Are People More Important Than Brands? | Brooke Budke with the Truth About Building Authority Online

Welcome back, everybody, to the unemployable podcast. I'm Jeff Duden. If you were a cancer survivor in your senior year of college, have performed the firewalk at a Tony Robbins event, rose from VP of marketing to be the president of title boxing club, and today is the founder and CEO of Momentum Brands, a fractional chief marketing officer organization for emerging franchise brands. Your name can only be Brooke Budke. Welcome, Brooke.

That is hands down the best intro I've ever had. So thank you. Thank you.

You're welcome. Welcome, welcome to the show today. Opening question for you. Are people becoming more important than brands 100%.

So there's a Forbes study, in fact, that shows that 80% of consumers today, 80% of a consumer, would rather follow the founder of a brand than the brand, 80% of any consumer. If you're a franchise brand, that means potential franchise candidates. If you're a consumer brand, if you're a franchisee, that means your local audience, okay. Would rather follow the founder of a brand than the brand itself. They wouldn't know.

What's the psychology? What is the psychology behind that? And in your opinion?

Okay, so my opinion, I think there is an interesting thing that happened to consumers post Covid, and everybody went inward in isolation and everybody and. And also now virtually you can work from anywhere. You can find good talent in places. And so people started connecting with people more on social media and digitally. However, most people also lost, like an authentic connection to brands being in person, community building. And when they are spending money today with people, they want to know that they trust someone. They want to know what their leadership believes. They want to know their attitudes and values, and they want to see if they're culturally aligned. It's very interesting. So I don't think it's all related to Covid, but I. There is an interesting data point to look at and that people are seeking human connection now more than ever before. And the leaders who are comfortable building a presence online and building an opinion are actually winning 10 times faster than.

The ones that are not interesting. When I would buy a product, maybe a shoe, or let's say I went to Zappos to buy some shoes or something like that, I very much connected with the brand and it was about the service that I would get, the experience that I would have, the perceived quality of the product that I would get. If it was a service business that came out to my house, I would really reflect upon who the salesperson was, who the service providers were. Maybe I met the owner, maybe I met a salesperson. But to your point, more and more people I am interested in who is the name behind the brand, who's the CEO, who's the president, who's the personality behind it. And there will be $50 billion spent on social media in 2030. So non traditional media and also non paid. I guess some of that's paid, but a lot of it, a lot of it is also non paid. So what a challenge for small business owners today to try to compete.

Well, using myself as an example, I have built a remarkable business with no marketing dollars, all from personal branding on LinkedIn. And I in fact just gave a keynote speech about this that 1% of all users on LinkedIn, 1% will post and 99% of all users on LinkedIn will consume. So conversion on LinkedIn is three times greater than any other platform because every other platform has creators everywhere. Everywhere you look on TikTok Instagram there's creators like pumping out content everywhere on LinkedIn. It is a business strategy, recruitment, employment organization platform and the leaders who are posting on there are in the 1% of a billion users on LinkedIn. And you can build an unbelievable business by learning how to be yourself online authentically because no one else is doing it.

Is LinkedIn a viable platform for consumer business?

Give me an example. What type of consumer?

I. I have a painting company.

Well, I would say that everybody on LinkedIn, which is 800 million people, also probably have a house that needs painted. So yes, if you position yourself as an expert and an educator versus a salesperson, 80 to 90% of the content you put out online should be adding value, not selling something. So if I were a painting company, I would become the the expert in painting and repair and understanding longevity and understanding how to pick a color swatch, how to do something, how to how to analyze color. Anything that you would want to do in painting, I would become the expert at and talk about that on LinkedIn more so than talk about hire me to be your next painter. I would become known as the source for the best painter in my area.

So to go one layer deeper on that, you would then make sure that you connected with people that were in your local geography. You're in Kansas City, so you would want to make sure that you would research find all of the local business owners that are in your area or, or and are you able to Geo target on LinkedIn for where your posts go?

There are ads on LinkedIn. However I don't recommend people to do it because the audience size is so small compared to meta for running ads. In terms of geo targeting. But yes, I would connect with people in your area. The other thing I would do is I would engage every single day on everyone else's content because you then are visible in their circle of influence and their networks and who's following them. And all of a sudden it is the ripple effect. And everyone everywhere in your city knows you as the painting guy or gal because you are engaging at the highest level on their community's content and also posting on your own.

Okay, so you took us right here. So I'm going to go right at it. Let's talk about the concept of authority. Let's unpack that. Okay, so if people are going to be buying from people as a priority versus buying over brands, what are the things that anybody can do to build authority online? And I know we don't, we only have two hours.

I know, right? Okay. We could spend all day together. Jeff. It's good. So the way that we teach at Momentum Brands how to build authority is to create number one, your target audience. Who am I speaking to specifically? And I'm not talking an avatar of, oh, a 25 to 35 year old female. I mean what does she like, what does she not like? What are her value sets, what are her beliefs, what are the brands she follows? Who are the influencers she's influenced by? Where does she get her news? Understand everything about this person first. That is the first thing you must do. You're at least one to two. Top chart audience. The way you create authority in your target audience is what we teach. Five content pillars. So you then would teach on your beliefs, your founder energy, your personal habits, your let's call it category. Like so for me I talk about franchise marketing. In franchise marketing I could talk on grand opening, fran dev, local store marketing, consumer marketing. I also talk about being an entrepreneur. So you having five different pillars of content. These pillars are what you talk about with great consistency over time is what you will become known for. So when you create authority online, most of the time people say I want to be the painting guy. Like you used painting as an example. Well, it would be very difficult to sustain 365 days of content about just painting versus why would somebody want to change the color of a room or their house? And what happens when that refresh goes on for your customer to understanding all of the parts of what your target audience is interested in. Leadership, culture, values, community, the way you give back. So we teach, if you want to have authority and be known for something, you have five pieces of content that you own outright. And I post every single day, no matter what, sometimes twice a day, about the top five things that I want to be known for. And it is the long game because authority is only built over time, Right? So I'm three years in and people are like, oh my gosh, you're the LinkedIn girl. I'm like, well, I didn't start that way. So it's just doing what you say you're going to do with great consistency over time. And I think that is authority of a leader in all of life, not just on LinkedIn.

When you talk about founder energy and then you double that with. Or you couple that with beliefs, what's inside the lines and what's outside the lines. Do you give guidance to your clients about what to stay away from?

I.

And are you. And are you getting ready to get our podcast canceled? Okay, so we've had about, we've had about 15 or 20 that we just can't put ads behind. But, you know, we, we post them anyway.

Yeah. So cancel culture is prevalent everywhere online. And that's most of the reason why people don't post is because they're really afraid of not being liked. Okay. So there's a real fear. The top two fears every human being has is I'm not enough, and if I'm not enough, I won't be loved. And that's why people don't post is because we all want to belong. We all want to be accepted. So if we put our thoughts and attitudes and beliefs out there and then they're different than someone else's, we're very worried that then that person won't like us or be part of us or maybe we lose a deal off of it.

Sure.

Now there are banks in the river that I definitely recommend we put in place. So race, religion, politics, off limits, in my opinion. In business, when it comes to attitudes and beliefs, the way you raise your children and your culture and your workout style to your non negotiables, to the what, what's on your calendar. This is the stuff people want to know about as a leader, because especially in franchise development. If I'm going to give you my 401k and transfer to you my trust and saying, like, I believe in you as a leader, I also want to know that you are who you say you are. Online, offline, in person, Discovery Day, congruency there.

Right.

So part of it is what we do is teach a CEO how to be a leader, not just a founder and owning the beliefs that make them great and make them stand out as part of a differentiator. And sometimes the differentiators is the energy. It's how they lead their team. It's their selection for us. Like what we do is we actually extract them and we write these for the, for the brands that we coach and say, Jeff, if, if I was your fractional cmo, I would create a brand for you like this. And this is what you can own. And we want it to be rooted in truth. And so if there are things that make you uncomfortable, we're not going to go there. You're going to talk about things you love and also, you know, don't go to other places. That's going to be polarizing. Sure, because you, you have the ability to control the narrative. But also people know if it's written by AI or an assistant and it's not coming from the founder too. So part of it is being brave enough to own your category and the other part is being wise enough to not go to the areas that are going to cause riff raff.

Right. There's, there's the big ones like you just mentioned that you stay away from. But I can also imagine that some content that maybe it's probably age dependent, you know, you know, digital natives that grew up in social media might have a better sense as to what's going to play well and what's not going to play well. You get people from my generation. I mean, it took me a long time to get comfortable putting it. Like, I'm just like, nobody cares that I'm eating meatballs tonight. Like, right. And I don't post personal. I, if you, I mean, I post the minimum personal that I can get away with. I mean, if I'm sitting there with my dog and at the lake and okay, you know, something's got to go up. But at the end of the day, mostly it's mostly business stuff. But I can imagine, you know, you've seen things that look like they were innocuous, posted by a founder or a CEO or somebody that had some presence and it was just cringe. It was just really cringy. And unfortunately, if, if things get a little cringy, those are the things that tend to go viral. And now that's what you're known for. And I think those, like little mistakes that people make, maybe in a moment they probably shouldn't have posted or a comment that they made that, you know, they thought would have, would have resonated. So there's some risk inside of that. Do you, do you put some two People have to press the nuclear button on your clients. Or. Or do you give. Do you give people full access to themselves?

Oh, what a great question. Full access to themselves? It depends on the leader. Okay. So I am very selective in who I want to work with and coach, so I would not accept a client who would potentially go nuclear. Like, I just. That's not. It's not people I want to be around in life. And you know who they are pretty intuitively when you meet people, I think people know people in general. So, yeah. However, founders. So there's something that I call founder syndrome in franchising, where founders are an amazing founder, they might not be an amazing CEO of a franchisor. And so there is a growth period from I'm a really good founder to now I know how to act and think and behave as a CEO of a franchisor. So there could be some cringe moments in that transition. However, I don't think it's nuclear. I think it can be inherently authentic to talk about somebody's journey and their approach and growth. So there's just different ways to look at it. But everybody's cringe is different, and some will work and some won't. And my theory is, so what? Like, I have posted things nobody has liked. I have posted on LinkedIn, and I got 1.5 million views. And I'm like, it was a lighting tip, which is insane to me, about how to turn your face to the light. I feel like everybody should know this today in a digital environment. And it just kept popping. And I was like, well, I looked really stupid in that video, Jeff. Like, I was literally turning in a circle in my house going, look at my face the whole time and see, which is a good light. And this thing pops off and it has 15 million impressions, which it's kind of hard to go viral on LinkedIn. It's not really, like, a thing, right? And then I've posted somewhere, I'm like, it is the greatest tip I could give any franchise founder. And it'll have a hundred impressions. And I'm like, who's to say what will work? So my theory is post, engage, test, repeat. Those are the four things you post every day. You engage every time you log in. And the user on LinkedIn logs in eight to 12 times a day is how many times a user will log in. So they're logging in to see you posting every time you log in. My theory is you should be engaging with other people's content and then be willing to test content different times. Different content pillars, weekends, nights and repeat what works and don't, don't do the stuff that doesn't work.

You've led a franchise brand, you've had franchisees, you've led through crisis and you know, fitness is hard and you know, we all, we all think about what our franchise owners think about us. So this is a franchise specific question for you about franchise leadership as it relates to what we're talking about right now. And so for those of you who are not in franchising, who are listening, heads down on the desk, you can come up in a minute. But we remind ourselves at home front brands not to promote until something's permanent, not to be self promotional about the number of units that we've sold, not to self anoint ourselves as visionaries or incredible business leaders while our franchise are out there starting new businesses and just chopping wood every day. And it's hard for them, you know, they don't want to hear that. And, and I think you can be effective in posting without aggrandizing who you are, what you're doing and talking about, you know, hey, yeah, wow, you sold hundreds of locations but I was number 39 and I haven't heard from you and you know, it's an interest, it's a diff like in franchising it, you have this three layer business, it's you, it's the franchisees and the consumers where other direct businesses, they don't have that problem, you know, they have, it's them, it's their 100 employees and then they've got their customers out there and the, if they're doing H vac or plumbing or whatever it is out there. So we have a, we have a couple of audiences. I mean our franchise owners, we're connected with them, they're connected with us, they see our leadership. So not only are we trying to create some authority out in the world to bring some visibility back to our brands, ultimately helping our franchise owners with their authority, helping them get more business and leading in that way. But we also you know, want to make sure that we're coming across in a, in a way that's not going to antagonize them. And so, and you know that's pretty honest, candid thing to be saying here but like I've seen it happen and you know, the pride cometh before the fall and you know, people get kind of self anointed as franchise gurus in this industry then they just go off on it and you know, it's not too long within 12 months. Then, you know, next thing you know, they're having to reel it back in a little bit because their franchise owners have objected in a way. And I've seen it multiple times, sometimes publicly, sometimes just a little bit more privately. And people that I know personally, but you know, that is, you know, you, you and you lead franchise people. So in that regard, I mean, what's your counsel to people about that balance between being the self anointed, you know, you know, hey, we're, because on one hand you want to say, look, we're doing great, we're going to do great things, we're going to service customers, we're going to do these things. But then there's the fine line to say everything's perfect. And, and you know, look at, look at what I've built here.

Yes. So what I hear you saying is how do you, how do you create an authentic content strategy that serves the greater good of your brand, but also hon the franchisees and the walks that they're in.

That's when you're in marketing. Look at how, look at how clean you put that message together.

You know, I do try. Okay, so product placement. Yeah, I, I noticed earlier. Okay. So number one, the most important thing of a leader that I learned from failure in franchising is that you must be a product of the product. And what I mean by that is if you first understand what you were in the business of doing. I was in fitness, right. So I was, I was marketing director of title. We had 30 locations sold, 600 open, 200 plus. Figured out how to do pre sales, figured out how to have them be successful. But I had zero franchise experience, no budget, no tools, no resources, no team. And every franchisee virtually truly hated me. And I understand why they did because they were sold something in a tool, in a playbook that didn't exist. So they were figuring it out on their own. It's a common thing in emerging brands is we want to scale quickly, but we don't necessarily have the tools and resources or team ready. So then franchisee sentiment can get eroded pretty quickly because they trusted what you said you were going to do. And sometimes growth happens, lightning in a bottle and it's too fast.

Right.

So I was climbing a very steep cliff every day. And what I learned was very quickly I couldn't, yes, I was going to learn about franchising, but if I could be a product of the product and I knew everything the consumer needed and I could teach them how to know what their consumer needed, I could win them Over So I was 30. Our target audience was 35. A 35 year old female. I became her, went to the classes that she took, understand what she needed to do with personal training. The objection she would have, why she would like it, why she would not like it. And then I started teaching and training. I literally have goosebumps thinking about this. I decided I was going to be a product of the product of what our consumer needed. So if I could teach the franchisees that first my franchise experience and knowledge would gain every year that I was in it. And truly you usually learn by failure and franchising and then you figure out how to do it better and you do it better the next thing. So as a product of the product that we sold first at the consumer level and then in franchising, you also must be a product of the product of the franchisor and the commitments that you have delivered to the franchisees. The consistency of communication, how often you're visiting them in market is their ops team following up on the calls. They look at consistency of leadership inside of the franchise entity. And so oftentimes when you reference people maybe getting over their ski tips in terms of being a mouthpiece for the brand, sometimes what I always recommend, not sometimes, every time, is if you're a product of the product, your franchisees will be appreciative of you building a brand so long as you stand behind everything that you say that you're doing and you're congruent as a leader in your franchise community, in your locations and in the, let's call it, franchise industry at large.

Yes.

So where I see oftentimes content going wrong is when there's not congruency in who I say that I am and what I actually do.

Yeah, that's fair. If you're claiming victory online, but there's work to do, you might want to try to align those two things a little closer.

The challenging part is there is so much work to do inside of every franchise brand in the history of time. I have never seen a franchise brand that doesn't have opportunity to do it better. And the franchisees will always wish for more. And so that is the, you know, if your franchise or something I it's called K I C A N I constant and never ending improvement. If we subscribe to that and we believe in improvement and we are committed to improving ourselves and our franchisee experience, they're going to have more grace when we don't have it all figured out all the time. And you know, the exact steps that need to be done.

Perfect segue to my next question, which is what is the future of search?

What type of search?

Online search?

What a great question. So the future of search. So it's changed a lot with ChatGPT and people now are skipping Google to go to ChatGPT for many things. Now you can also turn off ChatGPT to let it search what your chats are to help the greater good of all of the chats. So there's interesting ways to work around it if you're a brand or an executive and you're building something proprietary. But Google then now is searching indexes to try and give Gemini, which is their chatgpt answers. So now you don't even see paid content or like the Google Ads that you used to because you're seeing Gemini's ChatGPT version in search. So one of the things that I always recommend brands to do is to label every picture ever posted on behalf of their brand with the person's name. Jeff, your first and last name, your role at the company, what the company does, the company website. Because Google is now searching even on LinkedIn, every picture I post, I use alt captions and text to code the picture so that when somebody even searches for me, it's going to now pull in from Instagram, it's going to pull in from LinkedIn, it's going to pull my name in from everywhere versus Brooke doesn't have to go pay $10,000 a month for Google paid search because I know how to code my content that I'm putting out there for the quote unquote AI tools to search it, to find it and to serve it. So it is requiring the brands to get more, let's call it aggressively curious about how to use and create a bigger audience through search. I think organic content is actually the way of the future because paid content is changing so rapidly. I am not a CMO who tells you to go pay thousands of dollars for SEO. I think you can have a really well done website and have insane content and save dollars on SEO and put it into meta ads and other things. So their search is changing rapidly. Voice search is also coming in hot where people are asking Siri or anything in their house, Alexa for things and also Voice talking to ChatGPT instead of even physically typing it in. So I think voice is also going to be a way of the future. But my recommendation to brands who are saying I don't know how to get ahead of this is to hire someone whose skill set is rooted in what your customer is doing. And how they are searching and behaving and do that. So a really savvy social media person, someone who understands content, having a videographer on staff and your CEO is putting out content and has a YouTube channel and that's being searched. Like getting more creative with where you're putting your information versus how many dollars you're putting into the marketplace.

Right. Website schema and authority are maybe two of the most important things that the large language models are going to be looking for. And when we talk about authority, which we have, it's also these true authorities, meaning places like Reddit, sometimes TikTok, places where you can get into dust up conversations, but where other people will validate that you are the authority. So getting into these Reddit forums, getting into Quora, I think there's some work to be done on Wikipedia, but these are all, maybe it's not new that these are places to go because I know that companies have been using these to launch brands and things like that, and there's some little secret sauce inside of some of those things. But you know, at the end of the day, to your point, they've, many people don't know that Google has already basically sunset their search and they've replaced it with Gemini. And, and Google is really the only one based on their end user licensing agreement that actually owns everything that it's scraped off of the Internet. All of the searches, all of the results. It is the only one that actually owns its own content. That's why Gemini is likely to be the de facto winner at the end of it. Did you see? Well, regardless, I mean they, you know, they, they tend to lay back and they wait to see a new industry or a new tool, maybe for example, Digi, AI tools that can create images or things like that. And then they'll come out with something that's just rock solid, better. And you know, they have a habit of doing that. And you know, whether it's Grok or Claude or Chat, you know, it's, you know, I would bet on Gemini ultimately to win, but we'll see, I mean, we'll see how that all shakes out. But at the end of the day, search is changing and when you have hundreds of franchise owners out there and you're trying to advise them and to navigate, it's, you know, it's very important that we try to get ahead of these trends and make sure that we're, you know, we're, you know, we're doing the best thing we can for, for those types of things. Do you have any Any tips or any insights about really other than what we've talked about here. You know, how to prepare yourself for, you know, large language model searches. I saw that chat was supposed to outpace Google by the end of, you know, you, who knows where people get these things? They put up on slides at conferences. But it was, I was at a tech conference, they said, well, by December 26th there will be more searches on chat than there are on Go Google. And that was probably, you know, somebody that was getting paid by chat to say that.

Yeah, that is, that is a good point. I think there's a lot of, a lot of misrepresented information out there and we shall see. Because I would also tell you there is a vast majority of people who are still not using chat or AI in any part of their life or career. And I am blown away when I meet people and I say, oh yeah, well you can use Chat GPT for that. And they say I've never opened up chatgpt. And I'm like, okay. It literally blows my mind how people still are not accessing tools that can help them. So I, I, I know that it is prevalent in our industry. I do not think it is as prevalent across all consumers today of, of using those models yet. So there is still, you know, when you said By December of 26, I'm not surprised because I think it's, there's still quite a bit to learn there. I would also say for a franchisee who feels overwhelmed is the number one way to grow your business is offline in your community and you can control the outcome significantly by the people in the places that you meet and the way that you conduct yourself and your community and your business and through social media content and all of that is technically free. It's sweat equity and hustle and it's arguably harder to then just go buy an ad, but it performs better because you are building rapport and relationships with people separate from the AI tools. I've also seen brands have massive resurgence through user generated content. On TikTok, for instance, Chili's is just having another huge run because of their triple dipper. And it was everybody talking about it on TikTok. Crumble Cookie had massive explosive growth and sold at the multiple they did. And there were influencers and creators who would say here's the crumble drop of the week or whatever they call it. And they were posting like that explosivity literally overnight. Every single person was running to get the crumble drop of the week and to do a review because it became trending. So it's interesting whether or not these brands planned it or they had some content creators involved in it. Unknown, because I haven't dug in that far for those two. But. But musicians will drop now their songs on TikTok with content creators over a music video, over a CD album release, and they will have their sound go viral on TikTok and then on Instagram in order to hit mainstream media. So also understanding where the outliers are and the younger generation and Gen Z's buying power, they're spending and maxing out their credit cards every month. And so so many brands are also just missing understanding how to be socially relevant with some of the top spenders today dependent, you know, obviously dependent on the category. So I think AI and search is different. I also think content creation, there is a premium that brands need to understand and how to live and exist with content creation too.

What does that mean?

Like, if I were a franchisor, I would put a premium on how much am I investing in creating authentic, original content that relates to our consumer. Okay, whether it's a TikTok account, an Instagram reels page, having stories be up teaching the franchisees. Like, let's see, I've been out of inside of a franchisor for four years and even four years ago, I had half a day in our franchise training teaching franchisees how to do Instagram and Facebook. And that was four years ago. And I would have a fake account. Here's what we did. Here's a great tip for franchise brands at a fake account. It's not fake. I guess it was real, but it was a private account. And at franchise training, all the franchisees and GMs who were there had to activate, log in and become part of this account. They had to take content when they went to the classes every night as they were doing the product. We would then rank and score and put them up on the screen and say, let's review this piece of content. Is it good, bad or ugly? And here's why. Here's what I do different. Here's how you can relate to your audience. And they had to physically do the work and post it. It gets over their fear. It gets over. Okay, great. What did you learn in the lighting? What did you learn in the angles? How could you have done this? What music did you pick? How do you create a reel? So if brands are not doing that today, I mean, it's 2025. Like, we got to teach franchisees how to create content that lands with their consumer and so I also recommend franchise training to teach them how to do it. And you can do it in a private account that nobody will see and give live feedback. And you're teaching them how to fish, you know, giving them live examples of what to do.

Yeah, that's really, really good. One of my business fundamentals is to disintermediate any intermediaries between me and my customer. And the more hands that you have that you have to pass through to get your customer, the more less money will be left for you or for the benefit of the customer. And as the Yellow Pages went away and the rise of digital happens, then we all learned that we had to pay for our customers now. And, you know, Facebook will go through fits and starts and the cost per lead goes up, the cost per lead comes down. Google, it's the same thing. There's algorithms that drive all, all that. And we have these third party aggregators like Angie's and Thumbtack and people that will aggregate your customers. And they're smaller companies doing it now. So at what point is a company like Amazon or a company like Facebook or Google or TikTok just going to be able to absolutely own the marketplace in terms of customers and have all the customers. And the reason I say that is because the game had pretty much been defined and there was probably some laws around it. But as these large language models roll out and the game changes a little bit, there's always an opportunity for the smarter, faster, bigger people to get a bigger piece of the pie. And it seems like anytime something changes, the fangs get bigger. And now the game is going to be. I mean, think about what we just said here, just the things we said on here. Hey, you're going to start a painting business. You need to be on Reddit, Wikipedia, Quora. You need to learn how to post reels. You need to do that. You probably need to get on some podcasts. I mean, when do these people have time to paint?

Correct? It's hard.

Yeah. So do you have any view or any concerns? I know that Amazon tried like the home services Marketplace and I don't think it really took off because you have to get the. You have to get the service providers on board to be able to participate and provide the services. And they haven't really bridged the gap that well from products to services. But think about accounting. What if they could sell accounting online? What if they could build AI accountants that do all the stuff and everything you need to do? And now you just buy a subscription from Amazon and now you know all of that's displaced. Do you, do you have any thoughts about any of, of, of that? Or do you see any kind of trends that you've identified that maybe people aren't paying attention to?

It's a really interesting theory. I know that there are brands who are popping up who do the things that you listed and I guess per se, Amazon could acquire them or they could just understand the intelligence and duplicate them and do it their own way. And yet things like Facebook, like, when you log into Facebook, it's still inherently a non AI platform. Like, I don't see people using AI to write their captions like I do on LinkedIn. Okay? I also, like, there is a generation that has stopped creating Facebook accounts. So I don't know if Gen Alpha will ever be on Facebook. But like my grandma was in her 90s and had a Facebook account, okay. And she kept up with all of her friends and family members. However, high schoolers who are now in college, who just graduated will never be on Facebook. So it is interesting when you look at audience demographic and behaviors and the way that things will influence them. So Facebook as an example, I don't see a lot of people using AI posts. I see a lot of really poorly thought out pieces of content from regular people on Facebook, which is interesting, right? Like, it's an older demographic who just posts what they have to think about and say. And you're like, you talk about, they should have had somebody else saying, no, no, no, no, no, don't say that. Like, I see that all the time on Facebook. Instagram is more of a. It's like the difference between Lowe's and Home Depot. Lowe's is catering to women, Home Depot is catering to men. They both do the same thing. So Instagram is like a female driven platform. And like there's the moms and there are male influencers on there, but it is inherently different than Facebook. TikTok, also a lot younger, heavy creator, very independent. And then LinkedIn is professionals. And yet I have seen more AI on LinkedIn than any other platform. And so, and there's even like, you can use like AI to leave a comment now on LinkedIn, which, you know, if you're posting something and somebody's using AI to leave a comment, you're like, why did you even comment? Like, I'm sorry, you know, like, it's fine, thank you for the visibility. But like you, if you're going to take the time to comment on somebody's post, just like, leave your own thought, right? So there is now all of those AI things coming into social platforms, I have not seen the consumer behavior shift so far as to wanting Amazon to do more in their life or the Facebook platforms to be the end all, be all. Because I think today people are actually craving land and space and normalcy and the height of this digital explosion. Like, I do not post my son's face online and I will not ever. And I did when he was an infant. And then as AI came out and I have a behind the curtain view of AI, I was like, never again will his face be posted online. Mine, I'm running a business. However, the protection of even what you want of your children shifts today when people take images and they create them and they make accounts and they do crazy things. So I would say people's privacy is going to be a premium and that there will be. If I were to predict, I think there will be companies that will be paying, excuse me, have services you can pay for that you could say, claim back my privacy, scrape down my pictures, get rid of my stuff. Because everything has been so public that I think people are going to go more the opposite direction.

Hold that, hold that thought. Because I have a question at the end that that's the perfect answer for.

Okay.

Okay. So consumers buy. We seek convenience and we seek comfort. I mean, it's all we are. We're just big comfort seeking thing, you know, beings out there. We want air conditioning, we want our cars to drive itself, we want people to cut our hair, we want people to cut our grass. I mean, we don't want to do anything anymore. So you said, alexa, if we could just talk to our phone. And right now we have to go get stuff. Oh, well, I've got to go to the Google and then I got to put it in the Google and then I got to click on that and then I got to go to the website and then I got to look and see who this has, the stars and are they operating in my area. And then I got to go down to that and see if they've got a phone number. And then I got to go to the website and fill out a form. So now I've had to do all these things, right? And I actually. And I mean, without even picking up my phone, if I could just teach grandma how to say my air conditioning is out. And it's. I'd like to find, you know, the best reviewed air conditioning contractor that has an appointment available at 9am tomorrow morning who can come out and service my unit and maybe change my filters and the phone Said, you got it, they'll be there. We just had to skip all of those steps or we got to skip all of those steps. So at what, you know, right now consumers have choice and they have to. And there's all these different points as they go through that acquisition, the research, the consideration, the decision, all of these phases. And now they're making a consumer decision to try this company or do that. But at the end of the day, if they didn't have to do it and they just were able to speak it into existence and then they had a good outcome, they'll probably never go back.

Potentially. Yet in that example, I don't think grandma would do that. I think grandma would call her son and say, I have an air conditioning issue. And then her son would say, this is the last thing I need to be dealing with right now because he's got a lot of things on his plate. And then he would tell his wife and then his wife would look it up online and then she would help her mother in law and then her mother in law would get serviced. Is what would happen today if I were to paint the consumer behavior. Okay, now tomorrow. I still do think that if you look at middle America and the elderly or the youth that they there are going to be generations who don't adapt to what you just described and then there will be people that do. And so I think brands are going to have to be more cognizant at the parent level, at the corporate level of who's the target audience and what is the future that's coming towards us for that target audience. If your target audience is an older person and you're a fitness brand and you see them two times a week, that might not be a concern for that brand so much. So like home services like you mentioned or a pizza delivery or you know, a service based business. So knowing your target audience is always the first place we work and then second, when we think about what is the future look like. And the future doesn't have to be 20 years, it can be 10 years. Like your franchisees are signing usually 10 year agreements. What does the 10 years look like and how do we bring that future closer and deliver it today? Because also the franchisee four years from now is going to say I'm really mad at franchisor because I have to retrofit my business, have a different model, have something different that I'm offering or a different service or a brand or logo. Because we're not setting the expectations that as the consumer changes, our business will continue to evolve and change too. And so as franchisors and franchise brands separate from the general consumer, we have to always innovate and evolve. But I do think it goes back to it is so simple that the essence of positioning is sacrifice. Meaning you have to be willing to sacrifice being good at almost everything to be great at one thing. And if you learn what you're great at and then you say what is the future of that greatness and how can I bring it forward and we start solving for that problem, it may be AI, it may not, it may be more customer service, it may be experience. Like it just depends on industry type. And I'm not, I'm not really afraid of what you described because if and when that happens, there will be different resources for us to use to apply. And so when you have an executive team that says we are committed to always going above and beyond and knowing what's here and what's coming, then you'll always be able to make the best decision you see in front of you. Because the future is happening so rapidly in technology. And mark my words, I think the brands that are going to crush it are going to be the ones who are kind of anti technology, high experience in person, like, like very, very, very energy rich brands versus there's not enough dollars and there's not enough AI and there is not enough technology for people to exist to claim all of the marketplace online. And there never has been. Like, it's just so vast. And we get this information rapidly all day long. You know, the brain is on all day long, looking at the news feeds on whatever social channels you're on and you're like, oh, look at all these things I need to be thinking about. And we don't actually need to be thinking about them. We need to be thinking about the things that matter to us, which is how do we be great and the thing that we own in the space that we own and in that commitment. For me it's like AI voice. Amazon could have a part in it, but it also could not. And it, you know, it just fends.

In your role as fractional cmo. You work with a lot of talented people. What makes a good marketer in today's environment?

What makes a good marketer in today's environment is being a product of the product. What I said a little bit ago and understanding what really goes on at the unit level. I also believe that the mission of the brand must be written for the front line. So the mission of the brand is a to be statement that is really short and simple. And it is the mission of the frontline employee to deliver every single day. So as a marketer, oftentimes we make these grand statements that say our mission is to be the very best, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. No, no, no, no, no. That's the, that's the leadership's job. The mission. For instance, when we wrote the mission at Title Boxing Club, we were in fitness, we were in boxing, we were in kickboxing. Our mission, day in and day out for the frontline employees was to be the best hour of someone's day. Didn't have anything to do with fitness, didn't have anything to do with boxing. It says, no, no. If you're walking in the door, Jeff, I'm going to look you in the eye, I'm going to welcome you, I'm going to walk you to the bag, I'm going to let you have your time, your experience, you're going to leave, you're going to pick up all the stuff you walked in with, but it's not going to exist here and like honoring that space for someone. So when we do mission work, when you think of really great marketing today, I believe the mission needs to be rooted in the exact purpose your frontline employees need to deliver day in and day out to the customer.

I like that. I like that a lot. Is there such thing as too much automation or are there things that a human will always need to run their eyes across?

There are, yes. So in my experience, the emotional IQ of a human being will never be replaced by automation. However, the sheer amount of responsibility a human being has in their job today at any level is usually too high for one person. So when it comes to automation, I love simplicity of tasks and next action items and having a list that is very thorough and it is the same every single time for somebody to own. And also limiting our expectations of what somebody can do in a day at 17 an hour or $20 an hour, whatever we're paying him or her. Now, when it comes to automation of a customer experience, there are very important key elements. When you think of, I'll use fitness as an example, membership models as an example, there's a lead, there's a first time experience, there's a membership conversion and there's retention.

Right?

So in that most of the time franchisees will call and say, I have a marketing problem, Jeff, I have a marketing problem. Okay, great, let's look at it, let's look at the data and let's look at the operational scorecard before we analyze if it's a marketing problem. Most of the time it's actually not a marketing problem. You have ample amount of leads, you are not converting them to a first time guest. So let's look at what's happening between lead and first time experience. Well, if we're fumbling, 75% of all of our leads are being followed up with, which means 25% of them are still on the table and they never got returned phone call, email, text. Then of those 75%, only 25% show up to take their first experience because we have not streamlined what they need to say and do to get them in to experience the business. Most of the time, once they experience your product or offering, if it's rooted in your culture and your values, they're going to convert. So the issue isn't we have to go out and generate 8,000 more leads most of the time actually the issue is in processes for how do we treat the lead and convert them to a first time experience and what do we do to market in between there to get him or her in to actually experience the product. And so what we do also is look at and say what happens? Can we automate it? Can every single lead get an email that says, hi, I'm Jeff, welcome to Home Front Brands. This is what you're going to expect in your first time experience with us. You're going to get boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And they have the same experience every single time. We saw first time conversion go up significantly and then when these people are experiencing your product and service, they're going to convert, they're going to get memberships, you'll retain them based on your experience. But automating lead flow and setting the expectations for what to expect from your staff and then your staff having tools and resources to follow through on that is what I would recommend for brands to do. Because we still want to hear from a person we want to understand, especially in home services, who's walking in my front door? Can I trust them? Am I a mom alone with my kids and there's going to be a technician in my home, what is it going to look like, feel like, experience? Like if I'm walking into a fitness place or I'm going to get a facial, are they going to think my skin is bad? Am I going to look like them? Am I going to go do okay in the workout? All of these limiting beliefs our customers have, if you can help them overcome it, you'll see an uptick in your first time experience and that actually Solves your franchisees problems more than I have to go invest more dollars into leads. So you can also automate the experience for the consumer along the way, which helps conversion points increase at, you know, every. Which one?

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I had a fitness brand and we lived and died at the front desk. It's, I mean it is incredible the importance of the one or two people that are seeing those leads come into the system. That, and we had automate, we had all kinds of automation around those leads. But like if you called them and you sent them a picture, you did. If you engage them in a certain way that had a human touch to it and then they would be, you got them and they would be accountable to show up and they would show up. And if you didn't do it, the, the show rate was so much lower.

Yes. And automating text messages today, my tip is to make sure you're using an automation that sounds like a human.

Right.

Because human beings don't text paragraphs. Like they just don't. So. Hey, I saw your interest come through on our website. My name is Jeff. How can I help you today? Yeah, it's such a simpler automation versus wow, thanks for your interest. And they're like, oh, like click here to you know, book your class. And then it just makes it harder for the consumer. So yes, but AI and you know, next action. And automated messages are definitely part of.

The norm today of a great marketing friend and his name is Dean Jackson. I'm not sure if you're familiar with Gene Dean or you've ever heard of him, but he uses nine word messages. Have you found someone to repair or replace your fence? That's it. Just like the, the question that a human would ask if they were just following up. And anytime you think about just using a nine word message, a nine word email, a nine word, are you still interested in doing this? And it just, it's, it's right at nine. If you can get it to write at nine words, it has a response rate and they will respond to you. And you can put that in an automated system and then it needs to get to a person. If they say, yeah, I actually have this, that or the other thing, it's like, okay, well I'll call you or something. All right, so I got one more thing I just want to touch on. And then we will tug on the reins and we'll, we'll, we'll nudge this, we'll turn this thing towards the barn. How about that?

Okay.

But I do, I do want to Ask you about any cool, thoughtful or interesting non digital traditional guerrilla strategy that you've come across recently that is so common sense that you just can't believe that everybody doesn't do it.

You absolutely. So yes, I do, in fact. All right, so I'm going to set the stage. We had, I think I shared this stat, about 30 locations open, had sold, arguably 600 plus we opened 200 in about, gosh, I don't know, seven, eight years. Okay. And in that time we went to market in the middle and the firm was like, great that you have all these units sold. How are you going to get them open? And it was one of those humbling questions. We all kind of looked at ourselves like, like, you know, I was like, I'm just in marketing. I kind of sat back and like mess up, you know, like that's not me to answer. And it was. And so myself and our head of operations, we devised this plan for pre sale and most of the time in fitness. I'll use this example. You can bring the product to the people and you can do experience and, and you can do that even if you're not in fitness. Samples, product samples, experience, like bringing, bringing what you will do once your doors are open into the community. So we built out this playbook where we were going to open every unit with 200 pre sales to get them on a path to profitability. Now Our highest had 665 pre sales. And he went in Ohio, no, in Michigan, to apartments. He did pop up workouts, he went to the mall, he went to all of his target audiences. But one of my favorite things in all of local store marketing is this single tip. You do an enter to win. So you have your tablecloth, your setup, your show. Let's say you're at a 5k as an example. Enter to win. I'm giving away one month free for this membership. Okay, great. So people enter their name, whether it's a QR code or sign up list. Like back literally back in the day was not that long ago. And we had a list, you know, that you would fill out your name and information to capture a lead. And every single time, this is my tip. You call, you draw the name out of the hat. One person gets one month free. Great, Jeff, you've won one month free. I cannot wait. We're going to open on this date and time. Let's say you're already open, that you can come in and redeem it. And let's hypothetically say you met 50 people. So you call 49 people and you say, jeff, just for fun, I picked a second place winner. I just curious, like, who would have really won if I just picked one more and it was you? And so I actually, I have, I can't give you the free months, but I have a pair of hand wraps. I have your name on them at the front desk and I want you to come in and use them. They're yours. It's gonna save you money and time when you get here because you have to wear hand wraps to take the workout anyways. You can even pick out the color if you want. Okay. White hand wraps cost about $2, by the way. The other hand wraps maybe cost five. The franchisees were selling them for 10. So you have a low cost strategy for a franchisee. A $2 pair of white hand wraps where 49 people get the second place phone call from the franchisee or the GM or whoever is there saying, just for fun, I pulled your name and I would like for you to come in and experience this. I'm going to put this behind the counter for you. 49 people walk in with something saying, I won. And it's a pair of hand wraps. And they take the product and they take the class with the free gift of which they gave you their name and information from. And then those hand wraps, follow them home, which are really cool, right? And they have them and they're looking at them and they're like, I need to go back and I need to use them again. And it is the entry to win first place, second place, and it wins every single time. And every single brand that has tried it has an amazing conversion rate for getting people into a first time experience. Because when your experience is great, you're going to convert them on site. And it is one of the easiest, simplest things to do.

This is concept of a monkey paw. That's from Sandler sales. And a monkey paw. Are you familiar with the analogy?

No. That's why I laughed. I'm like, you're, you've got good analogies. All right, go on.

Okay, so a monkey paw is. Think about a big navy ship coming in and the size of the ropes that they tie that thing up on the dock are probably about. Oh, you know, they're. They're huge, right? They're thousands of pounds. You can't, you can't throw those over. So they would have some sort of a ball and they would tie a smaller string to it, and that's what they would throw to the dock. And then they would pull that and it would go To a slightly bigger rope. To a slightly bigger rope. And ultimately you're pulling up the, the whole rope to get it in. So a monkey paw is the concept of giving somebody something small and then using that to kind of pull in, pull them in. Right. So I was in the restoration industry, so one of the things that we would do is we had these things called air scrubbers and they would clean the air, we would use them in fires, we would use them in mold remediation. Anytime that there was something where we needed to make sure the air was clean. If we were doing a lot of dust or demolition and there was maybe mold around, they rent for $125 a day, but they rent for nothing when they're sitting in the shop. So you go out to a job and if it's a job that you want or you want to come back to, or maybe they don't want to sign up right now because, well, I want to wait and see what the insurance company is going to pay. I'm like, well, you're only responsible for your deductible and they're going to pay. Yeah, but I just want to make sure. I know. And I'll be like, well, look, you know, we need to do this work and we need to get started, but if you're not willing to give us the authorization, at least let me keep your family safe by putting this air scrubber in here for you. I'm not going to charge you for it if you end up giving us the job. Yeah, I'll put it on the bill for the insurance company, but it's no cost to you. But at least you know that your kids, your dogs, your parakeet, you know, all whatever it is is not going to be breathing. Whatever it is went out in the house. And not only was it something that pulled them, you know, really created a trust relationship that you were, you understood, you saw them, right? You get me? Yeah, I get you. And but on top of that, you had to go back and pick it up so they knew you were coming back anyway. And more often than not, they would just call you and say, yeah, you've got the job, just come on over and get started or whatever. And then they would tell the insurance adjuster what you did for them. And look, it cost you nothing. And it absolutely cost you nothing. So, yeah, a little cost you $2 for a pair of hand wraps. We had similar programs. I was actually, I actually built a small fitness boxing, kickboxing thing. I actually think I might have been on a call with you at some point and your ownership group and myself and my partner around a brand that I had called Rockbox.

Oh, my gosh. Yes, yes, yes.

We, we. This is nice to see you again.

Well, likewise. You've asked some banger questions today, by the way. You did not come in soft, so likewise.

All right, well, it's been, this has been great. Great. So we have. I have got a curveball for you, and then I've got a fastball right down the middle.

All right, well, I grabbed softball, so.

Since we've, since we've both been in, in kickboxing and boxing fitness, maybe I've got a. I've got a hook for you and then we got a straight jab. How about that?

Let's do it. All of your questions, by the way, have been pretty hard, so.

Oh, really?

Let's. Yeah, so let's hear it.

I'm sorry.

Well, hey, hey. I.

It's good, but before we do, let's. Why don't you tell people how to get in touch with you? And then if you want to share a little bit, I know you've got six spots open for your fractional CMO business for brands. So if anybody's an emerging brand out there and they want to talk to Brooke about maybe bringing her on or having take a look at their business, they can certainly do that. And then you've got something called the executive edge coming out. So if you want to just talk for a, a minute about that and then tell people where to get in.

Touch with you, I would love to. So themomentumbrands.com is the easiest place to find us. You can also follow me on LinkedIn. I would love to connect with you. If you do leave me a message. Tell me that you found us here because I'd love to give that feedback to Jeff, which would be great. And when you go to the momentum brands, you'll also see we do franchise fractional marketing and you can fill out the contact form. So best way to get in touch. Now, we also have a knack for personal branding and helping CEOs scale their business with very little dollars and money. And as you know, in franchise development, that's important because if you're working with accelerators, FSOs, brokers oftentimes are giving out all of the commission and organic leads are few and far between. But that's really our specialty is teaching a leader how to fish in the pond of their target audience. So the executive edge is really just that. It is creating an executive edge for The CEO or leader of a franchise brand to differentiate themselves online. Five content pillars, giving you prompts on how to create your own and what you can own in the marketplace in terms of a narrative and then even some sample prompts, video trainings, et cetera, from myself, my team. So it's a great product if you know that you have the ability to scale your business and you have limited dollars where if you already are doing it and you want to add this in, it's a really great product to just give you the tools and resources that we teach. And likewise, I'm also a keynote speaker. I love to meet with franchise brands and inspire your franchisees and vice versa and industries. So there's lots of ways we can work together. And being on podcasts like this.

Awesome, fantastic. And then you've that's. And just again, the ways that you want them to reach out to you is momentumbrands.com themomentumbrands.com the momentumbrands.com Perfect. Okay. Curveball. Do you have a puppy dog, by the way?

I. I do. I do have a favorite one. Well, there's only one.

All right.

So do you like name is Maverick. Oh, yeah.

Do you care for it?

The dog?

Yes.

Who does? Okay, who. What dog Owner does not like their dog.

You know, oh, messy divorce. I didn't want the dog, but I had to take it. I don't know. So, okay.

Yeah.

Your favorite dog. Your own Maverick held out the window or gun to your head. You have to start a business in the next 30 days. It can't be something that you're currently in. And this is a question to ask you to look across the landscape of the marketplace and where do you see an opportunity that if you weren't so busy doing what you're doing and it wasn't something you're currently doing, what would be the business that you would start?

If I were to start a franchise brand, it would be a car wash. Oh. I am an avid super user of car wash. I go virtually every single day and the way that it clears every cobweb from my brain, I would find a way to market to the moms and to the female consumers who have a million tabs open in their life and their car is filthy and it is full of snacks and all of the things and it makes your life feel so overwhelming. I would also understand there is a male executive who needs to look a certain way and he would be another super user target audience of mine. And I would make the branding unmatched in Terms of what washing your vehicle can do for you. And I like the way that Tommy's car wash loads. I don't know if you have Tommy's in your area, but they have a loading system that doesn't have that, like, tiny little thing you have to put your wheel in so it's easier, it's. It's more premium. And I would, I would market and brand the car wash and teach people how to take care of themselves through washing them, their cars. Which sounds crazy, but it's like if you make your bed and you wash your car and you have a clean sink, how much better your productivity is. So if that's, that's the brand I would do. If I was in franchising, if I were to do anything that was not today, I would be a keynote speaker teaching people how to live life.

On.

Their terms at the highest level and to unlock a new version of themselves every day that transforms everybody around them just by being their authentic self. And, you know, I guess in partly your question was if you're not doing it today. I try. I. I do live those values with the leaders that we coach. So I do instill that in the people we're doing. But if I were not in franchising, I would be in personal development because I believe people can have, do and be anything and everything in this life. It's all a base, all based on our thoughts and our actions and our beliefs. So if we change our thoughts, you can change your whole world. And that's probably where I'm going to end up in life. So if I were to start something, I would do that. And if I had a franchise brand, I'd be in car wash.

Awesome.

Yeah.

Last question. Fastball straight down the middle, overhand right jab at a title boxing club. If you had one sentence to speak into somebody's life to make an impact, what would that be?

It would be a question. And the question would be, if you were to continue living your life exactly as you are right now, where would you end up? And in that it shows you are your patterns and rituals and habits a direct reflection of where you want to go. And most of the time the answer is no. And it is quite humbling. And so if we are courageous enough to look at the shadow and say, there are things right now that are not taking me to where I want to go, and I'm going to have the courage to change them. Really, your future is untapped.

Perfectly said. Brooke. Thank you for being on.

Thanks for having me. I'm telling you your questions, Jeff. Never been asked half of them before and I've been on a lot of podcasts, so it was really well done.

Well, the great answers and really appreciate it. I'm Jeff Duden, and on behalf of Brooke Budke and the Unemployable podcast, we thank you for listening.