EntreLeadership - #398: How to Build a Brand with Tim Newton

Episode Date: October 26, 2020

How do you create a brand people rave about? Turns out, there’s more to it than just fancy fonts and packaging. Tim Newton, senior creative officer at Ramsey Solutions, argues that truly amazing brands dig deeper. They use what they value to influence every touchpoint they have with customers. Does it really make a difference? Yes. Because over 53% of people say they connect emotionally to a brand because of shared values and beliefs.1 So, in this episode, Tim will teach you how to build a brand that creates lasting connections with your customers and sets your business apart.   entreleadership.com/podcast The Physics of Brand by Aaron Keller, Renee Marino and Dan Wallace #395: Pitfalls to Avoid in Your Leadership with Dr. Chip Dodd StoryBrand website #335: Why Self-Knowledge Matters with Ian Morgan Cron Branding Guide from Tim Newton Review this episode for a chance to win a $25 Amazon gift card   Want expert help with your business question? Call 844-944-1070 and leave a message or send an email to [e-mail]. You could be featured on a future podcast episode! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, if you run a business, you know that your brand matters. But what is a brand? We throw that phrase around a lot, and the whole idea of branding originated with cattle ranchers. You know, when they put a hot iron into the side of their cow to say, visually, this is the sign that says, this is my cow. And ever since then, branding has often been associated with the logo, the imagery, the visual experience. But guys, that's only a small.

part of the deal. From the Ramsey Network, this is the Entree Leadership podcast, where we help business leaders grow themselves, their teams, and their profits. I'm your host, Daniel Tarty, and my guest today is Tim Newton. Tim leads all things branding here at Ramsey Solutions as our senior creative officer. And when you hear him talk about branding, you're going to understand it's so much less about the visual experience and so much more about your values, your convictions, and the story of your company. Now, at Ramsey's Solutions, we haven't always had a great strategy for branding. In fact, in the early days, it was all over the place.

It was whatever came up in anybody's mind went out. So there was no connection. There wasn't really thought about brand. But there was an intuitiveness about the brand. Like Dave intuitively understands grabbing people's emotions. And so, like, he knew to say statements that represented what mattered to the brand and what mattered to him. Like, that's a part of branding. So he knew, and we would take those statements, live like no one else.

He could live like no one else. We would take those statements and put them all over the place. So there was consistency, but it was intuitive. There wasn't intentionality to it. And so thankfully, it was coming together back then, but just out of intuitiveness. Yeah. It was raw. There was definitely energy there.

Yeah, yeah. But I think what helped it was natural passion. Like that's what it was. We gravitate towards passion. When a brand looks like there's passion, when people look like there's passion, we gravitate towards that. So thankfully, even then, since the beginning of this whole thing, there was passion. And that's one of the strongest things a brand can have. Okay.

So that was there. I remember back in that day that you're talking about, we went to a live event, and we've got all these tables in the back that have our financial piece stuff, total money makeover stuff, junior stuff, entre leadership stuff. Because at Ramsey, we've got, I don't know, 15 different lines of business. Yeah. And each one is run by a VP who's kind of like a miniature business owner. And they were responsible for whatever. their stuff looked like like it was on them there wasn't like a centralized yeah branding creative team brand standards we didn't have a CMO i mean it was just like you said it's the wild wild west and i had a

buddy who was a big time um ad agency guy who really understood this branding stuff and this was the first time personally that i had kind of that light bulb moment of like oh there's something going on here he came to the live event and i said hey what do you think and he goes well this is awesome this is awesome Dave on stage is awesome. I said, what do you think about our, you know, our merge and all this kind of stuff? He goes, honestly, it looks like a roadside fireworks stand. And it's so overwhelming and confusing. And the messages don't go together.

The fonts don't go together. And I was like, oh, I guess. And I think a lot of business owners can relate to this because, you know, we're just trying to ship stuff and get it sold, Tim. You know, and taking the time to actually think through how does a customer experience this? How do they feel when they see it? And I also know in my experience, I guess we live so close to our products. Yeah.

And we forget that the design, and we just know what they do. We know our products and services very intimately. We know our websites really well. And we forget what it's like to have fresh eyes experiencing that brand for the first time. Yeah. It's totally true. It takes a lot more work and effort to understand the emotional connection with the brand. But all the stuff you're talking about, consistency and fonts working together.

and the narrative working together. All that stuff is emotional deposit. But you said earlier, we had an entrepreneurial mindset. That's an entrepreneurial thing to just go, go, go. And I totally get that. That's where we were back then, just go, go, go. But over the past few years, we've gotten really good at taking a step back and saying, how do people experience this? At every touch point, what are they feeling when they go from this to this? Does it make sense? Does it make them feel like they're going to have freedom after using this thing? Like, we're taking these steps to understand the connection. But there's a lot to be said for consistency. I remember after I kind of started understanding this thing matters, I got back, you know, from that event, that guy talking about

our stuff, kind of being all over the place. And I thought, I'm going to try to design a brochure for Entree leadership, because I was the sales guy for Entree leadership at the time. And we didn't have any marketing material. I didn't have any follow-up information. Like if you and I had a phone call and you were asking about the event, it was all verbal. Like I was just talking you through it. And then I would send you a follow-up email saying, okay, let me know when you're ready to get more info or ready to buy. And they would always go, could you send me something, like to show my spouse or my business partner? And I'm like, this email, you know, like what do you need? And so I thought, I'm going to design a flyer.

We didn't have a designer. We didn't have the money for a designer at the time. And so I open up Microsoft Word and you're already cringing. Yeah, I am. That's kind of painful already, yes. And I spent a couple days trying to get a word processor to do something that only illustrator could do. Uh-huh. And it was okay. You know, it had some, like, decent clip art, clip art, you know. Oh, good Lord. See, that hurts too. Google imaging. But, uh, let's be honest, it was terrible. It sounds like it was.

But, you know, it was, there was kind of a desperation. Like, we didn't have these resources. We didn't have the money to pay an agency. It was just like, we did what we had to do. Yeah. And many business owners are there and they go, look, I want my stuff to look better. I want it to be more on brand.

But I don't have all these luxury of, like, designers and a creative suite and CMO and all that kind of stuff. How can you, at that small, like that grassroots state of business, start to get your head around this concept that you call branding, because I know it's more than just a logo. Yeah. It's much broader than that. What are these small business owners with a few employees, limited resources, how do we need to be thinking about brand in our small business? Well, the good thing is most of these small businesses you're talking about, and you yourself, even back then, one of the most important things about brand is to have heart. It's got to have heart. You know, I was talking about passion. It's got to have heart. And so, thankfully, with most of these business, that heart is there. The question is, how do you communicate that heart? And that's really what it comes down to. When we talk about brand, I talk to people about it, and I find out 30 minutes in the conversation, they mean logo, like you said, or they mean just

the look and the feel, and that's it. I realize that and I'm like, oh, no, yeah, that's not what we're talking about. I'm talking about every touch point is the brand. It's how the whole thing is perceived is the brand. And so you need to understand how it is being perceived. But as a small business owner, it comes back to understanding what is at the heart of the brand. That's what it comes down to. And so the majority of people, over 64% of people, connect emotionally to a brand because of shared values and beliefs. So you got to start there. You need to understand what you value and believe. Like one of the mistakes that businesses make is they think a brand, you have to build it around what the customer wants. And that's not true. You market and you sell to what the customer wants,

but a brand is built around who you are at your core. If you think about a person like Dave, He came out, he had a ton of passion for helping people with their money. Like he had passion about that. That was at his core. He believed everybody was being sold alive about money. It was at his core. And that passion helped him to build a brand around that. And people emotionally connected to that because he gave them a voice to something they were feeling,

but didn't have the words for and didn't have a platform to say it. And he put that out there and there were those shared values and beliefs. And so if you have a business, you're there. That business was made for a reason. It was there because you wanted something changed in the world. saw a problem in the world and you had a solution for it. And so that brand is there because something mattered to you. So you need to uncover what is it that truly mattered? Because if you could find that, then you talk about that. You don't talk necessarily about the facts and the features of the

product. You talk about the meaning behind it because really that's what brand is. It's meaning and trust fueled by experience. Okay. That's the best definition I've ever heard. It's from a book called Physics of Brand. Say it again. It's meaning and trust fueled by experience. So that means that Every touch point, you have to communicate the meaning. You have to communicate the heart and the lifestyle that you're selling. And trust is consistency over time. So you have to do it the same way. We're talking about consistency with all the books and products.

It's that heart and then a consistency, making it feel and look and act the same every time. Because that's what we trust in humans. When humans are consistent, we trust them over time. When they start becoming inconsistent, trust breaks down. It's the same with a product. Gotcha. Or same with the brand. So it sounds like you're saying that brand at the foundation is a lot more about

your convictions and values than how things look visually. Yeah. You can figure out how to make it look visually. Like if you don't have the resources for it, at least understand what matters to you, and then there are exercises you can do to say, what should it look like if this matters to me? And if you could write out the words of what this should look like, that's the next place to start to realize, well, what should a design look like then? Like before, when you're creating the brochure for Entree leadership, you probably didn't

have much direction on what's the right kind of font and what's the right kind of lines to using colors. I had no clue. Yeah. But if you know that what matters to you is engaging people with passion or something and you want to be perceived as exciting, what does exciting look like? Exciting looks like yellows and reds. Exciting looks like forward moving lines. Exciting looks like speed and cars and these kinds of things. So you can put words to what the design should feel like if you understand what matters to you. Because you're just saying this identity, this look, is a reflection of what I value and believe. So we talk a lot on Entree leadership podcasts and platform stages about core values.

Yeah. We talk about core values in your company, things that we stand for. And oftentimes these are behaviors we expect the team to embrace. If you want to fit in here, this is what we value. It sounds like there might be some relationship to core values, but it also sounds like there's a different type of value that would inform your brand. How does this differentiate or how is it the same as core values? Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, I look at core values as this is what we expect.

This is who we are. And this is how we are looking at each other and how we do business. But the values I'm talking about is what is at the heart of this thing. So like when I'm talking to business owners, one of the questions I ask is, what happened in your backstory that made you passionate to even start this business? That's different than a core value like no gossip like we have. It's a value of this happened to me on the back end. And I'll give you an example. I was actually an entree leadership guy. I talked to him last year. And he said, he wanted to make his culture better. And I asked him, I said, well, why did you start your business in the first place? It was in the film industry. And I said, why did you start your business in the first place? And he said, well, I saw a lot of opportunity to make a lot of money in there. And I'm like, okay, that's not very interesting or exciting. I said, really, why did you start this business? And he said, well, you know what? When I was younger, I got really sick. And I ended up in the hospital. And it was, just, I had to be in the hospital for two weeks, and my parents were there every day with me,

but my brother was at home during the day. And so my brother, he would just record videos of himself doing funny stuff, and he'd give it to my parents to let me watch it. And he said, I loved watching those videos. It really lifted my spirits. And he said, and that was the first time I realized what film and video can do for someone's life to uplift them. And I was like, have you ever told your team this story? And he said, no, should I? Oh my gosh, yes. And so something in his backstory gave him that passion, you know. And so that is one of the beliefs I'm talking about is what really drove you to do this thing. Why do you have heart in this thing to begin with? Because we gravitate towards that. As customers, when we could see that passion, we want to be a part of that. We don't want to be a part of a business that's not to make money. We want to be a part of business who's passionate about changing the world. That's what really excites us, you know? And another question I asked them is, well, what makes you angry in the world? We know that Chip died. He was on the podcast before. He said that anger. is the only emotion that causes change. It's an emotion that causes change. And so if you can understand what makes you angry, like, your business is there because you want something to change in the world. There's a problem to solve, yeah. So what makes you angry in the world? Like, we get mad about the toxic money culture. That makes us so angry. And that gives us passion for the thing. That's at the heart of who we are is changing the toxic money culture. So there's passion behind it. So these are the values I'm talking about. There are a little different than the core values, but these are the ones that's the heart. This is in the soul of the brand. And that's what you want to communicate. So is there a way to, like, would you recommend sit down with a yellow pad and just kind of map this stuff out? Are there certain exercises or questions? Like, if you're trying to figure out, okay, what is my story? What makes me angry? Yeah. You just kind of think about it for a while and then. Yeah, I mean, you really just start thinking about those questions. Like, for me, when I'm working with a business, then I just start writing every note I can. Like, one thing I do is, is I have the person who started the business or the main driver of it, I just sit back and say, hey, tell me, tell me your

backstory how you got this to this in the first place and I just let them talk for about 30 minutes just telling stories and I just write down things that grab my attention like you can tell when their body language changes and when there's different inflections in the voice you can you can see when something's really hitting them deep and that's when you started writing some stuff down and there is something there of why this thing matters and I just sit and ask those kind of questions and I ask them to tell me what makes you angry about all this and they tell me that and I and I ask what truly matters to you in the world like what truly matters when it comes to this business and we just let them talk, you start uncovering all kinds of stuff, and you can see where the heart is.

You just write that stuff down, and I try to take everything I'm writing down and then group them until I find three very specific values and beliefs. You don't want to end up with like 10, because if you have 10 you're trying to communicate, then nobody knows what you're trying to communicate. But I try to end up with three very specific values of the deep meaning. And then I take it from there, and I start asking, okay, if these three things, if this is what you believe, then how do you want to be perceived? I start asking that question. And so, like, we have a brand Ramsey Plus. And with that, we said, we believe three things. We believe, one, we've all been sold a lie about money.

We believe that, and that really makes us angry. The second thing we believe is that anybody can win, but you have to decide to do it. It's up to you to make a choice, personal accountability, all that. We believe that. The third one is we believe that everybody should be able to live a life of freedom. Those are the three things we're talking about. And so we try to communicate that in every touch point that we have. One of those three things we're trying to get out there. And so with those three things, injustice, injustice, we've been sold a lie about money, then how do we want to be perceived? If we're about injustice, we want to be perceived as crusaders, trying to help all these people. And so like, crusaders. If we're about choice, you have to decide to change, then we want to be perceived as alive, you know, right? If we're about, if we're about, if we're about, if we're about, if we're about, if we're about, freedom, that we want to be perceived as empowering. That's how we want to be perceived. And so then when we

take that, we can start figuring out how does everything need to look then? Yeah. What would that feel like to the customer? How would they experience those emotions? Yeah. And so the three words we have, everything would design, we say we want to look daring, personal, and exciting. If it's about justice, we want everything to look daring. If it's about choice, we want everything to look personal. and if it's about freedom, we want everything to look exciting. So daring, personal, exciting. So from that, we could talk to our designers and say, hey, we just need everything to look daring, personal, and exciting. What does that look like?

Daring looks like a lot of movement all over the place, a lot of splashes. We use paint strokes all over the place. We use that kind of stuff. For personal, we use real people's photos and tell their real stories. We make sure there's nothing fake. Even in our sets, we make sure you see part of the lighting and part of the studio so that you could tell this is a studio. thing is funny. Well, and this is an interesting, you know, a few years ago, we used a lot of stock imagery. Yeah. And we had this conviction that if we're really about real people,

we can't use stock imagery anywhere. Yeah. And we deleted all of it. We did. We hired a photographer, several photographers, and we actually invest quite a bit of time and money to make sure we have original photos of real humans who are actual customers in various stages of their life, you know, smiling, laughing, crying. Yeah. And that's a choice made because of the brand. Because we want to look real, we want to look personal. And if that's the case, we can't have anything fake. So we put that guard wrong place and we're going to have no more stock photos. And as a company, we did that. So we're going to do no more stock photos. And now we get real photos and we figure out any way to do it. What's really cool is it may, it lets our creative team be truly creative.

Because stock image, it kind of, it just gets easy to get a stock image. And then the job becomes, well, how can I find a stock photo? But you unleash a creative team to be truly creative and say, no stock photos, go figure out how to do it. Oh man, that team's been coming alive. And the stuff, It looks so much better because it's so real. It's amazing. Talk about this a little more because I think this is a real issue. Business owners are going, okay, if I want this to look quality, the stock photos are sometimes better as far as like the photography. Yeah.

If I want pictures of my real customers, well, today it's going to be, you know, someone on our team shooting it with bad lighting and their iPhone. Yeah. Which one's better? Because the quality of the photo may not look as good, but it's a real customer. Yeah. But it's super quality with stock, but it's a stock. but a stock. Yeah.

Is that a tradeoff you just choose to make? Oh, yeah, it is, but I will say, so what's really interesting is nowadays, people don't trust businesses. We don't trust brands because we've been lied to over and over again. And so the thing is, we like looking at Instagram and Twitter and real people's photos, what real people have to say because we trust it. Like we look, we read reviews because we trust people before we trust what the movie marketing is, if that makes sense.

And so what's happened over time is that. that it's actually a pretty good thing to use real photography, even if it's bad, because it's real. And that's what we trust. When businesses try to be too polished these days and too perfect, then sometimes it can make people not really trust it because it looks too perfect. And marketing has kind of taken us to a place where we don't trust. All kinds of studies, especially millennials, are trusting businesses less and less. But the more authentic you are, then the more trust is built. And so it's actually a pretty good thing to use real photos, even if that lighting is bad. and even if things are a little funky, that's okay.

Like, we take real photos and we'll just draw on top of it to make it even more interesting and more fun. You know, some of the creative stuff our team has been doing to make those photos work. But there is a trust factor that's built by using the real thing, even if it's bad. So it's really not a bad thing. There are cases you don't want to have a bad photo. Like in the product, I mean, it better look really, really good. Like on the front end, you're trying to build trust and build a relationship and hit their

emotions, but after the emotions are met, then the facts better be really good. The facts and the features in the product should be really, really good. Because we make decisions off emotions, but then we justify it with facts on the back end. So in the brand building relationship part, if it's real and authentic, those real kind of photos, that's great. And then the facts on the back end better be really good, too, to justify that decision, if that makes sense. Oh, this is so good. And the way that you're talking about branding is making me think so much broader than the the things that we paint on top of our product to make sure that we can market. Yeah.

Right. I think oftentimes people pigeonhole branding into just a function of marketing. But when you get back to the values and the convictions, all that really should be showing up in the product. You know, because it's like if this is what we believe, then the product or service we're providing is an extension of that brand experience. What people consume is a part of the brand. Yeah. And making it look compelling is only a piece. of the product experience, right?

And I want you to say more about how branding and getting those core convictions and the way that people perceive this stuff, how that should inform developing product and customer service and the way you provide your service? Because it's not just the design aspect, right? Yeah, it's true. Well, so remember, we say brand is meaning and trust fueled by experience. So experience means every touch point. We talk around here that there's about a thousand of us here at Ram Solutions, all thousand of us over some. for the brand. We all are. It's not the creative team's responsibility. It's not the marketing team's responsibility. It's everybody's responsibility. And so if we know the values and beliefs that we

want expressed, then even the people who are on the phones and sales, they need to come across that way. Like if we're talking about daring, personal, and exciting, if exciting is one of those words, I want our sales guys to be exciting. Like we're trying to communicate freedom and everything. And that's exciting when we get people to have that freedom away from money. And so even our phone calls should feel like that. But when you're building a brand, the best brands are the brands that are the most human. And so what I mean by that is what do we like about humans? We like when they're funny.

We like when they lift us up. We like when they take care of us, when they serve us well, when they tell us good stories. Like we like people like that. We also like brands like that. We don't like people who are constantly trying to sell us on something, who are talking about themselves all the time. her always taking and not giving. Those are the kind of people we don't like. They're also the kind of brands we don't like. And so what you're building with a brand is you're basically building a human when it comes down to. Like these exercises that I have brands, businesses do, are, is making the soul of a brand. A human has a soul. Like we're making the soul. And when we're talking about the identity, what everything looks and feels like, that's the outward expression of the soul. So the way that you dress, the way that you look, the way that you style yourself, your glasses, these are all decisions based on. who you are at your core. You're just expressing what you value and believe by the way you walk, talk, dress, all that stuff. Same with the brand. Everything on the outside, the way it looks,

the way it feels is all an expression of what's going on at the core of the brand. So we're building a human, right? And so when you're thinking about the experience that people have within a product, you need to take a look at, okay, this brand we have is a human and it's talking to customers, which are human. What does that relationship look like? And how would a human, walk another human through this experience? Like, how would they do it? A human that we really enjoy, how would that human do it? So we ask that question all the time, what would a helpful human do if they were walking someone through this product? And so when we're making websites, when we're working on the product, we'll go into a room and we'll do an exercise. We'll say,

okay, let's figure out what a conversation sounds like between a brand and the customer, two humans. What does this conversation sound like? And we start listing out all the questions. And so a customer, they probably come ask the question, well, what is it that you do? How would a human answer that? We don't just sell blankets. We sell something that makes your home so cozy and so warm. That's what we sell. That's what a great human would tell you.

Like, we will make your home feel like a home that everybody wants to come to. That's what we sell. And the customer is like, oh, that sounds pretty cool. What does it look like? Might be another question they ask if we're talking blankets. They say, oh, these blankets are amazing. These blankets, we got striped ones, we got pattern ones. It's thick wool.

It's amazing. And you start talking to them like that. Like you mimic what a conversation sounds like. Then you can start understanding, these are the questions they're asking. This is how a human would answer it. So let's put that information on the website. I love that. And make sure it feels like a conversation between humans.

Don't just sell, sell, sell, sell. Make sure it feels like a conversation. Because then you are reaching into people's emotions. We don't emotionally connect. to products and to companies and to computers. We don't emotionally connect to that, but we do emotionally connect to humans. So the more the experience can mimic a human relationship,

the more there's going to be emotional connection with that product or with that service. That's great. I know for the last 18 months, 24 months, you've been one of the champions on a small team that's been really driving Ramsey's brand to be more cohesive across all of our areas. Yeah.

It's a project we call global branding, global just meaning that we're trying to make sure that anywhere, any Ramsey customer interacts with the Ramsey experience that they get that it's Ramsey, that it feels like Ramsey. And as you can imagine with all these different brands like Entree leadership and Ramsey Plus and every dollar, they all kind of have their own identity. And we looked up a couple of years ago and we said, hey, they're going to have to start looking more like they're at least in the same family. How do you kind of let there's certain ideas you want them to kind of like be their own thing and let it take root and blossom. And yet when we do that, they can they can lose their association with the core family of origin. But on the other end of the spectrum, you can get so extreme where everything is just vanilla and it all looks perfectly the same, but it's lost the lie for the originality and some of the different lines of business or names of products or things like that. You guys have been wrestling through that and came up with a great, you know, kind of a process to audit all these different areas and move them towards the sweet spot. But how do you define the sweet spot when it comes to that?

When it comes to connecting those brands and what that looks like, well, you know, we had to take a step back and understand what is Ramsey. Like, what does Ramsey look like? What does Ramsey sound like? What does it feel like? Like these kind of exercises we're talking about, we need to first understand that. We had one product that we did that we thought was a perfect expression of Ramsey. And we took a look at that product and says, what makes that product feel Ramsey? Like we have so much emotion and passion around.

What made that happen? And we started listing out why it looks the way it does and why it sounds the way it does, why it feels the way that it does. We started listing those things out and said, okay, well, these are the guardrails that we have for the brand. Like, we know that if brands do these things, it's going to feel like Ramsey. And for Ramsey as a whole, we talk about warm, real, and bold all the time. Again, that same exercise was done years ago where warm, real, and bold is our outward expression for Ramsey as a whole.

And that's derived from God, passionate people, you know. And so to express those warm, rail and bold. And so we said, well, with design, warm, real and bold looks like this. And it sounds like this. And it feels like this. So we had these guardrails. And then you talked about doing an audit. Doing an audit, I think, is key to any business.

Every once in a while, you need to print out. everything, and I mean print, don't just put it on a computer, print out everything, tape them up on walls, take a step back, and just take a look at everything. What is everything? Your web pages? Web pages, product pages, ads you've put out there, everything you can find that the customer interacts with, that's a visual, print that stuff out and tape them on the wall, because this is the thing. When it comes to branding, you can either intentionally build towards a vision of what you want your brand to be, or the brand is going to be something on its own that you did not intend for. You don't want to be. You don't

that to happen. You want your brand to go towards a vision of what you want your brand to be. And so if you're not doing audits, your brand is going to start going a direction. You didn't intend for it to go. Well, you know what happens? I remember this happening with the Entree leadership area. And at the time, I was probably seeing 90% of anything that was designed before it went out for public consumption. Like it would come across my desk. A designer would bring it in, a web page, a landing page for an event, thumbnail image for a podcast, something, right? And in each individual case, they all looked great.

Yeah. But there was something about, I think it was Luke, who you and the team and Luke printed them off and put them on, I walked in Luke's office, and it's all up there. And I was like, this stuff doesn't go together. Exactly. But I wasn't able to catch it in each individual thing

that was coming across my desk. Yeah. I didn't feel that disconnect. And then I was like, oh my gosh, if our customers are cruising through our website, which how often do you come to the front of your website, start clicking through like you're there for the first time, click around several pages like a customer, you don't ever do that. And this forces that visibility of like, hey, look how confusing and overwhelming this can be to your customer. That's why it's so important to do an audit

all the time, because it just slowly goes there and you don't even know what's happening. You don't even know it's going going that direction. It just slowly happens exactly the way you're talking about because you're doing one-offs that look amazing. But we talked about the value of consistency, if things aren't consistent, trust starts to break down, just like with a human. It breaks down when you're not consistent. And so when you take a look at everything like that, you do exactly what you're talking about. You can see where it starts to break down in the consistency. And so it really starts to hurt the brand, if that's the case. And another reason why it can so easily go in directions you don't want it to is because as your business gets bigger, you have more people

that are making stuff for the brand. And as people, and especially as creative people like me, we always want to make something new. It's just in us. We want to make something new. And so it could be really hard to make something stay the same for a long period of time. But listen to Dave,

he has said the same sentences for 30 years because it's consistency. The best brands do that. Nike, just do it. I mean, the same stuff. Apple, think different. They express the same thing

for years and years and years and use the same sentences over and over again because it builds trust. It lets people understand this is what I'm about. But, you know, we have a thousand people

working here now that's a thousand opportunities for people to start making whatever they want. And as humans, we want to do that because we want to make new all the time. And if the brand isn't built from our natural, genuine passion, then it's going to be easy for us to veer off. You know, and so you have a thousand people on the brand. It's going to start going different directions. And so you have to put guidelines in place. You have to put guardrails in place.

So when you're talking about us bringing all of our brands together, it was important that we put those guardrails together. What does warm, real, and bold look, feel, and sound like. And then we gave those guardrails to all the teams and walked them through it to make sure they fully understand it. And now as a team, we have a small team of us that is looking at the brands every quarter. And teams are coming in showing what they've worked on. And we're just making sure everybody's holding tight to those guidelines to make sure it's going in the right direction. Because I said it before, brand is an investment. It's over a long period of time.

It's an investment. And you're making emotional deposits over a long period of time. And so it's good to have a team that every once in a while is looking at, everything to make sure that that investment, it's building the way it wants to. And this is the key with the brand. If, since it's an investment and since it takes a long period of time, then the reward at the end is that your audience starts building your brand for you. And that's what you want. Like if you're doing all these things, if you're expressing these values and beliefs in a strong way, you're going to connect to people's emotions. When you're passionate, you're going to connect

to their emotions. When you're making the website feel like a conversation between humans, you're going to connect with their emotions. When we connect with people's emotions, then naturally they want to reciprocate and they reciprocate by talking about you and sharing about you and spreading the word about you. That's what they do. So they start building the brand for you and you start getting exponential growth because of that investment you put in the brand and making sure it's consistent and that it's speaking with heart all the time. I want to spend some more time on this idea of the audience building it for you because that's the benefit. But before we get to that, I want to circle back to that the idea of having these guardrails in place. And you said something really key. And that is that creative people

like to create new things. Oh, yeah. So how do you, how do you have consistency and guardrails in place without stifling the creativity of the creative people? Yeah, that's a great question. It really is. You know, it's, it's been fun figuring out how many different ways can we express this value and belief. Like when it comes to money, we have our beliefs about money. We've got three of them, but we'll do sessions. Well, we'll get in a room with a bunch of writers and a bunch of other creatives, and we'll figure out how many different ways can we say this one value and belief? Like, you want to leave room for the brand to grow and evolve, because as people, we grow, mature and evolve, and our style changes slowly over time. But what matters to us doesn't change

over time. Just how we express it can change, depending on what's going on in the world and what's going on with the market, all this kind of stuff. And so we'll get in a room and just write as many different ways as we can say this as possible. Like there was one I really liked the other day that we were talking about money. And we said, how can we say this one belief about money? And they said, it was about, we wanted to have something that talked about comparison with money. And we said, zero percent interest in your opinion. Such a good line. But it's still expressing that thing about money just a different way. Well, and it's nice and snarky, which is very Ramsey-esque, right? There are yes. And so, there are different ways to say the thing and different ways to put it in.

But another good example is, you know, we have a creative director here named Lee Floyd. And he's working on one of our websites. And we have a lot of guardrails for how the website needs to function and how it needs to flow and how it needs to, how certain functionality needs to feel. But then we have areas where you can have complete expression in these boxes, like the header at the top of a website. that can have all kinds of visuals and all kinds of different people and have all kinds of headlines and all this that change season to season. But the way that the website is structured doesn't change. And that structure stays the same from page to page and from website to website. But there are little areas where you can have complete expression. And then you got Instagram and Twitter.

We can put all kinds of stuff out there as long as it expresses the values and beliefs consistently. But you do want to leave that room to figure out new ways to say that thing. You know, Dave, live like no one else. You live like no one else. that's a part of living with freedom. Dave says that kind of thing in a bunch of different ways, but it all comes down to freedom. And that's the lifestyle that he's selling. Well, it sounds like it's not a super tight leash. It's almost like these guardrails are defining the edge of a canvas. And inside those boundaries, there's room for originality

how you're painting on that canvas. Just don't go way off the edge over here and it's something that we're not all of a sudden. That's exactly right. Yeah. Okay, so you're talking about audience building it for you. I know. I know. a lot of businesses have experienced this dynamic and just word of mouth. Where do you get your business? Where do you new sales come from? Well, word of mouth. People talk about us. If we can amplify people talking about us, especially if they're saying positive things, right? That's the secret sauce. I mean, there's no better marketing than your audience, your fans, your customers going, this place is great. You've got to try them out. How do we create that? Well, you got to understand. So we

we trust people's actions, not necessarily their words. Like, we want to see. We want to see. the words, but we trust their actions. And when their actions are being good representatives of their words, then that's when we really start connecting. So I'll give an example. CVS years ago, they were the first, or they said over and over again, we care about health. And so did Walgreens, and so did Target and so did Walmart. Everybody said we care about health. But CVS, they're one of the first that took cigarettes out of their store. And they lost millions of dollars that first year. But then they gained it back the year after and some and then some and then some because people saw those actions and said, oh, wow, they really do care about health.

Their actions proved it. You know, and so if you understand those values and beliefs, then you could write down, well, what actions should I take if I want people to perceive me this way because this is what I believe? So it doesn't just come down to the identity, what everything looks and feels like, but also what actions, what moments can I create. So our actions prove what we believe. You know, I have a, there's a guy go-to for my car, Bobby's Automotive in Franklin. And, you know, when I'm talking about brands, sometimes people say, you're always talking about Nike and Patagonia and Apple. These are big brands, but I got a small business. What am I

supposed to do? I'm not Nike. I'm not Apple. I get that. But the principles are still right, you know? And so Bobby's automotive. I go to him, and he cares so much about cars. He loves cars. He's so passionate about it, that he loves taking me to the garage and showing me what's wrong and showing me how it works and all this. And I love it. He's so passionate about it. And there was even one time where he fixed something in my car. And later that day something else broke and I took it back to him and he fixed it real quick and he said I'm not going to charge you for that Tim because I should have seen it when I was in there I should have seen that and that's on me. Impressive. Yeah and so his action showed that he really does care about people and his action showed he really is passionate about cars you know like his

action showed this stuff I tell everybody about Bobby's out of him and you just told a quarter million people about Bobby's got I know I know but but I tell everybody about it because because emotionally that did something for me like and I really connected with. with that because I've gone to auto places before that don't uh that that treat me just like someone else treat me like a number but this guy he had so much passion around what he's doing and he he genuinely cared about people and his integrity he didn't want to he didn't want to take advantage of anybody his action showed that and that meant so much to me and so I tell everybody about getting their when they when they say I need my car fixed I say we got to go here trust me this guy's

awesome but I am helping grow his brand and he's he's putting no marketing effort towards that He just emotionally connected with me by the way he acted, and they were a reflection of what he believed in value. So let's stay with Bobby's automotive, because I think most small business owners can relate to a company like Bobby's automotive. Yeah. If we were going to do this exercise with Bobby, is it Bobby? Is it his place? Okay. Yeah, it's his place. Yeah, it's Bobby sitting here with us. Yeah. And you're going, all right, we've got to work on your values and then the expressions of your brand and the perceptions. How would we walk that out with Bobby based on what you know about him? Yeah, with Bobby, I'd walk it out, I'd sit him down, I'd say, Bobby, what even got you into this business to begin with? Like, why do you care so much about fixing cars? And he'd probably tell some stories that he's had in the past. You know, even in the back, he has like at least three or four calls all the time that he's building back up, you know, for himself.

It's just like side projects. Yeah. There's always like three or four back there. And so he'd probably tell stories, I don't know, about fixing cars with his dad when he was younger or something like this, right? And so I would keep on digging in. Why does that matter to you? Why does that matter to you? Until I get to that point where I can tell, like, he's starting to get emotional.

And then I'd write that down by like, okay, that's a belief there. And it would probably be something around, I just really care about bringing cars back alive. You know, I just really care about that. You know, it might be something like that. And I would keep asking, I'd probably say, well, what, Bobby, what really makes you mad? Like, in the car industry with other auto shops, like, what really makes you mad? He'd probably say something like, you know, I've seen a lot of people in the auto industry. They know that people, a lot of customers don't really know about cars, so they could totally take advantage if they wanted to.

And some people do, some people don't, but man, that makes me so mad when people do that. It's just not right. It's not right when that happens. So I want to be a business that doesn't do that. I want to be a business that actually cares about people. He'd probably say that. These are the things he'd probably tell me. So I'd write those down and say, okay, so it looks like what you believe is you want to see cars come alive and you really love that.

And you also believe it's not right for people to be taking advantage of. You know, I'd write down these kind of beliefs. And then I would sit down and say, now, Bobby, how do you want to be perceived? Like if you care so much about bringing cars alive, how do you want to be perceived? he'd probably say, I want to be perceived as a car expert. That's how I want to be perceived. Ah, excellent. All right.

If you really care about people and not taking advantage, how do you want to be perceived? And he'd probably say, I'd want to probably be perceived as a servant-hearted guy, like caring. I don't be perceived as caring. Things like this, right? And I'd say, all right, so if that's true, so caring and what I say about the car one? Oh, bring cars alive. Yeah, bring cars alive. But perceived as, I don't even remember what I said.

Oh, from bring, uh, expert. Yeah, expert. Yeah, expert. Yeah. Expert and, and caring. If you want to be perceived as expert, then what does that look like? What does it look like? And it probably, it probably means bold. It probably means a lot of straight lines, things like that, like trustworthy in those kind of ways, right? Um, a very strong font.

Firm. Yeah, firm. These are words that designers can take and say, oh, I know what that looks like. If you want to be perceived as caring, what does that look like? And it probably means like warm colors, like sunshine, these kinds of things, because it's inviting, it's welcoming. You can give those words to a designer and say, I know what that looks like. And so now you have your identity. You have the words for the identity and the guardrails to give to a designer and say, I want it to look like this.

I want it to look warm and inviting. I want it to look bold and firm like this. So can design what that looks like for me, right? And so that gets in there. But another question I would ask is, Bobby, if I were to do as a couple of, customer, if I were to do everything that you tell me to do, what should my life look like? I would ask that because with a brand, you're not just selling a service. Like, Bobby's not just selling a service. He is selling a lifestyle. I actually don't believe there's such thing as a lifestyle

and a non-lifestyle brand. I think all brands are lifestyle brands because you are in business to help someone's life be better. Right. You are helping their lifestyle to be better. So I think it's all lifestyle. So the best brands are selling a lifestyle. They're not selling a product. or a service, the product or service is just a means to that lifestyle. Like, take Dave Ramsey, for instance, how many people really want to do a budget? And how many people really want to listen to money advice and how many people really want to do taxes?

On the other hand, how many people want to live a life of freedom? Yeah. And free from debt, free from all this. When people can see that vision, then a budget is like, oh, I'll totally do a budget, yeah, because I see this. It's a means to an end. It is. Which is the end is an experience that brings you joy and fulfillment and connection, right?

sell that because emotionally that's what we want. It's not necessarily the product that we want. It's the lifestyle we can have if we do it. It's the better version of my life that I want to have. If you can show me a vision of that, then show me, show me that, show me that, sell that to me. Like put that on your website. Put that on that because that's emotionally what's connecting. So I'd say, Bobby, if I were to do everything that you say to do, what should my life look like? And Bobby will say, you know, if I fixed your car and your car was always running, your life, it would look like. It would look like complete confidence that you will never get stranded. Complete confidence that your car will always work.

When you go on a long trip, you have confidence that your car will get you where you need to go when you got to get there. Confidence is what your life would look like. Confidence in your car. Nice, because that's what I want. That's what I want. If he's really good, he would say if you're going on a long trip to the beach with your family. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Where you guys are going to be on vacation and you're going to be bonding. and the last thing you want, right, is to break down on the way to the beach and you have to come back home and your vacation's ruined. My goal is to make sure no family ever has to cancel. You know, I mean, it's like,

you go all the way out to the connection of like, how is life better for people? Give them a vision of success of life. That's the lifestyle. Like, that there is a story. A good, a good humans that we like, they tell us things like that.

They don't say, these are the kind of parts I fix on cars. These are the kinds of tools I use. They don't, no, they don't talk about it. But I don't need to talk about that. Tell me that story about the beach and the family. Tell me that, because if I can get that vision in my head, oh, yeah, I'll totally go with Bobby, because he's going to give me that lifestyle. How does Bobby, if he's got all that stuff dialed in, and you mentioned handing this off to a designer, we've all had this experience.

A designer comes back, and they go, you mean like this? And you're like, no, that doesn't feel right. But Bobby's a mechanic. Yeah. You know, he's probably not able to say, no, I want it to look exactly like this. Yeah. The process of working with the designer, it can be delicate. You know, you don't want to insult them, but you want it to look a certain way.

Yeah, you know you're not the designer. Yeah. How do you know when you've captured that feeling that you're going for, and you and a good designer are, like, in sync? Yeah. Well, you know what's good to do. You have your words, right? You have your expression words for the brand.

Go ahead and start finding images out in the world that feel like that. Like, go to Google Images, go to Pinterest, find words. If exciting is one of the words, then think of something that's exciting. Like we, when we talk about being daring, that's one of our words, being daring, I found a poster of Rocky, the movie, you know, I found a poster of Rocky. And it looked daring, it looked bold like that. And so I put daring in a mood board, or I put that poster of Rocky in a mood board, because to me, that was a good expression of what that looks like. And so find, find on your own, find images that express, like that really capture you because it is, it is an expression. Because if you did a Google image search on Daring, you're going to see a thousand variations of, and you go, no, about 10 of those stick out to me. So you want to grab those 10 that stick out to you is how you feel Daring should look and drop them on a mood board.

What's a mood board? So a mood board, all it is is a collection of images and colors and fonts. It's just a collection. It's a collage of imagery on one board that's a representation of the brand. And so you can grab images from all over the place. They don't have to necessarily be about your brand. It's just images that express the same kind of things that you want your brand to express. And so on that mood board I was talking about, grabbing a picture of Rocky, Rocky represented that really well.

If I want to show speed, I might show a photo of a race car going real fast or someone running down a street. If I want to show energy, I might show like a rock concert or someone singing loud into a mic with sweat rolling down their face. you can make a collection of these kind of images and give them to a designer and say, these are the kinds of things that I like, that are an expression of what I value and believe. So take the vibe of these images and put together a mood board for me,

or I'll make it myself, and so I can see the vibe I'm trying to get across. So then from there, that can start give you the garbage. I think this is really key, because, I mean, most business owners that are not designers, you know, we accidentally say things that designers are like, Okay, you're not helpful at all. Like, can you just make it pop? Like, I want something that's like, vibrant and it pops, and it's kind of bold, but also sophisticated. And I want it to be really clean. And the designers go, this doesn't do anything for me. If you can bring actual images, some things that are not necessarily the end design, but the inspiration on this mood board, it lets you and that designer see like, oh, okay, we're kind of looking at the same thing. And we could have a conversation about it, right?

Exactly. Yeah. And that's exactly the point. it gives you, it helps you have something to put words around, you know. And so when, when you're showing these photos to a designer, then you should be able to say, I'll pull this image because I like it for this reason, da, da, da, da, I like this image for this reason. The designer should be able to take that information and say, oh, I see what he's going after. When you have visuals to look like, then both sides end up making sense of this craziness, which is putting a brand together. But yeah, both sides can make sense of it. You can put words around that. So you get all this stuff defined.

Bobby's got his values and convictions dialed in, the feelings, the perceptions, ultimately for my customers, life would look like this. Let's say he does all this work to get that mapped out. He's got a designer looking at a mood board. Then what starts to happen if this is being done well? Well, if it's being done well, then you have to just start making stuff. You don't really know what's going to work until stuff is being made. As a creative, I feel this all the time.

I can come up with the best thoughts ever about what the brand should look and feel like, but you don't really know until you start making a real ad and making a real website. So sometimes early on in the process, we'll get a designer and just ask them to make some fake ads just so we can see what it's starting to look and feel like, if it's feeling like what we want it to. And we'll say just make them quickly so we can start seeing if it's on the right page because you don't want to invest a ton of money into making perfect designs if they're going the wrong direction.

Just say make some as quick as you can. these guardrails, and let's see what kinds of things are working and not working when it comes to this expression. Kind of rough draft type. Yeah, and do it like that and just make them as quick as possible, so it's inexpensive. Then you'll start to see what's working and not working. From that, you can really start honing in on this is what daring means. This is what exciting means.

So when I give words to a designer, daring can mean a lot of things. You said it before, exciting can mean a lot of things. Words bold can mean a lot of things. Once you start looking at images on a mood board, it starts. to define that a little bit more. And once you start actually making ads and websites, it defines it a little bit more. And you start to see what's working and not working. So then you get down to the point of, okay, daring for us means this, this, this and this. Make it look like this. Bold for us means this, this, this, and this. So then from there on, you're basically making brand guidelines. And so when you,

when you hire more people in the future, you give them these brand guidelines and say, this is how we come across in the world with these guardrails right here, these guidelines. And you should start to see it coming together. And from that point, you just do audits every quarter, print everything out, like we said, and take a look and make sure that it's going to the place that you wanted it to go to begin with. I want to zoom in for a minute on marketing. We have a really good friend. He's been on this podcast, Donna Miller, speaks to our team, and we really like his framework of the story brand. And the whole idea of story brand is make sure that your customer is the hero of the story. And oftentimes you go to business websites and you don't see any.

happy customers anywhere. You don't see success stories. We'd call it social proof. It's like, are you really serving humans? Or is this just an information page about all the features of your business? How do we take the brand thing, mash it up with the story brand, Donna Miller stuff, and make sure that all that's coming to life in a way where the customer really is the hero, especially in marketing? It's a really great question. Because I think in a lot of ways, you got brand in marketing, right? In a lot of ways, marketing is more about the customer and brand is more about you. And it's the intersection of those two things that is where the magic is. So we're talking about emotional connection, right? When you're thinking of the marketing,

you really do need to understand your customer and understand what are their internal motivations. What are their underlying motivation? You know what's really interesting is that emotion and motivation are derived from the same Latin word, movier, meaning to move. emotion and motivation. And so we are motivated by our emotions. Emotions are the things that make us act. Not facts, not our conscious brain. It's our unconscious brain that's connected to emotion that makes us move, right? So you need to understand what are the underlying motivations for the customer? What are those things that really make them move, right? And so if you can understand that, then you understand, you start writing out, this is what matters to the customer. This is what matters to me.

So I'm going to speak to what matters to them through the lens of what matters to me. And you start looking at it like that. And so when you talk about underlying motivations, we talk Enneagram all the time. I'm sure you can talk about that. Yeah. No, we've had Ian Grown on the podcast. Yeah. I think its audience is pretty familiar with that at this point.

Yeah. And so think about it. Even on Eniogram, you figure out what. number you are based on underlying motivations. Like that's what that's where you decide what number you are because that matters us, right? I'm a three all the way. And so I'm an achiever. And for a three, we always have to be winning. If I were speaking to an audience where there were a lot of threes, in my ads, I would show how my product makes you win all the time. And that's how I do. And I would do it through the lens of what I value and believe.

Like, I would, I would speak through that lens and let them know, I'm going to help you look like you're a winner. Is it a five, the analyzer? Yeah, that's right. So, analyzer. Yeah, the investigator. They always want to be the smartest one in the room. Like, that's an underlying thing for them.

They want to be the smartest one in the room. So you need to talk to that desire and say, oh, we're going to help you be the smartest one in the room. If fives are the majority of your audience, talk to that underlying motivation. There are hundreds and hundreds of emotional motivators that make people. people move. And if you can talk to your customers enough to understand this is really what's going on under the surface of why they do what they do and you can speak to that, then you can really grab a hold of their hearts. And then if you're speaking to them through the lens of your values and beliefs, over time, they're going to understand what you're about also. And again, I talked

about how a brand and a customer, it's a human to human relationship. And so it's kind of like when you go to a party and you meet a human for the first time, well, when a human meets a human, when they me for the first time, you start talking and you realize, I really like this person. And you probably really like this person because y'all talk about things you have in common. And so when you can understand the underlying motivation for the customer and you understand the underlying values and beliefs for you, and you start having that conversation where those two things work together and you have a conversation because y'all have these common beliefs and these things that you like about each other, you can build that emotional relationship. And so I think story brand is a good

framework for that also because one of the first steps is define what they want. You got to understand what they want and then what's holding them back. That speaks to their underlying motivation. If you can understand what their underlying motivation, you can start talking about what matters to them, but be talking about it through the lens of what matters to you, because both those things have to be working. I want you to talk about the way that you can practically figure out what they want, because I know there's seasons where I've guessed at this and I've guessed completely wrong. Oh, yeah. And then I realized, oh, I could just talk to our customers and ask them. Let's go back to Bobby, your mechanic, buddy.

He may be going, well, everyone that I service their cars on different levels of the Enneagram. It's not like they're just one number. How do I take this broad group of people who have cars? Yeah. And we just say, okay, what their car owners? What do they want? You know, he may know what they want and what they – actually, I would say he may know what they need.

Yeah. Right? And this is where we get this mixed up sometimes. Yeah. Bobby knows what their car needs mechanically. That's the facts. But if we're not careful, we'll assume that their needs are the things that they perceive as their wants. Yeah, and the ones are the emotion. That's the emotion. So how does Bobby

figure out what his customers want through actually having conversations with his customers, what questions you ask? How do you start to distill this stuff? Yeah, I mean, it comes in all different ways, but that's it. You just talk to them. You know, a lot of times as business owners, it gets really hard to go out and just talk to the customer. But that's really all it takes. You can uncover so much by just asking why they do what they do. You know, I read a book once years ago. And it talked about the power of asking why over and over again to really find out the underlying thing. So in this book, it was written by Jim Signorelli. Oh, I don't remember the Toyota way? Where they ask five? They ask why five times? No. But it's the same kind of concept.

But you're drilling deeper layers down, right? Yeah, yeah. So why is that? So why is that? Exactly. I mean, it's the same thing. So in this book, he talks about how he's talking about a detergent, like bleach bright or something like. like that, right? And he asked, he asked the customer, why do you, why do you use bleach bright? And she says, well, because, you know, I want my clothes to be clean. And he goes, okay, well, why do you want your clothes to be clean? Well, because I think it's important that I look good and my family looks good, and everything smells good. Well, why is that matter? I don't know. I just, you know, it's just nice having clean clean. Well, why does that matter? And in the end, he was like, well, why does

that matter? She goes, because I want to look like a good mom. I just want to look like a good mom. And that was the underlying thing. He was like, oh, got it. So then they take all the ads and they start speaking to that, that we're going to help you look like a good mom. And it's not like if Bleach Bryant actually does do that, it's not manipulation. Right, right, right.

This is how we make you win in life. We're here to lift you up. And so speak to that. That's what she really wants, is to look like a good mom. And so you just talk to people and just continue asking, why do you want your car fixed? Why does this matter to you? Why does this thing?

And they might come down saying, I just, when I go to the beach, I don't want my car to break down when I'm with my family. Well, you got to keep pressing. Because oftentimes people that first answer, like if you said, why do you want your car fixed, they're going to go because it's broken. Yeah. Okay, but why do you want it to run well? Well, just because I want it to, I don't know, I just want it to be fixed.

Yeah, but I mean, why? Well, so I can drive to work. What do you do with your car? I drive to work. Oh, okay, well, what do you want to do on the way to work? I want to make sure that I don't break down on the side. I think most customers aren't thinking that deep about kind of those core emotions under what they want.

Yeah. And there's a little bit of Sherlock Holmes that you do to kind of pull that out of them. It's true. It's true. And it's really difficult because you're asking their conscious brain to put words to an unconscious emotion.

And those two are disconnected. And unconscious and the conscious brain are disconnected from each other. And so it is really hard. You have to figure out different ways to ask them the questions to find out the real thing. Like there's another way that we start understanding

what the customer's feeling is we'll put a sentence on a piece of paper and put that in front of them and say, can you read this and see if that's correct? And a lot of times they'll say, oh, no, it's not because blah, blah, blah, blah. Like what's an example of a sentence? Like, for Bobby's automotive,

I want my car to be fixed because I want my car to look awesome. You can write a sentence like that, right? And say, hey, I wrote this sentence down because I think this is what customers want. Can you tell me if that's true? And the customer can read and be like, oh, that's not why I come here.

It's because blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And the magic is in. the butt, dot, dot, dot, dot, everything after butt, because they're not thinking at that point. They're just reacting to a sentence. And so that's, that's another thing that you can do to figure out what's really going on under the hood is get them to react to something. Because they're, not thinking about the right answer. They're just, they're just saying what's, what comes out naturally. And that's what you just said what's going on under the hood. And we're talking about bodies, mechanics.

We can't get away from the dad jokes. We've got little ones. I know. That's my core audience. It's the little ones. What am I supposed to do? So you get to this point, your audience starts talking about you to their friends and family. Momentum grows. Your business starts to scale. You start hiring people. And you've got all this stuff kind of locked in, right? Then our job as leaders, I guess, becomes to make sure that everyone we hire knows these are our brand standards. And this is how we say things, do things and design things. I mean, we go from designing the standards to actually making sure we're shepherding them. We're stewarding them with the team. that's a whole process.

It is. Keeping a thousand people here kind of on brand and you've got all this creative energy and we're launching things all the time. So how do we keep the right processes in place, check in on this stuff, without it being bureaucratic

or micromanaging to the point that, I mean, it can slow down creativity. So you mentioned the quarterly kind of closing of the brands. I imagine you are also having one-on-one meetings with your creative directors and checking in with them. Are you guys looking at all the art, looking at all the design? Is it kind of sometimes you do?

Sometimes you spot. check, what's the right amount of oversight to keep all the stuff in check? Yeah, you know, and I want the team to be flexible and go. I don't want to be a micromanager on their designs, and they're super talented anyway, so I don't really need to be. But we do, every once in a while, I have to stop and take a look. So we talked about audits before. I have a weekly meeting with my creative team, and we use an envision board sometimes, and an envision board is a place where you can just upload some of the designs. Like, instead of printing stuff out, you know, I do like physically printing things out.

But for speed, sometimes we'll have an envision board that we just keep, and we'll just keep adding stuff to it over time. So periodically, we just take a look at that board and see the most updated work and see if it's continuing on the path we had. We had a meeting a few weeks ago, and I talked about daring, personal, and exciting, right? I wrote those words on the board, and before looking at anything, I wrote those words on the board, and I said, hey, guys, explain to me what you think daring feels like. explaining me what you think personal looks like.

Explain what you think exciting looks like. And it was fun because they got really passionate around what does that mean. How is that expressed in design? They got really excited about it. And we were writing down all these great phrases. The ad should look like this. It should feel like this. It's great.

And I was like, excellent. And then we pulled up the Envision board and we took a look at it together. And I didn't say anything. The room looked at the board and said, oh, we're actually not making it look like everything we just said. And they figured that. Like they uncovered that and they started figuring out as a team, how can we go and make it feel like all these words we just said? How can we go do that?

And so since then, they went to all these designs and started updating them to make it feel like what they were getting excited about. Because when you get into the day-to-day of doing the work, it's so easy to not take a step back and make sure that it is expressing what you want and has the passion that you really want. It's really easy to get there because you're just go, go, go. Like we talk about entrepreneurs. We do it like that. And so it was great for the team to uncover it. I didn't have to uncover it for them. They uncovered it and they made a plan to go back and start making it great after that.

And so, you know, another thing that we do, you talked about in the future when you get more team members going, we actually started making videos of like, I have a couple of videos of me talking about what our brand is. And so when we have new team members come on and they're onboarding, they watch these videos of what the brand is and how we explore. it. So right when they're coming in, they're getting an understanding this is how we express the brand. And it's just part of our onboarding process. So it's at this point, it doesn't take any extra effort to get everybody to see it. It's just part of our process when people come in. If you're small business owner listening to this and you're going, Tim, how do I get started? Like, what's my role in this? How can I just maybe take some baby steps here to get going in this direction? Because trying to do all of this tomorrow just feels really overwhelming.

Yeah. What's my trailhead on this? So if I were a business owner, we talked about branding as an investment, you got to put in that time. You got to put that time in the beginning. And if it were me, I would literally go to a coffee shop, put on some headphones, and just ask myself those questions, what's in my backstory, what makes me? And what makes me angry and what really matters to me. And just start writing stuff down and see which things naturally energize you. Like, dig in deep and ask yourself those questions and start figuring out when do I feel that excitement. which words am I writing down that make me feel that,

and just force yourself to come up with those three things and then force yourself to come up with what is the lifestyle I'm selling? Just start with that. Find out three values and beliefs and find out what's the lifestyle I'm selling. If you at least start with those things, then you can start delegating stuff out. You can start talking to designers and writers and say, hey, this is what matters to me, these three things,

and this is the lifestyle that I'm selling. Can you make a mood board that expresses this? And we'll take a look at it and see if it's, if it feels the way that I'm talking about. Just start doing that. And then the third thing, just take an audit real quick. Like, just print everything out that you can and just put them up on the wall.

And you don't need to even spend hours and hours taking a look at it. Just print everything out, put it on your wall. And throughout the week, just go in the office and take a look at stuff and write stuff with a marker on one of the ads or whatever you have on there. And just write notes just throughout the week.

You don't need to make it a big process. You take eight hours to do in one day. You don't need to do that. Just have someone print out. everything, tape them all up in your wall throughout the week, just write notes on stuff that you're feeling when you see it and things that are off, things that are great, you know, that kind of stuff. But just start there. Just take those little steps and you can start building it out from there. Man, I love it. You've brought some incredible wisdom and information through this

whole conversation today that I know all these small business owners and leaders out there are going to be eating this up and applying it to their business. As we close up, when we think about branding, we think about business owners who are out there hacking their way through the jungle. Any final thoughts or words of encouragement? Okay. You know the reason I love talking about brands so much? What's that? I love talking about brands because I want us to build up more brands in this country that are actually taking care of people and take down the brands who are taking advantage of people.

The people that are listening to this podcast, we know if they're listening to this podcast, they genuinely care about people. We know this. It's something that we teach, right? And it's something we talk about all the time. Most of our guests that come in, that's what they talk about, caring about people. the people listening to this podcast, the small business owners listening to this podcast, care about people. Those are the brands I want to be successful in this country. And it's the ones that are taking advantage of people. I'm not going to say which ones I was about to.

It's the ones taking... The snakes in the grass, as it were. Those are the ones I want those brands to be eliminated that are taking advantage of people because that's not right. People's lives are being destroyed because some brands are so good at manipulating people's emotions that they grab a hold of them and destroy their lives so that they can make money and other people's lives can be destroyed. Those are the brands I don't want in the country, and the brands listening to this podcast, these are the ones I want built up, because we need

more brands like that who genuinely take care of people. That's what we need. That's why we're talking about brand. Yes, I love it. Well, you guys, you guys listening to this, you just heard the charge from Tim Newton himself. Collectively, it's on us to lock arms, to build our brands in a way that attracts more people that we can actually help, that we can delight, that we can add value to their life. That's what this is about. That's why Entree leadership exists to help business owners win. We're talking about earlier like we need to help people win. I mean, we're very much interested in helping business owners win because of everything you just said. Tim, thank you for your time today. Oh, no problem. This is a blast. Well, I hope by now that you

understand if you're a small business owner, you've got to be the champion of your brand. You have to know the story and you have to work really diligently to create the narrative. And you might kind of feel it in your gut. You might kind of know what's on brand, off brand. But when you're building a team and you're starting to delegate these things to marketers and people that write copy or if you're working with an agency, you can't leave this stuff up to chance. You've got to document it. You've got to write it out. You've got to go through the exercises that Tim talked about today. And to make that a little bit easier for you guys, Tim put together a fantastic guide, a free guide that you can download that's designed to help you walk through all the frameworks

that he taught you guys in today's episode. So to get this free guide, you can just click on the link in the show notes. Well, I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Entry Leadership podcast. Hey, do you know somebody that would enjoy this episode? I bet you do. I'm going to send it to a few people

because guys, this thing, branding, so many small business owners are going, how do you do this? This is a fantastic one to share, lots of nuts and bolts. So send them a link. And we'd love to help more business owners win. And the way we do that is, well,

you get the word out. So thank you for doing that for us. You can also follow us on social media at Entree Leadership. You can follow me on Instagram at Daniel Tarty. And for a chance to win a $25 Amazon gift card, you can review this episode by clicking the link in the show notes. This episode was produced by Tim Hull. It was edited and mixed by Will Rutter.

I'm your host, Daniel Tarty, and on behalf of the entire Entree Leadership team, thank you for listening. Until next time, keep learning and keep leading. If you enjoy this podcast, you should check out other great podcasts from the Ramsey Network, like The Ramsey Show. We want you to take control of your life and money once and for all. I'm Dave Ramsey, and along with my co-hosts on The Ramsey Show,

we'll give you straight talk on everything from budgets to career to relationships. Join us as callers from all walks of life, learn how to get out of debt, and start building for the future and how you can too. Listen to the Ramsey Show, wherever you listen to podcasts.