Transcription

@0:01 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

Hello everyone and welcome to the shades of entrepreneurship. This is your host, Mr.

Flores.

@0:16 - Jade Scherr

Today I'm here with Jade Shear from North Dakota. Jade, how are we doing? I am doing well.

@0:23 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

How are you? Good. I'm really excited. This is again, folks. This is a marketing conversation. This is something I have been really kind of necked able.

I guess the company is marketing related, I have a feeling Jade has a much more diverse background than just simply marketing.

@0:39 - Jade Scherr

first, Jade, give us a first look. Quick little introduction. Introduce yourself and then we'll get into your company. Heck yeah.

Well, like you said, I am Jade Shear based out of North Dakota, but really I started HexaHive just about five years ago now, because I felt like in our region, there was just again.

app and agencies where they would sit down with businesses and be like, okay, what do you need? And like, they're talking with them and the business owner doesn't know what they need.

They know what they want, but it's not the right thing. And so I talked with so many different businesses that were like, well, I tried this because I saw a friend do it.

And so they poured all this time and energy into this campaign. And I was like, well, didn't the agency push back?

And they're like, I don't know. And so really started it from that intent of, let's make sure that we're focusing on the right things.

And so kind of sparked from that passion of wanting to make an impact. And now we work with businesses of all shapes and sizes, but my passion is midsize businesses because we're able to really help them grow.

So we work across industries from banking to cannabis to construction to retail.

@1:49 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

And it's really fun to see you to apply something that works for one business to a completely different one and just really getting to be a part of people's growth.

Yeah, you know what? That's one thing I think about. marketing that's quite unique is once you kind of identify your consumer, once you create market segments, then the kind of the marketing funnel is relatively the same.

The messages might be different, but the goal is still the same, right? Create the awareness so that consumer goes to the evaluation stage and then goes to their purchase stage and becomes a loyal consumer.

so again, folks, the marketing piece, although there are differentations in regards to the market segment, the messaging you want to go out to, marketing itself is pretty unique because you kind of still do the same tactics.

And one of the things you mentioned was you like to work with the midsize companies to find what is what is midsize kind of look like?

@2:37 - Jade Scherr

Yeah, I a lot of the time associated with like 35 to 70 employees. A lot of the times they're between like three to $10 million a year in revenue typically.

But they're my favorite because you don't have the red tape that you have record with corporate. And so we work with some corporate, but it takes six months to make a simple change.

And so with midsize, you have the resources and budgets to be able to get creative and make a difference and you can really be a part of that growth without having to go through so many layers of just approvals and committees.

@3:10 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

You know I cannot agree more folks I recently started a new project called swag for my brand you can head over to swag4mybrand.com and check it out but during that process you know working essentially what we do is we create high quality swag items customized swag items for brands right so you can stand out but the unique thing is when I call a large corporation it's like I have to go through the RFP process you got to go through the you know you have to go through a lot of as you mentioned a lot of red tape but then if I go to you know a smaller or mid-sized company as you mentioned I can go directly to the owner and have those conversations and they can like well this fits this doesn't fit you know and it's really it really is a unique opportunity to kind of be in that space.

Now give us a little background tell us about your company hexa tell us about hexa hive what is it and what is what does it do for your client.

@4:01 - Jade Scherr

Yeah, HexaHive. So we're a full-service marketing agency, but I think that the biggest piece that we do is we help people make sure they're focusing on the right thing.

So a lot of people will be like, why did you name it HexaHive? Because it's definitely a unique name.

And it's a twofold kind of combination of words. And really, it was because I knew that I wanted to have my business and I wanted the name to mean something.

And I was doing a lot of the same things just working and other corporate jobs doing it. But it's HexaGons and Hive.

And so HexaGons, when banded together, they're really efficient. Like you don't see a lot of wasted space when they work together, same with our clients.

We want to find strong, yet efficient solutions. don't want to have these gaps, like right here, where I'm pointing, you don't want the gaps and things.

And so that's really what I wanted to represent. I want to be full scope solutions where we're working hand in hand with your sales team, your operation, and making sure that we're making the most of what you're doing.

On the Hive side, if you're familiar with bees, they have this Hive mentality. They're all working. towards a common mission.

They all know where they're going. And same sense of that we want to know what our clients North Star is and help be a part of that.

We want to anticipate their needs before they say it because they don't know what they need. And so that was kind of we're bridging those two pieces together.

And I think that always sums up like, what hexahive isn't its whole? Yes, we're a marketing agency, but we're more than ads.

We're more than just running a campaign and starting and stopping. We are a piece of how businesses grow and want to be a part of their growth.

@5:33 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

I like it. know, one of things you mentioned that is very unique is finding a client's true North. You know, I think that is really important.

That's something I do, you know, work in the business development world folks and that's something we consistently are trying to focus on.

One, identifying your true North and then we can build upon that. And I got to tell you, I don't think this has done enough.

I really believe when you're doing the business. development and strategy for an organization, marketing has to be at that table at the very beginning, because they are going to help you define, once you've kind of identified and you're going through your true north, then you'll be able to identify who your true target audience is, then they can help you kind of craft a communication to that market segment.

Now, let me give you an example of market segments, folks. Again, working in the nonprofit world, we have philanthropists, People are a patient.

We might have a provider. All those communications are going to be different, because again, you're trying to get a different goal out of them.

At the same time, as me and Jay were mentioning earlier, you're still going down that marketing funnel, right? So I would love for you to kind of talk to me about how do you work with clients to find their true north?

@6:47 - Jade Scherr

Yeah, the part, so I'll answer that, but I also want to add to that, and I love that you mentioned that marketing needs to be at the table.

But I think a lot of people miss on why they need to, and they're like, well, it's sales, and it's marketing, and they're separate.

But you can make both be so much more impactful if they're working together, and that's also where it's not just showing up to a meeting together and giving a report, it's leaning on each other and helping each other grow and expand.

So we have one construction company that we're working with, and they came to us and they're like, what they needed was leads.

And so they were like, we'd be happy the agency that they were with before they got like two leads for like months, that was it.

So very low baseline, and we were like, okay, no, you need to be above that. So we're bringing in like 40 leads a month, and they're like, this isn't converting to sales.

And we were like, okay, why are they qualified leads? And they were like, yes. And then it was like, then what's the disconnect in the sales process?

And so for us, it was like, why are you paying us to get you leads if your sales team can't convert them?

And if we're giving you bad leads, we need to know that. If we're giving people unrealistic expectations with marketing, we need to know that.

And that's something that I think a lot of people just don't. Value the connection between the two, but now we're able to work with them and we're working hand in hand with their sales team to truly help them get that revenue because we can drive as many leads, but if it's not converting them, what's the point?

So to circle it back to your original question, I can rant a lot. Finding people's true north, I think it's getting to the root of why.

Like if you think we need awareness, a lot of the times people default to these fluffy metrics and it's like, okay, well, why do you need awareness?

Why do you need leads because you need sales? Why do you need this? And that's the most simple way that I can kind of walk it back with people, just getting to the why.

It's surprising to me the amount of businesses and they can be really profitable, really great businesses. I don't know why they're doing what they're doing and that's not going to sustain them for the long run because then it's really easy to get caught up with trends.

And get caught up with random things because if you don't understand the purpose and where you're going, how do you know if you got there?

@9:00 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

and I could not have said it better myself. one of the things in the business development world we're always kind of encouraging, we use a value proposition statement, right?

We encourage folks to write a value proposition statement because that will help them define their true norms, right? And so folks, what I mean by this, and again, you can find this information on the shades of e.com, I'll make sure I post a blog after this conversation when this episode comes out and we'll talk about the value proposition statement.

But essentially that template we use is, know, our and then list your company name, your product or service helps gives and then out of verb, right?

helps give whatever verb you want, customer segment. So again, defining what your customer segment is, either patient or consumer or whatever it is.

And then who want and what they want, right? So that's the solution you're, the problem trying to solve, right?

Is the solution. So you're essentially solving their solution. And then you say by avoiding or reducing. So what do you, what are you helping them do?

Cause again, you're trying to solve a problem of value, right? And think that's another important piece too, a lot of times entrepreneurs will solve a problem.

problem, but it doesn't really have any value. So make sure it has a value to them, right? And then insert the thing that they will stop doing or not have to do based on your product or service or whatever it is, and then whatever your outcome is going to be, right?

Because that's your differentiator, right? That's how you're going to be able to differentiate yourself from other people. the reason, Jade, I really like what you said in regards to the sales and marketing piece.

So folks, one of things I created in the healthcare world was a referring for vital funnels. Again, think of a pyramid upside down pyramid.

And so on each one, so I'm kind of the sales person. I'm going to build in the relationships, right?

I go out and make the money.

@10:39 - Jade Scherr

And then my marketing team really is a collaboration with me because they help me get to the door with marketing collateral, right?

@10:45 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

They have the flyers, the brochures, all these other fun stuff. So each one of these steps, so when I'm at the awareness step, I know what tactics I am doing, but I also know what marketing collateral I have within that tier, right?

And then I have a goal. Oh, and you can't move past the next year until I've actually reached that one goal, then I can bring it up to the evaluation stage.

Now I'm no longer just doing, you know, marginal outreach, you know, here and there. Now I'm actually having to sit down conversations with you, talking about clinical co-integration, talking about how we can build a stronger relationship.

at the evaluation stage, right? Starting to evaluate. And that's where the marketing information differs. It's no longer flyers and brochures.

Now it's actually statistical marketing data. Hey, this is where we're at in the market. This is where you're at the market.

Here's how we can help elevate you. Hey, we're already noticing we have these relationships, right? So that's why Jay just saying like the importance of really having the marketing team at the beginning.

It's going to help your sales team understand, okay, I'm at this specific stage in the funnel, where what pieces of marketing collateral should I be leveraging to help continue to push this relationship forward?

@11:57 - Jade Scherr

Is that correct? Amen to all of that. I think a lot of people will think of marketing as an expense, but it should be an investment.

Just like how your sales team, you're not just paying them to sit there. They're bringing you revenue and marketing should be doing the same, but in order for it to be effective, it can't be siloed.

People will often silo it and put it in this box and then wonder why there's this disconnect between sales and it, or why leaves are coming in and asking for something and they're like, we're getting people that want something that isn't a top priority to us, or that's a loss leader.

So really you need to have it where everyone is working together for that, for marketing to truly be an investment, and I think that's the first hurdle for people to jump through.

I also love how you mentioned giving people something that is valued to them. Too many people talk about their service in regard to either the features or the benefits, and it's like, why does that matter to the person?

problem does that solve? And when you talk before about like, is it something that's valuable. What is that value?

Do you know it? What's your only factor? How are you the only person serving this audience? And to find that?

And if you don't know that, then you need to walk back and see what makes your business unique and how do you uniquely add value to your customers?

@13:18 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

Yeah, no, I got to tell you the tech world, the tech entrepreneurs, folks, you guys should listen to this.

Okay. What they just said, because again, I think it happens in the tech world more than anything where they will create, you know, a SaaS product or an app or something and like, well, I'm not getting any clients.

Maybe I should add another, you know, service to it. I'm like, well, if you've gone down the rabbit hole this far, you created an app and you don't have consumers, another service on your app is not going to actually bring more consumers.

You actually have to find the value that you're providing within that service that's going to attract consumers and then build services off of that.

know, that, that'd be very interesting to know. One of the things you mentioned too is kind of being, you know, putting things out there and becoming not as efficient.

Can you give some examples of good marketing tactics versus bad marketing tactics?

@14:12 - Jade Scherr

Yeah, or do you want to like a specific industry or just kind of as a whole?

@14:16 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

It is a whole.

@14:17 - Jade Scherr

Yeah, so I think to sum it up, good marketing tactics and bad very much very based on your industry who you're reaching.

I'm going use business to business is one that I'm going to call out though because I think that people really really misunderstand it and I think I'm trying to reach a business but I hate to break it to you.

Humans are the ones at that business making the decision and so often people are focused on in business to business to like I need to get in front of this corporation or this like business but it's like the building is not the one signing your contract.

The building is not the one that I think is one that's a really easy takeaway for anyone that's them B2B is walk it back to the people and what they're doing outside of their day to days.

If you're only trying to reach people in their inbox, you're really going to be competing and email can be very effective.

But how else, what are they doing in their free time? How can you build that relationship? How can you stand out and how can you feel like they know, like and trust you?

And so for me, our marketing tactics for clients look so different across the board. So I struggle with like, here's a good one.

Here's a bad one because it's like, what's the purpose of it? Are you really connecting with someone? And so I think across the board, it's like, are you being intentional?

Are you being creative with it? Or are you just checking the box and googling? What should I be doing for marketing and going from there?

@15:43 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

You know, I'm going to tell you, as I've been building the podcast, you know, the Shades of Entrepreneurship folks, you guys can go judge me, go visit the Shades of E.com, please judge my marketing skills and provide some pointers because one of the things I'm starting to learn more and more as I've built in now, you know, this program is

the SEO world, right? That's also part of the marketing piece, making sure you likable photos, all, you know, alternative descriptions for images and things of that nature and blog posts and backlinks.

What are some things that individuals should be doing right now that they're not doing enough?

@16:20 - Jade Scherr

I think the first one that comes to mind is showcasing people. Like, yes, SEO is great. That can do really well, but you're looking for people that are actively searching for your service.

So, like, when people work with people that they know like and trust is like the simplest way that I can say it.

And so, how are you showcasing who you are? Are you showcasing the people and the impact that you're making?

Because anyone can do marketing. it's a matter of can they do it well or not? And so, for us, people come to us because they like our mindset.

They understand or thinking. They understand that we're not just going to go through this like scope of work that we do

for everyone. And so in the same note, I think people need to be thinking of as AI rises. How are you?

you mentioned, doing things for SEO so that you show up in that if you're in an industry where it's important to be showing up there.

So overall, I get frustrated when people get marketing tips that are those blanket because it's like, are you trying to, are you B2B?

Are you B2C? Who are you trying to reach and what are your goals? And focus on that first versus influencers are the trend because like they are a great trend right now, but they don't work for everyone.

And instead I'd challenge like if you're B2B, look at how can you get your employees to be your brand to showcase that because people are going to connect with them more.

How can you, if you're B2C, maybe that's looking at influencers to build that social credibility. And it really does vary across the board.

And I'm probably an unpopular opinion for that because I don't ride trends as heavily do. other people do because it's all about like what's the purpose of this and why are we doing it versus what we're doing?

@18:06 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

Yes, I completely agree. And I it's kind of fascinating. I feel like you really do capture the loyalty of a brand when somebody has like your article a closing that has the logo and you work for Nike or something.

fact, folks, you can go to the shades of me dot com slash shop and you can support the brand right now.

So please do so. They got some cool sweaters up there. But yeah, I think that's one of the thing because again, you're creating it's it's kind of actually blow my mind is never really thought about this, but you're also kind of in a way creating a loyal employee as well.

@18:41 - Jade Scherr

Yeah, you should be building them up. Some people are afraid of encouraging their employees to build personal brands because they're like, then they're going to leave and then it's like, well, you need to be a better leader to keep them at your company and give them opportunities for growth.

But that's going to go so much further. And even with our clients, we don't do as much through the

Traditional marketing that other agencies do because we don't want it to feel like marketing because people have this barrier now and everyone's craving Authenticity they want things that are real they want to feel like they're a part of something So how can you help them with that and even like you're wearing a Nike shirt?

So let's talk about Nike They're not talking about what fabric they use or how they produce their stuff instead They're talking about elevating you and helping you to accomplish your big goals and dreams and how You can just do anything and so it's the feeling.

It's not the material. It's not about having the best Like shirt or like being the latest and greatest in fashion.

It's about they make you feel like you can accomplish anything and That as a brand. It's like you want to achieve that and yes They do a slew of marketing tactics, but it's that messaging piece where you can do so many different things But if you're not helping people feel like they're a part of something And if you don't know what they're a part

@20:00 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

What of them? Why are you doing it? You know, I love that you said that because one of the things I mentioned about that is like when we're doing pitches, pitch competitions.

I always encourage folks to create a story around their brand, right? What's what is you have to make it relatable.

So, so for example, the most recent winner of pitch Latino folks, you can go check out Latino Founder.com and read about of things I said is like, you know, I want you to talk about walking through the grocery stores and not feeling like you see anything from your from El Salvador and you're like, man, you know, coming through this community and not seeing anything from El Salvador.

And here when El Salvador every day, I put it on eggs and put it on everything. And so I realized there was a problem.

I created a solution. I made my own crema. And then she started talking about the crema, how she went through it.

Talk about the importance of storytelling and working.

@20:58 - Jade Scherr

Yes. So important. And I think as AI and technology rises, it becomes even more important because there are so many things going out where it's like, what's the purpose of this?

It's so cold. In North Dakota, a major problem that we have here is workforce. And it drives me crazy because everyone promotes and says we're hiring.

And I'm like, can you just tell a story of why someone should work with you instead? Like, so easy to say we're hiring.

everyone posts these jobs and puts money behind it on social. And it says graphics that's probably downloaded from a stock website that's like we're hiring and it lists the position.

And it's like, but why do they want to work for you? If you went to your website, if you went to your digital presence, if you looked at everything you're doing, would you want to hire you?

Would you want to work for you? And if not, then you're probably not doing a good job of storytelling and showcasing why you're doing what you're doing.

And that's the simplest change that people can make. And I think it's so hard for people to understand how something so simple can make sense.

such an impact in why they would hire you and why they would work for you and it doesn't mean to be this complicated thing but simply like if you're trying to hire and struggling it's like talk about your mission what you stand for what you believe in why you're doing it and then people want to be a part of that if you're not sharing it you can have a really great story but people don't just know it and also if you share it once that's not enough like you need to saturate people and make it in everything you're doing and that's again if we're going back to Nike they're not just talking about specs neither is apple those are great comparisons because people think that they're this big brand and that they can't do that but it's like they got to be a big brand because they did that because they focused on why they do it because they focused on how they grow people and on the consumer too it's not about them it's about the consumer and how you feel as a consumer when you're using their product or buying it

@23:00 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

Yeah, you know, you brought up Apple. One of the greatest marketing pieces I've ever witnessed and is on print.

Again, this is print, folks.

@23:09 - Jade Scherr

yeah, it still was able to capture the essence of the product.

@23:13 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

And it was back when Apple came out with their iPhone. Oh, no, the previous, what was the dang music only one?

forgot now, the ITune one. So they came out with that and it was just a photo of their music thing.

Now, I can't even remember, it's been- iPod, yeah, I'm getting dated myself. So was print of an iPod, right?

On a photo, on a newspaper. And all it said was 1,000 songs in your pocket. That was it? The value was there to the consumer.

They didn't talk about the specs and talk about the memory. They didn't talk about colors. They just said, hey, you can have 1,000 songs in your pocket.

That to me, in consumers like, holy crap, that's valuable. That's what I want, right? I don't care how big it is.

I don't care that it looks like a brick in my pocket walking around, right? I just want the 1,000 songs in my pocket, right?

And that is that marketing piece that I think in fact, you know, you mentioned it too about the hiring now.

And I'm in here in Oregon, I'm not going to call any names, but I believe there was an organization that did really miss out on a golden opportunity.

I was watching these early morning commercials and a healthcare commercial comes on and it was just an employee talking about themselves like, Hey, this is what I do, this is what I do and it was a nurse.

the the organization and what the individual works there instead of saying, Yeah, I'm the nurse here. I like to do this on the spirit.

@24:36 - Jade Scherr

I'm like, that's great. I love that you get to do that. That's awesome.

@24:39 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

Great step. Yes. Yeah, great step. But what is the mission of the organization? Like, what are you working for?

What, what is your, what's the, what's that value proposition that keeps you there? Right? Because it's again, like you mentioned Nike, everybody's an athlete, right?

remember sticking out my tongue with my Jordan's thinking, I can't folks. I can't dunk. I can touch the rim, but that was about it.

Right? at least I tried, you know, you made you feel. feel that way, right? Is that feeling the essence of the marketing?

@25:04 - Jade Scherr

Yeah, or my husband teases me because like Costco going there, just like calms me down and I hate. But like the how they do it and like their customer experience here.

And he's like, why is your like ideal night out going to Costco? And I'm like, because they have like built this brand experience there when I go there and for a lot of people, it's target where it's that for them.

@25:28 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

But like Walmart does not have the same vibes for me at all of that.

@25:32 - Jade Scherr

I'm like, oh, God, no, I don't want to go there at any cost.

@25:37 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

Yeah, target man. I tell you folks, my four year old literally asked me this morning if we couldn't stop by target after school because she wanted to go get a spider to hang.

really what she really wants to do is probably get a cake pop from Starbucks that's inside the target and then walk around and kind of check out everything.

Things because again, that's to your point. It created this on it. Now again, I mentioned Starbucks, folks.

@26:00 - Jade Scherr

There's Starbucks quality of coffee isn't the greatest, but they're consistent.

@26:05 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

messages are clear. They're all over the place. The ease of ordering on that app and it's already there. mean, they really kind of, again, everybody wants that concierge when they want a when they're selling where they become a consumer, right?

You want that white love treatment. How can you give that to them? Like, how does marketing help give off the impression that you're getting white service?

@26:28 - Jade Scherr

Yeah. Well, I think a piece with that and Starbucks as a great example is that consistency aspect. know what to expect.

Even I was driving back home from a wedding this weekend and someone asked, do you want to go to this coffee shop or this one?

And I was like, this one because it tastes different every time. Sometimes it's ready right away. Other times it's not.

I was like, if they make it right, great, but not a good experience. Starbucks, like you said, I'm not a coffee connoisseur, but I get what I want.

I get it the same way every time it's right. They have great perks, they communicate with you and you know what to expect.

You know the experience when you go into any Starbucks. What's going to happen? And there's that consistency. Target's also a great example of that.

They don't need to put their logo on ads because they use a certain amount of red in every ad in the right color, so you know it's target even without seeing that it's target.

And so they have a whole plan for how they do that. And as like if you're earlier in business, you might not be like, oh, I'm going to be able to tell if there's 70% red in here or whatever the metric is, but also like are you consistently using your brand colors?

Are you consistently telling the same story in an engaging way though? And you don't need to say the exact same thing over and over, but are you speaking to the value that you bring?

Are you speaking to what you stand for? And if you went and audited like your social, your digital presence, what you're doing, even your swag, can you tell that it's you?

If you didn't... No, if the logo is blurred, would you know what's you and if not, then that's a problem.

And that's something where when you talk about like that concierge type of branding and how to do that, it's really knowing like who your audience is, what they care about, but then just being consistent.

People overcomplicate marketing and branding so much, but it all stems down to like, why do you do what you do and are you looking at your consumers' pain points versus your own?

Don't talk about what you do so well, but instead flip it to what are they feeling? What are their pain points?

I love we started with a new client yesterday and they for the past like four years have been documenting every single time someone calls what their pain point of why they're coming to them.

And I was like, that is a great idea. Writing that down, they can see and then we're able to so easily come in and message around that because people need to feel pain to make a decision in some sort too.

And Obviously, retail is a little bit different for that, I think those are easy wins, like, be consistent, understand why someone's coming to you, what you solve, if you don't solve anything, figure it out.

Like, you talked about with value proposition, like, are you bringing value? Ask yourself those tough questions. Sometimes you have to shift your business model.

Even like last year, we fired about half of our clients because we recognize that, like, for us to be able to give the level of service that we want, we can't be taking on so many small paying clients.

And so, made that decision looking at it, of like, for us to be what we want, these are the people that we need to serve.

And while I loved working with those different businesses, I had to let them go. Sometimes you have tough choices, but that's how you also get to the point where we can give the level of service that we pride ourselves on.

@29:50 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

Yeah, you know, I really love that you mentioned the brand guideline. Because I think that is such an important piece, folks, and it comes, first and foremost, that

The target story was awesome.

@30:01 - Jade Scherr

now, I'm like, I'm having visualizations of all these target commercials I made. I'm like, oh my God, yeah, there's so much red all the time.

@30:07 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

But that's really awesome idea. Now, in regards to the brand guideline piece, folks, I would highly encourage you to make sure you create your brand guideline all the way down to the font, the font size, the font you're going to use.

Like if you go on the shades of e.com right now, all of it's on the railway text, right? All the fonts, railway.

Not sure that's the best. Again, I'm trying to learn here, folks. But again, I'm trying to be consistent. All of the support boxes are by now.

Boxes are all black, right? But then if you go to swag for my brand.com, it's all going to be the blue and orange, right?

And I really liked what you mentioned too. Like when you're going through the brand guideline, you really have to determine, OK, how much of this color is part of the brand?

It's 40% this 20% this 15% this. And it's really, really important because no matter where you go across the country or across globes.

right across in the entire globe. I guess there's only one that we can kind of go across. So just the one globe, right?

But even if you go around the world, having that brand consistency is extremely important. Because again, that's that's kind of what people remember you for.

Now, what would you say are some of the biggest marketing challenges that you've you've seen some of your clients face?

@31:23 - Jade Scherr

Yeah, I think the common challenge is just the question of like, and you kind of touched on it little bit there.

Like, I'm doing brand I have brand guidelines, but like, am I using them right? Am I doing this right?

Am I focusing on the right thing? There's like so many different changes all the time too with social media and different things coming out that there's this constant like, am I doing the right thing?

And that's where a lot of our focus comes in as just making sure of like, do we know the why?

we know the North Star? So you know if you're working on the right things, and that would be instead of focusing on like, what you're doing.

focus on why you do it and then you'll be able to streamline efforts. You'll have way less headaches because you're focusing on the things that are helping you move towards your north star and helping you make an impact.

So biggest challenge is definitely going to be that like, are we doing the right thing? Why are we doing it?

And then the second one on top of that is integrating with different departments, especially as businesses start to scale, you go from you can have someone's siloed doing something, but then everything starts to get disconnected and then you grow more and more and the gap gets further and further.

And so those would probably be the two common challenges that I'm seeing of like the high level trends with that.

Yeah, sorry, go for it. Oh, I was gonna say when you talked about brand guidelines, one tip that I give to, a lot of the times people are really good about like, I'm gonna list my fonts, I'm gonna list my colors.

But one thing I think they miss is the messaging overall for your brand. So my favorite likes really Please simple framework if you're DIYing it is to do like we are fill in the blank, but not this and do like five or six of those because you can say we are fun, but not like, but not childish.

We are sophisticated, but not stuffy and you can go through and say and that can really help your team too because when you bring new people on also to help with your marketing.

It's really easy for them to look at something, but you can have the same look and feel and totally different tone, totally different vibes and so doing that is a really, really easy way to get everyone on the same page.

That's also something that we do with clients and onboarding workshops and I love it because you can have their leadership team all fill it out and it's like, huh, why like they have to challenge each other and get on the same page too of like what matters most with your voice.

But that is a key one that can really help when you're thinking of how you're communicating to and something that people may

That's in the brand guidelines.

@34:02 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

Yeah, that's a great point. the end of the day, a culture eat strategy for breakfast, right? So if you if you bring in individuals that are in a line with the culture of the organization and quickly erode the culture of that organization.

And you know, again, going back to the true north pieces, the importance of that focus again. If you're if you know what your true north is and you start making goals off of that, right?

Okay. Well, now you have a goal. Next year, I want to be in X amount markets or I want to be in this state.

want to expand to this location. Okay. Now that have the goal, tactfully, what do you have to do to accomplish that goal?

Right. That's where and then that's also again where the marketing piece comes in as well. Because, okay, tactic one, tactic two, tactic three.

Well, how am I going to accomplish tactic one? I marketing? Do I need cells? It's just, you know, what is it?

Right? is it operational design? that case, maybe you might not need marketing at that point in time. But once you're at operational readiness and you're ready to go out to the community and say, Hey, we're ready.

That's where marketing. That was coming. So again, involving the marketing team early and often as you build out, brand is very important.

Now, what, what, what would you say are some of the things that the entrepreneurs are really doing very well in some of small businesses that you've been working with.

You're like, from the marketing perspective, like, yeah, you're, that's a good thing that you're constantly doing, either a social media post or just networking.

What would you say is the biggest, the kind of the golden nugget they should consistently do?

@35:25 - Jade Scherr

I would say the golden nugget is building relationships. Marketing can go so far, but relationships are always going to overcome that.

And so even like, I've grown my business with very, very little marketing because I've put in the work for relationships.

And so I turn away typically like 40 customers a month. And so, some people can call that dumb, but it's like, I really want to focus on the people that I feel like I can make an impact on, that I can make a profit on too, but that we can be a part of it and help them grow.

And if we didn't have those relationships, I would be scrambling on the other side. And so, That is one where no matter what market you're in and even if you're not serving people locally, relationships still go so far and that's something that I've seen where you can tell the difference and how someone's able to reach their goals if they have those strong relationships.

The other one would be just putting yourself out there and you can also see if people are willing to try things.

So a lot of the times people want this big elaborate plan with all this planning and if, but then as we know the marketing industry is changing constantly and so the people that are willing to try something and accept that it might not be perfect but they're going to learn from it do so well and that's also what I love about small and mid-sized businesses because they're typically more willing to do that as well and so when you're talking earlier about like here's our North Star and here's the tactics of how we're going to get there.

The best businesses that are actually reaching those goals too aren't just setting tactics but they're looking at is that actually working and that sounds like common sense but it's something a lot of people miss out on

And especially larger organizations can miss out on that too. They're going through and they're like, well, we said this KPI for this, but it's like, well, now you're midway through the process and you're not getting the results that you wanted.

Why are we gonna continue to spend money and time and resources on this if it's not actually helping you with your North Star?

So that would be the other one is just businesses that are willing to pivot and willing to really dig into why they're doing it and is it successful.

@37:27 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

Yeah, I mean, I was about to mention when you started talking about that like folks, the key word here is key performance indicators.

Each tactic needs to have one, right? So you can, as you're mentioning, Jade, so you can kind of go back and look, is this tactic working?

Folks, you can go and check out some of my previous episodes. Now, they're not that great. When I was first starting out, I was learning about marketing.

Again, check out theshadesabee.com, go look at some of those previous, like one of those very first episodes and the sound was off, the video was off.

You know, I was always learning.

@38:00 - Jade Scherr

But again, I always tell people, I've never failed a day in my life.

@38:02 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

You either succeed or I learn and I'm learning a whole heck of a lot, right? And then I also agree with the networking piece, the importance of it, the value of networking outside of just meeting with other people is astronomical, right?

It provides you opportunities for new ventures. It provides you opportunities to possibly join a venture. It provides free education because again, people are sharing their knowledge.

And, you know, Jay, you mentioned it earlier and it's just something I would encourage, folks. If you think you are a thought leader in the market, we'll go out and share your thoughts with the market, tell you, right?

@38:38 - Jade Scherr

And part to add with that too is don't just share your thoughts. Like if you don't have an opinion, you're not a true thought leader.

You need to actually have a stance to like be a thought leader.

@38:49 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

So that's something to consider to that is a very good point. You know, it kind of takes me back to Hamilton.

Well, Berg, if you stand on nothing, then what will you fall for? If you folks, if you haven't seen Hamilton, I'm going.

Hey again, I love musicals. Go check out Hamilton. It's a great one.

@39:04 - Jade Scherr

But again, if you stand for nothing, what will you fall for, I think is a really good piece, especially for the leadership, right?

@39:10 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

you're thinking of, because again, a lot of times people are behind a leader, a thought leader when the marketing occurs, right?

Because they believe in that individual's value, or that brand, right?

@39:21 - Jade Scherr

That true north. so they're apart. Yeah, when we talk about personal brand, that's where it's like you need to be adding value to people sharing your stance, standing for something.

But that's going to go a lot further than like a traditional ad kit. And yes, there's times and places for everything.

So that's where I never say like everyone should be thinking about doing this marketing tactic, because instead it's more about the mindset.

And I think that's the biggest barrier to overcome is why are we doing things? are we doing it? Are we looking to constantly improve?

But it's the mindset of why versus what you're doing. And that's a harder concept for some people to understand of like, what do you mean?

Because even for us, like we work work in a lot of ways. container basis and it's like it's not a matter of what we're doing in a month, instead it's like are we helping you work towards your North Star, are we helping you with those key outcomes and what we're doing doesn't really matter if we're supporting those outcomes, if we're getting you the results that you want, why does it matter if we're doing Google Ads versus a referral program or an email drip, it doesn't because the outcome is what matters.

@40:24 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

That's very, very true and again folks that there's so many different medians within the marketing vertical podcast is one blog post, newsletters, a billboard, if you want to put your name on a billboard, heck you want to put your name on a side of a public bus, you can do that, right, you can put it on a park bench, in fact I go golfing every time I see a different marketing piece on the, I'm not sure how many people are calling to buy a house on the golf course, but at least they're marketing pieces there, right.

@40:49 - Jade Scherr

A good rule of thumb too is like not just creating content for one platform, so don't just do it for your podcast, but repurpose that.

So they often say like repurpose it in three different formats. And if you can't repurpose it in three different formats, then think about how you can, because people think that if you just do something in one spot, everyone's going to flock to it, they're going to see it, it's going to be great.

But you're also putting a lot of time and energy into something that's only being used there. So instead, how can we capitalize on that across platforms?

You'll be able to saturate more, but also be able to make more of an impact with very little extra effort.

@41:24 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

Yes, that's very true, folks. Again, these conversations, these episodes, I turn them into blog posts. There's a blog, there's a newsletter.

We have a transcription. again, you can go to shad3e.com after this episode airs. You can have the transcription as well as the audio, they'll have information about Jade, as well as hex hive link back to their organization so you guys can follow more information.

But before Jade, one of the things we're talking about, you know, marketing thought leaders, give us some advice. You're a marketing thought leader.

What advice do you have for aspiring entrepreneurs that are trying to build their brand and trying to market out their service?

@41:56 - Jade Scherr

Yeah, I would say, stop overthinking it, but make sure but you're intentional. So it's a balance of are you doing something for a reason or because you feel like you should be doing it?

And are you trying to be a thought leader just because you heard that it's a good thing to do?

Or is it something you're actually passionate about? With several executives even, we're talking with them and it's like, okay, for you, this just isn't worth trying to turn you into a thought leader.

So instead, how can we capitalize? Can we use another team member instead? So really look at why do you want to be doing the things that you think that you should be doing?

Why do you want to grow your business too? Think about it from that perspective and then walk back, but making sure that you're going out of your comfort zone, but in a way where it's for a bigger goal.

So don't just start a LinkedIn newsletter just to have one. Do it because you have an end in mind.

So that would be kind of the overarching thing, but it doesn't need to be perfect. Even I just recently started a LinkedIn newsletter.

I write it super, super fast. I don't overthink it. I'm sure it's probably typos grammatical errors for being someone in marketing apostrophes over well me and Same with commas.

So it's like I'm cool with it going out as is and I get a ton of right feedbacks It's skyrocketed our leads and I did it because I wanted people to hear Things that I felt like they weren't hearing in their day-to-day and so Approached it in that way.

I could definitely make it flash here I could go off of it right now working on repurposing that content more But it's all like why are we doing it is this something that you truly want or something that you heard from someone else?

And that's something that I get frustrated a lot in marketing where it's like, okay? Why do you think that you should be doing tiktok?

Why do you think that you should be doing this?

@43:45 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

If you don't know then figure it out first before putting your time and energy into it That is very very great advice I feel like I struggle and with the with the social media post like which one should I do which I shouldn't link Dan super in

gauging consumers there. Because again, I think that the content that we're providing is educational informative and professional, and so people within that sphere are very interested.

And Dr. Du, absolutely horrible. I'm sorry, I do not dance on these videos, so I guess I don't get the algorithm of TikTok very much.

Now, Jay, before we leave, how can people learn more about you? How can they connect with you online?

@44:22 - Jade Scherr

Where can they find HexaHive on the internet? Heck yeah. LinkedIn is my jam, so I also love it. So definitely follow me on LinkedIn.

HexaHive's there too. Our website's hexahive.co, but otherwise you can find me on all the normal social platforms. Jay Share, Share is spelled S-C-H-E-R-R, but I would love to connect.

Feel free to DM me too if you're like, what the heck should I be doing? I am happy. I also told myself often that I'm like the worst salesman because I say no a lot, but would love to dig into what your biggest struggle is and how I can help you move forward.

So if you're lost, DM me lost and we'll go

@45:00 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

from there and I can help you figure out what where should you be starting because that's really I never say that this one marketing tactics going to change your world but I want to help understand what you stand for and then I can give you some pointers if I think that my team would be helpful for you for that I'll let you know if I don't I'll also let you know and it really help point you to how can we help elevate your business that you can grow and use marketing as an investment to your next big thing love it again folks jade share on the shades of entrepreneurship you can find this information by visiting the shades of e.com go ahead and subscribe to the newsletter we'll have jade's information links back to the website as well as her linked in on the on the blog post the one the episode airs you can also stream this episode a couple of weeks early on patreon so five dollars a month patreon members can actually screen this episode early as well as all the other episodes coming up jade thank you again so much for being on the show very informative again I'm my mind is still blowing about the target

with the crystals and all the red. I'm still like, what the heck? And but it all makes so much sense.

It just does. So folks, please follow me on the shades of E.com. Thank you and have a great night.