This week on The PPC Show , we're joined by Kalya Kurtz, Associate Director of Sales at Hanapin Marketing, to talk about sales and marketing at a PPC agency. She brings an unique perspective to the PPC conversation having been an account manager before making the transition to the sales team.

Tune in as we dive into:

• Kalya's story of how she got into PPC after disliking teaching
• Then how she made the transition from an account manager to a sales rep
• And last, she'll provide some really great career advice for women looking to get started in PPC or in sales

Kayla Kurtz

Alongside a continued lead on 40% of Hanapin's overall opportunity and revenue growth, as Associate Director I facilitate project management for the entire department's goals and prospects. Responsible for managing the accountability of the Sales team, increasing the speed with which department-wide projects are completed & implemented, and continued focus on developing the agency's sales process & systems. You can connect with her on Twitter .

Transcript

Kayla Kurtz:                            Part of your job as an account manager in PPC is selling. You know what I mean? If you have trouble getting your client to say yes to a Facebook expansion, come find me. Let's talk about what that conversation should sound like. Let's help each other and then likewise, tell me how I can sound smarter about PPC so that I don't set you up for failure or say we can do something we can't do.

JD Prater:                                Welcome back to another episode of the PPC show. I am your host, JD Prater, and this week I'm joined by Kayla Kurtz, Associate Director of Sales at Hanapin Marketing to talk about PPC Agency life. Kayla and I, we've been good friends for a couple of years now and I thought that she would be a great addition to the show and provide a slightly different perspective coming from a sales person. So stay tune as she tells the story of how she got into PPC after disliking teaching and then how she transitioned from an account manager to a sales rep and last she'll provide some really great career advice for women looking to get started in PPC or in sales. Let's get to the show.

Hey, Kayla. Welcome to the show.

Kayla Kurtz:                            Hi, JD. Thank you so much for having me.

JD Prater:                                It's always a fun time when I have old friends on the show. For those that don't know, Kayla and I have known each other for what, almost three years now?

Kayla Kurtz:                            Yeah. Uh-huh. Yeah quite some time.

JD Prater:                                Yeah. So I used to work at Hanapin with Kayla, which I will let Kayla introduce as well but I figured what better person to have on this show than Kayla Kurtz. So, Kayla, give us a quick intro of who you are and what's going on.

Kayla Kurtz:                            JD, you're so kind. Hi, everyone listening. My name is Kayla Kurtz. I'm the associate director of sales at Hanapin Marketing as JD mentioned, his former colleagues and I do miss him dearly but he's moved on to a lovely partner of ours in AdStage so we didn't completely lose him. Hanapin Marketing, for those of you who are listening who might not know us, you may know us from Hero Conf, which is our twice annual conference that we host on PPC all the time. There's also our blog PPC Hero. Most folks know us through the more educational channels. I think in the industry Hanapin is the agency backbone of that. We specialize in everyone's favorite stuff these days, paid social, search and display. I am Associate Director of Sales department. Obviously bringing new revenue and trying to bring on more extra large size clients is a really big focus for our agency these days as I'm sure it is for most agencies like us. So super fun stuff. JD, I really do appreciate you reaching out and inviting me to participate. It's always nice to have something that breaks up the usual day to day. So I appreciate it.

JD Prater:                                Yeah. Not a problem. Not a problem. For those who are familiar with Hero Conf, Kayla is your MC. She's the one up there owning that stage and so I just want to give you a quick shout out.

Kayla Kurtz:                            You're nice. Make sure to letting me have introduction music and as you very well know it is Beyonce every single time now. That's my new favorite thing is picking out Hero Conf walk up music. It's so ridiculously nerdy.

JD Prater:                                Aw, man. Then let's go ahead and start off with that. What's going to be your opening song for Hero Conf, London, coming up in just a few weeks?

Kayla Kurtz:                            A used Formation at the last show in LA, so that's off the table officially now. I'm leaning towards 7/11, that's a good one. It's probably the front runner for right now I would say, but we'll see. We'll see what happens. I'm also in a little bit of strange Kanye West phase so I'm not sure what's happening.

JD Prater:                                Nice. That is perfect. I couldn't pick any other music for you. Let's go ahead and kind of get started outside of that question. Tell us how you got started in PPC.

Kayla Kurtz:                            Yeah. It's certainly and interesting story. One of the things that I love about meeting new folks in our industry is that there's not a standardized background that is applied across the board. Everybody's got a new and interesting story to share about how they ended up in this industry. I think mine is strange, I don't know if it's interesting but I went to Indiana University of Bloomington, graduated 2009 and was supposed to be a high school health teacher. I loved it. I loved teaching and when I graduated I left my job bartending. I worked in College Town for those of you who don't know here in Bloomington. So I stayed here in town and decided to leave and move to South Florida and I got a teaching job that was really nice but it was not fulfilling like I thought it was going to be. In fact, in sort of took the wind out of my sails because I just didn't feel like I could have the impact on these kids. I had really built myself up like I was going to be able to. So I had a freak out, right? Not even midlife crisis, like a 22 year old freak out and said I'm going to move back home and I'll figure it out.

I came back home. I reached out to my old boss at the bar and said I need my job back and he said, "Sure, see you Thursday." And I went back to Brothers, you remember Brothers?

JD Prater:                                I remember it very well. Yes.

Kayla Kurtz:                            So I went back there for a little while and took another job full-time that was just terrible clerical work and found the role of Hanapin in a Craiglist ad. I distinctly remember thinking there's not way there is a digital marketing agency in Bloomington, Indiana. There's not. It doesn't resonate as this tech hub. It's getting there and I love to talk about that with you later but it's not necessarily a town that you think of as having something like that. I went on the company website and looked up the staff and there was a gal there, Abby Woodcock, who you may know.

JD Prater:                                Yeah.

Kayla Kurtz:                            So Abby, it was Henry at the time. She and I went to elementary and middle school together so I reached out to her. They are using her picture so is it legit, do you really work at this place and is it real? And she said, "It is and I think you would really like it." I applied. It was this huge meet and greet, which we still do to this day but thank goodness we do it on a much more small level so it's not so frightening. I was in a room with 50 people who applied for an account manager role.

I had obviously done my research on Hanapin beforehand and I knew who Pat East was. When I meet and greet broke into just hang out and mingle with the Hanapin team, I just went and found Pat and I talked to him about professional wrestling because I loved that stuff and it was an interest of his as well based on his Twitter. So, I got super creepy weird and I was like, "Dude, I think I would really like to work for somebody who also shares my interest in what is this soap opera of professional wrestling." And I got a call back and ended up getting a job and I guess the initial stages of that are history now. That's how I fell into PPC. It was not at all what I intended to do. There are few people that I meet who are like, "I knew I was going to do digital marketing." Because it's not really old enough for that. You know what I mean?

JD Prater:                                Right, right. For those listening, Pat East is the CEO and co-founder of Hanapin Marketing. Great guy but he can definitely be a little intimidating with his questioning so I'm actually surprised that you went straight to him over Jeff Allen but Jeff could also be a little scary but maybe more creepy.

Kayla Kurtz:                            Yeah. True. Also, apologies. I just talk about these people because I see them every day so definitely cut me off, JD, and remind me that there are people who are listening to this at home. I actually, fun fancy note, and the next time you talk to Jeff Allen make sure you remind him of this. I actually was around before Jeff at Hanapin.

JD Prater:                                Oh, wow. For those listening, Jeff Allen is the President at Hanapin and Kayla was actually hired before him.

Kayla Kurtz:                            I think about six months. Not a long time but when Jeff started there's actually a really great story where he once a year usually forwards me this email string from when he first started because kudos to Pat knowing he was going to take a step back out of the company, he wanted to bring someone in who had interaction with our team from every level and didn't come in and sort of be handed the reigns and not know who we were and what we were about. None of us knew this at the time but Jeff came in as an account manager, moved to Bloomington from Utah and we all worked on the Orbis Education account together. Myself, he and Abby, the three of us. We had this morning ritual where we would go get pop tarts and a soda out of the vending machine every morning and we'd sit around and we'd talk EDU legion and they are some of my favorite memories at Hanapin.

And then you fast forward a few months and Jeff gets promoted into an account supervisor role and pretty quickly after that I think they revealed the news that he's going to be the President of the company. He's going to start steering the day-to-day. There's an email where Jeff did an ad copy review for me for an account of one of the schools that I was managing at the time and I sent him back this red-lined just busted up ad copy project with all of these pointers for how I thought he could do it better. I had maybe nine months of PPC experience under my belt and Jeff had been doing paid search before, he knew what was up. I believe he knew he was coming into Hanapin to eventually be everyone's boss and he was just so modest about it and so cool and takes feedback so well. It's still till this day one of the things that makes his creepiness worth it. He cuts the shit and he's still just a human with you. It's how that ended up here.

JD Prater:                                100% agree with that Jeff Allen analysis. If you still have that, feel free to screenshot that and I'll put that in the show notes.

Kayla Kurtz:                            It's pretty good. I'm sure if I can't find it he absolutely has it flagged someone for easy reference.

JD Prater:                                Aw, man. I do not doubt that. So you've been going at this now at PPC world. Talk to me because you said now you're Associate Director of Sales so how did you get into sales and what kind of led you to that decisions?

Kayla Kurtz:                            Yeah, totally. I started Hanapin in February 2011. Just over six and a half years. The account manager role was something that I was really drawn to mostly because it was fully trained and I had no experience in the industry so that was really important to me. Also, fully paid training, which I thought was also a joke but turned out to be fully legit. When I got into the position, what I am not, I'm not really into mathematics and spreadsheets aren't particularly my favorite thing, frankly speaking. I liked the job and I really liked the people that I worked with but I certainly wasn't finding my passionate role at Hanapin and I figured that it would just come with time and I would figure it out or I'd pull a true millennial thing and I'd get all trained at Hanapin and then I'd go somewhere else immediately.

Around the fall of the year that I started, about when Jeff started as well, I think we realized that we needed a much more robust approach pretty quickly to our sales in marketing for our own brand because we could not just let whatever account manager extension rang be the sales team. Because people were ... you could hear quote unquote sales calls happening around the office and again to our team's very Midwestern mentality we're helpful almost to a fault. People would pick up the phone and they would start talking about the problem that they're having and you'd hear them be like, "Can you send me a login? Give me your account ID. I'll get in there. We can fix this." And then you're like hang on, that was probably not a good idea. Did you ask them any questions?" And it's no one's fault but you start to realize that you have to have an approach to this.

I don't know exactly what the process looked like but eventually Tom Hootman shows up at our director of sales, and Tom had an extensive sales background previously, had managed teams of 15, 20, sales reps. He knows his stuff. We're talking like grunt work sales sometimes. Like it was US Foods. Literally knocking on restaurant doors selling cases of chicken tenders. He comes to Hanapin and gets on his first few sales calls and I imagine is a little bit caught off guard because every sales call immediately shoots to the details. "I want to talk about my cost per lead issues. I want to talk about where my lead volume is going. My lead quality is shit all of a sudden overnight, and I need to talk about that." And he was like, "I can't, that's not ... Hang on, I'm going to need some more information." I think there was this perfect thing that was happening at the point where Pat was realizing that he has members of his team that weren't necessarily utilizing their best skills, me, and talking to people and helping build solutions and he had someone who needed sort of an in between.

So I got plucked over into the sales department, which was two people at the time and I started putting together basically a nerdy version of here's what we can do for you specific for these accounts. So we get access, we put this analysis together, it's called a solution blueprint, and that's a big part of the sales process now. Still till this day. That slowly progressed into over the last four or five years as the team has grown I've then moved into a true sales rep role where I'm just taking sales calls, just trying to bring in new revenue, not doing the blueprint thing anymore, having someone else do that and then up now to that helping Danny and Mike, who are two of our other sales reps, helping them work their own deals, still working some of my own but really removing Tom from the day-to-day sales portion of it so that he could focus on the direction of the department. So that's sort of been ... Now my focus is more on driving revenue for the agency and bringing in new clients as opposed to obviously doing the PPC work and stuff behind the scenes.

JD Prater:                                Nice. Now you're in sales.

Kayla Kurtz:                            Now I'm in sales.

JD Prater:                                So you got a very unique perceptive here. I want to have you break it down for us. The sales person talking to the PPC person, what do they need to know and what does the PPC person need to know from the sales person. You have this unique ability to be able to answer that question on both sides.

Kayla Kurtz:                            I think one thing that keeps me up at night a little bit is that if that dialogue was crystal clear every time, I think we'd all be much happier people on both sides of it.

JD Prater:                                Sure.

Kayla Kurtz:                            If it was easy. If it were a set of questions. If you make sure, Kayla, this is what I always try to do. Sometimes to the point to annoyance, I'm sure, for the people that I'm dealing with in our team and my prospects. I try to get as many questions answered as I can and then I try to make sure that that information is completely downloaded to the team when they take over a client that I've signed. I'm always asking, "What are you finding out or what surprises are you learning in the first few weeks that if we had asked a different question as a sales rep it wouldn't have been a surprise to you." We revisit that conversation probably once every month or so and the questions are different every time and now we're getting to a point where the questions we want to add back we used to ask and we edited them because they weren't important.

I think sales reps in any scenario, this isn't just at Hanapin, I think in a digital marketing agency, sales reps need to have more open conversations with their services departments about what's changing in their industry because we're not selling a fucking widget. You're selling a service, which is all ready. You can't just immediately point to you want your report to pull this way? Done. It's not that simple. I got a prospect right now that just keep saying like, "I like you and I like what I'm hearing I just ... How do I know that's what I'm going to get?" You don't know. You kind of got to take a trust fall with me. There's a little bit of that approach as well internally too, sales and services. You just got to trust each other but I didn't sell garbage and I know you're doing your very best to service it as well as you can once it's on board.

I think if sales and services have that conversation and everybody agrees that that's the obvious state of the relationship, it's just a much smoother, stay open to feedback from both perspectives because everyone can learn from each other. Part of your job as an account manager in PPC is selling, you know what I mean?

JD Prater:                                Good point.

Kayla Kurtz:                            If you got trouble getting your client to say yes to a Facebook expansion, come find me. Let's talk about what that conversation should sound like. Let's help each other and then likewise, tell me how I can sound smarter about PPC so that I don't set you up for failure or say we can do something we can't do. It really does have to be a two way street of reeducating one another consistently, I think. That's really the key.

JD Prater:                                Cool. I think that's really good advice. Thank you for sharing that with us.

Kayla Kurtz:                            Sure.

JD Prater:                                I got another question for you here. This one is really kind of broaching being a woman in PPC and in sales. It's definitely a minority. If you look into the PPC community, and I do think it's changing a little bit, but it really is a lot of males and then you look at the sales work, I mean you're even director level and having being a female. I'd love for you to kind of talk us through maybe some of the challenges of that but then also some of the things you're starting to see in your own role.

Kayla Kurtz:                            I think that that's an interesting conversation that's happening around the world these days, which is what's the woman's place in the business realm and what role can she play. I think women are leaning in more, take it Cheryl Sandberg for you, we're leaning in more to those leadership positions and the confidence that it takes to hold them because ultimately while I think things are changing, speaking just for Hanapin, and I'm not going to give specific numbers because I wouldn't want Rhea or Molly to pull me and because I say them wrong, but gender diversity awareness is something that we're incredibly dialed into and Hanapin's the inverse of the typical, which is that we have a large majority of our total team structure is female and we have a lot of women in director level positions. There's three of our four associate directors are women on the services side. That's over the majority.

It's hard for me to have these strange feelings about it because I don't experience it daily at Hanapin, which is really nice. I'm super lucky. And things are changing and Hanapin certainly gives me the power tools to be just as successful as a male counterpart in my role as long as I have the desire to do so. That's where, just for everybody listening, I gave JD a fair warning about this ahead of time because I think it's only fair in the world of feminism I sometimes rub people the wrong way because I'm all about girl power and go out and get and you deserve it just as much as anyone no matter your gender but also I think you have to fucking earn it.

I get really annoyed at the, I'm going to piss some people off but it's okay, but the whiny voice about women in the workplace, you know what I mean? "Well, how many women are in leadership positions?" There's a better question, what percentage of the total team is leadership and of that how many are women. The secondary question is how many of your total team are women as well because you can't possibly expect 50% of leadership positions to be women if only 20% of the team is women. That's an unreasonable expectation but we see only a layer of the conversation and that drives me batshit. I get a little bit heated. I already am. I'm going to take some deep breaths.

I think that I'm just the kind of person who ... If I know what I'm talking about I will take the mic if it's mine, literally and figuratively. It doesn't bother me to chime into a conversation that may very well be male dominated. It doesn't necessarily occur to me that I'm a woman taking part in that conversation. I'm reading a book called The Confidence Code and part of what I'm reading is the unfortunate truth is that part of what makes you a confidence person is that you're built with it. You either have it or you don't. It's part of a gene. It can be made stronger by the nature effects, certainly. Or it can be diminished but there's a part of it that you just get to have and I must be lucky and thank my mom for that, I guess. Did you ever meet Buffy, JD?

JD Prater:                                I've never met your mom. I've only heard all the amazing stories.

Kayla Kurtz:                            Oh yeah. Buffy's a character. But nonetheless, I don't have a problem speaking up. That's not an issue for me. I do see it still, however, I can be the lead sales rep in a sales process and I've been the main point of contact throughout the entire set of calls, meetings, everything. And we'll get onsite to a meeting and if I have Jeff, Tom, and a male account manager with me, even though it's my conversation, and I've been driving it, and you not talk to any of these people, whether it's a male or a female prospect, they drive their questions almost, unless I grab their attention, they just naturally guide themselves towards the men in the room.

Now I also have to put my reason ability pants on because we're talking about I'm the Associate Director of Sales. I'm your sales rep and I'm in the room with your account manager who you're actually going to be working with when you come on board. The Vice President and President of my company, those are important people, they are not there for shits and giggles. They are there for a purpose. I also have that layer where I can say I don't know that they're doing it because I'm a women in the room. It may simply be because I'm the person that they will likely interact with the less from this point forward if they choose to move forward with us.

I do see things changing. I have a ton of runway to take as much leadership as I want at Hanapin but also feel comfortable asking questions of male leadership without feeling like I'm being man sling to, which I don't think everyone can necessarily say. That's unique.

JD Prater:                                It's a real thing.

Kayla Kurtz:                            It is. It is.

JD Prater:                                Let me give you a few follow up questions there, then. One is what advice would you give women looking for a career in PPC, so that's one. And two, maybe women three to five years in, looking to take that next step forward in their career and get that promotion, what advice would you give those to women and where they are in their career. What kind of advice would you give them?

Kayla Kurtz:                            Yeah. Absolutely. It's hang on the front end. If you're nudity industry, whether you're looking for a role in sales or not, but particularly if you're looking for a role in sales, find yourself a couple of mentors, maybe three. They don't have to be industry specific, if you're a women they don't have to be a women. I don't like giving Jeff a lot of praise but I reached out to Jeff and said, "Hey, talk to my supervisor." I get a lot of one on one time with him, helping coach me. I want another perspective, someone who doesn't work with me as much day to day and I don't know who to go to. And he was like, "I'll do it. I'll talk to you and I'll talk to you not as Jeff that works at Hanapin. I'll talk to you as Jeff who wants to help you grow professionally." And he's been doing that with me, we meet once a month, he's been doing that with me now for a couple of years. Sometimes the clarity that I get out of those conversations where he really just clears the mechanism for me of I've got all of this confusion of what I want to do and he just dials in and tells me the one question I need to ask, that's invaluable time.

I don't think I would be as confident not matter what Buffy gave me. I don't think I would as confident in the conversation that I have if I hadn't sought out additional mentorships that really force you to take a step outside yourself and put down on paper, here's the shit I'm terrible at and here's what I know I need to do better if I'm going to run that room. And I'm going to stare down the CMO of a Fortune 500 company I have got to change some things. So what does that have to look like? And hold you to it. Accountability is huge.

I think if you're starting off particular as a women, whether it's a male or a female who also finds empowerment in women using their voice, that's who you need to work with and have them help guide you and give you some milestones to work on. I think the tone changes a little, I can get more experience. When you get three to five years into it, if you are really loving it and you've started to carve out a role for yourself that fits your skill set and you're challenged but you also have the ability to feel successful, I think that's crucial, especially if you're looking at a sales role, you have to be comfortable with failure.

I fail every week maybe multiple times. Sometimes it's a failure that literally the entire company knows about because it was possible new business that we got everyone involved with. That shit sucks. You got to have a real backbone for that. So if you get the the three to five year mark and you're still really liking it, it's time to put your bossy pants on a little bit, right? So if you know your shit, stand your ground. That's crucial. Sometimes people push you just to push you and to see if you're really sure of what it is that you're saying. Make sure that you're certain and that you're absolutely positive in what it is you're bringing to the table but if you know what you're actually talking about, own it.

I made a joke about it earlier, right? But if the mic is yours and somebody tries to take it, fucking take it back. I hate that. I hate being talked over. That's probably one of my biggest pet peeves. Take the mic back, right? Whether it's because you're a women or whether you're just dealing with a dominate personality. Stand up and make your voice heard because people will respect you for that. You got to be kind about it. Don't be a jerk. Be respectful. But own what you know. I think if more women just said, "I may not know everything but here's what I do know." That's pretty impactful. I think self awareness is something that more and more folks are taking for granted these days. It's my little baby soapbox. Own your shit, man.

JD Prater:                                Own it. All right. Sound advice form Kayla Kurtz. Let's move on now. Let's move on to the next section of the interview where rapid fire questions now. So I'm going to ask you a couple of questions, you got 60 seconds to answer each one. You ready to go?

Kayla Kurtz:                            Yeah, I guess so. All right.

JD Prater:                                All right. First question, I'll call it my softball question. It's pretty easy. Kayla, you got an afternoon free, you got no meetings scheduled, you're just hanging out in the office and you're like man, "I'm going to get caught up on the PPC industry." What do you turn to? Sources, blogs, podcasts, whatever it may be. What do you turn to to get caught up in the news?

Kayla Kurtz:                            That's good and it is a softball because I work in one everyday. I would be a big jackass if I didn't immediately open up my Megan Stout and Jessica Viviano email inboxes and check out all of the inevitable case studies and whitepapers that they've sent to me that I've filed away so that I can use them later and read through them when I have time, which is usually on the fly when I need one of them. But I do try to take some time at least once a week to make sure that I'm caught up with all of the collateral that I've been given because, obviously, in my position having the same story selling technique is huge. I do spend quite a bit of time looking at just the PPC Hero blog and seeing what stuff has gotten the most attention in the industry. I always look at updates first. The nuances of how an account gets manged while that's super important to be, absolutely, I need to know what's changing because that's likely going to change the framework of how I sell. That's usually where I spend the vast majority of my time. It shows up in every one of my reviews. I'm always wish I had more time for more learning and I don't so it's mostly PPC hero. Very very selfishly.

JD Prater:                                Cool. All right next question. Number two. You've been in sales for a while. Associate Director and Hanapin Marketing. What's something that you wish marketing would do better? This is marketing as a whole. It's doesn't have to be Hanapin's marketing team. Just to clarify.

Kayla Kurtz:                            I was going to that's rude, JD, and I love everyone of them.

I think marketers in general, I'll be honest, I wish we could just take ourselves a little less seriously. Take the bullshit layer of trying to act like a badass off of the conversation. We're all just trying to sell shit. Whether it's services or products. We're all here to do. Yup, I get it. You want to sell as many of the things as you can for as cheaply as possible. We all know that that's the conversation so let's move past that. Let's stop asking those questions and let's just get down to the brass tacks of what you want to do. Because I think there's just a lot of conversations, specially I see on the sale side, that get gummed up with those questions people feel like they have to ask but it's like we wouldn't both be here if you didn't at least already have a feeling or an understanding that we were at least somewhat deserving to be here.

I think that would be my wish across the board. Just let's cut the shit. It's a layer of an hour and a half of questions we could probably get rid of as a whole and be much better people.

JD Prater:                                Nice. I got three more for you. Next question is let's say tomorrow, Hanapin Marketing is not around. We know that that's not true. What would be your fallback job?

Kayla Kurtz:                            This is so funny. This came up as a get to know your partner question with Amy and I a couple weeks ago. We were just asking each other random questions at dinner and I was like, "My god, I have not really thought about it" so here's hoping that it doesn't happen. I think I really love to cook. I think if I could do my whole like over again and it was a perfect world, I think I would have a bakery or be a chef and have my own restaurant or something. Because then I would get to also be in control which is important to me. You remember that from working together. So I still get to be in charge but I'm very passionate about cooking. I don't know how to cook for two people so I'm consistently ready to fill a restaurant full of folks here just at homestead. Yeah, that would be it. That would be it.

JD Prater:                                Nice. I like it. Okay, last two questions. So you used to be a PPC account manager, what's something that you miss from that role in Hanapin?

Kayla Kurtz:                            I really miss being as tied to that community. Not even just at Hanapin but being more day to day involve with PPC because now when I go to Cheryl Comfort, other conferences period, it's just a natural progression but I lost my ability to talk as much in the weeds about paid search and social and display and I wish I could talk more nerdy about it because some of my favorite conversations. We know some smart fucking people so I miss that. I miss being a little bit more tied to the community because now I'm the sales gal and that's obviously got a little bit of a different connotation, not that it matters in the industry, but my Hanapin folks still keep me pretty in the loop. I love them. They try to keep me cool.

JD Prater:                                Nice. Nice. Last question, so for those that don't know, Kayla is really good at karaoking. Kayla, let's just say you're in the final round of a karaoke battle, what song brings home the title?

Kayla Kurtz:                            It's Carrie Underwood for sure. Contry's my go to. I don't think any would have picked out because I said Beyonce and Kanye West were like my things earlier but I'm a country bumpkin down in the deep ducts of my soul. It would be Carrie Underwood. It would probably be Jesus, Take The Wheel because my mom really likes when I sing that song. So I think she'd probably be pissed if I didn't at least go with her favorite. So, that would be. I'd change my mind tomorrow if you ask me.

JD Prater:                                And there you have it. Kayla Kurtz. Thank you so much for coming on the show and dropping some serious PPC and also sales and agency knowledge. Definitely a slightly different perspective that some of our other guest but I definitely found it very beneficial. Yeah, thank you.

Kayla Kurtz:                            Thank you. This was super fun. Reach out to me again in a year and we'll do the anniversary edition. See what's changed.

JD Prater:                                You've got it.

Kayla Kurtz:                            I love it. Thanks for having me, JD.