The Art of Branding: Marcjon Nimmo's Expertise Revealed | Marcjon Nimmo | Ep 115

Marcjon Nimmo  00:00

It’s very, very difficult for a business owner to take time out. We just don’t switch off. We never do it. So I went on a holiday, we’ll call it a holiday. It was a honeymoon. Give me a minute, take a step back and see the business for what it was and see what was working and what wasn’t working while I wasn’t in the room. It showed the hard work that we put in post COVID Right had worked.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  00:31

So Hi, and Welcome to another episode of Better Business Better Life. Today I am joined by Marcjon Nimmo, also known as Martin Nemo. And Marc is the brand strategist and creative directory directorates creative director, I should say, of NIMH creative. Welcome to the show, man. Love to have you here. Yeah. Thanks for coming in, in person too. So creative director, brand strategist, tell us more? How did you get to where you are now,

Marcjon Nimmo  00:54

the long and short of it is I was only ever really good at art High School. I was good at a bunch of other stuff. But like very average ly good. I was pretty decent at art. And I had no idea what to do. Right? So I went to do like a course in college. And I learned more about graphic design. And I started understanding like, how I could make my art, like for commercial purpose, I suppose. And then I met a girl as everyone does. Girl, female,men.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  01:30

Person, partner, whatever. Yeah.

Marcjon Nimmo  01:34

And she was a psychologist in psychology, I should say. And when I met her, she was trying to have conversations with me. And I had absolutely no idea what she was talking about. So I went under the night class, just on cognitive behavior, just bits and bobs of psychology just to kind of keep up with the conversation. Yes. And I seen the correlation between graphic design and psychology. And for me, it was something that I started looking at design in a very, very, very different way, I started seeing that the stuff that we could create the message messaging that we could use could actually affect people’s mood behavior. And I wanted to explore that a little bit more. And that’s where branding came into things. So branding is the perfect synergy between understanding the psychology of people, and being able to create creative output. So messaging, graphic design, animation, storytelling, videography, you name it, like anything that can tell a story or build something that has emotional clarity.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  02:46

That’s what brand really is.

Marcjon Nimmo 02:48

Really what brand is. Yeah, so that was me back in the day when I was like 1920. And then I got offered a job like an internship in Seattle.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  02:58

Oh, I didn’t know that about you here. I love Seattle.

Marcjon Nimmo 03:02

Is an incredible city. And I probably appreciate it more now than an English boy straight from Liverpool. to US. I’ve just seen a big whiteboard that never knew existed. And I probably got drunk a lot more than I should definitely balance work and socialize and quite well. But from a professional point of view, it was probably a little bit lower down the pecking order than actually exploring the USA. And yeah, so I was in Seattle for a while. I went up to Vancouver on a holiday, and I went down to Orange County on a holiday. And then I went back to Liverpool and realized that I didn’t really fit anymore. This is all well and good. And I love the family and everything but it just didn’t work for me. So then me and a couple of college buddies went traveling. And then we traveled everywhere, Far East Asia, Australia, New Zealand, and then I personally run out of money in New Zealand.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  04:07

So that’s how you end up being here. I hope you like it.

Marcjon Nimmo  04:13

Like it, I absolutely loved it. Okay. It has the perfect balance for me like I love like winter sports. I love a decent summer. Except for this year. We normally have that quite. It’s quite good. So yeah. And then when I got here, I got offered a graphic design job. And this company didn’t actually bargain on having a brand designer. They just wanted the graphic designer, but they went through a rebrand while I was there. And they had me lead the project. They given me my own studio, and I started rebranding their business and it was Jesus. Five different services. Seven different languages 15 different websites that was our three main different countries Australia, New Zealand and Canada. So that was me solo, first proper job in New Zealand. Wow, rebranding a big

Debra Chantry-Taylor  05:20

a large agency from his hands. Yes

Marcjon Nimmo  05:23

And off the back of that I got my residency and I got all the stuff for me to stay in the country.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  05:30

And then was that how long ago was that? Actually

Marcjon Nimmo  05:37

I want to say 2010.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  05:40

It’s funny how time flies as

Marcjon Nimmo  05:43

I normally reference time, based on when Liverpool have won something. Oh, yeah. But yeah, and then, obviously, we’ve got their brand to a point of consistency. And then all the work that was coming through the door was just generic graphic design work that someone like myself can do with their eyes closed. So then I asked them if they’d prefer to be the first client of NIMH. All right, and then I started my own agency, and they helped Well, thankfully, bank rolled my first year. That’s awesome. I’ll say bank rolled my first year, they kept me alive for the first year, by giving you work. On was still expensive. But yeah, and then obviously, for the first two years of business, it was a glorified freelancing job would be the best way for me

Debra Chantry-Taylor  06:40

To get yourself a freelance job.

Marcjon Nimmo 06:42

Knew nothing about business, I knew nothing about taxes, I knew I knew nothing. I knew how to design, I knew how to brand I knew how to write, I knew how to tell stories. I just didn’t really know too much about business. So for the first two years, I lived a little bit in Vancouver, I went over to Thailand, I went back over to Australia, had my laptop of hand all the time, and just work remotely and just kinda live my best life I suppose. But then woke up busy. And I needed somewhere for work to live. So we find a little office space. And then well, I found an office space, then I turned into we write Yeah, we started bringing designers on and then I think we got ourselves up to about five. And then COVID came about, and then those five turned into two, three, sorry, and two contractors. And then after COVID, when the doors open, then everyone decided to leave the country, back down to two. And now we’re back up to four with two contractors. Okay, so we’re still a very small team. But what I’ve been working on of life is very much scaling the business to a point where I can take a step back and focus on rather than being

Debra Chantry-Taylor  08:07

Perfect. Okay. Now, I always ask my guests, what are you most proud of in your journey? So you’ve obviously had quite a very journey all around the world. What are you most proud of professionally and personally?

Marcjon Nimmo  08:19

So my personal achievement, I’m 40 now, and it’s 40 on the 16th of March. That’s not the achievement. The achievement is after four years I got married.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  08:36

Yes, sir. Yeah, just recently.

Marcjon Nimmo 08:38

Yeah, March 11. I got married to my missus, congratulations. Thank you very much. That is definitely the biggest personal achievements. I’ve had everything else. There’s been achievements, but they’ve been like real kind of just fun. Shortland this achievement is going to be with me for the rest of my investments. Perfect. I’d say that’s definitely

Debra Chantry-Taylor  08:58

What does your wife do?

Marcjon Nimmo  09:00

She would kill me if I got this wrong. She is the Senior Advisor for the Ministry of Justice. So she works a lot with judges whole ministry of justice making sure the wheels are turned and everyone does what they’re meant to do.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  09:23

Okay, why am I different? It’s funny how we married people for a different trusses and can relate to each other. Well. That’s cool. Sounds congratulations on that. And what about professionally, what are you most proud of professionally.

Marcjon Nimmo 09:36

Sounds a bit boring but survive and I think COVID was very, very difficult for people. We are quite lucky because a lot of our clients are very entrepreneur, entrepreneurial. And they were changing things to work with COVID So we were working with them and we were okay. Good. It was, but it was difficult from a mental standpoint from people leaving, and then bringing people in, and then saw some people to start work and who you had to interview remotely and all that kind of stuff. And just getting through that, and having a bit of a support resilience was huge. And we’ve came out of the back of it with more clarity about the business, we deliver. And we have invested a lot of time and energy in our processes. So now NIMH is in a position of where we are scaling, we’re going to be scaling quickly because of the clarity and the products that we offer. And without having that little bit of downtime, because every business owner out there knows, I wrote a post on it the other day on LinkedIn, it’s very, very difficult for a business owner to take time out. Yep. We just don’t switch off. We never do it. So I went on a holiday, we’ll call it a holiday, it was a honeymoon. Give me a minute, take a step back and see the business for what it was and see what was working. What wasn’t working. While I wasn’t in the room. It showed the hard work that we put in post-COVID Right had worked. Because I wouldn’t have known that without taking that time out. So I’d say that. Yeah, that professional achievement.  100% be the fact that we survived COVID, we focused on the things that we needed to focus on to be better after COVID.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  11:36

I think it’s interesting. We’ve got listeners from actually around New Zealand, Australia, and some in the US as well. And I don’t think that unless you were actually in Auckland, Melbourne probably was reasonably similar, but there’s only the most people most people went through COVID we had that big hit upfront. And then that was kind of, you know, life started to return a little bit more normal. But here in Auckland, it was a nightmare, wasn’t it?

Marcjon Nimmo  11:57

 It was I think.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  11:59

 It was the uncertainty I think more than anything else not knowing so the

Marcjon Nimmo  12:02

First time now.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  12:03

Yep. Was fine.  Yeah, yeah, we actually we actually had a great luck.

Marcjon Nimmo  12:08

What What can you do like this has happened, this is what we need to do. Everyone got all the ducks in a row, and was ready. Everyone was at that start line ready to go. And then as soon as the gates open, everyone ran out. And then as soon as they ran out, there was a bottle out in front. Really deflated a lot of people.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  12:29

Yeah. I think from a mental point of view. It was it was really, really dry. We had the first lockdown. My husband and I had a great time we ate healthily. We walked recycle. We did, worked on the business did all this beautiful stuff. And then was like, Yep, absolutely didn’t have much income coming in. To be fair, like my business for the first time in almost 15 years had three months with zero income, which was fascinating. But it wasn’t. So it still felt pretty good. But as you said, as it kept coming, rolling again and again. And again. It just got got depressing if a monster

Marcjon Nimmo  13:00

Got too much. And like a big shout out to everyone that has got our business. Yeah, they’ve made it through stronger than ever, because it takes a lot. Takes a lot to be able to do it. And we’ve done well.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  13:13

Yeah, great. Congratulations. Okay, cool. So you’ve got to get back into a team of what four plus two. So tell us a little about the work that you do. Because I know that for a lot of especially entrepreneurial businesses, I think we tend to jump brand, we kind of think immediately of logo, colors, fonts, Falola, which is only a very, very small part of the whole picture, isn’t it.

Marcjon Nimmo  13:36

So it’s a little bit like, if you’re not an artist, and I give you a paintbrush and say Paint me a Picture, you’re going to paint something because anyone can paint anything, whether anyone’s going to be able to know what it is, by the time you’re finished painting. That’s all.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  13:54

They pay for art as well. I mean, I suppose I have done some paintings, but pretty soon I couldn’t sell them.

Marcjon Nimmo  13:59

And that’s, that’s something that a lot of businesses out there, they’ll splash some color out there. They’ll give themselves a presence, and that’s fine. But if you could paint the Mona Lisa tomorrow, if you had to paint by numbers, and literally come up with this analogy now, a paint by numbers gives you the framework that you need in order to fill in the right spots in order to create a masterpiece at the end. So with the brand side of things, if we think about it as a paint by numbers, you need those numbers first. And that’s where our brand workshops come into it. Our brand workshops are all about understanding where the business is and where it wants to go. Yep, development values and purpose but also being able to develop actionable values and purpose which means that you can go out and build brand activations that can reinforce the key fundamentals of your business and be people can connect with an emotional level. It’s about brand messaging, who wants to hear what you’ve got to say? And how do you have to say it in order for it to land for the person that’s listening to it? Not a lot of businesses do that very well. It’s kinda like, if you’re a software business, and you are increasing productivity in the workplace, then the first thing that you see on a website is software to increase productivity. And you’ve got 50 other software businesses that use exactly the same caption and there’s no tone of voice, and there’s nothing of real substance. And then you just start personality, the noise, there’s no personality, yeah. Then we look at your customer personas. So well, we build your customer personas. So we don’t just look at who your ideal customer is, we start thinking about where they’ll see your brand, how they interact with your brand, who their close circle of friends are, we start focusing more on if your brand lived in their life. Because that’s where you need to play. And then if that’s where you need to play, what type of messaging do you need to create? What type of visual appearance do you need to have? What story do you need to tell what key things are important to the people at that moment in time, I said something a while ago to a group of accountants, if they had a billboard in new market, and it and it was like, really, really high up in the air, and it said something along the lines of allowing you to look down on your business. Yeah, we look at your numbers, there’s situation or messaging that’s going on there. And it’d be very different to a sign that’s on the back of a car, which could say something along the lines of watching your numbers while you watch the road. Yeah. Right. So but again, that’s got a bit of personality to it. And not everyone could get away with doing that. But when you start building your brand fundamentals, and you build that tone of voice, you do have the ability to be able to create that kind of messaging and Bs situation or whether and when you start figuring out where your customers are, what they’re doing, what newspapers to read, and who they’re talking to where they spend most of the time, you fight, you build your own framework about what you need to communicate, you take that communication, you take your brand tone of voice, you put them together, and then you start creating some effectiveness with the market. And that you do. Off the back of that we also look at competition is huge. A lot of businesses and Miss positioned, some businesses have a very low value. They suppose they have a really low value, but they look like, rich, they look yes, they just they look like it’s gonna cost a million dollars to work with them. So some people who are looking for them, and immediately look at how they look. And I know it’s a bit Gucci from our car. Yes, yeah. Whereas the price points actually reasonable. But no one gets to the price point because they see something at face value. And then the flip side of that is the fact that you might be super expensive, and you look cheap. And then you have so many people climbing over each other to be like, Look, we want to work with you. And then as soon as you’ve spent all the time and energy with that customer, and you get to the dollars to try saying yeah, sorry, that’s too expensive. Yeah, so building a little bit of balance, and understanding what your brand is, what it offers and who it offers it to. And who else in the market is filling the same criteria as you. They’re your competition. It’s not, that’s why I always say businesses in your industry versus competition. Because there’s businesses in your industry that you don’t want to be, they might be more expensive, they might be cheaper, like you know where your position needs to be. And then you need to focus on everyone around that position. And then you do some competitor analysis, find out what works, what doesn’t work, why their customers use them, you find out all the traits that you need to find out. And then you take that information with all the brand fundamentals that you’ve developed. And then you’ve got a way to be able to communicate and talk to people at a price point, or a visual representation that they’re comfortable to look at. And off the

Debra Chantry-Taylor  19:21

If you do it properly. You’re actually weeding out people who are never going to be your customer before they even come to you on you. A Samsung owners never going to walk into an Apple shop. It’s my husband hates apple.

Marcjon Nimmo  19:36

Samsung all day long. It’s just not gonna happen. It’s not. And I think that if you were to talk to anyone at Apple or if you were to talk to Steve Jobs, way back when if you don’t like Apple, that’s fine. Don’t use them. We’re not forcing everyone on the planet to use it. We’re forcing the people that want to use it to use it. I think a lot of businesses struggle that we had an example a minute ago where someone does everything for everyone. Yes, yeah struggles to have any form of clarity behind the business that they take to market. Whereas if you cut off a few appendages, even if you don’t want to cut them off, yep, just so you can have a little bit more clarity, focus and direction, you’re gonna go further.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  20:24

Yeah, I actually use the example as we have this, when we talk with our clients, we talk about their target market and who their ideal client is. So not represented was the ideal client. And they often is, you know, when I ask them, Well, who do you actually look after I got everybody’s like, well, you can’t look after everybody. Because you know, if you’re, if you’re everything to everybody, you’re not going to be anything to anybody. Yeah, that’s right. And so I always use the example of Facebook. And I know it sort of is changed over the years, but I say, what was Facebook originally designed for? And you know, they’ll say, Oh, it was a guy who was at Yale or Harvard. And it was just basically find the the hot fields and the classes, that’s what it was all about was finding the hot girls in the right classes. And it’s grown over time. But when they first launched it, it was really, really focused at that. Now, that doesn’t mean if you really, really focus on something, it doesn’t mean you’re going to say no to somebody else who comes along who may not absolutely meet that criteria. But at least you’re putting effort into dealing with one part of the market rather than trying to be everything to everybody. And we use in the US, we say we work with clients between the between 10 and joiner and 50 staff are prepared to be open, honest and vulnerable, a whole lot of other things. It doesn’t mean that if somebody comes into me, and they happen to have nine stuff, I don’t get older. Sorry. My mind can’t wait with you. It’s designed to attract the right people. Yeah.

Marcjon Nimmo  21:39

And I think a lot of businesses struggle with that. Yeah. And it really takes its toll on messaging.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  21:46

Well, because you it becomes a vote for both doesn’t that in terms of you know, if you’re trying to be five things to five different people?

Marcjon Nimmo  21:53

You’re, I would argue that as long as you’ve got clarity within your brand, yeah, if you’re gonna do five different things, that’s what your marketing campaigns are for?

Debra Chantry-Taylor  22:04

Right.

Marcjon Nimmo  22:05

Yeah, I suppose that if you’ve got a brand that gives off that sells an eight grand product. Yeah. Not everyone can afford eight grand for any kind of product. Yeah, right. However, if that’s what you do, and that’s where that’s where your focal point is, that’s great. But if you were to do a one to many workshop, or if you were to do a mini workshop for startup businesses, there’s nothing stopping you from doing that. Yeah. But that marketing campaigns, yes. If they were well, and people enjoy them, and you see value, and obviously the revenue is good. Then turn them into products that they’ll start being other arms to the business, but then never your primary. Yeah. And I think that people forget that they focus on trying to Oh, no, what they’re all is equally important. If you look at the numbers, if you reengineer, the profit from your products, and you realize that they’re all bang on level, then you’re lucky, but nine times out of 10. There’s gonna be there

Debra Chantry-Taylor  23:04

because there’s a leader there somewhere that really is a profitable. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, cool. And so what are the lessons that you’ve learned in terms of building your own business? It’s like you said, when you first started, it was you, and you didn’t have a business. And now you’ve got staff you’ve got processes are one of the biggest challenges in that process in the process of growing a business.

Marcjon Nimmo  23:24

So my mom and dad hate me for saying this. Okay, good. But being an only child is, is a massive hindrance. When running a business, in my opinion. There’s probably hundreds of only child’s out there that are super successful, and they’ve done really well in life. But for me, being an only child, I never really knew what it was like to have to work with people. Yeah. So it was always

Debra Chantry-Taylor  23:54

About that, because I had a brother. Yeah.

Marcjon Nimmo  23:56

Well, exactly. So one of the things for me, I say, when you look at businesses that have like two directors or three directors, they always do that little bit better, because they have a unit that work together. When you’re on your own, and you’re stuck inside your own head. Things just happen slower. But I think for me, it took me a long time to figure out how to bring the right people around me for me to move forward without feeling like I had to do everything myself. And if I couldn’t do everything myself, then I was failing. And that was a problem for me. One of the key things that I was taught wasn’t that long ago, it was maybe like 545 years ago, or maybe just before COVID One of the things I was taught was if you focus too much on the stuff that you’re not good at, you’re never gonna go anywhere.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  24:51

Right.

Marcjon Nimmo  24:51

And then I started talking to I brought on a business coach. Never thought I’d do that or I did that and off the back of it, I’ve learned so much more about the numbers that I need to focus on. For my business, the sales processes that we’ve developed have been, they’ve been huge for us moving forward. Then I started looking at our brand affiliations. So who do we partner with that actually moves us forward? And again, it was with us, it was like, with me, I should say, it was very much about trying to control every part of the narrative. Because I had trouble letting go. Yeah. And I think that the first time I’ve heard that, now I’m in a position where I’ve let go of little things so much now that it’s made me a bit more confident, to let go a little bit more. And I have confidence in the people around them, who can help us deliver better, a better product, or they can help my business run better through I’d say, accountant, you need a good accountant. But you also need an accountant that has the same kind of ambition and drive through their own business as you do for yours, because they will push you forward. 100% Yeah. And they’ll tell you stuff that you don’t want to hear. Like pay the tax man on time. Yeah. Everything that they’re doing is coming from a spotter professionalism. And that’s something that you do not have as a business owner to talk about, pay the taxes. I know, like, I will at some point. You need an accountant, that business coach as well. Someone in sales, if you know anyone who’s good at sales, and you’re a business owner the like for creative, it’s very difficult for a creative to sell. Because if you think about artists, when they put a picture on the wall, and they need to sell that picture, they have a curator. Yeah, Salvador Dali was never stood in front of a painting being like, does anyone want to buy this? Horrible, it kind of hurts us a little bit inside, to sell what we do show. And having someone in the sales spectrum that can help you move forward. Same with marketing as well. Yeah, mark it in such a convoluted world. It’s just, yeah, there’s just so many different parts to marketing. And and it doesn’t get easier, with different social media platforms coming out, or different algorithms getting changed, or Google bringing out that GA for that kind of mess people out for a little bit. But it does help when you have someone there that can kind of just oversee all of that. So I would say that one of the key things for any business owners, if you’re sat there and you’re stressing about accounts, or you’re stressing about a marketing idea that you’ve got or you’re stressing out about being able to build a brand or being able to generate sales, then connect with those people. And make sure that as long as you have the right, as long as you have a bit of banter that you’ve you feel good in that person’s present, yes, then nine times out of 10, they’ll be a good fit for you to move forward. Because they’ll want the best for you as much as you want the best for that.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  28:15

I do like your thing about saying that make sure the accountant has the same drive through their business as well, because there’s different types of accountants, let’s be honest,

Marcjon Nimmo  28:21

I have an account for three years. And they did everything that they needed to do by the book. Yeah, we didn’t go anywhere.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  28:31

And so the government’s in compliance side of our accounting, and then there’s actual accountants who add value by being strategic about the business and looking at how you construct your debt, looking at how you go, different ways of doing because they looking forward rather than so looking backwards, whereas you have to do the compliance, you got to pay the tax man, you got to make sure you get your your GST returns on time, etc, etc, and that they’re accurate, but it doesn’t help grow the business.

Marcjon Nimmo  28:56

Grow their businesses, you know, in that that’s looked after. So you get focused on something of importance to the business.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  29:03

Please, you find a good one. So I always ask the people come on the show to kind of give some tips for people who are listening in now we’ve got you on here, both as a business owner, but also as an expert in the run the whole branding space. So in terms of tips and tools, what have you got that you can share that you’ve either learned through your journey, or you already shared a couple already, of course, but you know, in terms of also in terms of branding and what branding is for them.

Marcjon Nimmo  29:25

So I’d say there’s there’s three books that I would say anyone should read. Oh, yeah, I’m pretty sure I won’t be the first person to say the first one. What Rich Dad Poor Dad.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  29:36

Oh, yes. And you haven’t heard about that for a long, long time. But yes, sir. It’s a game-changer in terms of the way you think about things.

Marcjon Nimmo  29:43

I’ve reread it for any business owner. I think it makes so much sense to just read that book or I don’t I am a very slow reader. So all your audiobooks Yeah, I use quite a lot. There’s a book on Oh, Zag by Marty Neumeier. Okay. And Zag is a book about an agency owner, who goes through a whole bunch of difficulties like on productive staff, all that kind of stuff. And he has a business coach. And this business coach is like, get rid of them, managed them out, or do this or do that, or they no longer down on a piece of paper, leave it in your drawer for five years. And then this is what will sell your business for that kind of thing. But it really puts you into perspective, whether you’re an agency owner or not, obviously I am. So it kinda has been. For me a little bit. Yeah. But just listening to the stuff that they were talking about, about the struggle that people go through about how much a lot of business, a lot of small businesses put a lot of eggs in one basket. And if that one basket gets dropped, the whole business can fall over overnight, just little things like that.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  30:55

My first business went to receivership was exactly that. We had a massive client, everything us and they pulled the pin with very, very little notice. And yeah, it was a we thought he gets through it. But we didn’t.

Marcjon Nimmo  31:06

Yeah, again, it’s it is difficult. And just give me one second, just so the other book is by a kiwi guy called James Hammond. And it’s called future demand. And if you know nothing about Brandon, James has got a really, really good way of being able to clearly explain stuff to people. So that books really good and very, it’s got heaps of insight and stuff into it as well. So I’d say my first one is read three books.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  31:35

Yeah for sure. Read those three books. And she just probably talking about books, too. You actually made a really interesting comment earlier on about finding people who can actually help you with your business. And there’s a really great book by Dan Sullivan called who not owl, and he talks about that exact philosophy is like don’t worry about how you’re going to do it, but find someone who, who can actually help you get out there. And we don’t you know, we don’t do that very often. I tend to do it quite naturally. But a lot of people they don’t think about that they just kind of go, but I don’t know how I’m gonna get to that massive target. It’s like, yeah, don’t worry about the hell go find someone who can help you do it. Yeah. Okay, so three books.

Marcjon Nimmo  32:10

Yeah, different mindset to go with. Yeah, top tip. And Brandon. Yeah, it’s hot tip. And Brandon, I’ve got. So I did put, as I said, I put a post on LinkedIn the other day, but one of the main ones that I’ve got is, know what your purpose is, and how to communicate it. So a lot of people might have this big, audacious goal. And they might have this purpose to drive the business. And they might tell the team about it all the time. But they don’t do anything like with brand activations, or events. So they don’t do anything to actually let people feel what that purpose is. A lot of people just use it as a word, stick it on the wall and move forward. And I don’t think that is the best way to do things. I think people need to be immersed in what that purpose is.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  32:57

Which I think Steve Jobs did really well, with Apple incredibly.

Marcjon Nimmo  33:01

Incredibly so. And I think that that’s something that people need to do if you have a purpose, and it’s strong, and everyone believes it. Try and find a way to build a platform where you can invite your customers, your competition, your clients, everyone into the same room. And let them feel the journey, let them feel that purpose. Because I can guarantee people walk out of it and know a lot more about what your brand stands for. I also say see how you stack up against other businesses in your industry, a lot of people just put their head down and move forward, and they forget about what’s going on. There’s people out there that are just natural born innovators. And you could be doing really well. And then you’ve got a couple of competent competitors or people in your industry in exactly the same spot as you are, they might just have a couple of little ideas that lift them to that next level you get left behind, it’s that it’s very important to know what’s going on in your world. And what we’ve just mentioned about who’s in your circle, if you’re building a brand, it’s not just about building a brand for your audience. It’s about building a brand and being affiliated with other brands that share the same values or have the same purpose and they want to move forward. They will all move forward together. Yes. And if you’ve got a strong circle, and safe say for argument’s sake, our social media partner Yeah, if she decided she was going to have an event tomorrow, I know five businesses that would be the in a heartbeat to be the backbone to make sure that that went, that was the best event that people can attend. And we all work together on a day to day basis. And I think that that’s super important. Like if you’re building a brand, if you own a an IT company that specializes in data recovery or data backup. Great stay in And then if you’ve got a hardware specialist that you bring into the fold, bring them in. If you’ve got a wipe, specialist, yes, bring them in, make sure you’ve got the right people around. Yeah. So when you do go out, you go out bigger, stronger, more confident. And you know where your lines are, and you support each other and move forward. Because otherwise you do the first thing I did for the last four years of the first four years of business, and focus on just being able to do everything for everyone, because I knew I could, I just didn’t know that I had no time to do it.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  35:37

I had the same issue myself, because I’m actually from a sales and marketing background originally, and then sort of into general management roles and what not. And then when I started doing coaching, you know, they’d say to me, Oh, can you help us with our sales? Planning? Yeah, sure. I can do that. Well, we that was a marketing trade. Sure, I can do that. On social media. Yeah, sure. I can do that. And then you found yourself like I was working ridiculous hours trying to do all this stuff that I’d said yesterday, which I could do. But it actually wasn’t the we talk about our unique ability. But what is your absolute unique ability, which is the stuff that you’re not only really great at, but you truly love as well? And that’s where you should spend most of your time? Yeah. Yeah. Because it feeds, it feeds you internally, it gives you energy. And it means you’re not working ridiculous hours.

Marcjon Nimmo  35:52

And all the other little bits that you do take energy away from you, you’re doing stuff that you absolutely love to do in your bond, though. You’ll get an up on a high every single day to go and do it. Yeah. Let everyone else do all the other bits.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  36:34

Because other people will, they’ll also love it. But this is what I would say that something you don’t like, there’ll be a high I mean, I’m a being a marriage of my first husband was an accountant. And it’s like, you know, for 14 years, we were together. I never got really got accounting at all, like I can, I can read the books, I can certainly do financial papers and stuff on boards, but I just didn’t ever understand them. But he loved it, you know, put him in front of an Excel spreadsheet, and he was in heaven. So there will always be somebody who will love the way that I love my EOS staff will be somebody who loves counting and, and spreadsheets like that as well. So yeah, well, let them do it. Yeah. Excellent. Okay, so what is your ideal client look like? Like, who do you work with? Who is your perfect client? If you like.

Marcjon Nimmo  37:14

Oh, that’s very interesting. We work a lot on developing customer. Yeah, for other people, you’d like to think I’d be able to say something straight off the bat. But to be honest, there’s I can think of two clients that we’ve got right now that are incredible clients, one of the main similarities, they’re not the same in size, but one of the main similarities they’ve got if they understand the importance of developing a brand and building brand culture within the business. And to be able to do that there is certain fundamentals you need to put in play in order to make that work? Sure. So one client is I think there’s six of them. There are six of them. And they are doing overseas recruitment. And they turn around 2 million a year. So I’d say that our gap would be 2 million to 14 million, is they the businesses that we tend to work with, the bigger the better, because, and I say this a lot to begin with, we’ve done a lot for everybody. But these bigger clients, when we build a brand strategy, there’s a lot of action points within that brand strategy, like you need to go and invest in SEO or you need to go and do a marketing event or you need to be able to fly your clients over to the Philippines. They there’s there’s a whole bunch of stuff that goes into it they do in a marketing campaign overseas. So with the clients that appreciate what our brand is, yeah, appreciate that they need change. So they might still look the same as what they did five years ago, and they might have changed dramatically since then, might be they might have lost market share. They might have been in a strong position. But then all these little fellas are coming in that are doing things a little bit. They’re just taking little pieces away. Yeah. And they’re struggling to be able to be as agile because they are a little bit more competent. But yeah, the businesses that we will work with, we will build a brand. We will build a brand strategy, but they need to be able to, they need to be able to invest one on one with different specialists in order to make sure that that brand lives to its full potential. So So with businesses that turnover of I don’t know half a mil to mil, and you’re talking about taking 10% of your revenue away for the year. There might not be in a position to do that. They might focus more on bringing the people in, that can do implementation in house Spot. Whereas the bigger businesses that everyone in there, every piece of the puzzle is doing what they should be doing to move forward. That’s when they bring in the specialists and they appreciate the specialists, and they appreciate everyone is great at something. And therefore they need that person to take them to where they need to get to.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  40:18

Just made me think I mean, so can you give me an example of a business that you’ve worked with, obviously, without necessarily giving away names? Where, you know, you started with them, you’ve done the work? And then what what, what does it meant for them, I’d love to have like a case study if you like.

Marcjon Nimmo  40:31

So I’d say the one of the clients, one client that comes to mind straight away with software was SCADA software businesses CRM supplier, right. But they were seen as a software business, they had a whole bunch of products, and they go out to market. And they sell solutions. So they might sell different pieces of software. But whenever they’d step into the room, like the people in the room would be like, Oh, you’re such and such, from such and such, and such and such that they were from, was the name of the product that they sell, oh, really, nothing to do with the business that they had. And that was mainly because the minute you go onto their website, and you look at who they are, there was zero clarity about what they deliver. There was nothing in the outline them as experts. There was just nothing of substance just locked very, it looked like and it said it provider. Right. Yeah. And that’s not what they did. They were a software distributor. Okay. So what we ended up doing was we came up with a brand new name for the business, which was a solution based name. So I don’t know whether I’m allowed to give them a plug. Yeah, please do not go for it. Yeah, as long as they don’t mind. Yeah. I’ve not spoken to them. They’ll be alright. Yeah, it’s a company called automate me. and optimize me is built to help businesses do optimization and automation through software. So anything a business does manually, that a software piece of software can deal with. This is where these guys come in and say, right, okay, this is what you have to do. But they’ll build a very robust plan for your business. And then they’ll tell them, or they’ll bring in the key pieces of software that you need to use to make it all run that implement it into the business. They’ll guide you through all the usability of it. And they’ll stay with you year on year to make sure that everything goes well, if there’s any updates or upgrades or different pieces of software that can work better than it’s kinda like, yeah, thanks for putting it in and doing that kind of stuff. They are experts, I remember the first meeting I had with them. They know so much about software went straight. To help you guys, I can’t just yeah, what you’re talking about is very difficult for me to be able to grasp. But that was the problem. Yeah. Like they were so technical. And so involved with the geekiness of the software, and the efficiencies and the optimization and the automation, that they weren’t focusing on the customer, right. So when they’d go in, and they’d sell a product, and they talk about the features and the benefits and all that kind of stuff. There were salespeople for the product. They weren’t experts in.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  43:34

Solving and soft, yes, obviously.

Marcjon Nimmo  43:38

So what we ended up doing was developing a brand that the name spoke for itself, the delivery was based on that they are the experts in their field with what they do, there isn’t one solution, or one product that they offer, that’s gonna change everything. It is very much a tailored solution using multiple platforms in order to increase the automation or optimization or productivity of your business. And we done that in a way that they could have the clarity to go out and be like, we are optimized me. Yeah, this is what we do. And this is how we do it. And these are the people that we’ve done it for. And they could utilize the video testimonials that we created with them. Yeah, we help them. Suppose we help them create all of that key messaging as well. They have personality. Personality, aside from like the very technical aspect of their behavior, they have personality like the majority of blokes who they have banter with each of those and that is there in the room and whenever they go to meetings that is there in the room that energy to be instilled in this brand that we created as well.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  44:57

It’s interesting that we spoke about before we came on the podcast as well. Have people who just go out there and you can, you can look at their competitors in the space and all other websites will all look exactly the same. They’ll say the same kind of thing. And this is my personality that and yet people buy from people. So you know, you need to be able to tell your brand story and have people who are part of your tribe who want to work with you. Yeah.

Marcjon Nimmo  45:18

I think that they’ve got something now that they are really proud of. When they go and see people now no one calls them. Everyone knows what the product was. Check them out.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  45:32

Okay we’ll do I’ll definitely well, yeah. Okay, Marc, if we want to get in contact with you, and either pick your brains about, you know, selling our business or talking about their brand strategy. How do they get ahold of you?

Marcjon Nimmo  45:42

Well, how does your wife feel about that? Marc is M A R C @nim and I am creative.com. Which connect with me on LinkedIn. So many ways. I’d say the easiest way to get in touch with me is my email, right? Because I’m on it. Most of the time.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  45:59

Yep. And you actually MarkJon Nimmo.

Marcjon Nimmo  46:02

Unique name on on LinkedIn to refer but it’s M A RC J O N. All one word Nimmo is N I M M O.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  46:11

Beautiful. Hey, look, thank you so much for coming in on your weekend to chat has been really fun. Really enjoyed learning about what you’re doing and how you’ve kind of come to the business I pick continues to grow and look forward to following you.

Marcjon Nimmo  46:23

Thank you. Thank you. It’s been good. It’s been good. My very first book.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  46:26

I know well, yeah, well done. It was it was really enjoyable. Thank you. Thank you very much.