Join us in this week’s episode as we sit down with Eric Troutman, the undisputed TCPA Czar and one of the country’s prominent class action defense lawyers. Eric, the creator of TCPA World, shares his unparalleled expertise in navigating the complexities of TCPA compliance, advocacy, and defense. With a career dedicated to shaping the landscape of telemarketing regulations, Eric offers a deep dive into the challenges and intricacies of consent, lead generation, and the impact of recent FCC rulings on businesses and consumers alike. From his journey to becoming the TCPA Czar to the formation of the royal court of TCPA World, Eric provides valuable insights into the future of digital marketing and the importance of maintaining consumer trust in an ever-evolving regulatory environment. This episode is essential listening for anyone involved in sales, marketing, and compliance, seeking to understand the balance between innovation and adherence to legal standards.
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Cross: Hello and welcome to 73 and Sunny, the podcast about the journey of getting things just right. We talk to tech sales and marketing leaders about how they are growing, dialing in best practices and getting closer to that sweet spot. This episode, we are lucky to have a true expert in the consumer engagement world, creator of the website, TCPA world, and known as the, in the performance marketing world as the TCPA czar, Eric Trautman.
Welcome, Eric. Hey, thanks, man. Thanks for having me. Yeah. Obviously in our world, everybody knows who you are and probably has seen you speak and hopefully follows TCPA world. There’s a ton of great articles and great information there. We appreciate what you do for the community and glad to have you on.
First, we don’t get to hear a lot about your background Can you tell us about how you became the TCPA czar?
Eric: Yeah, sure. So I’ve done nothing, of course, but TCPA defense and compliance work and advocacy work since 2010. So for 14 years, I’ve done nothing but this. I’ve been lead counsel and in more nationwide class actions and any other human being alive, at least some of the T.
- P. A. I’m help, the biggest companies in the world to get their enterprise T. C. P. A. Compliance in order and some of the smaller companies as well advocated to Congress, advocated to the F. C. I just You know, have a, kind of a 360 degree practice here. So people have gravitated toward, recognizing me as a little bit more than just your standard TCPA attorney.
And I would say probably back in 2015 2016, people first started referring to me in passing as the czar. There was a guy, a partner at Dorsey and Whitney, which was a big law firm where I was the managing partner of the office for a while. And he used to come into my office every day and say, there he goes.
The czar and, it was funny at first, but, he kept saying it and it stuck and at some point I realized, this is a good branding opportunity no matter how good you are, no matter how many times people hear the name Eric J. Troutman, yeah, maybe you’ll remember that, but you’re definitely going to remember the czar, you’re going to remember that and so we leaned into it, adopted that moniker full, pretty fully back in 2019.
And then we built out the entire royal court with Queenie, of course, at my side. And then we’ve got the Baroness and the Countess and the Duchess and the Dame. And people really like it. It’s something that people can catch on to and enjoy and on the one hand. It’s funny, but on the other hand, it’s very catchy and really easy for people to grab on to.
Here we are.
Cross: What drew you to the TCA, TCPA list of regulations in the first place? What, how did you get into that? That’s a great
Eric: question. I was a trial lawyer. That won’t surprise you. I’ve tried a bunch of jury trials and I thought that’s what I was going to do with my career. I really love trying cases.
And I remember it was back in, I want to say 2008? I did a series of fraud trials for Wells Fargo against the Armenian Mafia in Glendale. And one of the in house lawyers flies out and watches me try the cases. And she, and we got to be good friends. And a couple months later, she gives me a call and she’s Hey Eric, I’ve got this this TCPA class action.
I’d like you to handle for us and I’m like, Hey, I don’t do class litigation. I’ve never heard of the TCPA, I’m just your humble trial lawyer. And she was like, you’re a smart guy, you’ll figure it out. And so I start looking at the law, and I’ll be honest with you this is a stunning statute, right?
It’s 500 per call, class action exposure can be billions of dollars. You’ve got a four year statute of limitations. When you start looking at the law, it was never intended to be like this. It was actually expanded after the fact by the FCC and the courts, tons of constitutional issues. And then it moves so fast, right?
You’ve got so many lawyers that are filing these cases, so many different judges all across the nation, issuing different rulings, interpreting the statute in different ways. So it’s this massive patchwork of, very complex area of law that moves incredibly quickly with billions of dollars on the line, impacting free speech.
Man, this is the sexiest area of law that there is, right? And so very quickly I realized, wow, man, if you want high stakes poker, and I like that, and you want to be in a very complex area, you want to be mentally challenged day in, day out, like there’s nothing better than the TCPA. Now, that’s good news for me as an attorney that likes to be challenged.
It’s bad news, obviously, for a business who’s thinking, look, I just want to make phone calls. Like, why do I have to have a super genius like Troutman on my team in order to just make a couple phone calls? The truth is, it’s just a very challenging regulatory environment because really, there’s so little that’s clear.
And so what you’re trying to do is just navigate the different viewpoints and philosophies of all the different judges that have looked at this and try to come to the safest lane, recognizing that you can never really get to 100 percent in most of these instances. That’s pretty scary. And is
there
Cross: someone out there, is there a TCPA emperor somewhere that’s fighting you for airtime?
Are you, is this your, do you, is this a crowded space in the legal world?
Eric: From a plaintiff’s perspective, there’s a lot of very powerful lawyers out there. This is they’re the biggest sharks out there, the best fed. They’re all multimillionaires and they are very aggressive, very knowledgeable on the defense side.
There’s a couple, there’s nobody at my level. Like it is, it’s a tier of one and that’s our firm. But below us there’s a handful of lawyers that take it very seriously. They’ve dedicated their careers to it as well. They haven’t, read every single case and blogged every single case and graced the stages, all across the nation the way I do.
But they take it seriously and they’ve got teams and they’re built out and they’re capable. But there’s really only three or four of them, to be honest, right? And then below that, you’ve got your typical big law pretenders, right? You’ve got all these big law firms, and they’re like, yeah, we know how to do it.
And they’ve handled like three or four of them, and they’re really bad at it. And they charge their clients hundreds of thousands of dollars to defend it, and then they screw it. And that’s okay. It’s just part of the gig, and they exist in the ecosystem, the big law model. That’s just the way it is, right?
One guy and then they sell you to work with their partner so they can get some of the money that you’ve spent with them. It’s garbage, but that’s the way it works. But there are a couple other good
Cross: ones. They end up reading your blog,
Eric: half the AMLaw 100 follows my blog, and that’s okay. It’s, as it’s free.
There’s no barriers. There’s no boundaries. I don’t, I never out anybody, right? If you’re at, TCPA shop, you can read, if you’re a plaintiff or a defendant, you can read it. If you’re at an AMLaw 100 law firm, the biggest law firms in the world, I’ve got five or six people in each of these law firms that follow my blog.
And that’s fine. I never out them. I never say, he, they have to learn from me. That’s fine. I think it’s a good thing.
Cross: So transitioning to the new FCC ruling, there’s been a ton of content. You did a great podcast covering it already. And a lot of great blogs. Again, it’s TCPA world.
Check it out. Anything, any questions that you have about TCPA rulings in the past? It’s a great resource. There’s, so there’s been a lot of coverage, but for those who don’t know what it is, who are tuning in now. Can you briefly summarize the FCC’s crackdown on lead generators closing the lead generator loophole?
Yeah.
Eric: Before this ruling came out, hopefully everyone knows the lead generation world was running amok a little bit. Now, they don’t like to say that but you would have folks that have their websites, right? They’d have marketing partners lists that would have thousands of people on the marketing partner.
List and, it might be a website about lending, but then you would try to sell them solar or you try to sell them something else. These leads would get sold and they get sold without tracking, right? You just, people would sell a lead five times, 10 times, a hundred times. They’d sell them fresh.
They’d sell them aged. A lead would get sold to aggregators and they’d resell them. And, one lead might end up getting sold a hundred times as it goes through all the different networks and affiliates. It was terrible. It’s just a terrible situation. There was no standards. But even before really the FCC got involved, of course, we created REACH, which is Responsible Enterprises Against Consumer Harassment to try to clean up all of this madness because it’s just, it was just a wild West out there and consumers were getting just hammered by unwanted robocalls.
So REACH had its set of standards, but at the same time, the FCC kind of came over the top and it was like, no, we’re going to have what was called the notice of proposed rulemaking. Where we’re going to propose to do a rule that would limit the number of times that lead could be sold and the topics about which lead could be sold.
Now, they hid the lead in their NPRM. They didn’t really tell everyone what they were really planning. It was like a head fake. But I knew what they were up to. And so I told everybody, Hey look out, it’s going to be a one to one or maybe even a direct, there can’t even be an intermediary.
There can’t even be a lead generator anymore. It has to be right. Consumer to the seller. So a third party might be completely wiped out. Reach did a lot of work with the commission to try to get them to understand, I don’t know, lead generators serve value. These middleman marketers are actually valuable for the consumer.
They’re valuable for small business that you want to keep these people alive. And so the commission came down with, you could call it a middle of the ground road position, although I think it’s pretty aggressive still. And essentially, the rule is you can still have an intermediary, right? The consumer can still get to Wells Fargo through a marketer, but it has to be on a one to one basis, meaning that marketing, that lead generator, that publisher has to include a single name that the consumer is agreeing to receive just from that company.
Wells Fargo. Loan Depot, Mutual of Omaha, whatever it is, and nobody else. Now you can have multiple names on the form, but the consumer has to check each one individually so that every event of consent is a single event for a single, what they call a seller. The good or service provider, and then they have to provide the full consent, just like before the express written consent that suggests that single entity, big change, right?
Today, of course, people are getting consent for thousands of people at a time in the future. Once this becomes effective. one at a time. That will be the rule.
Cross: It reminds me of what Yelp has in place currently, where you get to the end of the funnel and there’s, they give you six options for people who are in your area and you get to click or check a box for each one that you want to hear quotes from.
Is there a, is there going to be a limit on the number of? of let’s say partners that these lead lead generators like lending tree can have on the last page. And is there going to be, for example, a check all or select all button that would allow you to consent or allow consumers to consent for all
Eric: of them?
So I don’t know if there’s going to be a limit the FCC’s ruling does not impose a limit. And I don’t think you can imply a limit from anything in the ruling. I think there’s a practical limitation that, a consumer probably doesn’t want to have to scroll through 150 names to get down to the bottom submit form.
Now there is going to be the option for a select all button. Like you can do that, but it can’t be like, people want to do the big select all to get the best quote. And then like underneath, select one by one, very small and go to different pages, no, no dark patterns. Okay. You can’t trick consumers or dupe them or drive them.
Into selecting all but you can have a little modest select all button, like you would see in lots of circumstances, select all toggles, a little bit more efficient. You can do that, you can do that but the consumer has to make that choice and it has to be clear to the consumer that’s what they’re doing.
And then there has to be select all and then a set just to populate all the checks and then a separate step of. Click to accept the disclosure, right? So it would have to be a two step dance, even if you’re selecting all. But I think in most instances, you would expect a consumer to select exactly which brands they want to hear from or a single brand.
Cross: So I would expect that the outcome of this would be that there will be fewer, the lead will be sold. Consumers will go through an experience that’s a little bit, it’s better for them, obviously, but the lead is going to be able to be sold. By something like lending tree to fewer partners and the value or cost of the lead is going to up to go up.
This is something maybe perhaps something outside of your general perspective. But how do you think this affects the consumer experience? How do you think this is an improvement towards a higher conversion? Is this going to be? So certainly there’s drawbacks in that they can’t market or retarget or remarket these leads to, things that are unrelated to a mortgage.
Lead can’t be sold solar or can’t be sold to a solar company unless they’re opting in for it. How do you think this votes for the consumer experience?
Eric: I think it’s a good news bad news situation to be honest. I think there’s good in this and of course reach right the big trade organization for the lead generators.
We voted. Just on Friday to not challenge the FCC’s ruling because directionally it will cut down on unwanted calls, which is, which we can all agree is a good thing, but there is downside for the consumer as well, which is, today you might get connected with a brand that’s a small company that you’ve never heard of that’s a mom and pop that really is committed to that consumer.
It does a great job for them, right? But in the future, where there’s only essentially a one to one connection that’s going to be capable or possible. Cool. Publishers, most networks are not going to be having mom and pop shop on that form. If you only going to have three, four or five, or even maybe just one, it’s going to be the big boys that, that, the consumer is likely to have heard of. And that, you’re going to be able to be more confident. You’re gonna be able to sell that into the marketplace with the big boy on there and then with the small person. So that’s bad for the consumer simultaneously.
It’s bad for the small businesses. One, because there’s gonna be less leads available. Obviously they are gonna become more expensive. That’s also a problem. But then even in the circumstances where the small businesses actually get their name on the form, right? If you’ve got Wells Fargo, LendingTree, and, Bob’s Mortgage Company, even if Bob’s Mortgage Company is really good, you’re not going to go with somebody you’ve never heard of, right?
And that was one of the nice things about how LendingTree and others of these, lending sites and other verticals as well operated is they would take a consumer that just had a general interest in something. They really just wanted the best rate. And ultimately, the website was agnostic in terms of connecting that consumer with a big company versus a small company.
And in many instances, the consumer benefited from that. And so I think the market is going to change more broadly, right? Less robocalls. That’s good, but less interaction and availability of services for consumers to work with small businesses. I think that’s bad. And that’s something that Reach is really pushing on the commission to understand is when you start limiting the access of consumers to get to small businesses and vice versa, you really take away a superpower of our economy.
Small businesses in this country exist because of lead generators and performance marketers to a large degree. And yes, big companies use these services as well, but really the small, it’s the life’s blood of many small businesses. So it’s a pretty big deal.
Cross: This is, that’s, those are great points.
And so this question is more specific about a brand. We work with a lot of real estate and mortgage companies. The first thing I thought of when I saw the TCPA ruling was the FCC ruling, excuse me, is that was Zillow. Where? Zillow put in place premier, their premier agent program where they essentially get consent.
You go to the website. If you find a property that you like, a box pops up and you fill out your form and at the bottom it gives consent for Zillow and its partners to reach out. So when The premier agent, the way that the premier agent works is that your information is sent to the Zillow contact center where a premier agent concierge reaches out to you.
Once they’ve connected with you via the phone, they transfer you to an agent. If the agent that they were trying to transfer you to doesn’t pick up, they go to the next one. It’s a waterfall, and whoever picks up then Zillow has a referral relationship with that agent. And that’s how a lot of their a lot of their business model works.
How does the ruling affect something like that, where consent is given to Zillow, but not to these agents on a one to one or where the consumer is supposed to be given consent to that agent. Does now that agent not have consent from that consumer, or does that initial conversation count as an existing business relationship?
Can you go into. I know it’s pretty deep in the weeds, but I was curious about your take.
Eric: Yeah, I think Zillow’s in a lot of trouble there. Now, the FCC has blessed, in a little footnote, what Zillow is doing because it is assuming that Zillow’s call is a quote, live call, meaning that it’s not made using regulated technology and therefore falls outside of the whole scope of this discussion.
But I don’t think that’s true. I’d bet you dollars to donuts that Zillow is using either pre recorded technology for outreach or some form of an auto dialer or something that could be considered an auto dialer. So I, I am concerned about Zillow. I think they’re in harm’s way and agents that rely on these leads.
So what’s going to happen is, let’s say that the consent does not comply with the new one to one rule. Zillow reaches out, let’s assume that they’re using an ATDS just for purposes of this discussion. One, their consent is not valid for themselves. Okay, so they’re, they’ve just shot themselves in the foot.
Two, when they transfer that to the premier agent the agent might end up now stuck with liability for the call that was made by Zillow. Now that shouldn’t happen in theory, right? Zillow is not going to be an agent. An authorized agent of the agent. Now we’re using mixing terminology, but from a vicarious liability standpoint, the real estate agent that buying that lead should theoretically not be liable, but the courts have been very aggressive in enforcing, vicarious liability in these circumstances where somebody else makes the phone call, but you take the benefit.
So it would not shock me if both Zillow is in trouble, and then whatever agent has now gone and bought that lead thinking, hey, why not? It’s valid. So there, so that agent is now on the hook for the original phone call that Zillow made, plus if that agent then wants to rely on that lead to make its own outbound calls using regulated technology after the fact.
They would definitely be liable for that call as well because there was no opportunity to obtain and they did not obtain express written consent in that process. So that’s not good. Like to me, none of these, the premier agent program, really any program where you’ve got a third party marketer that’s making the outbound call and then connecting that consumer with good and service providers, getting their consent over the phone.
That entire model is dead unless you’re crafting yourself as a broker, which, could be done, but now you’re also taking on additional licensing responsibilities in most states.
Cross: And, uh, so how would this affect let’s call, if we look to a parallel type model where there’s a corporate structure, where the corporate structure, the corporate head office is generating leads through their domains and websites, but they’re handing them down to franchises.
There was an art, an article in your blog about whether franchise, consent for a brand works as consent for a franchise. Can you go into that a little bit more? So if someone goes to a century 21 website and puts their information in, when does that give permission to, or consent to any of the Century 21 agents to reach out on behalf of the brand.
Does it have to go to that exact agent or that exact office? Can you go into that a
Eric: little bit? Yeah. First party issues here are a really big deal. I don’t think the FCC thought this through at all. I don’t think corporate America really realizes just how bad this is about to get for them. So the franchise model in particular let’s pick on century 21, like you raised that, right?
Let’s assume these are franchised. I don’t know. Maybe they’re not a franchise model. Let’s just assume they’re a franchise model. The. The good or service to the consumer is not being provided by Century 21, the mothership. It’s being provided by Century 21 of Illinois, Century 21, Bob, Century 21 of, Hoboken, New Jersey, whatever it is.
They’re the ones that are actually the broker. They’re serving as the, the broker on, or the agent on the transaction to help that consumer, not Century 21, the mothership. They’re just licensing, whatever they’re doing. So in that instance, I, I believe based upon the way the reg is written, you would actually have to get consent for Bob’s Century 21 of Hoboken, New Jersey.
You can’t just get Century 21 and then hand that off to all the franchises. That’s not correct because technically. Century 21 is not providing any good or service to the consumer, only that the franchise is and that’s true, not just for a franchise model, which again, that’s a big deal for franchises, but it’s also true for really any large conglomerate institution.
I’ve been picking on Wells Fargo here. It’s true for everybody, not for Wells Fargo, but Wells Fargo, for instance. They’ve got their big, Wells Fargo holdings or whatever it is, Wells Fargo Bank and a, they’ve got their mothership. And then underneath that, they’ve got Wells Fargo financial, they’ve got all these kinds of different Wells Fargo mortgage.
At least they, traditionally, I don’t know, I haven’t looked at their corporate structure in a while, but, they’ve got the different specific operating companies that provide the specific services, in today’s environment, you go to wellsfargo. com, you accept. To receive calls from Wells Fargo, N.
A., and all of its affiliates and subsidiaries. And that’s fine. Today, that’s fine. The consumer knows they’re signing up to hear from our brand, and whatever brand is going to provide that specific lending product that they want. They don’t care which Wells Fargo it is, like they don’t care, right?
But it doesn’t matter if they care or not, because the FCC just said no, you have to get the disclosure for the specific entity that is providing the specific service that consumer is looking for, and it has to be done on a one to one basis. So it can’t be Wells Fargo and every one of its little, conglomerate entities.
It has to be the specific Wells Fargo sub entity that is going to provide that good or service. And that’s a huge, just massive change in the first party space.
Cross: And this is a little bit, again, a little bit deeper than maybe we, we should go, but I’m going to go there anyway. If, let’s say, let’s use Wells Fargo as an example, and someone’s filled out a form and they said that they’re interested in learning more about a HELOC or some kind of personal loan.
And they get the loan, they have an existing business relationship, and now Wells Fargo wants to reach out. To that same person and offer them another type of service now they want to get them into a checking account or they want to talk about annuities or something is there now that they have an existing business relationship and they may use that existing business relationship to get consent for one of their other product lines.
So once they have consent for that specific thing now, is it possible to go get consent? For one of their other one of their other
Eric: products probably and the reason I say probably is because the rules around EBR and in the Scope of that consent versus the rules around express written consent and the scope of that consent are different So as I just explained under the new one to one rule under express written consent and you’re calling using regulated technology There’s no wiggle room.
It is seller specific, like the entity specific. But when we’re talking about EBR, there’s a little bit more grace given to the brand. So if you’ve got a relationship with Wells Fargo home mortgage, because you just got your mortgage, right? If it is in the consumer’s expectation that a different piece of Wells Fargo might contact you to offer you related services.
Then Wells Fargo can make that phone call if it’s doing so manually. Now, if it’s doing so using regulated technology, then you’re back over here, right? You can’t do that. That would not be legal for a different entity to make that call, even if it’s still a Wells Fargo brand. But when you’re talking about EBR, you’re talking about a manual call, then the answer is probably, yeah, you can cross market still as long as that’s reasonably within the consumer’s expectation, which, of course, is a pretty fuzzy test, right?
There’s risk there, but, the plaintiff’s bar has not really gone after that. So I personally would not be terribly concerned if I’m Wells Fargo and I’m going to call manually and the consumer is a student loan consumer and I want to offer them a personal loan and they’re going to pick up the phone and just call, I think that’s going to be okay.
Cross: So obviously this is going to affect a lot of the brands that are currently it’s going to affect brands that are currently generating their own leads through first party data that they’re collecting, but it’s obviously going to be more. It’s going to be more impactful for companies that are buying third party leads.
If you were advising a brand, who’s traditionally relied on third party lead generation, what steps are you taking right now to get ahead of the, of this rule going into effect?
Eric: I think, rule first step is you’ve got a year before it becomes effective and it’s not necessarily cooked in stone yet.
The FCC has adopted the rule, so it is a final rule. However, it has reopened the comment period to allow small businesses to weigh in and the FCC might change or ameliorate the rule in some way based upon what the small businesses say. So if I’m a lead buyer. I’m asking myself, am I a big boy or a small guy, right?
If I’m a big boy, then I still might do a comment, but my comment will be focused on the impact of the ruling on other parties, right? But if I’m a small lead buyer I’m a small business, I’m a local, all state franchise, or independent in Rochester, New York or something, I’m going to the FCC right now, today, and I’m saying, dear FCC, If you don’t change this rule, I’m going to lose access to 90 percent of my lead source.
I’m going to lose access to 90 percent of my customers. I’m going to have to pay more and I can barely afford to pay for the leads that I have now. I’m going to have to pay more for my leads. I’m going to be boxed out and have to compete on a national level with brands that have billions to spend when I have nothing to spend, right?
It’s a real story that people need to be telling the FCC. So that’s the first piece of advice I would give. If this is going to hurt you and you’re a small business, you should be telling the FCC this first. Second if you’re a lead buyer, you really need to be talking to your sources now.
Now, I’m not telling people to make any immediate changes, right? Now if people want to make immediate changes, great. But what I’m telling people is you need to start communicating. Find your biggest partners, whoever your biggest lead suppliers are, and start communicating to them. Hey, look, we know this is on the horizon.
We know that people have different philosophy on this. Our philosophy is this is the law, and we’re not going to buy a lead unless it is fully compliant with this lead. And start talking, or with this rule, and start talking through What levels are you comfortable with and what things are you not comfortable with?
Example obviously if the form has a single name and it’s your name and no other name and the consumer clicks the button, you’re going to be comfortable buying that lead. But if there’s four or five how are you going to know that yours name was clicked on that? What data points are you going to be provided?
What consent records are you going to demand to make sure that you feel comfortable that consumer actually chose you, actually saw that specific consent, actually clicked on that button at that time, recognizing that, remember, The caller now has the burden of proof, meaning that the caller has to have a full consent record before they make the call.
That’s another new change the FCC just made, right? In today’s environment or yesterday’s environment, right? The lead supplier gets the lead. They keep the form. Maybe they have the trusted form or your NIA certificate, but they don’t give it to you as the caller. They just give you the data right by the API.
You make the outbound call. Boom. You feel like you’re fine. But now you can’t do that anymore. Now the FCC says the caller has to have all of that in its possession now first before that call gets made. So if I’m a lead buyer, I’m thinking through all of this, right? What data sets do I need? What am I comfortable with in terms of how that’s going to display?
Am I going to sign up for a ping post model? Am I going to be willing to do an auction of some kind? What they’re calling a pre ping, right? Where they’re pinging before they get to that last page. Are you interested in signing up for that sort of thing? Bidding on what’s essentially just an opportunity.
Or do you just want to pay for a static ranking? I will pay you x dollars to be listed first on all of your forms Plus I will pay you x dollars for every lead that you generate Or I will pay you x for every lead that you generate and that’s more than my competitors So put me first right there’s gonna be you know where you rank on that last display page is going to be very valuable in the new world.
So again, as a lead buyer, you’ve got to be thinking through all of this. You also have to be incredibly adaptable. And I would encourage every lead buyer to be to really be working your network. This market is about to get wild. No one knows how much right? How much more these leads are going to cost in some circles.
I’ll bet you. Out of the gate, it’ll be very small in other circles. I think it’s gonna be very high, right? And no one knows for sure what it’s going to look like. So you’ve got to be adaptable. You’ve got to be thoughtful. And because now it’s a marketplace play it’s supply and demand. You’ve got to have a huge network of people that you’re looking at who you trust, who you think are going to be good, thoughtful, are going to give you good, real supply of leads following your instructions, but we’ll also do it the cheapest, right?
So it’s really very fascinating. It’s like a complete. It’s like you reset the entire game, reset the entire system, and then go, right? You’re gonna just start all over again. And those who are innovative, have big networks, are flexible, are adaptable, are communicative, and, I’m describing 90 percent of the industry, which is pretty cool, right?
These folks are so innovative, so entrepreneurial, they’re going to do very well. But those that are, fixed in cement, stuck to the status quo, don’t want to believe change is coming. They’re going to get just destroyed. They’re going to get destroyed. And do you think
Cross: this, do you think some people double down on first party data?
So we don’t want to play with any partners anymore. We don’t want to risk any of this. Let’s just go, let’s just see what we can do on our own and generate our own leads.
Eric: I think there’s going to be some motion toward that, but I think, most of the major brands and most of my clients are big brands that are, that do buying, they’ve all landed at the same thing, which is, we decided long ago that we’re not good at this and these other, there’s a whole industry that is good at this and nothing has changed from that equation, right?
The under, the underlying fundamentals of, we. Make loan products. We don’t do advertising, right? We offer insurance. We don’t do digital marketing, right? That hasn’t changed, right? So the brand still understand that their core competencies are their core competencies. They want to look to still the lead generation industry to do what it’s good at the performance marketers to do what they’re good at.
There’s value there at any size, at any scale, period. But they are going to need to know that you guys the folks that are supplying the leaves are going to be following the rules because as you guys know these are many times these are highly regulated institutions. These are big businesses.
They take compliance very seriously. They want compliant. They do. They want that. Don’t, there’s a lot of folks out there. I think that kind of put their head in their sand. They’re like, Oh, buyers won’t care. You’re crazy. Buyers care, right? Don’t even try it. And I’ll tell you right now, don’t even try to sell to any of my clients.
Cause I find out you’re selling my clients stuff that doesn’t comply and be pissed and we’re going to go after you.
Cross: Yeah, that’s a good insurance policy. I, we appreciate you coming on so much. You’ve said a lot, you’ve said a lot of a lot of great insights that I think are going to be valuable to our listeners, so we appreciate you coming on.
Everybody who is listening, please visit the TCPA world tcpaworld.com. You could just Google, uh, the czar or the TCPA czar and it’ll, you’ll land right on top. And so go check it out. Thank you so much for being on with us and thank you for all that you do for our performance marketing community.
Eric: Absolutely, man. Happy to be here and thanks for having me. Yep.
Cross: Thank you.
