Unlocking Remarkable Brands | Crafting Your Authentic Identity with Mike Jones [Part 1]
Get ready to unlock your brand's full potential and embark on a journey towards authenticity and impact. Since Episode 32, we began our quest into the art of storytelling. Now, it's time to pivot our gaze inward and explore the pivotal half of brand storytelling – the brand itself. With Mike's wealth of expertise from reshaping accounting firm brands, we're about to unearth the secrets that make a brand truly remarkable.
Join host Bryce McNabb and his friend and colleague, Mike Jones, CEO award-winning branding agency, Resound and author of the book, You Are Remarkable: How To Unlock Your Authentic Brand To Win Loyal Customers, as they delve into the heart of brand identity in this invigorating episode of Storytelligent.
You’ll Learn
Person-to-Brand Transformation: Learn how a robust brand identity elevates customer relationships.
The Authenticity Imperative: Embrace your brand's authentic core for lasting customer loyalty.
Cracking the Brand DNA Code: Dive into the essential elements of a powerful brand – clarity, consistency, and creativity.
Key Terms
Remarkable Brand: An exceptional brand that resonates deeply with its audience through authenticity and purpose.
Brand DNA: The fundamental traits and elements that define a brand's identity and perception.
Transcript
Mike Jones (00:00):
I think that the challenge that I've seen with professional services is that for so many, the way they've built their business is based on their own personal brand, right? So it's the individual relationships that they see driving business, especially when they're small, as they scale bigger and bigger, I think the brand plays more and more of a part in that process. And I know that's what we're gonna get to in our conversation of like, why is the brand important? But I think a lot of it is, like I, I've, I've never met, uh, anyone, any partner within a professional services firm, accounting firm, law firm, engineering firm, um, who doesn't believe that relationship is really, really, really important. Right? Right. 'cause that's how they built their business. It was all relationship, it was all me. Building relationships with potential clients and whether it was networking or speaking or writing or just, you know, working even in other businesses first, and then jumping into your own and taking those relationships with you. Like that's, that's how they've built their and scaled their business. The challenge, I think, is that they don't necessarily always translate that to the brand itself and realize that like, ultimately the client has to build a relationship with the whole firm, with the brand of the firm rather than just with the brand of the person,
Bryce McNabb (01:25):
Hey, what's going on? Brand storyteller. Alright. Welcome to the Story Intelligent podcast. I'm your host, Bryce McNabb. You were just listening to Mike Jones. Mike is a branding expert working out of Arizona, specializing in the professional services industry, and he's gonna introduce himself a little later. I felt like we've been talking a lot about storytelling, so the outward expression of your brand. And even in last episode, episode 38, we talked to Gina Fong, who helped us understand how to glean customer insight, which was really helpful in looking outward so we can understand how to best communicate who we are to our ideal customer. So it's been a lot of like outward expression, outward looking, but I wanted to balance this out with the other half of brand storytelling, which is brand. So in this episode, we're going to start the, the second half of this series where we're going to begin to look inward and really start to understand the importance of brand.
Bryce McNabb (02:19):
Why we need a brand, what a brand actually is, what are these fundamental components of a solid brand. And in order to do that, I wanted to, again, bring an expert in who could really help us understand what is necessary for branding. So that's why I brought on my friend Mike Jones. I met Mike about this time last year in Chicago. We were both speaking at a prime global event, and he is just a super great guy, very intelligent, very knowledgeable. The guy lives and breathes branding. So I felt like he would be a really good source of information to kickstart off this next series. Mike and I immediately jumped into our conversation. Whatever we get together, we just really, we can't be stopped <laugh>. So we ended up speaking, we had an hour slated. We ended up talking for over an hour and a half.
Bryce McNabb (03:06):
So I've broken up this episode into two parts. Today's episode is part one, and then in two weeks on episode 40, we're going to be discussing part two. But you're gonna get a lot out of this episode. This episode is really gonna help you understand why you need a brand, the role that a brand actually plays within a business context. And this is really gonna be helpful if your niche is professional services or if you are currently serving clients, because as a brand storyteller, you are providing a professional service. So without further ado, here's Mike Jones.
Mike Jones (03:45):
People wanna work with people first. And so the first relationship that matters, the brand needs to be there. So you can't just ignore it, you can't just discount it. Um, but the brand of the firm is not how you introduce people to your firm. You introduce them through the person, but then you have to ladder the relationship from the individual partner or the individual associate, whoever they're working with into the whole firm and the brand itself. And I think for large firms, there's incredible benefit to that, right? Because oftentimes what they're selling is not just one relationship. It's you get a relationship with everybody in our firm with all these different specialties, with all these different niches that they're able to perform really well in. And you get this diversity of expertise that you can't have with one person. And so the firm's brand itself contains that expertise, that diversity of expertise. The challenge is like, okay, how do you differentiate that from every other accounting firm who also says the same things? <laugh>, right? Right. Um,
Bryce McNabb (04:56):
Well, and so what I'm realizing too, as I've been like crafting my own brand story, is understanding that because the business is so relational, they forget the purpose of marketing itself. Yeah. Because by the time they get to the point where now I need to leave you to consider this decision, I need to give you something, that's when they start thinking of, I need a tool. Yeah.
Mike Jones (05:21):
<laugh>,
Bryce McNabb (05:22):
I need something to hand them. Yeah. And, and that just now becomes married to, well, I need marketing. Yeah. I need a marketing, I need a sales enablement piece, a leave behind. And so, yeah. And
Mike Jones (05:34):
Even then it's still business development, right? Correct. It's, it's not really marketing. Um, yeah. It's like kind of too late for that in some sense. Yes. Sorry, I know. Maybe I'm jumping into what you're already getting.
Bryce McNabb (05:47):
It's that, that's it. It's like marketing tends to get trapped there. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> and, and because it gets trapped there, I think the brand might not ever have an opportunity to flourish, and they probably train themselves to not see the reason for it. Yep.
Mike Jones (06:03):
Well, the brand, I think for a lot of professional services firms is, uh, well, it's perceived as just a container, right? It's just this box. I need to, I need to put a logo on everything, right? Yeah. Because all the money goes one place, and it just makes things a little bit easier and more efficient for me as when I'm doing business development. If I'm the rainmaker within the firm, or I'm, you know, one of the leading partners and I'm, I'm bringing in the business, like, I need something that establishes us as something more than just me. Brings a little bit of credibility. Yeah. But really it's, we all know it's me. Like I'm the one bringing in the business. Um, yeah. I think sophisticated accounting firms, sophisticated law firms, engineering firms, even construction companies and marketing agencies even, right? They, they get that the brand has to actually mean something and it has to stand for something much bigger than the individuals. It's like more than the sum of its parts. Um, and so that's where like story comes in <laugh>, um, which I know we're gonna get to 'cause that's what you live and breathe. Um, but, but I think there's like this element of like, really just getting past this idea that marketing and business development are at odds with one another, or that one is subservient to the other. I
Bryce McNabb (07:25):
Hate that home mentality.
Mike Jones (07:26):
They're hand in hands. And I, I, I hate to use this word 'cause I love it in one sense. 'cause I think it actually gets, it, it nails it really well. HubSpot has been using it a lot lately. Uh, and I know it's not their term. There's lots of people using it. But ss marketing, right? It's sales marketing, it's a dumb term. I know stupid everyone giggles when they, it's really dumb. But it, it captures the essence of it, which is that like, for, especially I think for professional services firms, because so much is still contingent on the individual relation relationship. So like for instance, right? If I'm selling a candy bar, when's the last time I bought a candy bar? Or you bought a candy bar where the individual relationship with a person from the brand, let's say it's Reese's, right? I love Reese's Peanut butter cups love.
I've never met a single rep from Reese's. But that's because their product is not predicated on an individual person to person relationship. It's a product relationship, right? The brand is everything. And there isn't really a whole lot of one-to-one. Now, some of that is also the way that consumer product goods are sold, right? They don't actually sell to me. Reese's doesn't sell directly to me. They sell to a distributor who sells to a retailer who sells to me, right? So the one-to-one rai relationship is actually with the retailer. That's actually where the, the human relationship lives. And the product doesn't really need that relationship to, to work. But in professional services, the product is the people, right? And so you have to have a one-to-one relationship at some point. And I think for most professional services, going back to what I've already said, most professional services start through one-to-one relationships.
It's like, it's how you build the business. That's how you scale it. It's me meeting you and selling you basically on me. And I happen to work for this larger firm, right? Yeah. And so the brand, I think the unfortunate part is like, okay, so we can wait it too far that way we can say, oh, it's all about the one-to-one relationship, really important. Really, really important. And I would, I recommend to every one of my clients that I work with, here's some books. One of 'em is Trusted Advisor. And it is all about how to build relationships with clients as an individual, uh, professional, right? It's not really about the brand, it's an extension of the brand, right? How you act, how you behave, how you treat your customer, how you treat your client is an extension of your brand. But it's a great book.
It has nothing to do really with marketing. Um, it has everything to do with how you serve your client. Um, and I think that's incredibly important. I think that every single professional services firm has to be like, have some kind of of focus on that while at the same time also having a focus on how do we build demand through our brand, right? Our firm should be something more than just the sum of all of our parts. It shouldn't just be like, oh, there's, you know, 400 CPAs in my firm. Therefore you get the combined knowledge of 400 CPAs. No. The reality is you have 400 CPAs who are doing something interesting because there's something unique about your intrinsic d n A as a firm. Your culture, your processes, your focuses in terms of different industries or services, even your history, the way that you've developed over time, perhaps even your location, right?
These are all elements of positioning that we can need to look at in telling a great story that is different than everyone else's, right? 'cause part of telling a great story is it's your story, not someone else's story or just like someone else's story. And so how do we find what's unique about it and really tell that story? Obviously, you know, my firm really focuses on like the visual side. We do a lot on the verbal side as well, um, in terms of telling the story verbally. And then, you know, the fun stuff is like when you get into what you do, like videos and all that fun stuff.
Bryce McNabb (11:32):
But even to jump on what you were just talking about, 'cause a lot of clients that I'll work with too are B two B clients. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And so these will often happen to be like corporations with massive sales teams. And so the company may have even started as like, uh, you know, back in its origin as that one-to-one, but then they built up their sales, um, their sales staff and their sales team. So it continues that one-to-one relationship because it's inherent in how they go out and build business. It's a
Mike Jones (11:58):
Sales first mentality, right?
Bryce McNabb (11:59):
But by not providing that brand Yep. They've now opened themselves up to risk. Yep. Because that sales person leaves. Yep. And you haven't established that brand relationship with the client. They take 'em with them
Mike Jones (12:14):
And nine times outta 10, they take 'em with 'em, right? Like yeah. In, you know, kind of the, the advertising marketing world that I've lived in my entire career, right? Like every friend of mine who's ever worked in an agency who's gone out on their own, took their clients with them, and not even because they necessarily like said, I'm leaving and I want to take all my clients with me. But because the clients go, I'm here for you. Like, you're the reason why I work with this agency. I've built the relationship with you. I love the work that you do. I love the relationship that we have. Why would I mess that up? You're gonna go onto your on your own or are you gonna go to another agency? I'm coming with you.
Bryce McNabb (12:57):
We jumped right into this. Yeah, go ahead. Let me, <laugh>, we need to introduce you first. <laugh>, I knew we were gonna just get completely carried away. Here you were. All right. So Mike, go ahead and just introduce who you are. Uh, help me understand, like, who are you, what do you do?
Mike Jones (13:17):
Well, that's a complicated answer if you want the full story, but the short answer. I'm Mike Jones, uh, c e o and managing partner of Resound. We're a brand consultancy, particularly for professional services firms based outta Phoenix, Arizona. Although we've got people all over the place. And, uh, I've been doing this my entire career. I've been working on branding and brands and brand identity, uh, for really the last, it's been 20 years, actually. Like basically since I was 18 in some way, shape or form I've been doing it. So I started, you know, working on like little friends and family projects, helping people stand up their businesses. I was in a band for a while, so I did a lot of, uh, branding for our, our band or album covers and uh, our posters and stuff. And I thought maybe that would be a direction I go.
So I picked up a couple other clients in the entertainment industry, um, but eventually got into an agency, a couple agencies actually, and was doing all B two B, uh, branding and marketing and, uh, originally doing a lot of graphic design. That's kind of my, my core kind of how my entry into, into marketing. But really loved the identity side of things, really helping organizations uncover what is unique and true about them and what really makes them like, authentically different in the marketplace. Uh, how do they serve their customers and their clients really well. And we've applied that over the last 14 years with my firm, particularly with a lot of professional services firms, accounting firms, law firms, a few others. And I've written a book about it. I speak about it all the time. Uh, I love coming on podcasts and having more con con of conversation stuff, but, uh, I live and breathe branding. That's what I do. Yeah. There,
Bryce McNabb (15:00):
It's, you're remarkable. Great book. Oh my gosh, I love this book. I like ate this in about a weekend, which is difficult for me 'cause I'm like, got a little bit of a d d I think I'm mildly Liz Dik. So, um, that's my dyslexia joke for you, <laugh>. But yeah, this thing was, I
Mike Jones (15:18):
Love it. I got it. Thank you. It took me a minute,
Bryce McNabb (15:21):
<laugh>.
Mike Jones (15:22):
I love that joke. But
Bryce McNabb (15:23):
Why, why did you, what was it about the identity aspect that you felt this strong connection to?
Mike Jones (15:31):
Um, I think there's a couple things. One is like, at the heart of identity is really building great relationships, serving people well, being authentically true, right? Um, and, and we do that like, at a personal level, I think a lot of people, especially nowadays, I think maybe 10, 15 years ago when I started my firm, uh, with my business partners, that wasn't necessarily as true. I think there was still a lot of like fake it till you make it type mentality for a lot of individuals. You're working on your career and, you know, it's like, hey, let's, let's kind of, I'm gonna make myself look at bigger than I am. Look smarter, look more professional, more advanced, uh, whatever it was. Or even in my personal life, right? Um, and I'm seeing that obviously in I think, individual realm. Like a lot of people are starting to really understand more of like, all right, I actually need to be who I actually am because that's actually what serves people the best. That that's not always the intention. I think when people use the word quote unquote authentic.
Bryce McNabb (16:31):
I was about to say authenticity
Mike Jones (16:33):
Was a little, yeah, I was a little, you know, we were, we were all my two co co-authors and I, who are my business partners, were a little hesitant to like, use that word too much. 'cause it's kind of taken on a little bit of a kind of negative connotation of like, um, I think sometimes people use that word as like an excuse to just be a jerk.
Bryce McNabb (16:53):
Okay.
Mike Jones (16:53):
Yeah. Well, I'm authentically being myself by just being overly direct, maybe having a really strong opinion and not caring. You
Bryce McNabb (17:02):
Give it to the I speak my truth territory. Yeah, yeah,
Mike Jones (17:06):
Yeah. <laugh>. Um, I also question, and this is getting a little off topic here, we'll, we'll bring it back. Okay, <laugh>, uh, I also question whether someone who says, like, I just, I'm just being my true self, has really done the homework to know whether they're really being their true self, or are they just purely expressing their emotions without a filter?
Bryce McNabb (17:32):
Right?
Mike Jones (17:32):
Authenticity is not just unfiltered expression. That's actually the opposite of what I'm advocating for and what I advocate in the book, particularly with, with organizations, it's like, no, the first step is thoughtful, deep kind of uncovering of who you as a firm actually are. What is your unique authentic d n a of what makes you, you and not any other firm? And then let's strategically and intentionally tell that story through visuals, through words, through all sorts of other media.
Bryce McNabb (18:14):
Now why is uncovering that, why is that important?
Mike Jones (18:20):
I think there's, there's a couple levels to that. One is, if you're in the business of serving people, and I would add argue every single company's in the business of serving people. Yeah. Like, that's why you exist. You might not agree with me. You might say it's money. You might say it's like, well, we have this cool product. You might say like, we're just really smart. Okay, get over your ego. Um, that's the first thing, right? You're not as smart as you think you are. You're not as differentiated as you think you are. Your product is not as good as you think it is. I I guarantee you it's not right. The people that matter, the opinions that matter, the voices that matter are your customers, right? They're the ones who either get value from what you do or they don't. And if you're not in the business of serving them and delivering value, I mean, that's ultimately what every business is in the business of doing, delivering value and exchange.
You get a, you get a reward, right? They pay you for it, right? Uh, maybe they even talk about you, they advocate for you. They spread the, they spread the word around for you. Um, but you're in the business of delivering value, right? And you're serving people by delivering value. So if you are being something other than your authentic self as a firm, if you're copying someone else in your industry, if you're just kind of to, you put it half-assing it, right? With the brand, and just like, wow, we, we did the logo, we got it done as quick as we can. We sketched it out on a napkin, threw it at like, some designer on the team who's never designed a logo before, picked a couple colors because they're, you know, the, the founders favorite college sports colors, right? Uh, okay. Like, you did something, I guess. Um, but, but you half-assed it. I'm sorry, <laugh> pardon my French there. But like, like you, you didn't, you didn't actually do it. Well, uh, you are trying, that proves to me, it proves to everyone, you don't really care. Right?
Bryce McNabb (20:20):
It could also show that there's a, there's almost like an unconscious decision making happening there. Yes. But you haven't done the deep work to figure out what is really driving those decisions deep down. Yes.
Mike Jones (20:34):
Yes. And it's always this like, pattern of why, right? So it's like, why did we pick that color? Uh, well, 'cause we really like, uh, I went to Arizona State University, and so we love the colors, you know, maroon and gold. Uh, I'm surrounded by a s u right in here in Tempe. Um, they literally own like half the city, <laugh>, <laugh>, um, and their alumni are everywhere. Um, but like, so, okay, that, that's fine. At some level, I think that's okay, depending on the context. Why, why do you like Arizona State University? Oh, well, I had this experience in college. Oh, well that's interesting. What about that experience is unique or different? Why has that so informed you? Why has that, what, how does that inform your business and the culture that you're building here? Right? Those are the questions I want to keep asking of like, why, why, why, why, why? And so we drill down to there are core fundamental beliefs driving your business and the decisions that you make in your business. Those are the things, those are your foundational pillars of your business, right? I don't, I've met very few businesses who at least care at some level about scale, about culture, about building something that's gonna last who don't at least put some thought into like core beliefs or values or pillars or whatever you're gonna call 'em, right? Um,
Bryce McNabb (21:57):
The way that I approach it is I approach it with this understanding that there is gold inside, and my job is to mine that gold and then plate that gold across the entire organization.
Mike Jones (22:11):
Yeah. It's already there. Yeah. We talk about that all the time with our clients. Like your D n A is already there. It's just a matter of asking the right questions enough times to enough people that we start to get the true fundamental answers to what is that d n A? What does it look like? What does it sound like? Uh, why, why does it matter? And then how do we craft communication tools to really bring that to life and make that as clear, consistent, and creative? Those are kind of like my three kind of pillars of brand.
The more clear we are in our messaging, the more clear we are in our visuals, the more pointed we are, the more impact we can have. The more I can really get to you that this is our d n a. If it takes me 45 words to tell you my d n a when I could tell you in three, right? I'm not being clear. And three is memorable. Three is easy to understand. Three is easy to communicate to someone else. You're reducing friction again, but you're also creating impact. And then you, you have to be consistent. I gotta do it over and over and over and over again. I tell my clients all the time, I want you to be bored of your branding <laugh>. I I want you in three years to be, Hey, Mike, can we just add one more color? <laugh>? Can we, can we just do it a little bit different this time?
And I'm gonna be like, no, no. Here's the, and and here's the thing. Like, your clients aren't bored. They don't see you as many times as you see you, right? And for, especially if you're on the marketing side of the, of the firm, like right, you're seeing the colors, you're seeing the fonts, you're seeing the logo, you're seeing like the same layouts, the same design, and there's some things you can change, you can mess around with, right? But like, I would wanna stretch that. I wanna be like, I'm gonna drag your, your boredom out as far as I possibly can in terms of you internally being kind of, I want to add something. I'm a creative. I want to like, do something a little bit different. Be like, how long can I make you go until you just finally break and be like, okay, we're doing something a little bit different, right?
'cause the reality is, the minute you do something different, you're adding something new that your customer, your client has never seen before. They're used to using purple. It's on everything you do. It's been there for years. That brings a level of like, satisfaction. It brings a level of trust, it brings a level of identification, right? Like every time I see the purple, I think of you, right? Yeah. With your client, and they're not seeing your purple like every single second of every single day like you do, right? And so, like, there's an element of like, you're bored because you have to look at it all for so many hours every single day, but no one else does. And so they're not bored like you are, but like, okay, you got the purple, we're adding orange, and they've never seen orange before. Somewhere, somewhere inside. There's like subconscious.
They're gonna go like, Hmm. Like, what is that? Where'd that come from? Yeah, it's gonna create dissonance. I don't like, maybe I don't mind it. They go together, it's fine. Like, but like, why, why is that there? What does that mean? Right? And if you haven't communicated what that means or why you're doing it, or you don't infer it, right? And how you're doing it, then you gotta, again, you gotta build up that trust again because you've, you've left the realm of consistency. Yeah. And then the last piece is creativity, right? And these all have to work together. So like, you can be really clear and really consistent and incredibly boring and uninteresting, right? Um, and let's be honest, working with a lot of accounting firms, law firms, like, that's probably where they kind of lean is like, all right, we're gonna be, I don't know if they're all very clear, <laugh>, they're all pretty consistent.
Pretty consistent. And you know, most of 'em have marketers who are really good at their jobs, and they, they keep it really consistent. I love how you're, like, they're co consistently confusing and boring. <laugh>. Yeah. But, but yeah. But I mean, that is part of it. Right? Now, if your brand, uh, if the truth is your d n a is like, we're kind of like, we're just, we're the boring group. Okay? Let's find something interesting about that. Like maybe there's something, some reason why you're, you think you're boring, right? Uh, maybe it's like we're just, we don't, we don't like change. We, we'd like to just nail it. We're just, we are the details people, and we just consistently nail the details. If you're an accounting firm, that might not be a bad idea, right? Like, your clients might really appreciate this, like, year in and year out, the tax returns come back and they are flawless, right? Yeah.
Bryce McNabb (26:57):
What is a brand?
Mike Jones (26:59):
Yes, we should talk about a brand <laugh>, I I summarize your brand is, it's your identity as a organization, right? It's the, the totality of what you believe and how you interact with the world, right? So if you think about an individual person, your identity is your worldview, right? The internal side of you and how that is expressed externally. Some of that comes out in things like s somewhat superficial or, or less, uh, deep things like the clothes that you put on in the morning, right? Uh, the way that you talk, the expressions that you use in your language. These are aspects of your identity, but there's a much deeper truth to your identity in terms of like how you perceive the world, how you look at it, the do's and don'ts that you have in your life that you have established in yourself and say, this is how I live and this is how I don't live. Every company has the exact same set of rules. They're often just not very well defined, and they're often a, a little bit squishy, right? And some of that has to do with the fact that organizations are made up of people. And so a whole group of people with all their own individual identities, you're gonna have to find some level of like, commonality amongst them to discover their, the firm or the organization's identity.
Bryce McNabb (28:18):
A a lot of what you're expressing in the book is a lot about like individual expression. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. But I feel like there's almost a, um, especially in crafting stories too, I have to balance, I find that I balance three different expectations. There's the, the self-expression of the organization and their goals and what they want to accomplish. There's the, the story subject, the person whose story I'm telling. And then there's the audience expectations. So one thing that I, that I didn't see in here is like, how do they a balance audience expectations within your industry? 'cause you don't wanna stand out too much because there's almost like, you kind of have, from my perspective, you can choose to agree or disagree. I would love to understand your perspective on this, but I feel like you have to be tethered enough to look familiar enough so that way you're, I think in terms of movies, so I think in terms of genre conventions, you should have a sort of design style that looks similar and familiar, but is distinct to your brand personality. So it's almost like you have to balance those things. And I would expect that you find something similar in accounting firms that you can't just make an accounting firm look like, um, like a, like a video game or something. Like,
Mike Jones (29:40):
No, I, and I think, um, well, I can, I can think of scenarios where I might, right? Yeah. If the firm's culture is a bunch of video game nerds who sell accounting to video game nerds, I'm all about it. Right? That makes sense. So it's like, it's, and this comes back to like, your identity is not just about you in a self-serving way. It's about how do I deliver as a firm? Our identity is about how do we deliver value to others in a unique and valuable way to, to the audiences that we work with? And one of the questions we always ask is, who do you work with best? Because that often leads to an understanding of your own identity, that there's something unique about our particular strengths, our particular aptitudes, our particular interests as a firm, our culture is uniquely suited to certain types of other organizations, other businesses or other individuals.
Bryce McNabb (30:51):
Alright, everybody, I hope that was valuable. I hope you enjoyed that conversation. Again, this is part one of our conversation with Mike. We're going to visit Mike again in episode 40, where we're going to be talking about the kind of core components of what makes up a strong brand and, and what are these elements that you need to build your brand identity. But I hope today's conversation gave you a really good insight into the importance of a solid brand and what exactly a brand is. If you liked what we talked about, definitely check out Mike's book. You are remarkable. I'm not lying. I love this book. It is super helpful. I've got the thing just like, like bookmarked and, and several pages just ridiculously underlined, like it is completely marked up. It is such a valuable resource. So if you're wanting to get into more, into branding into the brand strategy part, this book is a great crash course to help elevate your skills in that area.
As always, you can find me@brycemcnabb.com or story intelligent.com, whichever you prefer. So if you'd like me to come speak at your next event, come in, provide training or workshop for your team, reach out to me@brycemcnabb.com. I provide training workshops, coaching consultations, the works to help you clarify your brand story, and then really communicate exactly who you are so people understand not just who you are, but why they need you. If you wanna bring your brand story to life, you can reach out to me@mcnabbstorytelling.com. That's my agency side where we specialize in authentic documentary style videos as well as content campaigns. Thank you so much for tuning in to Story Intelligent. I will see you in the next one. Take care.