193: Lindsay Pedersen — Building an Ironclad Brand

Oh, what should your market? How do you get your marketing working better? How do you understand and message who you are? Like, how do you have all of that stuff be more effective? It's probably if you're having issues and concerns in that area, a brand issue, needing to figure out what your brand is, what is branding? What difference does it make? That's the subject of our show today. All about the power of brand and the surprising and unique connection to you and the other leaders on your team. Who, who are leaders and who is the company in the world is the subject of our conversation about branding. Keep listening. Well, hello and welcome again to the Scaling Up Business podcast. Today we're going to get into your branding and marketing issues. So it's helpful when we talk about scaling to get clear about who you are in the world. So I want to welcome to the show Lindsey Peterson. Lindsey, welcome to show.

Thanks for having me, Bill.

So Lindsay is up in the Seattle area. She's a friend of some others that other guests like Denise Leon that you've had on before.

That's right.

Yep. To talk about branding and stuff. She had some things to add to it. Lindsay is a brand strategist. She's worked with companies, you know, from new to old like T Mobile and Coinstar and Starbucks and Zulily. And she was a key person at Clorox working with multi billion dollar segments of the business and managing, well, a range of their brands there. And I'll let her tell more about the story. But anyway, she works with this and she wrote a book forging an ironclad brand that I thought was relevant and of interest to our folks in Scaling Up. So I'm glad to have you on the show.

It's so good to be here with you, Bill. Thanks for having me.

Good. So let's talk about, well, why don't we tell, kind of give some background first. How did you end up writing this book? What is it that you did? What deep flaw in your childhood led you to the need to write a book?

Okay, let's see how far back. So I spent, as you mentioned, the formative years of my career at Clorox, where in consumer packaged goods, the idea of brand is crucial to the way that you run a business because most of our products and consumer packaged goods are parity. And therefore, if you want to be differentiated, you need brand. It's really the only way to be differentiated and to avoid commoditization. So we get really good at brand in a world like that. It's kind of the Crucible for brand. And when I left, what is it?

Right, because you think about bleach. Bleach. Bleach, Right. So how do you create something? I mean, they have lots more products than that, but. But at the core, right?

Yeah, they're similar and some of them are like literally similar. Like bleach is actually the same as a private label even. You know, Casey Masterpiece Barbecue Sauce is fairly similar to the craft barbecue sauce. And Fresh Step Cat Litter is pretty darn similar to its competitors. So there are kind of around the edges there can be product differentiation, but there's not large spaces between you and your competitors at the product level. And therefore you have to differentiate in a different way. Yeah, yeah. So. And I think the other element is that as a brand manager in consumer packaged goods, you have P and L responsibility. So you're the CEO of the business. And as the CEO of the business, you learn to rely on your brand strategy as the decision making tool across the business, of the way to allocate resources, the way to punch above your weight. So it's very respected and it's just understood that it's critical. So there's also this cultural embracing of brand as a leadership tool. When I left consumer packaged goods and started working as a consultant with leaders to build their strategy, what I found is that this ethos of brand that I held from consumer packaged goods was really rare outside of that world. And particularly in a tech town like Seattle, where it's so product centric, that brand is kind of thought of as a logo and sometimes as TV advertising, or maybe it's the name of your company or it's your social media presence, or it's your personality. All manifestations of brand, but not brand itself. And I found myself having this conversation repeatedly. No, actually, brand is your North Star. It's not a logo. And it came to be so useful as a decision making tool for the leaders I worked with that I decided to write a book to take that conversation that I was having, one on one, and put it on paper so that I could share this idea, demystify brand, and show how it is the ultimate leadership tool and that there's a method for building it. You don't have to outsource it. You don't have to be a creative type to build it. There is a tried and true way to do so.

So I think before we go into that and talk about some of these client examples, you've got some great stories to share with us. It's useful to point to what you said I know that for some of the people that we work with and talk to and listen to the show and come to our conferences and workshops, their brand is the name and the logo mark, Right. And then very few of them have packaging also. But they might think of it that like the brand then might be the colors applied to the website. It's the visual identity and the name of the business for many people. And as you point out, that's a part of it, but that's not all of it. And then we all kind of know that certain things, certain brands are more compelling and they represent different things to us, which I think points to something bigger. But it's not just about creating a zippy new logo. And that's who you're going to be in the world, right?

That's right. I think brand, visual identity. So the logo and your colors and maybe your typeface and perhaps even your name, those are really important because they're often the first thing that people see when they're engaging with your business. But it's kind of like your brand is the relationship between your business and its audience. It's the meaning that you own inside the mind of your audience. And much like a person to person relationship, it's multidimensional. So to equate brand with logo or with visual identity would be to kind of equate me with what I'm wearing today. It's not that it's not relevant. People will notice what I'm wearing or the way that I am doing my hair or whether I'm wearing my glasses. Those are visible and therefore they can be ways of being, creating a bond. But it's also a little bit superficial. And the power comes from alignment between what it looks like you are and what you actually are. What people experience of you being congruent with what you say that you're going to bring to them. So the promise that you make and then the delivery of that promise being true, that's what creates relationship capital. In the same way that a human to human relationship is deepened when they are true to one another.

Before you carry that off because I think it's useful for people to get, I think what you said is really powerful there. So I had a mentor years ago who's an old ad agency guy, since passed away and I, I worked with him for a long time and published an online thing for his book series. And this guy, Jay Levinson, who wrote the Guerrilla Marketing book series. And Jay said, make sure you remember the difference between or you notice, pay attention to the difference between image and identity. He said your image or your brand image is like a false facade, like a, like a movie set town where everything is. There's nothing behind the front. And your identity is really who you are in your core throughout all the way out. And you talked about like, if you dress one way and we, we see this from time to time where a known sort of a person or celebrity or even someone in our life dresses out of character. Right. They, they do something a little bit and they're trying to stretch, they're playing and they're having a laugh or whatever. But, but when it's out of character, like, we immediately recognize, whoa, that's not sort of true to you. And it's not who you ever could be or are, but it's like who you are live for me and our companies are the same way. I think is, is what you're pointing to is that there's some way that you, that you're perceived as authentic and in your core, it may be wrong or it may be right. And when you do things that are consistent with that, it's expressive of that, it's in law, in sync with that. And sometimes you do things that are really off. And if it's accidental, it could be some damage, right?

Yes, exactly. The word consistent that you used, that's the way that people build trust. That's the way that relationships accrue trust is that there's a consistent bind between what you say you're going to be and what you actually bring, that you say things that are true, demonstrably true. So it's the same thing with a business or with a visual identity. When it is, when it's incongruent with what this person professes to be, it causes doubt, it makes us. It breeds distrust. And that lack of consistency, that breeds mistrust. It's something that you have control over. You can be really intentional about what you want, how you want to show up in the world and then follow through on that. But it requires that intentionality. It requires you to get really crisp on, on what you want that meaning to be so that you can make decisions that align to it. If you're not articulate about it, then it's hard to expect your audience to be clear on what you want them to receive from you.

Yeah. So getting clear about what it is. And then I think with that also then like with a human being, right. Every now and then we're triggered or stressed or put in some position where we reveal something that we spend A lot of time trying to hide. Like, I work very hard to overcome something, and then every now and then, some little nasty thing, like maybe I lose my shit with someone. Right?

Yeah.

Or some fears come out or whatever. And if that's something we've been suppressing or hiding. Right. It'll be like, whoa, wait a minute, what. What just happened there? And because it's. It's something that we work very hard and whatever that was is something that's inauthentic or that's like a. A veneer or a. Like a false front that doesn't include the thing that we've. And I think the same thing happens through with our companies. Sometimes we do that. We have a breakdown, an emergency of something, and. And then we try to, you know, gloss over it in some way. And that ends up doing some damage to the brand.

Yes, absolutely. And this is. It's interesting because what you're describing in some ways is at various points in the relationship, a different level of openness is allowed. So, you know, when you're just getting. When you're building awareness for your business, that's probably not the time to let it all hang out. Right. Like, whereas when you're. When you're in a deeper relationship, maybe you can experiment and be more willing to fail if somebody has given you permission to do so. I think where the. To step back even farther if we. And listeners can think about this as well. If you think about a brand that you really love, that you are loyal to, that you spend money with, and you don't resent spending money with that brand, with that business, you think of that brand, you bring that brand to mind. And I bet you that when you thought of this brand and why you love this brand, their visual identity did not come up. It might have been like number 11 or 12. But it's really, really rare for somebody to love a brand for that sort of the veneer effect or the logo or the color, it's about the way that you feel because you've experienced what they're selling to you. And it's nice when that can include.

Feeling attractive or sexy or like that. Right?

Absolutely. In fact. But that's deep, too. But that's about the customer feeling uplifted or more beautiful or in some way better because they've interacted with that business. That's about the customer. That's about the way that the benefit that they are experiencing because they're in relationship with that business. It might have some bearing to, like, how beautiful the visual identity of the business is. But. But it's less than most people think. Usually people love a brand because of the reward, the benefit that they enjoy, not because of a TV ad or a cute tagline or a pretty logo. It's usually what's in it for them, the customer, not what's neato about what the business did at a visual level.

Well, I'm sitting here surrounded by four Apple monitors.

Yeah.

And my phone and my. I'm like, oh, there's a brand that I spend plenty on. But I. In relationship to that brand, I feel smart, I feel productive. I feel elegant. Right. Smart, productive, elegant. It'd be things that kind of come to mind. Like my shit works better.

Yes.

I'm in a swearing mood today, it seems. But like that's why I feel like it. And it has polish and refinement. It's not kludgy and ugly and like that.

Right, Absolutely. Yeah.

In that relationship. But you know, I do notice the logos if I think about it. I can remember when they had different logos.

Sure, sure.

But I, but I don't think a lot about care. It's the overall experience and that, that, that I notice and think about there.

Yeah. It's a, it's. What's in it for you.

Right. Well that's. So let's, let's talk about some of your clients, that kind of thing. You, you mentioned as we were getting ready first retirement community. That I thought was interesting.

Yeah, yeah. So I was working with a retirement community that was exploring what are we, what's our. What is the brand meaning that we want to claim in our market. And they previously had been of themselves as we're a retirement community, we serve, you know, we take people in, in the last years of their lives and we provide them with, you know, a dignified way to live. And what we defined when we were kind of exploring what are the strengths of this company and how do they overlap with what their audience needs, what they really are good at bringing and what's a huge unmet need among their audience is vitality in the final years. It actually had very little to do with being a retirement community. It had little to do with the physical plant of the housing component of it. That's a product and that's one way of providing a platform for that vitality and, and dignity in the final years. But it really wasn't just about where they live. It's about experiences that can happen outside of the physical plant. And so when they got this crisp clarity that they're about vitality in the final years they could develop new products that had nothing to do with being a retirement community. They could develop experiences that happen even for people who, elderly people who continue to live at home. They could be an advocacy group. It was well beyond the physical plant. And so that was a source of scale.

It's funny. Retirement community. There, there could be resident retirement community and then there could be non resident. Right. Like a boarding school that, where some people live there and some are commuters. Yeah, they're all part of that community.

Exactly, exactly. And if you, if you're thinking of it at the level of the housing, then you're thinking of it at the level of the product instead of at the level of what's the reward that people enjoy because of what we bring to the world. And for many of them, what they're saying is, I just want to have dignity in my last years of life. I just want to still be alive until I die. There's nothing in there about housing. There's lots of ways to enable that emotional experience that don't require that. So it opens it up to many, many other product categories for them to grow.

Yeah, well, I think about like my mom lives at home and she has quite a few services that come into the home that help her deal with things that are harder for her to deal. And those services are designed and provided by folks who want to stay in their own home and that kind of thing. But when I think about the thing that she is hungriest for, for these days, it's company, it's social connection.

Yes, it's a huge deal.

So she connects with the caregivers as they arrive. She's still somewhat mobile. She has a little trouble, but she can walk unaided most of the time, but not always. So she's not confident, she's nervous. And what does she really, she so looks forward to, whether it's be the meal delivery or the, or the cook or the cleaning and the, all the different things that come. I don't know what, I don't know what they all are, I realize, but I know that these folks show up and they take care of her and she, I think looks forward as much to talking to them as anything else because the rest of the time she's got like 24 hour news on the TV going and she's, you know, and then sending messages to her kids about like, well, have you seen this and that kind of thing in the world? And I think that's just really all connection, right?

Absolutely. I mean actually without getting too Deep into the brand strategy itself. The way that people experience vitality in the last years of their life is by having deep community and connection. Community in the broad sense, not just where you physically are, but depth and richness of connections enables that vitality. And there are lots of ways to have connection. And maybe the best way, maybe the kind of best in class, is to actually live together. But there are gradations of ways of creating connection and vitality that don't require people to leave their homes. So there's a bigger idea here. And when you know, as the leader that you're in service of this bigger idea, not in just utilization of the rooms in your retirement community, you create more value for your customers. And when you create more value for your customers, you get people away from pricing conversations. You enable more of a rich margin without having to. You don't have to go to lowering prices because you have other ways where you're different.

Yeah, and the value is broader than any one point. It's a really interesting thing. In my 50s, I think about it more now than I ever did, although I still am quite mobile, productive and active. But you can kind of see it, as much as I hate to admit, like, you start to think about. You read an article here or there and you start to think about, well, what actually matters at that point is it housing, is it care? And then what trumps all of that is something like that, like community, belonging, purpose, connection, that kind of thing.

Exactly.

So it's interesting. So they discover that and then that alters little things that they do with the rest of the stuff, right?

That's exactly right. So the way that they explain what they do has less to do with hey, here's a place to live to, to, hey, here's a way that you can have connection and vitality in the last chapter of your life and you can kind of pick. There are lots of ways that you can engage with this. So there's a broader market because there are more people who want that benefit than people who are in, you know, in need of a place to live. And that's exactly right. So it changes their messaging, it changes their R and D. You know, what do we work, work on to create other ways to enable this benefit? By the way, a lot of those new product ideas are a lot more profitable and less overhead than a physical plant. So all by getting to what is the human need here that we uniquely deliver on instead of being at the level of what is the widget that we're selling.

Right. It's Interesting. So then a very different kind of business you worked with and talked about was the sports rehab clinic. Talk about that chain and that discovery.

Yeah. So there's a sports rehab clinic, a chain of sports rehabs that are in the Pacific Northwest. They were looking. They actually, initially they thought, gosh, we actually have to change our name because there were some legal reasons where they're gonna. They were gonna run up against not being able to own their name. So they had to change their name. And it begged the question for them of, well, what even are we? What. What kind of name should we be moving to? Because we have to change our name anyway. This is a good time to get really clear about who we are, what's our heart and soul as a business. And the focus of their messaging and even their product in the sports rehab clinic was, let's get you out of pain. You, athlete are in pain, and we're going to get you out of pain. And that's great. That's a huge need, especially among this group of people. But that's a category benefit. That's what any sports rehab clinic is going to do. Right. If you're a sports rehab clinic, you better be relieving pain. So it was not differentiated, meaning that they were standing for. And so there was no way to rise above all of the clutter in this market to talk about, well, we relieve pain. Well, everybody says that. So unless you're the person or the business with the deepest pockets in your category, then you have to be talking about something that only you can bring. So that was not tenable. The idea of relieving pain was not tenable. What we learned when digging and talking to customers is that this particular clinic actually had a fairly unique blend of different practices that they brought in to do this relieving of pain, different disciplines, from chiropractice to PT to life coaching, all of these. These different modalities. And because of the blend of them, they not only relieved pain more successfully, but they brought people to kind of a higher level of, why are they even an athlete to begin with? What are they trying to do that brings meaning into their lives? And what we heard from the customers is, I'm just trying to be my best. I just want to be my best self. If I'm a runner, then I can be. I can show my kids that I am still relevant. I can be healthy. It puts me in a better mood. All of these things that make life better. So the conversation shifts from relieving pain, which everybody in this category ought to be doing to living the kind of life that you want to live in a way that only this business was able to deliver because of their unique blend of modality. So then they did create a new name. And the new name was really about this hybrid of modalities and this intersection of different ways to help people to live their most healthy life. And then they had this distinctive place in the market. They were more memorable because they weren't saying the same thing as everybody else. And they had a more emotional bond because. Because they were talking at the level of emotional reward rather than functional, rational benefit.

You know, it's interesting there. So I used to do a lot of triathlon and marathon competitions and my therapist is still very loyal to her and her practice. But it was always painful, always uncomfortable. Right. But the point was, yeah, this, this like sucks, but I'm going to get you back out there, we're going to get you back running again and. Or biking or swimming or whatever it was that I was having an injury dealing with. She's like, well, it's going to hurt today, but you'll be better tomorrow. And sure enough, that was the promise. It was get you back doing what you love kind of thing again and again. That I always thought of her as that. Well, and I would tell people, you know, art, look, do you. That I would refer to her. Are you interested in getting back? Because if you just want to be pain free, then you should go find yourself on the couch and get a glass of wine or beer and crack on some TV and start binging. Because that's fairly pain free.

Yeah, I mean, I think it's interesting.

Running a smell of pain.

What, what you're bringing to light that I think is super relevant with brand is be really, really clear on your target customer and what their specific needs are. Because there are some people who. So she was really clear on her target customer and the need, the specific need that's different from the business that I was talking about. And it empowers you to be specific about your benefit. When you can be specific about your customer. You're not going to serve everybody at an A level. So choose the people who you can serve at an A level who are underserved by the rest of the market and optimize for them and be okay with the fact that there are some, maybe most of the universe that will not be attracted to that. There are athletes who do not want to go through pain in order to get better. So that's a source of power for her business to.

Yeah, no she caters to like hardcore ultra endurance athletes, very competitive athletes. Right. And so her name's Griot at Intersport. Just shout out to her because of all the love she gave me over the years. But she was very clear, this is not for everyone. Right, right. And I think that's also different than like if you did occupational therapy or post surgery, that would really be about maybe mobility and pain free. Right. Very different than trying to get a runner back in the game before their next event.

Yes, it sounds so. Gosh, it's so simple to choose. Make sure that you choose who you're optimizing for and what is the thing, what's the problem that you uniquely solve? Be crystal clear and focused on that one thing because the more vague you are on that, the less understandable and noticeable and remarkable it will be to your audience. So don't make the mistake of thinking you can be all things to all people because when you do that, it's just a recipe for being kind of mediocre.

So we talk about this again and again with understanding your core customer and your brand promises and your differentiating activities and being willing to do things a little bit different. Different that makes such a difference in scaling. When I see a company that speaks to me, that seems to tell my story, hey, if you're like this, we're for you, then I'm like, okay, yes, I'm in. Because I see that they know me and they have thought about someone like me, beautiful, whatever the situation is. Right.

I think that's a beautiful way of putting it. It's a gift. It makes you feel seen and understood. When somebody is specific specifically talking to you and you don't get the sense that they're just kind of doing hand wavy things to try to appeal to everyone and therefore it's going to draw more interest and more loyalty from you.

So talk about the software company that you did, because I think that's a whole different sector and we do quite a bit of tech clients both in the Bay Area and all around the world.

Yeah. So there was a Compliance, a SaaS company that provided compliance compliance solutions to their customers and the focus had been accuracy. So we, because of our software, your compliance will be more accurate and similar to the Sports Rehab example, what we found is that that is table stakes. If you're a compliance product, you better be accurate. That's not enough. It's not enough. It's important. But it starts there, it doesn't stop there. And so they initially had the hard realization that that means that they need to build more things that are not just about accuracy. So more of a turnkey, easy application, more service. And when they built those kind of foundational, rational benefits, they were able to ladder up to a more meaningful emotional reward for the end customer, which was this emotion of I feel mastery. I feel in control because I know that I can count on our compliant solution. So when you take the conversation from accuracy to I feel mastery, it's a distinctive brand promise. It also is a more emotional and resonant promise for this particular audience who that's what drives them is a sense of control and mastery. So that also allowed them to see growth opportunities. We don't have to stay in compliance, for example, because when we are able to enable this emotional reward of mastery, we can travel beyond just this category. And before it was, we're kind of stuck in this. We're about accuracy, we enable accuracy. And when they go bigger, they can straddle multiple categories and grow both horizontally and vertically.

You know, we've done a few shows on purpose before and figuring out what your purpose is. And I hear that there, like, why is accuracy important? And in sort of digging, why does that matter? You get to something like this when you say mastery. Right. I think of in this context, what more comes to mind is confidence and peace of mind. Like something's really deeply handled. And I don't know if that applies or not, but that's. Yeah, what I hear.

Yes.

And it's very related to this business purpose stuff that we spend a lot of time on.

I actually think I'll take that even farther. That brand strategy is a method for defining your purpose. So once you, when, when you have this, this, you know, step by step exercise to take you through the components of what creates a valuable brand, a scalable brand that can become your purpose. And it's, you're not just scooping something out of nowhere, you're actually building it based on, like, where do we have competitive differentiation? Where is the most need in the market? What are we uniquely good at and where can we bring that? How can we most reward our customer? What's the thing that's going to move the needle for them disproportionately? And then that can become your purpose. So it might be for the software company, it might be the feeling of mastery for all of our customers. For Volvo, it's safety. Their brand promise is safety. Their purpose as a business is safety. So they unite as this single idea that galvanizes your employees to deliver on this single promise. And it also Makes it singular and therefore easy for your audience to see you when you can distill it to a single idea. That's the governing purpose of all that you do.

Yeah, it's interesting. I think, you know, a couple things I'm hearing in this is. So now we're talking about what you care about, like, you know, and why that matters, that purpose thing, but it's also what matters to the customer. The client. And it's not just any customer, it's your particular customer. What that segment of the market is that you actually cater to. Not everybody in your whole category, but the piece that you're focused on and catering to. What do they care about and who are you for them? What do they really need from you versus want, think about, amused by, but like at their core need and care about. So it does definitely seem like a core kind of conversation, like who are we within that? You can also see on the outside like it's all the way through.

Exactly. And the benefit of having a single purpose that's both your brand to your customers and it's also the driving purpose for employees and for you as a leader is economies. It's more efficient to have a single idea than to have, you know, one brand that you put out to the world. And another guiding principle for how employees work, if it's the same thing, then you have this synergy. So an example I talked about, Volvo safety is their brand promise. Safety is also a tool for recruiting and for building culture. It's a very nurturing kind of risk averse culture. So it's also the way that they operate, which would be different from the way that say BMW would recruit. They're going to recruit people who are kind of lovers of the driving experience and kind of maybe enjoy the adrenaline of driving and speed. That's really different. So when it's a singular idea, then everything gets to. All of the musicians are singing from one song sheet.

Yeah. And like to go to the episode we did with Denise Leonard, having your people, your culture in sync with that brand makes a massive difference. And whenever there's a disconnect, as I've often seen with some of our clients, especially in the beginning, hopefully, if not later on, that there's real problems there. If, if you have people who don't, who, whose values, whose worldview is inconsistent with that brand promise, with the values of the company, you end up with problems. If your regular internal traditions are inconsistent with that, you end up with problems.

Right, that's exactly right. It goes back to the beginning of Our conversation, which is that people perceive inconsistency. You know, we actually as human beings, we are wired to discern inconsistency and it makes us feel unsafe. So when your logo looks different from your brand promise, or if your culture, by way of the things that you hear on Glassdoor, or the way that it feels when you interact with employees, if that is different from your promise, it doesn't just not build trust, it erodes trust. So you need consistency. In order to have trust as a very baseline, you have to have consistency among all of the components that your customer experiences of your business.

You know, it's funny in all that I realize that an exercise that we do with the brand is virtually the same as one that we do with leaders. So a leader wants to develop themselves. One of the things we'll do is we'll ask them to go out, do assessment interviews and they'll just like a 360 or whatever, they'll talk to the people around them, right? The people they report to that report to them, their peers, that kind of thing. And they'll ask them, who am I? Like, give me the real honest thing, don't sugarcoat it. Tell me, who am I? What am I good at, what am I not good at? Like that kind of thing. They'll explore the good and the bad in the view of another and not ever taking that. It's the truth at the core, but it is a valid perspective. And they'll, they'll look at all that, they'll explore all that, and then they'll take it and decide what they can do with it. Recognizing that is how they live for others at that point. It gives them a certain room to maneuver and to operate and the source of their leverage, power, effectiveness with other people. And I think the same thing that you point to is true when we have people trying to figure out what their brand promises are and what they represent. Go and talk to your, not to everybody, but to your core customers and find out who you are for them. What do they, how do they see you? What's inconsistent, what's weird and quirky about you, what do they love about you? What keeps them coming back, getting who you are in their eyes, in their language is very different than what. And for both the leader and the company, there's a kind of a way that we view ourselves all the time, right? It may be positive, it may be negative, or more of one or the other in different areas, but there's a certain kind of self delusion that, that people and companies have about who they are for the world.

I love the parallel that you've drawn, Bill. I think it's so true and that the quality that is required for a leader to do deep work on his or her own leadership is humility and courage. And that same character, that humility and courage is also required in order to do a really close look at your brand. You know, not how you want it to be, but how it actually is. It really does require. It requires courage. It's not this Kush exercise, but that's where the real rewards are.

Yeah. Yeah. So I think that's a good place to end. I think that we probably given folks a lot of stuff to do, but both for yourself as a leader and for the company, who are you really out there in the world? Not the way that you hold yourself. And whether you spot every flaw on your face, your body as you look at the company or every flaw as you look at your company and consider yourself or all the positive things. Right. I tend to be more optimistic. I hold myself a certain way. I still think I look cool. Right. Other people see some of the flaws and stuff and it's a combination, combination of those two things that really is who I am in the world for other people. And the same thing true with my company. There's the both good and bad, but getting real about it. So being interested in what it is, being willing to see it from another's eyes is a pathway to something powerful here. And then you can make tweaks and adjustments based on that. Right. But not without knowing what it is to begin with.

Absolutely.

Well, so if you want to hear more about Lindsay's work and company and like that kind of thing, if you'd like to talk with her about your brand, ironclad brand strategy.com is the URL. You'll find all that stuff there. And of course those past episodes of Denise Leon and some of the others that we have in the world of brand and marketing and purpose. You'll find all those and more@scalingcoach.com coach. We've got over 190 episodes and everything to do with scaling, growing your company, developing your leadership along the way, downloads of the tools, all the show notes and links and things like that@scalingcoach.com and we'll even give you a copy of the book Scaling up for free if you just pay the shipping and handling. We'll send it right out to you. So thanks again for listening. Thanks, Lindsay, for joining us this week. We'll talk to everybody again. Next week. Well, big thanks to Vern Harnish, creator of the Rockefeller Habits Scaling up the original Growth Guy. This show was produced by Lucy Summers. The audio production is done at Podfly Productions. It's audio edited by Albert Burge. Our show notes are compiled by Ayn Codena and proofread by Tim McGowan. If you love the show, tell somebody else and then go online wherever you got it, itunes, Stitcher, wherever, and give us a good review. Tell us what you love that really helps us more than than anything else and then you can let us know the parts you loved or what you want more of. Or if you've got a question about anything that we provide in the show, we're happy to take your questions and hear from you with an email to info scaling coach.com Again, that's our email is info scalingcoach.com thanks again for listening. Keep scaling up. Sam.