Aug 23, 2021
Growth Strategies, From A Great Logo to Consistent Content Creation with S.A. Grant
How is your business today? While its been a difficult time, hopefully things will continue to get better. A key piece of recovery or growth of a business is strategy. Strategy is the cornerstone of success. Whether you're a new or existing business a road map for needed for success. This road map should be dynamic, not static
About S.A.
Long, Long, Ago… I’m sure by now you’re pondering why should I listen to this person? Who is S. A. Grant? My core background began with the love for graffiti in Brooklyn in the 90s. From there, I became a Graphic Designer and then transitioned to a Web Designer and multimedia expert in the early 2000’s. Next I found a love for video and audio while working as an IT professional at a local art college. For the next few years I hopped from job to job searching for fulfillment all the while, gathering experience and holding titles ranging from Web Designer, Creative Director, and IT Director to name a few.
My desire to become an entrepreneur has always been in the back of my mind. Like most of you who are currently searching for answers, I started trying a multitude of things. I converted my freelance graphic design and web design business into a corporation, Serebral360.com. Then I went after getting clients that needed various branding, marketing, web development, and consulting services. Still on the hunt for more, I jumped into multi-level marketing, dove into the financial space, got a Life Insurance license, Property and Casualty license, and a Series 6 license. I started building financial teams from New York to Atlanta and every state in-between. Then my crazy @$$ back flipped into Travel and became a Travel Agent. Oh yeah, I also became a first-time author. I laugh out loud when I look back at it, I was collecting accomplishments like kids collecting new social media accounts.
I did all of this at the same time while being a full-time single dad. Over the years our routine became, wake up, drag my son and myself out of bed (note it’s still hard waking him up everyday and he is currently a teenager). I would then get my son ready, drop him off at school, work on my businesses, go to client meetings, put out fires until I picked him up. Then I would take him to after school sports or activities, and depending on the year, coached his basketball team, flag football team, became the cub scout assistant den leader, PTA president, and the Creative Director of the school’s foundation. Add to this, a few late evening conference calls, evening meetings, get him home in time for bed, cook dinner, dream up new ideas and get started on the action plans for more licenses. Finally, I would tuck him in bed, read articles online, and take action on what I just learned.
Step and repeat, step and repeat until all the long hours, stress, and genetics caught up to me on October 14, 2018. This was the day I suffered a stroke and I officially have a stent in my head to prove it. Even though my superman complex and genetics had gotten me into health troubles to begin with, I still will not claim I’m an overachiever. Understand I’m letting you into my world so you get a clear picture that no matter what you are going through, there is a light at the end of every tunnel. I knew I had to become UNCAGED to make a full recovery. Driven by 100% determination and mental toughness, I made it a reality one day at a time by applying layers of systems to get the work done. Systems that I will reveal throughout the on coming book series in order to help you BECOME AN UNCAGED TRAILBLAZER.
It started with helping to guide entrepreneurs and business owners in the right direction. I’m here to tell you once you step into something and complete what you start, all other actions become realizable. Now I’m dedicated to writing 56+ books to help the entrepreneur get a grasp of the requirements for SUCCESS. I’m not saying all of this to impress you or make you fearful of the journey ahead. I’m stating how parts of any story can be relatable, inspiring, and absolutely unbelievable and only you can create and deliver your story as you want it to be told!
SUCCESS will come to you if you hunt it down and I am grateful that you have made it this far. Your awakening may be found in the pages of this book much like the point I discovered Rich Dad Poor Dad’s money quadren.
This epiphany smacked me dead in the face. A book that gave me the “Oh $hit” realization that I was on the wrong path. I wasn’t a business owner or an investor, but I owned my job and was self-employed. So I went into overdrive and started self educating on everything that was associated with renewable revenue, passive income, and investments.
“I WOULD RATHER EARN 1% OFF A 100 PEOPLE’S EFFORTS THAN 100% OF
MY OWN EFFORTS.”
-John D. Rockefeller
The way I look at it I survived the stroke to spread my lessons learned. I’ve dedicated the rest of my life to REACH ONE TEACH ONE.
www.thebusinessofbusinesspodcast.com
Full Transcript Below
Growth Strategies, From A Great Logo to Consistent Content Creation with S.A. Grant
Sat, 8/14 10:30PM • 36:23
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
people, logo, business, strategy, brand, podcast, graphic design, growth, page, reach, educational component, videos, talk, website, represent, evergreen content, build, software, journey, steps
SPEAKERS
S.A., Roy Barker
Roy Barker 00:07
Hello, and welcome to another episode of The Business of Business Podcast. I'm your host Roy, of course, we are the podcast that brings you a wide variety of guests to talk about a bunch of diverse topics, try to help out our small businesses solopreneurs entrepreneurs, maybe get you to think about something that really hadn't been on your radar, but also give you some places to go. If you do need some extra help. We want to see everybody be successful. Today, we're excited to have S.A. Grant he is a business growth strategist. And he also is a host of a Podcast Boss Uncaged. And they're they talk about strategy and growth as well. So S.A. welcome to the show.
S.A. 00:48
Definitely, I appreciate you having me, right.
Roy Barker 00:50
Hey, you bet. glad to talk to you. I love business strategy. And, you know, we were talking pre show that now is probably a good time, we have some glimmer of hope of coming out of COVID. So I think there's a lot of businesses that are regroup in and figuring out, you know, where do we go from here? So not a better time to talk to us growth strategist? And, you know, see how can we start growing our business? So tell us a little bit before we get started, though, you know, kind of how you ended up here in this space a little bit about your podcast, and then, you know, maybe some things that you're seeing out there right now?
S.A. 01:25
Yes, I mean, my original background started as a graphic designer. And while I was in art school, I was just thinking, Okay, graphic design is great. It's a way for me to monetize art, but they weren't teaching me on how to monetize art. So in that journey, I decided, Okay, I needed something else to support that. So I went back for another degree, and I got a web design multimedia degree. And in that journey, I was like, cool. Now I know how to build stuff. And I know how to design stuff. Now how to how do I sell it?
Roy Barker 01:51
Right? And that's always the trick, right?
S.A. 01:54
So you know, just just on that journey, I just kind of just dove into business development, business strategy, you know, and on that journey, became a travel agent. I still hold life insurance licenses for like maybe six or seven states up and down the East Coast. I had a series six, I kind of let that go. Because you know, I'm not I didn't want to be controlled by FINRA. So I've doubled and dabbled in multiple different facets. And now with Okay, how do I put all these different things that I've journeyed upon and stumbled across and work then. And that's how I kind of developed the Boston cage brand, it was more so opportunity for me to help small business owners and entrepreneurs, and also leave evergreen legacy for my kids to understand my journey and other people's journeys on their success.
Roy Barker 02:36
Yeah, and you know, that's, it's mean, it's really a good place that you come from, because that is who I feel like, this is who we are talking to more today. It's people that found themselves in business. I mean, they may have a trade or a skill, just like yourself, and but it's like, okay, you know, I've had to do this to survive through this pandemic. But now, you know, where do we go as we come out of this, and, you know, a lot of people don't have that, that next step, like you've took is, you know, if it's just me, it's cool, I can do my thing, and be okay, but now I've got another employee, now I've got this, you know, more customers. So there's got to be some change and some growth in the business to actually survive. And, like, so a lot of people didn't set out to be entrepreneurs, they were just kind of forced into it lately.
S.A. 03:25
Yeah, I think I think that that stands true. I mean, especially with 2020, you know, behind this, but still current and well alive in 2021. A lot of people have the opportunity to figure out that, okay, we're losing jobs. What's our next step? So everybody went online, which was kind of weird. When you think about it. We've been online marketing forever. And now we have this influx of all these new people that essentially need us to guide them in the right direction.
Roy Barker 03:49
Yeah. Yeah. And that's an important part, as well as that. You know, there's just been increasingly more and more noise on the internet. So it's important to, you know, how do you differentiate yourself because a lot of a lot of people may not last in the space or, you know, when jobs pick back up, they might go to work. But still, there's just, there's, it's everywhere. There's just so many more people, so much more videos. And one thing I've noticed an explosion of in the last week, it seems like are people doing surveys on LinkedIn and used to that was a pretty good little little space, you could be in do a survey here and there, but you may be the only one but I guarantee you, when I checked my LinkedIn during the day, I there's like five to 10 surveys, all right, in a row. So again, it's it's not that it's a bad tool, but it's just one of those things, like the bigger pictures, how do we make ourselves stand out where we can kind of rise above all that noise that's out there?
S.A. 04:51
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think that that's kind of like a long, long tail keyword, right? It's, it's one of those things that in the markets Currently, right now, people are in the discovery phase, they're discovering all these new tools. And they're just going to use them. Yeah. Right. But once you get seasoned, then you kind of figure out like, what really works, right? So timeless things that were evergreen, they're always going to work is education, right? And that's the first platform in that education, then you want to look at probably books, Kindle, or physical books, those are not necessarily the million dollar items within a gateway drug, there are enough to hook someone to say, Hey, here's some information, I'm telling you a couple steps on how to get there, this book will get you part of the way there and then use that book as a lead magnet to then call me into the coach you either help you monetize, or to give you more information through an online tool, or even upsell, a software that I've created.
Roy Barker 05:46
Yeah, no, and I think I'm glad you mentioned that, because that is definitely what I talk about as much as I get an opportunity is that educational component is I feel like, to me, for my strategy that is just the very best is trying to educate people. And that doesn't mean I'm going to turn everybody into consumer, but you know what? We can't I don't think we can worry about that. We have to put it out there. So because it's like anything else there's going to be do it yourselfers that you know, they're going to take your instructions, and they're going to do it yourself. But the other component of education, I think is sometimes if you read my strategy and my steps, you may be like, Holy smokes, that's a lot of stuff. I need to hire a professional do that. Because you know, I could maybe do it. I mean, like, I could probably put a car together. But do I really want to take the time to you know, buy all the pieces and try to assemble this thing and hope that it runs, you know, when I get it all put together?
S.A. 06:44
Yeah, yeah, I think based on what you just said, I was trying to make this this funny analogy. It's kind of like, if you're working on repairing something at your house, right. And if you're like a do or die kind of person, no matter what happens, you're going to get it done, then that's great. But then you may be the person that may bite off a little bit too much. You may you may take down a wall and realizes this, this powerlines. And you may see water lines in there. And then you Okay, I'm going to cut the water line. And then you cut the water line, but you forget a step like maybe turning off the water, and then you end up with a bigger disaster. And then you're going to hire someone as a professional to come in and clean up your mess and fix what you raised.
Roy Barker 07:21
Yeah, yeah. And I'm that guy. I mean, I'm not I'm not scared to start anything. But you're definitely right there times I've started that project and got into it. And you just realized, like, why this is way over my head, or you know, the time constraints or whatever it may be that I've got to reach out and get help. And that's why I feel like this educational component. And let's see, that's not just marketing, I think in sales, you know, out when I was more of in the sales space, I use that as well. Because, again, my listeners get tired of hearing me say this, but instead of reaching out, like, Hey, I say, you know, we talked yesterday, I know you weren't ready, but I'm circling back with you to see if you're ready to sign up. And let's get started. You know, and I realized that we you got to differentiate between smaller dollar items versus, you know, high dollar items, but typically, you know, selling consulting services, and that it's usually higher ticket items. And so there's that educational component to like, you know, build some rapport. And instead of, you know, like I said, just circling back to see, are you ready to buy more stuff, you know, like, Hey, this is some information I found the other day that may help you in your business, or may help you with this decision or whatever. But you know, just kind of keep that relationship going. Because the reality is, you may not need my service today, he may not even can't afford my service today. But if I stay with you and keep, you know, that, you know, trying to keep that relationship up and sending you some information when you do get ready, then I'm top of mine, and you'll you know, hopefully reach out.
S.A. 08:55
Yeah, definitely. I definitely agree with that. I mean, I look at it from the standpoint of is just the medium has changed, right? If you go back to like the late 80s, early 90s it was all about faxing, faxing, and faxing, and faxing, and vaccine vaccine and and hopefully through these millions of faxes over the course of two, three years, someone raises their hands, right Same thing with mailbox, right? You get these little packages in your mail about roofers and plumbers and all this other information that comes in from time to time. And then eventually you may actually pick up a flyer and contact someone so it's just staying front of mine.
Roy Barker 09:31
Yeah. Yeah, no, that's to me it's it's the most important part because there are people that you know, they they're the one and done I reached out he didn't want my stuff. So I'm moving on to the next person in the list. But you know, we forget about that Top of Mind thing that you know, if if I got something from you in the last week, I may have gotten something from a guy that your competitor a year ago, but you know, he's not top of mind I'm thinking hey, I'm gonna reach out to so He's a guy that can help me with this. So I think it's important and we've got so many options that that's the other great part about this now is, you know, we've got these books, we got ebooks, we can do videos, so easy. I have, you know, of course, we tape so we use zoom a lot teams, but also, I just found loon not long ago. And you know, what an awesome tool that is, you know, I've got some, you know, people helping me with some processes, so being able to record that, send it to them, but also it may work, you know, for you in that marketing space, or reaching out to your customers, following up trying to get an ad on sale or reaching out to a prospect. I mean, that's the great thing about today is we've got so many things out there. But then I guess it's a drawback as well, we've got so many things out there, we got to, you know, figure out what's working and where we want to put our time and energy, especially, you know, for small businesses that, you know, we don't have teams that can we can assign a, you know, guy blog or got videos and this and that we, you know, we have to make those decisions based on our time availability. Yeah, definitely. I definitely agree with that. Yeah. So it's, what are you? What are you finding that's working as far as the medium or what works best for you? You know, like blogging, I know that you're doing the podcast, but a lot of newsletters or, you know, kind of what, what has your strategy man that's working well.
S.A. 11:28
So my strategy once I came to terms with it, right, because to your point, a lot of times people, they talk about systems, but they don't implement systems. Yeah. So for me, it was more. So I'm like, I'm big systems guy, I'm a big automation guy. So you know, I'm always looking for lifetime deals, and I'm making purchases, and I'm utilizing the things that I'm okay, I'm utilizing them, maybe one or two other people on my team is utilizing one part one component here, to the next phase, I need to orchestrate all the software into a system to say, Okay, I use this for this, these are the steps and procedures for this particular software. And this is what the outcome of the software is going to be, because then I can delegate that Yeah. And then once I have somebody to own that, then I can move on to the next thing. So that's part of what I'm doing on my personal brand right now, is I'm compiling all the information from the different sources that I use for my different pH vas, you know, and also myself and putting them all into one system to be here, the mastermind of Lawson cage, and then I can kind of pass it on to someone else to kind of run operation.
Roy Barker 12:31
Yeah, and that's another good point too, about getting you're getting everything consolidate, instead of having, you know, some people pieces, some team members using this piece, I'm using even a different software, a different program to do something and having it all consolidated, where you can kind of look down over that whole process, which kind of gets back to, you know, writing down. Documenting processes and procedures, I think is extremely important as we look at growing a business because I mean, you know, you bring a team member on, I can tell you how to do everything right this moment, but in a week from now, you know, are you going to remember exactly what we talked about? So again, using these different tools to document these processes, I just feel is extremely important.
S.A. 13:20
Yeah, I totally agree with that. I mean, and to your point, if someone new comes into your team, right, you have to think about if you have an HR department, if you're large enough to have a HR department, if you're not, then obviously you're the executive staff, you'd executive board. And then you're going to have to train someone will have someone else train someone, but they may miss steps. They may not do things exactly where you're going to do it. And you don't expect anyone that you're going to hire to do exactly what you're going to do. But if you put steps and procedures like step one, step two, step three, step four, Step five, and as long as they follow these particular steps. And again, they have to be comfortable with being bored to a certain sense to move past these steps until it becomes self explanatory to them. So they don't have to think about the steps anymore. Right? That's when you got to get to that that nice limit rock of a situation to where you can pass off that torch. Yeah,
Roy Barker 14:09
yeah. Yeah, because you know, we get it I think kind of gets into a little bit too about I'll say this nicely, not holding on too tight. I don't want to say control freak, that sounds pretty harsh and abrasive. But, you know, if we're going to move past that, if we want to, I mean, there's people that you know, they they like to operate as a solopreneur professional, and that's just kind of their space. But if you really want to grow at some point, you've got to be able to let go and know that you can't do everything all the time you know, you've got to, but that's why it's good for this brain Trent knowledge transfer to get that stuff out of your brain, on paper on a video or whatever. So we can help our team members to grow as we you know, as we do try to expand. Yeah. And then also those strategies about you know, when To expand, that's always a challenge. Because, you know, sometimes there are people that we want to grow the business. And unfortunately, I think there can be a downside to growth too, we can kind of outgrow ourselves. So we have to decide, you know, what is this marketing plan? You know, how are we moving through it. So we can have the people in place to serve, I mean, because, you know, there's nothing, nothing more satisfying than to implement a plan and getting business from it, or, you know, start getting phone calls or emails or however, but it can also be a very scary moment, the minute you know, hey, instead of getting five emails that you can handle, all of a sudden, I got 100, you know, 100 inquiries, or if you're a product fulfillment company, instead of Yeah, I got five orders yesterday, and I got 3000, you know, tomorrow. Because you know, we talk about that some, too, on the show is that not having business is not the only way to go out of business. Sometimes you can actually be too successful and have too much success. But you if you don't plan for that, it can be very detrimental.
S.A. 16:12
Yeah, I think definitely, with that, I mean, automation. And I know people that they hate the whole AI way that's coming. And that's here now. But that allows us to really focus on what we love to do. And then we can have a system in place that's going to automatically execute day to day tasks, right? I think that's, and that's how I juggle like my business, like, you know, if I get 100 people that come in one time, I'm gonna segment them based upon why they're contacting, I may have someone that may need coaching someone that may need counseling, someone that may need a website, someone that may need graphic design, and then I'm going to take each one of these elements and put them in their respective systems and automate that process.
Roy Barker 16:50
Right, right. Yeah. So you know, graphic design, it's having a good piece of real estate on the internet is very, very important. So, you know, just they wouldn't have to go way in depth, but just off the top of your head, you know, what are some things that we really need to look at our, our web properties and make sure that we have done you know, not only that text, but also making sure we have some pictures and videos, things like that.
S.A. 17:17
So even before the visual, I mean, the browser, your site could be completely hideous. But is the functionality primarily and coming from a design guy, you're going like, well, what, why? Why are we talking to this guy about this design guy, but I had to learn that myself in the process coming from a design background, everything looks great. But then what's the conversion? Like? What is it doing besides looking? Fabulous? Right, right. So one thing that you need to do on every single website, and I see tons of websites still to this day that have this one crutch is that in the first top 10% of your page, that there needs to be something to gravitate information from, whether it's a lead magnet, whether you're giving away a free ebook, or whether you're saying, hey, download something, or you just say, hey, sign up for my newsletter, like, that's the first and foremost, any website, that you have to have that front and center, before you even get into your services, or gonna do anything else you want to capture that lead for the game time is short, you only may only have 30 seconds, and somebody may land on your page, they may fill out the form, hit submit, and then if only Right, right, yep,
Roy Barker 18:17
yeah, that in the needing to load up fast, because there's nothing worse than having an awesome website that you just can't get the darn thing to load. Because, you know, we're all impatient on this, I have to admit, I'm the same way. If I tried to load that site, and it's too slow, you know, I'm moving on, or if something, you know, whatever, but so let's talk about that. I don't know what you call it technically. But that screen, you know, when you hit a website, you have a screens worth of information. And, you know, my philosophy in the past has always been, you know, have that catchy, draw people in there, and not try to explain everything, like rolling down a page, having, you know, back in the old days, when it was mainly tax base is may may have 10, or 20 pages worth of material just ran out all on one page where people had to scroll down and find but kind of tell us about how to, you know, what is a good plan to organize the information to take people deeper into the side instead of you know, I guess more length was?
S.A. 19:18
So I think that it really comes down to like your sale procedures, right? I mean, is your website, a sales tool? Are you using it as a conversion tool? And what that really means is that, as your sales people or yourself is responding to emails, you're having a conversation with someone, are you using a page on your website to send them to, to give them more information, then to convert them or if someone finds you do a Google search, and they're going to find general information and then you want them to contact you or they're going to submit an email address that you can contact them and that's kind of like the two pipelines right. Do you have to kind of distinguish between those two? for mine, you know, I have a mixture of both. What Honestly, I found the most rewarding to be Like to podcasting, just to podcasting is evergreen content. It's not like I'm selling, as I'm promoting without promoting, and I'm giving value. And to your point it's going to last right? So somebody may find my podcast five years from now and hear a particular topic that we were talking about. And then by the fall at the end of that podcast, there's not necessarily upsells, but I'm directing them to my social media platforms, where I'm directing them to a free opt in page where I'm directing them to a particular landing page based upon that particular topic that we were talking about. So that's the thing that I would say you kind of want to figure out like, Where's your pipeline? Where does it start? Where does it stop? And where did the conversion happen?
Roy Barker 20:39
Yeah, that's a great point to bring up about the evergreen content, I think it gets back to our building our brands and our reputation. And it doesn't have to be, you know, I'm not advocating one particular medium, there's so many good ones, since some people are better writers, some people, you know, don't want to get on and talk in front of a microphone or a camera. And it's okay. I mean, there's ways that you can find out, there's ways that you can find ways to promote yourself and your business and your brand that are comfortable for you and for your prospects too. But I think the, it's that consistency, and putting stuff out there, because, you know, the reality is, and you've, I'm sure you've learned this doing podcast, as you can record one episode, and put it out there, he may have some people that look at it, but not everybody in the whole entire, not everybody that seeking your service that title or that, that episode is not going to resonate. But if you've got 100 of them out there, then all of a sudden, it's just the number to me, the numbers become exponential that, you know, I don't need to get somebody interested in this one episode is like I've got, you know, 100 now that they can find something in there that you know, will work for them.
S.A. 21:56
Yeah, I totally agree with that. I mean, it goes back to the whole definition of being evergreen, right. And if you think of things that were published from, like Napoleon Hill, Napoleon hills content is evergreen content. You could listen to it when years ago, 100 years ago, 100 years from now, and it's still gonna be relative. And as he's not talking about, like, particular software, or particular niches, he's talking about the general content that's going to be forever useful.
Roy Barker 22:23
Right? Exactly. Yeah. And it's in the same thing works not only with podcasts, but with blogs, if you do just personal videos, but just be consistent pick out, like you said, topics that will live forever, put them out there. And you know, it's a slow, this is a long game. This is not, you know, we say it's not a sprint, it's a marathon. And we're doing a few things. I think two is it's not, you know, we do want to convert, I mean, I would love to send out emails or put something up, and people just flood you with wanting to do business with you. But the other part is, we want to build that pipeline, you know, we want to reach people that may not even know about us may not be interested in our service today. But like we said, You keep putting it out and stay in front of them, you kind of build that pipeline to where it just continues to grow and grow.
S.A. 23:14
Yeah, I think he brought a solid point of like, just list building. And it will say the riches are in the niches. But the reality is, is the riches are in the lists, right? Yeah. Like the larger your list is. And think about a list from the standpoint of what you just said, I may have 100 people in my list, much like I may have 100 episodes of the podcast, out of those 100 people, they may not listen to every single episode, they may listen to one episode. So let's say I send 100 emails, by the time you get to this email five or six, that particular email, that particular service, that you're helping them to resolve whatever problems they're having may talk to that person at that time. It's not necessarily a hit or miss game. It's just a quantity game and giving value over a period of time to get the best results.
Roy Barker 23:54
Yeah, no, exactly. And have anything else to you know, that you want to add about the brand building or any growth strategy, some things that you know, you've been working on here lately?
S.A. 24:07
Yes, I mean, we like to brand development brand strategy. I mean, that kind of goes to my core graphic design. And even think about like my brand, like the Boston cage brand, does multi different facets to it, somebody can look at it and be it's very simple. Somebody may see arrow, somebody may see a person, somebody may tie it into being an cage. Like that's what makes a good logo, right? You want people to kind of talk about it, and kind of ask you questions, like, you know, did you do that on purpose? Like, does this mean that Oh, versus just having a logo that's too overly complex, and people are still trying to figure out what's going on with it. And it doesn't really invoke an emotional reaction.
Roy Barker 24:42
Yeah. Yeah. And for those that aren't watching the video, you need to go watch it because you can see the logo behind essay and it's cool because it does look almost It looks like a man. But then it also looks like all the arrows pointing in. I look at it as you know, that's where all the answers lie. We're all the arrows are pointing.
S.A. 25:04
It's beautiful that you said it. Cuz I mean, every single time I hear and interpretation of the logo, it tells me that that's the right logo because everyone's interpretation is uniquely different. But the messaging is globally the same. Yeah. It's about internalizing, it's about focusing, it's a person. Those are all the things that we do, right? I mean, I'm talking to people about what they need to focus on, and how they need to grow, or my podcast is talking about, if you are currently in corporate America, and you want to break out, first you need to focus on what you want to do, which goes back to the arrows pointing inward, and then exploding out, which goes to the on page. Yeah.
Roy Barker 25:39
Yeah, that's awesome. And yeah, you know, and, yeah, just talking about the people that want to get out there on their own. I just mentioned this for many, you know, find your passion. And, you know, I'm sure you're the same way that podcasting is awesome, I get to number one, I learned so much from my guest. Just me having a conversation, but I get to meet a lot of great people learn a lot and but find something that you're very passionate about. And the same is true. If you find something you're passionate about, you'll never work a day in your life. Because it's it's fun, you jump up out of bed and want to rush to do this stuff, because you enjoy it and you get value out of it. So if you're, you know, thinking about it, just go with your heart. And sometimes that money and success, you know, we all want that. But that doesn't that money doesn't always measure success. Sometimes I think, you know, we can be happy in our heart. And that's a little altruistic, I know, but we can still be happy and have a pleasurable life, you know, doing some things that may not make us all the, you know, the money that we think we need.
S.A. 26:46
That's me, I'm happy that you went down that direction of like, just passion, because I mean, one of the books that I published last year, was pretty much 100% of my passion is about how to figure out how to target how to develop and build from your passion.
Roy Barker 26:59
Yeah, yeah, I think it's very important. Because, you know, there, I know, a lot of people that have good jobs make a lot of money, but they're miserable. I mean, they just their life is not their own. And there was a local news article about a guy that used to be a, he was an options trader had some kind of a medical event. And now he, he's a mural, muralist graphic, you know, he's an artist that paints on the side of buildings and things like that. And he's just like, and he's like, I am so happy. And this is so much better, you know, for my quality of life. So it's kind of an inspiring story. Yeah. I didn't mean to didn't mean to go down that road. But since we're talking about the, you know, people coming out the corporate world, and since it's important to give that some thought, where I was going to go with that was the logo is back to that to say, you know, it's very important to give your logo some thought, because, again, that's going to become your brand. And, you know, we're going to hopefully spread it across websites, social media, and everywhere that we go. So you want it recognizable. You want something memorable, and I like what you said about, you know, different people having different interpretations. I think that's something I've never thought about.
S.A. 28:15
Yeah, yeah. And the other thing too, about like, just branding, you want to keep the lettering, pretty self explanatory, like bossin cage is pretty simple. I mean, you know, five year old can pretty much spell it out, sounded out and spell it out. Yeah. And that's another reason why I wanted to kind of name it something like that, versus something that has 20 syllables, right. Sometimes you may have a last name, and you want to represent your last name. But if your last name is extremely long, or hard to figure out, right, you're not going to get any traffic, because everybody and their mom's gonna be on Google typing it and do a search results and another five, and they're gonna keep trying, by the time they do two three times, they're not gonna land on the page.
Roy Barker 28:52
Yeah, or hit somebody else that's close. I've done that before, you know, typing the wrong, trying to get somebody's name, right, hit the wrong and say, Oh, this person does pretty close to the same thing. So one last thing on logos, I think it's important because in the past, I've had people when I reached out said, Hey, I'd like to develop a logo. And they say, hey, great, I'll get you five ideas. But there was never any really discussion about you know, who, who I am, what I want, what the business doesn't, you know, and I'll let you explain the importance of, you know, find somebody that will sit down and have a conversation with you to really uncover the these types of things.
S.A. 29:32
Yeah, there's a caveat with that, right. I mean, like, probably, as of right now, I'm working on company wise, we're working on three, three separate logos. Yeah. So and obviously, this is not the first logos we've worked on for these companies, right. But usually what we do we start off with benchmarks, because anytime somebody wants a logo unless they're a visionary, and they can establish in their mind, what they want to see and perceive represent themselves. They have no idea so I always say, give me a benchmark, give me something that you see that main Not be in your market that may not be in your brand it, but it has the colors, it may have the shapes, it may have the iconography that you like, it may be the stylistic font that you like, then me that verse, yeah, right. In your company profile, I mean, I can go online and do all the research and do all that. But if I'm taking the iconography of what you're looking to look like, right, and then I'm gonna mix it with what you represent. That's how we come up with this new creation of something uniquely different that represents you.
Roy Barker 30:27
Yeah, yeah, because there's some people that are very buttoned up straight laced, and you know, they're gonna want something different than kind of that, you know, that funky artist type person that's a little bit more free spirited, it's going to, they're going to both think that each is going to have a very different interpretation of what works good for them, you know, or what represents them as their person, because that's really what you want. I assume that's really where we want to get to, as you know, we want it, especially small businesses, we wanted to represent who we are and kind of get our message out there as well.
S.A. 31:00
Yeah, yeah, definitely. Definitely. I think that one of the tips and tricks about just logo development strategy, in general, is that usually, if you're gonna say, I'm going to give you three logos, right? Yeah, usually, what you're going to do is put the worst logo first, like the one that you do not want them to pick, right that the most, the one that you just don't like and you just built because they give you they gave you direction to build that, yeah, then the middle one is kind of like usually the one that they're going to pick. And then the third one is like, hopefully, they may or may not pick it. So you present these three to them. And then the first one that I'm like, they're going to get to the second one, they're going to get to the third one. And then psych the psychologically started kicks in to where they're going to look at the third one, and they're going to go back to the second one, they're not going to really remember the first one because it's hideous, and they're going to kind of stay in the middle. That's like just a general strategy when you're being presented with logos.
Roy Barker 31:47
Yeah. Yeah, that's also I've heard that about offerings as well, you always put the put the one that you want people to land on the most in the middle, you put the kind of crazy ones to the left, and to the right, to drive him to that one in the middle. That's the, you know, kind of the sweet spot.
S.A. 32:04
Not works, yeah, works. So at least probably eight out of 10 times it works. And the part of like, the logo development side is like, you know, obviously, you give someone an opportunity, the first revision, like I always call it, the initial cost. So your logo is not going to come from the initial concepts, initial concepts is going to give me the angle to figure out which way you want to swing, and what looking to feel you're really asking for, because what you gave to me, is not what I'm going to present to you 100%. And it's not going to be the final product.
Roy Barker 32:33
Yeah. Yeah, just put some thought into that, you know, it My advice is hire professional like yourself to really put the thought into it that, you know, after you've done a few, you kind of develop a little bit of intuition. And you know, people like myself is, if you need a spreadsheet done, man, you come to me, I can put some numbers in a spreadsheet, and I'm pretty good with that. But you know, trying to come up with that creative, you know, something a little bit extra ordinary, kind of difficult for me. So that's, again, a good reason to reach out to a professional to get some help and work through that. Because it's important, you want it to live with you for a long time. Not that we can't change logos along the way. But you know, we want it to be recognizable where when people see it, they know exactly who you are and what you do. Yep. Because it's been around forever. Yeah. Alright, so well, thanks so much for your time. Any, any closing thoughts before we wrap this up?
S.A. 33:30
I mean, this this, this particular episode, maybe went down like just the design path, I would just say, you know, keep in mind, like when you're working with a designer, and there's just two levels of desire, right? There's a designer that can actually create anything from scratch, if you give them free will to do whatever it is, without any abundance of hinderance or hovering over them over them, you get a creation that you may not even imagine what have happened. Yeah. versus if you come to the table with something envisioned in your mindset. But it may not be achievable because of the limitations of what your company represents, versus what you're trying to put on the table. Yeah. So when you're looking at the two options, keep in mind that there's a value add to that someone that is going to create it from scratch, definitely should be would cost more, versus someone that's going to take your ideas and recreate something based upon the principles that you're trying to instill in them. They're not necessarily thinking they're more so just developing your ideas for
Roy Barker 34:29
Right, right. Yeah, exactly. No, that's a great point. All right. We'll tell everybody, of course, how you can help them with growth and how they can reach out and get ahold of you. But then also, tell us how we can find you on boss uncaged as well.
S.A. 34:45
Yep. So anything growth strategy wise, I mean, I think today, we kind of just dabbled a little bit on these aspects of what growth strategy really kind of looks like. And I think some people that really don't understand the definition of it and the definition, it could be graphic design, it could be web design, it could be you know, your Counting, it can be any one of these different puzzle pieces. But sometimes they're just fragmented, right? So when you come to a growth strategy, the goal is for us to pull these compartments together and give you a clear path to get to your next step. Yeah. So if you need any help with growth strategy, you could definitely go to sa grant.com. And you can pull out the form right there at the top of the homepage, like I suggested earlier, or you can kind of look through to see what kind of content and services we have there. And for the podcast is simple. Go to boss. Well, podcast.bossuncaged.com. So that's just podcast.bossuncaged.com.
Roy Barker 35:36
Alright, y'all go listen, a lot of great episodes out there and give S.A. call, he'd be glad to help you with your growth strategies as well. So thanks a lot for your time. Certainly do appreciate it. And that's gonna do it for another episode of The Business of Business Podcast. Of course, you can find us at www.thebusinessofbusinesspodcast.com. We're on all the major social media platforms, as well as all the major podcast platforms iTunes, Stitcher, Google Spotify, if we're not a one that you listen to regularly, please reach out I'd be glad to add it. So until next time, take care of yourself and take care of your business.