Podcast
The Localist with Carrie Rollwagen
The Localist is a conversation with local makers and independent entrepreneurs. Local business advocate Carrie Rollwagen invites mom-and-pops, freelancers, side hustlers and start up founders to talk staffing, funding, hiring, inspiring — and everything in between.
- Episodes
- 100
- Releases
- Weekly
- Typical length
- 55 min
- On air since
- 2024
- Latest episode
- 22 hours ago
Episodes
100 episodes, newest first
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1 hr 2 min
I work on websites for a living: AI still made me cry | Laine White, Marketing Strategist
Show notes
What really happens when you build a website with AI? Laine White plans and audits websites for a living, and she still found it much harder than people make it sound.
Laine is a returning favorite on The Localist. She spent years in marketing at Uptick Marketing, Infomedia's sister company. Now she is Head of Growth at PackPay, a Birmingham startup that helps food and beverage brands recover money lost to retailer deductions. In her first week, she saw that PackPay's website did not work on phones and did not explain what the company does. So she rebuilt it herself with Claude Code.
Carrie and Laine talk about the difference between a site that looks good, a site that works, and a site that actually converts and ranks. They get into website security and the recent PHP vulnerability, why a CMS matters when a founder hands a vibe-coded site to a marketing manager, and the design tells that make a site look AI-generated. They also cover semantic HTML and other SEO crimes, Google indexing, and using a brand guide with AI.
Watch the Full Episode on YouTube
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Mentioned in This Episode
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Laine's Localist Lab talk: The Actual Secret to Performing Well on Google, LLMs, and Social Media
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Laine's previous episode: Local Influencer Marketing
Connect with Laine White
Laine White is Head of Growth at PackPay, a Birmingham startup that helps food and beverage brands recover money lost to retailer deductions. She spent years as a marketing consultant at Uptick Marketing.
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Thanks to Our Sponsor, Infomedia
The Localist is sponsored by Infomedia. They are a Birmingham-based web and digital marketing company. They help small businesses grow online.
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Join Us at Localist Lab
Localist Lab is a free event series for small business owners. It meets on the third Thursday of most months at Saturn in Avondale. Free tacos and coffee too.
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See upcoming events and register
Subscribe to Carrie's Newsletter
Want more small business tips from Carrie? Sign up for her newsletter.
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58 min
Selling Calm in a Loud World | Bart Stephens of High Dive and Lakeview Marina
Episode 78
Show notes
What if a restaurant isn't really selling coffee, food, or cocktails? What if it's selling calm?
Carrie talks with Bart Stephens, owner of High Dive HiFi Lounge and Lakeview Marina in Birmingham's Lakeview neighborhood. Bart got hooked on listening bars about five years ago, when there were fewer than 10 in the country. Now there are more than 300. He visited them in Brooklyn, Miami, Japan, Berlin, Madrid, and Paris before building his own.
Bart walks Carrie through how High Dive was built for sound from the start: the shape of the room, the fight against refrigerator and air conditioner noise, layered foam and Helmholtz resonators, and why fixing a loud restaurant after it opens costs more and does less. They also talk about why listening bars are taking off now, how the algorithm broke up shared music culture, and how Bart chose local tenants like Seasick Records, Birmingham Classic Cuts, and Birmingham Mountain Radio so Lakeview Marina feels like Birmingham, not like just anywhere.
Watch the Full Episode on YouTube
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Mentioned in This Episode
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Connect with Bart Stephens
Bart Stephens owns High Dive HiFi Lounge, a listening lounge, coffee shop, and restaurant in Birmingham. He also owns Lakeview Marina, the Lakeview development that is home to High Dive, the Lakeview Marina Music Park, Seasick Records, Birmingham Classic Cuts, and Birmingham Mountain Radio.
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Thanks to Our Sponsor, Infomedia
The Localist is sponsored by Infomedia. They are a Birmingham-based web and digital marketing company. They help small businesses grow online.
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Join Us at Localist Lab
Localist Lab is a free event series for small business owners. It meets on the third Thursday of most months at Saturn in Avondale. Free tacos and coffee too.
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See upcoming events and register
Subscribe to Carrie's Newsletter
Want more small business tips from Carrie? Sign up for her newsletter.
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48 min
A Shopping Center Built for Neighbors, Not Chains | Sam Hickmott and Payne Baker of Bruto and Mom's Basement
Episode 87
Show notes
What happens when a shopping center owner tells a corporate tenant "no" so he can make room for the neighborhood?
Carrie talks with Payne Baker and Sam Hickmott of Bruto and Mom's Basement in Avondale. Payne owns the Avondale Mills shopping center and is a co-owner of both businesses. Sam is a baker and chef at Bruto. He has worked all over the Birmingham restaurant scene, from Urban Standard to Paramount, El Barrio, Carrigan's, and Hero Doughnuts.
Payne tells the story of how Mom's Basement started as a parking lot conversation among friends. He explains why he did not want Family Dollar to renew its lease, and how a CBD drink business, an empty kombucha brewery, and a liquor license led to Bruto. Sam shares how Bruto keeps prices low while baking its own bread and slicing its own meat, down to a $4 egg and cheese biscuit. They also talk about healthy debate between owners and managers, finicky espresso machines, and the old Ghost Train container bar that is becoming Bruto's back bar near the Rotary Trail.
Watch the Full Episode on YouTube
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Mentioned in This Episode
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Buying Businesses You Believe in | Jimmy Truong of June Coffee (The Localist)
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The Liquidators (used restaurant equipment)
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Frothy Monkey (former Urban Standard space)
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Connect with Bruto and Mom's Basement
Bruto is a from-scratch bakery and cafe in Avondale with bread, pastries, pizza, sandwiches, breakfast, and coffee. Mom's Basement is the bar downstairs in the same shopping center.
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Thanks to Our Sponsor, Infomedia
The Localist is sponsored by Infomedia. They are a Birmingham-based web and digital marketing company. They help small businesses grow online.
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Subscribe to Carrie's Newsletter
Want more small business tips from Carrie? Sign up for her newsletter.
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1 hr 1 min
Is Posting on Social Media a Waste of Your Time? | Laine White
Episode 86
Show notes
Is posting on social media a waste of your time? For many small businesses, the honest answer is: it depends.
Carrie talks with Laine White, a Birmingham marketing strategist and returning Localist guest who calls herself "the friend who answers your marketing questions." In this hotline episode, Laine walks through how to tell whether social media is worth it for your business based on your industry, your goals, and how much time you actually have. If your business is visual, has a story to tell, or has a personality people want to follow, social can work. If not, it might not be step one.
Carrie and Laine get into why the posts that perform are not always the posts that sell, when a trend is worth jumping on, and why a carousel you can keep posting beats a reel you never make. They also cover hiring a social media manager, building a B-roll library your staff can shoot, how studio-style short videos work for businesses, and a rapid-fire look at Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, LinkedIn, Threads, X, Reddit, and YouTube Shorts.
If you are tired of posting into the void and wondering if any of it is working, this episode gives practical answers on what to post, where to post it, and how often. Laine's bare minimum is one post a week. Her sweet spot is three.
Watch the Full Episode on YouTube
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Mentioned in This Episode
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"How to Use AI Without the Internet Turning on You" with Laine White
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"A Practical Guide to Influencer Marketing for Small Businesses" with Laine White
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Connect with Laine White
Laine White is a Birmingham marketing strategist who helps small businesses with social media and content strategy. She calls herself the friend who answers your marketing questions, and she teaches a lot of it on Instagram.
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Thanks to Our Sponsor, Infomedia
The Localist is sponsored by Infomedia. They are a Birmingham-based web and digital marketing company. They help small businesses grow online.
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Subscribe to Carrie's Newsletter
Want more small business tips from Carrie? Sign up for her newsletter.
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1 hr 2 min
Buying Businesses You Believe in | Jimmy Truong of June Coffee, Daily Edition & Last Call
Episode 85
Show notes
What do you do when a business you love goes up for sale? If you're Jimmy Truong, you buy it, and then you try very hard not to change it.
Jimmy was last on The Localist before June Coffee had a storefront. Five years later, June is one of the most popular coffee shops in Birmingham. This year, Jimmy also bought Daily Edition in West Homewood, and, with three partners, Last Call Baking Co., the James Beard-nominated bakery around the corner from June. Neither deal came from a five-year plan. Both came from friendships (and one phone call he didn't expect).
Carrie and Jimmy talk about why he kept the staff, recipes, and look of both businesses, and how he learned that Daily Edition cannot run like June. Jimmy explains how a design choice at June lowered the barrier between baristas and guests, why staff retention starts with listening, and how his first SBA loan compared with funding June on personal debt. They also talk about blueberry coffee, a boba experiment that lasted two batches, his friendship with Tim from Punch Love Coffee, and the new June location coming to Knox Square in Hoover.
Watch the Full Episode on YouTube
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Mentioned in This Episode
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Jimmy's first Localist episode: Transitioning from Wholesale to Brick-and-Mortar with June Roasters
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Word of Mouth Podcast: The Godfather of Birmingham Coffee
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The Localist: The Magic behind Ladybird Taco
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Connect with Jimmy Truong
Jimmy Truong is the owner of June Coffee, a roaster and coffee shop in downtown Birmingham. This year he also took over Daily Edition in West Homewood and, with partners, Last Call Baking Co.
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Last Call Baking Co. on Instagram
Thanks to Our Sponsor, Infomedia
The Localist is sponsored by Infomedia. They are a Birmingham-based web and digital marketing company. They help small businesses grow online.
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Join Us at Localist Lab
Localist Lab is a free event series for small business owners. It meets on the third Thursday of most months at Saturn in Avondale. Free tacos and coffee too.
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See upcoming events and register
Subscribe to Carrie's Newsletter
Want more small business tips from Carrie? Sign up for her newsletter.
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52 min
The Algorithm Hack That Actually Works: Serve Before You Sell
Episode 84
Show notes
Is there a secret trick to beating the algorithm? Laine White says the only hacks that last are the ones that serve your audience first.
In this Localist Lab session, recorded live in front of a room full of small business owners, Carrie welcomes Laine White, a marketing consultant representing Uptick Marketing. Laine explains why Google, Meta, and AI assistants all reward the same thing: a good experience for real people. She starts with a story about gaming Instagram as a high schooler in 2012, and watching those 5,000 followers disappear.
Then she gets practical. Laine walks through why saves and shares now matter more than likes, how to rewrite your FAQs so ChatGPT and other LLMs can actually cite them, and the three factors Google uses to rank a Google Business Profile. She shares a three-question test for any hack someone tries to sell you, plus five things you can do before next week. In the Q&A, she covers Google Business Profiles for businesses with dozens of locations, where FAQs belong on your website, and who to follow to keep up with algorithm changes.
If social media and search feel like a game you don't know the rules to, this session gives you the rules and the reasons behind them.
Watch the Full Episode on YouTube
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Mentioned in This Episode
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"How to Use AI Without the Internet Turning on You" with Laine White
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Uptick Marketing Learning Center
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Girl Power Marketing on Instagram
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Greater Birmingham Humane Society
Connect with Laine White
Laine White is a marketing consultant in Birmingham. She works with small businesses on social media, websites, and search, and shares deep dives on marketing on Instagram.
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Thanks to Our Sponsor, Infomedia
The Localist is sponsored by Infomedia. They are a Birmingham-based web and digital marketing company. They help small businesses grow online.
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Join Us at Localist Lab
Localist Lab is a free event series for small business owners. It meets on the third Thursday of most months at Saturn in Avondale. Free tacos and coffee too.
•
See upcoming events and register
Subscribe to Carrie's Newsletter
Want more small business tips from Carrie? Sign up for her newsletter.
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46 min
How Birmingham's Greek Festival Grew from Bake Sale to Must-Attend Event
Episode 83
Show notes
The Birmingham Greek Festival runs for three days. The people who put it on work on it all year.
This week Carrie is doing something a little different. Instead of sitting down with a small business, she talks with Agatha Pihakis, who chairs takeout and drive-through at the Birmingham Greek Festival at Holy Trinity-Holy Cross Greek Orthodox Cathedral downtown. The festival started in the late 1960s as a pastry booth at Birmingham's Festival of Arts, moved into the church gym as a bazaar, and now serves close to 40,000 people across a closed-off city block. It is a charity run entirely by volunteers, and as Agatha puts it, it is like opening a business for three days.
Agatha and Carrie get into the logistics. It takes a full week just to set up. The pastries are all made by hand over the summer, including 25,000 pieces of baklava and 600 full pans of pastitsio. Tommy, the festival's numbers guy, keeps an Excel workbook with five years of sales so they know how much salad to order and when to call a broker for an emergency delivery. Agatha photographs every table and every plug before teardown, because a year later nobody remembers how it was set up. They pull point-of-sale numbers at 2:30 each afternoon so the kitchen knows what to put in the oven. And the drive-through she and Tommy started about 30 years ago now runs three lanes and moves more food than the walk-up line does.
They also talk about the hard years, because the festival has been through several. It opened 10 days after Sept. 11, hoping only to break even, and sold out of everything. It donated its proceeds after Hurricane Katrina and had its biggest volunteer turnout ever. COVID pushed the team to pre-package the pastries and put up a tent across the street, and they kept both changes because both worked.
If you run an event, a fundraiser, or a business that has to pull off something big a few times a year, this one is full of practical answers on planning, record keeping, on-the-job training, and what to do when the tornado sirens go off with 1,000 people in the street. And if you just love the Greek festival, Agatha has the parking tip and the one thing she says not to miss.
Watch the Full Episode on YouTube
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Mentioned in This Episode
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Holy Trinity-Holy Cross Greek Orthodox Cathedral
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Firehouse Shelter (Firehouse Ministries)
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The Salvation Army of Birmingham
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Ronald McDonald House Charities of Alabama
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Birmingham-Jefferson Convention Complex (BJCC)
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Connect with the Birmingham Greek Festival
Agatha Pihakis chairs takeout and drive-through for the Birmingham Greek Festival, a job she has held for about 25 years, and she is a past chairman of the festival itself. She is a lifelong member of Holy Trinity-Holy Cross Greek Orthodox Cathedral in downtown Birmingham.
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Birmingham Greek Festival on Instagram
Thanks to Our Sponsor, Infomedia
The Localist is sponsored by Infomedia. They are a Birmingham-based web and digital marketing company. They help small businesses grow online.
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Join Us at Localist Lab
Localist Lab is a free event series for small business owners. It meets on the third Thursday of most months at Saturn in Avondale. Free tacos and coffee too.
•
See upcoming events and register
Subscribe to Carrie's Newsletter
Want more small business tips from Carrie? Sign up for her newsletter.
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52 min
Battle Republic Is Built to Grow without Breaking | Leah Drury and Lindsey Miller Neal
Episode 82
Show notes
This week on The Localist, Carrie Rollwagen sits down with Leah Drury and Lindsey Miller Neal, the co-founders of Battle Republic. Battle Republic is a fitness boxing studio with locations in Homewood, Hoover, and now Tuscaloosa. Leah played basketball at Alabama and coached in the WNBA. Lindsey spent 14 years at Zoe's Kitchen, where she was acting CFO while the company scaled to 240 restaurants, and she now runs an accounting business for small business owners. They have been friends since they were kids growing up, and they are refreshingly honest about what it takes to run a company with a friend.
The conversation gets into how they hire, which starts with character and gets to kettlebell technique later. They talk about building community in a dark room where nobody is talking, why they don't require members to own gloves, and what the red light and the blue light at the end of class are actually doing. They also get into growth: what COVID taught them a year into the business, why you cannot pay the bills at your first location with the money from your second one, and how they decide when to trust the data and when to trust their gut.
Watch the Full Episode on YouTube.
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Mentioned in This Episode
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"Unreasonable Hospitality" by Will Guidara
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"Atomic Habits" by James Clear
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Church Street Coffee and Books
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Connect with Leah Drury and Lindsey Miller Neal
Leah Drury and Lindsey Miller Neal are the co-founders of Battle Republic, a fitness boxing studio with locations in Homewood, Hoover, and Tuscaloosa. Leah played basketball at the University of Alabama and coached in the WNBA. Lindsey spent 14 years at Zoe's Kitchen, where she was acting CFO, and she also runs an accounting business for small business owners.
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Battle Republic Tuscaloosa on Instagram
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Battle Republic intro offer: two weeks for $59
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Lindsey Miller Neal on LinkedIn
Thanks to Our Sponsor, Infomedia
The Localist is sponsored by Infomedia. They are a Birmingham-based web and digital marketing company. They help small businesses grow online.
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Join Us at Localist Lab
Localist Lab is a free event series for small business owners. It meets on the third Thursday of most months at Saturn in Avondale. Free tacos and coffee too.
•
See upcoming events and register
Subscribe to Carrie's Newsletter
Want more small business tips from Carrie? Sign up for her newsletter.
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43 min
If You Can Write Instructions, You Can Build an AI Skill (Here's How)
Episode 81
Show notes
This is a live recording from Localist Lab, the in-person version of The Localist, where specialists come in to talk to small business owners about the work everyone's trying to figure out. This month Carrie Rollwagen was the speaker, talking about the thing that finally made AI click for her: using AI well isn't a tech skill, it's a management skill. Anyone who has trained an intern, written an SOP, or told somebody how to cover their desk while they were out already has most of what they need.
The session walks through how to build an AI skill start to finish, first using Infomedia's new hire Emery as the comparison and then using the podcast as the working example. It covers the 70-30 rule for deciding what to hand off, why a skill is really just a standard operating procedure written in plain English, why the context window works like a meeting whiteboard, and the eight things a good set of instructions has to include. Carrie also shows the skills she actually uses to make The Localist: a researcher, an interview writer, a title writer, a social media writer, and a strategic advisor skill that the others pull from.
There's also a story about an espresso machine named Richard that will convince you to read your AI's research before you sit down at a microphone. Then the audience asks questions on whether skills are just fancy form letters, whether you need to pay for an AI account, and what actually happens to your data once you put it into a chatbot.
If AI still feels overwhelming, or if you've built a skill and it keeps handing you mediocre work, this session gives you a real process for fixing it.
Watch the Full Episode on YouTube
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Mentioned in This Episode
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Infomedia AI training and upcoming events
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"The Localist" book by Carrie Rollwagen
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Laine White on local influencer marketing (next Localist Lab speaker)
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About the Speaker
Carrie Rollwagen is Senior Vice President of Strategic Planning at Infomedia and the host of The Localist. She is a former bookstore owner, a career writer, and the author of "The Localist: Think Independent, Buy Local, and Reclaim the American Dream."
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https://www.carrierollwagen.com
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Thanks to Our Sponsor, Infomedia
The Localist is sponsored by Infomedia. They are a Birmingham-based web and digital marketing company. They help small businesses grow online.
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Join Us at Localist Lab
Localist Lab is a free event series for small business owners. It meets on the third Thursday of most months at Saturn in Avondale. Free tacos and coffee too.
•
See upcoming events and register
Subscribe to Carrie's Newsletter
Want more small business tips from Carrie? Sign up for her newsletter.
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56 min
How to Use AI Without the Internet Turning on You
Episode 80
Show notes
Show Notes
How to Use AI Without the Internet Turning on You | Laine White of Uptick Marketing
AI can save your small business a lot of time. It can also get you dragged into your own comment section. This week Carrie Rollwagen sits down with Laine White, Head of Client Strategy at Uptick Marketing, to figure out where the line actually is. Laine uses AI every day, and she still has real ethical concerns about it, which is exactly why she is the right person to ask. Her rule is simple: use AI to plan, strategize, organize, and analyze. If you are using it to make the content people actually see, either make sure nobody can tell, or be ready for the fallout.
We get into why people come for small businesses harder than they come for big corporations, how one angry comment thread turns into a Reddit thread and then into what your neighbor thinks about your business, and what 'burstiness' has to do with why AI captions read as bland. Laine breaks down what captions actually need on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and TikTok, why she does not want you generating images at all right now, how a brand kit makes AI design look less like AI, and why ChatGPT keeps quietly editing your photos and giving you away.
She also answers the question every business owner is afraid to ask: you already posted the AI thing, people are mad, now what? Laine walks through what to say, what not to say, and why saying nothing is the worst option you have.
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Mentioned in This Episode
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The Localist episode with Hattie O'Hara
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Laine's first Localist episode: A Practical Guide to Influencer Marketing
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DJI Osmo Pocket 3 Creator Combo
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Connect with Laine White
Laine White is Head of Client Strategy at Uptick Marketing, the sister company of Infomedia. She works with small businesses on social media, websites, and strategy, and she has a psychology background that shows up in how she thinks about reputation and word of mouth.
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Thanks to Our Sponsor, Infomedia
The Localist is sponsored by Infomedia. They are a Birmingham-based web and digital marketing company. They help small businesses grow online.
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Join Us at Localist Lab
Localist Lab is a free event series for small business owners. It meets on the third Thursday of most months at Saturn in Avondale. Free tacos and coffee too.
•
See upcoming events and register
Subscribe to Carrie's Newsletter
Want more small business tips from Carrie? Sign up for her newsletter.
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50 min
How Personal Styling Builds Confidence (and a Brand) | Malissa Davis of Best You Ever
Episode 79
Show notes
In this episode of The Localist, Carrie Rollwagen sits down with Malissa Davis, the founder of Best You Ever, a Birmingham-based personal styling and image consulting firm. Malissa spent nearly 10 years at Nordstrom before launching her own business, and now works with clients in Birmingham and virtually across the United States. Fun fact: Malissa is also the mom of Taylor Davis, the showrunner for The Localist. If you've ever seen Taylor on camera and thought she looked great, that is Malissa's work.
Malissa opens with how she starts every client relationship: tell me your story. She talks about why building trust in a dressing room feels a little like being an unlicensed therapist, and what she learned in a decade at Nordstrom that shaped how she works today. She walks through her closet cleanout process (take out anything that does not fit, including the clothes you keep to shame yourself into losing weight), her style assessment quiz, and why her four-hour shopping cap is really about respecting your capacity.
The second half is about the business side of things. Malissa gets into why she specializes in curves and tall women, why tailoring is worth the extra $15 every time, how she styles for speaking events and camera, and the SOS package for special occasions. She also shares one of her favorite client stories: styling a Biggest Loser finalist for the show finale. If you are trying to build a personal brand, style yourself for a speaking event, or just tired of your closet saying no to you every morning, this episode is a warm, practical guide. Watch on YouTube _______________________________________
Mentioned in This Episode
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Thanks to Our Sponsor, Infomedia
The Localist is sponsored by Infomedia. They are a Birmingham-based web and digital marketing company. They help small businesses grow online.
Join Us at Localist Lab
Localist Lab is a free event series for small business owners. It meets on the third Thursday of most months at Saturn in Avondale. Free tacos and coffee too.
• See upcoming events and register
Subscribe to Carrie's Newsletter
Want more small business tips from Carrie? Sign up for her newsletter.
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58 min
The People Behind Birmingham's AI Boom | Austin Senseman and Robert Hill of Caravan
Episode 82
Show notes
In this episode of The Localist, Carrie Rollwagen sits down with Austin Senseman and Robert Hill, the co-founders of Caravan. Caravan is a Birmingham-based AI training company that teaches business owners and their teams how to actually use tools like Claude Code and Claude Cowork. Austin is also co-founder of Birmingham AI, the 501(c)(3) that puts on free monthly AI events at Innovation Depot, and is a Claude Ambassador for Birmingham. Infomedia hired Caravan for a full team training earlier this year, and Infomedia also sells the class to clients.
Austin and Robert talk about how Caravan started with a listening tour of 20 Birmingham businesses at the end of last year, and how the answer they kept hearing was not build me a product, it was teach me how to use these tools. They get into why they think Claude Code was the moment agentic AI became real for non-technical professionals, why every AI class is also a little bit of therapy, and why they update the curriculum every single week to keep up with what the tools can do.
The second half is where the conversation goes deeper. Carrie, Austin and Robert all get honest about the ethics of AI, the anxiety it creates, and the reality of being a writer or a small business owner trying to navigate this moment. They talk about why anger is a common emotional home for people right now, why disengaging from AI often means leaving the conversation to bad actors, and why Robert thinks 2027 is going to get weird. They also talk about James Clear's identity framework, why buying local-ish beats buying local perfectly, and why Austin's favorite AI story is a Birmingham pastor who uses AI to save four hours a week on sermons so he can visit more people in hospice. If you are grappling with AI in your own work, this is a rare honest conversation.
Watch on YouTube _______________________________________
Mentioned in This Episode
• Caravan
• Claude
Thanks to Our Sponsor, Infomedia
The Localist is sponsored by Infomedia. They are a Birmingham-based web and digital marketing company. They help small businesses grow online.
Join Us at Localist Lab
Localist Lab is a free event series for small business owners. It meets on the third Thursday of most months at Saturn in Avondale. Free tacos and coffee too.
• See upcoming events and register
Subscribe to Carrie's Newsletter
Want more small business tips from Carrie? Sign up for her newsletter.
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58 min
Before You Book a Photographer, Listen to This | Katey Beck & Taylor Davis of Infomedia
Episode 81
Show notes
What actually makes a photo shoot go well, and what makes an expensive one go sideways?
In this episode of The Localist, Carrie Rollwagen sits down with Katey Beck and Taylor Davis, producers at Infomedia Studios. Katey is a chef turned producer. Taylor is a film major from Auburn with a background in commercial acting and wedding videography. Together they run photo and video shoots for small businesses and brands in Birmingham, and Carrie regularly goes to them for the questions she cannot answer herself: what to wear on camera, how not to freeze up on video, whether her Zoom background looks weird.
Katey and Taylor talk about what really goes into a shoot. Why one hour of production equals one minute of finished content. Why a full day realistically nets you 80 photos and a 90 second video, not a highlight reel. Why hospitality matters more than gear. Why you should never book a photographer without asking about lighting, focus and their ability to direct posing. When you actually need a stylist on set, and why food is the one category you always do. How to make people comfortable on camera when they are not used to being there.
The second half is a practical guide for anyone shooting on their own. What a shot list is and why the whole team needs one. Why brand shoots often fail because the photos were not planned against the content they would live in. Why you should not wear the same blazer in every frame. How to build a good background at your desk. Why the iPhone is a legitimate tool in 2026, and how to hold your exposure to get better footage in any light. Katey and Taylor also answer listener questions on why video is so much harder than photos, whether there really is a good side of your face, and what budget you actually need to hire a producer.
Watch on YouTube _______________________________________
Mentioned in This Episode
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Spindle Photography (Kelly Cummings)
Thanks to Our Sponsor, Infomedia
The Localist is sponsored by Infomedia. They are a Birmingham-based web and digital marketing company. They help small businesses grow online.
Join Us at Localist Lab
Localist Lab is a free event series for small business owners. It meets on the third Thursday of most months at Saturn in Avondale. Free tacos and coffee too.
• See upcoming events and register
Subscribe to Carrie's Newsletter
Want more small business tips from Carrie? Sign up for her newsletter.
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41 min
Pizza, Pasta, and the Birmingham Brunch Scene | Bryan Stanfield of Trattoria ZaZa
Episode 80
Show notes
If you live in Birmingham, you already know Trattoria ZaZa.
In this episode of The Localist, Carrie Rollwagen sits down with Bryan Stanfield of Trattoria ZaZa in downtown Birmingham. Bryan started at ZaZa as a server in 2010 while he was a student at UAB. Five years later, he and his former business partner bought the restaurant from original owners Brian Somershield and Geoff Lockert. Today ZaZa is one of the most beloved lunch and brunch spots in the city, known for Roman-style square pizza, daily pasta, and coffee program.
Bryan and Carrie get into the name (it was ZaZa Trattoria in 2009, became Trattoria Centrale after a legal issue, and eventually went back to ZaZa when the community never stopped calling it that). They talk about how Bryan bought the restaurant instead of opening the ramen shop he had been planning. Why the pandemic pushed ZaZa to include tips in the menu price, and what the reaction has actually been. What it was like to close for eight months in 2019 for a renovation forced by Orchestra Partners' redevelopment of the Frank Nelson Building, how the space grew from 20 seats to 60, and how Bryan worked with Creature and designer Andrew Thomson to figure out every sconce and paint color.
The second half is about the food and the philosophy. Why the menu changes daily and how a chef comes in at 3 p.m. and rebuilds a dinner menu from scratch by 5. Why brunch became such a phenomenon. Why the pizza is a hybrid of Roman pizza al taglio and focaccia, and why Bryan describes his food as second-generation Italian cooked with Alabama ingredients. Why he still calls Brian Somershield and Geoff Lockert regularly for advice, and why the downtown restaurant community is genuinely a community. If you love ZaZa, run a restaurant, or care about what has been happening in downtown Birmingham food for the last 15 years, this conversation is for you.
Watch on YouTube _______________________________________
Mentioned in This Episode
• Helen
• Creature
• The Localist episode with Uncle G's Pizza
• Andrew Thompson Design Studio
Thanks to Our Sponsor, Infomedia
The Localist is sponsored by Infomedia. They are a Birmingham-based web and digital marketing company. They help small businesses grow online.
Join Us at Localist Lab
Localist Lab is a free event series for small business owners. It meets on the third Thursday of most months at Saturn in Avondale. Free tacos and coffee too.
• See upcoming events and register
Subscribe to Carrie's Newsletter
Want more small business tips from Carrie? Sign up for her newsletter.
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50 min
What's Really Going On with Your Digital Ads (and How to Fix It) | Matt Robinson, Director of Advertising and Analytics
Episode 79
Show notes
If your digital ads feel broken, it is because they are.
This episode is a live recording from Localist Lab, the free monthly marketing event series for small business owners in Birmingham. Matt Robinson, Director of Advertising and Analytics at Uptick Marketing, takes the stage to walk a live audience through what has actually changed with Google Ads and Meta Ads in 2026, and what to do about it. Matt oversees digital advertising at Uptick Marketing and also serves as President of AMA Birmingham.
Matt breaks down why you may be spending the same amount and getting less. Why cheaper cost per click is not the win it used to be. Why the platforms now treat your website as a data source just as much as your ads. What AI Max, Performance Max and Advantage Plus are actually doing on the back end, and why bad website content will burn your ad budget on them. He walks through what kinds of Facebook ads the platform is actually rewarding right now (us versus them, face to camera, product demos, testimonials, web experience, positioning tests, founder story), and why the answer is 20 plus ads a month, not a single perfect one.
The second half covers tracking and AI-generated advice. Why tracking is broken and getting worse. Why to think directionally, not in exact dollar amounts. Why cutting your budget is the wrong reaction to rising costs. And why AI advice from Claude or ChatGPT can lead you off a cliff if you do not tell it your budget, your goals, what has worked and what has not, and demand it push back. If you run digital ads for your small business, this is a practical field guide.
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Mentioned in This Episode
• Meta Ads
• Claude
• ChatGPT
• Uncle G's Pizza episode of The Localist
Thanks to Our Sponsor, Infomedia
The Localist is sponsored by Infomedia. They are a Birmingham-based web and digital marketing company. They help small businesses grow online.
Join Us at Localist Lab
Localist Lab is a free event series for small business owners. It meets on the third Thursday of most months at Saturn in Avondale. Free tacos and coffee too.
• See upcoming events and register
Subscribe to Carrie's Newsletter
Want more small business tips from Carrie? Sign up for her newsletter.
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58 min
Preserving Birmingham's Past While Building Its Future | David Fleming of REV Birmingham
Episode 78
Show notes
In this episode of The Localist, Carrie Rollwagen sits down with David Fleming, president and CEO of REV Birmingham. REV is the nonprofit that works to grow downtown Birmingham and the Woodlawn neighborhood, and David has been doing this work for 30 years. He is a self-described building hugger, a Bessemer native, and a walking encyclopedia of Birmingham history.
Carrie and David open with a Birmingham history lesson. Why the city was founded as an entrepreneurial response to the collapse of the Southern slave economy, why the immigrants who came here to open dry goods stores and furniture shops mattered as much as the industrialists, and why understanding that DNA is critical for anyone leading the city into the future. Then they get into the last 30 years of downtown revitalization. Why 2010 was the pivotal year. How Railroad Park and Regions Field changed people's belief in what downtown could be. Why Second Avenue North became a corridor and how Urban Standard lit the fuse.
The second half is a practical guide for small business owners. What REV actually does (place management, economic development, marketing and storytelling, advocacy and policy), the CAP program you see downtown in the blue shirts, the Business Improvement District, the historic preservation easement program, and the real estate advice REV offers for free to any business owner trying to figure out where to open. David also shares what a 2000-person survey revealed about what people actually want to see downtown, and why the answer is not what most people expect. If you own a small business in Birmingham or love the city, this conversation is full of practical resources and Birmingham history you should know.
_______________________________________
Mentioned in This Episode
• Birmingham Historical Society
• Church Street Coffee & Books
• The Localist episode with Gus's Hot Dogs
• The Localist book by Carrie Rollwagen
Thanks to Our Sponsor, Infomedia
The Localist is sponsored by Infomedia. They are a Birmingham-based web and digital marketing company. They help small businesses grow online.
Join Us at Localist Lab
Localist Lab is a free event series for small business owners. It meets on the third Thursday of most months at Saturn in Avondale. Free tacos and coffee too.
• See upcoming events and register
Subscribe to Carrie's Newsletter
Want more small business tips from Carrie? Sign up for her newsletter.
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57 min
AI Changed the Rules of Marketing. Here's How to Play. | Alan Harned of Uptick Marketing
Episode 77
Show notes
If your ads aren't performing the way they used to, if you keep hearing about AEO and wondering what it is, or if you have a Google Business Profile you haven't touched in a year, this episode is for you.
In this episode of The Localist, Carrie Rollwagen sits down with Alan Harned, Director of Account Services at Uptick Marketing. Alan works with small business owners every day on digital ads, SEO, AEO and analytics. He's honest about what has changed, what still works, and what small business owners can do right now, even without a marketing budget.
Alan and Carrie talk about why AI has accelerated changes in marketing analytics, why pausing keywords based on an AI report can actually hurt your campaign, and why platforms need 30 to 60 days to learn what a good lead looks like for your business. They get into hard conversions versus soft conversions, why Google Ads is now prioritizing conversion data more than ever, and how small changes to a website (like adding a schedule button) can turn analytics into a real business insight.
The second half of the episode covers small-business AI use cases: how to use ChatGPT and Claude to analyze your own analytics, build an AI advisory board, critique your website, and catch things like spammy backlinks you did not know existed. Alan also answers audience questions on whether customers are actually finding businesses through ChatGPT and Perplexity, whether SEO is dead (spoiler: no), how to handle a Google Business Profile you have neglected, whether Google Ads are still worth the money, and what budget you actually need to start working with a marketing agency.
_______________________________________
Mentioned in This Episode
• ChatGPT
• Claude
Thanks to Our Sponsor, Infomedia
The Localist is sponsored by Infomedia. They are a Birmingham-based web and digital marketing company. They help small businesses grow online.
Join Us at Localist Lab
Localist Lab is a free event series for small business owners. It meets on the third Thursday of most months at Saturn in Avondale. Free tacos and coffee too.
• See upcoming events and register
Subscribe to Carrie's Newsletter
Want more small business tips from Carrie? Sign up for her newsletter.
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53 min
This Pizza Entrepreneur Uses AI to Level the Playing Field | George Gilliam of Uncle G's Pizza
Episode 76
Show notes
How do you compete with Domino's when you are running a small pizza shop with two food trucks and a brick and mortar?
In this episode of The Localist, Carrie Rollwagen sits down with George Gilliam, owner of Uncle G's Pizza in Birmingham. George is honest about the journey. He has pivoted his business more than once, from food truck to brick and mortar to takeout-only with a commissary kitchen. He has built one of the most engaged social media presences of any small business in Birmingham. And he has been openly using AI to give himself back the time he needs to run the business and create good content.
George and Carrie talk about why pizza parties for first responders perform better than product shots, why short form video has been a sea change for his business, why the social videos that perform best are the ones he throws together quickly, and how he uses CapCut to build them. They also nerd out on AI: where George uses it for the back end of the business, where he avoids it, why he believes it can level the playing field for small business owners, and why the AI conversation feels risky to even have publicly right now.
If you are a small business owner trying to figure out where AI fits, how to use social media without being self-serving, and how to make small business work in 2026, this is an honest, funny and useful conversation.
_______________________________________
Mentioned in This Episode
• CapCut
• A. Studio That Works / Andrew Thomson (designer of the King Pep mascot)
• Noah Stalcup (illustrator of the King Pep mascot)
• Andrew Jackson Hood (designer of Ohm Jiu Jitsu branding)
• The Camel music venue (Richmond, VA)
Thanks to Our Sponsor, Infomedia
The Localist is sponsored by Infomedia. They are a Birmingham-based web and digital marketing company. They help small businesses grow online.
Join Us at Localist Lab
Localist Lab is a free event series for small business owners. It meets on the third Thursday of most months at Saturn in Avondale. Free tacos and coffee too.
• See upcoming events and register
Subscribe to Carrie's Newsletter
Want more small business tips from Carrie? Sign up for her newsletter.
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46 min
Writing with AI: What Works, What Doesn't and How to Use It | Janna Stevens
Episode 75
Show notes
AI can give you words. But it can't give you judgment.
This episode is a live recording from Localist Lab, the free monthly marketing event series for small business owners in Birmingham. Janna Stevens, Communications Director at Infomedia, takes the stage to walk a live audience through writing with AI. Janna is a career writer. She has spent years honing grammar, voice and style. She talks about what AI is actually good at, where it falls short, and how to use it without losing your voice.
Janna covers where AI helps: beating blank page paralysis, drafting structured writing, repurposing content, editing for length, grammar checks, document summarization, research and brainstorming. She also covers where it falls short: average output, flattening your voice, not knowing your audience, sameness across the internet, and the iteration loop that often takes longer than just writing it yourself. Then she shares practical tips for getting better AI output, including building richer prompts, asking AI to critique instead of create, and deleting the first paragraph almost every time.
If you've been wondering how to use AI for your small business writing without sounding like everyone else, this is a clear and honest guide from a writer who is using it every day.
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Mentioned in This Episode
• Claude (AI assistant)
• Claude Cowork
• ChatGPT
• Google Gemini
• NotebookLM
• Pam Darden's SEO for the AI Era talk at Localist Lab
• Luke Richey email marketing episode of The Localist
• Uptick Marketing
• Tempo Websites
• Infomedia Studios_______________________________________________________________________________
Thanks to Our Sponsor, Infomedia
The Localist is sponsored by Infomedia, a Birmingham-based web and digital marketing company that helps small businesses get big results online.
Contact Infomedia: https://infomedia.com/contact
________________________________________________________________________________
Join Us at Localist Lab
Localist Lab is our free live marketing event series for small business owners, held on the third Thursday of most months at Saturn in Avondale. Each session features practical strategies you can use right away, plus free tacos and coffee.
See upcoming events and register https://infomedia.com/events
________________________________________________________________________________
Subscribe to Carrie's Newsletter
Get more small business insights, resources and behind-the-scenes updates from Carrie delivered straight to your inbox.
Sign up for the newsletter: https://gmail.us20.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=9c59a060684d71f12f6e495fc&id=98cd3122b9
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51 min
Can You Build the App You've Always Wanted? | Dan Atchison of Tend+
Episode 75
Show notes
What if the app you have been wishing existed could actually be built by you, even if you don't know how to code?
In this episode of The Localist, Carrie Rollwagen sits down with Dan Atchison, the creator of Tend+, an iOS app that helps you tend to the relationships already in your phone. You download the app, pick the people you want to keep in touch with, set how often you want to connect, and Tend+ prompts you when it is time to reach out. Carrie has been using it for months.
Here's the twist. Dan is not a developer. He vibe coded the entire app himself, starting over Christmas break when he got bored. Dan talks about how he went from idea to App Store, what tools he used, what he learned the hard way, and why every small business owner should know what vibe coding can and cannot do.
Dan and Carrie also talk about what Tend+ is really about. Why proximity used to do the work in our relationships and how that has changed. Why we should tend to people instead of managing them. Why the cost of delivery is directly tied to the value of the message. If you have an app idea, or you just want to be a better friend, this conversation has something for you
Watch the Full Episode on YouTube ____________________________________________________________________________________
Mentioned in This Episode
• Tend+ on the Apple App Store
• Tend+ website
• Highlands College
• Claude (AI assistant)
• Claude Code
• Anthropic
• Famous.ai
• Base44
• Lovable
• Supabase
• Netlify
• Vercel
• GitHub
• Hattie O'Hara episode of The Localist
• Dan's Substack: Truth and Wonder_______________________________________________________________________________
Thanks to Our Sponsor, Infomedia
The Localist is sponsored by Infomedia, a Birmingham-based web and digital marketing company that helps small businesses get big results online.
Contact Infomedia: https://infomedia.com/contact
________________________________________________________________________________
Join Us at Localist Lab
Localist Lab is our free live marketing event series for small business owners, held on the third Thursday of most months at Saturn in Avondale. Each session features practical strategies you can use right away, plus free tacos and coffee.
See upcoming events and register https://infomedia.com/events
________________________________________________________________________________
Subscribe to Carrie's Newsletter
Get more small business insights, resources and behind-the-scenes updates from Carrie delivered straight to your inbox.
Sign up for the newsletter: https://gmail.us20.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=9c59a060684d71f12f6e495fc&id=98cd3122b9
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