#11: Building a Brand Story

with Jeff Sass

About This Episode

In today’s episode I am sitting down with branding expert Jeff Sass to discuss the art of creating brand stories. A great brand story can be applied to Amazon and E-Commerce sellers. We discuss not only the benefits of creating engaging brand story’s but also step-by-step instructions on how you can start. Jeff also mentions red flags you should avoid when creating your story!

About The Guest

Jeff Sass is Chief Marketing Officer of .CLUB Domains and Paw.com and he is author of the book “Everything I Know about Business and Marketing, I Learned from THE TOXIC AVENGER.”

Jeff has over 35 years of experience in the technology and entertainment industries and has co-founded several start-ups including mobile commerce pioneer BarPoint.com in 1999. Jeff joined the .CLUB team in March 2012, and has led the company’s marketing efforts throughout the process of acquiring and launching the .CLUB top-level domain. In 2019 Jeff also took on the role of CMO for pet product e-commerce brand, Paw.com. Previously, as Vice President, Chief Evangelist at Myxer from 2007 to 2012 Jeff played a significant role in growing the mobile entertainment company into one of the top 15 mobile websites in the U.S. He is a Co-Founder of Entrepreneur.Wiki, and Social Object Factory. Jeff has also written and produced for film and television and has a deep understanding of the content business that is unique for a tech executive.

A graduate of Cornell University, Jeff is a frequent speaker and panelist on domain names, mobile marketing, digital music, entrepreneurship, and social media. He has been an online instructor for the University of San Francisco’s Mobile Marketing Program. Jeff has had articles published in AdAge, Forbes, Entrepreneur, DMNews, Mobile Marketer, iMedia Connection, and others. He was a co-host of the Cast of Dads podcast and has written regularly for a number of blogs including Dadomatic.com, SocialNetworkingRehab.com, and his personal blog, Sassholes! He also served as an Intel Advisor and Sony Digidad and is currently a member of the board of directors of The Domain Name Association (TheDNA.org)

Date: August 6, 2020

Episode: 11

Title: Norman Farrar is Sitting Down with Branding Expert Jeff Sass to Discuss the Art of
Creating Brand Stories. A Great Brand Story can be Applied to Amazon and E-Commerce Sellers.

Subtitle: Everything I Know about Business and Marketing, I Learned from THE TOXIC AVENGER.

Final Show Link: https://lunchwithnorm.com/episodes/11-building-a-brand-story-jeff-sass/

In this episode of Lunch With Norm…, Norman Farrar is with Elena Saris and they discuss the benefits of building Shopify websites over Amazon and dropshipping amid COVID-19.

Elena Saris is a criminal defense attorney, a former stand up comic and a 7-figure ecommerce seller. After a successful 25 year career as a deputy public defender, she realized it was time for Chapter Two. She started an e-commerce business from scratch, first as an Amazon seller and as a store owner on the Shopify platform.

If you are a new listener to Lunch With Norm… we would love to hear from you. Please visit our Facebook Page and join in on episode discussion or simply let us know what you think of the episode!

In this episode, we discuss:

    • 4:35: About Jeff’s brand, life story
    • 5:58: How Jeff started his career
    • 6:39: Building a brand
    • 9:03: The corporate culture
    • 11:19: Why do we need an internal brand
    • 16:20: Our customer’s are the heroes
    • 17:51: Adventures of the company
    • 19:53: First step in building a brand story
    • 23:12: Red flags that we should avoid when building a brand story
    • 25:28: Understanding the hero's journey

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Norman 0:02 

Hey everyone and welcome to another live with Norm, Lunch With Norm. I’m Norman Farrar, aka The Beard Guy.

 

Norman  0:22 

You almost caught me catching the beat there. But anyways, dancing is not my thing. Today we’re broadcasting live on Facebook and YouTube. And Kelsey, can you tell everybody what to do?

 

Kelsey 0:37 

Follow us on social media. We have Facebook, Instagram, YouTube. You can follow Norman LinkedIn. If you’re looking for any of the highlights from the show, you can find all the full episodes and short clips on YouTube. Just search Norman Farrar and yeah, that’s everything.

 

Norman 0:58 

That’s a great job, Kels.

 

Kelsey 1:00 

Thank you. I’m getting better every week.

 

Norman 1:02 

There we go. All right, so we’ve got some really big news. We mentioned it on the last podcast. But because of all the positive feedback we’ve been getting, we’ve decided to make this an official podcast, not just a Facebook Live, but we’re going to go official three times a week, Monday, Wednesdays and Fridays at noon. And then we’re going to be adding the podcast to Apple or any of the other podcasts platforms that you subscribe to. So just wanted to let you know that and the other thing, I guess we should tell the name. It’s going to be Lunch With Norm, The Rise of the Micro Brands. And the reason why we’re calling it that is we wanted to touch the Amazon seller, but there’s so many other aspects of business for the Amazon seller or e-Com or anybody that’s online, that we wanted to bring in experts for Amazon for online, digital marketing, social media, business, even big brands. So we’re going to have some really cool guests on short 30 minute 30 to 45 minute interviews, and I’m sure you’re gonna get a lot of information out of it. So I can’t wait. This starts this Monday and we’ve got a very special guest that will be announced shortly.

 

Kelsey  2:17 

Oh, it’s actually already up. People can find it.

 

Norman

Oh, did you do that? Yeah.

 

Kelsey

Yeah, I made the streaming broadcasts already, so it’s already up.

 

Norman  2:25 

Okay. Whoa.

 

Kelsey

Who is it, Dad?

 

Norman

Well, I don’t know. But I’m sure everybody that’s listening right now knows my very good friend who has sellar sessions, Danny McMillan. So or McMillan. What did I say that for? Anyways, Danny has helped me out tremendously to get this podcast going and I can’t wait to have him on. He’s got a great topic that he’s going to be talking about and he’s going to be our official first guest. Awesome. Yeah.

 

Kelsey

And so who’s on this today?

 

Norman

Another special guest. This guy, Jeff Sass. I know, for a couple of years now. He is what I would consider a. I hate saying this, Jeff, you’re a branding guru. I took, I was sitting in New Orleans with him and I had a problem with one of my webpages and it was giving out the wrong message. I’ve been working on trying to create something, probably for a month. He took one look, while we were having a drink, gave me four or five different recommendations, and he killed it. I mean, it was just beautiful. It was in five minutes, one month of what I was trying to figure out and I think I’m pretty good with creating a brand message. So look, this is an absolute must. If you’ve listened to all the other podcasts, this is one of those podcasts that can change your brand. Jeff got an interesting way of creating a brand and how to bring it across the message. So sit down back, relax. If you have any questions, just throw them in the comment box. and you’re gonna love this.

 

Kelsey

All right.

 

Norman 4:07 

All right. So Jeff, are you there?

 

Jeff

I am here. I noticed that Norm, your Lunch With Norm theme song is very chill compared to The Beard Guy. So  but put me in a very calm mood so I’m ready to just chill and talk with you here.

 

Norman

It’s lunch with Norm

Jeff

So yeah.

 

Norman

Grab a cup of coffee

 

Jeff

Today’s a fast day for me. So no lunch.

 

Jeff 4:35 

Yeah. And by the way, Jeff is on the other podcast. I Know This Guy where we really dig deep into his backstory. It’s amazing and what he’s doing now. So if you get a chance, listen to I Know This Guy. But anyways, let’s talk about brand story. Tell us a little bit about yourself, Jeff.

 

Jeff 4:52 

So I’m essentially a marketing guy, but I’ve worked in many different industries. I started my career in film and television in New York and pretty much did everything from writing and producing to sales and marketing and licensing and Merchandising, and everything else. And then I’ve also worked in a number of other industries, including the video and computer game industry. Currently, I’m the CMO for a couple of companies. So I’m CMO for .club domains, which is one of the new top level domain extensions and alternative to .com or .biz or .org. I’m also CMO of paw.com, which is an awesome or I should say, pawsome, pet products company. We do some really beautiful products that are great for your pets and also look great in your home. I’m also a marketing advisor kind of a CMO to go for a few other companies and so I keep pretty busy but always kind of on the marketing side of the house.

 

Norman 5:48 

What I always like talking to you about is your book. Now usually this is at the end, but tell people about your book because it’s awesome.

 

Jeff 5:58 

Well I mentioned that I started my career in film and television and I had the unusual and memorable experience of working for a low budget film studio called Trauma for seven and a half years back in the late 80s and early 90s. I wrote a book called everything I know about business and marketing I learned from the Toxic Avenger. It’s actually a very fun, very different kind of business and marketing book where I extract practical lessons that apply to any business that I learned from making these wild and crazy, low budget action horror films. So it’s a lot of fun. Most chapters are one to two pages. It’s an easy read, but there’s a lot of really beneficial tips in there.

 

Norman 6:39 

I love it. So let’s get started with building a brand. So how did you get started with building a brand. Were you always on that side of the business?

 

Jeff 6:50 

Yeah,  I think  having been involved in marketing and all these different industries for so many years. I’m kind of an old school brand builder. While data is really important, I still believe that a lot of marketing has to do with building a great brand, building a great story behind that brand. Sometimes going with your gut and not just what the data tells you. Recently,  working with multiple companies at once, I got into developing what I’ll refer to as an internal brand story. I was actually inspired by the book building a story brand by Donald Miller, which I highly recommend. It was actually recommended to me by one of my clients, and when I read the book, it really sparked some thinking about how to build the brand’s internal brand story. And when I refer to the internal brand story, it’s different from your external story, right?. The internal brand story is the story that you tell yourselves and your employees virtually everyone on your team, and it’s not your external marketing messaging. It’s not the language you would shout from the top of a mountain to others. But it’s the language that informs that. It’s the story that informs your marketing message, it informs all of the copy on your website, it informs everything you do. It’s very powerful and useful for a company to have developed an internal brand story because it’s something you can share with everyone in the team. A lot of times companies, especially as they grow and scale,  the senior people in the company and the people in the marketing team, they know what the story is. They know what the messaging is, they’re in tune with the mission and purpose of the company. But a lot of times it’s not really spread internally well to everyone else on the team.The guys in the shipping room to the people answering phones to customer support. They all need to be on the same page and one of the great ways to keep everyone on the same page, and to align everyone is to have an internal brand story that everyone has access to that everyone is ready that everyone is familiar with.

 

Norman  9:03 

 So that’s, we’re calling that the buy in, right? You’re getting everybody in the company to buy in,  you’re creating the corporate culture. Is that correct?

 

Jeff 9:13 

Yeah, it’s part of corporate culture. I mean, culture is a lot bigger than that. Really, that’s a whole another discussion. Corporate culture is not pizza and beer on Friday afternoons and of course now with everyone working from home,  pizza and beers all day long. But really, culture is about people having a purpose and understanding the purpose and the mission of the company. People want to feel like they’re making a contribution to something that’s bigger than themselves. That’s a whole different discussion about culture and what makes a great corporate culture. But I think what’s important for developing this internal brand story is first and foremost, you have to understand what your company’s Northstar is. Similar to the North Star up in the sky that mariners used to navigate,  a company’s Northstar should be a short concise statement that really encapsulates what’s at the core of your mission or purpose. So to give an example, let’s say your brand is a toy manufacturer, your Northstar might be quality educational toys that I would give to my own children. So that might be the North Star. And that way, if everyone in the company understands that that’s the North Star, anything you do any product you make any message you put out there, you should be able to look at and say,  what I give this to my kid with this toy with this product be suitable for my own child when I give this to my kid. And you can think of that whether you have a kid or not, you can put yourself in those shoes. And if your answer is not, Hell, yeah, I’d give it to my kid, then it’s probably not something you should be doing right and then you should rethink that product. So having that Northstar, whatever it might be, is really a phrase that virtually everyone in the company can think about at any given time? And ask themselves, is what I’m doing aligned with that North Star? Am I on course? And I think that’s really the start of building your internal brand stories, understanding what that Northstar is.

 

Norman 11:19 

So there’s probably a lot of Amazon sellers that are listening, and they’re saying, Why do I need it? I’m thinking,  and know I would have thought that. Why do I need an internal, like the internal brand? Why do I have to spread the message? I’ve got three people and I’m a micro brand. Why is that important and when should I start developing it?

 

Jeff 11:41 

Yeah. So I think it’s important right from the start, because,  again, all good marketing is built upon good storytelling, right? Storytelling is the key to good marketing, and that’s really important. So you really need to understand how to tell a story about your brand about your product, and it starts with understanding that internal story because that’s going to inform the external story. Storytelling has been the most powerful means of communication back to caveman and cavewoman sitting around the campfire grunting and  pointing and gesturing to tell about the hunt they just had or the tiger they saw in the woods. And we still sit around campfires telling stories, but now we have the ability to tell our stories much wider, and much faster and with much more technology behind them with sound and music and video. Because you’ve got the great disrupter and distributor is the internet. Now virtually any of us can tell our story on a global basis and the reason why stories are so powerful is stories connect with people on an emotional level, right? A story has the ability to literally compel someone to change their behavior to take an action and that’s what marketing is ultimately all about. The purpose of marketing is to really change someone’s behavior to get them interested in and ideally to purchase a product or service. A story can do that in a very powerful way and if you don’t build a story behind your brand and behind your product, you’re just a commodity. You commoditize your product and a lot of marketers make that mistake. You promote your product based on the  megabytes in a computer or a tablet or the horsepower in an engine or the thread count in sheets. If you’re just selling your product based on those kinds of features and technical specifications, then you’re really commoditizing your product and you’re turning it into something that just sits in a comparison chart with other similar products, right? It doesn’t really stand out as anything special. There’s no story behind it and that story is going to make your product different. It’s going to make your product special and stand out. That’s why it’s really important to go down this path. And what’s interesting about building this internal brand story and the exercise I’ve gone through now with a number of companies, is really it takes the classic hero’s journey. So when you think about what makes a great story, it really hasn’t changed since the beginning of time.  A great story has a protagonist, right? There’s someone who has a problem, where they face an obstacle, and they have to go out there and try to solve that problem or defeat that villain. They can’t do it by themselves. They meet someone along the way who helps them out  like Obi Wan Kenobi helps out Luke,  and Yoda. They meet someone along the way who gives them new skills or helps them out that eventually leads them to be able to defeat that villain and they come home a hero and a changed person, right? That classic story structure was really coined the hero’s journey by Joseph Campbell, a literature professor. You can see that structure in virtually every great story for thousands of years and everything from the Wizard of Oz to Star Wars. Any good story is really based on that hero’s Journey structure and what Donald Miller does in his book, Building a Story Brand, he takes that very classic story and it breaks it down into a simple template that you can follow to build your own story brand or brand story. I kind of base a lot of what I do on inspiration from that book and I’ll do an exercise with a company that I’m working with where I get the senior executives and marketing people in a room or virtually. We go through this exercise where we look at things from their customer’s perspective. So it’s very important to do this with senior people in the company so that they buy into the concept and it’s also very valuable for them to take a few moments to brainstorm from the perspective of their customer. Why do I say from the perspective of the customer? Because the hero of your brand story is not you.  It’s not the brand, it’s not you. As much as we like to talk about ourselves, the hero of our story is not us and a lot of brands make that mistake. They talk too much about themselves. The hero of your story is your customer, your customer is the hero, right? This exercise takes you through a process of thinking from the perspective and the point of view of your customer. What are the problems your customer faces, right? The villain of the story is the embodiment of the problems and obstacles that your customer faces, which ideally, are the problems and obstacles that your product or service is going to help them solve, right? And so yeah, go ahead, Norm.

 

Norman 16:44 

No, I was gonna say, that’s a nugget. Because I can guarantee you a lot of the people that I talked to, they always put them as the hero and they don’t think of the customer as you know when you’re building out this story. One other thing I want to mention, Jeff, cuz I don’t think everybody knows where we’re going with this. But it is really a story like when you shared, and unfortunately, we can’t share this, but you shared the story with me. The paw.com story. I read it  and it was a true story like you broke it out. You had the beginning, middle and the end and at the end of it, you knew exactly like what you’re talking about right now was broken down step by step by step. You know exactly internally, what you were, who you were and it was great. I mean, first of all, I loved it. I’ve never seen anything laid out that way before.  I have been around a long time, especially in the brand side of things and when you showed me that, that was a first for me. It’s it’s very cool what you’re doing.

 

Jeff  17:51 

No, thank you, Norm. I appreciate that. Yeah, I mean, literally, after I do this exercise, as I mentioned, we’ll do that first with some senior people and some marketing people. We take those notes from this exercise and literally write a three or four page short story, right? It’s the adventures of the company and the hero of that story is your customer. We follow that hero on their journey. We define who the villain is how they defeat the villain, and lay out very clearly how your product and service helps them along the way. We really take that customer through this hero’s journey as a literal written story that you could read. It’s a lot of fun and as you said, it’s very different. And again, this is not the story you would post on your website. It’s not a story that you’re going to share with people externally. It’s a story that you’re going to tell internally to all your team. In fact, a lot of the companies I’ve done this for, they actually incorporate that into their onboarding of new employees. So when new employees come on board, one of the things they give them along with their insurance forms and everything else is a copy of the story and encourage them to read it and ask questions about it and understand it. When this exercise is done and that story is written, it’s actually presented to the entire company, everyone in the company. The goal there is for them to be able to read that story and see how they fit in and what their role is in contributing to making the hero a hero to making your customer a hero. And everyone should be able to see the little part that they play, no matter what role they’re in, in the company. It becomes very valuable because again, as I mentioned at the beginning, in a lot of companies, especially as you’re scaling and getting larger, that messaging that mission and purpose doesn’t always get communicated clearly down the ranks to every single person in the company. Yet, it’s very important for every single person in the company to understand the benefits and the value that they’re bringing to their customers.

 

Norman  19:53 

If I was a private label seller, where would be the first step? What would I need to do first to do this to start building this brand story?

 

Jeff 20:04 

Yeah. So I think the very first thing is really going back to that Northstar, like what is that Northstar? Because if you don’t have that, you’re going to start throwing out products that are not, there’s no consistency to them. There’s no consistency to your brand if you don’t understand that Northstar that you can point to. It’s kind of interesting.  I kind of even though I’ve been a marketer my entire career now,  40 years, coming up on 40 years, saying it doesn’t sound like it’s possible, but it is. So those of you who are younger than maybe look forward to a long and fruitful career, because that’s how it goes. But in all that time, even though I’ve been a professional marketer, I’ve actually never taken a marketing class. When I was in college, I studied theater and creative writing. And yet, the best marketing course or the best marketing class I ever took was actually my directing class in College theatre, directing theater. Because what I learned directing a play is that a good director thinks about the final moment. What is the moment when the curtain closes and the lights go off? What is it that you want the audience to be feeling at that moment? What’s the outcome? What do you want them to feel at that very moment? You have to know that upfront, because then you have to look at every scene in the play and ask yourself, does this scene contribute to that moment? Is this leading toward that moment? Is this helping us get to that final moment? And if it’s not, cut the scene out of the play, right? It doesn’t belong. That’s the same thing with having a Northstar. As a business, as a brand. You have to know what that final moment is. What is the outcome? What is the objective that your products and services are going to have? And then look backwards from that. Everything you do,  Is it contributing to that? And if it’s not, you probably shouldn’t be doing it. If you if your goal like the toy company is that I gave as an example before, if your Northstar is  products of quality and educational value that I would give to my own children, and then you have an opportunity to put out another product and you look at it and say, Yeah, I can make money with this product, but  want my kid playing with it? No? Then that’s something you shouldn’t be doing. That doesn’t fit with your North Star. Even if it could be a moneymaker, right? Because it’s not building a sustainable brand, building a long term brand is not about short term gain, right? Sometimes you have to say no to an idea, or a product that  you know could be profitable. But it doesn’t really fit within your story. It’s not aligned with your North Star. So I think it’s important to understand that first. Part of that process is understanding the outcomes because when you’re selling again, when you’re selling something, you’re not selling a product or service you’re selling the outcome. You’re selling how it makes the customer feel, how it makes the customer’s life better. How it solves a problem for them. That’s what they don’t want to buy. They don’t want to buy your widget, they want to buy what your widget does for them and that’s really important. And that aligns very much with the concept of the North Star.

 

Norman  23:12 

Are there any red flags that we should avoid when building our brand story?

 

Jeff  23:17 

Well, again, the biggest red flag is it’s not about you, right?  Remember who the hero is. Remember who it is that you’re trying to serve and help along.That’s really the biggest, I think the biggest red flag. Then the big thing is,again, internally, make sure it’s something that everyone in the company has access to and understands. No matter what their role is, if it’s the person who’s picking off the shelf in the warehouse of your company, they should understand that the product they’re picking is going to provide this value of this outcome to the customer, right? And that gives everyone a sense of pride and a sense of purpose. And that ties into having a great culture at your company as well.

 

Norman 24:00 

What if you get resistance? People just aren’t buying in.

 

Jeff 24:05 

Resistance from home? From someone on your team?

 

Norman

Yeah.

 

Jeff 24:09 

If  you have fun with it, and you do it right, be hard to get resistance because it’s kind of a fun exercise, you’re reading a story. It’s informing you stuff about your company that you probably hadn’t thought about before.  If you’re not on the marketing team or the product development team, you probably haven’t had the chance or had the inclination to think about some of these things.  To think about the customers perspective to think about, what is the real outcome you’re providing? So to be honest, I’ve done this now for four or five different companies and presented it through those companies. Hundreds of employees and the feedback has always been very positive. Especially from the people who, again, aren’t involved in marketing discussions. Typically, they get really excited that they finally are given some insights into  why we are doing all this stuff, what is it all about.

 

Norman 25:03 

Okay, so I’m gonna put you on the spot a bit. And I hope we can do this in a few minutes.

 

Jeff

Sure.

 

Norman

But do we have a step by step on what we have to do? Is there five steps? Is there six steps? Is there something that you can lay out and maybe what we’ll do is we’ll post this later on social media, but like five steps to building a great brand story?

 

Jeff 25:28 

The first step, of course, is to really develop and understand what’s that Northstar, right, and understand that. Then you think about the hero’s journey, right? And again, as I mentioned, in Donald Miller’s book, Building a Story Brand, he actually has a template that you can follow, where he breaks down that hero’s journey into seven or eight steps. And you go through that template and ask yourself,  who is the hero? It’s our customer. You define your customer.  Who’s the villain? Right? Well, the villain is the embodiment of the problems and obstacles and challenges that your customer has. So again, you look at the world from the point of view of your customer, and you kind of define,  what are their challenges? How do you turn that into the villain, right? And then you have to look at how can you help? How does buying your product or service help them overcome that villain? And those are the things and you make notes about all the different things, what are the different challenges facing your, your customer and you write them all down? And at the end,  what I do is I take that and turn that into that brand story. So I think in terms of things you can do, that would be very helpful, even if you don’t want to go through that whole process is number one, figure out that Northstar. Come up with a very short, concise sentence that you can look at any time and ask yourself is what I’m doing contributing towards that as it steering us in that direction. Right, so that’s your North Star. The other thing you can do is really look at the world through an exercise where you just look at the world from your customer’s point of view. First of all, you need to know who is your ideal customer? Who’s your product for? And then how do they see the world? Right? What are the challenges they face? And does your product fit those challenges? And if it doesn’t, what does your product do for them? What are the outcomes, your product is going to provide to them, because again, you’re always selling the outcomes, right? You’re not selling, the fact that it has a 350 horsepower engine, you’re selling the fact that you’re going to really enjoy driving down those winding roads with the roof down, and with a big smile on your face.  That’s what you’re selling, not the fact that the engine has 350 horsepower, or whatever it is, right? So you want to understand those outcomes. And I think those are things that are very straightforward and simple that anyone can do even if they don’t go to the whole extent of developing a full blown written story. If you understand your North Star, if you understand the world from the point of view of your customer and what are the challenges they face? And how does your product or service solve those challenges for them? And how can you convey that to them through a story that’s really the most important thing?

 

Norman 28:13 

Okay, so if anybody’s listening if they could post any other questions now, because I’ve got this pretty much the last question. And also, Hey, I just wanted to give a shout out to Mark, thank you. I’ve been looking at your comments and really appreciate you being out there and listening. I’ll keep giving the content, as long as I’ve got people that are supporting us, so thank you. Alright, so last question. If you had one takeaway, one thing that people could take away today from this episode, what would it be?

 

Jeff 28:46 

Well, yeah, I refer to it a lot. So one thing might be.

 

Norman

The North Star.

 

Jeff

Oh, no, you might pick up a copy of Donald Miller’s book and read that because again, a lot of this thinking, it’s not it’s stuff I already knew, but he helped me. Reading the book helped me frame it and shape it in a way that was more actionable. So I don’t think there is anything that any good marketer will know a lot of this stuff instinctively that’s in that book, but I think it frames it in a way that makes it very actionable. I definitely recommend reading that book and of course, I recommend reading my book.

 

Norman 29:23 

And we will be posting both of them. But just for that real quick plug, what was the name of your book again?

 

Jeff

My book, very short title because I believe in things being very concise. Everything I know about business and marketing I learned from the Toxic Avenger, with a subtitle, One Man’s Journey to Hell’s Kitchen and Back.

 

Norman 29:42 

Perfect, very short, concise. Hey, I just noticed that Victor joined. Hey, Victor, how’s it going? And you know what, Victor, I know, Victor. And this is a perfect episode for you and I’d love to get your feedback. So can’t wait to hear the whole thing once we get this posted. All right. So I think that’s about it for today. I hope you understand the brand story and the reasons why you need to build a brand’s story and get your team to buy in and not only your staff or any employees, but also contractors that are working with you.

 

Jeff

But, Norm.

 

Norman

Yes

 

Jeff 30:23 

I’m sitting here. I’ve been talking to you for half an hour. So where’s my lunch? I thought this was Lunch With Norm.

 

Norman 30:31 

I’ll send you a coffee cup.

 

Jeff

Okay.

 

Norman

All right. So thanks, Jeff, for being on by the way. I really appreciate you sharing your time with us today.

 

Jeff

Thank you, Norm. It’s my pleasure. Hopefully the people listening and watching found some value in what we discussed.

 

Norman

I’m sure they did. So thank you, everybody. That’s on Facebook Live and on YouTube, hopefully LinkedIn one of these days. So we’ll be posting this whole thing on Norman Farrar, aka The Beard Guys Facebook page and on some other platform with the shorter clips. Okay, so once again, that big announcement is Monday, Wednesdays, Fridays, starting this Monday August the 10th. We’re going to be doing the official podcast Lunch With Norm, The Rise of the Micro Brands. So tune in on Monday and can’t wait to get that going. Oh, by the way, the website will be live on Monday as well too. So until then, we’ll see you later and I guess it’ll be with our big guest Danny McMillan. Can’t wait from sellar sessions so tune in there. He’s gonna pump us full of information. So see you later.