Master online and offline reputation for local businesses

Justin Ulrich
You’re right. It is a pleasure to be here.

Shereen Qumsieh
We’ll try not to talk video games the entire time, right?

Justin Ulrich
Oh, we did have a long conversation about that one the other day, so it’s a good one. But hey, you know, before we get started, why don’t we just have you tell a little bit about your background and maybe about Akira and what kind of got you to the point where you wanted to start this company.

Shereen Qumsieh
Yeah, no, thank you. So my background is software engineering. I mean, that’s how I got my start. That’s my degree right out of college. And, you know, within the, I guess the first five years of doing that, I wanted to venture off on my own, and I started my own consultancy doing custom software development for companies. And we actually ended up doing a fair bit of work for one of the larger food service companies in Canada. 

And one of the very first projects we did was we called it the butcher shop application. And it was one of these very first examples where I got to realize or see the power of data and what it could do just by sort of baselining it and shedding some light on it so that people can say, hey, this is where we’re at today, and this is where we want to get to. 

And it was just a really an aha moment for me because, you know, I just…you just realize, and you’ll see me talk about this on LinkedIn and all over, but just what gets measured gets done. And so we built that application to help shed light on the yield and the waste in the butcher shop, and they saw improvement almost immediately. 

And that was. It was just a really cool thing. And that actually, that software is still running today for this particular customer. So, you know, we just…we love the craft of software engineering. We love building solutions that just reveal insights and make it really easy to understand where improvement happens. 

And how Akira started was, I had a colleague approach me a couple years ago, and they were looking for a solution to help manage their guest feedback, and they couldn’t really find anything that fit the bill. And we had just actually had a previous exit that we had come out of, so we sold a previous company that we had, and we decided that, hey, you know what? We think we can do some really cool storytelling here with respect to guest feedback. 

Because it is such a, I mean, you’ve got reviews and feedback coming from everywhere, and we see so often businesses don’t really know what to do with that, other than there’s kind of the table stakes work of responding to it. But then what can we learn from it? 

And so, yeah, we’re all about the storytelling, and how can we start conversations with operators where they’re just like, oh, that’s interesting. I didn’t know that. Oh, that’s what, these are the themes that are coming up most often. That’s where I should focus my time and energy. So, yeah, it’s just been years of doing that, and then kind of just, you know, launched Akira just under two years ago and been steadily growing it since then.

Justin Ulrich
Very cool. I mean, for what it’s worth from a fellow marketer, like, your website looks awesome. It’s super cool. I know there’s a…I know you’re in the process of making even more improvements, but I’m like, man, starting from where you’re starting, it looks pretty dang cool. So if you’re listening, go check it out.

Shereen Qumsieh
That’s all we doing, that front end coding. I’m still coding. So I’m still. We’re trying to build the company, but I still like to get my hands in there and do that.

Justin Ulrich
So did you do that personally?

Shereen Qumsieh
I did it personally. Yeah. Yeah. I find if I don’t do it, Justin, it’s like the things in life that I want to really be good at and enjoy, I have to do often enough. It’s like, for me, like, cooking, baking, playing video games. Right. Like, you just got, you gotta keep doing it so that you can continue to sort of hone that craft and sort of not lose it. Right. 

Like, you kind of, you get rusty at it. So I like to get into the HTML and CSS and still do it. And that’s probably not going to be true for very much longer as we grow, as we get busier. But for now, I’m still having fun doing it.

Justin Ulrich
That’s true. No, I hear you. The same thing on the marketing side. Like, I love doing graphic design work and just getting down in the weeds. It’s fun, especially with my team, where it’s a solid team. Everybody works really well together, so we just bounce ideas off each other and it just, yeah, it accelerates everything.

Shereen Qumsieh
I think there’s something to be said about, you know, having a small team where people are getting up every day and going, oh, my gosh, I can’t wait. Like, I want to work on this today. We found, I found, for me personally, I can’t speak to other people that were there, but the previous company, I think we got to about 30, 40 people. 

And, you know, my day was spent on the management side of things, and I very seldomly got to actually do the thing that I got into this industry for, which is, which is craft and build software, but then actually have a, you know, get into the weeds of that, and I wasn’t able to do that much anymore. 

And I, you have a moment where you’re just like, I don’t think I’m enjoying this as much as I think I should be. So, yeah, that was just a realization, right? You’re just like, huh? I like, so, you know, staying, staying small, having great customers, crafting great software. That’s what, that’s what I’m all about now. I think I’m at the point in my career where I can decide to do that.

Justin Ulrich
Be picky. Yeah, you do it. Be choosy. Be choosy.

Shereen Qumsieh
Be choosy. You got it. Yep. I love that.

Justin Ulrich
So, so let’s get into data real quick, because a lot of, there’s a lot of folks that no matter what industry you’re in, like, they don’t necessarily rely enough on data to make the decision. Sometimes it’s because maybe they don’t understand it or, you know, they don’t know how to translate the data, what it’s telling them or maybe they just don’t have the time to dig in. 

What is it that with your approach, you mentioned taking the data and creating actionable insights, what is it about Akira that does that for folks when it comes to reputation management?

Shereen Qumsieh
Yeah. So let’s touch on the data a little bit, because I’ve really started to get, I think, more vocal about this in the recent months. And for me, what I find that we do as product people, maybe even just as software engineers, is when we’ve got a set of data that we’ve either collected or whatever, we typically just throw it at the end user either on a dashboard, it’s either a pie chart or a bar graph or whatever. 

We just take that data in its entirety and we go, blah. And then what we do is we go, we kind of put that onus on that user to then take that cognitive or that mental whatever load and go, what is this trying to tell me? And often it’s too much information. It’s a lot of noise. So it is all the data. But what of that data is relevant? What of that data is something I want you to focus your energy on? 

And an end user is not going to be able to kind of think through that if all you’re doing is throwing all the data. So the approach that we take is we go through the data and we kind of go, okay, this is the bit that’s important, and this is the part that you need to, you need to poke, focus your energy on. This is the part that’s telling a story, a compelling story, or that we think will start the conversation that will kind of move things forward. 

So that’s the only data we send back to you now. And when I say send back to you, it’s the way we present it. We’ve got something called our location scorecard. And so it’s a very kind of, like, infographic flow where we’re sort of telling a story from, from top to bottom, and as you kind of scroll down, so you won’t really see any pie charts or bar graphs or anything like that. 

We started like that, Justin, and we found that, you know, if I, you know, we’d have both, you know, bi weekly meetings with some of our customers. And I would ask, like, are you guys using this? Is this useful? And nobody has any feedback. And when people don’t have feedback, that generally means they haven’t looked or they haven’t really thought through what that dashboard is all about. 

So that’s when we kind of went back and I said, we got to rethink this because this isn’t working. I know from personal experience, like, I’m a SaaS consumer. I have tons of subscriptions to all kinds of things, from HubSpot to whatever. And I don’t think I’m ever on their dashboards looking at anything really? Right. Never.

Justin Ulrich
Yeah. It’s like the same thing. It’s a nightmare from a marketers perspective. It’s like, okay, what should I even be looking at? And why? If you haven’t come up in data analytics and you don’t fully understand the whys, then it’s like, what’s the ‘so what’? Communicate that to me.

Shereen Qumsieh
Exactly. And the really, really common one we see is, for example, NPS. You see this in a lot of reputation management software or software, where you’ve got guest feedback and customer satisfaction at the forefront. And you ask any operator, what is NPS? What does it mean? What’s a good NPS? What’s a bad NPS? 

And so what you see is software will just display that number. They’ll just say, your NPS is at 42, but without communicating, what does 42 mean? What is that? For us, it’s about, well, we don’t just let you know that you’re sitting at 42. We’ll say, well, 42 means that you’re at advocacy, which means, generally, your customer retention is good and your customers are going to be returning. 

That’s language an operator understands. And sometimes storytelling is just switch it up and present it as a sentence versus just throwing a number at them. Right. Or use words like indifferent and advocacy instead of just you have an NPS of 24. Right. Because that doesn’t mean anything to anybody. 

But they understand if you tell them that their guests are indifferent, they’re just as likely to choose another competitor location versus yours. They understand. Those are terms they understand. So, you know, when we’re presenting that information, we, you know, it’s just a little bit more effort. It’s not, we’re not talking about complicated stuff, Justin. We’re just talking about a little bit more effort to take that, whatever that data is and tell the story with. 

What are you trying to communicate? Right. And so. And that we kind of do that throughout. We try to do that throughout the application or the platform so that we’re communicating. What is it that I want you to pay attention to? And like I said, a lot of times it’s pushing out the noise. 

So, for example, I’ll give you another quick example. Is every feedback that comes in, we use AI to theme it, to categorize it. So otherwise, that’s a very tedious manual effort. Somebody’s going in there reading through everything and then determining, well, this is food quality and this is, you know, so AI does all of that for us. 

And then as a part of sort of that location scorecard, we’ll communicate what’s going well and not well at that, at that location. So, for example, we can say, well, there’s an issue with respect to service, and we’re constantly missing items in our takeout orders, right? So that’s something that an operator needs to know know, so they can go take a look and go, hey, what’s happening with our takeout orders? 

But what we don’t do is if somebody mentions something, let’s say we’re looking at 100 pieces of feedback over 90 days, for example, what we don’t do is take one or two mentions and present that to the operator. That’s not worth communicating to them. That’s just extra noise. What we do is we take the things that are 25% or greater in their prevalence. 

So someone, it’s been mentioned frequently, it’s been mentioned multiple times. And that’s when we take that, that nugget, we go, this is something that you need to pay attention to. So, yeah, I mean, a lot of times it’s just tossing out all that noise. So they don’t look at a list and they see a bar graph and there’s just a bunch of lines and they’re like, what do I need to. Which of these do I need to pay attention to? 

I mean, what about the stuff at the bottom? Should I. Do I need to focus? No, we just take it all out. Don’t worry about it. These are the two top themes. This is what your guests are communicating. Go focus on that.

Justin Ulrich
Yeah, no. That’s awesome. Yeah. I’m also a visual learner or processor, and I think more folks are visual than otherwise, just in general. 

And I think some of the stuff I’ve just gone through your site and the way that you’re presenting the information, it’s less that you’re presenting the data and more you’re presenting the insights, which you want them to be actionable so that people can say, okay, I understand the ‘so what’ now behind the data. That the data is telling me, like, let me go take action.

Shereen Qumsieh
That’s right.

Justin Ulrich
In one key area, I think, to bring it back to a local marketing lens, you know, online reputation is massive. If you think if someone’s looking for…if I want someone from pest control or if I want to get, you know, best burger near me or whatever it might be, like, I start with an online search. I’m going to look at reviews, number of reviews, the star rating.

Shereen Qumsieh
Yep.

Justin Ulrich
Yes. All that stuff. So what is, what is Akira’s approach to managing those things? Because that seems to me like it’s one of the, I think, most important, at least from a marketing standpoint, if I’m trying to drive traffic and new traffic to my location or business, that’s going to be a key area I need to focus on.

Shereen Qumsieh
Bang on and at scale, that’s the thing we find. We see. It’s hard to do. Right? I mean, if you’re, if you have one location operator, you can probably stay on top of your Google reviews, your Yelp reviews, maybe your listings, but at scale, it’s hard to do. But you’re absolutely right. 

It’s interesting because when we’re talking about reviews and listings, it’s usually the marketing group that we’re working with that we’re kind of going back and forth with. They’re very interested in a few things. They don’t want to ghost their guests online. And I think you might have heard that terminology. We talk about it all the time, but it’s still surprising.

 I mean, Chad and I, and Michael and I at Popcorn, we talk about this often, where we’re just shocked by how many people or brands or multi, multi unit chains are still ghosting their guests online. And so I think, you know, for brands, it’s just, it’s doing that work of responding, responding consistently both the positive and negative reviews, offering a channel for follow up. I think you and I had talked about this last time. 

Again, I see this where, you know, you, if you’re responding them, great. But I think there’s got to be this. And I think genuinely, there’s this desire to resolve the concern. If somebody’s left you a one star Google review and they’re upset about something, give them an avenue to take that conversation offline, because you can’t resolve it through Google. It’s just not an option. 

So you take it offline, you resolve it, and then you. When we see this, I just saw this earlier this week where I was like, yes. Where we were able to go from a one star rating back to five star just because we offered a follow up, the automated responses, the guests took us up on it. And then right away what happens is it comes into a care, it gets assigned to that location and the location follows up with the guests right away. And then they’re able, they’re able to resolve the concern and the guests updated their rating. 

And I think not everybody’s going to be like that, but where we can have those wins, we should try, because I think anything helps. So, and we see from a data perspective, Justin, it’s really interesting. There’s this Goldilocks zone of Google reviews where you want to be between like 4.1 and 4.5 stars. You don’t want to be in the 3.7 or eight. That’s not great. And you don’t want to be in a five star rating because people don’t trust that either.

Justin Ulrich
It’s not real. 

Shereen Qumsieh
You think it’s either fake or, or maybe, and actually the FTC just really came down hard on that. They’re going to start to penalize heavily fake or AI generated reviews. But, so you want to be in that sweet spot, but you want to be there organically, authentically. And so I think these are all valid things that we help customers do at scale, right? 

So that they can decide how they want to do those responses. Either it’s AI driven or they can, you know, they can just have some workflow rules in place that handle that. 

But the thing that’s often forgotten is listings, listing management. And again, this is a marketing kind of component. As you know, Google, one of the things that its algorithm does is it’ll penalize you if your, you know, your basic things like your NAP, your name, address, phone number, and your hours of operation are inconsistent. Where people search, and we see this so often, and it’s a neglected thing. 

And then what happens is not only are you penalized from a ranking perspective if that information is inconsistent, but guess what? You get an influx of negative reviews if that information is not accurate. Right? Because you, I mean, we talk about this, it’s almost rage inducing with guests. I get really frustrated. I’ve been in this, especially when I got, you’ve got kids, you’re lugging around. Like, if I’m going to make all the way, and the first thing I do is I check Google, I’m like, is this place open?

Justin Ulrich
Right?

Shereen Qumsieh
Yep. They says they’re open. So then I get my kids in my car and drive all the way down. Then we find really hard parking, and then we walk four blocks because we couldn’t get close enough. And then we show up and they’re closed. Like, you’re just like, oh, my goodness, right. Like, it’s.

Justin Ulrich
Yeah, it’s brutal.

Shereen Qumsieh
And so everyone’s been there. And that’s one of those things that really drives people not only to leave a negative review, but they become a detractor. Like a real vocal detractor. And so, you know, we help. That’s what it’s about, kind of protecting that, that reputation and protecting your brand. We make sure that that information is accurate everywhere people search. 

And that’s why listing management, for me, is a crucial component to reputation management. You can’t just do the reviews and the feedback, but ignore the fact that your listings are incorrect everywhere and people can’t trust or you’re not reliable in terms of when your basic operating hours are. And so that’s another, that’s the kind of the third pillar for me that is really important, we advocate for. 

And so customers that are on a cure are using all three. They’re using us to manage only their listings, but also their reviews. And it’s like you said, Justin, it can get really complex. Like, there’s many review sites. Which ones do you aggregate from? Right. Which ones can you respond to? Which ones should you respond to? 

So, I mean, there’s a lot, I think, for a business to manage these days, and it continuously evolves. Right. So it can be a challenging thing to keep on top of.

Justin Ulrich
Yeah, for sure. You know, you’ve got your three pillars. If you had someone who came to you and said, hey, you know, I’ve neglected my reputation online and otherwise, like, what are some things I can maybe do today or this week to help turn that around and start getting my reputation moving in the right direction?

Shereen Qumsieh
I mean, and I don’t even know that you necessarily need to use a platform, but if you wanted to start today, I mean, the first and foremost for me is start responding to your guests, both positive and negative online. Right. That’s a really good starting point. 

And it also contributes to the completeness of your profile. Again, it’s part of Google’s algorithm, and its ranking is it wants to see that that’s complete. And part of it is honestly responding to your reviews. I also think it’s a really valid thing to solicit direct feedback as much as you can get ahead of it. 

We help companies do that before they’ve left those four walls. What are some ways that we could have fun with soliciting that feedback, that direct feedback, before it becomes an online review? Right. 

And the reason I think this is really important, and again, I advocate for companies to do this and you don’t need a solution to do this, but I mean, just, I don’t know, print a card or have something that maybe they can scan a QR code, kind of if it’s a casual dining experience or just when they’re sitting at the table. 

And the reason we advocate for that is because our data is showing us that if someone goes to Google, Justin, and leaves an online review and you go to the effort of almost immediately responding and soliciting them, take that conversation offline because you have a genuine desire to resolve this concern. Less than 10% take a business up on that offer. 

And so to me, Google feels like this fire and forget where, you know, just kind of in the heat of the moment. You leave a review and you’re gone. Whereas with direct feedback, it’s like 90% plus it’s almost guaranteed that if someone has went to the effort to contact you directly, either your head office or that particular location, they are waiting for a response. They desire somebody to communicate with them and to resolve that concern.

Justin Ulrich
So it’s kind of, usually, it’s usually, that’s like the first outreach. Like, if I like, as a consumer, if I’m having an issue with a product or something, I will reach out through the normal channels of communication. If I don’t get a response, then it’s like you leave a poor review and then they get back to you. 

It’s like the magic wand to get someone to help resolve your issue. But if you can get back to them when they reach out initially, like, it makes total sense.

Shereen Qumsieh
It makes total sense. And it’s. But it’s surprising how many businesses obfuscate that or make that really difficult. And one of the things that I’ve, you know, I’ve always thought is you’ve got to make it at least as easy, if not easier, than leaving a Google review, because, again, the data is showing us that your likelihood of resolving and getting that rating changed is not easy. 

So, yeah, so those two things work on your direct feedback channels and have fun with it. You know, I was talking to someone. He was like, that’s a great idea. Like, we’ve got these marketing teams that are so creative with their limited-time offers and all kinds of things. Maybe be creative as well with the solicitation of direct feedback. Have fun with it. 

You know, like, hey, was your meal today as good as your mother-in-law’s casserole or something? I don’t know, something fun, crazy, but just have fun with it. Get the feedback to come in directly and your chances of resolving it are really, really high. Your chances of converting that person to a raving fan or a promoter are really, really high. And then you kind of avoid this post to online. 

And you know what you could do even, and again, we advocate for this, is you can take those raving fans that either you’ve converted or maybe they just were raving fans and left you some great feedback. Because by the way, let’s celebrate that there are brands, get a lot of really good positive feedback. You can then go out to those guests and say, hey, would you mind leaving us a Google review as well to help help with that rating? 

I think those are all valid things. But again, you can’t do that if you don’t have really good direct feedback channels. And all that you’re doing is relying on online review. So I think it’s part of this kind of holistic solution, right? It’s kind of like your body. You can’t ignore one bit and then be really focused over here. It doesn’t really work. It’s eventually going to catch up with you. And it’s the same with, I think, online reputation management or reputation. 

Justin Ulrich
Yeah, for sure. And I would say too, if you take a step back from this part of the conversation and you look at like, data should drive all your decisions as a company. So if you have a baseline for where you are today, whether it’s your traffic data or your sales numbers or whatever it might be, and how those kind of correlate to your reputation, online or otherwise. 

And then as you start putting pieces in place, try to track how it’s impacting more foot traffic, more online orders, whatever it might be, and then you could say, okay, I know this thing really works well for my business. It’s hard for me to scale on my own. And then you can go find a solution to help you do that thing.

Shereen Qumsieh
Exactly, exactly. I love that. Yeah. I mean, yeah, you know, we do that here. Like I always say to Matthew, my co-founder, I’m like, just do the thing that doesn’t scale right now and we’ll worry about like almost informs because you kind of know, you’re like, well, these are the things that we’re doing and this is what the solution that we ultimately want to go for has to be able to do and automate for us. 

So, yeah, I think 100% agree with you. Those things are so, are so crucial. And I, again, I’m also back to the big believer in the data. You know, I wish more companies would be more, I guess opinionated is the word about what data to show me. Right? 

And it’s kind of like as these. These, I don’t know, these. Let’s call ourselves hoarders of data, because we do collect an enormous amount of data. We kind of have to be, yeah, a little bit, maybe more opinionated about what we show to the end user. Let’s not bombard and inundate them with a bunch of noise and be really kind of clear and specific about what they need to focus on.

Justin Ulrich
Yeah, exactly.

Shereen Qumsieh
We know better, ultimately, right. We’re the ones aggregating and hoarding it all, and we know what we need to communicate. And I’d love to see software that shows me less noise. Just show me what. Tell me what I need to know and tell it to me now. And that’s really all I’m interested in.

Justin Ulrich
Yeah, for sure. For sure. You mentioned earlier having fun with it, and you also mentioned even earlier in the call that you’re an avid gamer. You want to tell us a little bit about your gaming life?

Shereen Qumsieh
Do you know what?

Justin Ulrich
You don’t have to go too deep if you don’t want the world to fully know.

Shereen Qumsieh
Oh, I have nothing to hide. You know what’s funny is I think in the next year, Justin, and you know what? I’m going to ping you and say, hey, can I show you? We want to put some gamification into Akira because, you know, we. It works and we love it. Just a little bit touch. Right? 

But, you know, you hear that concept, that idea of gamification in SaSS, and I think it’s always a really cool idea. And I think if you’re someone like me that has a competitive spirit, you’re, you’re. Oh, wait a minute. There’s like a. There’s something competitive in this. I’m going to try to, gonna try to beat up my teammates, but. 

But, yeah, so for me, I, geez, I’ve been, you can see my background. World of Warcraft. I’ve been playing, been playing that since it launched, and they just released the latest expansion. So I have been playing that in my evenings after the kids go to bed. But, yeah, I just, I don’t know. 

You know what? And you know what? Actually, I will say the games that I play are the games that tell the better stories. You won’t catch me playing a game that doesn’t have a storytelling kind of arch. I don’t know if that. Maybe that kind of, that gives you a little bit more. More insight into Akira. But, yeah, we’re, you know, we play. I play World of Warcraft because there’s a huge storytelling component. 

So I don’t, you know this, but they’ve got, you know, authors that write books. You know, I grew up reading, you know, before, I guess, the new Star Wars movies came out, there was a whole canon that kind of extended beyond episode six, Return of the Jedi. And I think I had read most of those books. And so I just. Yeah, I love storytelling. I love reading. Reading things like that. And so those are the types of games that I play. 

And if I can weave some of that into Akira, because I think. I think guest feedback is fun. We’re really enjoying this right now, being able to tell these stories, and I think we’re just going to keep going down this road and try to tell the best or the most interesting stories that we can with the guest feedback. 

Just yesterday, for example, I was using AI to pull some really unique examples of raving fans that demonstrated brand strength for one of our customers. And I had a lot of fun doing it because there were some really kind of heartwarming stories that were coming in from guest feedback where guests were communicating unique experiences or anniversaries or, anyways, it was really cool. Really fun. And I’m enjoying that process.

Justin Ulrich
Very cool. Well, I thought it might be fun to weave a little bit of AI and a little bit of your gaming life into the podcast. So give us image of you. 

Shereen Qumsieh
I love it. That’s awesome. Oh, my gosh. Please send me that.

Justin Ulrich
That is not too far. It’s pretty close. It’s not too far off. I’ve been experimenting with some new AI tools. So this one was, I think it’s called photo app. It’s one that’s. That’s brand new. It’s. It’s actually. Really. Yeah. Oh, Photoleap. Photoleap. It’s a cool one.

Yeah. If you’re listening, you want to make some fun images of your friends and family. Jump on Photoleap, and it’s pretty cool.

Shereen Qumsieh
How far away do you think we are from the holodeck?

Justin Ulrich
Oh, five years.

Shereen Qumsieh
You know, I have to, like, Matthew and I have spoken about this, and I’m like, damn. Like, if VR gets good enough that I can be immersed, say, in World of Warcraft as an example or something, some world that I love. 

I don’t know if I might. I think as a humanity, as a, I don’t know, as a species, we’re gonna be in a lot of trouble because there’s gonna be a lot of people that aren’t gonna leave.

Justin Ulrich
We already are. If you look at everyone just sucked into their phones, it’s not even VR. They’re just staring at a screen, you know?

Shereen Qumsieh
You know, I’ll tell you a funny story. My kid was impersonating his parents the other day. I have a seven year old. You’ve got four. I’ve got two, but I think all young. Yours are young, right? Same kind of same age range.

Justin Ulrich
Eight to 17.

Shereen Qumsieh
Okay. That’s right. Oh, that’s right. You have eight to 17. Okay, so I have a seven year old, and he’s impersonating mom. And how he’s impersonating mom is. He’s like, on my iPhone typing. That’s your impression of me?

Justin Ulrich
That’s when you know you’ve won as a parent. Yeah. You need to make some changes.

Shereen Qumsieh
That’s exactly when you know you have to make some changes. And you know that e’ve got friends. You know, everyone’s kind of. You’ve got kids around the same age, and you’re all going through this journey together. And, you know, we know some parents that aren’t gamers at all, and no, no interest in it. Think it’s stupid. Silly, whatever. 

And their kids are just like, they’re desiring to play, and they’re begging their parents for more playtime, etcetera. And then there’s us with our seven year old. That’s like, here’s your gaming rig and your new monitor. Do you want to play World of Warcraft with us?

Justin Ulrich
He’s like, it’s water cooled.

Shereen Qumsieh
Not right now. Not right now. Maybe we’ll try next week, mom. And I’m like, you know, like, we can’t. We can’t get him to game no matter how hard we try. He’s just like, I think I’m just gonna go play with my legos over here. I’m like, yeah…

Justin Ulrich
That’s hilarious.

Shereen Qumsieh
It is funny. It’s just funny. The universe balance. It’s trying to create, but it’s trying to create it.

Justin Ulrich
So something. Some sort of balance. Well, hey, before we jump off, you know, I want to give you a chance to let folks know how to follow you. How to follow Akira as well.

Shereen Qumsieh
Yes, please. So, helloakira.com. please check out the site. And if you want to reach out to me, you know, I respond to everybody. [email protected] and would love to chat. And if you want to hear more about our storytelling and kind of the unique ways that we present those scorecards. Would love to chat with folks.

Justin Ulrich
Perfect. Well, there you have it. Thank you, everyone, for joining. If you want to go check out Akira, like she mentioned. Helloakira.com. it’s a great platform. Really cool stuff, especially if you’re trying to do things at scale, leveraging the AI, thousands of locations, you can manage all your responses and everything online. It’s an incredible product. Check it out. 

Thank you, Shereen, for joining us again. It was a lot of fun having in the lab.

Shereen Qumsieh
Can you send me that image? Thank you. Yeah. Thanks, Justin.

Justin Ulrich
You bet.

Shereen Qumsieh
Yeah. Bye.

Justin Ulrich
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 @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.