Building a Brand: The Purple Cow Philosophy

Well, welcome into the well. We're at what episode 21? We're going back to back today. Lots of podcasts today.

We'll figure it out afterwards. I'm sure I got it right. I thought it was 21, but maybe it's 22. So this is episode 21 and a half.

We're not sure where it kind of fits. So it's either it's either the half episode or a full episode and in between 21 and 22 and that's my botched introduction. I'm Drew.

And I'm Kat. And we're very happy to have a very special guest today. Another guest. We're enjoying this guest spot for the well. It's been awesome getting to meet and learn about people. And today we're lucky enough to have Kevin and I'll let Kevin introduce himself.

Yeah, I'm so excited to be here. This is my second or third podcast I've been on and it's always fun like getting in like kind of rolling with the punches and seeing at least conversations go, but my name is Kevin. I am the CEO kind of founder of purple cow brands. So we do like web design. So creative UX UI design and storytelling like deep copywriting story branding type of stuff.

And then we do SEO search engine optimization. And we love it. Our goal is to be like the buckies of web design in Texas. So we want to have the billboards the funny billboards with our, you know, our purple cow here.

And we're very Pixar like in our style and our vibe. So yeah. So that's a little bit about about me. I guess I'm from Oregon originally and I live in Texas. And I love it.

Been here for four years. And it's been it's been a fun journey starting a purple cow with my with my business partner who I went to high school with actually and we both lived in Oregon and somehow ended up here starting a business together.

So yeah, it's been a lot of fun.

That that's awesome. So first of all, I love the name purple cow. But we start off with a question with all of our guests and we don't share this in the pre showed combo.

But so it's going to catch off guard. Maybe, but what's your favorite thing to eat for breakfast?

I'm actually not a breakfast person. But if I had to choose probably French toast mainly because you don't want to go to like a breakfast restaurant. It's always like $25 for food.

I can make this a home for a dollar.

So true.

You're paying for the convenience more than the food.

Yeah, because you can go to, you know, when I go to like a burger place like Ford's garage down the street, you know, it's meat and meats expensive. But it's like I can make a pancake for literally like a quarter.

But I'm here paying for it. So yeah, breakfast is not my favorite. But jokes on me because it's my wife's absolute favorite meal of the day.

Really? What is she? What's what's her favorite breakfast food?

That she actually likes pancakes pancakes are her number one favorite food. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah.

So it's like jokes on me because yeah, when we go to breakfast like to a brunch place, you always order pancakes and I'm like, these are so cheap to make it all.

But it's not about that, right? It's about the experience.

It's about going on a date. It's about connecting. It's how that you experience exactly.

Yeah.

It's also about the money though, right?

I know.

A little bit. A little bit.

Every now and then it's good.

Yeah. So I have the luxury of understanding what UX UI means as well as Catherine does, you know, we have deep roots in that space.

But if you, I always struggle with this question when people ask me what I do for a living and I always dance around it.

It's always a tap dance because it's very hard because it's such a nuance what I do.

So how do you describe what you do for a living to people like, you know, without having them glaze over?

Yeah, it's such a funny thing because when we're working on our sales pitch and we're out networking, that's one of the things you've learned is there's sort of the ego side of I want to say I'm a UX UI designer, right?

I want to say I'm a creative copywriter. I want to say I have a degree in product management, but no one really cares at the end of the day.

What they care about is the fact that I'm a web designer at the end of the day.

We design websites, we design applications and that's really what we do.

And so one of the kind of philosophy is I have with all my employees is I would say, hey, when you're writing emails, when you're sending text messages, when you're talking to people on the phone, when you're writing copy on a website, you need to speak in like a fifth grade level language all the time.

And if you're speaking above that, you would say things like UX UI or, you know, SEO or talking about, you know, backlinks or something, most people are going to gloss over that pretty immediately.

And so I'm always like, okay, at a fifth grade level, what would I say to somebody?

In my day to day life, people know what a website is and they know what web design is and they can understand that.

So I usually just tell people, hey, we're a web, a super creative web design agency and we're just obsessed with websites.

That's it's a good way to put it because Catherine, you'll have to use that at some point for your own introduction.

So talk to us about, first of all, I saw your, you know, purple cow and I'm like, what a cool name.

So what led you to purple cow, like just out of curiosity, how did you come up with that? And why?

And the icon.

Oh, yeah, yeah, okay, there's a story with that.

So when I was in a community college, like 10 plus years ago, I had an obsession with Pixar and I wanted to go and become like a creative animator, right?

And I thought it would be so fun to do that and go work for Disney. Well, then a little bit of like life happens and a little bit of learning, a little bit of experience.

Disney's just a big corporation. I don't really want to work in a big corporation. That's not my vibe.

And so that, but I always have a heart for Pixar. Like I have been like, I was a fan of like Chevron cars. If you remember from the Chevron gas station.

And so when the movie cars came out, I knew like seven years before that when I was like 10, that movie was coming out. I was obsessed with it.

And so I was new like I was a Pixar like storyteller type of individual. That was my heart behind things, but I never pursued the copywriting side because I everyone told me there's no jobs in that field.

So I just kind of left it alone and I just created right on Facebook or whatever and how these really compelling thoughts about things.

But then fast forward, we moved to Texas. And there was a kind of an interesting eclectic guy named Rob who lives at farmers branch, who had started this company called purple cow brands. And he was kind of that old school.

Like he's just like always trying to get a rise out of people in his sales pitch. Like something crazy. Like hold up a giant banner in a sales pitch where he talks about purple cow brands or whatever.

But I would say they were trying to cater to like the least of these in their approach.

And the approach for me was I want to be super creative. I want to build some of the best websites in Texas. If not the best websites.

I want to be in the top five to 10% of web design agencies over the next 10 years.

And Rob had this company. It was really small, maybe doing like a thousand, two thousand bucks a month, something like that.

And I kind of saw an opportunity. It was weird because it was so small, but it was so well known the name was purple cow.

And the story behind what right where I've used that was it was from a book that was about standing out in the field.

And like if you saw purple cow while you were driving down the street, like that would stand out. Right. And most businesses don't stand out.

They're not remarkable. They're not interesting. They don't have a great sales page. They don't have a unique set apart.

And so we really wanted to change the game. So I kind of fell in love with the name through that process.

And he had this funny little logo that was 2D and was super pixelated. It was a picture of a cow with like some sunglasses on.

And I was like, this is not me. This is like not not creative like defined enough. And I was like, man, I really want like a Pixar level type of thing.

So I took an AI and I started generating ideas and just thinking through like what I want this to look like can just prompting different things.

And this was right when jet gpt first came out. And I came with something pretty similar to this not exactly this but pretty close.

And then I hired a really gifted talented graphic designer, a friend of mine to kind of bring it to life for me after I had prompted a few ideas.

And that's kind of how it came to be. So we're just about standing out in a field of people.

And as you design websites, I like the one number one thing I get to do for people is I want to help them tell their story.

I want to figure out why they started their business. I want to know where they came from because clients care about that stuff.

And then I want to know their process. And I want to help them define their process in a one step, two step, three step type of thing.

And I want to just help them create such good product that people can't help but go to them for their construction needs or for their counseling needs or for their therapy or for whatever their thing is.

So that's a great story. I love that.

Because I if you saw a purple cow in the field, I mean, you would definitely have this.

Absolutely.

Absolutely. I love before. Sorry.

I've had the thought before it like when you come up with a business and a logo, what is the anti brand?

It is coming up at this wacky logo idea that sticks and people's minds because it's so different.

It's not your typical mainstream. Hey, you know, let's let's create this logo and it really needs to look polished and did it with certain colors.

You know, so I loved I love different different is attracts people. So that's that's a very cool story. Sorry, you can go ahead.

No, no, I was just going to say to yes and what you're saying around I love how you just built that up creating the origin story.

I don't know why that I keep saying that over multiple podcasts. I do.

I feel like everyone loves an origin story and why not connect that to a brand, right? Like how did we get here?

You know, kind of what's the secret sauce? What made you put on the cape to become the hero or what made you put on the mask to become the villain?

So I love that you create that experience. So that's that's really interesting and I find fascinating. So yeah, so go ahead.

I love the sort of the curious like I'm a very like curious person naturally, which I think is what makes me such a good copywriter.

And designer is I'm just a very curious person. And as I started kind of building up this business that was one of the things that kind of came to life for me was I just realized like I love telling stories.

And I love getting to the heart of other people's stories and most people have no idea that somebody had three careers or that somebody grew up in another country.

You even think of like just as an example, like Elon Musk or whatever, like he's from Africa.

You wouldn't even like most people don't realize that. But it's like, oh, that's such an interesting thing that he's from somewhere else.

And most of us have grown up with people who fought in wars and people who lived in different countries, different states, different cities.

And we never even asked those questions. And I think it can create such a connection with people like most small business owners, they care a lot.

They care deeply. And for some reason, they don't want to talk about that. And I try to encourage people like, hey, let's like that.

A part of why people will choose you like that's why you have integrity. It's why you're honest, right?

Is the origin story of you? So I love that. You know, recently I so I have an art Instagram and it's for all the art that I do kind of my creative outlet.

And I had been scheduling a lot of posts through a tool of things from my life.

So, you know, jobs I used to have or things that I had created creatively. And it's amazing to see people post and say, oh, wow, I never knew you did that.

Or I never knew that, you know, you live there. So it's funny that you're bringing that up because I feel like we as individuals, we have so much in our lives that I know it sounds silly, but like is content worthy.

You know, to learn about people, it's not just you see someone and you're like, oh, that's the guy that works there or, you know, oh, he likes this, but we have so much complexity to us.

And I think people forget that kind of to your point. So it's awesome to be able to have someone who can tell the story or help you tell your story because everybody has one.

Yeah, I agree very much so I think like it creates loyalty to when you know people's back stories.

Like you can connect with them deeply. And so then it's like such an interesting thing when I, I've noticed that with some of our clients, we're talking about, you know, five years from now, what we're going to do for their business and stuff.

And it's because we, I don't know, we have this connection with each other where it's like, I trust you, you trust me because we know, you know, who we are.

And that's something we've been really trying to change about businesses. We want to be like excellent, like like a bucket's level of excellence, but also be deeply thoughtful and connected with one another.

As we build something successful for people and it's, I think it's a unique set of parts for us and we really, we really enjoy it.

So does your product background, I'm sure plays a huge part in your, in your business.

So how did you decide that you were just going to focus on websites?

Oh, that's a good question. It's actually funny. So I was an architecture for like eight years.

Oh wow. Yeah. And I became like a man. Yeah, it's, it's related. I suppose.

But I was a director of architecture and design and I was doing 3D modeling in this space. And I think I grew up in a trades family. And so it's like kind of funny.

But you kind of end up where you start to realize as you get older, like a lot of the things you pursue, like enjoy things that you love are actually just the people around you love those things.

And you haven't yet created your own identity in what it is that you like. It can be clouded by bad past experiences, family life, whatever, just not feeling heard enough.

And so then as you get older, you start to sort of realize those things. And I had sort of an identity crisis and had to go to therapy.

But it was about then I realized this is not my field. This is not for me. I don't enjoy it. And I've always enjoyed web design. So I decided I'm going to take a leap of faith and I'm going to quit my job. And I'm going to go out here and do this with my with my best friend Ben.

And we jumped in kind of whole steam ahead probably two years prior. We were working up to it kind of trying to figure out do we design apps. We started doing a SaaS app for a while.

And we decided do we sell apps or do we build apps for other people are we a dev company. We went through all those kind of things to figure out our story.

And even when we bought purple cow we then struggled with the identity of Rob the previous owner, right of like what is that our identity is that his identity and how the businesses run and that had to shift over a bit of time.

And I would say about nine months in so probably last August like putting my job and being at full time. I had lost like the direction we were doing ads. We were doing email campaigns. We were doing everything related to marketing.

And I was like, man, I am not doing any of these well. Like I'm just overwhelmed. And I'm not an expert at any one of these things. And it's really frustrating.

And I went to Ben and we talked through debate. Both of us have been feeling this of like we can we're techy people. So technically we could do anything.

But what is it that we want. And I had remembered, you know, a couple of years prior, I was like, man, I really want to build websites and I want to tell people stories.

And we sat down and said, we got to get back to this. And so we we stripped away everything else. We told all of our clients. I'm sorry if we sold you something X, Y and Z. We're not going to offer that anymore. Do you want this new service.

And we just started trudging in this direction. And rapidly our designs got like 10 X better like rapidly. Not overnight. But like what you saw from like 30 days prior instantly better 60 days prior 10 X better than that 90 days prior just got like just evolved rapidly.

So I'd say we're one of the best web design agencies around DFW for sure. At a truly a small scale. And we're not even close to done learning and growing in that space. But we just wanted to be known for something.

And I felt like if you're known for everything you're known for nothing. And I just really wanted to be known for something. And I said, hey, what if we get known for websites. It just build amazing websites tell super cool stories.

Hard for me is the heart for me is copywriting storytelling. I love UX UI design. And I want to just get really good at that. And so we're always evolving, which is kind of fun. It's stressful too. But we're always iterating. So who we are 90 days 90 days ago will be very different than we are.

And we're really committed to that just constantly evolving for the better not just for change sake. Obviously. But yeah. And that's really really what kind of home just into websites is we just realized we weren't known for anything. And that kind of sucked. So

Yeah.

It is kind of nice to hone in on one thing, the simplicity of it and say, this is what we do. And there's really no going back to the pitch.

There's not a lot you have to say. Besides, we're really great at website design, which is awesome.

You know, so then people equate purple caliber hands with great website design.

So that was probably very smart, you know, I know, I know for myself trying to do a lot of different things at once, you know, sometimes it's it is overwhelming. So then you have to kind of reevaluate and repuritize, which is a good thing.

Absolutely. Absolutely. So I have you've mentioned this twice. So I want to kind of pull on the thread. And it's what's it like being in business with a friend? Would you recommend that?

Um, man, that's a, it's kind of funny. I would say so bend of the taxes. I've always been an entrepreneur. I guess it's always been my, my mindset since I was like 16, 15.

I was buying and selling ATVs on Craigslist at one point when I was a kid, I was that I was money going through my account. I may or may not have paid taxes on when I was 15.

You know, and it was kind of funny because I moved here and I was running in my architecture business.

And then Ben, I just got really burned out of his job doing mechanical engineering. He was working for Northrop Grumman, which is a massive corporation.

And he had sort of that same dream that I had with Disney, which was like, I'm going to go build rockets and it's going to be amazing, you know.

And then he realized, this is a giant corporation and I'm a cog in a wheel and no one even, no one cares whether I live or die and I hate that feeling.

Right.

And so he, he stressed me out and he moved to Texas and just like quit his job. It was like, hey, I'm going to like word, run a business with you.

And I was like, I don't have like a bunch of work for you. And that's really, both of us were so immature four or five years ago when we started to cut down this path.

And so we argued and we fought so much and we tried to get a total sign contracts. He's a very analytical guy. I'm a very creative guy.

So I was like, I'm not selling a contract. I don't even know how to read a contract. I'm just creative.

And he's over here, spreadsheet, not as I as cross as he is, but I don't, I don't even know how to describe it, but it evolved over time.

And now our relationship is honestly incredible. Both of us know each other well.

And we can, we know how to communicate with each other well. We know how to talk about the hard things.

Both of us have our both Christians so that we have that in common, which is nice.

Yeah.

And I think it makes it easy when you, when you both have a lot of the similar world use and life views about things because really no subject is off limits.

And I think that's what kills a lot of business partnerships is when a subject feels off limits.

Then you're kind of hiding a part of who you are and neither whatsoever have that feeling.

And that's been such a great place to be together.

So it's a, it's so unique for us because I would say it is the best thing ever because we just work so well together.

Like we, we have tips like anyone does, but they're more just like stress tips.

They're not actual like we're going to expand the business and walk away from each other tips.

No, nothing like that. It's very blessed in this relationship.

That's so good.

Yeah.

That is so good. That's, you know, it's, it's funny.

Catherine and I are in business together.

So it's, we get asked that question and I never, I never even think about it.

I'm not like, it's just kind of natural.

It just felt very natural for us.

I'm always curious how other people that have, have passed, have a pass together.

How, how they work well together.

So it's, it's always something of interest.

So website design.

What's one mistake you see over and over and over again in the industry when people.

So I've designed a ton of websites.

I'm the worst website designer, right?

I just, I'm a hack.

I just put things on a page.

I don't understand how to format the content, make it consistent, cohesive.

So what do you see in the industry from, from small creators or even corporations that,

that is a constant mistake in a pattern in the industry?

Hmm.

That's a good question.

That's a deep question too, because it's a, the patterns are wide and broad

and they depend on whether you're in corporate or whether you're like a freelancer type.

I would say there's a lot of, on the corporate side, there's a lot of waste.

Like, let's talk about SEO, for instance.

I have, I have the belief, and I hold firmly to this, which is why a hiring house only,

which is that web design and getting ranked on Google and writing incredible copy are the same thing.

They're not different.

They're not different fields.

They're all the same thing.

And they work together to build a website.

Like you can't have a great website without good copy.

You can't make on Google without keywords.

And you can't, you're not going to rank very well on Google or have, you know,

a great copy just by itself without a good design, right?

Like it all works together.

And mostly industry treat all these things very separately.

There's a guy that tells out a bunch of spreadsheets and then passes it over to a designer.

There's maybe a person who writes a bunch of copy filled, you know, keyword filled copy.

And it just, it gets so muddy down because they're not working together as a cohesive team.

And so I have really struggled with that.

Even just hiring people because people come to me with that idea that they're going to,

they're going to work separately and they're going to do like their, their own copy and you're going to pass it to a designer.

And a designer thinks, well, I'm going to just design stuff.

And I want to pass it off to a copywriter and a keyword guy.

I think he's going to research a bunch of put it spreadsheets and then have no responsibility to implement any of it.

And I think that's, that's a mistake.

I think across the industry because I think the best designs are built together.

Like collaboration is what makes things amazing.

I am a good web designer.

I'm an incredible web designer with another web designer.

If we're together, we're going to break silos, we're going to break things apart.

We're going to, we're going to argue or have little tips about like this little corner radius or that thing.

And then the best design comes at the end of it, right?

Like if you look at Pixar, no movie from Pixar is designed by one individual.

But for some reason, web design is like you hire a web designer and it could be a guy who's the developer.

It could be a guy who's a creative person.

It could be a dude who's a copywriter and we're all just saying we're web designers.

And so the product is vastly different.

And I think, I guess like one of the biggest mistakes I would say too is people do not give weight to web design because you can go to Wix.com and create a website, right?

And that's cool or spare space or WordPress and that's cool.

But it's like if you don't understand the principles of design, if you don't understand how these things work together,

if you don't understand user journeys, buyer profiles, and how people are going to experience this.

If you don't know how to tell that story in a way that resonates with with the target audience.

Like it just, it doesn't work.

And so so many people are paying for either bad design or they're designing themselves because they think it's easy.

And it's really not easy to do a good job.

Anyone can put an engine in a car.

Not anyone can do it successfully or make it a really good car, make it reliable, right?

Anyone can do it technically.

Yeah, it's true.

Being in my backgrounds in UX started out in graphic design.

And I see one of the things that I see is that.

But I also see really poor architecture, navigation.

And you probably have seen similar things where people put pages and like menu navigation

that does not make sense.

And they they'll have pages for stuff they don't need pages for.

When I worked at a corporation logistics corporation, a lot of my work was on on their website.

And it was amazing to see how many old archived pages were still floating out there.

So you could search for it, the page on Google.

And it would pull up, but it would have no real good information on it.

Or it was outdated by five years.

So it is crazy to think about the internet as kind of a wasteland of stuff.

That is, it's kind of like Jira or what's the other, what's the other one that's just the pages?

Do you remember Drew?

Confluence.

Yeah.

People at companies are always like, oh, we need a confluence page for that.

And there will be like a million confluence pages that no one ever goes to ever again.

So yeah, I definitely, I find it interesting though.

You brought up the point about good design.

So I'm on the board for AIGA Dallas.

And it's a lot of professional design, designers, creatives, things like that.

And it really is interesting to see someone be able to design a website.

And I would probably put myself in this category where you know, you might have great navigation.

You might have a nice landing page, good content.

But there is a difference between someone that is a true designer that knows the design principles

and how to create something really intentionally visually appealing.

And there's a purpose for it and a reason why they select certain elements to go on a page.

They've given it a lot of thought.

Just last night I had a designer present a couple of website concepts.

And I was like, wow, this is so well thought through.

And a lot of people that are not in the design world or in UX or UI, they don't get that.

They don't understand it, but they know that something will look good, you know,

versus something that looks okay.

You know, but I wish that and I hear this a lot.

I wish we could socialize that more.

That there are things you can create stuff on an AI, a chat GPT.

You can create your own website on Wix or Squarespace.

But having someone actually like a true designer design, something is a totally different animal

than something that you just kind of hack through.

So I do see that a lot.

So that makes a lot of sense.

Yeah, we're actually just because you brought this up where we're actually redoing a website right now for somebody

where the web architecture itself is a mess.

It was built in-house by this lady who was very passionate about their nonprofit.

And the nonprofit's grown and it's got like 70 pages.

And I had to go in and it was hard.

It was hard to sit there and think about and we were just like, okay, here's all these pages.

What are these pages saying?

What is relevant?

What is this duplicate information?

What's hidden in a menu?

I couldn't find the contact us page because it was hidden in a menu.

Oh, yeah.

The kind of stuff.

It was like, what do you do with this?

And yeah, so that's pretty common.

And then designers designing to design is a very common one because they don't get the principles behind it.

They don't know what hierarchy is or flow or any other types of things.

Yeah, that's very true.

And I bet your background in architecture, that's why I was like, oh, but architecture, product,

all these things play into what you do right now.

They all, you know, they all, they all assist you in creating a good website.

Oh, so I have to go back to the ATVs because I read that you were published, right,

for creating a ATV.

So can you talk a little bit about that?

I forgot about that.

That's what you brought that up.

Yeah.

So when I was in high school, so I lived like, I grew up in rural outside of Portland, Oregon,

in a place called Baltimore.

Right.

So there's very much farm town and everybody was, you know, had little tractors and they,

you know, it's kind of, it's a, like California, they're more like left leaning and I don't

say this territory at all, but more like healthy, like they all have like hobby farms, you know,

they all, everybody has a couple acres and maybe an acre and they have a little hobby farm.

And so I was like, well, it's really expensive to buy a tractor, at least it wasn't the time,

for sure.

And there wasn't a lot of small tractor options.

And I thought, well, lots of people have an ATV.

So I came with this idea of putting like a front end loader, like you would have on a tractor,

on an ATV.

Because I was like, well, I bet we could beef this up and, you know, it could probably lift, you know,

at least a Warbow school and be something you could use on your hobby farm.

And so I got to work with my brother and we started like building this thing out and welding

it up and it came to life.

It was kind of never really went anywhere, but it was cool to build.

But we actually sold like two or three of them.

Really?

Yeah, it was a fun experiment.

That was my first time that I got to be in business with a business partner.

And it was not a great experience.

The guy was, oh, no, he was like 50 and he, in my opinion, he took advantage of two 15

year olds, like from a business perspective, because we didn't know anything.

And so he ended up taking the business and we just kind of gave it to him.

And it never really went anywhere anyway.

So it was, it was what it was.

But it was a fun experience as a kid to like, like, oh, yeah, I did that thing.

I forgot about that.

Oh, that's so funny that you just said that.

I did that thing.

We just talked to somebody who said he had created a film and they wrote it and directed it.

He was, he's one of our other guests.

And he was like, it was nice to say I did a thing, you know, and I completed a project.

I completed it.

And it was just, it's funny because a lot of people have ideas, but actually executing.

I feel like it takes, it takes something a little bit more to actually execute on the idea.

So that's awesome that you were able to do that.

So if we continue down the website path, I don't know a lot about ATVs.

I can't really add a lot of context there, but I find it fascinating.

So, you know, you mentioned, you know, always wanting to be an entrepreneur, which is interesting that you go into the web business, right?

So web design, being a creative, sometimes you don't think of entrepreneurship as a creative.

So which I, I find to be not a good stereotype or not a good correlation because I feel like creatives are extremely entrepreneurial.

But that's not my question.

How, how do you understand good CEO, SEO?

Like what strategy do you pull from?

Because I feel like it's a, it's a vast wasteland of words.

But really what defines a good SEO strategy to help get your stuff in front of the right people?

Yeah, that is, it's so funny because when we started a year ago, we hired like our first SEO person, and I was trying to learn all about SEO.

I knew a little bit about what it was, but it was like this smoke and mirrors type of thing, or no one could, it's kind of like you just said, you XUI to some random job load.

I was never heard of the term.

Like I couldn't, I couldn't get anyone to give me a straight answer about what it was.

I'm a techie person.

Like I know I'm a creative.

I've been around Texans.

I was a kid.

You know, I was, you know, putting Linux on laptops.

I was like, you know, I was always been into this stuff.

And I was like, why is it really this complicated?

Like maybe it is.

And so I kept just asking more and more questions and going deeper and deeper.

And what I found was sort of that designing to design.

A lot of people like to get data just to have data to sort of, I don't know, feel good about what they're doing.

But really, SEO is pretty simple.

You need to get your website to rank on Google.

So when somebody searches on Google for web design and Dallas, your website shows up.

Like that's the name of the game.

It's not that hard to understand once you really boil it down.

So we're going to take a keyword that somebody searches on Google like web design and Dallas.

And we're going to insert that in the copy of your website.

And we're going to follow a certain structure that Google respects.

So that when it crawls like the code of your website.

It's it's once I got computers in some of the weird.

There we go.

When it crawls the code of your website, it can go and read this information.

It finds those keywords.

But then the really, the thing that makes it really rank well is having good designing good copy.

So once Google gets there and once Google sees those, those terms that like this is a page people are searching for.

Then it's going to read it and it's going to learn about it.

And it's going to ask is this is this good information?

Is this the type of things people are looking for?

Is this in form of buyer about this product or service?

And then it decides to elevate you up the lips of Google basically.

That's kind of how it works.

It's not not crazy complicated.

So when people ask me like, what's a good strategy?

I'm like, honestly, good, really good creative that is purposeful, really good design.

It is really good copywriting that is story driven that answers good questions that talks about a service at a fifth grade level in a way people can understand it.

And then that has keywords implemented and good structure throughout the website.

And I think that is the strategy.

I mean, it's not crazy hard to do.

It's hard in the sense of like you got to get a team together and you got a design well and you got to write well.

And you've got to do goods research based on all those things.

And I think that's what people are doing really poorly is a lot of companies SEO companies don't own the website.

They just like write copy and put some keywords in it and they pass it off.

And I think that just kills the kind of just kills the effort and it just doesn't go anywhere.

And that's why I think why so many people have issues getting websites to rank.

So it's a good it's a good way to put it.

And I like how you you define kind of the hard work that goes into it to build up that information to hit the SEO differently than just putting a bunch of crap like word salad in there.

So that's that kind of leads me to and I don't know about anyone else, but I have AI fatigue.

I feel like every everything I touch getting fed some AI story or it's like a new fear is unlocked around AI for me all the time.

So how do you see AI either impacting disrupting complementing all the above, you know, how are you utilizing it to stay relevant, but also not have you set work yourself out of a job.

Hmm.

This is a tough question without sounding like I'm obsessed with AI.

I'm like everyone else, you know, like I'm a boomer who's like just stoked about AI and doesn't really know anything about it.

But I use chat CBT.

I ain't talking about AI because of that.

We use it for like deep research, you know, when we're like writing copy and trying to understand what to write about.

It is amazing for deep research.

I have custom driven custom written AI prompts that I've built that actually take a bunch of copy that I've written.

And then it has a kind of a have a discovery document where I spend like an hour and a half to two hours with a client.

And I feel in this discovery document just asking the really thoughtful question so I can get their voice.

And then it spits out like it can it can literally while you're designing in figma or framework.

You can literally write copy at the same time, which influences your design.

And so that's how we use it like heavily is we want to write really, really good copy in the owner's voice and kind of guide it in that way.

And we found we love AI.

We we use it all the time.

But I don't know what the future holds with it.

I don't know if I'm going to work myself out of a job.

I don't I can't speak like my business partner talking about all the time.

Next quarter our whole goal is to get our team to use AI more like to teach them not to replace themselves.

But we want to do better work more thoughtful work, tell better stories, create better designs.

And that is our framework for when we use any tool, whether it's AI, whether it's framework, whether it's figma, whatever the tools are.

That's kind of the way that we use it.

But I do have concerns for have a concerns for people who are doing a lot of just manual work.

I guess like a lot of people like think about Microsoft Word writer Excel or Google sheets, those types of things.

I think all those things are going to go away rather rapidly because AI you can prompt it to build you a spreadsheet.

You can prompt it to figure out formulas.

You can prompt it to lay out a document in a creative way that's structured.

Like it's amazing what you can do with it.

And I think I have I have some concerns not so much.

I think creatives are going this is just my personal opinion as a creative who's definitely not bias.

I think that creatives are probably the future of a lot of the stuff right now.

I think that for the longest time you've needed developers, you've needed.

You've needed a lot of people to do the work like just the actual work itself, the backend stuff.

And I think we're moving into a world where if you are a super creative person with a vision and you can prompt it well enough, you can define it well enough.

You can use these tools to your advantage.

I think there's a world where creatives are sort of the lead on things.

And the devs actually take more of a backseat where they're there to support you.

They're there to look at your prompt and say this prompt is really poorly written.

We could write it better so it doesn't suck out so much data right.

I think there's a lot of that that's going to happen.

But I don't know there's a lot of fear mongering and I think every year.

I think back to like the 1930s and washer and dryers came out and people said,

what are we going to do if we're not putting our laundry on a hanger?

What are we going to do if we drive cars and we don't have horses anymore, whatever?

There's always a new fear unlocked and always this idea of a utopia.

And I don't want to be someone who has my head in the sand to say those things can't happen.

But I also feel like all we can do is do what we can do right and do it well.

And if that day comes, then we'll have to figure out what to do when that day comes.

But I think for now, I think people should embrace AI.

I think people should use it to do better work to become better designers, to become better writers,

to become better SEO people or whatever your job is, better project managers.

And I think you'll do well to do that. That's that's my opinion.

So yeah.

So I appreciate that opinion because yeah, we are heavy AI users as well to my detriment.

My job was replaced by AI, so I definitely felt that as a product professional as well.

It was interesting that rolling out AI, they decided to use AI to write all the user stories.

So user stories were created in AI and they were able to develop test cases from those user stories

and then code from I was like, wow, it's a fully automated development house now.

But you know, it so basically works myself.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But I feel like and it's funny.

Catherine hears me talk to my chat GPT.

I'm always nice to my chat GPT.

I have conversations with it because I don't ever want to piss it off.

Right?

Like I don't want to piss off my chat GPT is named G.

I don't ever want to piss off G because literally I don't want it going after me or giving me bad info or

you know, just basically giving me a hard time.

So I try and be very nice to my artificial intelligence so we can continue to have a good relationship together.

So I do at the end.

Yes, yes, exactly.

They'll spare my life or at least put me in some sort of service or something.

Who knows?

That's right.

So I do appreciate the partnership aspect of utilizing AI.

And I really never thought about it from a creative perspective that they that creatives could be a leader in that space.

So that's an interesting angle that I think I really appreciate that point of view.

And I think more people would appreciate that point of view as well to kind of tone down some of the replacement theory.

Like AI, to me, is it's a tool and it all depends on how you utilize it.

Yeah, tools.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

I want to pivot away from work for a minute and talk about what you and your wife enjoy doing together outside of work.

Well, where are you going to say opposites attract?

We're pretty opposite.

She loves the hype and like travel and I'm like, that's expensive.

We should stay home and I should work myself to death because one day I'm going to be a millionaire or whatever.

But she gets me on my cover zone to travel a bit more than I think I would.

Like I grew up in a we weren't poor, but my parents definitely lived paycheck to paycheck most of our lives.

So I kind of and then she grew up in a family where her dad worked at Nike and was an IT architect.

Oh, wow.

Opposite ants, right?

Yeah.

Big 5,000 square foot house and my parents didn't barely afford their mortgage kind of.

I remember we were dating.

We went to Columbia Sportswear and her dad dropped like $500 and I was like, oh my gosh.

And so then we got an argument on the way home because I was like, I can't afford that.

If you think we're going to be a married.

I don't know what you think you got here, but I can't do that.

But yeah, we love to travel.

I think we both love to go out to dinner at the new places and try new things.

I love going to small towns and so does she like in just like the downtown strips.

We've kind of figured out some common ground there because I love big city life.

You know, I was like, hey, I'm an entrepreneur.

I'm definitely going to be in a big city.

And she's more like, I don't like the big city, you know, quiet life.

But we figured out how to like go to small towns.

We love going to downtown Louisville and we love going to coffee shops together.

We both play music.

She plays piano and I play guitar.

Oh wow.

And so yeah, we can do some worship together.

We should do more of that, but you know, we haven't done as much as we want to.

But yeah, it's, yeah, I think traveling around like road trips.

We love road trips.

That's been a really fun thing.

So.

Favorite place.

Do you have a favorite place you've gone?

Honestly, Oregon, where I'm from is probably one of my favorite places.

Yeah, it's.

We moved away because it's so like heavily like identity politics all the time.

And it's like, I just don't care about politics.

It's just not something I care to care about that.

Yeah, I talked about it.

I think we're all a similar mindset.

Right.

Oh, yeah.

If you're mongering yourself to death, can Nick, you feel like it's the end of the world for the rest of your life?

Yeah.

Can't enjoy anything.

So we moved away kind of because of some of that in my lot of my architecture work was here.

And then going back though, I mean, it's one of the only places you can go to where you can travel an hour and a half in any direction.

You can get to the ocean.

You can get to the mountains and go snowboarding.

You can go to the desert and you can have like sunny weather.

You can go out to bend Oregon like three hours away.

And it's like mountains and beautiful and sunny like 300 days a year.

And there's rock climbing and there's hiking and there's biking and swimming and like all the things you can think of.

It's one of the most interesting in places because of that.

I would say it's probably one of my top three places to go back to is Oregon because it's so pretty there.

So speaking of that, how do you like the Texas heat?

It's not the heat that'll kill you.

It's the humidity.

No.

It's terrible.

I like it.

I like it more than the cold.

I think I'm pretty confident about that.

Like when I was growing up in Oregon, like your hands would get so cold, like almost like arthritis feeling.

And you would just like hit your hand on something and you would bleed.

And then hours later, you would kind of start to feel it, you know.

And I don't miss that.

I don't miss the cold, dreary dark all the time, weather that was there in the northwest.

Yeah.

So I think I would choose the summer over the winter anytime.

Do you snowboard?

Are you still?

Yeah.

Really?

Okay.

So that Andrew is a big snowboarder.

Yes.

I picked a good place to live Texas.

Yeah.

It's great for my snowboarding habit.

I have to say it's really helped me improve.

But so.

Do you travel down to like Colorado or snowboarding?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We drive out there.

We go every year.

This will be the first year we don't go.

So I'll miss it.

Okay.

Just not in the cards this year.

But yeah.

I've been snowboarding 20 plus years.

So from originally from the east coast.

And once you learn how to like ski or snowboard on the east coast,

you can go anywhere in the world because it's treacherous on the east coast.

It's like ice coast.

So when I first got to the west and I was snowboarding, I'm like,

it's so quiet.

I'm used to like carving ice like and I don't hear any of that,

but any case.

So we also transplanted.

We're not Texan natives.

So what was like when did you first realize or you and your wife first realized you were in Texas?

Like, oh, wow.

I'm in Texas.

This is Texas.

That's a good question.

It's sort of the excitement or just like, oh, what am I doing here?

Or like a landmark, something that popped out at you visually or a sound bite,

you know, like your first cowboy hat.

I'll tell you my story.

I realized I was in Texas.

I went to a car show and it was an indoor car show.

And there was this guy.

He was probably 75, 80 years old.

He had the biggest belt buckle I've ever seen.

Big cowboy hat.

And he had three guns strapped to him.

So I was like, that's Texas.

I am in Texas.

And I was like, why do we need all this higher power at an indoor car show?

What am I missing?

But that's what I knew that I was in Texas.

Okay.

Yeah, we like two years ago, we went to Grandscapes three years ago, maybe.

And there was what they called Texas Day, which they were celebrating like the birthday of Texas.

I don't remember what exactly that meant.

I'm like, maybe it's independence from Mexico or something.

And we go to this event and there were these armadillo races.

Oh, wow.

Oh, wow.

Yeah.

You would go and sit behind the armadillos and you would blow on their tail.

It would cause them to run across the little, like, little race track they had made.

And then if you won, you got armadillo's milk.

And it was a little can.

It's called armadillo's milk.

I'm going to be sure it's real.

Oh, that's funny.

I never heard of that.

Yeah.

And then the whole time we were walking around Grandscapes, which Grandscapes for people that

aren't from here is like a big, it's like a big strip ball place where they do events in the center of it.

And they were, they had like the same seven songs playing over and over, which was all my exes live in Texas,

deep in the heart of Texas.

And it was like on loop the whole time you were there.

And you're just like, but you're getting like that Texas spirit like, yeah, Texas, the spirit of everyone around

to you.

Everyone's like, yeah, it's Texas.

It's a white cowboy hats.

And then there's armadillo races.

It's so funny.

And just kids everywhere.

That's hilarious.

It was pretty hilarious.

That was an awesome.

Yep.

This is Texas.

Yeah.

That's a memorable moment right there.

Wow.

Yeah.

I like your story better than mine.

Armadillo races.

I have yet to experience.

And we've been to Grandscape quite a bit.

And I've never seen that.

So now I'm going to look that up because I am dying to see an armadillo race.

I did find it interesting when we were at Grandscape.

They have that like surfing park now where you can like surf.

Have you seen that?

I was like, I've heard about it.

I haven't actually seen it.

I live like five minutes from it, but I've heard about the surf park.

Yeah, it's pretty wild.

It's pretty wild.

I'm like, wow, really can't do anything in Texas.

And you have like, it's like a restaurant.

So all these people are watching.

Really?

Yeah.

They have all these tables outside.

So people are sitting and eating and being entertained by you washing out on the surf board.

Yeah.

And they bring out.

They do that.

I think they do them in timed slots.

So they'll bring out like a small group of people in their wet suits.

There's like five or six of them.

And then they put them on all the boards watching them try to stand up.

It is entertaining.

It is entertaining.

Yeah.

It is entertaining.

Absolutely.

And I remember going on.

I remember two going into shields for the first time.

I was like, I've been in sporting goods stores, but I've never been in a sporting goods store like this.

I mean, just mass.

It's kind of like going into buckies, right?

Yeah.

You're just like, wow.

I've been in, you know, convenient gas station places, but this is nothing like I've ever experienced.

And just buckies is such a great place.

Shout out to buckies.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Buckies is amazing.

Texas.

Everything is big.

I don't think you really, well, for me, I didn't really realize it didn't really resonate that Texas.

Everything is big until I went to on a trip to Europe.

And I went to three different places, but they were all East Europe just and everything there was tiny.

Every, the bathrooms were small, like, like, closet size.

The rooms were tight.

The beds were like single beds in the hotel.

I mean, everything was just small.

I couldn't wait to get back to Texas.

I was like, I need space.

I need.

I need to be able to see everything.

It was really funny at how much I missed it when I was away this past year.

So, yeah, I like that.

Everything is big.

Yeah.

It's the buck the just for people listening that she always plays is so big.

There's a Ferris wheel inside.

Yeah.

It's like a full on Ferris wheel.

You can ride.

And then there's a full on like four-seater airplane just hanging from the ceiling in the corner.

Just like it's almost like it's like just a little toy hanging from the ceiling.

That's how big this place is.

I mean, it really, really is amazing.

Yeah.

You would think you think, oh, it's it's a sporting goods store.

It can't be that busy.

Like it can't get that much business.

Right.

Everybody's in there all the time.

There is not a dead time at all.

It is constantly busy.

It's crazy.

So Texas has exploded, especially in our area.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

So this hour has blown by.

Absolutely blown by this.

I'm like, wow.

I can't believe we're almost an hour in.

And so we kind of close on this question.

And then I'll give the floor to you if you want to kind of leave the audience with any parting

words.

But what about the post that we put out made you want to come on the show?

Hmm.

Actually, Catherine and I had talked about AIGA stuff.

And I just had seen her stuff.

You're one of the most creative people.

Like, I'm always sort of like looking for that effect.

When we're designing websites, like, I want to be the best.

And I kept seeing your stuff.

And I was like, this is intentional.

This is super creative.

Like your jacket that you made.

I was like, that's some cool stuff.

Thanks.

Yeah.

I just don't see that very often.

You know, I just don't, it's not something you see a lot.

Where you're like, this is intentional.

And this is really good.

And somebody really enjoys this.

And it's put time.

Not just like they enjoy it, but they know like what good creative looks like at this point.

And I just kind of kind of excited about it.

And I was like, honestly, I was like, well, Catherine hasn't responded all my emails.

I should see if I can just do in this podcast.

I'm sorry, Evan.

Wow.

You're on blast.

Oh, no.

We just haven't done anything else with the events we talked about.

I know.

No, it's all good.

I was like, you know, I'm just going to.

I kept seeing your stuff through.

And I was like, I bet this will be a really fun podcast to be on.

And I've been trying to get on more podcasts.

I just, you know, I'm doing production work and designing and I manage our team.

And I just don't get like, I don't get out of my house enough.

And so I wanted to try to be intentional this year about getting our voice out there a little more.

And just having really fun intentional conversations with other intentional fun people.

And that's just kind of what led me to it.

So I was like, hopefully this will be fun.

That's the best answer we've gotten to date.

So thank you.

I appreciate that.

That was, that was nice.

We didn't even prompt you to say that.

So greatly appreciate it.

Is there, was there any for this?

Is there anything you want to leave the audience with as far as?

And we'll put all your info in the show notes.

So people know how to find you, how to find your company.

We want to make sure that, you know, we're also big in helping people.

We love promoting creatives.

So it's, it's part of our ethos.

So it's very important for us to continue to support the creative community.

So anything you want to leave the, the audience with as far as, you know, what, what you want them to know?

Yeah, I guess, I guess one thing, I guess I really want people to know about purple cast specifically is.

I know there's a lot of really intentional people building really intentional companies.

And if you need somebody who really can help you build a website and not just build a website, but get your story on paper.

Help you figure out your user journeys and who your buyers are and how to speak to them in an intentional way.

Something you're really proud of, like you say, like, this is my website.

I'm very proud of this.

And I'm going to send people here because it's going to help me win more work.

It's going to help tell my story better.

It's going to tell people who we are as a company and what our services are.

And I think currently I have like one of the only go to is I know that it does that really well.

Our company is a whole not just me, but my team, they're just a really good team of people working with us.

And so I think that's, that's something we really look for is that you've got a remarkable company.

You need somebody who can do something intentional.

And that's what we do really well.

And then just on the other side, I think brands out there, people out there just be intentional.

I don't, don't freak out so much about AI and brace it while you can.

Seek to be, seek to be honest, seek to seek to keep doing really good work for people.

And the end will work itself out.

That's what I can say about the AI stuff and about that.

I just don't think it's worth worrying about.

There's a lot of great people in the world and that stuff can rob your joy if you let it.

So just keep being intentional, keep doing good work.

And I think that that will speak of volumes for, you know, where we all end up.

So I love that.

I love that.

So make sure everyone goes, checks out purple cow and help support local.

Local creatives and local agencies.

So that will come, that will bring this episode to a close, whichever 21, 22, 21 and a half, whichever number it is.

And I just want to say thank you, Kevin, for, for hanging out with us.

And thank you.

You know, we got to know you a little bit better.

And I would love to have you on again.

So if, if you ever feel inclined, I will, we will definitely have you on again and really appreciate it and enjoyed the conversation.

So on that note, that'll bring this episode to the well to a close.

I'm Drew.

And I'm Kat.

And, uh, Kevin, thanks everybody.

Thank you.