Henry Kaminski Jr. founder of Unique Designz- The Art of Authority Podcast with Mike Saunders - Ep 22

Welcome to the Art of Authority podcast, bringing you interviews and episodes to help you radically optimize your authority and influence to become the go to expert in your field. Here's your host, authority positioning coach, Mike Saunders.

Hey guys, welcome back. This is Mike Saunders, the authority positioning coach, back with another segment here talking about authority and influence. And today we have with US Henry Kaminsky Jr. Who is the brand doctor and he's with Unique Design. Henry, welcome to this segment.

Mike, thanks for having me, pal. I love. If there's anything that I could do to help you, my friend, I'm here.

Well, thank you. And you're a good friend of mine as well and I just respect your work and what I want to do right now is just dive right into branding because I think that so many people have misconceptions about branding. They think it's one thing, but yet it's so much more. So let's talk about that from a 30,000 foot view. And then before we end, I want to make sure we have at least one or two rooms, really easy takeaways, tactical things that someone can maybe look in their own business, look at their own brand and go, okay, I can do this myself right now from what I learned. So give us a little bit of background on yourself as far as your approach to branding.

Sure. So quick, quick, quick background on me. I'm a graphic designer by trade, been doing it for over 10 years, self taught, learned everything I know just by studying and studying the greats and really understanding great design, typography, colors, functionality of the design to really help entrepreneurs sell more product or service. I got to about my 6th year business and realized that design started to get this commodity sort of plague to it and I knew that I needed to level up my value as a graphic designer otherwise I would be consumed and eventually go out of business. So I eventually started to learn more about marketing and digital marketing and branding and really dove, you know, seven or eight layers deep into.

How to take graphic design and branding and marketing and fuse it all together to help my clients make more money. Because that's at the end of the day, that's what they struggle with the most.

Right? Sure.

And so now we've developed. It started as a one man band, you know, and now I have a 16 person, all digital, all virtual agency now that I've been able to help hundreds of entrepreneurs, you know, level up their brands.

And take them to the 6, 7, 8 now 8 figure mark by, you know, Russell Brunson is a client of mine and he just Hit the hundred million dollar mark. And so now I could actually say that.

Yeah.

But anyway, that's sort of the background on me. And I just love what I do and I love helping entrepreneurs help other people live better lives. And that's a lot of what my client roster now is full of. And it's just been a great, great journey.

You know, as you were mentioning that, it made me think of something. Have you ever heard of this place called Someday Aisle? No, it's this, this place way far out there that's like, well, someday I'll look into that. Someday I'll do that. Right? And it's kind of funny because I think that so many entrepreneurs get so caught up in the weeds of I need to start my business and then now I need to get customers and now I need to sell, and now I need to get my bookkeeping, accounting, CRM, website, all these things that branding takes a back seat. So it's kind of like the cart before the horse or the chicken and egg, which comes first. So I know what your response will be, but how do we keep people from kind of going to that Someday I'll look into that branding piece. What are some things that people need to realize right from jump street that they need to put into their planning regarding branding?

So Marty Neumeyer, great author, great individual, expert in the branding space, wrote a book called the Brand Gap. And in the book he speaks about what exactly branding is. And branding is that gut feeling that people get when they interact with your business. Okay. And you know, the Someday Aisle, it shouldn't take you very long to understand.

That.

Without that perception being built the way you want to be perceived, you will not have a business. I always tell clients, if you don't have an audience, you don't have a business. And branding is all about building that audience and building that tribe, building that community, building that feeling around your business.

I always stress to my clients, without a brand, you don't have a business. There's a lot of brandless businesses out there. You're just out there, out there sort of floating in outer space and on the Internet and.

Hoping that they connect with one or two individuals that will abide from them. Where if you really focus on branding, your purpose, your mission, your values, your clients and what they truly or who you truly want to serve, building your brand gets a lot easier and it becomes a lot quicker in the process.

Yeah, it reminds me of, I think it was a book by Zig Ziglar or a quote or, you know, how quotes get you know, you attribute it to one person, and then it really was nine people that said it. But the point is, hope is not a strategy, you know, and you've got to have that plan. And I think. Here's the other thing that you mentioned. You have to know about your own brand yourself before you start working on building it, because you need to know what feeling, emotion, and vibe that you want to give to your audience before you start working on. Otherwise, you're just running around in circles. So what's the first thing, first step that an entrepreneur needs to keep in mind when they start thinking about building the brand? Because you have to focus first what you want it to be, not what that other customer needs to view your brand as. Because they. You need to know. And if you don't know first, then they're confused.

Right. So one of the things. So I actually tell my clients, yeah, it's good to know who you are and what you want to do and all of that good stuff. But I've been hearing this a lot, and I'm sure you heard it a thousand times by the. By the greats. You know, follow your passion. You know, do what you're passionate about. And one of my buddies online, Roberto, Roberto Blake's, he said something the other day that really hit me. He said, you know, I challenged that statement because I think it's sort of half cooked. He said, it's great to follow your passion, but what if your passion isn't lucrative enough? What if your passion doesn't provide enough value that will actually get somebody to buy? What if that passion isn't something that people want to buy? You know, if you will fall short and eventually lose a lot of time, money, energy, blood, sweat and tears, and you won't have a business. So the first thing that I would say when building your brand is to find an audience that is suffering or is in pain.

By something and fix it. Whatever you're passionate about, make sure that that fixes that. Because I don't know about you, Mike, but when somebody's talking about a pain point that I'm struggling with and they possibly have a solution for me, you know, they have my undivided attention. And unless.

Unless you see that message and you go to their website, it looks like 1990s Craigslist.

Well, yeah. Well, then now what happens is your credibility is being compromised and the value that you provide is being compromised, and that trust factor goes down the tubes. So, you know, it's always important to keep your brand. You know, I always look at Brands as human, like living organisms. Right. Think about yourself, right? Would you not shower for weeks on end and then go out in public? Imagine what you would smell like. Just think about that for a second. So if you're not keeping your brand up to date, if you're not keeping it healthy, if you're not.

Practicing hygiene to help your brand live a healthy life, then it's the same comparison of walking into a mall, not showering for weeks.

Interesting word picture. And so let's think about something. How can we. What are some of the maintenance, hygiene issues that we should be keeping in the forefront of our mind? Let's say that we've clarified, you know, competitive advantage, target audience, all those things, and we now starting to paint that picture in our branding. Our brand messaging is coming to life. What are some of the things that you can put on a tickler file or a quarterly review that you need to be making sure that you're just. Just making sure those, those plates are spinning on the sticks or the ball is spinning, you know, then you just kind of keep that momentum going.

So what you want to do is you want to spend a lot of your time studying your audience and understanding their pain points and keeping up to date with those pain points and struggles. When you have a good pulse on your target audience's pain points, you're going to be able to speak to them a lot clearer. When you put the right message in front of the right people, the right things happen. So if you decide not to continue to focus on studying your audience and knowing everything about them upside down, backwards and inside out, that messaging will eventually.

Become outdated, you know, and people, your audience will say, well, I fixed that 10 years ago.

Yeah, right.

So that's the first thing that we need to do. As far as I know, you're trying to get to the identity side of things. So that's the messaging part. And the messaging part is very, very important. Again, that's one. It's the one part of branding that's going to allow your. Your clients to really understand you and.

Why you do what you do. Okay. From an identity standpoint, you know, there's trends, you know, Marty talks about in the book.

The.

The logo is dead, Long live the icon. Okay. And the icon is something that is easily remembered. It could be used on its own.

Right.

For example, the APC behind your head, that's iconic. Okay. And if you were to use that on PowerPoint presentation, on us, on slide decks, if you were to use that on clothing, okay. A hat, a left breast of a golf shirt, you know, that will last forever. Okay.

And, you know, one thing that I would want to point out is before Amazon was Amazon, nobody knew what Amazon was. So there is that moment in time for an entrepreneur that goes, okay, good, good. I've got my messaging down. I'm getting my identity, I'm getting that, you know, icon or that. That tagline and all of that. Well, don't think that the minute you walk out with that on your shirt, people are like, gonna go, oh, my word, I can't believe that. It's so awesome because you have to do the hard work of getting that momentum. So I think that's a good point too. But yeah, you excellent angle, which is how does that brand live and breathe beyond just, you know, the screen if someone sees it on your website?

Right. So the biggest thing that we want to do here, guys, is we want to differentiate ourselves from the competition. And without differentiating ourselves from the competition, we're not going to stand out. You know, when everybody's zigging, this is when we zag. Right. And I always try to tell people that's the quickest way you can grab somebody's attention to is to kind of flip a common phrase on its head, if you will, or something that's trending right now and challenge it. Right?

Yeah. Be contrarian.

Yes. It's a. It's a great way of sort of getting people's attention and standing out. You know, a lot of people are like, you know, I just want to go with the jet stream. I want to go, what's trending? Yes. I agree with Gary Vaynerchuk. 1000% should be marketing in the year that you are living.

However, how you do that is going to determine how well you stand out.

And that doesn't mean every word out of your mouth, every piece of content out of your business needs to be that contrarian view. It just needs to be spiced up with that here and there so you can take the trend of the time, the quarter, the year, and be speaking to that wonderful. But then also just kind of interspersed it with a little bit of things like, you know what, everybody's talking about this, but have you ever considered. And I think that then helps you to build that brand voice. And guess what, you, we have competitors. How can we stand out? And the whole point of the authority and influence summit is the fact that you want your target audience seeing you as that trusted, credible advisor, trusted source. And that authority, well, how else can they do that if you're just saying the same thing everybody else is saying. Right.

And one of the things that I stress with my clients and I stress with my community is if you want more clients.

Stop talking and start demonstrating.

Yeah. Okay.

You can talk until you're purple.

About how great someone or how great you are. And again, this is, this comes from Marty, too. You can tell me until you're purple how great you are, and I'm not going to believe you. But if your audience, if somebody else comes to me and says, you know, do you hear Mike Saunders in that authority positioning program that he has? You know, it's, it's, you should check that out because it's, it's something that, that's game changing. Now I come to you, Mike, and I say, mike, I heard.

Yeah.

That you got this game changing program and I want to know more about it.

Right.

It's a whole different atmosphere.

Agree a thousand percent. That's called social proof, third party affirmation, all of those things. But guess what? That person that said that to you in this example, if you had not done a good job for them, if your brand was not spot on, they never would have thought of that. They would have gone, thank you very much. Have a nice day. And then been like, ugh, next time I need xyz, I'm going to go find someone else. Because that was, you know, adequate. Because we don't want happy customers, we want raving fans. So I think that that that whole mindset needs to be kept in mind of while you're working on your brand. It is not just that logo and those colors and those things. It is the messaging and it's the way you do business and it's the way people perceive you. And I know that Jeff Bezos, I even saw this on your website recently, has a quote that says, your brand is what people say about you when you're not in the room. Well, how do you build and make sure that that is constantly maintained?

Just do amazing work.

Yeah. How about that? Yeah.

I said something the other day on social media, on Instagram specifically, that resonated with a lot of people. And I said, guys, it's cool to follow the greats and study them inside and out. That's what I did. I studied the Gary Vee's and the Lewis Howes and the Russell Brunson's for years. And then I got to a point and I said, don't forget what makes you amazing.

Yeah.

And that's incredible creativity and design work. Okay. And you need to get back into that and start Demonstrating and showcasing that you've now replaced yourself and built out a team of Mini Henry's, if you will, that now all have the same vision.

Yeah.

Creativity skill set as you now. All the stuff that you see out there that has to do with unique designs, that comes from me still. I do not delegate that out to my team because that is something that fulfills me to this day.

Yeah. Okay.

They handle a lot of the client work now, but I am the one still doing to the unique designs work and the brand Dr. Branding, because I get a genuine fulfillment out of it. Right. And so recently, I've sort of gone back to the basics and really put my head down. And I said, if you really want to attract the greats.

To you, then be great yourself and demonstrate that greatness. And so I've gotten back into doing a lot of the design work for myself, and it's just I get such a. I don't know, warm and fuzzy when I'm doing it because it reminds me of how it all began.

Yeah. You know, I think a big thing in marketing today is storytelling, story, selling the story of your brand. And I know that you're a big proponent on not just saying, look how great I am. I'm the hero, because it's the customers. The client is the target audience. That's the hero. And you're the person, the coach that is taking them through that process to build that brand and the brand messaging. So speak a little bit about how we as entrepreneurs need to make sure that we keep that mindset in place, because as we're working on our brand, which, again, is different and more involved than just getting that logo done. It's the whole brand ethos, the brand messaging. How do we keep that in mind so that our customers don't feel like there's a wedge in between us where it's like, come, follow me, because I'm the superhero. You're the superhero. Let me just show you some tips that I've learned along the way. And then they feel like, okay, good, we're in this together. We're arm in arm. And then that really is an attractiveness to the brand.

Yeah. Well, first and foremost, you know, you are the hero. Excuse me, in the story, whatever coach you decide to bring on to help guide you in the direction that you want to go.

They need to be positioned as Yoda, and you are Luke Skywalker. And that's the first thing that I tell my clients. You don't want to. When you start to create your brand's messaging you do not want to compete for the hero position. You want to embrace them as the hero and let them get that fulfillment. Because when you position yourself as the guide, there's going to be a tremendous amount of fulfillment that comes with that. Okay, but let's talk about mindset for a second, because I have a particular client who just recently sort of got this aha moment. And when I work with clients, I take them through a very vigorous discovery phase. You know, we don't touch design, we don't touch logo, we don't touch brand identity until we go through a very thorough diagnosis and diagnostic discovery. One of the things when he first came to me was he had this prep course for doctors in Australia to help them pass the specific test. When he first presented it to me, it sounded like a prep course. Take this prep course and score higher on your exam, where that's very vanilla, it's very commodity, it's very sterile.

Right?

As we started to dig in.

Into his purpose, into his mission, into his identity and as a person, as a physician himself, right there was, we unpacked this beautiful human being who's been a physician now for 15 years, who's been there, got the T shirt made the mistakes, came back, you know, fell down again, came back and has 15 years of experience of becoming a phenomenal physician that's helping hundreds of patients a year. And I said, now doesn't that sound way more attractive than a sterile prep.

Course that's about get a better grade on this course.

Yeah, right. And so he said, so what? I said, my friend, you need to begin to realize yourself. I can tell you until I'm purple in the face, but until you realize that you are so more than enough that you are going to impact thousands of doctors in your, not only in your country, but in the world once they start to hear more about you, you just opened up a Pandora's box.

But you need to believe, because we all suffer from imposter syndrome here and there, we get one or two bad reviews online and we want to commit suicide and we want to close up shop. And, you know, it's a bloated ego.

But those that know themselves and their purpose, and they stay crystal clear on that purpose and focus on their mission, that stuff doesn't bother them, you know. What's his name? Tillman Fertitta. I always like to say frittata, but Telman Fertitta was. I was watching one of his shows the other day, and he was working with an entrepreneur that had a clothing brand and she was working with a distributor, and she stopped working with the distributor because she felt like the distributor wasn't feeling the message, so to speak, that she was trying to share. And so she stopped working with that distributor. Now, this distributor had massive reach. Okay. And she was doing some great revenues with this distributor, decided to pull the plug because she just wasn't feeling them anymore or it. I should say, I don't know if the distributor was male or female. Fertitta said, you know, if I stopped doing business with everybody that kind of hurt my feelings or bruised my ego a little bit, I would not be where I'm at today.

Yeah.

And so I would have continued to work with that. That distributor, you know, until maybe another one came around, I don't know. But that's how I've got to where I'm at today. And I found that to be very, very insightful.

You know, in your example about the doctor, it made me think about transparency, authenticity, which I know are cliche words today, but I'm sure you're advising him to be bringing up those failures or those hiccups those fall down, get back ups. Because when the people that he is trying to help with their scores, that becomes the afterthought. It's like, oh, wow, you're someone that I want to learn from, glean from, be encouraged and inspired by, and, oh, you can help me get the better grade on this test of this exam. Wonderful. And probably in the back of their mind, they're going, I wonder what else that he could do or mentor me. But if we only put forth all the perfect stuff, you know, you're kind of up there on that high horse and that you could fall down. So I think that there's an element of, if there's a flying the ointment, point it out and then get it out. But don't worry about that, because I think people really do feel like when there's that little hiccup and we talk about it, they're like, yeah, you're human too.

Absolutely. I mean, when you become vulnerable with your audience, you begin to show that you are real.

Yeah.

That you're human. And I think people want to do business with humans and people want to do business with people. And when you show that part inside of you, you become much more attractive. And again, it all starts with why. And it sounds so cliche now, as Simon Sinek gets more popular and that book becomes more of a branding sort of bible, if you will.

It's the truth. Okay. When people find out your why they're much more prone to going deeper. And that's one of the things that I coach my clients on as well. It's. I don't take surface level as the end all be all, because I know that that's just the surface. When I at. When I ask why four or five times.

You now get to the core of them, their business, their identity, their method. Everything. Everything.

Yeah.

And one of the things that I realize is, excuse me, like a lot of entrepreneurs just can't focus their thoughts and ideas and they have a thousand ideas, thousand things going on in their head, and they just don't know which one to focus on first and pull the trigger on. And it's that hamster on the wheel sort of like analysis paralysis type of problem that the brand doctor must fix and prescribe some sort of medication for because it just stops them dead in their tracks.

It stops them dead in the tracks. It wears them out. Kind of like sitting in neutral and gunning the injured for four and a half hours. Something's going to crack. And then guess what happens when that car, in that example, you know, is overheated. You can't then take your family to emergency medical, you know, if you had a need. So the point is, if we as entrepreneurs are not being very efficient, we then can't serve our clients. And it does sound, you know, cliche to say, but at the end of the day, we're not trying to sell widgets or sell services. We're trying to make a difference and give and serve. And if we can't do that because our mindset's not right, our brand message is not, you know, spectacular, and our authority and influence is not, you know, top shelf. Boy, nothing, nothing really gets done. Because then you're succeeding by accident, not succeeding by design.

Yes. And one of one tangible piece of advice that I could give you that you could start implementing today.

Is start taking bite size shoes out of what it is that you're trying to accomplish. Let me give you a quick example. One of the things that I wanted to improve upon in 2018, because 2018 it was the year of refinement for unique designs. And basically what I've decided to do was create a little Golf one. Golf one each week.

Nice.

And have my team execute that goal by Friday at the latest. Right. Sometimes it leaks over to the next week, but at least we got it initiated. Right? We got the fire ignited. Those little wins if I do this for the rest of the year, turn into 52 goals that we've accomplished this Year. What do you think that's going to do for your business, your brand and your overall presence online, offline, however that may be? I see a lot of people trying to go from 500,000 to a million a year. You have to do.

Massive change into getting there. Now, sometimes it happens, sometimes, you know, they hit, you hit the lottery, right. And your stuff goes viral. Fantastic. But for the rest of us, it's those little wins that, that move the mountains.

Whereas if you had 52 goals on January 1st, you feel overwhelmed and you feel like, you feel like you can put it off because that's, that's December 31st, it's a long way away. But Friday, yeah, that's, that's here. And if it's strategically placed now, you're achieving these goals. So, so let's think of this. What is a way that an entrepreneur should be making goals specific to their brand in achievable bite sized chunks so that their brand is seen with that expertise and authority and influence that they need to make that impact in their target audience?

So the first thing that I would do is I would start demonstrating and documenting your process.

Ooh, nice, good.

And how you help your clients. I record every strategy call that I have with my clients. I record every step of the process. Today we just did a stylescape review and a site map review of one of my brands that I'm building in the fashion space. And it's recorded, it gets produced, it gets put on my YouTube channel, it gets sent out via email and it shows what I'm actually doing and how I'm making an impact on my clients and helping them build their brands. And so if you hide that, if you focus on all the things that don't matter.

You'Re killing yourself. I mean, you're really doing yourself a disservice because your clients want to know how good you really are. And again, you can say it until you're purple in the face, but when.

They see it, when the rubber meets the road, hey, have you ever had a client say to you, you know what, I just love how you do X? And you're like, really? I kind of just do that. And they're like, no, that's important. Well, what you just said with documenting your process and promoting your process and using that as a piece of content, there's someone else out there that might see something in your process that you just think is second nature. Like, I always do this and I always provide that and I talk to my clients this way. Someone else out there might Pick up on that. Go. That resonates with me. And you might not even be knowing it. So you said at the very beginning of this talk, research, and know your audience well, know your clients, know what impacts them, know why they chose you. And then when this tip here to document your process, you're then getting that out there, spreading that net so that other potential clients can look at you and go, oh, I like that. And someone else might like this, you know, So I think that's a really big, big strategy.

Yeah. And listen, people are very afraid. Like, there's that clue. There's that.

Quote out there that absolutely drives me insane. And it says, never let your enemy know your next move or your competition know your next move. I call complete BS to that. You know, for the simple fact that, I mean, I get what they're saying. If we were at war.

Right. And it was. It was. It was live or die. Yes. That is probably a strategy that must take place so that you don't die. But when it comes to business, people say all the time, like, are you breeding the competition?

Yeah.

By putting so much of what you do out there. And I said, no, because they will never be me.

Yeah, that. Yeah. I was just gonna say, you keep. No one else could be you because you's already taken. It's you.

So they can try my process, they can mimic it, they can model it. That's fine. But it's always going to have a different feel.

Yeah.

Touch and angle to it. And that is.

Default. Like that is. That's just. That's just the way it is. So I'm not worried about that. And believe it or not, Mike, you want to laugh? I have three or four clients right now that do exactly what I do.

You're coaching and training competitors.

Absolutely. And I have a. I have a mentor who has a multi million dollar branding agency who I meet with once a month. He's not mentoring you and he's mentoring me.

Yeah. Interesting. Because, I mean, when you think about it, it's not like you have the patent on the only solution to some problem out there, and there's people beating down your door. There's a lot. There's There's a lot of need out there and plenty to go around. And I would venture to say that if you look at the market, there's a lot of people up underneath that iceberg that need what you offer, and they don't even know it yet. So there's an even bigger market than what people realize. Because once an entrepreneur realizes that, okay, I've launched. I need to scale or I'm about to launch. I need this brand messaging piece to be in place. That's the people that aren't going out there looking for it. This is someone that's looking to take the business deeper. So I think I would venture to say that the market's even bigger than what a competitor may even realize. So that's a really wise and sage advice that you're even saying I coach and train my competitors and that shows the confidence you have in yourself.

Yeah, I mean, absolutely. And one of the things that I said to myself the other day is, you know, these folks are coming to me for a reason. They're coming to me because I am 15 or 16 chapters ahead of them and they want to learn from somebody who's walked as trait as blazed that trail, if you will. And that was one of the things that my mentor said to me. If you really want to.

Have a million dollar branding agency, then go hang out with a million dollar brand agency.

Yeah.

It sounds so cliche. I shouldn't say cliche, but it sounds so simple. Right.

Because success leaves clues. Blaze that trail that you could see what they've done and then you're doing it your way and you've got. And the other thing, like Seth Godin says in his book tribes, we've got our own tribe. So it's not like you're going to knock off your mentor's client base and try to get them or someone's going to because your best clients aren't going to leave you for the people you're coaching. I think that's what people need to realize is you're developing and you have your own following and your own tribe. So really, it's just, how can you better serve them? That's a really powerful mindset.

Absolutely. And it's crazy how much Kris has rubbed off on me in five simple calls. All right, Four simple calls. I mean, the way he.

Let me give you some. Let me. I want to continue to give you as much value as I possibly can by using example and story. So when I would get objections on sales calls. Right. I would get angry. I would get angry and I would. I would attack. Right. And that doesn't lead. That doesn't necessarily close sales.

Yeah, yeah.

Right. So when I explain this to Chris, Chris says to me, okay, well, let me share with you my approach.

When I get an objection or I get something that isn't where I want the conversation to go, I get genuinely surprised. And instead of getting angry get curious. I get curious.

Yeah.

And so he said, so I'll give you a quick example. So he had a client that wanted this video done. It was a big, big video game company. They came to him, and they wanted this crazy, crazy video done.

Right.

So they explained everything that he wanted, and then they said, but our budgets, 30,000. And he said, wow.

He said, what you just explained is like a $300,000 production. Production.

Yeah.

And he said, I'm shocked. I'm just shocked because I wasn't expecting that. And he says, I'm pretty good with stretching the dollar and getting the best bang for your buck, but I can't take 300,000 and make it 30.

Interesting.

He says, I want to help you, but I just don't know how.

That approach has changed not only my life, but every sales call that I get on with.

Well, because guess what? That does a. From the mindset of authority and influence that positions you up higher in that prospect's mindset to go. They're doing $300,000 projects like this. Interesting. Wow. And it's not a.

It's not combative. So that opens up the door for them to go, wow, well, I guess we could price now and then it opens up a conversation. It keeps it personable, and I think that's just ingenious.

And you know what he said? Nine times out of 10.

They changed their budget, which.

That's a whole other story. Like, how come you. They were trying to. They were trying to, you know. You know, back and forth. But the point is, his response was one of curiosity, one of intrigue, not see you. And I think that keeps that line of communication open, and it's a kind way to interact with people.

Yeah. You want to take. You want to take the combative out of your messaging. You want to take the.

I win, you lose mentality out of.

Communication with your prospects, your audience. They don't. What. They want to feel like you are part of them, and you have them in your best interest. So one of the things that Chris taught me how to do was position myself as a fiduciary trusted advisor.

Yeah.

And when you position yourself that way, you.

Again, you just become the subject matter expert. You become a friend. You become Yoda, you know, and it's a lot more comforting. You know, it's that doctor. He uses another example. And I use this a lot, too, because I am the brand doctor. And I say, you know, when. If I were to have you come into my office and I asked you just a couple of questions.

Two, three at the most. Told you. Okay, go take two of these and call me in the morning.

Would you feel like I was compassionate? Would you feel like I really cared about you?

Especially if your friend that referred you said that they got the exact same advice and you're gone. My situation is different. That's like malpractice.

Right. And so. Or, you know, I said, you know what your, your identity looks like, it's from 1998, and I just happened to own a boutique menswear shop. And if you're looking to level up your brand identity, why don't you come over to my shop and we'll help you pick out some wardrobe or five. How would you feel? Right. You would feel like I was a hustler, like I was hustling you into my store or hustling you into my. But if I sat there for a half an hour and asked you several questions and then at the end said, okay, based upon what you've told me, I truly feel like this is what's going on. And the prescription that I would give you and goes into a thorough, detailed description of how it is that, what it is that we're going to do to help you get out of that, then how would you feel and listen.

To, cared about, empathized with?

Yeah, that's it. And so the doctor, you know, when, when the doctor takes that approach, it just opens up Pandora's box. And now you become, it's. Believe it or not, I, you know, sometimes I consider myself a business therapist, you know, because when it comes down to really identifying your purpose, we're all human. We all have limiting beliefs, we all have doubt. And sometimes we got to crack through that order to get to the next level. And I read this very interesting book recently and it has nothing to do with business. It has everything to do with spirituality and how we literally can map out our lives. And everything happens in our lives because of us. Not.

In spite of us, in spite of us. You know, life doesn't happen to you, it happens because of you.

Yeah.

And everything that you have in life right now, you've manifested. All right. The reason why I have this multi camera setup in my office, the reason why I'm talking to Mike Saunders right now is because I wanted that to happen.

Yeah.

And if you don't understand that.

There'S deeper issues that we need to unpack. And so what we want to do is get to the bottom of what it is you want, why you want it, and just ask for it. And this book, I Forgot to tell you that the author, Pam Grout, and the name of the book is E2 and it's like E squared, but E2. And it's do it yourself ways to really understand spirituality and understand that life happens because of you. Not so anything you want in life, you have to vision it and you have to ask for it very specifically.

And then guess what, you got to go out there, do something. Because the problem with that whole, remember that movie the Secret years back, you know, law of Attraction, great, makes sense. But then so many people were back sitting there, you know, law of attracting things into their life and then not getting out there and humping it and grinding it and doing it. And so I think that that's the missing piece is you got to know what you want, know you want to be, you know, state your goals, all of those things, but then have that tactical plan of action. So I couldn't agree more. I think that's spectacular. And I think a lot of these things we've talked about here with the brand message and the work on ourself, the research we need to do on our market and client base so that we can make an impact in people, I mean, it's just masterclass, you know, bar none. So for people that are Luke Skywalkers and would like to reach out to Yoda at the Brand Doctor, what's the best place that people can engage with your brand and maybe connect with you?

I would say the best place to go is my website. There's a ton of information you'll be able to get me on social media via the website. And it's www.uniquedesignswithaz at the end, not an S dot net and you will find Pot My podcast there. You will find my blog, you will find all my social media platforms that I'm on every day and you will, you will be able to just get the insight, get all that guesswork out of your system and really get some solid answers to your problems and help you build a better brand and better business.

Awesome. Well, my friend, you're awesome. Thank you so much for your time today. It was wonderful chatting branding with you.

I like that. I like that, like, my pleasure, my friend. Anything for you, Barbara.

Thanks. Henry.

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