Adding Your Personality to Your Business

Business Brain Episode 601 for Casual Friday, November 22 National Go for a Ride Day 2024 Greetings, folks, and welcome to Business Brain, the show where we take some ideas, we crunch them, we use them to help tune our business brain so that we can easily each keep on living those charmed lives. Sponsors for this episode include incogni.com brain where you can use code brain to get 60% off an annual plan and take your personal data back as well. Shopify.com businessbrain. That's where you can go to sign up for your $1 per month trial period. We will talk more about each of those in a little bit. For now, here in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton.

And in Lafayette, California, I am Shannon Jean. And I'm excited to be here. Happy Friday.

Happy Friday, man. Happy 601. Here we go.

601. That's good.

We're into the 600s. Yeah.

Yeah. Hey, I want to talk about. First about memes and GIFs.

Okay.

That's on my agenda. And I. The way I want to talk, why I want to talk about them is because I think that's kind of an underrated method to connect with your customers using memes and. Jess. Okay, What I mean by that is, you know, every company's the same. Every store, every Amazon seller, every whatever, every social media. You know, you're just not. Not same. But everybody's out there pushing products and you the same kind of things anymore. So, of course, the great thing about memes or, or GIFs is they get people to stop and look and like, wait. Sure. What's that? That's kind of. Kind of weird.

Yeah. It's either new and, and interesting or familiar. And familiar.

Yeah, it's either familiar or trending. They saw something somewhere else. Now, let, Let. Let's define this. So the meme, right. Is.

And there might not be a difference between GIFs and memes either.

Yeah, you could have a gif, could be a meme, but it doesn't have to be. Maybe that's fair.

Like, right.

It's different.

It's different. Every. Every staircase has a stairwell, but not all stairwells have staircases.

I don't know.

So it's like.

So the, the memes are a way to kind of cut through the noise. And so the meme is, you know, some image that it could be trending, something that's happening in the news. And the way that I like to use them, and I would suggest you use them is to attach something related that's happening in your business or in the news or something like that, and create a meme, you know, or take the meme, the image or photograph or whatever. Like, there was a bunch of memes out there on Tyson, okay, Jake, Jake, Paul, fight. And. And a lot of them related to how Netflix fell apart and different things and. And didn't. Couldn't keep. Couldn't keep streams going, all that kind of stuff. Well, when you're creating newsletters for your clients or you're publishing blog posts or you're doing advertising, think about ways that you could integrate trending memes or classic memes that everybody's seen before from a TV show, from Parks and Rec or some kind of thing. So that's all well and good, and the Same was with GIFs, right. You're integrating them. There's funny things you can, you know, like if you're happy and if you're sending a customer a thank you for buying something, you know, take a GIF from a classic movie with people opening champagne or shaking a bottle or whatever, you know, these. These things that are out there. But for me, the challenge is I don't know what the current trending memes are.

Yeah. But Chat GPT does.

You can use ChatGPT. I think that's great. But I also use a service now, of course, of course. SAS Assess related to memes.

Okay.

And I put the link to that service in our Slack so you could share it in the notes. And it's called Memelord Tech.

Okay.

And it's amazing because it allows you to find, you know, trending memes and add your own, you know, your own comments to them, create different things related to what's going on. And it's. It's fantastic. And it definitely has helped me and I've been using it for a while to try to plug into the Zeit. Is it zeitgeist?

That's the one. Yeah. That's what you want, right?

I want to plug into that so people go, oh, wait, what is that? But my comment will be related to something in my business.

Sure.

They're going to see that image and stop. And even on your website, in maybe the hero section of your site, which is the first top of the page that they see when they come. Why not have a meme there or a GIF or something that rotates and instead of just the standard stuff that everybody's used to seeing. Right. Connect on another level to where if you're in the H Vac business, there's got to be some H Vac meme or something related to that out there you could find and you could search on this Memelord tech. You can search for topics, you can search for classics, all this kind of stuff. And I find it very helpful to do it. And I'm sure you can do it with Chat GPT as well. But it connects with people, I guarantee it. And I respond to comments on X all the time using GIFs. X has a great built in GIF engine that allows you to search for stuff and I always use it to respond to say thank you. Instead of just typing out thank you. I use a GIF of somebody, you know, some character we all know from Seinfeld or some different thing. And I put it in the response and it's great. It stops. It connects you differently.

All right, so I just did this here. I did it with Chat GPT because I don't have a Mean Lord subscription.

Yes I do.

I. I wanted to tell folks that if you are the type of person like me who looks at, sometimes looks at what trackers a podcast that I'm listening to is using, I wanted to find a GIF that helped me explain this or at least get your attention and explain this so that I can help show you that yes, we have started using trackers in the show, but if, if you've been listening for a couple of months since August, you might remember that we at Backbeat Media came up with an engine that helps protect your private. It shields your actual IP address from the trackers, but still gives the analytics companies the data that they need to prove that you downloaded the show or someone downloaded the show and that someone in your general area downloaded the show so that they can relate that to purchases that happen and all those things. And so I told Chat GPT, I said find a currently trending meme that I can use to relate to my business helping that helps to protect podcast listeners privacy. And, and it, it found the Simpsons meme that it said, you know, with. I forget what the guy's name is, but Ned. Ned.

Thank you.

Ned Flanders where it says, you know me, privacy matters. And then Google shows Ned Flanders and says, yes it does. Chuckles yeah, right. And. But we actually do care about your privacy and we're working to protect that. And, and are, are protecting that for you, even though some of our sponsors are using these tracking engines and it's fine.

Yeah. I just shared a link with you to one I used because I talk about buying from. It's in the private chat.

Okay.

Yeah, I talk about buying quantity of store returns and liquidation stuff from Costco all the time. So there's a meme from a movie called 500 Days of Summer or something like that. And it's a meme where I don't know the name. I forget the name of the actors in there, but it's.

He says, and I can't remember the other one.

Yeah, other dude. He always, he's in, in the movie, he says, oh, I love. It's a band. And she goes, me too. But they always do. So I changed that. And I said, I love Costco. And she says, me too. And then I. Down below, she's thinking of the $50 hot dog, and I'm thinking of pallets in a warehouse that, you know, I'm buying those things. So, you know, and, you know, I don't know, four or five thousand people look at that. But it, it, it's just to lighten the mood and to, you know, connect and, and do it.

So love it.

I think it's powerful. I think it really works. And at ways to integrate memes and gifs into your marketing, your website, your branding, anything you can think of, I think it's worth it.

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Right.

What about instead of making a GIF your brand, what about making you your brand or at least your personality?

Yeah, I love that. I, I always recommend your. You should be involved in your brand. You should be related to it, your company name, your. Your photos of you, your team, your. Your comments. Your personality is a big asset. And people want to connect with other people more than they want to connect with brands. Right?

And we, we learned this lesson the hard way at the Mac observer when we started that business.

Right.

Like, we were like, nope, we don't want to have our personalities involved. We want to be like the New York Times. Right. We want to be just a faceless entity that. That is one voice that that's a small company.

Off. I mean, that often.

Yeah. Because we wanted this seem bigger than we, than we were.

I have been there and it made.

Like we made a logical argument for it even though we were wrong and it took us a few years to realize, you know, as things as personalities would seep through anyway, it was like, wait a minute, that more of that, well, that's going to break our, you know, one of our core values. Well, let's break that core value. And we did. And of Course, now, every news organization, New York Times could be one of them, but same with the Wall Street Journal. Every one of them has personalities that are part and parcel of who they are. Yes.

Yeah. And it doesn't have to be you if you're the owner. Maybe you're more. Maybe you're an introvert, but it could be your general manager, it could be your. Your supervisors. It could be.

You could rack it up, too.

It could be anything. And you could make it up. And you can play a char. And I suggest you read the book called the Alter Ego Effect. And I forget the author's name, but you can just look it up and learn about creating.

I'll put a link in the show notes. It's perfect right there. Yeah, yeah, it's good.

That's awesome. And I'll give an example. With Tech Restore, I wanted to, quote, answer every phone call. That was my whole thing. Of course, that's impossible, but I could be the auto attendant that answered every phone call.

Sure.

And. Which I. And. And at the same time, I hate auto attendance. You know, who doesn't?

Right?

So I answered the phone and said, hey, this is Shannon Jean. I'm going to be your auto attendant. And I know that's not what you want, you know, so.

Right.

Yeah, I just played it up. I played it up the whole way. I'm like, you know, I hate these things too, but, you know, we got to be super efficient. This, that other thing. And then when they hit, like, oh, press one for service. It's still me. And I'm just like, hang on, I'm going to get. Hold on. I'm making noise. Crack, crack, crash. You know, do it like I'm chasing a technician down. And so ask. You know, introducing your personality to these things and maybe even a little humor would be amazing. People love that. And I. I can't tell you how many people, once they got to an actual human, were just like, dude, that was amazing. I love that. You know, and entertain them. And they're not mad because they had to go through four levels of auto attendance to get to your customer service department or whatever.

Yeah.

You know, they've been entertained. And so, you know, get rid of the hold music, get rid of the blank space. Just talk. And you could even talk about what's going on with your company. You can talk about what you did on, you know, with your team.

How often did you update the. The Not. The not hold music for your business?

Probably a few times a year.

Yeah. Okay.

Not quarterly. A few times a year. Yeah.

Ok. And I quarterly do it as often as you actually do. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I talk about what we were doing. Hey, you know, we're building this new glass factory and yada yada yada. And then you know, people listen and they're going to be stuck there anyway. And so you can kind of use that. But think about the ways you do it in your advertising. You know, does one of your people, you know, should they be in the ad working on your project? I'll back up and tell you you need to have a model release form before you. Anybody. Before? Yes, before you put anybody in an ad. If you need, I'll give Dave a link and you can get. I have a model release form that.

Okay, great.

You know, download. Because you want to have the right. Oh, you don't want to have them come back later and say you can't use my face or my hands or my feet, you know, because they got mad at you at some point. Because sometimes it happens. But people connect better with people. They like to see your personality. It helps to diffuse tension. And you know, I think it's great. I mean you don't want to go overboard and be like Crazy Eddie or whoever, you know, but if that works.

For you, it could go ahead and do it. We, when I was with Computer Nerds, which was a company I joined and then wound up being a junior partner there for a long time. We were in Austin at the time and Austin, Texas and we, we were doing some like print ads. Of course, we were doing some radio ads, but they were just doing like we do here, like host Red kind of things, you know.

Sure.

And then we cut a deal with one of the local TV stations, the local ABC affiliate where we would do some, you know, that we would manage their IT stuff and they would not only show our TV ads but produce them for us. Now the production of this was very, very minimal. It was, you know, a single camera shot for a 10 second ad because that's what we could afford to trade out. I mean the Austin market even at that point in time was, you know, over a million people. Like it wasn't, it wasn't super small, it wasn't New York obviously, but. And so we did this 10 second AD and it was right about this time of year and so we, well, we don't know what we're going to do. So we just collected the staff, which was maybe eight of us and we went down and to the TV station, whatever morning. A few of us brought Santa hats because it Was that time of year.

Yeah.

And we all stood there and the founder of the company and I sort of talked through. He was like, I have an idea. He's. I have an idea. He says, and we started the. The thing by saying hi and we all waved. And then Lee, the founder, continued on his own. He said, if you need help with your computer, call 441Nerd and we'll send a nerd right over. And all of us said, and we'll send a nerd right over.

Oh, that's cool.

Yeah. And it was fun. Fun. What we didn't know until after the ad came out was our. The guy who did all our dispatch didn't like being called a nerd. So when he said the word nerd, he pointed to the guy next to him. He's like, and we'll send a nerd.

Right.

Which also was fun. There were these Easter eggs in there and it blew up. We, like, everybody in town knew about computer nerds and our business, you know, doubled. And it was. But we became rock stars in town. It was. It was like my first little brush with. With fame in. In some way where it's like people recognize you in a place. It's like, that's cool.

Yeah, yeah, it's the same. But you're. You know, when we had bus ads and ads on the rapid transit out here for tech restore, it was always trying to be a little humorous and, you know, we had crack screens and, you know, bloody fingers, you know, get help at whatever and. And different things and. And, you know, there's ways to do it to lighten the mood and to it. It connects you and people will share things that are funny. It's the same with the memes. Back to that meme topic.

Yeah.

You don't have to be the one to make it funny. Right. It's already funny. So you can just adapt it to your business needs in some way. And. Yeah, it's awesome. And you can have fun with it and your employees will enjoy it too. And I guarantee you somebody on your staff is. Would love to be the person that helps you find this stuff or.

Yes.

You know, do things and definitely.

Yeah. Mention it at a meeting that you're going to do it and. And if somebody has ideas, you know, bring them up and just. That's the person. There you go.

Yeah. Figure it out. So I think it's great. I think it's. Be a little more casual. There's a. There's another.

It's okay. Casual.

Yeah. Yes. You can still be professional. You can still have an awesome business. Be, you know, crazy entrepreneur that never stops and hustling, grinding and all this stuff we talk about. But bring some of that casual air to the way you interact with your customers and I think that you'll find that it helps you a lot.

Yeah, I agree.

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