Lead Balloon Ep. 58 - The Mystery of the I-94 Sales & Marketing Tip of the Week Billboard

We're going to SOLVE A MARKETING MYSTERY, folks!

There is a weird, enigmatic old billboard along the interstate in Wisconsin promoting a "Sales & Marketing Tip of the Week."

Without any branding or context, this weathered sign invites thousands of motorists daily to call a mysterious phone number.

And that has been driving Dusty CRAZY because, frankly, nothing about this billboard makes any sense in 2025.

So we're going to SOLVE A MARKETING MYSTERY in this episode, folks!

Together with our old pal Kyle Brown, we're going to speculate about WHY this sign exists, how it got there, and what its purpose is.

And THEN, we're actually going to track down the person responsible for the sign and learn the strange-but-true story of the "Sales & Marketing Tip of the Week."

Sales and Marketing Tip of the Week Billboard

Because it turns out this billboard is a portal back in time to a different era of direct response marketing. We discover that it was built decades ago by Ken Hoffman, a self-proclaimed "ideas man" who gives them away for free, but has trouble getting his own ideas off the ground.

We learn how his career was influenced by the so-called "marketing gurus" of yesteryear, and find lots in common with this endlessly curious polymath.

Transcript:

Dusty Weis

There is a marketing mystery out along the interstate west of Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

It's an old, undersized billboard that looks like it was put up by some do it yourselfer, and in faded yellow and black, it simply says “Sales and Marketing Tip of the Week.” And a phone number.

That's it. No brand name, no website, no indication whatsoever of what's waiting on the other end of the phone.

As a content marketer, this enigma has been driving me crazy. And I am not the only one.

Kyle Brown

It stands out so well because it is so different. It looks like someone hit Microsoft Word, typed out a few sentences, and hit print to a billboard. It's not a normal sign.

Dusty Weis

So with the help of our old pal Kyle Brown, we are finally going to solve this mystery.

And when we call that number up there on the billboard, we are going to get so much more than a sales and marketing tip of the week. We'll find a portal back in time to a different era of marketing and a self-proclaimed ideas man who who's giving them away for free.

I'm Dusty Weis. From Podcamp Media, this is Lead Balloon, a podcast about irresistible tales from the world of PR, marketing and branding told by the well-meaning communications professionals who live them.

Thanks for tuning in. Make sure that you're subscribed in your favorite podcast app so you don't miss an episode when they come out. We are joined today by a regular guest on the Lead Balloon program. In fact, our most frequent guest over the years that we've been doing Lead Balloon. Kyle Brown is a marketing strategist. He has worked at companies including Kohl's, including Harley-Davidson, including other brands that you have heard of.

And he joins us now to lend a little bit of expertise, not necessarily as a marketer, although we're certainly interested in that part of it, but also as a Wisconsinite who drives down this very same stretch of highway that I do. Because I don't know about you, Kyle, but the first time that I saw this sign, I was struck by its simplicity.

And I was struck by the fact that someone would actually do this.

Kyle Brown

Struck is probably the best word. It stands out so well because it is so different. You know, it looks like someone hit Microsoft Word typed out a few sentences, and hit print to a billboard. But it's not. It's not a normal sign. It's the equivalent of like, you know, when you're in college and in, like the common area someone put up, like a little pull tab sign saying, like.

Dusty Weis

Dog walking services!

Kyle Brown

I'm selling a futon and just like, rip off a tab. Versus, like a professionally typical marketing billboard or poster or something like that.

Dusty Weis

Well, and as marketers, we also have to discuss the sign itself. This is a nonstandard size. It is a nonstandard layout. It's certainly not the 16 by nine that you would typically expect or whatever a typical billboard is. This is much closer to like a five by three, and it's much smaller than other signs. It almost has sort of like a homemade feel to it.

Kyle Brown

Yeah. And it's certainly not, you know, your tall standing ones that are 20, 30ft up in the air, mass vinyl printed canvas stretched out and rolled on, you know, printed in a shop.

Dusty Weis

The other thing that strikes me is that on a typical billboard, there's going to be some signage, much, much smaller, obviously down at the bottom. Usually that says Lamar or a Clear Channel Outdoor, or identifies who actually owns the sign and leases it out. And this has no such thing.

Kyle Brown

Which also would then lead me to think like either this person owns the land, or this person's cousin or friend, or someone is just doing this as a personal deal and has constructed their own structure, you know, to put up this, this very interesting and unique sign.

Dusty Weis

And you can see very clearly this is not a typical billboard rental. This is not some big brand, advertising its presence to the world. In fact, that doesn't even say who's put the sign out there. What else do we know that it is not?

Kyle Brown

Well, you know, you said it's not a typical rental. And, you know, rental periods, they can be anywhere from, you know, they can be days especially on like digital billboards which are promoting events and so forth, to a few weeks or a few months, sometimes upwards of a year or two. But you never see the same billboard last forever.

Dusty Weis

And we, between the two of us, cannot think of a time that this sign has not been there. I have been driving past this scrap of land for, 13 years since I moved to Milwaukee. You even longer? Yeah.

Kyle Brown

I've tried. So I grew up in Minneapolis. All my family's down here in Milwaukee, so I've been driving back and forth since I was, you know, born. And obviously, I can't recall every billboard I've seen, but I can't recall a time where I don't remember seeing it. I mean, this has has to be over a decade old, and I've driven this road a lot of times, and I've probably seen this billboard hundreds of times now.

And it has not changed.

Dusty Weis

It hasn't changed. It perhaps hasn't even been maintained because it looks fairly weathered. There are a lot of different things that this could be. One of them would disappoint me to no end, because I look at a lot of billboards as a marketing guy, and one of the worst ones that I ever see is, oh, we caught you looking.

You must be interested in billboards, the billboard for billboards where they're trying to build up interest in outdoor advertising. And what that really is, is a billboard that they couldn't rent out to somebody else. And so they're just using this space to advertise the existence of billboards until they can get someone to rent that billboard. Could this be that, do you think?

Kyle Brown

I don't think it. And it could be… as in maybe.

Dusty Weis

Like we might call this number and someone's going to be there and be like, this is Lamar. How can I help you?

Kyle Brown

I don't think I don't I can't imagine this is any big company. And on that, I've always thought it was interesting of trying to market a billboard with a billboard because like, your target audience, like what, one out of 3000 people have anything to do? One out of 10,000 people buy ads based on billboards. Other people are just going about their day.

Dusty Weis

It's better than having a blank billboard.

But you're also like marketing your own ineffectual ness. Yeah. At the end of the day, by being like, well, we couldn't sell it to anybody else.

Kyle Brown

I've always thought they were weird, like, sell it off, do a, you know, give it out to charity, do something to give some credit back to you.

Dusty Weis

Charity would be great. Advertise a fake company, for Pete's sake. Yeah, but don't advertise the fact that you can't sell your own billboard space.

Kyle Brown

You know, have something on the back up. And that's actually where digital billboards have eliminated that problem.

Dusty Weis

So that's one theory. What do you think it is? I mean, what's your what's your frontrunner right now?

Kyle Brown

I'm kind of split. It is either like created in a way that is so intentionally like just simple and clean and minimal and off from the norm that it was done by someone... It's like a brilliant agency behind this.

Dusty Weis

So you think it's targeting marketing people by defying the norms and conventions of marketing?

Kyle Brown

It's doing something to stand out. And I'm not saying this is like... I would doubt it's some mega marketing agency who's, you know, signing billion dollar contracts or whatever. But, you know, it could be for a smaller level.

My other thought is it's either someone incredibly intentional on this or it's the opposite, and it's someone who had, you know, a little bit of, you know, a marketing background or sales or they're doing something else in their life and they just thought, you know what?

I'm good at connecting people. I'm good at figuring these things out. I'm just going to try this and they got up. They it's either their land or their cousin's land or they, they found a way to get up this little billboard, and it's like their own little thing.

Dusty Weis

And, you know, it's like a retired marketing executive who got out of the business, retired, has this little scrap of land, and they're sitting there going, gosh, I really missed the game. I just, I even if it's just the local propane sales company. Yeah. You know, I want to get in their ear and offer them a few tips to help them get on their way.

Kyle Brown

Yeah. You know, this this is not I shouldn't say it's not. I can't imagine this is designed, you know, when the chief marketing officer driving down the interstate and they see this and like, oh thank God, right.

Dusty Weis

They're not they're not getting Coca-Cola.

Kyle Brown

Yeah. Like I haven't had a good idea in weeks. This is brilliant. I'm saved and I'm going to go call this number. Quickly let me write this down or text it real quick like I'm driving by it 80 miles an hour. But yeah, it's going to be like the independent contractor, the plumber, the air conditioner repair guy, or the small restaurant, or like some small press like, hey, this is great.

Like, I need some ideas, like, let's just see what it is. And maybe it's something that sparks up a little bit of a little bit of business for whoever is coming up with this. I would love if this is just some small shop or person just kind of helping people out. I think it's a fun story.

Dusty Weis

I would love that too. I'd love to meet the former advertising executive who's just giving away this top notch, world class consulting advice for free. I think just as likely as it being that it could also be someone who styles themself as an expert in marketing, but hasn't really worked in the space and is maybe just an ideas person who's just offered it up for free.

The value of that could still be good.

Kyle Brown

You know, someone who's always been told like, oh, you always have such great ideas. You're so creative. And they're like, yeah, I have great ideas.

Dusty Weis

I'm going to put up a sign!

Kyle Brown

I should charge for this, you know? Yeah. And again, this is where I it's so it is so unique.

Dusty Weis

To your notion that this might be some sort of lead generation opportunity. Maybe there's a small marketing agency or, an independent consultant out there, west of Sullivan, Wisconsin, who's trying to get people to call. So they get their number and they can send them marketing text messages or something like that. And I think that that's a possibility here.

If that is the case, I will be very interested to hear how effective, if at all, it has been, because I have always been kind of a doubter when it comes to outdoor advertising. I think it can work as sort of like a brand presence reinforcer. But as far as, like, instant lead gen goes? People who are driving cars, who's got time to write down a phone number while they're driving, particularly one that is not easy to remember.

And so if this is a lead generation opportunity, I want to know how many leads they've gotten from it.

Kyle Brown

You and I travel down that road when we're going from A to B, but for the community that lives around here, this is your daily traffic, your daily commute. You know, you live in one town and you work in the next town over you go by that billboard every day. So, you know, maybe for the if this is a local thing, you've seen that billboard every day and you're thinking it may.

And so maybe you're picking it up, but they're just offering free tips of the week, which have there been like 800 tips generated over the ten plus years?

Dusty Weis

Your tip of the week: “Have you ever thought about periodicals?”

Kyle Brown

Yeah, there you go.

Dusty Weis

What are these tips like? How are we going to get from this?

Kyle Brown

I would love if there a tip that existed before like the concept of social media marketing. Like if it was just that old, it would, it would just be a time capsule of the marketing and communications. I think maybe the most disappointing thing that you could hear would just be like, we're sorry, this number is no longer in service.

Dusty Weis

That's where we just throw out the tape.

Kyle Brown

That would probably confirm our theory of this is just someone who had an idea and had some fun.

Dusty Weis

All right, well, I think those are all the theories. I can't think of anything else that it would be. I think we've got one thing left to do here, Kyle. Make a call. Let's find out what we've got here. So if this is lead gen, I am going to be sacrificing my number to whatever sorts of spam texts I can expect to get.

But let's go. 262. 548. 1880.

Kyle Brown

Here we go.

Phone Operator

The number you have reached is not in service.

This is a recording.

Dusty Weis

Oh, that can't be all. Come on. Should we try it again?

Kyle Brown

Try it again.

Dusty Weis

Did I get the number wrong?

But we didn't have the wrong number. Imagine then our crushing disappointment when we confirmed that the number was no longer in service. We had such high hopes, and I was sure that there was a story there. So we decided to try plan B if we could pinpoint the exact location of the sign on Google Street View, we could then use GIS tax records to find out the landowner's name, try to hunt down their phone number and ask them whose sign it was.

Kyle Brown

This would be even funnier if it doesn't show up in the middle of summer because of foliage. Oh.

Dusty Weis

Got it. That's the spot. There it is.

Kyle Brown

But zoom in. Can you zoom in any more?

Dusty Weis

That's as far as it goes.

Kyle Brown

This is what it must feel like to be Sherlock Holmes.

Dusty Weis

I'm telling you, we are going to solve this bastard.

Kyle even managed to track down the original permit to put up the sign, which was issued in 1996 but didn't feature the marketing tip of the week language. But then Kyle had to take off.

Kyle Brown

I gotta run.

Dusty Weis

Which was a shame really, because just a few minutes later, I found a phone number for the 82 year old landowner, Patricia Hoffman, and paydirt.

Ken Hoffman

Hello?

Dusty Weis

Hi. Is Patricia Hoffman there?

Ken Hoffman

Who's calling?

Dusty Weis

My name is Dusty, and I host a podcast, and I have a question about a billboard that's along the interstate that I believe is on Miss Hoffman's property.

Ken Hoffman

Yeah, that's actually my billboard.

Dusty Weis

Oh, that's your billboard?

Ken Hoffman

Yeah. I'm in charge of it anyway.

Dusty Weis

That's wild. That's perfect. Then you're the person that I need to be talking to. I had to find out who put the billboard up and why. This is catching you off guard?

Ken Hoffman

No, it's just, It's funny. Sounds like you got the same sickness as I got. You're like, you know, once you want to know something you like really...

Dusty Weis

You gotta scratch that itch!

Ken Hoffman

Do the research and dig for it. It's not really a short story, but...

Dusty Weis

And that is how I met Ken Hoffman, one of Patricia’s sons and a self-taught marketing and copywriting consultant, jazz saxophonist, and qigong energy and meditation practitioner. And the story of his sales and marketing tip of the week billboard went deeper and further back than I could even have imagined. In fact, for reasons that we would come to understand later, he couldn't figure out why I was even asking about it.

Ken Hoffman

We put the billboard up like many years ago for our tree business is what happened. It was selling trees which were on the property here. We got like an 80 acre tree farm. My dad and my brother put it up. They built it because I'm more of the idea guy. I'm not the builder type guy, you know?

So I had the idea that there's a lot of traffic going by there. If we could put it up, it's basically free advertising. It was not easy to get that sign put up there because it's considered a non-conforming sign. And I think now I'm pretty sure you cannot put up a new sign on the interstate. But I knew that someday that would be a valuable asset.

That was one time I was like, we need to do this. Let's get this done. So the billboard was basically going to a prerecorded phone message, a la Dan Kennedy. I don’t know if you know that name, if you're in marketing. Yeah. I followed him for many years, went to a bunch of seminars, too, when he was still doing them. And so that's what happened.

And the business did really well because of that. But that business went defunct. And so the billboard was just sitting there and I'm like, how can I use this to make some money? I think it might have been actually a Dan Kennedy. That's where I got the idea from was many years ago, before the internet and all this stuff.

It was like the idea of running classified ads with a phone number and offering a free report. So it's kind of a tweak on that idea.

Dusty Weis

So my buddy and I, Kyle, we had all of these theories, and one of my theories was that, yeah, it was it was someone in the marketing space who wanted to use it as like a lead generation opportunity where they put it up there, and then people who are interested in it will call the number. They'll get the tip of the week, and then they're into your marketing pipeline and you can talk to them about, hey, you know, I'm a copywriter, I run...

Were you running like an independent marketing agency kind of a thing? Where were you based and what's your background in marketing?

Ken Hoffman

Well, I actually it wasn't really an agency. It was more like I started out calling myself a copywriter and then very quickly switched to being a marketing consultant just for positioning. Yeah, I've kind of got a strange story, but I'm a jazz saxophonist. And that's why I got into marketing.

Dusty Weis

You know what? That makes more sense than you think. I know so many musicians who have gotten into marketing because of the creative outlet and the similarities, the parallels between music and marketing. That is a story as old as time Ken.

In fact, the more I talked to Ken, the more that I started recognizing a pattern in his story.

You see, growing up in the West Milwaukee suburbs where his father was an entrepreneur, Ken went off to study music at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, Go Badgers. And after he graduated in 1987, he spent years pursuing his passion in music, but supporting himself with a series of odd jobs, pitching in with the family's business affairs and side hustles.

Ken Hoffman

I had the opportunity to play with a bunch of really big names, but as a background person, so like Natalie Cole, The Temptations, Ray Charles. I was basically just like a hired gun. They’d come to town, whether it's Milwaukee or Chicago. I was a staff musician on Princess Cruise Lines for a few years, traveled all over Europe.

Dusty Weis

That's a great way to see the world.

Ken Hoffman

Yeah, it's a tough lifestyle, better than the road, but a great opportunity. I was on the road with the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra for four months. That's my only road time. I went to school at Northern Illinois to get a degree, a master's degree in jazz, which was kind of nuts. And, yeah, tried to do the college teaching thing.

Massive competition. So I went, I just, I basically I did real estate for a couple of years. I taught private music lessons. I drifted out of the music and, my brother got a set of Jay Abraham tapes. I just thought it was the coolest thing I ever heard in my life to hear the concepts and the ideas about marketing, it just blew my mind.

I don't know, I guess I found Dan Kennedy, who I loved even more because of the creativity and stuff like that. And so I really, I thought, oh, copywriting, that sounds really cool. So I just, I went to a bunch of seminars of Dan's in Arizona, like his copywriting seminar. And then later I did like Google Pay per click ads.

You know, I've always been a little bit of a hack with it. I haven't really, because I was trying to do the music too. I didn't, like, pursue it full time. I mean, I didn't give it like a full time effort.

Dusty Weis

Ken had his first big break as an independent copywriter when he took out an ad in the Milwaukee Chamber of Commerce newsletter, and ended up supplementing his income as a marketing consultant for a handful of small businesses in the area. But when the family tree farm stopped doing business, he came back to that billboard along the interstate and found himself wondering if that couldn't be leveraged to stoke his consulting business as well.

But the results were underwhelming.

Ken Hoffman

When I had that up there about the marketing tip of the week, I think I maybe got a half a dozen calls. It was not a really big response. But the bigger issue was that I was getting a response from people that were basically sales people. So that message resonated with salespeople more than the small business owners. That's the thing.

Trying to do a billboard with direct response marketing is not an easy thing to do, especially when it's such a tiny board.

Dusty Weis

A tiny board, and along the interstate where people are flying by at 70 miles an hour and might not have a chance to write down a number. Yeah.

Ken Hoffman

Yeah, that. And so that was the thing. And you probably didn't see, but there was a period of time when I actually more recently when the sign had a website on it, and I think it was boost-profits.net. And I thought that was a nice short thing and I think I got like nothing from that.

Dusty Weis

No kidding.

Ken Hoffman

Like zero. Yeah I had a pretty simple especially for its date, lead capture page. But I remember like basically getting zip. And I was really flabbergasted. I thought I got people requesting the free report on the tip of the day thing. But when I did this simple website... and ironically, when we had the tree business, there was a website on there, like after we did the phone number, I think my brother had the idea to put a website up there.

It totally went crazy.

Dusty Weis

It slayed.

Ken Hoffman

Yeah, yeah. I mean, we it's like we had all the business we could possibly handle from that because when it worked, it worked. 20, maybe 25 years ago. And so things were a bit different. People, they weren't quite as, frantic, let's say, as they are now. And what I, what I've learned from it is that, you know, me trying to do business to business type of a thing is just way too narrow.

Even if the billboard is free, it doesn't work. And part of it is, I think you're right, to people driving faster and faster and and having less attention span. I've talked to the world famous Gary Bencivenga. And I'm not sure if you're familiar with him.

Dusty Weis

Okay.

Ken Hoffman

He's just like, top of the A-list copywriters, but he. I had a conversation with him, and he said you'd be better off renting the billboard than trying to put something up there, because it's a pretty hard, direct response medium.

Dusty Weis

Well, it's a very, very niche thing. Right. And it's the kind of thing where your message is going to maybe apply to one out of every a thousand people that drive past it out there. I'm just ballparking figures here. It's just a numbers game at the end of the day.

Ken Hoffman

Yeah. And the numbers is... See, I've always been... It took me a while to kind of get that into my head about the... I'm a creative guy but it's like, the other half, the knowing the numbers part, it's just as important. It's not an easy thing to try to bring something that most people don't understand, like direct marketing.

It's a little bit of an uphill battle, you know, with small business owners, or at least it felt that way to me. It probably would be, it may be different today. Probably would be today because of the internet. Everybody kind of has a better idea about testing and basing advertising on results and response, rather than just like sort of brand awareness and stuff like that.

Dusty Weis

You really are just a self-funded, creative polymath who's just kind of dabbled in a little bit of everything over the course of his career and is still just kind of improvising, still just doing jazz all these years later.

Ken Hoffman

Yeah. I've never been called that before, the polymath thing, but...

Dusty Weis

I think the shoe fits, right?

Ken Hoffman

I probably I mean, the number one thing for me is creativity. And the way that my mind works is I never have a problem with coming up with new ideas. That's like a non-issue. It's more of the implementation... It’s the follow through. Yeah. In fact, the other day my teacher said, you know, Ken, you are an empath. And I've been told that many, many times as far as like intuition, creativity and deeply internal...

And it's taken me quite a long time to fully appreciate what that means and how to use it...

Dusty Weis

Channeled correctly, it can be a superpower. It really can. But to be endlessly curious is to also be endlessly distracted, at least in my experience.

Ken Hoffman

Yeah, that's I would say that's my greatest challenge is the distraction. That is absolutely true.

Dusty Weis

But as much common ground as we discovered as endlessly curious polymaths, Ken and I kept coming back to one key disconnect--the very reason for us having a conversation--that weatherbeaten Sales and Marketing tip of the week billboard along I-94 west of Sullivan. Ken put that up more than 20 years ago, and in the years since then, it was covered over by newer iterations, and they eventually started renting the billboard out to other small businesses, which covered it up with their messages.

And then he just kind of moved on and forgot all about it.

Ken Hoffman

It's so weird about a billboard that's been basically dormant for, oh, it's been nothing up there probably the last five years, I want to say.

Dusty Weis

So that phone number that the billboard links to that doesn't even connect to anything? That's just out of service now?

Ken Hoffman

I think so, because I think that was a voicemail number. And after that there was, a website on there. And then there was the boost profits. And I mean... it's hard for me to comprehend this because from what you're telling me, it sounds like a layer of the sign maybe came off... What did it look like?

Is it like yellow plastic.?

Dusty Weis

Like yellow plastic with black letters.

So whatever was wrapped around it came off.

Ken Hoffman

Yeah, yeah, there was a sign. There was, Well, I'm trying to. There's two different sides of the sign too. Through the years after that, we rented it to other people ... like the pottery place in Lake Mills and so I... I'm, like, trying to rent that again, but I just, I never, like, make the calls, you know, I gotta... it's like one of many, right?

Dusty Weis

You got a long to do list.

Ken Hoffman

Yeah, exactly. I might have to look into getting that phone number back. I mean.

Dusty Weis

I mean somebody's still calling it. It's me.

So ultimately, while our theory that the sales and marketing tip of the week billboard on I-94 was some Wildcat marketing strategist’s lead generation honeypot was not far from the mark, it turned out to be so much more than that. A time capsule from a marketing era before pay per click and SEO and email marketing.

The marketing gurus of this era didn't run LinkedIn profiles or Substacks or TikTok accounts. They sold cassette tapes and ran classified ads for paid seminars, and anyone who was so inclined could slap up a billboard and try to get in on that action. So, like a dinosaur skeleton buried in the ground, this relic sat there for years under layers of vinyl until the elements laid it bare again along the interstate to pique our curiosity and prompt us to dig in.

And while he may have forgotten all about that billboard, it's probably because Ken Hoffman has moved on to other interests. His latest professional pursuit is AttractingCoachingClients.com, where he offers to coach aspiring business coaches. He looks after his mom and their property. Of course, it's looking to play out again as a musician and has taken a strong interest in the Chinese energy and meditation practice Qigong.

One thing that hasn't changed, though... while his interests have evolved, Ken Hoffman is still, let's say, professionally ambiguous.

Ken Hoffman

I turned 60 last year, and I'm at a point where, like, I want to be doing the marketing again, I want to be doing the music again, and I want to be doing the Qigong. So I've got a large task. But essentially my nature has always been to be more interested in ideas and concepts. I've always been such an introvert and ironically, to be a great copywriter,

It's all about putting yourself in the shoes, and I've been able to do that pretty well when it's on paper, but it's taken me a long time to be able to do that in real life with real people.

Dusty Weis

Well, Ken, I've got to say this has been really, really gratifying and thank you for helping me solve this mystery here. And, and certainly we appreciate your sharing your story. And thank you so much for joining us here on Lead Balloon.

Ken Hoffman

Oh, yeah. Yeah, it was it was kind of like a little bit of a, walk down memory lane for me too. So it's kind of fun to revisit. I hadn't thought about some of this stuff for a while, so it was really cool.

Dusty Weis

I was just tickled when you picked up the phone today. Man, that made my week. Made my month. That's too good.

Ken Hoffman

Oh that's awesome. Good to hear. That's great when things come together like that, isn't it?

Dusty Weis

It was kismet, man. It really was.

Dusty Weis

Special thanks once again to Kyle Brown for helping me solve this little mystery. And of course, Ken Hoffman for sharing his story with me. His life story really.

You might be wondering, how long did it take you to track this guy down and convince him to talk to you like that? And I'm going to shoot straight. While we normally put a lot of prep into this show, doing research, reaching out to potential guests, prescreening them, we did this one in a day. Kyle and I batted a few ideas around. We started digging in. I found the phone number, I called it Ken picked up the phone and he spilled his guts to me.

I guess it's a superpower that I've had since my days as a news reporter, to get people to just open up like that to me. I don't know how I got it, I don't know why I have it. I'm just always super grateful to the folks who choose to trust me when I call up and start asking questions.

So thank you, Ken. Thank you for filling in the blanks on this one for us.

And of course, thank you for tuning in here on Lead Balloon. I like to think that we're like Freakonomics for PR and marketing professionals, meeting the people and telling the stories that make this a fascinating field in which to work.

So we hope to see you back here in this feed again sometime soon. Follow us in your favorite podcast app.

Lead Balloon is produced by Podcamp Media, where we provide branded podcast production solutions for businesses. Our podcast studios are located in the heart of beautiful downtown Milwaukee, Wisconsin. We work with brands all over North America to help them launch and build podcasts that work.

Check out our website, PodcampMedia.com. Music for this episode by Ryan Saranich. And until the next time, folks, thanks for listening. I'm Dusty Weis.