Branding For The Rest Of Us

Written By Katelyn Goupille

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In this episode:

Bringing big ideas to small businesses! Welcome to our first episode, with our first guest, Dr. Iahn Gonsenhauser. Host Max Gerson and Dr. Iahn have a stimulating conversation about noise in marketing and how that makes working with clients, leading a team, and communicating with other external forces so difficult. 

In this episode, we explore what makes communication challenging and how to overcome it as brand strategists. We answer common burning questions like, what is brand strategy? Why do you need a new website?

How do I get unstuck?

Dr. Iahn also shares his own personal experience with teaching youth on the importance of mentorship and authenticity, leveraging the power of narrative, and much more.

“Look down from as high as possible, look ahead as far as you can see, and then decide what to do. This is all strategy is.”

TOPICS DISCUSSED:

  • Getting Unstuck (1:31)

  • Perspective (2:53)

  • A Guiding North Star (5:40)

  • Helping a Client (6:53)

  • Authenticity (12:10)

  • How to Support Host and Guest (18:08)

  • Max Gerson (00:00):

    Welcome to Branding For The Rest Of Us, the Brand Wolfe podcast, where we promise to deliver big ideas for small businesses. Today on the show, we're gonna talk about all the noise that exists in our world and why that makes marketing to our clients, leading our team, communicating with our wife, so difficult. Because there's too much noise in the world. We as human beings have developed a new survival instinct and that survival instinct is ignoring all of the noise. Communication has become challenging in every aspect of our lives, because there's always something more interesting. And it's usually in our pockets. So today on the show, we're gonna explore what makes communication challenging for all of us, and how we as brand strategists and leaders can overcome that noise. Today on Branding For The Rest Of Us, we have myself Brand Wolfe principle, Max Gerson, along with one of my great friends, Dr. Iahn. While we work in wildly different fields, our passions and our challenges really do overlap in some pretty interesting ways. As we both care deeply about problem solving, communications and change. Iahn, welcome to the show.

    Iahn Gonsenhauser (01:12):

    Max, as always thanks for having me. I look forward to these conversations every week. I often know what needs to happen. I know the change that I want to accomplish, but I just don't really know how to get unstuck. I don't know how to get there. So I'm interested in asking the question today on the podcast. How do I handle that? What do I do in those situations? How do I get unstuck?

    Max Gerson: (01:34):

    Absolutely. So the first thing you have to do is be able to identify tension, right? We identify tension as the gap between your current state and your desired state, right? There's a stuckness there, you know, you're not where you want to be. You know, there's, there's a problem. And once you recognize that tension, then you need to start being a little bit self-aware right. If you knew how to resolve that tension by if you knew where that tension came from and how to resolve it, there probably wouldn't be tension. You would probably be out there solving the problem. So when you get to that point, you just have to know that I have a problem. And because I have a problem, I may or may not be the best person to solve that problem. So this all comes back to ETH. You don't know what you don't know. When people raise their hand and ask for help, they're identifying that they have a problem, they're reaching out for help, but you have to understand that you're asking for help. And the only language that, you know, people will call and say, Hey, we need a website, right? Well, if they knew that they needed strategy, then they just would've asked for that, right. Be, be aware of the red herrings, be aware of what your instincts are. But when you ask for help, be prepared to listen to someone who has a different perspective, who can help you see the thing that you can't see.

    Iahn Gonsenhauser (02:48):

    So I'm interested in that I'm, I'm also interested in some perspective, how does perspective come into the work that you do?

    Max Gerson (02:55):

    Dr. Iahn, great questions. I love it. Perspective. That's the name of the game? Right? So, here's the quote that I just love to share with people. You can't read the label from inside the jar. This is what makes marketing and branding so hard. So how does one create the ability or the skillset to help other people read the label from outside the jar? So let's wind it back to the summer of 1997. I was 17 years old. I was fortunate enough to go on a 31 day wilderness leadership course through the National Outdoor Leadership School. And this was a 31 day track through the Telaquana Mountains of Alaska. And we were, we were navigating on Gods green earth. We were not on BLM. We were not in a park. There was not a trail. There was not a path. It was map and compass time.

    Max Gerson (03:42):

    So the last week of the trip we were without our instructors, we were just meant to meet them at the pickup point. And we set off and this fog rolled in. And literally you couldn't see your hand in front of your face. And we stumbled through the fog for a few days. Eventually there was a break in the fog. And when we looked up, we saw there was a sheer cliff right in front of us. And we were like, that's

    not supposed to be there. So we were lost, right? We were lost in the Alaskan wilderness. Couldn't see anything. We didn't know where we were. We didn't have sat phones. So what do you do? We did what we were trained to do, which was to climb the tallest peak. We could find, take a look around and, and see if we couldn't figure this thing out.

    Max Gerson (04:17):

    And I had totally forgotten about this story until I was reminded of it from Simon Sinek quote, look down from as high as possible. Look ahead. As far as you can see, and then decide what to do. And that's all that strategy is that's it, it's just that simple, get that temporal distance that objectivity the space away from the business, study their brand. Don't ask them why it's cool. Ask their clients, who are they competing against? What is the competitive landscape for their marketing tactics? Who is their audience? What do they care about? What do they buy? What do they not buy? What is the language they like to communicate? And how do they like to communicate? That's the work. If you do that work, you'll know what to do. Because at that point it's like climbing the mountain. You can see the thing that you couldn't see before.

    Max Gerson (04:59):

    So what makes a great strategist? It's someone that's a great problem solver. Someone that's able to focus on objectivity and truth and data and information and create a plan that gets you unstuck. It's not about a cute logo. It's not about the sizzle or the shine. What we care about at Brand Wolfe, aren't pretty logos, right? We care about the type of strategy that has a profound impact on your business. So I created brand Wolfe in a way to be agnostic about deliverables, to be a marketing business and a marketing brand that truly stands in the corner of small business owners and helps them to understand what they need, right? Because this is again, emo. We don't know what we don't know. We think we do. We know there's a problem. We know there's tension. We know we need more sales. We need more revenue. But sometimes the questions we're asking are in fact not the right questions. And if you don't really take the time to understand your client's situation from their perspective, you might not actually be helping them at all. So if you don't bottle the heat, if you don't define your north star, and if you don't protect your brand, if you don't understand the reasons why you became successful in the first place and you grow, watch out might not be dangerous, but it could be fatal.

    Iahn Gonsenhauser (06:12):

    So I love that. I think that that's something that we can all apply, you know, broadly across our lives. Again, if it's your career path, if it's something in your personal life, it's, if, if it's your, your corporate direction the importance of perspective, the importance of being willing and able to step to a new vantage point to give yourself some new stimulus, some new information, some new strategic fodder for, for where to go next. It's just critical. And, and I think that resonates with, with anybody who's

    listening. So, obviously that's conceptually, you know, where this, where this comes from and where the Brand Wolfe approach comes from. Can we talk about an example of when you actually, you, you worked with a client and you've got 'em unstuck. I mean, let's hear how you actually helped them find, find a way.

    Max Gerson (06:57):

    Absolutely. So I love to tell people that I didn't land on Brand Wolfe, Brand Wolfe landed on me. Brand Wolfe was born out of demand, not intentionality. So before I had a business, before I had an LLC, before I had anything, the phone rang and it was one of my great friends, Gabe Adams at Bluewater Performance. And he said, I need a new website. And this is a very common question. I get it all the time. And I said, well, you know, your current website is not very delightful, not very wonderful, but why do you need a new website? He said, well, to make more money, he said, sure, okay, well, how does a website make you more money? And he said, well, because I wanna expand our reach. I wanna add, I wanna add Porsche and Mercedes to the lineup of the brands that we already serve.

    Max Gerson (07:41):

    And I said, okay, this is a revenue problem, right? That, that was really the core of it. And I said, it's not the website, man. This is just a red herring. This happens all the time. People say, Hey, can you help me with a pitch deck or a sales deck?'' ``Look, the deck isn't the problem. You know how to build a deck. If you had a great message, you would've already built this, right? The problem that Gabe and Blue water Performance had was not a website. That it was the fact that they'd been in business for 10 years. They're doing well. They have a great fan base. They continue to grow and scale revenue and reach every year. The thing that made the website hard was they didn't know why people chose them. They didn't understand their own brand identity, and they didn't know how to leverage that.

    Max Gerson (08:21):

    So fast forward to a year after the project on a spend of $70,000, the business grew by 130%. So they saw 30% growth in revenue, but I certainly will not take credit for that. They were trending towards 15 to 20% growth anyways. The business made an additional $400,000, but here's the most important part of the story. The business owner Gabe Adams did not have to be in the building. During that time we came in, we identified their brand. We helped them craft their narrative and understand their clients in a new way. We helped them understand really what is their job? What is the one thing they need to do for their clients? If they're facing a tough decision and mechanics face tough decisions about every five minutes of the day, we created a north star that they can look to that helped them make decisions. So yes, the revenue, the money, making sure that they had some ROI was important, but the most important thing was that now Gabe, as the owner can really function as a leader because he isn't invested in a solution that allows his team to better do their job. The SEO, the website made the phones ring, but that doesn't mean the business is going to grow, right. If you're gonna make the phones ring a whole lot more, you gotta make sure people are ready to do the thing that you've just sold them.

    Iahn Gonsenhauser (09:35):

    I love that example. I, I think it ties back so nicely to the fact that there's always something that wants your attention, right? There's always something else that's demanding your attention. We mentioned that oftentimes it's the thing in your pocket, in this case, initially, it, it was this, this website, right? The website is the solution. The website is everything. And I think what you did there was help create

    the recognition that it's, it's not just about the website. There was something much bigger than that, that the brand needed to deliver. And you worked with them and that's exactly what happened. And, yes, a website was a component of it. But as you said, it was just a piece, right. There was something far beyond that that needed to be done in order to make that successful.

    Iahn Gonsenhauser (10:21):

    So I love that example. And, and I love the example that you gave also the, the comment on the power of narrative and what that means. And I think that's something that, you know, maybe as we think about what people can walk away from this, with the power of narrative in achieving what their goals are is one of those things that people can really think about how to leverage when I mentor people. And I mentor a lot of people in healthcare administration. One of the things that I tell young people that are just starting in that world that wanna build I tell them about the power of narrative. We talk about it extensively when we first meet and specifically what I tell them is you're gonna be living inside a bunch of important narratives as you try and build your brand in a, in a space.

    Iahn Gonsenhauser (11:11):

    And it's gonna be your role in that narrative that defines a lot of your opportunities. And so the specific suggestion that I give them is to figure out who holds the keys to the gates that you need to move through in order to achieve your career aspirations. So if you want to be, you know, an associate executive director of something, who's the person that's gonna give you that job. Who's gonna name you to that position? And what is their narrative? What are the things that they're currently defining that they want to demonstrate success in that they want to have a narrative of success about, and what are the specific components of that narrative that you can be a part of? How can you be a protagonist in their narrative? That's helping them achieve their goals, because if you can connect in that way with the narrative, the person who holds the keys to your next opportunity, they're gonna do what they can to get you there.

    Max Gerson (12:08):

    I love that. I just, I wanna jump in and support that with an idea about authenticity, Bluewater Performance was already successful. People already loved them. When I came in, Gabe, the owner, he was concerned that I was gonna try and make them into something else. I was gonna turn them into a different thing, but that wasn't the case at all. It has nothing to do with the car. It has everything to do with the human experience. I can talk about this because I am a car guy or I'm a retired car guy, but a lot of car guys are pretty lonely and they use their vehicle to identify themselves, to, to navigate their way through the world. Maybe they don't have a lot of friends. So the car is the thing that gets them out into the world to, to social events and things like that.

    Max Gerson (12:52):

    And the car is just a vehicle for a personal experience. When clients came to Ble water, they were there for a very low key, very laid back, very empathetic experience, literally on their website today, you can see language that says, you know, maybe we would make more money if our service advisors cared about hitting their bonus, but they don't. They care about your car. They care about cars. They care about racing. So you know what, you're probably not gonna get your estimate on time. You might not get your estimate on time, and that's not a problem for anybody. It's not a problem for their clients. Their clients could already forgive them before they make a mistake, because they love the brand because of their imperfections, not in spite of them. And so that's just so important to narratives, to communicating, to, to marketing, to talking to our wives, it's authenticity. And it's hard to know who we are. I think that's one of the hardest things in the world. And I think that's why people really need help from brand strategists. But if your narrative isn't authentic, if it isn't true, no one will follow you.

    Iahn Gonsenhauser (13:54):

    Yeah. And the thing about authenticity, it's very hard to fake. It's kind of the fundamental thing about it, right? You can't fake authenticity. And, and I would a hundred percent agree. It's an authentic message that is behind any impactful brand strategy, communication strategy. You, you have to strike a chord of

    authenticity with people to move them towards making really any decision that they may have some discomfort with. Any decision that they may have some inertia against or resistance to. And in what I do every day, I, I think authenticity is probably the single most important element that can be communicated. And I've worked with plenty of inauthentic leaders that the resonance of their message, the ability of their message to transcend whatever media it's delivered via their ability to connect with the people who they really depend on.

    Iahn Gonsenhauser (14:51):

    Right. And we'll, we'll talk about servant leadership another time. We'll talk about the fact that leaders depend on, right? That's what it comes down to for them. If they don't have people willing to engage with their strategy, with their goals, with their needs, they're gonna fail in place. And authenticity is just the key to making that happen. So I, I love where, where you went with that, but what, what is branding? What is strategy? How does that work on a, on a day to day basis for the rest of us?

    Max Gerson (15:21):

    I love talking about the definition of brand strategy or strategy in general, a lot of people get it wrong. They think branding is the sizzle. They think it's the veneer. They think it's the shine. That's not what strategy is. That is not what brand strategy is. What brand strategy is, is clarity for making good decisions. Branding is change. It's the change from not knowing to knowing, from not seeing to seeing, from not having to having it is the change from not doing to doing when you can see new things, you have new beliefs, and when you have new beliefs, you can improve your behavior. And when you improve your behavior, you improve your outcomes. That's what it's all about. And in a big component to this, to answering the question, what is branding? What is brand strategy? It's clarity. It is change. It is enthusiasm in my world.

    Max Gerson (16:15):

    Perfect. Doesn't exist. The perfect logo, the perfect tagline, the perfect website, the perfect graphic doesn't exist. There's bad. There's good. And there's better, but it's just all about getting the business owner, getting the sales team, getting the players, to be clear about who they are, why, what they do is valuable. And knowing that they're really good at doing that. Because if you have a bad logo, it doesn't matter if you're enthusiastic about your brand and what it stands for, then you invest in marketing. Then you wanna shout it from the rooftops. And that's the type of behavior that actually drives outcomes. So again, what is branding? What is brand strategy? It's clarity for making good decisions. It represents change. That drives enthusiasm, that improves behavior and improves outcomes today on branding for the rest of us, Dr. Iahn and I focused on a big problem that exists for all of us, which is how do we overcome the noise in the world?

    Max Gerson (17:12):

    What do we do when we get stuck? When we don't know how to communicate, how to sell better, how to influence our audience, whether that audience be our clients, our employees, our team, our wife, our children on branding for the rest of us. We promise to deliver big ideas to small business. So today we really focused on what do you do when you get stuck? How do you get unstuck? And we shared with you guys, ideas that can help you solve your marketing problems, your communication problems. In real time. We want you guys to be able to think like a strategist without having to hire one. We believe fundamentally that if you improve your thinking, your problems will solve themselves. They won't solve themselves by themselves, but you'll be able to see the thing that you couldn't see before. You'll be able to navigate around that hurdle and get your business, your team, your spouse, to the place where you both want to be Dr. Iahn, thanks so much for interviewing me. This was really fun, Dr. Iahn's doing some big things right now in the world. And especially on social media, we've been getting daily updates on coronavirus. We've been getting tips and insight and clarity on how to make good decisions. We've been getting tips and insights about how to make good decisions in a world full of noise, misinformation, fake news. Right? I follow Dr. Iahn because he gives me clarity for good decisions. We have spring break coming up. We're going to Disneyland. I'm scared about coronavirus. Watching Dr. Iahn's content on Twitter and LinkedIn is helping me to make better decisions. So Iahn, can you please tell us where people can find you online?

    Iahn Gonsenhauser (18:52):

    You can find me on Twitter at Dr. G underscore M E D like medicine. You can find me on Instagram at Dr. G MC dreamy, and you can find me at Iahn Gonsenhauser on LinkedIn. Feel free to subscribe, follow me, leave some comments. Let me know if you have a topic that you want me to answer, and I'm really happy to put something together to do just that. Max is doing huge things as well. And Randol is doing a lot of great work that everybody should see. Everybody should know about. You will, you will see in action, the concepts that were brought up today and countless more stories of how clarity and decision making can happen for you. That's really Max's promise; it's what he lives and breeds every day. And you will find a wealth of information. If you stay current with what he puts out there, Max, where can the people find you?

    Max Gerson (19:46):

    You can find brandwolfe@brandwolfe.com. That is B R a N D w O L F E brand wolfe.com. You can find me at Max Gerson on LinkedIn. You can find Brand Wolfe on LinkedIn. If you wanna connect with Brand Wolfe, head over to our website@brandwolfe.com. That is B R a N D w O L F e.com. If you're ready to talk, we're ready to listen. We offer all of our clients a free two hour strategy session. Before we even think about talking about money. We're here to help. We're not here to sell, drop us a line, let us know why you're stuck, what the problem is. And we promise to help now branding for the rest of us. We're talking about us when we're talking to you guys, we're also talking to ourselves branding for the rest of us implies the idea that branding is not for us. It's for someone else it's for Nike. It's for Pepsi. It's for Coca-Cola it's for fortune 50 brands, but the truth is small business deserves big ideas, small business deserves big strategy, and that's really our mission to deliver the type of strategic solutions in high end strategy design and marketing at a more affordable way in a more impactful way for small business owners. So please download, listen, enjoy the Brand Wolfe podcast, Branding For The Rest Of Us, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Katelyn Goupille
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