Nick Mallory with 6 Signs of a Stand-Out Brand [FUBCON Session]

No matter where your business is today or where you want to take it, you'll get there faster and more profitably with an operating system. Welcome to Team os, your guide to starting, growing and optimizing real estate team. Here's your host, Ethan Butte.

Nick, I am so glad that you are here at fubcon and I am glad you're here in this room with me.

Right on. Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it. Super fun. I got in last night. I'm blown away by the event and excited to talk to you.

Cool.

Yeah.

I'm going to start with you, Nick, where I started with everyone who's been in that show. Awesome. Which is what is a must have characteristic of a high performing team.

Oh, geez. I think empathy is, is by far, at least for me, a huge characteristic that I think, you know, not only the leader of the team needs to have, but, but the team in and of itself. You know, when I first came to Elysian, our team was really fractured. Not really talking to each other and you know, not really talking to other departments in the company. And especially, you know, I work with marketing teams. So there are super creative focused for a team like that. You know, really kind of starting with that, that empathy at the beginning. You know, how are you doing and what can I help you with and how can we help remove obstacles? And you know, that really helps kind of foster that creativity and helps the team grow closer together. So empathy for sure.

Awesome. Characterize your team a little bit for folks listening.

Yeah. So at Elysian, I oversee our marketing department which is spread out over kind of four different subgroups. We have a design team, a content team, and then we have what call a home market team, which, you know, allegiance in Seattle, Washington. So it deals primarily with like Washington and the west coast. And then we have a team dedicated to space Dust, our largest brand. All in all, it's about nine people, four different contractors, and we work with a bevy of agencies, so it's, it's pretty robust for the beer biz.

Awesome. How would you describe your own leadership style?

You know, my leadership style, I mean, you know, get ready for the buzzwords. Right. You know, I, I tend to be really transparent. I also really want to be empathetic to the team. I know that designing stuff and being creative and coming up with these ideas is really hard. The hard thing about marketing is that when it's done well, it looks like magic. You're like, well, of course that's what it should look like. Oh, of course. Just do it. Is Perfect. Well, do you know how hard it was to come up with that? There's a ton of work. It's like the iceberg or the. Use your metaphor before the duck with the legs going like crazy under. Under the calm water. So, you know, I like to be transparent with my team. I like to help bring people up. So I've, you know, I've always been one that hire your replacement, you know, and look for people on the team to potentially take over your role. And how do you spot those players and, you know, help them grow and remove obstacles. So that's, that's kind of my. My charge as a leader.

Awesome. I. We're going to get into marketing and branding, and I have a very specific question I'm super excited to hear your response to, but I would love for you, before we get into that, just go in that direction, like high level, you know, buying and selling real estate. Approximately. Like the service. The service of an agent is commoditized.

Right?

Right. And you're doing your best to fight in a commoditized space as well. Talk about a couple key ideas that you've developed for yourself and advanced into your team kind of culturally or philosophically or even very practically to create differentiation in a commoditized space.

Yeah, you know, the, the big one that I fall back on and the one that I talk to my team about all the time is without a doubt the biggest lesson that I've learned in my career in beer. And it. It happened a. A long time ago. It's something that I kind of colloquially called triple useim because it helps me remember it. It's. There was a. A was kind of an advisor at one of the first brands I worked with, Rogales, back in, back in Portland. And he would always say, you know, every great brand or great marketing initiative should be these six things. Simple, interesting, meaningful, unique, understandable, and unexpected. And every time you see something that's a little wonky or it's not really hitting or it's not standing out, nine times out of ten, it's missing one of those six things. You know, it's. You have something that's really complicated to explain, or you have something that's not very unique. You know, you're living in a commoditized world and you're playing the commodity game or, you know, it's not understandable. You know, what I'm trying to say to you just doesn't really make very easy, simple sense. So it's a great list and a great watchword and I say to my team all the time when we're coming up with a new idea, you know, okay, folks, simple, interesting, meaningful, like, where are we? You know, what do you think? And it's this awesome litmus test for kind of how are we standing out? You know, are we doing something unique or are we just kind of, you know, playing the same game that everybody else is playing?

Yeah, I know if I was listening to this in my earbuds, like in Spotify or Apple podcasts, I would probably hit the back button out of courtesy. Hit those six characteristics one more time because it's a, it is a great list. I'm going to spin on it myself.

So they're simple, interesting, meaningful, unique, understandable and unexpected. I carry around a notebook with me all the time. I'm a huge note taker. And in the front of every single notebook I write those six things because they're just awesome to remember and kind of keep, keep close when you're, when you're really trying to develop some differentiation and stand out in a commoditized world.

Awesome. You write a workshop. An interesting idea.

Hit me.

Okay, so I'll, I'll frame it up a little bit. So you have the individual agent and they need to brand and market themselves.

Right.

We're focused on teams on this show. So there's a, there's a team brand that needs to be marketed and developed and it needs to stand for something. And it's a collection of the individual brands at some level. Then you have sometimes directly, then the corporate brand or the franchise or whatever, like the Exp. The Keller Williams, the ReMax, the Coldwell banker, the Better Homes and Gardens, whatever. And sometimes there's a subvariant in between those two. So it's like, you know, REMAX Advantage kind of a thing. Or ReMax Elite or ReMax Edge or ReMax Platinum.

Right.

And ReMax Corporate. So. So for you, when I think about it, I think like Space Dust Year Round Beers. Elian.

Right.

Or I think Space Dust, Elysian, Anhyzer, Busch and Bev.

Right.

I don't know what the latter is, but it's something like that. You could also, maybe you have several. A few IPAs that you do year round. So it could be Space Dust IPA Year Rounds, a lesion. So like that same ladder, how would you advise a team leader and then separately an agent to think about? Because we all have the same motivation, but we all kind of want our thing to be the thing too. Totally in that. So, you know, as people are battling for how do I. How do I leverage? Because they all have different benefits and leverage points as well. So share any thoughts on what I teed up there in terms of the structure of the things that can or should be marketed and branded, developed, and then leveraged in some kind of an appropriate context.

So here's the caveat to this answer. I did not talk to you beforehand about any of this stuff.

Right.

What you're talking about, we're working on right now. So I've got an example that is literally what we're working on right now of what you're talking about. Awesome. So first, to kind of lay the groundwork, Elysian is part of the Anheuser Busch Network Network. We're part of the Anheuser Busch Network of craft brands. Without getting into, like, the myriad specifics of all of that, you know, let's just say There are roughly 20 craft brands across the country. We're one of them. We ladder up into, you know, the AB InBev Global, you know, largest beverage company in the world. So, you know, there are a lot of brand propositions inherent in that. For the sake of this example, I'm just going to talk about Elysian. So one of the things that I've been working on now, again, a craft brewery, Budweiser is like a single beer brand, right? Budweiser brews Budweiser, maybe a couple variants, whatever. But Budweiser brews Budweiser. A craft brewery isn't like that. You brew 20, 30, 40 different beers. And how do those beers ladder in to the master brand? That's the work that we're working on right now. So, for example, we're asking ourselves, what is a lesion all about? You know, what is at the core of Elysian and Elysian, if you really look at it as a brand? We're all about creativity. We're all about kind of this. This unwavering love for creativity and using that creativity to engender connection. You know, beer at its core is a social product. You know, Ethan, if it were, I don't know, maybe a little later, we'd have a beer here, right? Or, you know, hey, let's meet at the bar for a beer. Let's talk afterwards, or whatever. So Elysion is all about creativity. And if that's your North Star, then the next question you ask is, how do all the brands ladder into that? And the brands have to have their own brand proposition to ladder into this kind of overarching creativity. So how does Space Dust articulate its own creativity? Does it do it through humor? Does it do it with, you know, poking fun? Does it do it with the stuff that's on the label? Like we're work, we're doing that work right now to figure that out. But the point is, in your kind of agent, team, company, broad organization, number one, get clarity on what the overarching brand proposition is of that organization. You know, what's your, why, you know, what are you trying to do? What's your kind of the emotional benefits of your brand? What, you know, what is that brand trying to say? Nike famously, you know, to, to inspire, you know, innovation and inspiration for athletes all over the world. Like that's their mission statement. It gives you a sense of what they're trying to do. What is that for your company? And then your team's brand should fit into that in some way, you know, Is space dust the funny part of being creative? Is it the serious part of being creative? Is it, is it creativity is fine art? Is it creativity is graffiti? You know, whatever it is. Right. So then how does the team ladder into that? And then how do you as your brand on that team ladder into that? I. Step number one is finding what that brand proposition is. And if there isn't one, then that's awesome work that you can sit down and do with your team. What are we about as a team? Okay, so we take that North Star. Then how do I, as an individual contributor to that, build my brand to kind of fit into that in a way, not necessarily copy it? I want to remain my autonomy and I want to, you know, I want to build a rockstar brand. But how does it ladder into that sort of team proposition and then company proposition? Does it make sense?

Absolutely, it does. I mean, what I see now is a thread that runs through all of them. They're unique points on the, you know, mental and emotional relationship to one another. But there's a thread that connects them all totally. So they're disparate.

But it's hard. Yeah, it's hard too, because if, if everybody's kind of creating their own thing, then it's just sort of disjointed. And now all of a sudden you kind of get away from the simple interesting meaning. Like you're, you know, like, like for instance, and this is a dumb example, and again, I'm not in real estate, but I'm, I'm trying to, I'm trying to make it work here. You know, what if, what if your team is all about first time home buyers, but you want to be all about luxury homes? You know, it's like, well, now you've got this disconnection and. Which is incredibly difficult to explain to your clients. And now you're off the simple, interesting, meaningful train. So it's like, okay, how can we work on that, you know, to ladder it up to what the team, you know, is all about?

Yeah, good. What I heard in that, like, on the negative side is like, we're for you. And we're for you, too.

Totally.

And we're for you, too. We can do that. Yeah, we could, you know, we could turn sideways. We could put that hat on. We can do all. Yeah.

Sometimes you just got to make a choice, right. And be like, nope, this is what we're going to be. You know, you can't be all things to everybody. I mean, there's a lot of people out there. Right. There's a lot of clients. So, you know, tell me what you.

Think about this idea. Brand in branding is primarily a promise. This is just my own kind of thesis. Yeah. Customer experience is the actual delivery relative to those. And of course, you want those to be aligned as well. So, like, the brand itself is the promise. I think of customer experience as the emotional resonance that's left, and it's either aligned with what was promised on the front side or broken from it or 50% delivery, whatever. And the more that those. The more that the things that we're saying on the package are experienced. Now, this is interesting with beer, because so much of what. Or any packaged product.

Right.

The package absolutely affects the experience of consuming or enjoying the product itself. But, but, but to me, it's, you know, the, the act of branding is simply trying to articulate clearer, better promises. And then the product in service delivery needs to fulfill it. And the more that those two things are the same thing or really, really similar, the stronger the emotional resonance we leave. Typically in a positive way.

Yeah. I mean, you know, or do you.

See brand differently and feel free to.

No, I mean, I see brand. You know, I see brand the IC brand the exact same way. You know, I'm not, you know, I'm not smart and articulate like you saw. Probably explain a little bit worse, but. So you know Seth Godin.

Absolutely.

The real famous marketer.

Yeah.

I saw a video of him the other day and I thought that he explained it perfectly. So all shout outs to Seth. You know, Seth is the godfather of us all in some way, shape and form.

Yeah.

He said, I'll illustrate for you the. The difference between having a brand and not having a brand. What if Nike Built a hotel. Now, if I just tell you, Nike building a hotel, you probably know what that hotel will look like. You probably know what the front desk would look like. You know, how it would feel walking into there. You probably have an idea of what it would smell like. You probably would have an idea of what the rooms would look like. What if Apple made a hotel? Same thing, right? Now, all of a sudden you say, what if Hyatt Regency made shoes? You would have no idea what they'd look like. Right. That's the difference between having a brand and not having a brand. Like, a strong brand will always live up to its promise and always push to live up to its promise. The hard part is that a lot of brands don't know what they're promising. Right. Nike knows what they're promising. Apple knows what they're promising. It's really hard to land on that. What are we promising people? You know, and then building the experience to match that promise. The other thing that's really funny is that most folks focus on the experience and not the promise because the experience is fun.

Yeah.

And you get to do cool stuff in the experience. Figuring out what the promise is is the hard work, you know, and it's. It's tough to land on what that is. You know, with. With Elysion and with all of our beers. We want the creativity to shine through, you know, we want you to look at Elysian as a creator you can trust. I want to be creatively inspired, whether that's the liquid inside or the labels on the package. And I know that when I grab an Elysian beer, I'm going to get that experience. It's landing on that promise in the first part that's really the hard part. Making sure that the package kind of matches up with that and that the experience conveys. That's the fun work. But it only works when you do the hard stuff up front.

Yeah. Yeah. It goes back to the word you made, a word you offered earlier, which is, you know, we make choices or decisions or commitments. You just say no to some things and. And yes to something in particular. Also layered into all that is like, who are we making the promise to?

Yeah.

And all these. Some of the. Some things we kind of drove by a little bit here. This has been absolutely awesome. I've enjoyed it so much. And before I let you go, fun pair of questions, and you only have to answer one, hit me. What is your very favorite team to root for besides Elysian? Or what is the best team you've ever been on besides The Elysian team.

Boy, what a great question. If I can't use the Elysian team, and are you talking about, like, team teams or, like, companies?

Anything that's in your mind right now is a viable answer.

Oh, good Lord. I mean, I got to. I mean, here's.

It doesn't have to be the very favorite.

Here's the truth. I will be. I will be, you know, honorable to my soul, because anybody who knows me that listens to this, they know what I'm going to say. I grew up in Eugene, Oregon. I went to the University of Oregon business school. I am contractually obligated to be a Nike fan. I met Phil Knight when I was a kid. I met coach Bill Bowerman when I was a kid, and I've been absolutely addicted ever since. I love anything and everything that Nike does. I always watch after what's new and coming up, so I always have a giant rooting interest in my beloved Nike. The best team I've ever been a part of, honest to goodness, is the. The hardest team I've ever been a part of. It's kind of that you learn so much through the struggle kind of moment. When I was at Rogue, it was really. I mean, it was hardcore marketing, branding, learning, tough lessons, aggressive. You know, it's us against the world kind of stuff. And. And it was a pirate ship, man. And everybody's on that pirate ship, like, rowing in the same direction, and, you know, here we go. And it was really, really hard. And I learned so much during that experience. And the further away I get from it, the more I look back on it with a ton of reverence, you know, unfortunately, when I was there, the founder Jack passed away. I worked really closely with his son, Brett Joyce. Both of them were hugely inspirational to me, even if they might not have known it. And it. It really, you know, stretched and pushed me in a lot of ways. And as I get further away from it, I look back on it and, you know, sometimes that's where you. You learn the most.

Yeah. So appreciate you sharing that. And I will say, just in. In support of the work that you all did, and I don't know where you were in this timeline, but I've walked a lot of coolers and scanned a lot of coolers in my time. And when I think about a lineup of bombers in a cooler, nothing comes to mind. Before. Before Rogue.

Yeah.

You know, the way that those were designed, labeled, styled, like, I can. I can see a bunch of the.

Fist in the air. Everyone had the fist in there.

I can see a bunch of them in my mind right now. Like, that was a thing.

It was a thing. Yeah. There was one woman who drew all of those. One woman in West Virginia. She was amazing. So it was such a fun brand to work on. And again, such amazing lessons came out of that, you know, and it's a kind of a good last little word for everybody right now. You know, the real estate is really tough right now, and it's really competitive, and the economy's all crazy and interest rates are really high. You know, sometimes when stuff is really hard is when you learn the most. So, you know, I try to keep that kind of close when I'm going through. When I'm going through it. So there you go.

I can't think of something better to close on. So thank you.

You bet, buddy.

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