Brian Meert On Business Success And Grateful Living
Financial success doesn’t mean much when you forget to be grateful for what you have. Joining Chad Burmeister today is Brian Meert, CEO of AdvertiseMint, Inc. In this episode, Brian supplements listeners with valuable insight to help you grow your business and the perspective that has allowed him to live a blessed life. The road to success hasn’t always been smooth, and Brian shares some of the challenges he’s faced along the way—from finding the confidence to lead to finding the right partners to work with. Life isn’t just about the highlight reels, but it’s also important to take a step back and be grateful. Learn more about Brian and how he maintains a grateful perspective on life and living right here!
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Brian Meert On Business Success And Grateful Living
I've got someone with me who is in the stomping grounds where I used to be, which is Southern California, Los Angeles, Hollywood area. I'm looking at the map where their offices are and it's right down the street from some of the coolest places that I have ever been. There was a company called DVDXpress that changed to Express. They sold DVDs. They are one of my biggest customers back in the day, many years ago, at FedEx. Now, we are talking to the Founder and CEO, Brian Meert of AdvertiseMint. Welcome to the show. Thanks for being here.
Thank you so much. You mentioned Hollywood, it is a crazy place. The stuff that I have seen going on in that neighborhood. I walked out in front one day and NSYNC was right in front of our building doing a concert. I was like, “What's going on here?” It was all women. No guys in the audience at all. I was like, “I should have been in a boy band.”
I would love to learn how you’ve got there but the way I do that for my audience is, tell us about when you were a kid. Where were you raised? What was your passion? It helps us connect the dots. After all, when we “grow up,“ we are still just like big kids. It helps to understand what were you like when you were a kid. What were you passionate about?
Both my parents are nurses. They met down in Los Angeles and moved up to Sacramento. I grew up there most of my life. I had a cool little house. The suburb backyard was a full bone grassy area. There's a creek. I spent a ton of time playing outdoors, running around, rope swings, making for it and stuff like that. As a kid growing up, the things I loved were football, trying new things, going on adventures, something I had never done before or getting into trouble.
One thing that was weird that I always liked as a kid was growing stuff. I would love to plant things like a sunflower. Coming back to the next day and be like, “There's nothing there. The next day again, nothing.” Forgetting about it and coming back a week and there was a little sprout. I always liked checking on things as they grew. It was crazy because a lot of that is what led to what I do now, which is helping businesses and companies grow. It's the same thing.
It's exciting when there's a business, we have helped them and they are double, quadruple and ten times the size. To be right there to be like, “These are the things that we are doing that help you grow?” It's crazy. I was a normal kid like everyone else. Everyone always voted me like the class clown. I was a guy usually up to trouble, lightened off smoke bombs, stink bombs, making people run around, laugh and have a good time.
If you grew up in Colorado, you probably wouldn't have ended up growing something else other than businesses and advertisements. That's a great story. It's the first that I have heard that as a hobby. I was the guy with the magnifying glass when the sun lighting the toes of Luke Skywalker on fire. Now you are helping companies. We talked a little bit about how companies use Facebook these days. It's so unique in the advertisements that you can go and say, “Show me someone who likes Elon Musk. They are a part of a Salesforce user group and they are age 35 to 45. They are male. They are in Southern California.” You can get so amazingly sophisticated and narrow it down. I hear you. That's a lot of fun.
When the internet came out and it was a time before the internet, I remember hearing something where people would say, “Advertisers know more about you than you know about yourself.” It seems like some weird spooky being like, “How would they know more about me than I know about myself? It doesn't make sense. Are they looking out the window or are they watching me walk down the street?” It was always a weird statement. It seemed creepy. In the world of Facebook with a lot of actions happening in the digital world or on social networks, a lot of that can be tracked.
A lot of algorithms and projections can be based on your actions being like, “These are things that we think people are going to like.” When I talk to people at times, their first comment back is that creepy one, which is, “You guys are watching everything that I'm doing. You are tracking me. That seems weird.” I get to see the flip side of that, which is when you open up your Facebook app and I open up my Facebook app, we don't see any of the same ads, almost ever. You are going to see only ads about the things that you care about, which from a consumer standpoint is more awesome.
You are like, “I'm not seeing random things that I don't ever care about that’s wasting my time or waste my life.” It has a positive aspect of it. I always had been a weird thing that people are like, “Weirdly, someone is tracking me or doing that.” Facebook has some incredible tools. The value is that when you are only spending money on the people that are most likely going to want your business or service, you are more profitable as a business. You are spending less on wasted ads and more on profitable ads, which means you can build and grow your business faster.
I remember someone told me that they went to a pet store, and then they start seeing the pet ads. He was like, “They had to be listening to me on the phone.” I said, “Yes.” What I have understand and you can probably validate this, is the geocoding. Facebook is not listening to every one of my conversations and converting it into text. There's no way. Maybe the government is but that's a different conversation. I do believe Facebook certainly can say, “Chad was in the pet store for 45 minutes.”
I know this has been a fun conversation. I get this a lot at dinner parties where people are like, “We know they are listening.” There are probably thousands of data points that Facebook has on users that are using their systems. A lot of these got released with the iOS 14 update where they started to disclose, “Here are all the ways we track you or have the ability to track you.” What happens is there are a lot. One of them is location, the websites you visited. Even if you google search something and look at a website, even though you didn't necessarily click an ad or say it, ads can show up. There are a lot of other areas on how Facebook can make those connections to be able to show you ads. I have seen it happen to myself where I'm like, “I said that I was out and here it is.” These are the microphone on, “What’s going on?”
We are talking a lot about technology. We talked about when you grew up with the things you like to do. Everybody faces some challenges in life. At the time, it feels like the biggest gut-punch you could ever get. Sometimes looking back, you go, “That was amazing. I'm glad that happened to me.” Are there any of those that you are comfortable sharing that might be beneficial for our audience to hear?
There are two that I would probably share. The first one was that growing up in high school and stuff, I mentioned the class clown thing. I lost every election ever when I tried to run in my class. I was lucky enough to be in a class with 2 to 1, girls to guys, which again, it was great odds for me but when it came for ever being elected for a class, office or something like that, I lost every single one to a girl.
Grateful Living: When you're only spending money on the people that are most likely to want your business or service, you're more profitable. You're spending less on wasted ads and more on profitable ads, which means you can build and grow your business faster.
It wasn't until I’ve got to college and there was a men's fraternity president. I was like, “I will run for that.” I actually won. That's when I was like, “It was necessarily me.” Up until then, I had thought, “Maybe I wasn't a good leader.” There weren't some traits that I have. I realized, “I was in a scenario that was 2 to 1 with girls that are going to vote for their friends. It’s the circumstances I wasn't going to win.”
You tell yourself a story. You make that story up, and then you never fixed the story, then you would be down that path for the rest of your life.
A lot of times, you can rewrite your story, and a lot of times, it takes trying something else or trying again. You will never know when one of those doors may open. The truth was once I’ve got through and I’ve got elected, I still have people to this day that will be like, “The stuff that we were doing when we were in the fraternity, all the events you had, bench press competitions, and video games, we did a lot of fun stuff and I was excited to get in there.” I still get people that come back and we had so much fun in college because of all the things that we were doing.
I was like, “It's great.” I would have never known had I listened to that back voice in my head that said, “You are not good enough. You will never win.” The only thing that I would say is throughout my career, I have had three different businesses that I have started. One, I built and grew. Another one I built and failed. When we talked about painful moments, I have had three falling outs with business partners, and these are people that 1 was 2 of my best friends. Another one was a good friend. We worked together for several years, and then one was my wife that later became my ex-wife.
It was super painful to be like, “These were people that I thought would have my back no matter what, that I thought would always be there.” It was tough for me to say goodbye to some of these people in the business sense. We maybe will be friends but when it comes to business, we may not be the best fit. In business, there are a lot of relationships that come together that need to be able to mesh and flow where people understand their roles and who's doing what.
One of the biggest things that when you are starting a business is figuring out who is your partner and who can you work with. Do they have traits that might be different than you? The first business I started, two of my best friends, we were all the exact same. We all did the same work and the work that none of us wanted to do, never got done. We were like, “Why isn't that getting done? Do you want to do it? I don’t want to do it.” All doing the business didn't go very far because we didn't have a good diversity between us. Is someone doing the accounting? Is someone doing bookkeeping or someone doing other things that have to be done in a business?
A lesson that I didn't see when I started is the importance of picking those good partners. When there isn't a good fit, knowing when to say goodbye. You need to be able to step out of situations where you might be taken advantage of or you might be carrying the weight of the rest of a team. They are not interested in adding the same amount of what you are doing but they are definitely interested in taking the same amount of dollars off the table when the benefits come through.
Perception of value is a big deal. I have had a couple of business partners very similarly. I have heard we went to an event with 48 CEOs, and every freaking one of them had a similar story like, “Let me tell you about the ex-business partner.” Defining the lane, figuring out what the yin and yang are because you can't have two yins. It’s not going to work.
I had a meeting with our CRO and we in fact made some tweaks to say, “We brought you in because you are the channel guy. You wrote a book on channel sales. Let's redefine the lanes so that we can grow our business to a new level and we are not rowing in the wrong direction. Now, we've got two boats in the water instead of one.” Sometimes, that's important to do. That's neat. Thanks for sharing.
This question sometimes is a loaded question, especially when you are on your game and it sounds like you are on the sprint now and doing a lot of things right. What would change everything for your question is sometimes hard to ask or hard to answer because you are like, “I'm doing it,” but is there something that you would change in the world that would be awesome for you?
In my world or just the world in general?
Let’s go world in general because it’s an “interesting time” we are living in.
If there's anything that I could change in the world, I do think the pandemic brought around this new wave of a weird sense of time when people were apart. They weren't able to be next to each other. It was a whole new normal that everyone was going into and figuring out. I know a lot of people, at least from my talking with them were felt lonely or maybe anxious. What was normal for them got shifted and changed quickly.
I want to let everyone know that you are accepted and loved. It's okay to be exactly where you are at. What happens a lot of times on social media, the downside or the hidden dark side of social media is that everyone is posting the highlight reels, “Here I am at this cool party. Here I am traveling at this island,” and they don't get the parts in between, which is, “I'm going to work to pay for it. I'm having a bad day.” Those parts don't get posted a lot of times.
Grateful Living: When starting a business, one of the biggest things is figuring out who your partner is, who you can work with, and whether they have traits that might be different from you.
When people are looking at that, it's disheartening when they are like, “Everyone is doing better than me. I'm nowhere near as beautiful as that person or I don't have a fancy car like that guy.” In social media, you have to understand that what you see is not necessarily the truth. It's not the reality. What I would say is if I could put a blanket message out there and be like, “It's 100% okay to be exactly where you are. Give yourself a high five for making it this far, keep going tomorrow and take things one day at a time.” Is that really a motivational thing?
It’s like the tip of an iceberg. You are dead on. People could look at, “Chad was on an airplane. He went to Noah's Ark in Kentucky. He did this and that.” I was like, “I also had a tough Q1 and it sucked but I'm here. I'm still kicking and clawing.”
I have been able to work with a lot of celebrities being in the business world as well. There are days that you get bad news after bad news and you are like, “Why am I doing this?” You also have the high points where all of a sudden, something good comes through. Usually, that's what you share. I will get a lot of friends that call me and be like, “You run your own company. That's amazing.” I’m like, “You don't understand. My number one client told me he wants to leave. I had to fire four people because of something that happened. It makes me miserable. I hate doing stuff like that.” Honesty is always important but it's tough when a lot of people only see those high points to be like, “The reality is there. Not every day is sunshine and rainbows but keep moving forward.”
I met a woman in a Steamboat not too long ago. A friend of mine and I are there up in the mountains and she's the Owner of the bar-restaurant. We are chatting before everybody comes in for this live band. It turns out she won the lottery for $40 million. She was like, “It was the best thing that happened to me and it’s the worst thing that happened to me.” The husband breakup because he wants all the money. All the friends are calling and asking, “I need $1 million. It's important. My parents need it,” or whatever. She went through a lot of counseling over a long period of time to figure it out.
Her answer and I go, “Let me guess. It's just in the moment you are in.” She was like, “How did you know that?” I was like, “It’s because that seems to me to be all you have. It’s this moment, where you at, what are you doing, and smile about it.” I have four hours of flight delays and I was like, “But I'm back in the airport. This is awesome. Who cares? Bring on another two.” Let's think about this question and you have probably been asked this before but if you could go back 10 or 15 years and say, “Do this one thing a little bit differently.” What would you say to yourself?
If I could go back, I would probably say this is one, “You are way stronger than you even realize. Believe in yourself. Keep taking those swings, shots, go for it, and go bigger than what you think you can handle.” I didn't grow up in business. I never thought I was a businessman. It wasn’t until in college when I started taking business classes and realized I was good at marketing. My whole life, I wasn't around any business people. It wasn't something that I had. There was no YouTube around that I could watch. No Gary Vee or other people to look up to be like, “Look at me. This is how I do business.”
I only had the people in my world. One thing that I would say is, “You have no idea how strong you are, how much you can endure, and how much you can go through but keep going, pushing, and swinging for a little bit more.” Imagine you wouldn't fail. I'm coming back to the future. Things are going to be okay. Go for it a little bit more. It’s what I would probably say to myself. Don't hold back and believe in yourself.
Good relation to that would be when it came to growing business, there were a lot of times I was hesitant to maybe take out a loan if I believed in myself, where I would go a little bit slower than going out being like, “I know I'm on the right track, a great industry, and things are growing. How do I accelerate this to the moon?” I was on the right path but I was a little more timid being like, “Let me play it a little safe.”
That comes from losing a business. I ran one 100% into the ground where I was like, “I can do anything and I failed it miserably.” Some reality came out of that but at the same point, there were some things that I wasn't paying attention to when that one failed. That was just on me. I had to realize, “That's where I made a mistake. Now let's get up and keep going.” I do think believing in yourself and taking the shots, making sure you are as prepared as possible in whatever you can do and go for it.
There's a guy named Dan Martell and he coaches Founders and CEOs of software companies mainly. He's on the board of probably 100 of them. He's the guy who put on the 48 CEO event in British Columbia, Canada at this backcountry ski resort, where it's all snowcats. What he calls this is, you either have $1, $10, $100, $1,000 problems. It's interesting, the further up you get on the scale and some people might look at it and be like, “That's $30,000.”
An example, I'm a member of this thing called Board of Advisors. It's $25,000 a year. It's four times a year, I go for a week to Sarasota, Florida. My wife looks at it like, “That would pay for half my salary. I don't need to work if you ditch that.” Let's look at what comes as a result of that. I hired my fractional CFO from there. I've got my controller from there. We've got about $10,000 worth of business from there. It’s still not fully paid for but without doing some of those investments, there's no way that you have a $1.5 million a year company. People look at those like, “That's a car. That’s a year of college for our kids.” it's interesting when you play in a different game and have a different mindset.
I would say that as well. In an area that a lot of people hold back is investing in themselves. If you don't network, then you don't work. One of my mentors told me that. He was like, “That's the truth.” People like to do business with people they know. Being in the proximity of bigger people and more successful people is probably the quickest way you will ever be more successful. You are around people that are doing good and they are like, “We want you to do good as well. Let’s go. You are in our club or tribe.”
There are a lot of truth to that. Sometimes, you get in by who you are like a family member. Sometimes, you get in by paying and be like, “I'm going to pay to join a club or a group because I know there's value on the other side of that.” I couldn't agree more. It is valuable to make those connections and have people that are like, “You are my guy for X or Y. I will call you if I need help.” They now have someone that they know and trust, and that's you.
Kevin Harrington was here right from Shark Tank at this event. There's another guy, Rick Jordan who puts together a good software security company. Kevin and he meet over the last couple of times. He said, “Why don't we take you public and let's go buy up a bunch of other software security companies?” Now they publicly made the first two acquisitions. They are going after a 20X to 40X multiple.
Grateful Living: You have no idea how strong you are and how much you can endure, and how much you have the ability to go through.
If Rick Jordan is not in the room, he's not meeting Kevin Harrington and he's not getting funded. It's definitely interesting. The last question for you and is around faith. It's interesting, no matter who I ask, it doesn't matter what side of the aisle you are on or where you are from. It seems to be a common thread in nowadays world. What role does faith play in your life and your journey?
I grew up in a very strict Christian household and I was blessed. One of the things that I think the best about this was my parents took me on a lot of volunteer trips where they would go for 1 or 2 weeks where we would go to Costa Rica, Mexico or the Dominican Republic and build churches, schools and orphanages. Get out there in the world and be like, “We are going to help build something up.” I was able to do about ten of these from about 10 to 20 years old. To be able to see the real world, which is I have already won the lottery. I'm in America, I’m able to work in front of a computer, type a little bit in an air-conditioned
office and I get paid money for that. I've got a car and a house.
I'm already well above most of the people on planet Earth. To be able to realize that and see other people that had very little but were super happy, a lot of American cultures is, “I have a lot of stuff but I'm unhappy.” To be able to have that frame of reference my entire life and be able to go back to be like, “Take a step back. What is it?” I get to choose my happiness now no matter what. Being able to have that is so critical. When I was probably 6 or 7, I had an older brother who was diagnosed with cancer. When I’ve got to junior high, he passed away.
It was nothing more than a random draw the cards. It made no sense. Doctors couldn't explain it. They didn't know where or how. It was something that came through. He fought it for a couple of years and he didn't make it. By the time I was in junior high, I understood life isn't fair. It isn't going to be fair across the board. Everything isn't going to be in your favor. I realized I was lucky that in the game of life, it was me or my brother, one of us made it through.
That was something that always stuck with me that you've got this moment, you've got now to be able to go and do the things you need to do to say the things to the people that there may be something keeping you guys apart and be like, “Let's clear the air. Let's get and talk it out.” I don't need to hold a grudge forever and ever. I want you to be my friend or I don't want you to be my friend. I'm much quicker to make decisions because I realize life is short, nothing is guaranteed and I'm not owed anything.
Why I work so hard is it could all end tomorrow or end later but I'm grateful for what I have, the opportunities I have, the people that work on my team or work with me, and the companies we get to work with. That type of attitude goes back a lot towards helping and being in a happier place across the board.
A couple of thoughts. Jocko Willink has this video and it says, “If it's bad, good. I can breathe. I can open my eyes. No matter what it is. If you were fired from your job, good. What can I learn?” It’s a punchy video. When you are having a bad day, you watch this, you wake up and you go, “I'm going to have a good day.” My neighbor passed away from COVID out of the blue like you are talking about.
I saw an image on Facebook where it showed this ramp in a nice green field. People walking up the ramp going to heaven. You never know what your order is in the number of the line. Take a ticket. What do you do now? When you are having a bad day, great. Let's go to Vegas and sit out at a pool. “I can't afford that.” “Let's go walk in the mountains.” Sniff it all in, enjoy it. Talk to someone who cares about you and live.
Happiness is a choice and realizing how blessed you are. This is one thing I have always heard. There are people on planet Earth that will pray to God for what you have now. That's something that's always stuck with me to be like, “In someone else's eyes, I am a billionaire.” With the house that I live in, the car that I drive, and the computer I get to work on. Some people will look at me like, “If only I could have that, I would have everything I could ever imagine.”
Usually, people are always looking at something bigger or more expensive and always in the distance but being able to stop for a minute and realize how blessed you are, and how much God has blessed you is super important for people to be able to remember. It gets overlooked a lot in the social media world. There's always something bigger, better and flashier. People are trying to get your attention or sell you something. Don't be afraid to put that phone away for a day, enjoy life, and be thankful for what you do have.
I have been talking with Brian Meert from Southern California, AdvertiseMint.com. If you are looking to do Facebook ads, these guys work with the best of the best that's out there with companies like Coca-Cola, Inc, Forbes, Entrepreneur, Viacom, Newegg, and Grant Cardone. You’ve got a long list there and I can tell why. It’s because you are a good person. You know what's up and what's down. It’s a pleasure getting to know you.
I appreciate being on here. Thank you so much for the opportunity.
Everybody, we will catch you on the next episode.
Important Links:
Jocko Willink – YouTube video
About Brian Meert
Brian Meert is the CEO of AdvertiseMint, a Hollywood based digital advertising agency that specializes in helping successful companies advertise on Facebook. He began his online advertising career with his college cafeteria money and since then, has managed millions of dollars in digital ad spends in entertainment, fashion, finance and software industries. Brian has an MBA in marketing and over 15 years of experience in the field.
Brian built and sold Gofobo.com, an online ticketing system that revolutionized the entertainment industry and is now utilized by Warner Bros. and Disney. Four years ago, Brian founded AdvertiseMint after seeing the Facebook ad platform for the first time and realizing it was a game changer for the Advertising industry. AdvertiseMint is now the highest ranked Facebook Advertising Agency according to Google search results.
Brian is also the author of, The Complete Guide to Facebook Advertising, which is available on Amazon. Brian gives monthly tech talks to small business owners in the Los Angeles area and also teaches a one-day bootcamp with General Assembly. Brian is passionate about entrepreneurship and loves sharing his knowledge with others. When he’s not in the office, you can find him doing CrossFit, mud runs and traveling. He has lived in Australia, Greece and Fiji and currently resides in Los Angeles.
