Creating Impactful Brands: Culture, Storytelling, and Leadership | Ryan Chute

Join us for an insightful conversation with a remarkable entrepreneur, Ryan Chute, who has successfully navigated the retail, furniture, and automotive industries. Discover how our guest's personal growth journey has been instrumental in overcoming business challenges and transforming high-pressure environments into opportunities for success. You'll learn how the intersection of brand and culture is pivotal in reducing business friction, and how lessons from the Wizard Academy shifted traditional advertising mindsets toward creating genuine connections through storytelling and experience.

Uncover the essential elements of defining business values and the profound impact it has on personal and professional realms. Through a metaphor of navigating life's ocean, our discussion highlights the diverse approaches to business and life, encouraging listeners to become navigators guided by their personal North Star. By understanding what we stand for and against, we lay the groundwork for authentic leadership and meaningful impact, leading to more effective decision-making and clarity in defining success.

Explore the power of core business principles grouped into helping people win, being trustworthy, and living gratefully. We delve into how innovation and trustworthiness propel progress, while gratitude enhances happiness and growth. Learn strategies for building emotional brand connections that resonate with consumers and employees alike. By prioritizing a holistic approach to brand-building and focusing on emotional storytelling, your business can foster lasting relationships and ultimately build a brand legacy that stands the test of time.

Ryan Chute: Partner, Wizard of Ads for Services

Website: https://www.ryanchute.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wizardryanchute/

TikTok: https://www.youtube.com/@wizardryanchute/featured

YouTube: agruen@agfinancialcpa.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wizardryanchute/

#Entrepreneurship #BusinessGrowth #PersonalDevelopment #LeadershipSkills
#BrandBuilding #Branding #Storytelling #Marketing #Advertising #BuildAn Empire #CoreValues #CultureAndBrand #BusinessGrowthTips #BusinessStrategy #SmallBusinessOwner #EntrepreneurshipTips #SmallBusinessPivots #BusinessPodcast #MichaelDMorrison #BOSS #BusinessOwnership #OklahomaCity

Chapters

• 0:00 Building a Strong Business Culture
• 10:47 Defining Business Values for Success
• 20:52 The Power of Business Principles
• 29:46 Creating Emotional Brand Connections

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

All right, welcome to another Small Business Pivots. Today we have another special guest from around the world Texas.

Speaker 2: 0:07

I'm here in Halifax, nova Scotia, today and have offices as well in Phoenix, Arizona, where we help small businesses become big brands.

Speaker 1: 0:32

Wow, I think that's everybody's dream is to build an empire, right. And then we usually get stuck in our business with a one or two person show and a lot of fires to put out challenges, and so we can't even fathom getting to that next level. So how do you think we're going to help our listeners today with your message today?

Speaker 2: 0:53

Well, you know, if we do things right, I think we'll resonate a message about how brand and culture are effectively the same thing and about the coping mechanisms that leaders need to have to reduce friction in their business, to get out of their own way, to be tall enough to ride the next ride.

Speaker 1: 1:11

Wow, wow. All right, everybody, buckle up. We're going to introduce the show and we'll be right back. Welcome to Small Business Pivots, a podcast produced for small business owners. I'm your host, michael Morrison, founder and CEO of Boss, where we make business ownership simplified for success. Our business is helping yours grow. Boss offers business loans with business coaching support. Apply in minutes and get approved and funded in as little as 24 to 48 hours at businessownershipsimplifiedcom. All right, welcome back to Small Business Pivots. I know for a lot of our listeners, they've read a lot of books, they've watched a lot of videos, tutorials, they probably bought a ton of workshops and all that good stuff, and nothing just seems to be working for them. So what I'd like to do, if you don't mind, is share a little bit about your history, your upbringing, how you became an entrepreneur, so they can go. Yes, he's walked in my shoes. I'm going to keep listening.

Speaker 2: 2:14

You got it. Yeah, listen, I'm blessed to run an eight-figure marketing agency today, a creative agency that helps strategically build companies from very, very small, under a million dollars up to we have clients that are in excess of a billion dollars. We have many hundreds of these companies that we've seen every step of the way what roadblocks and bottlenecks and breakpoints come up to really cause those headaches and to have us having shift gears as we start leveling up our businesses. But it wasn't always that way. I grew up in a high friction business. I was in retail. I went through the gulags of retail and furniture and automotive and did all the jobs that could possibly be done, from sales through to management and all the administrative stuff in between.

Speaker 2: 3:03

And there was a lot of toxicity. There was a lot of frustration, there was a lot of weaponized fear, shame and guilt. There was an awful lot of trying to figure it out and hitting this very frustrating ceiling, thinking what in the world am I doing wrong? And look, I've even been fired from doing what I thought was the right thing because I was mirroring and mimicking bad bosses doing the things that seemed right and thinking that I needed to do what they did. And after one kind of summarial firing, I really kind of hit this peak. I was so frustrated, thinking we had just crushed every possible record that you could possibly crush. I had absolutely exceeded expectation from a management standpoint and I was unaware that I was the problem.

Speaker 2: 4:00

It wasn't until really 2015, when that dramatically changed for me at the age of 40 years old.

Speaker 2: 4:08

So don't feel like it's too late, it's not. The reality of it is that I was living a transactional survival mode life and what I needed to recognize, and what I was helped to recognize, is that there's this whole other universe that's not just aspirational sitting above us, that allows us to live a life of esteem, live a life of giving back in abundance, a growth opportunity, an abundance opportunity, and it comes from a few really kind of core concepts that I've learned over the last 10 years or so and that's been a big deal for me as I've learned to evolve and become a better leader, a better strategist and a better servant to those people who I'm helping today in not just growing their businesses through advertising, but growing themselves to allow them to get out of the way, to allow them to grow their businesses. The biggest problems we have is that we, we, we hit that ceiling. We, we, we grow to the length of our shadow and we're just not big enough to ride that next ride.

Speaker 1: 5:17

Wow, that's. That's important stuff. I can relate to that because my first business coach I had I wasn't seeing the results I wanted from the coaching itself. He said until you change, nothing around you will change. And I was like whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, I'm paying you for this, what are you talking about? And he was absolutely right. Until I changed, nothing around me changed, and so that's pretty powerful stuff. So how did you go about motivating yourself to make those changes? How did you find out what you needed to change? And then how did you hold yourself accountable?

Speaker 2: 5:56

Well, you know, michael, it started with this class at the Wizard Academy that Roy H Williams was teaching at the time. He now has teachers that are teaching that in Austin, texas, called the Magical World, and it was this whole notion around how to advertise your business in a way that isn't about sales and promotions and offers and gimmicks. And we just went through that class and I was completely transformed, predominantly for one big thing that one of the partners, ray Sagren, had come up with called the story, the culture and the experience, and what it had me go down was this crazy rabbit hole over the next 10 years about figuring out what in the world does that mean and how could we actually apply that back to growing our business. And growing our business is very often, like you said, getting out of the way of our business. And growing our business is very often, like you said, getting out of the way of our business, and it all starts not with the external leadership that we think we are, but the internal leadership that we need to reconcile before we can become the leaders that we wanna be.

Speaker 2: 6:59

So think about it this way you started your business with all these great intentions, right, and we all know that good intentions line the path to hell if we don't actually treat it in the ways that need to be treated, and what I learned that that meant was we have these great intentions, but we only get what we tolerate from ourselves, from our people around us who are representing us, and from what we expect our brand to be, be it a personal brand that we're growing or a business brand that we're trying to make bigger than ourselves.

Speaker 2: 7:33

And ultimately, it comes down to whether or not we want to stand for something or if we want to conveniently pivot through our beliefs along the way, and we'll get into that more in a little bit.

Speaker 2: 7:50

What I came to discover was that the brand is your culture.

Speaker 2: 7:53

The brand that you're trying to put out into the universe is what you stand for and what you stand against, what you tolerate and what you disallow, and when we realize that that brand is what you stand for, it becomes your culture and your business, with yourself and or your staff. Those people, including yourself, are the people who are going to deliver the buying experience, and the buying experience and the employee experience are the two things that feed the advertising of the brand, that represent the brand, that tell the customer whether or not they want to shop from you and the employees whether or not they want to shop from you and the employees whether or not they want to work from you. And until we have that, right until we have reconciled that in our heart and stood for something, we're not going to grow our businesses beyond the superficial. Now, different markets, different scenarios, different opportunities will all come to a different head, but at the end of the day, there is a ceiling that you will hit every single time.

Speaker 1: 8:50

We've had a guest on before that said you'll never have a business bigger than you think you will.

Speaker 2: 8:57

Yes, and I agree with that. And I also agree that you can change how big you think you can grow, that you can change how big you think you can grow. Right, I used to think that $10 million was a huge deal, from small town Nova Scotia where I grew up, and today I'm upset if I'm not doing $10 million and I'm aiming for a billion. So, ultimately, when we start to look at the perspective and scope here, there is huge opportunity but we have to also make it real. One of the things I learned in tribal leadership the book called tribal leadership, one of the cornerstone books for Zappos is that you have to meet people where they're at, and for me to throw out a casual number like a billion dollars is insanity to an incredible amount of people, because it is insanity.

Speaker 2: 9:48

But when you start to wrap around how I plan to get there and all of the things that can be done, based off of 10 years of experience specifically in this category, to do this, a billion is actually undershooting it. Fair amount, but I can't meet people who are under a million dollars at a billion. I need to meet them under a million dollars together and bring them by their hand slowly up through, showing them the way, showing them where the pitfalls are and the roadblocks and the blind spots, so that we can stay on the path that they want to be on, because my path is not theirs. Right, there's no expectation that a person should be chasing a billion dollars. I'm blessed to be surrounded by very wealthy people and other groups and motivators that are looking to do this thing with me, and that's why it's achievable. Those things will, too, come for other people who desire that.

Speaker 2: 10:45

But, more importantly, do what's right for you. What is your definition of success? Your definition not just in external functions, but in the internal things. What are the true definitions? And then let's grow that.

Speaker 1: 10:59

Yeah, that's well said. What would you say are some of those early stage self-discoveries, so that a business owner can say, yeah, I need to look here and here, and for those not watching, I'm pointing like at my heart and my head and my mind. But what are some of those early stages? Because a lot of business owners can't even fathom focusing on one more thing because they're working in their business 12, 14 hours a day.

Speaker 2: 11:26

Well, this is a very philosophical conversation, michael. But that philosophical conversation distills down through biology to psychology, to exactly what the business owners hope to achieve. Ideally, by the end of this podcast, we'll have given them some coping mechanisms. By the end of this podcast, we'll have given them some coping mechanisms. The human brain is designed to cope right. We filter out all kinds of information. There's this bouncer over here on the left side of the brain called Broca, and that bouncer is eliminating any of the boring, expected, predictable things. They don't need to know the thing they know already again. So they're going to keep that out of the brain and only allow new information in. There's no such thing as changing your mind. There's only such thing as making a new decision in your mind. When you actually look at how neuroscience works, we're not changing the mind. We're adding new information and adapting with a new piece of information, because the past is the past and that's a construct, not a reality. So what are we actually doing? We're actually filling the heart up through the imagination in a place where there is no capacity for words. So it's what the heart desires that the mind will reconcile. So it's what the heart desires that the mind will reconcile right. The mind will do what the heart desires. So the first thing that you need to look at is what you want, what you intended, what you care about and what you don't care about, and stand for something.

Speaker 2: 13:01

There's these four different people on the ocean of life there's the drifters, the drowners, there's the surfers and there's the navigators. Now, drifters are just bobbing around, hoping for life to happen to them, waiting for the thing to come about. It's like Field of Dreams. They've hoped for something. The surfers are riding the waves. They get a good wave, they ride it, then the wave goes away and they ride another wave, and if it's not a good wave, they blame the wave. They don't blame themselves. Then, of course, there's the drowners. The drowners are the ones who are professional drowners. We're not talking about the occasional drowning that we've all had financially, spiritually, mentally, chemically from time to time. I'm talking about the people who always have a problem for every solution. These are the people who are going to suffer, no matter what they will see to it. And then there's the people that are listening to this podcast, and those are the navigators.

Speaker 2: 13:55

Now, what navigators know best, and more than anyone else, is that the North Star is the only star in the sky that does not move. That with that star we can navigate. Now the North Star does not move. That with that star we can navigate. Now the north star doesn't move. And that's no different than the things we stand for not moving. We will not budge from the things that we stand for most and the things we stand against now. While the other stars are a wonderful sight to see and somewhat distracting, with the constellations and the meteorites and all the other fun things that go along, they don't take you anywhere, but they are scenery along the way.

Speaker 2: 14:28

And when we have leaders who are leading now because they can navigate, that's when you can get followers. People want to follow people who are going somewhere. No one's going to follow you if you don't stand for anything. So the very first thing that you want to do is define what you stand for, and that comes down to a really strange and sometimes hard conversation to have around beliefs and values, because people can believe two completely opposite things.

Speaker 2: 15:01

Niels Bohr, nobel Prize winning physicist, said the opposite of a profound truth is very often an equally profound truth. For every proverb there is an equal and opposite proverb. Right, we have this reality, where this duality in life, that that says that justice and mercy are equally true and and virtuous concepts. But if I'm the accused murderer, I want mercy. But if I'm the accused murderer, I want mercy. And if I'm the victim's family, I want justice. But what happens when the victim's family murders the murderer? Now what? So? The beliefs that we have are easily interchangeable, and the problem with beliefs is that there is no consequence. The true value that we bring to life, the true value that adds value, that shows love, that shows that activates the chemical oxytocin, not dopamine, those are values.

Speaker 2: 16:00

Now, values are the things that you do that cost you something right. When I'm delivering you something of value, it's costing me something right. It's costing me struggle or strife. It's causing me sacrifice. I am opening late for you at night because the other people won't do that. That are my competition. I offer my spouse value that other people don't offer peace, comfort, happiness. I do the same thing for my children in my church and everyone else that's in my different communities, including work, whether I'm an employee or an owner. And at the end of the day, when I start to define those values clearly of what I stand for, what I stand against and what punishment I will accept when I don't live up to my value. Now I'm worth something. Now I'm worth something not just to the world around me, but to myself.

Speaker 2: 17:00

So defining this is the very first step in people who are opening businesses and going what the heck, why am I not any better than anyone else? Well, are you doing something different than anyone else, or are you just blending into the fabric of the universe, delivering that stuff at a level that demonstrates what you stand for and what you stand against does? Now, all of this is very philosophical. We take this down and we distill this complicated stuff into a very simple message and advertising. So, at the end of the, it is incredibly difficult and incredibly easy at the same time, as, as DaVinci said, the greatest sophistication is simplicity, and that's what we're chasing here, and that is really hard to do. I respect the struggle that people are in right now, but that is the struggle that you need to start with is defining what makes you valuable versus what makes you beneficial.

Speaker 1: 17:57

That aligns with a lot of things that we coach and preach as well, because we often share with a business owner. When they come to us and they're challenged and they're struggling, we often say the first thing we have to do is admit that the business we have today, we either allowed these things to happen or we created these things to happen. So you're kind of captain of the ship, so recognizing that internally, that I don't have a North Star, because we use that often as well, I mean that's just so powerful. If you don't know where you want to go, how is anybody else going to know? And so we start with that. But I do have a question, because I've been asked this for many business owners and listeners Okay, so I know what I want, I know what I stand for. It's not like weightlifting or running where I say if I run one mile every day, I can eventually run 10, you know, because that's kind of a. You see the results in business. You've got the ebbs and flows of everything employees and the economy and the marketing, the algorithms and things. So, using your philosophy, how would one kind of think like OK, if I do these certain things, you're listening to small business pivots.

Speaker 1: 19:13

This podcast is produced by my company, boss. Our business is helping yours grow. Boss offers business loans with business coaching support. Apply in minutes and get approved and funded in as little as 24 to 48 hours at businessownershipsimplifiedcom. If you're enjoying this podcast, don't forget to hit the subscribe button and share it as well. Now let's get back to our special guest. Using your philosophy, how would one kind of think like okay, if I do these certain things, I can get what I want. Any tips on that?

Speaker 2: 19:51

Well, now we're talking about tactical things, right, and the tactical elements come in, based off of the foundation of what you stand for, and I've distilled it down Over about four years. What I did is I took basically every core belief, every value statement, every mission statement, every vision, every mission statement, every vision, everything that I could find from all around the internet and the companies that people like Jim Collins talks about in his books Good to Great and how the Mighty Fall. I looked at Martin Lindstrom's books like Brandwashing and started looking at what their value propositions were, and what it all distills down to is three themes. I was absolutely gobsmacked that it actually distilled down to that simple of a group. Those three themes are written right on this bracelet of mine Helping people win is the first, the second being trustworthy and the third living gratefully.

Speaker 2: 20:52

Now, when you take all of your beliefs and you bundle them up into all one or more of those three buckets, you'll find that every possible value, virtue, belief, structure, value, proposition, core value, whatever you might want to call it vision, purpose you name it is going to fall into one of those three buckets. Now people might say things like well, how does innovation fall into one of those three buckets. Now people might say things like well, how does innovation fall into that? And the question is it's helping people win, because without innovation, without some improvement or iteration towards something that's slightly better, you're not propelling the universe forward, you're just sitting stagnant with everyone else. How does closing a deal help a person win or be trustworthy? Well, I would argue that if you have identified the right solution for your customer and you say, hey, this is the thing you should buy, and we go through the process and the haggling and the negotiation of buying it, we should close the deal if it's right for them, because everything else is just an expenditure of money, energy and time until such time as a deal has been closed. We're serving people at the highest level when we close the deal, we're not serving them at the lowest level or self-serving us, because it is a mutual exchange Doesn't mean that it is a single exchange. It is a win across all channels. Trustworthiness it goes well beyond values. Notice that everything is about action here. Helping people win, being trustworthy, living gratefully these are actions and behaviors that we're embracing. These are the steps to take, these are the momentum, the movement forward, the propulsion, the inertia that is necessary to get things done and always falls in.

Speaker 2: 22:48

I'll tell you, the outlier for me surprised the heck out of me, I did not believe it until I really just started working it down was gratitude. And gratitude has a profound power that we often ignore. It is the quite literal linchpin to happiness. It is the pursuit of happiness. We're not grateful for the things we have, right? People often say, hey, happiness can, money can buy happiness. And then there's, of course, the duality of that saying no, money can't buy happiness. And the science actually proves that money can absolutely buy happiness, right, and it's not for why we think? Because that's not the thing that makes us happy.

Speaker 2: 23:30

The thing that makes us happy is the ability for us to be independent and autonomous enough for us to be able to afford that thing right, to be able to enjoy that thing, to have that thing represent our identity and rank us up within ourselves, our corporate group and our greater tribes. You know that we care about and ultimately it's the gratitude that makes us happy, not the thing itself. Just like our children make us happy and our wife makes us happy, it's not our wife's job to make us happy, right, it's our job to be happy through gratitude and when we start to find that simple construct of gratitude drives us forward. The reason why it's driving us forward is because it's pulling us out of survival thinking and into abundant thriving thinking. And when we have abundant thriving thinking, we actually have a greater capacity to make deeper, more significant, more complex decisions, because we have that different chemistry going on to actually help us do the thing that needs to be done to elevate our business.

Speaker 1: 24:46

I love these deep thoughts because a lot of times the reason I had asked earlier about the tactical side was because there's so many programs out there, there's so many influencers out there, there's so many courses you can buy, and they're all very tactical. And so I know business owners a lot of times are frustrated with which one? I've bought six and none of them are doing anything. Them are doing anything. What you're saying is exactly right, because we say three essentials to a successful business are guiding principles, which aligns with finding your North Star.

Speaker 1: 25:23

Number two is systems and processes, and then number three is people, and it's not just employees, it's your banker, it's your accountant. And they're saying well, what about sales? And I'm just using this analogy for listeners because I've talked about this before so they can understand what you're talking about and how powerful that is because they're like what about sales? And I'm like well, if you have the, your processes, sales will come, you know. So, a lot of times what we're looking for is this step-by-step process. When it goes deeper than that, I think, is what you're saying.

Speaker 2: 26:02

It goes much, much deeper than that. Look just to pull this back way back for a minute to the 10,000 foot view. Our most successful clients are always going to be the ones that run their businesses as a marketing company. They often use us as help and then their number one process is sales. The number one thing that they think about is selling the operations is simply the backfill. Think about is selling the operations is simply the backfill. There are plenty of incredible operators that we have that do the selling or they have put somebody in selling and they do the marketing.

Speaker 2: 26:43

Sales and marketing are the thing that your business is. That happens to sell whatever you sell. Now, if you're the person who has to deliver the solution as well, think about how you can figure out the whole solution and then iterate it down into chunks and have other people delivering the solution. When you are the salesperson, you're going to make more stuff. Now, does that mean that all people should stay salespeople for the rest of their lives? No, Maybe you should be the person just delivering it, but look at ways that you can do one to many one to create an environment where you can make it bigger than yourself when you're under a million and you're trying to break through.

Speaker 2: 27:24

That's hard, and if you add product to it and all this other thing that has cost associated with, that's pulling away from your leverage, that you have to spend more in marketing. The companies that are most successful are marketing companies that sell and have operations, backfill the promises that are made. And then it's about crafting to the promise. Ideally, you do that in a highly efficient way so that you can rinse and repeat that without diminishing one ounce of the solution that you're providing and, if anything, adding to it.

Speaker 1: 28:02

So take us through the process of a client working with you. What is your ideal client and how would that look for them? How?

Speaker 2: 28:12

would that look for them? Yeah, look at the wizard of ads as a whole. We have 80 partners who all do different things. I'm a strategist, so in my world, what I'm looking at is figuring out who to put the right client with with the right team. Sometimes I participate in building out the strategies and sometimes I bring in strategists to do the thing for me. Depends on the situation, because I'm not the expert of everything. That's ridiculous. Ultimately, what I focus in on is home services and professional services.

Speaker 2: 28:42

I love service-based businesses, particularly the ugly ones, the ones that are really hard to sell for and to market for because they're not sexy, they're the opposite of sexy, like HVAC companies and plumbers and electricians and law firms and accounting firms. The things that are really boring and hard to advertise for is my sweet spot, because I've cracked the code on how to really elevate those things in a way that makes people feel right about the thing they don't need right now until such time as they need the thing right. But then there's other partners who are exceptional at business to business or direct to consumer or online sales or offline sales or all of the different kind of buckets that you can fall in Now we, as a rule, will typically focus our efforts in on clients that have a slightly larger average ticket, that are on a longer purchase cycle, very often having a little bit more complex thing to sell, from jewelry up through to automotive and everything else in between. Working with us is really about a three-step process have that conversation, find the fit of people because fit is absolutely crucial here that, because we're going to be together a long time, be it me or somebody else, we're not doing this for a short term. You can't do a short term strategy without a long term play. Right. This is everything that we're doing is doing it for at least 10 years. If you don't have a 10 year horizon on it, we're probably not the right window for you, because it's only going to start taking real meaningful effect in years three, four and five, once you've had time for the brain to connect the dots with the brand with repetition and a really, really impactful message. So the first thing that we're going to do is find those right fits. Then we're going to get the strategy right.

Speaker 2: 30:33

What the heck do you stand for, what do you stand against, how do you run your business and what unleveraged assets do you have that we can use to our advantage. What assets are you leveraging? But maybe not in the most meaningful or significant of ways. There's always something, and then we come up with a holistic strategy that solves the problems. For whatever channels you're going to buy Now. Sometimes we hire out the channels and sometimes we don't. At the end of the day, we're not associated to a channel.

Speaker 2: 31:00

And back to your earlier point, michael, when people often look for marketing, what they're actually looking at is they're looking for a channel. That is their biggest mistake. When you say I need Facebook ads, you've done it wrong. When you say I need radio ads, you're doing it wrong. What you need to say is this is what I want to say and this is what I have to offer. Is it good enough? It's good enough or it's not good enough. We have to fabricate a story around it that is authentic but powerful, or we have to lean into this incredibly powerful story right. Once we have the nuts and bolts together of your market and your customer base and what it is that you're trying to achieve and how you stand out against a crowd and how we can help you elevate against a crowd, then we go to storytelling and then we say where's the best place to tell this story for the budget we have, now that the budget we have? It could be Facebook, it could be pay-per-click, it could be a hundred different things.

Speaker 2: 32:07

All marketing works. It just only works if it has the right strategy. If it doesn't have the right strategy, you're in trouble, right? You're going to get so far, hit a ceiling, and wonder where the heck everything's going Well, it's going nowhere, because you're either wasting the money on stuff that doesn't matter it's going well, it's going nowhere because you're you're either wasting the money on stuff that doesn't matter. It's going into the ether, quite literally, because it's all about brain chemistry.

Speaker 2: 32:31

We have this little part of our brain, like the ram of a computer, that lasts about seven seconds when most ads are heard.

Speaker 2: 32:37

That's where it stays and that's where it goes, and you don't play it fast or frequently enough that it starts to move back into this midterm memory, this working declarative memory that lasts about seven days and is erased with sleep, right, like defragging an old PC, right, squeezing out the stuff that doesn't matter, like those boring ads that mean nothing and connect no dots.

Speaker 2: 32:57

And then, lastly, as we say things with impact or long enough, they'll start putting bricks back here in the third part of the brain, the chemical part of the brain, and we can either have a whole bunch of bricks sitting back there in a pile or we can add something to it the mortar. The mortar is the emotion that is attached to your brand, the things that make people feel something about you. The more feeling that you have in a particular ad, a statement, a post, the more motor is going to be concocted to get back there to build a McMansion. So if you're really looking to build an empire, you need to do it with emotion, and that's not just emotion for the customers that hear your stuff, but for the employees that want to be a part of that thing and build that house with you.

Speaker 1: 33:49

That's a lot but it's so true. It takes me back to. I owned a company that we used to do direct mail for clients and all of a sudden I just started thinking of these clients when you said, if you're looking for a Facebook manager, you're going about this wrong. I know people would come to us. They were worried about their postcard, the shade of green, the placement of people, and I'm like, you spent no time on the mailing list. Like, oh yeah, we don't care about that. But I'm like, oh yeah, we don't care about that, but this, I want this. I'm like, oh my goodness. Like, if you're not getting it to the right people with the right message, you're throwing your money away, and that's kind of what you're saying.

Speaker 2: 34:32

Particularly in a targeted area, for example in direct mail. We wouldn't try to do a direct mail to everyone, right, we would rather spend that money strategically on the gated communities of the city that you're in, where the average home value and net worth of client is is X, and we would do that over and over and over again with something that's less about transit, transaction or an offer and more about something that bonds the customer to you and goes oh, those people, those people, those are my people. Now, in some cases you can spark a little thing. For example, you could. You know, lululemon pants.

Speaker 2: 35:15

It's not hard to get somebody to feel something about Lululemon pants, and making people feel good about themselves is about identity. That's an internally driven thing. But when you're doing something that's not that sexy or is just kind of noise, because people aren't conceiving you as a, as a reason, you know, unless, unless they care about it or or have that in their perspective, you're just noise. So what do you do in those instances? In those instances we have to do something that's going to get noticed but hold their interest, because getting attention is easy, keeping it is hard.

Speaker 1: 35:56

Is there an average today that you would say you've got to touch someone I know? Back in the day it used to be like three times, four times, just to kind of get there. Is there anything like that today where, because there's just so much noise out there- so they um, not well, um, researched averages are eight times before.

Speaker 2: 36:21

66 of the population will recognize that you exist. Once they recognize that you exist, they have to care that you exist. Right and with enough durability in your campaign, you could get name recognition. Now, wizard of Ads, we have zero interest in having our clients have name recognition because that's just like the minimum viable product, right, right, yeah, that's just like okay. So I know you exist. Who cares? We want people to care.

Speaker 2: 36:53

So the fundamental anchor difference here is emotion Laugh, cry or make them angry. It has to be one of those three things. This is based off of some science in Stanford University studying PTSD and the highest impact quotients of chemistry, of biology. That said, this is going to stick in the brain. Now we obviously know how powerful it is when it comes to PTSD, but equally as much when we start looking at how we live in that space outside of hyper-violent extreme situations, it all comes from emotion.

Speaker 2: 37:31

So to build a brand is to bond with the chemistry of the customer's brain, and we do that in a very, very significant amount of scientific ways. We're looking for embed codes, we're looking for in-bed codes, we're looking for auditory anchors, we're looking for ways that we can continue to build a landscape and a McMansion within the house, the house within the chemistry of the brain, through frequent repetition. The better question isn't to ask how many times before they recognize me. The better question is to say how many times do they need to see my brand to continue to remember me? Because getting attention is easy, holding intention is hard, keeping their interest is hard. It's three times a week, every single week, 52 weeks a year without a break. Your brand needs to show up in their space and that's why apple spends seven percent of their marketing budget on advertising to this date, with a whole heap of it being offline yeah, people don't realize that either.

Speaker 1: 38:35

Right uh, google same thing.

Speaker 2: 38:39

Basically facebook, facebook, yeah, indeed yeah, all, all of them. Yeah, because you cannot build a household name without massive amounts of money being spent, and most of us didn't have, you know, the ability to lose money for the next seven, eight, ten years. Yeah, to be able to build that presence online by sheer volume and presence and then use all kinds of dopaminergic strategies to chemically get you addicted to a device that can continue to feed the addiction. We have plumbing companies and coaching companies and a budget and payroll and probably a mortgage All important things to pay as well as building your company.

Speaker 1: 39:27

Yeah, Well, I can't imagine that a listener is not eager to learn more. So how can someone follow you, connect with you online? Where's the best place to just get more of this?

Speaker 2: 39:40

Yeah, Three different spots. Wizardofadsservices is my personal URL, direct URL to the services side of my marketing business. Wizardofadscom, of course, for the main site. You can reach me there at all of these spots and we can have a 30-minute introductory conversation to figure out where you are and where you're going. There's. There's so many things that we can talk about when it comes to getting past yourself and into building your brand. The second is uh ryanshootcom. And at the third, on all socials you can find me pretty well anywhere at wizard ryanshoot.

Speaker 1: 40:18

Okay, fantastic. Well, I always end with a question that I ask each person, and that is if you were in a auditorium of business owners, all seasons of business, ages whatever, what's one piece of advice that would be applicable to all of them?

Speaker 2: 40:35

It could be a quote, a book, or just something that you've learned along the way, you know the biggest thing that I've learned, which seems very, almost counterintuitive, is less is more, that we can do an astounding amount less than what we think that we need to do to get the job done, which reduces friction, which creates a smoother communication with our employees and our customers. Get rid of the weasel words, get rid of the yeah buts and the what ifs. Get rid of all of the things that don't matter and just build a business. That's going to be simple. Get rid of half of your inventory, right. Shrink it down. I like the inventory in a more meaningful way. You're going to have more success with less and really put your energy and efforts into that.

Speaker 1: 41:24

Wow, Less is more people. You heard it here. So, Ryan, you've been a blessing to many and a wealth of information. I appreciate you taking your time to talk to our listeners and help them expand their brand.

Speaker 2: 41:37

Super grateful for being here, Michael. Thank you so much. My pleasure.

Speaker 1: 41:42

Thank you for listening to Small Business Pivots. This podcast is created and produced by my company boss. Our business is growing. Yours Boss offers flexible business loans with business coaching support. Apply in minutes and get approved and funded in as little as 24 to 48 hours at business ownershiphipsimplifiedcom. If you're enjoying this podcast, don't forget to hit the subscribe button and share it as well. If you need help growing your business, email me at michael at michaeldmorrisoncom. We'll see you next time on Small Business Pivots.