The Essentials of a Good Vision with Brooks Szewczyk
In the third installment of this series, our Host - Lee Murray, Business Growth Strategist at HMC Consulting, discusses the essentials of brand vision with Brooks Szewczyk, marketer at Yardstik.
Together, they delve into the significance of having a clear vision when establishing a brand and attracting customers. The conversation also explores how a well-defined vision influences marketing endeavors, emphasizes the necessity for marketers to align with visionary companies, and underscores the pivotal role of brand identity and values in crafting a persuasive message.
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Brooks Szewczyk:
record again.
Lee Murray:
Right. All right. And we're back with Brooks. Thank you so much for being here.
Brooks Szewczyk:
Yeah, absolutely. Glad to be here.
Lee Murray:
Yeah, so the simple recap is that I'm building a course called How to Build a Strategic Marketing Plan for Marketing Leaders and Small Business Owners. And this is, I think, the third installment of a user going through the course. They've learned a lot about buyer personas, profiles, understanding the buyer. And now on the other side is understanding the brand. And so this first part of the course understanding your brand is talking about vision. And in the course, we've talked a lot about setting your company organizational values to then embed those into your vision statement and mission statement. But today, what I want to do is talk about vision as a broader topic and look at why is vision a good thing to spend time on occasionally. And then how does it kind of flow through practically to marketing and use cases within the business for it to be productive to work on? So, first I'd like to kind of have you give just a quick background on what you're doing now, how do you work with your role and maybe some past roles just to give people context of your point of view.
Brooks Szewczyk:
Yeah, absolutely. So currently working at a, you'd call it a startup called Yardstick. Yardstick is the world's first trust and safety platform. So we run pretty much any kind of pre-hiring screen. We built a platform that's incredibly unique and allows people to do that really easily and really well. So there's a lot of changes that came with the internet economy, the growth of like marketplaces as a business model. And we believed that... in order to build trust and safety into the internet economy, we had to build a platform that reflected that change. So that's what I'm doing at Yardstick. I'm currently the only marketer and we're looking to grow our team here in the future. But being the only marketer, my initial focus is on brand. I'm a brand centric marketer. So I'm thinking, what are the foundations right now that we need to lay in order to build something that's going to acquire customers really quickly in the future. And so that's why vision is really central to me there. Of course, I've been for the last seven years building something on the side of my own and working with a lot of companies on messaging is primarily where I'm at. And vision is foundational to messaging. So that's often one of the best places to start. And... Previously, I get just one more piece of experience to mention is I used to lead the marketing team at Bethany Global University. And being a school with a very, very central mission and vision kind of instilled in me the power of vision and mission as part of your brand and as part of what makes you you. And I've seen with a handful of companies that I've worked with over the years that if you don't have a well-defined brand, if you don't have... beliefs as a brand, a mission as a brand that you hold very strongly. It's really hard for you to say anything meaningful. So I think that's probably where we'll, we'll go with a lot of this, but that's a quick introduction to where I'm at and what I'm doing right now.
Lee Murray:
Yeah, that's great. So it sounds like I got the right person here to talk about vision. Because I agree. I think vision and brand go hand in hand. Vision is this thing that the course takers are learning about, in that it's really this casting of a big statement about what your organization is going to do in the future. And a lot of times, I think it's centered around the founder, CEO. you know, the main leaders because they're the ones casting that vision typically and Getting support from you know other leaders in the organization But it's kind of this idea of how are you going to change the world, right? How are you going to change the industry? How are you going to change? your Local community if that's you know where you're focused But it's about change. It's about you know, your organization and therefore your brand impacting people in a way that is so much bigger than just selling a product or, you know, just delivering a service. So, you know, to start there, that's sort of how I see vision. And then we'll look at some other things around it. But, you know, when you think about vision, what, you know, what comes to mind, how would you explain your definition of vision?
Brooks Szewczyk:
Yeah, I think that vision is the direction that you're trying to go. It's the end of that, the endpoint of that direction. And usually this is going to be your most like grandiose endpoint possible. Vision is, is like you said, how do you want to see the world changed? Uh, if, if you did everything right as a company for the next 10 to 15 years, what, how would the world be different? That's, that's what your vision is. And it has to be realistic. I think some. companies go overly unrealistic with their vision and it makes it kind of hard for people to follow. It makes it hard for you to defend and care about as a brand which is why when you do it that way, some companies just don't care about their vision at all or they don't think it's very important and marketing teams don't do much with it. But if you do it well and you actually have something that's really relevant to your market, that's really relevant to your employees, and... you have this vision of something that you're genuinely working towards and something you can care about as a company. So to me, it's the direction that you're moving. If you're looking at that direction, it's the very end point of it. Everything goes right. This is where we want to land.
Lee Murray:
Yeah, and I think the modern day Steve Jobs, because everybody I think in decades past appointed Steve Jobs as the visionary, and I agree, is Elon Musk. And I think one of the things he's trying to do is create an interplanetary species that we can inhabit different planets, which is such a crazy vision.
Brooks Szewczyk:
Right.
Lee Murray:
But I was watching something on, well, whatever the... not Starlink, it's not Tesla, it's the SpaceX. I was watching something on SpaceX and it was talking about essentially that vision of accomplishing interplanetary species inhabitation is drives all of the decisions of the company.
Brooks Szewczyk:
Mm-hmm.
Lee Murray:
So, you know, every department understands this vision and part in part is why they signed up to be a part of it because
Brooks Szewczyk:
next
Lee Murray:
they
Brooks Szewczyk:
time.
Lee Murray:
have somehow latched onto this is almost impossible, could be impossible, but I want to be part of something that is impossible, made possible. And what's interesting is that the tentacles of a strong vision that is cast well out into the ether, but also through, you know, your organization and the ranks of your organization is that it has far further or further reaching tentacles into the second and third, fourth tiers of partners, investors, stakeholders, everything that reaches beyond your team. I was talking with a colleague of mine not too long ago about what he's doing. He's part of brokering a fund over in, I think, Africa somewhere, no, it's Australia, to do mining. And it's mining here on the earth, like we've known mining. But it's basically the bigger vision of that project is to set in place the structure, the infrastructure, that they could then transplant to Mars for it to do mining there. So the investment vision of what someone would give money or investment group would put money in for is not only to make money here in Australia, but also that it could have a link to the things that are happening on Mars. So when a vision is strong and compelling, it attracts so many different types of people to it. So,
Brooks Szewczyk:
Okay.
Lee Murray:
that's the one thing that I would wanna bring forward is that the vision is stated with which to have impact. And in order to do that, it needs to be compelling.
Brooks Szewczyk:
Yeah. And that goes to show from a marketing perspective, a lot of marketers are focused on one specific type of area, I guess, in the in the funnel. Like if you're looking maybe at just acquiring leads or something like that. And then if you're thinking about vision from just one really myopic point of view, you're not going to catch the full breadth of what it actually affects because vision is. why people are really excited to come to you. Vision is why your customers are excited to work with you and excited about what you're gonna do in the future. And I think especially for startups, having customers who are excited about the direction you're going in is incredibly important because your customers are gonna be your best marketers, they're gonna be your best recruiters. And if they're not excited, which they're not gonna be if you don't have a vision, then you're not gonna achieve any kind of real growth. Right. Vision is why investors want to come and put money into your company. If you're interested in doing something other than bootstrapping. And it's the, and the thing that I think it's really overlooked is. Vision is why people want to work for you. Like if you, if you want to attract top talent, people want to do work that is meaningful and
Lee Murray:
That's
Brooks Szewczyk:
I
Lee Murray:
right.
Brooks Szewczyk:
know like a lot of times people will say, we're all actually in it for the money. Every time people say it's about meaningful work, they're lying. They're not, they're seriously not. People are coming to a company because of what they get to do, what they get to influence, and who they get to work with on top of what they get to make. And so that's why, because it's so far reaching, like you said, it has to be genuinely compelling and realistic for them.
Lee Murray:
Yeah, and I think it makes sense for the owner, founder, CEO, whoever the main person, and I really would subscribe to this idea, there's one, usually one person, at least at the beginning, that is casting this vision and it is emotionally, and even like, just their whole being is about this thing. The passion is there. That's what's gonna attract people to it. It reminds me of this old saying that I'll probably botch about. If you want to build a boat, you don't ask people to help you build a boat, you show them the ocean. You show them essentially the destination or
Brooks Szewczyk:
Mm-hmm.
Lee Murray:
what is possible. And then as you've seen, as we've seen historically, even hundreds of years ago, people will show up and work for free on things that they feel compelled to
Brooks Szewczyk:
Okay.
Lee Murray:
seek come to fruition, to your point of people being getting... to people to be compelled is for it to have meaning and purpose for them and their lives.
Brooks Szewczyk:
Mm-hmm.
Lee Murray:
And we see that more today than ever, I think.
Brooks Szewczyk:
I think so. I think you're saying like the best possible scenario is for the leader of the company, the founder, the CEO, to own Vision and then to drill it in to everything that they do. And that does happen a lot. I think a lot of founders are really good with Vision, especially some of them are following like operational frameworks where Vision becomes a piece of what you do. Like a lot of
Lee Murray:
Yes.
Brooks Szewczyk:
startups now are using EOS,
Lee Murray:
Right.
Brooks Szewczyk:
which I think is really helpful. But the like second, scenario is you have a leader who doesn't instill the vision, you as a marketer then have to in your messaging. If you have no vision at all as you're building out your messaging as a marketer, your messaging will do absolutely nothing. And then
Lee Murray:
Yes.
Brooks Szewczyk:
the third scenario is no one owns it. Ideally, the founder CEO owns it. If they don't, and they don't want to, then as a marketer, you're kind of forced to in order to do anything that works. You have to. Um, but, but a lot of times that second scenario almost never happens. It's either the CEO owns it and drives it down really well, or no one does. And that messaging never sticks. And
Lee Murray:
You're right.
Brooks Szewczyk:
yeah, and
Lee Murray:
Yeah.
Brooks Szewczyk:
that, and that affects. So if the marketer is the one, even if the marketer is the one who is having to figure out what you actually believe as a company and what you're actually trying to accomplish. then you miss out on the, because when you're building, when your vision affects all of the ways you work internally. Right. So marketer can say one thing, but if your product team isn't bought in on that same vision, the product
Lee Murray:
Yes.
Brooks Szewczyk:
isn't going to go there. Your customers won't be happy in the future. You won't be attracting the right investors. And you definitely won't be attracting the right, the right talent.
Lee Murray:
But I couldn't agree more. And I would say that by far, you know, I've worked with a lot of companies. I've seen a lot of things. And by far, I would say I see companies with no solid vision and founders, CEOs, you know, leaders who don't have a clear vision. And if they do, they're somehow not communicating it at all or keeping it hidden or silent for some reason. And that's very detrimental to the growth of the company in general. Culture, it's detrimental to everything. And I would say, you know, we sort of switch and start talking about what I would think of as this dystopian, you know, world of marketing where you have no visionary person that is leading. Unfortunately, I think most companies, most marketers land in a position where they're at a company where they're sort of at this purgatory where, you know, The, you can, you know, what it's like vision, I think, is that it's like water to your body. And it's that essential. And the more you have of it, the more your body thrives. The more, I mean, obviously there's a, the analogy only goes so far, but you know, having water is essential. Now you can drink lower quality water. You can drink less water in the day than your body probably really needs and still survive. You can drink sodas, you can do a lot of things and your body's still gonna survive, but it won't be optimal health. You won't live the highest quality lifestyle, all this. I think it's the same for companies. I think most companies, unfortunately, they exist in this sort of purgatory nature of drinking soda water all day. They're existing. The leader is not leading from a visionary standpoint. They're just keeping the thing alive, putting out fires every day. And so marketers, I think most marketers probably watching this, are in that position where they haven't really ever stepped back to say, am I working for a visionary? Am I working for an organization that has a vision? Because maybe they're working in a non-profit, right? There's
Brooks Szewczyk:
Okay.
Lee Murray:
not maybe one singular person that's casting the vision. And I think the answer by and large is going to be no, which goes to your point of, okay, now I have to make this assessment. from a marketing standpoint, a branding standpoint of how am I gonna now understand what it is that we're doing to have impact and then communicate that to the buyer, to our audience, total audience, in a way that's compelling so that they can lead, so that you can lead them, right? I'm a subscriber to Jocko Willink's Extreme Ownership. You really should own your... You know, you'd be responsible for your life. If you want a business, you know, you want all problems and so if you're a marketer in a marketing role, I think that the buck sort of stops with you. So assessing what that is, and you're gonna own that position. I think owning the leadership of the audience that you're building, of the attention that you're garnering, you know,
Brooks Szewczyk:
Mm-hmm.
Lee Murray:
all of these things is really what should, how you should think of it. Then when you get to the business of doing it, it's going to be harder. I mean, it just is. It's going to be harder than if you had a visionary or someone that's more inclined to communicate their vision well across the organization constantly indoctrinating the why. If you have that person, it gets easier because you can really clearly and easily say to anyone any time, this is why we're what we're about. Right? So I think, you know, you have to kind of assess your position and what the landscape looks like. And if you're the type of person, and I'm this type of person, there are some of us out there that work in corporate where you are all about the why, and you realize this about yourself where like, I need to have a strong why to exist because my purpose is connected to that why. Well, the hard truth is, you know, do the best you can in a situation where it's you're not getting the feedback, you're not getting that clear vision. But you may want to start looking for an organization, tracking one down, that you could find someone and work under that person that has a strong sense of where they're taking the organization so you can connect to it and feel like when you go to work every day or most days, because it's still work, you're gonna show up with a smile on your face and excited that you're making an impact.
Brooks Szewczyk:
Mm-hmm.
Lee Murray:
Now, not everybody's wired that way. Some people can take more of, less why than others, but. Still, I think the point is to be made that if there is a compelling vision of the change that you're set out to make and the impact that you're going to make, that compelling vision needs to be communicated across the organization and through to your future customers and current customers. And so as a marketer, you kind of sit in that impasse where you're in the line of communication, right?
Brooks Szewczyk:
Yeah, I think to a lot of people, vision seems like something that comes out of a business textbook that doesn't actually translate to the real world. And they just need to be told that is not further from, couldn't be further from the truth, right?
Lee Murray:
That's right.
Brooks Szewczyk:
Give me one second. My one-year-old just started beating on the door.
Lee Murray:
Yeah, no problem.
Brooks Szewczyk:
I just want to make sure he's not doing that in the... Maybe I can I start from that moment again?
Lee Murray:
Yeah, go for it.
Brooks Szewczyk:
Sorry about that. I think to a lot of people, vision seems like something that comes out of like a business textbook that you would see in, you know, getting up some kind of business degree, but it doesn't seem like something that translates into the real world, but they would need to be told that could not be further from the truth. When we've worked with people who are struggling to build an audience in general, are struggling to make their message resonate. The first thing we do is figure out what do you actually believe? And what are those strongly held beliefs? What do you believe with some strength of conviction? And almost always, like if I'm acting like a doctor, my diagnosis is, well, you're not creating anything compelling and you're not growing an audience because you don't care about anything and you think you shouldn't care about anything because you're a brand. Well, that doesn't make any sense. And so the first step always to get a message to resonate is to go back to... What's your vision? That's, that's step one. And then based on that, what are your strongly held beliefs? And then based on those, how can we develop some type of IP that we can defend, care about, and when you have those three things, then you can, then you can start to build an audience and you can start to do something real with, with your marketing. But if you're a marketer and you're working under a leader who doesn't have a vision, then you have to go back and answer those questions for yourself. Do a lot of hard work, do the research. I would say go talk to every major leader in the organization and just try to dig into why they're doing what they're doing, where they see the product going, where they see the company going. Go talk to your customers and figure out why they're excited to work with you, why they chose to work with you. Go talk to people who are in your pipeline or in your market and ask them the same questions. What are they looking for? What problems are they experiencing? And based off of that, come up with some kind of de facto mission and vision that you can own and then build beliefs and IP off of. Now, I think there's people who are in companies where the CEO abdicates responsibility for the vision, but also refuses to let anyone else own it. And to those people, I'm like, you just can't be a marketer that does anything worthwhile there.
Lee Murray:
Right,
Brooks Szewczyk:
Look around.
Lee Murray:
I agree.
Brooks Szewczyk:
You're going to have to look around and find somewhere where you can do something meaningful. And maybe the word of advice to marketers who are looking around is... make sure you're digging into that vision as you go into a company. Make sure they have the foundations that you need to be able to do your job well. And if you care about brand and demand, which are the things that you should be caring about as a marketer, then you're gonna find a company with a strong vision.
Lee Murray:
Yes, I couldn't agree more. And I think also that if you find that your leadership or leader thinks of marketing as a cost center and they're always kind of talking down to marketing, they're not a visionary. Because I think most visionaries are typically have a marketing kind of bent because marketing is communicating.
Brooks Szewczyk:
Exactly,
Lee Murray:
So.
Brooks Szewczyk:
yes.
Lee Murray:
If you're communicating, all they want to do is tell people about their vision. All they want to do is tell people about how they're going to change the world or the industry or make something different that helps people or impacts
Brooks Szewczyk:
That's
Lee Murray:
people.
Brooks Szewczyk:
so good. If
Lee Murray:
You
Brooks Szewczyk:
they
Lee Murray:
know?
Brooks Szewczyk:
care about vision, they're going to want to amplify that message. They're going to
Lee Murray:
That's
Brooks Szewczyk:
want
Lee Murray:
right.
Brooks Szewczyk:
to defend it.
Lee Murray:
Yeah.
Brooks Szewczyk:
They're going to want to expound on it.
Lee Murray:
Right.
Brooks Szewczyk:
And if they, if they are not interested at all and having anyone in their organization defending or expounding on or owning that message at all, then yeah, they don't actually care about the mission very much.
Lee Murray:
Yeah, and you know, I think to a person like that, which was, I think, ultimately, as a marketer, you're right, you're going to have to end up finding another place to thrive in because they're not going to put money and dollars and resources and time and energy and, and meetings and thoughts around promoting what it is that you're trying to do as a marketer and making that better. But in the meantime, a good exercise is to kind of go back to business metrics and speak their language for a little while. And just for the sake of getting better as a marketer that can speak a bit of business language, I think it's a good exercise. It's probably not one, it's probably one that's foreign to a lot of marketers. I know it is.
Brooks Szewczyk:
Mm-hmm.
Lee Murray:
But first going to them, I think, and this is for the person who's barking up the tree and they're not getting a response, going to them and saying what matters to you inside the organization? You know, forget vision. What matters to you? Is it just a quantified number of units? exponentially or incrementally going up each month. You know, what is it that matters to you? And then taking what matters to them and trying to connect that to something that is compelling that you've found by, I think these other exercises and talking to everyone else, looking internally to the company externally, that's a great exercise because you may end up back at the same position where they don't understand what it is you're really trying to do with marketing because They're not, they don't have the vision. They're just looking at ones and zeros. But you will, it will do you better to understand the business better, which is
Brooks Szewczyk:
future.
Lee Murray:
important. So understanding how your marketing impacts revenue, it can be a cost, but also can be revenue generator. Understanding the business side of things, that's a perfect person to do it with because they don't wanna talk fluff. They wanna talk
Brooks Szewczyk:
Mm-hmm.
Lee Murray:
dollars, cents. So I would say the positive there is to lean into that, sort of what can be negative at first, and get the value you can get from that one person, so that whenever you are under someone who is more visionary and is fine with not necessarily talking dollars and cents all the time, you can still talk dollars and cents to back up the work that you're doing that is compelling. That's a very strong marketer, I think.
Brooks Szewczyk:
Absolutely,
Lee Murray:
Someone who
Brooks Szewczyk:
yeah.
Lee Murray:
can put both of those two things together. And... Again, leading in their role, being able to lead the visionary sometimes in use cases for looking at revenue and looking at dollars spent instead of just being let go. Because I think it's bad to be under someone that lets you just do whatever you want as well, even if there is money there. Because I've seen that case before too. It's not always good.
Brooks Szewczyk:
Yeah, for sure. That's really good for... Marketers have to be able to talk and contextualize what they're doing to the leadership team. And like you're saying, even if you have a leader who really understands vision and is really going at it, you won't have everyone who does. Marketing is the most misunderstood function within a company, I think. And so you have to defend what you're doing in terms of... revenue positivity or whatever the company cares about, not just to the CEO, even if you have a great CEO, but also to the rest of the leadership team. I've seen it often that the board is actually the ones who don't understand marketing the most.
Lee Murray:
for sure.
Brooks Szewczyk:
That's happened in a lot of organizations where the founder, the CEO is thinking, this is incredible. Here's all these things that have happened and the board's like, where are the leads? And that's like, well, that's not actually what we're doing. You can see. because we're looking at revenue more than anything. But to be a marketer who does anything, you have to be able to defend marketing up. And it's hard because in a lot of other functions in an organization, you don't have to learn how to do that. Because
Lee Murray:
Yes.
Brooks Szewczyk:
if you're in sales or you're in product or whatever it might be, that's actually already built out for you really easily. And people already understand what you're doing for the most part. If you're one, if there's of course, exceptions, but as a marketer, you have to be able to contextualize what you're doing and then bring it to some real metrics, bottom line, bottom of funnel metrics like revenue. If you want to actually be able to be trusted to do something great, like with vision and you, and I would add it's really easy to connect message with. Revenue, right? If that's, like I said, if you're acting as the doctor and coming in with a diagnosis, a lot of times I've looked into companies and they're like, okay, we are struggling to close deals. because the symptom of not having a great vision and message is every deal you pull through feels like you're having to drag people by their ears.
Lee Murray:
Yes.
Brooks Szewczyk:
Every lead that you get feels like you had to go out and do a ton of work to get it. So you see that, that's the symptom, the diagnosis is, well, your message isn't compelling. And if you fix that, typically, and then you go out and defend it, you have people who are coming to you. And so that's really easy then to prove. Okay, well, if we're getting less people interested who are having to pull by the ears and more people who are coming to us that go through the funnel faster or worth more closer to our ICP, we can easily connect that to revenue.
Lee Murray:
Yes, and like we've talked about, team members want to work for a company where they feel there's purpose and there's meaning, and that's usually connected to some vision. I think it's the same thing for customers these days. It's been for a while where people want to feel like a purchase they're making for the most part, even down to the gallon of milk or whatever. I mean, even those kind of commoditized products are even probably the higher identity type products where customers want to feel like this is what is this saying about me and how am I connected to it? So there's meaning and purpose behind how they connect to and by what it is that you're selling. Um, and even in the B2B space there is too, because there's, there's roles that are involved. People are making a decision and roles. What does it say about me and my role, how I'm leading my team,
Brooks Szewczyk:
Mm-hmm.
Lee Murray:
you know, um, all of the things. So I think that's the same type of thing that vision can do for this, these selling situations that you're talking about. your messaging across the funnel for marketing. What you're doing is you are creating a scenario or an environment where there is fit, right? Because I think when we look at what we're building here is what we're trying to understand is understand the buyer, what are our certain needs and wants, we understand the brand and part of that is understanding the vision, what is going to all come together in messaging. And the messaging is has to be compelling. So if you have these two sides of the land and you have a bridge in the middle where you're building with messaging, it has to be compelling. And the way that it's compelling is if your buyer sees that they fit with your company and that fit happens across lots of different layers. One is obviously pricing. I think two is identity about their role and how it's gonna affect what they're doing in their position, talking B2B services here. But how is this, you know, when they tell someone that they bought this or what does that mean, right? How is this going to help their team? Is it going to make them look like a better leader? Is it going to help, you know, increase revenue? Is it going to impact their business metrics? They have to feel like, okay, when we start using this product, this is going to solve the problem that we're facing. It's going to help us get closer to the things that we desire. And it's going to feel like we're working with a company that gets us because our value set is the same. So if in all of that and other factors you have fit, right? So what I like to think about, you know, trying to talk to marketers here is, is if you're having to go to your leadership, constantly looking for budget, constantly looking for, you know, awareness about what you're doing in marketing, and you're kind of pushing up. you know, barking up the tree. I think you have to start to talk their language and in why talking about vision is productive for the organization, right?
Brooks Szewczyk:
Mm-hmm.
Lee Murray:
It's an unfortunate situation because if you aren't, don't have to do that, it makes your life a lot better. But you become a better marketer in the meantime. And I think the end goal there is that, or the end product of working with your team, your company. on creating more compelling messaging, and therefore through sales, is that you end up seeing the result of vision work, stuff we're talking about here, is very, very productive for not only your organization, your team, your product building, but for your customers and the value they're getting currently for your prospective
Brooks Szewczyk:
Absolutely.
Lee Murray:
customers. It's very impactful across the board. So being able to look at all those checkpoints and measure or... you know, look at the effect that doing this work could have on those metrics, and then communicating that up to your leadership is gonna be productive.
Brooks Szewczyk:
Yeah, that's really good. I think that message market fit is something that's really important that you're kind of hitting on there too. And that to me comes back to brand. Like I said, I'm a brand centric marketer. I think brand is often misunderstood. It's often thought of as smaller than it's meant to be. Or even sometimes people talk about the wrong things, kind of like the things you would read in a textbook when you're getting a marketing degree. You think of brand and you start to think of how does this make me feel? You start to think of brand consistency. But in reality, there's different levels to brand. But there's a lot more components in it than you might think.
Lee Murray:
That's
Brooks Szewczyk:
And
Lee Murray:
right.
Brooks Szewczyk:
there's different, when I say different levels, I mean, some are more foundational to others. So what you're mentioning there is who is your, who is your market? What's the problem you solve? How do you solve it? Those are really foundational. And then out of that comes vision story. value propositions, which are probably the next layer. And then
Lee Murray:
Yes.
Brooks Szewczyk:
after that comes beliefs. Things, what do you not believe really well, you know, all of that. And then out of that comes the messages and the medium where you're sharing them through
Lee Murray:
That's right.
Brooks Szewczyk:
all of that. All of that is brand and all of it works together. And if you jump to message, or if most people actually jump just to medium and say, oh, we need to be on LinkedIn, what are we going to talk about? Well, then you're not going to, you're not going to say, or create anything that people want to see. But you have to understand that each piece of the foundation is important. You have to understand who your customers are. You have to understand what they care about. You have
Lee Murray:
That's
Brooks Szewczyk:
to
Lee Murray:
right.
Brooks Szewczyk:
understand your values, your mission, your vision, so that you can do well at some of those more practical components of brand.
Lee Murray:
Yes, and sort of an analogy, I think that brand, I think of brand as sort of brand identity. And I know in the marketing space, a lot of brand identity terminology is focused on colors and
Brooks Szewczyk:
Right.
Lee Murray:
icons and imagery and that kind of thing, style guides. But I think identity as larger, like who are we as an organization? What's our
Brooks Szewczyk:
Yes.
Lee Murray:
identity? So I think the customer has an identity. They may not. have it written down because they are not trying to, that's the mystery, right? It's like dating. So if you're dating someone, there's to the medium like LinkedIn, social, you can go to a bar, you can be at church, you can be in a playground, you could be at a concert, there's lots of mediums where you're going to interact with this person. And in bigger, more height, louder settings, you're going to talk to that person in a different way. They're going to communicate in a different way than you would in a quiet, you know, more reverent place
Brooks Szewczyk:
Mm.
Lee Murray:
maybe. So that's not unlike all the different platforms that we have to communicate it to our, our audience. What you're saying is, is very important in how you say it to that person. What you're doing is you're learning their identity. You're learning what their needs and desires are. You have a good sense of it, but it's a sensing type of thing. They're learning yours. They're learning how they fit with you or do you fit with them, right? And I think this sort of courting of, is this getting closer? Is this getting further away? Is marketing and sales essentially, but mostly marketing. It's, are we getting closer? Is there a fit? Is this fit happening? Or is it just not making sense? And so I think most, maybe lay, marketers think about brand as just what you see and how it makes you feel, which in dating would be the cool leather jacket with a good cologne, right? And yeah, there is an impact there because it gets your attention. Like, okay, well, there's something different here. I like the way it makes me feel, like the way it looks. But then you spend a couple, two more minutes, then you spend two more hours, then you spend two more days, two more weeks, two more months. and you're like, okay, I see what this person really is about and I really am starting to like it even more to the point of love versus this is just a leather jacket and some good cologne, right? And most people want something that's deeper than that. So,
Brooks Szewczyk:
Yeah.
Lee Murray:
you know, not to over analogize, but I think that that's what it is.
Brooks Szewczyk:
Well,
Lee Murray:
It's we're dating
Brooks Szewczyk:
no, it makes sense. Yeah.
Lee Murray:
or identities are trying to find a fit.
Brooks Szewczyk:
People don't understand what resonates. Then that's really what brand is. The colors that you've chosen and all of the color theory work that you look through in red or whatever, you know what I mean? That stuff, your brand consistency and the way you look and your style, that doesn't resonate with people. That's not actually what's making people like you,
Lee Murray:
Yes.
Brooks Szewczyk:
make them recognize you. That's not why they like you. They like you because of who you are. what you believe, what you defend,
Lee Murray:
That's right.
Brooks Szewczyk:
what your vision is. That's what they actually like you because of. Those are actually the way more important things. So
Lee Murray:
That's
Brooks Szewczyk:
that's
Lee Murray:
right.
Brooks Szewczyk:
a real, I think it's a really good analogy.
Lee Murray:
You know, something else that comes to mind, and this may be from left field, but I feel like it fits, is with Signal Media, my content agency, we do a lot of video work for our clients. And the ones that we work with that have a compelling message, which means I typically have a vision of what they're doing to insert, have impact or change, they are the easier ones to work with because they may not have their brand style guide together. Sometimes they don't, that's fine. It depends on where they're at. But... It's not about that as much as it is them knowing what it is that they want to communicate to the audience. And then they just need some help getting it printed, essentially email or video or whatever it may be. And so those are fun to work with because it gives our creatives the ability to be creative and do what it is that they're good at. They're good at putting together a graphic design. They're good at, you know, building a video from scratch that tells a story. All of those things can get so much more rich as a practitioner, a creative, you know, as that person that that's what your discipline is, rather than someone coming to the, to the table, basically saying, I don't know, what do you think? And it's like, well, I mean, we have lots of thoughts because we've done a lot of this and we can impose our creative ideas on you, but that doesn't mean that it's going to, the message is going to be compelling to your audience when they see this video, right? And so when I think about this, I think about it like these pointing into the spear when it comes to marketing, especially branding. But I'd say for a lot of your paid stuff too, is this compelling message that's timely. And when I think about video, it's like, okay, we, here's our audience. We know them well. Here's what we're about. And here's what we're trying to communicate in this video. And here's the purpose of what this video is supposed to do for our audience. and then for us as a company. Then our team can go to work and put our frame, we have a framework and just run that compelling, you know, message straight through our framework of, okay, well, what are the effects gonna look like? What are the sound effects gonna sound like? You know,
Brooks Szewczyk:
Mm-hmm.
Lee Murray:
what are the graphics gonna be on the screen? All that can tie to a style guide. We can, you know, our creatives start going, you know, popping and saying, okay, well, yeah, we could, we can do a click sound at the beginning with a light coming on. We can set them in a chair this way. And so they are now light up and they can tell that compelling story, you know, create it and tell it so much more when the message is already there to be told. Now it's
Brooks Szewczyk:
Yeah.
Lee Murray:
just crafting it into this creative thing that gets your attention and engages you. But it's the opposite way. Well, we have all the chops to do all these creative things, but we can put this filter on it and we can do that cool sound and It's just gonna look like other people who actually had a vision, but
Brooks Szewczyk:
Mm.
Lee Murray:
it won't be because there's no vision that's coming through this.
Brooks Szewczyk:
Lipstick on a pig.
Lee Murray:
All right.
Brooks Szewczyk:
Yeah.
Lee Murray:
Yeah, so that's the way I look at it. I think that vision is like water to the body. It's essential. Going back to the board, you have these bigger business conversations that are happening maybe beyond the marketer's reach. If you have a visionary in the leader's seat, they're gonna be communicating that vision to the board as well. In fact, if it's a startup situation, especially, they're probably gonna be looking to build a board around their vision. people that are passionate
Brooks Szewczyk:
Yes.
Lee Murray:
about what they're doing. And if they don't, they've really pigeon held themselves to constantly be barking at the wrong tree.
Brooks Szewczyk:
Yeah. You can
Lee Murray:
So.
Brooks Szewczyk:
talk about your vision every time you talk about your six. Like we, you know, you want to point to this campaign did this or this, this new product launch brought in this amount of revenue, things like that. And alongside them, you can say, okay, we just did 5 million in bookings because of this, that's incredible. We're going to celebrate. And it also brought us one step closer to
Lee Murray:
Yes,
Brooks Szewczyk:
accomplishing
Lee Murray:
yes,
Brooks Szewczyk:
this thing that we actually
Lee Murray:
yes.
Brooks Szewczyk:
exist for, you can talk about those things
Lee Murray:
Yeah.
Brooks Szewczyk:
next to each other and, and show how important the vision is as a leader.
Lee Murray:
That's it, actually. I don't want to miss that. I think that's a great point to make in that if you're measuring all these other business metrics, it would be great to measure the impact of your vision and
Brooks Szewczyk:
Mm-hmm.
Lee Murray:
have that alongside, I know a lot of nonprofits do this because they already have sort of built-in vision. But having those metrics, as much as they are able, you can pull them out, having them alongside these other revenue metrics, that's very compelling for... a leader that is a visionary for them to see the tangible result of your work. I love that.
Brooks Szewczyk:
Yeah. Thanks. Yeah, I think this is, this is really foundational stuff for people, but it's often, it's often missed, so I really appreciate this conversation. I think this is a much needed one. And I think really helpful, especially for people in the marketing seat, which is, I'm glad that's the audience. Cause I think this is especially helpful for them.
Lee Murray:
Yep, couldn't agree more. Well, this has been great. And I appreciate you being on and your time to help marketers understand the impact of vision in an organization. One thing that we didn't really cover is culture. We can maybe circle back to that another time. There's always more time to come back and talk about other
Brooks Szewczyk:
Yeah.
Lee Murray:
things. But culture is a big one that I think, if you're a marketer listening to this, hopefully you see two sides of that. You see... that there is hope for you if you're an organization that's not typically geared towards vision, to gain some chops in that organization and do the hard work, but maybe look for an organization that will, you can find a better connection to the purpose there. But if you are an organization that has vision, well, you have to look to the side that you're not necessarily being judged on and lead yourself in that way too, which could be a business conversation. you know, a well-rounded marketer is going to be able to look, you know, into an organization and see the impact that their work is having, both internally and externally. Because when you think about brand, brand is, it's permeable. It's not this thing that you, it's not, again, it's not a leather jacket on the outside. It's the heart of the organization coming through. You know, that person that just happened to wear a leather jacket and a nice cologne, they, they could come from a place where they have a great heart and they just like to wear leather jackets because it's cool. But a lot of times organizations will have that jacket on but there's not a really strong beating heart inside of it. So as a marketer, that's our, where we sort of sit in the hot seat of communicating value across lines.
Brooks Szewczyk:
Yeah.
Lee Murray:
So this is a good conversation for that.
Brooks Szewczyk:
think so. My, my thought on culture is we talked about earlier that some people say that people just come for, for money and they're not there for what they believe. And maybe some people do exist like that. My question would be who would you rather hire? Someone who comes because they really believe in what you're doing or someone who comes who doesn't believe in it and they're, they're just there for, for the money. And of course we want to be able to treat people well, pay them well. It's not,
Lee Murray:
Right.
Brooks Szewczyk:
that's beside the
Lee Murray:
Sure.
Brooks Szewczyk:
point. But you want people there who actually care about their work. And I think being a marketer, and if you're a marketer hiring other marketers who work under you, hiring people who don't have, don't care at all about your product or can't care at all about your product,
Lee Murray:
Mm-hmm.
Brooks Szewczyk:
it's going to mean they're not, they're not actually passionate in their work. And that, that's not, that doesn't create a good culture at all. You want a culture of people who, who care.
Lee Murray:
That's right. I agree completely. I'll throw a kind of a out of left field answer to you. Cause I know that obvious answer is to hire people that are on board. But if you see in someone, sometimes there's people in bad situations. They just need to have a job that can pay them and they can
Brooks Szewczyk:
Yeah,
Lee Murray:
get
Brooks Szewczyk:
for sure.
Lee Murray:
onto the next season of life. If you see that, obviously that's something to discern. But apart from that, if you see that there's not necessarily a connection, but you think that there can be a connection, is something to consider because it's similar to a conversation we're having with our buyers. You know, there are some buyers, there's a portion of our buyers that we need to influence into the call of what we're doing and the solution of what we bring in their life.
Brooks Szewczyk:
Alright.
Lee Murray:
You know, not everybody's a first adopter. Not everybody is going to get right on the bandwagon and have the Roomba, you know, going around their house. Some people have to be sort of dragged into it and once they're there, like I can't believe I've never done this before.
Brooks Szewczyk:
Yeah. Yeah, that's kind of why I said they can't either people who don't or can never
Lee Murray:
Mm-hmm.
Brooks Szewczyk:
care about it because
Lee Murray:
Yes.
Brooks Szewczyk:
like going into yardstick, I didn't I did not care about building further trust and safety into the gig economy and the internet economy because I didn't see the change. And that's what you have to go out and do in general is you have to create awareness of the problem that you're fixing and this vision that you have. and then bring people to it. And that's part of the hiring process. It's also part of the onboarding process. And you know, maybe it's easier fixed, sadly, maybe it's easier fixed post-hire than pre-hire, because it's kind of hard to figure out if someone's able to come in and care about what you care about. But the things that I would look for ahead of time to know whether that is, this is a framework Patrick Lincione put together in his book, Hungry Humble Smart. But it's those things, humble, hungry, smart. I think I said them in the wrong order. Are they humble? Are they hungry? Are they smart? If so, they're probably gonna be on board and a great fit in your organization. But a lot of times if people only have hungry and smart, they're not actually gonna ever catch on to the vision. Similar with humble and hungry, they're not gonna catch on to the vision. So that's a really good framework. And
Lee Murray:
Yes.
Brooks Szewczyk:
I've used that hiring in the past. I think that's really, really good to dig into. There's interview questions that surround those ideas as well. That's a really good framework. really good book, but like I said, you may just have to figure out later on. You can see the fruit of someone who doesn't care
Lee Murray:
Yes,
Brooks Szewczyk:
in their work,
Lee Murray:
I
Brooks Szewczyk:
right?
Lee Murray:
think so. And you can maybe see a track record too, when you look at their experience
Brooks Szewczyk:
Yes,
Lee Murray:
to
Brooks Szewczyk:
yeah.
Lee Murray:
see what is gonna be happening in the future. Part of it too is getting them in to a team. Maybe they're just looking to work for a team, work with a team that is encouraging. Maybe they're working siloed right now. Maybe they just need a better team environment for them to care about what it is that they're actually doing.
Brooks Szewczyk:
Yeah, for sure.
Lee Murray:
There's a lot of nuances when it comes to hiring and people and all that, but. I think what we've done here today is we've kind of, you know, covered a lot of basis when it comes to the impact that vision, the work of vision can have in an organization, which is huge. And so I'm thankful for you to be on here and talk through this. If every, anybody wants to connect with Brooks, which I would suggest you to do, go over to LinkedIn, Brooks, Sefia, check. And then also you have your side project, if you want to mention that,
Brooks Szewczyk:
Yep, twomarketers.com. If you want to learn how I work with companies on messaging and things like that, you can find that there. But mostly I just, I love to connect and build a relationship over LinkedIn. That's primary. So if you just find me there, I'd love to connect or chat. So that's
Lee Murray:
Cool.
Brooks Szewczyk:
great.
Lee Murray:
Yeah, thanks again, Brooks. And we'll probably have you back at some other point.
Brooks Szewczyk:
I hope so. I love coming on. Thank you, Lee.
Lee Murray:
Yeah, thank you.