The Algorithm Hack That Actually Works: Serve Before You Sell

Inside Lowe Mill's Maker Community with Dreamers Supply Co | Alan and Kaitlin Slattery   What happens when two artists stop working alone and move into a 100-year-old mill full of makers? Carrie talks with Alan and Kaitlin Slattery of Dreamers Supply Co., a husband-and-wife studio making handmade leather goods, illustrated stationery, and a hairpin that went viral. Alan trained in accessory design and Kaitlin in illustration, both at Savannah College of Art and Design. They were Carrie's second guests ever on The Localist, back when Dreamers had a shop in Forest Park. Now they work out of a studio at Lowe Mill in Huntsville, where customers can watch them work, shop, and sit down for a workshop. Alan and Kaitlin explain what Lowe Mill is and why being part of a community of about 130 artists has changed how they work. They talk about the tiny jeweler's anvil that made their hairpin go viral, why filming social content with kids and dogs at home is so hard, and what it costs to run a retail business when you have an ick about overconsumption. They also share how an alumni residency in Lacoste, France, with a 3-month-old taught them to rest, eat with the seasons, and live more locally back home. Kaitlin explains her Local Love project, where she leaves Google reviews and photos for local businesses she loves.   Watch the Full Episode on YouTube   _______________________________________   Mentioned in This Episode Lowe Mill ARTS & Entertainment History of Lowe Mill Yule Y'all at Lowe Mill Winter Solstice Market at Lowe Mill Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) SCAD Lacoste Alumni Atelier Oddbird Co. Zkano Zkano Socks on The Localist Stone Hollow Farmstead   Connect with Alan and Kaitlin Slattery Alan and Kaitlin Slattery own Dreamers Supply Co., a working studio and shop at Lowe Mill in Huntsville. Alan makes leather goods and accessories, and Kaitlin creates illustrations, paintings, and stationery. Dreamers Supply Co. Website Dreamers Supply Co. on Instagram Dreamers Supply Co. on Etsy   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. Contact Infomedia   Subscribe to Carrie's Newsletter Want more small business tips from Carrie? Sign up for her newsletter. Sign up here  

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   _______________________________________   Mentioned in This Episode PackPay Harmony Venture Labs Uptick Marketing Infomedia Laine's Localist Lab talk: The Actual Secret to Performing Well on Google, LLMs, and Social Media 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. PackPay Instagram 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. Contact Infomedia   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. Sign up here  

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   _______________________________________   Mentioned in This Episode High Dive HiFi Lounge Lakeview Marina Music Park Seasick Records Birmingham Classic Cuts Birmingham Mountain Radio The Garage Sloss Furnaces Pepper Place Rotary Trail   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. High Dive HiFi Lounge High Dive on Instagram Lakeview Marina email list   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. Contact Infomedia   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. Sign up here  

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   _______________________________________   Mentioned in This Episode Buying Businesses You Believe in | Jimmy Truong of June Coffee (The Localist) Ghost Train Brewing Good People Brewing Cahaba Brewing Rotary Trail Amavida Coffee The Liquidators (used restaurant equipment) Frothy Monkey (former Urban Standard space) Paramount El Barrio Trattoria Zaza Carrigan's Public House  Hero Doughnuts & Buns Crestwood Tavern Ohm Jiu Jitsu   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. Bruto on Instagram Mom's Basement Website Mom's Basement 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. Contact Infomedia   Subscribe to Carrie's Newsletter Want more small business tips from Carrie? Sign up for her newsletter. Sign up here  

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   _______________________________________   Mentioned in This Episode "How to Use AI Without the Internet Turning on You" with Laine White "A Practical Guide to Influencer Marketing for Small Businesses" with Laine White Church Street Coffee & Books Paramount Birmingham Ohm Jiu Jitsu Uptick Marketing Infomedia Media Services 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. Laine on Instagram Laine 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. Contact Infomedia   Subscribe to Carrie's Newsletter Want more small business tips from Carrie? Sign up for her newsletter. Sign up here  

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   _______________________________________   Mentioned in This Episode June Coffee Daily Edition Last Call Baking Co. Jimmy's first Localist episode: Transitioning from Wholesale to Brick-and-Mortar with June Roasters Word of Mouth Podcast: The Godfather of Birmingham Coffee Punch Love Coffee Ladybird Taco The Localist: The Magic behind Ladybird Taco ETC Jewelry Zephyr Barber The Collins Bar El Barrio Paramount Birmingham Tattoo Company Juniper Helen Ohm Jiu Jitsu Alabama Twisters   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. Jimmy on Instagram June Coffee June Coffee on Instagram Daily Edition on Instagram 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. Contact Infomedia   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. Sign up here  

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   _______________________________________   Mentioned in This Episode "How to Use AI Without the Internet Turning on You" with Laine White Ladybird Taco Breakout Games Birmingham Laine on Instagram StoryBrand Uptick Marketing Learning Center Luke Richey on LinkedIn Adam Mosseri on Instagram Annie-Mai Hodge on LinkedIn Girl Power Marketing on Instagram 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. Laine on Instagram Uptick Marketing 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. Contact Infomedia   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. Sign up here  

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   _______________________________________   Mentioned in This Episode Birmingham Greek Festival Holy Trinity-Holy Cross Greek Orthodox Cathedral Food for Our Journey Life on Wheels Firehouse Shelter (Firehouse Ministries) The Salvation Army of Birmingham American Red Cross of Alabama Children's of Alabama Magic Moments Ronald McDonald House Charities of Alabama Boutwell Auditorium Birmingham-Jefferson Convention Complex (BJCC) Infomedia   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. Birmingham Greek Festival 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. Contact Infomedia   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. Sign up here  

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.   _______________________________________   Mentioned in This Episode Mpire Concepts Zoe's Kitchen The Stable in Greensboro Vuori at The Summit "Unreasonable Hospitality" by Will Guidara "Atomic Habits" by James Clear Church Street Coffee and Books Infomedia   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. Battle Republic Battle Republic on Instagram Battle Republic on LinkedIn Battle Republic Tuscaloosa on Instagram Battle Republic intro offer: two weeks for $59 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. Contact Infomedia   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. Sign up here  

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   _______________________________________   Mentioned in This Episode Infomedia Uptick Marketing Tempo Websites Caravan (AI training) Infomedia AI training and upcoming events 1Password LastPass Trattoria ZaZa "The AI Daily Brief" podcast "The Localist" book by Carrie Rollwagen Laine White on local influencer marketing (next Localist Lab speaker) Saturn in Avondale   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." carrierollwagen.com Carrie on Instagram Carrie 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. Contact Infomedia   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. Sign up here