S-6 E-4 - My Brand

We are all in business for ourselves.  We are our brand.  We need to put the best foot forward.  On this episode we talk about Ashton starting a business and making sure he is presenting his best self. 

Transcript

Dad: 0:00

My question to, to, to the listener and, and you guys are on the table, what does this have to do with adulting? Why does running a successful business, why does it have to do with adulting or does it at all?

Ashton: 0:11

My answer to that question is you are your business regardless if you're running a business or not.

Dad: 0:18

Even if I'm starting a business, I'm starting a business, not a brand. Yeah. But you can say brand now and Gideon follows it. Yeah, right at 16 in high school, he knows what a brand is. He knows what an image is. Yeah, he knows who he is. That is why I thought this is such a critical part of adulting now, and the reason why this one's unique is because this wouldn't applied if we were doing this podcast 30 years ago.

Ashton: 0:50

So everything you say from here on out is on the record. Perfect. And can and will be used against you or for you in a court of law. I should. You choose to scratch this. Off the record, I say no.

Dad: 1:05

Good luck. Okay, thanks. I appreciate that. I got you Anytime. Welcome to Adulting Decrypted, where we prepare young adults, be independent powerhouses for life. Back. I, I'm joined with Ashton. Oh. What's up?

Gideon: 1:21

And my name is Allen Gideon Allen.

Ashton: 1:26

So

Dad: 1:26

the first thing about running a success, have you ever tried to run a

Gideon: 1:29

successful business and had two podcast

Dad: 1:31

hosts that are just pissing

Ashton: 1:32

me off? No, I can't say that I do, I can't say that. I mean, my, I love my podcast hosts. I love, I love, love all. Have you, dad, have you there are, there are times you, there are times that I am tested

Gideon: 1:45

to my patients with that.

Dad: 1:46

Tested to your patients. Test. My patients are tested based on situations that are happening around the table. I

Ashton: 1:53

can't, I, I can't imagine the scenario. Do you have an example or, well, let's just say there was this

Dad: 2:00

one time when, uh, we tried to start an episode and somebody started giving me my Miranda rights. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. There was another time that somebody just kept texting some girl. Oh,

Ashton: 2:11

I don't know. Who do? I don't know. Yeah, I don't know who do that. He can't even talk now cuz he's so like,

Dad: 2:17

Focused on his

Ashton: 2:18

last text with her. I'll, I'll lie on the, it was me. I did, I was texting. My bad. Yep.

2:25

Okay.

Gideon: 2:25

Oh, jeez. Ashton's acuity. Sorry.

Dad: 2:29

All right, so bus. You know, it's in interesting though that, you know, with this banter set aside that running a business is hard. I don't, I don't know if you guys are experiencing the same thing with trying to grow adulting, decrypted. Get in, you run a lawn care company. How's that growing? That business?

Gideon: 2:50

Always super exciting and a pain cuz of this stupid rain

Dad: 2:55

Right. That's actually execution. Right. But what, yeah, execution is tough for sure. But what about growing it? Well,

Gideon: 3:04

I mean, yeah, I mean, I just gotta work on it. You know,

Dad: 3:10

you passed out flyers. How many flyers did you hand out?

Gideon: 3:13

I handed out just like just under, probably like 60.

Dad: 3:18

And what's the, what's been the take rate or the results?

Gideon: 3:22

Uh, nothing yet really. One, one little tug.

Dad: 3:28

Nice. Yeah. So nice. It can be hard. Right. In Ashton, the, the reason why I thought it'd be fun to talk about this one is we're doing adulting decrypted, but with you graduating college and starting your own career path, you're gonna be an entrepreneur yep. But what, what percentage of your income will come from a day job and what percentage will become like 10 99 side hustle? and really, you can't call it side hustle. We have to call it your main job. Yeah,

Ashton: 3:56

no, I, I mean, off of technicality. I think day job will cover about 20%. Okay. Like as, as the, as it stands now that that current day job would be in the business. Right.

Dad: 4:10

So it's in the industry. Yeah. But it would be, you'd be constrained to their time and, and hours. Yep. However, you could still be labeled as a gig economy because it was not a full-time. Right. Still a gig. Yeah, it's still a gig. Yeah. So it's really a business. Right. There, there's, you know, if we were to sit down around a table and I took five business guys, do you think I'd get the same answer from each one of them of what it takes to run a successful business? No.

Ashton: 4:39

No, I don't think you would. I also, no, I think, I think you'd probably get a lot of variations on the same theme, but then I'll tell it to you in a different way.

Dad: 4:47

Yeah, I think you're right. As a matter of fact, I know you're right. So I just tried to narrow it down to like three things that, that were. Pretty critical for our success. To grow a successful business, you need to have clear vision and a strategy is the first thing I came up with, probably leaning a lot towards our goal podcast, right? So a clear vision and a strategy, clear vision is if it's one guy, it's a one person, business, and you're gonna go clean windows. Seems like a pretty straightforward business, doesn't it? Yep. I mean, is that fair with your lawn mowing business?

Gideon: 5:23

Yep. Uh, it's pretty

Dad: 5:25

straightforward. Yeah. So clear vision is what I'm gonna go mow lawns,

Gideon: 5:30

making stacks

Ashton: 5:33

on stacks money. Yeah. Yep. I think so. So clear vision and strategy are the same thing? No. A

Dad: 5:41

clear vision of of what you want to deliver and then a strategy on how you're gonna deliver it or onboard customers. Gotcha. Was the only way I distinguish those two. But those are both step one. Uh, yeah, that's clear vision and a strategy for that vision, so, gotcha. Because the reason why I honestly believe Gideon's business is only a certain size is because he has a clear vision of what he does. People go, what do you do, Gideon? I'm old loans. Right. Nice. Yeah. But, but he doesn't have a real strategy on how he can grow a business. Right. He doesn't have a, even a hook that says, oh, I've got a clear vision and here's my strategy, to grow it. I put'em together only for ease of conversation. Sure. But it can be a sales strategy, it can be a clear vision of where you wanna take your company. It can be based on how much money you need to make, you know, this real clear vision and a strategy to get there.

Ashton: 6:36

Yeah, it's, I'm thinking about it cuz. Like we started talking about is the percentage of incomes is of entrepreneurship, day job, all that stuff. And the entrepreneurship is the thing that I'm trying to figure out right now because, having that as thing number one would be great. And it's interesting because. Thinking of this, the work and the, the thought I've put in the past few days, I have a lot of strategy ideas, but the vision, like the end of it all, it's not very clear. Aside from wanting to be able to make a sustainable living off of music itself like that, is, is that clear enough of a vision? Does that count? I think

Dad: 7:15

that's falls more in line with your, your goal. Right. Okay. But, but, you know, but, but. I like to think of what Stephen Covey calls end of mind. End in mind. You know, what is enough? What is sustainable? Okay, yeah. What does that really look like, right? I. But the strategy of how you're gonna get there, how much of that's gonna be writing for movies, how much is that gonna be jingles? How much of that Right. You know, I'm making stuff up here, I don't know. Hints. Sure. You know, I, I'm making stuff up here. Cause I don't know exactly what that dynamic, I think that's a, a changing and developing based on, you're like, oh, I gotta try this strategy. My clear vision's still there. I know what I want in the end. I know I need to make$150,000 a year and then I need to grow that income by 20% or a hundred percent a year in order to keep up with the times. But the strategy, I think is kind of alive and dynamic. Yep, that makes sense. So like right now you're going, Hey, my strategy is work part-time at a, at a high school doing this, I'm gonna have this, I'm gonna strive to have five students that I'm doing independent. What do you call it? Tutoring classes. Private lessons. Yeah, private lessons, yeah. And I'm gonna have this percentage come from writing content for other people that they're gonna pay me for. Yeah. And then now that you've got this goal, the ones already you, you've already solidified where to find the gig, the job that pays you 20% or 30% of that. Now how do you go find enough students? How do you find five or 10 students and how do you find the right. Groups to write for. Those are all strategies that feed into that vision, and those are the ones like we've talked about in goal setting and business development. You're gonna go out there and try, you're gonna fail and you're gonna win. Yeah. And you look at the ones you won and say, okay, how did I get that? You look at the long you won, say, how did I get them? How do I duplicate that success? How do I repeat that success? I, I appreciate that it, with adulting decrypted with the podcast, we struggle sometimes with CL clear vision because we all see it a little bit different. Yeah. There's times that we're like, oh, this is a fun hobby to do on a Thursday night. Other times you see it going, well, we could go do a live show at a school. Well, we don't know how to do that. We've never tried that strategy. How would we put that in play? How would we build that? What does that look like? We all just stop. Yeah. Because we don't have a clear vision. We don't have, we never spent the time to muddle through and un dig and uncover.

Ashton: 9:53

The other thing, the other thing that I think of is, that we did an episode, with Clint forever ago. Mm-hmm. The et I think that's probably just a really good breakdown of the vision aspect as well. I don't think we talked as much about the, strategy in that episode. Yeah. But it was more of in, in a short synopsis. So listeners, if you wanna go check it out. but basically he, he just talks about how in the movie ET by Steven Spielberg, they spent years in hundreds and hundreds of hours on different adaptations of how the alien would look, so that it would, end up as the memorable figure we know now. So,

Dad: 10:34

yeah. so when you, yeah, so, so you're absolutely right. They, we talked about vision, right? And the, the thousands of hours that they spent getting that right. Really all he's looking at that is the long term success of the movie. And, and how does that look and how does e et always act the same? You know, and consistently the other one is you look at the strategy and the, the strategy should include marketing, operational, finance, customer service, strategy, all those kind of things that are critical for business success. Sometimes that's the hardest work cuz you're like, what does that look like? Yeah. And then we've gotta step back and look at it and then work on it. So as you're thinking of clear vision and strategy, I think those go hand in hand, but they're pretty different. Yeah. the next one is strong leadership and effective management. Leadership. The way I like to look at is the why and the what, and sometimes the by when. So why? As a business owner, as the, as the leader, you come up with the why and the what, and like what does that mean? And by when? Do you guys understand what those three things? The why, the what, the, by when? Yeah. I think you got it.

Ashton: 11:51

An example perhaps to. To see if I get it. Yeah. Recently I was facilitating, I wrote a percussion arrangement at the Utah Percussion Studio, for a pro rock tune, and I wanted to get a, get a recording of it. What's the

Dad: 12:06

name of that? So everybody knows Hyperventilate

Ashton: 12:09

Hyperventilate, super Dope by Band Frost. Check it out. Wanted to get a recording of it, and so why was because I'm working on getting it published. What would be the recording of it, and, and getting it so we got like a high def, high quality, you know, all around sound. And then the by when was actually the hardest part to facilitate for me. Where it was just like in a leadership position of that because all, all of the, all of the, players in that ensemble were solid and they wanted to get a recording project, but it wasn't up to them to make sure it happened. Like, they're like, oh yeah, if it happened, we'll do it. So taking on the responsibility of like, okay, I want to get this done, so what do I have to make do to make sure this group of people or this project gets completed? I had to def define Yeah, the why, what, but then the when was, Organizing all those things and when's this final project gonna be completed and all that

Dad: 13:05

I like that because in that scenario, you actually were the leader, cuz you talked about the why. Why do I wanna record it? Well, it's my senior year. I've got access to all the tools I've got and I want to get it out to the world cuz it's kind of dope according. Quoting your wor words. It's dope. So that's your why. And then you knew what your what was, which is a final recording in a high quality environment that you would be proud to share. And then the by when is you knew it was time sensitive because the people who performed at live are all going out to start their life. Yeah. Right. And And you were so busy with college, you couldn't do it the last couple weeks, so you're like, crap, I gotta get this done the first two, three weeks of the summer at most. Yep. Or I lose everybody. So you knew your what and why by when. Yep. And then you really had to act like a leader. You had to motivate these people. Now how much did you pay these people to do it?

Ashton: 13:58

Nothing. Cuz they're amazing. Yeah. Just hugs, right?

Dad: 14:01

Love much band love, yeah, exactly. Go Utes. Yeah. Go use. But. But you had, so, so you motivated and you've gotta take some pleasure from the fact that you motivated and you inspired team members to come together to hit your why and your what. Yeah. And you actually got it done in the timeframe that you wanted to by your when. Yeah. Because you had to then deal with you also. Now were the manager because, so the leader does the why, the what? The when. The manager talks a lot about how. Yeah, we're gonna do it. Yep. And, and, and a lot of time on how, and the metrics is to hit the win, the Y's already been established. His goal is to hit the win. Yeah. Not when goal, but like when Yeah. With the w in there. When the h Oh yeah. The w n win is two. The e. Is only in one of anyways, nothing about that. But the H is the when, so they get the how and the when, so that they can get the win. Yeah. You liked that, didn't you get him? You're impressed. I mean, yeah, totally. It's a

Ashton: 15:10

total dad joke. You ever feel like you get frustrated with one of your fellow podcast shows? There again, go back to

Dad: 15:16

earlier conversation. All right, so the, when. Then, then you turn to the subject matter experts in this ca. They call'em Miz, right? In this case, who's the subject matter experts? They're the percussionists that played those instruments. Your marimba players, your what else was played there?

Ashton: 15:38

Oh, in that group? Yeah. Well, there's tons of keyboards, like you said, marimbas. There's Vibraphones, there's his xylophone. There's Glock and Spiel. There's s, right. There's a bunch of accessories. Right.

Dad: 15:48

So you could, so these guys are the subject matter experts? Yes. And really they have to deliver the performance. Yes. So you're like, they need to fit in the why. The what? The when. But they don't care about it. They don't set it right. The how and and the how and hitting the goal. They, they don't decide that that's not their job. Yeah, yeah. Theirs is to show up and play that instrument and to play it the best way they can so that you can hit your why. By why, by what? By when? Yeah. So really you need to have effective leader, which you were, and then a, and then an effective manager and the manager. A lot of times, and this is the role that, that we miss in our group. They're the ones that call up and say, Hey. Ashton, you missed this timeline. Hey Gideon, we need you here for this. The manager has to deal with that. How and by when. Yeah, and, and so what that does is when you're missing that componentry, it gets really hard to run a successful business because we're all subject matter experts, right? If I say Gideon, how does Gideon Allen adult? Well, you're the only one that knows that. Would that not make you a subject matter expert? I

Gideon: 17:06

would, I would be quite the expert.

Dad: 17:08

Yeah. Yeah. Because you're who? I'm, I'm Alan. That's right. You're Alan Gideon. Oh my gosh, Alan. But it wouldn't work. It wouldn't work if, if I said, okay, Gideon, how, how, what's it like to raise three boys? Torture. It's you, right? He's not

Ashton: 17:28

wrong.

Dad: 17:29

No, but you're not the subject matter expert on that. Nope. But you could still be a leader on it. You could still talk through what you would like to see when you're a dad or when you're, you know, raising a family, but you're not the subject matter expert. You can't set those goals up. You're not that leader yet for that scenario. So we're all subject matter experts. I'm the dad, Ashton's, the, the college graduate, g's, the high school senior. So we're all subject matter experts, but at different times, we're all trying to take this leadership and then manager role. And it's hard because we are a small business. We are trying to keep this friendly. It's not monetized, right? And so I have nothing to hang over your head. Hey Gideon, come out and record today and I'll give you a high five.

Ashton: 18:18

Sweet. I got you.

Dad: 18:21

Well done. Waiting not to leave him hanging. Makes sense, dad. Thanks. Yep. I shouldn't ask that question either. All right. Moving on. So clear vision and strategy, strong leadership and effective management, customer focused. And continued innovation customer focused. Are we customer

Ashton: 18:40

focused? Yes and no. I feel like we're talking, we're talking podcast now, right? Yeah. Yeah. I, I think so. I mean, it's, it's a little bit of both cuz one, we're, we're here. in this sense, dad, you are the subject matter expert and we're here discussing those things. So it's, it's two part, and now we've defined it as it's, it's for us and for the listener. So it's, it's both.

Dad: 19:05

Yeah, so I think we're customer focused. The problem is sometimes we don't get enough feedback from our customer, so shameless plug, reach out to us, My question to, to, to the listener and, and you guys are on the table, what does this have to do with adulting? Why does running a successful business, why does it have to do with adulting or does it at all?

Ashton: 21:19

My answer to that question is you are your business regardless if you're running a business or not.

Dad: 21:26

ask us

Ashton: 21:26

questions. I thought you, I thought you were going. Shame on you guys. Like, Hey, that's, I don't think

Dad: 21:30

that's gonna help. Yeah. I don't think that's the way we do it. It's never worked in our households when I've shamed somebody, they, they normally just get angry and distance themselves from the, the conversation. Shocker. My question to, to, to the listener and, and you guys are on the table, what does this have to do with adulting? Why does running a successful business, why does it have to do with adulting or does it at all?

Ashton: 21:55

My answer to that question is you are your business regardless if you're running a business or not. Like, the percussion studio at the One of the big things that we always talk about is brand and how every individual has a brand. So when we talk about it in the studio, it's like, what is the studio's brand? What does the studio stand for as studio members? How do we exemplify that brand? But then there's also been times where we've talked about it as what is you as an individual, your brand. So when you think of Apple as a brand, You think of, you know, probably sleek, creative designs, expensive products. When you think of Android, you think of more functional, more powerful. Maybe you, you know, you think, you think of Ford, you think of classic American trucks. You think of, you know, every brand means something. So when it comes to all this, this business stuff, As an adult, one, chances are high, especially in the world nowadays, that you run your own business. You are your own brand, or I'm using brand and business interchangeably in that sense, where it's like, yeah, you, you gotta know what you stand for. You not gotta know what you, you represent,

Dad: 23:07

Even if I'm starting a business, I'm starting a business, not a brand. Yeah. But you can say brand now and Gideon follows it. Yeah, right at 16 in high school, he knows what a brand is. He knows what an image is. Yeah, he knows who he is. That is why I thought this is such a critical part of adulting now, and the reason why this one's unique is because this wouldn't applied if we were doing this podcast 30 years ago.

Ashton: 23:40

I think,

Dad: 23:41

and I find that it. If you would've told me that was gonna be your answer when I was your age, I would've just been almost graduating college. I'd have been like, wait, wait. Back me up. We're our own brand. Yeah. What do you mean by that? I just go to work. I am, I'm, I'm an employee. Even if I'm starting a business, I'm starting a business, not a brand. Yeah. But you can say brand now and Gideon follows it. Yeah, right at 16 in high school, he knows what a brand is. He knows what an image is. Yeah, he knows who he is. That is why I thought this is such a critical part of adulting now, and the reason why this one's unique is because this wouldn't applied if we were doing this podcast 30 years ago. People would've looked at us and went, what are you talking about? I always believed when I was watching the internet come into fruition. Believe it or not, I was not born with a cell phone. I didn't get my first one until I was 27. So, You came out holding a cell phone, get in. It was pretty awkward. Yeah.

Ashton: 24:50

Like, like how does that, how does that work? Huh?

Dad: 24:53

It was not a thing right? When I was younger. What's that? Giggle?

Ashton: 24:57

No, nothing can ask mom about it. No. Move on. Please do not say, move on please.

Dad: 25:02

Okay. More than 22% of Gen Zs and 25% of millennials. Wanna have a side hustle as their main source of business. So if anybody did the, the thinking on that or the math on that, that's four 47% of that group wanna have side hustle Almost the majority. Yeah. 39% of all adults have a currently have a side hustle. So you're not wrong in the sense that you are your brand. Right. Your brand is you. Being able to understand what it means to have a successful business is critical to the population as a whole, like it never has been before. I wanted to point out is the continuous innovation. And there's no better time that that's apparent than right now. Currently, what worked on MySpace? Do you guys know what MySpace is? Yes. I throw it out. Gideon, do

Ashton: 26:05

you know? Do you not know what MySpace is? Oh my gosh. He doesn't know what MySpace is. No, I

Gideon: 26:10

know. Like I've heard of this so many times. It's that like when it's on the tip of your tongue.

Dad: 26:16

Oh yeah, yeah. It's like it's the 4runner to Facebook. It's no longer a thing. Yeah, yeah. So I knew it was Facebook. Facebook is cool for what group? You? Yeah. My old, yeah. No, you're not wrong now. My age group, not just me. Your

Ashton: 26:31

age group that I have to fact check you. MySpace does still

Dad: 26:35

exist. No, it doesn't. It does. Who uses MySpace? No idea. But it's, I just looked it up. I'm scared. What do you call it? Deer with no ice

Ashton: 26:42

sign? No idea. I mean, wait, no idea. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, you can, you can sign up. Sign in. I think it's more of, it looks like it's more, I don't know.

Dad: 26:52

It still exists. Sorry. Okay. I apologize. It was cool before Facebook was cool, so I don't know who has MySpace. If you have one, please let us know who has it. We're super

Ashton: 27:01

curious. And then we'll kindly direct you to Facebook or Instagram. And

Dad: 27:06

then I, so I'm Facebook When, who's Instagram? Who's the Instagram? Are you a user of Instagram or is that kind of a different, is that in between me and your age?

Ashton: 27:14

I'm like, I, I like land in the middle. Okay. I use Facebook and Instagram. And then Gideon, what's the cool, what's the cool

Dad: 27:21

thing

Ashton: 27:21

now? I feel

Gideon: 27:23

like everybody just uses TikTok at this

Ashton: 27:25

point.

Dad: 27:25

Okay, so, so once again, we have to continually innovate how we are found and how we find people. continuous in innovation and improvement to reach out to the customer and, and help them understand what you're delivering as well as understand what they want so that you're delivering product they want and need as part of running the successful business. And if you are your brand, you have to be willing to look and say, Just like you were doing is the, is what I'm putting out there what I want the world to see? If not, then I need to modify, improve, or change it. But it doesn't mean your old stuff is bad. I challenge anybody in this group as they're looking at businesses to go look at Amazon when it originally started. Some of Jeff Bezos's original interviews are hilarious on what he thought he was versus what he is today. You know, you go back and look at Listen to business podcast. You can see how. Like, fender music has changed over time. Apple, well, we, we already, well, no, that was Jeff Bezos. We didn't talk about No. The apple. But how Apple changed over time. I, things change, things, develop things, innovate. And we need to be willing to innovate with those. So even though you have a clear vision and and a clear strategy, make sure to be willing to look at'em and update'em. Continue to work on your leadership and your management skills. Make sure you stay focused on your customer and innovate with the times. That's what we're gonna do here at Adulting Decrypted.

Ashton: 29:05

GIDE, can you ask me if I've ever been irritated by a host of the show? If, because they shook the table, I've ever been

Dad: 29:12

irritated at the host of

Ashton: 29:13

the show cause shook the table. No, not ever. Oh, never, never, never, never. Go use problems. Go use

Gideon: 29:21

sweet.