Christian Ray Flores: Why Better Branding Leads to More Sales

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It's a simple equation: better branding leads to more sales.

The truth is, you can have the best product in the world and great service, but if your company doesn't stand out in the crowd, it won't matter. Your business has to have a reputation that people will remember and associate with you. That's where branding comes in.

Join us for this episode as we sit down with Christian Ray Flores, a marketing expert who helps businesses and startups create a brand that brings them success. He also talks about the power of storytelling in building your business which is a must-know for any brand.

Christian Ray Flores is an evangelist, entrepreneur, philanthropist, investor, speaker, and co-founder of Third Drive, a venture development company that focuses on raising capital for startups and creating award-winning digital media storytelling for businesses and non-profits. 

If you are looking to build a brand that sets you apart from the rest, this is an episode you don't want to miss!

Specifically, this episode highlights the following themes:

• What good storytelling can do for your brand
• How to build a premium brand that people can't resist
• Tips and practices to increase your branding success

Links from this episode:

• Subscribe to Christian’s podcast: Headspace 
• Learn more about Third Drive: thirddrive.co

Want to give your podcast the boost it needs to stay ahead of the competition? Check out honestpodcasts.com and take the first step toward achieving your podcasting goals!

And if you have a guest in mind who you think would be a great fit for this show, drop me a line at hello@honestpodcasts.com. 

Transcript

Christian Ray Flores  0:00  
Trends change quickly, and your company and your branding won't change as quickly as the trends change. So you have this opportunity, you establish a new brand, you get a new logo, all of the assets, you have a window to create a reputation. And then the imagery really supports. It's just a placeholder, the reputation is what carries you you do good work. That is the bottom line. It's never the brand, you can do a perfect brand and your work is just not up to par. And the brand doesn't matter then at all.

Travis Albritton  0:34  
Welcome back to the Honest Marketing Podcast where you learn proven strategies to grow your business without selling your soul. I'm your host, Travis Albritton. And in this week's episode, you get to hear from my good friend and founder Christian Ray. Christian Ray co founded Third Drive which is a creative marketing agency that works with businesses and startups that want to capture their story, build their brand, and use creative assets online to build their business, which is the name of the game nowadays, you have the paid acquisition, you have the creative, and Christian Ray is a fantastic storyteller, especially when it comes to driving business growth. So in this episode, you're gonna hear us talk about branding, how to capture the right stories to tell for your company, to connect with your clients, the pros and the cons of working with industry best practices when it comes to branding and marketing versus staying true to who you are and what you're trying to build. And just how to think about storytelling in general. So you're gonna get a lot of practical tips about what kinds of stories to capture, how much you care about production, quality, and things like that, and how you can start taking those stories and using them as marketing collateral to start getting the word out about your business. I hope you enjoyed this interview. Here's Christian Ray. So Christian, you have a very eclectic background, to say the least. And without going into your life story, I'm curious how you transition from Russian pop star, to political refugee, to evangelist to professional digital marketer, and kind of like why you ended up landing in that spot of all the places you could have landed with your background and your skill set?

Christian Ray Flores  2:11  
Well, the secret is I didn't, you know, I landed in like two or three different spots, but one of them was marketing. I think marketing is conversations in marketing is storytelling. And that's why if you have the privilege of growing up in three different continents, you get exposed to a lot of culture, a lot of language, body language, you start sort of perceiving human nature a little bit deeper, I became a Christian, you become more perceived deeper human nature. You become a musician, you're basically it's all about how you feel the pulse of the culture. So I think all of these compounded ended up being such a natural fit for me to do marketing and storytelling, which that's it. That's really the short answer of that.

Travis Albritton  3:00 
Yeah, well, and storytelling, that's intentional, right. So you're not just writing personal blog, you're not just logging your life. But you really do have a great finger on the pulse of how to help companies use creative in order to drive the kind of results they're looking for, which in the direct response performance world that we live in, is becoming a really valuable commodity. Right? That is more and more things kind of revert back to the mean of measure the clicks, how much did the click costs, how much did we make, if we made money, spin it up again. And the creative, I think, because of that trend is becoming more valuable, not less, because there's less good creative on the internet. Because some everything is micromanage down to the last penny. So I'm curious as you're working with companies with their drive, what are those conversations look like as you're walking through the value of creative or are they coming kind of predisposed. Like, you know, you're an award winning cinematographer. We want to work with you for our business, like what does that process look like? When you're starting that conversation with a company about really how to leverage storytelling to help their business?

Christian Ray Flores  4:10  
Number one, I think it's convincing them that there's nothing new under the sun. And fundamentally, the story in this story is drive our perception stories drive our emotions, and they drive our actions at the end of the day, right? So so if you tell a good arch of a story, just in general, as a as a as a brand, and then you tell a whole bunch of stories inside of that arch. You'll do well eventually, you'll figure it out. And I think maybe the other, the other part is especially if we're working with startups, which we do quite a bit. It's so easy for founders to focus on their thing. And in a conversation and translate perception wise as a selfish conversation, right? Like you, you go to a reception, you make first contact, that's the first impression. And on the internet, you have six seconds to get somebody's attention on a website, probably less than that maybe three seconds on a social post, right? If somebody's talking about themselves in the reception, you walk away fairly quickly, if somebody is talking at a reception, about something that really, that you perceive as necessary or need, or important, or vital, right? Or the or even dangerous, like did you know, right? The person, you get their attention, same thing with storytelling, it's a conversation, right? So a lot of founders are quite quite a few of them. And even even we are not immune from this, if we're starting a new marketing agency, or a new nonprofit, or a new business, which we do every once in a while we start our own businesses as well, is that when you close to the business, you want to talk about the business and not the benefit to the client. And that's sort of the cardinal rule of marketing is talk about, what they need, what they want, what they aspire to. Make them feel like you know them. And that's, that's the art of marketing.

Travis Albritton  6:18  
So, so I'm guessing that the primary story that matters is not founders origin story, which is just usually the first it's the low hanging fruit. It's like, how I became inspired to start this company are taken over from my father, let me tell you about sleeping on the couch, and my sister's mobile home with $20 to my name, and now look at me and how awesome I am. It's very self aggrandizing. You know, I am someone to be believed in.

Christian Ray Flores  6:44  
And I wouldn't say I wouldn't even say that people are trying to be self aggrandizing. That's why, for example, many, many of the interviews that I have, I have this very rich, wild, strange story like I started as a refugee when I was five years old. People attach themselves to that, and they go, well tell us that. And I tried to minimize that. Because really, at the very core, maybe people would like some of my biographic stories just as a, you know, like a, you know, it's a personal story, right? But if you're talking to marketing, that no one cares about the backstory, what they care about, if what what can you do for them, right. So you can use the backstory almost as a con, filling, adding context. But that you can't lead with that that's, that can't be the main thing just doesn't work. And people. I don't want to sound as a sort of cynic, right. But people don't care about your backstory. They don't care about my backstory, they just don't write. Now, once they like you write once they're in relationship with you, they totally care about your backstory. But when they're trying to decide whether they want to give you their bandwidth, their emotional bandwidth, they just don't. In that moment, they don't care about your backstory. And that's such a classic mistake founders do is a talk about themselves and talk about the functionality of the whatever it is that they're offering, you know, and we do this and we do that, and the app does this, you know, so it's all about functionality. It's not talking about the pain point. What is the pain that you're fixing in somebody else's life? And that's, that's the main focus. That's sort of it's one of those things that it's everywhere, right? When you talk to help them with their storytelling.

Travis Albritton  8:31  
Yeah. 100%. It's like, oh, but our features are awesome. It's like, Yeah, but I don't need your product. Yeah, but if you knew how awesome our features were, anyways,

Christian Ray Flores  8:40  
People don't buy an awesome drill. They buy creating a hole somewhere, right? What's gonna make them create a hole somewhere in the most efficient way? That's what they're trying to buy. But if you give them all the, you know, if they're looking for a drill, and you're selling them a hammer, with all these features, they don't care about the hammer. They're just trying to make a hole. Yeah. So that's it.

Travis Albritton  9:03  
So what are those arching stories look like? Kind of the the Meta narrative within that you then create stories within? How do you map that out from the clients perspective? Because I imagine much of the story is driven by the client's needs, as it relates to the businesses that you're working with. How do you reverse engineer or map out the story to start telling to help the client see themselves within that story? And then what are the stories you create within that to help them identify the companies you work with as a potentially good solution to help them with their problem?

Christian Ray Flores  9:35  
That's a very good question. We had this with this company is a FinTech company. But it's also a sort of an API company. It's a connector company. So it's a B2B company. And they're wonderful, right? Great, great tech. And the first exercise was when we started working with them, was to figure out what's the one thing they want to do. But the things they do, everything's like legitimately solves three or four different problems within the, you know, within their industry. But that's not good enough, we need to find out what is the thing that you lead with the thing that the highest pain point, I think everybody needs a promise of, and it's distilling that is such a painful process in any marketing of it, right. And when we get we got, there we go, okay, this is it. This, this is the one thing that's what that's the arch, right? Everything else is sort of, there's a discipline towards prioritizing that one thing. And then adding dimensions to that, right. It takes discipline takes humility, it takes storytelling. Now, within that, let's say the company is a, you know, supply chain company, which is I'm talking about this particular company, right? It solves all kinds of issues within supply chain, industry. It is such a cold narrative, the story, let's say we are we, we solve we do cash financing, right of people, that for suppliers that supply a service or a product to to buyer. But then there's a net 30, net 60 Waiting time, and I'm just a small business owner who supplies this one thing to this massive, massive corporation, there's hundreds of us, right? So I'm waiting on this payment, and I have to keep my staff the lights on, make payroll, create more product. So then the story becomes very human, once you go, just a layer down. And the end the story is prosperity, economies, societies are built on small and medium sized businesses. That's the backbone of every prosperous economy. It's, it's good people doing good work for a long time. And what we're doing is we're giving them the opportunity to grow their livelihood, their, their business, the quality of their services, by supplying this fast cash payment. So they don't have to wait for 30 to 60 days. So we're creating the tagline, the bat of the story that makes you feel something is we're creating a world where we're business commerce is seamless. Now that's a story you can tell so many of those sub stories, right? And then even sort of the the cover on the website that we used in some of the presentations is, is small business owners, their faces, right? So there's these these elements, floating elements where there's a face of somebody who owns a shop, who owns a small production, who prints something to create something, those are the people that we're serving, ultimately, now those are stories that not only they make us feel something, right. So that's my point, these are these are the sub stories, they are still, what is the thing? That what what what are you solving for somebody who they're struggling with it, they just can't, can't do it, no one has done it well for them, but you're gonna do it well for them. But then there's all these sub sub stories and artists that you can pursue that are inspiring.

Travis Albritton  13:11  
So then once you've kind of identified the larger story of your company, and how it's serving in the marketplace, and you start to pull back the, the layers and you say, Okay, well, here's a really good story with you capture, here's, here's a client success story that we can highlight, to help see the value of what we do. You know, here's something that's happening in the world and, and how, you know, people in our industry can make this kind of impact and how we're doing it. Like there's so many different ways you can just share the story of things you're doing and how it relates to your clients. But then there's the actual creative of making the story, right. So once you identify this is a story worth telling, and a story that will be helpful for positioning the brand of the company. And you have to actually execute that. So so how do you execute a well crafted story for the internet? I mean, that's, that's ultimately the billion dollar question. If you can answer that question. Sure. and execute it consistently, then you'll never run out of food to eat. But I'm curious, like, as you think about executing for businesses that are hiring you to do that for them? What does that process look like? And what are the some of the best practices that you've discovered as you've had repetitions at this?

Christian Ray Flores  14:24  
You know, surprisingly, honestly, surprisingly, it doesn't require, it requires mastery, but not a lot of sophistication when it comes to polish. Right. And I'll give you an example from the Ukraine relief network that we started when the war started in Ukraine. And basically, the problem we were solving, I was sort of, you know, I used to live there. My youngest daughter was was born in Ukraine, so I really sort of cared about it, felt it. So what we started doing is okay, what's the highest, what's the pain point? What's the highest pain point right now? And at the moment, it was, it was millions of people fleeing for their lives stuck in traffic jams in villages somewhere in like, you know, basically escaping bombs to places that are safer. And they were running out of gas, food, clothing, medicine, that sort of thing. So we did as developed a very quick solution, so we can drop micro donations to refugees directly into their e-wallets. So that's the pain point, let's say right for this particular for this for the sake of this illustration, but then how do you tell this specific story is, and it was very simple. We just said, Okay, let's, let's capture short videos or pictures of individual families. And they're very mature, unpolished, unproduced stories. That lasts between 30 seconds, and a minute and a half, or two and a half minutes, that sort of thing, where you can see a picture with a family and saying, look, they're in this particular situation right now, and just got help from us. Let's help more people like them. Or a, a woman who is, you know, who needs medicine. And she's just saying that, look, we ran out of everything, we're very desperate. And now we have medicine, we can live, we can be healthy. And we can still, we still have to rebuild our lives. But this was amazing, right? And you see tears and you see joy. And these micro stories that were, we just sort of generated very, from just a broad network of refugees. It made it into social media, it made it into our website, and it's like this grid of stories in the ukrainereliefnetwork.org If you want to check it out, that helps people go, I get it. Not only do I get the pain point and the solution here, but I'm getting the effect that people I'm feeling a desire to engage with this particular nonprofit. So does that make sense?

Travis Albritton  16:47  
Yeah, well, it's so funny, like, I think as businesses, we're still trying to shed the veneer of like old, old creative, where everything was made for TV, or everything was made for radio, right. And so there was a certain like, production level quality, to just like, get a seat at the table. But with the internet, it's like talking in selfie mode on an iPhone.

Christian Ray Flores  17:14  
Exactly. Absolutely.

Travis Albritton  17:14  
And like that can become really, really valuable, like I remember, was it. There's a man now that now that I'm not thinking of the name of the company, it's gonna drive me nuts. But there was a cranberry juice manufacturer in the United States that their highest performing marketing campaign ever was someone drinking their juice on a longboard. 

Christian Ray Flores  17:37  
Oh, was it like Ocean Spray or something?

Travis Albritton  17:39  
Yeah. Ocean Spray.

Christian Ray Flores  17:42  
I remember that.

Travis Albritton  17:43  
So you know, user generated content. And that became like their number one campaign ever. And it's like, they didn't have a film crew to create that video. It wasn't planned. It just happened. And then you captured the zeitgeist of that moment.

Christian Ray Flores  17:59  
You do. Yeah. But that's the thing is, there's a lot of sophisticated thought and strategic thought that went into, let's look for those, right. And that's the magic here. It's so it's not the it's not even the cost of the production or this polished version of it. But it's how to think of it a certain way. That helps nonprofits, businesses, whoever just get the pulse of, of the people they're trying to serve.

Travis Albritton  18:26  
Well, and the irony being it. I don't know if you've noticed this, but I've kind of noticed this to be true with businesses, either. It's super polished. And it's effective, because it's really exceptionally well produced. Or it's very raw. And because of that it has value. Right? And it's it's very hard to make something work in between where it's, like, just produce enough that it feels like a commercial, but it's not authentic enough to feel like it's native content, especially when social media happens. Have you seen that kind of distinction as well?

Christian Ray Flores  19:03  
Yes, I think so. And I think there's, there's really no reason why you can't do both. Even even the Ukraine relief network that I just mentioned, we have this very unedited very, very much, very much grassroots content that's there. But we're actually now finalizing an actual commercial that is very polished, full production, scripted all of it right? With voiceover from you know, we have the voiceover from the guy who did all of the Star Wars audiobooks, for example. It's just perfect. It's, you know, I can't possibly speak like that on camera, right. But we have, we'll have both eventually. And the reason for that is just they serve different goals. You know, one serves as these these illustrations is context is feeling inducing thing. The other one, the polished one really serves as a overview of the arch of the, this is where we're going. This is the philosophy, the approach. This is who we're serving. So it's really an explanation of, of the strategic value of it rather than the illustration of it.

Travis Albritton  20:06  
So for companies, it's really thinking through, okay, we want to jump into this content, we want to start creating content capturing the stories. But we wanted to have a positive reflection of our core identity of what we want to stand for. Right? So walk through, when you think about branding, most people think colors, logos, that kind of stuff. But it goes much deeper than that. How do you think about creating a premium brand? For a business online? Like, what goes into that? What considerations do you make? What's the overall experience that you you've shaped for that company? And how do you go about kind of crafting that process?

Christian Ray Flores  20:43  
Well, I think it's really you act like, like, they're shrink, to be honest with you. Like it's like, like a counselor of some sort? Right? Yeah. Because, because most, most founders, they're so close to it, that it's hard for them to distill the essence of it, right? It's their baby, right? Like, what, what is the one pain point of your baby of your child? Everything is the pain point on my way, you know, like, my baby's perfect. Isn't she adorable? have three daughters, right? Like, what is who's your favorite daughter? And what's the one thing that she does that everybody else can't? They're perfectly amazing in all kinds of ways, right? So I can I just can't speak like that about my, my babies, right? So your company's your baby, and you devote so much time to it. So. So it's basically sitting with them and going, okay. Let me help you think from the standpoint of the person who doesn't know you at all? And that's the starting point, right? What is the first impression? Let's let's shape as the lead together. So it's a lot of conversations about that. And then associations, you know, references, reference points, aesthetically, verbally, color wise, all of that stuff, and aspirations, right? You mentioned premium brands, specifically, you know, premium isn't very interesting, because premium is wonderful, actually, it's a great niche in general. But if you're close to their business to the business, you, you want to be premium, but you see all of the here, now, all of the floors, so it doesn't feel very premium, so you feel insecure about sort of branding and a separate premium. So you have to talk through that and going okay, what's the aspiration, though? Right? What's the you get there? Right? Yes, we'll get there. You actually do? Yes, we do. Okay, so let's, let's think of it as if everything is perfect. What would that look like feel like, right? color wise? Energy? Is the logo more of a technical representation? Like, is it? Is it an industry specific thing? Does it have to induce feeling or emotion, right? Is it does have to just demonstrate something that's out to fit in or stand out? So there's so much nuance, that's probably the hardest part in working with, with branding is that it just requires tremendous emotional, just emotional labor on on the side of the founder. And then I would basically be the guide. You know, I'll be the, they're the Luke Skywalker and the Obi-Wan Kenobi, right? I'm the guy who's going, okay. Just trust the force. I'm not going to do it for you. But I will do it for you. But I won't distill the essence for you. But let me help you distill the essence. Right? So that's the, it's fun. It's really cool. If you have someone who really trusts you, yeah, if you have somebody who trust you, it's fun. It's somebody who is in a hurry, and not really, you know, it's like a checkbox, it's less fun. So I tried not to work with with people that are in that place that just don't have the emotional bandwidth for creating something special.

Travis Albritton  23:56  
Sure, well, and, sidenote, as many Star Wars references, you want to fit into one episode. Go for it. Okay, good. You're a good company. Because I was, I did want to ask you, the the mixture of the the art and the creative and preference versus the science of best practices, right? You know, so you have best practices of like, colors, logo design, you know, the kinds of images and videos that you capture, you know, so there's certainly like best practices. But then there's also like, the founder needs to feel a certain way about the brand as its unfolding. And so how, how much of that tension is kind of goes back to the relationship you have with the client is like, listen, are you hiring me because you like my taste and my preference and my track record? Or are you wanting me to just be a creative shop that responds to your graphic design critiques? Like how do you hold that tension where you can kind of have a win win? Where it's like, we don't really want green? And even though we're a finance company, it's like, alright, well, you want people to still feel like they're making money when they do business with you, right? It's like, yeah, okay, well, there's only so many colors that will communicate that emotion. So walk me through that, like, how do you blend the best practices with kind of pleasing the client, but then also having that instinctual, kind of like eye to detail of this is really going to work for this company for this reason?

Christian Ray Flores  25:25  
It's a million dollar question, I think it's really it really has to do in, in sort of establishing a certain kind of relationship from the get go, right? You frame it a certain way. And you ask a lot of questions. And then you basically decide whether you want to work with with this kind of frame limitations, everything has limitations, or you don't, right, and then, and sometimes you do, although because they're they might be like 90% there. They know what they want exactly. They just want it executed and then transferred to all the assets and have sort of a disciplined approach and brand guide all of that stuff, right, all of the assets. And that's fine. Whether 80% there, they know what they want, they just want to push through the finish line, and then sort of adopted across across all of the marketing assets that they have everywhere. But if you're if it's raw, I think really, my preference would be, hey, are you emotionally available for this? Will you give us give me your time, because I will give you mine? And then would you trust me to not have the final word?Bbut to guide you into poke you into not into challenge you without you being sort of offended, offended or defensive, right. And so you establish that you go a few circles around that. And that helps because it's, it's a very emotional, I know that I'm bringing that up over and over again. Branding is a very emotional affair, because it's the essence of what you do. So it can become messy, right? It can go sideways very easily, it can be very time consuming. And it's almost never, it almost never goes flawlessly. Well, in the sense of, wow, our first set of designs, we got it, we nailed it. Almost never right. Yeah, I feel it's a very emotional affair, as I said, right? So I guess maybe it might my concise answer is, it's a very emotional affair. And the founder, and the team needs to be emotionally invested in it and available emotionally for it, which is sitting in places of discomfort of creative searches, and sort of the left that going to the left and then going to the right, being able to do that. And sometimes people are not in that space. That's all.

Travis Albritton  27:47  
And then are there any trends or best practices that you're seeing? When it comes to online brands and 2022, because it's some it's always a moving target, right? Millennials are currently the largest workforce, but Gen Z is going to catch up pretty quickly. And so then marketing and branding trends are gonna shift, right? But are there any best practices or trends that you're seeing that you've seen be successful as far as connecting the brand with the ideal client or not? Or is it really, company, by company, industry, by industry, we're gonna use this color for this emotion here, we're gonna use a totally different color for the same emotion over here.

Christian Ray Flores  28:20  
Sure. You know, what I'm seeing is I follow the trends, right? For example, like, three or four years ago. Most of the logos that would produce were flat and simple, no gradients, right, right, or dimensionality to it, very, very simple. And that's changed into three years, or five years, probably quicker than that. I basically can't allow that to shape the process. Because any brand or any business, it better survive five to 10 years, if you're trying if you're doing your best if you're doing good work, right. So the brand will change, the trend will change. But if you're doing good work, people will associate that imagery with that aesthetic with the good work that you do. That's really the bottom line. So in some sense, it doesn't matter, you know? Is it good to be aware of it? Yes, it is good to be aware of it. But at the very core, I don't think it matters because the trends change quickly, and your company and your branding won't change as quickly as the trends change. So you have this opportunity, you establish a new brand, you get a new logo, all of the assets, you have a window to create a reputation and then the imagery really supports. It's just a placeholder. The reputation is what carries you, you do good work. That is the bottom line. It's never the brand, right? You can you can do a perfect brand and your and your work is just not up to par In the brand doesn't matter then at all, you know, then it stands It stands for bad work eventually. You know, so I guess I guess the short answer is I don't pay attention to these things, although, although I'm aware of them.

Travis Albritton  30:05  
Well, and the reason I asked you that is because often I see companies that for one reason or other, they think, Oh, the branding is the problem. This is the silver bullet, we get the professional logo, all of our sales issues go away, overnight, right? Or, you know, it's the same with like, you know, ads managers, it's like, well, we just got to find the right right agency that can run profitable ads to our widget that doesn't help anyone. It's like, okay, well, how many, you know, reticulating back scratchers are there on the internet? And why should they care about yours? Like, all a great sales team is going to do is put you out of business faster. And so I see the same with branding, where it becomes like, oh, well, if we just had good branding, then everything would be better. Because then we'd be a premium product. It's like, well, if the impact of your company is not premium, it doesn't matter. You know, what kind of lipstick you put on the pig?

Christian Ray Flores  30:56  
You're absolutely right about that. Yeah. Just do good work and people, that's it. It's not that complicated.

Travis Albritton  31:05  
No, but we got to make it complicated. Christian, it can't be us. It can't, the founder is not at fault. Our company is perfect. We're perfectly positioned. We're always communicating perfectly. It's our clients that don't understand how much they need us. Right? There's a little tongue in cheek there. Now, are there any like faux pas, or just like, very clear lines? Like, don't do this if you want to have a long lasting internet business. Like, are there any things that just immediately come to mind? Like, I remember, they did this and it was really bad. And don't do that, you know, just things that you've picked up that that are just kind of good food for thought for people that are trying to work through this very creative, kind of subjective process?

Christian Ray Flores  31:48  
Probably. Probably, I would say, I mean, it's not a long list. But I would say the overarching goal is to engage and not confused. And it's remarkable how quick how often a company will will go from, even if they establish something clear and neat, and interesting and engaging, how it deteriorates quickly, right? So it's keeping, keeping the other person being a selfless person is the key to marketing. You know, because you think of the other person, you don't think of yourself, what tickles you, what makes you feel that you're doing good work, you know, the thrashing of, of changing copy all the time changing, product names all the time, changing the website all the time. Look, leave it alone, set it up, leave it alone, do the work. That's it, that's the secret. But people quite often replace, doing good work with being busy. And oftentimes, the busy part is the marketing. Right? They just play around with things too much, instead of just doing good work.

Travis Albritton  33:06  
If only we could just execute that we'd all be a lot happier, right? Just be a great company that do good work, and be lean enough to survive as you build momentum. Right?

Christian Ray Flores  33:17  
Yeah. And in focus on forward motion, rather than changing the things you already set up. Like branding, the brand, or the marketing is, is essentially the first impression. First impressions are not going to build your business, they won't, you know. So focus on the second impression, and the third impression on the actual user experience and all of that stuff.

Travis Albritton  33:40  
Now, before we wrap up, I'd love to hear more about third drive, and how you partner with companies, businesses, startups, to kind of shape these stories build out these branding, assets, and funding. What are the different services that you offer? And then who are the kinds of companies and clients that really make excellent fits for what you do?

Christian Ray Flores  33:57  
So the broad strokes of it is that we have a consulting part of the business, which is really more business consulting, raise capital for startups, help them get more investable. And my business partner, Brandon, nice to hit, he's sort of leads that and I help them, then we have the storytelling part with the marketing part. And our our strong points are high quality, high quality branding and storytelling, not necessarily ad buying and sort of SEO, things like that. We can do that. But we prefer not too, right. So we focus on the high quality stuff. And we have won a bunch of awards for that. And we work really more. I think our, our ideal client is probably post revenue, they have some revenue, so they have some budgets to actually dedicate to developing something high quality, but not enterprise level, right. So sort of a medium in the middle segment, where it's being shaped. It's also more interesting to us as creatives. When your an enterprise level, it's there's so many, there's so many controls and so many limitations that from a creative standpoint, it's just not very interesting. So it's better if other people do that kind of thing. And so we work with startups, and it could be all kinds. A lot of them are tech startups of fintech. We we've with some with some services, as well, we work with medical, legal things like that, insurance people, and then nonprofits as well. Because I think partially is because I love, I'm a pastor, I'm a Christian, I love nonprofit work. We help the poor internationally. So I've done so much work of that. So I have sort of a personal interest and passion in that. And because of that, I am quite good at telling those stories, right. So, so we have quite a few clients that are churches, nonprofits, that sort of thing.

Travis Albritton  35:53  
Very cool. And I'll leave a link to thirddrive.co in the show notes below. If you want to go check out Christian's website and see more about what they do. And then I also want to give you an opportunity to plug your show, Headspace. So walk through your own personal project.

Christian Ray Flores  36:06  
Oh, thank you!

Travis Albritton  36:07 
What you, what you talk about the kinds of people that you talk to, and what moved you to start creating content around the concept?

Christian Ray Flores  36:15  
You know, I think the the backstory to Headspace is that, you know, I love people that are ambitious, that are eager, that are learners, that are world changers, right? I've been always sort of this way. And what I don't like when people that are exceptionally gifted undermine their own work, right? So my, the backstory is that I was one of the top performers in the in the country that I was living in at the time in Eastern Europe. And, and I was really, really, really good. And I had a number one hit at the time, but my personal life was crumbling. So I was super depressed and super successful at the same time. I think it's for them. It's for these kinds of people. That I want to change the world but they have to get out of their way and need to figure out how to do it. And the cool thing is that if you like the tagline of the show is your headspace today will determine your lifespace tomorrow. It is that really, it's an exercise of changing a lens in your head, right? Like, the headspace you're in you're thinking about this particular things wrong. And because of that, you're literally hurting yourself in the long run. And you're so gifted, and you're so ambitious, and you can do so much good. And the world needs you in good shape. So I think that's, that's the target audience for Headspace. Right? And basically, the goal is to just distill ideas that can be leveraged for transformational effect downstream, something that you can change tomorrow, today will change your tomorrow basically in amazing ways. And that's what happened to me. You know, I've made a few tweaks in my life. And I've had 25 years of, you know, it's not troublefree. But it's wonderful, right? It's just expansive. It's wonderful. It's world changing. And I'm just grateful that those tweaks that I made early on so I can get to do more good in the world.

Travis Albritton  38:10  
Awesome. Amazing. Yeah, we'll leave links to that as well in the show notes. Go check out Headspace. Go check out Third Drive. Christian, thank you so much for your time.

Christian Ray Flores  38:17  
Thank you.

Travis Albritton  38:18  
So my number one takeaway from my conversation with Christian Ray, is that when it comes to branding, be less concerned with how your logo turns out or what colors you use, typography, the things, the nitty gritty details, and we can get so wrapped up on thinking if we just have the perfect combination of all these creative elements, it will explode our sales and we'll never have any growth problems at all. Instead, use your brand as an opportunity to make an impression on your customers, and then be a great company. Because no matter what branding or logo design you end up running with, if they associate that imagery with high quality solutions, and that you deliver the results that you promise for them, then the logo becomes secondary, right? If Coca Cola tasted bad, it wouldn't matter if their logo looks good, because you'd associate it with bad tasting soda. So in the same way, branding is important. capturing stories from your customers, and sharing them is important, but at the end of the day, that's only the window dressing. Beneath that, be a great company that does great work for your clients. And in the long run, all the branding will work out. Now, if you or someone you know would be a great fit to be a guest on the podcast, shoot me an email at hello@honestpodcasts.com and I'd love to interact with you or the person you feel like would be a great guest. And you know, just share the love. Like, let's, let's really have a great conversation around how to be ethical marketers, ethical business owners in the internet space and make a great impact for our clients and customers. Hope you enjoyed this episode of the Honest Marketing Podcast. And as always, be honest.