Be real: Building advocacy through authenticity

Well, what’s up, everyone, and welcome to the Local Marketing Lab. Joining us in the lab today, we have a guest with over 20 years of experience in the restaurant industry. He’s a two-time new dad and loves In N Out fries. He’s the national advisory director at Zelnik & Company. He’s a host of Closed Monday podcast and the Commercial Real Estate School podcast. TikTok knows him as Mr. Restaurant, but the rest of the world knows him as his legal name. Kyle Inserra, thank you for joining us in a lab, my friend.

Kyle Inserra
I’m glad we can make it happen.

Justin Ulrich
Congrats on the new little one. 

Kyle Inserra
Hopefully you don’t hear him during the show. I think he went for a walk, so it would be a good time to not have him cry. But yeah, thank you.

Justin Ulrich
Hey, if he’s already doing this thing and going for a walk, then we shouldn’t have an issue.

Kyle Inserra
Yeah, he’s got a little help. He’s not quite there yet.

Justin Ulrich
Awesome. Well, cool. Well, appreciate you jumping know, Kyle, one of the things that I just thought would be good to kind of start off with you started your career on Wall Street. You hung up your suit to become a chef for eight years and then kind of shifted into the commercial real estate side of the restaurant industry. 

I’d love to hear a little bit more about your journey and kind of what got you to where you are.

Kyle Inserra
That’s kind of crazy. When we were talking before this or back and forth on email, I was like, holy shit, this is kind of crazy. But yeah, I was really after 9/11, I’d gone to four year college, got my degree in business economics, and I did what everybody from my college did. They went to Wall Street. They went to law school, they went to med school. So I went to Wall Street. 

And yeah, right after 9/11, I was like, okay, I don’t want to this was after the kind of, like, bull run of the 2000’s, things were kind of starting to taper off anyway. And I was like, okay, that’s it. I’m not going to die in this city doing what I’m doing now, which is cold calling people, trying to sell stocks that I don’t really know anything about. So I went downstairs that day and I called my dad, said, hey, I’m enrolling in culinary school. And that’s kind of where it all started.

Justin Ulrich
Oh, very cool. Very cool. So you went to culinary school and became a chef for eight years.

Kyle Inserra
Yeah, I was a chef, let’s see, 2003 to I guess 2002 to about 2016. I wasn’t full on doing chef stuff, but for a long time, it was the real deal, back of the house guy for a long time.

Justin Ulrich
That’s right. And then what kind of brought you from that role to want to get then into the real estate side of things?

Kyle Inserra
Yeah, I just got burnt out, and it was kind of like we weren’t growing as a concept. I was butting heads with my partners, and it was like, all right, I got to figure out something else to do. I had a family now, and I was like, same kind of feeling. I don’t want to do this anymore. We’re not growing. We’re not expanding.

And then I needed a way to leverage the experience that I had into something else. And then the woman who helped me, some real estate stuff for our restaurant concepts, she specialized in restaurant real estate. So I reached out to her and was fortunate to get a job with her right after I left the partnership.

Justin Ulrich
Oh, very cool. Yeah, it’s definitely an interesting run. I love the depth and kind of, I guess, broad range of your experience. Both you said in back a house and then all the way through the business side of things and into the commercial real estate side. 

Given your depth of experience and breadth, really, what are some things that you think are the most important aspects of local marketing?

Kyle Inserra
We started marketing, like traditional marketing with the restaurant in 2008. We hired a PR agency. We did all that stuff very expensive. And the time Facebook was the thing. And then Facebook page I don’t even think existed when we first started, but I’ve always found out and kind of it’s a big conversation now, but being authentic and kind of telling a story. 

Always more engaging than sort of just putting know pictures at the time of the restaurant, putting out pictures of the food, or with real estate now, just putting out pictures of the listing. Authenticity seems to resonate the most. And we found that even then again, we didn’t know what the hell we were doing. We were posting pictures, posting pictures of ourselves. 

Over time, it developed into just really being a way to connect with the community, aside from the four walls of the restaurant, which obviously is part of the conversation now in all the industries. But, yeah, I think these digital connections, I mean, you and me and Shawn and I, a lot of people that chip close, and really anybody that I have met in both these industries over the last couple years have been digital first. But I think we’ve always connected on that authentic piece.

Justin Ulrich
Yeah, for sure. It is crazy how quickly you can kind of accelerate your success and your network with the access through digital channels. LinkedIn is the one where we met through and I met Shawn through. Most of the connections that I make digitally are through LinkedIn. It’s just where professionals all go. They all want to succeed, connect, network, you know, it’s it’s incredible.

Kyle Inserra
It’s funny because these guests that I’ve had on the show talk about marketing. We talk about marketing on both Closed Monday and on CRE school. And somebody said the other day that they apply the late night principle when they’re advising their clients on marketing. 

And it was like, hey, it’s kind of like when somebody from a record, from an artist, right, they produce a new album and the label wants them on all the late night shows. They talk about everything. They talk about, oh, how’s your wife? How’s your kids? This, that, and the other thing. They got them doing all sorts of crazy stuff, and then the end, they’re like, oh, by the way, you have a new album coming out.

 It’s all that stuff that people can’t connect to them and be like, wow, now I really feel like, you know, who knows? Justin Timberlake was the example that my guest used. But, yeah, it is really all about how to find ways to connect with people. It’s definitely happening digitally every day.

Justin Ulrich
Yeah, for sure we’ve I’ve spoken with Jeremy Julian a few episodes back, and he was talking about just knowing your audience and knowing what resonates with them, communicating to them in a way that resonates delivering the content in a way that they like to engage with. 

If you don’t know your audience and you’re not kind of at least focused on a certain audience, you try to be all things to all people. Don’t resonate with anyone, come off as inauthentic, and you’re just not successful from a marketing standpoint.

Kyle Inserra
I’ve experienced it. I’ve seen it in the commercial real estate side, and it’s gotten so much better over the last couple of years. But if you’re just sitting there talking facts to people, like, a restaurant is located here and we serve this type of food, you’re just spewing facts. Right. I could find that on your website or in print. Same with commercial real estate. 

But yeah, if you can connect to them on some other level, I think that’s really the key to unlocking some of that local marketing.

Justin Ulrich
Well, speaking of unlocking local marketing, what are some things that you’ve seen or tried or maybe some of your clients have done lately that you think has worked from a local marketing standpoint?

Kyle Inserra
I think what always, regardless of the industry, people have…we’ve kind of been trained to this, but that’s sort of like behind the scenes vibe. Like, I’m doing this and then showing why. 

One of the concepts that I really look at a lot as a great example of this is a bagel shop in Hoboken, and they do a lot of behind the scenes stuff, and there’s a bunch of other restaurants, Frank Pepe, they do some behind the scenes stuff. I think that kind of thing is really what’s working well. And I think it’s always going to be something that you can just flip on the camera and do. 

It sounds weird because everybody thinks about how they have to be so creative and they have to be that imposter syndrome stuff. But the reality is, if you just show what you’re doing, it’s a hell of a lot easier.

Justin Ulrich
Yeah. It’s easy to create the content. You have your phone at your fingertips. We had the same conversation with Shawn. It’s like, all you have to do is just take out your phone, start recording. It doesn’t matter what you’re working on, what the process is. People love seeing processes. 

My kids will sit down in front of the TV and watch stirring beads into clay or just mixing things. I’m like, dude, what are you guys watching? But these videos all have millions and millions of views. It’s insane, but also pretty incredible. People just want to see how things are done.

Kyle Inserra
And they want to see that you struggled with something that it’s not this infallible figure out there preaching from a soapbox and just telling them everything that they should be doing. I think it’s weird because you don’t feel like it’s that interesting. Right? 

But then goes back to what you said before. Know your audience. And I can sit there and ramble on about why a letter of intent is so important and brokers across the country will roll their eyes. But I’m not talking to them. I don’t give a crap what they think. I want my clients or future clients to understand why it’s important to me and if you’re serious about a space so I think sometimes it’s tough to get into that and work that muscle out. But you only get good by doing it.

Justin Ulrich
Yeah. And the better you get, the more impactful you are, because you’re able to target your efforts and do things that are actually meaningful and generate results value.

Kyle Inserra
And value that’s what they want from you, right?

Justin Ulrich
Yeah, for sure. What are some things that so for our listeners today that might be struggling from a local marketing standpoint or from local growth standpoint? What are some things that you would suggest that they do today or this week where they could start getting out of that hole and start seeing some results?

Kyle Inserra
Okay, so I’ve said this a bunch of times. And maybe it may seem like commonplace now, and it may seem difficult to some people, but I think one of the best things you can do is just grab your phone and be like, hey, I don’t know what the hell I’m doing, but I’m going to give this ashot. I’m Kyle from Closed Monday, and I’m gonna, like, try to make it happen for you guys. And please let me know. 

And I think that authenticity, like, just kind of that humility of like, I’ve never done this before. Everyone’s telling me I got to do it to build my brand and there’s a guy that I’m trying to think about, he has a candle company in the city, and he does that, but he’s blown up since. But his content is so matter of fact, and he’s just like, all right, I’m going to tell you how I make these great candles and hundreds of thousands of followers. 

So I think starting there, because I think that one thing, too, that has happened is people can sniff out the BS, right? If it’s scripted or if it’s too pitchy, they’re going to kind of scroll away. But I think that authenticity and showing your vulnerable side and what you’re going through is really part of the magic. 

Justin Ulrich
So from an authenticity standpoint, that’s why I’m not afraid to just record my podcast from the closet with my bare tan walls.

Kyle Inserra
That’s it, man.

Justin Ulrich
Although, hopefully I’ll have a background soon. I’ve just bought a green screen, so we’ll see how that goes.

Kyle Inserra
But it’s what you get to be known for. Nobody started in this game doing what we’re trying to do. These podcasts, I didn’t know how to hook up one. I don’t even know what this thing is called that the mic is connected to. It took me so many bad pieces of equipment to end up here. So, yeah, I think everyone can appreciate that.

Justin Ulrich
Literally, the part that’s probably been edited out of this episode is me just losing my audio and us fumbling to get it back. So, yeah, it happens. I’m not a pro like you’re a pro, but most people aren’t. They just get in and just get started. Just start doing something. 

Kyle Inserra
You know, made me feel better about that was somebody’s like, go back and watch Joe Rogan’s first podcast. And I think it’s like, in a backyard, and they’re all, like, drinking beers, and it’s like this dingy, maybe like in Brooklyn. It’s just really crappy. So I was like, okay, yeah, there’s upside there.

Justin Ulrich
That’s hilarious. Yeah, it’s funny because my kids, I’ve got two teenagers, and they just roll their eyes. We’ll be driving, and I’ll put the podcast on. Like, I’m a big deal at this point. At the time of recording, we’ve got, like, five or six episodes, and they’re like, dad, come on, dad. And I’m like, guys, I’m kind of a big deal. Like, I have a standalone microphone.

Kyle Inserra
You see these headphones? Hello? What do you think? Yeah, my phone. Well, that’s the whole reason I got on TikTok, was to screw with her. Because at the time it was headphones. No, it was just in general, just to all right, you think you’re cool on TikTok? And we were all penned up in the quarantine. I’m like, let’s do this. So now she still rolls her eyes, but I can just give her a wink back. But it’s funny how that works.

Justin Ulrich
Hilarious. Your TikTok does really well, and you have some really good nuggets on there. I think it’s engaging. It’s entertaining. Funny. There’s some stuff that’s tips and tricks type of stuff. It’s good content.

Kyle Inserra
What I found is that I forget when it happened, but there was that switch of people actually talking to the camera and it wasn’t just doing, like, pointing at things on the screen. And when that happened, I think it became and people love to talk. I mean, you got to have thick skin to be on TikTok, but if you put it out there, you get the engagement. That’s what you want.

Justin Ulrich
That’s true. Yeah. That’s I’ve seen I’ve seen you have some pretty thick skin, too. I’ve seen some episodes of the RIF show that you guys would do, and Shawn would just rail on you. So for me, it was hilarious. I grew up in Buffalo area, so western New York, but it reminded me of just growing up and how we all would just treat each other.

Kyle Inserra
Right. That’s the thing. Those are your real friends, right?

Justin Ulrich
That’s right. Alright, who would you like to shout out for doing something really cool, really engaging, interesting from a local marketing standpoint?

Kyle Inserra
Local marketing standpoint, man, I already shouted out O’Bagel. They’re a big one. 

I like what I’m seeing in some of these QSR concepts. Small group out of I think they have, like, so small. Maybe they have six or eight units, Fry the Coop. They’re a chicken concept. 

Joe, I’ve had on my podcast, super cool guy, but you get a feel for the brand, you know. Tony and Pete’s, another dude who was a guest. Justin was on my show from Tony and Pete’s out in Toledo. Great branding, great storytelling. They made the decision, or I forget how, they came across some sort of videographer and graphic designer who really helped create their brand. 

But I think ultimately it’s figuring out now in your startup cost for restaurants at least, it’s like where you’re going to spend your money. I think when it’s all green pieces of paper, I think a lot of that’s got to be dedicated to or significant portions got to be dedicated to building your brand. All your touch points in the four walls of the restaurant, but your digital stuff, too, so your logos, how you communicate, there’s a lot of that stuff, and there are people out there now to help, and it’s an expense. Yeah, of course, right. You don’t do it. Somebody else got to do it, so you got to pay for it. 

But I think these restaurants that are getting it in terms of this is my brand, this is how I talk, and they’re staying authentic, I think they’re the ones having the most success. So I would say definitely say O’Bagel. Tony and Pete’s. Damn, I forget the even one. The one I said, Frank Pepe is another one. Yeah, they’re starting to catch on. Like you’re seeing it more and more. So I think that’s really cool.

Justin Ulrich
Yeah, very good. Yeah. I think the one thing I’ve learned too with regards to creating the content, creating the long form content leveraging tools has a lot of AI tools right now that can help you just kind of piece it up and have a bunch more derivative pieces of content to help kind of nurture folks along and just get more and more engagement.

Kyle Inserra

I mean, the AI stuff is pretty wild. It’s pretty wild. I love playing with it, but it seems like it’s changing every day and I love that type of stuff. And some people take advantage.

Justin Ulrich
Yeah. And if you’re small and if you’re scrappy, you can leverage those tools and it seems like you have a team. There’s a tool we use called Capshow and you just upload your video. It cranks out a blog post, it cranks out social posts, cranks out video snippets, like all sorts of stuff that would typically take somebody hours to do. It just cranks it out for you and then you’re kind of off to the races. So that’s one thing that you could do if you’re a small company to kind of get started today and just do something.

Kyle Inserra
I think it’s that’s another thing. Like with your local, there’s a lot of technology we use on the real estate side. And I don’t know how they figure this out, but one of the things that they include, and that’s something that we provide to our clients is basically based on the market that they’re in. 

So let’s say you’re in Toledo, Ohio, and you want to your clients looking at this section of the market, you can run a report that says, how do people in this section of the market like to receive their marketing? So it’ll break it down and it’ll say. They have like an index and it’ll say like, newspaper social media. They rank social media separately. So LinkedIn, TikTok, Twitter, Instagram are all indexed so that when you hit the market and you’re ready to open, you can start to push out content on those platforms. 

The idea being that you’re going to hit them where they’re even more so, more highly targeted. So that type of stuff. And then you layer in the AI. It’s really kind of making things pretty interesting.

Justin Ulrich
Yeah, for sure. Let me ask you this. So you’re in commercial real estate. The platforms that you use, do they differ much? Do you focus more on LinkedIn because you’re marketing to folks that are kind of in the corporate world or you still on TikTok? And the commercial side, I know you have a huge following there on restaurants.

Kyle Inserra
No, it’s interesting because I think the white space is where they’re not. Like so you can do TikTok content, commercial real estate TikTok content, and seemingly, or it seems like they’re not seemingly, they’re not there. But I can’t tell you how many times I have gotten a message about a potential listing they want me to get in front of one of my clients, just sort of like, I want to pick your brain conversation prospects who have seen a TikTok video but have reached out on LinkedIn. 

So it’s a really interesting dynamic. They don’t feel comfortable DMing like they don’t want to see whatever because so many people set up just, you know, keeping an eye on my kid. But then it’s so addicting. Right. And instagram. Same dynamic, too. Instagram is a little bit different now, but yeah.

Justin Ulrich
So that’s interesting. So people do engage with your content off channel, then they come into LinkedIn to reach out to you to engage.

Kyle Inserra
It’s happened a lot. Yeah. Pretty weird.

Justin Ulrich
Yeah, very interesting. Yeah. Well, cool. We went through some of your facts a little earlier. You just had a new kiddo. You love In N Out fries. One thing that you let me know was that I guess you tried out for the Boston Red Sox and for the XFL.

Kyle Inserra
That was like a million years ago.

Justin Ulrich
Was that just scratching an itch?

Kyle Inserra
Well, the Red Sox was a thing where they were called a bunch of us to go in there, which was a really cool experience, even though I hate the Boston Red Sox. I’m a Yankees fan. But that’s about as far as it went. So no worries there. 

But yeah, the XFL was funny because I played football in college and then it was just kind of happening and we were playing in this semi pro league and I got an invitation to try out there. But yeah, that was pretty interesting experience. 

It’s weird when we were talking about that, I’m like, I was all over the goddamn place from my early 20s to early 30s. But I think sometimes when you look back, you’re like, wow, all those things kind of help you where you are now, and you got to be grateful.

Justin Ulrich
That led to where you are.

Kyle Inserra
Yeah, you got to be grateful for them.

Justin Ulrich
Yeah, for sure. Every single experience, I always say to my kids, especially if we’re doing something really boring, everything you’ve done in your life has led you to this moment. And they’re just like, oh, yeah, exactly. 

So you’ve worn a lot of hats, and I wanted to crank all this information to AI and come out with something crazy. But it literally was the hardest because there were so many different variants of what you’ve done. When I was thrown into XFL, in the prompt…

Kyle Inserra
Red Sox, forget it.

Justin Ulrich
But I did come up with a cool shot of you just kind of just jacked up.

Kyle Inserra
I’m going to send this picture to my wife. 

Justin Ulrich
Looking beefy.

Kyle Inserra
Alright. Wow. I like it.

Justin Ulrich
Anyways, kind of hitting at the dichotomy of what you do in the real estate. You’re in a restaurant and then one more that I just had to.

Kyle Inserra
Yeah dude.

Justin Ulrich
Because you love those French fries.

Kyle Inserra
I hate those fries. Sorry.

Justin Ulrich
Look at — that’s alright. The fries are a little big, but.

Kyle Inserra
Hey, that’s my taco. That’s my dog Taco, too. Enough?

Justin Ulrich
Oh, yes. Thanks for being a guest on the podcast, Taco.

Kyle Inserra
You’re welcome. I need those pictures. I need those pictures man. 

Justin Ulrich
I’m sending them. I’m sending them over to you. But that wraps it up for us today. If you want, just let everybody know how they can follow you.

Kyle Inserra
Yeah, so it’s @KyleInserra pretty much on every platform and @MrRestaurants on TikTok and yeah, that’s about it. That’s where I’m usually on all those platforms can get me one way or the other.

Justin Ulrich
That’s right. Awesome. Well, thanks again, Kyle. Make sure that you follow and subscribe to Kyle’s podcast. He’s on the Closed Monday podcast. He’s got the Commercial Real Estate School podcast. Follow him. Mr. Restaurant. Lots of good content on TikTok. Kyle, it was a ton of fun having you the lab today. Thanks for joining us.

Kyle Inserra
Thank you so much. Thanks for the pictures, too.

Justin Ulrich
You bet.

As always, thanks for joining us in the local marketing lab. This podcast was sponsored by Evocalize. To learn more about how Evocalize can help you grow your business, visit evocalize.com. 

If you learned something from today’s episode, don’t forget to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform and follow us on LinkedIn and Facebook at evocalize. That’s Evocalize and on X at Evocalize. 

And remember, keep innovating and testing new things. You’ll never know what connects with your customers best unless you try. Until next time. Thanks for listening.