Meet Adam Di Frisco, "Real dang nerdy" and 2024 MKE DMC ‘Speaker of the Year’ 

Adam Di Frisco can’t seem to stay away from Milwaukee. Despite living in Chicago, he’s become a fixture at MKE DMC events and a helpful ambassador of the Club. And he just earned the Speaker of the Year award. Curious why an “out-of-towner” invests so much time in the MKE DMC community? Adam says it’s simple: the people, connections, opportunity, and real dang nerdy discussions about SEO. In this conversation, Adam talks about commanding a room, staying “real dang nerdy,” and why other marketers are your best teachers.

Think about the last work meeting you had where the intent was for a leader or manager to teach you how to do your job better apart from working cross-collaboratively with designers, copywriters, SEOs, socials, product marketers, etc,. How many internally branded buzzwords were used?  What transferable skills did you actually learn that later when applied, led to a desired outcome, rather than checking off the box by completing a half-baked training session for your training team? How many of your work meetings are considered to be “educational sessions” where you find yourself learning from a recognized expert in their field? 

I can tell you that quite the opposite happens with any one of MKE DMC’s monthly meetings, especially when Adam di Frisco stars as a guest speaker, which is why he was named 2024’s Speaker of the Year.

Candidates in this category, elected by the Club’s members, are said to successfully deliver “high-impact content that energizes the audience and sparks new ideas…leaving a strong impression on everyone who attended their session.” 

This was all wonderfully true for Adam’s August presentation, “Birding Strategies That Strangely Improve SEO.” It was inspiring at its worst and career-changing at its best, evident in Adam’s thoughtful approach to weaving together an analogy between his love for observing birdwatching and applying those learnings to the art of human (and search engine) search behavior.

Uniquely, Adam’s content was as reflective through his birding storytelling as it was relatable through his humorous and candid take on universal SEO-client dynamics. His advice for people who are hungry to teach or tell a meaningful story? “Keep nestling your way in there. Keep pitching. Keep thinking up new ideas.”

Adam leaves his audience with tangible ways to do their day jobs better with prescriptive how-to SEO instructions that spark curiosity to dig in and research – and patience to test and observe.

Let’s learn more about Adam

Read the full conversation between Adam and Tyler Einberger, MKE DMC’s co-founder below👇:

Tyler Einberger
You're from Chicago. You keep coming back to Milwaukee DMC. You're consistently involved. Why?

Adam Di Frisco
It's really just the community. I think this, since I came here the first time, I got tons of LinkedIn invitations, tons of conversations with other marketers, lots of really good back and forth. So it just made me want to be more and more a part of it. So that's what I'm doing back here and why I want to continue to be a part of it. That's why I'm going to continue to come here in 2025. 

Tyler Einberger
How would your kid describe you in three words? 

Adam Di Frisco
Real dang nerdy, I think are the three words that he would describe me as.

Always on my computer, always talking about algorithm updates and all of that. Yeah. I think those are the three words he'd go for first. 

Tyler Einberger
How would your team describe you in three words? 

Adam Di Frisco
Real damn nerdy. I think they would also explain me those three words. Same thing. Just waking up at five in the morning or nine o'clock at night, talking about new things that Google's doing and all of that. Same words. Awesome. 

Tyler Einberger
What advice would you give to someone who's an aspiring speaker or they've never done it before but really want to try it out? 

Adam Di Frisco
Oh, that's a good one. Just keep trying. Keep nestling your way in there. Keep pitching. Keep thinking up new ideas.

And as we learned here with Milwaukee DMC, the more creative you can get, the more you can tie in things that can be interactive and can really engage people, the better. So just keep getting creative and keep trying. 

Tyler Einberger
Awesome. Two more for you. Do you have a secret for commanding a room while you're speaking without saying a word? 

Adam Di Frisco
Practice a lot. So practice a lot before your presentation. Don't have scripted notes. Just think about it. Just know what you're talking about and try to speak to people as if you were talking to them one-on-one and trying to give them really good advice. I think would be my top takeaway. 

Tyler Einberger
If you could deliver one message to the greater digital marketing community, maybe it's SEO, maybe it's the paid community, but what would you say to marketers, not just from Milwaukee, but everywhere? 

Adam Di Frisco
This one's easy. Learn from other marketers. There's no matter who your client base or if you're in-house, no matter who your audience is, there will always be somebody else that's dealing with something either really similar or something really different that you've never come across. So talk to other marketers. Learn what they're going through. Learn how they got past it, and it'll make you so much of a better marketer. 

Watch Adam's award-winning session

Want to listen in and observe how Adam has refined his SEO teachings and storytelling?