Category: Blog

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.

Kevin
Welcome to the Content Machine podcast. This week, I’m joined by my friend William Donnell. William is going to be talking to us about his interesting career and how he’s grown and changed his business over the years. William, thanks for joining us today.

William
Yeah. Thanks, Kevin. I guess you’ll have to stay tuned to see if it’s actually interesting or not.

Kevin
That’s true, but I think it will be. Okay. William, you have a really interesting career path that really starts, in my knowledge with you being an Ag major at UT Martin.

William
True story.

Kevin
Why don’t you give us a little bit of background on that?

William
Yeah. I grew up on a farm. If anybody has been to Donald Century Farm, then that’s the farm I grew up on. I was always the geek sheep of the family. But my dad and my brother ran the farm after I graduated college. And then my dad still… My dad has passed away, but my brother still runs the farm, and then my mom also helps there, too. So growing up as being on the farm for generations and stuff, agriculture was just always a big part of my life. I thought that I wanted to do architecture landscaping. So went to UT Martin and got a degree and about that same time, though, my wife and I were dating at the time and started doing music. I do have a degree in agriculture, and I’ve never used it. As soon as we graduated from college, we just continued doing music full-time, which naturally led to doing website design and creative, and then from there. It’s a pretty natural progression. Most people start in a Ag, then they go to music, and then into a tech field. Same old story.

Kevin
The music to website stuff, What was that transition? I know you guys had some success in the music space. You were traveling around, making albums.

William
We made a living.

Kevin
We made a living.

Kevin
Yeah, absolutely. No, seriously. But then how did that transition into websites?

William
Sure. Maybe this is an advertisement for anyone to take electives in college that you’re interested in that are not part of your major. Getting my degree, I had to have a communications class. I could either take speech or I could take visual design, or I think it was desktop publishing. We were using Aldus PageMaker. I’m really dating myself there. You’ve probably never even heard of PageMaker. I’ve not heard of that. This is before Adobe, or maybe at the same time as Adobe, but before Adobe just dominated the landscape. I took a desktop publishing class. I’d always paid way too much attention to advertising and billboards and ads and stuff like that. Just always fascinated by really more that than maybe the fine art side of things. But I was just never a very talented, traditional writing, drawing artist. In that class, though, you could use computers. You could use the Command Z button to undo. If I could play around with something and then undo, let me try to make something different, undo, let me try it again, then I just really got an opportunity. I was like, Hey, this is a tool I can actually use, and I can find a way to be visually creative. My professor, who’s now the dean of the department, says that I am the best Ag student he’s ever had in his program. But I did get a taste of that. Then doing music full-time, the internet started to become a thing. This is around ’97, ’98, maybe something like that. And I realized, hey, we probably need some type of a website. So I didn’t know anyone local that did websites. I knew one person. There was only one person. That’s not true. Beth Rowe, locally, I knew her, and she was doing website stuff. And so I just thought, well, I don’t have any money to pay somebody to do a website. And so I’m just going to get some software and see if I can figure it out on my own. Got some software, used the tutorials that come with the macromedia stuff that was back then, and played around with flash, and played around with Photoshop and a bunch of stuff. And so built a website for our music ministry, and a local business said, Hey, I saw the website you did. That looks really good. Can you make one for my business? And I said, Absolutely, I can. And I knew that I really only had about half the knowledge which I needed to be able to complete that project. But I thought, Well, I didn’t know anything when I started my first project, so I’ll just just figure it out. And so did that project, learned a lot from it, obviously, and continued to do, I think, two more projects with her over the next five or seven or eight years or so. So that’s how I got into it, though.

Kevin
But your business didn’t stop at websites. You did websites mostly for the first how many years?

William
Yeah, websites have almost always I’ve been a part of the portfolio, I guess would be the fancy word, right? But one of the services we provided. But other types of marketing and stuff. So we’ve tried a lot of different things. I remember to begin with, any project that was remotely interesting and would help pay the bills, I would take it. And very early on, I got reconnected with a friend of mine from high school, Shane Aday, who was working for DeVilbiss, I think, locally, and was doing some freelance graphic design stuff. And so he and I got connected, and he was like, Man, I don’t mind doing the work, but I hate talking with customers. I was like, Hey, I could talk to customers! I could do that part! We started collaborating together. Then we did more print stuff because of Shane’s experience with that. That’s how that got started. But yeah, through the years, and I think we’re in our 22nd, 23rd year, I’ve tried lots of different things, and some of them worked, and some of them didn’t work as well because they weren’t profitable or because I didn’t feel like it was not an area that we wanted to continue to dig into, or I didn’t feel like we were really going to be good at this.

Kevin
Well, and I would say, based on just my recollection, because we’ve known each other for probably about 12 years now. Yeah, sounds right. Because I was actually a customer on a very small project at a nonprofit I worked at. And then we ended up working side by side at theCo for several years. So probably about eight years ago, I feel like the change started to accelerate greatly in what you guys were doing. You started moving more into user experience design and research. What is that? What is that? Yeah.

William
Yeah, sure. So first, I’ll explain what it is. So user experience is really thinking about any time a customer interacts with your product or organization. So if you think about if you’re going to go and get a box of Kleenex at Target, then the user experience is not just seeing the box on the shelf, pulling it off, putting in your cart and checking out. That’s not the whole user experience. It’s the whole thing of when you’re pulling to the parking lot, is it easy to find a spot? Is it clear how you get into the building, the signage, the landscaping when you walk inside and you smell the coffee over to the left at the Starbucks? That whole thing from when you first get out of your car, or maybe even before, all the way through when you check out and leave and then later see their ads or any other part. All of that is the experience the user has with your brand and with your organization. So the way I really became exposed… Well, I’ll say that when I first learned that there was a term for this thing was when we first started working with our first startup organization. And so this is really when we got into digital product design from website stuff. But I’ll get into that in a second. But that’s what user experience is.

Kevin
Okay. So how did you make that transition from doing websites to user experience design? And then it seems like over the last eight or so years, that has become an increasingly large part of your business.

William
The short answer is the providence of God. The longer answer is that a great friend of mine since eighth grade is Marcy Harris, who grew up in Lexington, so she’s a local girl. After college, she founded a startup that had one foot in the San Francisco Bay Area and one in the DC area. I was the creative person she knew. She knew that they needed to design a product for pop box, is the name of the product that they were working on. And so got an opportunity to work with her. And then it was really amazing because she got connected with someone who I now consider my friendtor, which is a word I made up, but feel free to use it if you want to. I’m trying to make it a thing. Janice Fraser. Janice is one of the OGs of user experience. The very first user experience design firm is the the one that she was the founding CEO of. So I just happened to, I say happened to, but I think I mentioned the short story, the short version of this. It’s not just happened to, right? But got a chance to be introduced to Janice, and Marcy and all of pop box went through an eight-week boot camp of user experience and really a lean startup methodology for startups. Janice led that workshop, and my eyes became open to all of these things. I was like, Oh, so that’s what that’s called. And that makes so much sense. It was very much this thing of… Now, don’t get me wrong, there’s tons of new stuff that I had never heard of before, but there was a lot of stuff, too, that it was just connecting the dots to things that I just- Or putting a name to something.

Kevin
I’m already doing this, but I didn’t know it was a thing.

William
Right. If somebody said, Oh, that’s called gravity. You’ve experienced gravity all of your life, but you didn’t know. And there’s a principle behind it, and there’s rules, and there’s math behind it. You don’t have to know all the math to understand.

Kevin
To know that you’re going to fall off a chair. That’s right. Yeah.

William
That’s right. Yeah. So getting exposed to all of that was just an amazing milestone in my life, personally, and just changed the trajectory of Sodium Halogen.

Kevin
It’s interesting how people popping into your life can change entire directions of things, right? That started to become a thing. You found more and more of it to or you liked doing it more, you guys really started to pursue that. Why did you chase after that so much?

William
Sure. I think it’s a couple of reasons. One is it’s just way more challenging, way more exciting to create a digital product that, in that case, for that product, there were tens, if not 100,000 people that were using this product. I’d never worked on something that had that scale and reach. Also, because pop box was all about connecting what’s happening in Congress and the laws of Congress with the actual people that are being represented by those Congress people, That was really exciting, too. I feel like we were really good at it. Here’s a thing that is exciting to me. It is maybe, potentially, of more consequence to touch more people than the stuff I’ve worked on before. It is something that I think can be profitable and something that I just really enjoy doing. So working with startups, that was our first introduction of working with startups on digital products. The reaction we got from working on that from the venture capitalist, who are the people who invest in the startups, was very positive, too. There was obviously a need. I think startups were realizing, Hey, figuring Coming out this user experience thing is really important, and there aren’t a whole lot of people at that time that were doing it. So it felt like there was a void in the market, and it was something that we thought was exciting, something we could be good at, and something that would be profitable, too. So you want all parts of that

Kevin
Thank you for joining us for this first half of the episode with William Donnell. Stay tuned. In a couple of weeks, we’ll release part two, where we hear more about William’s business journey.

I wanted to do a little bit of an introduction about me because I know some of you, and some of you are very good friends, some of you I’ve met today. I am not an expert in running a business or growing a business. Many of you have businesses that are larger than mine. What today is, is my observations from doing this for 10 years. Just a few weeks ago, really, my company turned 10 years old. I started it from nothing. When I say nothing, I have a degree in youth ministry, and I didn’t come from another marketing agency. Most marketing agencies that start, you’ll find out that they started another marketing agency or they have a degree in marketing or something, and they worked in the corporate world. I worked at the nonprofit world, and then I jumped out and did this thing, and hey, it turns out I’m all right at it. And so these are just observations that I’ve made. I’ve got a long way to go in improving my business to where I’m super… I mean, I’m excited about my business, but it can be a lot better. For example, I took a huge L last week. One of my customers who I was a little too generous on payment terms and not following up, decided that they’re potentially filing bankruptcy and has wiped my profit off the table for the year. So anybody dealt with that before? Some of you are small business owners. You can imagine that. And so my fourth quarter started on Monday. And because fourth quarter, my goal is to recoup that and get ahead of that. And so I’ve got a bunch of goals for myself because my job in the company is the business development, mostly. So Monday, a week early, started my fourth quarter so that I could have some goals to set for. I’m in the middle of this, like many of you are, and And so we’re going to go through this, and I’m going to try to say everything clearly, but hopefully we’ll have time for questions at the end. I’m a person who likes to establish what are we doing? What are we saying? What’s the framework work that we’re thinking about here. Let’s start with everybody’s favorite thing, terms and definitions. I define working in your business as anything that is direct sales or service. Now, the reason this will make more sense, hopefully you’re here because you want to improve your business or whatever. But I define working in the business as anything direct sales or service. And really, only the largest businesses have people that dedicated only to leadership. Most of us will have someone working on the… Most of us, regardless of who you are, you’ll have some working in the business to do. And it’s important because working in the business is the reason that you make money and have a business. So it’s not that that’s not valuable, but we need to think about how to do it differently because working on the business is, in my definition, something that improves the business by growing capacity or creating long term value. So that’s the definition I’m working with for the rest of this presentation. Something that increases, grows capacity for your business, so it increases your ability to do more things, make more money, service clients better, which creates money in the long run or create long term value for your organization. And working on your business is important, but it’s very rarely urgent, right? Because there’s fires to put out. I put out fires all the time. But here’s the thing. If you’re in leadership at your company, working on the business is your responsibility. There’s nobody else to hand that off to. You can delegate a lot of other things, but ultimately, casting that vision and pushing the business forward is your responsibility as the leader or the owner or whatever you may be. And so we need to think about how to do that. Here’s a couple of examples of what this might mean, working on, working in, just so we can make sure that we’re on the same page as we dive into the rest of this. If you’re launching a new business, getting your marketing together, I would say, is working on the business. You’re at an early stage, you’re trying to figure out who you are and communicate it to the world. Hiring your first employee, I say, is working on the business because you’ve increased your capacity significantly to do more work. Building a strategic plan, working on the business because you are planning for the future, you’re increasing value, hopefully you’re doing it right and you’re doing that. Building an onboarding process for new team members. I think that’s working on the business because you are setting them up to work faster. You’re helping build the culture that you want to have at your company. Fulfilling the latest order that comes in from a priority client in the business. That’s right. You got it. You’re there. You’re working in the business. Hiring an HR person to take care of future hiring, working on the business. Because then they’ve taken care of that responsibility for you so you can do other stuff. Okay, a couple more. Let’s do a little quiz. This is a public participation component. All right. Implementing an AI tool to improve efficiency. That would be on. All right. We’re doing good. All right. Building a personnel handbook. On. This sounds like torture to me. I don’t know about you guys, but this would be something that would be important for your business as you continue to grow. Fixing your biggest client’s problem. In. You guys are crushing this. Rebranding the company. Chad? On. On? Yes. We recently rebranded Foundation Bank. Yeah, definitely on. Speaking to an event to increase your brand reach. I think at this point, I’m working in the business. This is doing the marketing of the business. This is what I’m doing right now. Selling a giant new project. In. Yeah, I think in. It didn’t like that at all. Going to a conference to learn new leadership skills. On. I’ve never seen it do that before. That’s new. Okay, we’ll try to unhook that and start it going again. So, yeah, you guys did great on that quiz. Now, you guys know the urgent versus important grid, right? That famous square that Eisenhower came up with where you’ve got urgent. I have a picture of it, which is helpful. But urgent versus important. There we go. We’re back. Now we’re cooking with gas. Okay. All right. So Urgent versus important. Some of you guys have seen this. Raise your hand if you’ve seen this before. Surely no? Okay. Less than I thought. So you have urgent versus important. Really urgent, important, you do it right now. Urgent, not important, you do it later. Almost everything that we deal with that keeps us from working on the business is that urgent, not important. And really working on the business is important, but it’s very rarely urgent. And so we have a conflict here. So how do we make time to do it? It is a little bit of a radical idea, but almost always working on the business is not urgent. So the mindset I want you to think about today is, how can we change this to be something more important and more urgent for us? How can we think about frameworks to try to make this change happen in our business to help us to get to where we want to be? So the next phase, we’ve got definitions and terms. We all talk about the same thing. Let’s talk about diagnosis. This is a question that you should ask yourself as a business owner or a leader. What’s the most valuable things that you can be doing? There could be a lot of different answers to that. Now, I asked my team this, and if you have a team, I would encourage you to ask your team this question. I asked my team that, and they said things like business development, big picture planning, overall strategy for clients, big picture planning for the company, overall strategy for clients, culture building. So some good things to be thinking of and working on. What is it for you? What’s the most valuable things you can be doing leading your company? You should think about asking your team that question this week, if you have a team. Some of of you have a team, some of you are solopreneurs or whatever, think about that. But if you aren’t a solopreneur, think about that as a team. Now, I printed off nice little workbooks that our team designed for this. If you open to the first page, we have something that I call our Chief Everything Officer Worksheet. As an owner of a business, as a leader of a business, you are likely the Chief Everything Officer. I don’t remember which company branded that, but I thought it was pretty brilliant. This is a tool to help you think about the things that you’re actually doing on a weekly basis, and it’s probably a lot more than you think it is. And you might be propping up more processes in your organization than you really think you are. This is an actual list of things that I did. I gave this talk a few months ago. This was a list of things I did on a Monday preparing for that talk, not preparing for that talk, just while I was preparing for that. So I responded to an incoming lead. I wrote blog content. I led staff meeting. I had a project management call with a client, which was the Jackson chamber because it was a Monday. Interview new semester interns, wrote a proposal, I repaired a broken website, I was sending an invoice, and I set up meetings for projects. Seems like a pretty busy day. It was. But when I look at that, the goal of this exercise is there are things that’s high value for me to be doing, or it’s things I should be delegating. So that the two columns next to that is high value or delegating. I would encourage you to seriously do this for a week. Get home at the end of your day or the first thing in the morning, think back on the day before and be like, all the things that I did as my job, are they high value or should I be delegating them? Some of this list I should be delegating, and some of it I have since then. A lot more that I should be delegating. But this is a diagnosis. You need to get a picture of how much you’re doing so that you can think about other ways to handle that. Because with this, the next question is, when you go back to that first question is, what’s the most valuable things that you can be doing? Is it on this list all the time? Does it make up most of this list? And my guess, unless you’re a lot better than me, and some of you are, is probably not. Because we’re busy putting out fires instead of doing important things. Now, the next question then is, what prevents you from doing the thing that you’re most valuable at? You need to ask yourself that question and ask it seriously. And there’s a couple of reasons that that may be the case. It could be pride. I do this better than anybody else can do it, so I’m not delegating it. Or maybe it’s low quality or unequipped staff. You might have a staffing issue that prevents you from taking the things off your plate that you need to have taken off your plate. Maybe it’s budgetary, right? We have a budget problem all of a sudden that we didn’t have a couple of weeks ago. I guess we did have it a couple of weeks ago. I just hadn’t really come to grips with it. But budgetarily, if I could hire someone else, there’s things that I could do to take stuff off my plate. We’ll talk more about that in a second. One of my pitfalls is that I’m doing too much of the marketing work. We’ve got a great team of designers and stuff, but one of our weak areas is there’s some things that I’m hesitant to hand off to team, and I’m preparing for this talk, and I had a pastor growing up who would be like, Every time I’m pointing a finger at you, I’m pointing three back at me. He was not that great of a pastor, but that was a good illustration to remind yourself that, Hey, I’m talking to you guys about this, but, Hey, I’m not perfect at this either. I’ve got shortcomings. Preparing for this talk made me think about that.

Welcome to the second of two episodes with Katie Howerton, where we talk about type. And so you’re saying that in a good brand kit, so if someone’s listening to this podcast and they’ve got a brand kit from a professional, there should be a font listing in there.

Yes. And they’re ideally multiple. I think in my mind, an ideal set is three fonts. So one being your main title font, which you could use a variation of later, a subtitle font and then a body copy. And you can use those within the same family. I like a little variation. So say you have sans serif as your main title font, try to use a serif or a slap serif to offset things in the body. So yeah, and then in addition to that, you should be getting with your brand kits if they do require downloaded fonts as font files as well, which is an easy step to miss because there’s no one rule for fonts across on the internet. Maybe one day we will have that, but yeah. Yeah.

And now you are somewhat famous for your handwriting, your handwritten script and stuff. So how can using unique type or handwritten script add meaning to a project?

I think something we talked about a lot in college when we were learning about typography is that every font has a voice, which sounds like no child left behind. What I mean is that when you see letters in a certain way, you imagine them sounding a certain way or feeling a certain way. It’s why most of our clients, male clients, if I present any script, they’re like, it feels a little girly. It’s a little overcompensating, but it’s true. There are different… It’s like if you’re doing an old brand and you’re using all very modern type, it’s going to feel disjointed. So often I will use hand lettering when it comes to any brand that is okay with as far as either something that’s playful, something that is very personal, or if you just hit a wall with something. So I think about even our own brand. We have a strong look with using Gotham and using our body copy type. But I like to do quotes in hand lettering so that they have a more illustrative element. They can be one on their own. They don’t have to match everything. And as long as the color palette carries over, that there’s a consistency with elements like that, you can have a little bit more fun. So that’s why I like to use it specifically with quotes, because those are heard.

Yeah, you’re reading it to hear it like someone said it. Yeah, absolutely. All right. And then the last thing to talk about is, sometimes we have a conflict about software in our office, and usually that’s because you are obsessed about InDesign. I feel like InDesign is the… The… The… The…

The black sheep.

The black sheep of the Adobe world that nobody talks about. But you love it.

I do love it.

So I wanted to give you a chance to pitch Adobe and defend your choice to use it all the time.

So, Adobe has many, many products, the three main which are used by designers are Photoshop, Illustrator, and Indesign. Photoshop for images, Illustrator for logos, is the best way to put it, and then Indesign for print. I ran our Jackson home for five years, and that was what I designed every magazine in. It’s what I’ve designed resumes in. It’s what I’ve designed anything that is going to be printed in because it is made for that. And so if you learn the muscle memory of it, which is like any Adobe product, if you get used to it, you don’t want to-

Yeah, because the key commands don’t transfer between different software.

Exactly. So it’s just very print friendly. But even with that, I’ll sometimes use it for non-print or things that just don’t necessarily need Indesign, per se. There’s a lot more locking features on there. I can envision it better, I think. In Illustrator, it’s a little bit more of the Wild West of you can have things spread out, less organization. I think I’m just mostly an organized person, and I have found a system within Illustrator that benefits that. I can also design two things back to back and pick a favorite, and for me, it’s visually easier. So I would say the Indesign is really helpful for print materials or anything with lots of words. It’s very type-centric. So I would encourage anybody, if you’re creating a business card, if you’re creating print materials, even if you’re laying out for a website, just to play around with the idea of what are the margins? How are we doing this? Indesign is a good place to start.

Well, Katie, thank you so much for joining us today and teaching us a little bit more about type and making a case for InDesign.

Yeah, anytime.

If you have a favorite type project that you’ve seen Katie make, which are all the quotes from this show that you see on social media, please let us know, and I’ll share that with Katie so she can hear nice things about her work. So thank you for listening to the Content Machine podcast. Stay tuned for future episodes about marketing, small business, and leadership in culture. Thank you.

Kevin
Welcome to the Content Machine, I’m Kevin Adelsberger, and this week we are joined by Katie Howerton, who is a graphic designer at Adelsberger Marketing. We want to talk to Katie about some stuff in the graphic design world. Katie, you are known for your hand lettering and your love of all things that is type. Can you give us a rundown of some of the basic terminology that people should know when they’re thinking about type?

Katie
Most people, when they think about type, the first thing they think is font, which is valid. But that can encompass a lot of different things. When you’re talking about fonts, there are three main groups: sans serif, serif, and slap serif. There’s also hand lettering and calligraphy, things like that. But essentially, serif is French for feet. And so sans serif means without feet, serif means with them. So essentially, that’s going to be your difference between a Helvetica and a Times New Roman. That may mean nothing to someone listening, but essentially something that has curved edges, like a Roman look, versus something that is nice and sharp and modern. Slap serif is a good in between in that it has those edges to it, but they’re nice and sharp and not… They’re a more modern look. So essentially, when you’re… That is the three kinds of fonts you can choose from. Obviously, within that, there is bolding your type, italicizing your type. Often, there are different weights, which essentially means how skinny is letter, is it condensed, is it spread out? And often, there’s a lot more choices there than you necessarily need to make. But essentially, when you are picking a font, you are trying to pick something that matches the tone of your business or of specifically what it is doing in that moment. So there’s going to be a difference between what is easy to see and read and matches the voice of a title versus an entire website’s body copy. So, yeah. So those are a few things, as well as font size. That’s something we’re all familiar with. But there are a few rules within that, unspoken rules about this is too small to read, this is too big to fit a word across the line. There are obviously also specifics that you can get into that the designer will get into, but probably not the client, of letter and line spacing. And then your biggest question in the end to ask is, is it legible? Which seems really like a silly question. Legible means you’re able to read it, i. e. your handwriting, Kevin.

Kevin
My handwriting is very good.

Katie
But then there’s also readability, which is technically different in that once something is in a body of text, can you read through it without having to pause and check it. Legibility is ‘can I see what the letters are’, readability is ‘if I see a paragraph of this text, is it easy to read? Or is it clunky or takes longer than it should’.

Kevin
Now I’ve heard in books that you always use serifed fonts because it’s easier to read and then on your phone, you’d see a sanserif font, your text messages.

Katie
I don’t know the science behind that, but it’s true, in that things are easier to read on a screen if they’re sanserif, serif if they’re in print. I don’t know if it’s just muscle memory, honestly. There’s also the difference of light text on dark, how easy that is to read. And that will affect as well how… If you have something really ornate that’s light on dark, it’s going to be a lot on the eyes.

Kevin
That makes a designer’s choice more complicated or something to think through. I’ve heard the phrase font family before. What does that mean and why is that important for a brand?

Katie
So a font family, it sounds silly, but just imagine it like a family. So, primarily what people think of is like, here’s the font, here’s the bold version, here’s the italic version, there’s our family. But many fonts go far beyond that as far as they will have, like I mentioned earlier, a condensed version, a super bold version. They’ll have something called book, which means essentially the way that is easiest to read in body copy. So the great thing about if you have a very large font family with lots of options, is often you can build an entire brand off of one font family. So just like a family, they look different, but they have similarities. So they work together. There are also, I think of two fonts, Mr. Eve’s and Mrs. Eve’s, that are essentially the same fonts, but one is sans serif, one is serif. So they have integrations that make them work well together. So whether you’re picking multiple fonts or you’re working from one font family, you want to make sure that they call back to each other and they work together well.

Kevin
So that would be a phrase we use as pairing fonts together? Okay. All right. And then, if someone has a brand-specific font, how should they handle fonts? Because sometimes a brand-specific font, maybe in what we call the logo mark, you might not be able to replicate that in email or your word document. How should you approach … if your brand has a very specific font, how should you approach selecting a font for your email or your word documents?

Katie
Yeah, so, it’s a real struggle. I will say that in the design world there is a unspoken that a logo should never be just a font. It should always be a variation. Whether that’s incorporating imagery into the letters or tapering things, people shouldn’t be able to pull it up, type it, and say, Is there a logo? That’s what makes it unique. So often what we’ll do is, if you do have access to that font, you can use it for titles and stuff. You don’t want to overuse the main font because then it’s everywhere and your logo doesn’t stand out. But it’s subtitles, things like that. Those are really important to incorporate throughout your website or different areas. We usually work within Adobe fonts because Adobe programs are what we use.

Kevin
And most of the design world has access to.

Katie
Yes. Unfortunately, most clients don’t. They’re not doing their designing. I send them a brand package, they have their fonts, and they realize, oh, we’re using Canva, we’re using Google, we’re using things that don’t have access to these fonts.

Kevin
So this is an interesting point. Not every program that you have or not every computer that you use has access to the same sets of fonts.

Katie
Yeah, and fonts have changed over the years as far as how you use them. It used to be very standard to purchase a font, and that can still be done, but it’s just different, and it’s old school as well. It’s also a very expensive process if you want to own a very prestigious font. I’m trying to get better about using Google fonts on the front-end. Basically trying to say, these fonts are accessible everywhere. You can… The good thing is, too, unlike with adobe, it’s like a subscription system. If you have the access, you get it. With the google font, you can download that at any point and hold on to it.

Kevin
And it’s free.

Katie
Yeah. And it’s not a sketchy… This is a free font website that might give you a virus. So I try to work primarily off of those. If I really am attached to an adobe font, but I know they need something similar to be able to produce things on their own, then I will go into Google Fonts and just mix and match. Often, there are better designers out there who I can google, Hey, what’s a similar font to Helvetica? Because it takes a long time. So I’ll do that. And then also, something that I hadn’t really thought about until recently is a client using their Gmail, like you mentioned. I don’t think about fonts and email a lot, but if you want it to match the brand, that’s a very limited set, as well as a limited set within Microsoft, different things. So really, we’re trying to provide the client, ideally, with a font they can use anywhere, but if not, a really great backup that essentially creates the same effect.

Kevin
And I would say for email or Word processing, it’s really more important for legibility. Or readability, whichever I’m supposed to be saying. Thanks for tuning in to the first of two episodes with Katie Howerton talking about type. Stay tuned to your feed for the future episode where we finish this conversation.

At Adelsberger Marketing, we typically focus on digital marketing for our clients, but we also recognize the value of physical items in marketing. Whether this is something for inside the company or something to give out to the community, both have some finer points to consider. Let’s jump in with internal use first. As a business owner, I love giving my team new swag. Well, why? I think it accomplishes several goals. One, it makes culture practical. One of the great values of swag is that it can allow you to make the components of your workplace culture practical, like making stickers or clothing that emphasizes the core values of your organization. Two, it can make you feel like part of a team, sort of like sports jerseys. Swag can help people feel part of a larger group. Feeling like you belong is an important part of great workplace culture. It can make them feel valued. Giving gifts is a great way to help people feel like they are valued somewhere. And it can be used for recognition. Some companies use special gifts to recognize special accomplishments or longevity in a position. While we get some indirect marketing benefits from equipping our staff with swag, we also see it as a valuable tool for marketing our business as well. Top of mind awareness can be created by swag. It’s hard to measure top of mind awareness, but it certainly plays a role in customers’ purchasing behavior. We’re in Jackson, Tennessee, and there’s actually two safari parks close by. But I bet if I polled our community, 9 out of 10 would only know about one of them. And it’s actually one that is a few minutes further away from us because they invest heavily in top of mind marketing. Swag, when selected and used well, can help you create top of mind awareness in your target market. It’s a physical reminder of your company. We love to give our clients and friends things that make them think about us when they use it, whether that be a sweatshirt or maybe even socks. And it’s late marketing through affiliation. If you do a good job with Swag, People will wear it in the community or they’ll give you a shout out on social media for it. You gain a few marketing points by affiliation with those folks or just as a visible recognition of your brand in the community. Either way, if you’re trying to do internal or external with physical gifts, here’s a few things that you should think about. One, make it unique. Thinking beyond just your logo on things, engage a graphic designer to create something fun for your brand. But also, sometimes unique items will leave more of a mark. Also, make it useful. If the item is useless to the target, it will end up in the trash. Thinking through how people will make it useful will make it a better gift for those people. Or make sure that it’s target market adjacent. So if you have dog people who are customers, maybe create some dog toys. And then quality items. Getting good quality items will increase the likelihood that others will utilize it and therefore increase your ROI on the purchase. A good pen will be used more than a cheap one. Here at Adelsberger Marketing, we’re ready to help you think about building culture with swag. But if you’re really getting into ordering some new gear, I would point you to our friends at IMS Promos here in Jackson. They will hold your hand through the entire process, and we’ve gotten some great sweatshirts and socks from them in the last year. My question to you would be, what’s your favorite piece of corporate swag that you’ve gotten, internal or external? I’d love to hear about it. Send me an email at kevin@adelsbergermarketing.com, and stay tuned for future episodes of the Content Machine podcast, where we’ll talk more about marketing culture and leadership in the small business environment.

What is the value of a mission and vision statement? It’s difficult to put that on a balance sheet, just as workplace culture is difficult to put on a balance sheet, but both of them can affect your bottom line. Mission and vision statements are part of the core identity of any business. In previous episodes, we talked about core values and how they operate. Today, we will look at mission and vision statements. Now, both of these statements can play a role in shaping the culture and the future of an organization as it continues to grow and change. It sets a theoretical standard for behavior, a rubric for actions and goals for the future. Mission and vision statements allow for shared meaning that can also be referenced as an anchor in the turbulent seas of business. Shiny options might come by to distract, and disruptions in the marketplace can happen, may try to change your path even, and personnel can change your capabilities. But these strategic statements can be help to put your eyes on a North Star during all those changes. I think a mission statement is the focus of a business that shouldn’t be moved away from. It can keep us focused from distractions and gives us a rubric to judge whether we are being successful and really should be true for a 10 to 20 year long time horizon. The mission statement for Adelsberger Marketing is to make creative work that grows our clients’ businesses in a culture that values our team and community. Our mission incorporates several elements that I hope will be true of us for the future of this company. First of all, We don’t just make work, we make creative work, and we believe that creativity is important. Also, we don’t just make creative work. We’re not just artists. We make creative work that grows our clients’ businesses because there’s a commercial into our work. All of that is done in a culture that values our team and community because we recognize that our people are not just robots on an assembly line. They are real humans with feelings and feelings and thoughts. Our community allows us to exist, so we want to be good members of our community. All of those things are things I think are important for us to remember as we grow and change. As a business, it’s all so short enough that hopefully our team can think about it and digest it easily. We’ve operationalized it by going over it in detail in onboarding. We generate cool stickers with it to make the idea sticky and visible in our team members’ lives. And then annually, we do a year-end review where we use it as a rubric to see if we accomplish these things throughout the course of the year. We go through each point as a team to make sure that everybody can see that we’ve accomplished these goals. Vision statements, in my view, are what would happen in the distant future if you were successful in pursuing your mission statement. That’s the big picture accomplishment. And so for us, our vision is to be the best place for creatives to work in West Tennessee. Now, I know you can’t define that with a set of scores, and there’s no authority giving that grade out, but I have worked by operationalizing it and making a list of things that make a great place to work and have worked on including those in our strategic planning. Additionally, I think it’s helpful for the team to know that that’s the vision that I’m pushing towards. It’s very important that companies work on operationalizing these things. And when I say operationalize, I mean make it relevant to their operations. As a business, how do they make it more than just a statement that lives on a piece of paper in a three-ring binder in HR’s office? How do they make it alive and relevant to the people that work there? So we work as mentioned, including it in orientation, but not just saying it and explaining it, showing what it means. We include it in our annual reviews, and our core values are in our quarterly reviews with team members. We’ve also done our best to make the idea visible and available for our team to review. And ultimately, it’s on my plate as the leader of the company to ensure that these ideas are visible and active. And so I need to return to the practice I used to do, where once a week I’d review a core value, a mission or vision statement with the team so they can remember what it means to be successful beyond our monetary metrics. What’s your favorite mission or vision statement that you’ve ever come across? Send me an email. I’d love to hear about it, kevin@adelsbergermarketing.com. Thank you for listening to this edition of the Content Machine podcast. Stay tuned for future episodes where we talk about marketing, culture, and leadership in the small business environment.

A few weeks ago, Adelsberger Marketing celebrated 10 years in business. And on today’s episode of the Content Machine podcast, I want to look back at a few lessons that I’ve learned over that decade. The first couple of things have to do with leadership. It is an interesting thing to learn about the value of leadership as someone who’s went through a lot of leadership development classes in high school and college. Hearing it so much, it can become blasé or devalued or just common, that leadership is really important. But as I’ve continued this business and observing things in our society, leadership becomes more and more valuable, and that burden for the company largely falls on me. Seeing the value of leadership is definitely something that I’ve learned. But it’s also because the burden of that mostly falls on me, I’ve learned that it can be a lonely endeavor. All the problems I run into in this business are not unique to me or Adelsberger Marketing. They happen to most anyone leading a business or within a company. I have a responsibility that no one else shares, and so I don’t think that I would have guessed that that would have felt like a burden 10 years ago like I do today. I also would not have guessed that the most joy I find from the business comes from helping my team members create a life for themselves and seeing them grow and develop and see their families grow and change. I’m not the best business owner, but I’ve gotten to see my people buy their first houses and have children buy cars, and that is some of the favorite things that I’ve gotten to do as a business owner. In business, it matters a lot that you are paying your bills. But I’ve also grown a bigger appreciation for the amount that people matter. Caring for developing the culture that cares for people may be the thing that sets our business apart from so many others. Because as our theme was a few years ago, if you want to go fast or go alone, if you want to go further, go together. And I can see that even more clearly now. There’s a limit to the work that I can do, the amount of effort that I can put in and how hard I can push on a goal. But when I bring others to the table, we can do it together and go further and accomplish more. I have been fortunate to find people who are capable and good culture fits and willing to work And hopefully, I’ll be able to continue to find people that help us do that. I’ve learned a lot about marketing in a world that’s moving faster and faster. And in our society, niching and differentiation becomes more and more critical. Niching is about finding a horizontal or vertical niche that helps you be special and defines who your customers are or the services in a way that allows you to be successful. I think the future for niche services is growing, and I think it’s a lot clearer to me now how important it is than it was 10 years ago. And so I’m trying to reckon with that from inside our own company, working through what that could look like for our future so that we could be more niched, so that we can be more competitive. Differentiation continues to take on a bigger and bigger role in our marketing plans for our customers. Having niches is a differentiator, but that also applies to all the clients that we have. Clients who try to compete with every person who sells the thing that they sell everywhere are going to not succeed like those who have a niche. And so we are increasingly pushing our clients to help differentiate themselves and find ways for them to set themselves apart from the crowd. Not just your typical marketing ways, but in a very crowded market, being able to separate yourself from everyone else is crucial. And then one added responsibility I found for myself is that I need to be working six months or a year or two years ahead of the rest of my team. Because of that, finding a project manager to help manage the day-to-day gives me the flexibility to focus on the bigger picture things, which is also something I never would have guessed when I opened the company. And finally, I’ve come to realize that burnout is a real thing. I would hear people talk about burnout, but I had never experienced it. And so I wasn’t sure that if I was just getting older or the work was more stressful. But now I’ve realized that I’ve nearly burnt out several times. But now I can identify when it’s happening. The last time I felt it, I could feel it coming. I could identify it, which is new to me. So I was able to take precautionary measures to ensure that I didn’t completely burn out and leave the company in a bad spot. And now I know that I’m out of that spot and I’m ready to rock and roll again. Business is way harder than I thought it would be, but fortunately, we’ve got a great team of people that is helping to build this in a way that it will be sustainable. Hopefully, we’ll see you again in 10 years, where we can talk about what I’ve learned over 20 years in business. Thank you for supporting Adelsberger Marketing. Thank you for listening to the Content Machine podcast. If you found this episode interesting, share it with a friend, and stay subscribed for future episodes where we talk about marketing, culture, and leadership in the small business environment.

Kevin Adelsberger

Welcome to part 2 of the Content Machine podcast with Chad Wilson, President of Foundation Bank. We had the pleasure of working with Chad on a rebrand recently, and this is the rest of our conversation with him about that project. Foundation Bank has been around for a while, right? Almost 100 years? Yeah.

Chad Wilson

1934, so we’re 90 years old this year.

Kevin Adelsberger

90 years old. Things maybe in the recent past wouldn’t… Like a rebrand would never have been on the table in the last couple of years, probably. So this is a different thing for you guys to think about. How has that… How has been the response been internally? It’s been good for the culture or bad? Or how’s it?

Chad Wilson

It’s been very good for the culture. I think that people are happier to wear the brand now. That was a real priority for us is we wanted it to be a brand, the color scheme, the fonts, the look. We wanted it to be something they’d be proud to wear. On Fridays, we encourage branded material to be worn. I think it’s landed very well with that. The feedback has been, I would say, almost uniformly positive within the team. There have been a couple of folks. One of our core values is absolute honesty, and we want to be able to hear-

Kevin Adelsberger

That’s a double-edged sword, right?

Chad Wilson

We want to be able to hear contrary opinions, and I’ve appreciated some of the input for, I’d say less than 2%, but a couple of folks that had some concerns, and that actually has fed into maybe the way or maybe the mix of colors and the kind of branding we’re using in different places because of some of the input that they gave about color combinations and things like that. Even though we were on the back end of it by the time we got that input, it’s still helpful in the way we represent the brand going forward. You guys provided us a great brand guide where we can mix and match a lot of these colors and looks of the logo. That’s something I learned is that you’re not just picking one representation of your logo and your logo type and your icon, you’re really getting a palette of things consistent with your brand to use depending on the setting, depending on what works for that particular audience. So Yeah, internal input, generally positive. External input has been good, too.

Kevin Adelsberger

Now, if there was a company listening to this that’s thinking about doing a rebrand, what would you… Just say they came to you and said, Hey, I need a rebrand. What should we be thinking about if we’re going to do that? What would you set them up to think about?

Chad Wilson

So I would ask them, Are you worthy of your brand already? Are there bigger problems? Because you can have a beautiful façade, so to speak, But once people get inside it, if they’re not having an experience that’s what they expected just from what they saw on the outside, you don’t want to whitewash your business. And so I think that there’s a real need to look internally, what are the biggest operational challenges, culture challenges, morale challenges? Hey, just are we making money in the first place? Make sure that the guts are good, the bones are good. And I think once that’s the case, there’s a necessity to turn to, Okay, what is the message we’re sending through our external marketing? Yeah.

Kevin Adelsberger

Well, let’s talk about banking for just a minute here. So what are your thoughts about marketing for community banks? So you’ve talked about making sure that you know who your niche is and what your service you’re providing, but anything else comes to mind when you think about marketing for community banks?

Chad Wilson

I don’t think community banks do it well. I think community banks do the relationship side of banking really well. But I think there’s another piece there that we’re missing as an industry on being, I would say up to date. Community banks at times can seem, I’m speaking of us too, can seem a little behind the times, maybe a little old fashioned. And I think there’s some great things about being old fashioned, but I think what community banks have an opportunity to do is hold on to everything good about being old fashioned, about being traditional, about down home family values kinds of institutions, but represent that in a way that looks current, that looks like you are on top of things, that you are not stuck in another day, but you’re trying to tease out all the great things about the past, but you’re trying tweak that looking forward to the future, because people need to know that community banks are future-oriented. I think the degree to which you can represent that will allow you… There’s going to be a lot of community banks that sell over the next decade. In my career, we’ve gone from 9,000 banks down to less than 5,000, and that’s just in a 20-year period. And so more and more community banks are going to be selling if they’re not future-oriented. And I think a brand is one aspect of making sure that you’re forward-oriented.

Kevin Adelsberger

All right. Give you one minute just to pitch on Foundation Bank.

Chad Wilson

So we absolutely love building long-lasting financial relationships at Foundation Bank. So if you felt overlooked by your financial institution, or if you felt like you’re just a number, if you felt like you don’t know anybody at the branch in which you do business anymore. We want to be the alternative to that experience. We want to know your name when you walk in the door. We want to be available to help you in all the financial decisions of life. There’s home buying, there’s investing for the future, there’s managing your assets currently. We’ve invested a lot into technology to help those be tools to help you do those things. But at the end of the day, we provide financial solutions, not just financial products. We think there’s a difference. It’s the way in which you go about teaching people how to use those tools and helping them make good financial decisions for their future. If that’s something folks are looking for, we think people are starving for that. But most don’t have the time to set aside to make a change in their financial life. But we think it’ll be worth it. A little time now could lead to tremendous dollars and time in the future.

Kevin Adelsberger

Then you have a podcast, so I want to give you a chance to promote that, too.

Chad Wilson

Okay. We do have a podcast we put out every couple of weeks. It’s called Money Matters. And we try to talk about things that are going on in the economy, but boiled down into layman’s terms. I know that when we read things in the media, sometimes it can be overwhelming. It’s hard to tease through some of the data and the jargon. And so we just try to boil it down to this is what it means, and this is how it might affect you in how you make daily financial decisions. It’s a quick one, 10 to 15 minutes, and really accessible for folks that just want to know a little bit more about what’s going on in the economy.

Kevin Adelsberger

Well, Chad, thank you for taking the time to join us on this episode of the Content Machine podcast. We’ll be back with future episodes, so stay subscribed to see what’s next.

Kevin Adelsberger
Welcome to the second episode of the Content Machine podcast we’re recording at Pretzel Day in 2024. I’m joined by Chad Wilson, President of Foundation Bank and a longtime customer and friend of Adelsberger Marketing. Thanks for joining us, Chad.

Chad Wilson
Happy to be here. Honored to be here.

Kevin Adelsberger
Chad, we recently helped you guys with a rebrand for the bank, and I wanted to ask you some questions about that because rebrand is a big marketing decision. So why did you decide to go through with a rebrand?

Chad Wilson
It is a big marketing decision. It took us some time to get to a point where I guess we were comfortable making the plunge into rebranding. I think that the more you think about it for a business, everything in your business speaks, everything says something. If you look at all the different parts of your business, what are those things saying? What does your building say? What does the vibe when you walk into the building say? What does all of the digital presence that you have, what does it say? We had thrown together our branding in pieces over the years. We had some legacy branding for our bank that had been there for a long time. We refreshed that a bit with the new brand in 2005, and it was really a bootstrapped project where we got online, found somebody to just help us put a logo together. I think a lot of thought went into our name that we wanted to use to brand with. There’s some real meaning behind the name Foundation Bank. But the graphics, the look, the feel of that, we put some thought into, but I think over the years, it just became more and more apparent that we could do that even more clearly, could do that with even more excellence. It felt like in some ways we were playing Pong, and the rebrand was like moving to Fortnite. It was a big time advance for us just in, I think, the quality of the look that we had. We feel like we’ve got a great culture, we’ve got a unique thing in our bank, and we want that to be visible externally. And so in some ways this brand, the rebranding, we wanted it to be a reflection of more so who we really are. And we wanted it to be something that was fresh enough that it looks like we’re paying attention to what is speaking digitally. And so thought about it for years and decided it was just time to take the plunge. I think you have to have, in some measure, things right internally before you can take that plunge, because in many ways you’re wanting that brand to be reflective of who you are. And if you’re not really happy with who you are, there may be some internal work to be done first to help you feel like you’re really capturing the essence of who you are in the brand and that you’re able to stand behind what you’re communicating. So we spent some years doing that. And you never arrive. You can always improve your culture. You can always improve the experience that people are having with you. But we felt like we were at a place where we were strong enough in our confidence of who we were. It’s time for us to now have a more attractive, contemporary representation of that through our brand.

Kevin Adelsberger)
That makes a lot of sense. So what was about that process? What did you not expect? What did you learn about the bank during the process of rebranding?

Chad Wilson)
Well, one thing we already knew is that we’re not perfect, and there’s always room for improvement. And that’s helpful, too, because sometimes you can poke your chest out too much and think, we got it all together. We’re the best thing since slice bread. Going through the process that you took us through of really trying to identify what we do well, where we really excel in the marketplace. When you do that, you also see where you don’t excel. You see the holes, and I think we knew that going in, but it was a more specific process to be able to see, okay, this is an area we just got to be okay with not being good at. These are areas that we just really need to lean in on. I think that’s the thing that I learned. I knew we had shortcomings coming in, but I think I came out of the rebounding process, and I think our whole team did, having a greater understanding of who we are, having a greater understanding of what we do well, and just really leaning into that. And being okay with that. It’s really easy, I think, in the business world to try to become all things to all people. I think, particularly in the banking world, there are lots of banks, and there are lots of banks that do different things well. If you’re not careful, you can always be chasing what seems to be really attractive at the moment or really eye-catching at the moment. But the fact is, every bank has a niche, and we embrace that niche even more now than we did before the rebrand, because I think the team that went through the process, they were able to see, okay, this is what we are good at. Let’s be better at it. That’s one thing that we took away, is a greater understanding of our strengths, and I think an even clearer understanding of our weaknesses and we’re trying to play to the strengths in our everyday operations and then represent those in the rebrand

Kevin Adelsberger
You mentioned a niche and feeling you define that now. How would you define that niche then?

Chad Wilson
I would I would say that our niche is providing financial solutions for people who appreciate a values-based culture and a values-based financial decision process. At first, going in, I think we thought we’re a small bank, we’re just able to do customer service really, really well. Sure. And that is something we do well. But I think we’re able to press even deeper into that. Not everyone is looking for a great customer service experience. Those who are sometimes are looking for not just a good customer service experience, but a process in which their own values are appreciated and even pushed up to the front in the process itself. And so we want to appeal in a culture where honesty and integrity are often questioned and where most institutions are approached with skepticism. We want to really, for those who value trust, who value integrity, we want to be an institution worthy of that, if that’s something that they care about. Some people just want a close bank that has a great app, and they never plan on walking in the door, and we’re not going to be the best fit for them. But for folks that want honest, sound financial advice, who want more than just a place to put their money, but people to help them decide what to do with their money, that’s where we’ve honed in to be able to get that personalized, not just relationship, but attention consistent with the values that they may already have.

Kevin Adelsberger)
That is a niche, I think, for sure, because I think most banks that people run into are large banks that are more interested in the transactionary stuff than the relationship stuff. Now, if you were to ever think about doing a rebrand again, what would you do differently or Or is there a way that you’d approach it differently? Or anything that maybe was a surprise to you in the process? You’re like, I wouldn’t have even thought about that on the front-end

Chad Wilson
I’m proud of the way that we went about it because we did include people from different parts of the bank to speak into it. I thought that was really important. You don’t want maybe the typical decision-makers being the only ones to weigh in on a rebrand, I think. We had a core team that was composed of a couple of typical decision-makers, but then we had some folks that just had marketing insight, and they were helpful to whittle down choices, to give some impressions of this is how this lands. But then we did include, at certain parts of the process, an even wider group to just give us, How does this hit you? If you were to choose between this and this, what would you do? We intentionally also were in six different markets in Northwest Tennessee. A lot of them are smaller towns than Jackson, Tennessee. And so we wanted to make sure that this brand would be embraced in each of those markets. And so we did get someone from each market to just let us know what they thought about the brand. So if I were doing it again, maybe even broadening that just a bit, You have to be real careful, I think, of involving too many people in the decision making, or you might say the draft input phase.

Kevin Adelsberger
Too many cooks in the kitchen.

Chad Wilson
Too many. But once you have have some choices, and once you just want to see how something lands, I think you can broaden the audience to where you’re able to just be even more informed. So we might have even broadened that. I think we did a good job, but we might could have done even better strategically not saying, What do you think our brand should look like, but here’s some work we’ve done. What do you think about it?

Kevin Adelsberger
And I’ll say from our perspective, we’ve done this with other companies. I think your team was on the better end of teams that we’ve worked off on that because You did have people from different departments. You had people with different opinions. And I’ll say everybody was cordial, worked together, was not in there just to throw a wrench in the plans. They were all there for the same goal and working together. It went really smooth for us. Thank you for listening to part one of our two-part podcast with Chad Wilson, President of Foundation Bank. Stay tuned to Content Machine for a future episode featuring Chad talking about his rebranding process.