Branding and Marketing Fundamentals with Kevin Adelsberger

Welcome to Building Better Developers, the Develop-a-Nor podcast, where we work on getting better step by step, professionally and personally. Let's get started. Hello and welcome back. We are continuing our season of Building Better Foundations. We are the Building Better Developers podcast, also known as Develop-a-Nor. Actually, we were Develop-a-Nor first and then became Building Better Developers. That's its own story. You can check that out. I happen to be Rob Broadhead, one of the founders of Develop-a-Nor, also the founder of RB Consulting, where we are, as often referred to, often referred to as a boutique consulting company. We do IT consulting, we do technology, but basically what we do is we sit down with you, help you understand your business and become your technology partner. We help you work through things like licenses and vendors and what is it that you need to do your business and what's available to help you do it better, how to leverage technology in the best possible way. We sit down with you, we walk through your processes, your procedures. We look at ways through simplification, integration, automation, innovation to help you build a roadmap to be better today and better positioned for growth and success in the future. Check us out at rb-sns.com. Also we have a free Insta assessment, basically Insta being about 10 minutes. Sit down, answer a few questions and you can get a nice little guideline, a little roadmap, like a really simple roadmap of like, this is roughly where you are. Here's some things you need to do. Check that out at matrix.rb-sns.com. Good thing, bad thing. I get to change it up this time because the bad thing, for those of you on the podcast, the rest of you that are the YouTubers already know this, but I have managed to not be able to hit the record button way too often lately. And while we're in the midst of a really busy time and we really don't need to spend this extra time on this, I am managing to burn time that we don't have. So smack myself on the wrist is just not, you know, not very good. That's my bad thing. The good thing is we get better every single time we do it. The more we practice this, the more we redo it, the better. And as I'm thinking about this, there's also another podcast that I am on that we're doing the same thing. We've recorded like six or seven times and we're about to do another one at some point and hopefully we'll have that perfected. But that one's a little different. Also very different is my co-host and he's going to go ahead and introduce himself. Thanks, Rob. Hey, everyone. My name is Mike Malant. I'm one of the co-founders of Building Better Developers, also known as DreadWalker. I'm also the owner of Envision QA, where we help businesses struggling with software. We help you take back control of your software. This could be software that you have had custom made or even cookie cutter software that you bought over the shelf. We find too often that businesses struggle with inappropriate software or software that just doesn't meet their needs. And you can find yourself in this situation where you try to do something, it doesn't work for you, and you end up building these processes to make the software work for you, not the other way around. That's where Envision QA comes in. We help combine the quality of test driven development and we sit down and walk through the user stories with you and your team to figure out how the software really needs to work to meet your business needs. And then we build that custom solution or find the right software for you. So check us out at EnvisionQA.com. Good thing, bad thing. Oh, go ahead. No, I was, I forgot. I was like jumping right ahead. I'm sorry. Good thing, bad thing. Bad thing, my co-host likes to not hit the record button and interrupt me if I'm not. Good thing, bad thing. Good thing, the weather's changing. It's getting nice and cool out there. Starting to really enjoy the season. Bad thing, it is my seasonal allergy time of the year. So I'm struggling with allergies a little bit, but thank goodness for taking care of it. Well, the reason I keep jumping ahead and stepping on Michael's toes today and because I guess I'm going to use that as an excuse for not hitting the record button as well, is because I really enjoy this conversation with Kevin. So we're going to jump right into part two, picking up right where we left off with our interview with Kevin Adelsberger. We're going to talk about marketing and we're going to even ask the question that nobody wants to be asked anymore because it gets asked way too often. We'll let you like wait with baited in breath for that one to happen. Here we go back to our interview with Kevin. And sort of continuing on that, I guess because there's a couple of ways I guess I'll go this way is I've seen a lot of stuff on the psychology of like colors and there's some fonts and some stuff like that. Is that something that you that you see that you regularly as they regularly creating brands and stuff like that? Is that something that comes to mind a lot or is a little more of a like, and that's yeah, that's got its place. But really, there are there are other. Color psychology is is largely, I think, not not real. I would argue that most times color psychology is not real. Now, there may be a few instances where there might be some wisdom to take place. But and I can't think of a good example here right now. But like there may be a certain color that's a problem for your industry. Like you may not want a certain color because it has a connotation within your industry, but like certain colors making people feel a certain way. You can find examples of every counter version of that. Honestly, Google color theory logos and you'll find just images and you'll see all sorts of charts of every successful brand that does and does not match their brand colors. The color theory beyond them. Fonts are a little bit different. Fonts can set a set a tone for a type of communication. And so color could be used in a way like that, but fonts for sure will. And so whether it's a hand lettered or a serif font or a sans serif font, there's a lot of different meaning that you can pull from. This is very formal. This is informal. This is fun. This is serious. A lot of that can really come through in the font. And so I would say that that way. Thinking about the brand, thinking about the overall messaging is more important than necessarily the color or the font. Because if you want to be like a fun, crazy brand and you have a serif font and a one color logo and not a lot of fun, like no messaging around it, you are. Then you've got that disconnect there. And no amount of color is going to. Or no, like no, there's not a color that's going to set people off the wrong way about that. Now with that, because particularly now as we talk about messaging, because a lot of it, especially when you're side hustling and you're a technology person, you're probably going to be like, you know, fidgeting with your technology and your website and stuff like that on a regular basis. Especially these days, I know I've run into many people and even business owners that are they're hooked on like some of the metrics and stuff like that, particularly when you look at like, you know, Google ads and Google words and all of the different ways that you can evaluate your site. Is there a. How do you how do you feel about people that are regularly tweaking, you know, making those adjustments and doing those those changes and by regularly is I'm sort of throwing that out to you is like, what is is there a good like is there a good time of like, OK, do this, let it bake in and then reset and then continue or should you leave stuff more continuous? Should you do little adjustments on the side? What are your thoughts on that as sort of as evolving, especially from a refining point of view, evolving and refining your message and your your content? Ideally, once you've got your message dialed in and styled in like your main like elevator pitch, your one liner, who you are as a company. Ideally, that's dialed in pretty quickly and it may evolve over time, but it's not going to be made. It's not going to be super regular things. Now, there are things that you could look at every month or every week on your website to try to make revisions on improvements. A lot has to do with the number of people that are coming to your site. And so I would imagine most people are not having enough traffic to make any really good decisions off of data every day. You know, Disney, sure, ESPN, yeah, Amazon by the hour, I'm sure. But like for most of us and the rest of the world, you know, once a day is probably too much. But once a month might be a better looking point or once a quarter might be a better looking point. I actually usually see the problem on the other side where people are never looking at their website after they launch it. And it's out of date and not relevant. And oh, by the way, their Google, the API on their Google Maps is broken and it's been broken for six months and nobody said anything to you about it. Or your contact form is broken and nobody's mentioned it to you. And so that's the bigger issue I see. The other side of that, going back to that changing it every day, my question would be, do you not have client work to be working on instead of changing your website every day? And then, you know, because when we think about fundamentals of marketing, I break marketing into two categories. There's inbound marketing and outbound marketing. So inbound marketing is all the things that you are ready to be found. So you have the website, you've got your brand, you've got your messaging, you've got your products, you've got your website set up. So if someone comes to find you, they figure out whether they want to do business with you. Once you've got that set up, you should be able to like check it periodically, make sure it's working and then spend your time doing more outbound stuff. So networking and writing blogs and interacting with other people so that you can get business coming in and figure out how to manage that time between those things is important. But, you know, we don't make changes to our website every day, I'll say that. So kind of taking this, continuing this thread a little bit. So as like someone is building their business or expanding from the hustle to the business, what are some tips or tools that you could suggest for marketing novices or people that really don't have any clue on where to begin? You know, they may not even know what a marketing, like a sales funnel is. They may not even know what like an email, you know, email cluster is or mail to things like that. You know, where is a good place for people to start? Yeah, this is one of my favorite books to tell people to start at, Story Brand by Donald Miller. There's a new version of this out. I have not read the new version, so I can't tell you if it's any good. And he does a great job of helping you understand a lot about marketing. That's really good. Another book I'd recommend is Entrez Leadership by Dave Ramsey. He has a whole section about marketing and a lot of other good business fundamentals in here, too. And so it's like a really light grade MBA. And then a more advanced book I'd recommend is this is Blair Ends, who's big in the marketing world, but everybody who's in business and a consultative cell could enjoy it. It's called The Four Conversations, and it's about the four conversations to sell things. And he's got some really good thoughts that are not just marketing agency. He consults marketing agencies, but it could be really adjacent to, I think, everybody who has a business that's a consultative sale like us. We have that in common, I would say, that we're not just like, here's your car wash, you know, here's your car. It's like, let's figure out the problem, create a solution and then work towards that solution. That's kind of like we all do that in this on this podcast. He talks about a lot about how to market that in this Four Conversations book. I think it's a really good one as well. Those are some places to look. We also we also have a lot of content on our website that's about marketing fundamentals that can be found as well. But if I was to actually when I was getting ready for this, I pulled up notes from a talk that I did about marketing fundamentals. The first thing is understanding who you are. So like, what do you bring to market, how you bring it to the market and what makes you different? What are your competitive advantages? Making sure you have those lined up. And then a couple of lightning round things. Does your visual brand, is it consistent? Can you use it in multiple places? Do you have a one liner that kind of talks about what problem you solve and who you solve it for? So, for example, we wrote one for an HR company that said we turn human resources. Into human capital. I believe is how we worded it. And the reason behind that was like everybody hates HR. I don't know that I've ever met anybody that likes HR unless you work in HR. Human capital is a better ring to it. And it's like instead of human resources, it's an investable thing over here in Capital. We do you have the website? Who's the website for? Is it for you or is it for your customer? Does it answer all your customers questions? And then, you know, does it avoid using stock photos like stock photos for a lot of places? Like, it's a dead giveaway that they might not be a legitimate entity. There are circumstances where it makes a ton of sense. I know that. But we encourage people to do that as little as possible because it helps build trust with people. Like these are real people doing a real thing and they're not afraid to show their faces. And then because I always like to see leadership on people's websites as well. Because if you're not afraid to tell me who you are, I'm less concerned about doing business with you. If you're trying to hide who you are, it makes me question why you would want to hide who you are. So it's interesting. I kind of want to go back to like that second when you talked about where, you know, figuring out your business and marketing to your customers and that. And when you're trying to figure out marketing and growing your business, how would you suggest that people look at their competition? How do you figure out what the competition is doing and how they're doing it right? But not so much steal it. You know, sometimes you can steal their techniques, but you don't want to necessarily steal their branding outright because you get in a copyright. But how can you kind of look around and see what people are doing and utilize that without getting in trouble? Well, you know, artists steal, I think is the phrase. So, you know, I think there's a good healthy part of competition where you take other people's ideas and make them better. You don't want to steal someone's logo and try to deceive people that you are that company. Right. But being aware of what some of your competitors are doing is a good thing. I would actually encourage I'm a part of a couple of groups of other agency owners where we're not in direct competition with one another, excuse me, because of industry focus or geography. And it is a very worthwhile time to get together with those folks to hear about what's working for them, what's not working for them so that I can learn and steal things without feeling bad about it. I like that. So how did you find out about that? Or how can people look for something like that within their particular nature or industry? Yeah, there's a lot of owners groups of different things. So I joined the Bureau of Digital, was the first one that I joined. And it's just it's a several thousand agency owners from across the world. And and so if you're in an industry that's been around for a while, I would bet if you Googled industry groups or ownership groups, you would find people that would have wisdom to share. And they like it when you share wisdom, too. And so it's like kind of a two way street where they you contribute, other people contribute, everybody wins. Very nice. So we'll go with the one that everybody has thought on their top, top of their mind these days. So what do you think about AI in the world of marketing and how people are using that? 43 minutes in, Rob, you ruined the interview. I know, I wanted to wait till the end so everybody else is like, OK, check, I'm out of here. Let's face it, we get this all the time, too. Yeah, I threw up a little bit. Repeat your question again for me. What are your thoughts on it? Because I know there are some people out there like it's like in everything. People are like, hey, I was going to like eliminate marketing. You're never going to have to worry about it again because it's going to do all that stuff. And then even I guess the stuff a little bit probably, which is I think the which is an interesting area to get into, I think, is the generation of content as well. Now, there's like the complete from scratch, you know, stuff that's been around for a while, where these things just go out and they just like, you know, pull stuff in. So you've got essentially fake content that you're using to make your site look more, you know, your company to be bigger than it is. But then there's also somewhere it's it's using it like it like more like a grammar layer or something like that, where it's really it's like it's wordsmithing your way into it in your message. Yeah. Yeah. So what are your thoughts on it? Is there a place for it or where do you see a place for it? Yeah. Let me start really big picture. I think this is the downfall of society. I might be overstating just a little bit, but like, I mean, there is certainly a component where there's a huge class of people whose incomes have been generated through developing creative things, whether that's software or video or marketing that is getting cut off at the knees right now. And let's say every one of those developers who bought a nice sports car when they got their raise, will they be able to afford to buy a sports car? When they got their raise, will they be able to afford that sports car in two years? And some AI company that's doing it for a third of the cost, will they ever be able to afford a sports car? Right. And so and then and then what's to stop me in six months from just using the latest version of lovable or whatever to write the software for myself that I only have to pay lovable for and not some AI guy who made the software that replaced the other software. And so there's like the shell game that's happening right now. And there's going to be a lot of bleeding in the economy before it's all over. My estimation. OK. The other thing that's hanging out there is I think there's so many legal questions still about ownership and rights and access. I think it's going to be really hard to put that genie back in the bottle. And if like if it goes to the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court says, you know, AI doesn't there's nothing that you can produce that's not been used. You use copyright material. So like we're all you're all open to legal liability or nothing can be trademarked that was created with AI touching it. And then everybody can steal everything either way. There's like huge downsides to all those things. That all being said, I would be a fool if I wasn't trying to utilize it in my business right now. And so I've got to think through ways to use that locally now. So those are some big broad statements to get more practical. I mean, AI slop is a great terminology. I'm glad that that term has come into the public consciousness along with clinker as a as a derogatory term for AI tools. I like both of those. We we are trying to find wise ways to implement it around our company all the time. Like we have a meeting every Monday to look at latest AI tools and what can we practically put this to use. And we've had a lot less implementation than we thought we would have at this point, honestly. And maybe that's just us. But I think I've seen a lot of statistics. I've seen some statistics on the Harvard Business Review that said the same thing is like people are spending money to implement AI, but it's not doing what they want it to do. And so so I think there's a gap to go still. Our view in the company is we want it to assist us to do our work better and more efficiently. It's not replacing anybody. Mostly like we have used it for voiceover. And so like that's one less check that I have to write to a voiceover artist, which I'm not excited about. Like but the client's budget wasn't going to allow for it anywhere. The timeline wasn't going to allow for it anyway. And so so like there's a video in my area that has a woman's voice on it. That was actually me. That was AI modified to sound like a female's voice as the narration on the video. And I could have paid someone to do that. But time and budget didn't allow. So we did it with a computer. So that's a very real practical like that was money that did not go to a contractor because we had the AI tool available that I could do it with. Now we're trying to do that as little as possible. There's certain circumstances. But so like we had a website we were working on recently and the client was being difficult about getting us answers on stuff, which if you know if you've ever built a website for anybody, that's like the day ends and why. Right. But and so I was like, hey, let's just let's take what we know. Let's work with AI. Help it build out the content. We proved it and improved it and worked on it and then presented it to the client and worked on. That was an easier start to work with with the client in an industry that we're not super knowledgeable about. That's a that's a easier starting place for the client to review instead of having them to regurgitate everything about their their industry to us. So it's a it's a there's good and bad. I think it's the phrase I've been using is it's democratizing creativity. So, for example, I mean, from a developer side, like I had an idea for a piece of software, nothing complicated. I mean, software is complicated period, but like nothing crazy. Like we're not going to run a business off of it. It's just like a tool to show a thing. And in 30 minutes with can't remember which one I used. I used one of those software tools. I think I had a like a working prototype and it cost me five dollars. And so like the it's democratizing those skills. So like you guys may not be illustrators, but like you can get chat, GPT or Gemini or whatever to to do that for you now. And so I think when we get those big legal questions answered, that's going to be a lot of things that happens. But yeah, it's a it's an interesting future. And I'm I'm not really sure what my job looks like in 10 years, honestly. Well, good. That's sort of what we're seeing. And it's you know, it's essentially I think it's par for the course. You know, you get technology and then people go nuts and they're like, oh, we're going to use this and it's going to replace everything. And this is how we're going to do it. And then it settles down and then we get into like, OK, here's I think way. And this is it goes back a bit when when Google started out and you had you were able to Google stuff and that's sort of the to me, that's been part of that progression is you were able to go find stuff. But then also you always knew that it was you had to take that with a grain of salt. And I guess even now I hear that the young kids these days, that's like if you're if you're doing something that's B.S., they'll say, well, that's a I. So if you're like, you know, hey, I'm you know, I rode on a dragon to work today. And so it's I think it's it is becoming the good news is that I think it's becoming just like you said, you can see fiber logos and stuff like that. I think people are starting to recognize it. Like, you know, they're questioning everything, which is probably not a bad thing anyways. And then they're starting to get a feel for like, oh, wow, this is, you know, this is probably a I. This is maybe a I. Well, it's October 7th today. And so last week, I feel like we crossed the line with the new Sora where it can make things that look real enough that we can no longer believe everything that we watched on TV. I mean, I'm a big sports fan. I don't know if you guys are sports fans, but there's a guy who used to be the quarterback for the New York Jets named Mark Sanchez. And he got stabbed this weekend, which might have been his fault. Sounds like he started a fight any who. But there's security footage of him walking drunk. And I was like, hey, so came out seven days ago. I could have faked this with Mark Sanchez. Like I could have. He's famous enough. His image is everywhere. We could have faked this video of his security camera, him walking drunk. The world that the world has changed. And I don't think we've fully identified that yet. Are you guys using a I in any practical applications? I guess I can ask. Can I ask you guys a question? I guess I don't know. Well, yeah, but as I mean, for myself and Michael can answer differently, but I have been been casually working with my team on it. Similar, I guess, to what you guys did there is that we've been working for at least the last year, you know, about finding ways to help it help us solve problems much more is like a really is like a search tool and stuff like that. Or in particularly because, yes, in software development, there are a lot of problems that have been solved a hundred times before. So you can find a good example and you can basically say, OK, let's take this and move forward. But it's been it's definitely had a lot of challenges in it because it does stuff its way. And if you don't know what you're asking, you're going to it's I had a conversation with a guy about a week ago that's an A.I. It was deep in A.I. He said, you know, he said the best way to think of it is A.I. is like an interior level or maybe ops, a mid-level employee and getting them to do something for you. And it really resonated with me because that's it is. It's like you have to be very specific. You really have to know your domain that you're working with it to get the kind of answers out that you need. And it will we found it for I use it as a thinking outside of the box, actually, is a lot of times you'll throw a question at it and it will give you an answer. That is completely different. We did a whole season of developing new or last season. We took every topic from a prior season and we threw it into A.I. and say, give us some things to talk about. And, you know, it it hit some stuff that we did. Sometimes it went in a completely different direction. But it is is definitely to me, it's something that you have to be playing around with it. You have to be working with it and figure out how it's going to fit into specifically something like this. Like this, we're creating your source code that some of us don't like. You're creating content and you are creating new stuff. But then you can build off of other stuff, which is all I is. It's not going to create anything new. It's just going to mix and match what already existed. One of my favorite questions to ask it is, what am I not thinking about or how should I think about this differently? So like I'll write a thing and our plan or whatever and I'll feed it the plan and be like, how can I improve this? What should I think about? You know, that and it's been very helpful, actually. Yeah, it really is. Go ahead, Rob. I just really is, especially if you can take it in steps. I found that is very effective for that way. We actually planned a trip to Europe and how we did it based on with conversations with AI. And we took we started big and then worked it down to step by step by step by step and got some really great answers along the way. Because it's yeah, it is it's along the way saying, OK, well, how about what if I look at just this? Can I let's take it outside of the context of everything else or there's some other ways to look at it, Michael? Yeah. So one of the biggest benefits I've seen to it, given that, you know, yes, I'm a software company. We build software, but I'm also heavily testing focused. And one of the biggest things I've seen with AI is if you put in like a system requirements and say, give me all the listed edge cases, give me, you know, kind of define what it is I should be testing. And then from there, you can kind of ask it more. You can flush out ideas. You can think about, oh, I missed this edge case or I didn't think about this. And then ultimately, the other thing is, and I know people joke about this, you know, people over 40 using it as their Google. Really, from a software development perspective, it's not bad to use AI for your Google, because sometimes it's going to give you like, hey, this is how I would approach this or hey, maybe this is a programming language you should look at. And so you then go to Google and you start with more refined Google searches. It kind of is the Kickstarter to get you where you want to go with Google is I'm going through all the fluff and all, you know, trying to scroll through all the pages to figure out what it is that you want. That makes a lot of sense. We are we're running up on time. I want to thank you so much for the time that you've given us. This has been great. We've gone all over the place and you have joined us on the journey. Before you leave, I do want to start to you. What is the best way for people to get a hold of you if somebody is like, I like this guy, I like where he's going, I think he can make my company better. Yeah. Carrier pigeon smoke signals are usually pretty efficient. You can keep up with us on LinkedIn. I think would be a great place if you're wanting just to kind of see what we're working on would be a great place to do that. Find me on LinkedIn, Kevin Adelsberger. I'm sure you'll know how to spell that the first time that you hear it. And then for Kevin at Adelsberger, marketing dot com is a great email. Excellent. And I will second that. Yeah, I follow you on LinkedIn and you guys have some great stories, some of the things you guys have been doing. It's been fun watching from a distance and living vicariously through you guys a little bit. And some of those things going. So thank you so much for your time. We're going to let you go. And like I said, we'll we'll get this out. Everybody, you know, everybody's standing and applauding right now. If you guys can just quiet back down so we can let Kevin leave the room. He's got places to go because he's an important person. We will be back with you guys. You got many means to create. That's right. Thank you guys for having me. It was a really good conversation. I'll see you later. Thanks a lot, Kevin. And that will wrap up the conversation with Kevin. I want to thank him. Really appreciate his time and all of the work that he did, especially because I actually I've literally done. I think like it's about 100 interviews at this point. And this is the first time that I did not record it the first time around. As far as I remember, I don't remember ever doing this before. If I mentioned it, then you guys can leave a note, something in the comments and say, hey, you did that one time before. And I'll be like, OK, crap. Now I've done it twice. It really hurts my percentage, too, from like 99 percent to 98. But now I have to do like another thousand or whatever to get it up close to anything useful. That being said, thank you for Kevin, for your time. We appreciate it. Hopefully you appreciate it. As always, this is really what's interesting to me is every time I have an interview, I feel like I'm going to be doing a lot of interviews. I feel like if you guys get half out of it, what I do, then it is more than worth your time. It has been a great time. He was a great guest. Who knows? We may try to have him back on again because he's just one of those guys that's got a lot of information and he enjoys doing it. He really enjoys doing what he loves doing, what he does. I will say we love it when we get email from you. So shoot us an email at info at developer.com and let us know your thoughts. Give us some feedback, positive, negative, however it is. Or if you don't like email, who doesn't like email? If you don't like email, then you can leave us comments on anywhere that you see the podcast. You can out there on the developer channel on YouTube. Also check out the YouTube developer channel. There's a lot of other stuff besides these. We was out there the other day doing some stuff and I was like, wow, we've got a lot of content and material out there crossing a lot of different areas. You can also follow us at developer on X and we have a Facebook page for those of you guys and gals that are over whatever it is now over 100 years old or whatever. The people that use Facebook like me, there's the developer page. That being said, I want to thank you so much for your time. Thank Kevin again for his time. We appreciate what he's done for us. We appreciate what you are doing for us. Go out there and have yourself a great day, a great week. And we'll talk to you next time. Thank you for listening to Building Better Developers, the Develop-a-Nor podcast. You can subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon, anywhere that you can find podcasts. We are there. And remember, just a little bit of effort every day ends up adding into great momentum and great success. Thank you.