Live Conversation Series – Episode 002

During this FB Live Conversation I am joined by Shawn Willis, Creative Director at 806 Designs. Shawn is an artist, designer and digital marketing expert. We sat down to discuss how to create a brand you are proud of. Before you create your Brand (the noun) Shawn stresses the importance of taking a step back and asking yourself a series of questions to determine what your brand persona is and how the various elements of your brand will properly represent that. Creating and auditing your brand can take quite a bit of time and energy…but it is totally worth it.

Free Resource

Shawn has generously shared a Branding Audit Worksheet with my audience. If this topic, video and Shawn’s insight resonated with you and you want a little help with your brand, fill out the form below and I will send along his audit worksheet right away!

Video Transcript

Don Mamone (00:08):
All right. How are you doing Shawn?
Shawn Willis (00:10):
Good. How are you?
Don Mamone (00:12):
Man…that was a lot more work than I wanted it to be. Nothing like being 18 minutes late to my very own Facebook live event. Um, I’m not gonna let it get me frazzled though. This is very important conversation. So, uh, to those of you that are loyal fans and followers that hung out with us for 18 minutes while we figured out why Zoom, wouldn’t talk to Facebook. Thank you for being here. Um, I’m super excited about today’s conversation. Um, after last week’s live conversation with Ayelet Shipley, the results were overwhelming. Uh, people didn’t want to listen to me talk. They wanted to listen to me, talk to someone else. So I called up Shawn and I said, Hey, Shawn, this is kind of last minute. I didn’t realize I was going to be interviewing someone or chatting with someone every week. Will you do it? And he said, heck yeah. So, uh, welcome to the people first, then profit Facebook live conversation episode two. Today, we’re going to talk about branding, branding identity and branding persona. So I’m going to tee this up by introducing Shawn. So, uh, Shawn, the interesting thing about you is everybody knows about Don and Emily, but what people don’t know is you knew about Emily and Emily because you know, Emily as far back as well before I met her and then, uh, once Emily and I got together and I got to know you, I thought, man, this guy has got it figured out. He’s creative, he’s talented, he’s professional. So you and I, and Emily did all that work together for the American Fallen Soldiers Project. And in 2012, when we rebranded, I thought this is the only person that could possibly do this. And I’m perfectionist. I’m a self described recovering perfectionist because I don’t believe in perfection anymore. But, uh, it was you that brought forth just how important the branding process is. Uh, and at the time I had no idea that it was as detailed a process as you showed it to me. So I want to start out by saying thank you for being here. And the next thing I want to talk about is…branding is something that you do when you start a business, obviously, but in conversations you and I have had, especially right now, there’s also the opportunity for branding audit. So let’s start by looking at your process when you start talking to a client. The most important thing that we do when we try to set up a brand is what?
Shawn Willis (02:32):
um, I think you have to take a step back. Um, what I like to do is spend part of my processes. Take your brand and actually create a brand persona.
Don Mamone (02:47):
Describe what that is for people who don’t know
Shawn Willis (02:51):
It’s taking your brand name, looking at it as its own personality, its own person, place or thing. What that does for me and the client is it kind of lets us take a step back and look at the brand from a different perspective, um, kind of create, um, objectives based on that persona that help us develop what that brand looks like. Um, it kind of takes the subjectivity and some of the personal subjectivity out of the process.
Don Mamone (03:24):
So it’s interesting you say that because in a lot of ways for me and this new adventure that I’m on as a relationship marketer, you and I have talked about it, that my personality and who I am is a large, larger part of the brand than some companies might be. But what you’re saying is even in that situation, you still have to put an objective framework around a subjective process and almost pull yourself far enough out of it, to be able to see this as its own person place or thing.
Shawn Willis (03:54):
Yeah, absolutely. Um, you know, a lot of, a lot of what we do is, um, We’re basing our decision, especially when you’re starting a new business, you’re basing a lot of your decisions based on assumptions and those assumptions are not always correct. And as your brand grows, you start to realize you start to pivot and start to do different things. Um, but by starting with that persona, um, it gives you a better idea of seeing what your brand needs to reflect, um, outwardly, um, from the beginning, um, it gives you kind of a, a better starting point. Um,
Don Mamone (04:32):
So when you, I love what you said when we were kind of chatting about this because for so many people, including myself, when we very first did this process, you and I now we’ve done it fully twice. We did it once with Emily and once now with more me, but with Emily’s, um, very constructive feedback, which I love right when the three of us work together is you said you called it a North star. Like literally when you go through this branding process and you create a brand identity or persona everything you do that relates to the brand itself, whether it be creating your values, creating a marketing message, creating your sales, you would look up and say, is this headed in that direction? I mean, that’s a really cool way to phrase it because basically it takes away the guesswork, right. You just basically can say, is this on brand? Fair?
Shawn Willis (05:24):
Yeah. Yeah. I mean the most important thing outside of developing the brands and the most important thing that you can do after you’ve developed your brand, um, is…or if you have your current brand and you want to look at an audit and kind of, um, look back at where you’ve grown and how your business has grown is, uh, you have to be consistent, um, and you have to pay attention to the details. Um,
Don Mamone (05:48):
And that’s something that’s easy to miss because, um, well anytime I think of details or, or a process that’s this overwhelming or can be, this overwhelming, I think about depth and breadth, right? So let’s take one element, right? Your logo or your mark is one element, right? How deep do you dig to create that, that logo or Mark is part of the process? And I understood that, right? Like I feel like creating your Mark should be one of the most fun, most interesting things you do. I know whenever we created the mark for The Mamones, I had the pleasure of sitting in a room with you and going through this objective process, you know, and talking about our style and our design, all the stuff. And then you created this, this mark, which I still have a love affair with. Right. But what I didn’t get was the, the breadth of it. Right. I was like, okay, logo, Mark, dig deep, create this. But then you started talking about, well, you know, Don, what do you want to do about your typography? I’m like, what do you mean? Well, you need to have fonts that represent the brand. I’m like why? And you explain that. And so, um, I think what I’d like to do is go through this process from the probably overused cliched number of thousands of feet from strategy to tactical, right? So we’ve sort of started at the hundred thousand foot way up in space. This is the overarching thing that branding is. Right. Um, let’s pull at the thread of when it comes to creating, um, a persona. I remember when we were looking over the worksheet that you created for our audience, Hey, by the way, if you’re watching right now, stick around because we’re going to be giving away an amazing worksheet that Sean created to help you review and audit your brand. So there’s that give me a thumbs up and a, like, if that’s a good idea and you want that, uh, so you literally have personalities, um, and, uh, voices that you apply to a brand, right? So if you could give us a couple of ideas, you don’t have to go through them all, because I know that we’re only gonna be here for a short time, but, you know, get pick maybe two or three that you would assign to a brand that would, uh, that you would pick to say my brand voice or my brand personality is.
Shawn Willis (07:52):
Yeah. I think, um, I think it’s just, you know, it’s really about creating this persona, um, that is, you know, you go through and you kind of create a personality around your brand. Um, you know, you hear about brand essence, um, and words like that. Um, you know, what is the voice of your brand and how does your, how does your, if you were, if your brand was a person, how would they speak? Um, you know, a big part of our personalities are how we, how we talk, how we joke are we sarcastic? Um, do we joke a lot? You know, are we serious people, um, you know, are you informative? Um, if your brand was a person or thing, how would your brand speak? You know, um,
Don Mamone (08:36):
Let me give you an example. So one of the things I remember this years ago, I was, I was posting a picture. This was not from the new marketing relationship marketing brand, but from the photography brand, I posted a picture of a, a bride and groom. And, um, we had a particularly great relationship with his bride and groom. You know, we became friends with a lot of our clients, but I remember posting it and I was in the presence of another professional. And as I was posting it, they were kind of watching over my shoulder. And, um, again, I’m a, I’m a hearts and flowers kind of guy. Um, I tend to be romantic and sincere and authentic, and I remember typing it out and the person was like, kind of like cheesy isn’t that dude. And I said, I mean, that’s me. This is, this is who I am. This is the kind of thing I write. And it was at that moment, I didn’t realize at the time, but now that you start talking about like a brand’s personality, I think so much of our personality in that brand was very sincere because I would oftentimes write very whimsically and very authentically and sincerely, right. But if you hadn’t brought it up, I never would have thought about that. Like how to interject that into a brand. And so…
Shawn Willis (09:41):
You know, a lot of times that happens naturally for a brand, you know, that’s cause it’s who you are. Um, but you know, as a brand grows or you get more employees and more people representing you, but you have sales people, things like that, they have to understand…it’s, it’s kinda like your, your core values. Um, you can look at a branding the same way. Like they also have to understand what that personality of the brand is and they need to represent that brand in the same way.
Don Mamone (10:10):
That’s an amazing tangent to our next conversation, right? So, um, we made a very short list and this is something that we can, um, review with your worksheet when people, if people need help, when they get the worksheet, there is a myriad of reasons why you need to reaudit your brand, right? So, uh, I talk right now about sort of leveraging the gift of the time we’ve been given. And, um, this is a great opportunity for you to look at your brand and say, not that you did it wrong, right? That’s not the point. It’s not, it’s not that it needs to be changed. It’s, it’s an audit, which means I’m going to look back through and look at what we created and see if it still applies. Some of the things we rattled off, uh, Shawn, where what if you’re changing your client base? Right. So Emily and I did that in, I guess, let’s see, we started 2012. So it’s probably about in 2015, 2016, we started moving to a more corporate audience and you helped us pivot and create marketing messages around that pivot. Right? And so our brand shifted a bit, um, what if your market place changes, right? What if your audience changes in the way that they’re buying and the way that their interviewing and the way that they’re, um, looking for with the service or the good that you provide? One of the things you just pointed out, company growth, right? So you started as two people. Maybe it’s a lot easier. I would imagine to be on brand, to use the brand voice. If it’s only two people, what if you have a 10 person company now, then you have to make sure that I’ll tend to those people I imagine. Right? So team size and company growth, um, how would you recommend people go through the process of starting a brand audit? I know that your worksheets can help. And I know that it asks some objective questions, for that objective framework. What would you say first step, I’m going to audit my brand. What do I do?
Shawn Willis (11:55):
Um, take a big step back, you know, over time you start to kind of compartmentalize different parts of your brand. And that’s where on the design side, a lot of things start to stray. Um, you know, throughout the years, five years go on 10 years, go on people, you have other people involved. You’re bringing in different freelancers who kind of see it in a different way. They have different styles. Um, so to be able to step back and kind of pull all that content that you created, especially today, we have, you have your website, you have your Twitter feed, you have your YouTube cover, you have your Facebook cover, you have your LinkedIn cover all of these things. It’s really easy for these things to start to change and kind of morph into different things in different styles. So if you can kind of pull all that stuff in one place, um, and look at all that stuff as a whole and see if it actually is all working together. Mmm that’s uh, you know, that’s the biggest thing with, uh, with, with a brand being successful is like I said, it’s consistency and attention to detail. Um, and it’s really easy for us to kind of lose sight of all of those things over time. So when you want to audit your brand, you can kind of start by stepping back, pulling all of that stuff into one place and really looking at it visually, um, and understanding, you know, the different things that you want to get rid of, or do you want to revise and do you want to kind of get it all back? Mmm. Back in order. Um, and ideally you’re, you’ve worked with a designer or you, you had the chance to create brand guidelines, you know, and you have your brand guidelines and it has, you know, all of your, your…your logo and the different ways to use your logo and your taglines and your tone and voice and color palettes. And I work with a lot of clients that, um, you know, are bigger businesses, um, that are doing advertising on their platforms for other companies. And, you know, I worked for a company in Australia who did constantly did advertising, and I would get these, I would get Toys R Us brand guidelines. Cause I was creating an ad for Toys R Us for my client and there were very strict Disney, extremely strict about the way you use their logos and their marks. And all of that stuff is to protect their brand and the way their brand is being perceived. Um, if you should do that for yourself, you know, that should be something you do for yourself more than anybody else outside of your brand.
Don Mamone (14:32):
Well, I can tell you as a, um, a lover of all of this, but, uh, somebody who doesn’t believe that he’s exceptionally, um, I’m a visual artist from a photography perspective, but graphic design has never been a strength of mine. It’s really, really nice. I mean, I, I, first of all, you’re worth every penny of your time and talent, but can’t afford to outsource every single thing. So when you provided me with that brand guideline, it’s unbelievably helpful. Like if, if you’re watching this right now and you’ve worked with a graphic design artist that has not provided you with, I think Shawn’s is like a 10 page PDF of exactly how the logo and mark should look color, font, color, the hex codes, everything around, um, what headline should look like, what paragraph text should look like. It makes it so that when I do need to design something or I do need to create something, I know exactly what to do to make sure that I’m right on brand. So it takes, again, something that even after it’s established the way that you use it could be considered subjective and it puts an objective framework around it, right? If I’m creating a design and I, I have a headline, a subtitle and a paragraph, I can literally go directly to my brand guideline. And I know that this is the font and this should be the font size. There’s the font, the font size. And this is the paragraph in paragraph texts and it’s unbelievably helpful. So, um, I’m impressed by that, Shawn, because again, this is a process in an artistic space where I’ve always said a graphic designer, that are as talented as you crawls into your brain, asks you the right questions to try to figure out what I’m thinking, but I can’t possibly put into a two or three dimensional space and you create that for us. So, um, that to me is the talent and why it’s so worth working with the right artist and going through this process. You touched on something and that’s, I want to, uh, two more things before we wrap up one, you said details and consistency. And I think that it’s important to put an exclamation point at the end of that for the moment, because here’s the deal. Um, it doesn’t take much to stray, right? Just a little bit of, of losing sight of that Northern star that you’ve created and all of a sudden the wheels come off. Right? So, um, I think that’s what that brand guideline is for. And I think that that, that helps a great deal. Um, and it’s why an audit is important because you can get off track by just being like, oh, it’s no big deal. It’s just the font, but you could also get off track because things are changing and you’re not changing with it. Is that an accurate statement? Like sometimes you can veer off course a little bit because you’re not auditing your brand and saying, this font is isn’t the right font anymore. We should update, let’s go through the process of bringing out. Is that, is that a fair as well?
Shawn Willis (17:16):
Yeah. Yeah. I would say anytime, you’re going to make, you know, big changes like that, and you might not see it as a big change, um, you know, adding a new font throwing it in every once in a while, you really need to think about that as like, does this go back to that persona? So does this fit that persona? And if it doesn’t then rethink that idea if it does, that’s when you need to make the decision, is this something that you want to be married to, right? Is this something that you’re going to use throughout everything, because it’s not just about changing that one flyer. Or that one cover it’s about taking that new decision and scaling that across all of your collateral and everything, you know, all of your identity, your brand identity.
Don Mamone (18:02):
I want to touch on something we talked about was that, um, people routinely go through their processes. They go through, um, hiring practices, customer service practices. Their marketing ideas, their sales tactics, but they don’t always necessarily go to brand. And one of the reasons we’ve identified Shawn is the emotional connection. Um, and I think it’s important to touch on that for a second. Um, a brand audit doesn’t necessarily mean a complete overhaul, although it could, right. Um, it takes a certain amount of emotional strength to either say, we’re going to retire this mark or logo, or we’re going to adapt it substantially to kind of move with the change in our business. I imagine you come across that a fair amount and have to encourage people.
Shawn Willis (18:51):
Yeah. Um, yeah, I would say the emotional side of things really play into that. Um, I do a lot of nonprofit work. Um, it’s a whole other level at that point. Cause a lot of those original marks are something that was very dear to their heart. Um, um, but yeah, I would say just like anything else in your, in your business that’s changing and you’re pivoting and you’re reassessing your processes. You have to think about your brand in that way too, because there’s a good chance that when you started this, um, you either didn’t go through the correct processes to really think these things out ahead of time, or even if you did, you’re basing a lot of that on your assumption of what your business is going to be. Um, and the great thing about being in business for five or 10 years is that at this point you have analytics, you have data, you have experience one-on-one experience with your customers. Um, you have much better understanding of who that is and you can actually step back and redevelop that persona. And either say that my brand is not the person that used to be, or, um, my brand was never the right person. You know, I thought most of my demographic were going to be women. Um, but they’re not they’re men. Um, and you can kind of look back at that and create that new persona and, um, adjust, adjust. It’s not necessarily a naming strategy, creating a new name, launching a whole new brand like you guys did, um, with The Mamones. Um, but it could be just a refresh and visual, um, identity itself. Um, and there’s something there’s something exciting about a rebrand. People are so scared of a rebrand, but they don’t understand the kind of excitement the shot in the arm it can give you as a company and you can attest to that. I mean, you’re, you’re a brand launch was the, one of the coolest events I’ve ever been to, um, working with you guys as coming up with awesome ideas of everything from the way that you not only visualize the brand, but the experience you had at that event, at that party and going to the different rooms and actually having an actual experience of that new, a piece of that brand. It was really cool. Um, that, that came together.
Don Mamone(21:07):
That’s one of my favorite anecdote, Shawn. So if you guys are watching this and you want to hear that anecdote and you weren’t part of that, um, let me know, because I don’t have time to tell that story now, but it’s one of my favorite stories to tell from the inception that we created it with you, Shawn, and how the events industry pulled together to help us with that because I’ll be completely transparent when Emily and I did meet. And when we were operating as individual photographers, after a few years, it just didn’t make any sense at all to keep operating two brands. But to your point of a complete rebrand was super exciting to me, but my fear was people won’t recognize the brand. Now we had some name recognition because we kept the last name and a few other things, but Emily had the same fear, right? If, if our two brands were absorbed by this new brand, how do we ensure that people know that this is us and we’re still in the marketplace and we’re just moving and changing. And, um, so many people helped that happen. And it took a fear that I had and it turned it into some, one of the most exciting most, most, um, fun anecdotes I’ve got. So, um, let’s, let’s pivot real quick and talk about the breadth of what we were going to talk about because that’s a lot of what we’re sending people with this worksheet is, um, when you and I started working on the relationship marketing, um, iconography the mark and, and all that. One of the things that I thought was so amazing was you continued to stretch the depth and breadth of what we needed to do in order to well represent. And you were able to remove me from a very personal brand far enough to say, yeah, I know that this brand is so much about you, but it’s also about your audience, right? And you encouraged me to look at this from a perspective of color theory, even let’s, let’s just, just for a second color theory, which isn’t always something that people think about. It’s probably one of the lesser known concepts. You gave me, I don’t know how many comps did you give me maybe 10 or 15 over the course of a week or two. And you kept saying sort of the same thing. If we put these two colors together, this is maybe how your audience will feel. And I remember Emily saying, you know, Sean, when I look at those two colors together, it makes me anxious. And you said, good, because we’re going to use those colors when we want to introduce an emotion of like urgency and anxiety. And I sat back and I was like, like the color theory, evoking emotion makes so much sense, right? The psychology behind it, but it took you encouraging us and then showing us how these two colors and you gave us four colors as part of the brand. And when we settled on it, we recognize that these ones are cooling and sympathetic and easygoing. And so they would be shared or used in a certain way. So, um, it’s everything, man. You know, things we talked about so far, I’m just going to list them off and we can pick a couple, you know, your logo or your mark, which we talked about, your color theory, your typography, your taglines, your photography style, right? Like if you’re going to put photography all over your website and your marketing images, um, your layouts, right? I know your branding guidelines, you sent me has spacing and kerning for different things. So we talked about it. If, if somebody goes to your website and there’s a lot of negative space and it’s designed in a certain way, and then they go to your Instagram, your marketing, and they’re really cluttered and cumbersome, then you’re obviously in a very subtle way, really far off brand. So, um, that overall aesthetic, um, I’m so impressed, man, by this whole process. And I am on a quest right now to demystify this process and help people understand that it’s a, it’s a very ambitious effort, but that it’s totally worth it. Um, so if you had to think, and I know you’ve probably said it, so even if it’s a reiteration of something we’ve already talked about as we wrap up, what’s the most important reason or some of the most important reasons why you believe it’s important to go through this sometimes arduous iterative process of brand creation or brand auditing.
Shawn Willis (25:19):
Um, people need to recognize you. Um, I mean, you’re in a sea of other people out there and if they’re doing it better than you, um, if they’re taking the time to do these things, um, it’s the same with pretty, you can, it’s the equivalent of any, any other part of your business, right? Like you want your customer service to be better. All of those things, it’s the same with your brand. Like you need to be able to stand out and I can’t harp enough on consistency and detail. Um, it’s about, you know, and it’s not always about the craziest design. If you’re a small business, sometimes you want to talk to your, um, talk to your, talk to your designer and, and hopefully they’ll understand that you don’t have the bandwidth or the money to constantly have an in house designer or keep their brand consistent. Mmm. If you have that, if you can get an intern, um, there’s going to be a lot of creatives coming out of this, this, um, you know, this coronavirus with, uh, with no jobs. Um, if you can get an intern that could be that person that keeps your, keeps your things in line, um, that’s super important, but if you can’t talk with your designer and tell him, I want to keep it simple, like I use Canva, I use this, I use these tools. How can I take what you give me and keep that consistency and keep those details in a, in a simple and effective way. Don’t too ambitious if you don’t have the time or the money to do that. Right. Talk to them about that up front.
Don Mamone (26:49):
Yup. I love everything about that because obviously if we all had unlimited budgets and time and resources, then we could just, you know, right. So that’s a great point is to work with, and again, like I said, I love to come to you and say, Hey, you know, I need this thing designed and you’re so amazing at doing it, but there’s times when I just need to knock something out, all right, you can’t engage with you. So those, those, your understanding of that, and you giving me that that tool has been awesome. Um, I got a question online from Barb Granados. Barb, we love you, dear. Um, thank you for being here. Uh, I wanted to reiterate, so when we talked about color theory, she said, Oh, is that so that I feel an element of anxiety as in I need their business to get what I need. I can’t do it myself. Not exactly. I think when we talked about sort of having the customer, have an emotional experience, if it was something like, wow, it makes me a little bit anxious. It would, it would mean that you’re looking for resolution maybe, or maybe anxiety wasn’t quite the right word. Maybe it was more like excitement or, um, I think we even used the word confusion. Sometimes Shawn, like you introduce these two colors together and it, it just wouldn’t be soothing. And so it would maybe promote action or have people dig deeper. Um, and it, but it does depend on your brand. I would say that too Shawn. So depending on what your, um, what your arena is like, what discipline you’re in, we talked about, you know, green representing money, but also rest is representing nature and organic and, um, purple being like the color of royalty and sort of, um, aesthetics and things like that. So, um,
Shawn Willis (28:24):
There’s a lot of emotions that more in the literal sense of that emotion that a color brings to you though. Um, with Emily’s comment, it was a little bit more about those two. She used the word anxious, I think. Uh, but I think it was more about like the contrast or if you want to really get down to it, I’m pretty sure those two colors are what they call it, color theory or in design theory, it’s, it’s a vibrating color. It’s when your eye sees two colors and it almost creates a vibration, but this way, your eyes see those colors. And it was really more about using those two colors together as maybe a call to action on your website, something to create that contrast, to make that, that specific thing really jump off the page at you. But yeah. Yeah, there’s, there’s a lot of depth in color theory.
Don Mamone (29:16):
So I think with the time that we have alotted for today, um, basically the takeaway Barb is color theory is important. We don’t always think about it as a strong a component as it is psychologically. And so it’s something that if you’re not already talking with a designer about or doing research on, we should be, um, I’m kind of putting you on the spot. Uh, Shawn, somebody asked if there’s a color theory book or resource you would recommend, and if you don’t have that at the top of your head, we can always post it in the comments.
Shawn Willis (29:45):
You know, I have, I have a book, I don’t remember the name of it. It’s in my office, which I haven’t been to in a month and a half. But yeah, I would love to, I would love to share some links on color theory.
Don Mamone (29:57):
Okay. So, um, Jonathan, we will make sure that we post in the comments, um, some, some ideas regarding color theory. So, uh, let’s wrap it up. It’s been just about 30 minutes. You know, we say these are going to be 15 to 30 minutes, Shawn, I think forever and always, I’m gonna have to say 30 minutes cause brevity isn’t one of my strong suits. Um, first and foremost, um, you’re an amazingly creative professional talented dude. Thank you for doing this with me. Second, um, much like with my, uh, conversation with Ayelet last week, I wanted to walk away from this with more than just the video, which is incredibly helpful, I hope for the audience, but also something they can take away with them. So Shawn has agreed to take his process with his clients and put it into a worksheet that you all can take home with you and use. That doesn’t mean that there won’t be a point at which you’re going to need a little bit of help going through it. And if that’s the case, then Shawn will be available to you. But, um, you remember how we did it last week? You post in the comments, I want this branding audit worksheet to help you kind of review and revisit your branding and then send me a DM with your email because that’s how I send it to you. All right. So post in the comments, I want this branding auditing worksheet awesomeness from Shawn, and then just send me a quick DM, give me your email. I’ll make sure you have it. It should be going out by the end of the day tomorrow. Uh, the other thing I’ve already asked to Shawn being that he’s such a giving soul is we’re going to do a follow up to this. Okay. I mean, we’ve literally just scratched the surface of what the branding process looks like, and that’s both for creation and auditing. The next thing we’re going to talk about is how branding carries through, um, the operation of your business, right? Marketing, sales, your hospitality. How does everything direct back to that Northern star? Um, because that’s just as complicated as this. All right. Um, it can be overwhelming, but we’re all gonna do this together. Um, Shawn, one more time. Thank you, friend. Um, I have the utmost respect for people that can do what you do because, um, here come the hearts and flowers, buddy…I hope you’re ready. To work as hard as people work to create a business and a brand and to love it as much as they do it is an unbelievably, just genuine feeling to be so proud of it. Um, I remember when you created the mark for The Mamones right, and for those of you that haven’t looked at our mark recently go back and look at our brand. Um, we, we watched Shawn create that Mark live as he asked us questions and did some things. And when he created the D and the E together with The Mamones around it, uh, it, it affected us on so many levels. Personally, professional. We were married. We created this brand and he created a mark that in two dimensional space, it’s just a little bit of color represented our brand so perfectly. So, um, all of my respect and admiration to Shawn, for the ability to create that, um, I should say that the name of Sean’s company is 806 Designs. So if you want to check him out, he’s online, he’s on Instagram, he’s on Facebook. I’ll post some of those things down below. And, uh, if you comment, which you should, because I’m telling you, this is a resource you want, and you just send me a quick note with your email address in my DM. I’ll make sure you get it. Shawn, any last words?
Shawn Willis (33:13):
No man, thanks for having me!
Don Mamone (33:13):
You’re a pleasure. I really enjoy chatting with you all. Alright, everybody, thank you for your patience. I’m sorry. We were late. I learned something new. If you’re on Facebook, live from Zoom, clear cookies in your cash before you get started so that you don’t run into what we run into. Um, have a great week. We’ll see you next Wednesday.