The Power of Saying No in Business | Jesse Wroblewski

PROFITABLE TALKS...

In this episode of the Profitable Creative, host Christian Brim speaks with Jesse Robluski about the journey of decommoditization in marketing. Jesse shares his experiences running a marketing agency for 25 years, the challenges faced during the pandemic, and the importance of differentiation in a crowded market. They discuss the concept of branding, the impact of budget on marketing strategies, and the significance of understanding customer value. Jesse emphasizes the need for businesses to say no to unfit clients and the resurgence of direct mail as a marketing strategy. The conversation concludes with insights on creating memorable brands and the resources available for entrepreneurs.

PROFITABLE TAKEAWAYS...

• Decommoditization helps businesses stand out in a crowded market.
• Differentiation is key to avoiding the race to the bottom.
• Branding is about creating a memorable experience for customers.
• Understanding ROI in branding is complex but essential.
• Budget constraints can shape marketing strategies significantly.
• Saying no to clients can protect your brand's integrity.
• Direct mail is making a comeback as a marketing tool.
• Every business has a brand, whether intentional or not.
• The lifetime value of a customer is crucial for marketing decisions.
• Creating a strong brand requires discipline and focus.

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Transcript

Christian Brim (00:01.688)
Welcome to another episode of the Profitable Creative, the only place on the internet where you're going to find out how to turn your passion into profit. I am your host, Christian Brim. Joining me is Jesse Wroblewski Did I do that right? With Decommoditized. Welcome, Jesse.

Jesse (00:17.686)
You did, you did.

Jesse (00:22.23)
Thank you sir, nice to see you again as always.

Christian Brim (00:24.984)
Well, I'm, I'm excited to have you based upon our previous conversations. I'm curious where this one goes. So for the, for the audience, why don't you catch us up on, on who Jesse is, what he does and how he got here.

Jesse (00:40.014)
Sure, sure. So my 60 seconds is I've been running a marketing agency for 25 years.

when the pandemic hit, I had to take a step back and, kind of shut down the office, go virtual, cut some employees. And that led to soul searching, which I think a lot of people went through during that time. And I wanted to figure out, you know, what at the past 25 years was not only the most fulfilling to me, but most rewarding for my clients. Where did I make the most impact? And I signed up for a couple of, you know, agency bootcamps, trying to figure this thing out of what I wanted to

Christian Brim (01:09.518)
Yes.

Jesse (01:15.626)
be when I grew up. And I realized that my favorite thing to do is taking almost like the most boring product ever and injecting it with so much life that it could, you know, not only stand on its own with a personality, but charge a premium in a crowded market space. So yes, yes, yes. So one of my, one of my coaches said that, you know, that sounds great.

Christian Brim (01:32.088)
Like accounting, that would be boring.

Jesse (01:39.852)
But you can't say you specialize in boring products. No one's going to self-identify as boring. So I came up with the concept of, know, what if you're

on the verge of becoming commoditized. I felt the pinch when my agency had becoming a commodity with a lot of alternatives popping up. So I came up with the secondary concept of helping people become decommoditized if they feel like they're racing for the bottom to charge the lowest price. And that pride that they used to feel by solving their clients' problems because they were the only ones that could do it, started to get eroded away and now it's all price-based.

Christian Brim (02:06.894)
Yes.

Jesse (02:21.664)
I wanted to kind of inject some of that some of that pride back into what they do for a living and give their life meaning so little grandiose but that all led to me writing a book called marketing for super villains, which I'm sure we'll get into and I'll get Thank you. Thank you. And yeah, I saw you speaking in Oklahoma and

Christian Brim (02:36.024)
Love the book, by the way.

Jesse (02:44.366)
I think your bio page most of all spoke to me because I too speak in fluent movie quotes. I can get behind this guy.

Christian Brim (02:56.644)
So who do you, you now that you have reinvented yourself, so to speak, who do you tend to gravitate to work with?

Jesse (03:06.242)
So great question. Number one, we usually don't fit well with startups, right? So everyone, know, most startups have rose colored glasses. They think they're special and they're going to take over the world. say, yeah, yeah, yeah. I say, we, you know, we want to work with the people that, you know, have their teeth kicked in a little bit, right? They've been through the wringer.

Christian Brim (03:12.973)
Right.

Christian Brim (03:19.15)
They are special, Jesse. They are special.

Christian Brim (03:27.371)
Right?

Jesse (03:29.374)
They don't know where to turn and they've kind of unturned every stone and they're kind of looking for the next option, right? So when you get, when you start working with a marketing agency, it's kind of like an arms race. It's great for us marketers, right? Cause it's, you have to rebrand yourself. And then we do the rebranding process and then your competitors rebrand themselves. And it's like, you got to redo your packaging and you redo your packaging and then your competitors, they're re-packaging and you drop your price and it goes back and forth. It's like this arm race. So I say,

you know, becoming decommoditized or successfully differentiating yourself, that's like the mic drop moment. Like that's something your competitors, all of a sudden they're in this arm race and they're like, Christian just did that. Like we don't know where to go from here. We can't compete. So that, that special thing, it's not always easy to come by that differentiator is your mic drop and you leave the industry.

Christian Brim (04:22.074)
So, I got your book and read it, immediately. I sat down and read the whole thing and then I shared it with my marketing team. and I talk, I talk a little bit about, so, so my recollection is, is that you have these, I think you called them planets, of, of differentiation. what are some of your favorites?

Jesse (04:50.924)
Yeah, so to touch on that, I've read a lot of business books even before going on this journey. they all say, find your USP or find your differentiator. And then the chapter ends. they never explain how to uncover. It's an incredibly monumental task. And then there's a secondary monumental task of

Christian Brim (04:59.875)
Right.

Right. The end.

Jesse (05:11.758)
Once you figure it out, if you're lucky enough, how to explain that succinctly to the universe, right? So my goal was to almost codify how brands throughout history that have successfully differentiated themselves figure out, like, let's put a box around this and like, let's give people a starting point because you can very quickly just...

go off into a tangent and never really uncover your differentiator. So I created something called the universe of differentiation. And there are a lot of ways to differentiate, but this is just the top 12 ways.

that brands throughout history, large and small, have successfully differentiated themselves. And if anyone's interested after this conversation, you can download a nice little full color worksheet along with some examples. The planets on our website, completely free. It's a great starting point. And within that, we can touch upon any of the planets you like. There's differentiating by definitive, differentiating by approachability, differentiating by your process, et cetera, et cetera.

Christian Brim (05:43.482)
Mm-hmm.

Jesse (06:13.168)
I'll let the conversation go from there if there's anything interesting that you want to

Christian Brim (06:17.132)
Well, it was funny as I was reading through there and your examples, the one that just stuck out to me was, okay, we're going to differentiate ourselves as the, don't remember exactly how I phrased it, but like, we're very average accountants. Like there, there, there are a lot better accountants than we are. because, there are.

That's demonstrably true, but it spoke to the thing that we were good at, which was communication and relationship, the soft skill part that most accountants don't have. And my marketing team didn't like that one much, so.

Jesse (07:12.398)
Yeah, I mean it's a common trap that a lot of business owners fall in, right? So I'm kind of hardwired to always chase down being the best, right? You be the best at everything you do. Everything's gotta be buttoned up. know, I'm into martial arts. I'm a black belt. Like I gotta go after the best teacher, the best, the best, the best. And a lot of times you don't have to be the best.

Christian Brim (07:35.32)
Right.

Jesse (07:35.95)
because a lot of, I don't know if you can speak to this, a lot of our end users, our prospects, they don't know the best from the worst, right? They're, you know, so it kinda, it can be a fool's errand to say, you know, hey, we're gonna offer more services or we're gonna offer, you know, all these premium value ads and the client's just looking for ease of use or some other byproduct of the true thing that you're offering.

Christian Brim (07:43.074)
No. No.

Christian Brim (08:00.44)
Well, no, I think you speak truth that most people don't want to hear, which is, and I would include really all professional services from medicine to marketing in this. The end user has no idea whether the person's any good at it or not. They're going based upon the trust, the feeling that they have.

Jesse (08:20.418)
Yep. Yep.

Christian Brim (08:29.24)
But, know, do you know if your doctor's giving you good advice? Do you know if your marketer's giving you good advice? No, because you're not an expert. How would you know?

Jesse (08:38.728)
Yep, So.

Christian Brim (08:40.346)
But most people don't want to admit that, right? Like, I made the right choice, right? But did you? I mean, what are you basing that on?

Jesse (08:49.198)
Exactly, exactly. You look at lot of SaaS companies, majority of users use about 5 % of what their software as a service offers. And they're out there, value, benefit, benefit, feature. And it really comes down to that approachability. I'm intimidated. I don't know the questions to ask. But if you're out there talking this high level feature and benefit, you're missing out on a huge opportunity to connect with me on a human level and make me feel like I'm making the right choice.

Christian Brim (09:17.358)
Well, yeah, and to that extent, think professional services tend to use the jargon because they think it makes them look better, right? So I'm using all of these terms that you don't understand, and that shows that I'm smarter than you. But really what it does is just confuse you because I'm like, I don't know what, well, I mean, I do, but

Jesse (09:37.23)
Yep. Exactly.

Christian Brim (09:46.854)
You know, what's the difference between SEO and CRM, right? You know, like, why are you using acronyms? Right?

Jesse (09:56.184)
Exactly, Yep, it's a trap that a lot of us fall into.

Christian Brim (10:00.856)
Yeah. And I think it's, I think it starts with, especially with existing businesses. It starts with what we think we know about our customers. Donald Miller, when I, when I did his class, the story brand guy, he, he described it as, right, as experts, you're, you're trying to communicate what you do and you are the

are have all of this knowledge and you dumb it down from from your knowledge as a 10 and you dumb it down so that the audience can the prospect can understand it and you think you've really dumbed it down but really all you've done is taken it down to a seven right you need to get it down to a two or three I recently spoke at a the onward summit and it was a bunch of videographers

and I was speaking on profit and I thought I had dumbed it down, but at the last minute I had added one more term. And as I was going through the presentation, I realized I lost the audience. And afterwards, they were talking to me and like, okay, now explain this to me again. And I'm like, yeah, I should have left that out because I was going too far. And again, I thought I was being simple.

Jesse (11:26.168)
Yeah, yeah, I mean, I...

have the exact same experience here in New York City that's been like a long-standing bookstore, very prestigious. And I went in and I just published my book. And I like to donate this book to the store if anybody's interested. It's like, what's it about? And it's about finding your differentiator as a business owner and it's tied into marketing for supervillains and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And he's like, wow, that's great. What does differentiation mean? And I'm like, I lost you on the third word of that pitch. I thought it was this big, special,

Christian Brim (11:54.84)
Right, right.

Jesse (11:58.253)
bookstore like nope never you can never underestimate your audience enough

Christian Brim (12:04.064)
No. In a previous conversation, we talked about the difficulty of computing return on investment for brand. And I'd kind of like to explore that if you're willing.

Jesse (12:23.598)
I would love it, I would love it. Yeah, it's very, your brain is very interesting to me because you walk both sides, the analytical and the creative. So let's put it to work, see what it can do.

Christian Brim (12:30.776)
You don't want to get in there, Jesse. You really don't.

Christian Brim (12:38.616)
All right. So, so, one of the things that I believe to be true is that if, it ever existed, the idea of direct marketing, where you can tie, ROI to a specific spend. you, you know, return on investment, you, you, spend money on Google AdWords and you get this sale and you can draw a straight line.

That is gone, if it ever existed. Now there are multiple ways people interact with your company before they purchase. An example of that is a book, right? You wrote a book, I wrote a book. The fact that the book exists, whether someone buys it, reads it, uses it, likes it, doesn't like it, doesn't matter. Just that the book exists affects prospects, right?

But there's no way for you to quantify that or know that, right? So, you you spend money to print a book, put time and effort to create something out there. How do you quantify whether that's a good investment of your time? And this conversation can be applied to anything that you do in marketing, but let's talk specifically about brand. So you're trying to

Rebrand invest in your brand and trying to decide How much is it worth? What how do you go about that?

Jesse (14:20.204)
So there's a lot of, this is like one of the most, probably the most abstract thing in business, right? Brand. Everyone has a different definition of it.

Christian Brim (14:27.096)
Right? Yes. Yes. And let me pause and interject. My marketing director, who's been with me three years from the outset, was preaching brand. And I'm like, so as a business owner, I'm dismissive of her. I'm like, you know, that shit is for Coca-Cola. You know, we don't do branding, right? But the reality is, and this is the truth, that every business owner has a brand. Every business owner has a brand.

It's kind of like culture. can't... you have a culture as a business. You have a brand as a business. The question is whether you're being intentional about it or not, right? Okay, so having said that, yes, it is very nefarious... not nebulous. So how do you go about quantifying?

Jesse (15:15.879)
Yeah, so in my efforts to kind of create a baseline right the most elegant definition of brand because brand means something different to everyone the best definition I've ever heard is brand is simply a memory someone has of your business Right, so it could be

Christian Brim (15:32.154)
I like that. I will stipulate that.

Jesse (15:35.872)
It could be a smell. could be a jingle that gets stuck in your head, really annoying. It could be a color. It could be a brand. It could be a word, a logo, whatever. So we, as branding people, as business owners, want people to remember us. So the question becomes, what's the most cost-effective way to create that memory? We want to carve out that real estate in that person's brain so that when they see something, when they need something, they remember us because we're in there. And there are a lot of factors.

Christian Brim (15:40.559)
Yes?

Christian Brim (15:56.218)
Mmm.

Christian Brim (16:03.033)
Yes.

Jesse (16:06.028)
Audio is the most motivating of the senses, right? You never see something and start tapping your foot and like you hear stuff, you get your body moving. It's the most motivating. You can get a jingle stuck in someone's head, but the question becomes how many times do you have to pay to get that jingle in front of them? And it becomes a math problem, which is where you and I kind of gelled figuring out how we could fill in each other's holes, right?

Christian Brim (16:11.578)
Okay.

Christian Brim (16:34.094)
Whoa, okay. Jesse, All right, go ahead. Sorry.

Jesse (16:35.31)
You know, visual, our eyes tell our brain what it's seeing and creates memories faster than anything else. And then you run into, know, I'm going to be a little edgy to break through the noise. And that edginess becomes, you know, hey, it's really memorable or I'm offended and I'm not going to remember. So there's all these factors.

Christian Brim (16:49.103)
Yes.

Jesse (17:04.822)
I'm a creative so I don't make it a math problem, but I'd love to hear, maybe we can create a workshop as, know, how, what, here's all the ingredients. Visual is fast, audio is motivational, trendiness or edginess will contribute to this if you're going after a demographic of seniors.

All of a sudden that edginess level goes down. If you're going after college kids, that edginess level can go up. And there's probably all these slide rules to create a mathematically successful in conjunction with a creative brand. But I think a majority of us branders, branding people, we go with gut. We're all making an educated decision as to what we think is going to work best.

Christian Brim (17:54.284)
Yeah. I had a marketer on the podcast recently and I, I, this is not really revelatory, but the statement is that the reason why marketing is, is really hard to get right is because people behave unpredictably.

And we'd like to put them in boxes and say that if we pulled this lever, they're going to go up. And if you push this lever, they're going to go down, but they don't, they don't react, react rationally. Right. And so I think. I don't, I don't want to say it's a fool's errand to, to be able to create a construct that will predict with, with accuracy, the return on investment of those things.

But I do think that there are principles that can guide you, right? So that you're not wasting money. but at the end of the day, it, it's, it's, very hard to connect the dots. instance, okay. You said that, you know, audio is the most engaging, which I found fascinating, but I agree with you.

while visual is, is processed quicker. so then you, you can take that, that principle and apply it to your, your process. But I think you have to start with some, fundamental questions like, all right, how much is this customer worth to you? Right. What's the lifetime value of that customer?

Because that's going to define your economics in a broad scale. if that customer is worth $10,000 to you over the lifetime, then you can't spend 11, right? And if you spend close to 10, so eight, nine, eight or 9,000, it still may make sense, but it's real hard to scale. So you have to understand the lifetime value of your customer.

Christian Brim (20:13.728)
And then you can start looking at, right, what is the investment that I can make to attract more? And I don't think that fundamental question is asked enough by business owners or marketers.

Jesse (20:29.91)
Yeah, I mean, everybody points to Nike.

Like, I just want a recognizable logo that, people see it and they think Nike, they don't realize that Nike has 4,200 professional athletes on payroll that receive paycheck every week just to wear Nike. Right. So it's not that logo. mean, it's, it's 4,200 paychecks on top of all the other, things that they have. So, you know, I think your, your, your question and landing on budget, good or bad.

Christian Brim (20:53.646)
Right.

Jesse (21:02.616)
will demonstrate your success in the overall marketing campaign. So if you don't have a big budget, not a huge deal, but Chiquita Banana put those stickers on bananas to let everybody knew that was quality. But the first million people that saw those stickers, they didn't even know what it meant. Chiquita Banana had to tell them, this is why you're looking for the sticker. This is what it means. So.

To have one without the other, you're to put stickers on everything and people don't know what the hell it means, you got to spend that money. So if you don't have the money, maybe that sticker is not the right option for you.

Christian Brim (21:36.602)
So when you approach a client to discuss their branding and you've got that budget question answered, what's the process you go through to determine what is the best way to differentiate yourself?

Jesse (21:54.316)
That is, you know, unfortunately.

going into the analytical side of our creative world. That's unfortunately probably the biggest driver of where we take everything. So if you have the budget for a Super Bowl commercial, I'm probably going to move the needle regardless of what I do. If you are working on a shoestring budget, I got to work a little harder, a little smarter. To use a football analogy, I got to find that hole in the line where nobody's looking and breakthrough.

Christian Brim (22:16.036)
Right.

Jesse (22:28.238)
and get you a couple yards. I can't go head to head with everybody and see who comes out on top. So budget is a huge factor. How we decide on...

Christian Brim (22:30.596)
Right.

Jesse (22:39.864)
how that factors in. It's a lot of things, right? So if you're going after college kids and it's a small budget, we probably want to try and develop social, you know, social posts that are viral, that are going to give you extra eyeballs because people are more willing to share the content that you create. If you want people to share the content you create, you got to be as entertaining, if not more entertaining than Netflix that's posting right below you, right? Now we, now we put ourselves into a creative stratosphere. If you have the budget, maybe it's just an,

branding and awareness play where you're in more spaces and more places that your competitors are not. So yeah, absolutely a huge ingredient that, like you said, a lot of people just overlook and they just go head first into the creative side and then they have this great TV spot but they have no money to put it on TV, right? So.

Christian Brim (23:26.552)
Well, yeah. And that's what I love about, about your, your approach and your mindset to this, this problem is that there, there tends to be as, as humans, this herd mentality, right? it's, it's the opposite of blue ocean marketing and it's like, well, everybody's posting on social. So I need to post on social. Everybody's doing.

XYZ therefore I need to be doing it. But as you point out that that puts you into a lot more competition and it's, you know, one of the things that I'm, I've had it circulating in the back of my mind for a couple of years. but I'm, I'm really thinking about doing it is, going to a quarterly printed newsletter, right?

And my thoughts around that are, you know, I'm talking to my target market. They're not consuming any, they're not receiving any, right? And so I'm the only thing they're going to get. It's not going to get lost in the postings on social media or on my website.

And the engagement level of someone reading something that they're physically holding is much higher than the way they're going to consume it, you know, online. And, you know, but then, then you take that to your marketer and they're like, well, I don't know. We don't, we've never done that. Right. We, we, but, and, and, and so it is a risk because, know, it's not cheap to print and mail.

and you know, you, you lose a lot that you have in digital cause you don't necessarily have an easy direct response. and so your, your tracking of it may not, you know, be, be real easy. but it goes back to my gut. Like you said, your gut, like it's, it's something that no one else is doing.

Jesse (25:43.874)
Yeah, I mean, it's very funny you bring that up. I started my career 25 years ago in the direct mail industry and saw the internet come along. I'm like, this is going to be the revolution. Direct mail is dead. 25 years later, I'm even more entrenched in the direct mail industry is having this huge resurgence. Why? Because they can, it's almost a guaranteed impression, right? I get you, I get in your mailbox, you're going to touch it. You're going to see it. You're going to, even if you throw it out compared to digital, where I'm getting all these impressions, who knows who's

Christian Brim (25:49.935)
Yes.

Christian Brim (26:05.273)
Right.

Jesse (26:13.808)
if they scanned it, if they even ripped it.

So they are now in the business of creating guaranteed impressions and they're having this huge surge back in business. So it's funny. It's funny the cycles and you say, why are they having that resurgence? Cause everyone's saying, well, nobody's here anymore. know, no one goes there anymore. It's too crowded, right? So everyone goes here and yeah, it's, very interesting in that mindset. You know, the pioneers will always drive those trends. And I'm sure, you know, five years from now when we chat, everyone's going to say,

direct mail is too saturated going back to digital.

Christian Brim (26:49.048)
Well, I, Jesse called it where we're going to see a return of vacuum cleaner salespeople. We're going to have that door to door. yes. So let's pivot, and talk about your entrepreneurial journey. what challenges financially you talked about the, the, pandemic and the impact, maybe, maybe it's that maybe it's something else, but

Jesse (26:54.284)
Yes, yes. Yep, Yep, yep.

Christian Brim (27:17.018)
Can you share something about your journey where you had this financial problem? It may not have been devastating, but, how you, how you processed it, how you overcame it.

Jesse (27:32.75)
Sure, sure. I think, you know, if I could put on my author and my theoretical, whatever you want to call it, my philosophical hat, go back into my super villain world, kind of explain where a lot of these parallels come from. according to the Joker from Batman, the only thing that separates him from the rest of us, he says, is one bad day.

Christian Brim (27:50.891)
yes.

Jesse (27:57.622)
We're all one bad day from creating our own inner supervillain. So he was a normal guy, stand-up comedian. He was doing a job for the mafia and his wife and his unborn child got killed. Combination of events that one bad day set him on the path of what he is today. So I started thinking, what was my one bad day that led to me flipping the switch? And agency owners, they all have multiple bad days.

Christian Brim (27:58.106)
Hmm.

Christian Brim (28:09.124)
Right.

Jesse (28:23.742)
I had created, you know, again, tracing that, chasing that impossible finish line of being the best created this incredible agency only hired the best of the best geniuses and creative geniuses under my, under my watch. And this client came in and he was, he was a whack job, right? Completely. He was a joker. He's out of his mind and payroll was around the corner.

Christian Brim (28:43.172)
Okay. He was a joker.

Jesse (28:49.838)
And he said, you know, I want to pay you guys to do discovery. All right. I have an open checkbook, you know, brought me to give you an idea of how wacky he is. He insists on paying in multiples of 11. So he would give me in cash, $1,100 and 11 cents, 1100, $1,111 and 11 cents. And he would stack those envelopes. So I'm like, all right. That's that is one red flag.

Christian Brim (29:13.892)
That's a red flag, Jesse. I'm just saying, go ahead.

Jesse (29:18.542)
Red flag number two was he insisted that every single member of my team sign their own NDA, even though my NDA covered. And on top of that, he wanted to pay everyone for their NDA, $111.11. So we're all rubbing our eyebrows are up, but we're getting paid. And then we sat there and I have this video of what this presentation is, and I'll likely share it for you and your readers, but it was a bat shit.

presentation and as I was looking around at my team members and their eyes are rolling in the back of head, I realized that like we put our refined skill sets, our genius, we're wasting it on unappreciated people.

The bump in the banking account felt great, but we got to this point where we're just doing bullshit for money and we kind of felt like stale-outs, right? So that was the point where I was like, no more. We need to do something drastic to make sure we're never in this position again to just cater to crazy people. Use our highly refined skills for nonsense.

Christian Brim (30:11.104)
Mmm... Yeah.

Jesse (30:30.126)
So that was my, if you want to call it, a financial realization, my one bad day. But that was the day that took the cake.

Christian Brim (30:39.458)
Yeah, I think, I think that journey is pretty ubiquitous that, you know, business owners start out with, with some plan to, to help people. And they realize that they can't and shouldn't help everyone. but you know, it, it's, it's a tough lesson to learn.

Fortunately, it doesn't sound like that was one that caused you financial problems. I think, you know, it's maybe quicker to learn when that bad experience comes along with a financial pain because you learn it quicker. But yeah, think knowing that you're not

And it kind of goes along with, what you're saying with the de-decommodidized is, you know, knowing who you can help and who you shouldn't help.

Jesse (31:47.022)
Absolutely, learning to say no is the hardest lesson that I've had to learn. I know in a lot of business owners because as a service provider, you get endorphins by helping people. And if someone says, you know, I need help with this and it's kinda something you can help with, it's so hard to say, nope, I don't do that. Like you get that endorphin rush by saying like, you know what, I can't help you. Money's nice too.

Christian Brim (31:50.744)
Yeah.

Christian Brim (31:57.668)
Right.

Christian Brim (32:07.15)
Right. Absolutely. And so, you know, the

Yes. Saying no is the best skill that you can learn as a service provider. But for me, the way, the way it flipped for me was I realized that I wasn't really helping them. was, I was really just enabling them maybe. you know, it, it, it, or, or like in your case, you're participating in their fantasy.

Jesse (32:22.958)
you

Christian Brim (32:42.842)
You know, it's like, I don't want to go over into crazy world and, and, be there with you. yeah.

Jesse (32:52.332)
Yeah, I mean, going back to brands, you're creating memories in people's brains. And if you're the guy like, yeah, know, Christian, you could probably fix it. Right. That although it's good, it's taking away from the memory of what, what Christian is best in the world at. Right. So it was like, you have a computer virus call my guy, Jesse. He works on computers. Right. It's not what I do, but that was the memory that was, you know, I was eroding away the brand that I cultivated as being like just the computer guy. Right.

Chances are if they heard someone that had you know problems becoming a commodity and needed to rebrand my my brand wouldn't come up in their rain because I'm like I'm the local guy that you call when your computer goes batshit

Christian Brim (33:33.794)
Yeah. And that reminds me of a speaker that we had at that Onward Summit where she talked about personal branding and she said, you know, we all have a guy. have a plumbing guy, we have a roughing guy, you know, and the question personally that we all need to answer is what are you remembered for? So like what, you're the guy for what?

Jesse (34:01.292)
Yep, yep. Yeah, I mean, Blair ends of the two Bob's podcast says, you know, if you're having trouble figuring out what you want to be, imagine you're sitting sitting backstage and the announcer goes, Ladies and gentlemen, joining us today is the leading expert on blank. Please welcome Christian Brim. What was that blank?

Christian Brim (34:23.969)
Right. And for me, it's turning passion into profit. Which, you know, I haven't figured out if that completely resonates yet, but it's sticky and it's true. You know, I think one of the kind of going back to what we talked about earlier, one of the hardest

problems is getting out of your own head and getting into your customer prospects head. You know, is that a term that they would use? Is that something they would say? It doesn't always have to be something that they would say because I mean, branding to me also is about novelty and maybe you create something new. know, Windex, okay.

that word did not exist. Coca-Cola, that word did not exist. All of those words were made up. So maybe it is a made up word instead of something that people say. But when I can say, yeah, Jesse's the guy that you wanna go to get decommoditized.

Yeah, maybe they don't know what commoditized is commoditized is or maybe they don't know what differentiation is. But you know, I mean, it's it's at least in my mind something that I know exactly what Jesse is good at.

Jesse (36:01.166)
Yeah, I mean, you take some of the best in the world at boiling it down. You have Saab. They own the word safety. I'm sure there's a lot of shit that their salesmen can talk about their cars and the style and the design. Saab is safety. You want a safe vehicle? That's the first thing that comes to mind. So kind of boiling that down takes an incredible amount of discipline. And, you know, while I do this and I also do that, I'm good at this too.

Christian Brim (36:09.785)
Yes.

Christian Brim (36:23.94)
Yes.

Christian Brim (36:29.762)
Yeah. Well, yeah, because everybody wants to not say no, you know, right? Yeah, our cars are good looking and they're fast and well, that may be true, but that's not what you that's what not. I guess that's the thing is is it feels like limiting yourself when you say that this is the one thing it but it doesn't make those other things go away.

Jesse (36:29.995)
It's hard. It's hard.

Jesse (36:34.979)
Yeah.

Jesse (36:57.07)
Correct.

Christian Brim (36:59.246)
Jesse, how do people find your book? One, and then two, you referenced it. I want to go find this graphical universe. I'm envisioning something. I hope it doesn't disappoint.

Jesse (37:10.638)
I think you'll like it. can get the book anywhere books are sold Amazon, Barnes & Noble. If you go to marketingforsupervillains.com there is a what I call the nuclear edition where you buy the book and you get to spend the weekend with me this is real on a nuclear sub and we rebrand and decommoditize your brand over the weekend and there's only one available so if you're curious there's a video on marketingforsupervillains.com

Christian Brim (37:22.02)
Ooh, ooh.

Christian Brim (37:27.652)
What?

Christian Brim (37:37.987)
I love that idea. I've never been on a nuclear sub. That sounds fascinating Jesse I really appreciate your time your insights Listeners if you like what you hear Please follow the podcast share the podcast if you don't like what you hear shoot us a message and I'll tell Jesse that we won't have him on the show anymore Until then ta-ta for now