E 52 | Branding and Public Speaking Masterclass | with Steve Sims

[00:00:00] Henry: Hey everyone, this is Mark Grass, the President Digital marketer, and this is the podcast that keeps you up to date on everything you need to know when it comes to digital marketing. From the platforms we gonna be focused on to the cutting edge tactics and tools they're working today.

[00:00:11] Henry: Today our guest is Henry Sims, the co-founder of Sims Media, and a specialist in branding versus marketing, which is what we're talking about today. So welcome, Henry. Thanks for having. All right, let's just launch into it. So I, actually came from kind of a branding website, development background specifically with startups.

[00:00:29] Henry: So the conversation always got confused where people thought, what I was doing was essentially branding, but a lot of people came out of it with like, Okay, well where's all the sales ? And so, yeah. Then we had to talk about marketing. So kind of talk to me about how you guys define branding and kind of the difference between branding and marketing that you've.

[00:00:49] Henry: Yeah, so there's a lot of crossover between branding and marketing, and they work together, which is why it gets confused so easily. But the way that we like to kind of define it is that marketing is what you say about yourself. Branding is what other people say about you when you've left the room and it's that emotion, it's that vibe.

[00:01:12] Henry: It's that feeling that people have for you. And so that's where branding really stands out versus marketing because how do you create that? How do you get people to understand and connect with you and your brand so that the marketing can easily run on top of that branding? Hmm. Well, and I think I've seen what people don't have that branding element.

[00:01:34] Henry: It seems like a lot of their advertising seems to be independent of the company. Like it could be any company because every single one is different. Yeah, definitely. That's, that's why branding has to come first because it's, it's setting this foundation. When you do, when you start with your marketing, you're kind of guessing.

[00:01:56] Henry: You haven't yet honed in entirely on exactly the vibe you're trying to create, the emotions that you bring about the, perfect type of client. And so that can just be this standalone, You can actually have a weak message with your marketing because marketing's. Amplifying everything. And so if you haven't taken the time to set that brand first and identify the type of connection you're trying to have, your clients, how you want them to feel when they work with you and when they see you, then the marketing can end up being a little weak.

[00:02:30] Henry: But when you do take the time to set that foundation with your branding and make sure that you know exactly how you wanna show up and connect and communicate with your audience. Then the marketing thrives off top of that. Again, it's just amplifying what you've put in place. That's why we always try and push the branding before the marketing.

[00:02:48] Henry: As entrepreneurs, we really wanna move forward. We're always fast and shiny. Go, go, go. And marketing is exactly that. There's always new stuff coming up. It's hard to keep up with. And so we can often get scatterbrained and jump into every new tool out there and new method, but then we leave branding behind and so over.

[00:03:07] Henry: Things start to get a little confusing. Gotcha. So for branding itself though, like what is a brand? Is it your logo, your company name, your domain name, your I don't know, like, I call it core creative, which is like a, driving force behind the creative direction. Like what is it? Yeah. we have people who come to us for branding and they're like, I need a new logo.

[00:03:29] Henry: And we're like, Whoa, we can make a new logo. But that's not the brand. The brand is that emotion. It's how people feel when they're in your ecosystem, when they're talking with you, when they're working with you, when they see your content, it's how they feel and connects to it. And I always love, Nike because their shoes and athletic apparel, so there's not.

[00:03:54] Henry: Really anything like emotional about it. And you would think like, Well, how do you create a brand around that? How do you get this connection with an audience through that? But they do it through all of their content and the way they show up. They've got this just do it attitude that they've brought everyone on board with and all of their advertising and all their content.

[00:04:15] Henry: Is always showing every demographic and group of people pulling everyone together into this same message. So they're showing and including everyone into this common goal, which creates this community and this feeling of excitement and inclusion that was just choose an athletic apparel. And so they've done a fantastic job of building that emotion.

[00:04:41] Henry: Actually Seth Goodin, he had an awesome interview a while ago that I listened to, and he was talking about branding and he was saying that Hilton versus Nike, if you were to understand which one had a brand, you kind of think, what if they switched roles? If Hilton was to start creating shoes, what would they look like?

[00:05:07] Henry: It'd be kind of hard to really understand what they look like. But if Nike was to start creating hotels, you would kind of have an idea of the vibe and feel and look of those hotels, and that's where the brand exists. And so that's, what the brand is. It's not just the logo, it's the overall feeling and connection with the audience.

[00:05:29] Henry: Gotcha. Okay. So if we go back to the Nike example, the core brand then would be the Just do it message. Yeah. Like voice. I'm just trying to define it because when you say, all of that is a billion dollar marketing campaign to establish what mar what Nike has. If we kind of bring it back to say the, mom and pop business or even the the seven eight figure business how do they actually find that brand?

[00:05:55] Henry: Message, or do you have a name for it? we call it a, digital marketer. We call it your brand voice, your character diamond to describe your brand. We also like honing in on your words and getting like two to three words that you kind of anchor all of your messaging around.

[00:06:13] Henry: So within my business, Sims Media, we really hone in on the word clarity. That is one of our big words, and that's our anchor for everything that we do. Everyone we work with, we're trying to establish clarity in the way they show up and the way they market themselves, and that is how we present ourselves.

[00:06:34] Henry: So everything that we message is all about trying to keep things simple and clear and create that for our clients. And so, That tweaks the tone of how we present ourselves. And so when we work with other people, we also like to figure out what their words are and hone in on what their anchor words are so that then shows up in their emails and their content and it just spreads out and it starts to create that brand voice that you're talking about.

[00:07:05] Henry: So honing in on those little words is one of the ways that we like to do it. Also, Understanding just the type of clients that you want to work with that can help you guide the way that you wanna show up to be able to connect with those people. That makes sense. Well, and I like the, concept of the anchor words to try to figure that out because I think like when I had an issue with somebody where I said, Hey, here's your target market.

[00:07:28] Henry: Here's your product, and then your brand needs to serve both of those didn't necessarily fit with say what the vision of the founder was. Cause the founder could be like, they sell teddy bears, but this guy. Rides motorcycles and goes to glamorous, like we were talking about before we started, like he's an aggressive guy, but his product is a teddy bear.

[00:07:50] Henry: So do you separate that the, kind of founder personality with say the product offering or the target market? It depends how. Ingrained the person is in the business. So if it's a personal brand, then there's, no division. Like you show yourself as you are, and that's how you're gonna connect with the audience that you wanna work with because they resonate to you.

[00:08:14] Henry: And it's an easy connection. So when it's coaches and speakers and authors and people like that, Then those personal brands are, easy to have that personal involvement and show what you like doing and your attitude and that will attract the clients that you wanna work with. But then when it comes to those kind, like if we were to think of SAS businesses or where it doesn't necessarily rely on a face of a person.

[00:08:41] Henry: Then there's not necessarily the need of the CEOs face to come into it. They could have a representative within the team that does become the face and puts that personality out there. I love the use of faces and people within businesses because it does create that connection that I feel like we're lacking more and more as time goes on and businesses become more automated.

[00:09:05] Henry: But that's what Nike. Everything they're doing is showing people and they're putting us in their shoes. They're making some kind of visual connection that makes us see ourselves using. Nike products. Awesome. Well, I like the connection with the personal brands cuz I do think there's a big difference between branding for, say a, big organization with 5,000 people and a rotating CEO that changes every couple years.

[00:09:30] Henry: And that kind of thing you see happening with a lot of businesses where they have to be a little bit more generic. But just I think if we just focus on that personal side. I think that'd be super helpful. Cause I think every, marketer needs to have their face out there and they need to have their specialty and they need to have all these different elements that makes them unique for wherever their target market is.

[00:09:48] Henry: And actually we could just use me cuz I've been thinking about that recently where I'm like, I haven't spent any time on my personal brand really. I'm the president, digital marketer. trying to be the face digital marketer, that's one thing, but my personal brand is totally different.

[00:10:00] Henry: How would I go about finding my anchor words and kind of coming up with that core message as an example? Yeah. when you're trying, We are actually working with someone right now, a good friend of ours, and he's looking at this same kind of position. He's been associated in a business for a while, and he's looking at creating his personal brand now, and he's like, I don't know what I wanna be when I grow up

[00:10:26] Henry: It's true. Yeah, It's funny because you've identified with this business for so long, when it comes to the personal brand, what does that mean? But I think it's more a self exploration of you've got certain skills and expertise that's probably fairly easy to identify, but it's the actual exploration of who am I?

[00:10:50] Henry: Because a lot of entrepreneurs. Define that as the business that they've built. And so when it comes to the personal brand side of things, it's like, how do I really operate? Like, not how do people need to see me? How do I want people to see me? and for me my dad and I have our business and we are total ying and yang, but that works and we've never tried to beat each other.

[00:11:14] Henry: He's very loud and exciting and high energy. And I'm the opposite. I'm a lot more slow and calm and, we resonate to different people because of that, but that's just how we operate best. That's there's no concern. And we know who we are, so I'm not trying to be. A different, like I'm not trying to be him.

[00:11:36] Henry: He's not trying to be me. The influencers we see on social media constantly, we get influenced by them and think that's the standard of how we need to show up. But that's where personal branding can actually be very tough because we know our expertise, but it's more about self exploration of how do we actually want to show up as a person and who do we wanna connect with?

[00:11:58] Henry: And then we could start kind of working. With those parameters to help define those core words and messaging of how we show up and connect with those people. We can start thinking about if, If we don't know exactly for ourselves, we can think about who do we want to work with and in what capacity, and then work backwards on, okay, how do I connect with them?

[00:12:21] Henry: What words do they resonate with? What messaging do they resonate with? And it might help us define that for ourselves. Okay. So for you guys, if your kind of core anchor word is clarity, and you have these two personality types that yin and yang, the kind of aggressive, energetic versus the, cool and clear to mix those elements together, you would say to your potential customers, which I'm guessing are these kind of people are trying to develop these personal brands, you would say, At, our company, we.

[00:12:48] Henry: Know clearly that we're different people and so we're able to resonate with a bunch of other people trying to develop their personal brands because we have both sides. So we could look at it from two angles and come up with the best anchor words in brand messaging or whatever, however you package it.

[00:13:03] Henry: For you, is that kind of how, it works? you could think of it as kind of, I guess, like three personalities because, my dad has his side to his personal. And then there's my side, and then we've got SIM's Media. And SIM's Media has its own anchor words and the way it's presented online, its own design, appearance, all of that.

[00:13:26] Henry: And then there's similarities, like we both enjoy that style, so there's crossover, but the people that we resonate with individually in our own platforms, that's where we attract differently. But we do address that by doing lives together all the time, because people get to see how that ying and yang works from the benefit of them in Sims Media.

[00:13:51] Henry: We position it so that everyone understands the strengths of our ying and yangs have come together to build this company. Where it's all been systemized into what is finally delivered to you. So they aren't getting multiple personalities really within the business. It's not like you have one side working with me, one side working with my dad.

[00:14:14] Henry: We're coming forward together to show how that works together and how we've created this business that gives you this final product. So we show our personalities and that does allow us to connect with a, a whole bunch of people. But everyone knows when they come in that it's been collaborated. It's, it's working together.

[00:14:36] Henry: Okay. So that kind of so in addition to clarity, you're kind to kind of bringing the elements of integration and kind of a holistic pro to messaging just because a lot of these concepts are really abstract, and this is the the situation that I run into with my client where you're trying to describe these things, but they want a tangible thing, like they wanna see.

[00:14:54] Henry: Yeah. Okay. We defined the brand, we came with the messaging, came with the anchor words. Now how do I convey that information? , like, do, you have to come up with a, slogan? Is that the driving force behind the initial creatives or maybe the content that you put on a podcast or the concept that you put on YouTube or blog post, that kind of thing.

[00:15:14] Henry: You can and I do like to do that because that's kind of a hook and when it comes to your social media profiles, because that's one of the biggest ways that people discover you. Now, that little headline up at the top, Is your hook. It's your chance within 80 characters to get someone to look further into your profile where there's content, where there's the ability to direct you further to a website, and so you do need to grab people in.

[00:15:43] Henry: So that does take consideration. But those next tangible steps from defining kind of your messaging and your core and your anchor words and all of that is then looking. How do you show up now and just Googling yourself and looking up your name on social media and compiling it all into one space. It's really good to do it on a computer.

[00:16:09] Henry: This is one of the few instances I would suggest doing it on a computer rather than on a mobile device, just so you've got a big screen to view it all. But if you just pull up every single channel that you're on, your website, your Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter. Get everything up your podcast, and if you start looking at it and you go, Okay, here I'm presenting myself as Henry Sims, but here I'm presenting myself as some course name.

[00:16:36] Henry: And then you look at your website and that's not even connecting your social assets or it's promoting a different offer. If you start seeing. Then you know that you're creating confusion and that your brand, although you've got the idea, isn't properly being represented online. So that next step from building that messaging and that core and really understanding the approach you're going for is then making sure that it shows up the same everywhere.

[00:17:05] Henry: All your social platforms, easy stuff, like same profile, photos, names, usernames, the headline, the link that you're directing them. That's a big one because a lot of people, as we were discussing, they'll have a strategy for Instagram and then they'll have a strategy for Facebook versus LinkedIn and they'll be directing people to different places when their business is the same.

[00:17:30] Henry: It's the same offering, but they think they have to do something different because the platform's different and they see other people acting differently. And what trends are picking up on those platforms. But that's where your brand stays the same. Your branding is the same, and your business is the same.

[00:17:49] Henry: So you wanna show up the same everywhere because we're in a multi-touch point world. So when someone goes through and sees your ads and then wants to look further and do their own research as we do now, they're going to look at your social platforms and your website and your podcast, and they're gonna start gaining all this info and.

[00:18:11] Henry: Opinion of what you truly are and if there's continuity, consistency with what you're advertising. And if there is, then awesome. you're doing a great job of building that connection with them and that trust. They know exactly what you do and for who. But if you're showing up different on different platforms and different offers here and there, it makes it hard for that backend research to be done and starts putting in little.

[00:18:40] Henry: Bits of confusion and my dad has a good little phrase he likes to say. No one confused ever gave you their credit card, . No, that's true. and actually the best offers you see out there, even from big companies is there's always one offer. It's not like, here's a million different places you could go with us, because that never delivers anything really, and it doesn't reinforce the branding, which is what you're talking about.

[00:19:02] Henry: So, cohesive approach to all platforms. Reviewing basically how you appear currently on the different platforms in San Cohesive, and then figuring out that kind of core offer. Would that. A good way to, kind of establish the brand. Yeah, definitely making sure that there is just continuity everywhere.

[00:19:21] Henry: It makes it easy for you as a business owner, but it also makes it very easy for your audience who's being hit with offers everywhere to actually understand what you're doing and what you are offering them and how it helps them. So that's the, big benefit of the simplicity and clarity and consist.

[00:19:41] Henry: Of your branding is just honing in on it and making sure that every touchpoint that your audience hits is very easy to understand and that it's on. Gotcha. So just from my personal standpoint, so I do exactly what you're talking about. Where I have, like Instagram, I, share my family stuff. Facebook, I, stopped friending aba, who's not something I actually know.

[00:20:02] Henry: So it's again, family stuff. Then I have TikTok, which is like an experiment, and then I have LinkedIn where I put my business stuff. So, my overall thing is business leadership, since I'm president, digital marketer and have had different executive roles and also content. So I came from, developing a brand that I built and sold, doing a hundred percent organic kind of content marketing and I wrote a book about it and all that different kind of stuff.

[00:20:25] Henry: So content is always where I live. So how would you take that situation and say, Okay, here's the next 90 days for you. Cause that's how we operate at Digital Marketer 90 day sprints. How would I. Yeah, again, with that consistency, I like the same content to go everywhere, just to make, and it's not hard.

[00:20:45] Henry: We know of lots of different scheduling tools out there where we can just have it scheduled and it will just blast out to everything. So even if you wanted to do it one post at a time, you still just select all your profiles, hit it, and it goes out. So it's very simple to make sure that all the same content goes out everywhere, which again, helps with the whole Multitouch point research.

[00:21:06] Henry: But when we look at the type of content, it's, we don't create a ton of these very granular buckets in which there's different themes of content. We're very much looking at, okay, how do we one provide value in your content and two personality? And those are really the two focuses that we have when it comes to strategizing the type of content that goes out there because.

[00:21:33] Henry: When it's just simply personality as a personal brand that can simply be, like for me, if you look at me on social media, you're gonna see a lot of coffee . Mm-hmm. . I'm obsessed with coffee. I've gotten espresso machine and I've just been obsessed with making different types of coffee and I'm gonna, I show that and that actually creates, and as well as my motorcycling and my stupid adrenaline junkie activities, I love doing.

[00:22:00] Henry: People resonate with that. And I've had people on LinkedIn where a lot of people are like, You shouldn't be posting this kind of informal stuff on LinkedIn. It's a professional platform. I've had people reach out, connect and do business with me because they're seeing that on LinkedIn because otherwise they're just seeing the same generic business professional standard stuff on LinkedIn because they see me posting, I'm at the racetrack today on my motorcycle.

[00:22:29] Henry: There's a talking point and there's, a similar thing that we can connect on, and that's part of the job of branding and marketing is creating that connection and conversation. So I don't like to say that there should be a specific content on one platform or the other. So we'll look at, all right, what are things that define you?

[00:22:50] Henry: What do you like doing? And we can then just make it easy of like, all right, when you do those things, Get photos, get videos, and we can share that out. And then from the value side of things, social listening is huge. Going and looking at your competitors or similar accounts on social media, what kind of content are they posting?

[00:23:12] Henry: What kind of questions are there audience asking? And then you can create content as well on the same thing, or answering the questions that their audience is asking or even using other tools. Answer the public to scrape different Google searches, Google trends, and the keyword planner within Google Ads to see the type of trending keywords and the search volumes per so that you can start seeing what people are searching around, what you do, and then you can create content, answering their questions and giving them solutions.

[00:23:47] Henry: And then that way now, and you can get so much out of that. Mm-hmm. , you can get way more than 90 days of content from using those tools. So we look at that and we go, Okay, let's look at the foundation of your content, providing value and establishing this personality. And then within that you can pepper in the offers so that it's not just constant sell, sell, sell on every single posting.

[00:24:13] Henry: You're creating this connection establishing. then giving an offer. So that would be how we cycle it within those 90 days. But That's the underlying strategy and motivation behind creating content is looking at how do you bring out that value and how do you bring out that personality to create that connection with your audience.

[00:24:36] Henry: Awesome. Okay, so let's say that we established a brand, we got some content rolling. It's consistent, it has that messaging peppered in the offers. Now how do you roll in the marketing side to it? Or is that a completely different function and not something that you do or that's when you partner with people?

[00:24:52] Henry: We do. We partner with people. We'll just recommend out to friends of ours who are awesome at what they do. But that is where the marketing starts rolling in and it can kind. You can slowly incorporate what you've been doing by like just simply boosting the content that you've been creating and start building up data behind what pieces of content, what questions that you're answering are resonating the best with your audience, and then you can start pulling those pieces that you made organically and start turning those into bigger.

[00:25:29] Henry: Advertising campaigns and draw more branches outside of that. But from the foundation of making sure you've got this website we like to call 'em we call it a website, a chalk, a central hub of conversation or communication because website sounds dismissive. Now business owners are like, I just need a website to be a business.

[00:25:52] Henry: But it's this. And you're trying to connect all these assets. So when you've got the website in place and you've got content flowing, now you simply amplify it. That's the marketing job. You amplify it through boosting content on the regular basis to see what kind of things hit. And then pulling them and putting bigger drawn out campaigns and marketing behind those elements that you're now seeing working.

[00:26:20] Henry: It's hard in, the content world to figure out what's gonna work. You think something's you hypothesize that a piece of content's gonna do great and it tanks never does. Yeah. You just throw something out and it just goes viral , so you never know. But if you just do it consistently and you've got that foundation behind your approach to.

[00:26:39] Henry: Then you can just boost them out here and there and see what actually hits. And once something hits, pull it, market it, and really monetize. Nice now for the businesses that say they got started or, you know, say it's just somebody a, new coach or somebody who does that kind of personal touch points with their clients.

[00:26:57] Henry: What if they need the leads sooner? Cause I know with the organic process, I used to tell my clients, I'm like, Hey, we're gonna do this really hard for like a year. And then, Yeah. And that's how we're gonna get results. And a lot of people are like, Okay, well I need sales now or I need leads right now.

[00:27:12] Henry: Do you incorporate, do you just start boosting sooner to figure out what works and what doesn't faster? Or what's your process for kind of speeding everything up? it's hard to say that we could really speed everything up. Usually our foundation when we're building from scratch for someone.

[00:27:30] Henry: Usually the foundation to build is gonna take two to three months for us to get that set up for 'em. And that's fairly quick. And so that's building an entire website, getting a bank of content, rolling and going, getting all this stuff produced and making sure that all the previous history stuff is kind of scraped away.

[00:27:51] Henry: Mm. And that there is that clarity. But if someone's looking to speed it, Then sometimes it can be, and this may, I'm sure there's gonna be advertisers or like, that's horrible advice. But when you spend very little money, sometimes it's hard enough, it's hard to generate enough data to really know what's working.

[00:28:13] Henry: So marketing harder sooner with just more ad spend, and that can help you gather enough data. Optimize into a, single lane that's really working well. And like for us, we've been advertising on all these different platforms lately, and then we found that YouTube just kind of sparked on a particular piece of content and we're like, Okay, cool.

[00:28:36] Henry: Direct the efforts there and that's how we're going to ramp things up. So there is gonna be that little period of. That it takes you to evaluate everything and then really clear it up and strengthen it. But then from there it's kind of how hard do you wanna push in the marketing and make sure that you're paying attention to when you see that shine, that you direct your efforts there to really increase the roi.

[00:29:05] Henry: Nice. Well, I think, yeah, and I think that's everybody's experience in terms of, okay, let's see what's working a little bit faster. Start boosting everything on every platform and go from there. Yeah. So maybe it's just saying a budget, testing it out, and then over time you'll find out that over time thing is always the, hard sell , because nobody likes that.

[00:29:22] Henry: They wanted to see the ROI for the, marketing campaign, and this ad generated this many leads and this ad, blah, blah, blah which is a little bit harder on content because. Wow. I mean, we have our scorecards, right? With scalable and digital marketer where we're saying, Okay, here's the metric we're judging success by.

[00:29:37] Henry: And so for that it might be, I mean, classically for me, especially with my personal brand, just my newsletter list, like, is my list growing? Are people opening up the emails? And then that's how I know I'm being successful, whether I'm. Getting leads or not, or a need leads or not. Do you have the same thing where you, you basically have a, a core metric maybe for you guys whether your YouTube success is impressions or are those converting into newsletter subscribers?

[00:30:02] Henry: Yeah, we like to see one of the things that we're judging with this recent YouTube trial is that, impressions, and that's a nice one to see from a budget standpoint of how many people can I get in front of. But what we're really judging our success by is the watch time. Oh, wow. And seeing how long people on average are watching this part, this particular piece of content.

[00:30:26] Henry: Because then we know not. Oh, we're in a good, we're at a nice low cpm. We can just keep money, putting money into it and reaching a ton of people. But through the watch time, we know that we're re reaching the right people and that they're connecting with that piece of contents and that it's engaging them.

[00:30:46] Henry: And so that's what we've been using because we've been getting incredible watch time through our recent YouTube ads. And that's where we're like, Okay, this particular ad, like we've, nailed it. So now let's just retarget those people who are watching lots amounts of our videos and hit them with our offers.

[00:31:08] Henry: And those are gonna be the people that resonate well with us. So when you're boosting, sometimes it's nice in the beginning to see like just getting reach and impressions to just get a bunch of data available to you. But then from there, I like to look at the watch. and see are people actually sticking around for what we're putting in front of them?

[00:31:31] Henry: Yeah, that's a really good way to do it. And it seems like you have kind of a free form flow to even defining your target market. So you're not saying, Hey, we're putting out content specifically for Joe, the, lake guy or, whatever it is you're saying, let's see who this actually connects with after we make the content, and then we'll decide on the target from there, which is.

[00:31:50] Henry: You probably know who it is, but there's a good chance that you don't, and you'll actually discover that over time, which is actually a different approach, and I like it. Yeah, no, I think you got that really good is like we have a particular idea of who we're trying to reach, but at the same time, you may be surprised by who does resonate with what you're putting out there.

[00:32:09] Henry: And so we're always open to seeing like, where does this perform? Well, Who's liking it because. We're always surprised who does resonate and wanna do business with us. Whe when a little while ago we really hit home with the mortgage and real estate industry and we were stunned that they really enjoyed our style and approach to this world of marketing and branding.

[00:32:34] Henry: But it was just that was not a market we were really think. Was gonna be the one to resonate with us. We were always thinking like coaches and speakers and authors and that kind of thing, but these real estate agents and mortgage brokers were so used to a very like cookie cutter old school method of doing things.

[00:32:52] Henry: And then when they saw the way we approach it, they really liked it and it was just new to them and fun. And so that's. We've had a lot of success within and you just never know. But being open with it and seeing and paying attention to where things do grab, you can take advantage of. that's funny cuz that's, that was my experience too with well, not so much cuz I, had a fitness magazine back in the day, but we also had a gym.

[00:33:19] Henry: So we had a gym in Orange County in, Braa actually in the two thousands. And we built it to be like a grunge, It was one of the original kettlebell gym. So Kettlebells back then weren't a big thing, but that's what we did. And so we had camo netting from the top. It. Black and red and super aggressive.

[00:33:35] Henry: Actually, it reminds me a lot of your, branding with your agency, which is funny. And it was totally just male focused and it was 95% women were our clients. Like we had no guys in there. And then when we did have guys in there, the women would destroy them and then they go away. And that just reinforced the, female atmosphere, which was all chainlink fence and camo netting and didn't go.

[00:33:59] Henry: Anything we thought was gonna be our market, cuz we were actually targeting MMA fighters. We were like, Yeah, there's a lot of MMA fighters, we'll build their, functional training up, blah, blah, blah. And then now it was completely wrong and it was successful. And , we had all these really dedicated long term clients that they got really strong and, but it was completely different than what we were planning.

[00:34:19] Henry: But yeah, And we had a lot of consistency in everything that you guys talk about with your branding. So yeah, my, personal experience is everything you're doing completely works completely different approach from your standard marketing paid advertising approach, which will give you the exact opposite advice.

[00:34:35] Henry: Define the target market, define your offer based on the target market. Define the branding and the creatives based on the target market, and then hit the target market. and this is not that. Yeah. Well, we also, as entrepreneurs, we get into this to create a life that we enjoy doing something. We enjoy having our control of our own time.

[00:34:58] Henry: And so from our perspective, a lot of it is like if someone resonates with us, we probably wanna work with them. So instead of being too harsh on the target, we kind of like to see also who comes to us. And then we can adjust the, advertising and such to cater to those people as well. But when someone comes to us and it resonates and the connection's good, then we have fun and we're happy to still be doing business.

[00:35:25] Henry: So we're not too harsh on that end targeting criteria because we, wanna have fun and, work well with the people who want to work with us. I like that. Well, and you're starting from a basis of something which is mm-hmm. , better than not having anything. Which is what, where a lot of people go into, they're like, Okay, well you're gonna do an advertising campaign, and they throw out the brand and they're like, No, we're gonna make this advertising campaign successful.

[00:35:50] Henry: But I like it cuz if you have all those elements and you're so consistent on all the different channels, then doing the ads is just a pulling pieces that you need to fill in the ad content or to fill in that stuff cuz it works and you appear a certain. And you're good to go. So, and, everything that does then is reinforcing the brand because you built up the advertising from a basis of the brand first.

[00:36:13] Henry: Yeah, It's that whole, it's that whole ecosystem. When people are in your funnel and they're seeing something, when they fall outside of it and they're looking elsewhere, does it all match? Does it all vibe the same? And if it does, then awesome. Then they're gonna have a much easier time connecting. But it's the marketing is gonna thrive on top of a solid brand foundation.

[00:36:40] Henry: That's what it's there for. It's to set the foundation to make sure that when people hear about you, discover you, that there's this whole world now that you have all these assets working together to build confidence within that audience member and. Make that conversion happen a whole lot easier. I love that.

[00:37:02] Henry: Well, I think this is super helpful, and I love talking about branding cuz it's such a abstract topic that isn't really covered in a lot of the different, marketing disciplines. So if somebody wanted to work with you guys or, get started on the path that you guys set, how would they do that?

[00:37:17] Henry: Yeah, you can go to our website, sims.media and reach out there. You'll see all of our accounts there. And we'd be happy to help you. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming out, Henry. I think it's totally different approach than what we, talk about a lot of the times. So I really like it and I like how it, pulls the personality.

[00:37:36] Henry: Cuz a lot of times, businesses fail not because the target market wasn't there, The product was bad, but because they just didn't have the passion for it. And I think yeah, with your approach where you're, finding that that clarity for your clients, they have that basis. They know who they are and now the other stuff could flow from.

[00:37:53] Henry: Versus selling something that you don't actually like. So yeah, I think you're doing great work and really excited you came on to talk about it. Thank you. All right. Thanks so much for listening. Be sure to hit that follow button so you get notified when all of our new episodes release.

[00:38:08] Henry: Please share that this with a friend who is clueless about digital marketing, and don't forget to visit digital market.com where you get access to all of our courses, certifications, and training programs. Thanks again everyone, and we'll see you next.