Overcome Entrepreneur Loneliness and Master Marketing with Brian Town

LMScast with Chris Badgett

In this LMScast episode, Brian Town highlights the loneliness that comes with entrepreneurship despite its apparent success. He talks about the psychological effects of managing a company, fixing difficulties all the time, and dealing with impostor syndrome even after years of expertise.

Brian Town is a video marketing specialist and seasoned businessman, best recognized as the founder and CEO of Michigan Creative, a full-service creative firm that specializes in web development, branding, and video production. He published a book called “The Lonely CEO“

Brian openly discusses his battles with burnout, providing details on how the constant pressures of managing a company may negatively impact both mental and physical well-being. He emphasizes the value of self-care practices like meditation, consistent exercise, and even taking breaks when necessary in order to have a good outlook.

Additionally, Brian draws attention to the strain many entrepreneurs endure in juggling their personal and professional life, where work frequently takes precedence.

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Episode Transcript

Chris Badgett: You’ve come to the right place. If you’re looking to create, launch, and scale a high value online training program, I’m your guide, Chris Badgett. I’m the co founder of Lifter LMS, the most powerful learning management system for WordPress. Stay to the end. I’ve got something special for you. Enjoy the show.

Hello and welcome back to another episode of LMS cast. I’m joined by a special guest. His name is Brian town is the author of the lonely CEO. You can find that at the lonely ceo. com. He’s also the founder of Michigan creative. That’s at Michigan creative. com. It’s an agency. We’re going to talk about some things that people don’t talk about when it comes to being an entrepreneur, being lonely.

The challenges there. We’re going to talk about entrepreneurial mindset. We’re going to talk about marketing and branding and just see where we go from there. But first welcome to the show, Brian.

Brian Town: Chris, appreciate it, man.

Chris Badgett: Let’s start with I don’t want to say dirty little secret. It’s more just like the taboo thing that people don’t talk about as much, which is.

The loneliness part of entrepreneurship because entrepreneurship gets a lot of acclaim and you know There’s a lot of people we put on the pedestal some of the great entrepreneurs of our time even in the smaller world in our towns and cities and stuff. We may be recognized as a success. We have a successful business whatever that means But it can be super lonely.

Let’s dig in there. What compelled you to write an entire book about that topic?

Brian Town: A mental breakdown.

My, my wife is a entrepreneur. She runs her own business too. And she won an award pretty recently. We won an award pretty recently and people were like, Oh man, you guys are the power couple.

We’re like, I wish they could come by our house. And, Sometimes you see like how stressed out we were and how worried one of us is on any given day and how we’re wondering if we, that imposter syndrome, we talk about that a lot and I just think it’s just a lonely place. And luckily I have her and she has me, but I think, every business owner that I’ve talked to, they have that same kind of.

Worry. It’s just, there’s so much, as you start to grow, she has nine employees. I have 16 and that just, there’s so much that you’re thinking of. And my biggest fear has always been, and we’ve had a handful of times, three, four, five, six times where I was like, I got to go pick up a check.

I got to find some money to make sure that we’re making payroll stuff is the things you lose sleep over. And it’s not just Oh, wow. That didn’t work out. Shut it down. It’s a little deeper and I think, your friends don’t get it. Everybody thinks you’re great success. Cause on paper and in reality, like we are successful, like things are working, but there’s been some months that most recently too, that we’re like why are we doing, What are we doing?

And I think everybody listening right now probably sometimes has felt that way and maybe be feeling that way right now. So I think that dirty little secret is it probably one of the hardest things that I’ve ever done. Yeah. Same thing. My wife says the same thing. Now, that being said, there’s so much good that’s come from it.

Whether we, let’s pretend that everybody fires us today and all my employees are like forget you, we’re leaving 14 years running an agency. Through the pandemic, my wife’s starting a business and becoming really successful pretty quickly. That’s success. We don’t see it that way.

There’s always gotta be more and what aren’t we doing?

Chris Badgett: Yeah. I think the concept of enough is like a thing to meditate on. What does enough mean?

Brian Town: And I think that’s the thing is like this last couple of months, I’ve been really off my game and I haven’t been meditating and I haven’t been.

Eating very well or sleeping very well. And, I think when is enough, I think is one thing that I need to do more of, but then also, I’ve been better about this over the last couple of days, but, really looking back at all the great things that you have and the great things that you’ve done, like this building, for example if I’m real stressed out, cause we didn’t get this one client or something.

I, I need to go look around, like there’s, 12 people working here right now, and it’s beautiful. And our clients, love everything that we’ve done for most of them. And so I think it’s that we all need to do a better job of not just if you’re a business owner, but I think appreciating and having gratitude for what we’ve done and what we have.

Because it’s great. And I think it’s hard to do as a business owner, because the minute we get off this call, or if you’re done listening to this, you’re thinking, all right, who’s emailing me that needs something, who’s mad, whatever, we’re always trying to think of that next thing. Why we have all this other stuff to deal with, because we’re parents and, we have tons of animals at home and it’s just It’s a stressful thing.

Chris Badgett: And the entrepreneur is a problem solver. So when you’re done with one problem, feed me another problem.

Brian Town: That’s what it is. My wife said it the best. She’s I thought I’d start this med spa and it’d be great. She’s a PA and it’d be a great thing. And it’d just be a lot of fun doing it.

It is, and it’s been really successful, but it’s always something. Most of her day, when she’s not seeing patients, I work over there one day a week. It’s solving problems. Employees go, Hey, what do you think about this? What color do you want this? And what are we going to do about this package?

And it’s all day long. You’re solving problems. So then when you get home and your fifth grade daughter needs you to help solve problems. This very complicated math, you’re like, man, I don’t know if I’m up for it.

Chris Badgett: I’ve had too many problems today. I get that.

Brian Town: Oh yeah.

Chris Badgett: How does you mentioned imposter syndrome.

I think it’s different in the very beginning, but it never goes away. Like, how has that changed for you over 10 plus years?

Brian Town: Yeah, it never really has. I’m terrible. I’m a classic case of imposter syndrome. Nobody would know it. But it’s, for me, it just, I think a really good example is when we were pitching just on Monday to Jiffy mix, which is a huge, if you’re from Michigan, they’re they are in Michigan, but they’re all over the country.

At first when they sent it to us, I’m like, okay, we’ll do this proposal. And then they asked us to come in and pitch. And then we were getting ready to pitch. I was like, we can’t do this. There’s gotta be the Ann Arbor or Detroit agencies that it’s pitching on this as well. Like we’re just here from Lansing and We’ll give it a shot and, so dumb, like I’m thinking that and then as we start to put the proposal together and showing case studies, and I looked at it Monday morning before we had to go and I was like, yeah, man, maybe we are the only ones that they should go with.

And it went really well and the pitch went really well and. We were ourselves and we do have that type of work and we can do it. And I think I don’t know why I get like that and I don’t know Necessarily if it’s a bad thing we talk about this a lot too is like I think if we didn’t have This imposter syndrome our whole entire lives maybe we wouldn’t be where we are today because I’m always trying to better that imposter because I’m, I’m worried.

I’m like I’m going to have to outperform him then because just in case they find out who we really are. And, sometimes it gets in the way a little bit, but a lot of times it’s just been how I’ve run my life and always. It always tried to get better and better. So I don’t know, man.

Chris Badgett: I’ve heard a saying that behind every entrepreneur, there’s like a trauma or a shame story or something. And maybe that’s where that imposter syndrome was born. I don’t

Brian Town: know.

Chris Badgett: Loneliness is for real. Like it’s interesting. You’re married to an entrepreneur. My wife has her own business. It’s a side thing she started, but she’s not like crazy entrepreneur person like me.

So we have me and then we have a normal person in the house. But I’ve definitely found a lot of solace in spending time with other entrepreneurs and, And then I don’t feel so lonely and all the weird stuff we think about or ways of being in the world or, common ground and it doesn’t feel so lonely anymore, but how’s that been for you in terms of fighting loneliness, like what are some things you do

Brian Town: Yeah, I think you’re right.

I think being with other entrepreneurs has been super helpful and, talking to people that have been through it. And, for me, I need to probably start my podcast again, because that was always very helpful and doing these kinds of things too, like podcaster. Good for me too, because I can, I get, it’s the only opportunity I get to talk about like the good stuff that we do and that I’ve done, and I remember when I was going down this journey of the book and then building my personal brand, when I was.

Working with a ghostwriter for the personal brand and posting and those kinds of things. I was just telling my normal story. Like I was a teacher, I had four kids, had a kid in college, decided to start a company one day. When I got done telling that, they’re like, Jesus, man, like you’ve got a lot of you’ve got a really interesting history and you’re really got a lot of great things.

But we just hang out and. And talk to other people that are still doing it. So we just think everybody can do it.

I was like, Oh, do I, Really? And because for us, man. It’s I just, we just hang, I think one of the things that we have to realize is that not most people don’t start companies and even that small few that don’t make it. So the percentage of you and I being able to still be here today, is pretty small.

Chris Badgett: Yeah, it’s normalized.

Brian Town: Yeah, it is for us, and I, I think for me, having her be an entrepreneur now too, cause before it was like safe and, she was the.

But, I even think, I remember when she was working on her job and there were still, I think a lot of employees today are feeling entrepreneur ish too, because they have to do things on their own. And so I don’t know, I think for me, the writing, the blogging, the posting, and then doing podcasts has been super helpful.

Because it’s just an opportunity for me to maybe think I know what I’m doing.

Chris Badgett: Yeah.

Brian Town: Sometimes.

Chris Badgett: I know one person who like has that list that you gave to your ghostwrite content person about your life and they actually keep it in their like on a note on their phone. And before they ever have to go speak or be a guest.

They read it to like get in the mindset of Oh yeah, I haven’t done a lot of stuff. I’m worthy to be here. People want to hear what I have to say or whatever. It’s easily forgotten that where you’ve come from or everything you’ve done.

Brian Town: I just think mindset is a crazy thing. I probably would have been done a great job a couple of weeks ago and faked my way through this, but.

I wasn’t at a spot where now when I’m talking to you and telling you about these things, like I actually believe it and feel it. Cause there was just a lot of stress going on a couple of weeks ago and a lot of things that I was just like, I don’t even know if I want to continue to do this, I get like that every once in a while and it’s like, all right, nevermind, things are good, and it’s that mindset piece that. When you get out of that, it’s hard to do the things that, you need to do to stay in it. So like I wasn’t meditating. I wasn’t exercising, I wasn’t writing very much and I’ve noticed that over the last week that I started to pick those things up again because I felt like doing them Mindset’s totally different.

Chris Badgett: What other mindset tips do you have? You mentioned a lot there like your routines of self care meditation exercise just acknowledging that, Hey, maybe you’re at a low point and it tends to go back up, but what else?

Brian Town: Yeah. My morning routine it’s in the book, we, I make fun of all the gurus and stuff for do an ice bath, man, and wake up at 4am and then, go get a two hour massage.

I’m like, all right listen, I got pooping all over the house. My daughter’s mad cause she can’t find her backpack. It’s that’s not happening. I, I’ve got a couple of meditation apps that I use. And so really my routine in the morning is pretty easy. I try to get up coffee and then do a little bit of meditation for about 10, 15 minutes.

Try to write down a couple of things that I’m grateful for and thankful for and what I’m looking forward to that day. And then a winter two from yesterday and then exercise. And, that’s, that, those are the things that it doesn’t have to be like tons of weights or whatever, like just something that, that gets me in that right moment.

The other thing that I wasn’t doing for a while and now I’m back in it and I’ve got a card in my pocket. That’s just my moonshot card was what I call it. And it just, there’s a, it just says, Hey, I’ll be making million dollar, million dollars a month in a calm and creative way.

And it’s just something that I read in the morning and a million dollar month is like crazy, right? Like we’re nowhere near that. And, but it’s one of those things that, is in my pocket that I can just remember and I can feel it. And so when things are coming up where I’m like, eh, maybe I shouldn’t reach out to this client or I don’t feel like doing this or whatever, I’m Oh, hold on a second.

Is that really fit to where I want to be? And so for me, getting back into that routine and keeping those things going have been super helpful.

Chris Badgett: You mentioned calm, that’s cool. Like for such a short statement to add calm in there makes a lot of sense. Cause you could make a million dollars a month creatively and be totally like at your wits end.

Brian Town: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So like it’s a little folded piece of paper. That’s just my third grade handwriting that says a million dollars a month, I’m so grateful that I’m making over a million a month at a calm, creative or calm, confident and creative way. And so I don’t know if I’ll ever hit a million dollars a month, but yeah.

It’s like that moon shot. Like it’s crazy. Like when Kennedy was like, we’re going to go to the moon. We don’t know how we’re going to do it. And we’re going to do it. It’s called, yeah, there it is. And it’s just funny how, like when I was not in the right mindset, not even did I not put it in my pocket.

I was like I’m not going to put that in my pocket. Cause it’s never going to work. And that’s so stupid, like a child.

Chris Badgett: What what causes people to feel stuck as a founder or entrepreneur? We’ve touched on some of it, but what else is in that bag of. Corrects.

Brian Town: Yeah. I think for me, it’s the pure chaos that you can control, right?

So you can control that chaos. When you’re in the mode that you don’t think you can, or it’s not going well, it can get out of control pretty quick. So I’ve been, I’ve done a really good job at really mastering my calendar. And blocking things to get things done and outsourcing tasks and not doing the things that, you shouldn’t be doing.

And it sounds easy and it sounds common because you hear this all the time, but it’s an art.

Chris Badgett: I feel like I’m still mastering my calendar and I’m pretty good at it, but it’s like constantly evolving. I don’t think it’ll ever stop.

Brian Town: Yeah. And I think doing the high level things that you should be doing as a CEO, and then we can’t always do that.

I’ve got these bills. I’ve got to talk to this client. I probably got to write something. Those are not really on my to do list that should be, but, having time that real good focus time to build your company and to vision think about, put those in your calendar.

Because if you don’t, especially if you have lots of employees and clients, like it’s just going to get filled with zooms.

Chris Badgett: Once you get some work done on yourself. Part of self is leadership. So what, 14 years into an agency and you, I believe have many, or if not all team members in the building with you whether they’re remote or in the office, leadership is required. What have been some of your leadership lessons and fumbles along the way?

Brian Town: How fumbles we, I don’t know how long this is, but I’d write about those a lot in the book too, because, I think my, so one of our core values is that, we’re all leaders and A great leader makes everyone around him or her better than they are. And that’s something that I’ve used when I was a high school teacher.

I use that same statement. I used it when I coached youth football it was just all these little pieces that I think my job is to make people leaders in this company. Then their job is then to make other people that they’re working with leaders as well. So I’ve surrounded myself with people that are better and smarter and brighter than I am.

One of my business coaches told me this, and it really stuck with me. But he was like, I was talking to him how I was worried and I was down. I was like, and he’s like, Hey man, I’m telling you, your team is going to feel it. And he’s like, if you’re down 10%, And I said I’m down a lot more than 10%.

He’s like, all right, listen, if you’re down 10%, your team’s going to feel it by 40%, and I was like I get on our team calls and I’m usually inspirational, but it’s not working. Nobody’s listening. He’s it doesn’t matter. He’s your job as a leader is to always be that one that is not necessarily pushing or, getting people to do things.

It’s to inspire them to be great. I’ve always done that in every classroom that I’ve been in, and every speech that I’ve given is my job is to inspire someone to do something and to be great. I think that’s what a leader is. And the issue with leadership today is like, when I tell this in all my classes and everything that I’ve done, it’s you’re not taught leadership, right?

And none of us off the top of our heads, especially young people can think of a good leader. I can think of a ton of really bad leaders. Bye. They can’t really think of well, who’s a good leader. And so it’s something that has to be taught a lot. And I think for me, my when I get in trouble with my leadership is, when I’m not trouble, that’s not what I meant, but the things that I’ve been really good at is taking ownership of going, Hey, I was not following the core value on this.

I was not doing this and that was really poor leadership. And so here’s what I’m going to do, to rectify that. And that alone fixes 99 percent of the problems. Like a politician, like you’d want them just to Yeah, I did that. That was terrible. And I shouldn’t have done that.

But of course they’re never going to do that, but for owning up, owning up to things when you’re not, you’re doing things that don’t meet the core values, that’s leadership.

Chris Badgett: It was about 10 years into my entrepreneur journey where I really learned the value of company values or core values, and it’s particularly powerful if you can get them to overlap with the same ones you would carry in your personal life.

And I was reading on your website before you came on. One of y’all’s is everyone we come in contact with should have a better day. And I was, I thought that’s a cool one, that’s really cool. And that the way I learned it, you can hire and fire against your core values. So it’s what you look for in the team you want to build and they’re in the character of the people.

And if it actually, nobody likes firing people. But when you see the values, and examples over time, it’s and you try to correct and change and learn and grow. And if it’s not happening, it’s, it makes that whole process easier just to have those.

Brian Town: That’s like I said, there’s lots of things that, that if we shut down tomorrow, I would be proud of.

Those core values would be one of them. And, really we help companies write their core values because I love to do it. The, the core values, the stupid core values are like customer service and integrity, like bullshit. Bullshit, that’s stupid. And so what I wanted to do is make sure that we had core values that were written in a way that.

I wanted people to be like that at work and not at work because those are the type of people that I wanted to work with. But I also felt like core values should be able to help people as well. And I think for me, that core value is my favorite. And I’ve taught that to my kids. My, it came from my dad and it was just, it’s for them too.

So look up, help somebody open a door. Be nice, whatever. If even smiling at people in the store today is like unheard of. And so my son does that all the time. And his girlfriend is so annoyed. He’s like, why are you like, why does everybody want to talk to you? And why is everybody friends with you at the store?

He’s no, I just look at people and they want to talk to me, and but for me, I was always telling people it’s not necessarily for them, but it’s. It’s for you to, it’s for you to feel like, okay, maybe you have made a difference today. Maybe you are a good person. And so I think those core values for us are the only way that we review and rate our employees.

And then we use them on all of our pitch decks as well.

Chris Badgett: That’s awesome. Yeah. As I look at these and I’m transitioning to the marketing part of the conversation. About what your customers want to know before they engage with you or buy from you. And for me, like before talking to you on this podcast, I’m scanning the website and I saw the core values and I’m like check on all the ones that are there.

I’m like, this is going to be a good conversation. I’ve always felt like the about page is really important to a business. But yeah, tell us more just for whether it’s an agency or anybody in any business. Creating online, like what what do customers need to know and feel before they engage?

Brian Town: Yeah. I, our new site, which is this one that you’ve been looking at I’m really happy with the way that is. I think, for us, like what we always felt is that. I’ll go back to the Jiffy Bix thing is and I told this, there was a room of 15 people and. I was like, how do I separate myself from someone that’s going to come in here and be super technical and have 50 sites this big that they’ve built is I felt like they probably wanted to work with someone that they felt like they could work with.

For people that had good values because that’s a value based company, right? And for me, I think today it’s very, it’s very difficult today to separate yourself from your competitors because everybody has the same tools, right? We can all make our websites look great. We can all say that we have X amount of combined experience, which is the dumb thing, don’t put that on your website.

I think people want to know that they’re going to work with people that. That are like them, that have the same values that they have, but more importantly, that they have somewhere in their culture that they’re helping their employees with these values and we expect certain things.

So like a good example of customer service would be everyone you come in contact with should have a better day. So instead of putting customer service on there if that’s the thing, whether they go with us or not, I want them to have a better day because they met somebody.

Chris Badgett: And that’s visceral.

You can feel that. It’s not like 99. 9 percent customer satisfaction. It’s a different, has a totally different feel to it.

Brian Town: Yeah. And I just, my favorite, I’ve always wanted, cause I read a lot of detective novels and my dad and I used to watch a team together and I always wanted to be that guy that’s got a problem.

Oh man, you should just really talk to Brian or Michigan creative. And that’s what people do. They’re like, eh, I don’t know, you know who you should talk to. And that’s, I wanted to have that piece. I also felt that, one of our core values is creative and it’s in our name and obviously it’s what we do, but I just think there’s such, such a great value in being creative.

I think people like you and I, and probably the majority of your audience takes it for granted, cause they’re just, that’s all they’ve been all their entire lives. They were the ones that did videos for school projects and, just the weirdos and

Chris Badgett: I was like, yeah, I remember the first video I did for a school project with a VHS yeah, I did the same thing.

Brian Town: That’s why I’m sitting here right now is because we used to do videos with my mom’s little VHS camera tape to tape editing and my 11th grade English teacher, Mrs. Eichel said, Hey man you ought to go into video production. That’s what I did. I went to college for video production.

That was my first job. I taught video production after that. And now, we do a ton of videos. But anyway, I think, not only your core values, but really, they want to work with a company that they think they could work with. And then also getting that brand and message, we’ll. My favorite exercise to do with clients is what we call finally. I think everybody on this could do this with their brand is. I, we made the mistake of the same thing is that we wanted to be every, everything to everyone all the time. And I still think we’re not as niche down as I would like to be.

That’s why I love what you’re doing. The niche, is great. I think if I could start all over again, I’d really think about niching to one particular group. We’re doing that more in the manufacturing space and the food space, which I’m loving. But, that finally exercises what I love to do with customers, because, as we have a couple of seconds to grab somebody’s attention.

And so what, what would it take for someone to come to your website or see an ad for a couple of seconds and for them to go and they’re on their phone on the couch at eight o’clock at night and they’re scrolling through stuff and they see your ad and they’re like, ah, finally, I’ve been looking for a company just like this, or I’ve been looking for a product just like this or a service just like this.

And that’s what I think We all need to work at, and it’s just funny because even some of the biggest companies that we’ve worked for, like they’ll come to us and they’ll go our website and our messaging is fine. It just doesn’t really tell who we really are. And I hear that over and over again.

And I’m like, great, that’s what I like to do. I love to do that. And I think, some of these really large manufacturing companies that we work with, one of them was like that. They said that same thing. Like we are the leader in the world in what we make and everybody knows it.

And, but if you go to our website and our social media and our videos, like you wouldn’t know it and they’ve got competitors that are coming up and their websites look awesome, videos look awesome, but their products aren’t as good and they’re getting pissed, so I think for me what is that message that you’re trying to get to that right person at the right time? On the right device in the right moment is what marketing’s always been. It’s really never changed. We just somehow with that gets lost because we’re trying to do so many other things.

I think

Chris Badgett: speaking of a couple of seconds to make an impression how can you help like a business owner? Think about having a more visually appealing logo and website. I’ve, I, as an example, I’m not a great designer myself. I love naming products in business. I think I have a really unique there, but yeah.

And when you talk to a potential client or existing client, they don’t necessarily have the tools and the language to tell you exactly what they want or what they think they want or what’s going to make them happy. And more importantly, their customers are prospects happy. So how do you approach the strong visuals, particularly in the logo and the web design?

Brian Town: Yeah. Yeah. So I’ll tell you an easy path to that. And then I’ll tell you a story of how I think it matters, I, it’s asking a lot of questions. Like my job is, has never been to. Come up with a great idea for you necessarily. We get to those, but I think what we found is that by just asking a bunch of the right questions, somebody usually says like that perfect tagline that’s in the business, they say that perfect, like here’s what I was thinking it should be.

And from that, those brainstorming sessions and the forms that we have, people fill out that says, why should I be your customer? If you’re at a coffee shop and someone asks, what do you do? What do you tell them? Like all these little pieces and things that we do. It’s just awesome to see people say things cause they know they just, they’re busy with everything else and they don’t have, they don’t know what to do with it.

I think our job is to take those great ideas. And build it into something that can be visual and creative and work on a bigger, in a bigger scale. And I always, I always try to, and it doesn’t always work for every client but I don’t know, maybe it does. Like I always try to get them to think about a symbol.

Like we want your logo and brand to be a symbol for something. And it’s really easy to do and fun to do with nonprofits. And we, I think how I even noticed talk like this, like I’m not classically educated in brand and marketing. I’ve learned all this stuff through figuring it out as we go.

It really came to us when we were doing some work for a company or a nonprofit that used to be called Wayne County safe and Wayne County safe, this is like ultimately one of those stories where Hey man, if we don’t do any other work, we’ve made our, And this was years ago. And I knew somebody that worked there.

So it was a small nonprofit that was in charge of in the beginning. The story goes that there was a PA Kim that worked at an emergency room in Detroit and she got assault victim in there and she had to perform or use a rape kit on her. This sounds terrible, but she was like, I’m a PA and I don’t know how to do this.

She was like, how can that be? And so she started Wayne County safe, which was in charge of getting the backlogs done that happened in the city and trying to get all these kits processed. It turned into a assault center turned into a mental health facility for women. Now it’s the largest, one of the largest assault And women’s health centers in the country.

So they came to us and they’re like, Hey, we got to change our name. It can’t be called Wayne County safe anymore. Cause this kid

Chris Badgett: first told me, I thought it was, it sounded like a armored car service or something.

Brian Town: She’s it’s too big. They’re in Wayne County, but it’s, we’re starting to do more.

Chris Badgett: Yeah.

Brian Town: And we need to rebrand and we need a new website and we want you to do it. And she’s we’re gonna have to go through the process and, whatever. But we ended up getting the contract and our job was to come up with a new name and a new brand. And so I remember talking to my staff.

I said, look, we got to come up with something that’s a symbol for hope. When someone sees it, we want them to go, all right, maybe I’m going to be okay. So when I’m going through all the workshops with the staff, I kept talking about that and getting them to tell us the stories. And some of the stories are awful, right?

But there is light, tons of light that’s been there. We came up with a new name called Avalon and I don’t remember how we came up with it. So Avalon healing we’re like, okay let’s do our research and let’s pitch it. Our designer at the time came up with a logo and They, they ended up going with it.

And so we built the website and the brand and flash forward a couple of years. I’m helping them with a podcast and I’m just, I got my headphones on and I’m over at their office and there’s some guests and one of the guests who didn’t know who I was like telling his story and he was like and then someone said, Hey, check out Avalon.

And then he went to their website and then he went to their building and he saw their brand and logo and he was, or he saw the logo and he’s yeah, then I thought. Man, I just felt like I was going to be okay and I was like, what did he say? I didn’t say anything, but I was like, I told my staff, I was like, you guys, we did it, and so then that approach, we were making that up as we went.

Of course I was like, Oh yeah, we do this all the time. And my staff’s what are you, what do you mean? We haven’t done this before. I’m like, don’t worry. And now that story I tell a lot, and I still take that, that into even whatever manufacturing business or whatever, I think the idea here is that you want to be able to see their logo or wordmark or whatever, and be able to understand that it’s there.

It’s the best or it’s high quality or that’s the only company that you want to get to and we’ve been like that our entire lives it’s all about brand like the nike talk about the big brands. It’s the same thing.

Chris Badgett: Oh, that’s awesome You mentioned story. How do you help clients with storytelling?

Brian Town: Yeah, they’re historically, they’re typically not very good. And what they say to us all the time, we have

Chris Badgett: products and features and services.

Brian Town: Yeah. They always talk about what they do but not who they are. I have to go and speak again to the association of general contractors. I think it’s in Colorado this year.

My talk is about how to attract millennials to the trades, or I’m sorry, Gen Z to the trades. Millennials are old. And the, when I did it in Atlanta, I was like, there’s 80 people in the room. I was like, how many people here have a picture of a building or some construction tools on your homepage?

Everybody’s hand raising, great. That’s what you do. And that’s great. But they know that’s what you do. Like people know that’s what you do. And but who are you? As a company. And why should I come work for you? Getting them to think about telling that story of who they are as a company and why they do what they do, it really helps because I’m like, what happens is people first come to you because of that, and then they’re going to go start to research and see if you have the right products and services, but they’re always going to come back to that.

That’s one of the things they say to us, which I love is they’re like that’s why we hired you. We’re not creative. Yeah. I’m like, I know,

Chris Badgett: I don’t know your story, you got to talk to me, man.

Brian Town: And so a couple of different ways that we do it, I think, one of the ways that are really helpful is, if we can record videos of them telling that story, that’s great.

But the process that we have works really well. Where, we have them just answer all these random weird questions and give it to as many people as you can. And then we’ll take all that and we’ll make a summary out of it. Then I’ll go back in and start asking questions. And that three step process seems to work pretty well because.

People know it, it’s just, they have to be asked. It’s like a, it’s like a high school classroom. Like you can’t, the thing I always used to tell new teachers, if I was training, I’m like, don’t ever say, does anybody have any questions? Like at the end of talks to that’s the dumbest thing to ever leave for question.

No one has questions. No one wants to ask questions. You have to ask the right questions to get them to answer it the right way.

Chris Badgett: Very cool. Yeah. I think, Nike, part of the reasons that strong is Michael Jordan’s story, right? Like the story of his life and many brand champions or influencers or whatever, it’s about the story.

Brian Town: Yeah. Apple’s the same way. Yeah.

I’m going to put a hundred songs in your pocket, and it’s the same thing. That story and really their product, their product’s cool and whatever, but it’s just. I think how they were able to do it. It’s the idea of having an Apple, having that was a status symbol.

It’s not as much anymore, but that’s how they, you were cool when you had a Mac desktop, you were that cool weird guy.

Chris Badgett: Especially if it was the green one or the orange one or whatever. I have to ask you as an agency person, who’s done a lot. How do you get clients?

It’s a, the biggest thing I hear from people who are particularly if they’re earlier on in their journey. Yeah,

Referrals are great, but what else can you do?

Brian Town: Yeah. And that’s what I spent the most of my time doing as the CEO and in a chapter in the book, I talk about sales and that’s all that matters.

And sales to me is something that I think, we’ve tried to outsource sales. We’ve tried to hire salespeople. Not much success. We’ve got one right now that she’s pretty good. So Liz, if you’re listening to this, I’m not talking about you. But is, I think there’s multiple approaches to how you get good clients.

The easy things that you have to do and as marketing companies, for whatever reason, we don’t seem to do a great job at this. But is, you have to make sure that your search engine optimization or SEO is good. Yeah. We do AdWords for ourselves. We always wanted to make sure that our social media was the best.

Cause I didn’t want somebody to go there and go, I’m not going to hire you to do that. For us, that was all those pieces, but then as a CEO and as the owner, a couple hours a day, an hour a day, every day, you need to be in charge of doing some sort of sales activity and it’s a learned, Thing.

I took some bunch of courses for years in Sandler and read tons of sales books because I had no idea how to do sales and sales is probably one of the hardest jobs that you’ll ever do because we’ve, we’ve tried sales people and that are new and hear me thinking, Oh shoot, we’ll just give a young person some little bit of salary and a great percentage.

And they’ll kill it. I could make 200, 000, they only got to sell four websites or whatever, whatever it is. Yeah.

Chris Badgett: Yeah.

Brian Town: But what they don’t understand is that they’re going to get a ton of nose and their percentages are terrible for closing, no matter how good you are. And so I think, always having those sales activities in the pipeline and always following up.

And so my job every day. I have a, I think an hour and then a half hour blocked off to do sales activities. And sometimes it’s just going into the CRM and following up with proposals that I’ve written, have written. Sometimes it’s reaching out to customers. Sometimes it’s prospecting for other ones and sending random emails, but a couple of big, easy wins that I think that we don’t think about doing is we always think about getting new customers.

I’m guilty of that too. When I’ve got, I don’t know, I think we host 200 some WordPress websites right now, and we’re starting to do better at this, but I should be going back over every single one of those and start reaching out to go, Hey man, here’s what I’m thinking. Let’s rebuild this. You’re not doing SEO with us.

What do you think about that? Or, Hey, did you know we do AdWords and, I’ve got a pipeline of customers that have been with me for 10 years that know and trust me. And I’m looking for someone that has never even heard of me. And so I would work your list of your current customers and then also.

We know we say referrals and referrals that come in are great. And it was funny because one of my sales trainer one, one time was like, Hey man, how many referrals did you get this year? And I’m like, I don’t know, 30. I have no idea. 30, let’s say 30. He’s cool. He’s like, how many of those did you ask for?

That’s why I didn’t ask for any of them. What do you mean? I said, no, man, that’s not how referrals work. They just come in. He’s no, dude. He’s call up your friends and call up your best customers and call up your colleagues and go, Hey, how’s it going? It’s okay, cool. Let me know if there’s anybody else I should be talking to that might be a great fit and they’re usually pumped.

If you’ve done a good job for them, they want. To help someone else. And they’re like, Oh man, you should call Rick. Rick’s got this manufacturing company. He’s getting fed up with, whatever. I’m going to, I’m going to email you too. And he’s going to be, and he usually is Hey man, you guys got to call Brian.

He’ll take care of you. And that’s almost like. A done deal, but you got to ask. And I love giving her, that’s like my favorite thing to do. Like I love giving referrals. If someone treated me, really well, like my insurance guy, you’re happy to do it. I’m man. I’m like, I do it because I know that’s going to make me look good.

Yeah. Cause they’ll call him and go, man, was took care of us in a half hour. I’m like, I know. But so I think working your current customer. The list doing sales activities every day. I’m being okay with getting nose as soon as you possibly can. Yeah. I want nose. I’d rather I want nose. Yeah. Like I just want them to go, look, man, I don’t like you.

Your goatee is weird. I don’t want to go with you. I’m like, great. Don’t pretend. And then not. Email me back. And so I think that’s important. And then get some training, get classically trained in sales. It is one of the hardest things you’ll ever do.

Chris Badgett: What what’s in your agency stack?

Cause I know a lot of folks. Yeah. Particularly over here in WordPress, like they just build websites, but it sounds like you do paid ads and other things. Like what is on the menu at Michigan creative?

Brian Town: Yeah. Sometimes I’m like, man, I wish we just did WordPress websites. That would, cause when we started and I didn’t know, like I quit teaching.

On a Friday and started this company on a Monday. I had no ide, I had no idea what marketing was. And I didn’t know how to build websites. I ran into a former student a couple of months later and he, and I’m like. Hey man, what are you doing? He’s Oh, I just graduated, but I’m not really working. And I’m like, do you know how to build websites?

He’s yeah, I think so. And he was my 10 year, 10 year employee, WordPress developer. But so yeah, so we, we started and just being like, we’ll do everything. But for us right now, what we’re really trying to focus on is WordPress websites. Video production is a big part of our business.

I’ve got two full time producers and a director.

Chris Badgett: And what’s that? Is that like the sort of like the homepage video or social media video or what is What, how are you using video for your clients?

Brian Town: Yeah. What we really like to do. So yes, to all that. And what we really like to do is create brand anthem videos.

So it’s like that 92nd Superbowl, like commercial voiceover, the thing that you’d watch. And get inspired to, to work with that company. So we do a lot of brand anthem videos and I love doing those. So storytelling so we do some commercial work and some social media videos as well, but a lot of our work is, and we do a lot of interview videos too, but a lot of our work is in brand anthem and I love video because it’s that’s what I started in.

But I also really like it because these guys that I got now Matt, Zachary and Anne Marie, they run it like a, it’s entire separate company.

Chris Badgett: It’s like a division. Yeah, I

Brian Town: don’t even have to be a lot of these shoots and even recently they’re like, Hey, is there any way we could just start writing the scripts?

I’m like, wait, what do you mean? You don’t like my script writing? I got a little bit. They’re like, no, it’s just I think it’d be, I’m like, fine. But So I love that department. They’ve done just such a great job and the work they’re putting out is really cool. And I get to go sometimes and I love to ask questions of people like sit across from them on the camera and just get them to tell their story.

Like I love doing that. But then we do a ton of brand and graphic design and then also, digital digital ads, mostly social ads. We do some pay per click and then SEO.

Chris Badgett: A question about the brand anthem. I’m curious here. Is it, is the, is your agency doing the narration or you’re bringing in like the founder or somebody, or is it like hands off for the company or are they like the talent or I’m sure they have input and stuff, but how does that come together?

Brian Town: Yeah. A real brand anthem, what we do is we end up. Interviewing them and talking to them and then we’ll write the script. And then once they approve the script, then we’ll assign shots to the script, the shot list. And sometimes it’s a day, a full day shoot. Sometimes it’s a couple of days.

So we’ll go in there and let’s just say it’s a manufacturing plant. We’ll go in there and get all the shots of, employees working on the machines the CEO, people doing and interacting and just trying to make it look, good. Cool is not a good enough word, but try to make it, we want somebody to watch it and we want it to do a couple of things.

We want it to go, Oh man, like this is the company we’re looking for. Or it also works really well for employment videos too, where they’re looking to get people interested in coming to work there. And then typically what we’ll do is we’ll hire a professional voiceover person. Sometimes we’ll let them pick, do you want male, female, old, young and then we’ll just put that voiceover in.

With music and with the shots that we’ve taken. Once we have that day shoot, like they’re pretty much out. Now we have done videos where we’ll interview the CEO and that’s a little bit of a different where we still are using B roll interview, the CEO, the marketing director, whoever, CEO.

And we have done those. My favorite ones to do are just the brain anthem with voiceover music. I think every company should have a brain anthem.

Chris Badgett: Yeah, that’s awesome. Yeah. So for you out there watching, if you have an agency, maybe consider adding that to your stack.

Brian Town: And they’re great.

Cause they turn out really cool every time. Like I haven’t made a brain Anthem. We haven’t made a brain Anthem that the customer wasn’t like, Oh my God, this is awful. Like they always turn out really good.

Chris Badgett: Yeah. This has been awesome. Brian, if I want to take it back to the lonely CEO, if somebody out there, whether you’re running an agency or whatever your company is, or your education entrepreneur, if somebody’s feeling stuck alone, a little lost and they have all this chaos going on around them, number one, they should get their book, your book.

It

Brian Town: still has the not for sale copy, but it’s still there. Almost there. It’s like a real book.

Chris Badgett: What’s the first action they should take. It, they get your book, but what’s the first like tactical thing, even if they just turn off this podcast and they’re in that headspace, what’s a possible next step for them?

Brian Town: Yeah, I, man, I love kind of thinking out that five years, that 10 years, like, where do you want to, like, where do you see that company? Cause that’s fun. Throw it out there and just be like, this is where I want to take us and this is why, and then come back to that day and, reflect on how far you’ve already gone.

And I think I want them to understand I really want you to understand because no one, like I can. Tell you a quick story about how this will maybe resonate with your audiences. I was doing, I do a little bit of coaching and I was coaching this entrepreneur Stephanie and she was her husband ran a gym and in front of the gym was her business, which was a smoothie shop, coffee shop.

Whatever. And she was like, I was sitting in there with her and I was just helping her. And she was really getting, it was really tough. She just felt she’s I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t think anything that we’re doing is good. And I’m like, hang on, man just look around you.

This is beautiful. Like you’ve got your own shop, man. You got. There’s been like 10 people that have walked through here while we’re talking. And I said, you’re doing it. You’re making it happen. You’re the right person to do this. It’s just that self confidence I think for her, knowing that there’s a way to do it, she felt like she was trying to do everything and all at once and it wasn’t working.

And so I think. And this is from the e myth, but this, this is where I got it from, but Michael Gerber said it, when you’re in that small business and it’s just you or you and one other, you’re having to wear multiple hats but plan that out. So from nine to 10, you’re the CEO, from 1030 to 12 or whatever, you’re the marketing director and start to put in those things in place in more of a scheduled structure way.

So you don’t feel like you’re having to do everything all at the same time. And I think lastly, just. Realize that you are the one to do it. And everyone else is feeling the exact same way that you are right this moment, like as successful as I sound, I don’t have any of this figured out. Like I’m worried about the same stuff that you’re worried about.

Which when people used to tell me that, I’m like, Whoa, that doesn’t sound good.

Why am I still doing this? Like when those commercials come on from a bank and they’re like, yeah, start your dream and start our own business. My wife and I are like, yeah, don’t do that. Yeah. Are you sure? But yeah, just realize that you’re the one to do it. What’s the worst case scenario. I told that to someone, one of my clients, coaching clients.

I said, what’s the worst case scenario. Worst case scenario is you’ll, she was doing a, and it’s very successful. Just in the last year, a golf simulator, brand new business. She had no idea about how to do it. And I go, what’s the worst thing that’ll happen? The worst thing that’ll happen is it won’t work and you’ll shut it down.

And you got a couch, you had a master’s degree. You’ll either do a different business or you’ll go work for someone that’s it. That’s the worst case scenario. It’s we’re all pretty smart or we could all probably get jobs. It wouldn’t, we would hate it, but that’s the worst case scenario.

Chris Badgett: Yeah. The worst case is often not as bad as it feels if you like really think about it.

Brian Town: Yeah, but as a failure for us, if we had to shut down, it’s, we didn’t make it. 99 point whatever percent of the people never even started.

So I don’t know how that’s a failure. I’ll need to watch this and remind myself of this.

Chris Badgett: Yeah. Yeah. That’s awesome. That’s Brian town. He’s from Michigan creative.

You can find that at Michigan creative. com. Go check out the book, the lonely CEO. It’s got its own website, the lonely ceo. com. Brian, thanks for coming on the show. Is there anywhere else people can connect with you or any final words for the listener?

Brian Town: No, man, bryantown. io is a great place. It’s got all our links on there.

And yeah, no, I don’t think final words, I think that simple realization that you’re the only person to do it and you’re the right person to do it, I think is something that I wish I would have heard years ago. I think sometimes that’s enough.

Chris Badgett: Thanks, Brian.

Brian Town: All right, man.

Chris Badgett: And that’s a wrap for this episode of LMS cast. Did you enjoy that episode? Tell your friends and be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss the next episode. And I’ve got a gift for you over at LifterLMS. com forward slash gift. Go to LifterLMS. com forward slash gift. Keep learning, keep taking action, and I’ll see you in the next episode.

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