Category: Blog

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.

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.