, no. So, uh, it, it was actually birthed out of, out of a mistake to be entirely honest with you. So prior to milk money, I, I ran an entertainment marketing agency, uh, for a decade called cat called the house of hype.

And during that time, several of our clients, when we did activations were asking about Adam's. And a few times, I just remember like trying to figure it out, trying to like Google, who has billboards and make some phone calls. And it was like a real pain point trying to figure it out. And one of the campaigns that we had was actually, we were doing a BT party for, uh, for puff daddy, for Paul, and he wanted to have a billboard near the event.

And we finally ended up getting one on sunset. It was in sunset Plaza. So we ended up getting one, but it was like a nightmare to do it. And, you know, I kind of like always in the back of my mind was like, this is like so awesome, right. That seeing the billboard lie, but it was just such a pain to get, get through it.

So tough the way in the back of my mind, I always had like this, uh, this desire to crack that nut, right? Like to figure out how do we, how do we do that? Um, and then a few years into, um, into the house of hype history, I, as an agency, I got tired of running an agency. And people would come to us. Brands would come to us constantly for our network and they want it to get placed in a music video or in a movie or a TV show.

We're constantly doing product placement and we had the connections, you know, with the industry insiders to be able to place them. And it just became overwhelming. It was just too, too many opportunities, too many missed opportunities. So milk money, 1.0 was actually. A marketplace for product placement and sponsorship opportunities.

Interesting. Oh really? It took what we did at house of hype. And we built a website that allowed people to bid, to integrate their brand into these key placements. And we had, you know, all the major movie studios and TV networks and record labels, and they were posting their shows and movies. Uh, music, videos, and brands were bidding.

On these placements and give me an example, like a placement for like Justin Bieber's music video. Okay. And brands would bid to integrate into the video. The problem was, um, dates, shifts, production schedules, shift treatments, change scenes, get cut out. Um, locations change. And sometimes the product no longer fits in the scene or the talent doesn't want to hold the product any longer.

It just there's a conflict of interest. Right. And there was just way too many barriers, right. To get it right. And although a lot of people were excited to bid and get integrated. There was a lot of opportunity for these, these campaigns to not see the full potential. Right. So we started looking for, now that we had a amassed, all these customers, we had all these brands on the platform.

It was like, okay, what other assets, what else could we put on there? What could we list that people would want to buy? Right. But we know it's not going to go. Right. Like, what's going to be like a placement without, um, there being any compromise. And I thought back to, you know, trying to buy a billboard for, for my other clients and how excited the client was ultimately to be able to get like a great deal.

See themselves on, on, on out-of-home. So I just reached out to, uh, you know, my first call was to my friend, Conrad, um, used to be a total, and now he's at Seumas and, and I was like, Conrad, you're in the billboard space and I've known Conrad for a long time. And I said, what do you have? And he's like, I got a couple of boards.

I'm like, well, do you have any, that could start pretty soon because I need something to sell on the platform. And he gave me some assets and we sold it within an hour. Wow. And yeah, I mean, it was that, that quick. And, uh, and then I, I, you know, I'm like, who else has inventory? And then I called, uh, you know, Lamar and I spoke to, um, Mike Kasota.

Who's, you know, the, the, the manager in the LA market. And I introduced myself and I was like, Hey man, do you have any inventory that, uh, can go live like. And he gave us some inventory. We put it on the platform and it's sold and, and, and I was like, wow, I think we hit something. So, you know, it was really birthed out of a mistake, but then eventually we took everything else off the platform we focused on, on billboards.

And eventually we grew to be more of an out of home, uh, marketplace. So it started with bulletins and then we started layering it. Uh, you know, everything else that it is today and now it's, it's actually expanded beyond the traditional and we've got nontraditional assets as well. I mean, you could find out.

On there, you can find skywrite skytyping and sky writing and aerial banners and hand painted murals and experiential things like food trucks and ice cream trucks and all sorts of like, you know, great, great assets. You know, we're working with this other vendor. Who's got a rooftop advertising that, that we recently listed.

Oh yeah. What they been here. Yeah. Great guys, man. Bye-bye ads yours in this space. So shout out, shout out to those guys. Um, and I'll tell you, I think like the exciting thing for me is that, you know, when you first went on Airbnb, it was like renting an air mattress in someone's living room. It really was, it was like couch surfing.

Couch surfing. And today you can book a castle and an igloo and a boat house, turtles player, huh? The ninja turtles layer, ninja turtle. I haven't seen that, but I got to check it out, but they recently had the fresh prince of Bel-Air his house outcome. That's so cool. Yeah, that was last week. So the idea for me is the same thing.

You know, it doesn't have any of the traditional guys, anybody who's got any form of, out of home that qualifies, they can list it on the marketplace and the more. You know, we get postings and listings on there. The more advertisers are going to be attracted to the platform. You know, right now, everything we've done has been a word of mouth.

So someone got something, they loved it. They told a friend, a friend told a friend, um, they gave it a shot and it's really been like super organic, which is all you can really ask for at our state. Yeah, absolutely. And we're so excited about them, man. I mean, when we, when we see the faces of our, our customers, right?

When they post something on social or they email us and tell us, like this was a dream come true, or they, you know, they always wanted to, to make their mom proud or their girlfriend jealous or, you know, whatever. It was like, look, mom, I made it like, you know, we all have our motivation. There's nothing, there's nothing better than that, you know?

And at the same time we also help our vendors. Um, monetize on loss opportunities. So it's a win-win for everybody. Yeah, for sure. And just getting ready for this conversation, you know, talking with some, some of the independence around the industry, the feedback's been nothing but positive. So clearly you guys are doing a good job.

If it sounds like it's a great platform for anyone who's got any sort of out of home advertising idea, right? How many different forms. Do you have, if you had to put a number on it right now, we're probably about 25, probably 25 to 30 distinguished. Formats, but there's variances on, but I would say, you know, twenty-five, which is pretty, pretty significant, um, and growing.

So, you know, if you're listening and you've gone out of home, hit us up and milk money, we'd love to have you on the platform, uh, and, and be part of our market. Definitely how, how should people get in touch if they want to get their assets? Hello? At milk money.com. That's pretty easy. That's pretty easy.

It's hello? Add milk mind. We'll make sure to put it in the, in the show notes, the description below, uh, Sam, what are you most excited about right now? Scaling? Scaling. And it's exciting every day when, you know, I mean, look COVID was, was rough for everybody, right? Us included. I mean, the first few months was a matter of like what, you know, survival.

Right. You know, we had, we had clients who had booked inventory and they were concerned about their impressions. They were concerned that people were going to see them. They wanted to get out of contracts. They wanted to extend. Uh, you know, their start dates, you know, we had, we had a lot of variables.

Fortunately, all of our vendors were super supportive. They understand the long-term value of a customer. They understand that, um, you know, everyone's in this, you know, it's not a unique situation everybody's in this. And the only way we're going to win is to work together. Um, and we powered. You know, I think everyone for the most part has survived and is coming out of this thing and, and hopefully going to continue to grow.

Um, you know, I think for us, the nice thing was that smaller advertisers who needed to keep their doors open needed to find new channels of lo you know, buying local ads and nobody was a great resource. So I think, you know, during COVID we kind of got to shine, you know, our value really, um, presented itself to our vendors, improve that, uh, there is a need for this.

And we're all about like the micro-transactions, right. It's a lot of like little buys add up to a big number. Um, and none of our vendors ever complain about a deal size, right? Like there's nothing too small for them. Right. They're all found money. They're grateful for any level by, right. And I think that's like the most rewarding thing for us is that no one ever complains about why I didn't get more or, or why someone else got something, everyone so far has been super supportive.

And I love that about this community. You know, I've had other vendors hit me up and be like, wow, that was amazing what you did with, with pivot. Or that was amazing what you did with big, or that was amazing what you do with nutrition. Um, well, that's amazing that you had, you know, that incredible mural that you did with ICU art.

You know what I mean? And it's a really tight community, you know, and, and I really, really love that. And I think that's been part of what's allowed the industry to thrive. And I think this is a moment for everybody. And I think ultimately people just need to be open to change, you know? Cause the changes.

Right. And they need to be open to the idea that advertisers buy differently. Right. And you can't lock them into buying one way. Um, and if they historically bought one way today, they may shift the want to buy a different way. Um, which is the thing about us too, is like, we don't come. We don't, we don't force our clients to be AOR.

Like that was like a big deal for the industry. It was like, are you their AOR? Are you their AOR? And I'm like, no, we don't want. I don't force my advertiser to only buy for me. If they want to go buy direct or they want to go buy from an agency or they want to try something and come back, we're a marketplace, you know, Expedia, doesn't tell their customer.

They only have to buy from Expedia and they can't call Delta or Marriott. Right. Or if they went there, they can't come back. You give them the ease of use of platform and they buy how they want. I mean, look, no one tells Netflix what to do, right? No, one's like, you do what to do. And, and if, as a vendor you want to say, you know, they're only limited to buying from an agency or, uh, you know, whoever they traditionally buy from then you're gonna miss out on the dollars that they're going to spend with.

And if you follow us, then you'll see that there are there they're spending and we're, we're, we're, you know, we're giving them whatever inventory, um, we have. So I encourage people to look away from, from AOR, right. And think, uh, think of it in the grand scale. And if you have inventory, don't let it sit there, give it to us and give us a shot at trying to get somebody to, you know, Tend to fill it quickly and pay quickly.

So that, that last piece maybe say that, say that twice for the people in the bank pay quickly and pay quick, quick, quick, quickly, quickly cashflow cashflow is king. Absolutely. Speaking of scaling, speaking of community, your team's growing and you just added some out of homeys to the team, right? We did. We did.

We. We really didn't have anyone from out of home on our team, um, to date. And, uh, interestingly enough, I didn't really want to lean on anyone from the industry. I really liked the idea of developing and cultivating our own, uh, our own team. Right with, without any, uh, any bias to the industry and how things have been done, because we're doing things differently.

So I want an open people with open minds and I wanted really, really good people regardless of their walk of life, like where they came from. Right. It didn't really matter. As long as, uh, you know, they, they have the qualifications for what it would take to, to work in milk money, and, you know, during the pandemic.

We saw a lot of people that had been furloughed and people that have lost their jobs. Um, and we started getting a lot of inquiries and, uh, we had kind of put it out there to the industry, to people that were looking to hire. And we got flooded with resumes. I mean, we got so many, uh, talented people that were displaced.

And honestly, you know, I was like, you know what? This is a great opportunity to, to give back. Um, and to give some people an opportunity to stay in the industry that they love, we were, we were hiring some others weren't so we opened that up and we got some great candidates and we hired. This week alone, we hired three people, um, from OMG alone.

Um, and they're great candidates and we're super excited to have them as part of our team. Um, and they're bringing some great value and, and hopefully, you know, we'll, we'll open our doors to, to some more people as well. Um, but yeah, I mean, look, if you're, if you're looking for a job, um, You know, reach out to us at work at milk, money.com.

Gosh. So make it easy. Does, you know, we're open to, to hearing from everybody. So yeah, we, we that's kind like how it happened. Um, and we, uh, it's exciting. It's been a lot of fun to watch. Uh, Sam, if people want to get in touch, follow you, where are you most active? How do people find you? Uh, probably I'd say like our Instagram.

You know, uh, follow at milk, money, uh, super easy handle. Um, and we post a little bit on, on LinkedIn as well, but you know, most of, most of where we're social is is, is on Instagram. Uh, and, um, at Sam . And you could put that in your, the spelling of that in the footer somewhere, be sure. Well, we'll make it easy.

That's the theme, make it easy, make it easy. People do more of it. Yeah, but yeah, we, we want to hear from everybody. I mean, we, we love, we love to hear from people, right. We love to work with everybody. So, um, whether you're an independent guy in, in, in, in the middle of the country or you're, you know, a big guy, um, you know, with multiple markets or you've got some new, new, interesting assets, or you're looking to build out some assets and you want some help.

Um, we'd love to hear that. Awesome. And that's how low@milkmoney.com. Again, show notes, description below. You'll have everything you need to get in touch. Sam. Thanks so much for being here. I appreciate it. Thanks for the time. Absolutely. As always make sure to smash that subscribe button, share it, like it, comments, all that stuff.