My Weekly Marketing

How to Use Storytelling to Build a Strong Brand with Deevo Tindall

• Janice Hostager • Season 1 • Episode 144

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In this episode, I sit down with Deevo Tindall to talk about what brand really means beyond logos and colors. We unpack how lived experience shapes positioning, why every touchpoint matters, and how clarity helps attract the right clients while naturally repelling the wrong ones. This is a grounded conversation about building trust through consistency, not hype.

We also dig into origin stories, values, and the problem your business exists to solve. Deevo walks through how to turn personal experience into a clear, compelling message and why your brand should feel aligned everywhere it shows up. If you want your marketing to feel more natural and believable, this conversation will give you a strong place to start.

Deevo Tindall's Website: The Brand Storyteller

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Janice Hostager:

I'm Janice Hostager. After three decades in the marketing business and many years of being an entrepreneur, I've learned a thing or two about marketing. Join me as we talk about marketing, small business, and life in between. Welcome to My Weekly Marketing. Branding is something that we all know is important to our business. But the challenge is, how do we create a strong brand for ourselves? I know from working on my own branding and by working with others, once you have it right, it makes a huge difference in how you communicate and the customers that you draw. But getting there can take some steps. Today I'm sitting down with Deevo Tindall, the brand storyteller. Deevo is a brand strategist who helps entrepreneurs build brands that reflect who they are and what they want to communicate to the world. Devo definitely has a no-fluff approach to branding, showing people how to use their voice, tell their story, and create brands that are magnetic. His specialty is helping you translate who you are into something people can instantly feel. So your brand stops blending in and starts doing the heavy lifting for your marketing. If you struggle with building your brand, buckle up. This episode will give you the clarity you need. And just as an alert, this episode does contain a little adult language. Nothing wild, but if little ears are around, you may want to pop in some headphones. Let's dive in. Hey Deevo, welcome to My Weekly Marketing.

Deevo Tindall:

Thanks for having me, Janice. I appreciate it.

Janice Hostager:

So I'm just going to dive right into the questions here, and then we'll get a little bit into your own story. But so what's the simplest way that you can explain explain what a brand really is?

Deevo Tindall:

A brand is every single touch point on your customer or potential customer's journey. Every single opportunity they have to see, smell, taste, hear, watch, consume, read, every single piece about what your business does or the value that you bring to the world, if they have an opportunity to see that, consume that, that is your brand.

Janice Hostager:

Love it. When you look at other small businesses online, what do you notice is missing? When you look at a brand and you say that's maybe not there yet, what is it that you would notice?

Deevo Tindall:

Well, I don't know if there's any one thing that every brand suffers from. I think there are some potholes that need to be shorted up. Consistency for one thing, their website says something, their podcast says something different, they have a different logo or a different message on their social media or their social or no social media at all. Um, how they talk about themselves, how how they dress, for example. Like I go to weekly networking events and you know, people are out there trying to sell a service, but they'll they'll walk in in flip-flops and sweatpants, and I'm just like, that may be if that's your target audience, that's cool. But if that's not the brand you want people to receive and sort of have a better discernment and understanding of who you are, then you kind of have to dress the part, right? So I think probably consistency and clarity around exactly who they serve, exactly what they do, why they do it, how they do it, the solution, the superpower that they bring to the table. I think a lot of times people get caught up in this whole idea of like speaking about what they love to do, but they forget to talk about the solution, and they forget to talk about it from the person they're actually trying to sell it to and how they would benefit from the service. So there's not any one thing. I I really I guess that we could boil that down to consistency and clarity, I would be a kind of a fun way to say it.

Janice Hostager:

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I really I think you're right. I think a lot of times people kind of forget about the brand that they portray themselves, like you said, a networking event or although I I also have met people that carry the branding to an extreme where if their brand colors are blue, then everything they wear is blue, kind of thing, too. So um which probably isn't a bad thing.

Deevo Tindall:

Yeah, to each their own in that space. I I mean I I I don't know that you can overdo that particular area until you become obnoxious and people start to tell you like, you know, maybe back off a bit. But um yeah, you can certainly undercut yourself. I think if that's your thing and that's your brand and being magnanimous and bold and out there and sort of showy to the world, then yeah, please do that. But um, whatever it is you do, just be clear about it and have consistency about it. I think a lot of people are not consistent, they give up too easily for starters.

Janice Hostager:

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. The other thing I noticed, I used to have a design agency uh years and years ago, but I I would focus on branding with the to the point where we would develop a a logo for them and and website and that sort of thing. And a lot of times I get pushback when I would say you know, l let's look at your core. What what are your what what are your reasons for being in business? And a lot of all of those things. Do you feel like sometimes people miss that part of it, the core?

Deevo Tindall:

Different strokes for different folks. I think that there are there is a population in small business that has gone overboard about sort of uh the more woo-woo stuff. But I think generally, by and large, most people don't put branding and personal development in the same bucket. And they don't see sort of because it's a bit existential. I was just having this conversation with a men's coach this morning, because working on yourself can be construed as maybe vain, or we weren't taught about the importance of self-help, self-work. Um, it can be, it can sort of get a bad rap, and it sometimes comes across as a bit woo-woo and existential, and and people aren't really making the connection between I'm selling widgets, why do I need to work on my shadows over here? But what they're missing is that the individual that they are is going to be imbued and carried into the business that they run. And that might be, that might be outputted in their scarcity, that might be output in their perfectionism, that might be outputted in their annoyance with dealing with customer complaints, whatever it is. But if you were to unpack just those three elements that I just talked about and go back to sort of like their psychological, neurological meaning behind them, you would see that something about their personal development, something that happened in their story, whether it was trauma, whether it was parenting, whether a divorce, whatever it is, affects their view of how they operate in the world. And how you operate in the world, especially if you're an entrepreneur or a solopreneur, is going to be how you run your business. So it's really imperative to sort of understand sort of like your shadow side, as Carl Jung would say. Like, how do I perceive the world? How do what do I believe about the world? What are my philosophies? Do I inherently believe that people are good? Am I here to serve or am I here to only make money? Am I here to take over the world? Like none of those are wrong answers, but it's really important to understand what those philosophies that you stand for are, so that when you carry them into your business, you're kind of understanding where they came from, but also what the output might look like. Does that make sense?

Janice Hostager:

It does. That's not quite the question I was asking. I was asking.

Deevo Tindall:

Oh, sorry, I went extensive on you.

Speaker 2:

Sorry, let me rephrase.

Janice Hostager:

However, that that is that would be a question I would have for a personal brand, because we do bring a lot of ourselves to our brand. But I I just mean in terms of mission and vision. I do feel like before somebody works on their brand, did they really need to know their their raison d'être for their business, not necessarily for themselves, but their mission and vision for the business itself?

Deevo Tindall:

Well, yeah, the first answer still applies to this question then. But yeah, absolutely. I mean, you can call it a mission, you can call it my mantra, you can call it my my genesite quoi, you can call it whatever you want it to call it, but having some clarity on what you do, who you do it for, why you do it, what's the problem you want to solve, what's the value proposition that you're bringing to the table, and some clarity around why would you give me money for my zone of genius? What's that energy exchange going to look like for me? Because most people just care about like what's in it for me, man. So like you can talk as blue in your face as you are, but if I don't see any value that I'm going to get from my my resource exchange by handing you my money, then and and that comes from you, you called it your mission, you called it your values, all those things. That comes from doing that ex I call that existential work. That's sort of like spirit work, that's soul work, that's like foundation work. Yeah.

Janice Hostager:

Gotcha. Okay. Okay. So you focus a lot on storytelling. And in fact, um, on your website, you say the stories we tell are the brands we build. What's your own personal story? And how does how does that connect?

Deevo Tindall:

Well, I have a lot of different crossroads. I I'm one of 12 children, so that undoubtedly shaped, you know, sort of how my view of the world is. Um I come from a quite disruptive uh parenting background. My father was quite abusive, and so of course that sort of shapes into my narrative. Um, in terms of my journey, I'm I'm a single father, so I've raised my kids since they were five and two, respectively, by myself. So that shaped who I am. Uh, I'm a college athlete. Um I love I've basically been involved in sports and coaching for most of my life, as well as photography. Um, I own a photography studio, and that photography studio sort of ran its course in terms of what I wanted to continue doing with my life, and it moved me into this pivot of branding for people. So I started first creating content for companies, and then I realized in addition to the content, they didn't really understand their story. Like they had no idea sort of the meaning of why they were even in business, or they didn't know how to show up on social media, and so the more you sort of break that down, the more you realize nobody really understands their true story. So I got into this idea of helping people tell their story because stories are what connect us. You know, you and I are gonna connect on some emotional level based upon some story you share with me. I'm gonna find resonance or some commonality in something you said. I'd be like, holy shit, and Janice and I are like, we have the same story right here. And so that's how people connect. And so if you can find a way to do that in your business, and especially now with social media, I mean, you have access to eight billion people on the world to tell your story to make some sort of a connection with them in order to offer your service and offer your value. And so, yeah, storytelling is literally at the centerpiece of everything we are as humans.

Janice Hostager:

Hmm. And for the business owner who says, but my story's not very interesting, what would you say?

Deevo Tindall:

Everybody has something in their story. You've got to unpack it. I think that's probably some sort of scarcity model that they're operating from. Everybody has something that they can talk about. It doesn't have to be, I don't think every story has to be fireworks and sort of like crazy cinematic storyline, but something in your story about your product, even if it's just a simple of why did you start building fairy wands and selling them on Etsy? Well, because there's business owners like Devo who like to buy fairy wands and send them to every one of his clients because he always says to them, if you had a magic wand, what would you create if you had no inhibitions, no impediments, no blockades? Well, I buy hundreds of these every year. So if your story is like, I just found this one dude who really wanted this custom fairy wand. And so I literally can carve this thing out of wrought iron for him and I send it to him, and he buys 150 of them every single year. Well, that's your story, man. Somebody's gonna hear that be like, holy shit, Janice can make me custom fairy wands. Well, I'm gonna call that dude. So that's your story. Like, you just have to find what is the reason of your existence. Why are you doing what you're doing? If you're solving somebody's problem, somehow, some way, you had an epiphany or you had an idea or you had an inspiration or uh you got struck by lightning. Something sort of led you into that space to have this solution that you want us to buy from you. So tell me that freaking story, man.

Janice Hostager:

Yeah. Okay.

Deevo Tindall:

There you go. I'm excitable. That's my story.

Janice Hostager:

Well, you know, and and I think sometimes I personally kind of struggle with with stories because not because I don't have them, it's because I think, oh, it's just not all that, you know, exceptional. It's not gonna stand out from all the other people out there, you know. But sometimes I think it it's like you you spoke very personally about things that you've been through in your life. And sometimes it's very hard to pull that information out, I think, and talk about that, like things that are really your drivers of why you do what you do.

Speaker 2:

It's not as hard as you think. Let's play a little game. What do you sell?

Janice Hostager:

Okay.

Speaker 2:

What do you sell?

Janice Hostager:

What do I sell?

Speaker 2:

Yeah. How do you make money?

Janice Hostager:

Uh I work with small business owners to help them with their marketing, their marketing strategy.

Speaker 2:

Okay. Why do you do this?

Janice Hostager:

Um I do this because first of all, I'm a marketing geek. I just love it. I for whatever reason. I love the intersection between creativity and psychology. And I do this also because I grew up in a small business family where I saw my dad struggle and I always felt like I wanted to help him in some level. And I think that's why I went into marketing.

Deevo Tindall:

So the people that you help, is there a specific type of individual that you're helping?

Janice Hostager:

Yes, small business owners that are uh solopreneurs service-based.

Deevo Tindall:

And service-based in any particular industry or industry agnostic?

Janice Hostager:

Industry agnostic.

Deevo Tindall:

And how long have you been doing this?

Janice Hostager:

In some way, shape, or form since I graduated from college, so more than 30 years.

Deevo Tindall:

And you make money doing this?

Janice Hostager:

I do.

Deevo Tindall:

And you change people's lives.

Janice Hostager:

I hope so.

Deevo Tindall:

You have case studies to support the differences you've made in the clients you've worked with?

Janice Hostager:

I do.

Deevo Tindall:

Do they come back to you and say, Janice, I made X dollars last week, I did this last week, I solved this problem last week, thanks to you?

Janice Hostager:

Yes, they have.

Deevo Tindall:

Okay. So while your story may seem benign to you, it's not benign to them, and it's not benign to anybody else who needs your help. And so you have an inspiration from some sort of trauma or tragedy that you had as a child where you saw your father was unable to provide at the level of provisions that he thought he needed to provide as a man, especially in those days. And so you felt sorry for that and you made a promise to yourself that because of this situation, I will never be in that situation, first of all. And secondly, I'm gonna make it my life mission to find business owners who could potentially have similarities or crossovers to the same experience that I had as a child because of my father. And I'm going to be that salve for them so that they have tools at their disposal to build something better so that they don't have to feel like my father did. So there's your story right there. In a nutshell, there are hundreds of people just like you. I had a horrible situation with my father, so that really resonates with me. So somebody out there is going to hear that story and be inspired because I've got goosebumps hearing it. This woman has made it her life mission to help individuals who had scarce resources at their disposal. And she has made it her life mission to reverse that for any number of people because she does not want them to experience the bullshit and scarcity and anger and sadness that she saw her father experiencing. There's your story, girlfriend. And that is a story that people will hear and be like, flip, that's exactly what I heard. That's what I went through, or I need that. I'm curious, how exactly do you do that? And so there's your baseline, and that's where you start. I'm not saying you tell a sob story every time. We don't have to show up as well as me, but you're basically in a nutshell recreating a traumatic situation that you saw as a child, and you've made it your mantra to sort of predispose yourself to people who so they don't suffer from that. So somewhere in that storyline, you're solving a problem for people who need that, and that is your story. And I don't find that to be very boring or benign at all.

Janice Hostager:

Hmm. That's very good. Thank you. Yeah. And actually, until I was speaking it out loud, I didn't, you know, I understood my background, but I didn't realize that that's exactly the same person I'm looking for. That's very good.

Deevo Tindall:

You are a marketing geek who has a lifelong passion for helping other people, and you do work at the intersection of psychology and creativity so that people could understand their own wounds and capitalize on that and build upon that so they can run a better, softer, better life, better business, yada yada, yada.

Janice Hostager:

Wow. Okay. Thank you.

Deevo Tindall:

That's messaging.

Janice Hostager:

Yes, yes, it is.

Deevo Tindall:

A nd that is what it is.

Janice Hostager:

You can do it very, very well. So uh let's change course here a little bit.

Deevo Tindall:

Let me pause you for a second. What you just did is tell a story.

Janice Hostager:

Yes. Yeah. And and I I get it, you know. I I I can tell a story. I think it took me a long time to to pull that story out. Um it took me an actually a number of years to really understand, to really do do a deep dive and understand why I did what I did. I I know you're talking about doing woo-woo stuff. And and that part of it was my quest to understand my own personal brand. It's like, why am I here? Why am I doing this? You know, why do I keep going back to the same thing? But um, yeah, I think you're right. There's so much, there's so many layers in our life that we probably need to peel back to really understand why we do what we do.

Deevo Tindall:

If you don't understand why you hate dealing with finances or you hate doing payroll, or you hate dealing with human resource issues, if you don't understand why you keep hitting the same financial ceiling, if you don't understand why you spend hours and hours working 16-hour days and you're still hitting the same baseline you hit yesterday and the year before, the year before that, if you don't understand those things, it behooves you to sort of unpack who you are as an individual. Who am I as a human? Where did those beliefs, where did those ideas, where did those lessons, whatever it is that I believe yours is with your father, where did they come from? And are they serving me right now? Because if they're not serving me, how can I address them so that they can serve me so I can show up and optimize? Because I believe running a business, running our life are basically in the same channel of things. And it behooves us, the reason we are here is to become better versions of ourselves in every single moment. And that's how we do that. We unpack who we are so that we can see the scars and the inputs that are bad, outdated programming, and let's retool them. You said you're a marketing geek. Let's fix those. What are the creative ways that we can tweak those things for a stronger, more maximal output?

Janice Hostager:

Hmm. So good. So good. So where should a small business owner start if they feel like their brand is just like a hot mess? They don't know where to start.

Deevo Tindall:

Some sort of discovery, whether it's inherently doing them themselves. I mean, we've got massive amounts of technology. You can use AI if you're so inclined to do that and set up some basic rubrics to sort of get some clarity and foundation on what it is this great, juicy, audacious idea that you have is, right? And being able to get that on paper, right? Somehow spell out whatever it is that I hope to build. I I think you have to have a foundation, right? Like it it's like building a home. If you've ever built a home, you know, you didn't start putting the roof and artwork up and just laying it on the dirt. You built a foundation. You established some sort of a foothold that you can build upon, right? And so um, not to be too metaphorical, like you have to understand what that foundation is. And at the core of your foundation is sort of the basic elements. What am I doing? Why am I doing it? Who am I serving? What problem am I solving? How am I uniquely doing it? And then how can I craft this message so the people that I want to sell this solution to can clearly understand exactly what it is I'm bringing to the table. And then that's so that's your messaging, that is your brand. And then you start the scaffolding and you just sort of building on the foundation one after the next. And I mean, there's business 101 principles that everybody needs to apply for. I'm not going to go into that, but before you even get into all the nuts and bolts of actually marketing your business or trying to sell a service, you need to make sure that what you have has a foundation, like it's something that you can build, right? Instead of just like this crazy idea. I always ask people, and you could ask this uh question, you can sort of put it this way if I charged you with doing whatever it is that you want to do for the rest of your life for free, you wouldn't be paid for it. But you would and you would have to serve somebody and solve a problem, what would that be? What would you do if you? Never got paid for the rest of your life, you had to solve a problem, you enjoyed doing it, but you never got paid for it. What would it be? And there's your starting point. What would that be? I who knows. It it might be sailing boats in the Caribbean for somebody. It might be serving as a social social servant for helping people. I don't know. Like there's different things, whatever that might be. But once you have that, then you can start to figure out how to monetize that and revenue, make revenue from that or serve, or whatever it is that you're is sort of like motivates you, right? And then but even that, you still have to have a story to it. That what is your story for that piece that I just asked you about?

Janice Hostager:

Yeah. Yeah. I agree.

Deevo Tindall:

Coke has a story. Nike has a story. It's not just for personal brands. Everybody has a story.

Janice Hostager:

Yeah. I think what I see a lot is maybe they have a career. Maybe let's say they're a bookkeeper and so they decide they want to launch on their own and go out and start their own bookkeeping business. The last thing they're thinking about is a personal brand. They may think about a logo or some colors, but is there something that are like non-negotiables? Now we just talked about the the story, of course, but that uh every brand needs before they start pouring energy into that content or ads? Like how how does one go back and kind of reverse what they just did? Or maybe then we should reverse it?

Deevo Tindall:

So they're already in business and they've already started something, but they're not getting any success. Is that sort of the story where-

Janice Hostager:

They're they're just coming across as a little bit vanilla?

Deevo Tindall:

Yeah. I mean it the same thing what I just said. You've you've got to re- you've got to go back to the the the drawing boards and answer the core elements of what your brand story is. And those core elements are what do you do, what problem do you solve, how do I view the world, what are my beliefs and philosophies and how I'm gonna show up, and what is my unique value proposition that I'm going to uniquely do for anyone else, for everyone I'm serving. And and when you can answer those, then the next phase is putting words and meaning to them. So whether it's your website, whether it's your social media, you've got to start figuring out a way to connect with people and build relationships in order to share this story that you just put the foundation to. Does that make sense? And and what happens, the people that you're talking about is they're showing up at these networking events. I was at one yesterday, and like I can't even tell you. I'm and I and I work the room, like I just go around and like I don't give two shits about these places. I just show up as me because I'm just sort of like loud and irrelevant obnoxious, and I just like to beat people. And so I just got to walk around and barge in and introduce myself to people. And when you ask them what they do or what it is that they're loving right now about their life, or hey, what's I mean, I try it tonight. Go some stranger you've never met before, even your husband or your sister or whomever, and just be like, hey, what is one great thing that happened to you today, or what are you really supercharged about? And people are gonna be like, uh uh um uh and then then ask them what they do. Like, what are you what's your what's your superpower? What do you what are you doing for the and most people can't even describe that? And so the brand is that if you can't tell me in 10 seconds or less, not 30, if you cannot tell me in 10 seconds or less what exactly your superpower is and what you're doing to present that to humanity, then you've got to do some work on that. Like what at the end of the day, what's the problem you solve? At the end of the day, what is the problem you solve? Why would I give you my time, attention, and money? Because I can just swipe and thumb or whatever it is you do on your phone to anybody else doing the exact same damn thing. And I want to know why I would buy from you. I want to know what it is about Janice that makes me want to connect with Janice. Is it her pretty art that she likes or say does she sell? Is it her story about her father? What is it? There's something about you that's gonna make me connect and trust you, and that's how I start doing business with you.

Janice Hostager:

These are all simple but not easy, I think.

Deevo Tindall:

Well, I mean, nothing worth doing in life is easy, but worth doing well. Um, I don't think they're terribly complicated. I think it's gonna take some diligence to sit down and really ask the hard questions of yourself, or find somebody you don't need to hire me for thousands of dollars. Go speak to somebody really close to you and give them a list of questions that they're gonna ask you, and then you're gonna record and answer them, or get on a Zoom and make your own questions and be like, okay, what exactly do I solve today in my business? Well, I love bumblebees and I think that the honey extraction process is too complicated. So I built this homemade honey making machine to back where I was able to drill in a spout and I heat the spout because in the winter the honey doesn't flow, but I want to heat the spout so that the honey does flow. And I was like, wow, I could deliver honey to people in the middle of the wintertime when they can't get honey over here wherever I live. So it's like, how do you sort of figure that out? And then you start to just keep adding the fleshy bits to it, and before you know it, you have your whole brand story. So it's not, I wouldn't say it's not, it's not simple, but it's gonna take some time. Yeah. Put some love into it.

Janice Hostager:

Are there some quick wins that can make a brand feel like a little more polished?

Deevo Tindall:

Um, consistency, clarity, having some sort of a website. Don't just throw something up and call it a day. Have somebody else look at your website. I did a website audit for a client recently, and it was like, out of the 1200 characters that she had on the website, 612 of the words were misspelled. I was like, bro, did you did you do spell check on this? At any point, did you think I should probably have my mom just at least read the website? Like, call your mom and be like, mom, could you read my website? Tell me if there's some typos on here. I mean, yeah, like brand is a the- brand is aesthetic. I don't want you to think that branding is all like all the woo existential stuff. That's part of it. But in my opinion, branding is sort of a holistic circle. Like there's branding is every single touch point on the customer journey, right? And some of that is woo-woo, and some of that is pragmatic, and some of that is just using the damn spell check and getting someone to proofread your work. Yeah, dress the part, man. If you're gonna go to a networking event, maybe pull take off the sweatpants and put on a button down and a pair of slacks or some jeans or something. Like, don't just roll in like you're hobo-joe from under the bridge. Like, I'm probably not gonna buy from you if unless you're selling me to how to become a hobo. Like, I need to have some reason to come up and otherwise I'll be like, I'm gonna have a few more whiskies before I talk to that cat.

Janice Hostager:

Oh, love it. So, what happens with the intersection of that ideal customer and and your brand? How does the brand shift when entrepreneurs get super clear on their on their ICA, their ideal customer avatar?

Deevo Tindall:

You connect with the right people. You connect with the people who fill you up at the end of the day, and you don't go home wanting to cut your wrist after having to work with the most annoying people on the planet. You find people who need your service.

Janice Hostager:

Because they're not your story.

Deevo Tindall:

You're not you're not just pimping yourself out all day long. People are starting to hear about you, and word of mouth spreads, and like Janice is like, man, I just spoke to that guy Deevo, and he literally, in one hour, completely clarified my my 10-second pitch. Like, you got to talk to him. And what it does is it just it it capitulates and it ripples, and like you suddenly start filling in the flow. Like, that's the thing. Like, we spend we spend these lives feeling like we have to like you ever seen the old Dunkin' Donuts commercial where probably roughly in the same age category where the dude would roll up at five or four o'clock in the morning and he was like a mustache little tubby guy, and he'd be like, Time to make the donuts. And he just hated his job, but he had to make the donuts every single morning. Like, bro, you don't have to live that life. Like, you could actually find a flow state where you're attracting the right kind of people and doing the things that really matter to the world and making an actual difference. And you can come home and look in the self in the mirror and be like, wow, I kind of like that dude. Because you're doing stuff that fills you up because your brand is clear, your messaging is clear, people are hearing it, and they're like, wow, I didn't even know I needed that. So, and that doesn't happen overnight. Like, it's you don't just fix your brand and be suddenly like, you know, bell of the ball. Like, there's all sorts of other things that go into running a business. You know that. You've been doing this for how many years? But the brand is the foundation. And once you have that down, it just makes everything easier. It allows you to talk about the things you love easier. And people pick up on energy, man. If I if I showed up on your podcast like this, and I was just like, yeah, sure, Janice, whatever, you know. No, man, I'm like, this is who I am. If you met me in person, this is who I am. And some people are like, whoa, that's a lot, Deevo. I don't know. But some people are like, wow, I really like that dude. I can really kind of work with that guy. So that's your brand. Like, be in be in love with what you're doing.

Janice Hostager:

Uh, I I love that answer. I mean, I think there's a lot of times that when we, especially when we're starting a business, we feel like we we maybe will we'll look at somebody else that's doing something similar to what we're doing, and we sort of try and mimic them for a bit, just because we're uncomfortable with it all and they're they're successful. So we kind of can lose ourselves in that. And I see this quite a bit with with customers or clients, because they don't feel comfortable portraying who they really are because they think it's going to repel some people. But the reality is that that's a good thing because you want to repel the people that you don't want to work with, right? Is that what you're kind of saying?

Deevo Tindall:

100%. You just reverse engineered that. If if you're repelling people, that means either you're being a dick, but if you're not being a dick and you're just showing up as your genuine, genuine, kind, loving self, and people are repelled by that, those are not your people. Do yourself a favor and pat yourself on the back. But if you are showing disingenuous and you're showing up as somebody that you're not, that's only a get that's a game, man. You're wearing an imposter suit and you cannot carry that forever. At some point, the leaks are gonna come out, and the leaks are gonna generally start with you first, and you're gonna get burnt out and you're gonna be tired of holding up this lie, and you're just gonna finally be like, I'm done, I'm out. So yeah, find your zone of genius, whatever that is, and figure out a way to tell that story, share that. I think people always, you know, I know we got to make money, but I I feel I do genuinely believe in my heart of hearts that the the reason we are here as humans is to experience life and to be part of a community. And running businesses is part of that community. You're providing a service that's helping someone in some way, shape, or form become a better version of themselves, whether it's the grocery carts you sell or the advertising that you do or the marketing genius that you apply, whatever it is, you're helping somebody in some way, shape, or form. And if you can figure out how to help somebody and get paid for it, you just got to buy one, get one free of life. And that's the thing that's going to make you feel good and have more have more success.

Janice Hostager:

Awesome. The thing with marketing, if if you're do anything in marketing for you know half an hour, you would realize that things change at a pretty rapid pace. But I feel like branding is branding. Or do you feel like AI is kind of influencing branding to some extent?

Deevo Tindall:

Well, it's a great question. I think like anything, there are gonna be the the groups of people that are going to capitalize on how to maximize the efficiency out of AI and make money doing it. But I also think there's always going to be a group of people that would rather have the human touch of things, would rather let somebody else do that for them, would rather pay someone else to do that for them. There's always gonna be sort of those those two camps, right? And there's gonna be variability in between them, right? And so it's our job as business owners and marketers to sort of find which of those camps can we utilize the most efficiently, right? So I do think that there are trends that are gonna come on and change the way we do business. For example, content creation, and I'll just speak for myself, it's become much easier with me and my team to create content because we're A, we're very organized, but B, we have a lot of technology at our disposal that we didn't even have a year ago to create content, right? And so, so just from that standpoint alone, branding is is changing and evolving because the way we consume information is changing and evolving, right? And so, as branding and and and founders and owners of our business, it behooves us to sort of stay abreast of what's going on. I don't mean you have to shift everything overnight just to be trendy, but you do sort of have to understand what's working in the marketplace and what's not working in the marketplace and figure out a way to capitalize on that, still using your zone of genius without sacrificing whatever it is that you don't want to sacrifice about yourself. It's like my mom, you know, she's like, I'm never gonna use cell phones. And I'm like, mom, let me give you a cell phone, let me show you what you can do. I'm in Charlotte, you're out in California, we can get on the phone and talk and let me show you. And guess what? You can even put my face on it. And now she still doesn't know how to hold a phone. She's like this when she talks to me. I'm like, mom, back the phone up, but she can still connect with me. And she's she still found a way to sort of embrace whatever tools were at her disposal. So I think, you know, there's two ways of looking at it. You can be like my mom and be like, I'm never gonna use a cell phone and then eventually embrace it, or you can be like the people who are looking at technology and be like, how can I use AI? How can I use all these things that are coming out and use them in my business to optimize my efficiencies? And so that's, for example, that's how I use AI. We use it for content creation, we use it for uh running data checks on stuff that we're using psychometrics on. Like, for example, if I was working with you, I'd do a full case study on anybody in your market that would potentially be a competitor of yours, and not necessarily to look at them as competition, but what are they doing that's working for them? And so that we can take a look at what you're doing and what's not working for you, and how can we now maximize that? And they might just have other tools at their disposal. So I we've adopted AI to sort of integrate into our research model. So yeah, like I think it's gonna change, but what hasn't changed? How long you've been in business? How long you've been in business?

Janice Hostager:

That's about over 30 years.

Deevo Tindall:

So I've been in business since 2010, full-time as an entrepreneur. I didn't even have a cell phone in 2010. We didn't have social media in 2010, and I don't even think I was using a website in 2010. So, you know, we I used to advertise in magazines. I like us to pay thousands of dollars to have a little small, you know, two by two inch square advertising pack in in Carolina magazine. And like everything has changed. And so again, as business owners, you just got to be able to grow with the technology and use it to your advantage. Don't be don't perish from it. Don't be scared of it.

Janice Hostager:

Right, right. Yeah. Well, and I think that's it. I think the the you know, your own personal brand or your brand, your business brand, it does not probably change from year to year, but how it's manifested, how it's communicated definitely changes.

Deevo Tindall:

That's a brilliant point. How is it received? And I think that's another really cool point you should draw on, if we can, for a second. A lot of times we think when running our business, we're we're only telling it from our point of view. It's really important to understand what's our customer's perception of our point of view. And how do we speak their language to them so that they can, to your point, they can receive the information more optimally. If I'm always just talking about how great I am and all the things I want, and I'm always just throwing sales at you, it's gonna really piss a few people off. But if I start talking to you in a one-to-one conversation about what are the things that you're struggling with most right now and how can I support that in some way, shape, or form with what I do, it completely changes the conversation. Now I'm asking you, what is it that you need that I can help you become a better version of yourself today, tomorrow, and the day after? And instead of being like, hey, I've got this really cool Zoom, just throw those at you, you gotta buy it from me. It's buy one given free day, 20% off. You know, it's gonna make you a millionaire in seven days. I don't even know what you're gonna say, but I'm not gonna buy that from you. So, you know, you just have to figure out what works for you and then like use those to your advantage.

Janice Hostager:

Love it. Love it. Well, so many good things today. Where can listeners go to find out more about you or work with you?

Deevo Tindall:

Uh just go to the website. I mean, that's sort of the starting point for everything, the brandstoryteller.com. If you just go right there, um you can go to my podcast if you want to be a guest, Janice. You're more than welcome. I'd love to have you on and we can continue talking uh part two of this rabbit hole. Um yeah, but there's the rest that's probably the best. I'm all over social media, LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook. Just look up Deevo. There's not too many Deevo, the brand storytellers out in the world. I got the market on that one.

Janice Hostager:

That's awesome. So we'll put the links in the show notes as well. So thank you so much, Debo. I sure appreciated our our talk today, and I learned a lot too. So win-win. So I appreciate it.

Deevo Tindall:

I hope that was I hope that was great for everyone else too. Thank you for having the having me on the show. I appreciate it.

Janice Hostager:

Deevo dropped so many great gems today. So for more information about anything we talked about, visit myweeklymarketing.com forward slash one forty four. Thank you so much for listening. I will see you next time. Bye for now.

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Janice Hostager

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