Mission to Grow: A Small Business Guide to Cash, Compliance, and the War for Talent

In this episode, we dive deep into the importance of personal branding, authentic marketing, and creating a human connection between businesses and their audiences. Our guest Philip VanDusen Founder and CCO at Verhaal Brand Design, emphasizes how companies, whether large corporations or small businesses, can engage more effectively with customers by showcasing a relatable, human side. We also discuss the role of personal branding for leaders, the effectiveness of behind-the-scenes content, and the importance of creating a cohesive employee and customer experience. Whether you're a restaurant owner, hair salon entrepreneur, or remodeling business, this episode is packed with actionable advice for boosting your brand visibility.

Takeaways:
  • Human Connection Matters: People prefer to do business with individuals rather than brands. Establishing a personal connection can make larger companies more relatable.
  • Personality in Branding: Infusing personality into your brand helps differentiate it in competitive industries, making it memorable and engaging.
  • Show Behind-the-Scenes: Sharing behind-the-scenes content can demystify your business and build authenticity, making it less intimidating for potential customers.
  • Empower Employees: Involving employees in your marketing creates a sense of community and shared purpose, enhancing the overall brand experience.
  • Authentic Storytelling: Focus on authentic storytelling rather than trends, as it resonates more with audiences and builds trust.
  • Clear Communication: Ensure that job descriptions and expectations are clear to attract the right candidates and create a positive onboarding experience.
  • Consistent Touchpoints: Maintain consistency across all brand touchpoints, from marketing to customer service, to ensure a seamless experience for both customers and employees.
Quote of the Show:
  • "People distrust perfection. The more authenticity you can show, the more people connect with your brand. No one wants to do it themselves—they want to see the care and quality you put into your work, and that's what attracts them to you." - Philip VanDusen
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Creators & Guests

Host
Mike Vannoy
Mike is a digital-first marketing executive with 25 years dedicated to helping HR companies thrive. As a board member of an AI software company and Chief Marketing Officer at Asure, he's been at the forefront of AI, HR compliance trends, and the changing demographics that shape today's marketplace. Under his leadership at Sales Engine Media, the company predominantly focused on the payroll, HR, and benefits industries, earning multiple spots on the Inc5000 list. Actively involved in multiple small businesses, Mike is a lifelong entrepreneur adept at navigating the changing workforce dynamics. He has held multiple executive roles at industry-leading HR firms, showcasing his expertise and leadership in the sector.

What is Mission to Grow: A Small Business Guide to Cash, Compliance, and the War for Talent?

Welcome to Mission to Grow, the podcast tailored for small business owners seeking practical insights, compliance-oriented content, and expert advice to navigate the complexities of HR and beyond. Hosted by Mike Vannoy, a seasoned business professional with a vision for rebranding and leveling up. Join us every Thursday as we delve into the world of compliance, productivity, and management strategies to empower owners and managers of midsize companies.

MTG - EP 122 - Philip Van Dusen
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Philip: [00:00:00] I think you have to look inward. I think you really have to take a moment. And I mean, everyone in a small business is running fast, right? They're trying to deal with the customer, deal with problems, get the inventory, you know, get it out, get the sales. And establishing A strategic approach to your branding, your brand voice, and how you're coming across in your marketing takes a moment of pause.

So if you can have a little offsite, you know, take the senior management team and like get away to a hotel suite, you know, and have a little, you know, powwow about where you are, because you have to kind of assess where you are in order to establish what needs to be fixed and how to go forward.

Intro: Welcome to Mission to Grow, the small business guide to cash, compliance, and the war for talent. I'm your host, Mike Vannoy. Each week, we'll bring you experts in accounting, finance, human resources, benefits, employment law, and more. You'll learn ways to access [00:01:00] capital through creative financing and tax strategies, tactical information you need to stay compliant with ever changing employment laws, and people strategies you need to win the war for talent.

Mission to Grow is sponsored by Asure. Asure helps more than 100, 000 businesses get access to capital. Stay compliant, and develop the talent they need to grow. Enjoy the show!

Mike: How small businesses can attract and retain the right kind of talent by building an employer brand. Uh, cool topic, uh, probably an even cooler guest today, uh, breaking the mold from, uh, HR attorneys and, uh, HR practitioners and tax specialists today. Uh, I have a brand specialist with us and I'm really excited for today's conversation.

Uh, so he's, uh, uh, an entrepreneur, a creative designer, uh, Over 25 years experience in brand strategy, graphic design, and creative leadership, his impressive career includes serving as Vice President and Head of Design for Global Snacks at PepsiCo, where he [00:02:00] helped grow iconic multi billion dollar brands like Lay's, Doritos, and Cheetos.

With a portfolio that spans everything from fashion to corporate identity, And having worked with, for, with global brands like Old Navy, Disney, and Microsoft, his designs have won prestigious awards and shaped the identity of some of the world's biggest brands. He now shares his insights with over 270, 000 YouTube subscribers through his brand news newsletter, his brand design masters podcast, and in his thriving online community.

He's the founder and CCO, chief creative officer of his own firm. Uh, welcome to the show, Philip Van Dusen.

Philip: Thank you, Mike. I appreciate you having me on.

Mike: Yeah, uh, uh, I'm a marketer by trade focused on how to help small businesses grow through HR best practices. So this is cool getting to talk to a fellow marketer here today, uh, someone as accomplished as you. Um, maybe just, I want to talk about, How small [00:03:00] businesses can build their brand as an employer of choice to attract and retain talent that aligns to their mission, their vision, their values.

Uh, how do they level up in this area? We're going to go deep on a bunch of different topics, but if you had to, had to kind of recap, what would be the one message that you would want small business owners to, to take away from today's conversation?

Philip: I think it's really that the work, paradigm, the working world paradigm has shifted dramatically in the last three or four years and small businesses have to evolve to meet that. There's aspects of visibility that businesses need to achieve online. There's aspects of. Dealing with flexibility and remote work.

There's aspects of, accepting and embracing the new, consulting economy. And so I think that's, kind of, there's a bit of a wake up call going to be in our conversation today, I think, Mike.

Mike: [00:04:00] Yeah, yeah, I think so. So. We're, we're going to talk some best practices around how to create a brand for yourself as a small business owner, a unique opportunity around personal brand, how that can bridge into business brand, uh, et cetera. But I, I think it, I think you're spot on. I think the hidden story here is how do you adjust your brand to attract today's labor pool?

Because the labor pool is fundamentally changed. Uh, what it was even just say, you know, five or 10 years ago, I think, I think we kind of forget that, you know, post pandemic doesn't mean going back to the way things used to be. The, the, the, the makeup of the labor pool is permanently changed. What can you add more to that?

Philip: Yeah, it definitely has. I mean, and I think the attitude of the labor pool has changed. Uh, you know, I think all of us can understand that when COVID hit, um, it was no longer business as usual and [00:05:00] our lives came to a screeching halt and a lot of us were stuck on zoom, um, all day long and at home. And we suddenly started to reevaluate our entire working lives.

And a lot of people decided that they wanted to have better work life balance, spend more time with their family. They wanted to have more flexibility in their work. They wanted to possibly work, continue to work from home or to work from home partially.

Mike: Yeah.

Philip: of those things. are massive changes in how companies have to address their, their employee base.

And those things aren't going away. Just like you said, post COVID, you know, after that storm has kind of settled, people aren't going back to work the way they were in the past. And so employers are having to adjust how they're approaching their labor pool pretty dramatically.

Mike: So let's, I want to take the conversation where you, where you want to go. Cause I [00:06:00] think we can, we can go deeper on the makeup of the labor pool. And, or we could go down the branding, how to develop a personal brand that ties to your corporate brand. Both of these stories are going to come together at the end.

So, so you, you lead me.

Philip: Yeah, they definitely are. And I think that they, they, they relate directly to each other. I think that they, there was a study done a number of years ago and the end date of that study was actually next year, which is 2025 when they said that up to 45 percent of the labor pool in 2025 is going to be independent contractors.

I would actually venture to say that it might even be more than that at this point. And so, We were talking on our pre conversation to this podcast about the labor, the available labor pool becoming much more competitive and much and shrinking in terms of the ability of available talent. And so part of that is due to the [00:07:00] fact that a lot of people have chosen either through.

No fault of their own. They've been laid off, or there was some sort of redundancy or out of lifestyle choices to become independent. And that has shrunk the labor pool and companies, especially small companies are struggling with how to, um, leverage that pool and get more talent into their mix. But in order to do that, they're going to have to be more flexible in how they're, how they're working.

Um, And so I think that there's an adjustment or an evolution that small businesses are going to have to take on board in order to have the pick of the litter, so to speak. Um, because that, that pool has, has definitely split. It's bifurcated. There are people who are ready to go back to the office, ready to work in person.

And there are other people who are choosing a little bit more flexibility and, and, and a remote, remote, remote, And so companies really have to [00:08:00] understand or start to think about very deeply how they can utilize remote. talent pool to the benefit of their company. And there's lots of ways to do that. Um, one is just not having as many full time employees.

And there are a lot of companies that are choosing to do that so they can reduce, you know, the, the, uh, costs associated with full time headcount, like insurance and, and brick and mortar real estate, et cetera.

Mike: right. All right.

Philip: yeah. So I'll just stop there for a second.

Mike: So, so we'll talk a lot of specific strategies and tactics here. Why is it so important to identify the changes in the labor available workforce, the labor pool. Why is it so important to become aware of that before you start developing an employment brand, an employer of choice brand?

Philip: Well, hopefully most companies have. started to pay attention to that [00:09:00] aspect of their businesses anyway, but with this change in the expectations of the labor market, how companies are representing themselves in their content, in their advertising, in their in real life events, wherever they're showing up to the public.

They have to adjust what their company cult, how their company culture is going to reflect that change. And so that will have to, you know, that necessitates a relook at what your brand voice may be, what your content is focusing on. How are you going to communicate the fact that you are embracing this evolution and change in the marketplace and you are being accommodating to that.

And so I think that those. Two things both go hand in hand. I think companies have to figure out how we're going to do it internally. And then I also think that they have to figure out how are we going to communicate this externally. So people who come across us realize [00:10:00] that we're a great place to work for and, work, with in the case of consultants.

And, So they are starting to attract that talent that they so desperately need.

Mike: tell me if you think I'm getting this example, right. And I'm going to conclude with wanting you to give the audience a definition of brand story. So if I'm going to, if, if, if I'm a brick and mortar, uh, uh, business, Um, maybe I'm a restaurant and people can't work virtually and they have to come in. Um, I might have a talent acquisition strategy, a brand, an employer brand story that maybe it's around the specific type of food or cuisine.

And I want to attract people who are really passionate about, about this niche. Uh, food that I'm providing, or we are like a family and, uh, join here. And, and, and this is what day to day life is like, here's some pictures of our picnics. in, in, in outings, or maybe we pay more than the restaurant across [00:11:00] the street.

And it's a financial brand story. So those would be three different examples of a brick and mortar, uh, local business, but maybe going back to where you started about understanding the available workforce, if I'm willing to mix things up, maybe up until this point, I've tried to attract from a talent pool of a, call it a 20 mile radius of my building, um, and now.

Because of the ability for people to do work anywhere in any time zone. Um, maybe my story is looking for people who are passionate about some niche. And it's not about that. My, my, my, my story might change fundamentally. I'm looking for people who are passionate about X. Maybe I come a mission based business, people who want to support Y.

And I think about. You know, college grads might want to get, you know, uh, uh, accredited at a Google or an Apple, uh, but other people might say, I'll [00:12:00] be willing to work insane hours for a boss who just going to drive me to the grave because I want to be part of putting people on the, uh, on Mars. Right. And so there, there's all kinds of different brand stories, but that brand story is going to depend on who your audience is.

Is it. A 20 mile radius audience, or is it a global audience that, first of all, am I, am I, am I hitting that right?

Philip: Yeah. I mean, I think that any business has to figure out how they differentiate themselves and that differentiation, there are a number of different levers that you can pull in differentiating your business from someone else's and creating that differentiation is what starts to, to create this brand story around your company, which is what is going to get it.

People enable them to identify with you and to understand whether their mission, their passion, their interests are going to be served by working for you. And some of those things that you mentioned are, [00:13:00] you know, Caché. Is this a company that is the top of its field and people are desperately wanting to, even in the case of a restaurant, it could be a very high end restaurant that, um, is known statewide or countrywide and people have a need to want to work there and be associated with their, that brand.

There are companies that Uh, leverage the idea of growth or the ability to move up through the ranks of a company. So in joining, you know, you may be joining at a level, but if you work hard and show up and, and learn, you may be able to ascend into higher ranks in the company. There are companies that, uh, you know, a lot of tech companies in particular, they leverage the idea of ownership.

So as you work, you can invest in a company and actually become partial owner in it. And that idea is very attractive to obviously a lot of people in the tech industry. There are. Differentiate companies that differentiate themselves in [00:14:00] terms of mission statement or ethos. What is the company culture?

Like you said, is it very familial? Is it super flexible? Is it, um, do we have a lot of fun? Do we have a lot of events? You know, how are you going to start telling me? Or crafting that story around your company and your brand. That's going to be that magnet. That's going to start to draw, draw people in

Mike: Yeah. I want to talk about the bridge between, cause I think a lot of people, they hear the term marketing and branding and they're thinking, Oh, that's how I acquire new customers, that's how I sell more stuff. They don't necessarily equate that to building an employment brand to recruit and retain talent.

Could, can we maybe take a couple of steps back? How would you define. Uh, a company's brand and, and use my term if you want, uh, you're, you're the brand expert, not me. Uh, what, what is a company's brand story?

Philip: a company's brand story really is, [00:15:00] and people have described the idea of brand as being what people say about your company when you're not in the room. And it really comes down to what is the. What is the internal repository that people have? What understanding do they have of your company? Where does it resonate in their heart and soul?

How do they think about you? The difference between branding is what you do in order to build that sort of equity internally in people. And then marketing is short term. Marketing is you spend money on an ad, you get a short term result. Branding is a very long time horizon, and marketing is very short.

finite time horizon. And so if you think about it in terms of, of that crafting a brand story is really, what is that, what is that personality of your company? How is that personality going to be, um, shown? How is it going to come to life in what you do [00:16:00] day to day, say in your restaurant or what you do online in terms of what you focus on or what you're championing or what you're Point of view is on things that's what's going to really start to build people's understanding of what your company and your brand is.

And some of that is done through. You know, events and focusing on what your company produces, your goods and services, but then also on your employees and what you do with your employees and how you compensate them and how you keep them engaged. What, what sort of, you know, things do you talk about on social media?

All those sorts of things are really important in terms of building that larger context of what your company is.

Mike: Yeah, you, you made the bridge for me. I was going to ask, okay, help, help me bridge this from acquiring customers, selling more stuff to, uh, to a brand, uh, uh, uh, to an employment brand, but, but I mean, you said it it's your, it's your employees are engaging with clients or your employees are [00:17:00] greeting the public, your, your employees are delivering the service, so they, they are.

part of that brand. I'm sure plenty of people have said it, but I love the quote. It was Jeff Bezos. What is a brand? It's what people say when you're not in the room, right? Um, and, and I always make the joke. It's like, I might have some brand message up on the wall of my lobby. The customer is number one in, but when you walk in, In the person behind the desk doesn't look up.

They don't make eye contact. They're looking at their phone. They, you get the vibe that they're a little, almost annoyed that you're interrupting their, their day. That, that plaque doesn't mean crap, right? I mean, so the brand in that case. Is the employee experience in between the employee and the customer.

It's not what you declared your brand to be right.

Philip: That is absolutely true. And you have to make sure that your [00:18:00] employees are, you know, to a certain extent, indoctrinated. They drink your Kool Aid, so to speak, and that they internalize what your company's ethos is, what your mission is, how you, what your, the personality of your brand is supposed to be. And if they don't, if you don't take the initiative to, first of all, Define those things for your company in a very intentional way to codify those things in writing through a process of branding and strategy with, you know, an expert and someone who knows how to do it.

And then, and then this is the part where a lot of companies fall down is then you take that codification and you educate your employees. Every employee who comes in the door has to internalize that That ethos, that messaging, that personality, because in every single touch point in your company, from the, the person who picks up the phone after you've been sitting on hold, or the [00:19:00] person who's greeting you as you're walking into the restaurant, or the person who is servicing, you know, the piece of hardware that you sold them, I mean, every single touch point that, that a person has with a brand is an opportunity to bring that Personality to life and to start to build that, what we call that brand equity inside of people, their understanding of it.

A perfect example of this. And I love this example. My, I've done a lot of work with P& G and in the past. And one of the things about, one of the things about, um, uh, consumer packaged goods is that those sorts of, uh, products are Many times the brand equity is passed down literally from generation to generation.

So you might've been a Tide family. You might've been a Gain family. You might've been an Ivory Soap family, and your mother's trust in those things and her using that throughout [00:20:00] your upbringing, chances are pretty strong that you're going to be using that same brand in your family when you're bringing up your kids.

And so that's the sort of, uh, That's the sort of long term equity that branding can actually build in people. So there's that affinity people have to use your products and your services, and that can absolutely pass down from generation to generation.

Mike: And then making the bridge from products, probably maybe it's not, but maybe it's harder in like consumer packaged goods. But I think about a company like Disney, right? It's clear what their product is, uh, uh, fairly clear what their brand is. Outward facing, but what do they call their employees? They call them cast members, right?

So, uh, just a simple thing, like what do we call our staff? Um, uh, [00:21:00] as a way of pulling that, that act, that customer facing that outward facing brand story inward. And do you want to be a cast member? Cause just calling yourself a cast member. Just speaks volumes of what's expected of you performing your role.

You're if you're a cast member, you know, and I can see that, you know, it way more than just I'm putting on the Mickey ears and I'm performing in the park, but if I'm an executive responsible for, uh, to deliver revenue for a certain function, I have to perform as well. I'm a cast member. I have a role in this play.

I have a role. that I'm, uh, that I'm playing here. Right. Um, can you, can you think maybe other examples of ways small businesses can kind of bridge this customer facing, external facing brand, so it's not a separate, here's my mark, here's my sales marketing brand, here's my employee brand. I think to only to work, they have to be the same thing.

Can you think of maybe other examples where that, where you see that bridge?

Philip: [00:22:00] Yeah. I wanted to mention an example of, you know, when you were talking about Disney, Paul Pressler, who used to be the, the head of, um, the head of Disney, um, Parks in Europe. And he became, when I was working at Old Navy, he became the CEO of Gap Incorporated. And when he started with Gap and kind of did his listening tour, going around and talking to Gap and Band of the Republic and Old Navy and all those teams, he kept referring to our customers as guests because at Disney, they call their customers guests.

Everyone is a guest. And so that's a, that's putting a different kind of moniker and, and. Uh, a way of thinking about and way of, um, positioning who your customer is. You're approaching them in a very different way if you're calling them a guest than if you're calling them a customer. Customer is very transactional.

Guest is very kind of welcoming, right? And I think [00:23:00] that the same thing, goes with any kind of small business. It's how do you, how can you create a little bit of memorability in what it is that you do? Starbucks has done an incredible job with this when they, when they, you know, now you can order, I think it's something like 10, 000 different variations of their drinks, but it used to be that.

You know, you could go in and you could order the size you want and the flavoring you want and the how many shots of espresso that you want. And you can super personalize your coffee. At the time, this was groundbreaking. Like it used to be like, you go in, you order coffee, you want cream, you want sugar, that's it.

Boom, done. And now this was a completely different experience. So how do you make what you do? An experience, an experience that people are going to remember. And that could be, you know, for, for a restaurant, it could be how you greet them. Walmart does this amazingly. They have actual people who are just greeters, like when you walk into the store and Here's [00:24:00] another experience.

Like when I was in the fashion industry, I used to shop the globe for inspiration and go to tons of different stores. And when you went into Abercrombie and Fitch, when Abercrombie and Fitch was like really hot in the fashion world, when you walked in, um, You could always, they had a scent. They had a perfume and colognes that they sold there.

But when you bought some clothes, you went up and you bought some pants, you bought some shirts, whatever you go and you're checking out and they are putting them in the bag, they would spritz your clothes with the

scent. And so, and they didn't ask, they just did it. And so when you got home with your big paper bag of, of abercrombie and fish stuff, you opened that bag and your clothes.

You know, you brought the clothes out and you also got this wafting scent of the scent that you were smelling in the store. So they made this connection between there, there was no longer just like a product, a pant, a shirt. There was a scent memory [00:25:00] that you had about Abercrombie and

Mike: I think I've read where, uh, Ascent is like one of the most powerful. Sensory connectors to memories.

Philip: Yes, it

Mike: Sometimes you, you hear a certain song. It's like, Oh, I was, I know exactly where I was when I first heard that song. Scent is like the most powerful of those.

Philip: Scent is the most powerful. Color is the second in terms of your, um, your memory and, and, and triggering memories. And color is one of those things that has deep, deep psychological, um, impact. So the colors that you choose for your brand are also really important in terms of how people are perceiving your brand.

Same thing, you know, and, and if there's any way that you can incorporate scent or sound. Or, or color into your experience. Here, another great example, Cinnabon, right? So Cinnabon, when you go into a mall, granted they're baking things, but they make it a point to let that cinnamon smell waft through, [00:26:00] waft through the mall.

So when you're going even close to the food court, you're smelling Cinnabon and you know, your stomach starts grumbling and you think about that super decadent. Treat, right? They leverage scent that way. There's a lot of companies that leverage, you know, stuff in that regard.

Mike: I want to, I'm going to pivot us for a second. As you're talking about Starbucks, what jumped to my mind is, and maybe, maybe this is just my, uh, small world, but how many of us knew what the word barista was before Starbucks, right? I mean, so the words existed forever. Um, but again, where Disney called the employees cast members, if you worked at Starbucks, you weren't just, you weren't schlepping coffee, you weren't, you didn't work at the diner just as, an employee or a waitress or waiter, you're, a barista.

And so just, Ways to elevate it, to leverage the brand that you are, pushing, putting out there [00:27:00] for your customers, your clients, your guests to consume, but also for your employees to like live that out. Because if I'm an employee and I got a choice of a 15 an hour job at this restaurant versus 15 an hour at Starbucks, do I want to be a waiter or do I want to be a barista?

Right? And so incorporating that brand story all the way into the employment spectrum. Let's, let's pivot here for small business owners. And, um, I'm going to keep pulling us to the employment brand to recruit and retain talent that aligns with our mission vision values. Um, that sounded like a bunch of corporate gobbledygook there, but, uh, I think it starts with basic brand building and there may be no better opportunity for smaller businesses, say under 50 employees for the owner to be the face, for the [00:28:00] owner to be that brand.

Can you say more? Agree or disagree. I see you nodding, but agree or disagree with that. Put some color on that. And then let's, let's talk about personal branding and how that ties to your corporate brand.

Philip: Yeah. There's this great quote that I love, and it says that people do business with people. They don't do business with brands. And the larger challenge is for actual larger companies who are large conglomerates who need to put some sort of a personal face on what it is that they do so people can relate to it because people can relate to people.

They can't relate to inanimate entities. And in fact, people seriously distrust. Large entities. And so the more human you can make the brand, the more approachable it becomes for people to engage with you and to bring you into their lives, basically. And so a lot of times you see super large companies that are injecting some sort of a character or personality [00:29:00] so people can identify with it.

Perfect example of this is, and I'll, and I'll, and I'll move to the smaller companies in a second, but a perfect example of this is like flow, right? For progressive insurance and or the caveman for Geico or the gecko for Geico, right? You have, sometimes when you have an industry that is super boring, like think about it, insurance is super boring.

So how do you bring some fun into that? How do you make it memorable? How do you differentiate yourself in a commodity business? Insurance is a commodity business. How do you differentiate yourself? So people understand that there's a difference between Progressive and Geico, right? So you're introducing a character or something, a person, an animal, a mascot, something that people can really relate to.

And so it's the same thing with smaller businesses and small businesses have a real advantage in this way because there's generally fewer employees and it's easier for one of the C suite people [00:30:00] to become a much more visible. Kind of presence in how that company is showing up on social media and so building a personal brand from a leader in the company is one of those ways that it gives people a person to connect with and so.

That's one of the strongest and most important things about becoming more visible as an owner of a company or one of the leaders in the company. It doesn't actually have to be the CEO. It could be the CMO. It could be, you know, someone who you anoint as your spokesperson. Another great example of this is like, Wendy's, right?

Wendy's is a restaurant and they have a character who's Wendy, right? But on social media, on X in particular, they have some really, really talented social media people who are to respond to and get involved in engagement conversations with people who are talking about Wendy's. And they also [00:31:00] are super snarky and, and confrontational with their competition.

So with Burger King and McDonald's, and they're always needling their competition and they're very, very funny. And so they have kind of brought in a personality into the Wednesday's business in a very public facing way that is super engaging. And it's a way that you can start to identify with Wendy's.

Wendy's is kind of in a way on social media, a very irreverent brand. And so establishing some sort of a point of view, you Personality, presence for your company in a visible way, either in real life or social media, is one of those ways that it gives people a portal to get in and to be able to really start to connect with you.

Mike: Let's get really tactical. Where does the small business owner start? So I own a restaurant that I just serve just American fare breakfast, lunch, dinner. [00:32:00] I'm, uh, I have a hair salon, uh, that, you know, my, it's a middle class suburban, 90 percent female customers that get colors and cuts. I'm the, uh, I used to swing a hammer and now I have three crews doing bathroom kitchen remodels.

And my bathroom kitchen remodel business, right? Typical one to 5 million entrepreneurial companies. Where the heck do they start? Cause I, I feel like so many times business owners just, they don't even know where to start or when they do, they think they just have to do the, like the latest Tik TOK dance, uh, uh, to, to, to get out there.

And it versus. What is my brand story? And then how do I, how do I put that story out there? Can, can you, can you get real practical for us?

Philip: Yeah, absolutely. I think the easiest way to really do it is people love to know what's happening behind the curtain. [00:33:00] People distrust perfection. And the more authenticity that you can show people, the more behind the curtain, behind the scenes sort of stuff you can show people, it gives them an understanding of who you are really at a deep, very deep level.

And so one of the ways that any small business owner can get started with this is to just do some short videos, like just do some vertical. Everyone's got a phone in their pocket. Just do some visual, you know, Vertical talking head. This is what we're doing today. Walking around your hair salon, walking around your restaurant.

Oh, you know, we're prepping the duck for our special tonight, showing the people who work there, showing the place where is your place of business, showing a bit of your personality and showing people what happens, how you do what you do. And that gives people a sense of who you are. Helps them get to know you as a person, you become less intimidating.

You start to see, and, and people also see the value of what it is that you're doing and the [00:34:00] quality and the attention to detail that you're, you're bringing to your business. And that, demystifies it for people, but it also makes it really attractive for people because they see the value of it and they want to, if you do it, do it well and make it, you know, kind of a fun experience for people, they want to become a part of it.

And they, and it, and it's an easier transition from them to go from watching a video on TikTok or LinkedIn or Facebook or YouTube or Instagram. Um, any of those platforms will take short form video and it's a, it makes that jump going from. Thinking about going to this salon as a new salon down the street and actually doing it, it's an easier, you know, because now they've seen what it looks like inside.

Now they've seen who the owner is and it's less intimidating and could be really fun.

Mike: And then tie that back to employees. So, so I'm a, we'll stick on the, in the hair salon example. [00:35:00] So, uh, and try to remember, uh, who, I've watched some, some really good marketers out there that talk about social media and. What does every restaurateur put on their Instagram and Facebook? Pictures of food. And it's like, who wakes up in the morning thinking, I'm, I'm just really curious to see some photos of a good looking cheeseburger.

Nobody, right? But like you say, if, if, if in my feed, there's somebody, it's a joke, maybe it's a kid's birthday party that I'm, that, that, that they're celebrating, maybe it's, who knows, but it's something behind the scenes, making the food, something that ties into the mission, whatever, whatever it is. I think people make that mistake, you know, uh, hair salon, just to put pictures of hair out there versus how to actually do hair, right?

Uh, how to video knowing darn well that no one's actually going to have the skills to do what you're doing. So they're going to come to you anyway, right? Um,

Philip: And that's a, Mike, that's a really important point. [00:36:00] Is that if you show how you do what you do, lots of times people go, well, if I share all my secrets, or I show her how I make my donuts, or I share how I make our bread, the secret's going to be out and everyone's going to do it for themselves. Here's the thing.

No one wants to do it for themselves. What they do do when they experience your sharing stuff like that is they see. How important it is to do this process to get this wonderful thing and they value it at a higher level and they want it more. And so when they end up kind of walking through the door of your store, they are understanding the value of that experience at a higher level than if they didn't know anything about it.

And so to your, to your point about the other employees, right? So there can be one kind of figurehead to a company that is, the predominant face on their social media, but giving your employees supportive roles in that is very motivating to [00:37:00] employees because they like to generally like to be a part of it. And, you know, everyone wants to see themselves on social media. And if they don't, you give them an out and you don't make them, you know, but. It's a, it's a way to kind of bring that family together and make the marketing of your company a truly group experience that people are all invested in. And that makes, that makes that a sell, a pitch, a completely different experience for people.

It's so much less intimidating and it's so much more welcoming than this is our, this is a shot of our burger on a plate, right? And we're having a special today. That's like, It's so cold. It's so impersonal.

Mike: Red, Red Bulls, uh, quite famously great social media marketers. If you go to any of their social properties, you don't see pictures of a, of a drink. You see extreme sports, right? Cause that, that's what they're, that's who they're marketing to. [00:38:00] So they provide, uh, uh, entertaining. It's maybe educational, mostly just entertaining content, the things that their audience does.

Um, I'm going to pull us back to HR. Does, does the marketing in the, say your personal branding, you know, you're the owner, or you've designated someone in your company to be the face, You, so you have, you have humanized, you're putting out good content. Uh, you, you, you, we'll talk other aspects of marketing here in a second. Uh, but you're doing this, do you need separate content, separate messaging to recruit and retain people, or can you.

do this in a way that you kind of kill two birds with one stone. And I'm, and I'm kind of going to the, uh, whether you love him or hate him, then Elon Musk, you know, people will work their faces off insane hours and not even maybe be treated super well because they want to be part of putting [00:39:00] people on Mars and colonize, right.

I mean, because they're so mission based. So. Maybe, can you just take us through that? And maybe there are some cases like that. It's a mission oriented thing that two birds can, you can kill two birds with one stone or, uh, where, where do you need to have something separate that you're truly marketing to your employees?

Philip: Yeah. And I think that in any social media marketing, um, calendar and strategy, you have to create themes around the content that you do. There are going to be themes around your content that are highlighting your products or your services. So people can understand what they are and really see and feel the value of them.

There's going to be. thematic content that you do that's around the customer experience. So what people actually experience when they're doing business. You may have themes that are around the [00:40:00] trouble, you know, troubleshooting or problem solving around what if something goes wrong? What if the dryer breaks, you know?

Um, what is that experience like? You can have themes around, you know, employee events. So what's it like to work here? Um, you can have themes around the product itself, right? So, And so how you think about your content is segmented, and you have to approach it that way, because what you want to make sure you're doing is not just doing a knee jerk reaction of, Oh, today we're going to do this.

Oh, today we're going to do this. And like, I feel like X, you want to be very intentional about the subjects that you're covering in your content. Content because you are addressing multiple needs. You're wanting to be more transparent with your customers. You're wanting to educate them as to all the products and wonderful things that you offer.

You're wanting to also kind of illustrate what it's like to work at your company. You want to illustrate how much You [00:41:00] value your employees and how your employees get treated and what the value of working at your establishment is for your employees, because that's ultimately what's going to attract people to you.

And how do you illustrate what your mission is, what your ethos is, what your, you know, um, you know, what your core values are. Because those are the sorts of things that people have to feel like they identify with in order to work for you. And I, you know, I wouldn't use, I mean, to go back to your Elon Musk example or your Tesla example, I wouldn't use that.

as a manipulative element, right? I don't think that you want to do that in order to kind of get over on people or to abuse people in terms of how much they work. But what it is doing is it's giving them a clear understanding of why they should want to do that. And what it is that they're going to get out of it, because I think that [00:42:00] one of the big changes, and this is circling back to what we talked about at the very beginning, Mike, which is that the, the work environment and the paradigm of work in our country has changed dramatically in the last four or five years.

And we have to, as employers, make changes. Are companies as attractive as possible to attract talent? And that has to be a very concerted effort. You can't just expect to throw a job description up on Undine anymore and get like 200 incredibly qualified applicants at the drop of a hat. It's a much deeper, Responsibility of yours as a business owner to craft a picture and a story and a presence for your company that's going to actually act like true content marketing, which is attraction marketing.

Mike: I, you, you, you, you, you jumped ahead. I mean, that's exactly what I was, I couldn't possibly agree more. When you had a world where you [00:43:00] just put your job posting out there and you're going to get plenty of qualified candidates. I mean, there's, there's a whole world of software that's developed to weed through, uh, resumes because there's too many for people to, to, to weed through and you needed machines and technology to winnow down your, your few best candidates.

And even then you had two or three to choose from. I mean, shoot. through, Today, it feels an awful lot more like the first person who can fog a mirror and show up on time is hired, right? Uh, just cause a lot of small businesses are struggling. How, how do you as a small business owner make your business a place that employees want to work?

Either for you or for your business serving your customers? How do you get them to want to do that?

Philip: I think you have to be really clear with expectations. So we've been talking a lot today about what is the company culture? How do we craft that [00:44:00] story? How do we make sure that that is getting across to people? So they want to work for us. But then once they are attracted to us, what is that experience for them?

Just like you think about what is the experience you have, that your customers have when they come and they experience your product or service, you have to think about your employees in exactly the same way. What is that onboarding experience? And that starts really from the second they're reading a job description.

So I can't tell you how many job descriptions that I read that are so generic and they've been thrown together from a frankensteining of three other job descriptions and it's been written by HR and it's obviously has nothing to do with what the real role is and they're misleading and it confuses candidates and they, you get a lot of people who are perfectly qualified who don't apply because it, you have to know UX UI or something because someone from HR threw that in there and so they don't apply.

So you have to be very intentional and clear about what your, [00:45:00] what the job is, what the expectations and the true role are. You know, be thoughtful about how you're putting your, um, your job descriptions and your, uh, your, your advertising out there for the role, because that's the step one, like be clear about what the job is.

And then as soon as people start contacting you, you want to make sure that they have the same kind of onboarding experience of interviewing, You know, the, the followup, the communication that goes on after you interview, or after you send in your resume, tell you, Mike, if any company wants to really differentiate itself, this is something that I'm just going to go off on a little tangent for a second.

If you want to really differentiate your company right now, deal with the incredibly, absolutely broken online job application that most employees are experiencing right now. I work with and coach entrepreneurs and, and creative professionals. [00:46:00] And it is a tragic experience that people have when they're applying for jobs.

They, companies are putting out, Vast, broad, nonspecific job descriptions. They're getting 500 resumes. They're throwing them all, like you said, through the ATS, through the applicant tracking system software. It's spitting out maybe three or four. They give like two of those people an interview. They don't communicate to any of the other 500 people who dropped them a resume.

What's that say about your brand? That someone had, you know, they, they cared enough about your company to want to apply for the job, and you don't even. Reply with any email like thanks for your resume like there's so many companies that don't even do that and it's tragic and so if you want to do you want to really stand out treat the people who are applying to your company.

Like your customers, because they are, they're the people who are going to make your company rise or fall. And so if you treat them with respect and recognition, and you [00:47:00] really actually communicate with them and let them go through the process of hiring in a way that they feel valued, they're going to bring an entirely different vibe to your company.

Mike: Yeah, amen. I mean, go back to my example. There's the, the customer is our number one priority sign in the back wall of the lobby, but the person behind the desk when you walk in doesn't make eye contact, feels annoyed. There's brand disconnuity. Discontinuity from that single experience. Now keep on going down the path.

Maybe, maybe I walked in the store because I saw an ad that was really provocative and spoke to me. And so that's why I'm in here. And. And now those two experiences, how I felt when I read the ad or consumed the content versus how I'm treated here is different, but then maybe once I get, maybe I buy it anyway, uh, in what's that customer experience look like?

What, all the way from opening up the box and the packaging [00:48:00] to the customer assisted videos or the customer support. Is it, does it feel like I'm talking to the same person? company at every single step of the way, same thing goes for the employee experience, right? Cause you talk, you talk about an example where, uh, shoddily put together, uh, job descriptions that are, you know, Frankenstein copy pasted, uh, that aren't even accurate.

You could have the reverse problem. You could have a great marketing copywriter, right? All of your job descriptions for the HR department. And, uh, people think, wow, this is amazing. And then their first experience is no response or the interviewer was a jerk or it seemed super disorganized. Or maybe I did get through and I got an offer, uh, but it really wasn't clear.

Uh, or they, they acted like they're so technology first, but then they mailed me. Uh, a big old, uh, folder full of paper that I got to fill out and mail [00:49:00] back. This doesn't feel like the kind of company that was advertised that I was, that I thought I accepted a job for. Uh, and keep going first day of the job, the first month of training, expect, I mean, every single one of those is what you and I would consider to be a brand touch, right?

That employee lifecycle experience.

Philip: That's absolutely true. I almost have nothing to add to that. That was really well articulated, Mike, but you're right. It's like every single touch point. from beginning to end has to be as consistent as possible and considered. And just as you do that for your customers, people who are actually, you know, paying on the barrel head for your products or services, you want to do the exact same thing internally, because those are the people, the human, true humans who are going to be instilling that brand, into your customers and your, and, and your, your prospective customers.

And if they aren't doing that in the way that [00:50:00] is thoughtful and kind and aligned with your mission and your purpose, then you're just creating chaos and you're not building a business as and as well as you can. And what happens Mike is that when companies have those sort of disconnects and these sort of processes, as they grow and scale, it gets nothing but more complex.

And many times they have to go back and do a lot of triage in order to correct that, either correcting it through onboarding or correcting it through training or correcting it through, um, You know, customer service, and that is extremely expensive and, and it takes some time. So it's better to kind of craft that sort of thing from the beginning.

So when you scale, you don't have to do that. And it's the same thing with branding, visual branding and design. It's like,

Mike: Yeah, I mean, this is so your world, right? [00:51:00] From consumer packaged goods to, uh, small business B2B services. So I think we're establishing the point that recruiting an employer, employment brand to recruit and retain talent, it's marketing. You are marketing, And good marketing is honest. It's authentic.

It's truthful. It's vulnerable. it, it has a perspective. it creates memories. It's, distinctive. It's differential. I don't, I have a fear that sometimes small business owners might think, the, oh, I'm marketing as though it's something slimy or sleazy. No, I mean, Marketing that doesn't tell the truth is gross.

I mean, people's bullshit meters are really, really good. Good marketing has to be true and authentic, right? And same, goes here when you're marketing [00:52:00] to, a, workforce to try to get them to work for you.

Philip: That's absolutely true. And like you said, people's BS meters are really, really sharp these days. And that actually aligns with the recommendation I had for how you can get started with content is because, because of that filter that people have, that level of distrust that people have as a baseline going into almost any interaction, you have to disarm that as quickly as you can.

And the. The easiest way to disarm that distrust is to be transparent, to show people behind the experience, to give people someone to identify with. And here's the other thing, Mike, is that once you give people that, if they have a bad experience with your company, that's the person that's got to get back to them super fast.

Like you have to, You, they have a person that they can hang that displeasure on. So, but it gives you the opportunity to [00:53:00] make that interaction right and to leave them with a good experience. So that, that breaking down that distance between the company and the customer is what is going to Make them want to, to be part of your brand family quicker.

And it's also going to give you the opportunity to fix anything that, that breaks or goes wrong more effectively.

Mike: can you give, so I think, I think, I hope we've done a really good job here, kind of explaining that it's the same techniques. It's the same process. It's the same brand. It's just, it's maybe two sides of the same coin, whether it's my, uh, customer facing, my marketplace facing brand versus my employment brand.

It's the same brand. It should be. Um, it just maybe the types of content, the types of messages that I still tell from that same viewpoint. Hopefully people get that this is the same. Can you maybe speak [00:54:00] to, I'll call it the criticality. of a consistent brand voice. And I'm, and I'm thinking, you know, good old fashioned stuff like colors in stock photos and, or not stock photos, whatever you're, whatever you're using graphically, uh, fonts, word choice, styles, can you, can you speak into that?

Philip: All day long, I can speak into that.

Mike: this, this is, this is,

Philip: This is my, this is my, this is my, this is my territory. Um, Yeah, the establishing a visual brand, what I like to call a brand ecosystem is everything from your visual brand to the experience of your brand, like those individual human touch points to the brand voice. And brand voice to me is actually how people talk, how you write, how you show up in, in written content, what the brand actually sounds like, and then [00:55:00] there's the, what the brand looks like.

So that's the brand identity, the fonts you choose. The color palette that you choose, pattern or text, texture, sound, smell, um, all of those sorts of things are part of a, uh, you know, brand identity system that you want to establish and codify as clearly as possible and set rules and parameters around.

From as early on in the birth of your company as possible. Cause again, if you kind of go at it, hodgepodge, you end up posting stuff everywhere and advertising and whatnot, and none of it aligns and it's all very inconsistent. And what that does is it makes it very difficult for people to build brand equity or understanding, or even recognize you when they come across you.

So the whole purpose of establishing a brand ecosystem is so that people can Understand when they see you, that it's you, and that every time they come across you, they can recognize it's you faster. [00:56:00] And two of the most important things to do in terms of that are consistency, And color, because apart from smell, which is hard to kind of get across in social media is color and color is one of those brand, uh, vehicles, which the more, the, the closer and more specific and more, um, and simple you are about how you communicate your brand with color, the quicker people are at recognizing you.

And so that's one of those, uh, As you talk about branding and brand ecosystems, the voice, the visual branding everywhere you show up should be as consistent and as thought through as possible.

Mike: Can you maybe think of examples? where this is done poorly. Small business, if you can. I know you had a lot of big company experience,

Philip: Well, I mean, I can generalize. I, I, I work with a lot of small businesses and a [00:57:00] lot of times they're coming to me when Things are broken where they have been in business three or five years. They've grown to, you know, a couple million dollars a year and, or some efforts, you know, up into 1, 500 million. And they have one or two different logos that are showing up in different places.

They use different fonts, they use different colors depending on the social media platform they're on. They use different sorts of photography in different places. They do different video styles and. Over time, because you haven't had a very clear system, they are basically creating assets for the particular need at that particular moment.

And they've been doing that for years. And so they've built up this library of exposure on social media that isn't clear. It's not aligned, it's not easy to recognize. And so we have to go back And we have to [00:58:00] define what all those things are and then go back and as much as possible fix everything that's already been posted and, um, and make it a very clear experience for people.

And that's one of those things that I would recommend any small business do. If like, if you feel like you don't have a really clear brand ecosystem, both visually, verbally, And, and how you're approaching social media and your social media content and your strategy. Stop, put on the brakes and do it.

Cause the longer time, the longer period of time that you, you know, you keep going, the more expensive and the more time consuming it is to fix it. Because as you scale, you're going to have to fix it.

Mike: Yeah, that's right. And so I would encourage folks to think about that exact same approach. And the traditional marketing, uh, uh, outward facing, you, you think about, okay, do I have consistent use of logo, fonts, colors, messages? That could be a [00:59:00] social media post. It could be a PDF, uh, download. It could be a printed piece of collateral.

It could be my website. Could be lots of, it could be my invoice. It could be the sales proposal. It could be my PowerPoints. It could be, it's all those things, right? In. If you're going to build an employment brand, you need to think that through that same user experience for every single one of those touch points as the employee, right?

All the way. Now you can't control, say the font and the color, uh, on a job posting on Indeed. Um, but you sure can control the types of words that you use in the voice And the perspective that you speak from. And then as you get them into your ecosystem, you sure as heck can control those fonts and colors.

Right.

Philip: Yeah, absolutely. And if you ever want to know, If you ever want an experience of what you get when you don't do those things, just go on Glassdoor and look at a bunch of reviews of companies, because [01:00:00] it's the dumping ground of unhappy employees who have had bad hiring or bad employment experiences. And that sort of bad press will live forever on the internet.

So the more that you can, uh, kind of, uh, avoid that happening for the, in the beginning, the better off you're going to be.

Mike: I could talk to a fellow marketer for a long time. I think we're at about time. Is there anything that I'll give you the last, the last word here, Philip, what, what would be your, maybe. Parting thoughts to small business owners trying to build an employment brand to attract and retain the kind of talent they need to get to the next level.

Philip: Yeah, I think you have to look inward. I think you really have to take a moment. And I mean, everyone in a small business is running fast, right? They're trying to deal with the customer, deal with problems, get the inventory, you know, get it out, get the sales. And establishing A strategic approach to your branding, your brand voice, and [01:01:00] how you're coming across in your marketing takes a moment of pause.

So if you can have a little offsite, you know, take the senior management team and like get away to a hotel suite, you know, and have a little, you know, powwow about where you are, because you have to kind of assess where you are in order to establish what needs to be fixed and how to go forward. So just like we're talking about today, Mike, about, you know, re looking at how you are architecting your employment experience and how you're addressing the new labor market post COVID, all of those sorts of things take a bit of Reflection.

And so if you're moving a million miles a minute as a small business, take a pause, try to reflect and, um, and be more strategic how you're approaching these things.

Mike: Yeah. And maybe my final thought would be, uh, branding and marketing is not just [01:02:00] for your customers and your prospective customers. Uh, it is your ethos. It's, it is who you are. It is what people say behind your back when you're not in the room. Uh, and that certainly includes employees and prospective employees.

So we're all in marketing. Uh, it's just whether you know it or not. So great conversation. Felt really enjoyed it.

Philip: Thanks, Mike. Thanks for having me on the show.

Mike: And thanks for everybody else for joining us today. Uh, it clearly marketing topic, you know, you think, uh, growing businesses. But no matter how fast or slow we grow, you can't do it without the right people.

And so, uh, encourage all of you to be thoughtful about developing your employment brand and letting us be part of your mission to grow until next week.

Outro: That's it for this episode of Mission to Grow. Thanks for joining us today. For show notes and more episodes, visit us at missiontogrow. com. If you found this content valuable, I invite you to share it with a friend and subscribe to the show. If you really want to help, [01:03:00] I'd love it if you left a five star review on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, or wherever you listen.

Mission to Grow is sponsored by Asure. Asure helps more than 100, 000 businesses get access to capital, stay compliant, and develop the talent they need to grow. To learn more about how Asure can help your business grow, visit AsureSoftware. com. Until next time.