Joe Koufman has introduced brands to marketing agencies more than a thousand times. He has also introduced three couples who went on to get married and have two children each, a statistic he offers without being asked and immediately qualifies by pointing out that he is not a marriage counselor. He runs Setup, an Atlanta firm that calls itself a marketing matchmaker, and he has just published his first book about how any of this is done on purpose.
The music thread runs underneath everything, as it tends to with our guests. He spent years hosting a weekly music discovery show, first on a mountain station in Jackson Hole and now online, and he is slowly learning to play a hundred-year-old trumpet that belonged to his grandmother.
Jeff Perkins talks to Joe about the Abercrombie job that turned into a radio show in Wyoming, why the agency search process takes four months when it could take a week, why the best connectors he knows are introverts, and the one-minute habit that sits underneath the whole thing.
Key takeaways
- Networking is the wrong word and mostly a bad tool. The goal at an event is not 20 new contacts, it's two.
- The traditional agency search takes three or four months and costs a client upwards of $200,000. Joe's model gets to three or four qualified agencies in about a week, paid for by the agencies.
- He used to think choosing an agency was half capability and half chemistry. He now thinks it's closer to 35 percent capability and 65 percent chemistry.
- Introverts often make better connectors than extroverts, because showing up at events is not the skill. Following up is.
- The habit underneath all of it takes about a minute: when you think of someone, tell them.
- Everything he calls a soft skill is learnable, which is the entire argument of the book.
Listen to the episode
From an Abercrombie in New Orleans to a radio show in Wyoming
Jeff: Let's go back. Tell us a little bit about your origin story. Where did you grow up?
Joe: My family moved from Boston to Winston-Salem, North Carolina when I was six. So I grew up in North Carolina, went away to high school in Virginia, and then came home for college to Wake Forest University. I double majored in politics and speech communications. I use that speech communications major every day, and I use the politics major probably more often than I'd like to.
Jeff: What was your first job out of school?
Joe: I was working part-time at the Abercrombie and Fitch in the mall when I was in college, and I had no idea what I wanted to do post college. So I negotiated with the manager of my store to let me move to New Orleans and be an assistant manager at the Abercrombie and Fitch there, and spent a couple of years doing that. Then I got recruited by Eddie Bauer, same job. And then they offered me a job managing the store in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. So they moved me from New Orleans, the flattest, most humid place in the United States, to Jackson Hole, one of the most mountainous and driest and coldest.
Joe: I was 26 years old and responsible for a whole staff, and I learned a lot during that time. They sent me to Eddie Bauer University for a week or two to learn how to be a store manager. But I'd also collected all this amazing music from my time in New Orleans. I'm a huge music fan, my parents were music people, so I grew up with music. And I brought a mix CD into the local radio station. It was Your Mountain of Music, 96.9 KMTN, Jackson Hole, Wyoming.
Joe: I ended up with a radio show on Sundays that was all New Orleans and Louisiana music. And it was cool, because my show was heard not only in Wyoming but also Montana and Idaho where they had transmitters, and the local record stores started carrying a little section of their bin with all the music I'd been playing on the show.
Joe: Then Eddie Bauer moved me to Atlanta after about a year and a half, to manage the largest store in the Southeast. I did one holiday season and really decided I needed to get out of retail forever. So my career progressed from there. I went to work for a dot-com for eight years, a marketing agency for six, and then started my company 12 and a half years ago.
What retail actually teaches you
Jeff: Working in retail, especially as a store manager, is a really interesting way to start your career, and probably a great way, because you learn about customer service at a very deep level. You learn about managing a staff of mostly minimum wage workers with high turnover. Talk about some of the lessons that served you later.
Joe: You're dealing with a staff of young people who are getting paid very little and whose job is not their top priority. They've got other priorities in their life and this is a way to make a couple of extra bucks to help pay for school. I learned a lot about dealing with people. I was responsible for hiring and I was responsible for firing. I had to fire a person I discovered had been stealing from our store. It's really difficult to watch somebody marched out of your store in handcuffs because you made that phone call.
Joe: At one point they were renovating our store. They built a wall right in the middle of it and asked us to keep the store open on one half while they renovated the other. It was dusty and messy and loud. And in the middle of a busy Saturday we heard a pop, and all of our registers went down. The workmen had accidentally cut a cable that went to our registers. So what do you do when you have a line of customers and no cash register? We learned about improvisation. A lot of those lessons carried with me.
Jeff: I worked in restaurants and bars, especially in college, and I always valued that experience. Having to deal with people when things are going wrong and they're angry. This guy is yelling at me because the bartender messed up his drink or the chicken wings were a little crispy, and what do you do? It gives you a lot of empathy. When I'm getting horrible service in a restaurant now, I don't get mad, because oftentimes it's not the server's fault. It's the kitchen, they overbooked. It really teaches you how to deal with people when things aren't great.
Joe: Everybody should at some point early in their career be in a service business where you deal directly with the public. We learn a lot about how to interact with people in a way that makes them feel comfortable, makes them feel seen. Those are lessons that carry over later in business, where curiosity and empathy are two of my core values and things I think a lot about. I'm a curious person and I want to be an empathetic person. It's not easy for me, it doesn't come naturally, but I try really hard and work on it.
Joe: I remember dealing with employees who were checked out. How do you deal with somebody who truly doesn't care and doesn't want to be there? How do you motivate them? And I also waited tables in college, which was a whole different atmosphere, because the camaraderie between the staff in a restaurant is truly a team. You have to cover for each other.
The guy who was everywhere
Jeff: We met a long time ago, probably 15 years ago. And the thing I noticed is that you were always there. You were the guy who was everywhere, and I was like, who is this guy? He's always talking to everybody and everybody seems to know him. Then at one point I was interviewing for a job at Engauge, where you worked, and I walk in not even knowing you worked there, and I was like, oh, there's that guy, he's here, he works everywhere.
Jeff: You were at an agency in business development, so your job is to bring in new clients, and it didn't seem like you spent a lot of time on the phone. You were going out and meeting as many people as possible.
Joe: That's interesting that that was the perception, because I actually began that long before I ever worked for an agency. I spent eight years at the dot-com. It was called KnowledgeStorm. And I got involved in the Atlanta Interactive Marketing Association back then, which no longer exists under that name. I started understanding the value of connecting with people really early.
Joe: Even way before all of those days, there are three couples who have married as a result of me introducing them to each other. Each couple had two children. They're not all still married, but I'm not a marriage counselor. They liked each other enough to get married and have some kids.
Joe: Networking specifically is often deemed a bad word. A lot of people are terrified to go out, because they think of networking as, you go to an event, you exchange a bunch of business cards, and it can feel very transactional. The book is called The Connector's Compass, and it's not about networking. Networking is one way to meet new people, and I love meeting new people, but not everybody loves networking. To me it's just a tool to meet a new person.
Joe: I'm not the kind of person who works the room and tries to collect as many business cards as I can. I do like showing up, I want to be there in the room. But when you're really forming new relationships, you don't want to leave an event having met 20 new people. You leave an event meeting a couple of new people. And the goal is to learn about them, understand them, remember things about them, and start to build and nurture a relationship.
Jeff: It's not transactional, it's relational. And that doesn't happen at one networking event. Probably the more important thing than going to the networking event is what you do after it.
Joe: Remembering little tidbits about people is always a great start. Being curious and asking great questions, and then filing away what they say, and not forgetting their name, and not forgetting where their alma mater is. There are so many little tidbits about you, Jeff, that I've filed away over the years. I know how huge a Bruce Springsteen fan you are. I know you have two daughters. Not because I'm working an angle, but because I'm truly curious. I honestly like knowing people and getting to know people better.
Joe: And the follow-up can be as simple as a quick text message. It can be an email, sometimes a phone call, a LinkedIn message. There are so many communication channels now. It can be an Instagram message. I've found that different people like to connect in different ways, and you have to meet people where they are and connect with them in the ways they prefer.
Be brave enough to be bad at something
Joe: Part of the reason I wrote the book is that these really are skills that can be learned if they're practiced. You mentioned my trumpet. My grandmother passed away when I was in college, and during COVID my uncle was cleaning out the basement and said, I found a case with a trumpet that was owned by your grandmother, do you want it? So he shipped it to me here in Atlanta, and I started taking lessons over Zoom, because this was COVID, and then eventually in person.
Joe: I'm never going to be truly amazing at the trumpet. I am definitely a rookie. But I love it. I have a passion for music, and I feel connected to my grandmother playing the trumpet that once touched her lips 60 or 70 years ago. Be brave enough to be bad at something. I'm bad at the trumpet, but I really love it. And to bring it back to the book, these are skills you can learn even if they're difficult at first, and over time you can become much better at being a connector of people.
Joe: One other piece is that being generous with your time and your connections leads to good things in the long run. If you're known as a connector of other people to each other, that does benefit you in the long run, even though that's not the goal.
Turning the thing you're best at into the company
Jeff: You developed a skill as a connector, and you were doing it for other companies. At the agency you were helping your agency connect with brands. Then at one point you realized, my ability to build and sustain a network, I could turn that into a business. A lot of times people say, this is my superpower, but I can never activate it. How did you figure that out?
Joe: I feel really fortunate to be one of the few people I know who has taken their life passion and turned it into their actual career. I love the show Severance, where they live a life at home and then walk into the office and don't know anything about their home life. We all have to sever a little bit, separate out our professional life and our personal life. And for me, I've never felt comfortable doing that. My co-workers know a lot about my personal life and I know a lot about theirs.
Joe: I had a passion for connecting people together, and I started a company that connects people together. At Setup we're marketing matchmakers. We trademarked the phrase. We connect brands and marketing agencies together, and we've made over 1,400 introductions in almost 13 years, which is an average of 120 a year, about 10 a month. It's fun to have a conversation with a marketer to help them uncover the challenge they're trying to solve, and then introduce them to some agencies that can help them solve that exact problem.
Joe: My last agency got bought by Publicis Groupe, a massive holding company. They offered me a job there, and then I said I'm going to leave, and I had six job offers, mostly from agencies that said, we want you to do what you did for them but do it for us. And I had breakfast with a friend who said, why are you going to go work for a marketing agency where they want you to bring in 90 percent of the revenue and they're going to give you five percent of the equity? Why don't you start your own thing?
Joe: Her idea initially was for me to start an agency. And what I realized was, I didn't want to build websites or do social media or PR or TV. I really liked just connecting people together. So I thought, can I start a company where the entire focus is business matchmaking? That's what I've been doing for almost 13 years. Everybody on my team are matchmakers, and we get a spark of joy every time we're successful. We introduce the client to several agencies, usually three, and if they end up deciding they love one of them, they hire them. That's exciting.
A week instead of four months
Jeff: There have been people doing this kind of service forever. When I worked in the big agency world there were consultants who would run the big pitches. How do you think about your business compared to that traditional agency consultant, RFP guy?
Joe: They're called search consultants, and they're typically paid by the client to run a three or four month RFP process. The client has an idea that they need an agency, so they hire a search consultant to guide them through it. It begins with developing the profile of the kind of agency they're looking for and interviewing key stakeholders. Then developing a really long list of agencies, maybe 50 or more, then sending them requests for information that help the search consultant narrow from 50 down to the top eight or 10. Then they send a request for proposal to those eight or 10, and use the answers to narrow to the top three or four. And then those three or four come in and pitch, and the client sits through the pitches and picks one.
Joe: That process takes three or four months. There's an organization called the 4A's that says it costs over $200,000 for them to run that process. And it's a full-time job on top of the day job for the person running it. Agencies find that process burdensome. Responding to an RFP is a pain. And if you think it's a pain as an agency to respond to one, imagine being the client who has to manage eight or 10 of them.
Joe: So how we're different is we've said, look, your goal as a client is to narrow down to three or four really qualified agencies. They have the team that can do the work. They have the experience and the case studies that show they can do the work. They have the bandwidth. And once you've narrowed down to three or four agencies that can do those things, it just comes down to chemistry.
Joe: I used to think it was 50 percent capability and 50 percent chemistry. Now I believe it's probably 35 percent capability and 65 percent chemistry, because at the end of the day, if you're choosing between three or four agencies that are all really qualified, that's the only differentiator. Which one is the best fit to help solve the problem for me and my team?
Joe: So we say to the client, we can help you write a really tight marketing brief outlining exactly what you're trying to accomplish, then introduce you to three or four really qualified agencies. And by the way, it doesn't cost you a penny. We're paid by agencies to connect with potential clients. Clients love it, because our process takes about a week compared to three or four months, and they don't have to pay for it. Agencies love it because they're getting introduced to a client they probably wouldn't have gotten introduced to otherwise, and it's between them and two or three other agencies rather than eight or 10.
Jeff: Has the business been the same model the whole time, or have you had to constantly pivot like most entrepreneurs?
Joe: It's largely the same as it was in 2014. Our model is to write a really tight brief with the client, figure out which of the agencies we've put through our vetting process are a good fit to solve that problem, and then make matches and get out of the way.
Joe: We have evolved, though. We just launched an app that two or three years ago would have taken several years and maybe a million dollars to build. Because of AI and the ability to rapidly create an app, we made one called Setup Certified, mostly focused on smaller agencies. They get two things from it. One is a credential, a seal that says they've been certified, which is useful when they're talking to a potential client. And secondly it gets them listed in our private database, so that when a brand comes to us with a need that isn't a fit for the agencies in our collective, because it's smaller or very specialty, the first place we look is that database.
Why he publishes a job board he doesn't get paid for
Jeff: One of the things I noticed about you, which I think is really smart, is that you help people find jobs. When people ask me, hey, I'm looking for my next gig, I'm always like, talk to Joe. And you do it as a Google sheet. But that strikes me as smart, because your best clients are the ones who move to different companies and bring you with them.
Joe: That's marketingjobopenings.com. It's mostly focused on jobs based in Atlanta, but a lot of them are remote, so it could be useful for anybody in the country. I've also written extensively about marketing career paths and job seeking advice, and we have a whole series of blogs to help job seekers think that through.
Joe: Part of the reason I started it is karma. Be helpful to the people who are important to us. And part of it is honestly a little bit of self-defense, because I get asked quite a bit to go to coffee to talk about looking for a job. So part of it is being able to say, here are some resources. I want to help you, but I don't have time to have 17 coffees every week for job seekers.
Joe: So what I often say, particularly to young people looking for jobs, is do your homework. Read all of the blog posts on this topic that I've written or that my team has written. And if you do your work, then I'll have coffee with you, and we can begin the conversation with that background knowledge already behind us, instead of me giving you the information that's already in the posts.
Why he wrote the book
Jeff: Writing a book is very hard and takes a lot of time. You're a busy guy, you've got your own company. What motivated you?
Joe: First of all, I'm not a natural book writer. I'm not the kind of disciplined writer who can wake up every morning at 7am in front of the computer. I'm a fits and spurts writer, where I'll sit down for three hours and write and then won't write for two weeks. Shout out to my publisher, Ripples Media, for pulling me across the finish line.
Joe: Part of the reason I wrote it is that in this era of AI and digital communication, I think a lot of people, particularly young people, are missing some of the more important skills. We used to call them soft skills, but those of us who've been around long enough understand how important those so-called soft skills can be. Many young people are more used to looking down at a screen than looking somebody in the eye and making a real human connection.
Joe: And in the age of AI and digital communication, human connection is the most important thing. AI can do a lot of amazing things, and I'm definitely a proponent of using the tool in the smartest ways possible, but it can't teach you how to make a connection with another human being.
Joe: Some of these skills have come naturally to me and some have been learned over time. I wanted this book to read like a how-to guide for people where it doesn't come as comfortably. Introverts sometimes have a harder time making new connections than extroverts. If your job is spreadsheets or coding and you don't have a ton of interaction with other people, maybe this book is less relevant to you. But if you're in any kind of business where you want and need to interact with other people, this is the book for you.
The best connectors are often introverts
Jeff: I was at an event for Emory a couple of months ago and they asked me to come in and speak about networking. One of the common objections I get is, hey Jeff, I'm an introvert, so I can never be good at networking, I get anxiety when I go to a big event. And my comeback is that some of the introverts I know are the best networkers. Because going to an event does not make you a good networker. You can be at every event and just hang out with your buddies and not talk to anyone, and it's a boondoggle on the company's dime. The best networkers are the ones who actually make meaningful connections, whether that's at an event with 500 people or at a coffee.
Joe: We have a common friend who I think most people would be surprised to find is an introvert. Jeff Hilimire is a very introverted person, but he's maybe one of the best so-called networkers I've ever met. And part of the reason he's so strong is that he makes strong connections with people, he follows up, he remembers things about them, he asks great questions, and he demonstrates curiosity.
Joe: I reference him in my book, and here's something that hasn't been told anywhere else. I once accused Jeff of being good at politics. One of my chapters is about developing diplomacy, and I referenced him because I said, you're really good at politics. And he was offended, because he thought I meant the kind of office politics that's backstabby.
Joe: What I meant was that Jeff is really good at figuring out the pieces of the puzzle to get something done that he wants done. Who are the right people to get into the room? Which people need to be coached up before we have the conversation? Should we intentionally wait to talk to this person until later, because that will help? To me those are all politics, in the best possible definition of the word.
Joe: These are skills introverts can really develop over time. He's had to work hard at them. It didn't come naturally to him, but he's good at it.
Joe: Each of the chapters talks about a specific skill. Demonstrating curiosity about people. Leveraging your ADHD, because we live in a world where we have a device in our pocket that demands our constant attention, and even if you've never been diagnosed with ADHD, we're all distracted these days. Developing diplomacy. Embracing vulnerability. Aligning yourself with creative people.
Joe: I can't paint, I can't draw, I can barely write. I can write well enough to write this book. But I'm a creative person, I come up with creative ideas, and I think we all can flex that muscle and become more creative and align ourselves with other creative people. All of these are important skills to develop as human connections become even more important than they were in the past, when there were no distractions from digital communication.
Reach out before you need something
Jeff: One of the things I often experience is that people reach out to me when they need something. I need a job, or I need to sell more because I need to hit my quota. And that's fine. But what I think is more valuable is when you reach out to someone when you actually don't need something. The time to build your network is before you need a job. How do you tell people to think about relationships compounding over time?
Joe: There's a super simple trick. When you think about somebody, reach out to them.
Joe: The way you reach out and the message depends on the relationship. If you don't know somebody very well, sending them a text message out of the blue at 6am is probably not the best approach. If it's somebody you know really well, maybe it is. I actually schedule messages a lot, because you can schedule both texts and emails. Sometimes I think of somebody at 10:30 at night and I'm like, that's a little weird for me to reach out at 10:30 at night, but it's fine at 9:15 tomorrow morning. So I'll schedule it for the next morning.
Joe: Just reaching out informally is much more powerful. Whenever you think of somebody, reach out to them. Takes you a minute to do. And boy, it builds a relationship.
Jeff: When I get text messages from you, they're usually dad jokes.
Joe: Know your audience. At the end of the day, we have to be self-aware enough to know the audience, and I feel that you will appreciate the dad joke, so I send it to you.
Joe: I actually spend very little time on social media, but people think I spend a lot of time on it, because I'm pretty intentional about going on there and seeing what's happening and what people are posting. And then I reach out. Oh wow, looks like a fun trip. Oh wow, congrats on your son's graduation. These are all just excuses to reach out. And you've got to look for those excuses. If you think of somebody, just say hi. It doesn't have to be anything fancy. It doesn't have to be a dad joke.
Joe: In the digital era those communications are largely digital, but obviously you can do the same thing in person. You sometimes come to the building where my office is because you've got other stuff here, and sometimes we get a chance to say hi. That's the human equivalent of the digital just thinking about you.
Jeff: Do you use a CRM to manage your network? I imagine a master spreadsheet, or maybe you have something that says, I haven't caught up with Jeff in 60 days, and it triggers a task. Is there validity to that?
Joe: I should do that. We do have a CRM for the business, and that's a little different, where you're remembering to follow up on a task. But no. I kind of think about my relationships in lots of different buckets. There's a bucket that's the Atlanta marketing community. There's a bucket that's my college buddies. For those of us who have lived long enough and been part of lots of different communities, those are contextual buckets of people. And I do think, hey, I haven't reached out to my college buddies in a while, I'm going to reach out to my college buddies.
Joe: It's funny that this came up. Last night one of my Google Photos memories turned out to be my whole team at Setup going kayaking in 2019. So I started a new group text thread with the people who were working for Setup at that time, and there are only two of us in that group still at Setup, including me. I sent it and said, look at these photos from the time we went kayaking. And it started a whole conversation with that group, who all work at different places now. The photo triggered the thought, and the thought triggered an action.
Where to start
Jeff: If you give one piece of advice to someone listening to this who says, all right, I'm going to start networking, what's the first thing they should do?
Joe: First chapter of the book. Demonstrate curiosity about people. Ask good questions and listen for the answers. Not just asking the question and then forgetting what they told you. For some people, the old-fashioned CRM is to take a little note and keep it on a piece of paper or put it into your phone right after the interaction. But yes, demonstrating curiosity about people. My real advice is buy the book.
Jeff: Be curious about people. Because who doesn't love it when someone comes up to you and asks all kinds of questions about you? Then you get to talk about your favorite subject, which is usually yourself.
Joe: For sure. And those questions need to not be an interrogation. It's better to think about questions that allow somebody to get deeper. I'm not a huge fan of small talk questions and talking about the weather. I have a friend who loves talking about the weather, and I always try to get him past it quickly. I acknowledge the weather and then I ask something a little bit deeper and more interesting. There are plenty of topics that are work safe and still deeper than the weather.
Advice for teenage Joe
Jeff: If you could go back and give teenage Joe Koufman one piece of advice, what would it be?
Joe: Get better grades in college. No, I'm just kidding.
Joe: Honestly, soak it in. All of the experiences I've had have led me to this point and I wouldn't change a thing. I would say build even deeper connections with people, because what I've found is that when you're young, you collect two things. You collect skills and relationships.
Joe: And the skills will change. To your point earlier, working in retail and working in restaurants taught you some skills you probably used later in life. But also those relationships. The relationships I formed at a very young age have come back and resurfaced for me in positive ways throughout my life. So I would say, nurture even harder.
Frequently asked questions
Who is Joe Koufman?
Joe Koufman is the founder and CEO of Setup, an Atlanta firm that connects brands with marketing agencies and describes itself as a marketing matchmaker. He founded it in 2014. Before that he was SVP of business development and marketing at the agency Engauge, which was acquired by Publicis Groupe, and he spent eight years at KnowledgeStorm. He is the author of The Connector's Compass, his first book.
What is marketing matchmaking?
It is a faster alternative to the traditional agency search. Rather than running a months-long RFP process, Setup writes a marketing brief with the brand, then introduces them to three or four pre-vetted agencies that have the team, case studies and bandwidth to do the work. The introductions typically happen within about a week, and the brand pays nothing, because agencies pay for access to the network.
How much does an agency search cost?
Joe Koufman cites a figure from the 4A's of more than $200,000 for a traditional search consultant to run a full RFP process, which usually takes three or four months and effectively becomes a second full-time job for whoever manages it on the client side.
What matters most when choosing a marketing agency?
Chemistry, once capability is established. Joe Koufman's view is that the split is roughly 35 percent capability and 65 percent chemistry, because if a brand has narrowed to three or four genuinely qualified agencies, fit with the team is the only remaining differentiator.
Can introverts be good at networking?
Often better than extroverts, according to both Joe Koufman and Jeff Perkins. Attending events is not the skill. The skill is making a small number of real connections and then following up, remembering details and asking good questions, all of which suit people who prefer depth over volume.
What is the simplest way to build a professional network?
When you think of someone, tell them. Joe Koufman's core habit is reaching out the moment somebody comes to mind, by whatever channel that person prefers, with no agenda attached. It takes about a minute. He schedules messages when the timing is awkward, and treats social media posts as prompts to reach out rather than as an activity in themselves.
What is The Connector's Compass about?
It is a how-to guide for building professional relationships, written on the premise that the skills involved are learnable rather than innate. Chapters cover demonstrating curiosity, working with distraction, developing diplomacy, embracing vulnerability, and aligning yourself with creative people. It is published by Ripples Media.
