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Here’s the program.
Andrew Warner: Hey everyone. I’m Andrew Warner. I’m the founder of Mixergy.com, home of the ambitious upstart. You guys know what we do here. Every day, I bring on a different entrepreneur to talk about how he built his business or what she learned along the way, about the setbacks, about the milestones, and so on.
Today, I want to find out about building a personal brand. Joining with me is Sasha Strauss, Managing Director of Brand Strategy at Innovation Protocol, a brand development firm exclusively serving innovators. He has led international programs for companies such as Microsoft, Thermos, TiVo, Electronic Arts, Yahoo!, eBay, Adobe. He also teaches graduate brand strategy as an adjunct professor at USC. Sasha, welcome to Mixergy.
Sasha Strauss: Glad to be here.
Andrew: I was thinking before this interview that my heroes in business, guys like Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, Sam Walton, didn’t really spend much time building their personal brands. They built their businesses and then their brands were built as a byproduct along the way. I’m wondering if they didn’t obsess about it, why should I even care about personal brand?
Sasha: I have to honorably disagree with your observation. Maybe they didn’t focus on building their personal brand like I’m talking about it, where you take control of the story and you make sure that people know what you want them to know about you. They didn’t call it personal branding, but they definitely focused on their identity.
For example, you hear Warren Buffet’s name, you know exactly what’s synonymous with that identity. He was just meticulous about making sure that everything that he touched aligned with the story that he wanted to tell. They might not have called it what I’m calling it, but it is the same consideration. What do you want the world to know about you, and how can you take action to make sure that they’re only hearing exactly what you want them to know?
Andrew: I see. So, Sam Walton might not have had Twitter and Facebook and all those other tools to craft his personal brand, but by driving that old pickup truck of his, even when he was a billionaire, he was sending a signal to the world saying, “I am a guy who’s thrifty, who cares about saving money everywhere.”
Sasha: That’s exactly how it worked. The difference between now and then was you only had control over what people knew about you when you saw them face to face. Sam Walton drove around in his pickup truck making sure that people remembered his story. Now it’s so much easier. We have LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter. We can make sure that every time someone looks up our name, hears our name, we’ve prepared our recipe and served them exactly the meal we want them to eat.
Andrew: Do you have an example of somebody who does it well?
Sasha: I can tell you who’s done it exceptionally well despite what I would consider a flawed personal brand.
Andrew: Okay.
Sasha: I’d say that Steve Jobs has done this exceptionally well. Just taking into consideration, most people have no idea where he went to school. They have no idea if he’s got graduate degrees. They don’t know where he worked before Apple. All they know is that every time he speaks today, he makes sure that a consistent story is told. Everyone knows exactly what they should expect from him. He even has a demeanor about the way that he presents. Right? He has meticulously managed his personal brand. He will not do ad hoc interviews. Right? He makes sure that everything fits in the box that is Steve Jobs. He has been a pilot of his own story ensuring that whenever anybody hears his name, he has controlled what they remember.
Andrew: Do you have another example? Because every time we hear about Steve Jobs, it sounds like an exceptional case that the rest of us can’t ever live up to because he’s Steve Jobs up on a mountaintop somewhere with Apollo.
Sasha: Honestly, I would say if your participants or you want to come up with a category, there is an industry leader who is Richard Branson. I know that we read all the books about his prestige, but you have to respect a man who doesn’t know how to use Excel. He’s not formally educated. His mother had to mortgage her house in order to finance his first business. Right?
You look at Barack Obama. I was in Romania giving a presentation a few months ago, and the Romanians that I was meeting, the delegates of the government systems as well as the academic systems, I had a big conference with them. They actually came up to me and said, “What is it like to have Obama as your president?” I’ve traveled constantly for work over the years, and no one has ever asked me what it’s like to have an individual as our president.
You’ve got to acknowledge that we know nothing about Barack Obama’s past. We know basically what we think that he’s done. But on paper, he’s not who the President of the United States should be. He fulfilled particular brand roles as we needed him to be in his candidacy, and then therefore we decided he was the spokesperson on behalf of our country. That was a personal brand package. He made sure that every time you heard his story, one single notion, a notion of change, came forward in anything that he said.
Andrew: How about, and I hate to keep asking for examples, how about somebody who’s a lot more ordinary? Maybe a student of yours who did it well. Maybe a friend of yours who did it well. Maybe someone you happened to look up. I want an example that we can relate to and we can feel like, “They did it. Sure, I can do it.”
Sasha: Let me give you a great example. Our firm is prestigious. It’s well-regarded. We have 20 full-time staff, most of which have not only master’s degrees, but exceptional experience in an ability that is foreign. I have to tell you that we’re lucky.
There is a woman who, two years ago, found me. I travel a lot. I give a lot of speeches on brand development. She came up to me and said, “I’m really interested in what you do. I want to make sure that I follow in your footsteps.” I said, “These are the things that I want you to do, and here’s how I want you to do them.” She actually works for us now. I want to tell you that for the last two years, all she did was manage her personal brand. She associated herself with the right types of organizations, engaged in rich conversations with people like yourself, built a relationship with the community so that every time you heard her name, she was the brand expert. She volunteered for non-profits. She started clubs on campus. She was the president of the marketing association so that her name was synonymous with communications.
I have to tell you that we had 35 people apply for her job. 35. Not only 35 people, but people with credentials you would kill to have on your team. She won because she was the only one who had made sure that her story, no matter who we called, professors, colleagues, co-workers, you name it, everybody had the same story to tell. Think about how rare that is. Right? Think about everybody in your life and think about the relations that they have. Are you going to hear the same story from every single angle? You’re not, because most of the people we know are not meticulously managing their personal story. She did and it resulted in a perfect scenario for us both. She got the dream job. We got the dream candidate.
Andrew: I see. I’ve got to tell you that you did it really well, too. The reason that I say that is I research people before my interview a lot, and it’s very hard to figure out who somebody who I never met before is, who they are, what they’re about, what I should be asking them about, because every page on the Internet that relates to them, often, says something completely different. “Here I am without my shirt on.” “Here I am enjoying sky diving.” Those are all great, but who are you?
I gave your introduction to you, before we started, to make sure that I had it right. We were both smiling because we knew that I was reading it pretty much verbatim from the bio that you sent me. I think that’s a good thing because it means that I know exactly what you’re about. You gave me a way of expressing who you were about. I didn’t have to figure it out myself.
The other people who told me who you were, maybe it was on YouTube video clips that I saw of you giving speeches at UCLA, or on somebody else’s website, all said, “This is the guy who focuses on these areas, on branding for businesses, branding for personal. He’s an entrepreneur. He uses sites like LinkedIn.” It was all perfectly wrapped up, which is why I’m really happy to talk to you about this. If you didn’t have that kind of credibility, I’d be smiling now as I said, “Let’s talk about teaching people how to do branding.” Instead, I’m smiling as I read your bio as you gave it to me.
Sasha: Let me tell you, I have been booked for very expensive, multiple thousands of dollars speaking engagements, for an hour presentation, where I’ve never met anyone who works for the company or works for the organization. They have just heard. They’ve sourced content based on what it is that I do, and they have decided that I’m therefore worthy of the presentation.
Look, you don’t have to think about personal brand in the context of fame. You can think of personal brand in the context of if you are in the consulting business and you are going to be having an appointment with someone who’s never met you before, they are going to type your name into a search engine. Why leave it to chance? Why hope that they find something that’s appropriate? Right?
When you apply for graduate school, they’re not just taking your application verbatim. They are going to do the due diligence to ensure that you really are who you say that you are. In fact, as far as my entrepreneurial colleagues are concerned in Los Angeles, there’s a joke amongst us which is, “Has anyone hired anybody here who they haven’t typed their name into a search engine?” Right?
Your name comes to us. You send us an email inquiry with a PDF of your resume attached, the first thing I do is take that name and put it into Google. Right? Again, you don’t want the world to make up the story. You want to have crafted the story so every time someone hears your name, they’re hearing the story you want them to remember.
Andrew: I have a plug-in right now in Gmail that will automatically pull up information about you whenever I open to see your email, so I know before I even do a search. I can send you a couple of links to companies that are doing that now.
Sasha: Wow. That is a sign of the times to come, right?
Andrew: I want to ask you about how our audience can do that. Before I do that, I have to ask you a question that I can anticipate them wondering, which is, don’t you ever feel boxed in by that? On one day, you might really be a sky diver, on the next day you might just want to talk BS on Twitter, and the day after that, you might have something that we can’t even think about today. We’re evolving as people and we’ve got lots of interests and they’re all being spit out on the Internet. Don’t you feel confined by this clear presentation that you give?
Sasha: I don’t, and that is because the presentation has to be authentic. Most people think that branding is a fabrication. Right? You wrap yourself in something and you position yourself in the market and you try to monetize that connection. As we all know, the brands that have lied to us have crumbled. They have just dissolved themselves. Whereas institutions that deliver a consistent promise over time, they’re the brands that emotionally charge us. They’re the ones we want in our lives.
I think that I’m a good case study in this. For example, my LinkedIn profile, my Twitter profile, my Facebook profile, all have the same profile photograph. It’s intentional. I want to make sure that people know they found me. Right? I don’t fabricate names. My name is Sasha Strauss, whether I’m advising people on Amazon on what books to buy in branding or I’m socializing about my weekend.
Another factor here is that the days of people having a home life and a social life and a work life are gone. There is no such thing as being able to bring these walls up so that you can live three different lives. We live the same life. We hang out with our co-workers. We work with our classmates. Our spouses come to work and meet our colleagues. There’s no denying this integrated social life that we live. The way that I think about it is, and to quote Mark Twain, I don’t tell any lies because I have a terrible memory. I can’t remember what I said to somebody.
In the realm of my personal brand, everything is authentically me. If I want to hang out with a bunch of people on the weekend in Vegas, I don’t do stuff that I regret. I don’t care if someone takes a picture or records it or Facebook posts it, the story remains the same whether I’m in a suit giving a speech at a big conference or I’m socializing with friends on the weekend.
Andrew: We actually did lose the audio again. Not completely so I was able to hear you, but enough for me to wonder if maybe you could plug in that USB microphone that you had. How much time would it take to do that? Is it handy?
Sasha: It’d take me about 60 seconds.
Andrew: All right. Let’s give it a shot. I want to make sure that we get this as well as possible. I’ll hang out here with the audience.
Sasha: You guys can admire my shelving units that were built by hand. It swings and everything, so just appreciate it while I run. Excuse me.
Andrew: You got it. I see Mose is wondering if that program is Gist. No. It’s actually, I can’t remember the name of the company that I use. I know eTax has a program that you can, has a little bookmarklet that you can use in connection with Gmail to see who’s emailing you. But there’s another company that I’ve been using at home, that’s a Y Combinator company too, that just makes it dead easy. I just can’t think of their name right now.
I see that a lot of people are getting into this space. More and more when you get an email from someone, you won’t just see that one line that they send you, you’re going to see their picture. You’re going to see their bio from LinkedIn. I see their tweets. These programs are just getting smarter and smarter because they’re starting to do some research and really assemble the data that they get instead of spitting it all out at you.
Sasha: All right. The microphone is set up.
Andrew: Okay.
Sasha: I don’t know if it changes anything.
Andrew: So far, I can hear you okay. Hopefully the audience can too. Guys, if you’re listening to me in the recorded version, and you can’t hear it okay, it sounds perfect to Dan in the audience, but if you’re listening to the recorded version, and you can’t hear Sasha well, let me know and I’ll recompile the audio afterwards. Hopefully we’ll have it edited right, but if we don’t have it edited right, you let me know. We’ll recompile it for you guys. We aim to serve over here, Sasha.
Sasha: Well, we’re on the cusp. Technology is right there.
Andrew: Yeah.
Sasha: We’re just on the bleeding edge, friend.
Andrew: [laughs] Right. Okay. Let’s now assume that the audience is in on this. They understand the need to build a brand. They understand that Andrew, when he gets an email, sees their brand before he sees the email that they’re sending and the message that they’re communicating in the moment. You’re doing the same thing before you hire them. How do we take control of this? How do we take control of the brand that people see?
Sasha: Great. The way that I think about it is, by the way, I should have started the conversation by telling all of our listeners that brand is about a relationship between a product, so we are each products, and a customer. You need to decide who your customers are. Are your customers your family, your friends, your spouse, your neighbors, your co-workers, your potential clients, your graduate students, you name it? Okay? Your responsibility is to define, just like in a corporate environment, when we’re building a brand for a corporation, we define who those audiences are, and then we analyze the touch points between them.
My suggestion in personal branding is define five audiences. I know that they’re a lot. Pick five main audiences, and then decide what your primary touch points are with every one of those audience members. Then you can answer your question, Andrew. Then you can decide, all right, for example, I have had hundreds of graduate students, nearly impossible for me to stay regularly in contact with them, so I make sure that we’re connected on LinkedIn. All my graduate students are connected on LinkedIn, so when they need a reference or they want me to review their resume, we’re right there connected. I make sure that my LinkedIn profile is perfect for those types of relations. That’s your responsibility. Decide on who the audiences are, analyze the touch points between them and you, and then build your messaging program between them.
Andrew: I see. Okay. It is okay, then, to have five audiences? Part of the reason that I don’t define an audience for myself is because it’s so hard to say, “This is the one audience that I’m going to talk to and it’s only going to be them.” Maybe I need to have more discipline and force myself to do it. You’re saying five. Five is okay?
Sasha: I think that more than five is okay. More so, think about yourself, Andrew. You’re an entrepreneur. You’re a successful entrepreneur. You’ve decided to socialize your relations and connect people. . .
Andrew: I hope we didn’t . . .
Sasha: . . . with the entrepreneurs that you admire. It looks like you froze. That you think about it is that this is not about constraining yourself. I think that’s probably the primary challenge. When people hear branding, they think narrow focus and one story at all times, and that’s not the case. The case is that you’ve decided that this is the story that you want to tell, and it manifests itself in different ways.
When you’re hanging out with your family and they ask you about what’s going on at Mixergy, you give them a slightly different answer than when you and I are trading emails and you’re trying to get me to do this interview. These are just interpretations. You’re mending the story so that it aligns with the audience. I think that the answer to your question is that you could have 30 audiences, but there has to be some common philosophy, some reason to believe, as I say. Right?
Every single person is looking for a reason to believe in another. I need to have a reason that I should listen to what Andrew has to say. I do my due diligence. I find that you are an amazing person with incredible accomplishments, and I say, “What an honor. I’m happy to make this conversation happen.” You’re making sure that your brand story is coming across. I’m making sure that my story is coming across. We meet with an authentic story in the middle.
Do not consider brand a constraint. Consider it a guide. Right? No matter who you’re going to meet with, no matter what you’re going to do, make sure that if they can remember something about you, it’s rooted in that core brand concept, and you just interpret it. It’s kind of like when you’re hanging out with children versus seniors. You’re still the same person, but you engage the child in a childlike way, and you engage the senior in a much more honorable conversation-like way. Right?
Andrew: Mm-hmm.
Sasha: Still the same person, you’re just doing so in the appropriate mannerisms.
Andrew: Okay. To use myself as an illustration, I’m a guy who interviews successful entrepreneurs for an audience of entrepreneurs, and I’m doing it here on vacation in Buenos Aires. I might have an audience of entrepreneurs who I’ve interviewed, an audience of entrepreneurs who I did the interviews for, and maybe some people who I’ve met here in Buenos Aires. Every one of them is going to be looking me up, and they should all know the same true story. But they each are looking for different pieces of information, and I need to make it clear to them.
Afterwards, I need to have a touch point with you, which I hadn’t thought of, and I need to have a different touch point with the audience and maybe a different one with someone who I met here in Buenos Aires, so if I want to go out on a Friday night, I’ve got that audience also.
Sasha: There are more. Think about all the students. Think about all the students that are watching this content, people who are not entrepreneurs yet. Think about the person who’s considering becoming an entrepreneur. Think about the media, “Entrepreneur Magazine” and all of the resources that focus on this market. You have hundreds of audiences with numerous touch points. You’ve tended to focus on five primary ones, and that’s enabled you to do a very good job at what you do.
I have to tell you that there are a lot of people who are trying to accomplish what you’ve accomplished. They’re not doing nearly as good of a job. Why? Because Andrew has decided that this is the life that he lives and this is the life that he has lived and this is the message that he wants to create. Therefore, the connection with you is so easy. It’s so natural, that no one is thinking that it’s foreign. It’s not awkward for us to come to your site and recognize that you are the person to be hosting these sessions. That’s your brand story, and that authenticity makes sure that we remember you.
Andrew: We got a question from someone in the audience here. Tariq D., he’s saying, “Let’s say I have three types of audiences or communities, one would be software development, the other political view, and the third would be the religious, spiritual view. How would you handle that?” Should he use his real name for all three audiences? How does he handle them?
Sasha: That’s excellent. I’m going to give you the what’s called “house of brands” versus “branded house” answer. The best way to think about it is like this. When you take an organization like Procter & Gamble, most consumers don’t buy stuff from Procter & Gamble. They buy stuff from Tide or Gillette or Olay. The institution has decided to keep both brands independent, that way they can decrease their size, or increase their size, or market one, or not market another.
I will tell you that that collection, that house of brands, plural, is very expensive and time-consuming to manage. My answer to your listener is, if you’re going to invest in three different identities, it’s going to take you three times more energy to build equity in those entities.
I have religious audiences. I have graduate students. I have very well-paid senior executives at Fortune 500 companies. I have decided what I think each one of them would appreciate from me, and I’ve made sure that one story works for all of them. My answer to your listener is decide what investment you want to make. Do you want to invest 100% of your energy in one story? Or do you want to invest your energy and divide it amongst three stories? That’s how you need to make your decision.
Andrew: Great. All right. I’ve got the first note from this conversation is to have five audiences. The second is to establish your primary touch points. What’s next?
Sasha: The next thing is to go about this process as if you were a corporation, a business. Okay? For example, if you were to hire my firm to assist you with your corporate brand development program, the first thing we would ask you would be, “Who do you consider your indirect and direct competitors?” I want everybody to think about this, okay? I don’t care how good of a person you are. You could be a religious figure; you could be a philanthropist. There are people competing for mindshare. They want your listener. You need to decide who they are. You need to learn from the best and worst practices of those organizations.
The number one challenge here is don’t just take the people that are doing the exact same thing as you. Think about the indirect. Think about the individuals who are doing things that are a little dissimilar, but something about their practice, their demeanor, the way that they dress, the way that they carry themselves, their professional experience aligns with yours, you can learn so much about that category and that capability by studying your competition.
I’ll tell you that when we go on pitches, we’ve done very well on pitches. We’ve beat some of the largest organizations in our category. The difference between our pitch and our competitor’s pitch is we don’t go in knowing nothing. We go in having studied the competition so rigorously, it’s part of our natural conversation.
To answer your question, Andrew, your first stop, decide who your competitors are. Study them. Read their profiles. If you can go hear them speak, and if you can buy their books, know them. Then, create a set of indirect competitors–individuals who aren’t doing the same thing, but something that’s tangential–and use the learnings from that analysis to decide, “Okay. Right. Here’s the entire spectrum of individuals fighting for the same mindshare that I am.”
Andrew: Mm-hmm.
Sasha: “Is there a little niche? Is there a little space here that I fit in perfectly so I don’t look or sound like anyone else?” If you can pull that off, it’s like rocket fuel for your story. You don’t have to worry about bumping people out of the way, you have a space that’s entirely your own.
Andrew: Okay. Again, using me as an example, another person who does video interviews the way I do is Mark Suster, who does “This Week in Venture Capital,” a good friend of mine. He is focused on venture-funded startups, or ones who want to be. If I try to compete with Mark Suster in that space, I get destroyed, or at least I split up my audience with him.
Sasha: Correct.
Andrew: You’re saying to find a different audience. It might be an audience of people who never want funding or maybe were going lower-level funding than GRP partners, his venture capital firm, is offering.
Sasha: Or maybe they’ve already checked that box. They’ve been funded. They’ve moved past it and now they just want to learn from other individuals like ourselves, right?
Andrew: Got you. Okay.
Sasha: But you see how that works. Right? You and Mark, I bet you that you’re, you not only said that you’re friends, I bet you’re colleagues. I bet you refer people back and forth, right?
Andrew: Yep.
Sasha: That’s the nature of establishing a position. In fact, the key word in brand strategy is positioning. The place in the market that’s exclusively yours to claim. I’ll have to tell you that in your personal life, and all listeners please do this, the next time you go shopping, go to a grocery store. Don’t just walk in there and buy the food that you need. I want you to decide, think about why you chose product A versus product B. Just sit there for 10 seconds and think to yourself, “Well, my mother always bought it.” Or, “I remember that ad.” Or, “You know what? They’ve never changed the packaging. It’s just the way that I remembered it.” That type of consistent communication is so important to us.
The way that I like to think about it is this. We, as consumers, are impatient and we’re complacent. We do not like to make new decisions every day. I don’t want to make new friends every day. I want to establish deep relationships with people that I can trust. That is built on consistency. That is built on a promise delivered consistently over time. Our responsibility as personal brands is decide what promise we want to make, decide what promise we want to keep, so that people who haven’t even met us yet know what we want them to know about us. That’s the story.
Andrew: All right. Before we go on to the next step, I’ve got to ask you now about your history since we’ve been talking about it. What did you do before now? What is Innovation Protocol?
Sasha: I appreciate you asking. I’ve actually worked in this business about 16 years now. I worked for big ad agencies like TBWAChiatDay, they’re the creators of the Apple brand, Nintendo, Nissan. I’ve also worked for large public relations firms like Rogers & Cowan. I worked at one of the largest brand strategy consulting firms, Siegel+Gale.
I basically compounded all that experience into a specialization, which is specifically brand development, brand creation as we like to think about it. Many of our listeners are probably thinking about brand management versus brand strategy. I just want to draw the line really quickly.
Andrew: Mm-hmm.
Sasha: Brand management is the management of a brand that has already been built. Brand strategy is the creation of a brand, or the reinterpretation of a brand. We only specifically do that.
Innovation Protocol is a firm that I started and founded. We’re lucky. We had no VC backing. We just sold our services. We literally opened shop and people started paying us for what we’ve done. I’m super proud to say, as I said earlier, that we have 20 folks, and those 20 folks make their keep. They absolutely generate business and serve those organizations.
To a point that you made earlier, Innovation Protocol, we only have one requirement, and it doesn’t make a difference if we’re assisting a non-profit with three amazing hippies at the helm or a Fortune 100 taking over the world, the only requirement is that we exclusively serve innovators, organizations that are somehow changing the nature of the market that they target. Good offline example is if somebody came to us and said, “We want to sell more bread.”
Andrew: Mm-hmm.
Sasha: “Help us launch a bread brand.” Although they might pay us well, we’ll refer them to a traditional agency. But if they want to create Thomas’ English Muffins, a completely different type of product, that’s the type of organization we serve.
Andrew: I’ve got a list of clients here from your website. Maybe you can pick one and give us an example of how you’ve helped them.
Sasha: Great.
Andrew: Instead of me going through and picking out one from your list.
Sasha: All right. I have a really amazing one, and I think it’s perfect for you guys as entrepreneurs. Most often, by the way, when people want to hear about the work that we’ve done, they ask us for famous brands. Right? They’re like, “Oh, Johnson & Johnson. PayPal. eBay. Amazing.” I have to tell you, even though those are a large part of our portfolio, the most amazing keep-me-up-at-night programs are always for entrepreneurs.
One example is a chemical manufacturer in San Diego called Genomatica. Genomatica was founded by a Ph.D. research student and his professor. They basically took the model that was used for analyzing chemical structures and they wrote an application. You guys probably remember basic chemistry, right? Periodic Table of the Elements. Basically, every chemical is a math equation. They actually created a piece of software that not only creates that equation, but this is what’s amazing about it, you have this piece of software that tells you how a chemical is built. They actually reach into the equation, they remove a toxic element, and they actually put some biomass in there, so that the chemical process remains the same, but the outcome is non-toxic chemicals. We’re talking about the most common chemicals in the world produced in non-toxic ways. Chemicals that the waste used to have to be buried in the ground, can now be poured in a river. Think about how amazing that is in the context of chemical production.
Well, the answer is, they were phenomenal scientists. They knew exactly what they were doing. They just didn’t know how to tell the world. That’s our job. We study the science, we understand it from their perspective, but we create a package around it, a vessel, so that no matter . . . like that story that I just explained to you, we came up with that. We helped explain the complexity of their science so that they could focus on doing their job, making biochemicals, not having to explain it in simple terms.
In fact, one of the things that we did is we wrote a speech for their CEO. It was so special because, brilliant scientists, not only brilliant scientists, but someone who’s been in the business for generations, right? They’re going to these conferences and because they’re talking about green chemicals and biochemical manufacturing, they’re talking to new audiences, people who maybe don’t get the molecular structure of the science.
In this speech, we actually wrote a little spiel, which was basically this guy would be standing up in front of the audience and ask everybody to look at their name tags and say, “All right. The name tag is made of plastic. It’s clearly a toxic plastic and it’s non-recyclable. Imagine if this was not only made in a non-toxic way, but you could throw this on the ground and it would degrade into natural substances that wouldn’t be toxic for the environment.” That’s what he had to give in this speech, right? Not complex chemical structures, but everybody look at your name tag. That’s our responsibility. That’s what we do as brand strategists. We back away from the complexity of the manufacturing of the service, and simply talk about the story that the world can remember. That’s what we build.
Andrew: I was a little nervous that you’d bring them up as an example, and now I’m really grateful that you did, because I didn’t know what they were. I did all kinds of research to go find back articles on them, and I knew the facts but it wasn’t until you explained it. For people who are listening to the mp3, you missed it. He’s even using his hands to show how that toxic part comes out, how biochemical goes, is it biochemical, bio something, went in there. The fact that I remember even a second of it means that you did a great job in explaining a tough issue, because I spent a good 10, 15 minutes trying to figure out what they do and how I could explain it.
Sasha: I have to tell you that what you’ve been digging up is old stuff. They’re in the process of launching the new stuff. I think what’s important here is that everybody, you’ve got to think about life like this, okay?
Andrew: Mm-hmm.
Sasha: Most people are fantastic at doing something in particular, manufacturing a particular type of good or providing a particular service. I, as an attorney, am good at giving lawyering advice, right? I, as a chef, am good at preparing the foods. All the neighboring skills, you usually want to call in an expert, right? You usually call in someone who specializes in just those neighboring skills.
When it comes to this chemist and this amazing institution, who got $22 million in round one funding, just think about how amazing that is. Right? Their challenge was not expert in science. Their challenge was expert in communication. That’s why they brought in a partner like ourselves. The really special thing was from the receptionists to the paper pusher to the chemists in the lab, they all kind of knew what job they were doing. Now they know. Not only do they know, they’re chemists at Genomatica.
By the way, one of the aspects of the brand that we created for them was a visual system, a whole range of things that help tell their story visually. One aspect was that they were so revolutionary that they had to use a color to mask all of the things that they were doing, so that when you saw it, you knew this wasn’t a traditional chemical company.
Through our research, we found that almost every chemical company in the world was either blue or red. When we showed the color purple to chemists, they actually associate it with a revolution. Who would have known, right? So Genomatica’s entire color system, now, is purple. Even the walls of their offices, their chairs are purple. The gloves that the chemists use to create these biochemicals are purple. Just think about it. Lab coat in the basement, beakers everywhere, and they’re sitting there with purple gloves. What does it remind them about? Right? What are they thinking about as they’re mixing these concoctions? They’re reminding themselves that they’re telling a story that’s going to change generations. They are initiating a revolution. They’re reminded because the brand is in their face. It’s present every single time they do their job.
Andrew: How do you convince a company that this is important? Especially a chemical company that thinks that it’s saving the world already and might think that branding, it’s just not time for that. Branding is what you do after you have the oil spill, not before you launch.
Sasha: That’s the interesting thing about our business. We don’t advertise. We have a client roster where we get to pick our clients. The truth is that they have to know that branding is necessary. We don’t cold call. We don’t send out ads or anything to that effect. People call us because they know that branding is necessary. I think it’s conversations like this that introduce the notion.
By the way, if your listeners want some books to just learn about how branding affects life, go to Google and just type in my name, Sasha Strauss, and Amazon. I just have a collection of books. I don’t know the authors. They’re just books that I think really will help introduce the notions.
To answer your question, Andrew, basically what happens is one of two unfortunate situations. One is that there has to be an internal advocate, someone who’s going to go work at this big company and knows how important branding is and fights, says, “We need to bring in a brand strategy consulting firm.” Or you have a BP situation. You have this terrible disaster where the organization’s like, “Our brand, our equity, what people know us for, gone.” What are they going to do about this? I rarely have ever taken the crap storm. I mostly focus on the organization with an internal advocate who knows how important branding can be.
Andrew: All right. Let’s go on with the next steps for the audience. We talked about finding their audience, primary touch points, thinking of yourself as a business with direct and indirect competitors. What do they do next?
Sasha: Once you have done all of this, and I should start off by telling you, by the way, that your obligation is not to process the information as you receive it. Your obligation is to collect it. Okay? The analogy that I often use with my clients is, it used to be when we were kids that we were given a box with puzzle pieces in it, and we put the box on the table and then we built the puzzle. Right? Making sure the picture is aligned. Right? That isn’t the way the business works. Any successful entrepreneur can tell you, you don’t get a picture of the destination. You get a crazy pile of puzzle pieces that you’re supposed to figure out every day. That’s exactly how great brand strategy works. Do not try to imagine what the answer is. Just collect.
I’ve asked you to collect direct and indirect competitors. Now, I want you to collect the influencers, stakeholders I call them. That means your investment parties. That might mean your co-workers. It might mean people who might eventually buy your product or service. You have to think about all the people that are going to be consuming what it is you’re constructing, and you need to do profiles on all of them. What are they listening to? What are they reading? Where are they getting the information, and what information is being pumped at them? So, when you eventually produce your answer and you hand it to them, it’s through the channel. You’re sliding through the conduit that gets directly to the point where they can remember you.
You’ve done your competitive analysis. You’ve really mastered the space directly and indirectly. Now you got to think about the stakeholders, the consumers of the content. Again, venture capitalists, the press, you name it, do bios. Think about who each one of them are, so that when you insert the message into their mind, it’s exactly what they’re waiting to hear.
Andrew: These are the people who are going to take my message and then amplify it by sending it out to their audiences.
Sasha: Or they might crap all over it, and that’s what I don’t want people to deny. Right? You can only control communication 50% of the time. Sometimes, people are going to take your story and they’re going to berate it. Well, by being authentic in your value proposition and by doing all that analysis in advance, whatever story you tell, if they don’t like it, so what?
I’ll give you a perfect example. When I founded this firm and said that we were going to give away 10% of our services away to non-profits, most consulting practices work on a 19 percent profit margin, 19 to 23 percent. We were going to give away 10 percent of our resources. Press, advisors, analysts, you name it, shit all over it. They were like, “That is the stupidest business model I’ve ever heard.”
We’re not only hiring someone every month, but we get to pick our clients and the non-profits that we’re serving are changing the world. Imagine your employees coming to work and knowing that 10 percent of their time is spent making the world a better place. My business model is successful and healthy because we have a non-profit value proposition underlying what we do.
You just have to take into consideration that not everybody’s going to love your story. Rather than waiting for the situation to occur, like Domino’s, waiting for some employee to make a video that was very destructive . . . if you guys don’t know this story, really unfortunate, some employees messed with pizza in disgusting ways and then put a video on YouTube. They had never thought about what they would do when an employee messes up. Isn’t that astonishing to you? That Domino’s is in the food business. They are reviewed every day for the quality of their product, and they never thought to ask themselves, “What does our brand do when it’s not loved?” That’s your responsibility. Take into consideration all those audiences, the lovers and the haters, and decide on what you want them to remember about you.
Andrew: I see. Okay. Decide what you want them to remember about you and if they do have a message or they do have an idea that’s contrary to that, what do you do? Using Domino’s as an example, maybe.
Sasha: I try to pre-predict the dissent. Right? All of us, as true entrepreneurs, we know what the haters are going to say. What’s our responsibility? Don’t wait for them to start hating. Prescribe, decide what you know that they’re going to attack you for in advance, so that you have an articulate, cool, calm, and collected response, no matter what it is that they bring to the conversation.
I think that we’re all a little neurotic. We’re all a little ADD. We’re a little intense. So we tend to be reactive. That’s not what we want from a successful entrepreneur. We want someone who is on top of their game, knows exactly what they’re talking about. Right? Rather than deciding what the lovers are going to love, decide what the haters are going to hate, and just practice. Practice your response when you’re in the car. Practice it with your co-workers or your spouse or your partners. Let them hate on you, and stay calm and answer their questions with really calculated answers. That’s the recipe for success. That’s what you need to do with your communication strategy.
Andrew: I love this. Somebody in the audience had as a note here about 37signals. They have a very clear set of ideas on how the world needs to work. When people disagree with them, they always have what you say, a calm response that seems like they came up with it right on the spot.
Sasha: Right.
Andrew: But they must have spent a lot of time thinking about it. They must have anticipated the responses. They must have heard the haters a long time ago and already formulated their answers to them.
Sasha: I have a nice supplement to that. Next time you guys are watching “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” or any of the talk show hosts, Leno, Letterman, etc., know that every one of their guests was given the questions in advance. Okay? The guests, these people who are paid as actors to just talk as if it were natural, they get the questions in advance. If they get the questions in advance, you deserve the questions in advance. Think about all the things that the talk show host is going to bring up, and just decide what you want them to remember about you and the answer to that question.
Andrew: In the interest of fairness, my guests here often know the questions in advance. Not that I send them a list of questions in advance, but I told you before we started that I want to ask you some tough questions about why people should brand, and I wanted to say that so you’d be prepared. I didn’t want you fumbling around for the answer. I wanted you to give me a valuable answer, not one that maybe put you off-guard for a little bit.
Sasha: You have the best intent, by the way. You want this to be good for both of us.
Andrew: Right.
Sasha: And you still let me know in advance the kind of things that we would talk about.
Andrew: Yeah.
Sasha: Come on guys. Everybody listening, can’t we do this for our business? Can’t we think about every single one of the people who’s going to be listening and what it is that they want from us? Just decide the three touch points, the three points that you want to make when you’re talking to audience A or audience D, so that when they hear your voice, they lean back and they’re like, “God, he gets it. He understands. He knows what it is that I want from him.” That’s our job as truly successful entrepreneurs.
Don’t just assume that the audience is going to figure it out. They have no idea what’s going on, and they’re going to remember one percent, three percent. So why run the risk? Why run the risk that the one percent they’re going to remember is you messing up or not having an answer to a really tough question? Right?
Andrew: All right. What’s next? I want to get to how do you get that message, that brand that you want to communicate to the world? I guess we’re not ready yet, right? We still want to collect information?
Sasha: No, you’re really close. Remember everybody, we’re collecting puzzle pieces. We’re not deciding on what the answer is, okay? This is what we do with our clients, and it’s really eye-opening for them. We have a very collaborative work program with our clients. We don’t leave for a month and then give them an answer. We work through them as teams.
This is what I often ask our clients to do and they love it. We set up a room, and it could be your living room, it could be your conference room, or whatever it might be, and we actually put up photographs that we found on the Internet of everybody who represents the different audiences. That’s it. If your audiences are seniors, just find some pictures of seniors and put them up and put a label. Do it for every one of the audiences that we just talked about, okay? First obligation, don’t do anything yet.
Then I want you to put up on the wall all of the touch points. How are those audiences connected with? Newsletters, business cards, PowerPoint presentations, Twitter profile, you name it, I want it on the wall. I don’t want you to hypothetically put it there. I don’t want you to write Twitter. I want a picture. I want a printed, full-color picture of the Twitter profile that they’re getting their information from. I want that on the wall. You’ve got your audiences listed, and then you have all of the touch points.
Once you’ve got your touch points, I want you to move to the next section of the wall which is all of the current communication materials from your competition, your indirect competition, and from you. Okay? Different than the touch points, guys. The touch points are just channels. I’m talking about communication devices. So you put them all on the wall, every brochure you collected. By the way, most public companies have PDFs of their annual reports. Print the hell out of them, put all of them on the wall. I want you to see the photos they used. I want you to see the messages that they’re conveying. I want you to see the products that they showcase. Next wall, okay?
Once you have done all of that collecting, now you can back up. Now you can start to make observations. All right, guys. Look at our audiences, okay? What are the touch points that those audiences are using? You can start drawing lines and connecting them and say, “Wow. You know what? These seven audience members, they’re actually really similar. They use the same communication channel. They’re the same level of education. They’re the same level of comprehension.” Good. That’s one bundle of communication we need to target. Now we’ve got that bundle, what communication tools are we using? What message is being targeted to them? Now you can start to draw the holes. Okay?
Once you have done all of this, now you have a foundation of knowledge where you can actually go out and have these really rich conversations. Right? I told you about analyzing your competition and building character profiles for your audiences. Only after you’ve done this analysis and you’ve actually spent time talking to those audiences can you actually go out and hit the street.
Having face-to-face interviews, or at least one-on-one conversations, amazingly impactful for a couple reasons. One, you get content directly from the horse’s mouth. You tell them, “I’m not recording this. I’m just taking pen-and-paper notes. I just want to hear it directly from you.” Not only are you getting it directly from the horse’s mouth, but guess what happens after you have an open, candid conversation with an audience member? They become an advocate. They become like a public relations arm for you. They’re going to socialize and talk about how wonderful this discourse was. Right?
You’ve done this analysis. You know so much more about the space and the needs, and now you’re going to go out and conduct these interviews. You’re going to have really deep conversations. You’re not going to lean back and say, “So, I’m thinking about going in the biochemical business.” Right? No one’s going to be able to have that conversation. You talk to them about exactly the scenario you plan on attacking and what message you want to attack it with and you give them the chance to react. By the end of this conversation, you have all the puzzle pieces on the table, guys. You’ve got direct quotes, direct quotes from the interviews you just had. Right?
You’ve taken as many notes as you possibly can, bring an intern, I don’t care. You want as many handwritten notes as possible. I don’t stop until I have 30. You’re going to say to me, “But I’m an entrepreneur. My business hasn’t started yet.” No, no. There are 30 people you can contact. I’m talking 30-minute interview, have lunch with them, phone call, you name it. Just make sure you have your questions prepared in advance. Pull an Andrew. Make sure you’ve got all of the questions you want to discuss in advance, so that when you engage these people they feel like you’re really paying attention and you know what conversation you’re trying to have.
Once you’ve collected all that information, and remember, it’s been audited against all the other work that you’ve done, that competitive analysis, the indirect competitive analysis, the communication channels, the communication tools that you and your competition are using, and then you conducted these interviews, now you have 100 percent of the puzzle pieces. You know exactly what position in the market is uniquely yours to claim. You know what audiences sit within that space. You know what communication channels are used to connect with them and what they’re most likely going to listen to, and you had conversations with them. You know exactly what they’re waiting to hear from you. That’s your obligation.
Once you have all that information, now back up and write your story. Now you can actually write the message. Now you can articulate your value in a way that doesn’t sound like the competition and is like when you handed candy to a kid for the first time. It was just so overwhelming to their senses, that it was like, “I can’t believe you’ve been holding this out on me.”
I promise, when we build good communication programs for our clients, when they hand them to their stakeholders, the audience that’s supposed to consume . . . take an employee who’s worked for a company for 30 years, okay? 30 years doing the same job. They never had a reason to believe. They knew why they were doing their job, because they wanted to get money, take care of their family, etc. Everyone has a job. But when you actually help them understand how their job is changing the environment or giving people something to believe in, helping mothers better mother, whatever the reason to believe is, they will work harder. They will work longer, and they will work for less. Just consider that, entrepreneurs. Your employees, when you give them something to believe in, will work harder and longer for less. Isn’t that a good value proposition? Isn’t that a reason to do this?
Andrew: Yeah. I know I would. I work harder and longer for less because I care about it.
Sasha: Exactly.
Andrew: What you’re saying, if I understand you right, is that at the end of this process where you’ve got pictures of your audience on the wall, where you’ve figured out where they talk, where you’ve figured out what your competition is using to say to them, at the end of all the interviews, you will then come up with your message? So the message comes from talking to them?
Sasha: Yeah.
Andrew: How?
Sasha: In fact, here’s my little recipe. I write sentences. I write, and look, I’m a terrible speller. This is for me, it doesn’t matter, okay? I just start writing sentences. The messages that I think that those audiences want to hear, and I don’t try to merge them together. I just give every audience the message that I think that they’re waiting to hear from me. Okay?
What you’ll see happen is that you’ll start to see some common themes. What I like to do is I like to write the messages on the wall. I have a conference room that’s all marker boards, 360-degree marker boards, okay? We just write all the messages, all the key words that those audiences need to hear. Right? Then we back up and we just start to take a red Expo pen and circle the concepts that we think are magical. Like, “You’re right. That notion, that notion, that notion, that notion, strip those out and now we have a message. Now, we have our sample message.” Right? That’s how brand strategists do it, guys.
There’s no, we’re not like Don Draper, sitting in a room whipping up magical concepts in a vacuum. We’re doing the due diligence. We’re doing the analysis, so that when we produce that answer, it’s infallible, it’s authentic, it’s differentiated. You do not have to be a phenomenal writer to do this. Worst case scenario is, you got the base of the message, and you just hire some freelance communicator to just tweak it, just tighten it. Remember, we all love specialists, guys. When you stub your toe, you don’t go to an oral surgeon, you go to a podiatrist. Right?
Do your best, collect your message, extract those phrases. Come up with three or four summary statements, as we like to call them. Then, if you need to hire a podiatrist to tighten the bolts on it, fantastic, because you’ll get a very, very valuable answer.
Andrew: What kinds of questions are you asking this audience? What kind of questionnaire are you taking out to them?
Sasha: Cool. Not only do we create a questionnaire in advance, and it’s written in a social-like way. So my suggestion to your listeners is don’t write it in a business-plan-like vocabulary, write it in a social vocabulary. I’m going to give you one of my favorite questions. Remember, we have clients that are large manufacturers, or big software vendors, some of the biggest software companies in the world. So when we’re talking to their engineers or their sales staff, my favorite question is this, “When you go home and attend a family party, what do you tell people you do?” Think about that question. When you go home and you talk to someone who isn’t an engineer, isn’t a scientist, what do you tell them you do? I let them ramble, because the vocabulary that they’re using is mass-consumable. It’s what everybody is prepared to hear. Right? That’s one of my favorite questions.
Another question I love to do is I like to talk to well-established executives and ask them, “Why here now? Why are you here? And why now?” If you’re the chief financial officer of this company, I can get you a job somewhere else tomorrow. There’s a reason you’re here. Why? Why do you wake up every morning and say that it’s worth it? Do you see how these questions are much more about the feeling?
Andrew: Mm-hmm.
Sasha: I should have pointed out from the get-go, guys, branding is about a sensation. It’s about a relationship that is intangible, hard to quantify. I just know that when I get into that beautiful car in the morning, that I worked my ass off to afford, I feel like I accomplished amazing things. Every time we consume something, when we buy high-quality oranges for our kids, we’re not just buying something because it won’t get us sick. We’re buying it because we want our kids, we want to feel like we’re doing what’s in the best interest of our children.
Everything we consume every day, lawyering services to orange juice, there’s some emotional component. One percent of it, five percent of the decision is emotional. Your job is to make sure that emotional resonance is perfect. In the situation with those employees or those executives, I don’t want to know about what their day to day job feels like. I don’t need to see the spreadsheet. I want to know why you come to work here every day. When you can tell me that, now I know. Now I understand the message that I should distribute to all the stakeholders.
Andrew: You teach at USC also?
Sasha: Yeah.
Andrew: I would love to take a class with you. This is incredible. I’ve talked to now 300 people at least, done interviews with 300 people here. There are just, the number of people who capture my interest, who I want to listen to more like this at the end of an hour, very small.
Sasha: Thank you.
Andrew: How do you even find the time to teach at USC, and what do you teach there?
Sasha: I have to tell you that I didn’t have a mentor.
Andrew: Mm-hmm.
Sasha: It was really hard for me. I sought a lot of guidance. I tried to find someone who was passionate about the creation of brand as I was, and I was disappointed. I went to graduate school twice. I went to the Anderson School at UCLA for business. I got a master’s in communications management from USC. Although graduate school education is great because of the camaraderie and the teamwork, I didn’t learn what it takes to build brands. So I decided that if I’m going to do this, if I’m really going to go out on my own, I’m going to use my own capital, I’m going to hire my own employees, that anybody who wants to learn about the process, I will teach.
USC asked me four years ago if I would teach a graduate course in brand development. I said absolutely. I created a curriculum. I have the largest class in the communications school. There’s a two-year waiting list for the content because there is no other class like it. I guest lecture at business schools all over the world, and I don’t charge them. Maybe they pay for my plane fight, but that’s it. Corporations, we’re talking about $5,000 for an hour presentation. Okay? Students? For free whenever they want it. I’m not talking about best business schools in the world only. High schools, you name it, clubs, the economics club at UC Irvine. I don’t care who the audience is. If they want to understand the principles, we have created a whole range of presentations to teach them those principles because I’m not scared of competition.
I’m not scared that someone’s going to take my business. We’re good at what we do. There’s plenty of business for us. In fact, if we get a project that isn’t right for us, we don’t flush it down the toilet. We hand it to our competitor down the street because, and it sounds so cheesy, but brand is so important.
We’re all, as I said earlier, we’re all looking for something to believe in. We walk around the streets with a band name on our chests. Right? We all have those bands that we love. When was the last time U2 wrote you a check? Right? In fact, when was the last time their tickets cost less than, what, 100 bucks? Right? U2 is not paying you to advertise. But when you wear that band name on your chest, you feel something, you create connections with people you’ve never met before. Right? Achtung baby. Right? We all have that reaction. That’s what brands do. They enable that type of relationship. We’re all looking for those types of connections.
I really feel like when I teach people about how to build their personal brand, or how to build a corporate brand, they’re creating more desirable emotional connections in the world. I’ll tell you, after four years, and four, five speeches a week, I can only tell you that beautiful things have come of it. Amazing businesses have been built. Graduate students have left engineering and pursued communication strategy in the engineering world. You know how amazing that is?
A lot of my graduate students are here on visa from India. They’re amazing, like triple graduate degree engineers, who’ve worked for software companies we’d all kill for. They’re like, “I get the math. I understand the mechanics of this. You know what? I want to think on a higher level. I want to know what the math does for the world.” They take my lectures, my content from my lectures, and they mash it with their engineering prowess and they actually create a new value proposition for themselves. They are the expert communicators at Boeing. How amazing is that that they can take all of that skillset, and they just wrap it in the social communication of the value? They’re the guy who sits between all of the engineers and all the clients. Isn’t that cool? What a cool job, right? They only know about it because we’ve been teaching them how to build brands for so many years. Look, if I die a poor man but millions of people have learned what it feels like to do this, it was a worthy pursuit.
Andrew: I’m looking at the chatroom here, Tariq D. is saying, “I like the attitude. The art of being a mench.” Dan O’Manion is saying, “I love Sasha’s energy.” I saw in preparation for this interview, I saw a speech that you gave UCLA students. Some student took that speech and just edited it down to two minutes of just the six major points, which I have here on my screen. You are an incredible speaker.
I got to tell anyone out there who can do this. If you have a student group, find a way to bring Sasha in. Find a way to have him come and speak. If you can’t because you’re school’s too small, or I don’t know why, go to UCLA when he speaks there, or go to USC, find a way to see him live. I don’t get anything from doing it. You end up getting more work for doing it. We’re not here to try to do anything for ourselves. There’s no ulterior motive here. I’m just telling you, I found someone who’s great for you. Find a way to get in front of him in person.
Sasha: Thank you, Andrew. To extend that offer, I’m on planes, trains, and automobiles constantly. I ride the Southwest Bus to work all the time to Northern California. What most of the academic institutions do is they just tell me that they’re interested. I have a speech coordinator who just books the times. So if I’m in your neighborhood already, I just extend my trip by half a day and make time for those sessions.
Andrew: Constantine in the audience is asking if you blog.
Sasha: Thank you for asking, Constantine. Having 20 employees, 25 active clients at any given time, 35 graduate students, an amazing wife and family that I adore, I haven’t had a chance to blog. I will tell you that my intention is, and I have a work plan together. I’ve hired someone to help me with the process. We’re going to do a little bit more than a blog. It’s going to be video content like this where, for free, you can learn about the different stages of brand development. Like Tariq asked earlier about brand architecture, I told him about the house of brands versus the branded house, we’re going to have that content available for you so that you can learn about the process.
I know business will come of it, because if you need our help working through that process, you’ll ask us. Again, more importantly, the more people that understand this, the more people who know how to use it, the better businesses will be run. The more entrepreneurs will be successful.
I’ll tell you, one thing that I believe with my heart of hearts, this economic crisis that we’re in is not the fault of entrepreneurs. It’s the fault of the complacent, old way of running businesses. This is our generation, you guys. The next three to five years, we’re going to be the ones that fix this problem. We need to learn from each other. We need to have conversations like this as much as possible.
Every week I go to some entrepreneurial networking event. I’m going to one tonight, and I’m going to give millions of dollars of intellectual property away. Why? Because I know that we’re going to fix what this is. This is our chance to share. If you have a question, you email us. I’m going to get that content online. So, I don’t blog yet, but just give me a couple months to package it all together, and it will be yours.
Andrew: Right on. Dan O’Manion’s pointing out that you are on Twitter. You guys can all find him at Twitter.com/SashaStrauss. Thank you for doing this interview. Really great to meet you.
Sasha: My pleasure and an honor. If anybody has any follow-up questions, please reach out to me. I only add friends on Facebook, but Twitter I’m happy to connect with you. My Twitter profile is not just about brand development, it’s just about my awkward observations of life. If you’re interested, I’d be happy to share. On LinkedIn, I also add only professional contacts. That doesn’t mean that we can’t establish a professional rapport. Just reach me through any of those channels, and we’ll have a conversation.
Andrew: You bet. Absolutely. If anyone wants an introduction, I’ll do my best to help out. I see Mose is asking for one, and absolutely we’ll take care of it by email privately. Thank you, Sasha. Thank you all for watching. I’ll see you all in the comments.
Sasha: My pleasure, guys. Good to be with you.
Andrew: Thanks.
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Sponsors I mentioned
Walker Corporate Law – Scott Walker is lawyer who takes startups from incorporation, to funding, to sale and everything in between. Watch this video to learn about him.
99designs – The largest crowdsourced marketplace for graphic design. When I used them, I wrote a description of the design I needed and how much I wanted to pay. I got a bunch of designs back. I gave each designer feedback and picked the one I liked the best. Try them for Logo Design, blog design, app icons and more.
PicClick – Is a 1-person startup from my friend Ryan in San Diego. His site gives you a visual way to search eBay, Etsy, and other sites. Try it this iPad accessories search, for example, and tell me what you think.
