Edition #3 There's No Beer in the Third Period

Hi. Welcome back to the Wednesday Windup. This week, I want to share why I constantly repeat to my team—almost at nauseam—the phrase: Ready, Fire, Aim. I believe it’s the only way to truly move forward and make progress.

 The world loves Ready, Aim, Fire—sounds responsible, calculated, like you're doing everything "right." But let’s not kid ourselves. The only people still aiming are the ones too afraid to miss.

The world we live in doesn’t wait for you to get your aim just right. It moves. Fast. And by the time you’ve lined up your shot, your target’s long gone.

If you’re waiting to be 100% ready before you act, you’ll never act.

That’s what kills most people’s potential.

They think the aim comes first. But the most successful people? They shoot.

Then they figure out how to aim better on the next round. 

You don’t learn from standing still and calculating. You learn from action, from misfires, from adjusting your scope after you’ve taken a shot.

So, for those still aiming—stop pretending that you're being thorough. You’re being scared. Pull the trigger. Miss if you have to. But at least you’re moving. And movement beats perfection every time.

The cost of waiting for the perfect shot is far higher than the cost of missing a few along the way.

There's No Beer in the Third Period

A Story From Isaac's Desk

A few years ago, we took our largest client at the time to an Avalanche game at the Ball Arena in Denver. 

I get up at the start of the third period and announce to our guests—Gary, Corey, Alexis, and Duke (who had the least possible resemblance to anything approaching royalty) that I was going to grab another round.

They laughed and shook their heads. I learned that it’s illegal for NHL teams to serve beer in the third period, or something like that. I also learned that NHL games were only three periods. What a ripoff.

I thought that was ridiculous. There must have been thousands of cans of cold, unsold beer. I repeated, quite confidently, that I was going to get another round. They laughed and shook their heads again. Truthfully, I wasn’t quite sure how this was going to shake out.

I circle the entire Ball Arena at least six times, asking every concession stand for beer. I offered them all double, or triple the price, but still, no one was willing to risk losing their jobs for the red-headed goon who wanted to impress a client.

Then I spot some wiry kid hurrying through a “Staff Only” door. I run after him. I say I’ll pay him $100 for two cans of beer. It was my most aggressive offer of the night. He nods and says to follow him. Three narrow hallways and one dimly lit corridor later, I find myself in a small storage room. Another guy, blinged out in what looked like the entire King Ice catalog, sat behind a mountain of cash sitting on a small desk.

He was surrounded by a group of impossibly fat men with their tree-trunk arms folded across their chests. It looked like I walked into a Corleone meeting, but these guys were unarmed with either guns or brains.

King Ice kid looks up at my escort, spits on the floor, and says, “What’s this guy, Vinny?” “He wants a beer,” Vinny says. “A hundred dollars.” “Beer! Vinny, I’m countin’ cash! Get this guy outta here, Vinny, or you’re being sorry tomorrow.”

Vinny didn’t like the sound of being sorry tomorrow, so he, and I, got out of there.

Now I’m back in the arena, still beerless, the third period halfway over, when I spot a waiter rolling a food cart into a staff elevator. I tell him my story, which wasn’t as much a story as it was an offer to pay $200 for two cans of beer. He looks me up and down, looks at his food cart, and says, “Watch my food cart. In fifteen minutes, meet me in the bathroom outside section 213, second to last stall.”

It was a long fifteen minutes, but sure enough, he was there waiting for me in the last stall of the bathroom outside section 213. He lifts up his shirt and this guy has six 24-ounce unopened cans of Coors Light lining his waistband like grenades. I felt like Robert Downey Jr. in Tropic Thunder.

By the time the deal was struck, the game was over. I finally found Corey, Gary, and Duke waiting in line for yet another bathroom. I started pulling mostly-cold Coors Light cans from my pockets. No words needed to be said. Just picture the scene.

I’ve never had so many people with such full bladders and such empty tanks of anything approaching intelligent life cheer for me. But man, if that’s what being a rockstar feels like, I thought I could get used to it.

“You cannot bore people into buying your product. You can only interest them into buying it.”

- David Ogilvy

What's Going On At AdVenture

We just wrapped up our annual AMG end-of-summer BBQ.

Naturally, we forgot to take a proper company photo. The only picture we managed was a slightly blurry masterpiece, courtesy of my 3-year-old.

With the whole team from all three offices together, it’s always the highlight of the year.

In For a Penny, In For a Pound

Food for thought on advertising

Whenever someone visits your site, Meta’s pixel tracks them and marks them as a potential buyer in your category. But .... Meta doesn’t just keep that data for you. It offers it to whoever is willing to pay the most, including your competitors.

If you’re not actively bidding to bring those visitors back, your competitors will—and they’ll be happy to take your leads.

Meta’s whole business is built on turning your prospects into revenue, whether for you or for someone else.

The mistake most brands make is waiting for leads to come back on their own, or not putting enough effort into retargeting. But people aren’t loyal—they probably don’t even remember your site’s name.

If you’re not consistently showing up in front of them, you’re letting your competition win.

The solution? Balance aggressive prospecting with retargeting. If you don’t, you’re allowing your competitors to steal your audience.

This gave me a good laugh... 

Never Never, Never Always.

An AdVenture Client Story

Best practices aren't always best for every situation. 

At AdVenture, we live by a simple mantra: “Never never, never always.”

If you’re feeling the squeeze of high customer acquisition costs, it might be time to question the rules we preach to ourselves. Sticking to the same tactics over and over can backfire when the landscape shifts.

Take a client of ours in the repair industry. Our conversion-focused strategies were getting too expensive. We needed to change things. So, we pivoted to a maximize clicks bidding strategy with CPC caps. We focused on immediate, action-driven results like “get directions” and “click-to-call,” capturing customers who we're in the market and at a cheaper rate. 

We also moved their campaigns into Performance Max, making sure their ads showed up where they would hit the hardest: in search results and local maps. These are the places where intent is highest, where customers are on the verge of making a decision.

Not only did we slash their costs, but we also attracted a wave of qualified leads ready to take action.

Question your own rules. What worked yesterday might not work today. When you’re willing to challenge your own beliefs, you open doors to strategies and opportunities you might not have seen before.

P.S. We want to make this newsletter valuable to YOU! If you have any specific topics you want us to cover or questions you want answered, hit reply to this email, and let's get in touch! 

P.P.S. Seriously, I mean it! I read every email. I am here to help you!