Episode 318: Building an Outrageously Remarkable Brand with Dean Caravelis, Blezoo

Welcome to Skucast, the podcast for entrepreneurs in the promotional products industry. Skucast shines a light on our industry's best work, features maverick personalities, and discusses what's really involved in running a modern promotional products business. Skucast is the official podcast of Common Skew. When Dean Karavelas, CEO and founder of Blazoo, launched his promotional marketing agency, he started with a blank sheet of paper. No partners, no funding, and no experience in the industry. What's more, he started in 2008, in the middle of the deepest part of a recession. He did have one advantage, though. As a former CMO, he knew the ideal customer well. In our chat today, Dean will share some real-time tactics, strategies, and ideas that will help you build a brand that people want to connect with through every business touchpoint. From the way your team communicates to generous marketing, Dean combines his experience as both client and distributor to help you build a brand your customers will like, love, and trust. You can check out Dean's amazing team and company at blezoo.com. That's B-L-E-Z-O-O.com. And also, Dean has interviewed some amazing people, including Seth Godin and also Pat Williams, co-founder of the Orlando Magic, and more. You can follow along and catch these great stories at Dean's website, deancaravelis.com.

D-E-A-N-C-A-R-A-V-E-L-I-S dot com.

I'm Bobby LeHew, Chief Content Officer at Commonsku, and welcome to the SkuCast. Today's episode is brought to you by us at Commonsku, the work-from-anywhere platform that powers your connected workflow, enabling you to process more orders and dramatically grow your sales. To learn more, visit commonscue.com. Now here's my chat with Dean.

Thanks for having me. I'm really stoked. Let's talk.

Let's do it. Hey, the title, Outrageously Remarkable, How would you define that?

So I, well, I started this blog called Outrageously Remarkable, right? Because I would talk about that term all the time. Mostly it was a way where I could meet people in person and really talk to them about what differentiates them. But the term outrageously remarkable, what it really means is being so remarkable, so outside the norm that you cannot be ignored. You cannot be forgotten. It's disproportionate results for disproportionate positioning. So it's really about just pushing, pushing things that are not so close to the mean. And so it's just, it's just kind of what it means. It's just so outrageous that like you have to be paid attention to.

Yeah, I love the word disproportionate in that mix. We don't hear that word a lot when we talk about this particular type of topic. How does this translate to the Blizzoo brand?

Yeah, so pretty much everything we do at Blizzoo, we think of it through the prism of You know, how can we position things a little bit differently? And I know I didn't tell you I have a show and tell, but I got a show and tell.

Yeah.

Awesome.

I love it.

One quick example is we love to send out welcome kits. I've been doing it now for about 16 years. So our welcome kit, everybody gets one whenever we get in contact with them and they get this in the mail. It's a kind of shows them a little bit about what Blazoo does, right? Has our different things on there. It has a punch-out robot, right? And so that's like our mascot. People put it together. And they got this little robot. It's kind of like a print promotional product, right? So that's not normal, right? Usually you just get something in the mail. And so we'll go visit customers and they'll have the little robot sitting out in the reception area or someone has it on their desk. So that's, that's one specific way that we've been carrying kind of that theme throughout. And it's something that's unexpected. And so that's one way that we kind of push that edge, right? Because I don't, can't think of many people that send their mascots being assembled. By the way, it's a custom die we've owned now for 12 years.

I love it. And I don't— you don't know if you recall when we first met, I got one of those. Yeah, well, it's like such a habit for you, for you guys to do it. And when I got it, I'm kind of hard to impress because, you know, I'm kind of an old dog at this game. And I got it and I was like, that's cool. And I loved it because I knew when you get something like that, you know that the people behind it care about every touchpoint. That's, that's the message that I got was like, oh, these guys These guys are doing it right. What other ways— can you give us one more example how you guys use your marketing? I mean, you— so that folks will know, we, we said it in the bio at the intro, but you have a background as a CMO, so marketing's, you know, marketing's in your blood. But give us another example.

So another thing that kind of ties into the welcome kit is we send out to our customers that go to new companies a new gig kit. Now it says New Job Who Dis on it, right? But New gig kit goes out to all our customers that join new companies, and the goal is to get it to land their first week of work. And I don't know if you remember your first week of work, but usually, like, you're new, you're still feeling things, you know, feeling the walls of the place. And so it makes them feel special. And so that's another way that we kind of, kind of step outside of the norm, right? Sending a quick message online or something, but land something on their desk. Bobby, the, the magic in that also is, in all of this, is it— we measure it, right? So we measure all these things on a weekly basis. But think about it, we work in an industry where we're delivering stuff, so, right, getting an address is our lifeline. So having metrics that rely on going and getting addresses, I think, is an important way to kind of close the loop on everything that we do.

Yeah. Well, you are not only busy at running a very successful distributorship, you have sort of your own that you're working with. You have a book coming out, if I can tease that a little bit. Mm-hmm. You've interviewed some amazing people on your show. You've had Pat Williams, the co-founder of the Orlando Magic. You've had Seth Godin and many others. I know this is a really big question, but what are a few of the most important lessons you've learned from those folks about being outrageously remarkable?

Yeah, so I actually wrote a, a LinkedIn blog after I interviewed, I think it was like 20 people. And the thing, a, a couple of takeaways. One is about interviewing and one is about the common thread. And so the common thread I'll say is out of all those people, every single one of them, right? Everything that they're doing, they totally have imposter syndrome. So like everyday folks like me are constantly questioning, like, you know, you know, am I doing this right? Am I, am I putting my best foot forward? Am I making the right decisions for my team? I can guarantee you all those people. That I look up to, they have the same doubts. And so I think one of the big takeaways is, you know, when you're trying to do something or you're, and you're pushing the envelope, it's okay to be a little bit doubtful, right? As long as you have conviction in what you're doing.

Yeah.

Everybody's running around with imposter syndrome. So that's my, I would say, common thread, every single interview. Yeah. The cool, a cool thing about the, the process of interviewing folks is I learned two things. One is The conversation I have before I interview with them, if I don't have a rapport, was super important. I can't tell you how many times I hit record talking to somebody for the first time. Literally the first, you know, 30 minutes of me talking to them in my life was recorded. And that's not ideal. You need some rapport. Right. The second thing aside from like having the rapport is I thought about having a separate, separate recording device because the conversation after the conversation was oftentimes way, way, way, way better. And so I— there's a couple of those takeaways, but a lot of it was around just everybody having imposter syndrome, which is very, which is very comforting, honestly.

Yeah. And Dean, I can really resonate with that because after interviewing now, you know, hundreds of distributors through not only the SKU Cast but also through our events, I hear it all the time. I'll look to a distributorship and their business, and I look at online, and they have some incredible marketing, and they'll, behind the scenes, they'll be like, Bobby, it's like we're building the plane, like we're trying to learn, you know, as we're going. And every single one of them, to a tee, feels like we don't have our shit together. But they do far more than they realize, right? It's so— I hear that so often from successful companies too.

Yeah, I think it's, I think it's a factor of a couple of things, but one of them is, as, as business owners and executives, we're always measuring ourselves based on what we haven't done yet.

Yeah.

Instead of measuring backwards and going, what where were we a year ago or 2 years ago or 3 years ago? That's a much more valuable measure of progress rather than going, what haven't we done yet? It's such a great point. That's a, that's an, I think measuring backwards is the, the really the way we should be doing things. But we also live in a very, or at least work in a somewhat custom industry, right? We not have, not many orders these days are the most straightforward. There's always going to be some nuance to it right now in the world of like kitting and logistics and all that. So yeah. It, it, it is a very cognitive industry of like really true asking the right questions and navigating the forthcoming challenges, which are definitely on the way. We, we, we wake up every day, open up our computers, and the great thing is we're problem solvers cuz there's always problems in this industry.

That's right. That's right. Let's talk a little bit about your specialty, which is humanizing the brand. And that's a phrase that many of us have heard for a while, but I don't think it's ever been more important than it is now. And it fits with being outrageously remarkable. Mm-hmm. As you look at this industry, how would you advise distributors to focus on humanizing their brands? Are a few tactics you've learned or keys or strategies or positions? How would you help them?

Yeah, I think in many senses when I talk about humanizing the brand, I keep thinking back about in my early days and you know, when you're small, when just you, right? Just you in the back bedroom getting things going.

Right.

Usually you try to fit in, right? And so you look at other companies and create communications and your presentation as if you're bigger, as if you're this big corporation, right? And I don't remember what blog post it was by Seth Godin many, many years ago, but it kind of triggered me in a way where I said, you know, maybe I don't need to try to act so big. Maybe I can position myself in a way where I communicate like a human communicates, right? How can I get more personal with my communications? How can I act more like a person communicating to another person rather than the company as a whole? So I think communication and narrative with your customers, I think, is the first way to humanize your brand. I think another way is in how you eat your own dog food. And so I was showing you the welcome kit and the onboarding kit and, you know, using your, things in, in trying to connect with your customers, different life events and milestones. You know, we talked about, yeah, we also have another one, onboarding kit. Like you become a customer, new gig kit, right? You got a new job. I mean, we have maternity kits, paternity kits. Somebody has a kid, we, we send them something in the mail. So to me, it's connecting with the different milestones in the customer journey and in the life journey. We focus on the customer journey, but everybody has lives. So I think that when you, when you combine those things, you can really humanize your company and put a smile— putting a smile on someone's face is good business. And so I think trying to find those opportunities and how that can fit into your business.

I love the fact that you've matched those two together instead of treating them like two parallel lines. You have people's lives and people's business, and you found a way to celebrate both. And you're right, that's just a fantastic way. And we as an industry have this incredible conduit. Like, like a lot of industries don't have this, but we have this incredible conduit called merch that does create an emotional connection from people across the globe or across the state or wherever.

And I'm preaching to the choir, right? Because, because he's got this figured out, right? Yeah.

Yeah.

About everything I'm talking about, Commscue does an amazing job. So if you're a new distributor, mimic some of the stuff that Commscue is doing. It's, uh, you know, draw some inspiration there because they're doing a great job. So kudos to y'all.

About Blazoo, you started in the industry with zero industry experience, but you're a former CMO, so marketing's sort of in your blood. And how did you view the industry coming into it, and what was the one thing you knew you wanted to do differently?

Oh gosh.

One, if you compare it down to one.

No, this one's easy because I didn't even know the industry existed, but I kept getting cold calls constantly because I was a marketing director and to the point where some of these promo, these promo distributors to the point where I knew some of them by name whenever they announced my name on the all call. And I finally started just asking them questions like. Um, how many of you are there? You know, it's like army coming out. And so that was my first inkling that, hey, this is a big pie and this is an industry with sort of undifferentiated entrants that are all just cold calling. And I started asking questions and pretty much at the time it would just be, did you look at my catalog? Have you looked at my website?

Yeah.

Have you looked at my website? And so what I realized was, you know, you have an industry that's fairly undifferentiated, you know, mass of, of distributors. And positioning yourself as a marketing director, talking to marketing directors, is that— and talking about marketing director stuff rather than just merch. Yeah, was the, the, my initial positioning. Like, let's, let's start with the questions and the pain points rather than, have you looked at my catalog? Have you gone to my website? And so that, that was kind of the inspiration. It just kind of came to me because I was the prospect for lots of people.

Yeah, right. That's phenomenal. Well, as you evolved, so you got in the industry, you evolved. I'm assuming you started targeting a market you know well, which is marcom people, marketing and communications folks. What type of clients did you end up serving, or do you have a specific niche at Blizzoo, or what do you— where did you gravitate to and evolve as a company?

Well, it's, it's evolved, it's evolved a lot throughout the years, but in the beginning, I started in 2008, so if you can imagine No one's buying anything. And you're just, and so my first niche was, I said pro sports. So I did this thing called 100 Days in Sports where all I did for 100 days, sunup to sundown, was contact every pro sports team in North America and create just this, this database. But it's 2008 and no one's spending money. So I had to give it a little bit more regional. And so I started focusing more, more regionally and I would say today, I mean, like many distributors that are not absolutely niched down, we service most industries, but I would say education, healthcare, and financial are our biggest. And I think that it's no coincidence that all of them sell something that is not tangible, right? They need a tangible representation in the world because you hardly ever look at someone and, and can tell that they went to University X, right? So, right, so I think there's, there's a lesson there.

It's a huge lesson, and I've always felt that way. I always used to say that B2B boring, boring brands that were B2B companies or that were service companies needed us badly because they didn't— you're right, they didn't have that. And so we became, in a way, the branded merchandise becomes this tactile representation of the brand, and it's far more important and they value it far more.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, if you're If I'm selling applesauce, I'm probably gonna give out some samples of my applesauce.

Right, right.

But, but you, but it's really difficult to give somebody a sample of your financial services.

Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You know, and so I think brand building the brand and building the presence in the physical world where people actually live, I think is a big function of this industry.

How did you decide to engage with Commonsku?

Well, it's funny, Bobby. Years ago, and I might have told you this in person, years ago, I, somebody sent me CometSki and I looked at it and I said, this is cool, but not yet. So I waited a little while and I was reintroduced to it about 4 years ago. Our director of operations, Casey, had mentioned it. We started checking it out and frankly, the timing was right. Great product, great timing. And I was also running a business on a system that I built that was just a, you know, duct tape and— Duct tape and super glue. It worked to a point, eventually it'd break. And so I think it was just the right time and, and, and really it, it, it was something that could bridge us to the future for sure.

Yeah. Speaking of that, then 4 years in, how has it helped transform the business?

It's given us a lot more standardization and it's allowed for us to be able to create a better workflow going from a completed and approved sales order. Yeah. Through production and invoicing. So that being able to be able to create that flow has allowed for us to be able to put people in positions to succeed, to be able to utilize processes to really problem solve. Because like I mentioned earlier, right, we create imperfect products.

Yeah.

There that are created by imperfect people, delivered by imperfect carriers., delivered to customers who have unknowable expectations. So, right. Things are going to happen. So you need a standardized and scalable system to be able to deliver that and, you know, reduce that, reduce the, the potential issues from, from this much to this much, right? Because you're never going to get zero, but common SKU, uh, we found has helped us to dramatically just standardize everything so we can get closer to that, that zero.

Yeah, we've been putting a lot of work into our reporting. We've got some new reports landing in June, but all of this, I've always felt like it's so powerful for salespeople. But for leaders, for someone to have that kind of transparency in your business, how does that help you as a leader?

Yeah, I mean, I think you've probably heard this a million times, right? Leaders want as much visibility and transparency within the organization as possible. I shouldn't say most leaders, let's say. But I would say also, I, I have a theory that the, you know, like they say, what gets measured gets managed. At the same time if you don't have a system like CommonSKU, you're going to have corners of your company that are pitch dark, right? You don't have, you don't have a spotlight on them to be able to understand how to move different metrics or what is the rate of X happening, right? And so it's, it's a, I think there's a lot of great tools in CommonSKU to not only work through the workflow, but now with your dashboard and all the, all the new things that you all have coming in, it's, it's really, really helped to get a snapshot of exactly what's going on within, within the business at any time.

I love the pitch dark analogy. It's so true. Let's talk a little bit about Dean. Who are a few brands— since you're such a, you know, branding person, who are a few brands that you follow religiously or that really inspire you?

So I, I'll mention a few. You know, nowadays we talk about humanizing the brand. There's a lot of people and personalities that are brands nowadays. And so there's, there's a, there's a handful that I follow all pretty, pretty religiously. And, you know, we mentioned Seth Godin a bunch of times. I mean, I got a Seth quote on the back of our welcome kit, okay? Right. So I gotta have Seth Godin on there. But Ryan Holiday, Sean Purry and Sam Parr, Tim Ferriss, and also Derek Sivers, I think, are all deep thinkers. And, and I think that, you know, we talk about The 5 people you spend the most time around, you kind of become them. So I think we need to think about that as well as far as our content also, right? And so those are, those are kind of the key people that I follow.

You might have mentioned, you already may have mentioned them when I ask about the biggest mentor in your life. Is it probably the same kind of answer or do you have someone else in mind?

You know, the first, I wouldn't have gotten into marketing if it wasn't for a, or at least I wouldn't have been as hardcore into marketing if I did not get turned. I was actually an aerospace engineering major at first, because I was told to do that because I'm good at math. But a friend of mine named Frank actually turned me on to marketing. And I probably wouldn't have been into marketing if it wasn't for him. I had also a college professor who was an amazing marketer, and he got me to be passionate about marketing. But funny enough, you know, Seth Godin, I've, I've, I've done Alt MBA. I've done workshops with him. I interviewed him for my blog. And so I've been very involved with him for, for some time. And a lot of the stuff that I'm doing, even with the boxes, even the blog, he challenged me to, with the blog as one of my Alt MBA projects and, and also doing more of the boxes, right? He, and so I, I think as far as like a mentor from afar, I think he would definitely be one of the key people.

Yeah, you're such an erudite thinker. You process a lot, just like you just mentioned, like name-dropping those names that you did. What's a recent article, book, podcast you'd recommend to the community that you've read recently that's made an impact on your thinking?

So I want to mention a video. Okay, I want to mention a video, and this is total left turn, but I've thought a lot about this video that I saw a while ago, probably around the time I started Blazoo. It was, it was a video by a music artist. I've been involved in music pretty much my entire life. And, and there's this artist named Ill Gates, and he was talking about a young artist who was emerging at the time, and everybody was so interested in what are his instruments? How is he producing this music? And when it finally came out that this, this artist was just using the most basic editor, and he was just using scissors to copy and paste. He was literally just using samples to create this music. And I'm, I'm telling you this because it is so easy to make things complicated in this industry. I just had a conversation with my team before. I said, I guarantee you, if we just could not pull in anything from ESP Web into Common Skew and we could only use previous presentations we've created, to create new presentations, you would have this infinity of repurposing. And we do the same thing as a society, like with content, right? I mean, I'm always trying to lay a golden egg when also when I have this back catalog of— that's so true. Wow. So this inspiration of like thinking genius is creating something from complete scratch. Yeah. I think when you look back and see how many things are repurposed snippets of other things, I think lends itself as an important inspirational lesson, not only for content, but also presentations and ideas, right? We come up with so much stuff. Repurposing and getting organized, I think, is the most important.

It's such a huge point, and we're gonna end on that because it's so fantastic. I love that, Dean. Thank you for that. That's so encouraging, and that's gotta be so encouraging to so many distributors because we all know how many projects we hustle in, in a year, and that's such wise wisdom. Thank you so much, my friend, for joining us. I'm really thrilled to have you here, and I learned a lot from you today.

Hey, listen, it's my pleasure. Anytime, Bobby. I look forward to seeing you, uh, really soon up in Nashville.

Yeah, that's right. We'll see you at SKU Camp. Thank you, Dean. Thanks so much for tuning in to this episode of SKUcast. Be sure to keep up with our latest content by subscribing to SKUcast on iTunes or to our blog at community.comandskew.com. Until next time, friends, thanks so much for listening.