Fearless leadership: Overcome doubt to inspire change with David McGraw

Lee Wochner:
A few weeks ago, we had internationally recognized branding expert, Peter Wilkin, on this podcast. Peter talked about how to know who you are as an organization and why that was essential to understanding how to market, how to grow, how to succeed, and how to behave on a daily basis. Today, in a follow-up of sorts, our guest is David McRaw, Chief Executive Officer of Oyova. After that episode of our podcast launched, David messaged me to say he had just listened to it and that Peter told them a year ago what to do with a certain problem and quote, I wish we would have listened to them. So on this episode, David, who was a sharp manager, shares with us the successes he and OYOVA have generated for their clients, including nonprofits, how best to work with a software development agency to get the success you need, and why he made the mistake of not taking Peter’s advice, and what he learned from this error. That’s today on That’s What’s He Said.

Jaclyn Uloth:
Welcome to the podcast that lightens the tension when things sort of get hard…That’s What C! Said, the Counterintuity podcast, featuring interviews with leaders and doers who have helped to make our world a better place through their actions — and especially through marketing, communications, and embracing change. Here’s host Lee Wochner.

Lee Wochner:
David, nice to have you here. Good to see you.

David McGraw:
Thanks for having me, always good to see you as well.

Lee Wochner:
So I know we’re gonna be talking about branding in a minute. So I thought I’d start with this. You know, one of the things I’ve always appreciated about you from the day I met you eight or 10 years ago is your practical pragmatic approach to management, to business, to life in general. You just always struck me as a smart, solid person and a good guy. And you know somebody who makes and keeps commitments and somebody who gets things done and it wasn’t afraid to have an opinion. So that seems to me to be your personal brand. How does that square with how you see yourself?

David McGraw:
Let’s see. I think you nailed it. I mean, honestly, I think when you when you give your word, you have to deliver no matter what. There was a project that we had ran over years, cost explosion. But, you know, we stuck stuck with it because I gave him my word that I was going to get it done. We did. And we eventually crawled out of that. But, you know, there’s things, especially with like business and management. You know, one thing I’ve told myself in life, don’t chase trends. So, you know, when we first met, you know, the big trend, everybody’s chasing culture and, and, you know, we have to do some of that to some extent, but it was like, you know, guys, the first thing we’re doing here is providing value to clients, you know, and if we’re not doing that, then there’s, there’s no us here. So, so I’ve always just tried to make sure that I don’t chase trends. I don’t follow the herd. And I just try to be, um, uh, be me and deliver, deliver what I say I’m going to deliver.

Lee Wochner:
The values thing makes it possible to look at yourself in the mirror every day and feel pretty good about it. I knew a guy, or I know a guy who got embezzled by his business partner and the company declared bankruptcy. And nevertheless, he spent years working to pay back everybody they owed money to. He took care of it himself. I’ll never forget that guy. What a hero.

David McGraw:
Did I ever tell you how Oyova got started?

Lee Wochner:
No, how did Oyova get started?

David McGraw:
So I started it with my boss at my job before I went on on my own. He was supposed to do sales and I was gonna do the technology. And so I kept landing all these projects and he was just sitting there doing nothing. And so I landed my first big project and I designed it in a way where he basically didn’t get anything. And so he filed a final K1 on the business without talking to me, took money out of the bank account, disappeared and…

Lee Wochner:
Hmm. Wow.

David McGraw:
Hey, looking back at it, at that time it was a $4 ,000 mistake. If you would tell me now, would you pay $4 ,000 to have your company back all day long? So at the time I was devastated, now I’m like, thank goodness.

Lee Wochner:
Hmm. Yeah. It is funny how time, right? Time pays off some things like that. So yeah, good for you. I was telling last night, last night I was telling somebody the story of someone I didn’t partner with and I’m still happy about it. And short term, it looked like it’d be a good thing, but I was like, I think this would be a bad thing. And I got a far better partner instead. So you messaged me after hearing our podcast episode with branding master Peter Wilkin, whom you and I both know, and then you and Oyova worked with Peter, right? You guys hired him.

David McGraw:
Yeah, so he was the speaker at the last DMG conference and yeah, really taken with him. I thought what he was saying was smart. I really liked what he said. I mean, I’ve been pretty critical of a lot of speakers that have come through there. And this was one that was, you know, genuinely surprising to me. So I read his book and I was like, I think this is an escape out of my frustrations, you know? So.

Lee Wochner:
Digital mastermind group, yes. Mm -hmm. Me too.

David McGraw:
Called him up, talked to him about his offering, and we hired him to do the leadership evaluation. And it was eye -opening. It was a great, not only just for me, but my leadership team really enjoyed it. They enjoyed talking with him on a one -on -one basis, I guess because their boss isn’t listening to it, they could be a little bit more open with him. So Peter acted part business coach, part evaluator. Then he came back, brought our whole team together. We did a group session. And then he gave us the reports. And I mean, he gave us two startling, like looking back now. And why I reached out to you is I said, look, I sat on my hands for a year with his advice because I knew it was right, but I didn’t know how to do it. I didn’t want to face it. And so after I saw you interview on my go, I’ve got to tell Lee my experience because it was… It’s just eye opening that once we finally executed on his ideas, a lot of things came into focus. A lot of things got easier. A lot of weight got lifted off our shoulders and we’re seeing a little rebound growth because of it.

Lee Wochner:
I have many questions about this and, and you know, like you, I’m taken with Peter. I also thought he was a dynamic presenter. I learned a lot in his presentation. I read his book. Um, I sure enjoyed talking to him on the podcast. I mean, I’m really, um, as I said, taken with him. So this was about a year, a year and a half ago, you hired him. Is that right?

David McGraw
Oh, about a year almost to this date. It was like right when we, it was right at the turn of the new year of last year.

Lee Wochner
Okay. And why did you engage him? You had confusion about where to go? You had a problem he could deal with? Was there a particular reason you engaged him?

David McGraw:
Through growth, you know, so as we grew, our growing pains were about our leadership team and friction. And as we grew and as the teams grew, the friction got stronger. And so I looked at this as a way of, it’s worth it to spend a little money to get somebody from the outside to come in and talk to my leadership team and say, here’s how you work with these. You know, individual people. And the one thing I liked about the tool set Peter brought was they could actually go on there, look up the person they’re about to interact with, and it will give them tips on how to approach that person. And it worked. I started using it against my team, and they didn’t realize it. But I would like, before I get on a call that I know is going to be frustrating, I would hop on this tool and go, all right, what do I need to do? So with one of my leaders, I just had to start the call with about five to eight minutes of praise and just bumping up the ego and then boom, we got to solutions really fast. If I didn’t do that, it was butting heads for 15 to 20 minutes before we got onto the solving thing. So I was just like, wow, all right, these tools work. It’s working in action. And so we engaged him and hired him because I just needed an outside source to come in and say, guys, we’re one team here.

Lee Wochner:
Ah. Which is actually in a way part of branding because it’s around values and actually like identity and what you guys are doing. So what did you learn? What did you learn from the process of working with him?

David McGraw:
Well, the first amazing insight that we got, my business partner, John Sorakis was on your podcast, I don’t know, three months ago. Well, we merged in 2019 and we kind of just jumped in and we were friends, so we knew it was probably gonna work. But Peter shows us a chart that says we are like, he’s never seen a match so perfect together. So that was the first. First thing was like, hey, we made a good decision. And you know, we generally say, yeah, it’s been a great, been a great match. Second one was he had, it’s funny, he’s going through the profiles and we can’t see the individuals at first before he did the group presentation. He would just say, this guy is your, is your director of operations, right? And we’re like, no, not at all. No, he’s an accountant. He’s like, that’s impossible. There’s no way with this, he has of all the, profiles that I’ve seen that match this, they are in operations. I’ve never seen them on the account side. And we’re like, wow, that’s extremely interesting. The third thing was our leadership team was extremely big picture, too heavy in the big picture. Everyone was big picture. Nobody was in the, we only had one person. So it’s, you know, it’s a grid and you fall in multiple things and as CEO, I fell in the financial and organization realm. And John being the perfect match was the big picture passion realms. And so we both complimented each other. Well, we had too many people in the big picture and not enough organization and not enough doing and not enough of the other stuff. So it was interesting seeing that. So it forced changes. So slowly we implemented.

Lee Wochner:
So with my own business partner, I tell people that I’m forest and she’s trees. Like I, you know, I can absolutely see the forest and I’m like, there’s trees here, where are they? And she’s very trees. And I have no detailed orientation, no real management skills. I’m completely lacking. But I have those ideation, creative, forward -looking skills. So in our orientation, I’m a John Sorakis and she’s a David McGraw. There you go. So now he’s given you some advice that you didn’t take. And what sort of advice was it? Was it about roles people should be in? What was it, generally?

David McGraw:
It was, two of the things he told us was one person was in the wrong role, one person should be let go. And you know, I had no plans of being there, you know? And so when he hit us with that, I was like, no. So instead we kind of bastardized his advice and said, instead of getting rid of this person, let’s move him into a different role and see if that fixes things.

Lee Wochner:
Oh my.

David McGraw:
And that was a year -long mistake. So he was spot on with it.

Lee Wochner
And why did you, so why didn’t you take his advice? What was the rationale for that? You wanted to think about it or you weren’t sure, you rejected it, what?

David McGraw:
Fear. It’s fear. You know, it was… Anytime you want to consider letting somebody go that’s high up in your leadership, it’s the fear of where the gap’s gonna be. What’s gonna fall on me now that I’m gonna have to come in and cover? And there was a lot, especially when we’re talking about director of operations levels. There’s a lot of fear there. And then you’ve got history with people. I mean, our leadership team has been around with each other for a long time. So there was a lot of angles and I always thought, you know, I can fix this. We can fix this. Some situations aren’t fixable.

Lee Wochner:
Okay, so now you’re past that, right? This was resolved a month or two ago. Okay. What were the outcomes? What’s the upside? What’s the downside?

David McGraw:
Yeah, about two months ago. The decision was made two months ago. So, you know, some of the things that we’ve discovered is that information was kind of being gate, you know, gated away and people weren’t completely aware of what we were doing, what we were trying to do. We had projects where I was completely floored that they didn’t even understand the goal of the project. And I’m like, well, how can you be working on this? You don’t even know what the end goal is. So, and I had to distill that down into thinking that it was a power play, you know, holding onto information and not releasing it, being that single point is a power play at heart. And so we realized that the team, I’m telling you, like the first week that we made, you know, executed this decision, talking with some team members, it was like talking with like a, you know, person that’s been kidnapped for five years. You know, they were afraid to talk. They were afraid to open up. They were afraid to express, you know, I’m like, guys, come on, we’re a team here. Let’s go. And it was just, you know, I told you before that, you know, we kind of ended up in two different silos and it was two different worlds within one brand. And that was what the, in general, the unhealthy, you know, environment, these two silos were constantly fighting for power. And, um, they just couldn’t coexist.

Lee Wochner:
So this fascinates me for lots of reasons. And I want to remind our listeners, this is relevant to so many things. I’m going to try to peel this back a little bit and try to reveal why this is relevant. So let’s go back to Peter. So Peter is a branding expert. And sometimes people don’t quite grasp the extent of impact of branding. And I started by asking you about your personal brand and to some degree, your story is about people’s personal brands, like the way they work and who they are, and then how it affected your company’s brand, which works with nonprofits and commercial enterprises and such. So in your mind, what qualified Peter as a branding expert to look at what is essentially a management issue that needed to be corrected?

David McGraw:
It’s just like his approach in his book. It’s take little steps to a bigger decision and he just put the management angle on it. And again, I don’t even know if we started looking at management structure. He just started interviewing us and talking to us. I think he got us to there. So he was like necessarily matching up with what you and John are saying. And so, you know, it was, I’ll tell you, well worth the cost. I mean, it was, it was, yeah, it was good.

Lee Wochner:
So one of my girlfriend’s sons said to me, what qualifies you to do this work? Because he Googled me and to some degree I come up as a playwright. And my first response was, well, the millions of dollars clients pay us and have paid us. I’m pre -qualified. But there’s something about listening with intent and being able to find themes and track them back to their source that the creatives, especially external creatives, can bring to such a process. And I think Peter is obviously very well qualified. So let’s say that somebody has a nonprofit, a public agency, a commercial enterprise, something, and they’re working with a marketing agency like Oyova or like Counterintuity. Your story is about… We got advice that seemed to be right, but we didn’t do it. And finally, when we did it, it proved to be right. And now we’ve gained the advantage that came from it. What advice would you have for people, or what is your own practice in how to sift advice you’ll take from advice that you’re not taking, or that you’re rejecting, or you’re ruminating on?

David McGraw:
Well, the first thing is you already kind of hit it with what your girlfriend’s son said is, you know, what’s your actual experience? Like the thing that I hate about our industry right now is the number of business coaches that try to approach you for coaching that have never run a business. I mean, that to me is like, I can’t trust your advice if you’ve never gone through that. Also why digital mastermind group is such a valuable resources that these are, you know, generals in the trenches. We’ve gone through it. So that’s one of the big things. But isn’t it funny? Think about what the advice Peter gave us. How many times do we have clients that we give advice to that don’t listen to us? And a year later they go, oh, I should have listened to you. And it’s just funny that it works on me too. It happens to me too. So everyone has that regret of, I should have listened to you year ago.

Lee Wochner:
I try, yes, and you know, there’s the difference between hearing and listening. And I may have gotten more listening oriented as I’ve gotten older because it’s like, wait a minute, maybe there’s something here. Like I really want to hear criticisms. I remember about Bill Clinton’s political foes called him slick Willy. And then later when he had some obvious problems in his presidency, I realized, oh, they were right. He is kind of slick -willy. There’s some value in criticism like that. And I listen. When somebody’s got a negative about me or about something I’m involved in or something didn’t work well here, I really want to take it to heart and find out if there’s something to improve. So do you? So you ask people, you try to figure out what qualifies them for the advice. And by the way, I have to share with you, he’s dead now. The number one screenwriter coach here in LA never sold a screenplay. I mean, the guy famous for it wrote books, had big high powered celebrity things that every major actor you know of went to learn about story. He never, none of his movies got made. I mean, nothing.

David McGraw:
Some people are really good at motivating others. There’s a class of people that that’s their job. Their role is to get other people to perform higher.
This is where they topic starts to shift about Oyova and their business
Lee Wochner:
Mm -hmm. That’s a good point. That’s a very good point. So, okay. So tell me a bit about how Oyova works with clients, like particularly nonprofit clients and what it’s like when you’re offering advice or strategy.

David McGraw:
So most of our nonprofits, so just to give the audience a little background, you know, Oyova’s got kind of two wings. It’s applications, custom software, and then digital marketing and, you know, design and websites. And interestingly enough, most of our nonprofits do more custom application development with us than the marketing. And that is because, you know, nonprofits traditionally don’t have a ton of money to drop on these expensive systems. I mean, you look at the cost of a Salesforce and some of these other systems these days, it’s just unattainable for a nonprofit unless it’s getting donated. So one of our really big nonprofits that came to us had a grant from a technology company that gave them this tooling for free. They had no clue how to use it. They were getting really no value at it. So they were, you know, if anything, the company that donated is just using it as a point to brag that they’re working with this nonprofit, but we came in and made it all work. And so we came in as the technology experts for them and got it wired up, digitized their system. And so we took their non, I guess, can I say the nonprofit organization? Yeah. So we work with here in Jacksonville, there’s a very famous, well -known nonprofit called the Tom Coughlin, the J -Fund, which is the coach of the Giants and the Jaguars, the NFL coach. And so he has a nonprofit here that pays bills, expenses for families with kids with, that have kids with cancer. So it’s a great, it’s a great organization. You know, we’ve donated a bunch. We’ve sponsored their events because we’ve developed a great relationship with them. Well, they were doing everything with paper. I mean, can you imagine getting receipts and utility bills and all these things from these families and trying to reimburse them efficiently. Cause again, you’re working off donated money. You don’t want to waste it. So we digitized it. So now social workers and parents can just snap a picture while they’re in the hospital or wherever they’re at and upload it in the system. And now it’s already in queue to start getting paid by the organization. So it’s great, great cause. And we did all the architecture and the solution, created the solution for that. So that’s. That’s our bread and butter, and that’s what we love.

Lee Wochner:
Awesome. So do you ever, I’m sure you have, and how long has Oyova ever been in business?

David McGraw
Since 2008, actually.

Lee Wochner
Ah, so in those almost 16 years, certainly you’ve given someone some advice, some client, and they just didn’t do it. How do you, like, what’s it like offering advice or strategy that isn’t followed up on? And do you ever follow back and say, how was that for you? Because I know you well enough to know you’re just trying to help them.

David McGraw
Yeah, I the most most frequent that happens is when somebody comes in and wants to build the next Facebook or the next and so yeah, so you know, I tell him, I do you have a billion dollars to compete? You know, do you have the marketing budget to go after them? Because, you know, so there’s tons of that. There’s tons of that. And I’ve told them, tell them.

Lee Wochner
Yeah, I’m doing that this weekend. Sure. Hahaha

David McGraw
We’d be happy to build this for you. But if you, if you don’t have any marketing, so many people come to us with a development budget. They’re like, Hey, I’ve got $20 ,000. Can you build my MVP? Sure. We can do that. But what do you have to support it after? Do you have the ability to go get customers now? Because the app isn’t going to sell itself. And, um, you know, that’s kind of the thing that I tell all the time. And you know, some listen to it and some, um, some find a cheaper resource to. Try to make your dreams come true.

Lee Wochner
Well, I don’t always agree with you, but I always listen to you. So, and we’ve had some spirited conversations about a few things. We’re gonna take a short commercial break. When we come back, David and I will be talking about what’s changing in marketing and how to make the most of that change. Stick around.

Jaclyn Uloth:
Hi, this is Jaclyn with Counterintuity.

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Lee Wochner
And we’re back with David McGraw, CEO of Oyova, a software development and marketing company in Jacksonville, Florida. Is there a difference, David, in working with nonprofits versus commercial enterprises?

David McGraw
Absolutely. I think when you’re working with nonprofits, there’s a lot more people-oriented, you know, you’ve got to be a lot more people-oriented. It’s not just about who can bring the technology or who can do what it is, but they want to like working with you. I mean, people that are working for a nonprofit are not working there to maximize their earning potential. They’re working there to make a difference because they want to have an impact and they like the people they work with. I mean, that’s the reason why they’re at a nonprofit. And so, you know, we kind of lean into that because we’re an all US based company. We don’t outsource. So we try to lean into our personability, our ability to connect with people. I think it works on a lot of levels. Also, there’s a lot of nonprofits that just can’t work with companies that are out of the country. So we’ll get some of that business. But yeah, it’s definitely different. I mean, a corporate, there’s some corporate clients, like I almost never even take a New York corporate client. Because the culture of New York City versus Jacksonville Beach, Florida, almost never works. And I’ve had to fire clients. I had a client in Chicago. And I mean, I had to talk to him so many times about, I live in the South. You’re in big city, Chicago. You can’t just browbeat these people. You can’t just yell at them. And we were just punching bag. And after a couple months of that and having a couple, you know, conversation like that, we just said, we’re done. You know, we’re not going to be your punching bag anymore. And so there’s, there’s even just regions that of the, of the country that we’re just like, I don’t know if I really want to work with these people.

Lee Wochner
Yeah. Years ago, I worked here in LA at 20th Century Fox. And at the time, the head of the studio was in court ordered anger management. And the people he’s yelling at are therefore yelling at other people. And I was the only person, I started as a temp when I was in grad school, and then they formalized my position for a bit and then I left. And they were always really nice to me. And one time an executive, assistant came to me, I mean, really nice, like Barry Diller shook my hand, talked to me. I mean, really like people with awful reputations. And this executive VP who had three executive assistants, one said to me, how come everybody’s always nice to you? And I said, because they know I wouldn’t stand for it, I would leave and I think they need me. And here, the culture we have is nobody gets yelled at. I mean, you know, it’s also, you know, nobody’s laying down rose petals for you to walk on either, but good for you for firing clients who are shitty to your people. That’s just not allowed. It’s not, it’s not good. It’s uncalled for. Yeah, which is.

David McGraw:
Now, there is the opposite of that. I’ve had a client that, you know, all these modern project management systems that all of our agencies use, they’re pretty much public to the company, right? So we had a client that was well -versed in logging in and putting in comments and probably put in about a thousand word posts that the entire company could see with, you know, F -bombs and A -bombs and, you know, just trashing me in front of my entire company. So I’m traveling at the time and I get a text message like, you seeing this? And I look at it and I’m like, what the? I called the guy 30 minutes later. I call my team on speaker and I go, Hey guys, I need you to set up invoicing for a 30 hour retainer. We’ve increased the retainer from five to 30, you know, 35. I was like, I’ve established that we’re not going to accept that anymore. He’s going to apologize. And we’re going to get him to the place where he needs to get. So I was like, I took a lot of enjoyment out of taking that client and just reverse engineering and reverse psychology and turning them into a bigger client. So I, you know, I don’t like getting yelled at. I won’t put up for it, but I also don’t hold grudges and I could care less what people think about me. So if you know somebody bad mouth me, I’m like, are they sending the checks? So.

Lee Wochner:
Yeah, good job. See that that’s the equanimity that you have that I appreciate. So let’s talk about change for a little bit. Because you’re in the business of change as am I. That’s what that’s what marketing agencies do and software development people. And you’ve been in business 16 years and we’ve been a business 17 years. So similar paths. What has changed recently in marketing? What’s what’s new? What’s going on?

David McGraw:
I don’t want to say AI because I’m sure that’s what everyone says. It’s like, you know, 16 years ago, if you went to college and got a marketing degree, you’d probably be studying personas, audiences, market approach. Now a marketing degree teaches you it’s a statistics degree. You know, it’s how to get data out of Google Analytics. I’ve actually I’ve been trying to work on a project to make analytics simple again. Because it always blows my mind that when Google Analytics first came out, everyone used it, everyone loved it, everyone knew how to use it. And they just kept dumping more complexity into it to the point where if you were a mom and pop shop, there is no way you would be able to utilize Google Analytics to any value. You had to hire professionals, so good for us, bad for our small clients. And so I think the whole trend of the digital marketing world, and marketing in general is just this over -reliance on tools to do it for you. You we’ve got tools to write articles for you now. We’ve got tools to create images for you. And then people are wondering why the level of satisfaction or the quality of the work’s going down. It’s because it reminds me of like the movie Top Gun, right? The premise of the movie Top Gun was that every fighter pilot around the world, was relying on heat seeking missiles and forgot how to dogfight. Right? So they had to create a top gun school to reteach the basics of dogfighting. And that’s where marketing is at right now. Everyone’s relying on the heat seeking missile of AI powered automated AB testing, you know, throw out all the buzzwords and, and you’re missing out on the connection, the values, the, you know, the the relationship. I mean, people work, I mean, that’s the number one thing. People want to work with people they like. It doesn’t matter that you want to.

Lee Wochner:
Well, yeah, and also you have to be able to actually communicate in a humanistic and humane way, right? And so I think of AI in a way as broadcast and an actual message development by humans as narrow cast and broadcast dies pretty quickly. We live in a post -broadcast age, right? I mean, the music I listen to is probably concurrently enjoyed by a thousand people around the world because it’s not Taylor Swift, right? And there’s a market for Taylor Swift. I’m not it. And I nothing against Ms. Swift and she doesn’t care anyway. But sure, there are some things that artificial intelligence can do for you and do quickly, but it can’t compose a compelling marketing message. It can’t adhere to you in the way that major brands do. Like why? Why my girlfriend will stay only at a Marriott, as an example, right? The Marriott’s really important to her. Why, you know, some people will book the hugely expensive hotel and other people are like me, are happy to stay at some dump as long as there’s wifi, a bed and a jacuzzi where I can drink bourbon and smoke cigars, right? That’s, it’s like, I don’t need the other things, but some people do. And so AI, AI is fast and AI is powerful, but it’s not specific. And it’s not warm, which of course creates an opening for companies like yours and like mine, because people still need real stories, real things that ultimately get someone to take action. And so I think AI is not good at that.

David McGraw:
And that is exactly why I love what we do is we don’t do as much on the public facing side as much as we do on the internal side. Because there’s nothing more enjoyable than creating software that takes someone’s job from eight hours down to two hours. And then they have six hours to make an impact somewhere else in their organization. Like when you talk to somebody that you just made their life easier and took a mundane task away off their plate, that is super satisfying. It’s way better than, hey, you got two more clicks today. I love internal tools, and they’re also a lot harder to replace with a generic solution. A lot of clients come to us and say, hey, can you just do a custom thing in Salesforce? I can’t even you know, these are really expensive, giant platforms that yes, if you were a SharePoint expert, you could create a custom application in it. But that’s typically super overkill for a lot of places that still need technology. And also, you know, going back to that corporate comment question, when you work with big corporations, it’s largely thankless and it’s just expected. And… And then I hate the mentality of you never get fired for hiring IBM. Nobody in the corporate world takes a risk, or very few take a risk with a smaller company because ultimately their job will be at risk. And if the smaller company fails, then it looks bad on them. So.

Lee Wochner:
And then there’s the obverse of all of these nonprofits where people are working from passion and trying to make a positive improvement in the world. It just motivates me. I mean, it’s just amazing what some individuals and some nonprofit organizations are able to accomplish. Last week, I was talking to a gentleman who has saved 20 ,000 children from human trafficking. I mean, it’s just… that guy gets to go to heaven. I mean, that’s just amazing story, right? And he just happened to be in, he was a teacher in Vietnam and saw all these kids and then noticed that one was making a little money and always giving it to people down in the alley and found out what that was about and set about putting a stop to that. So I’m just, you know, everybody has a role. Like some of our clients need the clicks. In fact, all of our clients need the clicks. So there’s a role for that too, right?

David McGraw
Yeah, we do. Yeah.

Lee Wochner:
Click to donate, click to buy, right? There’s a role for that too. And, you know, like you, I just love all of it. I just love doing it. I love working with people. I love manifesting success. You know, it’s a real good thing. Yeah.

David McGraw:
Can I share a story about one of the worst nonprofits I’ve ever worked for? I’m not gonna name names in this one. But their business model was to raise money just like every other nonprofit. They had to make money. So what they did is they hired me to create a technology platform that once you donated to them once, we essentially started building a database of just spying on their donors so that they could.

David McGraw:
Yeah, it literally if you donated once they would ingest your entire social media, your any any message board that you’re like they would tie all this data in so that the next time they call you they would be like hey Lee, I see that you’ve enjoyed this play last month, you know and to try to create an artificial connection to get more money out of them. And I was like, I feel so.

Lee Wochner:
Did the new privacy laws put an end to this?

David McGraw:
This client was a long time ago. I haven’t followed up with if they’re able to still do that. But at first I just thought, how terrible must you feel that you’re trying to make an impact but your end result is you’re trying to scam the people that are helping you on your mission as much as possible. I felt so dirty working.

Lee Wochner:
Why’d you take it?

David McGraw:
At the time, I was being directed to do it. This was not Oyova’s. Part of the reason why I started Oyova.

Lee Wochner:
I see. Yeah. Yeah, good for you. Because I’m like, this doesn’t sound like the David McGraw I know. Okay, yeah, that’s icky. Yeah, you know, it’s interesting in in when we have prospects, we’re we talked to we have prospect meetings pretty much every day. And I’m interviewing them, of course, which I know you and you and your partner do as well, you want to make sure it’s going to be a good fit. And we’ve turned down some things that we don’t feel so good about. We don’t think that there are things we want to be associated with. So we’ve turned them down or either we’re not the right fit or we just don’t like the values behind it. We don’t think it’s what we would feel good about putting out in the universe. And like you, I have kids, other people here have kids and everybody’s part of an extended universe. We’re all connected here and you’re trying to do positive things and no, there are other things I don’t wanna be involved with. So what are the… What are the most important things, David, that you think everybody could do right now to help with their marketing? Are there some things that, like, if you’ve got a marketing issue, what’s the top five things you should do?

David McGraw:
That’s tough. I think everyone’s story is going to be different. I just talked to a furniture company and I’ve been thinking of ideas and they just moved to a new location. They’re not getting any foot traffic in. So that’s like a completely different problem than, you traditional digital marketing. But I’m still sitting there thinking of solutions and I go, you know, you guys need to do, get a grill out here, grill up some hot dogs, give away some free hot dogs, bring out all your furniture so people can see it. Cause you can’t see from the building, you don’t know that somebody knew. And for 10 years, that was like an office. So it wasn’t even, you know, people, the public didn’t think they could stop by and come into this storefront. So one of these ideas I’m coming up with is like, you’ve got to change the perception of your storefront because people are ingrained with it’s just an office. So I don’t know, you really have to think about it on a per project basis, but it’s how do you make somebody go, wow, what’s this? You know curious because if you can’t drive curiosity, you’re certainly not gonna drive clicks or traffic into the store. So What can they do?

Lee Wochner:
You know, your example there, first of all, you’re right. Of course, it’s a trick question. All cases are individual. Years ago, somebody built a really nice steakhouse here, not too far from our office. And it was this beautiful, heavily smoked glass on the outside. And nobody ever went inside because you couldn’t see what was in there. There was not enough signage outside. You couldn’t figure it out. It looked intimidating and they failed. And then somebody picked it up for cheap and put another bar restaurant in there. Same outcome. And then finally somebody bought it, stripped all of that off and you go, oh, look, there’s a restaurant in here. And now it’s been a booming success for like 10 years.

David McGraw:
So I touched on it earlier, but I’ll say it again for marketing. Don’t follow the herd. The herd in marketing leads you off a cliff every single time, or it leads you to nowhere. And so an example here is there’s a building here at the beach that was a grocery store, it got bought, that’s turning into something. And they were, you know, I knew the people that bought it and they were, or I knew somebody that knew somebody, and they were kind of putting feelers out there of what would work. And the leading idea was a sports bar.

Lee Wochner :
Mm -hmm. We need more of those. There’s so few.

David McGraw:
And exactly. So I said, look, we’re in Jacksonville Beach. This is a pretty Jacksonville in general is a pretty conservative. It’s like, you know, my dad calls this area the Redneck Riviera, you know, and to some points he’s he nailed it. And so I told him, I was like, you know what I would put there? I would put a country bar with a stage. And I’m not I’m not a country fan. I’m just looking at the market going. They don’t have one of those anywhere in the city. So stand out, stand, you know, be your own and you’ll, you know, it also reminds me of a story of I’m a New England Patriots fan because I was born outside of Boston and I started a fan club here in Jacksonville and we’d go to restaurants and try to get them to host us. And, place after place after place. We’re like, no, we’re a Jaguar bar. I’m like, every place in this city is a Jaguar bar. You are not standing out at all. Finally, we had somebody agree to us and we were bringing 50, 60 people of business every Sunday, made them a ton of money. And then when the Patriots came to Jacksonville to play, they made $38 ,000 off us in one weekend. We had the official Patriots team come and the cheerleaders show up and

Lee Wochner:
Thank you. Yeah.

David McGraw:
It was a big deal, but people are so stuck in being in their little box of doing what’s safe and what everyone else is doing that they are never going to be ultimately successful. You can tread water for a long time, but if you really want to break out and do something, you’ve got to do the unexpected. And that’s everywhere. That’s your product line, your product offering, your building, your online site, your everything. You’ve got to do something unique. Because again, that drives curiosity and people like that.

Lee Wochner:
I 100 % agree. I mean, that’s why our company is called Counterintuity. I mean, it’s gotta be different. You are 100 % right. What’s next for you and Oyova?

David McGraw:
Well, you know, we’re coming out of this scary transition of where we had to graduate some people. We’re seeing growth already. It’s like the floodgates are open. We’re being aggressive with our quoting. You know, now that I’m a little bit more involved in the quoting process, which I wasn’t, you know, for the last three years, I was happily out of that. You know, and when I see numbers, or the economy slowing down or the lead slowing down. I’m saying like, get whatever you can get for what, you know, adjust our solution to their budget, not just throw out a number and say, well, if you can’t afford it, we don’t want to work with you. And that’s what we were starting to fall into is this idea that, which I loved, you know, we would set a price and if you didn’t meet it, you know, Hey, you’re not working with us. You’re not our client. And that’s great in the good times. But if there’s ever a downturn, you can’t, you can’t react like that. So we’re, we’re just going back to, and my business partner came up with this, uh, mantra is just be the easiest company to work with and everything we do the communication the delivery You know think through the things we need to know like our big focus now is If they’ve got an e -commerce site that we’re gonna start asking for you know authorized net tokens, you know start collecting that information way ahead before we need it because too often in projects We wait until we need it to ask for it. And now we got it now there’s slack and I don’t want to sit there and wait three days for someone to get a turnaround on whatever their token is. That’s a waste. So it’s about being very predictive and being ahead of the game.

Lee Wochner:
What’s the best way for people to reach you and to learn more about you and Oyova?

David McGraw:
You know, I’m off all social media. So I would say LinkedIn is about the only I don’t even know if I call that social media, but I’m on LinkedIn. Interestingly enough, there’s probably 1000 David McGraw’s. So I get email bills from a David McGraw in Houston. There’s a David McGraw in Virginia that drives Alexis. There’s a David McGraw in Ohio, whose kid plays baseball. So I somehow because I have David dot McGraw email address, I get all their emails. So David.mcgraw@oyova.com. You can contact us at Oyova.com as well and hit us on our LinkedIn page.

Lee Wochner:
And we’ll put it in the show notes. As far as I’m concerned, there’s only one David McGraw. Let me just make that very clear. These these others are immaterial. If there’s one thing you hope people would take away from this conversation, what would it be?

David McGraw:
Stand out, listen to good people. Don’t let fear hold you back.

Lee Wochner:
Cool. David, thank you so much. Always a pleasure.

David McGraw:
Thanks for having me, this was great.

Jaclyn Uloth:
Thanks for listening we’re glad you came. That’s What C! Said is produced by Lisa Pham and engineered by Joe Curet. It’s available on Apple podcast, Spotify and where ever you get your podcast. Please like and follow the show. Visit Counterintuity.com to sign up and learn more.