How Using Challenger Branding Accelerates Business Growth

Kathy (host):

Hello there and welcome back to another episode of Help My Business is Growing, a podcast where we explore how to grow and build a business that is healthy and sustainable. I’m your host, Kathy Svetina, a fractional CFO and founder of Newcastle Finance, a company where we believe that everything you do in your business will eventually end up in your finances. And to get to healthy finances is to have a healthy business.

Kathy (host):

How do you get there? Well, this is where this podcast comes in to help. If you’re running a growing business, you know the competition is tough. And it’s easy to just get blended in the sea of sameness of other companies. So how do you differentiate yourself and stand out, especially when you’re currently not the biggest player in the industry? And again, this is important for your finances.

Kathy (host):

One effective way is through challenger branding, a unique and powerful strategy many businesses overlook that can help them succeed in a competitive market. It can help you create a distinctive brand and set you apart from competitors, meaning that you can charge higher prices, have better revenue options, and all that good stuff. But what is challenger branding exactly? And would it work for a small business? And how can you use your company’s culture to make this approach work for you?

Kathy (host):

As a quick reminder, all the episodes on this podcast, including this one, come with timestamps for topics that we discuss, and each one has its own blog post. You can find all the links and the detailed topics in the episode show notes.

Kathy (host):

My guest today is Mike Sullivan. He is the President and CEO of Loomis, the country’s leading challenger brand advertising agency. For more than 30 years, he’s helped some of the country’s most successful companies build their brands. He is also the author of the book “The Voice of the Underdog: How Challenger Brands Create Distinction by Thinking Culture First.” Join us.

Kathy (host): 

Welcome to the show, Mike.

Mike (guest):

Well, thank you very much, Kathy. Glad to be here.

Kathy (host): 

Yeah, and I’m glad you’re here because we’re going to be talking about branding and positioning. And you know, for someone who deals with finances and numbers, I strangely love to talk about this a lot. And if you’re listening to this, we’re currently about 60 episodes into this podcast. And if you check what was the most talked-about topic, it was marketing. There’s a reason for it. Because when marketing is done well, it will make a significant financial impact on the business. And it’s also why I practically get hives when I hear businesses talking about cutting marketing spending to save costs (and I’m putting this in quotation marks). Because unless things are really not working out, this is a perfect example of being pennywise and pound-foolish.

Kathy (host):

But you know, this little rant aside, Mike, you wrote a book about challenger brands, and your business is an actual example of that too. And I have so many questions about that. But first, let’s dive into what is challenger branding exactly.

Mike (guest): 

Yeah, well, first of all, I want to just concur with you 100% – marketing should really be looked at as an investment, not an expense. And it shouldn’t be held to those standards in terms of marketing ROI. But challenger brands are the kind of brands that we have a real special affinity for. And, classically defined, any brand that is not the leading brand in the category is technically a challenger brand. You’re challenging to become the category leader, or at least to overtake the position just ahead of you. But we think about it a little more broadly than that.

Mike (guest): 

When you look at classic challenger brands, some of my favorites are Uber and Airbnb. If you look at them, they have really unique cultures. So the first thing is, you’re in a state of being in the market. You’re not number one. So they have sort of a culture of ambition. They’re striving for something better, wanting to overtake a competitor just in front of them. Then we talk about the state of mind. Challenger brands are either already the best at something or they are striving to become the best at something for their consumers. And we characterize that as a culture of commitment.

Mike (guest): 

From my perspective, I think the most important thing is what we call a state of readiness. And that really comes down to the leadership’s willingness to take on new modes of thinking, to break with category conventions, and do things differently to disrupt. And that takes a lot of courage. We call that a culture of willingness. When these three elements come together, you get brands like Uber, Airbnb, Warby Parker, Redbull, and other wonderful challenger brands that I love talking about.

Kathy (host): 

So, these are all big brands, obviously—you know, Uber, Airbnb—but how do you apply this to the small business world? Because a lot of people, might think is, “Yeah, this is all fine. But how does this really look like in the small business space? Is this even possible in the small business space?” From my perspective, I would argue that you know, any business starts as a small business. So, you have to start somewhere. But what is your take on that?

Mike (guest): 

Well, no, you’re 100% right. And that’s very often the reaction that you get. But what people forget is that they’re looking at sort of the finished product. You know, you look at Red Bull, you go, “Oh, my God, they’re the biggest, you know, beverage company in the world, following Coke, perhaps, but they’re certainly the biggest energy beverage company in the world.” They weren’t always like that. They started off as this little, tiny, Austrian, quirky beverage, and they snuck up on the category leader. One of my favorites to talk about is Chick-fil-A. Well, you know, Truett Kathy, back in the 60s, he started with one Chicken Shack. He didn’t start with a chain of chicken stores. But what he did, and what every challenger brand leader needs to do, is he got really clear on his values. And his values are the things that informed every aspect of his behavior. They helped him create his mission, his vision, whether he articulated that clearly or not. From the jump, he had a felt sense of who he was and what he wanted to put into the world. And then he was disciplined about that. And what you see today is a product of Truett’s original work, getting very clear on his values. And in his case, obviously, this is important for challenger brands, to think about what your values are, to think about what you say yes to, what you say no to. You can’t be all things to all people. That’s a tragic marketing mistake that we see all the time. For example, we’ve got a client that’s a fitness gym chain. They aren’t the gym for everybody. They’re a gym for a very specific group of people. But very often, clients will say, “Well, everybody needs to work out. So our product is for everybody.” That’s just not an effective strategy. You know, get radically focused on your customer, understand who they are, understand what your values are, and then build a product or a service offering that is custom-tailored, bespoke for them. And then more people will find that product, and you sort of iterate from there.

Kathy (host): 

So, I don’t know if you know this, and we haven’t talked about this in a prep either. But I’m very much right now, even for my business, I have dived into this context of positioning. And it’s interesting because if you do positioning well on the market, it’s essentially what you’re putting together. You’re putting together a context for people to think about the way they think about your product, the way they think about your service. And that’s what it’s all about. You might be serving all people, but positioning yourself on the market in a specific way means that you’re giving people context on how they should be thinking about you. So if someone is thinking about, “Okay, so how do I really do this? In reality, how does this look like? How do I use those two things if I want to position myself as a challenging brand?” What would you say to someone like that?

Mike (guest):

That’s a really good question, Kathy. So I’m going to use my own company as an example here. So I’m in the advertising agency business. I’ve been in the business for almost 40 years, believe it or not.

Kathy (host):

And congratulations on that.

Mike (guest):

Yeah, thank you. It’s not an easy thing to survive, but I’ve done it. But one of the things that ad agencies are terrible at is positioning. We give all this advice for our clients, and then we don’t take it for ourselves. We want to say yes to everybody, so if you’re a franchise company, or if you’re a bank, or if you’re a pharmaceutical or healthcare, yeah, we’ll take all your business, that’s who we are. That is really an effective place to play. What we did is we identified a group of clients, it really cuts across a lot of industries, that we define as challenger brands.

Mike (guest): 

And we said, “Okay, we’re an agency that really focuses on challenger brands.” Well, who are challenger brands? So these are the folks that they’ve got to outthink and not outspend the competition, they don’t have an embarrassment of riches to market themselves. So that requires us to develop an entirely different ethos, an entirely different approach to marketing ourselves.

Mike (guest):

Well, I can’t tell you over the course of the years, over the last 15 years, how many prospects call me and say, “Oh, my gosh, we are a challenger brand.” They see themselves in what we’re offering. And so we glow in the dark. And what we call that, Kathy, and this is great work from a think tank out of London called the Eat Big Fish consultancy. And they wrote a book called “Eating the Big Fish.” And in that book, Adam Morgan describes what he calls a lighthouse identity.

Mike (guest):

Okay, so you think about what a lighthouse is. A lighthouse is what ships use to navigate the ocean so they don’t hit the rocks and they don’t hit the shelves and all that good stuff. Well, what you’re trying to do with your brand, and there are some great examples of this out there, is you’re trying to create a lighthouse whereby consumers, anybody who’s consuming your brand, whether you’re B2B or B2C, they are navigating the category using you as a lighthouse. It’s like, “Oh, I know who they are.” And they then sort of define the context for everybody else.

Mike (guest):

And so that’s really what you’re trying to get to as a company. It’s like radical clarity on who you are and who you aren’t. And that allows people to either select you or not select you, but they’re really clear about your positioning. You show up with one clear, clean personality, people get you.

Kathy (host): 

And if someone is trying to do this, and they’re going through this process, and they’ve said okay, I understand I need to do it and I’m in the process of doing it. What would your advice be? Can they do To this alone, or do you need to hire someone the problem when it comes to this, as they say, it’s hard to read labor from the bottle. So how much of a challenge is it if someone were to do it themselves versus, you know, hiring someone, and who should they hire, if they do hire someone to help them with that?

Mike (guest): 

It certainly can’t be done alone; some people have really just great marketing minds, and they’re able to do that. I always think it’s, you know, in our industry, we pair writers and art directors together because two heads are better than one, and they come at it from a different direction, and they crack it a little quicker. They come up with more novel solutions, so I’m a big fan of, you know, bringing in help.

Mike (guest): 

Sometimes you can do that without spending money; maybe you’ve got somebody in your network who’s a great marketer, and maybe you can trade services and guidance, you know, with them and sort of bounce these sorts of concepts off of them. Or, you know, it may make sense to hire somebody; it depends on where you are, what your budget level is, and all that sort of thing. But there are a lot of great consultants out there who really do understand this stuff and I think and provide the kind of guidance, so I would say that I lean on the side of bringing somebody else in to sort of test your thinking.

Mike (guest): 

It’s tough to kind of look in the mirror all day long and sort stuff out. Again, you can get it right, but I think the old mantra “two heads are better than one” is appropriate here, for sure. I will say that I didn’t even come to our challenger brand positioning on my own. I actually put in this is another good way to do this; I actually got out.

Mike (guest): 

I was attending a conference in, I was actually up in Silicon Valley at the campus of Yahoo, and Mark Barton, for me big fish, was at this conference. And he was talking about challenger brands. And what I noticed was every CEO in the room, there’s over 100 of them, were in lean-forward mode for the full two days. I’m like, my gosh, this is got their attention. This is a rich vein here. And so that’s what prompted me to sort of bring the positioning back to the agency, and it took some convincing among my fellow leaders here at the agency that this was the right move for us.

Mike (guest): 

And so that’s another thing too, but don’t look for everybody to just jump in and go, “Oh, my gosh, you got it! That’s great.” You know, you always meet with resistance, especially the more novel and interesting and different ideas, the more resistance you’ll meet. It’s a test all the way through, I think, in that respect.

Kathy (host): 

And when you do that change, how long did it take for you to see the difference in the companies that you worked with? How did the market react, and how long did it take for you to see that reaction in the market?

Mike (guest): 

I would say, in our case, it started to immediately shape who our new business prospects were. And so I’d say within the first six to 12 months, you know, that started to shift. The biggest challenge, I think, is depending on the size of your organization, is really imbuing it into the culture and getting the language to change, to getting thinking to change, to inviting new people into the organization who want to sign up for that and parting with folks who don’t, you know, those are difficult decisions as well. Well, I don’t want to work on challenger brands. I want to work on brand-day brands. I want to build my resume, you know, that kind of stuff does come up. And so you’re really curating a culture around your positioning.

Mike (guest):

And this is another very important point in the book, one of the main themes is that culture drives brand. And this is my favorite definition of brand. And we hear all kinds of definitions out there. I’ve read them all and thought about them all and written some of myself, but your brand is what people think it’s like to do business with you. It’s real simple. Your brand is what, yeah, if that is true, well, your culture drives your behavior. Culture drives everything about what we do, what we think, how we show up. A culture that’s expressed, unexpressed, frankly, the unexpressed rules in an organization are far more powerful than an express rule. It’s what we do, not what we say.

Mike (guest):

So that culture and this is the brilliance of brands like Chick-fil-A, that culture needs to meet up with your brand ambitions. And so if Chick-fil-A’s aspiration is to be the nicest, quick-service restaurant brand in the industry, and by the way, they are, and that’s measurable, and to put goodness and positivity in the world, well, by gosh, their culture better reflect that. They can’t then treat their employees like the typical employees treated in the QSR industry. They’ve got to do something to elevate. And they’ve done that from the inside out. I can’t overstate the importance of getting culture right, even before you start to really think about how that looks as a brand in the world.

Mike (guest):

And so going back to your point about, “Gosh, what can small entrepreneurs do?” They can really start to hone in on their culture and be really intentional about the sort of values that they want to be operating by. It informs everything.

Kathy (host): 

Yeah, so what I’m essentially hearing is you need that congruence between what you’re signaling to the market and what you actually have happening in your business internally.

Mike (guest): 

100%. And congruence is exactly the right word. Kathy, we write about that in our book. It’s, you know, I used to tell my kids, “I can’t hear what you’re saying; your behavior speaks too loudly.” You know, why not speed things up? And this is really important for leaders too. And one of my messages in all the talks that I give and discussions I have around this is that cash, it really does all start with leadership.

Mike (guest): 

You can’t outrun your leadership. I’ve got a dear friend who runs a leadership development program that I actually went through called the Stake and Leadership Academy. And he often relates is that leaders will come to him and say, “Hey, I need to develop a program for my people. I need to get my people fixed. I need to develop them,” with no regard whatsoever for their own development. And he always laughs because he listens for that too, because it’s like, “No, you need to get the mask on your face before you can begin to help anybody else. You really need to work on your own development.”

Mike (guest):  

And I think that goes to leadership development. A lot of us give ourselves a lot of credit for being great leaders because of our title as CEO or president or boss. It’s just not true. If anything, that comes with a lot of liabilities. You know, folks won’t always be honest with you. So, look in the mirror, do your own development work. And I think that’ll pay dividends throughout all of this stuff.

Kathy (host): 

And you bring up a good point, especially in small businesses. When you start a business, people usually do it because they enjoy what they’re doing and want to offer it to clients or customers. But running a business is very different from being really good at what you do. You have to handle business development, sales, and team management, and figure out how to effectively lead your people. There are so many other aspects to consider in a business.

Kathy (host): 

I always say, “If you want professional and personal development on steroids, go start a business.” Because nothing will reveal your weaknesses and strengths as much as running a business. I see this all the time with the businesses I work with. They may be growing, but they often realize that things aren’t happening the way they need them to. And that’s because many crucial leadership elements are missing. They have to figure out how to address that.

Kathy (host): 

So, what I usually recommend is seeking the guidance of leadership coaches. While I focus on finances and I’m not a leadership coach myself, I recognize the importance of having that support. It will have a significant impact on how everything ultimately translates into numbers and financials.

Mike (guest): 

Yeah, there’s no doubt about it. I think that leadership development is one of the biggest game-changers in an organization. I personally went through a one-year intensive leadership development course back in 2009, and it has had a lasting impact on me. Even though I thought I was a pretty good leader, I couldn’t see my blind spots. That’s where a good program comes in. It elevates your self-awareness, allowing you to see more options and have greater success.

Mike (guest): 

But it doesn’t stop there. As a leader becomes more aware and has more choices, there is an obligation and responsibility to help elevate the awareness of those around them. A leader can see things that others can’t, and it’s important to bring them along in a way that honors their own development. That’s what I did in my organization. I put several of my leaders through the same program, which helped us develop a shared language and understanding. It elevated the awareness of everyone in the organization and improved our culture.

Mike (guest): 

As a result, we have been recognized as one of the best places to work for 10 consecutive times by the Dallas Morning News and the Dallas Business Journal. I consider that a high-water benchmark for my own leadership. If we were to miss that list, I would look in the mirror and question what we’re not doing and what needs improvement. Making that list every year is not a given and it gets increasingly challenging.

Mike (guest): 

These are just some of the things I would say to anyone, regardless of whether they have a two-person shop or 1,000 employees. As my friend Randy says, “Leaders get the organization they deserve.” The organization can only develop as far as the leader develops, and it requires hard work.

Kathy (host): 

I hate to put you on the spot here, but I’m really interested in your personal journey. What were some of the challenges that you had in your leadership development? And how did you overcome that?

Mike (guest): 

There are so many, Kathy. But I’ll tell you, one was—and this, I think, is probably the truth for a lot of entrepreneurs—I was hustling hard. I worked hard. I worked sideline to sideline, probably too hard for most people. And I expected the same from those around me. I expected that very same intensity. Anything less suggested to me that they just weren’t as committed and they weren’t, you know, wow, did I have to adjust my game with respect to that? I chased off some good people, you know, sadly. I think my own sense of compassion around that has opened up.

Mike (guest):

I also recognize that gosh, I don’t have to be the smartest guy in the room. And by the way, if I am, there’s a problem. You know, and I think a lot of us as young entrepreneurs, we build our careers through personal heroics, and then we get above when people need us, and we get a buzz when we’re the ones with the right answer. That was me, certainly through my 30s, and maybe chased me into my 40s. But making the turn and recognizing, “No, wait a minute, you know, there are folks who have greater capacities for these things than I do. Let me help them develop them.”

Mike (guest):

My partner, Julie, is a great example of this. We’ve worked together for 22 years. When I came into the organization, I was President, she was a young account person. She didn’t have all the training that she needed. But God, she had all the raw materials. Well, she fell out, stripped me and out, kicked me from her ability to lead clients and run this organization. My ego would have been so in front of that and would have kept that growth down. And I think maybe I did early on. But once I got out of the way and allowed her to blossom and invested as much in her development, it’s just, she flourished. And I can’t imagine where we’d be without her capacity.

Mike (guest):

As a leader, we wouldn’t be halfway where we are right now. And she’s one example. There are many other folks inside the organization. It’s about, I think, recognizing your blind spots, getting out of the way, doing what you do best, and sort of relaxing into it. It takes some practice, it really does.

Kathy (host): 

I like to think of it in a way where it’s not about you, even if you started the company. In my head, the way I think about companies is that they have their own persona. They’re almost like their own person. Yeah. So how do you take care of this? If we think that the company is its own person, how do we take care of it in the best way possible? And a lot of times, even though you started it, you might not be the best person to take care of it.

Mike (guest):

100%.

Kathy (host): 

Obviously, no one can be good at everything. So, thinking about it, not what’s good for you personally, even sometimes you get into your own ego, as you said, but what is good for the company? And how can you strategically put people in the right places in the right seat so that the company thrives? And obviously, if you’re the owner, if that company thrives, then you’re thriving by definition of it, right?

Mike (guest): 

Yeah, well, Kathy, first of all, I think that’s exactly the right way to think about a company. It is a living organism, just like a person. I mean, that’s essentially what the culture is, it’s shaped by people, it’s changing with every person who leaves, every person who goes.

Mike (guest): 

And I think really, this might sound a little hippie and out there with folks, but it gosh, it starts with love. It starts with loving the company, loving the people, and really developing a genuine interest in their development. It’s sort of giving first and getting second, you know, really developing that orientation, developing an orientation around trying to help people transform and grow and not making things just transactional. Again, it sounds a little esoteric, but you have to, I think, treat your company the way you would treat someone you love and try to help it flourish in every way that you possibly can.

Mike (guest): 

If you do that, what you find is that all of a sudden, you’ll be surrounded by co-conspirators, you know, people who are trying to help you create something that’s really good in the world because it’s good for them too. Everybody wants to answer the question, “What’s in it for me?” whether they say that explicitly or not. When people understand that you are really for them and you’re trying to help build them, it pays huge dividends.

Mike (guest): 

One quick example is that in most organizations if you want to leave, that’s the last thing you tell your boss, that’s the last thing you talk about. When you’re interviewing, you got to sneak around and pretend you have dentist appointments. And you’ve got to, you know, all this kind of nonsense. We tell people, and we mean it, if they want to leave, we’ll help them. I’m interested. I’m very proud of the careers that our alumni have gone on to build. I mean, it’s a really great agency and great company. That makes me really proud. I don’t want anybody to stay here beyond sort of their term limit if you will.

Mike (guest): 

If people want to move on, I want to help them with that. And when you collaborate and cooperate in that way, it’s amazing what shows up. I mean, we’ve had people return as clients, we’ve had people return as employees, and again, we’ve had clients return because we take that same orientation toward our client relationships.

Mike (guest): 

You know, a lot of agencies, man, when a client says they’re done, it’s like, “Oh, well, I’m gonna pitch the keys on the roof and walk away. You know, that’s your problem.” And we’re not that way. I mean, if you’re really trying to operate, if you’re trying to put some good into the world and do the right things, you have to hold that orientation, even when it’s most challenging. And perhaps when it’s especially most challenging. We’ve had clients leave, we thought the circumstances were really unfair. And still, you show up in a way that you’re trying to put good energy into that even that leaving transaction, and it ultimately pays dividends.

Mike (guest): 

What we follow basically are the tenets of conscious capitalism. I’m not sure if you’re familiar with the whole conscious capitalism movement, but it’s fantastic stuff. And the results speak for themselves. A book you are probably interested in, Kathy, if you haven’t read it, is “Firms of Endearment” by Raj DeSoto. He’s a financial guy think, and he made a really compelling case for companies that operate by the tenets, the four tenets of conscious capitalism. And I won’t recall them all, but the outsized financial return to these companies as compared to their peer sets, it’s unreal. And the thing that sits in the middle of all that is the stakeholder orientation, as opposed to a shareholder extractive sort of everything done in service of shareholders, you know, everything else is damned. The stakeholder orientation is not sort of a win-lose construct, it’s really a win-win-win.

Mike (guest): 

So, your employees would be a stakeholder, your clients, obviously, a stakeholder, your customers, your vendor partners (I hate the word vendor, but that’s the nomenclature), but your vendor partners, your community, when you’re really trying to balance the equation so that all of them benefit from what your enterprise is putting into the world, I mean, magic happens in that place. And the book “Firms of Endearment” does just a masterful job of laying that out. And so, we try to operate along those lines. And it’s not always easy, it really, it’s a lot easier to inexpedient, sometimes to do the easy thing, but we really tried to hold ourselves to that standard.

Kathy (host): 

Thank you for suggesting that book; I’ll definitely check it out and also put it in the show notes if anyone else is interested in this as well. And I 100% agree with you because I come from the corporate world and how many times I have seen made financial, operational, and any other decisions in a pennywise and pound foolish way, as we talked about at the beginning because they’re so concerned about the next quarter, about how the stock market’s going to react. And you know, we need to get our stock up.

Kathy (host):

And I always say, you know, the easiest way to show a lot of profit on your profit and loss statement is you just slashed costs, you just started firing people, use last, you know, your marketing, you slash all of these things. It will look great, it will absolutely look great for maybe three to six months, but you reap what you sow. And six months to a year later, you will have some tremendous problems. So having this short-term view, it’s not doing anyone any favors, and not even the stock market for the mistakes.

Mike (guest): 

Now, it’s really true. And obviously, there are some real flaws with that whole model and that construct. I think it’s something that does need to be cured. And at some point, maybe it will be.

Mike (guest): 

For me personally, that’s one of the reasons I’ve always been attracted to smaller, sort of private concerns. You have more control; you don’t have to deal with a lot of the stuff that comes along with big corporations. There’s plenty of goodness there too. It’s just what do you want to sign up for and how hard do you want to be wrestling with the challenges that come along with that. In my case, not much. You know, I just don’t have much capacity for that.

Mike (guest):  

But in a smaller concern, I think this is what’s great about being, you know, our entrepreneurs. Gosh, the course is yours to chart when, but be deliberate. You know, think intentionally about, okay, what is it that I want to create? And if the results aren’t there immediately, that is the great thing with sort of a long-term perspective. You know, if you believe in it, you can take a three, five, ten-year perspective.

Mike (guest): 

The group that I’m involved with, the Stake and Leadership Community brand, they’ve got companies in there that have, crazy enough, but they’ve got 25 and 50-year horizons, you know, and some even longer than that, some generational companies in that thinking. One of my former clients and friends at First United Bank, gosh, they’re on sort of a 100-year trajectory, which is just kind of overwhelming to think about.

Mike (guest): 

Now, you might look at that and say from a planning perspective, well, that’s silly. You know, so much is going to change, how can we possibly know? And yet, values don’t have to change; a mission doesn’t have to change. And certainly, we can adjust to the circumstances. But if you understand who you are, it’s a lot easier to navigate those difficulties than if you’re trying to figure it out on the way and always retreating. That becomes really challenging.

Mike (guest): 

And the other thing is, from a leadership standpoint, it’s really attractive to know who you are. People really are attracted to companies, brands, people who have a clearer sense of who they are, not to be completed with ego, but just a real clear understanding of who they are and what they do want to turn to, how they’re trying to operate in a world. That’s attractive.

Kathy (host): 

And I always like to bring this back into very concrete examples. Do you have an example of a small business that started with we are for everyone, our customer is everyone? And they evolved into this challenger brand. And now they’re thriving. Do you have an example of that?

Mike (guest): 

Well, one that’s fresh on my head, just because my buddy is working with us to kind of help them make the turn on it. My friend, Brands Wing, actually is the guy who runs his company. And he bought a small CPA firm called LJB, a CPA firm for everybody. And Brands is working on and has been since he took the firm over two years ago, on making a transition to where he really just wants to deal with companies and businesses that are trying to put good into the world. Again, coming back to this whole conscious capitalism orientation. His express purpose is to essentially elevate humanity through good accounting practices if you will. And it’s not just about accounting.

Mike (guest):

Well, in the last year, and by the way, through all of the pandemic, I mean, Brands’ heart, I mean, he’s got a huge heart. He’s a numbers guy, you’d appreciate that for sure. He’s got a great head for numbers, obviously. But he’s got a great heart and a great love for just helping businesses thrive and survive and so through the entire pandemic, I mean, his business over the last year has doubled, just by getting radically clear on the kinds of companies that he wants to work for. And very clear on the kinds of companies that de-energize him and de-energize his team. And that’s really important, from a cultural standpoint, is thinking about who you want to invite into your organization, especially if you’re a service provider, your clients have everything to do with your culture.

Mike (guest): 

There’s a book, it’s sort of the, I guess it’s called “No Assholes” or something like that. And the whole premise of the book is being really deliberate about who you want to offer your services to and how you want to shape your organization. Brands has done a great job of that. And he’s currently in the process of actually renaming the firm and re-messaging the firm, and I predict great things from him. So that’ll be a company to kind of keep your eye on, you know, over the course of time here. And there’s many others like that, Kathy, I’m sure you can pull a bunch of other examples if we have the time.

Kathy (host): 

This is really interesting, even when I think about your agency when you went out there and you said, “We want to work with challenger brands,” and then Brands, that he wanted to do business with those particular customers. But you could say, “Well, if I’m doing prospecting, let’s say, right, because I just started doing that. And marketing is going to take a while to take root and for people to understand. But if I’m doing prospecting, it’s hard to go and there’s no filter that says, you know, ‘Yeah, are you a challenger brand? What type of company we’re looking at, from the ethos perspective?’ Like, how would you manage that from the beginning when you need to get the business that you want to get, but the positioning is not as established just yet on the market?”

Mike (guest): 

Yeah, that’s a great question, Kathy. So we’re talking about marketing funnel stuff. Now, we’re at the top of the marketing funnel, and we’re casting a wide net because we’re trying to expose our services to everybody in service of finding the right customers as well.

Mike (guest): 

Now, a couple of things here: when I first started with this agency, and it was just this little fledgling shop, and we didn’t have any clients, we did indeed take on business that paid the bills and kept the lights on. And we understood what the role for that client was. So it didn’t involve compromise very often. Early on, we had some clients that, and I didn’t love the category, I really didn’t love the clients personally, and the way they were oriented, but it was serving a purpose, and it was helping us move along the trail. So I’m not suggesting turn down anything that doesn’t absolutely fit your mold unless you have the wherewithal to do that.

Mike (guest):

But once you start moving in the right direction, and you’ve achieved some stability, and you have the luxury of saying no to clients and saying no to opportunities, which is really important to understand your no’s, then you need to start doing that. And so what we’ll do is we get all kinds of inquiries through our website, through our network, and just by virtue of our reputation, and that’s great, but our very first act is to put together a discovery call. And in that call, we learn everything we need to know about whether or not that client would be a good fit for us or not. And when they’re not a good fit for any number of reasons, maybe it’s a category my team isn’t particularly interested in, maybe there’s a personality that, you know, we’re getting read here that we’re not going to be good. And we all know that we are any number of things, what we’ll do is we’ll make a referral, you know, to somebody else. We want to help them along. It’s not like “No, go away,” we definitely want to help them along. But we are quick to recognize when the opportunity is not going to honor what we’re trying to do in the world. And we make that hard call.

Mike (guest): 

Earlier in my career, that was much more difficult for me to do, you know, so I got clear on my own values and the kind of day that I wanted to have and the kind of day that I wanted my team to have. It became easier to do, and it is such an empowering place to be to be able to say yes and to be able to say no, with all the respect in the world. But to be very clear about who you want to give your services to. You work really hard, you have something to offer, and just make sure that the folks on the receiving end are worthy of that. That’s all.

Kathy (host): 

I’m in a position now that I could do the same in my business as well. And it still hurts to say no to business.

Mike (guest):

Yeah, it does.

Kathy (host):

But if you’re looking at it from a perspective of conscious capitalism, it’s like, “What is going to serve the client the best?” Yeah, so you’re putting your needs behind the client. So the client’s needs are always in the front part. And the best way to serve the client could be that they just have to work with someone else.

Mike (guest): 

Yeah, 100% Kathy, and again, too, if you’re taking business that doesn’t align with your values, is not congruent with your culture, and all that sort of thing, your team members know that. And so, a lot of times, I think leaders who will say, “Well, you know, we’ll get through it, we’ll just give it to this team, and they’ll just do it.” But you lose all kinds of credibility in that, and then you can’t stand up and say, “Well, hey, we’ve got these values, and we live these values,” and you know, it just doesn’t work. It’s again incongruent. It’s like, “I can’t hear what you’re saying because your behavior speaks too loudly,” and then things start to crumble. So, again, it’s none of this is easy. It involves hard decisions, and I hate saying no to revenue too.

Mike (guest): 

We had a client prospect, this goes back probably four or five years ago, they were desperate for us to take their business, which is kind of crazy. It literally would have doubled our revenue. And the reason they were desperate is frankly the reason we ultimately turned them down, and I won’t get into who it is or even the category because I don’t want to start anything. But I was really proud of the decision. And it also hurt. You know, I went home for a week, and I was like, “Oh, my God, what we could have done with that revenue, and how that would have really helped the organization thrive.” And we can think of all the good things, but ultimately, it was absolutely the right decision. And I’m glad we made it. And we’ve made many like that.

Kathy (host): 

Yeah, otherwise, you would have been in a position of trading values for money.

Mike (guest): 

And by the way, I know I would have lost people, too, people that I really think a whole lot of. And while this isn’t a democracy, kind of is, you know, at least the way I run things, I really want the thoughts and opinions of my folks, and whether I follow them or not, at least they know that I value them. And I do want to hear from them. Simply do it the way you want to do it with no regard for anybody else just is not a good long-term plan at all.

Kathy (host): 

So, Mike, this has been an absolute fantastic conversation. I love all the paths that we took with this. So if someone is listening to this and says, “Okay, I understand what the challenger brand is, I understand the positioning, I understand the values that I need in the business. There’s a lot of stuff happening here, right? Where can I start? What can I do in the next week or two if I want to go down this path of a challenger brand? What can I do, something tangible?

Mike (guest): 

Well, the first thing I would say, Kathy, is to get really clear on your values, you know, what is it that you are? What is it that is important to you? And then from that, if you don’t have a mission statement, by gosh, commit it to writing. You know, there’s so much power in that. I mean, sit down and actually write out a mission statement. Here’s what we’re doing in the world, and then create a vision statement. I mean, these are really simple things, a vision statement, okay? Who do we want to become? Who do we aspire to? It doesn’t mean that you won’t ever amend that. But put something down in writing. And if you’ve got some peers in your business that are important, and they’re all important, I think, in these sorts of discussions, invite them into that discussion. I think that’s a really smart, tangible thing that you can go and do. And you might say, “Yeah, but that’s not going to win me an account today, or that’s not going to get me a new customer today.”

Mike (guest): 

Believe me, you’re putting things in motion, you’re putting forces in motion that you don’t even fully understand. Even if you don’t come back to that for six months or a year, you’re starting to do the work. So I would say that number one, number two, I would say invest in your leadership. All of this sort of cascades out of that. Invest something in your own leadership, whether it’s just reading some good books on the topic or actually enrolling in a leadership development program, which I couldn’t recommend more. You know, do that.

Kathy (host): 

Mike, where can people find you?

Mike (guest): 

Well, they can find me on my website at Loomisagency.com. That’s T-H-E-L-O-O-M-I-Sagency.com. By the way, we could have gotten that URL when we got that URL all those years ago, we could have gotten TLA. But we thought spelling out our whole name was a good idea. Anyway, you can get me there. Any of the contact buttons will come straight to me and some other folks in the organization. And certainly, if you want to see the book, if you want to read the book, that’s on Amazon, “Voice of the Underdog: How Challenger Brands Create Distinction by Thinking Culture First.”

Kathy (host): 

Awesome. Mike, thank you so much for being on the show. Really appreciate it.

Mike (guest):

Yeah. Thank you, Kathy.

Kathy (host): 

Well, thanks so much for joining me on this episode today. And I hope that you picked up some great tips on how your culture and using the challenger brand strategy help you stand out in a crowded market. Also, if you love this episode, you can find all the timestamps, show notes, blog posts, and links on my website, newcastlefinance.us/podcast. And before I go, as always, I do have a favor to ask if you’re listening to this on Apple Podcasts. If you could please go to the show and tap the number of stars that you think the show deserves, because this gives us that much-needed Apple algorithm love and it helps other people find it and benefit from it as well. Thanks so much. Until next time.