How to Waste Money on Marketing

[Music] hello everyone welcome to the 21 hats podcast I'm your host Lauren Feldman this week Shan busy Jackie Russo and William vanderlan talk about a whole slew of marketing challenges from strategizing for trade shows to whether your logo has to tell a story to understanding what constitutes a brand to whether that iPad ad that Apple pulled was terrible or brilliant they discuss what makes marketing so difficult it all starts Jackie says with the industry refusal to set standards I can't find another industry that treats themselves so badly electrician CPA realtor hairdresser nail salon tech everybody else has some semblance of something to say I am a legit entity except our industry which is part of the reason Jackie says that this is the constant refrain she hears from frustrated business owners who hire agencies we paid them all this money and we got nothing for it plus how do owners get past that feeling they need to be the hardest worker in the office the first one in and the last one out even in Good Times owning and running a business can be a lonely Pursuit our hope is that these weekly conversations brought to you by a principal sponsor the great game of business will let owners know they are not alone in facing challenges same thing with our daily newsletter the 21 hats Morning Report which Jak magazine named the best newsletter for business owners and which you can subscribe to for free at 21h hats.com where you you can also find transcripts of our podcast episodes and lots of other articles and interviews joining me this week on the podcast are regulars Shan busy CEO of Kinesis which is based in Portland Oregon and works with small businesses on marketing culture and strategy Jackie Russo CEO of brand Russo a marketing agency based in Lafayette Louisiana and William Vander blumen CEO of Vander blumen Search Group a houston-based recruiting firm that works with churches and other faith-based organizations the episode is titled how to waste money on marketing welcome Sean Jackie and William it's great to have you here it's uh it's almost June and we somehow are nearing the halfway point of this year I'd like to start just by checking in uh on how each of your businesses is doing what's working what's not how about you William we haven't spoken to you in a while how things been going man uh we've just been really busy and that's good and that's part of why I've not been able to be on the show I've missed being with you guys our coo asked me if she could set an aggressive goal this year of 30% growth and she'd been with me two and a half years and and is yet to be wrong on projecting things so I said okay fine and first quarter we closed 31% over first quarter last year so that's awesome second quarter is you know it's we're not even halfway through it yet but it's been a little slower now it was last year it was our record quarter ever so maybe that's the one we don't hit I will say that the thing that's different that we're noticing is the way business is coming to us uh the algorithm that Google uses is just changing all the time and everybody I talk to that has super successful blogs is seeing a drop in traffic and everybody's trying to figure out how to deal with it and I don't know that anybody knows the dark arts well enough to fix it yet but uh we're making some tweaks and changes and hoping that uh fixes things for what appears to be a problem for a whole lot of people that have an internet driven business it sounds like it hasn't been a big problem for you no I think we would be well over our projections if we had better traffic um but we got I mean you know I noticed a funny thing yesterday I it was a virtual day I wasn't at the office and I got a text from a guy that I had interviewed for a search I was running 12 years ago and he turned down the the he pulled himself out of the search that's fine he texted me and said William you probably don't remember who my name is and we met here and of course I remembered him and he said now I need a good number two I'm in a really growing thriving organization can you help me find them so it's that kind of thing that has covered the loss in web traffic you know just the compound interest of having done this for a long time has provided some nice growth for course that um has has uh subsidized the traffic loss that we've had which is not that bad it's like I think we're eight or n% down which is but friends of mine are 20 30 40% down so something's going on we're trying to figure it out Jackie how about you you you were very open with us last year you went through a difficult period where you had a long stretch where you didn't attract new clients I think you told us earlier this year that you were expecting a couple of big clients to come aboard how how have things worked out those are dark days Lauren I don't like talking about the dark days um it's a little triggering I'm got have some PTSD it got better though right it did it did it did as it always does it just was a longer stretch than I'm comfortable with and we've gotten off to you know kind of a stop start year the the two big ones are still hanging they're still waiting on some other piece of something to make it all happen but in the meantime we filled in with some really nice other new ones and we're heading in the right direction we've also made some changes you know much like William the things that got us here aren't getting us there and so we've had to change how we do some of our new business work and I'm forever grateful for the clients that we have and the referrals that they give us because that's always our lifeblood but um you know we we what kind of things are you referring to Jackie what what have you changed I was just gonna tell you we um we have a very robust uh thought leadership program you know whether it's podcasts or speaking engagements you know we're still getting a lot of mileage from the book and so that's always been beneficial we do have a pretty solid email uh database that we work really well I think and that's been good and we're doing we're starting to go back to some old school things that we really enjoyed back in the day and we just kind of got away from but we're going back to our Hot 100 these are the companies that we really really want to work for and um courting them sending them things in the mail not letters you know some some solid fun promo items and some um resources and some fun kind of marketing looking things and uh we're doing a pretty good job of connecting on LinkedIn too and that's been helpful your Hot 100 that's a list of a hundred uh companies that you've identified that you would like to be clients they would be so lucky that's how I think about it I love your attitude Jackie it's awesome and then you you you cold call them you reach out to them or do we're literally courting what we used to do in the olden times um you know the teens because I went back through the decades of when did we grow the fastest when did we grow the best and it was really that kind of 08 to 14 that was a really good streak for us and so what were we doing then and it was simple we had this Hot 100 and we added to it you know every month we'd add a few to it but we always it had to be at least 100 like we're always adding to it and it was we would mail them 3D promo items fun stuff we would send them for a while we were kind of on a healthcare kick and so this is how dorky we are we created this poster and it was I don't know like 11 by 17 it was very beautifully designed black and white and it said Legends legendary doctors and it had uh the doctors from Mash Dr J Dr Dre all the legendary doctors and then the whoever the head of the healthcare facility we were calling on it had them so we would get pictures where these guys would frame it and hang it on their wall like I thought it was the greatest thing ever and so things like that things that just kind of take the take the air out you know just kind of make it fun it marketing should be at its core something that gets people's attention for the right reasons and so we're getting back to that Sean you spoke earlier in the year about the big push that you made to get your folks out in the community and make connections kind of an everyone sells idea and you were pretty uh enthusiastic about how it went um how has that carried through uh since then yeah I'm really proud of the team and and um feel really grateful that they're willing to basically take on a job that was not in their job descriptions and I think that process is going well you know it's not an overnight it's not going to be an overnight success the aspect of it that's been working really well so far is I was in a sales meeting the other day um this was our second sales meeting with a potential client and I played almost no role in that meeting and the team did a really great job I texted with the prospect afterwards and asked him how he felt and he was super enthusiastic and excited to make it happen so you know I feel I feel really good about that phase of selling that that the team can handle it without me in the room and that's a big deal uh I think the early stage of like developing relation ships and nurturing those relationships and getting referrals that's going well but that's a long game you know that doesn't happen you know overnight in many cases and you know the type of work we do you know a client it may take a year two years three years five years before they actually buy from us and so you know the seeds you plant today they turn into trees much much further down the road so I was talking about the other day I mean it arose from a dog park visit that I had in you know uh two and a half years ago and I met a business owner and started talking to him and you know one thing leads to another and I'm kind of coaching him on what to do because he's a new business owner and then somebody in his team reaches out to me it's like oh remember me we met you know literally probably eight years ago and I was like oh my gosh I hadn't seen you in forever and then fast forward to three months ago the the guy on his team calls me and says hey I mentioned you to this other person the other day and I think you might be able to help them so like all of those things play a part in that opportunity manifesting itself so I've been doing this for many many years so more opportunities fall on my lap than anybody but now that the team is doing it that'll that'll happen for them too are you sending your team to dog parks all over Portland well I mean that's a funny you know thing but I mean I think the thing that's important that we've been we talked to the team about is to find the thing they care about and invest time in it and and to build relationships in those spaces so you've got you know folks investing time and uh sustainability and um engineering and just all kinds of different things where they're they're interested in the thing and I think that's the most important thing that you can't push somebody into a space and say hey go get clients over here they actually have to kind of care about the space and and so that's that's our strategy Lauren this is why Sean is a far more strategic businessman than I am when we started I didn't have enough to do I mean you cold call everybody you can and there it's just me and a card table and the dog and uh you know I got around to Friday and I'm trying to Target churches when we started didn't need a pastor and church staffs are typically off on Fridays so Friday was totally dead day so Adrian sent me to Petco not the dog park and while I'm in Petco I get a call from a a pastor I had heard from it are you trying to start that thing still yes I think we might need you for this okay how would it work I walk him through it he well I'm going to have to check with people and run this through traps and I'll get back to you okay fine I'm at the checkout counter of Petco and I get a call back from he's like we're good to go what do I sign and oh no no 30 more seconds and I'll be done um I bought the wrong dog bowl with the food and Adrian said you need to return that when you get a chance so the next Friday I go back to Petco I'm returning the thing I get another phone call from a different guy I hadn't heard from it for are you trying to start this thing so like when things got slow in that first year I'd just go sit in the Petco parking lot and work there you go it's the dogs all about the dogs man uh Sean I want to go you you you talked a little bit about what you guys have been doing the other thing you you've mentioned is that you just went to a a trade show and I'm curious what your experience was like there yeah um so I have never been to a trade show of this scope and scale before um I mean the convention hall this was in Chicago was a a trade show for automation companies and I think they said something like there were 800 vendors there and you know you had these huge companies with massive booths um spending probably hundreds of thousands of dollars to be there and it you know I literally at one point got lost in the in the booths like I was like where am I I don't know how to find where I'm going and so it was just a really eye-opening experience um you know having not really lived in that world before and yeah learned a lot of lessons I think one of the really cool lessons was that all the time I've invested in LinkedIn you know through the pandemic before the pandemic over the years really paid off um you know I had people at the trade show come up to me and say Hey you know I know you and I was like oh I know you too but we've never met and so it really for me kind of solidified this sort of idea of you know how you advance relationships and that the digital space can be a place to start a relationship and then the physical space like a trade show can be a place where you can develop it and nurture it and and move it along and so you know he hands me his card and he's like we should talk and and I was like that would have never happened hadn't I gone if I had gone to that trade show so that was a really good lesson um the other lesson was I've never seen so many salespeople in my whole life I I cannot tell I mean I maybe you two have have had more experience in this Arena but like you literally cannot stop for a second when you're walking around the booth because someone will come up to you like you know everybody you you feel like you're a piece of meat and there are sharks everywhere I I Jackie what are you what's your experience you're you nodding your head here so yeah well Sean couple thoughts first of all welcome to being a girl because that's how we feel a lot of times in a lot of places oh God not to get political about it but you know you kind of Express the the feminine experience and a lot of different venues um but no I do think that in the past it felt like you know pre-co trade shows and conferences felt more like a place where you would run into different decision makers and the last few that I've been to whether I was speaking at them or we had clients that were exhibiting and I was you know kind of showing up to support the overwhelming sensation was that the floor was filled with salese but no buyers uhhuh yeah and to be successful you got to have both yeah I I I got I got a sense that like if you went to that show and you didn't have a really good strategy to connect to people outside of the show like if you were just there to display or walk the walk the aisles I don't know that it would be very valuable I mean I was a speaker so that had some value to it for sure and and the client I went with had a strategy for after the show The Magic was after the show it wasn't the show itself just to that point we started implementing and this is pre-co uh a little bit of a before during and after kind of strategy and I won't go into like the nitty-gritty details but for us the before is about setting up appointments because you don't want to just leave it to chance that somebody's going to find your booth so there's some cool Tech and kind of wooing that can happen ahead of time to really make sure you you're on somebody's calendar and they're not just going to find you during the show you got to have some strategies for getting people to the booth and getting their attention while they're there and making sure the right people are seeing the message but then post you're right that's where the magic happens because that it still takes eight touches and at this point you've had two so what are you going to do to keep touching them in a legally appropriate way after the show to make sure that that you stay top of mind and if in fact the person you met with at the show wasn't the right decision maker how do you leverage this new found friend to get you in front of the right person yeah I was really struck by I I would say almost like the wealth inequality of the show so you would have these companies that were massive and they would have these booths that were I don't know probably a thousand square feet you know and then you would have folks who had like an 8 by10 Booth shoved way in the back and right you know those 8 by10 Booth folks I I felt for them because it's like how are you ever going to be found by anybody unless you've got a strategy outside of that booth and and they're not paying you know it's not like they're they're getting off cheap you know the I think the square foot price was like 40 bucks so an 8 by10 Booth is $4,000 hotels in the neighborhood are $500 a night you know you have ubering and food and taxi the whole thing it was like that's a big investment for a small business and it it really made me realize that if you don't don't go with with a really good game plan it's going to be really expensive and and hard for me to see how you would get a return on that unless we do that uh like think through it long and hard for a strategy it's an absolute waste of time we went to one conference without a strategy and I think we paid $10,000 for the booth and never mind all the other costs and I'm like and next year I'd rather you just give me $10,000 $1 bills and I'm going to light them on fire consecutively fun so I'm curious you know for the two of you something that we've we've done two years now in a row we've done a small business uh conference it's a ton of work it's expensive but boy the the effect of it has been really great for us I'm curious you know I'm starting to see our clients do this help our clients do this I'm curious if y'all have either thought of doing this yourself or uh have clients who are sort of like Hey we're going to build our own Community instead of like renting a community from somebody else yeah we we're experimenting right and we maybe we should have a our own conference and host it at Petco I don't know anyway Le last year we decided to take our very best uh clients and we judge that by like net promoter score and uh we invited them to an exclusive limited very small gathering very high dollar uh that we did in sort of a white glove thing so it was a mini conference it went great and everybody asked can we come back how do we do that again but it was more about the experience than anything did Golf and Ski shooting and you know things um we we're also still seeing that if we will take our time and drop back into a strategy for a conference it works like for instance maybe the most difficult search we ever do is someone that needs to run the Children's Ministries at a large church and it's a long story why it's difficult but it's really really really difficult in fact if Jesus didn't love children we wouldn't do it so um but I'm serious so we couldn't get candidates for children's pastors so they the largest children's Pastor conference in the probably in the world asked us to come to a booth and it was going $10,000 I'm like what are I don't even know how to and this was 10 years ago and our one of our Millennials in their 20s said I was at a party the other night and they had a thing called the smile Booth it was photo booths you know you before they were a big thing and so we looked into it we bought one we took it we made the photo booth our booth and it was a brand new thing nobody had heard of and we put out you know costumes put classes take all the pictures you want and just give us your email address and we'll send you the pictures and it was genius we actually got kicked out of the conference the next year because the line to get to the photo booth was so long it went all the way around the guette center and nobody was going in for the main sessions so that that kind of gorilla Warfare where it's like let's change the whole game because what we needed was not revenue from that we needed candidates I think we came home with 3,000 children's pastors addresses so w that's a weird story but it's but it's like the only way it's worked for us is to think about conferences that charge a lot for booths in Guerilla Warfare terms Sean I'm curious what um what prompted you to go to uh an automation confer I know you have some clients in that area well some of it was R&D you know it's like okay let's go check this out you know I have I have several really great clients who work in automation like really good clients and uh one of them was going to go and have have a pretty substantial presence and G to be speaker and he was kind enough to kind of let us ride his coattails and even um did a co-p speaking event with me so the two of us got on stage we talked about you know this kind of a topic near and dear to our hearts in terms of building Professional Services businesses and what that looks like through brand and marketing and culture so there were just like a lot of unique opportunities there you know even just his own connections and being able to be introduced to people I got he went to dinner with somebody he referred that person to me we we had a nice you know intro sales call so there were just a lot of stars aligned if I had gone there without that lined up like I didn't know anybody I didn't have a client there boy it would have been a really different experience so this was really kind of a special and unique thing will I go back next year I don't know I mean it it's such a machine I mean it is just a machine that you really don't feel very unique in it and mean even in the the speaking events are like churn you through right so we go to get up on stage you you have 30 minutes you got to end right on time they mispronounce your name they mispronounce your company's name literally like five minutes before I go on stage she's like okay so how do you say your name I'm like it's busy and and then I offer her and like and the company's name is kinesis okay great so she introduces me as David Bucy from kisis it's just like oh oh my God but they don't care did you correct her I mean it's like the most awkward situation right they introduced me as David Bucy and they introduced David Nicholls who's also on the stage properly and I'm like hi I'm Shan busy from kesis so it's just so freaking awkward but it just you just kind of realize like they've got to like file you know 30 speakers through in a day and it's it's just it's it's a financial thing right and so I contrast that with a with a different event that I went to that was for it was more of a like a learning event a few weeks ago where everybody in the room was looking to learn like so there were education sessions there were CE credits and in that environment boy it was great you know because I had you know 100 people in the room I was talking about an idea that was really near and dear to their hearts about about the changes in marketing a lot of actually what um William was talking about the changes in digital and so so it's just like a different thing in one environment you have a ton of salespeople looking to sell products and stuff and in the other environment you have a bunch of people looking to learn things and you know I think knowing the differences between these conferences and how they're structured is really important did you have a booth I did not no so when you were done speaking did you just kind of wander around yeah I mean I I would go to after events um which I think is really important is to kind of like figure out what are people doing outside of the conference and you get to have more like intimate conversations so I think that's really was really advantageous but having a booth would have been an absolute waste of money for us I I just yeah it just would not have been worthwhile because you've got a bunch of people there a bunch of if there are buyers they are engineers and they're looking at robots you know they're not looking for like brand Communications so you know they're already skeptical of us marketing folks right so uh I I think you know kind of the unique way we approached it was was great and I think having a client on stage with me talking about like this is what we did together and it changed our automation practice that was that was a great opportunity you know I had I got great results from that but a booth no it would have been a it would have been an absolute waste of money completely agree from our side Sean we didn't do a booth forever and ever and ever because it's like what are you going to hand me a resume in front of everybody so one thing we fell into which again I it's not these are these are not necessarily repeatable examples but I had to get my mind in a different place and think outside what's the normal use of sponsorship money and we got invited uh very early in the company in fact it's one of the main reasons we broke out and started you know a whole lot of new Endeavors a friend of mine who designs spaces he worked for Disney for a long time designed our office said hey man I've got a a chance to the green rooms in the major conferences are horrible and they're they're nothing like a really well done Green Room I think I got a way for us to host the green rooms if you'll put up $110,000 a conference I'm getting three other partners we built out the green rooms made it an entirely different experience for the speakers and a lot of those guys now I had a head start because in my prior life I was on the same spe speaking circuit with a lot of the speakers at these conferences but I was hosting the green room and giving them great food and great time and that was I can draw a direct line back to our biggest growth from when we were doing that because then the the what does Seth Goen what does he say sneezers or who you want people who will sneeze your idea everywhere they go and we focused on that which was a whole it I didn't come up with it can't claim credit but it's a different sort of I call it like guerilla marketing to uh just sort of I don't know no uh Zig when everyone else is zagging those are the times this work for me when I've been able to listen to people with an idea for doing it differently I think that's such a good point you know I mean to talk about you know Seth Goen right like the whole Purple Cow book right it's it's these conferences are structured to make everything the same so they can monetize it that's right and you got to find a way to be that purple cow in that herd of brown cows if you're not attacking it with like a creative idea you're you're done I just think you're done because you're going to lose out to people with way more money and way more presence uh in that case Jackie in our emails this week you talked about your concerns about standards in advertising in general uh can you tell us what's uh what's going on with that what triggered that as a topic in your mind it's a soapbox Lauren that I get on anytime somebody acts like they want to listen or they're waiting for a bus and they can't leave or they're trapped in an elevator with with me or or trapped on a podcast with you or or welcome to being a captive audience pull up a chair though I hear from companies all the time this frustration that agency XYZ we paid them all this money and we got nothing for it and now we don't have money for you and we think you're going to do actually a really good job and and now we're sad we wasted the money okay so sure maybe part of it's just a thing to get up saying yes to us but they could just say know but I as I dig into it and I see what XYZ agency did they're right they did get paid a ton of money and very little was done and then I I look a little deeper and you know the client should have been smarter there were some red flags they should have maybe not hired XYZ but here we are and so I think in so many situations and Sean I'd love to know your thoughts on this we do it to ourselves as an industry anybody can call themselves an ad agency or creative agency or communication or PR Company or whatever you want to call it these days anybody can open their Mac laptop and have a canva account and now they're a designer we have not done any licensing or certification or educational requirements or testing or ongoing continued education and I look around and literally I can't find another industry that treats themselves so badly a plumber electrician architect CPA realtor hairdresser nail salon tech everybody else has some semblance of something to say I am a legit entity except our industry and I I don't get it yeah oh man that's such a good point Jackie I I was on a call the other day with a with a company that had 300 employees let's just call them an engineering firm and they had just fired their ENT ire marketing department and I was just sort of digging in and I real like their their marketing team had built this like Byzantine spiderweb of digital marketing that no one could understand and I was digging into it and what I realized Jackie is that the level of complexity that has become the marketing and advertising industry is way higher than people's perception of its complexity correct you know like this owner of this company which is in the tens maybe hundreds of millions of dollars he has no idea really and he's a pretty smart guy right he has no idea say the difference between you know an SEO strategy and maybe account-based marketing or you know thought leadership and all the different ways that plays out and what is a relevant social media strategy and what I realized in that moment is that in our care you I think we have a probably similar career trajectory Jackie right back in the day when you and I were operating you know early in our careers like you didn't actually have to track that much you know like you know maybe four or five channels you know in terms of how the message might get to the customer and then you could just focus on being creative and today marketing is everything from super super highly technical tracking users and their digital Behavior to yeah actually being really creative and Innovative and brand and all places in between and I really think that the the the business uh world just fails to comprehend how complex it is and then as an industry we've done oursel a terrible disservice by actually not creating some standards and education and so you get it's a freaking wild west and no wonder I mean Lauren you've said this before like it is the one topic where there's massive confusion and frustration of of all the all the aspects of running a business there's so little Clarity on what to do with marketing why is that I I have said that Sean and I've focused on it from the perspective of business owners who just struggle with figuring out where to send their marketing dollars who to hire uh you know what channels to use it hadn't really occurred to me that it could be frustrating from the other side of the table as well uh which is one of the reasons that intrigued me when you when you brought this up Jackie have you spoken to other agencies have you you mentioned you get on your soap soapbox when you can have you gotten anybody to to salute I mean everybody you know whether it's local agencies uh agencies that we partner with on clients you know we may share a client each filling a different role you know I I'm an AMA member I've brought it up to them adfed it's sort of this third rail that nobody wants to touch and I never want it to sound like I'm saying I'm ins now so I want to close the door behind me and not let anyone else in that is please don't hear that what I want to do is let's just go with a naming protocol the reason why the company in Sean's example had all these people doing all these things is because there's no protocols in place I think about architecture what would it be like if every architect was self-taught and maybe they had a degree maybe they don't maybe they went to two-year maybe they went to four year maybe they worked at other companies for years or maybe they just learned some stuff in their mom's basement and watched some YouTube videos and now they're out there selling their archit we would never allow that why would we not allow it it's a hazard they could build something that could fall down it's an incredible expense it's safety how is this any different William is this confirming your worst impressions of the marketing industry oh my gosh should listen to this podcast two weeks ago we're rewiring our whole marketing thing trying to figure this SEO thing out among other things and uh it's it's deep dark magic man it's not Don Draper coming up with a good idea you're ABS I'm just learning how much tactical strategy is in place and then also intuitive I think this is right and I should have hir you guys come help me figure it out yeah well call me we'll talk I mean I think there are two culprits here one is um the marketing industry itself it really loves to simplify and make it easy to buy and so we will do things like 10 ways you can get new customers in 20124 right like we make it seem easy and and we love our listicles and our like infographics so we're kind of dumbing down that the discipline in and of itself to begin with and so shame on us for not really helping you know businesses understand like this stuff is complex you know I saw the other day 50 types of SEO like different types of SEO B2B SEO B Toc SEO a tactical it was just like ridiculous and so so we're to blame I think that's part of it and then I also think businesses are to blame and what I mean by that is you know I was talking to this Prospect the other day and and he went to back to the founder and was talking to him about our conversation and the Founder's response was well why don't you just go figure that out on the internet and so so so the resourcefulness that that actually serves business owners well right figure out how to do stuff themselves right we've talked about this with like QuickBooks right in the early days you're like doing your own QuickBooks and then like you eventually realize um that's stupid and highly risky eventually business owners kind of figure out how bad of an idea that is but that like Innovation and like resourcefulness and I'll figure it out which we're all guilty of sometimes we hold on to that for so long we fail to see like just how complex an arena is I've had another Prospect who literally said to me you know we want to hire somebody in marketing and the person they hired had no experience with marketing right and then they said well maybe we could pay you to Mentor them and I'm like okay you want to like me to like put 24 years of experience onto them okay sure no problem but then then they backed out from that like we're going to watch some courses and take notes and like confir I'm like are you kidding in what world would you do that in a business discipline that's just insane but like they th they and these are smart people they're running effective businesses so there's something about the you know treatment of marketing as it's like this thing that well people do and it's not really that hard and so we can figure it out ourselves it's so comical I'm on a rant here but like thank you join the club people get it wrong and it has massive costs to their business but but but Sean I think to Jackie's point is that you as an industry have encouraged these business owners to think that way by not setting standards yes for sure yeah we have and and we've dumbed down branding we have only ourselves to blame all we we have complicated names for things that aren't used consistently I'll start with the word brand everybody uses it differently yep if if you talk to an architect they all use the same terminology for things why because they took the same classes they took the same test there is and and there's still creativity in that there's still style points they are allowed to do things um in their own way but on the same structure because when you do the right things the right way you get the right result we are in a free-for-all yeah if you say the word what is what if you ask somebody what is a brand you would get 30 different answers to that question if you ask business owners what brand yes yeah yeah yes William what's a brand oh gosh I don't know when I see it a good brand okay just just I mean you guys have heard this before philosophy and religion degree I don't know all the cool things you guys know to me when I see something say that's a good brand it's I recognize it I recognize it as something I can trust and I recognize it as uh something I'm willing to pay for how's that that's a great answer that's better than a vast majority of people who will think that the brand is the logo or the brand is the website or you know oh wow that company looks really professional that's no that's not that's not a brand that's just their visual that's their visual identity but again a lot of this is our fault as an industry for sure well let me stop you there Sean let let's let's spell that out the the visual identity is part of a brand right for sure sure for sure absolutely but I think the more important thing is is what are people saying about the company and what it represents when they're not around I mean that's a that's a better definition of brand and the whole ecosystem from visual identity how they treat their customers how the customers talk about them to other potential customers what is their reputation you know all of these things are brand you know there was that recently for example there was this commercial that Apple put out advertising their new iPad and in this commercial they crush with a with a giant you know industrial Crusher they Crush all these beautiful instruments of creativity trumpets you know paintbrushes uh Pian video games cameras the whole thing they just crush it and within a day I mean the creative Community was just up in arms and within a week Apple pulled the ad okay why did that happen because the Brand Apple represents is a brand of creativity and Innovation and this ad was really really an affront to that community so was it a cool ad was it professionally produced yes yes yes but it was in congruous with their brand which is is much more ephemeral it's much more hard to understand I have a little bit of a different take on it than you do Sean okay I'll start with just to lead back into this I like Marty new me's definition from his book The Brand Get he says that a brand is the emotional connection or gut feeling that a person has about a company I like it because it puts the emphasis in the right place it's the person's feeling it's their emotions and that is upending to the corporate world that used to be able to broadcast messages and assume that everybody just believed what they said well now the consumer owns it so I think that's important onto this ad I am not a graphic designer or a painter or a singer or a performer I'm a strategist I have thoughts I think that I have a a touch of creativity because I think you have to be in our industry but I don't consider myself a creative because I'm not an artist when I saw the ad which I saw before that you mentioned it I was blown away by it I thought it was awesome it reminded me of the meme that floated around for a while of a desk from like the 1970s and 80s and how one by one everything from that desk went into the um iPhone so the calculator the clock the computer the set of encyclopedias the telephone the camera the videographer until eventually the desk was completely empty and there's just like an iPhone sitting there I'm like okay I get it it does all those things this to me was a continuation of that and really the whole point was not you've got all this stuff inside this magic box but also the magic box is thinner than before as somebody who travels and I'm looking at myself right now and I'm embarrassed I have in front of me the laptop that I'm using for this I have the iPad that's the full size with the keyboard that I use because I always am Wi-Fi troubles whatever um my phone and the mini iPad that I use when I'm doing a speaking engagement because it's got my timer and my notes and stuff and airpods and you know various other technological things on this desk and so I obviously I'm all in and if it's a thinner iPad I can't wait to swap two or three of these things whatever the new faster thinner thing is I mean I get it you're you're B you're you're talking about like the functional value of it and I actually think that old ad was very effective because it was talking about the potential that's inside of something why this ad is a complete failure is that it's yes in the end you're like oh okay I get it this thing is somehow all these things have been squeezed into it but through that process it has destroyed these things that are of our childhood and of our cre creativity as children so it's like I call it the antithesis of stranger things why was stranger things such a massively successful movie it's because it was tapping into the childhood the shared childhood experiences and you want to talk about brand and emotional experience it's tapping into those emotional experiences and bringing them up to the surface and really celebrating them right and the Miss on this ad was that it did such a good job of picking all of these amazing things that are of of the emotional experience of creative people and then it destroys them and I get like oh no no no it's squeezing them into the iPad no it's destroying them it's literally crushing them they're falling out the edge the eyes on the Emoji are bulging it is a ter Jackie it's a terrible ad and I bet you Michael feels the same way I do I certain Michael feels the same way because I love it I imp positive he hates it can a pedestrian ask the experts a question about brand logos then talked about people think a brand is just a cool looking logo okay that's fair so do you need a cool looking logo and the and the real question is does the logo need to tell any story at all like I think of Starbucks there's no story there what is that the mermaid on the front of ahab's boat like what is that Apple that's a cool story they're saying we actually took a bite out of the Apple in the Garden of Eden to have the tree of knowledge like that's a cool story how much does that matter oh I think it matters a lot yeah I I'm with you we'll disagree on the ad but we I think we agree on this one yeah I I think I think why it matters William is that if you don't have a story it doesn't mean you will fail but if you do have a story it gives you 10x the potential in terms of how you can advertise how you can communicate how you can talk about your company so you leverage you leverage the logo I'm asking selfishly because our logo is pretty cool nobody knows knows why it looks like it does it's a search light it also looks like a snowflake because every one of our clients is in individually unique and it also looks like a bunch of V's coming to intersection point and that's exactly what we are we're a hub that connect a lot of different PE and we don't use that at all and I'm wondering listening to you guys talk if if we ought to be telling more stories out of that logo or not 100% yes and here's the thing it's not necessarily that you have to go around saying this is the story of what my logo means it's that number one it needs to look good and professional and clean and cool and have brain standards and and be you know taken care of and protected for sure but when you have a story behind it and the story allows me as the potential buyer to see myself in that story and to realize the benefit that I gain the problem that you solve the way you make my life better the way that you are a guide getting me from The Challenge I in to the promised land that's the story that's going to get me me to buy every time because that's a story that cuts through the Clutter and makes me want to pay attention because that's a story talking to me about me so I feel seen and heard unlike a story where you're talking about yourself expecting somebody other than your mom to care okay yeah well that's the story brand sort of make the client the hero all that sort of there's a reason why it sold millions of copies we are just about out of time I want to run one more question by you guys real quickly this is a question that comes from the uh small business subreddit a business owner wrote in kind of quiet desperation why do I beat myself up for taking days off I have employees they know what they're doing I've taken the last two days slow only doing some light home office work the majority of people I know take two days a week off I almost never do yet my inner voice tells me I'm a bum you guys have all found peace with this topic but I'm wondering did you ever struggle with it did you ever feel like you had to be the last person to leave the office or the the hardest worker uh at your company and if so uh how did you get past that kind of concern I believe that as the owner everything's on me that's it's my job I own it I get the ultimate benefit from it Michael and I have had conversations where he wonders why other people in the company and this is at different eras it's not like he said this yesterday where he feels like they don't have the same commitment or the same resolve or the same dedication and I said of course they don't they don't own it I'm like that's crazy to ever think an employee would be first in and last out and feel the need to work seven days a week and carry the burden of payroll and be focused on what's next that's our job that's our privilege that is a gift that we are afforded by being able to own and run and continue to operate this company so I don't have guilt though when I'm not the first in or last out I don't have guilt when I travel or take time off because I come back refreshed and better I also think I've done a lot of work I mean a lot of work in the 24 years of being a business owner to get to a place where I lead the way I do um it did not come naturally so you did struggle with this for a while um no I struggle with raising four kids and being married to my business partner and finding clients and keeping us a float um I wish these were the things I had time to think about um no I think that and this goes all the way back to my time in Los Angeles I came out of a situation that was felt like being on the floor of the stock exchange it was loud and it was high energy and I I will use the word abusive because I think that's the only way to describe it it was a challenging work environment uh we were told if you can't come in on Saturday don't even bother coming in on Sunday because you will not have a job on Monday because we were expected to be in at seven and out at 10 p.m. seven days a week it was it was work it was a lot of work and you know there were things thrown at us and yelled at us and it was unpleasant work and we were told we were grateful to have the job so then next job um I I leave there after a couple of years helped start a company and I become a boss and I have two assistants now and I treat them the way I had been treated because that's the way the world works and I was dealt a blow of reality when they sat me down the two of them together because they were scared of me one by one and in tears explained that they hated their jobs and they hated me and they hated everything about their lives and I thought wow I don't want people to feel that way that sucks that's how I felt and so I started what has been a long and slow process to become someone you want to work with William uh you come from a kind of religious sphere there is guilt in that sphere uh what's your take oh man oh I don't know guilt is the thing I I think I feel like I've started so we'll turn 16 this year I think I've started at least five companies in that 16 years and it's all the same company like so we've gone through when it was bootstrap if I didn't do it it didn't get done so I was at it at 4 in the morning and maybe worked out once a day and went to bed late and woke up horse and that was just the way it was if I didn't do it nobody else would then then then we had a team and I needed to train them but at the end of the day I was still the one that had done more reps and I was better now we've moved to a place where I have moved out of doing any direct client work with the very rare exception of a super complex problem and the team is better than I at what I'm doing so I'm having learn now to not be in the way by being at the office first in last out because what what I'm bringing to the table is and and this is what my team wants from me is Vision what's around the next Corner what should could we do next and I will overcook that and go too fast and introduce too many ideas and pour too much vision and everybody just goes oh my gosh I got enough work to do now and you want to do all these new things so I'm having to kind of Marshall my time at the office because the things I'm being asked to do are not the normal day-to-day execution of searches it's it's vision and uh motivation and challenging people to the next level and and you can overdo that as a CEO and I'm thankful for a CEO who's like Jen just tell me when I need to come to the meeting or when I'm going to be a disruption and she's really good to say skip this one you'll be a disruption we don't need new ideas this is about integration we found the uh Pat lanon working genius model to work really well for me to understand when I need to be there and when I don't how about you Sean well I kind of jokingly asked the religion question because I realized at one point in my life I had fully bought into the Protestant work ethic idea that you know basically my worth and Val value was related to how much work I did and that was like almost a volume question which is kind of crazy and if you start to peel back the layers of that onion you kind of get into even things like the Industrial Revolution and the idea of inputs and outputs right so a factory if you can turn up the inputs you'll get more outputs right so it's a very linear time investment kind of space and I think a lot of us sub consciously C correlate amount of time to value and that's the wrong idea right because like like to to Williams kind of idea right if he spends 30 minutes and comes up with a revolutionary idea is that less valuable than if he spent three weeks and comes up with a mediocre idea no I mean there there's often not a relationship between time and the value of an idea so I think especially as owners a a really important um transformation that we can make is looking at how do we create the most value for our organization and that may be decoupled from time it may be greatest way I can create value for my organization is finding people who can do the job better than I can do it um and and maybe they do it you know more efficiently maybe they do it with more grace maybe they do it with more joy and I think those ideas they're they're woven in deep within us and I think that's why when we get into issues of like the 4- day work week and so forth people get really emotional about it right on both directions right you'll get people who will say what four days I worked 60 hours a week when I was coming up so you you get this like idea of time spent is value and and and and how much you're contributing and I've I've just found that like that when you start to free yourself from those ideas you can do more powerful and more impactful things so you you're saying this wouldn't necessarily be a better podcast if I kept you here for two hours I mean know Lauren that's a whole another that's a whole another podcast about how to do a podcast that'd be I'd love to learn from that I started listening this morning on my run to a three and a half hour episode of a podcast and I thought this is crazy it's almost like listening to an audiobook but I am completely fascinated and it's amazing what I'll listen to if it's really good and how long I'll stick with it is it the podcast acquired yes interesting yeah I'm listening to the lvmh story that's just such a good example right you know if you were to listen to sort of like the common marketing wisdom right it would be like well people's attention P span is short and D so you need to make the podcast short it's like there is room for being different you know like what what that podcast is showing is like like just because something has been done a certain way for a long time or because the experts say a podcast should be 30 minutes it doesn't mean that that's true and often the most impactful things are when somebody back to our Purple Cow idea goes in a totally different direction that's I think that's where of the opportunity is well I personally would spend three and a half hours with you guys anytime but uh unfortunately I think we're going to have to stop here my thanks to Shan busy Jackie Russo and William Vander blumen and to our sponsor of the great game of business which helps businesses use an open book management system to build healthier companies you can learn more at Great game.com thanks everybody wait wait don't leave yet if you have a question or a comment that you'd like the 21 hats owners to address send it to me by replying to your Morning Report or by email at Lauren 21h hats.com that's l r n at21 hats.com do it now before you forget and don't be afraid to tell what you really think you can take it and if you got something out of this conversation help us reach more business owners tell a friend subscribe and review us wherever you get your podcasts follow us on Twitter subscribe to the morning report at 21h hats.com this episode was produced by Jess tharon founder of blank word Productions okay now you can leave thanks for listening everyone [Music]