247: Has your Business Brand Become a Liability? How to Know When It’s Time for a Tune-up with Adam Chaloeicheep

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So there are times where you're just like stuck. That is a good time to revisit and we would say every few years revisit that for what you would call a brand refresh. We call it a tune up. So do we want to refine the colors? Do we want to tweak a logo? Do we need to add a few new brand elements that would better serve you? Again, you don't need a new car, but you need to tune it up. New tires, new stay in the race, keep things going and running really well.

This is your time. How can we earn twice as much in half the time with joy and ease while serving the highest good? That is our guiding question here at the Freetime Cafe, your home for heart based business. I'm your host Jenny Blake. Join me for conversations with authors, friends and fellow business owners as we explore ways to free your mind, time and team to do your best work. Now onto today's show.

Welcome back Free Timers. I am ecstatic to have one of my closest friends, Adam Chaleci back on the pod. Adam was last here in episode 45 going behind the Free Time brand. We were talking about what a flying money emoji, a stray takeaway coffee cup and a heart have in common. And it is the brilliant brand strategy that went into the Free Time podcast, the Free Time book, the Free Time swag pins, the BFF community, you name it, they've done it. And I've even given together Agency. That's the company that Adam co founded. I've even given them a testimonial saying I will not do a project without them. By the time this goes live, we will be celebrating our 12 year friendversary. Adam, welcome back to the pod.

Thank you Jenny. It's an absolute honor to be back again. We're a decade and counting and looking forward to more.

We're getting old.

It's true though. It's true every next conversation. Well, you and I catch up all the time as friends and yet it is still true that I don't do anything in my business without you and your Brilliant wife who is the CEO of Together Agency, Marisol Dahl, who actually worked with me while she was still in university. And I'm very grateful and honored to say that I also facilitated, slash officiated the proper term, your wedding, which was such an honor.

You're like a household name because, I mean, you also introduced us.

It's true.

If you think about it, you've kind of been with us the entire journey, and it's like you're in this home.

I'm so grateful. And I gotta say, I'm gonna pat myself on the back because if I had known introducing you mean I would lose Marisol in my business because she's one of the smartest people I know and extremely hard to replace, would I have done it again? I guess. I guess.

We're here in the new year, and there's all this new year, new you energy. I'm curious about the new energy for a business. And specifically I asked you back on the show to talk about how a business owner can know when it's time for a rebrand. And I think there are different levels of this. So there might be a brand refresh, a spruce, maybe zhuzhing, some social media, you know, templates. And then there's sometimes comes a point where a business owner might feel like they really do need a rebrand. It's not a new business. They may or may not have had a formal brand strategy before, but that's where I'd love to start with you. Who are the people that come to you and how can they know that it's time for a rebrand?

A lot of times when we are first contacted, we actually will do that on the first call and have some back and forth over email, if that helps. Sometimes clients just need to talk it through. They don't necessarily know if they need it. They feel like they need it. They might feel pressure from the outside. A friend or an advisor has brought something up to them and they need to verify. And at together, we really choose to make sure that we put our heart and soul into. Into every brand that we work on. We need to make sure that they're also in the right place to dive in. Because an actual rebrand or just creating a brand, as you know, is a lot of work, and you need stamina and you need to be able to stay up late, give feedback nuanced, and get into the details, which while doing that and running a company or possibly trying to get another company off the ground and using the rebrand as part of that extension, you Know, it's a lot of work, so a lot of things to handle. Usually we would say that there are kind of three key things when there's a telltale sign that it's time to rebrand. The first one is your brand is a liability to your business. Maybe your brand is keeping you from making sales, getting deals. People are going to more compelling competitors. Another one is brand's business model shifted. Maybe you have more products and services, settling your name, your identity, you are growing out of it. And then the last one is maybe your brand name no longer works. So sometimes names help move a company in a completely new direction in a new growth model. And so we need to think about where's the future of this company going, starting at reinventing everything from the ground up.

I love these three things that you've outlined. It's so helpful. And when you and I first met, in fact, the latter two were true because I had life after college. I had hired a professional designer at one point, halfway into that project. But by 2012, 2013, I had completely grown out of it. The business model shifted, and the brand name no longer worked. So you were there when we did the interim site, Jennyblake Me. And then, of course, you were there for Pivot, the Epic logo, and now Free time. But in each of those cases, just to give listeners an example, I had kind of outgrown my previous turtle shell, if you will, even though I love those brands and Pivot is timeless and eternal. For that matter, so was what you did with jennyglake me. But I want to encourage listeners, really check out episode 45 almost first before you come back to this one, because that's where we talk about all the work that goes into brand strategy. It's so much more than just what you see. It's the strategy of the business almost at the same time. So the piece, Adam, of those three that I'm curious about is, number one, you said when your brand is a liability to your business, sometimes it's hard to tell why you're not landing new business or you're not getting the rates that you're suggesting. How can a business owner know that the brand has actually become a liability and not any other factors in the business?

Yeah, we call this Persona. So we have kind of our own Personas of what our clients are. This is a Jekyll and Hyde Persona. And so when your brand is a liability, it means that you need to go through a rebrand for a better business. Maybe your brand has gotten them so far, but now it's holding them back. So they've got traction, they've got something really special going on. But they're losing out on bigger opportunities and need that rebrand to launch them into the next phase. This is kind of where your brand was great in the beginning, but now it's kind of the enemy. This is probably unpopular comment, but it's kind of like the person in your friend group that keeps you from getting invited to all the cool parties.

I'm still curious though. How do they know? Because sometimes a business owner has lived with their visual voice and anything else that went into creating that original brand. They've lived with it for a few years. As you said, it can be hard to pull over and work on something like a rebrand. I guess I'm just wondering. It feels like probably much like driving an old or used car, it could kind of sputter along at when do you actually go to the dealer, put down all that money, get the new car versus someone who's saying, okay, our brand might not be working extra hard for us, but how do they know when it tips into that liability point where it's actually hurting them emotionally?

You're going to be unhappy in how your business is being represented or trying to figure out how to get it represented the right way. The brand also might not be functionally working for you and your team. You know, it can be more. You know, it can be set easier and cleaner. You know, it can be more memorable. And maybe it's grown up. Maybe it needs a different outlook on the world. Its personality has changed. The way we try to approach it is a more authentic approach. We really believe that in today's world, there's a lot of noise out there. There's a lot of people having empty promises. And so we want to make sure through our strategic us that you are actually being seen for what you are and where you're going. You don't need a peacock here, but we need to make sure that we need a full brand expression that is related to you and it's at your fingertips and you know when to dress the part. Great analogy with the car. Maybe it's working, maybe it's getting you there, it's high mileage. But maybe personally your lifestyle's changed, maybe you've grown, maybe you've now got a family and need a bigger car. You have moved and you have to drive four or five hours to get to family. There's all these kind of factors that come into play that will then start telling you that you need to upgrade.

That reminds me of talking with my brother, who many years ago, he was in real estate. I think he was working for a brokerage, but he would have client meetings, or it could have been when he was trying to get his own thing off the ground. And the car that he drove was really important. So if he drove a pickup truck, that was a signal that he gets his hands dirty. He's the guy to buy your house from you at a great price. But if he was meeting with somebody to do a business deal with or start a company, well, that's where the Porsche he would, oh, I need a used Porsche so I can show up at these meetings and impress people. And it kind of makes me feel the same way when we're talking about brand and when it's time for a refresh, like you said, your old car might be fine. And it's not that we want to get caught up in status signals, but it is still saying something about you. So I know for some people, I know you've even worked with coaches who I've referred to you who wouldn't normally think, oh, I'm a coach. I need a big, fancy brand strategy. I've also used the metaphor of renovating a house. And yet there are a lot of coaches out there, and there's more every year. They seem to be growing exponentially. You know, of how many go through trainings. Whereas it may not have mattered to have a big, bold, beautiful, differentiated brand in the beginning, the economy might shift in such a way or the market grows in such a way that, well, now it is needed to stand out and differentiate and show. I've been at this a decade. I take it really seriously and have the website, the newsletter, the social, all tied together in a cohesive brand. Now I'm just speaking for you.

This is what's great. Though we've worked together, you're now educated. This is kind of like when the teacher becomes a student or the student becomes a teacher analogy. And so this is great that you were actually able to speak to this, because now when you are working on your brand and you're growing it, you're able to think of the consistency between all these channels. That's amazing for a small business owner to be able to learn and be a brand manager and not always have to look outside of them to make sure that they're doing it the right way. That's music to my ears. And that's what we hope we're doing. Like we're teaching you how to fish. We'll make sure Everything else is set. And that's really what we are known for, to come up with those foundational brand pillars that you can now stand on. And I think what's great too is we try to leave room that if you do grow or as an extension of your brand, it's a smart enough system that you can easily use items from it to do that. And then when you get to a certain level where you really need to grow or some verticals taken off, yeah, maybe you'll come back to us and we help you refine that and make sure that the whole system works cohesively together. So everything that you're saying is spot on and that people have to kind of take a step back when it comes to brand building. I think a lot of people get focused on how Cool Logo works, how it looks, and how everything feels together. But remember, it's about building the relationship with your customer. And first impressions are really important. When we think about the coaches that we have helped with their branding platforms, we've really talked to them and listened to them to understand who they are in a sea of coaches because we're all different and we're all distinct and we all have our own methodology and process. It's actually been really fun to work with coaches and solopreneurs because a lot of times as we go through our brand strategy process, we'll help uncover different methodologies and even sometimes name those methodologies that they didn't even think about. And we even tie that into the bigger brand system. All of a sudden, it's not just about them being a coach. They've got a methodology. They have a POV on how they lead and how they teach people. And so you start having these, like, distinct brand pillars about who they are that then they can kind of stand on and explain who they are in the world and it will help them stand out differently. And on top of that, we have really dope designers and artists, so we always make it look really, really good, too. But the core, strategically forward, the core of that brand is already created before we even get into the looks of it.

We'll be right back just after this.

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I love that you mentioned those pillars and even the methodology that makes a business or a business owner unique, let's say if they're a solo preneur like me, I also like to refer to it as being an ideapreneur when I talk to people about licensing. I mean you've read Rolling in Dough, you know that it hasn't been easy. I have not successfully landed a third licensing client despite almost a decade of trying. So take this with a huge grain of salt. However, the clients that I did land, those are six figure contracts. And I don't know anyone who's landed a contract like that without a cohesive brand from the inside out. The pillars, the methodology, having the materials look really seamless, unified, they have to look professional. It's like that Porsche, your IP cannot be scrapped together or someone is not going to write you a six figure check. And so in that case, I'm so happy you brought this up because it's not just I think the website, it's that when you want to go down the path of something like a book or a licensing program, which in my case had a spiral bound facilitator guide, participant handouts, a workbook, there were so many extensions of the brand and they all needed to talk together. And I have like a fourth grader skill with any kind of visuals or creating anything cohesive, I'm not skilled at that whatsoever. I don't think that way. I could work collaboratively with a team like yours, but I cannot cobble together what I need just through Canva and now even mid journey or AI. It's so helpful when there's actually a structure to it, to the pillars, the thought pillars, the methodology, but also then all the ingredients that you would combine to create a cohesive set of materials that if you run a business that has a business model where you are trying to land maybe VIP coaching clients or speaking gigs or a book deal or design a book or any of the rest, that's where I think it really does make a difference.

Yeah, and to echo that, there's something really relieving when you as a client, you are actually expressing yourself in full kind of brand therapy mode. We're going through the strategy phase and we are able to understand it, comprehend it, and come up with different ways, concisely, creatively, bite size snapshots and getting back to you what we think this is and what you're saying to us. And a lot of times we get kind of like the silent. We're actually presenting the brand strategy. They look at us in silence with just a huge smile on their face because they're like, you didn't even just hear me. You were able to elevate it and add more thought behind it that they may not previously thought about before. I think it starts becoming a very real thing when you go through the brand strategy process because it's, as you said, it's part business strategy, part brand strategy. There is this kind of brand therapy part we're helping you understand, like what to throw out and what to keep. And then we're putting that through our process of what the personality traits are, what are the pillars, what's a 10,000 foot view, and all those kind of extra things that kind of make up the brand strategy. So when you read through it, you really understand the story and you start understanding how you're going to start building relationships with your customers.

I love that you said brand therapy. You must have that phrase for a reason. What is brand therapy that you've had to do with clients? When does that come in?

It could be throughout the whole process. Currently, we're working on a pretty big brand in New York City right now, and the client is having a big issue with the name change and with the new look. We're going not because they don't think it needs to be done. They're just attached to something that they saw as their kind of genesis baby of this brand. But now it's just becoming so much bigger than they thought possible and they're just having a hard time of letting go. So there's always a therapeutic part there where we're trying to help them understand the bigger picture and where it's going to go. Maybe there's a middle ground in what we do with the brand that has some throwback to where it started. So there's always that. And then a bigger part of our brand therapy process is during the strategy and the upfront. I think a lot of times founders, solopreneurs, they come into this process thinking that they already know what this thing is and they just need help unifying it into looking a certain way and the way we look at it is, even if we might know an industry really well, we still try to come in with a Buddhist mind, like we don't know anything. We are just trying to ask questions, get very curious, poke holes. And a lot of times these one hour client calls turn into two hour calls because we are going down various paths and memories and why they want to do this in the first place and something a lot of times that's where the good stuff is. We start going down these random tangent pathways and we just start exploring. And there are actually some really cool nuggets in there that we will notate on our end and say, hey, does this make in the brand strategy? Does this visual moniker that they're talking about, does that come up in the actual visual brand? So we'll actually start taking things because again, we're always trying to get down to the authentic part of what this brand is going to be. And since you're the founder, you're the leader, you're the CEO, we need to make sure that it really resonates with you. And I think when people start going down that process, they actually feel a lot lighter when they go through it too. You actually see their emotional kind of state through these calls and going through the process actually changing as well. And that's the really fun part for us is when we get to go through that and we get to see them extremely happy at the end and saying that they feel really seen and heard. Because the whole idea of what an authentic brand is has become like a cliche. We're actually trying to say no. We're staying true to the art and science of what we know. And we know that we can actually really reach an authentic brand for you. And we don't try to sprinkle too much fancy words on top of that to win you over. So it's nice to see them see relief to be seen, to be heard, and us to bring our talents and expertise to make it something very viable that they can actually put out into the world and feel like it really represents them.

And then you get that fun feedback from website visitors or people who see it, who in my case, with free time, went out of their way to say, what the heck is this? I've got your website and I'm utterly delighted. And for me, that was so helpful. I really did feel seen and I didn't even fully know what a brand or the book or the podcast were. You helped shape that. So I think that's important to say too, that not that you want every client coming to you in a goose state like I was. But it is so cool to feel best expressed in the business through the business. Again, for me, differentiating because I wanted people to land on the podcast and not know if it was one of the big players, big networks, and I wanted them to see the book and not know if it was hybrid or indie published compared to one of the big five. I wanted it to look better than the top publishing houses. And if I don't say so myself, I think it does. It won six awards thanks to you all. You mentioned process and the art and science of what you do. When a client comes to you for a rebrand, are you actually following the same process as if they were a new client or is there anything different if they already have some existing brand strategy or materials?

Yeah, a rebrand and a brand, let's say from a blank canvas, usually will go through the same process. Like we were talking before, like the camp of being a Jekyll and Hyde, you have a brand, but now it's a liability. You're losing business, you're losing customers, you're losing deals. We would need to go through the process to figure out, okay, there's a reason why you're losing those deals. Let's figure who you are. Now. There might be some things we can look back on that and use, but it's actually better and we're better service that we actually look at it with again, like a beginner's mind and coming in like we don't know anything to see what we come up with. That also kind of comes into the camp of your brand's like a little bit like a Frankenstein. You did a logo one time here you did a brand strategy later here you did a website. Like everything's kind of all over the place. Again, we would rebrand for better alignment there. I would say that if you are coming for what we would call like a tune up, right, you need to refresh your brand to like kind of stay in the race. Let's go with the car analogy. You need a tune up and you need fresh tires to stay in the race. It's kind of like you're doing fine, you're making sales, everything feels cool, but you're kind of on the fence whether you're need to update your brand or not. So like, maybe while addressing the brand is not urgent, after a few years you do run the risk of being outdated. There are a lot of many brand elements that are stuck in their times. For example, do you remember when every tech company named themselves with an ly at the end.

Oh, my gosh, yes. Or without vowels.

Right.

Michael and I still make fun of mood wood.

Right.

Or they had a Flash website. Do you remember when everybody. Super professional, big movie studio or anything was on Flash? Like, absolutely horrendous for mobile accessibility.

Yeah, absolutely. So there are times where you're just like stuck. That is a good time to revisit. And we would say every few years revisit that for what you would call brand refresh. We call it a tune up. So do we want to refine the colors? Do we want to tweak a logo? Do we need to add a few new brand elements that would better serve you? Again, you don't need a new car, but you need to tune it up. New tires, stay in the race, keep things going and running really well. I would also say too that's really fun about these tune up moments is that customers and clients also get really excited to see something new. It reengages interest. When you're able to dive back in, it can become a moment too where you're able to show the world, hey, we're still here, we're still growing. We're not changing the brand from the bottom up and we're not going through a huge rebrand. But we're refreshing and we're refining and we're polishing. That's always a nice thing to see.

I know you have a really dialed in process by now because you've been at this a long time and you're great at hiring incredible and very talented team members. Can you share at a high level what the together agency process is? So from the time a new client signs, what happens? Take us through the car wash. Yeah, I'm sticking with our metaphor.

I'll give two scenarios. You're coming to us like the blank canvas. Okay. And you have a business idea, not much else. So we would then first we do discovery and research. So we do some surveys with you personally. We get to know your business, we do our own research around your business, your industry and stuff that we can find that's really interesting. What historically, what it currently is and where the industry possibly might be going. We try to match that up with your survey answers to understand where you're at and what you might be best at in that industry. And then we will take that and we'll put that into a brand strategy process where you actually start understanding your foundational brand pillars, your personality traits, how you want to talk and be seen in the world. Through mood boards and tonality exercises. Then from there we go into the visual brand exercise. We start off with the logo because a lot of times the logo needs to have a lot of meaning within. Can't embody entire brand. That's impossible for a lot of logos to do. But it can have one of the kind of top ideas that we want to understand through this brand. And then from there we'll build out the color palette, the typography system, the graphic elements, the animation elements and then we start going into whatever applications you might need. It could be a full on e commerce website, it could be a simple website, it could be a marketing website. We will go through those different avenues and figuring out what is going to serve you best in your business from a digital standpoint. And if there is a physical point or we need to do some print materials, we work with a lot of real estate clients, so maybe we have to do in unit stuff, we have to do signage. So whatever the expression of the brand is, we will then create it from there at the end of our time and journey of this part together. Because we have also been startup founders on our end, we understand how we need to have things delivered. So we don't want to have things stuck in a Google Drive that is hard to go through. We use a platform where we lay out all your brand assets in a very organized way. So you can easily just log in, download and go. Can also share it very easily with other people on your team or other contractors. You might have that. You need to help develop something with the brand assets. So you've got that and then at the end you've got your what we call the brand guidelines, which is essentially your brand bible. This is going to show you how to use every asset and when to use it and just be a reference guide on how things are put together. So a lot of times that we come up with social media templates, email templates, all sorts of different things that you might use over and over and so those will be readily available through there. And if you want to create something new, you have it as a reference and you know how the branch should come together. That is kind of the blank canvas, a brand rebrand journey with us, a tune up, a brand refresh would be something smaller. We don't necessarily need to go through a whole brand strategy. We need to go through and see what can we tighten up. Is it looking like a little 10 years ago? Do we need to kind of update it through the style, visual representation? Maybe there are some things around tonality and the copywriting that we should also think about. And are there other assets we need to create that would help push you for the next 10 years? So the tune up is a much shorter, tighter timeframe and turnaround. But we're also not digging into like the nooks and crannies and excavating what your brand is. So I would say those would be like the two main ways you could look at our processes.

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I know a lot of listeners are inevitably going to want to know about budget and what kind of investment. I shared a little bit in the last episode in episode 45 because there is a difference for a venture backed startup that's just blasting money out every which way and they're also trying to become a unicorn. So it's really a no brainer for them to invest in something like this. And it's different for a small shop or an indie like me where I can say, I mean I invested almost six figures for free time between the podcast, the brand overall, the book design. And the thing is, I know that it's worth it because I'm going to live in it for five years, if not more. In this case, pivot the brand strategy we did back in 2015. The book launched in 2016. I still love it. I mean maybe there are certain things to refresh. Probably the things that I did that I hacked together from your brand assets, but the logo itself is still very smart and very fresh. And so that's seven, eight years on. So for me I'm kind of maybe a little different in the sense that this is the thing I'm really willing to pay a lot for almost sacrificing like going to a mastermind or hiring expensive coaches. I just like to invest in brand because it's the thing I can't do myself. But I'm curious, like, just tell us a little bit about what kind of investment, at least to work with you. And then maybe there are people who there's not a fit to work with you or they don't have these types of resources. And I wouldn't have these resources at this moment in time, but when I'm thinking of a new entire direction for the business, I'm somehow able to cobbled them together. So I also think sometimes it's not now, but it's helpful for people to think about, okay, do I wait, do I pool my resources and go with an agency like yours, or do I really need to do much smaller scale?

Yeah, we want everyone to make responsible business decisions for sure. When it comes to your platform, I wholeheartedly agree that Pivot is still timeless, it's still awesome, and I think it's going to live on for a very long time. When you do come to work and sign on with us, that's always our North Star. We are actually hoping that we create something where you will not need a refresh or even a tune up for 10 years. That's our hope. Now, sometimes companies grow and they change and they pivot, so they might need to go through a bigger endeavor. But I'm really happy that you brought that up because Pivot again, to this day, we love it. The Freetime brand. We absolutely love Freetime. We show it off all the time. In our case studies, we've gotten such good feedback from it as well. And like you said before, even mutual friends that we have, I've gotten messages when they're like, how did you capture Jenny in a brand new. You know, when they look at Free Time, that to us is such a glorifying, amazing affirmation of what we're doing because we want to make sure that we're actually capturing you in a bottle. Right.

And by the way, I just want to pause you because at the time of this recording, like Freetime launched in the midst of a pandemic. So it's not the best business case study. But Pivot, I crunched the numbers because someone in BFF asked a question. The Pivot part of the business has earned over $2 million. So if I spent six figures on the brand, but it helped me land all these opportunities, speaking licensing, et cetera. The ROI was there over the longer term. Like you said, you wouldn't want somebody to go in debt around it, obviously. But just to update, because I didn't even have those Numbers when we recorded the last one, depending on your business and on your business model.

Absolutely.

I do think there's a correlation.

I'm glad you brought that up. 2 million, dude, that's so good. Amazing to hear that. You said 2015, 2016. So yes, the ROI is there. So I would recommend that if you're going to try and build, let's say a platform like Pivot or something bigger where you are looking to make 500k plus over a few years or pivot went to 2 million, that phase, we would actually want to go through a proper brand and that would start around 50k. That's because we're a strategy first company and like I said, we are going through quite a bit of processes to even know what to develop and what your brand IP is going to be. We do have what we call a starter kit that starts at 25k. This would be for small organizations, solopreneurs who are just starting out and they just need to get enough to get their brand out to the world. We'll still go through a smaller brand strategy and we'll do enough that is going to help us give us a brand system and that could usually turn into maybe like a one or two page website. The starter kit is something that is hopefully going to get you off the ground, going to work for a year or two and then you are ready to come back to us and say I'm really ready to build this out. Once you've got some traction going. And the last one is usually the tuneup kind of brand refresh again, that would start around 25k too. A lot of times we would have to feel out if we're going to be the right team to tune you up. Because a lot of times we want to make sure that we aren't just putting lipstick on a pig. We want to make sure we're doing it the right way. For example, Jay, if you came back to us and said one of your brands, let's say in 10 years, needed a brand refresh, we would immediately say yes, because we've already worked on this brand. We know you and we know what you represent. And we've gone through this strategic process where we feel like we understand the foundation. Other people come to us who maybe we haven't worked with from the beginning. We would just need to figure out if they're just a good fit and if we can actually help them. And again, not just make something look a certain way for the sake of it making it look pretty.

That makes a lot of Sense. What about for somebody for whom their business model just doesn't support this type of investment? It doesn't make sense for them, but they still want to tune up. What advice would you give? Where should they start?

Today's pretty amazing. With the technology around ChatGPT, it's a very smart friend to have in your pocket. You could also start there and even ask it straight up about brand strategy phases and tactics that you could probably work through.

And by the way, I did a ChatGPT episode, I'll put in the show notes. I had to do that. I asked for author and podcaster Jenny Blake, please create brand strategy guidelines. And it was not a bad first draft. So if you have any public thinking or writing out there on the Internet, it's not bad what it gives you, it's not perfect, but you're not starting from scratch to at least create the guidelines. I had it say, what's my voice? What makes me unique? Like it was very interesting.

Yeah. And a lot of times now what's happening is people are actually taking the brand strategies that we've created and using that with ChatGPT, so they're kind of becoming self sufficient. They don't have to come back to us with a question. They're kind of using this technology to help them move forward with their business. So if you don't have the resources, ChatGPT is a great place to start. There's also places like upwork, working, not working. These are all platforms where you can look at different people's portfolios and what they're doing and see if someone seems to be a good fit, understands your industry and you can test them out. I think that if you are first starting out, you don't want to always invest too much if you don't know exactly what it's going to be. If you do have a very clear idea on what it needs to be, maybe you can also reach out to different agencies like ours. And we sometimes work deals out. If we really believe in that person, that founder, we will invest time and energy into them as well. So that's always a possibility. It never hurts to just reach out to an agency we really like. You really resonate and say, hey, I've got something. This is what I got right now. Can we work something out and put me on a payment plan, whatever. It could be anything like that. But if you also just want to feel a little more self sufficient, ChatGPT working, not working.com is a great resource. Upwork is a great resource. And also if you Go to Behance, which Adobe owns. It's just plethora of portfolios of people's work and their case studies, and you can hire them and reach out to them through there as well.

And Canva is really good for things like a business proposal or invoice templates. Like, I have used Canva very successfully. I just found it easier once I had all the brand ingredients and the color palette and the logo files. I have been able to do a lot on my own, I will say, with tools like Canva as well. Okay, Adam, two questions as we wrap up. The first, you always ask such creative, fun questions during the excavation and exploration process with clients. So I'd love to leave people with a brand thought starter. So what's one question that you ask in that intake survey that we could leave listeners with to just carry as an inquiry into the next two weeks?

One of my favorite questions we have, it's a bit more esoteric, and that is what's really fun about our kind of brand survey therapy sessions is we will go between pragmatic and esoteric. We're trying to get kind of both sides of the brain here. And since I'm so visual and I like to think how a visual voice can unfold, my favorite is what texture is your brand?

Thanks to you, I have an answer to that. I've always said cashmere is my spirit fabric.

Now I have an answer for how that connects to my business and my brand. But I'm super curious. What would you say if I tell you, Adam, Texture. It's cashmere. That's my brand's spirit texture. What would you say? What does that say about my business?

Soft can be casual and also dressed up.

Wow.

Comfortable. Little.

Little bit of luxury.

A little bit of luxury. Like I said, you can wear it casually, but also you can dress it up.

I do have a cashmere sweatsuit from Nadam that I wear all the time. Well, I actually, I only allow myself to wear it when I travel because I know I'll ruin it if I wear it at home.

And I think it always looks good. It's always nice when you have a cashmere scarf or sweater. There's a little panache with it and it always looks good.

Okay, I did not expect that. I didn't think I was going to give you a brand texture. Pop quiz interpretation. Now you have brand therapy and you have, like, I don't know, esoteric brand interpretation. Okay. The very last question, which you might remember from episode 45, if you could give fellow business owners Permission to do something differently or drop something altogether, what would it be?

This question, I think, is personal to me right now in regards to doing it for myself. And the permission to be vulnerable on paper, whether that is to write yourself an email, call it a journal, call it a morning pages, whatever that might be. But to be able to open yourself up and write about something new that you've never spoken about before, and to be vulnerable.

And speaking of morning pages, I'm going to link to your beautiful wife Mari's substack mind brew in the show notes because she's doing a book club. She's written about morning pages and Artist's Way.

Do you know she didn't even tell me about that?

What?

I found out about it at your birthday.

Excuse me. And she was what, like 13 posts then? 14.

Dude, my wife is so funny.

That's hilarious.

I know.

I called her out the day Stealth Brand.

Well, I told her. I was like, why didn't I know about this till I heard about it from Jenny? She's like, I don't know. I'm not like you. I don't need to tell everyone.

And I was like, okay, everyone being your husband who you live with.

Exactly.

Hey, you know what? I talk about that a lot in BFF that you need to launch with psychological safety. So, you know, she had to do it for herself. And then maybe I just accidentally found it, which is entirely possible. And so you were a little ways down the list. That's okay. I know. You know, you could be a bulldog with your feedback, just like Michael. Well, as you've read in my substack, he's like, why do you always wear those silly shoes? Or he'll just comment, I'll buy something I'm really happy that I picked out. And he'll go, oh, take me shopping with you next time.

That. We are so similar. We are so similar.

I know. Well, it's such a blast to catch up officially on the podcast, unofficially every afternoon when I take Ryder out. And I just really appreciate you letting us have a peek into your process, into the tune up and the F1 track and all the different metaphors that we've mixed into today's combo. Thank you so much and let us know where can listeners find you if they do want to learn more and keep in touch?

Yeah, best place to find us is @gotogether agency. Our email is weotogether agency. You can find us on all the social channels as well. Again, we're not the most active because we are usually putting our heart and soul into all our clients and making sure that their brands really shine. But hit us up through an email or there's an intake form on our website directly there. We love the chat. Even if you're not ready for a bigger investment, that's fine. We love to build relationships and maybe we could help out in some way. So please, please reach out.

Awesome. And I happen to have whispers that there's a Together Agency substack as well in the works. You probably don't know about it yet, but I do, so I'll link to that in the show notes.

Thanks.

Awesome. Thank you so much Adam and Big thanks everybody for listening.

Thank you Jenny.

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