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Join Derek Hudson as he explores Essential Dynamics, a framework for approaching the challenges facing people and organizations. Consider your Quest!
Welcome to Essential Dynamics. I'm Derek Hudson, host of the Essential Dynamics podcast and creator of the Essential Dynamics Framework. On the podcast, we learn about essential dynamics through deep conversations with interesting people, and I'm happy to welcome back Rocky Pedden. Rocky, thanks for coming back.
Rocky:Yeah. Glad to be here again.
Derek:It's it's great to have you. It's a great conversation last time. I learned a ton. I took notes. And for those who haven't listened to these in order, I Rocky gave me an a plus at the exam at the end too, which is pretty cool.
Derek:Rocky, I wanna take us up a couple levels today because I think your perspective on things will be really interesting partly because of your experience and and the way I've seen you think, but also because of what you try to do with your clients now, I think, requires a level of understanding of their whole business and and thinking about business as a system. So in Essential Dynamics, we really consider that our job as leaders is to define and then refine the system that we have for creating value. And we have to define value in terms of what customers customers receive. And there's different different ways that we look at it with the the idea of the purpose, path, and people and and attentions on those. I won't get into that now, but I I do wanna talk about the leader's responsibility to define and refine the system.
Derek:And let me let me start with this because because of what you're doing right now and the way we talked about it last time, when you talk to a client about work that your firm's gonna do for them, you really do have to understand the the client's system.
Rocky:It it's incredibly important. Yeah.
Derek:Yeah. How often are they, like, right ready to tell you that, and how much do you have to kinda pull out of them?
Rocky:You know, it depends. I would say most clients that we bring on, you know, they will they'll have some documentation. But what we oftentimes find is a lot of assumptions that they will make about, you know, their system, their clients, the the problems that their clients are having. And we'll we'll ask them some questions around, like, hey. Did you do market research around this?
Rocky:Or how do you know this? Is this anecdotal? Is this, like, coming strictly from your clients? Like, how are you getting this information? And, like, as we peel back those layers, like, we'll start to uncover.
Rocky:And usually, there is some moment where the other client will be like, oh, I don't really know. Like, I'm making some assumptions, and it will kinda be like an moment almost. And oftentimes, depending on who we're talking to, you know, if we're talking directly to the CEO, that will sometimes happen. If we're talking with the VP of marketing and CMO or somebody else in leadership that's in charge of, you know, the work that we're doing or overseeing the work that we're doing, then they will oftentimes be like, yeah. Like, I felt this way for a while, and I just didn't know how to I didn't know how to put my finger on it more or less.
Rocky:And so, yeah, when we get into those conversations, like, the beginning work that we do has nothing, frankly, to do or not nothing with marketing, but it's really focused on brand. It's it's who you are. And I think that's the future. Like, philosophically, when we think about what's the future of marketing, I think it's really brand centric. It's no no more are we just gonna see people, like, throwing a bunch of content against the wall or purchasing backlinks or things like that.
Rocky:I think it's gonna be, like, people, brands getting up on their soapboxes more or less and telling the world, like, this is why we exist. This is the problem we solve. So but, yeah, to get to that, you really do have to peel back those layers of the of the onion, so to speak, to really get them to think about, like, the basics before we can you gotta gotta crawl before you walk. It's really a good analogy.
Derek:Can you say more about brand? Because I think when you say brand, there's a lot of people who think of something different from what you're talking about.
Rocky:Yeah. I feel like brand is one of those words that, like, you you ask 15 people what the definition of brand is, you're likely to get 15 definitions. And and the way that we look at brand is just, you know, what do you stand for? You know, how do you think about your problems or solutions in the context of the problems that you're solving for your for your clients? Specifically, in the in the work that we do, we really focus on verbal brand identity, so not so much like the visual aspect.
Rocky:So when we say verbal brand identity, what we're thinking of, like, things as as simple as, like, the Oxford comma. Do you deploy an Oxford comma in your writing? But even more deeply, what are your core beliefs? Like, what are things that you say? What are what's language or words that you would use to describe yourself?
Rocky:What are words that you would never use to describe yourself? So when we think of verbal brand identity, that's kind of a route that we're going down. And then more broadly, when I say brand, it really is just talking about, like for me, it's how do you want the world to perceive you? That to me is, like, the core concept behind brand. Like, that's your brand.
Rocky:Like, whether you like it or not, the perceived like, how others perceive you, how other your customers, your clients, your prospects perceive you, that is your real brand even if it's not if it if it doesn't match up to what you want it to be.
Derek:So when when you say what's your brand, you're actually talking about two things. One is your aspirational brand, what you want the world to see, how you want the world to see you. And then the other is if we ask the world what they thought of you, what they would say.
Rocky:Yeah. And I think, like, to what you were saying earlier with respect to, like, leadership's responsibility here, you know, I think on an ongoing basis, quarterly, minimum, annually, You're communicating this internally to your team first, and it's your responsibility as a leader to set the the alignment, the direction, the vision, the purpose, the mission of the company. And and then it's your job to to teach your team what that is because ultimately, they're the ones who are interfacing with your clients, and they're the ones that build that perception of your brand with your clients in particular, and then your sales team with your prospects. And so, you know, that starts at the top and it rolls down, and it's important that, like, as leaders, we have these ideas about, you know, what do we stand for? What do we believe in?
Rocky:Like, what do where are we going? What's our purpose? Like, how do we wanna get there? And then, like, how do you communicate that? And there's some really great tools that can help facilitate those conversations and discussions.
Rocky:And, you know, I know we talked and everybody's talking about AI right now, but even going into an LLM and and asking it, hey. Give me, like, give me a quiz. Like, I need to build out a mission statement. Give me a 10 question quiz that you do research on and have me answer the questions and give me a mission mission statement out of it. Like, you can do stuff like that now and get to a pretty good outcome.
Derek:That's really interesting. So let me sort of inject some Essential Dynamics sensibilities into this, and I think it'll reinforce what you said. But what I'm thinking is that your brand aspirationally is the way you want organizations, your customers, the world to see your company. And the way they're gonna see your company is not by the statements that the company makes about its mission, but how it actually executes. And so when I'm talking about the system, I'm talking about the way you accomplish your purpose.
Derek:And the elements that we talk about are the path, which is, you know, all of the moving parts, and then the people who are the ones who are actually participating in that. So when we talk about brand, my contribution to the brand conversation is that is a way to look at and describe your system that can be understood by people outside. And I'm just I just made this up in this instant. So mark that time we're about eight and a half minutes in. Culture is what we say inside about the way that we do the things to accomplish the purpose.
Derek:And and they all have to be the same thing in some sense to be integrated. If if we're trying to impose a brand and we don't actually deliver that way, we're not gonna be successful. If we if we tell our team this is how we do business and we treat them differently, that doesn't work very well. And so we're all trying to get this integrated system that delivers value that the customer sees and the employees feel good about participating in. Is that a fair way to describe it?
Rocky:I think so. Yeah. I I think anytime I think the most important concept there is the idea of consistency, whether you're speaking internally and how you are working with your team or you're projecting externally to your prospects and to your clients. And, like, even if we think about externally, there's always different channels that you can go to. Like, you can go to LinkedIn, can go to Reddit, you can do your blog, your newsletter, and your brand needs to be consistent across all those channels.
Rocky:So anytime any of your prospects or clients see something about revenues in, they're like, oh, yeah. I know those guys. Like and it's and this is consistent with them. Like, their messaging, how they speak, their philosophy around, you know, the evolution of GEO and SEO, like, we're recognizable. And, like, that should be, like, the ultimate goal.
Rocky:That doesn't mean you should never change. Like, obviously, you're gonna have to change. You're gonna have to evolve with the market and the industry and so on and so forth, but that should just be part of who your brand is. And then as you're as that change is happening, you're projecting that across all of these channels, and not only externally, but then internally. So, yeah, I think the most important piece of this is the consistency aspect.
Rocky:And then from from my leadership perspective, like, my philosophy there is, like, I really lean heavily. You know, my first job out of college was working at enterprise rental car. And one of their founding values was you take care of your customer, you take care of your employees, and growth and profits will follow. And that has always stuck with me. There were seven founding values.
Rocky:That's the one that I I still remember word for word, and it's because I take it everywhere I go. Because, like, in if you go to RevenueZen's website, we have that founding value. It's written a little bit differently, but the principle and the concept is the same. And for me, it starts with your people. And this was kind of always a debate that we had at leadership talks since I'm enterprise, which was, well, what comes first, the customer or the or the employee?
Rocky:And it was, like, usually split, like, fifty fifty down the room, and I was always on the employee side. I was like, you take care of your employees first because if you have disgruntled, unhappy, upset employees, taking care of customers gets a whole lot harder. And so and that's the philosophy that we take into revenues in. Like, if you communicate internally first, like, what we're trying to accomplish, how we're gonna do it, how we're gonna get there, how we're all gonna work together to make that a reality, and then you can take that and translate it externally and start doing the thing for the customer to actually build value for them. And and when you have your team all rowing that boat in the same direction, like, that that work, that job to be done becomes quite a bit easier.
Derek:Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, I I appreciate the rowing analogy. I did I did talk about the the book, The Boys in the Boat on a Great podcast. On a podcast a while back, and they talked about swing.
Derek:And
Rocky:In that book, they talk about swing?
Derek:Swing. And
Rocky:I mean, I don't remember that part of the book.
Derek:Guess. Swing is when everyone is, like, completely aligned.
Rocky:Oh, that's right.
Derek:Right? It's so it's it's like the flow state.
Rocky:Yeah.
Derek:Right?
Rocky:Yeah.
Derek:And you can't force it, and it all just kinda has to come together. And it's just it's a beautiful description. I think I might have even blogged about it because the the climax of the Olympic race that that's when they've they finally get their swing. And if you have, you know, the flow state, if you have swing in an organization, your brand, your culture, the customer experience, it's all the same thing.
Rocky:Mhmm.
Derek:So that brings me to a really important question that I gotta ask you, Rocky. The name of your company is RevenueZen. Now I think you joined it after it started. Mhmm. But tell me about the name.
Rocky:Yeah. I mean, it it's intentionally picked. Again, like, speaking, like, from a philosophical point of view, the founder of Earth News Inn, Alex Boyd, if I'm not mistaken, I think he got his degree. I think he studied philosophy, actually. I could be wrong about that.
Rocky:I can't remember exactly, but I know he reads, like, Marcus Aurelius. Like, he's read those those types of books. And and even when I after I came on, we talked a lot about our name because people would would sometimes say, oh, your name's too long. And every time somebody would question our name, he'd be like, no. Our name is intentional.
Rocky:It's purpose built because we think marketing you know, if we think of marketing as the engine to drive sales, it'll the lifeblower of the organization. That's kind of how we look at we work out to do it. We wanna bring an element to of Zen to that process. And a way that you bring Zen is by having a system that you know is going to be successful. And so, like, that's we we early on in our kind of deck building days when we were talking about our brand, you know, we kind of envision this idea of a Sherpa, you know, taking people up a mountain and and being their guide.
Rocky:That's kind of how we looked at ourselves for the Sherpas of these people businesses. And especially early on, we worked with a lot of, like, really small startups and, you know, people who had never done marketing before. They were young entrepreneurs. They knew they needed to do something, but they didn't know what that looked like. It's like we really were, like, guiding them on their first adventure into, you know, entrepreneurship.
Rocky:And so we took that we took it very seriously being entrepreneurs ourselves. And then, you know, as we have gotten larger, we have some more enterprise level clients. Now, obviously, they have a history of marketing themselves. And and and for us, it's like, the idea is still the same. We wanna make this a system that we can that they can rely on, that we're gonna execute on with them, and we're gonna lead them into this place of, you know, working with their CFO in particular about forecasting and understanding, like, what revenue is gonna look like, what the return on investment's gonna look like for their marketing engagements, and really bring a lot of clarity to the marketing and sales questions that they have, and then just helping them take that next step forward.
Rocky:So that's that's really how we think about ourselves, how we always have. I would say, like, our conversations around how we speak about other news in have evolved over time, but the principles are really consistent, and they have been for the last, you know, seven years.
Derek:Well, I think that enduring principles eventually lead us to truth. And things that are things that are true will really endure. You can describe in different ways, and you always come back to them. So I just wanna reflect with with what you just shared some things where we agree, like, deeply. First of all, I've I lived in Korea for a year, like, more than forty years ago, and got exposed to Eastern philosophy there a little bit.
Derek:And so when I was putting Essential Dynamics together, the idea of the yin and yang, you know, and sort of that that balance and harmony with opposing forces was was sort of a driving element. So so the Zen thing kind of caught my eye. But then you said it's the system you know will be successful, and you trust the system. And so that's where you can get to that flow state. In fact, going going back to the boys in the boat, that was very specifically described as the only way they could get to swing, was to give up the last sort of part of holding on to themselves and just trust trust that everyone else had each other because that's the only way it would work way it would work.
Derek:So the system you know will be successful is is one that you can trust in, and that, of course, helps the system to to flow. And then the other thing you talked about is you used the word Sherpa, but then you were used the word guide. And my consulting practice people say, are you executive coach? And I say, no, I'm a guide.
Rocky:And
Derek:and they you know, what's the difference? I said, well, if you wanna climb a mountain, who do you hire? You hire a guide. You still have to climb the mountain, but you've got someone there with you that's that's been there and they'll be with you every every step. So those are, I think, enduring principles that you need to develop a system that you can trust and then trust the system.
Derek:And you can get outside help. Oh, yeah.
Rocky:I I mean, almost certainly somebody has built a better wheel. Mhmm. And, like, that's kind of the way I look at things. And I try to not build wheels myself. You know, I try to find the wheels that other people have been, like, have pioneered, and then we can improve upon those ideas.
Rocky:And as an example, we lean heavily on Kevin Indig. He does a lot of marketing research. If any of you viewers are ever interested in learning more about anything related to marketing, in particular, like, the the evolution we're going through right now with GEO and AI, He's a great resource. And oftentimes, what we'll do is, like, we'll start seeing something within our own client base. Like, some some, you know, data point starts coming across.
Rocky:We'll start seeing it kind of again and again. The first place we go is, like, well, has Kevin talked about this? Because oftentimes, he'll look at much larger datasets, and that will really help us confirm or deny, like, this this bias that we're seeing inside of our own data. And so, yeah, there's always somebody out there. Like, I kinda say this a lot to anybody who will listen to me, but I never wanna be the smartest guy in the room.
Rocky:I always wanna be the guy learning from other people if I can be, and then taking that and, like, putting my own bend to it. And then you must say, okay. Like, this idea I really like. There's certain elements I'm gonna change and, like, make it my own, and then that's what we're gonna deploy to our customers. And that's gonna be our differentiator in the marketplace or however we wanna view the thing.
Rocky:But but, yeah, like, those principles that you talked about, I I couldn't agree more. And just being consistent with those principles in good times and bad times. Like, for us, when COVID hit, for example, we lost, like, a quarter of our business just evaporated overnight. And, like, we had as as owners of the business, we had some tough decisions to make. Right?
Rocky:Right. We're gonna lay people off, or what what are we gonna do? And we looked at our founding values, and we were like, we think it would be the wrong thing to do to lay people off right now. We're gonna all take pay cuts first, and we're gonna see, like, what this looks like in a month. And sure enough, like, the market rebounded relatively quickly.
Rocky:We're able to pull back some clients, and we were able to keep growing. But I think those founding values and principles, they can't be things that that you say because they sound good. They gotta be things that you live and breathe daily in in, like, the best of times. You live and breathe them. In the worst of times, you still adhere to them.
Derek:Yeah. Yep. Rocky, I I really appreciate that, and that that goes back to our conversation about brand and culture. Those are ways to describe something that is. And if you're trying to build culture or brand by PowerPoints and consultants with sticky notes, you you might move the needle a little bit, but, really, your brand and your culture is who you are.
Derek:And, you know, my contribution to that is and that really involves how you deliver value to customers. And they're they're inseparable. So let's, let's leave it at that. We're all trying for swing. We're trying for Zen, or as I usually talk about, we're we're looking for that ultimate system flow.
Derek:And so I appreciate you bringing that to life with your own experience, Rocky. I think you said, best way to find you is LinkedIn, so we'll put that in, in our notes, but also refer to Revenue Zen so people can learn about that. I'm from unconstrained, and you can find us at getunconstrained.com. And until next time, consider your quest.