When searching for influencers for your brand, it’s easy to get wrapped up in the number of followers they have. Pause and let the follower count drift to the background. Are they producing creative, quality content? Do (real) people comment on their posts? Are they already posting about your brand or engaging with it? Jackpot! Influencer expert Kayla Mueller shares how to get scrappy with your influencer marketing strategy by identifying who you want to work with, knowing how to measure ROI and staying away from distractions in part two of our podcast. Chelsea Ragland: [00:00:00] This is The 19, a podcast that delivers marketing insights from Orange Label in 19 minutes or less. This year, the agency is celebrating 50 years of working with established brands that are driven by a fearless entrepreneurial mindset. What does this mean for you? It means in rich conversations and stories with marketing and leadership experts aimed at improving lives. Chelsea Ragland: [00:00:28] Welcome back to the 19 with Kayla Mueller, Senior Creative Strategist at Popular Pays, a Lightricks Company. In part one of the podcast, we discuss the value of influencer marketing. For part two, we’ll be sharing tips to identify influencers that resonate with your brand and insights on how to track campaign performance. Chelsea Ragland: [00:00:51] What are some tips for identifying influencers that resonate with your target audience? Kayla Mueller: [00:00:55] Influencer marketing, if you haven’t done it before, can be very overwhelming and the more work you put in, like the pre-work and the planning of finding the right influencer creator, the better it’s going to be all around for everybody. Brands, take a look and they’re like, this is the type of creator we want. Well, first, let’s look at sales data, like, who’s buying this? Who is your audience? Like, sometimes brand teams, agency are like, this is the target demo. And we’re like, Are you sure? Because if they are, that’s totally cool. We will go with that. That’s amazing. But if you have any sales data or, you know, hey, most of my audience is in California, for example, let’s just look at creators who are in California and like look at if most of their audience is there or if a product is only available in a certain place, let’s just focus on that. So I think just taking a step back, that’s like a theme in most of my answers is take a step back and like really think about it and be intentional. So once you know who that audience is and you’re engaging the right people. Search for creators so you can use software tools like Popular Pays. Where I work, you can work with agencies like Orange Label, you can work with both at the same time, and then you can even get scrappy.So based on like your resources and your time, you can look in the platforms yourself. You can search for people talking about your competitors. If you want to take that approach, you can search for people talking about a specific like category or vertical that you’re in, and they may be a thought leader there. So there are ways to get scrappy like in the platform just based on. Kind of what your resources are. Even I would search for like branded hashtags. You can do that in the platform. Anybody has access in TikTok and Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest to search for brands in there and like, see what’s popping up. Who’s already talking about your brand? I think we’ve definitely seen a lot of successful campaigns even outside of my team where people are already talking about a brand or product. So is that not a perfect fit, right, where you’re talking about a specific skin care, people already posting about it. They already have almost all every product in a line already.

Influencer marketing may not be for everybody. By the end of this podcast episode, you’ll know exactly what influencer marketing is, how brands benefit from it and how to decide whether it’s a fit for you. With spending on influencer marketing forecast to reach $5 billion in 2023, this is a must-listen podcast to plan your content strategy as we approach the fourth quarter. Tune into Part One of The 19: Entrepreneur Edition with Kayla Mueller, Senior Creative Strategist at Popular Pays, a Lightricks Company, and Orange Label Social Media Supervisor Chelsea Ragland. Chelsea Ragland: [00:00:00] This is The 19, a podcast that delivers marketing insights from Orange Label in 19 minutes or less. This year, the agency is celebrating 50 years of working with established brands that are driven by a fearless entrepreneurial mindset. What does this mean for you? It means enriched conversations and stories with marketing and leadership experts aimed at improving lives. Chelsea Ragland: [00:00:29] Kayla is the Senior Creative Strategist at Popular Pays, a Lightricks Company, and faculty associate at Arizona State’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication. From Oscar Mayer’s viral face mask influencer campaign to stunning travel content for travel app Liist, Kayla is a creative force for content, curation and influencer strategy and has fun while doing it. Kayla, welcome to The 19! Kayla Mueller: [00:00:53] Thank you, Chelsea. I’m so excited to be here! Chelsea Ragland: [00:01:00] Awesome. Can you tell us a little bit about your background in digital advertising and influencer marketing? Kayla Mueller: [00:01:06] Definitely. I was first drawn to advertising. I had an email internship and I loved advertising. I thought it was incredible how you could target different people. And then after that, after school, I went and worked in paid search for a few years at a big agency. That was a really cool experience, and then I found myself at a boutique PR firm. So there I was, kind of leading social media strategy photoshoots, social calendar planning, a lot of different things and influencer marketing there as well. And then I kind of found myself now at Popular Pays, a Lightricks Company, where I’m a Senior Creative Strategist and I make a lot of RFPs for brands. I’m sure we’ll get more into what my specific role looks like, but it is really humbling to be in the world of digital. I think it’s almost been eight years at this point and it’s really cool to see how it has evolved and it’s just a really exciting space to be these days. So, I’m really grateful. Chelsea Ragland: [00:02:10] Absolutely. And we’ve seen such great success with our clients’ influencer marketing campaigns. For those that may be unfamiliar, how would you define influencer marketing? Kayla Mueller: [00:02:20] Yeah, that’s a good question because we talk about those words. We use some of these words all the time. There’s so many marketing and advertising buzzwords. So I think it’s so important to kind of take a step back and revisit what those words are. I think at its core, to simplify, influencer marketing is word-of-mouth advertising. It’s hearing that a friend has bought something and it makes you want to buy it or learn more about it. And it’s kind of that referral and testimonial type of process. So it’s really, at the end of the day, partnering with humans, people, and gathering testimonials from them to promote a product or service. And I think one reason why influencer marketing is so successful and why influencers are so helpful to a marketing strategy is that it’s a human testimonial, right? So it’s, it’s humans and people talking about a brand or service instead of just a brand,

For nearly a decade, the Sprout Social Index has gathered data on social media marketing to help brands better connect with their audience. The most recent Index interviews 1,000 US consumers and 500 US marketers to reveal the top trends on social media in 2022 and insight into what’s to come. Listen to our exclusive interview with Sprout Social’s Senior Market Research Manager Mike Blight and Orange Label Social Media Specialist Samantha Hernandez for more! Samantha Hernandez: [00:00:00] This is The 19, a podcast that delivers marketing insights from Orange Label in 19 minutes or less. This year, the agency is celebrating 50 years of working with established brands that are driven by a fearless entrepreneurial mindset. What does this mean for you? It means enriched conversations and stories with marketing and leadership experts aimed at improving lives. Samantha Hernandez: [00:00:29] Hello and welcome to the 19 Entrepreneur Edition. I’m Samantha Hernandez, Social Media Specialist at Orange Label. One of the things I love most about social media marketing is building genuine connections with the brand and their audience. How and where these connections are built evolves frequently. The annual Sprout Social Index helps us visualize just how much social media changes each year and gives projected trends for the years to come. To put things into perspective, when the Index launched in 2013, Instagram had just introduced video capabilities, Facebook had a launch in a new timeline with video autoplay, and the six-second video sharing app Vine was nearing its peak. Nine years later, new features occur at least monthly on apps, and key social media players have changed. Nevertheless, video remains a key emphasis of social media strategies. Here to share insights from the latest Index to help brands best connect with their audience is Sprout Social Senior Market Research Manager Mike Blight. Mike, welcome to The 19. It’s great to have you today! Mike Blight: [00:01:27] Thanks for having me. Samantha Hernandez: [00:01:32] Awesome. So, Mike, you’re the Senior Market Research Manager at Sprout. Can you tell us a bit about yourself and your role? Mike Blight: [00:01:38] Yeah, my title basically tells you nothing about what I actually do. We are a very data-driven company. On the content side, we’ve been investing significantly, as in my role as well, into using data in a more meaningful way and all the content that we produce. So a significant part of what I do is help drive data-driven projects like the Index, everything from data collection to analysis to helping our content team package all that together. Samantha Hernandez: [00:02:08] Awesome. So speaking of the Index, can you tell us about it? Mike Blight: [00:02:11] Yeah, the Index is even before joining Sprout and I know this is going to sound like a product placement, but the Index is one of my favorite things on social. Sprout has been doing the Index since 2013. So this is the ninth year of trend forecasting. And so this particular Index, we surveyed over 1,000 US customers and 500 US social marketers between ages of 18 and 75. Samantha Hernandez: [00:02:36] Wow. What was the most surprising stat from this year’s Sprout Index? Mike Blight: [00:02:40] We have, and this is going to require you to download the full report. So thanks for giving us your email ahead of time. Samantha Hernandez: [00:02:47] Yeah, we got it. Mike Blight: [00:02:48] Since 2019, we’ve been tracking what marketers are describing as the challenges that they face when it comes to their social media teams. And year over year, we see things like providing some sort of ROI or social execution, resourcing, these being primary pain points. This year in 2022, finding the right talent rose to the top of all of those. It’s not to say that proving ROI is not a challenge still, but of all the things,

There are some podcasts that leave you so motivated, you find yourself nodding along with them. This is one of them. In this new episode of The 19: Entrepreneur Edition, Olympian Lina Taylor shares the very same tips that she used to develop her personal brand. From finding clarity in your vision to sharing your story, we hope that she leaves you as motivated and inspired to create as she left us. Rochelle Reiter: [00:00:00] This is The 19, a podcast that delivers marketing insights from Orange Label in 19 minutes or less. This year, the agency is celebrating 50 years of working with established brands that are driven by a fearless entrepreneurial mindset. What does this mean for you? It means enriched conversations and stories with marketing and leadership experts aimed at improving lives. Rochelle Reiter: [00:00:30] Hello and welcome to The 19: Entrepreneur Edition! I’m Rochelle Reiter, President of Orange Label. Today, we’re talking about personal branding. Well, this may not feel like it pertains to you when you take away the formality of the name. The core of it is how you market yourself. Our guest today, Lina Taylor, is a two time Olympian Volleyball player who utilized lessons of resilience from her life and sports career to build her personal brand as an executive coach. Her work in promoting her story and mindset has led her to speaking events and workshops for companies including Shopify, American Red Cross, Zendesk, Google and more. And now she’s here to inspire your personal brand. Lina, welcome to The 19. We’re so excited to have you here today! Lina Taylor: [00:01:12] Thank you for having me, Rochelle. I’m really excited to be here. Rochelle Reiter: [00:01:19] So it’s not often that we get to speak with an Olympian athlete on The 19. Can you tell us a little bit about your transition from Olympian to entrepreneur? Lina Taylor: [00:01:28] It’s definitely a transition, just like any other major transition in life. You experience a sense of a loss of identity in the way that you have been before, but it gives you a chance to reinvent yourself. And so what I’ve learned through going through several transitions like this is I started making a list of the things that I would be doing if I wasn’t playing, if I wasn’t a professional beach volleyball player anymore. And I remember earlier in my twenties when there was a time when I couldn’t think of anything else that I wanted to do more than just hop on the next plane, take me to a beautiful setting and playing a tournament. That’s all I wanted to do. But once I had done that for about ten years and played in two Olympics, now I started making less. What else would I be doing with my gifts, with the things that I want to offer the world? And when that list started getting pretty long, I decided it’s time to jump. It’s time to change ships. Rochelle Reiter: [00:02:22] What a fascinating way to do that. What an exploration. I think everyone should do that. Lina Taylor: [00:02:30] Don’t wait until you’re in your late forties or fifties. Rochelle Reiter: [00:02:33] Yeah, I’ve never heard it explained that way. That’s great. So at what point did you realize that you could take your story and build a personal brand from it? Lina Taylor: [00:02:42] That’s a great question. It was the beginning of the pandemic, and what I had is I’ve always kept a journal for myself, but I had started keeping a journal for each one of our three kids. And so I had the three journals for the kids. I had a travel journal for us. I had my own journal. And I was kind of thinking, I need to figure out a way to write a better story or tell a better story. Tell it in a way, because I didn’t I didn’t have time to keep up.

More content, connections and creative control – a branded podcast can deliver all three of these things, plus the ability to showcase yourself as a brand leader. Whether your podcast is short or long, entertaining or informative, it’s all about the content that will resonate most with your audience. Make your podcast specific, make your podcast valuable and, with these tips from Podcast Professor and Learning/Development Expert Heidi Kirby, make your podcast now. Rochelle Reiter: [00:00:00] This is The 19, a podcast that delivers marketing insights from Orange Label in 19 minutes or less. This year, the agency is celebrating 50 years of working with established brands that are driven by a fearless entrepreneurial mindset. What does this mean for you? It means enriched stories and conversations with marketing and leadership experts aimed at improving lives. Rochelle Reiter: [00:00:29] Hello and welcome to The 19: Entrepreneur Edition! I’m Rochelle Reiter, President of Orange Label. In the five years that we’ve hosted The 19, we’ve had the opportunity to connect with experts on a variety of topics, from company culture to brand photography and how to deliver the best experiences for your brand. The one thing I love about podcasts is that they can teach you something new very clearly. I’m not the only one who loves podcasts. Statista estimates that listenership will reach 160 million in the US in 2023. Our Social media Specialist, Samantha, is studying to get her Masters in Mass Communication and social media marketing, and she connected us with a professor who shares the team’s affinity for podcasts and has a deep understanding of the opportunities that they hold for brands. Without further ado, here’s Learning and development professional and University of Florida professor Heidi Kirby. Heidi, welcome to The 19. We’re so excited to have you here today! Heidi Kirby: [00:01:25] Thanks for having me. I’m glad to be here. Rochelle Reiter: [00:01:32] So can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your experience with podcasting? Heidi Kirby: [00:01:37] Yeah, so podcasting comes to me by way of my working experience. And so I started my career as a college professor and eventually, after several years, moved into still learning and still education, but in the corporate space, right? So corporate training. And while I was making that career shift, I was listening to a lot of industry podcasts. But then as somebody who is creating learning experiences for people at organizations, I quickly recognized it as a method to help my learners and another way to deliver information. And so I think it was at three different organizations where I pitched with varying levels of seriousness, a podcast at those different organizations. But it was for a small pre-seed startup that was building a mobile learning management system that I finally had my, my podcast, my podcast baby was born. And so we were trying to build and promote this mobile learning management system. And I said, Well, we need to hit the people in the industry who are going to buy this. Let’s do a podcast and then just have the product be an ad spot. But in the podcast, just talk about learning and development so that people know that we know what we’re talking about. So that’s how my podcast was born, and I ended up not continuing my contract with that startup, but I ended up keeping the podcast. And so it’s now become like a personal thing and it’s still going. And recently one of my colleagues in the field, TA, is an instructional designer for University of Florida, said, Hey, will you teach podcasting at University of Florida? And my first reaction was to me, yeah. And then I thought about it and I was like, Well, I do have a podcast and I have taught college before and I do have a grad degree.

Marketers are putting first-party data to the forefront of their strategies. The most-recent CMO Survey finds that 75% of marketers plan to increase their emphasis on this type of data in the next two years as changes continue with second- and third-party data. Why wait to acquire data when you can start now? In the latest episode of The 19: Entrepreneur Edition, we take you behind the scenes into one of Orange Label’s methods of acquiring first-party data, called the View From the Field, and how it can be used to not only build your brand but help you connect with your audience. Ashley Ruiz: [00:00:00] This is The 19, a podcast that delivers marketing insights from Orange Label in 19 minutes or less. This year, the agency is celebrating 50 years of working with established brands that are driven by a fearless entrepreneurial mindset. What does this mean for you? It means enriched conversations and stories with marketing and leadership experts aimed at improving lives. Ashley Ruiz: [00:00:28] Hello and welcome to The 19: Entrepreneur Edition! I’m Ashley Ruiz, Senior Content Writer at Orange Label. I’m the one who writes Orange Labels monthly blog covering a range of marketing topics. In our April blog, we shared five key takeaways from the biannual CMO Survey. One interesting finding from the survey is that 75% of marketers plan to increase and focus on first-party data. This is a big change as marketers have generally relied on first, second and third party data equally in the past. For many, this means adapting to a new way of gathering information. At Orange Label. It’s confirmation that the agency’s View From the Field a method of gathering primary research, is as valuable and necessary as ever. Today, I’ll be interviewing Orange Label President Rochelle Reiter to tell you all about this process. She’s our usual host of the 19 podcast, and today she’s on the other side of the mic. Now I get to say her usual line: Rochelle, welcome to The 19! Rochelle Reiter: [00:01:23] Thank you so much, Ashley! It’s so great to have you on the other side of the mic and hosting me. Ashley Ruiz: [00:01:28] Excited to be here. Rochelle, were you surprised to see a growing emphasis on first party data reported in the CMO survey? Rochelle Reiter: [00:01:39] Well, we really saw it coming over all of the restrictions that have been put in place about collecting data over the past few years. So the good news for Orange Label is that we’ve been collecting first party data with our clients for many, many years. Ashley Ruiz: [00:01:52] Okay. How long would you say that Orange Label has been conducting this first party data research? Rochelle Reiter: [00:01:58] Well, our agency was really founded with a research philosophy, so asking questions of our clients, customers and prospects has always really been part of our DNA. One example of this in action is our testimonial radio commercials, where we produced for some of our clients across the country. And we actually visit our clients, customers in their own business environment and conduct one on one interviews with them. So the nuggets and sound bites that come out of these interviews are to create messages that authentically and emotionally connect with the audience. In addition, we use that messaging from the interviews in other forms of marketing, such as digital ads in websites and more traditional pieces like brochure and outdoor advertising. And then about ten years ago, we formalized our interview process and named it a View From the Field. So this method is a little bit different in that we conduct interviews, how we conduct them for the radio commercials, but it has the same end goal in mind, and it’s really to gather authentic and emotional responses from the marketplace so that we can develop messa...

What drives the most valuable businesses on the planet? It’s typically not their real estate or their tangible assets. It’s their intellectual property. In that light, protecting your brand shifts from a “to-do” to a “must-do today.” Attorney Andy Nelson shares how to be proactive in keeping your intellectual property safe from something as small as a social media post to something as large as your brand’s identity with a trademarked name, logo or slogan. Rochelle Reiter: [00:00:00] This is The 19, a podcast that delivers marketing insights from Orange Label in 19 minutes or less. This year, the agency is celebrating 50 years of working with established brands that are driven by a fearless entrepreneurial mindset. What does this mean for you? It means enriched conversations and stories with marketing and leadership experts aimed at improving lives. Rochelle Reiter: [00:00:28] Hello and welcome to The 19: Entrepreneur Edition! I’m Rochelle Reiter, President of Orange Label. Today, we’re talking about something that every entrepreneur can benefit from, and that’s learning more about intellectual property rights. The World Trade Organization defines intellectual property as “the rights given to persons over the creation of their minds.” Understanding intellectual property is a key part of being able to protect your brand and its exclusive identity. Here to share more about intellectual property from copyright and trademark protection to copyright infringement is attorney Andy Nelson. With decades of experience representing clients in business, commercial and intellectual property matters, and his clients have ranged from the food and beverage industries to advertising, technology, apparel and more. Andy, welcome to The 19. We’re so excited to have you here today. Andrew Nelson: [00:01:18] Oh, thanks Rochelle. I’m excited to be here! Rochelle Reiter: [00:01:24] So tell us about your background as an attorney and your specialty. Andrew Nelson: [00:01:29] Okay. Well, I’ve been doing this 20 years now. I started out up in the Bay Area, Silicon Valley, I guess, to be accurate. I came down here in 2003 and I’ve been practicing in Orange County ever since. I guess I’d put it in two categories what I’ve been doing my entire career one dispute resolution and avoidance for businesses. So that is garden variety problems that crop up to full fledged raging lawsuits, anything in between. I do help businesses try to avoid narrow and and resolve their little dust ups that that occur. And then on the other part of what I do, which kind of emerged out of my dispute resolution in the intellectual property arena, is developing a transactional counseling prosecution, if you will, intellectual property practice. And that I’ve built up over the last number of years. So I love getting in there and helping businesses understand what they have in terms of intellectual property, putting boundaries around it, identifying it and helping them exploit it and then helping them enforce it. Rochelle Reiter: [00:02:27] Why is protecting intellectual property so important for brands? Andrew Nelson: [00:02:32] Simply put, it’s it’s an asset so much like, you know, a business’s personal property. It’s, you know, it’s desks and inventory and things like that. And it’s real estate, which may be actual real estate holdings. It may be a leasehold, whatever it is. People understand those assets, these more intangible things. They’re treated like property in the law. But a lot of folks don’t understand that it’s treated like property. And the thing is, I think just about any business is going to have something, some kind of intellectual property that’s an asset for its brand. And, you know, the gates are kind of left open a lot. And in some cases, it may not be the most important asset for business...

What do you do for a living? Have you ever asked this question and been met with an answer that left your ears ringing and your mind still wondering, what do they do for a living? The key to distilling complex information and creating an engaging elevator pitch is great storytelling, author and screenwriter Michael Ashley shares. In this episode of The 19 podcast, he discusses the art of writing attention-grabbing stories that steer conversations and capture hearts. Rochelle Reiter: [00:00:00] This is The 19, a podcast that delivers marketing insights from Orange Label in 19 minutes or less. This year, the agency is celebrating 50 years of working with established brands that are driven by a fearless entrepreneurial mindset. What does this mean for you? It means enriched conversations and stories with marketing and leadership experts aimed at improving lives. Rochelle Reiter: [00:00:30] Hello and welcome to the 19: Entrepreneur Edition, I’m Rochelle Reiter, President of Orange Label. The Super Bowl is quickly approaching and no matter how you feel about the teams that are playing, there’s something else about the game that captures audiences attention year after year. The ads, of course! With about 40 minutes of commercials that occur throughout the Super Bowl, the ones that tend to be the most memorable are the ones that focus on story. Whether emotional like Google’s Loretta or funny like Old Spice’s “I’m on a horse,” these 30-second ads stand out because they appeal to our emotions. Here to share more about what makes stories such a powerful business tool is storytelling expert Michael Ashley. Michael’s experience spans from being a playwright and Disney screenwriter to a four time best selling author and branding consultant. Michael, welcome to The 19! Michael Ashley: [00:01:19] Thank you for having me. Rochelle Reiter: [00:01:25] So glad you were able to join us today! Can you first start by telling us about your background in storytelling? Michael Ashley: [00:01:31] Yeah, absolutely. So I guess my background began professionally when I was in college. I was a playwright at the University of Missouri, and after I graduated from the university, I worked. I had my own company for a couple of years, and then I transferred to Chapman, where I got a master’s degree in screenwriting. And while I was still in school, I had a movie optioned, and as soon as I graduated, I began working for Creative Artists Agency, the top talent agency in the world, and my job was to read screenplays for directors and for screenwriters. And around the same time, I got accepted into a special program at Disney. I was one of six screenwriters that got to work with Gary Marsh, the President at the time. They were looking for their next big movie idea. And at the end of the week, they bought one treatment, which was for the treatment I wrote called Girl vs. Monster. It became a very successful movie for Disney starring Olivia Holt. It launched a kid’s clothing line and more importantly, more importantly, it got me an agent, and I was able to quit my day job and to focus on storytelling full time as a writer. Rochelle Reiter: [00:02:38] That’s so amazing! What an adventure! And I do know the movie. My daughters watched it and I watched it too! How exciting. So let’s switch over to the business side of it and why storytelling is such a powerful tool in business. Michael Ashley: [00:02:55] Absolutely. So I just gave a speech last week about this very topic. And so for one thing, storytelling is a way to communicate ideas. It’s no accident that we tell parables to children to help them make sense of the world. And if we want to convey something, especially something complex, storytelling is a great way to do it anyway. The presentation that I was giving last week was about the subject of pain, and it surprises people.

As technology advances and marketing distribution continues to evolve, how can we keep reaching target audiences in a meaningful way? Though many things have changed since Orange Label’s inception in 1972, some key principles have remained the same. In honor of our 50th Anniversary, this special edition of The 19 Podcast features our agency founder, Paul Barth. Listen to Orange Label CEO Wes Phillips and Paul discuss the inspiration for starting the agency and the two most important components in advertising. Rochelle Reiter : [00:00:06] This is The 19. In 19 minutes or less game-changing insights from Orange Label, the leading response marketing agency for established brands that are driven by a fearless entrepreneurial mindset. Wes Phillips: [00:00:24] Hello and welcome to The 19: Entrepreneur Edition. I’m Wes Philips, CEO of Orange Label. Can’t believe it’s already 2022, which means that our agency has been in business helping brand leaders thrive for 50 years! Today we have a very special edition of our podcast in honor of our 50th anniversary. We are talking to the agency’s founder, Paul Barth. Paul and I have worked together since 1983, and what began as a working relationship has grown into a real friendship. He has an exceptional understanding of interpersonal relationships and client communications, and the foundations he laid are still in the DNA of Orange Label to this day. I personally have learned so much from Paul over the years, and now we have the opportunity to benefit from his five decades of experience with brands and expertise in response marketing. Wes Phillips: [00:01:23] Paul, thank you so much for joining us today! Paul Barth: [00:01:25] Glad to be here! Wes Phillips: [00:01:26] Now, one of the things that I’m most interested in when you started the agency back in 1972, it’s actually now become the longest standing, privately held response marketing agency in Orange County. I’m curious what inspired you to start the agency? Paul Barth: [00:01:42] You know, my motivations were not lofty. I didn’t come from a sophisticated environment. You may be looking for something more elegant, but the fact is my inspirations were earthy, very pragmatic. I guess three words that could describe what I felt were freedom, fun and instinct. I relished the opportunity for freedom to move quickly, to change, to meet opportunities, to take risks. And that goes to the fun, to wake up in the morning with answers and ideas and then be able to act on those ideas. Nothing is more fun than waking up with an idea or being in the gym and having an idea occur. That’s what the instinct it probably was handed down from my father, but I got to tell you a silly story. My first marketing success was way back in high school, and it was winning the high school student body race. My opponent for student body president was the captain of the football team. He was the quarterback and he was dating the head cheerleader. By the way, he was a straight-A student. There is no way I could possibly beat Kelly Burkeline to become student body president, so I thought, What am I going to do? So I went to the candidate for vice president, the one for a secretary and one for treasurer, and I said, Hey, you guys, let’s get together and let’s create a political party and with our own slogans as a party. And this will accomplish a couple of things, number one, that the teachers will be really impressed that we were so innovative and we came up with this idea. Secondly, because everyone was limited to how much advertising they could do. It’ll give us four times the amount of advertising. Well, of course, that gave me four times the amount of advertising we won. I got to be student body president and that was my first experience with marketing. I still enjoy telling that story. Wes Phillips: [00:03:41] Freedom, fun and instinct. So clearly,

When you think of company culture, do you think of a fully stocked kitchen and a foosball table? Unfortunately, we’ve been fed an inaccurate idea of what it means to elevate your company, confusing culture with perks. So then, what does it look like to create a world-class company culture, and how do we implement it? In part two of The 19: Entrepreneur Edition, we are continuing our conversation with business coach and author, Cameron Herold and discussing the elements that will shape a company culture and attract great talent. Rochelle Reiter: [00:00:06] This is The 19. In 19 minutes or less game changing insights from Orange Label, the leading response marketing agency for established brands that are driven by a fearless entrepreneurial mindset. Rochelle Reiter: [00:00:24] Welcome back to The 19: Entrepreneur Edition with the CEO Whisperer and Business Growth Guru Cameron Herold. In part one we talked about the power in creating a Vivid Vision instead of a Mission statement or a Vision Statement and in today’s episode we’re discussing how to make your work culture the best it can be. Spoiler alert – as a COO, there’s always something else you can do to elevate your company. Here’s some tips on where to begin. Rochelle Reiter: [00:00:55] So let’s switch over to creating a world class culture. You’ve done a lot of work around that, so tell me about culture and how it can inspire internal teams, potential customers and current customers. What’s the role of culture in an organization? Cameron Herold: [00:01:09] So first off, I think we’ve really been done a bit of a disservice by the mass media on what company culture is, what the mass media talked about were perks. You know, they talked about the foosball table and the free lunches and the the massage therapists coming in to do massages. That’s not culture. Those are perks that you’re giving your employees. Culture starts. If I think about like a jigsaw puzzle, the corners, the four corners of the jigsaw puzzle are the culture. The first one is your Vivid Vision. So it’s that alignment that everyone can see what the CEO can see. If everyone can see the same vision, if everyone is on the same page. If you get rid of all the people that don’t like what they see and you keep attracting more people that do like what they see. That’s the first corner of the jigsaw puzzle. The second corner of the jigsaw puzzle. Are your company’s core values. You have to hire based on the core values. You have to fire people based on the core values. You have to obsess about living the core values on a daily basis. You have to celebrate the core values. You’ve got to thank people for emulating and living the core values, and you have to reinforce them on a daily basis. Most companies get their core values wrong because they either have single words as a core value, which end up being confusing. So core values should be short phrases such as deliver what you promise, respect the individual, pride in all you do right? Very easy to understand. Core values should be limited to four or five core values, not seven or ten. If you have so many core values, you can’t live them. So if you have four or five, then you’re probably willing to fire people who break them. And then the core values have to be something that you’re going to recruit on. So that’s one area that that companies need to really focus on. As the second corner, right, are the core values and the culture emerges from those. The second or the third corner of the jigsaw puzzle is your BHAG, your big, hairy, audacious goal. And that’s a Jim Collins term from Good to Great. A lot of companies do it wrong where they say their BHAG (bee-hag) is a billion, whatever or a million some things. By definition,