Author: Brittany Crockett

Kevin

And welcome back to the Content Machine podcast. We’ve come to that time of the year where we get to hear from our interns about what they’ve learned and what they’ve enjoyed about their internship at Adelsberger Marketing. This semester, we’ve been joined by Ben Paulk and Lainey Fox. And we’re going to hear from them, too.

Kevin

Let’s start with that. So, Lainey, what is something that you’ve learned during your internship at Adelsberger Marketing?

Lainey

One of the things that I had to learn through this internship was how to take correction a lot better and being able to really take those learning moments and use them to their best advantage. I came into this internship with a whole lot more confidence than I probably should have had, thinking that, Oh, I got this. There’s not that much that I’m going to be learning here. It’s just going to be gaining experience for the resume. There was a lot of instances where maybe I wasn’t able to achieve the goal that you all were setting, or there was moments where I needed to learn something new and being able to take you all’s really good correction and be able to sit there and be like, Oh, that’s really good advice, or, Oh, I see why they’re right, and be able to implement that. It’s been a really big life skill that I’ve really had to learn into.

Kevin

Yeah, that’s a very mature response. Ben, good luck following that up.

Ben

I think for me, it’s really been learning to seek consistency over perfection, because while perfection is good, it’s ultimately unattainable. And really, your best work is done when you’re consistently doing the grunt work day in, day out, and learning those basic skills and then stacking those on to the more difficult projects or things that are harder to learn. Yeah.

Kevin

Well, speaking of projects, tell us about what your favorite project has been this semester.

Ben

My favorite project this semester has definitely been working with the AC Furnish Repair Company. It brought with it its fair their share of challenges, but also definitely some triumphs, being able to work with just in general, a field where there are so many logos and so many different variations. And trying to come up with something that feels original and feels fresh doesn’t feel overdone, because a lot of the logos that I’ve seen whenever I was looking it up on Google, they all look the same, if I’m going to be honest. And so I think what me and Katie and working with her has been fantastic. And I think what we came up with just feels fresh, and I was very proud of that.

Kevin

Yeah, and the client liked it, too.

Ben

That’s a bonus.

Kevin

You think that’s a bonus? That’s actually the most important part, but yes, as Absolutely. Lainey, how about you? Favorite project you got to work on?

Lainey

I really enjoyed, honestly, delivering socks to… Delivering socks to you all’s past clients in celebration of the company’s 10-year anniversary. Anniversary. That was so much fun.

Kevin

You’re not being sarcastic?

Lainey

No, I had so much fun with that. I got to drive around and meet just the broad scope of clients that you all had, and being able to chat with them was a blast. But on a more work-related note-I did not anticipate you saying that. It was a lot of fun. No, on a more work-related note, I had a lot of… I guess fun is a good word. I I really enjoyed getting into the nitty-gritty of different types of professional writing and the different tones and things that go into that. For instance, the press releases that I’ve been helping on a little bit. There was a lot there that I had no idea how they worked. And it was very interesting looking at you all’s past press releases and trying to learn what goes into that and the tone for it has been very interesting.

Kevin

Yeah, and that’s a skill you’ll be able to take with you wherever it goes. Yes, very much. And so So we’re talking about where you’re going next. So Ben, I think you’re heading towards graduation, right? Yes, sir. So what are you hoping that your future career trajectory looks like from here?

Ben

I think for me, I’ve definitely found my home here in Tennessee. So I was actually born in Tennessee. Then we moved to Texas, then Alabama, and now my family lives in Georgia. And there’s something about Tennessee. It’s where my grandparents were. So I definitely want to stay here in Tennessee, either in this area I potentially move to Nashville or Knoxville. I love Tennessee. I love where it is just geographically. We get snow, actually, and I’ve lived further south. And so I love the snow. But I also like Nashville and Knoxville. I’d like to live there one day, hopefully. But I think the main thing for me, and this is going to sound funny, but being here at college, I haven’t been able to bring my Lego collection with me.

Kevin

So So wherever you go, you got to get enough square footage to put your Legos. Exactly. I need a Lego.

Lainey

So Nashville might be off the list, actually. He has so many Legos. Okay.

Ben

I do.

Kevin

He has so many Legos. All right. And professionally, what are you hoping to do now for work?

Ben

Professionally, I’m hoping to work as a graph designer. I don’t think currently for me working solo is going to be for me, frankly. I think it’s too volatile, and I don’t think I know enough I want to learn under somebody. I’m not ready to do it by myself, I don’t think.

Kevin

Well, that’s a good realization to have. Lainey, how about you? Because you’ve got a year or two of school left.

Lainey

I got another year of school.

Kevin

Another year of school. So career-wise, what are you thinking for your future now?

Lainey

That’s the question, isn’t it? Yeah. So, yeah, like most college students, I think the distant future of career goals is a little a little bit nebulous sometimes. I do know that I really enjoy working either with customers or with other people. I really enjoy what you all do here of trying to take what a client is looking for and be able to make that an actual attainable goal and bring their ideas to life in a way that’s going to be productive. I think something in that field, I haven’t narrowed it down super well yet. I do think that being in this internship has very much opened me up to the scope of things that I could go into, and I think that that’s been a huge takeaway.

Kevin

Ben and Lainey, thank you so much for interning with us this semester, and we are glad to get to know both of you. If you are watching this and you are thinking about, I would love to have an internship at Adelsberger Marketing, we have new interns cycling through on the regular. So check out our website for that application. And look at these two for career opportunities as they hit the job market not too long from now. So thank you all for watching the Content Machine podcast. Stay subscribed for episodes about business and leadership and-And I don’t think I know enough yet. Culture building in the small business environment.

I am a person who normally defaults to action. I sometimes describe myself as an action-oriented person. I don’t sit still well, and I do not like a meeting that does not end with a to-do list. I once saw a poster in a co-working space that read, Doing things can be a sufficient strategic plan. And in some ways, this poster may have had too much influence on my life. But ultimately, I believe a good plan now is better than a perfect plan later. Despite these personal convictions, even I, at times, find myself allowing others to dictate the tone in some situations. Situations where it likely should be me setting the tone. So what do I mean by setting the tone? In every relationship, in every exchange, in every situation, someone or something dictates the tone of that. So the definition I’ve got to set the tone is to establish a standard in a particular interaction, personally or as part of a group for attitude, intensity, communication, and/or excellence.

Now, this analogy might be most obvious in sports. If you think you are getting together for a fun pickup game of soccer and three minutes in, some dude having just finished aggressively chugging his pregame monster slide tackles someone? In that moment, the tone has an opportunity to change. Either someone takes Gary off to the side and takes him down a notch, or the entire game becomes more intense. Gary was setting the tone. In competitive sports, it can be set an example for the rest of your team about how much the leader is willing to sacrifice to win. For example, Southern Illinois University men’s basketball team in the mid 2000s earned the nickname floor burn U. This mid-major college outperformed larger programs because they were willing to outwork their talent level. All out intensity was the tone. In practice, you would get points for effort plays. So are you willing to dive out of bounds into the stands to get the ball? Are you willing to outwork everyone else? Or are you taking plays off? These are the questions that set the tone in that situation. At work, maybe this is the leader setting the tone for the standard of what will be acceptable or how we will treat a certain type of customer.

This last year, we experienced a particularly difficult client. Each meeting was something that everyone dreaded. Eventually, we reached a point where this client was openly hostile to us in a meeting. Now, this is weird for us because normally clients love us. We are used to smiles and maybe at most some constructive criticism. In this situation, however, I feel I abdicated my responsibility to set the tone. I had allowed the client to set the tone, and we all paid for it. As I wrestled with the situation, this year’s theme was born. Set the tone. The first step to solving a problem is admitting that you have one. In this sense, we’re going to first recognize the need to set the tone. I believe this first starts with you and I on a personal level. What tone are you setting for yourself? Are you setting yourself up to win? Or is there an internal voice too critical or unsupportive, setting yourself up for failure. Are you doing the right things to be successful? It’s not only the boss setting the tone, you do not have to be in charge to set the tone. Leaders lead. But whatever level you are in a meeting or at a team, you can work to set the tone. When someone sets the tone, we can either match it or set a new one.

Customer engagements, internally with ourselves, or on the field at a pickup game. I am someone who often finds myself to be the leader in a room. When I’m the leader in the room, I want to work to not destroy the tone set by others if it’s appropriate for the situation. This is especially true if I’m in a room where I am not the leader. If the leader in a situation has set a tone that’s appropriate for what’s going on, I want to work to keep that tone in my interactions and not undermine that leader. Before you have a meeting or an interaction with someone else, especially if it’s important, let’s think about the tone with which we wish to carry the interaction through. The other party will have thoughts, but with intentionality, we have the opportunity to set the table with the proper tone before the meeting even starts. So this is my question for you. Who’s going to set the tone in 2025? Because the opportunity is ever present for it to be you.

As we approach 2025, are you ready for the new year? Planning is critical for long-term success, and every year, I take time in the fourth quarter to map out our goals for the coming year. Today, I want to share a few thoughts on preparing for the next year of business. The first step I find is helpful is to review what happened this year. Take notes on what worked and what didn’t. I go back through my calendar to help me refresh my memory of events, clients, projects to help prompt my thoughts on ways to improve. Additionally, I want to examine key metrics like profitability, utilization, and revenue compared to the previous year to see if we’ve made any progress. Every year, our team evaluates our alignment with our mission statement. We break down our mission into four components: creative work, client success, team, and community. We go over these as a group to see how we did that in the last year. We also use the entrepreneurial operating system or EOS, which includes setting rocks or key projects that go above and beyond our day-to-day work at the company. At the end of each year, we review whether we met our yearly goals, which may include things like certain revenue, utilization targets, or projects like celebrating the company’s 10th anniversary that we did this year.

Our annual planning is also guided by our 10-year vision, which is maintained through the EOS system. This vision helps us define what each year should look like as we work toward the ultimate goal. After reviewing the past year, the next step is planning how to make further progress towards that 10-year vision. This involves setting targets for revenue, profitability, and utilization, broken down into monthly increments so that we can monitor progress closely. We also identify our rocks for the coming year. While some rocks may be added during the course of the year, I prefer to have a clear idea of our focus areas up front. During this planning phase, I gather feedback from our team on future rocks. In a flat team structure like ours, everyone helps contribute ideas. But if you have a leadership team, that might be just where you limit that input from. And sometimes, people on your team send you pictures of The Rock when you ask for rocks. Each fall, we review our organizational chart and consider growth trends in the business. I look to head to potential staffing needs and plan how responsibilities might be allocated to maximize our chance of success. This includes evaluating the current staff to see if their role should be adjusted to better meet our goals and their goals.

The end of the year is also an ideal time to assess whether our pricing aligns with our goals, whether driven by market conditions or profitability targets. We implemented a financial management checklist last year with reminders for key tasks throughout the year, ensuring that we’re handling the business side of things effectively. One takeaway this year is that I need a more detailed checklist for next year. So what are all the things that are part of the annual planning routine? Now, this planning season is shaped by what I’m calling Mission 2028. My goal by July My first, 2028, is to equip Adelsberger Marketing to operate independently of me for a full month. This would mean building a resilient organization with no single points of failure. Mission 2028 is a significant influence on our 2025 planning. Are you ready to plan 2025? Do you need support for your 2025 marketing strategy? We’d love to help. We have one or two spots open before the end of the year, so feel free to reach out to me at kevin@adelsbergermarketing.com if you’re interested. Thanks for listening to this Content Machine podcast. If you found this episode valuable, please share it with a friend, and don’t forget to subscribe for more information on small business leadership, marketing, and culture.

 

Now, the next question then is, what prevents you from doing the thing that you’re most valuable at? So what can we do to overcome those things? Well, the first thing is… The next topic is Delegation. That’s not a surprise to anybody here, right? But I want to give you some thoughts about Delegation. This quote, Andy Stanley I wouldn’t necessarily go to him for theology or anything, but he was at a leadership conference a long time ago, and he said a quote, and this is more than a decade ago, I heard this quote, and it stuck with me ever since. He said “Leaders should focus on doing what only they can do and delegate the rest.” This idea of what’s the most valuable thing that you can do was planted in my brain a long time ago, and I don’t always follow through with it as much as I could. So going back to our Chief Everything Officer worksheet, what can you take off your plate? What are the things that are low value for you that you can hand off to someone else and delegate it so that you have more time to do the things that you’re best at that provide the most value?

Delegation is not a dirty word. Because sometimes I have conversations where I’m like, people are just like, I just don’t want to do that thing. Well, there’s a reason you don’t want to do that thing. You may not be skilled in it. It may not be the right thing for the business. It’s not just you’re like, I want to get rid of this piddly task and give them to someone else. No. Delegation allows you to free up your time to do the things that you need to do. We’ve covered that a bunch. It allows the things to be done with more attention and focus than you’re going to give to it anyway. The things that I need to get rid of are things that I’m going to do as quickly as possible to get rid of them. But if I give them to someone, they can give them true attention and focus and do a better job at that than I will. Also, you can get someone who can do it better than you. There are people who are skilled at things. I hate accounting, but man, I’m glad accountants like it, right? Because you’re Giving someone an opportunity to grow and find work that they love.

Just because you don’t like to do it and you think it’s a piddly task that needs to get off your schedule, doesn’t mean that someone else won’t find it fulfilling. You’re not delegating it because it’s trash. You’re delegating because you need to do something different. Delegation can be really good for you, and it can be good for someone else because it gives someone an opportunity to contribute to your organization. Now, there’s a couple of levels of delegation. Do as I say. This is where interns start. I don’t care what you think. I just want you to do this thing. If you do that well, we can move you up the spectrum of authority. Research and report. So learn about it, tell me about it, and I will I will make a decision. Research and recommend. Learn about it. Come to me with a recommendation. You’ve earned some trust. I’ve seen that you’ve made wise choices. Come to me and recommend, and then I will confirm or tell you to go back to the drawing board. Decide and inform. This is a big jump between these two. But hey, make a decision. Let me know so that when I talk to the customer, I know why you’ve made that decision.

And then act independently like, Hey, you’re going to handle this. I’m trusting you. And this is a funnel. Everybody know business is a funnel. Most things in life are a funnel on some level. You start at the beginning and you work your way down until you build trust and you know someone’s competent enough to do that. Delegation is important, but what do we need to delegate? We’ve talked about tasks. Let’s think about it from a different perspective. I don’t like organizational charts, but I think they can be a very useful tool in this aspect. I started my company from nothing about 10 years ago. And a couple of years in, I learned about an activity. I can’t remember which book it was in, but it was like, make an organizational chart for your business. And I’m like, that seems dumb. It’s just me. And they’re like, the idea is like, No, You do more than one job, make a chart of all the jobs that have to happen, and then figure out who’s filling those jobs right now. So I got to do a new one of these in a couple of weeks. I want to do my end of the year planning

But a couple of years years ago, this was as best as I could get to as an organizational chart for my business. The visionary and integrator words sound a little arrogant, and it has to do with a book that I’ll talk about in a minute. But notice, very heavy on this side are a lot of things that you’d recognize that go with marketing. We got a videographer, we got a copywriter, web design, all those things. If I was to ask you what a marketing company does, you’d get a lot of those. Well, but we also have to worry about business development and account management. Oh, by the way, we have a van. You may have seen it outside. We love our van. Hey, it’s got to get its oil changed. It’s got to get washed. I need to wash it. It’s like growing mold. So IT, HR, all things that have to happen in my company. But I don’t have a dude who takes care of the van. So when you draw the organizational chart for your business, go detail. All the things that have to happen need a spot on the organizational chart

Then what you do is then you start putting names by stuff. And this is where it gets a little sad because you’re like, Oh, my name’s on a lot of spots on this chart. And now, a couple of years ago, my name was even more spots on this chart. Eventually, I want my name to just be up here, but it’s not going to be that way for a while. But vehicle maintenance, that falls in my camp, right? HR, it’s me, my project manager, and my wife. I hope that my project manager doesn’t have an HR issue. I help with IT, and then we got a guy on our team, Ricky, he can fix anything. It’s really remarkable. Eric’s in the back recording. He’s on the videography team. You can see how… You see my initials a bunch, right? You should do this. You should make this list. And then what you do is ask the question, what do we do to start removing you from things? Because you only have so many hours in the week. One of the hardest lessons that I’m still continuing to learn running a business is that I can only work so hard for so long, and then I’m going to fall apart.

And I’ve gotten close to that a few times in the business. And so the old phrase, faster alone, further together is very true. And so what can you do to start removing yourself from this list? So can you promote someone internally? Can you hire someone to help you with those things? There’s things called virtual assistance. I was talking to a guy who owns an HVAC company yesterday, and I was like, he still takes all the phone calls for the new business. I was like, what if you hired a virtual assistant to take all the calls and give you a schedule? And he’s like, wow. He’s like, I could get another job done every day. I was like, yeah, that would pay for it very quickly, right? Fractional leadership. CMO, CFO, COO. Have you guys heard of the term fractional leadership? A couple of you. It’s where you can’t afford a chief operating officer, but you need someone to help you with that type of area. You go on LinkedIn and you type COO and you’re like, Oh, there’s a bunch of people doing this, and they work for you a couple of hours a week, and they give you guidance in that area.

And I’ve gotten close to that a few times in the business. And so the old phrase, faster alone, further together is very true. And so what can you do to start removing yourself from this list? So can you promote someone internally? Can you hire someone to help you with those things? There’s things called virtual assistance. I was talking to a guy who owns an HVAC company yesterday, and I was like, he still takes all the phone calls for the new business. I was like, what if you hired a virtual assistant to take all the calls and give you a schedule? And he’s like, wow. He’s like, I could get another job done every day. I was like, yeah, that would pay for it very quickly, right? Fractional leadership. CMO, CFO, COO. Have you guys heard of the term fractional leadership? A couple of you. It’s where you can’t afford a chief operating officer, but you need someone to help you with that type of area. You go on LinkedIn and you type COO and you’re like, Oh, there’s a bunch of people doing this, and they work for you a couple of hours a week, and they give you guidance in that area.

It’s a little bit more woowoo I guess would be the word than I normally read books at, but this is an enjoyable book that helps you think about how to expand – have you read Is it? No. No. Okay. Oh, well, and if you scan that code, I’ll get money. So it’s great. All right.

So the second component, and we’re doing good on time, is Traction. A lot of the next part comes from a book called Traction by Gina Wickham. Who’s read or seen that book? A couple of you. Great. Perfect. Traction is like, how do we make progress in the whirlwind of business? I’m sure I’ll have a semi-acrimonious meeting with a client this afternoon. How do I still make progress on my business, even though I’m dealing with that and dealing with all the details? How do we grow our capacity and operations for the business? Well, first we need to have a vision. So what is your ideal future? So this is another… If you clip through the book, there’s sheets, the organizational chart in there. There’s a thing called 10-year goals. So what is your ideal future for you and your business?

What is your income in 10 years because of the business? What is your company revenue? What is your percentage of profit coming in? How many staff do you have? Here’s things that I care about. How does your staff describe you? What is the culture that you’re building? How are you treating your people? How does the community describe you? If you asked a random person on the street that knew about your business, would they say that you are someone they wouldn’t want to do business with or someone that they would want to do business with? What does it look like for us? One thing in our 10-year vision is to have a big studio space. That may look different. Obviously, most of you probably don’t need a big studio space, but you may have something specific that you want to have. Jamie might have a fleet of vehicles, and you’d like to be completely get free on those vehicles in 10 years. Is there a specific thing that you can hit on that goal? And then what do your responsibilities look like in 10 years? If 10 years from now, if you’re successful, what does your job look like and how will it be different because you’ve grown the organization underneath you?

Traction is the idea of this vision meets reality and it turns into action. And that’s when you have traction and you start moving forward. This is from a book called Traction by Gino Wickman. So I would encourage you to read this. It’s like an operating system for small businesses. And so it’ll help you give a framework to achieving the goals that you want to achieve and give you a set of methodologies to get there. So we’re going to talk about a few of those really quick. It starts with having you set a 10-year vision, and I’ve done that. And then if you’re going to get there in 10 years, well, where do you have to be in five years to get to the 10 years? I know that sounds really simple, but having to put it down on paper is a little bit of a challenge. For me, five-year goal, and for Mark, too, is we’re going to take a month off, not together, Just to be very clear. I mean, we could if you wanted to go somewhere, but my goal is to take a month off of my business and not touch anything in the business for a month.

Because in a month, all the cycles of normal business will have happened, and if they can do that without me, that means that I have a real, true business, not something that I have to run and maintain, something that can run itself. That doesn’t mean that I am no longer involved in the business or anything. It just means that I can work on those things I’m the most valuable at, thought leadership, big customer development, strategy, stuff like that. One year. So if you want to get there in five years, what’s the one year goal? How do we make one year’s progress? And then for one year, what’s the next 90 days look like? How do break that goal into 90 day increments to get to where we’re going. What does that process look like? So it’s a system called Rocks. There is an example Rocks sheet in your agenda, which it looks like that. But this is an actual screenshot of our Rocks. I gave you a piece of paper you can do it on. You can do it in a spreadsheet. They sell a lot of different softwares for this, but I’m cheap. So we do it in a Google spreadsheet.

And important thing is we talk about it every week, every week in our team meeting, our staff meeting, because our company is small enough that we don’t have a leadership team that just runs this. As your company grows, usually a leadership team runs these meetings. Every week, I would ask Brittany, which is initials BC, where she’s updating our case study content. Brittany, give me an update on the case study content. Hero video. Alex, Ricky, give me an update on the Hero video. Kevin, me, so I’m accountable to the team, too. Release the CMO service, plan in place. So you can see, look, I had to tell the team multiple weeks that I was behind on this. It’s not fun, but the accountability is super important. Even for you as an owner, I almost feel like it’s more important for you as the owner because nobody’s going to stop paying your paycheck. Nobody’s going to fire you. You’re not going to get a deduction on your whatever. You’re not going to get a point on your record or whatever. My accountability to the team is just as important as their accountability to me. This is a screenshot of our actual rocks, and I think we actually completed all those rocks.

Now, also, truth telling here, our third quarter rocks, my summer got so crazy that I jettisoned all the third quarter rocks. I said, Guys, we can’t do that right now. We’ve got to focus on what we’re doing. Which is a whole another situation. And so fourth quarter, the rocks are back. I started a week early. We’re moving forward again and growing progress for the company. So I’m not a perfect example of this, but this accountability is super important. And then you’ve got this worksheet. Well, And so start something easy like read EOS and what does success look like? I read the whole book. And then who’s responsible? It’s probably you. And then what day does it due? And then each week in your leadership meetings or your staff meetings, you give an update and you ask whoever’s in charge of that thing to give you a report. Because it’s like doing a group project at school. When they are like, Hey, did you do your part? You don’t want to be like, I didn’t do my part. At least I hope you’re not one of those people. Statistically, there’s probably a few of you in here, but accountability is key.

So the traction book is really helpful for that. Okay. Yeah. We got time for questions. I’m going to do the real quick pitch. If you are needing someone who’s a strategic marketing partner, we would love to help you. We work on websites, digital advertising, videography, and then we also have a CMO service where we work with this framework with your business. And so we help you think strategically about marketing. On top of that, this QR code, you can sign up to get the workbook emailed to you. So if you wanted to share it with people in your office. And if you want to get a recording of this session later, scan that code, put your email in there, and I’ll email you about when that’s finished being edited. I’ve got a couple of comments or time for comments or questions. So the floor is open. And if not, I will turn it back to Kyle. Thank you all for your time and your attention. I hope it was valuable. If you have any questions later, feel free to shoot me an email. I’d love to talk about this stuff. So thank you all for your time today.