Doug Wagner [00:00:01]:
06:46. Now the morning show clock. Your morning show calendar reads Monday, December 8th of 2025. There’s snow on the radar in eastern and east central northeast Iowa right now. 7 degrees Cedar Rapids, 9 degrees in Davenport and Iowa City. Dubuque checks in with 10 light snow and 9 in Waterloo here on your morning show, joined on the Newsmaker line by Joshua McNairy from McNairy Marketing and Design. You can find out more about what he does at his website, but I’m going to tell you once you get there, sign up for his email blast that he puts out because he sends it. And it’s one of those things that I automatically read.
Doug Wagner [00:00:41]:
If you’re old enough to know when E.F. sottin speaks, people listen. Well, when Joshua McNary sends out an email, people actually read it because it’s got good stuff in there. Hey, Joshua, how you doing today?
Joshua McNary [00:00:52]:
I’m great. Thanks for that.
Doug Wagner [00:00:54]:
I’m very glad to have you on the program. You wanted to talk I wanted you to talk to my listeners about if they’re small business owners and maybe even not, they can bring something from this home for them. Building your 2026 tech roadmap. And the whole thing is that everybody’s just focused on AI. AI, AI. It’s tech is more than just AI.
Joshua McNary [00:01:15]:
Yes, sir. I mean, AI is the buzzword of the last number of years since the ChatGPT moment back in 2022. But technology always needs to have a plan to be able to actually help you achieve your ends. And that’s true with AI. And as we’re looking into 2026.
Doug Wagner [00:01:31]:
So where do people need to start?
Joshua McNary [00:01:34]:
Well, it starts with outcomes, not tools. What I mean by that is we’re so quick to jump to, hey, this tool here can help me be more efficient with my business or sell more or whatever it might be that they’re marketing. But you need to have your outcomes in mind. What do you want to do with your business, big picture, and then apply the technology tools to that rather than the other way.
Doug Wagner [00:01:55]:
That’s really interesting. I like the way that you do that because the tech can be the tech, but the thing is you got to have a design for that whole thing. And what you say is that rather than going after every little thing with a little, you know, pellet gun or something like that, you say you need to choose a small number of high value initiatives. Why is that?
Joshua McNary [00:02:17]:
Well, it starts with that outcome part. I mean, if we want to say sell more stuff on our website, well, okay, that’s Maybe an outcome that we can have. Well, now let’s think about what initiatives can we do within that, with what specific types of things can we do within that that line up with the tools then. So it’s okay. We’re going to add some AI here to make it more enticing to buy this product when they come to our webpage. And then maybe we’re going to do on the back end of the website, we’re going to do some things to automate with artificial intelligence so that we can ask them to get a referral after they buy the thing. Those are the types of smaller issues we can start to apply once we know the outcomes and then we can start lining it up with the tools.
Doug Wagner [00:02:57]:
Now, Joshua McNary joining me here on the Morning Show. We’re talking about an email that he recently sent the website in here in a second. But when you get to his website, you click through, make sure that you sign up for the newsletter that he has because this is really good stuff. The idea that, you know, of all these things that we’re talking about, if you don’t have a very solid foundation for the data that you collect and that you keep, all of this can be really meaningless when it comes down to it.
Joshua McNary [00:03:28]:
Absolutely. I mean, this is interesting. If you watch any of the commercials on football on Sunday or whatnot around technology, a lot of them are talking about data. They’re talking about, hey, do you have good data? Because if you don’t have good data, you’re not going to get good outcomes when you put it into artificial intelligence or whatever technology tool. So you are already sitting on a data store, whether you’re a small business, an individual, a big business, whatever, you have a lot of data that you’ve collected over the years. And how can you put that together, patchwork that together in a better way, often with technology tools to help you do it, to be able to leverage all of that and pull all the information out of it that artificial intelligence and you, as with your human, human intelligence, can pull out of it to improve these outcomes that we talked about. At the top.
Doug Wagner [00:04:18]:
Joshua McNary is our tech pal. That’s how he signs his emails, your tech pal, Joshua. And he joins us on the Morning show occasionally to talk about tech, your business. Good stuff right there. McNary Marketing.com is the website and of course you’re accepting customers and clients for the upcoming new. Yes.
Joshua McNary [00:04:38]:
Thank you, Doug. Appreciate you having me.
Doug Wagner [00:04:39]:
Hey, Joshua, Merry Christmas to you and the family. All right, buddy, Absolutely. All right, take care. 6:51 now on the Morning Show, Sean Hannity, morning Minute. Coming up next.