Today we’re talking brand promise, that elusive but essential vision that affects every element of a business—from customer experience to employee attitudes to HR practices. Rick Thomas, business advisor at Pilot Wealth Management, joins us to discuss the ins and outs of brand promise. We’ll cover everything from what exactly a brand promise is and how to develop one, to how you can use it to make solid business decisions and ensure the long-term success of your organization.
Tell us what you think!
Brandon: Welcome to the HR for Small Business podcast, this is your host Brandon Laws. Today with me I have Rick Thomas, he’s a business advisor at Pilot Wealth Management. Rick, before I have you dive in, we’re going to talk about an interesting topic, but first off, you’re a business manager at a wealth management company. Talk about that a little bit.
Rick: Yeah! Thanks for the question, Brandon, and thanks for having me here. So we’re a little unique. In the broad category of capital management, of which the majority of the financial industry could say they’re in the business of advising on capital allocation. We add an element to this around human capital, which is really my role. And the reason we do that at Pilot is because a good chunk of our clients are business owners. And as RIAs, we’re a Registered Investment Advisor, we advise our clients on their behalf in how to allocate their capital. Given that a number of them are business owners, a good chunk of their portfolio is tied up in that business. So it just made perfect sense to us that if we can help them get really good at generating profit within a healthy business, that helps us be of more value to them in advising on the capital side of things.Brandon: It makes perfect sense. And it ties into what we want to talk about today.
Rick: Absolutely!
Brandon: You’re a business advisor, you’re talking to many business owners and executives and helping them really grow their business. And our topic – we’re going to talk about brand promise and why those are so important. We start hearing the brand promise coming up a little bit – you wrote an article recently and you opened it up with a story about Walmart and how they sort of had this identity crisis about their brand promise. Can you tell that story?
Rick: Yeah, absolutely! And you know, to give you a little bit of backstory with that one also, I got a call from my daughter about 6 months ago. It was a panic call. And she was like, Dad, my car is overheating. I’ve got to get it repaired and yadda yadda yadda. So I immediately go into dad saving mode, whip out the “S” on my chest. So I’m on my way down from my office to where she’s at with her car, and I’m trying to find the closest place to the freeway that has antifreeze. Now, what pops into my head is Walmart.
Brandon: They’ve got everything.
Rick: They’ve got everything!
Brandon: At a cheap price, too!
Rick: Yeah! I have this love-hate relationship with Walmart.
Brandon: I think everybody does.
Rick: That’s another story. But I have come to depend on Walmart for certain things. And that is, I can get the stuff that I want at a very, very reasonable price and a pretty darn good selection.
So! What does this have to do with my daughter? So I’m heading down the freeway, and of course I look them up on Google, and there’s a Walmart that pops up right off the freeway here on Boones Ferry. So I go to that Walmart and interestingly enough it’s not like any Walmart I’ve seen before. It’s a very small store, and it’s in the former location of a business that was eventually bought out by Whole Foods, which is a natural foods store, what have you. And it’s called a Walmart Neighborhood store, and I thought okay, whatever. So I go into this store, because I’m on a mission to find antifreeze, and I’m racing up and down the aisles, and I cannot find antifreeze there.
And so I ask the attendant, I’m like, So where are your motor supplies? And he goes, Well, we don’t carry them here. You have to go to a Superstore for that. And I’m like, okay, that’s interesting, I’ve never run into that. And I start looking around and there is nothing about that store that said Walmart except for the fact that it said “Walmart” on the outside of it. And they had really tall aisle ways stacked with merchandise. Other than that, you would not know it was Walmart.
Brandon: It’s almost like they had set that up to compete with the Whole Foods of the world.
Rick: Exactly!
Brandon: And that seems crazy because it veers off of what your promise is. It ties into everything that you do from a business perspective.
Rick: This was the whole premise for the article, is I started doing a little digging on why is it that Walmart made this decision to go into Neighborhood Stores. And at some point in the boardroom, they thought it would be a good idea because they saw things going small box, that they need to go small box too to maintain a presence. So they had bought a number of these small locations throughout the country and they were miserable failures. And not just from a business model point of view, but getting back to brand promise, I mean, anybody that studies business modeling could have walked through that store and known at a gut level that something’s wrong here. This doesn’t make sense. And it was fascinating to me that at the top level of that business, Walmart, in the boardroom, they missed that. That’s fascinating to me, how a company that successful can have a miss that big. And I think it speaks to something even bigger about brand promise that can be really challenging, that even a company like Walmart can miss it. Brand promise to me, and by the way, you’ll ask 20 consultants on this, you’ll probably get 20 different answers.
Brandon: About what a brand promise actually is?
Rick: About what it is and what it means. So let me give you my definition. And I’m not a marketing guy.
Brandon: You’re speaking to one!
Rick: So we have different opinions about this, but a brand promise is, in the simplest terms, a physical manifestation of the value that your business delivers to its client in terms of what they experience. So no matter what you say you do and what that value is, what it really is is the experience that they have. In the use of the product, in the use of the service, in the way it makes them feel, that is what the brand promise is.
Brandon: And it’s got to be across every aspect of the business, right? From the people you hire to the products you offer to the packaging, if you create your own products.Rick: Yes, yes. And here’s a little bit of my poke in the eye to marketing people, Brandon. Thank you for indulging me here! I think sometimes marketing people miss this because they’re so concerned about how to say it and how it’s going to look, whether it’s on the web or on a tweet or on Facebook or in the literature, that they miss the core principle that, really, this is about the experience. And if we stay close to that, then the rest of it will take care of itself.
Now, from a business ownership point of view and what I talk to our clients about, in terms of this brand promise, is look, don’t go out and hire whether it’s a marketing guy or somebody like me to figure that out for you. Now, you can hire them to help you articulate it, but you have to really look in the mirror as a business owner or as an executive team, as a business to say What is it that we deliver and what’s the experience that our client has as a result?
We did a leadership economics summit a couple years ago with Dave Sanders from Zoomcare, if you recall.
Brandon: Yes, yes.
Rick: And they do an interesting exercise, which is not that new, I think a lot of businesses do this. They have identified what’s called an avatar. And I may get this wrong, but I want to say the avatar is Cathy. It’s a fictional name, but Cathy represents their client. And every time they have a discussion about what product they’re delivering via Zoomcare, or now Zoom Healthcare, or Zoom Fitness, they discuss it within the context of how does Cathy feel about it, see it, purchase it, use it, all that stuff. And I think that’s a great method for identifying what is and how is the brand promise experience.
Brandon: That was a really interesting exercise that they went through because that means they’ve identified and know what their customer wants so much that they can roll out the right product offerings, hire the right people, speak the language the correct way so that it matches with their customer perfectly. And I think that’s why Zoomcare in particular, they’ve created multiple brands within the Zoomcare family because it’s targeting a particular person.
Rick: I believe so. Now, is it foolproof? No. But it’s a great avenue to kind of work this out. Because it’s not perfect.
Another method of getting there – you may have heard me talk in the past about this TED Talk by Simon Sinek called “The Golden Circle.”
Brandon: Love that one.
Rick: It’s on how great leaders inspire action in organizations. So it’s really couched in the guise of a leadership talk. However, and, I think that is just as applicable to getting at what the brand promise is as it is about leadership inspiring leadership, because it begins with the “why.” Why do we do what we do? And when we get really clear about the why, what naturally extends from that is the value that we deliver to our clients. And when we can name that value, guess what? We’ve named the brand promise.
Brandon: And it’s interesting because I think a lot of companies haven’t gone through that exercise of figuring out what the why and the purpose is. And so they don’t have a course or a correct path that they need to go on when they are starting to now interact with their customers. Because internally they don’t even know who they are.
Rick: Absolutely, right. There’s an internal identity crisis. And imagine now, if they don’t even know there’s an identity crisis, and the ownership, the executive team, is making key decisions about how to pivot the business or take the business, not knowing that there may be this disconnect that can have substantial implications on the business, such as Walmart experienced with Neighborhood Stores.
Now, it’s hard to say how that boardroom conversation went. I would have loved to be a fly on the wall to really observe and listen. But I would be willing to bet that there’s a compelling argument in there that why they missed had something to do with that. That they were responding more because Wall Street analysts were saying, Well geez, Walmart, they better be going after small box because small box is going to start eroding their base! And so they’re responding to that as opposed to Wait, what’s our core business? What’s our core value offering and does that strategy fit or not? If it doesn’t, hey Wall Street analyst, go pound sand, man. Which is not easy to do, admittedly, but it’s easier to do that and take the flak ahead of time than after the fact say, You know what, we just had to close 150 stores. Which is what they did.
Brandon: So when you think about how companies veer off from their brand promise, what are usually the reasons why? You just mentioned that the Wall Street analysts may be saying, Oh you need to go after the small box stores! So they sort of look from an external basis at the competitors and whatnot. But what are some common reasons why people veer off from the brand promise?
Rick: Well, let’s talk about customers. Steve Jobs used to talk a lot about the voice of the customer and how important that is in really defining your brand and defining the product, in their case. Now, what’s interesting about that, about Apple, is, and Simon Sinek talks about this in his TED Talk, is Apple weren’t asking the customers What do you want? And then here, we’re going to produce this iPod or iPhone or whatever. They were leading the customers.Brandon: They were. I remember reading Steve Jobs’ book and he said, Hey look, customers don’t even know what they want.
Rick: Right!
Brandon: So he had this vision for how it was going to look and feel, even the packaging.
Rick: Exactly! Which gets back to why that framework of the Golden Circle is so profound when it comes to identifying brand promise. And back to your question, how do people get sideways, is they’re chasing their customers rather than leading their customers. Now, in leading your customers, it’s not that you’re dictating to your customers, This is what you will and won’t buy. You need to have that open dialogue of what is it that your customer responds to, their needs and wants. But how you respond to that is not what they tell you they want. It’s getting at the underlying what’s the value, what do they value in what you offer? And how can you package that value in either the product or the service in a very original and compelling way.
Brandon: I think you have to know your customers inside and out. You’ve got to open up the dialogue with them, ask them questions, there’s probably 1,000 different ways to really get to know your customer. You know a lot of these companies who have really refined who they’re targeting and really know them inside and out, how do they do that? How do they open up that feedback loop?
Rick: Wow. This is where I really do need to lean on the marketing experts! I’m not a marketing guy. I’m sure there are some compelling and elegant ways to do this. Certainly focus groups and you could probably spend a ton of money doing this. You know, in my own experience, how I and we have done this at Pilot, is we make sure we have meaningful conversations at the very top and at the very bottom.
Brandon: Explain that a little bit.
Rick: Ok, so I think sometimes when you’re servicing an organization – we’re a professional service firm. So on a consulting basis I will go into an organization and I’ll begin engaging and typically I engage at the C-level. So I’m working with the executive team. But it’s important that I don’t get pigeonholed in just interacting at that level because oftentimes executive teams have no idea what’s going on at the frontlines of the business. And all you have to do is spend half a day shadowing people that are actually doing the work of punching the buttons, making the product, whatever, and oftentimes you get an entirely different story of what’s happening in the business. So whether it’s a professional service firm like ours or whether it’s delivering a product to a distributor or to an end user, it is making sure that you have got a great cross section of that end user from top to bottom, inside and out. And don’t just look for one voice, and especially if that one voice is telling you what you want to hear, then push beyond that to listen for a voice that tells you what you don’t want to hear. Because that might often be the nugget of wisdom, that kernel of truth that helps you pivot in a way that will take your business to some other place that you can’t even imagine. Or saved your business from ending up on a rock somewhere, whatever it may be.
Brandon: One of the things that we did at Xenium within the last few years and, actually, you were quite a bit a part of it, was, first off, we wanted to refine the brand promise but we also wanted to develop our internal, what we call the Xenium Promise.Rick: Right.
Brandon: We actually did a podcast on that, so if you’re looking to develop that you could go back and listen to it. But we involved the people in how do we develop what Xenium, how do we act to each other, to our customers, what does that mean to all of us? And it wasn’t just the leadership team getting in a small group in a vacuum and developing this thing. No, we surveyed everybody, we refined basically what people felt about the brand, about how we’re supposed to treat each other, what’s valuable to us. We started with that, then we moved over to the external side which was the promise. What is our brand, and what is it to the market? And we got everybody involved because the people here are so invested in the brand. And it’s no different for any other company, but everybody’s so invested in it that when we bring in another person, we want them to know exactly what’s expected of them not only in their job but how do they interact with our brand?
Rick: That’s a great illustration, Brandon. Let me add one additional comment to that, and that is, whenever I take an organization through a values exercise, the mistake that many companies make is they stop at the values.
Brandon: Just have a bullet pointed list.
Rick: Yeah, a bullet pointed list of values. And what I have learned is you need to take it one step further and identify the behaviors. And we call those behavioral anchors. What are the behavioral anchors that underpin each of those values? And why is that important? Let’s talk about a value that I often see – integrity. It’s a great value, it speaks volumes. The challenge is that your definition of integrity may be different than mine. It’s not that you’re wrong and I’m right or you’re right and I’m wrong, it’s what’s right for the business. So let’s identify those behaviors that are of integrity that are right for the business in very specific terms. And now when we onboard people or when clients are looking at how we behave, not only have we said integrity’s important to us, but this is how we live integrity. In these behaviors. Now I think this is relative to the brand voice as well. Because as a business when we talk about what matters most – so our brand promise for Pilot is “lasting impact.” In that abstract mind’s eye that we have when we think about this, if you go onto our website, you’ll see that there are bridges. The iconography of “lasting impact,” you’ll see bridges through it. That’s really a profound icon for us, because, for us, we want to be making an impact on our clients that last generations.
Brandon: A legacy.
Rick: It’s a legacy! And we have this refrain that we either want to be speaking at our clients’ funerals or we want them to be speaking at ours. This speaks to the multigenerational view we have. And we have a set of behaviors about how we do this. What is it that we adhere to? And between Nick, Jason, and I, how do we hold each other accountable to this. So we’re thinking in the long term.
Brandon: That’s interesting because I’m going to make an assumption that if you guys internally are looking for that legacy, that kind of long term factor, naturally you’re going to want to pair yourselves up with clients who are also long term thinkers instead of the short term, quick growth and then they’re selling their business. I’m sure you like those clients but they’re not the perfect fit.
Rick: Frankly we don’t like those clients! Because really, and every business owner can appreciate this, that oftentimes what looked like a really good client because lots of business, potentially profitable, but that client was not a good cultural fit in terms of the business, how much extra work that is.
Brandon: Tons of extra work.
Rick: And it usually always ends badly. And so we pay a lot of attention to this, about who best fits this model of this generational approach. We’re not looking to get instant success overnight. We’re willing to take months and years to develop a relationship often before they even choose Pilot to help them. That’s okay with us. That’s okay.
Brandon: I want to tie this back a little bit, this is obviously an HR and leadership podcast. I think that the brand promise, really what it helps the rest of the organization do, we talk about business leaders like yourself who are trying to grow a business, so you try to develop a brand promise so you internally have a course, navigation, a compass, whatever, but for the rest of the employees, for larger companies, the reason you have a brand promise is not only for your customers to sort of feel it but it’s also a standardization for your employees so they know exactly what’s expected of them. To know where we’re going, to know how we act in the marketplace, I mean, have you seen some of those things in action where from day one somebody knows exactly?
Rick: Absolutely! This is an experience I had probably 10 years ago – I love Enterprise rental car. And there’s a lot of rental agencies to choose from, yet I will go to them every chance I get, and it’s because of one experience that I had in Oak Harbor, Washington when I’m on my way to a writer’s conference and my Volvo generator blows up in a rainstorm and I end up in this Enterprise rental car in Oak Habor, Washington. I have to get to Coupeville, which is like 45 minutes away. And I have an appointment with a literary agent that I can’t change, it’s like you either show up or, sorry, you’re done. And they didn’t have a car ready for me, so the regional manager put me in her car and drove me to that appointment.Brandon: Wow, that’s incredible.
Rick: And then when I was done, she came and picked me up and brought me back. And then I had a car for the weekend while my car was in the shop. I mean, that’s what I’m talking about. You get on their website and they talk about customer service, and everybody does this, but man, when you go to Enterprise rental car you experience it! Every employee behind the counter, if you notice when you go to Enterprise rental car, they will walk you out to the car, and walk around the car with you and make sure. Now, what you’re also going to get with that, is they’re going to try and upsell you from that Kia to that convertible Mustang!
Brandon: Of course, you don’t need it! But the customer service is that first experience you had.
Rick: Absolutely.
Brandon: I’ve had that same experience. Not the 45 minute drive, but just the customer service, the bend over backwards to care for you.
Rick: Absolutely, and here’s another one, a small local example – Gaynors Automotive Service up in Vancouver, Washington. I was in downtown Vancouver the other day and the low pressure warning light came on my dash when my car’s tires had low pressure. I couldn’t tell which one, so I took it in and said, Hey, this is going off, I think it needs to be looked at. They were like, No problem. They checked it out, put air in all the tires, he told me that when there’s been a change in temperature sometimes that can set it off. He probably spent 20 minutes with me, and I said, How much do I owe you? He said, Nothing.
Brandon: Wow.
Rick: He said, Nothing! Just, you know, think about us next time you need something.
Brandon: And now you’re talking about it on a podcast!
Rick: Absolutely! It’s small stuff. I think the mistake that people make with brand promise is Ok, we need to go out big with this! No. Go small. And back to your point about organizations, and how do you engage and why do you engage everybody in the organization, it’s because when you go small, it’s those small acts that they can take when they have the proper framework and guidelines to help them figure out how to do it that will make the difference. It’s not the big ad campaign that you’re going to spend a ton of money on. That may help –Brandon: It’s really about being consistent over the years, too.
Rick: Yes. Absolutely, consistency and just being mindful about what is the value we’re delivering and how do we help people on the frontlines deliver that?
So, let’s go back to my Walmart example. If that brand promise conversation had been driven down to, let’s say, the store manager level, so that store manager for that neighborhood store in Boones Ferry, if he had known, look, we’ve got a mixed message here, so what can I do to deliver the brand promise that Walmart says they deliver in a very condensed fashion?
Now, maybe they had that conversation. Who knows! But, at some point that argument was lost, if it was had at all, and they got what they got. But back to your point about involving the organization, this is why these conversations and these guidelines around brand promise are so important, so that people on the frontlines that do the small acts of extending value and engagement with the client, whether it’s through the product or through the service, that is what will make the discernible difference ultimately.
Brandon: You know, another thing that just as you were talking popped into my head, the brand promise, if it’s documented – I don’t know if it’s a document or just sort of integrated within your company, but it gives employees, the people that work for you, permission to act a certain way. And it keeps them engaged, so if I have a documented process, like Enterprise rental car, for example, I don’t know what their credo is necessarily, but customer service is obviously number one on there. All the employees, day one, know that they can bend over backwards for their customers. And they don’t even have to ask the higher ups. It’s like when you call one of those big companies, you get the customer service and they can’t make the decision, they have to pass you to their supervisor and the supervisor’s supervisor. They aren’t clear in their brand promise about customer service. And maybe that’s not even a brand promise at all. I don’t know, I just think that some people are very clear about it and some people aren’t, but it ultimately gives employees permission to act a certain way.
Rick: It is amazing. And I’ll throw out one last example, a big example. Most people should be aware of the fiasco that Volkswagen has gotten themselves into, with the altering of data of smog emissions, making the turbo diesel appear to be a much greener car than it really is! And there was a great article, I can’t remember the author, but I think it was the Atlanta Constitution. A journalist wrote an article about the difference between them and Tylenol. And harkening back to that huge issue that Tylenol had, I think it was back in the 80’s, when it turned out they had Tylenol that was potentially killing people. And the decision to pull all the product off the shelves.
Brandon: Everything.
Rick: Just everything off the shelves. And what the CEO at the time said is, look, he had driven home the core responsibility that that business had to its customers, which, when it comes to pharmaceuticals and medicine, it’s about keeping them save, it’s about delivering on promises – we’re going to give you a product that’s going to help make you feel better. But it’s going to be done safely.
Now, what’s interesting, the decision to pull the product off the shelf came when the CEO was in an airplane I think going to Japan or something. And it was one of his people on his executive team that knew, hey, we’ve already talked about what our brand promise is, and they all knew what their authority was to act on that. And so the decision to pull Tylenol off the shelves didn’t come from the CEO.
Brandon: That’s incredible.
Rick: And that is what empowerment of a brand promise is all about within an organization.
Brandon: I think it makes the decision making happen a lot faster.
Rick: Absolutely.
Brandon: Things speed up so fast, you don’t have to go through the hierarchy of decision making – it slows things down and it’s impossible to make business transitions.
Rick: Now, interestingly enough, with Volkswagen, who will ever know, but it appears that the exact opposite happened. That some crazy stuff went on in a lab somewhere about Hey, we could actually cook the books on this thing. And that can got kicked up the chain to the very top, and nobody would do anything about it. Because they have somehow lost their way, lost their soul, as some would say, about what Volkswagen really is in terms of a car for the masses. A car that everybody would want to own.Brandon: As we’re talking about these examples, a local one came to my mind. And this brings it back to your original Walmart example. A local company that gets it right that’s sort of similar to Walmart – Fred Meyer. What’s their tagline? It’s, “What’s on your list today, you’ll find it at Fred Meyer.” And they’ve stayed consistent throughout the years, I don’t know how old of a company they are, but whatever’s on your list, you’re bound to find it there. And going back to the Walmart thing, they sort of had these, based on competitors and external factors, they lost their way. And I think it’s just so important, to your point, that we are so clear about our purpose, the promise to our customers, and that we’re just all aligned within the organization.
So before we, we’ve been going long but this is such a fascinating discussion, if somebody’s listening to the podcast and saying, Gosh, I don’t think my organization has a brand promise. How do I, for one, bring it to the rest of the executives or leadership team to get started on this, or even ask if we have one – if you don’t know you probably don’t have one! But how do you initiate that?
Rick: I’ll answer that question, but let me comment on something you said, first. If you’re not sure you have a brand promise, I will tell you, you do have a brand promise, you’re just not aware of what it is and it may not be what you think it should be or need it to be.
Brandon: That’s also a scary thing just because if you aren’t part of that executive or leadership group and you think you know what it is, that’s very dangerous if everybody may have their own opinion about what the brand promise may be and acting very differently on an external basis.
Rick: Back to the question, a great question, I think it begins at the executive level to start asking the question and leading the conversation. There are a ton of materials on the web. Articles and frameworks and all kinds of stuff to bury somebody for years in this conversation. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing, I think people are too quick to fill in the box of what it is as opposed to really sitting and stewing and marinating on this and however many other analogies I can throw at it in terms of just really spending time with the question and not being too quick to answer. Along with that, it begins with starting a dialogue. Certainly with at the executive team and then cascading that dialogue to the people in your organization and then cascading that dialogue outside the organization with the people that touch and use the product or service that you deliver. That’s where it begins. Where it ends is really, it’s a unique journey for every organization.
Now, of course, I’m in the business of helping our clients do this. I think getting help with this can be really beneficial. Oftentimes getting an impartial third voice, a third party, to help reflect what you may be saying. We’ve even had this challenge amongst the three of us at Pilot, we’ll be kind of bouncing this stuff around, and it all has the same perspective. We need to get relief on that. So sometimes having another perspective and to be objective about Here’s what I’m hearing, can help get traction on that.
Brandon: The reason that we’re talking about brand promise today is because it touches, seriously, every aspect of the business. It helps fuel your decisions in marketing, in recruiting, in whether or not to go after another market. If you’re looking at your competitor in the rearview mirror, they’re on your tail, maybe it fuels our decision making based on what’s going on, there’s so many pieces of a business that the brand promise touches. It’s not just a marketing thing. And I think that’s the point I want to hit home.
Rick: I think that’s a really good point. It’s my belief that a brand promise, no different from the values and clarity about vision in the organization, it has more value in keeping you out of trouble than helping you find the next big opportunity. As the saying goes, and people have heard me say this many, many times, there’s the old adage “just because you can doesn’t mean you should.” And being clear about what that brand promise is, where is the tangible value that we deliver to our client, that should help guide us in staying out of areas that we need not be.
Brandon: The other interesting thing before we close, I think the brand promise is an internal guide, but it’s also an external guide. Here’s what I mean by that. I think it helps people self-select into your tribe. I’m going to call it a tribe, I read Seth Godin’s book years ago called Tribes and it really ties into this nicely. It’s where people see what’s going on in your little community, your little tribe, your culture, and it’s fueled by your brand promise, and they self-select in either as a customer or maybe they want to work for you or maybe they’re just a fan of your brand. You don’t necessarily have to do business with them or work with them. Maybe you’re just a fan of what they do. But yet, just being clear about that helps align those two parties.
Rick: Absolutely, I think this, what you’ve just described, is how the law of attraction works. It’s that when you get really clear about what it is that brand promise is, that tangible value, and you live it. People are naturally drawn to it that are aligned with that value. And at Pilot, it took us a while to get there, but we have gotten really good about attracting the right clients. Why stop? Because we know what to say? Although that helps! We’ve learned to get out of our way in a lot of ways. But it’s because we embody that brand promise in who we are and what we do. And that naturally attracts the clients that we want to build our firm with.
Brandon: Rick, this has been an awesome discussion. For those that are listening and are interested in learning more about you, where can they find you?
Rick: Well certainly there’s the good old internet!
Brandon: Just type in Rick Thomas in Google!
Rick: Yeah! Our web address is http://www.pilotwm.com/. That’s probably the easiest way to find us.
Brandon: Really appreciate you being on the podcast!
Rick: Thanks for the opportunity, Brandon. A lot of fun!
Brandon: And thanks for the download today. You can get us on iTunes, subscribe if you’re not a subscriber. And also, if you like the podcast, go ahead and give us a review on iTunes. A five star would be great, but we’re just looking for feedback, it helps us fuel content in the future. But thanks for listening today and we’ll talk to you next week!