Episode 24: Building a Business through Meaningful Relationships

00:33
Joseph Testa
Welcome to another episode of Marketing Moves. I'm your host, Joe Testa, and today we're talking about the intersection of technology, business and people. If you're interested in technology, cultivating culture and intentionally growing your business, this episode is for you. Today's guest, John Lurtz, is a well accomplished tech founder and cultivator of business and company culture. He co founded Moreland Connect, a custom software and application development company HQ in Cleveland, Ohio, with clients across the world. Prior to founding Moreland connect, John worked at Accenture. John's professional achievements are impressive, but what truly distinguishes him are his personal values. He places a strong emphasis on the importance of people in both his life and career. John is not just respected professionally, he is also deeply valued as a friend and family member.

01:17
Joseph Testa
He has built his life around meaningful relationships, marrying his high school sweetheart, raising six children, and actively contributing to his local community. John's approach is thoughtful, innovative, and centered around making genuine connections with others. John, welcome to marketing moves. It's great to have you with us.

01:33
John Lurtz
Thanks, Joe. Happy to be here.

01:34
Joseph Testa
Absolutely. I wanted to start with some background. Can you take us back to the early days? What inspired you to get into technology?

01:42
John Lurtz
Sure, yeah. As you might remember, I was a football player in college, and my original major at the University of Akron was underwater basket weaving. Just kidding. And I broke my neck in a game in 1998, and I cracked my c seven vertebrae and that was it. So football was over. The dream of going to the NFL was gone, and I had to change my focus from athletics to academics. So I quickly changed my major to operations management with a minor in computer science, and so finished off my degree at Akron with that and then went on to work at Anderson Consulting, which is now accenture, and flew all over the country for many years. I was an SAP guy, so I was working for Dow, Dupont, Polyone, ExxonMobil, Johnson and Johnson tioxide, just to name a few.

02:33
John Lurtz
My wife decided that I was on the road too much and we wanted to have some children, and you can't make kids when you're traveling all the time. So I left Accenture and went into real estate investing originally, and since then, we've had six kids. They're 19, down to five. And so that's been a tremendous blessing. But what I learned at Accenture was not just tech, but I learned how to understand business process and what makes things move and what makes things go for a business, what drives revenue, what drives expenses, how to become more efficient operationally.

03:11
John Lurtz
And so after I was done doing real estate investing, I got a little bored, and so I decided to do a tech startup, and my focus was to bring all of the best practices that the Fortune 100 has been thriving on for years in technology to the rust Belt and the middle market. So I went on this crusade to try and save all these local manufacturers and smaller companies in our region.

03:35
Joseph Testa
Wow. Well, that's enviable for sure. We know there's plenty of those local manufacturers, and I think we've seen an emphasis recently, at least in my years, in starting tech. I have a similar kind of trajectory, except I didn't finish school. I dropped right out and actually joined Vivifront.

03:53
John Lurtz
You learned enough.

03:53
Joseph Testa
Exactly. I learned enough. But before that, I was a freelancer, figuring out all of my own things, especially on the people side. That taught me a lot. I already had the ability to work within tech, so applying that and getting into a space where I didn't have to be the businessman was huge. Moved up here to Vividfront, and the rest is history. So I think what I saw in Cleveland was a lack of young talent staying in the city. And I think it's really hard to see all of your friends go to Chicago or New York City, chasing their dreams on the west coast and thinking that your local town, Cleveland, can't do what you think it can do, and you spend your talent, yeah, we call.

04:33
John Lurtz
It Moreland the brain drain, and we're actively trying to reverse that trend. We love Cleveland. We grew up here. This is our town. Let's make this a hotbed for technology, and let's start to serve not just our region, but the rest of the country and the rest of the world from here. So anything we can do to help keep these kids engaged. The Browns had a better season, so maybe that will help some.

04:58
Joseph Testa
Yeah, you can only hope, right? I think the first time we met something so interesting that you did, were all at a roundtable, big conference table up in the springsteen, as we call it, and were talking about our own backgrounds at Moreland, Vivifront, individually, what we did, respectively, at those organizations. But you kind of stopped that whole conversation and asked, what are you into? Something along the lines of, what are you into personally? Who are you as a human being? I thought that was so interesting because I've never had that in a professional setting. I've had it in maybe a team building session. Talk to me about what prompted that sort of question in that setting.

05:35
John Lurtz
Yeah. I think it's when you first meet someone, they're constantly evaluating everything that you say, everything that you do, your facial expressions, what you're talking through. And it's important to establish trust, and the quickest way to do that is to talk about something personal. So engage with them, find out what makes them tick, find out what their interests are, find out what's important to them, find out what they did last weekend. And so it gets the person to open up and start to share things with you about their life. And then almost always, I won't say every time, but almost always, there will be something where you can come together and you have a common interest or common experience or know the same person, and then you can use that as your anchor to then go through the rest of the meeting.

06:25
John Lurtz
So establishing that personal trust is important.

06:29
Joseph Testa
Definitely. Definitely. I think it was so interesting for you to go right there early on, though. I think so many people are, I guess, caught up in talking about what they do in their professional space, that they forget about the human aspect of who we actually are under all of the business and accolades wherever they lie in business. So I thought that was so interesting. And I tried to look at how I handled those interim meetings after that, respectively, and I was like, I think I'm being my true self, but I'm gonna try to channel some john in here because I thought that was such a beautiful way to kind of start off a friendship. As I said early on in the intro, Moreland Connect is a friend of ours, a strategic partner of sorts.

07:10
Joseph Testa
Talk to us a little bit about what Moreland Connect does in the software and development space.

07:14
John Lurtz
Yeah, so we're all over the board, so there's not an industry we haven't worked in. We work a lot in retail, healthcare, transportation, and manufacturing, because that's what's around us here in Cleveland. But we started out the business really as a mini accenture. So were doing some ERP implementations, some integration work, some continuous process improvement consulting, and then we found that a lot of these smaller companies couldn't afford SAP. They can't afford these big erps, and they don't necessarily need an ERP. So these smaller mom and pop businesses, so these are 50 million to 500 million in revenue companies. They all have one or two processes that are their magic sauce. It's what makes them go. And what we started to do was build solutions.

08:03
John Lurtz
Whether it's a customer portal or an inventory control system, or an asset tracking system or a field service mobile application. We started to build these specific things custom for these companies that were game changers. So once we started to do that for a few, the word got out. And as you know, before we started working together and you really are helping us tremendously with our marketing. We've seen great strides since we started working with you, but we did very little. It was all relationship based, it was all word of mouth, it was all success stories. And one person that we serve well would tell their friend. And that's how we grew the business up into the twenties. And we're looking to double here in the next couple years. And we're excited to be partnering with you guys.

08:49
Joseph Testa
Absolutely. I know. I think that was one of our, my first question is when Matty, our president, came up to me and was like, hey, I have this contact I met at so and so. Are you interested in meeting them? Like it's a development shop. So what are you trying to do here? Take our shine. But then obviously looked in, kind of dove into your ecosystem, the world you work in. And it is certainly relation like in relation to what we do, but the audiences we serve are so different. But I was a little bit nervous at first, got to know you saw what you did. Certainly different in the aspect of things you work on. At Vivifron, obviously we're primarily working with more consumer facing marketing tactics, whereas you're primarily working on operations side.

09:40
Joseph Testa
What would you say is one of the biggest differences when you're building a stakeholders business, their operations into an application, versus maybe making a pretty website that attracts leads and.

09:54
John Lurtz
Yeah, yeah, I think it's, you know, everybody comes to you with either a problem or an idea and you have to meet them where they're at, understand what their problem statement is, what their idea is, and then dig in and understand their business. And then what we do at Moreland is we determine on our own if we agree with their problem statement, if we agree with their idea and if we think it will improve or have an impact on their business. And if we do, then we will invest further and engage because we know that we can meet them where they're at, help them get the tech that they need and walk them where they need to be. So it's a very consultative approach. And that's what sets Moreland apart from a typical development shop.

10:43
John Lurtz
A lot of times dev shops will come in and they'll say, here's our rate, give us the requirements, and then they get started so they don't add any business or functional value to the equation. And a lot of people that own a business have been in that business their whole life. So their only context is running a tool and die shop for the last 50 years that their dad and granddad ran before them. So they don't have a more broad business context. So they'll miss things. They have blind spots. And with our Accenture pedigree, what we offer is a total package. And tech has really become almost the easy part. Building the solution is not difficult. Writing the lines of code, building the data model, hosting it on Azure or AWS, getting it all working, that's easy.

11:32
John Lurtz
What's difficult is getting into the mind of the stakeholder and helping them determine what is best and then building that solution. Design. Once that design is done and architected, the tech is easy. And we even see that. We were talking a little bit earlier today about AI and the impact that it's having on the offshore model. And having worked with offshore developers a lot in my career, especially in the Accenture days, it can be a great success if you tell them exactly what you need, down to the very fine detail. Yeah. And so now with Microsoft Copilot and chat, GPT and even Google Gemini, although they've had some controversy recently, you can feed that level of data to that AI and it will spit back the lines of code, and it won't be 100% ready to go, but it will be 85%.

12:27
John Lurtz
So the requirement in the world and in tech for offshore model, it's really becoming something that you can replace with AI. So it'll be that much more important for tech and consulting firms to understand the business piece, because that's what AI cannot replace.

12:46
Joseph Testa
Yeah, I think that's always been our big value add at Vivfront, is understanding the different verticals and also consumers we're speaking to and any of the clients that we work for. The hardest part of that, to your point, is the strategy around that, though, and that's something you can't replace with a computer or anything like that. But what you can do is work a little bit more efficiently through that process. And I think we're excited about AI in that regard. But what we always tell our clients is we sell our people's time and the experts we put in front of them who are delegated with the task of taking their idea to an actual working, functioning app or marketing campaign design, whatever it might be, are the people we're really introducing you to along with the processes that we have under the hood.

13:32
Joseph Testa
So it's on us to work in AI where it's going to work best. But it's certainly something that's going to benefit and hopefully, I don't know how often you've had this problem, but we take so many offshore solutions and fix them. I hope that model is either fixed through this or completely gotten rid of because I'm sick of inheriting spaghetti code.

13:52
John Lurtz
Yeah. What we found, we've done many, we call them offshore saves and we've done many of them at Moreland. It's interesting because the stakeholder will come to you and say, well, we've already spent most of the budget, but nothing works. Can you help? So that oftentimes can be an interesting discussion, but we do find a way to help them if we agree with their idea and believe in it. And that's what really sets us apart, like we talked about is we're going to come alongside you and not just spend your money because you want to spend it. If we believe in it, then we're going to work with you.

14:30
Joseph Testa
Exactly. And that only allows for greater successes too. I think one of the things we try to apply to our clients, it sounds like in a similar fashion, where you're making that lens of decision, is we have core values. At Vivifront, we try to look at our clients in the same vein as those core values as we look at our employees, our actions when we're working with those clients. If they don't share our core values, it's hard to work with them in a successful way. It's really important to believe in their ideas. One, believe in the solution that you're putting forward and then that's probably the best way to get to successful projects because working against someone who doesn't even believe in their own ideas is not in our best interest.

15:09
John Lurtz
Yeah. And it's critical to find good people, not just for Moreland, but for vivid as well. And when we are looking to hire a new consultant or developer, we evaluate them on what we call the steam methodology. So s t e a m. Okay. And the s stands for sled dog. So this is somebody that will stay at work late, work through the weekend, do whatever they need to do to hit a deadline, somebody that's just a hard worker. And then the t is for team first somebody that you can depend on that will grab lunch for everybody else. If your car breaks down two minutes from the office, they'll go pick you up, bring you in. E is for easy. Somebody that's easy. We've all had people in our careers that we worked with that were not easy to work with.

15:57
John Lurtz
So we know when that is. So we look for someone that's easy. And then a is for attitude. So attitude to win. We like people that want to win. And part of winning is failing. And when you get knocked down or you mess up on a client project or you check in code that breaks the build, you got to get right back up and get to it. You can't dwell on it. You can't dwell on that. You just have to keep moving and improve and get up and. And then the m is for mindful. And so these are people that will remember that it's your birthday, remember that your dog died last week, people that actually care and are investing in each other.

16:36
John Lurtz
So if we find people that meet all those criteria, even if they're not a great technologist yet, we can teach them that part. But those core fundamentals, you can't teach.

16:45
Joseph Testa
Yeah. That's awesome. I think we share probably two or three similar team. First is one of ours as well. And then empathetic people. We have different departments. Right. So I think that's the biggest challenge that we have compared to maybe in Moreland, where it's obviously tech is already so nuanced in itself, understanding all those domains. I know you guys are working throughout different languages as well. That's difficult enough. Add in the mix of we have marketing, we have design, we have PM's, so we have a couple extra layers there. So it's really important for all teams to be empathetic to each of those domains. Nuances. Right. We all have them, and we all have to be respectful of them, but also work productively to get things done.

17:26
John Lurtz
Yeah. And the skills that are required to be successful in each department are slightly different and differently skilled people oftentimes don't get along great.

17:36
Joseph Testa
Exactly.

17:36
John Lurtz
So you have to be empathetic with each other and understanding and kind and caring and loving and. Yeah, all those things.

17:44
Joseph Testa
Exactly. One of the things that I've noticed and heard through the grapevine, heard through your own stories of Moreland connect, is that you've established an incredible culture there of, I wouldn't call it easygoing, but get stuff done sort of culture. But let's have fun while we're doing it and enjoy our time together. How do you cultivate that culture and embrace technology at the same time? You know, it can be so quick. Late nights, things of that nature. How do you do that?

18:10
John Lurtz
Yeah, I think it's. It's a brotherhood and a sisterhood that we try and build there. Talking about the steam methodology is one piece of it, but culture is important. And if everybody is part of the culture and everybody's bought in and everybody's drinking from the same water cooler, it gets really easy. And what makes culture tough is when you have a new person that doesn't quite fit. And so then the challenge becomes, how can we adapt this person to the culture, help them improve so they can be successful with us? And most of the time, we're able to turn people around. Sometimes we can't. And that's okay, because you owe it to an employee that if it's not a good fit, they need to go do something else. That way, they can find excellence in their career and be a great success. Right.

19:03
John Lurtz
Every working person needs to know two things every day. So every single one of our guys and gals needs to know that their work is valued by the company. And then, number two, that they feel good about the work that they're doing. So if they don't have those two things, then we know we need to talk with them, take them out to eat, get some drinks, you know, work through it. So we're very intentional about meeting with each of our employees. Jeff and I are. Jeff Kavlik is my business partner and founder and mentor from Accenture. And we make sure that you can tell when somebody's off, you know, something's happened. And just taking that extra time to invest in them, find out what's going on, and then let them know that you care more about them than the job.

19:48
John Lurtz
And our employees all know that they're valued and loved by us, and they can come to us with anything.

19:55
Joseph Testa
Absolutely. And I think we share the same idea of what success looks for. Success looks like for any of our employees. Right. It's that they. They love, for the most part, what they're doing and are doing things that they think are allowing them to grow as a human being, as a business individual, as a creative, whatever it is, whatever their domain is. But that's what we truly care about. So up or out? If it's best for them to be out, because we're not serving them in the way that they need to be served, totally fine. That's better for the culture. And it can be such a difficult lens to look at things through, but it's really important for maintaining what you've built and all of that intentional growth you've kind of gone through to allow for the culture that exists there today.

20:38
Joseph Testa
So a kind of separate but similar adjacent question. Do you have any advice for someone looking to start their own tech business today, how to establish that culture in this fast paced environment that we're in?

20:51
John Lurtz
Yeah, I would say, well, a lot of times when people ask me, should I start my own business, my first question to them is, how much intestinal fortitude do you have? Yeah, I got to meet your founder coming in here today, and he would share the same opinion. It's hard, and when you have your own small business and you're growing, there's ebbs and there's flows, and a lot of times when you hit an ebb, it's easy to just say up, I tried this. But if you stick to it and you stick to your vision and your mission and you're passionate and you keep the energy and you keep going and keep going, eventually it will work. So I would tell. I would just try and measure that person's commitment to their idea if they're going to start a tech company.

21:37
John Lurtz
And that's the most important thing, is that personal commitment from the founders. And if they have it's going to eventually go, and if they don't, it won't.

21:47
Joseph Testa
Yeah, that's a great point. I think initiative, whatever we call that, wanted to do something, to accomplish something, once it starts at that founder level. You brought up Andrew earlier. I think he passed it on to me, Lisa and Maddie, very early on into our careers here at Vivifront. But when you can cultivate that intentional initiative, want to learn and understand as a base layer of what a human being working at this company looks like, it's contagious, and you really get buy in from, and everyone who starts at that, whether it's the third employee or the 30th employee, it should kind of go down that tree the same way.

22:27
John Lurtz
100% agree. And I think our job as men and women is to serve other people that are around us. And you do that with your employees, you do that with your customers, you do that with your vendors. You do that with someone you see at the grocery store that's having a hard time because they've got a kid in a stroller or something, your job is to constantly be looking for ways to serve other people. And if your founder, like Jeff and I, has those same morals and ideals and ethics and the servant leadership mindset. It's going to go great.

23:02
Joseph Testa
Exactly. Love that. Something unique, I think that we touched on a little bit earlier. Vividfront has a PM model. Right. We have a dedicated role for PM's now. We do have web PM's, we have marketing PM's. So we have a little bit of specialty built in there, but we do have the PM layer. Talk to me how Moreland teaches a lot of tech focused people who maybe don't have that innate PM ability to work through your client projects.

23:30
John Lurtz
Yeah. So our goal is to develop our tech folks into full stack developers that can work on every side of a solution and along the way they have to develop the ability to project manage. And so a lot of times companies will have a separate PM layer and we don't do that because if you can talk directly to the person writing the code and we've built within them PM capabilities, then it cuts out a layer of the equation. So it allows us to be more lean in our approach and it allows us to respond more quickly to feedback or issues from the stakeholder.

24:13
John Lurtz
If there's a bug or something, you don't have to go to the PM and they type it up an email, put it into Jira, something gets lost in translation and it's an extra hour or two or day or two that something could have been fixed if you just called your PM developer and said, hey, here's the issue. Okay, one line of code done.

24:33
Joseph Testa
Yeah, I think that's always been a challenge for us in different ways when we, I think the big difference, like I alluded to earlier, is that we kind of, our ideal client scenario is that we're working across all facets of their organization.

24:47
John Lurtz
Right?

24:47
Joseph Testa
So not just on development, but we have a marketing initiative going in tandem with maybe some new web development work. Also, there might be a branding exercise going on in the background. So I think that's the big difference for us to balance all of that. You kind of need that quarterback that can make sure and hold those individual executors responsible for their work. I would say we've tried to build systems to allow our executors to function in their own right. They should be able to speak to clients, they should be able to respond to emails. Those things are definitely built into our process. But I love how you found efficiency and, you know, owning that and turning those individual executors into actual PM.

25:31
John Lurtz
So I think we do have, based on that definition, what you would call a PM. So at Moreland, we call that an executive lead.

25:40
Joseph Testa
Gotcha.

25:40
John Lurtz
So that's either myself, Jeff, my partner, my other partner, Justin, Mark, or Steve. So those are like the five executives. So every one of our clients has. We take, each client has an executive that is caring for them, looking across the entire enterprise, making sure that the devs are doing what they're supposed to do, and we're delivering on what we promised to deliver. So we do have that in that regard, but we don't have the middle layer of PM's that were talking about.

26:10
Joseph Testa
Understood? Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I just thought that was such a different kind of take on things, even in that definition, a little bit different. But it's good that we both expect, I think, these individual roles to speak to their work at the very least, and also be client facing. Everyone at our organization should be able to speak to that client in some capacity, especially about their own domain. It's really important. It relieves a lot of headaches on all ends.

26:33
John Lurtz
It helps develop the total person, too. A lot of times in tech, people will be very techy and not as relational, not as outgoing, more introverted people, less extroverted. It's a good area for them to develop, to be able to talk and share their ideas and talk appropriately about different topics with the client, whatever that may be. And really, if you think about how you improve yourself in any area, you find where you're weakest and then you put your focus there. We do that with each of our guys, too. Likes to do what they're best at, but if you only ever do what you're really good at, then you can only go so far.

27:19
Joseph Testa
Exactly.

27:20
John Lurtz
But if you have multiple things that you've developed expertise in, then your trajectory becomes much greater.

27:25
Joseph Testa
Exactly. I think it's, again, part of that, looking after these individuals, knowing their strengths, knowing their weaknesses, but also spending time on those weaknesses is a key to that development. So gotta look out for these folks. How do you think, though, in your culture, you brought up the steam methodology? Do you think there's anything specific when you were initially doing projects and handling those that made your culture so holistic that the people serving on these projects should have more than one skillset?

27:54
John Lurtz
Yeah, I think it's because it's one word, care. We actually care. C a R e. We care. Right. And people can sense that. They can sense that you're genuine, that you are really trying to get behind them and figure out what they need and really invest in them and help. And I tell people once we get into a meeting or two with a prospect, and they sense. Hey, these guys actually want to help. They'll make money off of us, but they really want to help us. And once we establish that level of trust, then it just goes and we do the same thing with our employees.

28:32
Joseph Testa
Right, right. It's one of the hardest things I think we've had to learn is that people in that role end up in the role of establishing trust with clients. Always end up in some way of selling the company, whether it be for future projects, keeping them on board for existing projects, or even new work. They have to be able to establish that trust and also serve in that kind of holistic. Everyone is selling vividfront at some point in the Vividfront project cycle. They have to have that ability to make a client feel like they trust vividfront and what they're doing.

29:08
John Lurtz
Yeah, that's great.

29:08
Joseph Testa
Yeah. Like Vividfront, you've built your business primarily on the back of referrals and existing relationships. I know you talked about that a little bit earlier, obviously reaching out to us to do some fun work with on the marketing realm still, you know, mostly referral based. How has that changed over the years from when you first started establishing these relationships to now? What does that look like for you?

29:30
John Lurtz
Well, it's any business, when you first start, you go to your friends and family first. Think about the new insurance salesman. He signs up his parents, his neighbors, his grandparents, his aunts, his uncles. Right? So it's the same model, not just in tech, but in any business. So in the beginning, we leaned hard on our accenture relationships. So people that we worked with at Accenture are now CIO's and vps of tech at different companies. So we would go to these people that we worked in the trenches with for years. And so we already had trust and these people would invest in us. So our first batch of clients were not family, but they were close friends from the accenture days. And then once we started to establish a reputation, it just went from there.

30:20
John Lurtz
And as you know, we hired a chief revenue officer at the end of last year, Paul Francke, also an accenture guy. They call it the accenture mafia. Sometimes, you know, Paul's job is to wrap process and methodology around what we do. So he's not going to change how we sell, he's not going to change the message, he's not going to change how we add value and how we seek to serve everyone around us. But he's going to start to track it and he's going to start to bring more leads into the top of the funnel. So that's what Paul's been tasked to do, and he's doing a fantastic job. And we're trying to double this business in the next two years. So it's an ambitious goal, but we have the intestinal fortitude like we talked about, and we're going to make it happen.

31:07
Joseph Testa
Yeah. You believe in that goal? A natural ebb and flow of the organization, hiring that Paul as a CRO or whatever the title is. I think we've seen us evolve into primarily relying on Spot, Andrew Spot's relationships to building our portfolio up, building our respect in the area, not just in Cleveland area, northeast Ohio, but throughout the country. And then obviously, people like Maddie, who is great in person, great on the sales side, but also great. Just someone who believes and adds value to businesses through her opinions and ideas. We've seen that scale into ourselves and then future state. Yeah, maybe it looks like we have an individual sales team or something of that nature, but it's definitely evolved from just purely referrals to, you know, we still rely on those, but we're doing a little bit more now. That's good.

32:00
John Lurtz
Yeah, we. And were talking about developing that skill in each of our people. And some people, as you know, at Vivint and Moreland, both some people just are not equipped to close a deal or to sell, but they can still. We went to a training with a woman named Victoria Labalm, and she talks about the through line. And every person should know what their through line is. And that's what makes them. What their core values are, what's important to them and what they're good at and their worldview and who they are as a person. So each of your employees should be able to tell you what their through line is. And if they don't know what it is, you can do a little exercise with them to help them figure it out. And so I'll do it with you right now.

32:51
Joseph Testa
Let's go. Let's do it.

32:52
John Lurtz
Okay, so let's imagine that you're driving. It's a end of summer, nice warm day, and you're taking one of your kids to college, and you're driving, you're talking. You're reliving their childhood. You're talking about the first Christmas, their first bike, their first dog, all these things. You get to the campus, get them into their dorm. You move everything in. You go get their books at the bookshop, you walk their schedule with them, you have some dinner, and then it's time to say goodbye. And as you're saying goodbye to your kid. This just happened to me. That's why it's personal for me. As you're saying goodbye and there's some tears coming down, and then your child says to you, dad, any final words of wisdom? And so think about what you say, what final words?

33:43
John Lurtz
And if, you know, it could be a brother or a sister or a close friend. But what are those words of wisdom that you have to leave them with that they'll remember from that day for the rest of their life? And so those words of wisdom that you leave them and mine to my daughter Ella, was love the Lord your God, with all your heart, all your mind, all your soul, and love your neighbor as yourself. And so that's like the through line that I left her with. And so if you need to figure out what your through line is, go through an exercise like that and it'll come out.

34:13
Joseph Testa
I love that. Yeah, I think mine would be probably just, I'm proud of you and I got you. You'll do great. I don't have kids, obviously, but I absolutely love that story and thank you for bringing me on that journey with you. But that makes sense, I think finding what people value in their own, I guess, self and how they pass it on to the people around them, especially the ones they love the most, is a good lens to try to find where people are seeking value and where they think they add value. That's always been mine. Right. I just. I'm a supporter naturally. I think you're a supporter naturally, but like I said, a natural people person. You are. And you really value those genuine human connections. So I respect that greatly.

34:56
Joseph Testa
How do you think a referral based business compares to these kind of cold outreach, sort of spam inboxes, all that stuff?

35:07
John Lurtz
Yeah. I actually was talking with somebody about this morning, Paul, our chief revenue officer. And I said, man, in the last two years, I can barely get through my inbox every day because I'm getting so many emails and I must be on so many zoom info lists and whatever, and the emails are like, the subject line grabs you. John, we talked last Tuesday. This is really important. So you're like, oh, my gosh. You click on it and then you quickly realize that this is a come on email from some marketer trying to get your attention. So I just delete all those emails. And when I think about how we are starting to market more at Moreland, we don't want to send those spam emails.

35:54
John Lurtz
So if you come to our site and you download some content or we notice that you spent time on the site and then we can start to give you targeted ads when you're in Google. That's an effective way to market. But we don't do a lot of mass emailing, so we're trying to take what's best about the referral method, which is the trust and serving people and giving them value and giving them what they want and what they need. And we're trying to do the same thing in a more mass way through Internet marketing. And the proof will be in the pudding, but it seems to bearing fruit already.

36:33
Joseph Testa
Awesome. Yeah, that's great. And I think that's one of the biggest strategy behind who is Moreland and what are they about? They're about establishing trust and sharing and actually caring about the vision and goal of that project. How do you do that in a marketing campaign? I think you just detailed it out right there. And also, you know, work with the creatives in the world to maybe create a badass brand, hype, real type of thing, stuff like that. Creative matters. But you can do marketing that isn't cold. Right? You can do warm marketing.

37:02
John Lurtz
Yeah. And you guys built for us hypereal, and it was less than a minute and I was skeptical. Would your team be able to build something that's less than a minute that was impactful and meaningful and got the whole message across. And you did. And we just used it at an AI summit in Pittsburgh and everybody that saw it loved it. And so we got some great marketing qualified leads into the funnel. So thank you for that.

37:28
Joseph Testa
Absolutely. That's what we're about here at Vivifront, taking a page from your book and closing. What are you personally excited for this year?

37:35
John Lurtz
Yeah. So I'm excited to spend more time with my family. As you know, as an entrepreneur and a business owner, family time is crucial. And I've made a commitment this year to not bring the work home, not be on the phone during dinner, not be doing email in the evening, but read a book to your kids, help them with their algebra homework. I'm not getting any younger and neither are my kids. These moments and opportunities to invest in your own children are not going to be around forever. So I would encourage anybody that listens to this to be more intentional about the people that you care about most in your life. Your spouse, your kids, those closest to you, invest in them. Nobody's going to read on your gravestone one day that John was a really hard worker, but they're going to read.

38:28
John Lurtz
He was a great dad, great granddad, great husband. So that's what I want in my legacy.

38:33
Joseph Testa
Love it. I think you're embodying that very well. You know, the few times we've met, obviously over the course of the last year, I can see it in you. So I think you have a lot to be proud about there. And I'm excited to learn more from you in that regard. But I appreciate you for taking the time to chat today. I know you've got a thousand other stories that could be shared, so maybe we'll need to consider another episode. A roundtable talk. Tech drink bourbon next time. I'm sorry I didn't bring a glass this time.

38:58
John Lurtz
Sounds good. You know I like bourbon.

39:00
Joseph Testa
Yeah, all about it. Thanks, John.

39:02
John Lurtz
Thanks, Joe.