Building Million-Dollar Home Service Brands That Sell Before You Even Show Up with Ryan Kettering

Welcome back to the show. I'm your host, Phil Risher. And on today's episode, we're diving into building million dollar home service brands that sell before you even show up with Ryan Kettering. Thanks so much for joining us today, Ryan.

Hey, thanks, Phil. Glad to be here.

Yeah, for sure. Excited to have you on. So Ryan is the founder and CEO of Prolific Brand Design, which is a company that specializes in creative, cohesive, authentic brands for home service businesses. After running his own carpet cleaning company for 10 years, Ryan transitioned to full time branding in 2016 and has since helped over 2000 clients exponentially increase their marketing efficiency and business growth. His unique approach combines deep understanding of home service industry with strategic brand development, helping companies like Sky Power Washing double their revenue in two years without additional marketing spend. So, Ryan, both of us, from the, from the home service space, and that's why I was so excited for this conversation. Can you share a little bit about like how you transition from carpet cleaning into doing this and what that path look like?

Yeah, well, so when I started my carpet cleaning business, it was really a way for me to start to understand business. And I think at the time I thought I was building what a good business looked like, but each time I sort of leveled up. There's another level you find, right? But the level that I found towards the end of my carpet cleaning business really punched me in the gut because I realized that after I had finally understood how to build a sales system, how to get leads to fill that pipeline, and then I realized that not only were all the people marketing in the same channels, saying the same things, looking the same, walking, talking, acting the same. So like I started to look at branding and understand, like, conceptually that you, like, have to differentiate to an extent. But the thing that really messed me up in that business was I realized that if I was to sell, if I was to go out of business, if I was to just be taken out of that space, out of that business, that it didn't really matter. And that really hit me hard because I realized that, and this is what we try to help people with today, is that branding isn't just about standing out or differentiating. It's about figuring out what is the essence of your business and what are you trying to deliver to people that has nothing to do what's on the invoice, right? What impact do we really want to have? And what you notice about the very best brands is they, they stand for something. And what makes them different is so ingrained, you know, in the leadership and what they really care about, and that's how they're able to build something so different and so unique is it's not some gimmick that they're making up to. To make money. It's what they believe. It's what they live and breathe. And so when I started to understand this, I. I looked at my caring business and, you know, I just. I didn't see. And I started out this with. With what this was today because I had kind of fell out of love. And some. Maybe some people listening to this are in that position where they've fallen out of love with their business. And I think that's one of the most dangerous places you can be at with a business. And, you know, as I looked around, I'm like, which vehicle I had now had. We'll call it two, like, sort of business vehicles. And I needed to choose which one I felt like I could make this change in my life and how I approach business with. And so I chose the one that we're in today, obviously, is kind of where I would go. But one of the coolest things that I get to do today with businesses is help them to fall back in love with their business, to reignite that fire that they had when they started, because they've gotten so into the nitty gritty and the grind of it all that they many times forgot the reasons why they initially started. And those reasons may not have always been conscious to us too. It's like you're excited about something, but sometimes you don't know why. And so as they progress and we go back and look at all the things that. The path that they've taken, and it's really cool to be able to help them to reconnect with these deeper things that they may not have even realized that they're there, but they are for everyone.

So, yeah, I think the falling in and out of love with your business, I think naturally you start something and then you scale it, and it's like, okay, well, this messaging and how I have this structure doesn't match where I'm going with the company. And you kind of hit that point, and everyone has a different point. Sometimes you never hit it, but I think a lot of times that is where people start to think, okay, well, when, when. And I want to ask you, like, when does a rebrand make sense and when does it not make sense in your business? And maybe you have some thoughts on that. Of. Is it just like, hey, I want to create chaos in my business, let's do a rebrand or is there, you know, something else that. That comes into it?

I mean, I think, you know, I think, you know, a lot of people ask me because, because once somebody knows that they ought to update their brand in some way, the next question is like, well, you know, am I too small to do it or am I too big? And like, there's always an excuse. It's kind of like having a kid or wanting to have a kid. There's never going to be a right time. I always tell people the right time is when you know that you ought to do it. That's all. Anytime you know that you're going in the wrong direction, like you're become aware that you're going down the wrong path, the right time to switch paths, no matter how painful is at that time that you know and you know. But as far as, you know, creating chaos or what. The way that I look at it is, is we're not actually creating chaos. It might feel chaotic in the moment. We're actually creating order where there's already chaos. So what's, what typically is happening when people are doing a update is we are not intending to sort of rebrand. Our intention is to sort of rebirth, which is really taking the brand that's there and stripping away everything that. All of the chaos that, that you've created by accident by not having an intentional brand system and then finding all the things that are you, that are your authentic brand identity and then doubling down on those things and then making sure that the, the graphics, the, the logo, the system that we're creating visually and also that helping people to create with the brand experience all match up to who you truly are. And I think the big reason why people get. Have all that chaos that they're coming in with is that without a brand system, this is what it looks like when you get advice from a coach or whatever is. And it's all from a good place. But you have a coach, which I just a preface to make sure that doesn't sound like I, I believe we all should have business coaches. But sometimes what will happen is you get advice from a coach. And I think in the beginning you ought to just take that and just run with it. Don't even question it. But once you get to a certain place, once you become a professional, you can start to get creative, meaning you can start to make ideas your own, you can start to do your own versions. And when you're at a certain level in business, you want to take something, a piece of advice or a technique or whatever. Bring it into your system, but then say, what's our version? If we were to do this through our lens, through our beliefs or our tonality, with our stories in mind, like, what does that look like? And so what's happened is in the beginning, we take a lot of stuff that isn't our own and all kind of mishmash it together, and we end up with a pretty successful enough business and enough experience that now we can start to make it our own. And we need to get rid of or change or, you know, basically just tighten up that to be us again.

Yeah. Makes complete sense. So you mentioned this brand system. You rattled a couple things off there. It was like logo. What was some of the other ones? Logos, wraps.

Well, so I'll back. So that's. That would be a. I would say a visual system. I would say a brand system is a more fundamental system, systematic approach to business. I define branding. Probably the best definition of branding that I've heard prior to the way that I'm going to say it. And I think there's a lot of valid ways to look at it. But Seth Godin says your brand is what people say about you when you're not around.

Yeah.

Which I think there's a lot of validity in that. But I think that your brand is much more about you as well than a lot of people make it. And it's kind of like a bridge from who you are to the client. So I define brand like identity scale. Essentially, when I have an identity, I'm interacting with you. And identity in the social world, we have internal identities and then we have. Which is ego. We have social identities. You have these things that sort of connect and we're, you know, connecting now and creating something together. I think it's this idea of like, how could I take this and have that happening right now? And right now we have somebody at another show on stage right now. Right. Talking through these ideas. So that's identity scale. Right. We're taking the identity, the ideas about who we are and why we do things and all these different. The essence of, of the leadership and scaling it out. Right. That's what branding is. It's identity scale. So it's, it's taking like, what do you stand for? What is the one thing that makes you different from all the other companies that your competitors think you're stupid for even doing? And what are the stories that you want people to tell about you and your, your team members to know and talk about with your clients? What impact are you trying to make and Just like, what is the essence of who you are? That's kind. Your brand is. So that's a brand. And when you have a system on deploying that, for instance, if you have a new company come in, or somebody hires you guys, or somebody hires some marketing person or something like this, how does that company know what to put on your website? So many website companies, a client hires them and a business owner hires them, and they end up with the same thing as everyone else because they never ask them who they are. So where is this content coming from? It's got to be coming from basically their past clients or their opinions or whatever, but it's not coming from the business owner that hired them. Exactly. So a brand system would give those people something to work with. You know, here's who we are, here's what we stand for, here's what we're all about. Here's the things that we care about and make us different, and here's the clients that we love to work with and why we love to work with them and what we're trying to do for them. It's everything. What I. What I realized over time is that branding, but also the essence of what business is and what it's really all about is everything other than what you actually sell. You're doing this content. You're not being paid for this. I'm not being paid for this. The most fun parts about business, and also the most important parts is everything that makes no sense as a line item on some P and L or something like this, or an invoice or an estimate. Your client would never choose you over your competitor based on something you wrote on an estimate. It's always about something that they're feeling about. The way that you do things or why you do things, how you do things, these sorts of things. But the visual system is important too, and we can talk about that. But I'll give you a quick little analogy that I use to kind of show the power of both. Is it? We live in the United States of America, and I think that this country means a lot to everyone. But think about this. Every morning, kids all over the nation get up and they go to school, and what do they pledge allegiance to?

The flag.

The flag. It's kind of interesting when you think about it, right? Why would we pledge allegiance to a symbol, to an icon, to a flag instead of the nation, the republic for which it stands, right? Because you can't see the nation. I can't see your brand. You can't see my brand. But we can see a logo, these visual. A visual system, essentially. Yes. But that flag, I believe is meaningless without what it stands for. Right. And so, but I do believe that what it stands for is more important than the symbol. And so they're intertwined in a way. And so it's. The symbol is a physical manifestation of what we're trying to describe with it. And so that's where the kind of the relationship between the fundamental brand that we help people to and that's really the difference between how we approach things that our competitor, no one else in the space is, is helping people to build a fundamentally good brand. It's only visuals and those visuals are sexy and cool and I love, love them too. But who cares about the flag if you don't have a nation worth standing for? Right?

Yeah. So good. I think a lot of people think, oh, I have a logo that looks outdated. But it's so much more than just like a logo that looks outdated. It's the what is your brand and what do you stand for? So how do you walk through with businesses to like get them to get that out of them? Like. Sure, it's a process, I would imagine.

Yeah. Well, very quickly people. So we, we start with a half day strategy, clarity call with our clients. My goal isn't again to change them, it's actually to understand who they are. And I can't ever understand who they are and neither can they, by the way. But I can do my best to walk them through a process that I've found helps me to understand enough about them to give them a system to work with to start understanding these things, but more importantly to deploy them more consistently. Because once you know, for instance, if you figure out what is your primary and secondary brand personality archetype out of the 12, this based on the work of Carl Jung that we've put together for home service businesses or small businesses, then you could say for instance with the sage, like I would say just very quickly I can understand that you're the sage with knowledge, information, guidance, assurance. But knowing that one of the ways that you serve people just out of the natural, the way that you do things is by trying to help people create independence by guiding them. Knowing that means that and you're already living out well. But when you have a problem come up or some, or you get a tip from a guru or whatever like that and you're like, man, that's really good. And you go to implement it, but it's not at all you, you know, a lot of people are going on TikTok and trying to dance for likes. But like, if you went on TikTok and maybe you have it. I don't have. I don't really do that. But you would be like, well, let me. Instead of doing that, what people think it has to be humor. It has to be this. Well, no, it doesn't. No one. It doesn't have to be anything. If it has to be something, it ought to be you, I would say. But so you're going to create out of that personality type. And so it really helps a lot of people where they're hiring somebody to help with something and that person, without any input, would end up making whatever they believe is appropriate for that channel or building out of their own personality or whatever they think will make the most money. And so the way that we do that is essentially trying to wrestle with them through and understand who they are. One of the simplest ways is what are the stories you already have? So if you take the. When we start talking through the five different story narratives, V O I C E, Vision, Origin, Innovation, Customer, and Emblematic touchpoint stories, when we start figuring these things out with the client, you know, one of the simplest ways is like, tell me about. For the client story. Like, tell me the most notable, like the most interesting clients or who's your favorite client? Tell me about them. And here's a hint is if you don't remember their name, they're probably not it. But so you start to hear these stories and what's really cool is with a little bit larger companies, you start talking about it and the stories they get, they're like, this is incredible. We didn't even know this stuff is happening. And you get these stories and you can dig into them to see, okay, so you guys actually do this all the time. This is just a remarkable version of that. But so the two things I'm looking for is I ask them questions to understand who they are and deep questions, and I don't let them off the hook. Like, what types of things have you been trying to instill in your kids? What do you, like, at your worst? What do you feel like is missing from society today? But I don't let them just get out of them. Most people would just answer stuff and they like, for instance, if I asked a business owner at one of these, I don't put people on the spot like this, but if I'm at a conference or something and I'm like, hey, what makes you different from everyone else? They're going to answer me. But I Guarantee you they're going to answer me the same way that everyone else is. And I just don't let people off the hook with that stuff. Right. But then the other thing, other than like kind of walking them through a process with deep questions that I just don't let them off the hook with and keep them, like, if they don't answer as in the way that they authentically, it's not about like making them say something. It's about sometimes people will stay at the surface level and you just kind of give them, bring them deeper. And then the other thing is, it's like those stories, it's, it's walk me through your process. What, what did you change? What, what problem did you solve? Like, you saw something to work at this other company, what did you use that they did, but what did you not want to use? What did you get rid of? And basically our action is a high correlation reflection of who we are. And so understanding what people are already doing is a great way to understand what they believe because they're acting it out. And so with all of that, we can kind of say like, hey, do you see how sometimes you do this thing or you do it a little bit. What would it look like if we max that, you know, 10x that thing and they're understanding the rationale behind it now? So, so that's kind of how we, we do it. And we spend about a half day with every client that, that works with us. And you can even do it by itself. But every client that does a logo with us, we require that they do that first. Yeah. Because we don't want to build someone else's brand for you. I I so we want to figure out who are you, what's, what do you stand for, what makes you different? So that we can build your brand identity, you know, visuals and logos, not somebody else's, you know, based off of someone else's story. So yeah, yeah.

I think it sounds like a lot goes into it, which is good, Right. It's not just like, hey, let's go to Canva and ask it to make a picture of a seal or something. So that's good.

Yeah.

I think a lot of times there are so many layers to it that, that you have to pull out. And it could be very service level if you don't have someone who actually digs those things out. I'm curious how you take that and turn it into some color or also your thoughts on having some type of like a character versus not having character. Like, those are two Big things that I think a lot of people get stuck on is the color thing and then the character thing.

Yeah. So I'll back up to a previous question that was related to this. You asked about the visual system, you need it.

Yes.

Six, seven different things that you need. I'll try to rattle them off up top of my head that are going to represent you. And the reason these seven things matter is because every client should be, is or should be coming into contact with them during the normal process. Coming in the door, that's your name, which is the most important thing. Way more important than your logo. Because the name you're saying audibly as well, there's an audible representation of that, whereas the name or the logo doesn't. So name logo for a home service business vehicle wrap website, at least your homepage, but really the whole thing, but at least the pages that people are actually going to hit and visit your uniform. What we call an emblematic touch point. And then some sort of integration of video to help to bridge. I think video is the most important bridge to the digital, from digital to real world that you can make. Um, so those seven things are, I think, non negotiables and they need to be done at a, with intention and at a professional level. Because every single, like the leverage of those are so high because everything, hint, you know, hinges on them for their communication.

I want to ask you real quick, what, what the heck is emblematic?

So an emblematic touch point is essentially, it's actually a type of weakness. We consider it a type of story, but in the same way that a wedding ring is a story or a headstone on someone's grave. For some reason, us humans, we like these physical symbols to make sense of things we don't really fully either know how to understand or to articulate to someone else. So the emblem at a touchpoint is a type of story that doesn't need to be told because it's a representation of it. I'll give you an example. So I purchased a car at Carvana. Have you ever purchased. Bought a car from Carvana?

No, but I'm very unfamiliar with it.

Okay. So I did not. So you've seen these towers though, right, where it looks like a car vending machine? Well, I didn't know this until a few months ago. It doesn't just look like a car vending machine, it is a car vending machine. So it literally has like patented. On the door, it says like a plaque, patented car vending machine and the patent number and all that. And there's this big blue pillar that they have right in front of where you can kind of view these cars all going up and the middle of the building. And so I went there with my son and my wife and my daughter and my son's five and they gave him this, this big coin, like four inch wide coin to drop into this blue lit up pillar. And all of a sudden he drops it in there and the room, you know, the building starts moving around you and it's this huge lift going up to pick up your car. And as that car is coming down, I have a picture of his face that I use in my presentations. His. You. The way that he looked and he was like, almost. I'm like, I'm thinking like, I hope he doesn't like, is. Does he need to go bathroom? Like, yeah, you would have thought, you know, like Santa Claus was flying down on his sled. Like it was ecstatic. And what's interesting is probably I don't know the stats on this, but I assume that if there was a family feud and they're, you know, trying to figure out what is the, the questions, like, what's the worst buying experience or you know, you could have or probably buying a car is like the number one answer, right?

Yes.

But they took the number one worst thing, worst experience in commercial or buying experience, and they turned it into the best one. And when you think of it, yes, all the things you're seeing are amazing. But that idea of saying this experience sucks. What if we could make it the best? And what would that look like? And so the coin, they give you another coin before you leave. And that coin is the emblematic touch point. It's a physical embodiment or it's like, think about money. It doesn't have any value. So why does money have value? Because we know it does too, which is an odd thing. It has value because we place value in it. So your emblematic touch point is essentially it's a way to connect the story and place the value into it so that it's this reminder, it's a memorial to the thing. And so it means more than it is, you know, at DoubleTree one and out of, out of every three mentions or comments about them online, include the word cookie. You have these warm cookies in their lobby. It's not about the cookie. They can't be that good. There's probably a bakery next to. Some of these places have much better baked goods. So what's up with the cookie? It's not the cookie, it's what it Represents. Right. So that's. It's an emblematic touch point and we help people to understand how to implement those.

So could that be like, hey, you should create a coloring book that you leave for kids? Or something like that?

Could be.

Yeah, like that. Or is there any other.

Like there's people that have those. Yeah, yeah.

My home service business, we had that because.

Okay, cool.

Yeah, we made it and we gave it to kids. I'm just thinking through, like, what to leave behind that also builds your. What, like your actual, you know, like, values and brand. Is there any others that you. That are like, cool ideas or.

Well, you know, Tommy Mello at A1, which you're probably familiar with, many listeners might be familiar with. Yeah, every single job, they offer somebody a beverage on the way to the job. Every single job, which is at the scale that they're doing it. It's insane. But, you know, only about 4% of people take them up on that. And that makes total sense because I always tell people we're not. We're not building our business for 100% of our clients. So they're paying 100% of the money revenue coming in. But only you're only building for roughly about 4%. That's your 20% of your 20 percenters, and that's your 4%. These are the people that go out and tell people about you all the time and refer you all the time. And you don't realize that these are the people talking about you right now. There's somebody talking to, referring you right now. That's your 4 percenters. Right. And that's who we're building it for, and that's whose feedback matters, and that's who you know. But what's interesting is you can actually allow people to show you that. And I don't know if they do anything with this information, but I would treat those people who accept the beverage differently. Potentially. There might be some other checkpoints. It seems like a simple thing, but you're acting something out there, right? You're acting out. Like if I offer you something and you engage in it, you're entering in a contract that someone could be careful about. These social contracts that we make and the fact that someone lets them in. When I did, you probably did door to door at some point with what you did. Right. I used to do door to door and I knew that if I was to walk through somebody's door, there's something psychologically happening there and sociologically with that other person that I knew. My, you know, the chances of that being a sale were quite high. And it's not just because the data shows that it's like there's a difference in. There's something happened in that relationship. Right? And. But that beverage, just to illustrate why that it's. It's can be important is for instance, let's just say that, you know, I was recommending them to someone else for a normal company. I might be like, oh, they came, they showed up and did a great job. Guys were awesome, pricing was good. Like, that sounds like a pretty good review. It sounds like, you know, detail, whatever. Sounds like a review. We would all like to have a five star next to and on our website or whatever. Right? But imagine also that they're like, it's funny. Phil showed up with a six pack of beer for me and. Which is crazy because it was 8:30am But. And then, you know, imagine you're telling your friend this and they're like, why, why is. What's going on here? Well, you know, it's eight o'. Clock. Phil's on the way to my house. He said he was gonna stop at, you know, CVS or wherever to grab something to drink. And I was joking and he asked me if I would like a beverage or something. I was joking and I said, I'll take a six pack of Heineken or something, you know, and this guy shows up with it. And so anyways, Phil comes in double. And so it, what it does is it takes all the things that people are saying about their business. Oh, they're friendly, they were. They do a great job. They all this. And it shows it, it puts. Creates a story around it and it creates a physical tie to it. It gives proof, though. And if you were in a court of law and you had to defend your customer service, for instance, and one company is saying, well, let me tell you about it. Let me just tell you all the stuff that we do. And another company is saying, well, here's the evidence, here's eyewitness testimony that we are friendly. Like, there's exact examples. That's what we're looking for all the time. I tell people, look, with branding, the simplest version of the goal that you're trying to kind of have happen is you want people to talk about you, right? But here's the real problem. And people will, almost everybody will just skip over. This is where I'm talking about with hard questions. If you hear this and in your. You think about it, keep thinking about it. You know, don't just let it go. That's the Difference of people who get to the exceptional results is they will sit with a question. A question is much more important than an answer because a question has opens up to new answers. Right. But people want to have a business worth talking about. What do you have to do? You. It's very simple. How do I do things worth talking about? How do I do something worth talking about? That's how you have a business worth talking about. But when I, when we start to think about what can I do that's worth talking about? It's a hard question and so you end up like just dismissing it. But it's the one question you have to answer for branding. If I want people to talk about me, why, what is worth talking about? What after you leave somebody's house, if, let's just say I was already going to call my friend or my sibling or whatever, why should they talk about you after you've already left their house to that person? And I think a lot of people will just go right past that. But I think that if you sit with that question, only good can come from that, you know.

Yeah, absolutely. You have to give them the story about the brand because they're going to come up with whatever they want. So you have to give it to them, which I think is very important. So these seven things lead into the color and the character thing of getting that out.

Imagine so you know, with care, with characters and colors and these sorts of things. Though I would say the majority of what you're going to see from a company, the majority typically is going to be based off of their brand personality archetypes. So there's a guide on our website, it's called the fractal brand identity system that we, that we use. And the idea is building self similar brands. So like if this is your initial sort of like who you are identity, the base level of it of these three pillars, then the fractal is a self similar. So we're just trying to imprint that on everything we can so that when you zoom out from that business, the individual interaction, the individual touch point looks like the whole of also what you stand for. So in a moment I stand for, I show you that I stand for something. But then as you zoom out to all of my actions, I also appear to stand for that thing, some of it and, but anyways so the brand personality is one of those pillars and that's the thing where I think almost, almost all, most of, of how we do things or how something, you know, peers the, the, your, your. It's not just your logo or colors, but it's also how you answer the phone or what types of actions you would take. Like some people would. If they see that you're. You have some cobwebs up in, you know, in around the lights in your house when they're in their cleaning or something like this, some people would go and clean those. Because I'm Also sage personality, one of my two, like you, I would rather give them like a 10, here's 10 things that you didn't know how to do in your house than you could do it yourself. But I'd rather guide them instead of doing it for them. Every man, for instance, would do it for them. Maybe the hero might do that for him, but it's mostly going to be based on that. So that's where if you are everyman or Jester, then yeah, like probably, you know, a cartoon character could be a great fit if you are, you know, hero, sage, like probably not a cartoon character. Right. And so I think that if you don't have somebody figuring out who you are on the way in the door, though, like when you go get a logo done, there's only essentially who is directing, the creator who's directing that project. It's either you or them. And if they're not asking you who you are, then who are they basing off of? Everyone else. Right. And if, and if you, when you go really cheap with a, with a logo, you go to five or something like that, you're the director of that creative, right? So you need to be asking these questions or else no one will and they're just gonna create whatever you ask them to. So is a cartoon character good? Is a, Is a, you know, is an illustration good? Is a certain color better than another? I would say it depends on you. Like, think about it. Most people don't think that brown is the best brand color, but UPS isn't doing too bad, but it says something about them. And brown is the color of boxes. I don't know if there's other reasons because of it, but it does make sense if you think about it. And so we want to find. That's the cool thing, is that once you double down on who you are, you get permission to do things differently. But they're not different for the sake of being different. They're different because you're different. There's only one of you. And so when we can figure out, you know, in the case of any leadership, right, you're trying to have the brand be an essence of the leadership, you know, and usually that's the founder, the owner, or something like that.

So, yeah, I think the color piece and the cartoon piece, people get stuck so much on that, and they don't think about all these things that build into it. And I do want to. Maybe I'm a little stuck on it. But I want to ask you about the color piece because people say, oh, colors mean this, emotions and that. And, like, you want to look different than these people. But, like, is there any, like, guide that you tell people, like, hey, here's. Or, like, how do you come up to that?

I think colors absolutely do mean different things. But, like, for instance, you know, T Mobile. Magenta is a feminine color. T mobile can still adopt it in. And so you can. I think T mobile is a little bit more of an example, kind of like Xerox, where they're sort of assigning new meaning to something. Like they're trying to take something that. And sort of reassign the meaning a little bit so that they can own something. But I think that, like, for instance, our colors are purple and green. Why did we choose that? Well, green, like growth prolific. And the purple came out of trying to do something. So the more obvious choice, I think, would be black or green or blue or green. And so we wanted to do something that symbolized, like, the idea of being different, right? Like doing something a little bit different than you might expect. And so I do think that the colors. So the colors certainly have symbolism. And there's lots of data that show that. I think the issue comes where there's, like, blanket symbolism. And this is where if you're just looking at the stuff and you're like, oh, well, red means stop or caution. I shouldn't use that. Or yellow is caution. Or blue means flowing in water. And, you know, well, then what happens is almost in almost all industries, you have these couple colors that everyone uses. Like in roofing, everyone's either black and red or black and blue. And they have the little roof line over their logo. Right. If you're in plumbing, you're. Everyone is blue and red or blue and orange because that's hot and cold, or water and, you know, hot. What a heat or whatever. In cleaning, you have a lot of blue for water, any types of cleaning water, green for, like, green chemicals. And then if you're blue, there's only so many. Like, if you're looking at a color chart, there's certain complementing colors. So if you go blue, like, you're like, well, I gotta have blue. Okay, fine. But now you're sort of locked into these colors that are either going to complement it or, you know, whatever. So I think that for me, I'm trying to understand that company specifically before I make those recommendations, but I do absolutely. There is certainly blanket meaning to these colors. But when we look into your, your identity, that's what we're trying to. It's kind of like, you know, hearing, I don't know, like listening to someone's dream or and trying to sort of take blanket things about, oh, well, that animal must mean this for you. Well, maybe, maybe not. Like for some people, if they had their father in their dream, they maybe they had a bad childhood. It means something different than somebody who had a great father figure in there. So we're trying to understand that particular person and then go from there. What colors did well in this business? You have the orange, right? What did you have for your business?

Blue, black and white. It was like H vac blue.

Black and white. Okay. Yeah. So to me that color scheme feels like it would probably be kind of in my head the way that if I was using those as for a brand, it would be like probably like bold and crisp and like maybe clean, but that the black is going to create boldness. A one color brand or you know, you have neutrals, right? But like blue being the color, a lot of times that's going to create a bit of boldness with it. If you have to go have on the black, if you do light on the black and it's more like blue and white, it's going to sit on what you're associating blue with. More. So many times we'll use only, I love one, like one primary, you know, one color brands. Like you're going to use other colors like neutrals. But I love to own a color. But otherwise you're trying to shoot for like one or two colors. You don't want complexity. A lot of people just have all kinds of random stuff. And that means you have no color. Right? So I think that's another component of colors. Like is it clear what colors you actually have? But yeah, if I, when I'm looking at a. We also look competitively too. So, you know, if you, you know, really want this color but everyone's using it, like maybe we should try to own, say for instance, instead of all the blue trucks on the road or whatever, like maybe we should try to own orange. Right? And what if we could be the orange truck that when I see it from so far away I can't too far read. But I can see that orange. Boom. I know. Flash. Right? So that's, I think another thing is where we're not just looking at color like we're looking functionally. How do we use the color? Like how do we use it to our advantage? And I think a lot of people are sort of like picking it like they're like their wedding colors or something. No, this is something that's supposed to be a communication bridge. Right. So we are using it very tactically I think, and carefully. So there are different meanings like that. But I'm trying to basically say, although we could talk about general color meanings, they're not, I would caution people to just pick them because everyone, without going through a process like we're talking about is going to pick the same colors.

Exactly, exactly. I really appreciate you sharing all this stuff. I can, you know, I've never gone through a branding exercise and even just this conversation I'm like, wow, there's just like so much that goes into this. So I appreciate you breaking it down but also explaining like it. There's a lot that goes into this and it's not just like slap a logo on something or colors. So if someone is thinking about doing a rebrand. You mentioned the guide on your website, but where should they go and learn more about your business or what should be their first steps?

Yeah, I mean I think if you go to getprolific.com, get prolific.com, get that free download, it's a great place to start. And I think just to come back to the. I think the title we're using of essentially having the client sold before they buy is that when you do this. Right. Think about this. If you're worth talking about and everybody's talking about you, if you can just to kind of tie this up in a hopefully nice neat bow. If you can get people talking about the things that you care about most and your team members are being hired because they care about what you care about. Right. And they're going out and creating actions and stories we're talking about that represent who you are. This is why, for instance, Tesla can go up to full production first. First company in 120 years that goes to full scale production in auto and they did it with a zero dollar marketing budget. A lot of people don't know they didn't spend a dollar on marketing until like a couple years ago. How do you get everybody, how do you change an industry without spending a dollar on marketing? You do things worth talking about. You know, Elon Musk has a car floating around outer space. He makes flamethrowers. He gave his patents away to his competitors. Why? Because that's what he believed in. So I would say to the listener, what do you believe in and what have you been setting aside because of your clients goals? Your clients goals, 96% of them aren't yours. What is your goals and who are your 4 percenters and how do we build the business for that? And everyone else will gravitate around because the early adopters and you know, they're kind of your first people, everyone else will still buy, you know, it's not gonna, you're not gonna lose the other people, you're gonna gain more of them. Because now we create these relationships that can really go and these little seeds and these little mini cheerleaders for our business. But yeah, I think getting that guide and starting to wrestle with some of these questions, what do I stand for? What makes me different? And what's the story I want people to tell about me? And if you don't know those or your answers sound the same as someone else, don't just set it aside. You do have these answers already. You just haven't sat with the questions long enough.

Yeah, well, thanks so much, Ryan. I really appreciate you man. And look forward to continue the conversation and relationship.

Absolutely. Thanks Phil.

Yeah, man.