The Revenue-Focused Marketer

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Transcript

0:11:
Hello and welcome to another episode of the revenue Focused marketer, where we discuss anything and everything related to marketing as well as data.

0:19:
I’m your usual host, Hershey, and today’s conversation is one that every founder, marketer, and brand operator needs to hear.

0:27:
We’re really going to change and challenge a widely accepted belief in the industry, that branding is a subset of marketing and to help us flip the script that like, you know, we’ve been having in our head, we have none other than Charlie Birch.

0:42:
Charlie, thank you so much for joining us here today.

0:44:
Oh, it’s my pleasure.

0:45:
Thank you so much for reaching out and for having me on the show.

0:48:
Yeah, definitely.

0:50:
So just a little bit about her, like she is a founder as well as a creative director.

0:55:
, and Charlie, tell us where you’re working at.

0:57:
I live in New Jersey in the US.

1:00:
Awesome.

1:01:
So thank you so much for joining us again.

1:04:
And I know that, you know, a lot of the work that you’ve been doing is like going just beyond logos and taglines and start treating brands as like more behavioral foundation for growth and for people who are kind of really struggling with aligning marketing sales, like their customer service.

1:22:
Operations.

1:22:
, I think this episode’s really the one for you.

1:26:
So I guess we can start with, I guess, just hearing more about you, Charlie.

1:31:
Tell us about, you know, how you got to kind of be a founder and got to start, to start your band, but like, yeah, just about your journey would be great.

1:39:
Yeah, sure.

1:40:
It’s a giant ball of yarn winding, winding road.

1:44:
, my, my background is actually in psychology, so I did my undergrad in In psychology and dance performance as a double major.

1:53:
And then I went on to work in a psychiatric hospital facility as a crisis responder for a couple of years.

2:00:
Went to grad school for dance therapy, which is, , one of the many creative arts therapies that really is focused on what’s going on in the body, , with mental illness and wellness in general.

2:13:
And when it came time to, , apply to Internships, I just started having this like nagging feeling of like this isn’t really what I want to do.

2:21:
Like this was my plan B like I wanted to be a dancer and I had a back injury and so like, oh do psychology.

2:27:
And I just started doing that and then I realized I was walking this path of like my plan B and I hadn’t really paused to make an alternative plan A, if you will, like something that really felt like aligned with my whole human.

2:40:
, one of the things about being a counselor, , licensed counselor.

2:44:
In the states is you have to pick a place to live and you have to get licensed in that state and I just felt like this really like rigid like I don’t wanna I don’t wanna do that.

2:53:
So I happened to be living in Boulder, Colorado at the time, which many people know has a huge entrepreneurial community and I just happened like the week that I decided, you know what, I think I’m gonna drop out of grad school.

3:05:
, there was a big startup summit and a, and a friend of mine was working at a co-working space and she was like, why don’t you just come.

3:11:
Some of these mixers with me and I was like, God, these are my people, like people that are like, I have an idea.

3:16:
I’m gonna make it a thing.

3:18:
I had like really never even heard of entrepreneurship and so I was like, OK, I’m gonna try my hand at like this coaching business idea because like all these skills I learned one thing led to another and you know, I’ve had many different iterations of me as an entrepreneur, , humanized is the most recent one and especially lately I’ve been really, , Really acutely aware of how it’s brought me so full circle.

3:43:
Like everything I learned as a dancer and choreographer, as a psychology student, as a crisis responder, all these skills that might seem totally random and disparate are actually very, very relevant to the work that I’m doing now with my clients in terms of helping to create.

4:01:
Create really distinct identities for businesses that are as dynamic as the people who work inside of them and the people who patron them or, you know, collaborate with them.

4:13:
So yeah, it’s just, it’s been a really fun experience lately, especially to the more I back up into what branding really can be for a business.

4:24:
Business versus what a lot of people, how a lot of people treat it.

4:28:
The more I realized that I have this really like diverse, unconventional skill set that is a, is a secret, you know, a superpower for me and my clients to access and take advantage of.

4:41:
That is amazing.

4:42:
I love like, I kind of recently had this full circle moment too.

4:47:
, like I started my own business as well, and an aspect of that was like being able to combine what I did as a consultant before and sort of being the product leader within AI and now doing AI consulting.

5:01:
So for me also it was like, you know, I’ve been Doing these things in the past and like, you know, now being able to kind of put them together and entrepreneurship, like, you know, comes with so much responsibilities is what I’m learning.

5:12:
So I might have to ask you a tip or two at the end, like, just for my own sanity.

5:19:
I don’t think since I’ve started this thing I’ve been able to sleep.

5:22:
Like even when I sleep I’m still thinking about this and somehow I’ve converted my room to just whiteboards where I’m like constantly writing because there’s too much going in here and you know, I used to do this work before, but now there’s more responsibility and that’s definitely on my.

5:42:
Shoulders it seems like.

5:43:
So I guess let’s start with any advice that you might have for like, you know, other founders or people that are still figuring out this sort of entrepreneurial side.

5:53:
Well, you know, I think we’re in this interesting cultural moment where entrepreneurship is really very in vogue and a lot of people are trying their hand at it.

6:03:
I And then an interesting case and then I decided really early on, like pretty much before I had a career but I didn’t really want to work for anybody else and then I didn’t really see like a job description that totally took advantage of me and I’ll just create that.

6:21:
I’ll just make, make that for myself, , and I think there’s a couple of pieces of advice I would give, .

6:28:
, to people who are either coming out of corporate or, you know, coming out of just out of life and wanting to start a business.

6:37:
My parents were both entrepreneurs.

6:39:
They grew up, they, they were business partners and I really saw my dad struggled with substance abuse as a way to cope with the stress of being in leadership and my mom, you know, burned out new.

6:52:
Numerous times like she tells the story of walking down the beach and not wanting to go home from family vacation, walking down the beach, and she’s like, I literally started running along with the flock of seagulls and I broke down in tears crying when I couldn’t fly away.

7:08:
And she was like, and that’s the, the moment that I realized I had outsourced my life to make room for my business, you know.

7:16:
It took me well into my late twenties to realize that I had internalized a lot of those behaviors and that I was Really operating in a stressed state all the time.

7:28:
And there’s so many messages in our culture that tell us like hustle, hustle, you know, sleep when you’re dead, blah, blah, blah.

7:34:
But like, the truth is that you only have, you can only give your business as much as you have space like inside yourself.

7:43:
So like one of the things we talk about in psychology, which actually I was just talking to somebody about the other day is this kind Concept of the window of tolerance and it’s an that’s neuroscience actually.

7:53:
So it’s the idea that like you have this range of tolerance for positive and negative experiences where you can stay regulated inside of them, right?

8:00:
And you make it really, if you try to, you know, push down the negative stuff, it just shrinks the whole window.

8:07:
Like it doesn’t just shrink in one direction.

8:09:
And so As you’re going into entrepreneurship, it’s really important to be able to look honestly at the positive and the negative.

8:18:
And one of the things that I had to learn kind of the hard way early on when I was part of a startup that the leader of that startup was really like a happiness bully, like a positivity bully.

8:28:
I don’t know if you’re familiar with that term, but there was no space in the conversation for useful critique and honest assessment of what’s really going on and.

8:39:
They’re real all sort of, right?

8:42:
It’s just not happy all the time.

8:44:
Right.

8:44:
So like, think about all of your experiences, not so much as like positive thinking or negative thinking or limiting beliefs or, you know, but to think about like what mindset is going to expand my capacity, what mindset is going to expand my network, what, you know, think about it in terms of expansion versus constriction, and then you can really start to feel that in your body.

9:08:
Of like is this going to be like when you’re starting to do this all the time and you’re and especially like if you’re at a computer like you’re gonna naturally kind of do that like get out of that like stand up, go for a walk like when you feel stuck, if your body is reflecting that like drop it, right?

9:25:
You’re saying like it’s hard to sleep it’s hard to sleep but sometimes really the best thing you can do for your business is take a nap and let your nervous system reset.

9:33:
So like I think that’s a really under talked about thing.

9:37:
100%.

9:38:
I also think sometimes like, you know, we might think we’re being productive sitting at a computer all day long, but like your brain isn’t really there and if you’re well rested, like you might just do that type, like, you know, type of work in half the amount of time because you’re focused.

9:54:
So I think it’s definitely an art of balancing that.

9:57:
I, I’m definitely still learning and trying to figure out for myself.

10:01:
There’s good days where I’m like, yeah, weeks and bad weeks, and you know, the second thing I would say which piggybacks off of that and kind of anchors us back into what we had intended to talk about here with branding is to really not just think about.

10:18:
, and we have a lot of conversations about, you know, what is the customer persona want, what does the customer need, , and how brand can magnetize the right people into the business.

10:31:
But one of the things I’ve been talking about and hammering on lately is the idea that the brand is really just the market facing.

10:40:
Side of the culture coin, right?

10:42:
Like brand and marketing and brand and culture are really two the two sides of the same coin, and if your culture is not in alignment with your brand, that is going to leak out into your customer experience.

10:56:
If you are setting like say you have a, a brand intention to create like let’s use Patagonia as an.

11:02:
For example, because it’s a very big popular, well respected brand, and they do a great job with integrity, but like it’s all about adventure and exploration and freedom.

11:11:
But if all of the operational systems, all of the ways that the business operates and the ways that it treats its people and the way that the founder treats themselves doesn’t reflect those same values.

11:25:
Everything else is gonna feel inauthentic.

11:27:
And one of the things that I really get, I get so frustrated about is this idea of an authentic brand.

11:33:
Like everyone, if you ever hire anybody to help you with their branding and they’re like, oh, we’re just gonna build you an authentic brand, just fire them because that doesn’t, that doesn’t mean anything.

11:43:
An authentic brand doesn’t mean it doesn’t teach you anything about.

11:47:
the brand.

11:47:
It’s like, it’s like, oh, well, just be authentic.

11:50:
Just be yourself and you’ll be successful.

11:52:
And then when you aren’t, what’s wrong with you?

11:54:
What’s wrong with your authenticity?

11:56:
Your authenticity isn’t good enough, you know what I mean?

11:58:
When in truth, authenticity is also just an excuse for people to like, say and think and do whatever they want whenever they feel like it without having to pause to be strategic and to meet.

12:09:
The business where it’s at, and to meet the market where it’s at, and to meet the customer where it’s at, and to meet the team members where they’re at, right?

12:16:
The brand is the connective tissue, the space between all the people in the brand’s orbit, and that is so important to make sure that you are Building a business you want to be inside of, because no amount of fancy taglines and marketing campaigns are gonna help you build a sustainable business if you don’t want to be in the business.

12:38:
And I, you know, like, that’s not to say you can’t have passive income.

12:43:
But if you, you know, if your business or to say that sometimes it won’t be stressful, but back to that window of tolerance idea, like if your stress isn’t isn’t something you can channel, it’s not useful stress.

12:56:
We call in the nervous system you stress versus destress.

12:59:
If your business causes you distress, you have a big problem.

13:03:
And so many people are gonna just tell you to, you know, Push through that and I’m gonna say like don’t stop and ask yourself like what is out of alignment here because it matters to the bottom line, like your well-being matters.

13:19:
Yeah, I, I love that, you know, we got in here right at the start, so deep, and this is really insightful.

13:26:
Now I’m sure for the listeners, but also for myself here.

13:29:
But let’s dive a little bit deeper.

13:31:
You say a lot of times that, you know, brand is not a subset of marketing.

13:35:
It’s actually the foundation, you know, can you break that down for us?

13:39:
How do We end up getting it so backwards as an industry, like, you know, marketing, branding, we always keep clubbing it as a subset all the time.

13:47:
Well, I mean, I’ll answer that how do we get it so backwards part first because I think, I think a lot of it has to do with our language and the laziness of our language, right?

13:58:
So.

14:01:
The idea that there, there’s all these different words that are flying around, brand identity, brand, strategy, brand assets, right?

14:13:
And we also live in a culture that wants things to be tangible.

14:18:
People want to give you their money and they wanna get something tangible.

14:22:
And so, you know, in order to sell brand.

14:27:
It’s become like, OK, how do we make that more tangible?

14:29:
How do we make it more tangible?

14:30:
How do we make that more tangible?

14:31:
Oh, it’s a logo pack.

14:33:
You know what I mean, , but then it also becomes this part where like anybody who’s ever started a business knows that like, yes, a logo pack is valuable asset.

14:43:
Mhm.

14:43:
But it’s not always something that you want to invest in right away and that maybe you’re gonna reinvest in it in a year.

14:50:
So like, I started my business in this realm.

14:54:
My first business in this realm was Charlie Birch Consulting, and I was just like, OK, I’m gonna help these local businesses.

15:01:
This is right when we moved back to New Jersey, and I saw all these businesses that I had grown up patroning, you know, they were like part of the fabric of the community, and they were just having a really hard time modernizing.

15:12:
And their websites were just awful.

15:14:
Like, the customers it was like disrespectful to the customer to like have to deal with that kind of a website, and they were gonna lose business and they weren’t even gonna know they were gonna lose business because they have the idea that they’re just word of mouth foot traffic businesses and it’s like they were just not even paying attention to that.

15:29:
So I was like, I’ll just help these people with their website.

15:31:
But then you get the fact that you realize like, why is your website, which is a brand asset so bad because you don’t know what to put on it.

15:39:
Why don’t you know what to put on it?

15:41:
Because you never really stopped to think about how to translate what you do really well in person into a digital or tangible format, right?

15:50:
And that’s a lot harder.

15:52:
To do, it’s a lot harder to sell.

15:55:
Mhm.

15:57:
And so I think, you know, we just, it’s a, the marketplace is a living system and we are metabolically designed to choose the path of these.

16:08:
Resistance, right?

16:09:
And so the path of least resistance is to just slap a logo on stuff and check the branding box, you know, but the reality is that that’s not good enough.

16:20:
Especially now where we have This uprise of of personal brand, and this ties back into this idea of burnout, right?

16:31:
Like there’s so much narrative about personal brands, like, oh you have to have a personal brand, every business of the future is gonna have a, you know, a person who’s there business 101, like that’s when you go to a business class, that’s all I hear.

16:46:
And you’re supposed to be running a business and you’re supposed to be on LinkedIn 24/7.

16:50:
doing high quality engagement with everybody in your network’s post when you have 10,000 followers, not that I have 10,000 followers, but like, it’s just inhumane and unrealistic.

16:59:
And so the idea that if you look at the market and you look at the history of business, the history of business doesn’t have social media.

17:07:
The history of business doesn’t have personal brands.

17:10:
The history of business has brands that people bond with like Lego or like.

17:15:
Patagonia or like is there a spokesperson?

17:18:
Sure, but is my relationship with them?

17:21:
No.

17:21:
My relationships with the business because they took the time to create an identity that’s dynamic enough and clear enough that everybody inside the business can embody it consistently and allows you to bond.

17:36:
And so like, I feel like this is the thing that happens, especially for small businesses where you The, the shortcut, like the easy thing is to like be the personal brand, but then you hit a ceiling where you literally cannot continue to do everything yourself, but you’ve set this precedent that you’re the business.

17:56:
And anything else from that is inauthentic and disruptive to customer expectations when the real point of Brand is not just to make you look and sound good, but to set, meet and exceed expectations.

18:09:
Definitely, right?

18:10:
That’s a point.

18:12:
And we kind of want to dive deeper into like brand identity, you know, I’ve seen you say and post like it’s not just like fonts or your tone, right, but how your team really behaves at every touch point.

18:25:
So maybe like, you know, for our listeners here, you could share a real world example with like having that misalignment between departments can delete dilute a brand’s impact and kind of how do you get them back on track when you see such a scenario in your work?

18:41:
Yeah, , I don’t have that problem with my clients because we They hire us to no I’m kidding.

18:46:
, all my problems.

18:49:
I have these problems, right?

18:50:
It’s and, and I wanna say I’ll put like high level disclaimer like there is no perfect brand execution.

18:56:
It’s about are you paying attention and self-correcting on purpose or are you not paying attention and all the corrections are happening by default, right?

19:04:
That’s really the Most important thing is like not to, I’m not suggesting that there’s like some perfect way to do it, , but I do actually have a really good example.

19:15:
Actually there’s a, there’s a LinkedIn article about this because it was so infuriating to me that I had, I, I was like frustrated with these people, but .

19:26:
I am a mom.

19:28:
I have, I have two kids, and about a year ago, two Christmases ago, we bought my son like a room like ride on UTV like battery operated little car for the yard, and I bought the product in that comes with Amazon and so I was like, oh it’s like $25 to like, you know, have it be protected, which is like a $500 toy.

19:48:
So I was like, OK, cool, we’re gonna do that.

19:51:
Well, it broke and so I Pursue a claim.

19:55:
Well, on the website and in all the marketing about this product insurance, it says live customer support 24/7 chat and phone, right, all this just that, just that it’s like oh that makes me feel really good as a customer that if and when I have a claim, I’ll be able to talk to you, which is an increasingly rare.

20:20:
Phenomenon, you know, so that, that makes me feel good.

20:23:
So here we are, have to make a claim.

20:26:
So it’s 24/7.

20:27:
So I call the, the claim number.

20:29:
Hi, you’ve reached this company.

20:31:
Our offices are currently closed.

20:33:
Please call back during business hours.

20:36:
If this is not, please use our chat support on our website.

20:40:
I’m like, OK, so you just Blatantly lied about the 24/7.

20:44:
What’s happening here?

20:46:
I don’t have the expectation that I should be able to talk to somebody on the phone 24/7.

20:52:
That is not an expectation I brought to the table.

20:55:
That is an expectation.

20:56:
Created for you, yeah.

20:58:
Solicitly set and then immediately didn’t meet, right?

21:01:
And then Right away again, the chatbot is like, oh, this chatbot is broken, so I can’t get through to anybody, right?

21:13:
And so then the way that it’s set up on Amazon is that like there’s certain categories of products.

21:21:
But then when I finally got through to a person and I have the claim form, the reason I couldn’t do it through Amazon is because my product wasn’t an obvious fit into any of those categories of products, but they’re insuring everything.

21:34:
They’re just like kind of throwing these buckets out there, which is like understandable.

21:38:
But then I get the claim form and I don’t know how to fill it out any more than I knew how to fill out the digital form because I don’t fit.

21:47:
And I I can’t talk to a person.

21:50:
And then I so I send the claim form and then it triggers like this email sequence where they’re telling me that the, the claim is wrong.

21:57:
I need to send more information, blah blah blah blah.

22:00:
But because my Amazon account is shared with my mom, I have her phone number, somebody else’s her email and somebody else’s phone number.

22:08:
Calling them like, why?

22:09:
It won’t let me log in to view my, my thing.

22:12:
So it was just such a mess.

22:13:
It was like the whole thing was just like a giant mess.

22:15:
And I finally figured out, and this is the real kicker, the phone number that was associated with my account that was keeping me locked out of my customer dashboard was not my phone number.

22:25:
It was not my mom’s phone number.

22:26:
It was their internal phone number that had been linked to my account when they transferred me from one department to the other.

22:34:
Oh my God.

22:36:
It took me 3 weeks to file my claim.

22:39:
And I did.

22:40:
I got my money and I got my new car, and my kid is happy, but like, I have a full-time job, I have a family, and I’m doing the work, right?

22:49:
And this is like, don’t make it hard for your customers to give you their money or to give you.

22:56:
And that is the friction point, right?

22:58:
Like when you promise something in the marketplace because it is attractive.

23:03:
But then and everybody else is doing it, so why not?

23:06:
Yeah.

23:06:
And then the salesperson, not only are they contradicting it, but they’re like they didn’t even get the memo that they’re supposed to like slowly let you down off this lie or this, you know, inflated promise, and it just, even if it’s even if each siloed experience inherently fine and it’s not morally bankrupt, the friction and the inconsistency makes it on on a Implicit level and it’s like makes you be like, these people like don’t have their shit together, you know, or like, what’s going on here?

23:39:
And the thing again with psychology and energy nervous system, the implicit things, they don’t care about logic and they don’t care about time.

23:48:
The unconscious, which is the implicit learning system, does not recognize time.

23:53:
Once it knows something, that thing is happening all the time.

23:56:
So if you break trust with a customer, especially on a subtle level.

24:00:
Yeah.

24:01:
It’s always there now.

24:03:
It’s always there.

24:04:
It’s always informing their willingness to go deeper with you, even if they don’t know it.

24:10:
And that’s when you’re gonna get those like people who are, you know, haggling with you on price or ghosting you because they’re just like, I don’t really know, and they’re not gonna take the time to work through what it is about you, and they shouldn’t.

24:22:
They don’t owe you that, you know, , I hope that answers your question.

24:26:
I was gonna go.

24:30:
Firstly, I’m so sorry.

24:31:
That’s one horrible experience to go through.

24:34:
Like, I hate when you’re promised something, you promise the world and like, you know, everything in it, and then you get nothing even close to.

24:42:
I’ll tell you another like on the flip side of that, and I’ll give, I’ll name this company out loud, Vistaprint.

24:48:
I had a wonderful customer experience with Vistaprint where I ordered .

24:57:
Brochures for a client of ours.

24:59:
We designed this brochure that she was gonna take to a conference and it was kind of a quick project and we needed to get it ordered for her, , and mailed to her so she had them to take with her to the conference.

25:09:
And so I did the ordering on Vistaprint.

25:14:
And I put in her address wrong.

25:16:
So I got a notification that said, you know, the, the package has been delivered, and I was like, hey, Aretha, like, did you get your package?

25:24:
She’s like, No.

25:26:
And so I sent the picture that the, , you know, the delivery guy had put on the tracking page, and she’s like, that’s not even my building.

25:34:
Like it went like across the street to some other building.

25:37:
like, oh no, and I was like fully prepared.

25:40:
To afford the cost of express shipping it to her and having it, you know, just not having her pay twice and just like, OK, now I’m gonna pay for these brochures and I’m gonna have them express shipped and I’m just gonna eat it and honestly it would have made the project like almost unprofitable because it was such a small project to begin with.

26:00:
And I called the Vistaprint people and I immediately was put to like this is the right department, but the number was the right place.

26:08:
I didn’t have to.

26:09:
Be on hold.

26:10:
I talked to a nice guy and he was like, you know what, we’re gonna send it out express for free, no extra charge, no problem.

26:16:
Amazing, yeah.

26:18:
You know, and I was like, I, you are, this is the best customer experience I’ve had probably in a decade, honestly, you know, it was like, here you’re a human and you’re hooking a human up.

26:28:
Now I know not all businesses have the resources to absorb my mistake.

26:32:
But I just like it was so, it made my day.

26:38:
I remember.

26:38:
Right, like it stayed with you long enough to come to a podcast and talk about it that’s how is aligned with what they say they’re all about, like making, making it super easy and enjoyable to like bring your ideas to life and those promises that, you know, it’s, I mean, think about it if it was a dating profile, right?

26:58:
Like on a, on OkCupid or whatever your profile dating profile is, and you get to the date and the person has.

27:07:
You know, 30 more pounds, is 20 years older.

27:10:
Yeah.

27:11:
They, oh, they don’t work there anymore.

27:12:
They got fired last week, you know what I mean?

27:14:
And everything about it was not the same.

27:17:
You’d be like, but then you have, I have a, I had a sales call with somebody like last year, and they wanted me to create 5 different brands for the same business.

27:28:
OK.

27:29:
So they could target different audiences because this customer demographic, but it wasn’t like, oh we’re gonna create.

27:37:
5 different.

27:39:
It was like, oh, this person wants us to be this, this person wants us to be this.

27:45:
And it wasn’t even like we’re gonna test what works, but they were like, I know how to manipulate this person this way and this person this way and this person this way, and then they’re just gonna come to us and we’re gonna get their, get their money.

27:57:
And I was like, yeah, I mean 5 branding projects, that’s like $300,000 worth of work, but I was like, not doing that.

28:05:
Yeah.

28:06:
Yeah.

28:07:
Definitely, like that’s just I don’t even know what standard your doctor to have to do that.

28:13:
That’s some desperation right there to really sell out their van.

28:19:
But one question I really want to ask you is like, you know, we’re in a time where AI is being used to automate everything from email flows to.

28:26:
Chatbots, but that also means like the tools are interacting with customers on behalf of the brand.

28:32:
How should teams kind of think about brand behavior when AI becomes a touch point and like, you know, just your thoughts in this era of kind of AI taking the lead.

28:43:
I have tons and you know, I think it’s probably because my business is humanized.

28:47:
You might be, you know, primed to think that I’m like an anti-AI person.

28:51:
My opinion about technology in general is that it’s only as valuable as the human endeavors we use it to propel, right?

29:01:
, and I think there’s a lot of real concerns in the marketplace right now about .

29:09:
AI displacing human beings.

29:12:
But I think it’s also like an important thing to realize that we’re not entitled to a specific type of work, right?

29:21:
Like, my mom and dad, when they had their company, they had a word processing department.

29:27:
OK.

29:28:
A department.

29:29:
My mom manually cut and paste and white out her proposals.

29:34:
Like, do we not introduce word processing software because those people are gonna lose their jobs?

29:39:
No, we adapt, right?

29:40:
And it’s scary and like, but to your point, I think I’ve been experimenting with AI a ton this year.

29:48:
, we have one client in particular who is a writer, and I’ve been.

29:52:
Trying so hard to get her to like let me do more of her work because she’s, she’s, she just can’t write at even as a strong writer, she can’t write the volume that the marketplace demands, right?

30:04:
And so and driver’s block is real, right?

30:08:
But is real, right?

30:09:
And I think what what we’re working on right now actually is, , I’m working on with a colleague of mine, a joint.

30:16:
Offering that will empower a VA team to do engagement on social for the brand and or for the different leadership in the brand with their voice.

30:28:
So our tool which I gave you the link, the brand IDQ is designed to ask questions that tap into the unconscious of the founder’s mind and create a psychographic for the brand that’s distinct.

30:41:
From the founders, right?

30:42:
So the questions will be like, we, not you, not I, we as an entity, this, we as an entity that.

30:50:
And so what it will produce at the end is a a diagnostic of what your brand’s innate purpose or core motive is, how you can use that as a what kind of decisions are recommended around.

31:05:
that purpose, what to be mindful of, what to watch for.

31:09:
So like in the, in the case of an AI chat, like, let’s hope that somebody is watching those logs and, you know, let’s say you’re like our brand is the core purpose is to create order amongst like within chaos and we do that with, you know, clear systems, with structure, with boundaries, with If you know, 50% or more of the customer experiences coming through those chatbots are confusion, then I’m not, then something’s gone wrong and I can go back, but it’s also really important to Again, back up, that brand isn’t just voice.

31:49:
It’s not just like, oh, here’s a tone that has 4 dimensions, and here’s like a list of words that we use and like 7 or 8 pieces of copy that are like our core motive.

32:00:
You have to give the the software behavioral guidelines and logic.

32:08:
You can build a mind, right?

32:09:
It’s almost like our model has the core motive which has recommended decision making, you know, recommended decision making like guardrails kind of, , things to be mindful of.

32:22:
And then we have three emotive styles which makes the emotive triad.

32:25:
So, , and this is all based in like young and depth psychology, geek, me, , but the 3 emo, the motive triads.

32:35:
The mode of styles, you’ll have each style has a need, and it’s not just like a need that the, it’s not like, oh, my customers need ice cream.

32:43:
Now, it’s like the brand needs this.

32:46:
The brand needs this thing.

32:48:
Then you have the core beliefs and the needs and the core beliefs together inform what the habits of the individuals.

32:55:
are in their own like just like sit down at my desk and I’m in finance in the business.

33:01:
I’m in customer support in the business.

33:02:
I’m in marketing in the business.

33:04:
These are the types of habits that are going to help me activate those energies in my work and then similarly, there’s a bucket of behavioral guidelines called what we call relational strategies which How you show up in relationship to a person and that could be at a networking event or it could be at a presentation or it could be with a customer or it could be, you know, with a prospect, right?

33:26:
And so we have that framework and what I’ve been working on this year is backing that framework up into the configuration of a GBT we’re actually testing right now how , we can take those unique configurations of each of our client’s brand, take that, pair that with their knowledge base, and make it an engine that they can use to.

33:49:
, replicate their engagement online because this shit’s not right.

33:53:
It’s just so it’s my language.

33:54:
It’s inhumane the way that we are expected to be available to and so anyone who’s like griping at people about using AI as a comment tool and just like take, take a beat.

34:09:
Right?

34:09:
Like you’re using AI to schedule your content, right?

34:12:
Why shouldn’t I be able to use AI to engage with it if it’s if it’s grounded in Right, it’s a capacity builder, not, not a way to check out, and that’s the problem.

34:25:
If you’re gonna use it as a way to check out and you’re not gonna monitor, you know, but I think on the front end of training the channels, giving.

34:34:
it behavioral logic is really important and not just like plastering brand voice because also it’s a lot, especially if you’re using GPT as like your base.

34:44:
I don’t have as much experience with like Claude and I’m not a developer, so I don’t have any experience like building something from the ground, but .

34:52:
GPT has its own behavioral logic which even when I tell it not to do those things, it’s really a lot of coaching to be not itself, right?

35:03:
Like the exclamatory, oh my God, that’s the best idea ever.

35:07:
Like what I just told you today and it’s like you are a genius and it’s like I know like.

35:16:
I’m a genius, you know, and, , and then of course the, the, , dash dilemma, which I love it.

35:24:
I love a good sick of hearing about them, but I do, I’d love an M dash, but I’ve told my GBP to like I’ll put my own M dashes in.

35:32:
OK, let me be, I don’t need you to be my own M-dash authority, but I hope that answers your question.

35:39:
No, definitely, I know we’re coming towards the end of our.

35:42:
Recession here today, but what you said about like, you know, not being kind of afraid of AI it is something that’s coming.

35:49:
And even for jobs, like, you know, like you said, there were things that were being done before that, you know, we didn’t have the need for then, but then like, like everything, the internet boom, right?

36:01:
I’m sure there were a lot of jobs displaced then, where people are doing just fine and Better off because we, we as humans can be adaptable and that should be our biggest strength.

36:12:
And I think when it comes to AI personally also, I’m with you in this like this isn’t something that’s optional anymore to begin with also, right?

36:21:
So if your competitors are doing this and they’re already getting ahead and building their capacities and there’s more that they can do with their time.

36:28:
And you’re not utilizing cause you’re concerned, then you’re just like, you know, lagging behind in the race and you’re not able to really put yourself out there, , as much as, you know, other people are.

36:40:
So, I, I really, I would like to thank you so much for like, you know, this deep and refreshing perspective.

36:47:
I know.

36:47:
I learned a lot and I’m sure like, you know, our listeners will too.

36:51:
I just for like, you know, people who do want to reach out to you for brands that like, you know, business owners that maybe want to kind of get consulting work or branding help and advice from you, where can they really reach out to you?

37:04:
Yeah, sure.

37:04:
I’m very active on LinkedIn.

37:06:
I I will respond to a connection request.

37:11:
I might not accept it if it doesn’t have a note, but, , usually I, usually I do accept the connection requests that I get and try to start a conversation with people, so you feel free to reach out to me that way.

37:23:
You can also email me directly charlie@humanizecollective.com.

37:27:
Humanize does not have an E.

37:29:
, and our website is humanized Collective.com.

37:33:
, if you’re interested in the brand IDQ framework that is available on our website for free.

37:41:
It’s a complimentary tool.

37:43:
And then the next step up from that is like a Results integration call and that’s with me where we would look at, you know, any questions or things you might have about the results that you got.

37:55:
, also in that tool is designed to stand alone like the call is an, is an optional add-on, , but there is instructions on the results page about how to start taking the insight and converting it into action.

38:10:
If you’re in more of a DIY frame, I’m Very much come from a my bootstrap background, so I make a really strong point of making sure that our philosophy is accessible to anyone who’s interested in deploying it, .

38:28:
Yeah, and also I will, the other thing I’ll add is that we are in June, we are launching what we call the inner circle, which is our take on virtual networking without an elevator pitch firing squad.

38:42:
, so if anybody’s interested in like networking different online, there’s information about how to request an invitation to that on our website and our podcast.

38:52:
Mhm.

38:54:
I hopefully gonna launch in July.

38:57:
So follow along for information.

38:59:
Yeah.

39:00:
Definitely.

39:00:
That’s the most information I have about that right now.

39:03:
We haven’t even picked the title yet, so, , that’s very exciting.

39:07:
Congratulations.

39:08:
, you’re doing some amazing.

39:10:
Things and it’s so refreshing to, you know, kind of hear such an integrated perspective and such a forward thinking perspective also because you’re definitely here to shift mindsets.

39:21:
So thank you so much to you for this episode today and for the listeners that tune in to learn more.

39:27:
, we’ll be back and keep catching us up for, you know, getting the best insights and what’s happening in the marketing industry as well as data and AI.

39:36:
Thank you so much, everyone.

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