Transcript: Thanks Mike and welcome back to your 20 minute podcast with David Brower, special guest today is Kellen Kautzman from beautiful downtown Las Vegas Nevada. How are you Kellen?
Kellen Kautzman: I am doing quite well David, how are you sir?
David Brower: I’m well, thank you, thank you. One of the things that has always interested me, and most of the time it’s way above my pay grade, is internet marketing, search engine optimization, those kinds of things, and you’ve had some great success with that haven’t you?
Kellen Kautzman: Yeah we’re doing all right. Our largest client is Golden Nugget Hotel and Casino all the way down to a single realtor, but I’ve been doing this for about a decade, but we run the gamut and it’s been really good.
David Brower: And you call it Send It Rising Internet Marketing. How’d you come up with that name, what does it mean?
Kellen Kautzman: Send It Rising to me embodies philanthropreneurship, which is cause marketing. For example we went out the other day to Cynthia Cunningham Elementary School, and it’s a disenfranchised school that doesn’t get the resources it should, and a now friend of mine Kim McQuarry, a four time Emmy award winning documentary filmmaker, I didn’t know that when I met him in an elevator.
David Brower: Of course.
Kellen Kautzman: They called it an elevator pitch for a reason, right David?
David Brower: Yeah that’s exactly right.
Kellen Kautzman: Anyway we go out and we take, call it 40, 50 pictures, and I point my Samsung Android phone at my face and take a video, and we’re promoting it on Facebook. We’ve done all of the standard SEO, social media, everything you would expect from an internet marketing company, but what we really want to do now is push forward cause marketing. We put up this post about how we put up this garden, and there’s no sales pitch. There’s no, “Call us for a discount on your SEO.” There’s none of that nonsense, it’s just “Hey look we built a garden” and we spent $15 on Facebook advertising and we reached 3000 people, and then the non-profit called Green Our Planet also shared it and they’ve got over 3000 likes on their Facebook page. We’re looking for proof of concept that there’s a better way of marketing, not only for the end consumer who doesn’t need you to tell them what you do 99% of the time.
Kellen Kautzman: They get it, “Oh you’re a mechanic” or, “You sell Harleys”, or whatever. “You’re a massage therapist or …” it doesn’t matter, as long as it says sponsored by and the brand that it’s coming from, that’s the end of sales cycle, as far as I’m concerned. They understand so let’s just show them that we’re making the world a better place. Send It Rising Plays to that.
David Brower: Wow. I love that. Obviously, I’ve heard of philanthropy and all that kind of stuff. Some cause marketing, without really understanding what that means. I mean, you’re putting it out there, man. How many of those have you done?
Kellen Kautzman: Over the last, call it nine years, we’ve done just your status quo, let’s blog content, and I don’t know if you have … I’m sure you’ve experienced something like this in your life, where you just hit this exhaustion of … It’s strange because it’s not for lack of success. The money’s good, the hours are good. The soul is not so good.
David Brower: There you go.
Kellen Kautzman: I need to convince business owners that they can see a return on investment. For the last nine years, we’ve been doing basically what everyone else is doing in regards to SEO. I can say we’re better than they are but that entire debate is just silly. We’re talking about pennies. It’s just whatever. What’s better, Coke or Pepsi? It’s like, they’re both bad for you.
David Brower: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, what day is it? Exactly.
Kellen Kautzman: I actually was a partner with a company called Advise Media Group. I left in September of last year. Send It Rising is just a little baby. Call it seven months. I’m sure I’m off on that but about seven months old. I brought over all of my clients from Advise Media Group, thank God. Just your standard run-of-the-mill and things are good and that’s great. The cause marketing piece, so far, has been a partnership with a fabulous woman. Her name is Doctor Victoria Boyd. She owns what’s called the Philanthropreneur Foundation which is a nonprofit for nonprofits. She comes in and she teaches them how to, basically, run their organizations better. We’ve been talking over the last couple of years.
Kellen Kautzman: We just said, look, let’s launch this cause marketing thing. We met this cat, his name’s [Siloh 00:04:59] Moses. He’s won congressional awards because five years ago, he was homeless and his organization Serving Hope LV, here in Vegas, served over 64,000 meals to the homeless last year.
David Brower: Holy mole. Or, to use his name, holy Moses. I’ll be here all week.
Kellen Kautzman: That’s right. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
David Brower: That’s incredible.
Kellen Kautzman: Yeah. We made him our chief philanthropy officer. We’re working with Siloh, we’re working with Doctor Boyd. We met with KCEP radio. There a 44-year-old radio station here in Vegas. We are, basically, at the point where we need to gather evidence as to the effectiveness that we’ve done personally. We’ve done the research, we’ve looked at cause marketing. For the larger companies, there is ample research. Tom’s is a great example. Tom’s where you buy a pair of shoes and they donate a pair of shoes. They did phenomenally well. If you’re Coke, you have a division where you give money away, and that’s all part of you things and, hooray, that’s great. We need to show that the local insurance agent can do this.
Kellen Kautzman: That’s exactly what we’re doing. We met with New York Life not too long. Had a meeting with five folks there about it. Everyone’s really excited about it and jazzed. That makes my life so much better because, if I go in and I give the standard, peers SEO, here social media, his Internet marketing, people just glaze over and they just want to leave.
David Brower: Yeah, deer in the headlights, yeah.
Kellen Kautzman: Yeah, you get it. That’s what we’re doing. To answer your question, none, zero. Zip. We haven’t launched a campaign yet. However, there’s a gentleman who on the mortgage business that we’re doing a free month for. That started about a week ago. It’s just getting started, David.
David Brower: How fun. I mean, the passion that you obviously have behind this, the energy that you’re getting from Siloh and your philanthrop-er contact, your connections are just, it’s like a volcano getting ready to erupt, it feels like.
Kellen Kautzman: I appreciate that, David.
David Brower: That is cool, man. What’s the mortgage guy? You’re testing the waters with him. What’s involved in that?
Kellen Kautzman: He went out this last Monday and served food to the homeless. Through Siloh Moses and serving hope. The two of them actually know each other from way back. They did a, I want to say, a business training, multiple weeks seminar together and they became friends. Siloh went to him and said, “Hey, do you want to do this cause marketing thing.” Mortgage brokers? A single deal, if we get them to deals a year, we pay for ourselves. The idea is he goes out, they take a ludicrous number of pictures and they take video. We come back, we take all those images and we create social media posts for, call it, a couple of weeks. Not to mention, all of those photos, when they are added to Pinterest, become back links. We can create a blog post, hey, we went out, we served the homeless and just talk about the whole experience as people we met and la-dee-da.
Kellen Kautzman: All of these images on Pinterest, when you click on them, they take you back to that blog post. Because the images are actually worth sharing, their original, they’re not stock photos, people are willing to share them. It’s called a re-pinning. Every time they re-pin on Pinterest, it multiplies the number of back links. I have a side project that, it’s called whateverydogdeserves.com, that were using the philanthropreneurial model. “Purchase our products and we’ll rescue dogs.” We’ve earned over 60,000 back links from that project and that’s what really got my brain firing on because marketing SEO implications. Meaning, if we build all of these links from these amazing photos that we get from companies that are otherwise, David, so boring.
David Brower: Exactly, sure.
Kellen Kautzman: Think mortgage. Mortgage companies. The worst. If we can get amazing photos from them, then we can go viral on Pinterest. Because we are getting those back links, now they rank in Google for things like mortgage, mortgage lender, mortgage expert, whatever.
David Brower: All the back links, if I understand what you’re saying, they all work together to help increase the mortgage guy’s visibility on Google and really on the Internet, right?
Kellen Kautzman: Yeah, that’s 100% right. Rolled out something called right brain in 2015, which is artificial intelligence. It counts these back links as votes. If mortgage lender A has 30,000 back links from Pinterest and mortgage lender B has 12, the machine is thinking about the first mortgage lender more, hence getting it a better position in Google.
David Brower: My gosh. I mean, you got something going on incredibly special, they are. I can’t hardly wait to see you take off in this and have some huge success. When you have relationships that come together through, wink wink, coincidence and all this stuff starts to materialize, that’s something special.
Kellen Kautzman: You get it, David. You went through hell and back.
David Brower: Right.
Kellen Kautzman: You think that’s coincidence?
David Brower: Of course not.
Kellen Kautzman: Un-uh (negative).
David Brower: There’s no such thing, actually.
Kellen Kautzman: Right there with you, David.
David Brower: Wow, I’m impressed man. You want to pitch your SEO stuff?
Kellen Kautzman: Now only, 999.
David Brower: I know, call me now. Hey … Go ahead.
Kellen Kautzman: I will say this. Kellen Kautzman. K-E-L-L-E-N-K-A-U-T, as in Tom, Z as in zebra, M-A-N dot com. I do public speaking. I’ve been really fortunate to speak at Planet Hollywood. I was a guest lecturer at Roseman University. Obviously, the amazing David Brower show.
David Brower: Thank you.
Kellen Kautzman: Then a few other engagements that folks can see if they visit the site. If anyone’s looking for someone to come to an event, I’m your guy. I’d love to show up. I customize everything. Then obviously, Send It Rising, you don’t need me to pitch you on that because they basically understand that whole … Already.
David Brower: Yeah, I’m hooked up on that. I want to figure out a way to play in that world, because that’s something. If you ever need … On a full-time voice actor. I mean-
Kellen Kautzman: I love it.
David Brower: That’s what I did by profession his voiceover and sound design. I started doing these podcasts a couple of months ago. I do three weeks now, with experts on different pieces of the world. Whether it’s business, marketing, families, relationship, self-improvement. I’m not doing anything on voiceover. I’m doing things that actually can touch people, such as, ding, ding, ding, Send It Rising. If we can figure out a way to, and I’m obviously marketing that myself and having other people market these interviews, as well. If we can get some folks interested in what you’re doing, holy mole.
Kellen Kautzman: Let’s do it, David. I’m on board, man. Absolutely.
David Brower: Wow, that’s cool.
Kellen Kautzman: Absolutely.
David Brower: The way for people to get in touch with you is kellenkautzman.com. Again, K-E-L-L-E-N-K-A-U-T-Z man dot com. When you go to do the speaking events, you’ve done what? Over 20 in the last couple of years? Which is a pretty reasonable amount of everything else you got going on-
Kellen Kautzman: Sure.
David Brower: In your life. When you speak to people and you say you customize it, what does that mean? Give me an example.
Kellen Kautzman: Yeah, so I was invited to, it’s called, DepoSpan, which is a group of court reporters. The people that type on those weird machines when people are giving depositions. I can’t roll up to DepoSpan and give some same as I would give to, I don’t know, a group of auto mechanics. It doesn’t make any sense. The entire thing was based on their industry. I had to figure out what a stenographer otherwise. I had to learn about standard type. I made all these jerks. For example, I showed a slide for an image that did really well in Pinterest in the stenography world. I didn’t know what it said, David. I showed it and everyone laughed. I was like, “Okay, tell me what this says.”
David Brower: Right, right.
Kellen Kautzman: Hey, I got to customize it.
David Brower: That’s cool. Wow. I mean, you talk about boring opportunities. Mortgage brokers, boring reporters, boring. You’re able to reach out to these, quote unquote, boring folks and make something happen with them. That’s thinking out-of-the-box, there, man.
Kellen Kautzman: Hey, I appreciate that David. It’s been really, really, really fortunate. The whole thing has been, I wake up most days and go, okay. When the pressure finally alleviates a little bit, and I can reflect on my life, I bet you feel the same, you just go, “Wow, I’m lucky.”
David Brower: Yeah, no doubt about it. Yeah, you are blessed in the dictionary and there’s your and my picture.
Kellen Kautzman: Yeah, that’s exactly right, David.
David Brower: How cool, man. Again folks, Kellen Kautzman. K-E-L-L-E-N-K-A-U-T-Z-M-A-N dot com. Check him out. Check out that cause marketing. I’m speechless. Congratulations on what you’re doing.
Kellen Kautzman: Yeah, sounds good, David. Your story is impressive, too. We had a conversation prior to us getting on the call here in David’s been through a lot and I’m just really impressed with you coming out the other end.
David Brower: Thanks, man. Me too. Appreciate it. Hey folks, again, kellenkautzman.com. I’m going to be looking into that cause marketing. That’s fascinating to me. Congratulations. Thanks for being on the show.
Kellen Kautzman: Thanks, David.
David Brower: All right. You’ve been listening to Your 20 Minute Podcast with David Brower and our special guest Kellen Kautzman. Be sure to follow us on Facebook facebook.com/Your20MinutePodcast.