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DANNY : DE HEK: [00:00:00] Welcome to ELITE : SIX business networking. Think Tank facilitated by your host. DANNY : DE HEK, the place where decision makers come together to share their experience, knowledge and skills. I’m just trying some new things today, guys. So we are actually officially starting the think tank meeting. Everyone’s in a happy mood. I don’t know what it is. Maybe they put something special on the water. For the Aucklanders as well. So what we could do is introduce ourselves. First of all, my partner, Helen to introduce herself.

Helen Oakes: [00:00:37] I’m Helen, I am a photographer and I am a digital artist and I am a blogger.

James Parone: [00:00:45] Sorry Guys

Helen Oakes: [00:00:47] And a mum

DANNY : DE HEK: [00:00:49] And a mum, do you get paid for that? No a shame. They need to reinvent the wheel on that. We’re just introducing ourselves, James, that we’re going around the room. Paul. Okay.

Paul Starling: [00:01:00] Hi, I’m Paul I live in Rangiora and I run Canterbury Computer Services and KiwiSouvenirs, we specialize in doing IT for small to medium sized businesses.

DANNY : DE HEK: [00:01:14] And you sold a camera to Dave and he isn’t here today. So I, I, they might Dave David Clarkson and let’s go to Lachlan.

Lachlan McNeill: [00:01:26] I’m Lachlan McNeil. I am a recruiter. I also recently started a brand called earn your across funnily enough, which is all about the sort of wiggly world of small business and careers.

Rob Woolley: [00:01:37] I run Academy and to specializing in English porcelain. Not that anybody cares about that, but also around Academy training. We, we help people overcome stuttering develop public speaking and presenting skills and learn anything around management and leadership.

DANNY : DE HEK: [00:01:57] That’s lovely. Mark Scown

Mark Scown: [00:01:59] Yeah, well my currently doing the job for you as health and safety officer, I’m just checking for the tsunami that may come in behind us.

So an early alert from me will come your way clearly I’m in the insurance business. So yeah. So I specialize in personal and small business risk. But with a speciality in being able to provide a core level of options so that people can have long-term affordable and sustainable cover instead of paying stupid amounts of additional premiums as they age.

DANNY : DE HEK: [00:02:35] Excellent. Jaline, Jaline can speak

Helen Oakes: [00:02:52] so

Jaline Pietroiusti: [00:02:52] it’s Jillian and stair from the overlay. We specialize in e-commerce we bold e-commerce stores and your integration and support or small

Helen Oakes: [00:03:01] business,

DANNY : DE HEK: [00:03:03] right? Do you ever have the guy Savannah as well?

Stefano Pietroiusti: [00:03:11] We’ve recently become neater partners, which is another e-commerce platform. So you can most so Shopify partners and that’s, what’s being said, we try and offices creates online experiences for their customers and improve them.

DANNY : DE HEK: [00:03:28] Cool. And you’re on lockdown at the moment because the kids have been

Stefano Pietroiusti: [00:03:31] knocked down kids to the home, to the beach, just for like in a corner. That’s kind of cool.

DANNY : DE HEK: [00:03:48] We have to get sound going better for you and some tricks. James. How are you doing? Tell us what you are doing?

James Parone: [00:03:57] Hi guys. My name is James Parone. I am an entrepreneur. I’m doing coaching people building on motivational speeches and stuff like that. I encourage young people. Working with drug addictions and stuff like that.

I don’t courage them into the drug addiction. I’ll come out of this stuff and all the rest of it. Yeah. Yeah. It’s just the time of I’ve just started a company . And I’ve been just been gone for the last six months, a months. And a lot of people will come on board at the moment, but as clients yeah.

And things going really well. And it’s like encourage you all to do your best at what you do. I know you all are really good. I just know that by just listening to you guys, and I can see that there’s a lot of enthusiasm out there. And at this point of time, I really like to think that we all can play a part in what we do here in October or New Zealand, legal and otherwise, listen to you speak on Tuesday night and you’re a very good speaker.

I was really impressed with the way you came across. It was awesome. And now I remember at least six, so welcome to the family. Raymond, how you doing?

Oh no, you aren’t mine. I so productions telling your story through film telling you, getting gearing up for the 48 hour film challenge would say tonight that even PM. No one knows about that where you write everything and in the 48 hours,

Lachlan McNeill: [00:05:38] instead of like a short movie,

DANNY : DE HEK: [00:05:40] So there’s normally 48 FIM and then you’re led to eat.

No. Well thank you for coming along today. So we have actually got a pretty cool topic today and we will probably try to keep the meeting around about 30 minutes. I know Matt has got to go. I didn’t want to live in, so we’re not, that’s not going to be too bad. It should. We’re going to probably be finished by then.
But what I’m going to do now is I will share the screen and we have a mind map and we have full parts of the meeting. Just to bash out the topic of branding strategies and what we do is with the first few minutes, we talk about people’s experience with the brand problems I’ve had with the brand.

Some solutions I’ve found that works really good. And then near the end of the meeting, we’ll start talking about some takeaways that people can get by well got from their meeting, and then we will come out with the top of the next week’s meeting. So to start the ball rolling, we have. One, two will be around about Tina green Dean. Is it something in your business as an important thing? What’s your experience with your own branding? Have you experienced changing your brand or do you have any value in your brain or do you know what a brand is versus , which is something that we were discussing at the end of last week’s meeting or offline?

Rob Woolley: [00:07:02] I’ll go first. I’ve I think part of my brand is that I am laid back down to earth. I don’t dress up type routine to be the stereotype of what an antique dealer sometimes is perceived to be. And I think the name of my business Academy is part of my brand.

DANNY : DE HEK: [00:07:24] It does. I have no one, it stays for me because I sort of think.
A brain can be a swizzle. But suppose it can be a nine as well. Isn’t it? So it’s a business improvement.
And I, you a brain all, I believe I’ve got a posting brain called Danny Dick. It’s going to be great when I want to sell it.

Mark Scown: [00:07:46] Yeah. Well, I’m on the Simon. So you know, I don’t know whether you can see, and it was really on after talking to Danny a year, 18 months ago when I was sitting up my new company company as mandatory services, but they suggested, and I certainly agreed is that. The brain does me on Mark Scown insurance broker. So that clearly is sort of stated my logo.

Stefano Pietroiusti: [00:08:10] We are continually the evolving, our logo and, you know, the way we’d come across, just in response to the work per day.

Jaline Pietroiusti: [00:08:18] That’s changed three times.

Stefano Pietroiusti: [00:08:20] Well, actually more than that, yes. In the beginning. Although guys just been going around in circles, but we’re becoming more simple. So like in the beginning, we lost slots for offerings so much, but like as go along, we start some pine, what we’re good at. And then the like evolves together with what we offer to reflect our personality and the culture that we try to project.

Helen Oakes: [00:08:47] Process of personal branding involves finding your uniqueness, building a reputation on the things you want to be known for, and then allowing yourself to be known for them. Ultimately, the goal is to create something that conveys a message and that can be monetized. And it also says it’s creating influence and a public perception of it individual by positioning them. As an authority in the industry. Which is personal branding. It’s from wikipedia.

DANNY : DE HEK: [00:09:23] I had my sounds a bit better now. It’s terrible. I’m trying to wake my sound and sounds going to be a problem for the next few weeks. Did we get this sorted? I’m trying not to get feedback through the microphones at the moment, just in case you’re wondering.

Helen Oakes: [00:09:34] So I guess it’s finding you a USP. Isn’t it?

DANNY : DE HEK: [00:09:38] We liked the topic today. have I picked a goodie

Lachlan McNeill: [00:09:42] I think there were the challenges with, with the, with the general branding. Is that just trying to separate the two? Because what you find is you find, you talk about branding and then suddenly you talk about marketing.

You talk about, then you’re talking about selling and stuff like that. But in terms of defining branding, it is the sort of perception and that can take, can go across various different media, came and up stiff, the visual, the way you speak. The way you know, the sounds you use the general style of what you do.

Marketing stuff is the execution of that, but, you know, I guess you could say the appearance and the perception of is, is the branding side of things. I think is important. Otherwise we all get off track, but on turn with me, I’ve got Acorva recruitment. One of the problems I had was that I didn’t know what I was going to be doing.

I didn’t know the area I did. I thought I might start with recruiting for engineers, but I thought I might end up with doing whatever, you know, advertising people. So I picked a name, a Acorva, which didn’t mean anything. All on purpose. And it said at the beginning of the alphabet, so it was before other recruitment companies called Adecco and stuff like that.

So I was at the front and I thought, well, and I had a domain name, so it wasn’t really, I just thought I chose it because it sort of didn’t hold me back as it were.

DANNY : DE HEK: [00:10:54] So if your brand has a word on it, that actually explains what you do then. Is it a brand? Well, I know it can be a brand as well, but I actually think that a brand has actually nothing to do with anything.

Lachlan McNeill: [00:11:06] Well, well, well that’s, that, that could be part of it. But for example, the problem I had was, I mean, in hindsight, should I have called myself, there’s a company called technical recruitment solutions, you know, and it’s obvious what they do. And there’s an advantage. If you look through a whole bunch of bunch of recruiters, people that are technical recruiters or engineering, recruiting, should I have done that?
But that was one of the problems, you know, we’re talking about the sort of experiences and problems. My, my, my experience was that I really didn’t know quite what I was going to be doing. So I just picked something that could cover it. And I also picked a sort of a name and a general, I was free, vague at the beginning. I got more specific later on.

DANNY : DE HEK: [00:11:46] So what does the slogan then?

Lachlan McNeill: [00:11:47] It is it is simply technical

DANNY : DE HEK: [00:11:51] What do you do doing with a slogan?

Lachlan McNeill: [00:11:55] Well, I think you would

Rob Woolley: [00:11:56] Slogan helps defines what you do so that if you were a Acorva and you would taste the slogan onto a Acorva, then your trying to explain to either. External or internal customers, what a Korver focuses on it. And I think that the entrust thing thing is, is that a brand is basically what you do and how you do it. And a slogan is a describer of that and a logo design.

Mark Scown: [00:12:37] Of that we statement does

Lachlan McNeill: [00:12:38] Look at that, you see, you’ve got to earn your crust is, you know, rethinking work well that’s theory because it is the strap line on those or the slogan sort of defines it. And I know there’s a lot of people seem to change these over time.

DANNY : DE HEK: [00:12:50] Yeah. Because the only thing I had decision-makers on my ELITE : SIX, which is the company name. And then Decision-makers is. This is what we do. And then six dots, and now I’ve done away with using that branding of use the dots and carried on the call to myself. DANNY : DE HEK, but I still have ELITE : SIX. So now it’s a sort of a service or something within that.

Rob Woolley: [00:13:16] You actually made a comment in there that you said you had done away with that branding. I don’t think you have. I think you’ve changed your logo. But your brand has remained the same as easily. You are Danny and you have a set of describers, which describe what you do and how you do it. You’ve just changed your logo.

Helen Oakes: [00:13:44] That’s true. a lot think branding as just a logo and the name of that company. I know there’s way more. It’s the whole package really? Isn’t

Lachlan McNeill: [00:13:55] Look at the warehouse, for example, you know, they have a very key, we brands where everyone gets a bargain, is there, is there a strap line? And the way they dressed is Israelis to be casual. We compare that to, I can crush Ballantines or all the top stores. It quite a different, different brand, a different feeling each to their own.

DANNY : DE HEK: [00:14:13] There’s another thing that’s in my brand, which I forgot about. And that was the fonts that I use. I had to download them and everything I do now use that font. So that font, once you’ve seen that, theoretically, it’s part of my brand name.

Lachlan McNeill: [00:14:25] Yeah. And the branding is Marie, the way you do stuff, you walk into no lemmings and they have a certain general look and feel, and the way they, even the way they come up to you on the, on the, on the, in the shop, that’s all part of their brand. Isn’t it? Yeah. Deception

Paul Starling: [00:14:39] It’s a pity they never have any stock.

Rob Woolley: [00:14:42] I think if you have a look at spark. Cairo. So spark rebranded. And I think that we hear a lot of these terms often and we don’t stop to think, Oh, I go, you know what? We all know what rebranding. Mains, but then we don’t actually stop to ha have a look at a big company that has rebranded. So Telecom for most New Zealanders was a big corporate who was in personal. And then they changed to spark who is still a big corporate except. More friendly and engaging.

DANNY : DE HEK: [00:15:23] It cost a million dollars that logo. I wouldn’t have an inbox for it. If you looked at it, it’s a scribbled and you’re thinking they must have got there. Oh, what should we do? Somebody said, Hey, you said it give us a million bucks. What’s the bad brand. What’s some branding that you think is terrible. We did a search on the internet and found some bad brands.

Calm laid back. Can you think of some big brains that you think, how did I get traction with that sort of imagery? I mean, like the one about Nike, it was quite interesting because it was that his has name. So he’s actually made us to have a brand called Nike, which is actually part of the persons. Name who started the company.

Rob Woolley: [00:16:07] I don’t actually know that it is. I’m amazed that I wouldn’t mind having looked at that.

Mark Scown: [00:16:12] And really the brand, a part of Nike is the tech, which was generated in a competition from a 16 year old school go.

Rob Woolley: [00:16:20] It’s not as not, you know, he’s, you know, like Nike was invented by a guy called Knight and Nike is actually a Roman.

Lachlan McNeill: [00:16:36] Wasn’t there messenger.

Rob Woolley: [00:16:37] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I can’t remember now, but yeah.

DANNY : DE HEK: [00:16:42] What about new balance? You know, it doesn’t really matter what brand it is behind them. I mean, sometimes you buy the product more than the brand, but

Mark Scown: [00:16:53] yeah, but, but the very thing is that if you I will re recollect these brains that is, think terrible. The fact that you are doing it main set of it’s in your mind. So in some ways it could well be a successful brand cause people can remember good old bed.

Rob Woolley: [00:17:09] Hmm. Yeah, perhaps. Yeah. Yeah.

Paul Starling: [00:17:11] Nike is the goddess that personifies victory. Oh methodology.

Lachlan McNeill: [00:17:17] Wasn’t what I was thinking.

DANNY : DE HEK: [00:17:18] Being a small to medium sized businesses, getting a brand out there is quite difficult.
I’ve always found, I think sometimes it’s just something that looks nice on your business cards, but is it really a tool? Was it something that’s really important? You know, I’ve spent 20 years trying to build up my new Zealand’s information network, hoping that will become a brand that people remember. No one. Has she ever you know, said that to me you know, the, the, no one’s ever remembered the brand, but now

Rob Woolley: [00:17:46] I can hand you an example of a years ago, there was a minister in the national party who had a daughter who, who wasn’t into politics years later, a yellow, well, after the guy had actually resigned and he, he had an unusual, last name.
And the daughter decided to stained and got elected purely on her name, branding and her name. I’ll, I’ll just find a minister. I can’t, I can’t I’m just actually hit her name as, as name. That was Mr.

Mark Scown: [00:18:30] Cath catheter. That was it. Yeah. Yeah,

Lachlan McNeill: [00:18:34] yeah.

Rob Woolley: [00:18:36] The nineties. And she had been

Mark Scown: [00:18:39] a mayor of Auckland, something as well, and she,

Rob Woolley: [00:18:42] yeah. Yeah. Well, she might’ve been a leaked it out to that. Eggs are yellow. Nobody knew who she was. Right. They knew the name. Hmm.

James Parone: [00:18:55] Well on that, on that note, that’s what a brand is your name. If you like your reputation grinded

Lachlan McNeill: [00:19:08] Mean attached to isn’t it.

James Parone: [00:19:10] When you go to McDonald’s, they’ve got a certain way of doing things. And when you hear a name like that, It goes with the reputation, wherever you go in the world, people will look at your reputation, even though they call it my say, I’ve got this.

You can see there buses my cars, but it’s my name that will carry things through before people need to find you. People need to see where you’re coming from. And the only way you can be seen as low as just like wild seeds as daughter, God. And because of his name now, namesake is really the brain of everything.
And that’s the when we talk about brands, we’re actually talking about every time, because when we hear about bra, when we hear about. Danny, who do we associate that with? When we hear about McDonald’s, we, we actually are archaic hamburgers. I don’t know if we do that, but if we hear about Nike, we are so jaded, there was sports and that’s good stuff, great stuff because of the night.

And this is, this is the challenge, Veronica, as they have run, it’s such a nightmare that people, when we use them, when they’ve talked about you, or when you hear your name, they know what’s yours exactly about then this is the challenge for me that I’ve. When I was doing Brandon there’s that I had to have a certain reputation that they can associate who you really are as oppose.

There’s a lot of, out of the speakers. There’s a lot of other churches out there, so I really can associate you with something. And of course the logo is your advertising, but at the same token, Do they know who you are. Can they find you in the world where they find you, this is the challenge I can let you know our branding as all your branding has to be in such a way that is just, it’s not the same.

You are not the same report. You’re not the same condom electrician, that’s you, that’s different. And I think this is, I believe that’s in the sound. When he bought it out, looking at the brain,

DANNY : DE HEK: [00:21:38] my name is quite unusual when I had a business colleague who rang me up one day and he said, Hey, I’ve changed my name.
His name was Mark Stevenson. And I said, what’d you change it to? And he said, all Mark Rocket, rocket, why? And he said, well, your name’s really your name sticks mine. Doesn’t. So he’s changed. It’s a rocket now he helps. Yeah. Rocket labs, funny enough, but yeah, but he’s changed his name to Matt rocket and that was what he did.
So, I mean, I believe it, personal branding is everything. So if, if you were going to put a slogan, this is, might just be a bit off topic, but if you were going to put a slogan under your name, what would you say?
I mean you would.

Rob Woolley: [00:22:24] I think there’s a very good question actually, because you know, like have ha have any of us got a slogan and if we have, have got a slogan, how do we use it quite, do we use it to describe what we do to the customer? Or do we use it to remind us of what we ought to be doing? Yeah,

Mark Scown: [00:22:45] I have one.
And it’s all been heard by you guys before. And it’s the one that I tried to encapsulate. What are you and what my speciality is and insurance and that. And so my byline is ensuring long-term affordability and sustainability.

DANNY : DE HEK: [00:23:05] Yeah. So that would be a company cause you’ve used your personal name and they used, you’ve got a that’s my byline.
If we have business, we’d have one. If we personally had one know, I remember seeing that that street performer say be true to yourself. Be true to your heart will be true to your heart and be true to yourself. And I’ve always sort of lived by that. When I’m making decisions in life that it’s publicized, but it’s something I quite like every time I think about, you know, as a decision I’m making in life.

Rob Woolley: [00:23:36] If you take you and Helen who, who were elite six and mowed, and you’ve changed onto your own name, Say tells the customer a little bit about each of you straight away, how, how you brand is part of what it tells them.

DANNY : DE HEK: [00:24:04] Hmm. Yeah, I hope so. We’ll see what happens. We’ll tell you in a few months when we get it out there a bit more can we, well, let’s go into problems that we’ve had.
What’s the problems with branding. If you’re a naughty person, your brand sucks that could be a problem. Or you, you bring in isn’t in line with. That’s fine. Branding’s not in line with. Yeah. And that’s why sometimes a lot of people who start up a company or are we so focused on what, what they call their company?
So my company is actually called New Zealand in z.co NZ limited, which is my we’ve started dress. It didn’t. So that was my company, but it was no association for branding, but just recently in the last six months, I’ve actually changed it to Danny to heat limited. But when you look at what I’m doing, I don’t hit my company.
Name has no representation of it’s you who are, does a wee bit more. Now it’s more in line with my personal brand. However, I have an electronic shop and outdoor shop and other shop. And you might find my company well in the fine print, you’ll find my company name, but you won’t find any association with that company.
I use it as a trading as name. Yeah.

Lachlan McNeill: [00:25:15] If you look at Virgin

Paul Starling: [00:25:18] Virgin, Virgin insurance, Virgin airlines, they’ve done a similar thing, but they do include the name and all the subunit. Shall we say?

Lachlan McNeill: [00:25:31] Yeah, it’s not going to

Paul Starling: [00:25:31] I’m Brian buying into the Virgin

Lachlan McNeill: [00:25:33] brand.

DANNY : DE HEK: [00:25:36] Brilliant example of that one.

Rob Woolley: [00:25:38] If you’d like, as an example, when I was over in Ozzie and we flew on Virgin, I can’t remember any airline being different that I’ve flown on around the world, except for Virgin, because right.
You get on to Virgin and you got air hostesses who, who were young, smiley, happy. And he clearly not versioned it’s the nail. Probably not, probably not Virgin personality.

Lachlan McNeill: [00:26:08] Yeah. So I always had something fun guy.

DANNY : DE HEK: [00:26:11] Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I love that. That’s a really good example of a brand or reckon. I mean, obviously it’s not 500, 500 companies, but he’s also, you know, like we say, if it’s a Virgin brand it’s or it’s, you know, there’s a lot of layers of good stuff in there really isn’t there.

Lachlan McNeill: [00:26:27] Well, yeah, but in terms of the problems, you know, is the simple factors you change sometimes, you know, I’ve gone from being small to being begged, to being small again, and your brain has to sort of, sort of, you know, you’re going to get misalignment

DANNY : DE HEK: [00:26:41] sometimes not the way it has, if they decided to start over in corn and dairies.
Yeah, it does. I

Rob Woolley: [00:26:50] would say, I would say that would be moving their brand up. Yeah. But

Lachlan McNeill: [00:26:53] if you called yourself the little shed. And then suddenly you’ve got 500 stores around New Zealand. Well, yeah,

Paul Starling: [00:27:01] you also have to be very careful with what you choose as your branding. Because I remember years ago with the kids, with the warehouse branding, the kids were singing the warehouse, the warehouse where everything’s cheap and nasty.
So it can be very negative. It was like when spark changed spot. Was to sort out Telekom, spell it backwards and it’s craps. Yeah. Yeah. It’s, you’ve just gotta be so careful what you named things and also what does your brand mean in another country? True. Cause there’s a brand called cat. Will they? That means crap.

Lachlan McNeill: [00:27:46] Yeah. That’s right. Well, wait, we looked at the one in Hong Kong and Hong Kong airport. There’s a store there called WinCo.

Paul Starling: [00:27:55] Yeah, hang on there.

Rob Woolley: [00:27:56] Have you ha have a look at that image, right? That I put into the chat box? It’s the logo for Noel Leeming and if every person who works for Noel Leeming does not see in Earl it’s an animal.

DANNY : DE HEK: [00:28:15] Hmm. Okay. Well, people meeting online, but it’s sort of going off of it. I’m the only

Rob Woolley: [00:28:19] one I’m fine. No, no, I don’t think we’re gone off at all because it is what people perceive.
And once any meaning as a attached to yell at the logo, the name or whatever, it’s very hard to unattach it. Oh,

Lachlan McNeill: [00:28:34] is that a problem?

DANNY : DE HEK: [00:28:38] The problem is what.

Rob Woolley: [00:28:40] The problem is, is a Eve. Everything can attach a meaning onto your slogan logo or name. And we want to attach what we specifically want the to be, but other people may perceive other things.
And once they’ve seen it or perceived it, it’s the era it’s real. It’s hard to

Lachlan McNeill: [00:29:06] be negative to your business. Yeah, but I mean, let’s face it. Everyone is going to ever hate it. And you can never win them. All

DANNY : DE HEK: [00:29:13] right. Any other branding that we, yeah,

Lachlan McNeill: [00:29:16] yeah, I’ve got, I’ve got I’ll work with a guy who’s got a recruitment cut, another recruiter.
And his, his, his name was Richard Foster and his company is called foster era, which is so similar to Fontera. And we work together on jobs. We get candidates ringing up and say, Oh, I’m inquiring about the job with Fontera. And I think it’s a job for the milk company. So the names too similar.

Mark Scown: [00:29:39] Sorry. You just cut work out of that.
Thing,

Rob Woolley: [00:29:41] housing

DANNY : DE HEK: [00:29:45] recruiters. Yeah. Yeah.

Lachlan McNeill: [00:29:48] I tell you, it’s a quick, very quick, funny story. I’ve got an 800 number Oh 800 a Korver, which by pure chance is also those first letters are the same for one, my competition. And they rang me up one time and said, Oh, look, we’ve got this number. We should have this number. I said, now I got a thirst.
And they said, Oh, well, what are you going to do now? I said, what do you do? They said, we’re a recruitment company. I said, well, so am I picking up their stuff? Right. And that was very much the Obagi moment for them actually. And they go, Oh, five away, but okay. People ringing up. Yeah,

James Parone: [00:30:22] trying to chew me, catch it

DANNY : DE HEK: [00:30:27] in your addition to all family,

Rob Woolley: [00:30:32] think to overcome these issues, that if you’ve got a lot of money you work out what you will logo slogan namers. And then you ask other people who, who are completely naive to what you do. And so what are you saying? Yeah. Yeah.

Lachlan McNeill: [00:30:50] So one of the problems is confusion with other brands.

DANNY : DE HEK: [00:30:52] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Lachlan McNeill: [00:30:55] That’s a confusion on the brands. Yeah, you’re right. And, and also just the instant perception. I mean, I’ve always talked about the thing in Brownie’s mattresses, which I couldn’t think of a worst. Nine, even if your name was brownie, I just wouldn’t put Brad he’s mattress sets. I’m sorry. That’s what I was thinking.
Am I the only one? No. When I was at board is

Paul Starling: [00:31:14] still someone put a banana

Lachlan McNeill: [00:31:16] under a mattress and

Paul Starling: [00:31:19] forgot about it. It was under someone’s bed. When the hat they found it about three months later, the stock refused to believe it was benign as

Lachlan McNeill: [00:31:29] bird

DANNY : DE HEK: [00:31:34] and Helen pointed it out to me. That’s what I was trying to say

Helen Oakes: [00:31:36] before. It’s funny that you said that Laughlin, because when we were driving around the other day, I keep being all all these companies like that one, you know, Brownie’s mattress and it was, yeah. Underwater driver or diet yet? I mean, there was Oh, underground Brown.

Lachlan McNeill: [00:31:57] Underground Brown. Yeah.

Paul Starling: [00:32:01] The guys that do the digging with out using

Lachlan McNeill: [00:32:04] Biggers.

DANNY : DE HEK: [00:32:05] Yeah. Bore was boring machines.

Lachlan McNeill: [00:32:08] Yeah. Underground, but it’s good. This quite funniest, but I mean the poo man, that’s kind of funny and there’s purpose flow, so that’s okay. But for somebody that makes brownies mattresses is just the worst.
Cause it’s not

DANNY : DE HEK: [00:32:20] intentional.
We’re picking your brain. Could you get somebody else to do your brain for you? I did that the late sex. And I actually handed it over to a friend of mine who knew elite six really well. And I said, I don’t want anything to do with it. I said, I’ve got a budget of a thousand dollars, which wasn’t a lot.
And he knew a lady who just redid their branding and I liked it. And I said, I really liked that. And they come back with the concepts and basically they’re now a first time for me. Yeah. I think what Rob

Lachlan McNeill: [00:32:52] said before about getting someone else to test it. We had our brand down originally a COVID one done, and they tested on people.

DANNY : DE HEK: [00:33:00] Yep.

Rob Woolley: [00:33:02] I think, I think it depends on your audience as well, because you need to work out who, who is your customer, like for example, with right. If you were to call yourself elite, anything that just yell out the word that pops into my head. If people were buying on price, are they likely to call up elite Lottie Bly because right.
The word elite implies upmarket expensive.

DANNY : DE HEK: [00:33:29] Hmm. Yeah, no, I, I inherited that brand, so didn’t have much say on what the words were, but when the brand new lady come back, she actually used the word six and seed of. The number six sports was like a bit of a change. I thought I were doing that. And then the other thing, if you use speech recognition and try to say elite six you can imagine what comes up on the screen.

Lachlan McNeill: [00:33:53] That was a lot more

DANNY : DE HEK: [00:33:54] attractive. Yeah. But then all of a sudden, at least six, one of us started a business doing that. But I mean, the point is it’s quite close to another word that maybe isn’t good for the business because people often tripped me up on that. Yeah, I forgot you just at lead six and I’m getting six.

Rob Woolley: [00:34:12] Yeah. I wonder if the perception of, of the number means that elite is highlighted and if you altered the number onto word then you know, like elite is slightly minimized. I wonder if that was your

DANNY : DE HEK: [00:34:28] mentality, an example of a brain, and then how many people go to elite six?

Lachlan McNeill: [00:34:35] Well, I call it still think of elite 69,

DANNY : DE HEK: [00:34:38] six, shut up sex.
That’s my, there’s something of a better word for years. People think there’s only six of us at the meetings, so it wasn’t a good name originally.

Rob Woolley: [00:34:51] It’s a good point.

Lachlan McNeill: [00:34:52] Yeah. That constraints did

DANNY : DE HEK: [00:34:54] not. So I have to explain the concept that we sit in tables up and then they go, Oh, so that was the idea of the dots.

And originally that was actually a table was not around the table, but it looked dumb. So I got rid of the lines around the table, but yeah, I mean, this is where my limiting, my growth has often been there. People don’t want to turn up to, if there’s only six people there they’re too shy. Got you. Yeah. We put people there that will come along.

So it’s always been a hard thing to promote that brand. So in some ways, you know, the brand, I liked the logo when I bought it and I changed the everything. And then I can hang on, hang onto the brain for years, you know, I’ve changed it. Theoretically, I should have just rebranded the whole company, call it something else.

Paul Starling: [00:35:40] Call yourself business, networking online. Yeah, then you’ll pick up

Lachlan McNeill: [00:35:44] book sites

Mark Scown: [00:35:46] that Denny I’ve been involved for what, four years now. And I have never conjured up elite sex has been just for six people. She was curious at the start and then subsequently found out that the idea is to break into groups of six, but it certainly didn’t enter my head or thinking right at the word go that it was only for six

Lachlan McNeill: [00:36:06] people.
But Mark, you’re the sort of person who would ask the right questions. And a lot of people just don’t come through the door because they make this assumption and off they go again, you know, it’s like we have with Toastmasters, you know, you know, you know, Denny, you know, Toastmasters obviously drop, you know, how many people actually come to Toastmasters to learn how to give toasts not a lot.
It’s an older name. And so people that are, well, I don’t want to give toasts, I want to learn how to speak in front of a business group. So I’m not going to go to Toastmasters. And

Rob Woolley: [00:36:36] I think we’ve got a slogan as well. You know, I, we liters of mine I’ll get that out of each slate. You know, like we are leaders of mite and 90% of the members, you know, like believable, this is all about speaking. And so, you know, like the members, aren’t actually the owners of the brand.

Lachlan McNeill: [00:36:54] What James said before about the branding to attract people as good.
And I think that also in some ways, and not in a not cynical way is you want to. Track do you want to distract? What’s the word you don’t want? The people you don’t want to approach, approach you. For example, my technical recruitment, that really means my straight line. I don’t want people who you know, maybe they’re artists or whatever.
I, I don’t want the ring me up and saying, can you help me with a job? So part of the thing is to make sure that that is the be clarity. Good stuff guys. So solutions for branding. I just thought of another one when you was talking there about the branding and that was the fact that, because your name is so weird or your brain is so weird, it generates curiosity.

DANNY : DE HEK: [00:37:40] Yeah. Elite six stars. Yeah, maybe it does. I mean, so maybe you don’t have to explain things in your logo too much. Well, that’s the purpose of a brand. What is the purpose of a brand? What did we discuss it? I read that to you before

Helen Oakes: [00:37:56] becoming you creation, Excel as an authority, the new industry, really, and having a unique selling point being different you’re you’re unique.

DANNY : DE HEK: [00:38:12] So if you were to put a brain on a horse with a hunt on. Yeah. Would you put your phone number, your slogan and all those other things to explain what the brand is about? Or do you just wait the portal, the horse for the hotline? So you’ve got people would die. Oh, I know that’s his brain. So is it, you know, this is where, you know, advertising, you know, the lips were branding so much because people want their brand to send the message, but the reality of it is actually the brain should be.
Some of that people know because I’ve seen it before because of their advertising.

Rob Woolley: [00:38:50] Yeah. If everything is going to speak. So your logo, slogan name, car, vehicle the way you speak, how you dress, if everything speaks. And I think yellow, a lot of the big brands manage everything around the brand.
Absolutely everything. Do we need to do that? We’ll probably not, but ha ha, have we thought about the influence on our brains of how we speak, talk, answer emails, all of that stuff because it’s all branding.

DANNY : DE HEK: [00:39:31] Yeah. Well, I’m just looking at your misses here and you see the slogan not aligning with product

Mark Scown: [00:39:35] as well.
So it’s kind of saying slogan Alliance with product as the solution.

Rob Woolley: [00:39:40] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, sorry. Sorry. Yeah. Yeah. Got that. Makes sense. Well, maybe aligns with product.

Lachlan McNeill: [00:39:49] No, I’m

DANNY : DE HEK: [00:39:49] telling you to put an it,

James Parone: [00:39:53] there you go.

Paul Starling: [00:39:55] That’s all

James Parone: [00:39:55] surface.

Rob Woolley: [00:40:01] Product

Lachlan McNeill: [00:40:02] or service. Yeah. W we’ve had a couple of different sort of strap lines. I’ve just got a Mark done. If you probably can’t even see, I was, Oh, I have done in Canada and it’s the core one is it’s first things. I put the name on it and I put lots of people around because they’re telling me how to some five, six people and a lot of recruitment companies were only one person.

So the aha. Well, I want to let people know we could more than one person, but we put a thing here. Because it’s a little smarter, cause we deal with smart people. Most people are recruit are smarter than me, but also I wanted to be, I didn’t want to be corporate. So that’s hence the strap line, a little smarter, which I thought were issue worked quite well for us.

DANNY : DE HEK: [00:40:36] Yeah. And it’s interesting. You’ve got advertising when you cut there, but they’re not part of your brand name, but they endorse your brand. Yeah, they are,

Lachlan McNeill: [00:40:44] well, they actually are part of the branding. You know, I’ve got everyone had a business card like mine here, which has got my picture on the, these are all actual people working for the company.

It’s each of them had their own, their own little thing that that’s Frankie there, you know?

DANNY : DE HEK: [00:40:59] Hi, Frankie. Frankie. I want a little place. No hurry. So we haven’t needed a couple more solutions. So yeah, I lost my brain at the moment. I think most people have an intimate relationship with their own branding, but then when you shot somebody else, they got, you know, and that always like it doesn’t help your ego with it.
I don’t think

Lachlan McNeill: [00:41:20] the core solution is just find your audience though.

Rob Woolley: [00:41:26] Yeah. I think you’ve got a couple of choices here. You can either. Create your brand and live into it. Or you can work out who, who you are and create the brand that aligns to actually where you are now. So, you know, like, do you want to move into it or, or have it actually recognize who you are at the prison?
And it may. Change in the future.

DANNY : DE HEK: [00:41:52] I’m just thinking, do companies need branding or the individuals need branding and have it as individuals. I’m a real big believer of personal branding. And that’s where I’m putting all my energy now is my personal brand because I’m a small person. But if I was a corporate company thing, I need a logo.
I need a brand. So as individuals and small to medium sized businesses, maybe company owners need a brand. And maybe as individuals we might not is James said earlier on you are your personal brand because your name is ran.

Mark Scown: [00:42:26] Yeah. Yeah. So it’s not as if you’d not needing a brand, you have that brand, but I guess in terms of solutions, you actually know when your brand is successful.
When the general punters out there can reflect back to you

James Parone: [00:42:41] what they think you do.

Mark Scown: [00:42:44] And if I can, the message

Lachlan McNeill: [00:42:45] hasn’t gone out yet. Well, or if you’re right. Customers turn up,

James Parone: [00:42:49] frankly. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if you look at somebody like Donald Trump, you know, he’s got a brand going on as the Gulf. I forget his name whoever the young boy or whatever his name is.
Yeah. Yeah, when you look at those guys, you know exactly what they’re involved in, you’ve done it twice because the reputation is going to be molded. Yeah. And

Mark Scown: [00:43:17] it’s, and it stayed very same reputation with Trump. About five or six of his hotels have gone out and ripped the name off the front facade.
Who’s I don’t want to be

James Parone: [00:43:26] associated with his brain. That’s strong. You see that’s, that’s the, that’s the white dude. Carrie brain will be things like that. We’re all. And we’ve got to behave in such a way that people say these are, this is what they believe in. This is what they don’t believe you can get it all.

Good. I’ve got a, I got a logo that’s coming out, like check the cross now. Because it’s kind of, God’s love having the cross as a brand is kind of being controversial. Some religious, some not religious, some hate it, some love it, but the thing is it provokes thought that will have to provide thoughts.

It’ll have to provide, why is he got a Trump and the, and the word audit is going to be called cross roads because I’m the carriage. When I’m doing those things, I’m bringing them into my space. Yeah, sorry. I have to go

Mark Scown: [00:44:23] guys. So I’ll cut

DANNY : DE HEK: [00:44:24] out of here. All right. See you, man. And I think you could get away with it by calling, having the slogan
that generates curiosity in any answer at all in one. Yeah. And a lot of people, I think that’s really, that sounds really cool.

Rob Woolley: [00:44:40] Yeah. Excellent. That’s an excellent idea. And I think, I think there was an excellent example about Trump, because if you’re a supporter of Trump, you would probably want to go and spend money at a Trump venue.

Right. If you’re not, you won’t, but you probably wouldn’t have gone anyway. So who is your customer? Yeah,

DANNY : DE HEK: [00:45:06] that’s pretty good example. That one does not because you do, you want to associate yourself with the person you don’t like, you just don’t want to go the idea. If you didn’t like Trump and you wanted to go to his golf resort, it’s called Trump golf.

You would probably avoid it because you just, and so now it’s as branding as personal brain, isn’t working for them. We don’t want to go on too long. So what are some takeaways that we got from this meeting? I think I’m one that James just did, at least a brain should stimulate your thinking.

Rob Woolley: [00:45:35] I think a brand can be purposeful or it can just, you know, like a .

James Parone: [00:45:43] Yup.

Helen Oakes: [00:45:44] It should be paid as phone. Yeah,

DANNY : DE HEK: [00:45:46] it’s a good one. I think sometimes you need to change your brain too, as like, when you see rebels. Okay. When, when you see a company rebranding, I think countdown we’ve all ago rebranded and had a new logo and a refresh to a lot more like, Oh good.

They’re here to stay. You know, somebody I used to deal with two week campus, they rebranded themselves in that same name. And it’s just all been redone, new font, new colors that you straight away recognize as the same company. I think something that we sometimes hang on to our brains too much.
Okay. Any more takeaways, similar ask or anything out of that meeting that we’ve had today?

James Parone: [00:46:27] All I to just say Danny and Rachel when I think of you, Danny, I think we’ll be bust. That’s your brain
block. That’s how you’ve got me. When you talk about your brand, I think it’d be a, both, if you want a beautiful missing, I’ll be looking for the ELA kind of thing.

DANNY : DE HEK: [00:46:49] Rachel was my ex wife.

James Parone: [00:46:51] This is how

Rob Woolley: [00:46:54] right then for the photo. What a beautiful photo.

James Parone: [00:47:01] Sorry.

DANNY : DE HEK: [00:47:08] The other one, I quite like about it, personal brand at the moment, it was, I’ve got danny.co dot and Zed, and Harlan’s got Holland dot Coda who did. So it’s quite a cool thing to do, you know, for a New Zealand company. But my brand is actually d.com, which is an American one because I want to be the international.
You know, it’s extremely, I’ve taken the pistol brainstormers and that, so trying to get your first name dot Coda is it’d be quite cool. Yeah.

Lachlan McNeill: [00:47:37] This the sudden need different angles. You can take that. You can have a name that’s meaningful.
Raymond Lum: [00:47:44] Yeah.

Lachlan McNeill: [00:47:46] To be able to allow you to adjust within it without having to change it every time.
But as well as that ideally needs to convey things quickly.

DANNY : DE HEK: [00:47:57] I think when I got out of it, we, while ago I had three websites and I was managing three websites, but consolidate them all under my personal brain on there had one big website and everything I do this new is a service. And I can just add that into my website.

So it’s time of Helen. Really. She was called motivated photography. Now we call it hollow Nikes, and now she’s got a service of photography. And then he gives his, also sells digital art. She also can help people with online courses in the business of photography, and now she can add more to her website and more services and things she has to offer because she’s not limiting yourself to motivate the photography brand stream. She’s a photographer.

Lachlan McNeill: [00:48:37] Okay. I got you in terms of sorry, Helen.

Helen Oakes: [00:48:40] Yeah, I was struggling with just having the note to be photography. Cause I do other things as well, and that’s kind of holding me back. So even though I did like the name notifi, a lot of people couldn’t spell it or didn’t understand the either. Yeah. There’s another reason, but having my own name, I can add loads of other things into it now. Yeah.

Lachlan McNeill: [00:49:01] It, it is a problem having the, you got the corporate brand or the sort of company brand you’re like, I’ve got to call that. And then you’ve got the personal brand and just trying to manage those two, because it seems to me that the personal brand is something you can carry through.

You can have number of businesses springing off that, but there’s a real advantage. If you were a, I dunno, property broker or something, be able to call yourself property brokers. Limited is absolutely clear what you do, so you don’t have to kind of explain it to everyone. So it’s, it’s, you know, I th I actually think these days, ultimately people end up with a bit of both.
Yeah, and I was struggling with this one. Do I, do I call it Laughlin McNeil? I mean, I can have a Lockland mcneil.com, but it’s hard to spell. Does it mean anything? So I have to explain it to everyone. So I’m going to start with that. And you

DANNY : DE HEK: [00:49:46] know, Sarah go, I used to ACN to my brain, had put, I used to put by Danny to Hicks.
I new Zealand’s information. It would by identity. Indeed, well, identity to hit, you know, and identity to Higgins the brand. Yeah, sure.

Lachlan McNeill: [00:49:59] I mean, I think we agree in terms of takeaway, it needs to have minimum explanation, really, to people get the picture pretty quickly. I know you, you, when your images, Danny people look at it like, okay, I sort of get it.
It’s a business oriented environment.
Raymond Lum: [00:50:12] Mm.

Rob Woolley: [00:50:14] Why

DANNY : DE HEK: [00:50:14] association?

Rob Woolley: [00:50:16] Instant buying, you know, like you get it. Boom. Move on. Yeah.

DANNY : DE HEK: [00:50:21] Rob, you’ve posted in the chat room. There, is it a spark is market. And is that a take away? Yup. Yup.

Rob Woolley: [00:50:34] Yeah. Yeah. Just, you know, and I divide it up, you know, I completely, because you know, like they’re aiming it an audience that generally is not overlapping.

DANNY : DE HEK: [00:50:48] Yep. All right. Good stuff. All right, guys. What about next week’s topic? We’ll try to keep the meeting as short as possible.
If it doesn’t. I was,

Lachlan McNeill: [00:50:59] I was thinking, you know, we talked down and I would talk the week about, sometimes you’ve got to bring money in the door really quickly. Yeah. And, and like in recruitment, there’s certain things I can do sometimes, sometimes inside recruitment sometimes out just sometimes maybe entering new markets or.
Getting money in the door or something like that. What about that as a subject?

DANNY : DE HEK: [00:51:22] Yeah. That’s exactly what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to come up know for $97 that we can sell over and over again. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Rob Woolley: [00:51:31] I like advertising because advertising is, you know, like a specific act. And, you know, it’s not marketing, you know, like marketing is, you know, like you place price, product and promotion advertising, I think is interesting.
You know, I’ve learned a lot you know, about advertising in the last twenties.

DANNY : DE HEK: [00:51:53] Well, I think you don’t have anything to sell. You don’t have any advertising to do so I’m thinking, is there something that we could get money and now. Yeah, always

Rob Woolley: [00:52:03] advertising.

Lachlan McNeill: [00:52:04] I actually think advertising though is a separate subject.

I mean, I think we’ve done branding today. It’d be nice to do advertising in a couple of weeks, but I mean, look, you look at like, who was it, Gary V. He says, look, think of what you can sell around the house. And it sounds silly, but the low hanging fruit, because I don’t know about you, but I’ve always had times when I’ve had to get some money in the door.

And I had my drafting business and, and and recruitment, you know, things can take three, four, five, six months. You know so it’s like a slow, slow turning ship. What do you do? What’s some ideas and it may be something within your business alignment or something completely. You know, just a thought.

DANNY : DE HEK: [00:52:41] I think I quite like that. There’s anyone else just like that.

Helen Oakes: [00:52:43] I like that sometimes you saw, you know, worried about you can’t pay a bill and you go, what can I sell? So my old bike,

James Parone: [00:52:52] blah, blah, blah, waste

Helen Oakes: [00:52:54] my money. You know, things that align and your garage that you can definitely make money from mostly, but too lazy to list

Lachlan McNeill: [00:53:02] them.

James Parone: [00:53:06] Nope,

DANNY : DE HEK: [00:53:08] he’s gone. What does that mean?

Lachlan McNeill: [00:53:09] So, and I did that. I don’t know. I mean, it depends on people’s situation, you know, but but I’ve had times when I think, Oh, I could really do it. I need to, I need, you know, two grand or something. But also just thinking about this or this perhaps next week, but what about doing advertising the following week? Would you think about that? I think brand

Jaline Pietroiusti: [00:53:28] exposure as well. How do you get your brand out there? Because we’ve just discussed branding. Yeah. Yep.

DANNY : DE HEK: [00:53:37] Then we need to add a few. I’m sorry, what was it? Because you

Helen Oakes: [00:53:41] You need your brand to be known don’t you

DANNY : DE HEK: [00:53:43] So advertising. Yep. Was that right? And then what was the other one? We talked about getting

Helen Oakes: [00:53:49] your brand out,

Jaline Pietroiusti: [00:53:50] Brand exposure. Yeah.
Getting your brand out there. Yeah.

Lachlan McNeill: [00:53:57] We also talking Danny yesterday about you like, like me for like earn your crust and almost makes my head explode. Because what, when you ask advice, you get 15 people telling you, you should do all these things in all these different platforms.
Yeah. And the fact is, if you did it, half of that stuff, you’d go bust, you know? But the thing is working out what platforms you use and a platform doesn’t necessarily need to be a social media platform, but what channels, what are your main channels? What’s your home base? You know, do you use Facebook? Do you use and person you have your own website?
Do you bring everything there? That’s, that’s another, that’s a bit, it’s a big subject, but just deciding what your general. Platform strategy is

DANNY : DE HEK: [00:54:40] I know this guy sold insurance has 90% of his has money coming from knocking on people’s doors. Yep. One does it anymore. He used to have a calendar. And that’s what I used to do.

I just respect to time. I’m going to actually stop recording this meeting. So of y’all listening to it on a podcast. Thank you very much for tuning in. Please subscribe to any platform that you’re listening to us own. And the other thing too, is everyone in this room does have a profile on the ELITE : SIX website.

If you go along to a website, you will find this podcast and you’ll be able to click on the names and find out what they’re doing, who they are. So I really think you will guys will coming here today. And we’ll be back next week at 10 o’clock, which is the new time, 10 to 11. And I really appreciate all you guys tuning in and if it’s in your input, so thank you for sharing your knowledge and experiences in skills.

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