BRX Pro Tip: Protecting Your Brand Transcript

Stone Payton: And we are back with BRX Pro Tips. Lee Kantor and Stone Payton here with you. Lee, let’s talk a little bit about protecting your brand.

Lee Kantor: Yeah. Branding is one of those things that you’re doing, whether you’re doing it intentionally or not. People are coming up with what your brand is, whether you’re putting any effort to brand yourself. So, it’s a good idea to be proactive and do some work to help you protect your brand in the market that you’re serving or for the show that you’re serving. So, the impression that you’re giving your guests, the way you behave, the way they see what you have in your studio or on your show, the way you interact with them, those are all opportunities to brand the way that you … you know, postings on social media, that helps you brand. The events you show up at helps you brand.

Lee Kantor: We just had a meeting with one of the influential associations here in the technology arena in Atlanta, and she loves our brand. She’s like, “Every time I’d bring you up, people rave about you. They enjoy their interviews. They appreciate you coming here. We look forward to working with you. I can’t wait to come up with new ways that we can work together.” So, our brand in this marketplace is very good, and that’s because we put an effort to do a good job for these people and show up at events that we think are high profile enough and worth our time to show up at, and really serve the heck out of everybody that comes in contact with us. And because of that, we have a brand that resonates locally, especially in the technology community. And we’re hoping to build that brand and have people around the country have the same exact experience.

BRX Pro Tip: Reward and Celebrate Community Members Transcript

Stone Payton: Welcome back to BRX Pro Tips. Lee Kantor and Stone Payton here with you. Lee, let’s talk a little bit about rewarding and celebrating our community members.

Lee Kantor: Yeah, this is something that’s really important. It helps retention. By finding ways, creative ways to reward and celebrate your most active and engaged community members, or clients, or prospects, or just people that are good power partners, your kind of role modeling the behavior. You want the less active community members to exhibit by holding up and spotlighting the ones that are doing the stuff you want them to do. So, that’s a kind of good thing to do just by itself.

Lee Kantor: But if you can create an event that brings the community together to celebrate what’s going on and the work you’ve done together, and that way, you can spotlight the more active people that are in the group, that’s fantastic. Corey does that breakfast. We’ve been to dinners with hosts before. We’ve hosted mixers. Some people have had dinner parties just with select groups. I know you’re part of kind of a breakfast slice meal with one of our clients that you bring what you come market mates, like people that are referral partners together to kind of cross-pollinate and work together.

Lee Kantor: So, there’s lots and lots of ways to leverage that network that we have in order to kind of just keep nurturing it and encouraging the behavior that we all want, which is more referrals, whether they’ll be guests or they’ll be clients. So, anything you can do to create opportunities that cross-pollinate groups that typically wouldn’t get together, that we are uniquely qualified to bring a real diverse group together, that’s good mojo and I recommend doing that. Anything, Stone, you thinking about?

Stone Payton: Well, just again, I want to reinforce, I think we’re uniquely qualified to do exactly what you’re describing because there’s this common thread among everyone who would participate in an event or a series of events like that, and it’s such a visceral, strong bond that they’ve all come to the platform, shared their expertise, celebrated their success, talked about their challenges. It’s such a strong bond. There’s so much you could do. You could stop right at supporting, and celebrating, and reinforcing, and spotlighting, but let me tell you something, there plenty of profit potential there as well.

Stone Payton: Look, in the not too distant future for beach house and mountain house. And both of those are going to be designed along these lines of bringing people together, like-minded people who have this common bond supporting, celebrating, but also challenging each other, and providing kind of next-level opportunity for everyone to fully capitalize on everyone else’s presence there. And I think there’s virtually no limit to what you can do for people, through people, with people, and for yourself if you frame things up and be thinking in these terms.

BRX Pro Tip: Swag Transcript

Stone Payton: And we are back with BRX Pro TIps. Stone Payton and Lee Kantor here with you. Lee, as I sit here in our new studio in my Business RadioX wind shirt facing the Business RadioX coffee mug, I want to talk about swag.

Lee Kantor: Yeah, swag is a nice way to give people in your network or your community some stuff that is Business RadioX-oriented that gives them kind of a symbol that reminds him of their time with you. And that symbol might be a mug. A lot of us give out mugs to our guests we have t shirts. We have stickers and magnets and mic flags, those little things. People hang onto them, and they’re proud of them. I can’t tell you how many offices I’ve been in where there is a Business RadioX mug proudly displayed somewhere. Either they don’t use it, and they hold things on their desk to remind them, almost like a trophy of their experience, or it’s their favorite mug in the cabinet. And how many kind of workstations where they have coffee have you seen our mug at, Stone? I mean, we see it all the time.

Stone Payton: Oh, anytime you go, just about anywhere in Atlanta anyway. And this isn’t all Stone and Lee. Some of this is John Ray, and Mike Sammond, and the great work that they’re doing too. If you go to an office here in Atlanta, and they have a Keurig machine or an area where they have coffee, the cabinet right above, it’s got at least one business which mug in it, probably two or three. Absolutely.

Lee Kantor: Yeah. And these things, remember, are symbols that show pride in their association with us. So, it’s important to hand them out. You don’t have to hand them out to everybody. But I would definitely hand them out to anybody who writes you checks to make sure they got something that kind of reminds them of you, and makes them feel special, and makes them feel good about the association.

BRX Pro Tip: Build Community, Find Your Allies Transcript

Stone Payton: Welcome back to BRX Pro Tips. Lee Kantor and Stone Payton here with you. Lee, we talk a lot about building community around here. We’ve seen it happen. It’s such a delight to watch a community blossom around the Business RadioX platform. But you’re fond of saying to truly build a community, first and foremost, you got to find your allies.

Lee Kantor: Right. You have to find the people that believe what you believe, that want to be part of the team, that want to help, you know. And these people aren’t everybody. These are your superfans, the people that are going to take action to actually contribute, that don’t just kind of smile, and just give you a like on social media. These are the people that are actually doing things. They’re referring guests. They want to be a co-host. They want to be involved. They want to help out whenever they can. These people take action. They have a lot of energy. They’re not passive kind of trolls or just participants by listening. They are taking actual steps to help.

Lee Kantor: So, you’ve got to find these passionate people that support the mission of telling the stories of local business. And identify them, be nice to them, get them involved, get them doing stuff to help in any way you can, in some ways you can do that, or ask them to be a co-host periodically, invite them to one of the events that you’re covering to participate, show them off, let them come on, do your show with a client or a trusted referral partner. Find ways to include them. The more things you help them help you, the more ways they are going to help you.

Stone Payton: Well, and I find, you know, one of the best ways in a world to make an ally or make a friend is ask a favor. Do you find that?

Lee Kantor: Absolutely. So, any way you can get them to engage and sincerely serve them and show them the value of serving, then you’ve got somebody good on your hands. So, take care of them, treat them right, and they’ll help you grow.