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S3 Summer Edition - Dee Heffernan
8 Plays3 days ago
In this episode of Dial It In, Trygve talks with his friend Dee Heffernan, the founder of MATRIARC, a brand strategy agency. Dee shares the origin of their friendship, stemming from snarky exchanges during a Zoom meeting two years ago, and how they became close despite never meeting in person. The episode highlights Dee's journey, including her impactful TEDx talk on 'How to Stop Highlight Reel Living,' which delves into personal struggles and her relationship with ambition rooted in her athletic background. Dee discusses the essence of branding, emphasizing the importance of understanding customer psychology, creating compelling personas, and maintaining brand standards. She also explains her agency's approach to rapid project execution, the significance of strategic planning, and how effective branding addresses customer needs to drive business growth.
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Dial It In' and Special Episode
00:00:08
Speaker
Welcome to Dial It In, a podcast where we talk to fascinating people about marketing, sales, process improvements, and tricks that they use to grow their businesses. Join me, Dave Meyer, and Trigby Olson of BusyWeb as we bring you interviews on how the best in their fields are dialing it in their organizations.
00:00:26
Speaker
Let's ring up another episode.
00:00:30
Speaker
Hey everybody, welcome back to the dial it in summer schedule. We're bringing back some of our favorite episodes of the last season.
Meeting and Inspiration from D
00:00:37
Speaker
This particular episode was really valuable to me because it was a personal friend and it's an odd personal friend. i met D two years ago when we were adversaries on different sides of a deal.
00:00:48
Speaker
And we ended up using the zoom instant messenger to make snarky comments to the, to talk, crack. Ah, shit. Let me start over.
00:01:00
Speaker
All right. It's had my voice. This isn't clear today.
00:01:07
Speaker
All right. Hey everybody. Welcome back to another summer episode of the dial it in podcast. Today's episode is one of the favorites of mine from last season. This was the episode with my friend D and I met her a couple of years ago when we were adversaries on different sides of a deal.
00:01:24
Speaker
We ended up using the Zoom instant messenger on the meeting we were on to make snarky comments to the side that nobody but us could see. And for some reason, she and I have instantly become great friends and she's been become a confident of mine in my personal life, even though I've never actually met her in person.
00:01:42
Speaker
Then I listened to her TED talk and I learned why. Her TED talk on your own highlight reel hurt me in all the good ways as she laid out so many things that I've personally struggled with my entire life and she and I have never even talked about. So I'm lucky to have her as a friend. I'm lucky that she graces me and considers me a friend and even more so that we were able to do this episode together. so it's a very special episode. i hope you enjoy it and we'll see you next week.
00:02:10
Speaker
Hey everybody, welcome back. It's another episode of Dial It in I'm Trig and I'm running relatively solo today. Dave's not with me, but Nicole, producer Nicole's here as
Episode Sponsorship and Movie Parallels
00:02:20
Speaker
always. Say hi, Nicole.
00:02:22
Speaker
Hi, everyone. I am super excited to have one of my favorite people on the podcast today because she's grown exponentially over the last 12 months. So it's going be great.
00:02:34
Speaker
and ah Before we get into that, we have an actual sponsor and from an actual company for the pod now. So I'm excited. I am too. I'm really excited.
00:02:45
Speaker
Today's episode is brought to you by DataQuick, the ultimate tool for HubSpot CRM administrators and data architects. DataQuick seamlessly exports your HubSpot CRM architecture into an interactive user-friendly map, streamlining data mapping, cleanup, and organization.
00:03:03
Speaker
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00:03:18
Speaker
Visit dataquick.com to get started to get today. And I fumbled the last part. It's dataquick.o, C-O, to get started today.
00:03:29
Speaker
So, Nicole, have you ever seen ah the movie Step Brothers? No. The terrible Will Ferrell movie. And where two people who aren't really alike suddenly became stepbrothers.
00:03:43
Speaker
And there's this great scene when they finally realize that they have all these commonalities they look at each other and they go, did we just become best friends? And the answer was, yup. And that's how I feel about our guest today.
00:03:55
Speaker
We are wildly different, yet also really not at the same time.
Introducing D Heffernan: Brand Strategist and TEDx Speaker
00:04:00
Speaker
And our guest today is Dee Heffernan. She is all about authenticity and impact. As the founder of Matriarch, a brand strategy agency, she helps businesses build identities that don't just stand out, they truly connect.
00:04:14
Speaker
She is also a TEDx speaker, and she understands the power of storytelling, showing how genuine purpose-driven branding can make all the difference. Her journey is fueled by a passion for marketing and a unique ability to help brands find their voice in today's fast-paced world.
00:04:32
Speaker
Her approach is as real as it gets, inspiring brands to embrace what makes them unique. And most importantly, I would have absolutely no shot of beating her on a basketball court.
00:04:43
Speaker
ah so
00:04:46
Speaker
Welcome D I'm so glad to be able to hang out with you again Thank you, Trigvi. always love chatting with you. I've been really looking forward, genuinely looking forward to this day in this conversation because i just know we're going to, we just connect so well.
00:05:00
Speaker
Absolutely. Thank you for having me and thank you for the lovely intro.
D's Journey to TEDx and the Theme of Authenticity
00:05:04
Speaker
Sure. And thank you for, I was telling you before we got started that i I just watched your Ted talk and I cried a little during it, not a little, I cried during it for a little bit a amount of time. How did you, we can certainly talk about that, but I'm curious, how does one become a Ted talk speaker?
00:05:20
Speaker
Oh, it's a fun story. So a friend of mine who is a colleague, friend, also in the brand space, we met a few years ago serendipitously at a bonfire of a mutual friend.
00:05:32
Speaker
And we kind of just, as happens, we follow each other on LinkedIn and our communication waxed and waned over the last couple of years until one day, about six months ago, she texts me out of the blue and is, hey,
00:05:44
Speaker
am one of the speaker curators for a TEDx talk here in Chicagoland, and I think that you'd be great. um Do you have anything that you want to share? And she preempted it by saying that she follows some of my LinkedIn content, which...
00:06:00
Speaker
is a lot about my journey as a careerist, as a provider for my family. And I do talk about marketing, but mostly I talk about my personal experience, which maybe it belongs more on like Facebook or Instagram, but I love LinkedIn and I spend a lot of time there. I guess it worked because she was like, hey, I think that maybe you would be a good fit. You should apply.
00:06:21
Speaker
And I was like, I don't really have any big idea like the TEDx platform asks us. It's like ideas worth sharing. And she said, I think maybe there's something in your history or your background. And i immediately thought about if I really dig back into my relationship with ambition, which is a lot of what I talk about on LinkedIn, it all starts with my dad.
00:06:41
Speaker
And it starts with my relationship to basketball and my identity as a collegiate athlete. But before that, a young athlete. And I was like, if I'm going to go into this, I'm going to go in deep.
00:06:52
Speaker
So that's really what happened. i I submitted like a paragraph or two on this idea and was chosen as one of the people to do this event. And it's what's truly interesting about it is I've watched a lot of TED talks and they're all sort of business or aspirational and yours is and aspirational as much as it is deeply cutting and personal.
00:07:13
Speaker
Yeah. yes yeah you You opened up a vein and then shared it with somebody. Yeah. What was that like to do that in front of a crowd? Because I'm assuming you did it front of a crowd, right?
00:07:24
Speaker
Yeah, so the title of the talk is How to Stop Highlight Real Living. And the title actually was adjusted by TED. When they upload your talk, like it goes, so the organizers of this TEDx talk were is TEDx Arlington Heights.
00:07:39
Speaker
And they then do all of the the producing of the talk. They have the camera crews and they have the green room and they've got all the the tech stuff. And then they bring in, they have a license for a certain number of people to come in and watch the talk live.
00:07:53
Speaker
And then you submit the talks once they're recorded and edited and you give them your or the organizers give like the talk titles. And the original talk title that I came up with was about healing the real.
00:08:05
Speaker
But I guess Ted figured that maybe that wasn't clickable enough. i don't know. So they said how to stop it. But the point of my talk was about healing this thing that happens in, I think, many of us, if not all of us. And i it's become even more top of mind for me because I'm a parent of three kids.
Parental Expectations and Personal Growth
00:08:24
Speaker
Two my oldest kids are two of my identical twin daughters, and they play basketball now. And in parenting, I've learned that I've observed myself see them grow and see them follow their own ambitions and follow their own interests.
00:08:39
Speaker
And it's reflected back at me, some of the lesser healed parts of myself, what I view as success, what I view as being good enough, how I fuel my ambitions as an entrepreneur, as somebody who is the main breadwinner in my family,
00:08:54
Speaker
i have a built in pressure to perform and to quote unquote succeed. But my upbringing set me up in a way where my vision of success was 100% driven externally from me.
00:09:10
Speaker
Was is it good enough for my dad? Did I get enough trophies? Did I get to play in college? Do people love me now, ultimately? And it followed me in my entire life. And it it still does.
00:09:21
Speaker
i don't know if we ever truly, fully heal those old parts of ourselves. I think we just integrate them and keep peeling the onion. And so I've gotten to a place personally where I've healed enough and I've unlocked that internal drive for going after my ambitions based on my own visions of success that I wanted to share it because that gives me a lot of fulfillment. So for me,
00:09:44
Speaker
you know Writing this was an act of practiced integrity. Am I speaking just for the fluff of it or am I actually living something that I can share and that when I listen back at it or it it lives in that space forever, do I continue to live in integrity with it?
00:10:01
Speaker
Wow. It's stunning. And we're going to make sure that we link to it in the show notes. So if you have any interest, and go to our website so you can see it or check out these sites as well. I had a lot of personal resonance with it, especially because I'm a father too. the And my son is now getting into activities. And ah in my heart, i I have that feeling of wanting to scream at him to box out.
00:10:28
Speaker
Huh. but also realizing that he has no idea what that means. He's also just trying to have a good time and he's the enjoyment on his face needs to be the victory enough. Yes.
00:10:39
Speaker
Yes. and As opposed to the winning, because the winning is my curse. It's not his. And that's so true. And what I observe in myself when I watch my girls play, because I tell this story at the end of my talk about now my perspective as a parent being in the stands, it's remarkable how you can have this intellectually. I know what it's like to be lectured in the car on the way home and to be crying after games where, hey, my team won, but I didn't hit that 20 point marker that my dad had set for me.
00:11:09
Speaker
And so I had taken all this pressure on myself And as a child, our brains aren't fully formed and we're still dependent on our parents and so their rejection is just amplified. And I don't think that parents truly understand that even when we become parents, it's we forget that we were once that kid who was just wanting our parent to be cool with us.
00:11:30
Speaker
And i observe now almost after every game that my kids, they play multiple sports and but they do play basketball. And parents, you see it like the kid who's got a lot of talent on the team or maybe is a starter or whatever.
00:11:46
Speaker
Their parent, they've got inevitably a parent who berates them after the game. That the kid is walking off the court crying before they've even seen their parent because they know what that car ride home is going to be like.
00:11:59
Speaker
Yeah. And... I just every time I see that, I want to go up to the parent and shake them and be like, this isn't helping anyone.
00:12:09
Speaker
This isn't helping your kid grow. therere It's breaking off the confidence that they have inside of themselves that they're going to have to rebuild later on in life when they're 40 and they've been in a job that they hate.
00:12:23
Speaker
because they're trying to win their boss's approval or they're trying to win their peers approval. it's It's this thing that just keeps snowballing unless you address it. And I believe that if we can address it early on, especially with athletes, but also with anybody like kids who are, who excel in art or music or school, where their parents are just constantly like on their ass about it, just chill out.
00:12:48
Speaker
It's not worth it. So that that's my mantra. You said you had questions for me yeah bar about your TED talk. So yeah, let's make this interesting. Okay. So what really resonated? Like, when did you start feeling in yourself, like an emotional connection to the content?
00:13:05
Speaker
When you started talking about having to measure up to your father's expectations, because I had expectations from my parents too, because my parents were national champion speech and debate coaches, college speech and debate coaches.
00:13:25
Speaker
They had won all or part of a national championship for six straight years. Wow. And yeah. And so when I started, they were hanging out with all these kids and all these amazing people and they were going to all these events and they were winning all these trophies and I was at home with grandma or something.
00:13:46
Speaker
Or the kid who didn't travel or something like that. I heard all these stories about how much fun and how awesome everything was. And do I think that my parents meant for that to damage me?
00:13:57
Speaker
No, of course not. They were doing their job. They're educators. They were trying to do right by the kids that they were teaching. What it set for me was it set a standard of you have to meet this because that's where the attention goes. And that's where the, that's where the glory is.
00:14:13
Speaker
Yeah. the I did debate in high school and I was incredibly good at it. and And my coach, who's still a mentor that I talked to this day, he kept asking me, you you even want to be here? Do you even want to win?
00:14:29
Speaker
The answer was no to both, but I had to. I had to win. Now, did you say to him, no, or did you say yes? I said, yes, I want to be here. But but later, my answer and my answer in retrospect is, no, I don't want to be here. I have to be here.
00:14:47
Speaker
And I have to win. I had a similar experience, when you as you said, that in college. So I went on to play basketball in college. That was my dad's whole goal the whole time was that I had to get to college. can play.
00:14:58
Speaker
And so I did. And I remember, think it was my, maybe my junior season is when it all came crashing down for me. i ended up quitting at the end of my junior season, which was and unfathomable to think that I had gone through all everything only to quit just before my crowning glory, just to use your word, of being that senior that gets celebrated.
00:15:19
Speaker
i was just so burned out. But I had this one time we were at an away game and my coach came into my hotel room and she was like, hey, Like, what's up? i'm trying to I'm trying to reach you and I just don't know where your head's at. Do you even wanna be here?
00:15:34
Speaker
And I was so, i don't know, mad, frustrated, defeated at that time. i wasn't starting. I thought I needed to be starting. my My dad, who had been in every single game in my youth, now a thousand plus miles away, he wasn't there anymore. he didn't, in my view, he had lost interest. And I was like, now what?
00:15:55
Speaker
But I remember still fighting for that, being like, yeah, i do want to be here. Just play me more. Right. And in retrospect, I'm sure all everything that I was giving was saying the opposite.
00:16:07
Speaker
And in my case, one of the things that I've realized way too late is...
00:16:16
Speaker
I don't know how to qualify what my parents did. to where they Did they actively want to make me into the person that am? Somewhat, yes. Somewhat, no. On the other hand, did they do their best?
00:16:29
Speaker
Yeah. And am my my ah my inability to give things up and my constant need to win is ah shackle that I can never really give up, but I can't harness.
00:16:40
Speaker
in different ways.
Realizing Personal Desires
00:16:41
Speaker
But I think what I learned, and I think you had even talked about this, is just giving your your parents the grace to say, i am who I am because of this, and it hurt too at the same time. And two things can be true at the same time.
00:16:58
Speaker
yeah That's so true. And yeah that's maturity. That's seeing it. I think that's a healed way to look at it or moving into that place where Yeah, it did hurt. And when I was actually writing this, because the process of doing the TEDx talk, at least for me and for this producer, is you have to write everything out and you really operate from a script.
00:17:21
Speaker
yeah As I was writing into this for months, I was going into, actually have it in my office right now. I have this scrapbook that my dad made me. He sent it to me for Christmas, I don't know, five years ago or something.
00:17:33
Speaker
And it's a scrapbook of all these newspaper clippings, like tons of them and pictures in the newspaper. And he kept letters that that had been sent to the house from colleges.
00:17:45
Speaker
um I had no idea he kept all this stuff. And he even had, there's pictures of us from, or my old running those race bibs when you run like 5Ks because I started running really young with him.
00:17:59
Speaker
um And when he first gave me the book, I just threw it up on a top shelf in a closet in the basement. I was like, whatever. um And I talk more about that in the talk, obviously, that kind of like rejection of who I was and that whole experience for so long.
00:18:17
Speaker
But what you're getting at, what you just said and and what I'm trying to get at in this story is that I realized in looking through that scrapbook just how dedicated he was. and how much he poured into me from a place that I believe he believes and I believe is a place of love.
00:18:35
Speaker
yeah He wanted what was best for me. He was proud of me. The way he went about it was something that I think we could all debate. like But what I'm starting to appreciate now is that I wouldn't have played it. I wouldn't have gotten, gone to the University of Chicago if I didn't play that sport. It was a wonderful school and a great experience.
00:18:55
Speaker
And I have a lot of way, a lot of strengths that I can now channel that discipline of an athlete, the determination to follow through with things, that internal grit and the mental toughness and the desire, as you said, like to compete.
00:19:08
Speaker
And I can channel that into my life. Now I know where I want to channel it, which is that's the healed part. But yeah, I think you do, but you do hold, it's all there all the time, right? And I think the second thing that really resonated with me was you're talking about meeting with your therapist and your therapist. So great. Now that you're free, what do you want? You're like, I don't know.
00:19:26
Speaker
and I believe that in my life too, that my parents just wanted me to be happy and to blaze my own trail. But I was so bent on winning and not even understanding what that actually meant for me that I still to this day have trouble answering the question.
00:19:43
Speaker
What would you like? I don't know. I, what do you mean? What do I want? I, I, yeah. Yeah. It sounds like an ah absurd question when that question comes to you and you're like, I think that, I think it's healthy to ask yourself that question periodically and not know because At the same time, if there's people that say we have to have a five year plan, a 10 year plan, this big vision. And
Creating a Legacy and Building Matriarch
00:20:09
Speaker
ah to be honest, my parents are entrepreneurs and they have built a business over the last 40 years.
00:20:14
Speaker
That is their that's their world. That's their vision and that's their success. And that's what they poured themselves into. I don't know if I'm going to be still doing what I'm doing right here, right now, today, 20 from now or 30 years from now.
00:20:28
Speaker
And so I have to constantly be asking myself, how does this feel? Is this am I growing? Am I changing in a way that I want to? And for me, I worked for my parents business for many years, and that also added a level of complexity because now here I am in a family business where your calling or your destiny is now an extension of your parents calling and their destiny.
00:20:56
Speaker
And it's not like anybody was saying, now you have to work here. You can't go anywhere else. ive I fought for my position in that company for many years because I really wanted my destiny to be an extension. I wanted to be part of that legacy story.
00:21:10
Speaker
And it took a lot of time and therapy for me to realize that I will always be part of that legacy story because I grew up in the business and I was part of it for so many years. But I can also create my own legacy in a lot of different ways. yeah And so what does that look like?
00:21:25
Speaker
Yeah. And that's how I resolved it too, is their legacy. a Yeah. my my Mine is is yet to be written. What I think is so interesting about you and I on the whole is both and i have both you and I have this odd desire to win at all costs.
00:21:39
Speaker
And the way in which we've channeled it is by using our talents to help other people. And that's what led you to start your branding agency, Matriarch.
00:21:51
Speaker
Okay. So you and I met. Yes. When you were a fret you were a fractional CMO for an investment firm based in California.
00:22:02
Speaker
That's right. An investment banking firm. And we were looking to do a HubSpot migration. And as a fractional CMO, what you do is you become the head of the marketing function, marketing department. You sit on the leadership team and you make ah decisions and you have full accountability for anything that happens in marketing. The difference is that you're not really part of that company. You're still independent. Either you're working through another agency or you're working for yourself.
00:22:31
Speaker
Part of what I love about the the work in the work of being a fractional CMO and part of what I love about leading teams is i have like hardly any tolerance for wasting time.
00:22:44
Speaker
I don't like being in meetings that I'm not needed in. I don't like people going around in circles and not coming to the point. I like to make decisions and take swift action action. I think that might be a little bit of the athlete in me. I just want to get to it.
00:22:58
Speaker
Yep. And so you and I had a lot of resonance when we were exploring that partnership. As is common, there's four or five people on the call and everyone's looking to everybody else for how is this call going to go? What are we going to talk about? And a lot of companies and a lot of vendors, they like meander around. Let me show you the features and functions of this thing where, you know,
00:23:22
Speaker
a CEO or a CMO or the leader of a company is saying, what are you doing for me? How does this apply to my problem and my unique needs? And i just love having that role in a company. I think that there's a lot of success that can come from it.
00:23:37
Speaker
And I feel like I can help my clients move faster and go further with a lot less headache when you just cut straight to the heart of what do we need to make happen here?
00:23:48
Speaker
And how can we get off this call faster? And I felt that we aligned on that. And so that was really nice. And thought to myself, I really love this work. And how can I have more of an impact?
00:23:59
Speaker
How can i make scale myself and scale my own efforts? And I've been consulting for the better part of the last 20 years. And I've always had a dream of having a team of my own. So the thing about being a fractional CMO as well is you go in and you build other people's teams.
00:24:15
Speaker
And I had been pondering this notion that, OK, I'm the independent that goes in and helps build teams. And I could point out all the dysfunctions and other teams and then to go in and make these adjustments.
00:24:28
Speaker
But I've always wanted my own team because my impact can only go as far as the number of hours I have in a single given day. And so Matriarch is a collective of strategists and marketers and creatives who have come together to deliver that impact. And I'm a fractional CMO. I'm the the head strategist, but I actually grew up.
00:24:52
Speaker
My first job out of college was actually telephone sales in the yellow pages. i'm not sure if you knew that. But I was selling yellow page ads when I first got out of college. And for those of you who are under 40, you should Wikipedia. What is a yellow?
00:25:04
Speaker
ah Oh, yeah, that's right. Yeah, it was a thing. I liked it, but it was a little bit the creative side of me needed an outlet. And so fortunately, I had a friend who was really great at burning DVDs, and he burned me a copy of Photoshop and Dreamweaver.
00:25:20
Speaker
and like the original Adobe Creative Suite. And I taught myself how to use Photoshop. And I started freelance web design where I would design the front end. I'd write the copy and give write the pitch.
00:25:33
Speaker
And then i would hire someone, find somebody, a freelancer to develop the website and turn on the lights for me. And I did that for a few years and gradually I networked with more people and I literally had no, I went to the University of Chicago, which is a very theoretical education. It's amazing. It teaches you how to think and how to question and how to work.
00:25:52
Speaker
But i didn't learn anything about marketing at the University of Chicago. I didn't know what branding was. I didn't know what marketing really was. I just knew that you're a company, you need to sell something. You need a convincing way to get that in front of other people.
00:26:06
Speaker
And so I was like, oh, I do websites. And then someone was like, oh, you do branding. And yes, I do branding. Sure do. Yep. And it just grew and evolved. So the entrepreneur in me is like this layering the opportunities. And gradually I was working with larger companies and I still love to design. i designed Matriarch's website and branding myself. And I have a pretty heavy hand in the creative direction of a lot of the product projects that we conduct there.
00:26:31
Speaker
But also, we are now offering team activation services. We have three primary services. We have strategic planning, which is like we're looking out at the horizon of what we want to accomplish with our company.
00:26:43
Speaker
What's the strategic marketing plan or the product innovation plan? Or we our values and our mission statement is stale and we want to launch some new campaign around it. How do we do that?
00:26:54
Speaker
So my team comes in and we really put our brains on How do we get from here to there? Then we have this team activation arm, which is what I was just saying about teams.
00:27:05
Speaker
a lot of the time go, there's all this talent that kind of gets underutilized because we don't really know all the way how to blend our talents or get out of our own way. when we need to come bring those great ideas to the surface and make a plan for them.
00:27:20
Speaker
So um we're really looking forward to working with organizations that they need some visioning or some workshops around getting their thoughts crystallized. And then of course we do the brand strategy and design where we do everything from complete transformations to um impact campaigns.
00:27:38
Speaker
So this is like the impact campaign world is where I see a huge amount of opportunity for us because going back to the TED talk and like where my heart is, it's this Dove's Real Beauty campaign, for instance, like that level of amplification is massive. The amount of kids and women and people that see those campaigns is huge, but I'd probably do it a little bit differently.
00:28:04
Speaker
And so I wanted to come to have my own agency where I can follow those leads and hopefully someday have one of those ads nice and big on the Super Bowl so that everyone can see just how wrong they are about everything. I'm just kidding.
00:28:19
Speaker
and So they could see the light. It's a jaw-dropping. You talk about telephone sales because one of my first jobs out of college was working for an ad agency. And the most memorable thing that we did was there was a client who called and didn't get his yellow pages ad in on time. And what could we do?
00:28:37
Speaker
And the person creative director at the time was still a dear friend said, yep, no problem. And, and he did a Photoshop and ah I was like, don't know what you're going to do with this.
00:28:51
Speaker
and And then he ah one night at five o'clock, he said, great. I need you to come with me tonight and don't worry, you're paid, but i need your help. Take this box. I was like, what?
00:29:03
Speaker
Okay. Took the box. We went to the Yellow Pages distribution facility. And he had bribed somebody $500 to be left alone with, I think, 5,000 Yellow Pages books. Oh, my God.
00:29:18
Speaker
And we sat there and there were four of us. He opened the box and that that ad that he had made, he had gotten transposed onto a sticker. And we put that sticker on the front page of every single Yellow Page book.
00:29:32
Speaker
for five five thousand and it was such a creative way around the problem but yeah i think there's one more thing that you probably had a lot of fun doing that too yeah Yeah, it was an important lesson and for me because sometimes there are always creative solutions around everything.
00:29:49
Speaker
and And we didn't do anything at least. We did a couple maybe minorly, but that was a long time ago. And hopefully the fact that limitations is running since I just admitted to it on tape, but there are a lot, if your job is sales and you have to get in front of somebody, I advocate for this all the time.
00:30:07
Speaker
Stop calling and emailing, show up. Bring a dozen donuts, bring flowers, bring something, show up and remind people why you're there, why you're supposed to make their life better. Cause nobody else does that. Everybody's just sending emails and sending the same BS three line LinkedIn thing about here's what I do.
00:30:26
Speaker
he Click here for a 15 minute with me. Oh, you didn't tell me what you wanted. You didn't tell me how my life was supposed to be better or what value you're providing. You just telling me what you want from me. Right. right Next.
00:30:39
Speaker
Yeah. That's not how this goes. It's not it works. Yeah. I want to spend time talking about branding because that's supposed we're 30 minutes in and we're supposed to get to that. Yeah. Cause you and I could probably just go to Buffalo Wild Wings and spend all day talking about marketing and marketing.
00:30:56
Speaker
drinking beer and watching basketball and that's one of the things i love about you but i don't think people really understand branding i'm going ask you some stupid questions about branding i want to blow this out so people really understand that's just the logo right ah but so is that a trick question i love it so but your brand is like you're calling it's like you're How people remember you.
00:31:19
Speaker
Your brand is how people you remember you and how they recognize you. So it is your logo if you have a company with a logo. ah You hear people talk about personal branding. So your personal brand is also how people recognize and remember you. They might remember your personal style or even just the way you talk or the types of things you talk about.
00:31:39
Speaker
um So the same is true for a company where your brand is really It's your mantra. It's your mission. It's your vision. Why are we here? What are we doing? And how you're uniquely articulating that in a way that makes you distinct and memorable from other companies that are essentially doing the same thing or what the surface are doing it no different than you are. And so the task and the challenge of really good branding is finding that uniqueness.
00:32:09
Speaker
What is it that we do differently? Like, how do we, is it the way that we, if we're a business B2B company, is it the way that we work with our clients? Is it the level of value that they receive that's different than the other guys?
00:32:22
Speaker
Is it our process? is What is it exactly? And for for product brands, but you see the ads all day long. it's It's going to make your life better, easier. It's going to make you more attractive. It's going to, whatever. The brand is really what the is really your promise to your client. It's really the promise of value.
00:32:40
Speaker
The natural extension of that, because I talk to people about their brand all the time, yeah the the usual answer that I usually get is, it's really about our customer service. It's really about the the service we provide.
00:32:50
Speaker
And my response to that is, no, it's not. And b I tell people to think about my dog. And if you're using words that describe my dog to describe your brand, you don't have your brand down.
00:33:03
Speaker
My dog is great at customer service. I drop food on the floor. It has gone like that. He is a four-legged vacuum cleaner. If I throw something, he will go get it and bring it back. So don't tell me you're a go-getter because he's...
00:33:17
Speaker
It's interesting. So this is a really great point that you bring up. When we work through brand refreshes or brand transformations, what transformation just means you're changing something in a dramatic way. And that's typically what clients who work with us need. They're a well-established company.
00:33:32
Speaker
They're probably doing somewhere between five and $25 million dollars and ready to grow up a little bit. They're ready to enter a new market or they're ready to have a greater, ah bigger voice of authority. They want to look bigger and they want to be more sophisticated.
Understanding and Developing Unique Brand Strategies
00:33:47
Speaker
Maybe they're looking, positioning to sell.
00:33:49
Speaker
And we look at, okay, how do you talk about yourself? Oh, we're trusted and we're reliable. And, and it's my literally, there's your dog. So is literally everybody else.
00:34:02
Speaker
But of the things that, and and they usually get a little bit depressed by that. Well, great, then how else are gonna stand out? Do we need motion graphics? What is it? Do we need a mascot? Yeah, do we need do need radio ad? Like, what do we need? How can we, should we be louder? Which is a marketing function.
00:34:17
Speaker
But what we do is we say, okay, let's just say for a moment that trusted is like your pillar. That is your like absolute core. This is why people work with us because we're trusted.
00:34:30
Speaker
We create a story around that. In what unique ways is your company trusted? Is it because you're candid with your clients? You're a certain amount of experience, knowledgeable about things that maybe are a little less known?
00:34:45
Speaker
How can we make trusted this super common attribute or core value becomes something that is unique to your business. And so we we look for examples in the company where it lives.
00:34:57
Speaker
So if customer service is a place where it lives, OK, let's dig a little bit deeper. In what ways is your customer service standing out? What tell me a little bit about the types of challenges that your customer service is overcoming for your clients?
00:35:11
Speaker
Tell me about your the the problems you're solving. Because if you can communicate that you understand your ideal customer's problems, you have already won.
00:35:24
Speaker
Because I think that where a lot of marketing agencies, a lot of brand agencies fail, is that they don't ever really get to the core of that, like understanding who their client really is and what keeps them up at night and what keeps the client's customers up at night. Because that's where the story lies. That's where that uniqueness really is.
00:35:43
Speaker
Third, the the next stupid question I get is, yeah why would I need to pay you learn about my business? I know what my customers want. I think it's about lead gen.
00:35:55
Speaker
I think it's about the system. then yeah Then it becomes a conversation about the system. So a lot of companies that they maybe have like a marketing coordinator or someone in-house who is like their social media person who does like all of the other administrative stuff too is now suddenly their marketing person.
00:36:12
Speaker
like, why can't we just have that person just do everything for us? And why are we not growing? Most likely because you don't have a system in place where a proper marketing funnel to pull interested window shoppers in to really recognize that you're the company that they should be working with.
00:36:28
Speaker
And so what you're paying marketers or strategists for is to understand the psychology of that window shopper and to understand what is going to get their eyes and their attention to lift off of their phone and onto your sign that's sitting outside of your door.
00:36:46
Speaker
Which is the answer that I always want to give when people get ask me that question is, okay, then why am I here? If everything's great, why am I here? Yeah.
00:36:57
Speaker
And they don't like that answer. and ah But yeah what's interesting is you're talking, you're getting into the science of the emotion brain. yeah and Which I think people really don't understand is fundamentally as humans, we make decisions an emotional level and then we immediately justify it on a rational level.
00:37:18
Speaker
And so what a lot of times people will will do, especially when we just went through the election, There is all sorts of people and all sorts of fighting about the justification of the election one way or the other.
00:37:32
Speaker
But really, people's decision was from a multiple standpoint. Nobody really talks. me But that's where um yeah growth really actually comes into play. Yes, 100 percent. Our strategic planning capability, one of our core offerings is customer experience strategy.
00:37:50
Speaker
And so this is getting into the mindsets, the beliefs, the attitudes and the personal journeys that really shape the behaviors of your customers. And this is not something that is super obvious on our website at the moment.
00:38:03
Speaker
But the arc in matriarch, A-R-C, is actually derived from a exercise, a strategic exercise we put all of our strategy clients through, which is called the experience arc.
00:38:15
Speaker
And what this is, it's looking at the arc of transformation of a customer in their journey. So the customer comes to you and they have an issue. theyre They start at a place.
00:38:26
Speaker
They are starting at, let's just say, inertia They're not moving. They're just like, meh. You want to get them to activation. So the arc is really from inertia to activation. So how do we do that if we're, I don't know, a company that sells surfboards or we are ah an investment banking firm that wants to secure,
00:38:49
Speaker
um yeah entrepreneurs who are ready to sell their business. You have to understand what are the little micro decisions that they make along the way so that they can get out of that stagnation and into a place where they're ready to go forward at full speed.
00:39:03
Speaker
And that is such a hugely valuable exercise that I picked up years ago working for in that and for a large ad agency. And they, you could apply it to any business, whether it's a campaign or a long-term marketing strategy.
00:39:20
Speaker
But understanding the experience of the customer is huge. And honestly, when I've been in fractional roles and have brought in other agencies to execute on anything, their first question is, do you have personas and do you have a customer strategy map?
00:39:39
Speaker
Because that's how they're going to know what tools to pull out of their toolbox is what does the customer need and want. Stupid question number five. Yeah. I know what personas are, but for Nicole's edification, what is that?
00:39:54
Speaker
Yeah, a persona is like a fictitious representation of your ideal customer. And you can have many of them or several of them or just two or three of them, depending on the key differences. So let's say you run an organization that is a membership-driven organization and you have various levels of membership.
00:40:17
Speaker
You have whatever, the newbies who just got started. You have those who've been with you for 10 or more years. You've got... people who are retiring and getting out of membership. You've got people that you want to bring back in to be ambassadors, to call new people in to be members.
00:40:31
Speaker
Each one of those types of members is their own persona. They have their own unique purpose that they fulfill in the organization. or so I'm using this example as this is looking at personas that live, say,
00:40:46
Speaker
I say that we're within the organization because members essentially or your clients are kind of part of your company, but they are like, that's your customer. That's the person that you speak to. That's like their hopes and dreams and fears and their internal monologues and their their age. It's more than age and demographics. You typically see that a lot of the time, like age demographic, but it's deeper than that. It's about more of their beliefs and their experiences that shape them.
00:41:11
Speaker
Okay, so next dumb question. And by the way, for the record, Nicole actually knows personas for our organization. That's a trick question. She knows darn what personas are because she's had to do hundreds of, her oh, she's coming off mute. She's going to get. I didn't come off mute because she gave some great information. So there are some things from that going to take back. and Because you're right, it's not just about the demographics. It's not just about their age. There's so much more to that. So thank you for highlighting that because i don't think everybody understands that Well, I think all of those things ends up getting to the funnel at the bottom of the value of the persona, which is what is this person's emotional decision making structure?
00:41:43
Speaker
And if we how can we lay that out so then we can take advantage of it as we're trying to insert our product or service? and it And you have to really go through that emotional journey and look at that person through that lens in order to get to that point.
00:41:57
Speaker
Cause if they're going to decide then great there, how they're going to, how they're goingnna justify it could be a dozen different ways, which they're going to justify the yes, but in order to get them to the. yeah yeah Yeah. And with branding, the brand is the next step. So like people are like, why do we even need this? What do we do with this information? i was That was my next stupid question. How does this apply?
00:42:17
Speaker
ah you're going to redesign your website or you want to produce marketing materials that convert, You want to be speaking the language visually and with words that speak directly to the questions and the needs and the concerns of your personas.
00:42:34
Speaker
And so it's remarkable. It's like the brand, like but it starts from the middle of what's our true north, what's our mission, what's our vision. But ultimately, the the the marketing of that that those that internal vision, that in that mission of the company,
00:42:49
Speaker
has to be expressed through a language that your ideal customer can resonate with, which has everything to do with their own needs, not with who you are or why you're so great.
00:43:03
Speaker
What is a brand standards guide? So a brand standards guide is a set of rules around how to use the various assets of the brand.
Brand Consistency and Rebranding
00:43:14
Speaker
So an asset could be a logo.
00:43:17
Speaker
It's most commonly you have standard that has logos, color palettes, how to use a tagline, how not to use a tagline. In some very creative organizations, you might have someone take a logo and they put a drop shadow on it because that's how they like it to look.
00:43:32
Speaker
Or the tagline is set in a standard a certain way, a certain font size, a certain font weight or type. And somebody says, well, like this this tagline, but I want it to be in Times New Roman, not Helvetica. So I'm just going to use that in this PowerPoint here that I'm whipping up real quick for someone because that's what I like.
00:43:52
Speaker
And unfortunately, what that does is it dilutes the power of the memorability of the visual brand. So a brand standard is all about protecting the standard.
00:44:03
Speaker
of how a brand appears and all of the various elements that are recognizable. You wouldn't see like Lexus putting out ads with a slight variation of the logo with all of their ads or that L is so suddenly reversed or in ah in in a square and not a so not an oval. So a brand standard guide is really, it can be short or it can be very long. I've seen some very large brand standard guides that go very detailed all the way into like certain core messages, paragraphs, or how do you, how photography is used or treatments of photography. or It's, it can get very in-depth.
00:44:40
Speaker
Here's, I think probably the most important question that I'm going to ask you. If a company is considering this and they don't do it, what happens?
00:44:50
Speaker
Nothing changes for them. I think that if a company is considering elevating their brand, which is part of the marketing plan to obtain more leads and to grow, and they choose not to, then they'll have to fall back on the same methods that got them to where they are now. And a lot of our clients say, got us here is not going to get us where we need to go.
00:45:13
Speaker
And those who can who convert and become clients of ours recognize, make that recognition that they just, whatever they've been doing, they've been just making cold calls or they're just, they're trying to do this the same tried and true methods of just getting in front of people and shaking hands. And they're just trying to burn out the one way that does work for them, but they're leaving a lot of other opportunity on the table as a result.
00:45:38
Speaker
So they might just keep doing that one thing that works for them and not really scaling their efforts or their impact. How long does all this take? Because I i think yeah one of the things that you talked about earlier, one of the things that I adore about you is you and I have the same level of patience, which is practically male.
00:45:57
Speaker
Yeah. I think branding agencies as a cliche, takes forever. I hate branding agencies because of that. And I hate the 50 page PowerPoint deck that comes to you with all their quote unquote learnings from viewing your business. And and we are very different because of primarily because of my vision and intoler my intolerance.
00:46:22
Speaker
for that type of process very fast. So we don't bill by the hour we bill by the outcome. So for us, we take a whole a holistic look at the scope of work and the client's goals, and we build a flat rate around that project. And then our job is to get it done as fast as we humanly can.
00:46:42
Speaker
at the level of expertise that our client needs and expects from us in order for it to actually be um something that works for them. Because my business model is that we want to do their branding, but then we want them to come back to us and engage us as a fractional CMO, or we want them to come back to us when they have a launch campaign. So we're not just a one and done brand shop that's going to just slap a logo on it and put some new wallpaper and then send you on your merry way. We're going to actually make sure that there's a foundation in place that can be scaled from.
00:47:13
Speaker
So yeah, we typically, before doing a brand overhaul for a smaller business, we're probably looking at three to four months, which is about half the time of most companies.
00:47:28
Speaker
Yeah, we're pretty lightning fast. And I think that's what our clients love almost most about us is that they can't believe it takes, that they're there. It's done.
Branding as Company Therapy and Challenges Faced
00:47:37
Speaker
yeah. so yeah i I think the people who really do branding well, which you're at the top of my list of people who do that,
00:47:44
Speaker
is Customers and people who are considering the work need to really think of it almost like company therapy. yes I'm here. Something's not where I want it to be.
00:47:56
Speaker
How do I make it there? And so sometimes that the through product of it isn't a tangible thing as it is is more of a feeling and an understanding about the business that you didn't have before.
00:48:10
Speaker
And then that manifests itself into the brand, the new version of the brand. And sometimes it's a simple change. Sometimes it's a a dramatic change. Sometimes it's an awful change. Like when the Vikings changed uniforms eight, 10 years ago, went back to their classic.
00:48:26
Speaker
But the point, it's a change for change. And don't just change for change sake either. No. And one thing that I've learned, and i'll I know we're coming up on our time. One thing that I really leaned into this fast timing thing because the traditional agency model for brand agencies is you just, you give a ballpark of how long something's going to take.
00:48:48
Speaker
And then you submit that ballpark of time to the client. And a hundred percent of the time you go over time because the client, especially if it's a ah founder owned company,
00:49:00
Speaker
The client is going to have some say. They're going to want to make sure that the tone is right. Sometimes they have color preferences and stuff. And this is where a lot of brand agencies and designers go off the rails because then they become beholden to the client. that it's It's either just in response to the client, telling them what the client, what they want. And the client doesn't always have the right words to communicate. They may say, i want it to be gray instead of black.
00:49:30
Speaker
But what they're really saying is it feels a little bit too heavy. I want it to feel a little bit lighter. So a lot of the therapizing is getting to a point where we're speaking the same language. So I actually invest a lot of my time up front getting to understand how the founder's brain ticks.
00:49:49
Speaker
What is it about their company? How do they want it to come across? How do they like to enter our room? What's their personal style? What's their language preference? And I'm picking up on all of these nuances so that the first time I deliver something, it's really close to on the mark.
00:50:06
Speaker
And we're not going through endless revisions. And I say this to my clients up front because I actually I'm working with a client right now where they stalled out.
00:50:17
Speaker
They had a large website refresh project that completely stalled out about two years ago and paid all this money, got to a certain spot in the project, and then they just couldn't push it forward any further.
00:50:32
Speaker
The client, bless their souls, were so deep into trying to like really wordsmith and refine the language on the website and design. And the the agency they had hired had become so passive that Yeah.
00:50:49
Speaker
Like they just had a standstill. And so I came in and knock on wood, we're launching later this month. And it's been under four months where I said to them, I was like, look, you're bringing me on. You're going to trust me that I'm going to get you. But we have if if you want an aggressive timeline, because that's the other thing.
00:51:06
Speaker
Every client wants the website done yesterday. And why is the website done? Exactly. So I say, I can make this happen for you, but you have to be willing to make decisions that move the needle forward. And I'm going to give you my best recommendation for what to do. And I'm going to listen to you. and We're going work together, but we're not going to waste our time.
00:51:28
Speaker
Yeah. and And so then midway through the process, my role is really to crack the whip and make sure that they're making decisions, but also being sensitive to those, that feedback that they're giving. The challenge i see as you're talking about owner, founder, president type people is there's there's a plateau that every organization and invariably hits.
00:51:47
Speaker
And that's when they really need to look at reexamining the brand, look reexamining the website, reexamining the processes. Yeah. And it's so unbelievably challenging because of the founder's mindset, because coming in as an outsider and telling them the truth is the same thing as calling your baby ugly.
00:52:07
Speaker
ah And they don't like it. And what do you mean my baby's ugly? And I've, we've gotten to this far because of all this. And how dare you say that? you We're not saying it's bad. We're saying it's not enough.
00:52:19
Speaker
What do you mean it's not enough? What am I doing here then? If it's enough, what and that's one of the things that kind of helped me to to bring this full circle of dealing with
Ongoing Processes in Marketing and Branding
00:52:30
Speaker
my my habitual need to win is Charles Dickens said in ah Christmas sarah Carol, the actual novel, that play is the the most enigmatic word in the English language is enough because it means something different to everybody.
00:52:45
Speaker
This is true. And it's also OK to say that it's never going to be enough. And that's why marketing is an evolution and brands are an evolution and people are an evolution because and that's why we meet our deadlines, to be honest, because we can say, hey, we're going to get this thing up and rolling.
00:53:04
Speaker
And that's phase one is done. You can be good to go with phase one for as long as you want. But the next phase is going to be layering onto that cake. We're going to expand your thought leadership content. We're going to bring in a firm and help us implement HubSpot. We're going to do webinars. We're going to we're going to layer all these activities around us to ah increase the gravitational pull toward the brand.
00:53:29
Speaker
And I think that founders understand when they are when that is explained to them, they relax. Because a lot of the time a a firm will come in and be like, okay, we're going to dress you up. And then they're like, okay, now I have nowhere to go, but I spent all this money.
00:53:44
Speaker
Yeah. yeah But where's the, where's the momentum. And so I think that when clients realize that there's a plan and it's not just, my dad used to have this saying, he probably still does.
00:53:56
Speaker
That's a marketing is a black hole. Marketing a black hole of spend. yeah And it certainly can be. And unfortunately, oftentimes it is because a lot of marketing is put together, stitched together like Frankenstein, where you've got one firm over here that's doing your emails and another firm over here that's doing your brand, another firm over here that's writing articles.
00:54:19
Speaker
And they're all stitching these things together, but there isn't a holistic strategy. It's just these kind of tactics that get bolted on. And they're all finger pointing that the other guy isn't doing the job right.
00:54:30
Speaker
Oh, and the one that is most convincing is the one that's going to get the ear of the founder. And unfortunately, usually the one that is most convincing is the one that's the most wrong. I got to ask, though, before we go further, how do you inspire your clients to stay on target?
00:54:44
Speaker
How do you inspire them to stay on your timeline and to meet the deadlines that you're putting out there? I know it's a struggle for folks. So how do you inspire your clients to meet those expectations?
00:54:55
Speaker
The good thing that's on my side at this point in my career is that I have a lot of really good success stories that I can point to. And so my clients, when they see what I've done for others, there's a level of trust and credibility that's built into that.
00:55:08
Speaker
But then when we're in the project, I'm exactly like I am right now with my clients. I don't sugarcoat it. And I think that founders especially appreciate that. A lot of agencies come in be a little bit timid, a little bit glimmery. Everything's going to be perfect. And I come in and I just tell it to them straight.
00:55:28
Speaker
And I think that they appreciate that. And I think that they also appreciate that I'm also because we work so fast and because
Conclusion and Farewell
00:55:35
Speaker
we are so experienced, we know when to lay off and be gentle and not be just push, push and not be the thorn in their side.
00:55:43
Speaker
So it's a delicate balance between being the one that's driving. And I say we are driving this process for you. And if a client is nodding their head when you say that, then you know that it's probably going to be a good fit.
00:55:55
Speaker
If you say we're driving this process for you and the client says, I want to have a meeting every couple of days, and then it's probably not the right client because they're going to probably take forever or stall out.
00:56:06
Speaker
We want the founder or the leader that says, I like to build my team based on the expertise that they bring. I need you to know what my challenges are. And you just speak my language and prove to me that you understand my needs and goals.
00:56:18
Speaker
And then I'll give you my trust. And so very early on, I try to establish that I understand who they are and what their clients need and that I have the capacity to understand their business.
00:56:30
Speaker
And so that's why with matriarch, I have recruited expert level CMOs like myself and strategists who are very adept at those skills of managing the client and getting it, understanding who they are and what they need right away.
00:56:46
Speaker
Love it. Yeah. Thank you. um we are We are a little over on time, so we have to cut this here, but I want to ask, will you come back? Cause I know we're hanging out with you. Yes. Super awesome.
00:56:57
Speaker
And Nicole, any last final thoughts? This has been great. No, I'm, I don't know that I have any extra ones right now. I have a lot to take back and think about. and Wow. meet Me too. On so many levels.
00:57:08
Speaker
Dee, thank you so much. This has been, i will wait, before, before I go to my final speech, Dee, most importantly, how can people find you online? Yes. So you can find me personally. i have a personal website, dheffernan.com.
00:57:22
Speaker
From there, you can learn, you can get a link to my TED Talk. You can get a link right over to Matriarch. I have a couple other ventures that I'm involved in. You can learn a little bit more about me and those ventures and be navigated to them from there.
00:57:34
Speaker
You can also go to matriarch.co, M-A-T-R-I-A-C.co. And that is where you can learn more about our branding and marketing agency. Awesome.
00:57:44
Speaker
Thank you so much for joining us. This has been another episode of Dial It In produced by Nicole Fairclough and Andy Wintowski. Dave will be back for the next episode. And as always, with apologies to Tony Kornheiser, we will try and do better the next time.