Being on Mission with Manny De La Vega

In this episode, Lee Murray interviews Manny De La Vega, a business advisor with extensive experience in owning restaurants and mentoring entrepreneurs. They discuss the importance of mission in business and how it relates to vision. Manny illustrates the repercussions of business owners veering off-course from their company's mission and sheds light on the pivotal role that marketers play in aligning the company's mission with its purpose.

Whether you're a business enthusiast, entrepreneur, or simply intrigued by the world of purpose-driven endeavors, this episode offers a wealth of wisdom and many valuable insights.

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https://www.system-soul.com

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Lee Murray (00:00:01) - All right. We're back with another episode of Exploring Growth. Have Manny De La Vega here with me. Thank you so much, Manny, for being part of this.

Manny De La Vega (00:00:09) - Thank you, Lee. Appreciate the invite.

Lee Murray (00:00:11) - Yeah. So a quick introduction to Manny. I'm not Manny for many years. Just to kind of give you some context to his background, I think it's important for this topic. So for many years and I don't even know how many years, probably more than a decade. Manny has owned and operated his own restaurant and restaurants, plural, and has been had great success with it. He's also been for, I think, more than a decade, a mentor to entrepreneurs who live in impoverished environments like Haiti and Honduras and Mexico, countries like that that have very little resources and have lots of barriers to just day to day life, let alone owning and operating a business. He's been a mentor to them with the mission of helping them create jobs not only in their business but in their community, which lifts all boats kind of thing.

Lee Murray (00:01:07) - And I've had the good fortune to work with him in some capacities there over the years. And then more recently, Manny launched his new company, De la Vega Business Advisors, where he's a coach, advisor to business owners and entrepreneurs. And so I couldn't think of a better person to have on to talk about mission because, I mean, in every sense of the word you have lived mission out. So it's exciting.

Manny De La Vega (00:01:34) - I was definitely very excited when you invited me because the type of coaching that I do is very hands on. Like I'm interested in not only the theory of the information, but how can you take that information and live it in the business. So yeah, this is very exciting for me.

Lee Murray (00:01:49) - But yeah, it's great. I'm really super pumped to have you here. And so just let's just jump right into it. I want to I want to first before we get into our conversation, kind of do a little bit of a prologue, because I think it's important. I'm all about practical wisdom, right? So that's kind of like the moniker of this of this podcast.

Lee Murray (00:02:08) - I really want to get right to the point of what's the difference between mission and vision, or as I see it, so that we can have that in our mind as we're going through this discussion. So I wrote this out. I'm just going to read it to make it easier here. But Vision is giving your organization a purpose and a North Star. It's striving for something that is beyond revenue typically and beyond yourself. It's making an impact in the world or even just your industry. And it goes beyond turning a profit most of the time. I mean, profit is obviously something we're all looking to do, but generally good businesses, we see our great businesses, we see the profit comes as they follow their vision, building something great, saving lives, improving lives. These are the type of things that make up a vision. And of course we covered this in our last episode. And so now today we're talking about mission and mission. The way the way I see it is making your vision practical.

Lee Murray (00:03:09) - It's taking your North Star and applying it practically to your work and to your team and to your organization so you can fulfill that purpose. So being on mission is acting in a certain way and working with your purpose in mind. So if vision is the why mission is the what, what are we doing to fulfill our our vision? So I'll give you one example to kind of kick this conversation off. And this is just a made up example. But, you know, you look at a company maybe that's selling safety gear to the construction industry. This is, I think, a pretty easy one to wrap our heads around. If the vision for this company or the purpose is to save lives because, you know, maybe and typically we see the visionary is usually a singular person that has a passion for something that is beyond themselves, the starting company. Maybe that person came from the construction industry. Maybe that person fell off a building, you know, had the personal experience, but maybe they saw people around them getting hurt all the time and that's why they started this company.

Lee Murray (00:04:13) - I think when you see founders and owners that start companies or buy companies or are involved with companies in a way like that where their passion comes through, that's usually where you find a visionary. And again, we talked about this last episode, and those are the people who really can set people on mission inside their organization. So if we look at this example, if the purpose is to save lives, then the mission for the company is to equip their customers with the tools to reduce or eliminate all harm or risks to the workers. Right. So. If if that's the case in this fake example. Now, the natural kind of cascading effect of this purpose driven, mission oriented mindset of the organization is to create a brand that wraps around that narrative. And, you know, because ultimately what we're doing here is creating a strategic marketing plan, right, as part of this course work. So how does all of this map to business outcomes and marketing objectives? What it does is it affects all of your messaging through the marketing funnel and your sales pipeline.

Lee Murray (00:05:22) - Your marketing team now has a good, solid grasp on what the organization really is about and can more easily communicate this to their audience. And then when the sales team is learning about the needs of their customers in their buying process and presenting solutions, they're driven to fulfill this mission of equipping, equipping customers with tools to eliminate harm and risk. So therefore, their motive then is not just to sell them on something to get them in and make their their number. It's really to connect that customer with the vision and the mission that the company is about. So. Everything then gets more compelling to everyone in the ecosystem in which this organization plays in. So I kind of want to just give that prologue just so that people can have this idea of what a vision is and what a mission is. And I'll say it one more time Mission is making your vision practical. So now we get to talking to the real expert, you know, about mission. And I think the first question that comes to mind that I'd like to spend some time talking through is.

Lee Murray (00:06:34) - Why does it make sense for us to spend time working on our mission? Right. Mean there's. I think most people have to answer to someone when they when they're doing stuff with their time at work. And as marketers, we have to say, well, why does it make sense for us to spend time working on mission? Well, I think there are some very practical, business oriented reasons, but I'm curious to hear what you think, Manny.

Manny De La Vega (00:06:58) - Yeah, definitely. Well, you know, on paper, it's always very easy to spot, you know, the vision of the entrepreneur because like you said, in this construction worker, you know, he's got a passion. He saw a problem and now he's that's ingrained in him. And usually they know that and they never forget that. And now on paper, they align their mission to their vision. You know, they say, okay, that's my vision. I'm going to write my mission statement. I'm going to align it. But the vision is the why, and the mission is the what do you do consistently to get to the mission? That's where I see a lot of entrepreneurs miss that alignment, you know, and we know the benefit of alignment is because you're marketing, it's aligned, your team is aligned and all that.

Manny De La Vega (00:07:42) - But if your mission is not aligned with your vision, then there's a disconnect and then the statements get lost in just the piece of paper that nobody ever looks and all that. And you know, that happens a lot in businesses. I found that the main reason why those get misaligned is because the entrepreneur doesn't spend enough time not only writing the mission statement, but getting to know themselves to see if they're aligned with that mission. Because if what is about actions, your actions ultimately are going to be determined what by your values and what you believe and what you do, that that's what you're going to end up doing anyway every day, whether you want or not, because it comes with you, with what you believe in, what you, what you, what you think. And if you don't spend enough time seeing what you are about, then you're not going to be able to make a connection between your mission and yourself to carry out the vision. Does that make sense? So, so one of the ways we help entrepreneurs answer these two main questions one is what are you really passionate about? You know, because they want to sometimes they want to carry out the vision, but they don't really know what their passion is exactly.

Manny De La Vega (00:08:58) - Mean in a construction company, you can take that in many different areas. You can take it to commercial, residential, you know, And what is really your passion? Do you want to help this small, you know, residential customers? Do you want to help the big companies commercial? What is really the passion? And then the next one is what are you really good? What can you be the best in the world at? You know? And once you get a little perspective on that, then you can align your, your, your mission. We once I was coaching an entrepreneur, she was a great entrepreneur. She had a company of natural products. She sold, you know, supplements or supplements and all kind of kind of like a health store. She had about six locations and she had a great vision. She wanted to change the way people felt about their bodies, and she wanted to change the community into a more healthy living. Division was great. And when we started coaching her, some of the decisions that she was making on the business were not making sense with the vision that she that she had planned out.

Manny De La Vega (00:10:02) - And we started digging a little more and like why she's making these decisions that are ultimately gonna affect the business. And we dig a little a little deeper. And we found that the background was that she came from a family where her dad had a liquor distribution business and that was a big business already and the dad wanted her to work in the liquor distribution business. But when she grew up, she developed a religious beliefs that the liquor business was not the best business to be in. And at some point it got communicated from the dad to her that if she was not going to be involved in the liquor business, she was not going to be successful. So she created this health company to prove that that wrong and to to to show them that that that she could do it, that she could be successful. So she had an internal mission that the employees didn't know about. And it was not written on this statement and it was not aligned with the vision of making people healthy. She wanted to prove her dad wrong.

Manny De La Vega (00:11:15) - And that's what the wrong decision making started happening because she wanted to expand, expand, expand, no matter what shows you what have this big company. And she could go back to her dad and said, Look what I built. But financially it didn't make sense. And she was making decisions that was affecting the business. So we had to dig deep. And and then the question is, how many entrepreneurs? Actually driven and have actions daily that are driven by their values, their beliefs, what they think of their loved ones that affect their mission statements and doesn't let them carry out those, you know.

Lee Murray (00:11:52) - That's right. You know, it sounds like from that story, this is a case of someone who really is trying to serve two masters. They have the chip on their shoulder, which I think makes great entrepreneurs. You know, I mean, the starting out with having someone, especially someone close to them, that is telling them that they can't succeed or they can't do something, usually if it finds the right person, they're going to succeed because of that chip.

Lee Murray (00:12:18) - But then if they have this other more Pollyanna or a more positive thing that they want to do in their life, that's not because I think the chip on their shoulder can be negative, too. It can, you know, drag you down weird ways like like serving the community or, you know, actually helping other people, spreading the word about good health. That's the positive side of things. You kind of have to pick one. You know, you almost have to like say, what is it I'm about? Because it's going to be really hard to translate that chip on your shoulder to your team, Right? Exactly. Because they don't know the father. They don't care about that. But the other part of it, you probably could translate.

Manny De La Vega (00:12:56) - Yeah, definitely you could. But the key here is what am I about? About to use that fire that I have to prove people wrong and mean. She already built a great business. You have, like, seven locations, all right. And.

Manny De La Vega (00:13:13) - Right. But am I really about that or am I really about creating a healthier community? So what we ended up when that were happening, is that okay, why don't you heal from that? You know, like, well, first of all, understand, why do you need to to to prove your dad that you can be successful? Turns out that dig deep down, she thought that the dad was not going to love her enough, you know, And it came down to, I'm not going to be loved by my dad, which is not true. Right? Parents love their kids no matter what. So she said if she's able to heal that and say, you know what, I don't have to prove my dad nothing. He's going to love me no matter what. And she gets out of her heart and out of her mind. Now the question is, what am I really about? I'm really about building the biggest business I want just because I want to or I want to create this healthy community.

Manny De La Vega (00:14:08) - And that's what the environment comes in, because the answer to that may be that she may not want to be in the health business after all, if she didn't have to prove if she didn't have to prove to her dad that she could be successful at that because health was totally opposite to liquor business. And she just went with that because I want to prove all the opposite. Maybe she's going to be in a different business, that she can show that she's successful but doesn't have to be in the healthy, you know?

Lee Murray (00:14:34) - And yeah, that's so true.

Manny De La Vega (00:14:36) - Yeah. So so that's where if you don't do that work of going deep, you're living your whole business life with that misalignment and your customers get confused, your employees get confused, your marketing is this aligned and you don't you can't figure out why people don't buy from you. It's because you have that internal misalignment.

Lee Murray (00:14:59) - Yes, right. I think it's such a great example because I think in most cases, companies are started, people will get things going.

Lee Murray (00:15:11) - And it's it's for something that's driving them, whether it's, you know, I need to do something because I got laid off survival mode or I have this big grand vision that I want to change the world in some way and everything in between. But as you get going along and you start hiring people and you start bringing on customers and learning about your market, and it's such an iterative process. There's there's I don't think, ever been a company that's been created and they went from point A to Z, you know, and it all just worked. And it worked exactly The plan, it just doesn't work like that. So this is this story is not any different than probably most of the people that are listening, that are business owners, CEOs and and marketers that are trying to exist in an organization that maybe has a misaligned message or or doesn't understand the mission that they're on. So I think it's I think it's really good. And to your point, I think one of the one of the results or outcomes of working on mission is alignment.

Lee Murray (00:16:11) - I mean, I think that's just that could be sort of this umbrella that that everything else sort of flows from or lives within alignment gives you. It takes you sort of from a fragmented organization to a unidirectional organization. And if everyone is in a line, this beautiful picture of everyone knowing why it is they're doing what they're doing and all of that is in in, in accord accord with each other, you start you start to have business results. You start to have metrics that are positive in your favor, meaning you stop spending time on things that don't align with the mission, things that maybe never should have been spent time on. But, you know, you you have this in a fragmented organization. You have people spending time on lots of different things because everyone's sort of naturally going to make up their own mission. And when you have a lot of different missions coming to the table inadvertently, it makes for a very messy company to manage. You know, you have lots of problems. It just causes more problems than you, than you.

Lee Murray (00:17:27) - And if you're in an organization like that, you're kind of looking around and you're thinking. We do have a lot of like people saying different things and thinking different things and thinking that we are a company that we're not, that I think that we are, but this person is probably a really good, you know, it's probably a good reason that you're in a company that needs to spend some time looking at the mission.

Manny De La Vega (00:17:47) - Exactly. And business schools teach how to align the mission to the vision, but they don't teach how to go deeper and align your behaviors and beliefs to your mission that will align to your vision. That's right. That's just you don't learn that anywhere. You have to. Most entrepreneurs, and I've been around for 20 years in my business, have to learn that the best way, you know, when things don't work out and then have to rethink but wish there was a more proactive way of doing it. And, you know, coaching is a very proactive way. We all need a coach to kind of make us understand what are we about.

Manny De La Vega (00:18:22) - And because a coach will see what you don't see, right? You're in her case, she didn't even know and she wanted to prove her that that it was just something that fire her when she was little mean. The comment that he made to her, it was even when she was little then and then she got ingrained that and she didn't even know about it. So but yeah, but it's so crucial that we only not spend time writing the mission, but understanding what will drive the vision. That's going to be our actions and what drives our actions.

Lee Murray (00:18:54) - So That's right, Yeah. And you know, I think even more practically to that point, if we're talking about the why and then the what, then it gets to the how, which I'll cover in later episodes and modules. But the how should naturally flow out of the what. Because when you start to really, you know, take the steps through this your how is going to start to be goal oriented, objective oriented. You know you start to lay out the fundamentals of a mission.

Lee Murray (00:19:29) - So we're on a mission to do these things that serve our greater purpose. How are we going to do that? Well, we need to map out. Customer journeys. We need to map out, you know, all of these different things. So if you follow this train of thought, I think you can really naturally get to the why, what and how pretty quickly. But the hard work really is in honestly, in all the things that I've seen, it's in getting a hold of the person who should be the visionary or is the visionary and articulating down the the the channels to the rest of the organization in a very clear and concise and compelling way. That is clear to everyone what it is that you're doing. Okay. You know, I think that's the hard work. And I think there's you know, there is there are business outcomes. On the other side of it can be tricky, though, because as a marketer, if you don't own and control that vision, which you typically don't unless you are the owner, you have going to have a really hard time going up.

Lee Murray (00:20:35) - We talked about this a little bit on the last podcast as well, going up the chain to affect change, but I think it poses a good problem for marketer to be in the role that they are to say, okay, we're our job is to sit in the seat of communicating the message from the company to the buyer. We're learning about the buyer and we are part of the organization. Well, the marketer is in a great spot to affect change to both sides, but especially up the chain. So, you know, I mean, it's it's it's a place where even if it's not sanctioned by the company to say, yes, spend time and resources to go work on mission and involve us as you need, you should still maybe even spend some time after hours or whatever thinking through what does our mission look like to fulfill our purpose?

Manny De La Vega (00:21:28) - That's totally true. The market is in a great position because the visionary is not gonna first of all, people that work for him, they're not going to come to him and tell them this misalignment.

Manny De La Vega (00:21:38) - They're not going to be feel comfortable doing that. For a marketer, that is, their job is to put all these communications cohesively that they are in that position to make the visionary, see what they don't see and create alignment if there isn't. Yeah, totally. Yeah. You know.

Lee Murray (00:21:55) - Something that comes to mind is how a marketer could do that when they see that it's misaligned is going to their. Leader, whomever this person is, that that, you know, has a passion and it's just not being communicated and sitting with that person and understanding more about the passion that they have with the purpose of more clearly articulating that to the market, to the buyers. And I think approaching it that way. It involves that person to a degree where they feel like, okay, this is actually worth spending time. Because I do want to talk about why I'm passionate about what we're doing. And so you're probably going to make some headway walking down that road, drawing out their passion and then turning that into messaging.

Lee Murray (00:22:46) - I think, you know, there's no ideal scenario where you can just spend a bunch of time going away and doing ropes courses and stuff and everybody's, you know, gets to work on everything. And it's all it all works. So it's kind of messy anyways. But I think spending the time with the visionary get drawing that passion out and being able to communicate it even in your team to start is a great exercise for marketers.

Manny De La Vega (00:23:11) - Yeah. And then even for marketers like you that you work on strategy and strategy is. That's right. And of course when you think of marketing strategies, how what's the strategy to make the communication happen? But I think another piece of the strategy should be, how can I point this out and how can I spend some time with a visionary and do some strategic work in our framework that we use for coaching? We have strategic planning that we call it. And that is actually what we do is asking the questions to find if there is alignment of misalignment. So if a marketer has something similar that they can use a strategic planning time to point these these misalignments, then then they combine that with the strategic plan of the communication with the communication piece, and then you have a more cohesive plan for for the marketer.

Lee Murray (00:24:03) - That's right.

Manny De La Vega (00:24:04) - That's one thing I can think of. Yeah.

Lee Murray (00:24:05) - So yeah. And so the next question that comes to mind is why does all this matter to our buyers? Right? I'm interested to hear your thoughts on that.

Manny De La Vega (00:24:17) - Yeah, definitely. Well, and the example that we just talked about, you know, there was confusion everywhere. Consumers were confused. Employees were confused. Nobody knew that she wanted to. She had this motive behind that. But I have another example that is actually better. We were coaching a guy that he had about 250 employees, and it was very obvious when we started coaching this guy, younger entrepreneur, great entrepreneur as well, that he didn't want to be in any position that most owners end up with. He didn't want to be the CEO. He didn't want to be the CEO or the CFO. And we're trying to figure out until we ask him, you know, what is really what you're good at, what you liked about your business. And his answer was, you know what? I really what I really enjoy is actually make the deliveries of the product to the customers and see their smiles.

Manny De La Vega (00:25:14) - And this is our 250 employee company. And he wanted to be a delivery driver. That's what really drove him to do this because that's amazing. It's amazing. It's amazing. And he was living it. He hired a C, a CEO, a CFO. He had a whole team to run the company and he would get on the motorcycle and do the deliveries of the product to his customers.

Lee Murray (00:25:37) - That's awesome.

Manny De La Vega (00:25:38) - You know what that did for mission alignment with all the employees? When all the employees knew the owner was making deliveries, where the vision was to impact so many families with this product and to bring and to see Smiles was the vision mission every day to see smiles. And he was actually creating that from the bottom. I mean, everyone was aligned.

Lee Murray (00:26:00) - Yeah. What a high bar to set for the next delivery driver, you know.

Manny De La Vega (00:26:07) - But but contrary to the previous example, there was no confusion and nobody had to go read the mission statement, the vision statement. It was very clear to all of them what the business was about is create happy customers and see there's not it faces, you know, and it was lived out throughout the whole organization flawlessly.

Manny De La Vega (00:26:26) - Now, I'm not saying every owner should do that right, because that's unrealistic. But the question is, how do you take those actions? So you can be a great example, even if you are the CEO of the CFO or whatever your position is as the owner, how can you make sure there is no confusion and everybody is clear by the actions you take every single day? That's right. That's that's how culture gets affected. That's how consumer satisfaction gets affected. So you start seeing all these results. So that's your job as an owner is to do the strategy to make that happen, not to leave the vision and mission in the in the in the executive team and leave it there. No, bring it out to life. Bye bye bye example.

Lee Murray (00:27:15) - I have to imagine in that story it sounds like the retention rate is probably pretty high. For customers because he's out there talking to him every single day on fire, just passionate about what he's doing. You know, probably gets his feelings hurt very easily.

Lee Murray (00:27:31) - If someone doesn't like what, you know, the product or whatever, which is great, you know, it's very personally involved. But, you know, to the to the business metrics side of things, to just take it a little different direction, I think that's something to think about is what are the business outcomes for spending time on mission, you know, making it matter to your buyers. And for the buyer side, it's retention. I think that's one key metric is churn rate goes down, retention goes up. And if you're spending time in front of your buyers communicating this mission, this vision essentially in mind through your mission, what you're going to end up with is good, solid fit. And I don't necessarily mean product market fit, which I think is a kind of a Venn diagram of sorts that is involved in the same conversation because people have to find a use for what you're you're selling and a need has to be fulfilled and all these different things. It's, it's a prism of sorts.

Lee Murray (00:28:29) - But specifically when you're communicating your aligned message through the company to the buyer, you're going to find fit with buyers who are ideal, more ideal buyers than not, you're not going to sign up. Your salespeople are not going to sign up buyers that are not great fits. They're going to see the red flags quicker that okay, well, this this company, you know, doesn't fit and therefore it's going to be a much harder sell. So therefore, we may want to just move on down the road and talk to another company that is a better fit because when when the fit happens on the buyer side, it's just as beautiful a thing as the the alignment inside the organization, you know, And then you have this sort of feedback loop that you create with your buyers to your team, team teams, plural, depending on how they're engaged with them. And the mission sort of becomes fulfilled, right? It's like not this unending, you know, indefinite thing. It's we set out to do this thing and we accomplish the mission.

Lee Murray (00:29:35) - You know, going back to the safety example is we now know that ABC client that just signed on, it's been six months with zero accidents due to due to our work. So we celebrate that inside the company to know, hey, we did all this pre-work, we're doing the actual work now. We can celebrate that we've essentially saved lives or reduce harm and everyone is happy because there's generally if you're, you know, got a business model in place, that mat that makes sense. You have margin, you have profit. And the customer is glad to, you know, to pay you the money because they see the value. And I would say one more thing to to that point is like the way the customer sees the value is because you're aligned internally and can communicate that value.

Manny De La Vega (00:30:23) - Exactly. And buyers are really savvy at spotting the alignment or the misalignment. Yes, I don't even think so.

Lee Murray (00:30:29) - True.

Manny De La Vega (00:30:29) - But naturally we can't. When we think of Apple and they say think differently, we all understand we don't need to go see the vision statement or mission statement on the same.

Manny De La Vega (00:30:39) - We feel it. Yeah, just do it. We know that company is totally aligned. The same with this guy. His product wasn't the best really, and he was crushing the competition with a with an average product because people understood intrinsically that the he his company was totally aligned. So that's what the buyers that's how effective buyers they they know they can spot, you know, somebody that is truly true to their mission and totally alignment and somebody that is not they cannot tell you why. If you ask them why, they're not going to tell you why you want to have to do the job yourself as a business owner. But they can tell you, yes, you are aligned or no, you're not aligned. They feel right.

Lee Murray (00:31:22) - Yeah, yeah. I have an example. I can give two of a client I worked with as a training company and they train ophthalmology techs and in the ophthalmology industry and you know, they're the best of what they do. And the reason is because their, their their vision is to improve patient care in that industry.

Lee Murray (00:31:46) - And so how they do that is through, you know, what they're doing is high skilled, you know, world class training that has lots of resources around it. And they're caring for, you know, the practitioner, they're the provider, they're caring for the practice manager and the and the patient themselves. And so we were talking the other day talking about, you know, what's the ultimate goal here? Like, what is it that. Could really signify that you have accomplished what you set out to do. And really, it is if the patient were to be wowed, if the patient were to feel comfortable and secure and the patient gave feedback to the tech or the practice manager to say, you know, I was nervous when I came in here and I really was set at ease. I really felt cared for. I really now know what is going on with my eyes. I really now know have a plan. You know, that patient was really cared for. That's due to the tech that's been properly trained and the practice that's been properly resourced because of the organization that they hired.

Lee Murray (00:32:58) - And so what's cool about that is the effect. The impact is really happening at the patient level and their mission is complete When that patient gives good feedback in a way that's not mean, not necessarily whole life changing, but, you know, in the moment, it's people have trepidation about, you know, appointments, doctor's appointments, those kind of things. And when they're set at ease, well, now the patient retentions on the business side is is greater for the for the practice. The tech retention is for them to not have to hire new techs. So you have all these business outcomes that come from it that cascade down in parallel to the actual mission, which is patient, good patient care. So I think it's really cool to, you know, it's cool to turn a profit. It's cool to make money in business, but it's also really cool to see your the impact that you set out to do happen. You know, I mean, talking about the the work that we did in the different countries with creating jobs, well, what's the mission there is to create jobs and help their community grow, to give them a better quality of life, essentially.

Lee Murray (00:34:06) - And when you travel there and you see that actually happening where the entrepreneurs are taking the advice, they're implementing it, they're working hard, and the community, the jobs start to grow and the community benefits. I mean, that goes beyond money. It goes beyond revenue, you know, so it's so much bigger. Again, back to the vision. It's so much bigger than just the bottom line.

Manny De La Vega (00:34:28) - Definitely it's bigger. And you know what? You made a good point that once you have that alignment as a visionary of your mission and vision, your mission is going to be carried out most of the time by the front line employee. Right. And a lot of times there is a miscommunication. The marketing is trying to communicate to the buyer the alignment of the mission and vision internally. The front line employee is not properly communicated what that mission and vision is because they miss it or they don't consider it important. They just, you know, hire them, train them, Here it is. You have to do this.

Manny De La Vega (00:35:05) - But once the front line employee understands, just like the executive board team understands the mission and vision, then the mission gets carried on every single day by that former employee. And that's when the owner, like you said, can see the fruits of that every single day. And that gets missed all the time. Right. You know, the communication gets broken in between and the front line employee, they just think they just have a job and they don't think they have this big vision that is so important and they don't know about it because they haven't been medicated.

Lee Murray (00:35:38) - Yeah. And I think, practically speaking, what's motivating your team to do their job every day, to do their work, to come to work and be, you know, excited about what it is they're doing. This this morning I was on a walk and I, in light of our conversation, was just kind of thinking through this and. I had this visual of a person walking. You've seen people before and we've done it ourselves too, for self-aware enough to know that we're doing it where they're walking with their head sort of in front of them, almost like their brain is carrying them and they're deep in thought and they're walking usually at a faster pace.

Lee Murray (00:36:16) - And it's because there's something driving their mind. There's something driving them to walk faster and and pushing them. And this visual came to mind that I think it's not exact, but a visionary can be in that state, you know, a large part of their day because they're attached to that vision. But it's hard for someone that is working for the visionary to be in that state and be in that driven, you know, purposeful mind where you're churning out work for a reason. If it's not your vision and you don't have a vision. So there's where mission comes in is that I think a lot of people can attach themselves to someone else's vision. I mean, that's why you see, very few people have are the visionary. And a lot of people are on mission for the vision. Look at Tesla, StarLink, you know, SpaceX with Elon. People want to come to work and have an impact and make a change beyond themselves. And they will end up in that state that I'm talking about, the sort of visual of walking purposefully, working on something in their mind, working it out.

Lee Murray (00:37:29) - If the mission is clearly defined for them, you're going to have more of your team. Purposefully getting up and coming to work and even sacrificing, I would say, intentionally staying after coming in early, working on projects. You see this a lot in the AI space right now where you know everything's new. Well, it's new as part novelty, but also these tech employees that maybe have been burnt out on on SaaS software are like, oh, you know, I want to work on AI now, and this is the new frontier. So they go to bed late and get up early. They're researching their mission oriented. They need to now connect themselves to a vision that's greater than just building an AI thing. What is it going to do? But, you know, that just came to mind to my mind as I was walking, thinking. I've caught myself in that state before where I'm like self aware, you know, where I'm like, I'm mission oriented right now. I'm really working on this thing.

Lee Murray (00:38:26) - And that's what we kind of get up and go to work for. We want that purpose filled work.

Manny De La Vega (00:38:33) - And everybody wants that, especially the younger generation, like you said, and especially after the pandemic, it has put people in perspective that they don't just want to go to a job, they want to work for something that is meaningful, you know? So we've seen more and more, and I think we're going to keep seeing that in the next decade. Everybody turning towards that, that I don't need a job. I need to work for a mission that it's compelling to me. You know. That's right. So, so.

Lee Murray (00:39:00) - Important. Yeah. And lastly here, the last thing I had that I wanted to talk about was the practicality of mission playing out in marketing. We talked about it a little bit, touched on it. I I'm interested to hear your thoughts on, you know, if you take the mission, it's clearly articulated internally and aligned with the team. Now, marketers have the job of creating messaging and communicating to buyers.

Lee Murray (00:39:28) - What does that look like practically? How do you take what it is? I mean, I know you've seen this with other companies, like what is it? How do you take what you're on mission to do and communicate that to your buyer?

Manny De La Vega (00:39:39) - Yeah, I mean, what comes to mind is, you know, thinking about the guy that wanted to do the deliveries. I think everybody that works at the company is so aligned and so in-tune. So how do you create communication channels that you can let the outside world, the buyer, see the same thing because they don't see the owner delivering and they don't know that he's doing that? That's right. But how do you so then create a strategy to convey that message? Because it's very powerful. I mean, he was working with they're killing it on sales. They have no turnover. They have high retention. So they know that that works. So the marketer needs to be smart and say, what are the things that I can grab on that it's making this mission happen and it's my job to turn it into a tangible video, email, whatever this is, and finding the right channel that gets to my right audience so they can feel the mission being alive.

Manny De La Vega (00:40:43) - That's right. You know.

Lee Murray (00:40:44) - Yeah, that's right. Yeah, that's. And that's how I look at it too. It's it's taking the aligned narrative internally and then communicating that in a compelling way. So compelling means there's an overlap of, of what's going on in the buyer's mind about what they need and the pains that they currently have in there fires are putting out and the solution that you can bring to their world. You know, sometimes there's a little bit of an educational curve, sometimes it's a big educational curve depending on how new your to the market or how the market is. But the greater the passion, the greater the vision and and the more aligned that you are internally, the more clear it's going to become, you know, not, you know, get to channels later, you know, do we get on Instagram or LinkedIn or whatever, get to that later. It's about now creating messaging in a form that is compelling, you know, So if we get back to the safety gear construction company, they want to save lives or reduce risk to lives.

Lee Murray (00:41:52) - Well, you know, you can now start to look at how do we create videos, emails written, how do we create resources that articulate why we're so passionate about what is happening? How do we talk about stats in the industry? You know, how do we talk about lives that were lost and why it is such a big problem and why our company is positioned properly to solve this problem? You know, how do we give them resources that contextually wrap around this narrative? So maybe it's not necessarily risk that they're looking at, even though they it is in their back of their mind because it's not hasn't lost on them. But maybe they're really focused about compliance with OSHA or, you know, some kind of regulatory thing that's always creeping up and stopping their jobs. Right. Because top job is revenue loss. So speaking to the thing that matters to them most and drawing that narrative into, well, we want to help your guys stay healthy and, you know, at work and we want to help your jobs continue on.

Lee Murray (00:43:01) - You know so it's it's what is it that they value and aligning that with what you value you're going to start to pretty quickly get to some messaging that works.

Manny De La Vega (00:43:13) - Exactly. That's what Apple did so great and Nike for example you know when. When Apple was very small and you only have a handful of teams working on the iMac or the iPhone there. They were already feeling what we're feeling now about Apple. We just didn't know about it because, you know, the alignment was already ingrained inside the company. So the great marketers did that job. They they found what they were passionate about and they found a way to communicate it to all of us. Yes. And that's when Apple went, because they found that key ingredients. They had not done a really such a great job. Apple probably will be still small and, you know, everybody will be happy working there and creating all these things. But but who knows if it wouldn't exploded the way exploded. But the marketers did that, you know. Yes.

Lee Murray (00:44:05) - And and I think I have a reason why and I talked about this a little bit on the Vision podcast, last podcast. But it's this idea that if you do have such clarity internally and you're as a marketer, which I think very rarely happens. So if you're thinking, Oh, well, you know, my situation is so bad, a lot of people have it is all messy. But if you're handed this sort of. Perfect textbook textbook of vision and mission, and it's very compelling. Then as a marketer and then even as a creative, someone who's going to be creating this content, distributing it out, communicating so videographers, editors, copywriters, all the creatives, they can have a field day because they don't have to think about any of the upstream. You know, mess. All I have to do is say, okay, here's a clear here's what I'm trying to do. Let's communicate this in a compelling way. And if it's very clearly articulated, the compelling part is is given to them.

Lee Murray (00:45:13) - So then when you go to make you know, and I would I would argue that that pointing into the spear for marketing really is storytelling. And how do you tell a great story that's compelling in your campaigns? Well, all the rest of it has to be there. As a marketer, you can't be making up mission as you're trying to tell a story. You know, you look at all the great stories that we read in fictional nonfiction and the mission of the protagonist is well defined, right? And if it isn't, it's the that's the reason why you reading the book is to because it isn't. So I think when you get to storytelling, both in video written, you know, short form on social. The creative then is so much more fulfilled in their position in the company because they can have a field day creating stories and doing what and getting better at telling stories so the company exponentially wins at that point. So I would say if your Facebook ad copy or copy or content or any other things that you're paying money to put in front of people, it's not working.

Lee Murray (00:46:27) - There's probably because it's not compelling. I mean, there's other a lot of other factors to how you run ads, assuming you're doing it all sort of properly best practices, it's probably because it's not compelling to the audience you're trying to reach. So therefore, you got to have to look back up the chain to mission and vision so that you can tell a compelling story. So I think that's very important.

Manny De La Vega (00:46:49) - And in reality, I don't know how many marketers they think they hand out what everything is aligned and perfect, you know? I'm sure that happens, but more often than not is messy. And they need to figure out how and help them out. That's the real challenge of a market. That's right. That's right. And that's what differentiates a really good ones from the average ones. Right? The average ones can use stories from whatever they're given. The good marketers can do great stories and fix what they're given, so they find a way to make compelling stories, you know? Yeah, for sure.

Manny De La Vega (00:47:22) - If it means to go back and rethink mission and vision and find that alignment, they will. They will do that, you know?

Lee Murray (00:47:30) - That's right. Yeah. This has been amazing conversation. Again, I really appreciate you coming on and talking through this. I mean, again, I couldn't have thought of a better person to discuss this topic. So thank you very much.

Manny De La Vega (00:47:41) - Well, thank you, Lee. It's always a pleasure and glad to be here. Thanks for having me.

Lee Murray (00:47:46) - Yeah. If people want to find you, where should we send them?

Manny De La Vega (00:47:50) - Yeah. So our website is De la Vega advisors.com. That's where we have all our services. Yeah. And LinkedIn and and our website.

Lee Murray (00:47:59) - So perfect. We'll put all those links down below. And now we're moving on this thing. This is fourth installment to the fifth installment getting getting really interesting here on how to build a strategic marketing plan. So thanks again, Manny, and I'll see you soon.

Manny De La Vega (00:48:15) - Sounds good. Lee, thank you so much.

Lee Murray (00:48:17) - Thanks for joining us on this episode. We're now that was the fourth installment of How to Build a Strategic Marketing Plan. This course that I'm building and this has been so much fun just having all these different people that I know in my network. Come on experts in their own right to talk about these topics. So I hope you're getting a lot of value from this. If you are not subscribed to the email, that's something that I would recommend you do. I think everybody who is most people who open the email are excited about getting them, and that email list is growing every day. It's very exciting to talk, you know, give more of my perspective on the topic at hand from week to week. So go to Harvard Murray, click on Exploring Growth podcast and you can just enter your email right there. It'll add you. So definitely go do that and I hope that you will continue to follow this series that we're doing. We're building this course out and see you on the next one.