Kristen Graham Brown – Good Luck in the Future With That! (436)

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Episode transcript below:

0:00:00 – Mike Malatesta

Hi everyone. Mike Malatesta here and welcome back to the how it Happened podcast. On this podcast, I dig in deep with every guest to explore the roots of their success, to discover not just how it happened but why it matters. My mission is to find and share stories that inspire, activate and maximize the greatness in you. On today’s episode, I’m talking with an amazing entrepreneur who knows how to discover and maximize what makes you and your company special and stronger. We talk about what it takes to be a change maker, why you can’t stay out of the fray. That was an interesting conversation about brands that get into the fray or stay out of the fray. Then we transition to Jimmy Fallon, her very intriguing Zoom background, which is really fun. If you watch this on YouTube, you’ll see that she does describe it as well. Why it’s impossible to read the label from inside the jar. 

0:00:54 – Kristen Graham Brown

Brand is just such an overused word now. We have so many different meanings of it. Some people may think I’m just talking about visuals or your logo. Other people understand that a brand like Nike didn’t get to be Nike because of the swoosh, you know. 

0:01:12 – Mike Malatesta

Christine Graham Brown is a hero to everyone who wants a stronger set of vision, purpose and values to support the growth of your business and to improve your leadership and power. And here she is. Hello Kristen, welcome to the how to Happen podcast. 

0:01:37 – Kristen Graham Brown

Hello, thanks for having me. 

0:01:39 – Mike Malatesta

Well, I’ve been looking forward to this because Kristen and I did have a call earlier and we got to know each other. We were referred by a mutual friend, charles Bird I believe, who put us together. I was just really intrigued by what she was up to and her. We started talking about things that maybe we could do to help each other down the road and I thought I want to really explore and share her story with all of you, because I think you’re going to be intrigued and I think you’re going to get something very valuable out of this, and I think you’re going to get something that when you started listening to this episode you didn’t think you would get out of it. So big shoes for you to fill, kristen. 

0:02:13 – Kristen Graham Brown

Yeah, no pressure. 

0:02:15 – Mike Malatesta

So let me tell you a little bit more about Kristen Graham Brown. She is the CEO of Hoot Design Company, a woman owned creative branding and marketing firm with a human centered approach to problem solving. Kristen and her firm are convinced that people take action when they are inspired and that every touch point, no matter how small, is an opportunity to make an impact, and we’re going to dig into that and a lot more here. Kristen is on Instagram at get this right K to the G to the B, so she’s at K to the G to the B on Instagram. On TikTok, she is Kristen, that is with an E at the end K R I S T E N Graham G R A H A M Brown, the R O W N, and her company is Hoot H O O T Design Companycom, and that’s where you can find them on Facebook and Instagram as well. So, kristen, I start every show with just a really, really basic, simple question, and that is how did it happen for you? 

0:03:17 – Kristen Graham Brown

Yeah, well, thank you so much for having me, mike. I’m what an honor to be on your podcast and yeah, I think that the that’s such a great question because I hope that my story is is not, you know, it’s not intimidating. It kind of is one of those stories that would tell anyone that they can take this leap into business ownership, into doing their own thing. So I started at an ad agency in Chicago. I always knew I wanted to be an advertising from the time I was like 12. So I don’t know what that says about me. But when I had been an art director there for a little while and my husband got an opportunity to move back to Missouri, which is where we’re from, we decided to take it and I thought now would be an interesting time to try and go out on my own. And I think something else that often happens when you’re working for someone else is the grass always seems greener. So at the time I thought, ok, I don’t want to be in, you know, an agency. Clients are crazy. I’m going to go. Do you know? I call it retail paper. I’m going to do like a boutique paper company doing custom prints for people event paper. 

So we did a ton of weddings at that time in my life. That’s when a lot of people I knew were getting married, so all that work just easily came to me. So wedding it was basically a wedding and stationary papery kind of thing. That’s how we got started and it didn’t take very long for me to realize those people are way crazier than clients. Weddings are insane and it became quickly something I knew I didn’t want to build my life around. So that was my first pivot and that’s like a thread through my story as well is just how often it might require you to pivot to either stay in business or to stay relevant, and I think that’s just what innovation looks like. You know, it’s just innovating. 

So I think within a few years I had completely moved away from weddings and pivoted to be a you know, a marketing communications provider by around 15. And I started in 2010. And then by 18, I just niched down a little bit further into going all in on brand and we work with mostly just because I really, really believe in brand. It’s something that just fills me with joy getting to work with people on brand and on their business. I really think small businesses have the you know opportunity to change the world and make a huge change in their communities through one, you know, through their actual service and what they do, but to through employment. I’m super passionate about culture building and employment, and that’s how we serve our clients. We serve clients in one of two ways either by building meaningful brands for them, or by creating meaningful employee campaigns and experiences, which I think go a long way into building employer brand. So that’s really where we are today is, as you know, niching down and iterating from what once was a papery to what is now a branding agency. 

0:06:19 – Mike Malatesta

And so the move from Chicago back to Missouri. Were you thinking about doing this, going out on your own, before that, or was it something was like well, I’ve got this change now. So let’s explore a change and another change. 

0:06:34 – Kristen Graham Brown

Yeah, I think it was really organic, like more the latter. 

You know that there was this opportunity for change. So I was going to have to get a new job, because back then people it wasn’t near you know nobody worked remote and so I was going to be looking for a new job and I thought now’s the time to take this leap. You know lower costs of living here, so I thought it would be a good opportunity for me to like take that leap now. Might as well try it when it was kind of like forced on me anyway, much the way I think a lot of people felt during COVID you know, it’s like this change is here, how am I going to adapt through this change in a way? 

And for me, this ended up being, like you know, such a such a wonderful opportunity. I don’t know if I ever would have gotten here if we had stayed in Chicago. I loved the agency I worked for, I loved the work. I was finally getting like traction. I felt like in my career where I was like doing more of what I wanted after about five years of being there. So I you know I would have been really intimidated to start my own thing in Chicago and they just ended such a more competitive market and so, yeah, I think that it really was meant to be for me and I don’t know if I’d be a business owner otherwise. 

0:07:41 – Mike Malatesta

That’s a good story, because a lot of us, me included I, if I hadn’t been fired from my job, I don’t know that I would have ever, just on my own, said you know what, now’s the right time, and I’m just going to do this. Oftentimes there’s circumstances that come in that open the door to something you would not have otherwise opened the door to. 

0:08:00 – Kristen Graham Brown

Absolutely Well. I think it’s so interesting when you hear about people who knew as a child that they wanted to be a business owner. But you know, I wasn’t like that and I just hope that doesn’t intimidate other people. Like everyone is capable of this. I truly believe that, at whatever scale, makes sense for them, and I think it’s really interesting how many people don’t take that leap out of just pure fear. 

0:08:21 – Mike Malatesta

You know, and tell us about this wanting to be an advertising since you were 12. So what attracted you to it? Who were your like? What were your favorite ads or your favorite ad people? I did a. I did a podcast on David Ogilvy not that long ago, just like 20 things that David Ogilvy believed in and it was kind of fun to just go through them and he’s probably one of the most successful advertising people in history. So I’m curious what was influencing you when it came to advertising? 

0:08:52 – Kristen Graham Brown

Yeah, that’s. Yeah, I mean, what a legend he is. So, really it was. It’s visual communication always was. 

I absolutely loved visual communication and what I love about it is calling people to action through that. So not, you know, I was into fine art, I mean I liked drawing and painting and my clay and stuff like that. But I knew that wasn’t really my purpose. It was a fun hobby to me, but what was really exciting to me was getting to call people to action through something that I created, or almost you know every, every project I had in school. I would, you know, ask my teacher like, is it OK if I do something more experiential? You know, that wasn’t even a word. I was aware of them. But you know, can I like paper mache ads all over a mannequin and instead of doing a paper? And most of the time they were like OK, you know, and that was just the way that I was able to express myself better and, I think, have a have a bigger impact on the way I was able to communicate. So it was like, from the very get go, I love typography. I mean I had notebooks and notebooks filled of, just like you know, hand drawn letters and doodling and stuff like that. That really just was what was so interesting to me and I heard on this podcast not too long ago, the Naval podcast. 

He said that often were not asked what feels like play to you that feels like worked other people, and that is such a fantastic question Like I’m going to use that now with my kids, or even my employees. Like you know what feels like play to you, because I totally do not subscribe to that. You know mantra Like if you love what you do, you never work a day in your life. I mean, that is way too rosy colored glasses in my opinion for what business ownership looks like or what any work looks like. But I really think that if you can do something that feels like play to you, that feels like worked other people, you will be successful. You know, because it’s like I would read about this, I would do this on the weekends for fun. So for me it wasn’t some doldrum work that I was doing to execute a project like that. 

0:11:04 – Mike Malatesta

Okay, and as you were talking about the paper mache ads thing, I was thinking, having gone to a few high school art fairs, you generally this is my experience. 

this may not be your experience, but my experience is you walk through and you’re like some people are really good painters, that some people are really good drawlers, some people are really good sculpture, but they look like what you would consider to be what someone would come up with if you said, hey, let’s do an art project. When you say the paper mache mannequin thing, that gets me thinking about the exhibits that you see when you walk through and you’re like what is going on in that person’s mind? Is that how I would have looked at your work and been like huh or was or no. 

0:11:58 – Kristen Graham Brown

Oh, yes, and I don’t know how disruptive I was, but I think my personality was always like that. I always thought the term kook was really fun and I think definitely people refer to me as a kook. That’s kind of hoot kind of came from that name as well, of like what a hoot. I love the feeling elicited from the word hoot. So to me, what was so enjoyable about those types of projects was like what am I eliciting from the viewer, which I do think is different from a fine artist. I think a lot of times a fine artist is really expressing themselves and it’s much more about an inner world that they live in, that they’re trying to call out of themselves into reality, where for me, it was all about the experience of the audience. And that’s where I think you transition from fine art into visual communication, because if we don’t communicate in a way that calls people to action, we have fails at our job. Okay. 

0:13:04 – Mike Malatesta

And I got to ask about this piece of art that’s behind you. So if you’re watching this, you’ll know what I’m talking about. But if not, can you describe what? Is it one of your pieces? Can you describe what it is? I wish it was. 

0:13:18 – Kristen Graham Brown

Yeah, I wish I could be like, yes, and I painted this. That would be a good story because it’s a great background on Zoom. And so then everyone asking about it, but it’s just a black and white super structural line art piece. Yeah, but I do love it. It makes okay. So I would say what inspired me to get this is about the moment that it creates on Zoom Because, like we spend so much time on video now that it’s not even like you know, I’ve got these everywhere over my all, over my house. To me, this is a perfect backdrop for a Zoom call and that’s about brand right. 

That’s like how people perceive me as a person has a lot to do with, like, all the visual cues that you’re subconsciously taking in now about who I am with this background here, you know and that, like as much as I can control your perception of me, I want to, because that is my, that’s my personal brand, you know, or also how you might perceive my company. 

0:14:21 – Mike Malatesta

And what do you want my perception to be with this? 

0:14:24 – Kristen Graham Brown

Definitely yeah. So I would definitely want you to think that we are creative. 

We’re 100% a creative branding agency, so we don’t handle media for most people, so we stay in the creative space. We are strategists, writers and designers and project managers, and so what we do is to, you know, elicit emotion from an audience and call them to action is the bare bones of what we do. So I really want you to trust me that I am going to push the creative envelope. One, that I know what I’m doing and two, that I am going to be hopefully being bringing a creative element that you are lacking or your team is lacking. You know, because otherwise, why would you be hiring me if we are not adding value that you don’t have? 

0:15:14 – Mike Malatesta

For sure, when I well, you mentioned typography and I, when I saw this as you were talking through that, I was thinking okay, so these are letters, and I was trying to figure out if you had some unique way using, you know, all these different style of letters to spell something or create something in there. And I’m trying to. 

0:15:39 – Kristen Graham Brown

That would be genius, yeah, like subliminal messaging or something. 

0:15:43 – Mike Malatesta

Yeah, yeah, yeah Right. 

0:15:45 – Kristen Graham Brown

Yeah, brand is worth it. 

0:15:47 – Mike Malatesta

Yeah. 

0:15:48 – Kristen Graham Brown

No, I wish it was that sophisticated. It’s not quite that sophisticated Really. It’s just about a feeling, you know. I mean, that’s what I think brand is. It’s what is the feeling that you get when you interact with my brand. 

0:16:02 – Mike Malatesta

So what else? If you can remember what else were you feeling or doing when you were 12 years old and you know, besides being fixated on being in advertising? 

0:16:12 – Kristen Graham Brown

Yeah, well, I mean, I think just my hobbies were always really artistic. You know, I loved bringing stuff to life through art, whether that be sculpture or doodling, and I mean I’m not that good of a fine artist at all I would never say I create artwork that people want to buy but it was always a way of expression for me that was really meaningful to me. So I think that that and at the time I really didn’t think of it as like this is definitely what I’m going to do in my career. But then I was fascinated by, you know, reading ads I loved. To me the ads in magazines were just as interesting as the other content, kind of what they were curating. The, you know, the vision of what this brand was through just one tiny space in a magazine, you know, was really interesting to me. So yeah. 

0:17:09 – Mike Malatesta

I this is a little off topic, but I think once a month or so the Saturday edition of the Wall Street Journal comes with the Wall Street Journal magazine and it’s still this really thick I don’t know how much it costs to produce it, but it looks beautiful right. And I started flipping the pages and the first 50 pages are ads for very high end brands. That’s like first 50 pages before they even get to like what’s in the magazine outside of things. And I was talking to my wife about this. The last one we were going through it was they had an article on Jennifer Aniston. She just happens to be one of my favorites, so I wanted to kind of get to that, but you had to get through 50 pages of ads in order to get there. 

So it made me think who’s paying attention to these ads? Someone must be, because they’re putting so many, so much resources and when you you know I’ve kind of been conditioned to hear that. You know print advertising is kind of going the way of the dinosaur. I’m just curious on if you have a perspective on that, what it is, because it’s it’s definitely brand, I guess, because these are all like but, anyway, what’s going? 

0:18:27 – Kristen Graham Brown

on there, well, I do think that’s such an interesting question and I think that a lot of you know there’s certainly a level of prestige associated with just being in the Wall Street Journal. So there is a certain sense of that that when you see a brand at that level, you know there is a lot of subconscious work going on there, just you associating them with the Wall Street Journal. So I would say that’s half that battle for them is to be communicating in a publication of that magnitude, whether you’re really taking it in or you’re. You know, in a lot of that when you are at that level, a lot of that is just its name recognition again and again. You know, and what is the level of brand awareness that we have as Cartier or, you know, whatever brand that might be in the Wall Street Journal? 

I think you know Condé Nast is all these like super high end hospitality brands that you know advertise with them because that’s like saying we are, we align with this target demographic, which is the, you know, very elite group of people in our country who are reading Condé Nast or even the Wall Street Journal. So I don’t think print is dead, it’s just one of those. It’s like a tactic that has so much to do with your overall strategy. Okay. 

You know, and I do think that brand. You know I would always make the argument that without a really strong foundation of brand, those tactics will always fall flat. You know, because the brand drives that strategy. So without that, you know, you’re really just throwing stuff up against the wall to see what sticks. 

0:20:06 – Mike Malatesta

Right, so how do? That might be a really good transition, because how do? And if this is a dumb question, I apologize in advance but how does a company or a person get to the point where they understand what their brand is? And I, Like I think most people in most companies could tell you what they think is their brand, but I’m not sure how sure they are about whether it is that or not. 

0:20:38 – Kristen Graham Brown

Yes, okay, I love this question because I really think that so many people, when brand is just such an overused word now, so we have so many different meanings of it, some people may think I’m just talking about visuals or your logo. Other people understand that a brand like Nike didn’t get to be Nike because of the swoosh. So I love this and this is what I feel like is. My purpose on the planet is to help find this with entrepreneurs, and my team specifically works with owners and founders in the two to 10 million space. So we really want to work with owners and founders who are still engaged in the business, not larger orgs that have, especially when we’re talking about creating meaningful brands. On the employer brand side, that’s mostly large organizations who have enough employees that they even have like people, teams and talent teams. 

So what I would approach, what is my brand and how do I get there? We use a very specific process that’s taken years to hone, but I’m super proud of it now. It starts with brand heart and you’ve probably heard of the vision mission values part of a brand process. I think that is essential. We use vision, purpose and values and we operationalize those values with you as well. And one thing that makes us quite different is that we deploy an organizational psychologist during that component. 

So that’s a workshop model event. It can be about four hours and what we’re doing is really digging into the stories and the really deep level values that the owner or the founder has, the vision that they have for the world, what called them to create this business. And I think that a lot of times that work is either glossed over or it’s. You know you can’t just call my team and say we need purpose, vision and values. You know, get back to me in a week. That is such a personal process that you need a professional to mine that data out of the entrepreneur and to guide which roads to go down. 

Which story actually has more impact here, and that’s why we decided to use someone with the level of expertise as a psychologist, because I think that’s the only way to truly get that super strong product. Then I think another key point that a lot of people miss is that your employees are never. No one that you’re working with is going to read some, you know, 60 page document that you came up with at the brand workshop. It’s also our job to take all the massive amount of notes and mining of data that came from that experience and turn it into, you know, belief statements, manifestos, small bits of text that make people want to get up and chest bump you know, and I think that that’s a huge component of brand is what it does for you internally. 

I think people are just coming around to this, especially through, like, the pain of COVID and the like way that that just rocked the working world and the people, the expectations that people now have of their workplace. You know we want to align with brands that align with our own values. So they have to walk the talk and so often you see a company that might say one thing but does another. I really believe that that’s because they didn’t do that upfront, really hard work. You know we can’t say that we are living integrity or whatever and then we don’t, you know. So these have to be something that the owner can really walk the talk and be willing to make super hard decisions. 

On Nike’s a fabulous example I love. You know, of course everyone wants to be Nike, but they have taken a stand so many times like this movie air, so incredible to see them. You know, take a risk with Michael Jordan when he was more of an unknown, or even like they’re the work with Colin Kaepernick. You know people don’t think about that Like what is stand to take at that moment in time to say we know we’re going to alienate a bunch of people right now, and we’re okay with that because it’s they stand for something. You know that that and that creates, I think, a lot of alignment, both internally but also externally with their customers too. It creates trust. 

0:25:07 – Mike Malatesta

Yeah, so that’s the. The. The Arab movie is is interesting to me because I would like to get your point on it, so there’s. So there’s a couple of things. One is everybody wants to be Nike, but they didn’t when Phil Knight was trying to sell shoes out of the back of this car. You know something? 

0:25:30 – Kristen Graham Brown

that 100% of anybody remembers anymore. 

0:25:33 – Mike Malatesta

But this thing about taking a stand. So Michael Jordan is kind of famous for saying hey, you know I sell a lot of shoes to Republicans and Democrats, so I am not going to take a stand on that, because I could alienate 50% of my audience, and Nike is doing at least an example. You use that, the exact opposite of that. 

And then you see other brands, like in the news now, sort of like Anheuser-Busch and Target are taking and Disney, you know, are taking, getting hammered for taking a stance that some people, some of their customers, don’t like. So how do you think about squaring that up when you’re working with the people you work with? Because everybody wants to sell, almost everybody wants to sell to the, to the biggest audience that aligns with their product or their service or their whatever. So, yeah, what’s? I’m interested on your professional take on that. 

0:26:35 – Kristen Graham Brown

Yeah well, and we’ve heard a lot of pushback about this over the years just that there’s why take a stand. There’s no reason, you know why, make ourselves vulnerable to this type of fodder by? Because that’s not our role. Right, we are a commercial entity. This isn’t our role, and I just totally disagree. 

My perspective on what brand is is we are change makers. I mean, we, small businesses, have the opportunity and large businesses, of course, and large brands even have larger opportunities to create change. We drive culture. You know, if you don’t think that that brands are driving culture, I think that is a huge misconception, and so you can’t stay out of the fray. You know, I this and this is a very this is my perspective on this but I really believe that you will be. You know, you will be vanilla. You will be lost in that. People are inundated with 4000 messages a day. If you don’t want to take a stand on anything, I think you are lost in the mess of 4000 messages a day. 

You know, and I think that the critical component here is I just think this needs to be intentional and that’s the part I think that you can miss if you’re in it entrepreneurial seat running as fast as you can, forward down the field, trying to, you know, throwing stuff behind you for people to catch, trying to survive day over day through crisis, crises like you know, the economy or COVID or whatever I totally get why it’s hard to stop and make these intentional choices. 

That’s why I think, if you do that up front, I mean and that is what Nike did right, like I thought that was so cool how his like eight values or whatever his statements, you know, were always on offense is in everybody’s face all the time, because to me, that is so walking the talk and I’d rather align with the brand that’s going to lock the talk any day versus a brand that wants to stay out of the fray. You know, that’s just my personal opinion. So I would, I would consult with any brand that we were working with is like the moment that you decided to be a brand out in the world, you know, and especially one with employees, because now those people take on an identity by associating with you. You know, you put yourself in the crosshairs of taking a stand, and I would just, all day, every day, I would say it’s worth it. I’d rather take a hundred raving fans over 200 lukewarm fans. 

0:29:09 – Mike Malatesta

Okay, well, I thank you for taking that stand and for explaining it. So, wow, that’s that makes sense to me. So so you mentioned employees a couple of times. I want to. I think I read somewhere on your website that employees are your biggest brand advocates. That’s one of your, that’s a belief that you and your firm have and I. 

I’ve heard people refer to the engagement of employees, as, like you know, you hear about B2B, b2c. I’ve heard people call it B2E. You know making sure that you’re engaging your employees. Why is it that you believe that employees are, you know, biggest brand advocates that you can have? And and I guess? Well, I’ll wait till the second question because it’s a broader one. I don’t believe that. 

0:29:57 – Kristen Graham Brown

Well, I think this is so timely, like this is the time that we’re living in now, one. I think they, employees will expose you for not walking the talk. They will either leave, which attrition is extremely expensive, or they will put you on blast on social media. You know the internet has given us all a microphone in a way. I mean, look at this Jimmy Fallon thing. I did not see that coming. I think, as far as a personal brand you know he has this fabulous personal brand who doesn’t love Jimmy Fallon? Right. 

Well, now he has all these employees saying that he created a really toxic work environment. I have no idea if he did or not. I have no opinion on that, but what I think is interesting is, you know, they are willing to call him out, and I think that that’s happened so often now in a workplace. So I think it has to do with creating, because if brand is not authentic and we’re not walking the talk, you should have not said anything. You know, it would be way better to not say anything than to say espouse that you’re one thing and do the opposite. And so, yeah, I think employees are going you’re either going to create a team that’s incredibly powerful because you continue to walk the talk, or you’re going to fall Eventually, you’re going to be exposed. 

0:31:15 – Mike Malatesta

And it’s. I’m glad you brought that up about Jimmy Fallon, because you think to yourself well, if I can’t trust who Jimmy Fallon is, how can I trust who anybody is? And I’m not taking sides here, because it just seems so unbelievable that he would create an environment that would be scary to, or whatever to anybody. But maybe you know, sometimes when you close the front door of someone’s house they become something else. But that is something that a number of celebrities have. I think Reese Witherspoon has had those kinds of accusations. But yes, it’s gotten, you know, you’re right, it’s gotten. Not only has it gotten much easier to get that microphone, but you can also do it sort of anonymously, in a way that you could never do it anonymously before, which gives people. 

I think, on the positive side, gives people who are feeling that way an opportunity to express how they’re feeling, and on the negative side, it gives people who are just built to be that way you know a platform to do it, yeah. 

0:32:27 – Kristen Graham Brown

I think that’s so true. 

0:32:29 – Mike Malatesta

Lizzo. Lizzo is the one that was oh, lizzo yes, yes. 

0:32:33 – Kristen Graham Brown

I heard that. That felt crazy to me. Me too, yes, like when she was being accused of. I was like what? Like you know, fat shaming people, that’s, like, I would say, her whole brand is the opposite of that, yeah. 

I know and I’m certainly not saying like I believe every single thing I read about these people because, you know, I feel like that’s a whole other topic but I do think that employees I mean that’s just reputation, right. So like we work with Dropbox and a lot of their recruitment is just word of mouth, it’s referral, and I think that they’ve built some really incredible teams based on their ability to recruit and refer in, because that tech world is extremely connected. They’re always referring each other, bringing each other into different entities, and I think that if you can’t execute on what you say, that you are, that will be exposed either through methods like we have no referrals, we have a terrible time recruiting. Our turnover is super high. You know, glassdoor made it possible. 

now for people to go in anonymously, posed about their experiences at workplaces, and I just think that that’s something that you have to consider as part of very much a part of your brand. You know, culture is your brand. Especially if your clients have any, or customers have any touch point with employees, it obviously is a part of their experience. But even if they don’t, even if you’re e-com and you know all we do is potentially interact with customer service, I mean, I think you can feel a brand’s alignment or not through the way that, basically through how good they are. 

You know, are they able to move the needle forward because they have a bunch of people rowing in the same direction singing the same song. I mean that will make a strong company or a strong company weak, in my opinion, if we don’t have alignment internally. 

0:34:37 – Mike Malatesta

So I agree and I think I’ll start with a percentage question and dig in how. So in your, in the, in the range that you deal with, two to 10 million is sort of the place still run by the founder. In your experience, what percentage of companies are really focused and committed to brand in that size range? 

0:34:57 – Kristen Graham Brown

Well, that’s a great question and I feel like, if they’re working with us, they are so that I probably have a skewed perspective of you know, if you’re engaging with my team, you do believe this is really valuable work, because you know we’re not engaging with someone on that for any less than 40 K typically. So this process is anywhere from 40 to 70 K’s typically what we’re charging, and that has a lot to do with how many deliverables are on the other side. Do you need 12 months of deliverables or do we need three weeks worth of deliverables? Because we have a team that can take this and run with it as soon as they get their hands on it, and so by I would say by those standards. You know, people do believe in brand by the time they’re working with us which makes sense. 

0:35:44 – Mike Malatesta

Yeah, which makes sense because they’ve they’ve realized something there. They’ve they’ve become aware of something that they think you can help them with. Right, right. 

0:35:54 – Kristen Graham Brown

Right. Often it’s positioning and messaging. You know we can’t describe what we do People. You know we’re not selling the way that we want, we don’t have as many leads, or we’re not closing leads, etc. Or we have no idea who we’re for. You know that kind of thing, like you’re trying to find the essence of who you are, or oftentimes the owner, founder is the brand right. Right. 

They are. I call it the brand barometer. Everything has to go through them. They’re the only person that really understands the voice and the visuals and the essence, the ethos of what this brand is. That is not scalable and what I find is right around that tipping point around two million or 10 million, you know right in that sweet spot, is when people start to really butt up against that brick wall of we can’t scale. 

I can’t bring in. My marketing team is floundering and I would argue a lot of times that’s because they haven’t been given the framework that they need to execute. So they’re just throwing stuff up against the wall or or based on their interaction with you as a person, you know, and that’s not sustainable or scalable. And that’s really where I think a lot of people hit something, where they’re like we have got to level up. We hear that a lot. It’s time to level up. 

0:37:13 – Mike Malatesta

Right, right, okay. So it’s sort of like if you went around the company and you asked everybody separately what do we do, what do we stand for, why are we different? That kind of thing. You, you would get A lot of different answers to that question, and the owner would have a question, or the founder would have an answer to that that probably sounded more articulate than everybody else’s. But no, but that’s it sort of stopped. 

0:37:42 – Kristen Graham Brown

There. Yes, I think, most importantly, they’re surprised. I mean, that happens. 

0:37:48 – Mike Malatesta

Yeah, that no one else can just repeat what they bought, what they’re always saying. 

0:37:52 – Kristen Graham Brown

Yeah, like well, I can’t believe nobody knows this, because it’s intuitive to you, right, but it’s absolutely not intuitive to your team. Yeah you know, and then put on top of that turnover and Generational differences in an organization and all that stuff, and it’s just like rife for problems. 

0:38:13 – Mike Malatesta

So yeah, and you said early on you were talking about how. You know how hard it is to be An entrepreneur or a business owner. You got stuff coming at you all the time, and so it seems natural that even if you started with something solid like this is who we are. 

This is you know why we’re important. This is why we exist. Whatever, you know, people coming, people going, customers complaining, you know having to raise money and all these things start happening and you sort of maybe just Arrowed a little bit and then you start operating on. Well, I said it, you know, I’ve said it a hundred times. I mean, how could anybody not know it? But you really Not. It’s all on you. You haven’t built anything to support it. I guess is what I’m trying to say. Is that what you find often and it’s not? I guess that’s natural. Like I Can only focus on so many things at a time, right. 

0:39:15 – Kristen Graham Brown

Exactly, and I think a lot of times this is it’s something that doesn’t feel like a fire. 

0:39:20 – Mike Malatesta

Yes, you know, there’s so many other real fires. 

0:39:22 – Kristen Graham Brown

This doesn’t feel like a fire until it’s honestly usually a lot of frustration, a Lot of like feeling like year after year we’re budding up against this same revenue threshold. Why can’t we break through here? I’m the only person who can help ideate on products. You know I’m working 80 hours a week. That type of thing I approve all creative. That is just something we hear all the time. 

It’s typically when the owner, founder, is trying to get off of the dance floor and into the balcony so they can stop being in so much production mode that they realize I have nothing to train people, I have nothing to educate people on who we are, and then it’s a really great moment to intentionally make those choices, don’t just oh. And another thing I love, this trope I love to say is it’s really hard to see the label from inside the jar, because I have, we have paid people to help us with our positioning, because it is really hard from the inside. I mean, I hear this a lot when people say what’s your point of difference? And I’ll talk about our process, and they’ll say everybody says that Every brain agency says the same thing. Well, I don’t really feel very in touch with that, you know. So it’s really good for the. The outside perspective is one of the best values we can add, and then, of course, the expertise. But that outside perspective is almost impossible to do this without it so let’s talk about that. 

0:40:45 – Mike Malatesta

Inside the jar thing, reading the label, I’m because I I Also think what happens is that you got all these things coming at you, these fires that you mentioned, whatever and Because you haven’t built this Really strong foundational brand Archetype or structure architecture, you begin to just you and your people, begin to just kind of position yourself Like everybody else in the marketplace, right, you commoditize yourself basically. You forget about your value story. I call it the hidden vow that value story. 

You forget about what that is and you start to just compare. Well, like this is how they quoted the job and we have to quote the job the same way, sort of thing, and it just it’s like a Spiral to or down to ordinary being ordinary. Yeah. But I’m really interested in you saying that you needed. You sought out help. You are a. You and your company helped people do this for themselves, but you also were aware enough to know that you got to stay sharp too on this, can you? 

0:41:57 – Kristen Graham Brown

oh yes, and that was a wonderful experience for me was actually walking through with Charles’s team and making a large investment. You know, I’m a similar sized company that I’m working with and I want to be able to, you know, and I’m asking them to spend X If I’m not get it. You know, if I’m not spending that much on my branding and marketing and sales etc. Then I mean it’s really really hypocritical. So it was extremely helpful, you know, to have someone, and I would say he really kind Of ripped our positioning to shreds, just like you know, this is not strong. 

This is confusing. This is confusing and I think it’s really common to kind of wax poetic about what you do and also to To be out of touch with what is jargon and what is not when it comes to the target audience. You know, and there’s all these stats now that people read at a third-grade level, they skim everything, they read it in F pattern, so they’re skimming, skimming, dropping down reading to the bottom. You know we have such a limited amount of time to capture people that I think we have to be so on point about what we’re saying, that I think that, yeah, without outside perspective, it’s like nearly impossible. Or I find that people kind of they do this exercise again and again and again without really coming up with something very impactful. 

Especially when you’re working with you know I know this from working with a bunch of creatives it’s very Hard to really take the wind out of their sails. You know to say like, oh, wow, you guys miss the mark big time. It’s a lot easier to do that for a vendor, a consultant that’s working for you To say like, no, this is a big miss, guys. You know we’re gonna need you to go again. I think the owner takes on a lot of responsibility for the team, like, okay, why is the team struggling? This is my fault. 

Mm-hmm when a vendor can’t perform. I think there’s a lot less responsibility there, you know. 

0:43:59 – Mike Malatesta

So it’s not personal so that the vendor or the consultant or the branding agent is saying, hey, this is this is where we need to go and it’s not use. It’s not you as the owner or founder having to say, hey, you know what that’s really, that’s really I know that was your idea, but we’re not going there and then deal with the you know collateral damage off that. Yeah, exactly, I think it goes both ways. It’s easier for us to give them tough love and it’s easier for them to give us tough love. 

0:44:27 – Kristen Graham Brown

Yeah, yeah, makes sense, makes sense. 

0:44:28 – Mike Malatesta

So let’s as we’re talking about. So let’s as we wrap up here, I’m how does someone Get started with you? You mentioned the, you know the Psychologists that you bring in, and I’m just wondering like that seems to really be starting from point zero, and I’m really curious as to how, how point zero gets to point one and point two and ultimately to the promised land of like here’s, here’s who we really are and what we and. And then how do you get that message through to everybody in a way that’s different from what we discussed before, where it’s like well, the founder knows this and the people in the organization Don’t. I mean, it has to be like a rock solid structure, it seems to me, in order to be effective. So hopefully that’s not too big of a question to that’s such a good question. 

0:45:23 – Kristen Graham Brown

I mean, we would definitely start with a lot of Meetings, you know, about making sure we’re a good fit. We start with a lot of calls to kind of make sure that we’re a good fit and you’re at a good point to do this work, and then it can take about 12 to 16 weeks. So it’s not a small investment on the owner’s time, but we try and make that a very polished experience from Beginning to end, where it’s extremely planned out. You have a brand manager when you work with us, whose sole responsibility is your Satisfaction and you know setting those expectations. Then you bring up a great point. 

It’s so critical to harness the power of the moment when you’re doing something like this and to launch it internally in a really big way. That’s something we love helping people with at the end of this process, because we have this great quote that someone told us the day we presented all of this and helps throw this, you know, almost like this internal Launch party. She said you know, yesterday we were a different company and that’s how it should feel. I mean, you just made this big investment in this. You should be able to harness the power of this moment energetically for months to come, if not longer, and you know, and externally as well, what does it look like to launch a rebrand out into the world? Because you really just don’t want to pass up this opportunity to Capture attention, I think, and capture hearts, really. 

0:46:53 – Mike Malatesta

Yeah, and it’s so. When I hear that, it’s like, oh gosh, it just got more complicated. Not only do we have to believe it, but we have to get other people to believe it as well, right? 

0:47:03 – Kristen Graham Brown

Totally, totally. But I think that all starts with that like intentional, authentic, deep dive in the beginning. I think it’s really easy to sell this when it feels so true. Hmm, you know, it doesn’t feel like sales. It feels like finally, you have words to wrap around the last X number of years that you’ve been doing this. I finally have the like framework and the architecture, like you said, to bring this to my team in a way that I’m proud of. Like we hear that all the time too. I Feel so proud, I feel so legitimized, I feel validated being able to share this work and that is super transformational Energetically as an owner right. 

0:47:46 – Mike Malatesta

And it, you know, it’s kind of it’s kind of weird, like it seems to me, like you mentioned, when people come to work with you, they’ve already got that, they’ve already sort of crossed the bridge to Having an awareness of why this is important. 

But it seems odd to me why there’s so many businesses out there, and even successful businesses, that they just don’t Put any effort into that. They don’t put any effort into Creating a purpose for people to work there. They don’t put any effort into creating a purpose for people to work with them. They don’t create any effort, they don’t, they don’t put any effort into creating a language that they use that’s Unique to them and so it’s unique to the marketplace. And what do you, if you have an opinion on it? I just or a message to send to these people who think this way, because there’s a lot in my experience, there’s a lot of them. There’s almost everybody has done some fake effort at branding, so they’ll put a tagline on their truck or vehicle or something, but when you dig in there, the people have no idea, except that it’s a job and they you know. 

If we got a project, we do the job and there’s just no connection to a higher calling purpose or meaning behind it for them or for their clients. 

0:49:14 – Kristen Graham Brown

Yeah, I think that’s really well said. I mean, what’s funny is that I feel like you know, monthly, if not weekly I see someone like that and it does make me question my life’s work, just because they’re a $500 million company with like a one page website that is terribly written and designed and they’re not communicating anything. So certainly I’m not here to say that you can’t be successful without a strong brand. I question the resiliency and the longevity. So what I would challenge those people to say is how long is this an enduring brand? Is this a brand that can be sold? I mean, that’s something that people have to be thinking about. When they’re in the stages of in the two to 10 million space. It’s like can I sell this thing? Is it me, you know? Because then it’s like you have nothing to sell. 

You created a job for yourself which is better than a lot of us can say, but it is not something that’s actually this tangible strategic value based brand that you can sell, and so I would also argue that I think you we are at a pivotal moment here with a younger generation that is demanding this, and so you can get on the train or you can get left behind, because I do not think you will have a group of younger workers who are not here just to punch a clock anymore. They have rejected that and rejected it in a way that they’re willing to show I’m willing to live in a van, I’m willing to not have a 401k, I’ll do gig economy. 

I’ll do Uber and run. I’ll do graphic designing on my laptop while I travel the world, so I think that I would argue good luck in the future with that. But also is that building a resilient company that can stand the test of what I feel like are almost becoming these crises that feel every year there’s some new. I mean it feels crazy to me that this fallout from COVID is still kind of existing and the way politics feel like they’re in every part of our life now and it just seems like is that going to last, or is it a little bit more of a flash in the pan or something that’s not going to be able to weather a big storm? That’s my challenge to them is to really think about that. 

0:51:37 – Mike Malatesta

That’s a great challenge to think about. 

0:51:40 – Kristen Graham Brown

Kind of what you help people with right, Like the exiting strategy. 

0:51:43 – Mike Malatesta

Yeah, the dream exit yes, yeah. So, kristen, before we go, is there anything that I should have asked you, that I didn’t, or that you would like to leave us with? That I didn’t give you a chance to. 

0:52:01 – Kristen Graham Brown

No, I feel like your questions were so good and thorough. This has been such a fun discussion. I am always happy to consult with anyone or talk to anyone at no cost. I love helping people who either aren’t at this stage yet or want to have a discussion about why they don’t think brand is worth it. So hit me up in any of those places that Mike mentioned and I would love to talk to anybody. It’s very interesting for me and very fulfilling to connect with people on this topic. 

0:52:30 – Mike Malatesta

All right. Well, there’s your invitation everyone. Kristen Graham Brown, thank you so much for being on the show today. Thanks for the work that you’re doing and the explanation really good explanations that you gave us about a whole range of things. I didn’t think we were gonna be getting into Anizer, Bush and Nike and all of those things, so that was fun. Thanks for going there with me. I appreciate it. Thank you. 

And listen everybody who’s listening today. Thank you so much for joining us. Hope you got some value out of this. I hope you get value out of everything that I’m doing and everyone that I’m exposing you to, and I would just like you to one, make sure that you maximize the greatness inside of you today and, two, get to work on creating the future. You want the future. You want to make your property Something that you can really own and something that you can be super proud to own as well. So until next time, thank you. 

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