Josh Miles interviews Blair Enns, CEO of Win Without Pitching, about value pricing, anchoring and sales psychology.

How does your firm price the work you sell? Josh catches up with Blair Enns, author of Pricing Creativity: A Guide to Profit Beyond the Billable Hour to discuss the psychology of pricing, and how most firms can increase profitability with two simple tactics.  

This episode runs 59 minutes.

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Blair Enns is the author of The Win Without Pitching Manifesto and Pricing Creativity: A Guide to Profit Beyond the Billable Hour. He co-hosts, along with David C. Baker, and the podcast 2Bobs: Conversations on the Art of Creative Entrepreneurship. Based in the remote mountain village of Kaslo, British Columbia, Canada, Blair lectures throughout the world on how creative professionals can win more business at higher prices and lower cost of sale. Enquire here about having Blair speak at your event.

 

 Mentioned in This Episode on Value Pricing, Anchoring and Sales Psychology

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This episode runs 33 min.

David Lecours and Josh Miles discuss the importance of Core Values as a marketing tool.

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Mentioned in This Episode 137: Core Values as a Marketing Tool

Why Core Values as a Marketing tool
Core values are the foundation of our culture
Clients and talent select your firm for it’s culture
Culture = shared beliefs and behaviors of your firm
Core values must be codified
Do your firm’s core values have to be different from your competitor’s?
How to improve your core values
What’s the best quantity of core values?
How often should you revisit your core values?
Write core values with a verb to inspire action
Don’t include baseline values like integrity and quality
Write your core values to surprise and delight. See Atlassian example.
Create a core values manifestation
Share your core values internally and externally
Use core values to measure employees in performance reviews
Use core values to measure prospects in Go/No Go decision making
Try peer-to-peer recognition to reinforce core values. For example, bonus.ly

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Read the Episode

Announcer: Welcome to PSM, the Professional Services Marketing podcast. It’s insight applied.

Josh Miles: David, you know what I value?

David Lecours: What’s that Josh?

Josh Miles: I value values, and I especially want to talk about Core Values as a marketing tool. What do you think?

David Lecours: Yeah, I value my core. I need to work on my core. That’s why I go to yoga and do some sit ups. But yeah, let’s talk about Core Values. I think it’s something that’s not often considered as a marketing tool, but it should be, so that’s our topic today.

Josh Miles: And before we jump into that, let’s talk about our title sponsor. We’re very fortunate to be underwritten by SMPS, whose vision is ‘Business transformed through marketing leadership.’ Check out smps.org to learn more.

Announcer: This is PSM. It’s insight applied.

Josh Miles: Okay, so we’re talking about Core Values today, David, as we have already enjoyed. We’re not talking about your physical core. We’re not talking about your personal values. We’re really talking about firm values, and how this can be used as a marketing tool.

David Lecours: Yeah. Yeah I think it-

Josh Miles: So tell me more about what you’re thinking here?

David Lecours: Sure. So I have to confess, part of why I’m thinking about it is because I have some clients that are asking us to help them with that as a service, both in developing their Core Values, but also wordsmithing and then eventually manifesting those, and we’ll talk about all those things later. But the reason I think Core Values are so important and kind of hot right now, is I really see them as the foundation of a firm’s culture. And I believe that both clients and talent select a firm based on culture. It’s not the only thing they select your firm on, but it is a very important thing. And Josh, I know you and I have talked about in the past how we’ve got this war on talent right now. And so how do you think culture plays into that, or does it?

Josh Miles: Well, I think it’s definitely different in different size firms, but especially firms that are very culture driven are going to hire consultants, or they’re going to hire firms to partner with, who fit their culture as well. So I think what we’re seeing is, especially Gen X or millennial influenced, if not led, firms. This has become, not just a trend, but I think it’s just a difference in how these generations deal with things. And I think it’s certainly influencing where are young talent in particular want to go work. They want to know that there’s a good culture match there.

David Lecours: No, absolutely. And I guess culture’s this word that we through around a lot. So I’m just going to throw a definition out, it’s not the only definition, but at least it will be the definition we’re going to sort of focus on for this episode. And so when I think of culture, I usually define it as the shared beliefs and behaviors of your firm. And what that does is allows everybody to know, “this is the expected way we think about things, a way we do things, the way that we’re going to behave in order to get to our vision, or get to whatever desired destination we want to go in.” And it allows people to kind of row together, and be on the same page, and start to get known for that, start to develop a reputation or a following for embracing particular behaviors and beliefs.

David Lecours: And I think it should be, of course, flexible enough that allows people to be individuals. We’re not asking everybody to wear a corporate uniform, and march to work, and be these automated robots. But I think what we are saying is, “Hey, this is what we believe in here, and we’re going to tell you that from the beginning,” and maybe self-select, right? So if you’re a prospective client, or a prospective employee, and you don’t really believe in the same things, then this probably isn’t a great fit for you. There’s, I’m sure, another firm out there that has an alignment with your beliefs, but I think it’s important to put that out there. Otherwise, how do people know?

Josh Miles: Well, I think you’ve kind of hit on something, which is these Core Values can really serve as a filter.

David Lecours: Yeah.

Josh Miles: And that’s for internal talent, it’s for internal leadership, and it’s certainly for external clients, which really become … As we’ve talked about positioning a lot in the past, it really helps shape your point of view. So when you say something like, “Our firm is different, because our people make us different,” well, that’s a horrible positioning statement, not because it’s untrue, but because it’s what everyone else is saying. And I think when you can really get your culture nailed down, and it’s something that you can express and share, that’s a way to say that differently, which is, “What our people believe is what makes us different.” And I think that’s a spin on that generic positioning that actually holds some water.

David Lecours: Yeah, absolutely, and there’s going to be a lot of beliefs. And a lot of times I’ve heard some firm leadership push back and like, “Really, why do we have to do this exercise? Everybody kind of knows what we should be doing.” And usually my eyebrow goes up at that point. I was like, “Really, because if we did a survey of employees and asked what are the top three priorities, or what is the unifying thread that makes this firm special, I would probably get, if it’s a 50-person firm, 50 different answers.” So it’s really … These Core Values must be codified in some way. They must be written down, and be available for people to refer back to. Otherwise, if becomes sort of like a game of telephone where everybody interprets what they may of or may not have heard prior, and passes them on, and distorts them. And so by the time they get to end three years later, they’re totally different from what the intention was in the beginning.

Josh Miles: I think it’s helpful too when you’ve got these things literally on paper, or they’re on a poster, or they’re on the wall in your office, it’s easy to go about your business and forget what you all agreed on. But having that there is a reminder to go, “Oh yeah, that’s kind of a thing,” or to talk about them as you’re making business decisions, “When we talk about our value of being open, then that’s why this seemed like the right decision, and that’s what we’re sharing with you all.” And just making it part of that internal language, I think is better than doing this as an exercise in strategic planning, and then never talking about it again.

David Lecours: Right. You used the word filter before, and I think that’s really good. So not only should prospective employees go through your firm’s Core Values and filter themselves, but you should also use the Core Values to filter that prospective employee. But that’s not all, you should also be using these Core Values as filters in your go, no go, decision making, right? So if a prospective client has radically different values than your firm, it’s a recipe for project disaster, right? So if you’re not valuing similar things, then man, find that out early, right? Find that out during the dating period, where you’re getting to know each other before you marry and it becomes an expensive and painful divorce.

Josh Miles: Good tips. Good tips.

David Lecours: Yes.

Josh Miles: So where do we start if our firm is thinking about how to improve their Core Values?

David Lecours: Yeah.

Josh Miles: Or maybe they haven’t dusted these off recently, and reconsidered with current leadership if this still resonates. Where would you start?

David Lecours: Totally. I’ll answer that in one second. I just want to also clarify why I think in most cases your Core Values are not so great. Or what I’ve found is most firms don’t do a great job of this, and then we’ll talk about how to solve it. So often times it becomes the last agenda item at a strategic planning retreat, and everybody kind of wants to go home, and you’ve got an hour, and you’re like, “We’ve got to get Core Values done. We have it on our agenda.” And so it gets banged out. It gets very generic, and so a lot of times it’ll be just very expected things like, “We embrace quality.” Really? If you didn’t, you wouldn’t have a job. The other one that drives me a little bananas is this word integrity. You know, “We’re going to use integrity whenever we can.” Okay, whenever you can? The other side of that is like, “Oh really, when would you not have integrity?” Right? You’re going to lie? And so I guess if it’s totally expected, and minimum baseline for being a human being that works, please don’t include it as your Core Values.

David Lecours: That’s one aspect. The other part is they don’t get written up real well. They sound sort of generic. They start to go to another bunch of firms for inspiration, and they kind of do a mashup, and it becomes very generic, and they’re not inspiring. Then, they don’t get distributed, and I’m a firm believer in the importance of something is very reflective in how you deliver it. So let’s say you spent the last hour of your retreat on these Core Values, and then they get sent out in an email on Monday to all the employees and they say, “Yeah, these are our Core Values. Please comply,” and so that has no inherent value. People don’t like email, and they’re just going to go away, and they’re never going to be remembered.

David Lecours: So those are the issues. Now you asked, how can they be improved? One is, I think you should … because your firm probably already has Core Values, but I do think they can be improved. And I think you need to revisit them, maybe every five years, or maybe every time you do a strategic plan. So whether that’s three years or five years, you should really take a hard look at your Core Values, and determine is it something that is a little bit unexpected, right? So it goes beyond quality and integrity. And can the writing of it be improved and be a little bit more memorable and creative, and so forth? Anyway, I talked for a bunch. Any thoughts on what I’ve said?

Josh Miles: Well, I think one of the things that I was alluding to about the dusting them off is having a regular pace at which you revisit them, or some milestones, like every time we bring on a new principal. And for some firms that’s every year, so maybe it’s an annual thing, just to revisit and reinvestigate what we think we meant by that and unpack.

David Lecours: Yeah that’s-

Josh Miles: Do we see this alive in our firm?

David Lecours: That is such an important part. I think a firm’s culture should grow and evolve and change, and so as a result, yeah, your Core Values should do the same.

Josh Miles: Absolutely.

David Lecours: Did you have a magic number that you like, because what I’ve found is that there’s a lot of things the firm believes in, right? And so you could list a hundred things, but you can’t remember a hundred things. And there’s power in focus. So if you were going for a certain number of Core Values, what might you suggest?

Josh Miles: I certainly like more than two, and I like as many fewer than 10 as you can manage, but something like three or five is probably a really good target. And if your firm just feels strongly about four main things, then I think four or six is okay, but visually odd numbers always look nice.

David Lecours: Yeah, right.

Josh Miles: The aesthetics in me says three or five is probably good.

David Lecours: Yeah, no I totally agree. I tell firms to try to limit it to five or less, and the fewer the better, because man, if you can just sort of keep three in your head, that’s such a more focused, powerful effect.

David Lecours: So there’s some things that I typically recommend to clients if we’re helping do the writing, or wordsmithing, is that the Core Values should be written with a verb in it as an action statement, so that it can become a behavior, right? So if it has that verb in it, then it’s really clear how somebody should act. So let’s say, like radical candor, the idea of like just … So you would say something like, “Write and speak with radical candor, or we write and speak with radical candor,” referring to the whole company, right? And so the writing and speaking in there is the action or verb, so people are really clear what behavior they’re supposed to embrace, and then the summation of all these behaviors really does become your culture. And yeah-

Josh Miles: Yeah, I really like that idea of using an action statement or verb in expressing it, instead of just saying service, or just saying honesty, whatever.

David Lecours: Yeah. Yeah. Right.

Josh Miles: I think it really gives you a little bit more to stand on when you go back to review that and say, “What did we mean by integrity?” Well, if you make that an action statement, it’s a little more clear I think.

David Lecours: Yeah, no absolutely. There’s this company in Australia that makes software, and I’ll put the name in the show notes in a link. But one of theirs is, “Never,” and then there’s an F, and an exclamation point, and a dollar sign, and a something, and a K, “the customer.” And so you can fill in the blank there, and so we don’t cuss here on the PSM.show. So rather than like … So the generic thing would be service, right? But having this sort of unique, sort of eye-catching, sort of almost arresting like, “Whoa,” kind of thing makes you like … For one, it’s kind of how people talk in real life, and I like that.

David Lecours: A lot of times these Core Values get written, and I think there’s this idea that they need to sound so lofty that they hold us to a higher standard. Well, the problem with the higher standard is that it’s so far out there that we can never embrace it. It’s just not realistic. And so writing these as if somebody would speak, here’s an example. We were working with a client, and they wanted to talk about quality. So what we titled that Core Value was, “Our work goes on the fridge.” And at first you’re like, “What? What?” And so when I say that, what does that mean to you, Josh?

Josh Miles: Well, I just think of when I was a kid, doing artwork or getting a good score on a report card or a test, and my mom would throw that sucker up on the fridge. It was boasting rights.

David Lecours: Yeah. Yeah. Isn’t that what we all want? We want our work to go on the fridge, and that only happens if it’s quality. So yeah, so that was just a clever way of saying something a little bit differently. And that can be a way to capture people’s attention, get people engaged, and also communicate, “Hey, we’re a little bit different,” because I actually don’t think that all our Core Values need to be different from the firm down the street, but I think at least you’re going to have some common individual ones. I think collectively, yeah, you should have a set that is end up being unique, but you’re certainly going to have some that are probably in common. Where I think you can differentiate them, is sort of how you express them, and so how you title them, name them, and write the Core Value.

Josh Miles: I think there’s something about that ‘on the fridge’ concept that makes it feel … There’s a lot baked into that. It makes it feel very close to home and familial. And there’s a lot that is implied when you even use that phrase, so that kind of creativity as you’re writing those values I think really gives a more differentiated vibe to the overall value itself.

David Lecours: Yeah, that company that I was thinking of is called Atlassian, A-T-L-A-S-S-I-A-N, and if you go to their site you can find their Core Values. They have another one called, “Play, as a team.” And so what I like about that is it’s all in the comma, right? So there’s this idea that, “Yeah, we’re going to work our butts off, but we’re going to also play, but not as an individual group of rebels. We’re going to sort of work together.” And the idea’s like, “Hey, the more we sort of make, … ” or as they say, “We spend a huge amount of our time at work, so the more time that doesn’t feel like quote, unquote, work, the better.” You know like, “Don’t take ourselves too seriously.” I think that’s super cool.

Josh Miles: Well, speaking of creative ways to express Core Values, I think one of my favorite projects that you’ve ever done, if I had to pick a favorite David, is your coasters that you did for Marie Smith. So maybe for our listeners who are not familiar with that, tell them why … First of all, why coasters? And then, what was the connection here to Core Values?

David Lecours: Right. So with them we were helping them develop their Core Values and sort of unofficially they had started calling themselves … because of some of the positioning we’d done, one of their three uniques was, “We’re just the right size.” So they’re medium-sized, they are located in the Pacific-Northwest, which is famous for their craft breweries, and then a lot of people within the firm really liked drinking beer. So we decided to express their Core Values as faux beer brands. And so each core value, they ended up with I think seven, was a faux beer brand. So there was like, “Collaboration IPA.” And there was, “Fun Lager.” And so we had seven of these, and each one had a unique faux beer label. And we letter-pressed printed these on this really beautiful thick paper, that spongy beer coaster paper. And then on the back, we described in greater terms, or elaborated on what that Core Value really meant to that particular firm. So like for fun, it sort of described some of the things that they do for fun as a team.

David Lecours: And yeah, it was a great project. It was a great project, because it took their Core Values and put them in front of the people every day. You see these Core Values being used throughout the office. They have some nice conference tables. Nobody wants to be the one that stains the conference table, so people actually use these coasters. They take them to job fairs for their recruiting, and they give them out. And so they’ve had a real life beyond, and they don’t just get put in an email and tucked away, and thrown in the trash. These things have a life that reinforces the Core Values, and it is a creative manifestation. And I think all firms, they don’t have to be beer labels or beer coasters, but they should do some creative manifestation of their Core Values that brings them to life in a way, and it says to everybody, both internal and external stakeholders, like, “Yeah, we take these seriously. We take them seriously enough to invest the time and money into creating this thing, this artifact, and you should take them seriously too.”

Josh Miles: Well yeah, in that instance, again, not everybody needs to have beverage coasters necessarily, but that’s something that just floats around the office and could be at every desk, and at every conference room table. And it’s just something that you’re literally going to be looking at every day. So finding an opportunity within your firm for something that’s similar, maybe it’s the ink pens or pencils that are laying around the office, maybe that’s where you’re going to have that.

David Lecours: Right.

Josh Miles: But just that kind of visibility is just something that really reinforces those values.

David Lecours: Here are a couple other ideas of how you can manifest your Core Values creatively. I’ve seen Clark Construction, big general contractor, their Core Values … They did an individual video for each Core Value, but they chose an individual person within the firm as the narrator of that particular Core Value, so a different person for each Core Value, and that person explains the Core Value. But then they also go on and tell a personal story about how that Core Value got brought to life within maybe a project, or working on a team with another employee. And so I like that approach.

David Lecours: I’ve seen really great posters done, or even super wall graphics that get applied to the internal part of the firm so that they’re right in your face as you go to work, but done tastefully and well designed. Starbucks has this thing called the green apron book, and it’s a little handbook, that as you can probably imagine, goes in that little pocket in the front of a Starbucks employee’s green apron. And in that book is a whole bunch of great advice about how to treat the customer, and so if in doubt, the barista can just reach into this and remind themselves the values that he or she should be embracing as a Starbucks employee.

Josh Miles: Yeah, and I love when you go into a space and they’ve got some creative use of wall graphics. So it’s more than just putting the values on a plaque, and hanging it in the conference room. It’s something that really is part of the interior design and the culture of the space, so you reinforce that in a more fun way that feels a little bit more baked into the culture of the office, and not just a list.

David Lecours: Can I share one more that we did?

Josh Miles: Oh yeah. Go for it.

David Lecours: So we did Core Values with this firm, it’s an architecture firm in Los Angeles called KAA. And so, we think of Core Values as this foundational element, right, help sort of prop up the firm. Within this firm’s office, they had these five thick metal poles that were foundational structured, and we took their five Core Values and we wrote them with vinyl lettering vertically on these poles. And we made sort of like graduated marks, and so they were like little tick marks, sort of like a scientific beaker or measuring cup kind of thing. And so we named the Core Value, let’s say it was collaboration, and we made these little almost like … I don’t know what to call them. Flags? They used magnet, and they were sort of like this little beacon thing like two inches by ten inches tall, and you would attach it to the side of the metal pole where the Core Value was written.

David Lecours: And then they would actually, whenever they would have staff meetings, depending on how they’re doing on their Core Values, they would move this Core Value up or down on this graduated scale. And they would make a ritual of this and say, “Hey, we really kind of screwed up on this. We didn’t utilize collaboration, and as a result, the project took longer than we thought.” So they would self-regulate, and move it down. So they had this instant visual, if they looked at all five of them across all five of these poles, they could kind of check their pulse of where they were doing as a firm in terms of their Core Values.

Josh Miles: Yeah, that’s really cool.

David Lecours: Yeah.

Josh Miles: So it’s kind of a real-time assessment of, are we living out the Core Values, or are we kind of sucking a little bit right now?

David Lecours: Right. And so I recommended every quarter they start over, they start fresh, and they work their … Hopefully, they’re moving up more than they’re moving down, and so they would kind of move up, and then yeah, real-time assessment.

David Lecours: So this brings up an interesting point. So a lot of times people think Core Values, “Oh, it’s just an internal exercise.” But what do you think? Do you think they should also be shared externally?

Josh Miles: Well, I think a lot of the examples that we’ve talked about so far really are internal. And I think maybe the closest cousin to that is to go external from internal, if you will, is to use it within your recruitment.

David Lecours: Yeah.

Josh Miles: And that is … Sorry, the neighbor’s car alarm was going off, and I wasn’t sure how that was going to last. Yeah, so using that for recruiting is kind of the next step up, which is making sure that you’re sharing that in pieces, such as a job description, or a posting, and the collateral that you give to that applicant if they are there for an interview, or are they exposed to all those things? Again, it’s like that dating process, and man, there’s nothing that is more essential to that then as you’re scaling up and adding talent, making sure that person is a good fit.

David Lecours: Yeah, so when you were dating April did you ask her, what are your Core Values on the first date?

Josh Miles: Yeah, I actually had them tattooed on my arm, so I rolled up my sleeve. I actually don’t have any tattoos. I’m sad about this. So-

David Lecours: But yeah, I agree with you. Right, you got to share them. So you mentioned sharing them for recruiting, but I think it doesn’t hurt you to share them with prospective clients. I think we talked about earlier the idea of let’s learn early, are we aligned or not? And then if we are, let’s figure out a way to work together.

Josh Miles: Yeah, absolutely. And I think even if you look at someone else’s Core Values and you think, “Well, that’s not exactly like me, or not exactly what our firm or our leadership values,” it really still helps you to gauge and understand what it might be like working with this firm, or what the benefits of those Core Values might be to you as a partner, or as a vendor, or as a service provider, however you’re looking at that. But you know that when you’re working with a firm who, maybe for instance one of their Core Values is social responsibility, and based on the type of projects you’re doing, you can see how that’s a really strong fit.

David Lecours: Yeah, that’s a great example.

Josh Miles: Yeah.

David Lecours: So the last part I just want to touch on is these Core Values need to come to life, and there’s this sort of famous quote about “what gets measured, gets managed.” I think it’s by Peter Drucker. And I think that if you want people to embrace these Core Values, even as great as a manifestation like the coasters have been, you’ve got to take it even one step further, and you’ve got to incorporate the Core Values into employee reviews. And so that’s why I think writing them as a verb helps you to evaluate, are they taking on that behavior? And it’s not the entire employee review, but there should be an aspect of it where you’re giving people that barometer on how they’re doing in relationship to our Core Values, because we want to develop this culture.

Josh Miles: Yeah.

David Lecours: And then the other part of it, of course, is using them as like a go, no go, criteria. Anyway, what were you going to say?

Josh Miles: Well, I was just thinking another way to think about that is even internally as most of our audience are marketers or principals within an AEC firm, as you’re thinking about initiatives that you have happening from a marketing or business development standpoint, maybe you can start to categorize each of those under each of your Core Values. So how would adding this new page on our website, which one of our Core Values should that relate to most?

David Lecours: Yeah. Yeah.

Josh Miles: Does this video exhibit our Core Values? Or as we think about a new email list tactic to grow that email list, is that in line with what our Core Values are? So just another way to … Again, another type of filter that I think you can apply those Core Values to.

David Lecours: I love that. I think … Yeah, I would almost make the declaration that every form of marketing communication should be grounded in at least one Core Value. And if it was just one, that would make it even more I guess focused and tight. And then, I guess where there’s even cross-over, might make it even more powerful. Then that would ensure that, yeah, externally we’re communicating what we’re all about, because each time we do it’s, again, grounded in a Core Value.

David Lecours: A tool that I’ve heard firms use successfully is a digital tool, it comes from this company called Bonusly. Bonus.ly, if you want to check it out. And through peer-to-peer recognition, it offers the ability for … because a lot of times managers aren’t in a position to even see when you do something great just by the way companies are organized, but usually your peers often do. And sometimes it’s more gratifying to actually get positive feedback and recognition by your peers.

David Lecours: And so Bonusly sets up a thing where your company would put in a certain dollar amount into a pool, and then you would be deputized with being able to … Let’s say your company puts in, just for round numbers, a thousand dollars. And then each employee, ten employees, gets a hundred dollars for the next quarter, and they can decide how they want to give that hundred dollars out to fellow peers. The Bonusly thing comes in, and there’s a social sharing component, and you can use Slack channels, or use can use Intranets, or use can use I think even email, that let’s people know that you have given … Like let’s say that Josh did a great job with CPSM week this week and I say, “Hey Josh, I love what you did with those videos, I’m going to bonus you fifty dollars.” And you literally give him fifty dollars, and everybody knows it because you’ve made it public. So I just think it’s a cool digital tool that uses the social web to do peer-to-peer recognition.

Josh Miles: Yeah, and if you Google that kind of peer-to-peer recognition thing, there’re a couple others. And off the top of my head, I can’t think of any of them. But I’ve heard of a couple different companies, both in AEC and software, and other segments that are using these. And I’ve seen a lot of that in bigger or growing firms. It’s a cool little cultural bonus.

David Lecours: Yeah. Yeah. Nice. Alright, well I think we’ve pretty much wrapped up the Core Values. Was there anything else you wanted to add Josh?

Josh Miles: Well David, mostly just that I value our conversations.

David Lecours: Oh, thanks Josh.

Josh Miles: And I think we should use this as a marketing tool.

David Lecours: Alright, let’s do it. Now dear audience, if you guys have questions or comments, we of course want to hear from you. The best way to do that is to go to PSM.show, scroll down. We’ve got a one query line form you can fill out, and we’ll get it, and we’ll know what you’re thinking, so if you have guest recommendations, or whatever. But anyway, that’s it for this episode of PSM.show. Thanks to SMPS for sponsoring. I’m David Lecours, that’s me, and Josh Miles. We’ll see you next time.

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David Lecours interviews Craig Atkinson, VP of Communications and Strategic Services at The Walsh Group about keeping creativity alive as an A/E/C marketer.

This episode runs 41 min, 04 seconds.

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  Mentioned in This Episode on Keeping the Creative Fire Burning

David’s theory is that many A/E/C marketers choose marketing because they enjoy expressing their creativity. The reality is that much of A/E/C marketing doesn’t feel very creative. So, A/E/C marketers end up creatively frustrated. This episode is about how to keep your creativity alive.

• Importance of having creative hobbies outside of work
• Don’t let fear stop you from being creative at work.
• Suffering is a choice. So is happiness.
• Fear isn’t bad. It’s our relationship with fear that can be bad.
• Craig’s Instagram –  https://www.instagram.com/craigbatkinson/

“There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and there is only one of you in all time. This expression is unique, and if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium; and be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is, not how it compares with other expression. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.” 
— Martha Graham

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Read David’s Conversation with Craig

Read the Episode Transcript

 Announcer: Welcome to PSM, The Professional Services Marketing podcast. It’s insight applied.

David Lecours: Hello and welcome to PSM Show, the podcast for AEC marketers. I’m David Lecours and I’m joined by a special guest, Craig, Aka “Cheb,” Atkinson. Our topic today is keeping the creative fire burning. Our sponsor is SMPS, business transformed through marketing leadership. You can find out more about SMPS at smps.org, and you can find out more about our show, including the show notes at psm.show.

Announcer: This is PSM. It’s insight applied.

David Lecours: Craig, well, welcome. Glad to have you. You’re calling in from Chicago today, right?

Craig Atkinson: That’s right. Chilly Chicago. Thanks too for having me.

David Lecours: Yeah, it’s great. We met at SMPS Build Business 2018, and you taught a great session that I was fortunate to sit in on a titled What Taking Photos With my iPhone Taught Me About Life.

Craig Atkinson: That’s right.

David Lecours: And that was awesome.

Craig Atkinson: Cool. That was a fun one to do. There was a good crowd there too.

David Lecours: That definitely helps. Your current position is VP of communications and strategic services at The Walsh Group.

Craig Atkinson: That’s correct.

David Lecours: It’s amazing. You’ve been there 18 years. Maybe you could give our audience a brief origin story of how you got there, how you joined this wonderful world of AEC marketing and just bring us up to speed in a couple of minutes.

Craig Atkinson: This is a classic story of what amazing things can happen if you have no idea what it is you want to do, because then you don’t really have any limits. I went to Illinois State University, graduated in the mid … when was that? Jeez. Early ’90s, with a bachelor of fine arts. I came to Chicago initially with the thought that I was going to become some art star. I did show in some galleries and some things like that. But of course I needed a job and my first-

David Lecours: What was your medium?

Craig Atkinson: My favorite medium was photography, and still is. But at that time I had also expanded to include some more sculptural, multimedia type, installation type pieces. I had all these aspirations, but I also needed to make money, and what was wonderful is that the Field Museum of Natural History loved to hire artists to build their exhibits. My first job out of college was working there behind the scenes to build exhibits, paint murals. We did a lot of painting of murals and a lot of building of rock forms and other things like that. I held a succession of roles there.

Craig Atkinson: It was a great place to work, and it was a lot of other artists also working there. The challenge was that those positions were all based on grant money, and it was hard to predict from year to year to year, whether or not you would still have a position. That was fine early on, but then had I started having some kids, I needed a little more stability, and transitioned from that. By that point, it would have been 1996 or so. I was a project manager at that point, overseeing a variety of projects, both out on the exhibit floor, but also behind the scenes to upgrade the collections themselves, to organize things better and to make it easier for researchers to come in and do the important work that they do there. It was a lot of fun, but it was time to move on.

Craig Atkinson: I took a job as a project manager at Northwestern University, overseeing very small renovation and construction projects on the two campuses. I did that for a number of years. Also a great place to work, and I loved the academic setting. But I would say there, I could see that my career progression was going to be pretty … not very dynamic. That I could probably spend my entire career there, and it would be fine, but I wouldn’t really move the needle too much for myself. And I had bigger aspirations than that.

Craig Atkinson: I knew someone who worked here at Walsh, and they got me hooked up for an interview, and I came in. In 2000, I joined this company, and initially I worked … and then what happened from this point on and now, is that I have held a variety of positions. It’s like I changed careers without changing companies over the last 18 years. I was in estimating and operations, in IT, then I started up our training and development department, and then most recently transitioned into our communications and strategic services, which is primarily internal and external communications and marketing.

David Lecours: Walsh Group is a GC? Is that correct?

Craig Atkinson: Very large construction services provider. One of our primary things is to actually do the construction, but we also have a hand in the design and planning, financing, and the ongoing maintenance of various facilities as well. It’s a large company. This is where I ended up in a high level position at a very large company, in a corporate setting. I would never have predicted it. I think many people told me that getting an art degree was not a path that would lead me to something like this, and basically not a good idea. Turns out it was probably the best thing that I could’ve done because I think that it taught me a different way to think. I think that’s been very valuable for me over time.

Craig Atkinson: I’ve been relatively unbounded in terms of following a path and coming to a fork in the road and making decisions and seeing where that will lead me without a whole lot of worry attached to it. I find myself today overseeing a group of about 30 people, and we manage the proposal process and the engagement with clients, and then we also manage the general public relations for the company, and I love it.

David Lecours: Awesome. Yeah, I get that impression. It seems like during the session that I took that you were leading, I pretty instantly could sense that, oh, this guy’s got the heart and soul of an artist, and it comes through in the way you communicate and what you talk about. And I think that’s not entirely unique of AEC marketers. Everybody’s got their own path and yours is certainly unique and super cool. But it seems like so many AEC marketers come to marketing almost by accident. They have a degree in art, or they’ve got a degree in design-

Craig Atkinson: Yep. Design.

David Lecours: … few of them-

Craig Atkinson: Journalism. Some are on the writing side. Just so many of us are like refugees from the Humanities, is what I say, whatever the path is.

David Lecours: As a result, a lot of us we really enjoy expressing our creativity. What I found is a lot of our jobs is really not all that creative. The topic that I want to explore with you is how AEC marketers can keep that creative fire burning, because I think it’s really essential, even if we’re not doing creative tasks. Would you agree that that position or assessment is true?

Craig Atkinson: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

David Lecours: Have you found that to be the case?

Craig Atkinson: Yeah. I actually think that’s the case for pretty much everything in life. That there’s always an element to every aspect of our lives that is “the grind”. It’s easy to tell ourselves that there’s these … it’s like these dead spaces, where there’s no need for creativity. We’re not being called to be creative, and so therefore, we’re not. Unfortunately that can grow. I’ve seen it happen, that people feel like suddenly they’re at a role where there’s nothing that they’re doing that is “creative” or at least creatively fulfilling. Yes, I think that’s common in a lot of places in life, and definitely in what we do.

David Lecours: I’ve even found it true from my firm, which we are a branding and digital marketing. By definition, we’re supposed to be a creative firm, in that we’re doing naming or doing logo development. So much of the job is not the actual creation. It is that grinding. There’s lots of ways that we can explore creativity. One of the things that I think you’ve done so well is making sure that you have hobbies outside of work that also feed your creative soul.

Craig Atkinson: I would’ve told you earlier in life that if someone had said that one of the keys to happiness is to stay connected to a hobby that you’re passionate about, I would have said that that sounded silly. There’s no possible way that that’s going to be it. I’ve come to discover that in fact … and what I tried to present at the SMPS conference was that actually … I couldn’t have been more wrong. That it was in fact, the key to staying creatively alive was to stay connected in some way to a passion, “a hobby” that wasn’t necessarily something I was doing to make money, it wasn’t necessarily something that was directly feeding my production at work, but it ended up expanding my life overall, and it keeps me dialed in to my creative spirit, even in those moments when I’m just plugging stuff into a spreadsheet.

David Lecours: What are some of those hobbies that you do to keep you creatively connected?

Craig Atkinson: The main one is photography. What’s wonderful is … I know that these days there’s a lot of … we get a lot of stories in the news about how dangerous and damaging and limiting and distracting our smartphones are because they take up so much of our attention. I agree that that may be true, but I also think that in that conversation we’ve lost the fact that there’s also something amazing here about this. I carry with me a very good camera and an entire production studio in a means by which to distribute the images that I take, and it all fits in my pocket. What it means is, is that I have a tool that does allow me to stay connected to my creative spirit regardless of where I am.

Craig Atkinson: I more recently in about the last two years, really started to challenge myself to use my camera every day. It wasn’t a hard and fast rule, like I had to take a picture every day, but it was more like I had to use it every day. The end result might be images that I wanted to keep or they might be images that I didn’t really want to keep. That wasn’t important. It wasn’t important that at the end of a year, I had 365 images, one per day. What was important was that I had tried every single day to capture something meaningful. I am using Instagram is my means by which to share that project. That also, had no boundaries on it in terms of how many images I may put up there. I don’t really care how many people are following me or if anyone follows me. The point was to do it.

Craig Atkinson: What it’s allowed me to do is I carry this camera around with me and I stay very connected to what catches my eye, and capturing things in the moment, and then processing it later to understand a little bit better, why did it capture my eye? One of the things that I do when I keep an image or put it up on Instagram is I attach it to some quote or a saying or a piece out of a piece of literature, a poem or something that I’ve written because it’s also for me. Part of the reason that I’m really trying to lean in on this is I’m trying to notice what it is that I notice. Why did that catch my eye? And try to go a little bit deeper and connect the image in some direct or even sometimes indirect way to a thought.

Craig Atkinson: Then taking those two things together said more than any one of those elements by themselves. And then once a collection of these images are up there, together they actually begin to tell a story that’s quiet. But if one were to go through my feed starting from about October of last year through now and gave it enough time, you’d get a good sense of what’s been going on in my life. Both in my head and in my life itself. So there’s a little autobiography happening there that’s not very explicit, but it’s definitely there. What I discovered-

David Lecours: There’s something-

Craig Atkinson: Go ahead.

David Lecours: I was just saying, it’s really powerful, this combination of word and image, and you alluded to that earlier, this one and one equals at least three or more. I know you’re not looking for more followers per se, but if it’s okay with you, I’d love to list your link in our show notes-

Craig Atkinson: Oh, yeah. Sure. Absolutely.

David Lecours: … to your Instagram feed, so people can see visually what you’re talking about.

Craig Atkinson: You can get a sense of what it looks like and how it works, which is … and so what happens is I’m in a continuous collection mode. I’m collecting images all the time. I’m taking pictures of things constantly. I’m also, in parallel, collecting or writing. I’m writing things or I’m collecting scraps of quotes or pieces of poems that connect with me. I’m just always collecting these things. And then I spend a lot of time in the post production, not just cleaning up the images and optimizing them, but regarding the image and asking myself, why did I take this, and why do I want to keep it and why do I want to share it? What is it about this beyond “that it’s interesting” or pretty that is bringing some value to me?

Craig Atkinson: Can I connect that to some quote that I’ve written or collected that when you put those two things together, man, now there’s a little conversation between the word and the image going on here. [crosstalk 00:17:53]. I can do this from anywhere, and do. I found a way to build this flow into my daily life.

David Lecours: I love it. One of the things you said in the session was that you don’t have to be an artist to be an artist. You said, “Be intentional about how you experience the world,” and what I’m hearing you say is that by having this intention of trying to go out and capture an image a day and being aware of your surroundings and always looking for joy and beauty and all these things, it ends up making your life better. It almost changes your worldview, if I can be so cool.

Craig Atkinson: It’s about a mindset, and it’s about the tendency. What I discovered through this … and then later as I was doing some … really getting interested in this little bit more and doing a little more research into it, is that we as a … it’s part of the human condition to have a negative bias. Human beings have a negative bias, and we are more inclined to observe, frame and experience the world in negative ways. If we wake up in the morning and we’re going to our job where it’s not creative and I’m not being able to be creative and it’s not fulfilling, and that’s what’s in my mind, that is the job I’m going to have that day. I’m absolutely setting myself up to experience exactly what I’m asking the universe to give me, which is a boring, non creative job that’s not filling.

Craig Atkinson: There’s this big piece for me that … what this has been about is about shifting mindset, not about artistic talent. That’s what I think is so awesome about these tools that are available to us is I don’t think it’s a tragedy, I think it’s a joy that you don’t have to be a photographer to be good at photography. I don’t have to have a great deal of artistic talent to be an artist. It doesn’t mean I’m going to make my career out of that. It doesn’t mean that I’m going to drive my life with it, but it does mean that I can live with greater intention. In a few minutes, I can tell you where I landed with all of that. What did that intention give me, that I think is valuable even in the workplace, even when I’m not doing the “creative” parts of it? For sure. This is definitely about a reframing.

Craig Atkinson: I think part of it was to experience my emotional state and my thoughts, and process them in a way without judgment. That’s what this whole little practice allowed me to do. Whether it was a happy thought or a sad thought, a positive thought, or a negative thought, it doesn’t really matter. I captured this image, it speaking to me for a reason. If I spend some time really thinking about why I took this picture and why it’s meaningful, I can start to become very aware of my own emotional state. That really, in the end, was what was the most game changing thing for me. I ended up on an acronym, C.R.E.A.M, C R E A M. This is what this process has helped me shift to.

Craig Atkinson: I would say to anyone that if you want to be an artist, this is what is needed. I would also say, you could very easily take this and translate it into, if you want to be a good partner, if you want to be a good brother, if you want to be a good employee, if you … this is what I think … or a leader. You want to be a good leader. Here’s where I think we’re really called for. This is what emerged for me. This acronym is five states that I think are … they have, for me, become really important. I’ll tell you what they all are, and then if you want to go back through and piece through them or whatever. Tell me how you want to do this, but … so it’s curiosity, resilience, empathy, action bias and maturity. That’s the acronym, C.R.E.A.M. This is where the shift in state has led me to. This is what I got out of this whole process.

David Lecours: What I would love to do is go through each one, particularly as it relates to maybe working in maybe what people perceive as an uncreative environment. How they can use those tools.

Craig Atkinson: To the extent I can do that. Absolutely. Or when I’m dealing in those moments where I’m having to do things that aren’t fun and creative, which would be in my nature to procrastinate on. The first one is curiosity. To me, this one’s … they’re all important. This one’s really important because to me, curiosity is the antidote to fear. I think fear is really the thing that limits people. It’s the thing that we tell ourselves. The are negative bias in the way we look at the world, the way reframe things are really all built around a lot of fear, and curiosity is a way to approach the unknown with less fear and more interest. A curious mind state, why? Why is it like that? Why is it not like that?

Craig Atkinson: To be genuinely curious about how all of this works, or why something was successful or why something wasn’t successful is really, really important. And also, there’s a certain humility to it then, because to be curious means you have to say to yourself, “I don’t know. I don’t know.” That’s why I’m curious. There’s something unknown in front of me, and rather than rejecting it or being afraid of it … and I might still be afraid of it, but I’m going to actually try to face it with some interest and a desire to better understand. I have to acknowledge my own limits. A curious mind state is a big deal.

Craig Atkinson: Right behind that is … and so, same thing with anything here in the job setting. This is boring. Do you know what I discovered for myself? I would imagine it’s the case for a lot of people, is I never took the thought farther than that. I passed judgment on a particular activity or on some aspect of my job that I found unpleasant or boring in some way, and I never asked myself to explore, why? Why is it boring? Why do I feel so negatively about it? What is it about this that is unpleasant? A lot of it had to do, again, with my own … often came back to fears. Some of it sometimes it’s just … there’s a rope. Stuff we have to do that is not the fun part. But oftentimes, I’ve found myself, it was more about being afraid that I was hitting some area of my limit of my ability or my expertise.

Craig Atkinson: And then that leads right into the R, which is resilience. You’ve got to be able to face setbacks, failures, less than you expected, unexpected result that wasn’t necessarily a good one without losing enthusiasm for the journey. You got to be able to take a hit.

David Lecours: Yep. Keep going.

Craig Atkinson: In the creative process it is baked into it. That failure is part of the way that you learn. Failure sometimes is the part of way you discover a door to a new answer. So you’ve got to be ready that you’re not going to get it on the first take. My own daughter is … my youngest daughter is 10, and she likes to write stories. I’m trying to work with her on this mindset that she thinks she has to write the whole story in one sitting. The reason that we do revisions is because we don’t get it right and perfect on the … we fail the first time. We don’t often think-

David Lecours: Yeah, you got to give yourself-

Craig Atkinson: … of it as a failure, but you’ve got to give yourself room.

David Lecours: You’ve got to permission … there’s that great book about permission for shitty first drafts, and then you refine it and make it great.

Craig Atkinson: If you put that together with the curiosity, I think those two in tandem are really powerful because now it’s like, wow, that is not the outcome I wanted. So then you can start to say things to yourself a little bit differently with a curious mindset. Instead of saying, “I’m not good at this”, you could say to yourself, “What am I missing?”, Or “What am I missing in terms of knowledge, resources, ability that I need to gather in order to get an outcome that’s closer to what I’m looking for?” Rather than saying, “You know what, I give up.” It’s saying, “I think I need to use a different strategy. The one that I’m using isn’t working, so I need to get curious about a different way to do this.” Rather than saying, “This isn’t good enough.”, say, “I’m going to ask myself, is this really my best work?” Rather than believing, “I can’t make this any better.”, “Of course I can make it better, and maybe I need to seek help from others in order to see what it is that I need to change.”

Craig Atkinson: We tell ourselves that, this is just too hard. Rather than saying that, just say, “This is going to take more time than I realized.” I made a mistake. Mistakes are great ways to learn. Telling yourself, “I’m not smart enough. I’m not good enough.” Just tell yourself, “Well, I need to learn”, and if plan A didn’t work, there’s still 25 other letters. You take resilience and curiosity together, and it allows you to explore the unknown with less fear and less prejudgment.

Craig Atkinson: I think that opens the door for the next letter in this acronym, which is E, empathy. I have a lived experience that has created a filter through which I look at the world and I experience the world, and it is going to be vastly different than others around me because they have had a different lived experience. Their experiences no more valuable or valid than mine. It’s just different. It doesn’t mean I have to accept or agree with everybody, and it also doesn’t mean that there aren’t hateful ideas that we need to resist. But what it does mean is that I need to allow myself the opportunity to be more open. That someone else can look at the same information I’m looking at and see it very, very differently than me.

David Lecours: I think one area where we could be more empathetic is understanding that probably the owners of the firm have a good reason to be risk averse. The AEC industry, we build things, and we have to manage risk because we’re creating buildings or bridges that the public … their lives depend on. They have to get it right, and they can’t be entirely risked. Of course, our challenge is that a lot of times that mindset of risk aversion translates over into marketing, and that’s where, I think, we get into trouble is because we need to take some risks to be able to connect with our audience on an emotional level.

David Lecours: But if we’re empathetic of like, “Look, Mrs. Owner, I understand you’re worried about this because your background is such that you’ve got to get the specs on this bridge correct. But in this case, we can’t afford to be a little more risky because we’re going to have another ad that’s going to come out in the next month and we’ll connect. Just bear with us.” And so, yeah. At that empathy part is super relevant.

Craig Atkinson: Absolutely. You’re also making me think that … the other thing that I often encounter is when I’m working with a team … one of the things that I do these days on the career side is a coach teams that are going to interviews. A pitch to a potential customer. It’s very common for me to hear someone say something like this. “I don’t even know why we’re doing this, all that really matters is the number. And as long as we get to the right number …” This is just a bunch of bullshit, that we have dog and pony show, [inaudible 00:32:51].

Craig Atkinson: That is actually a fear based statement, because most people don’t enjoy public speaking. Most people don’t like public speaking, especially in a situation where there’s some consequence attached to getting a job or not getting a job, but they’re not actually going to say I’m afraid. What they’re going to say is, “This doesn’t matter.” Because all that really matters is the dollars because this is a business decision. Empathy is an element to explore here because behind every business decision there is an emotional decision as well for that customer. That customer is also feeling the pressure and facing the risk to choose the right construction services provider, the right teammates.

Craig Atkinson: There is always an emotional element to every business decision. It is not just about the money. The reason that we’re having an interview is often because we are trying to understand better what it’s actually going to be like to work with these people. Who is this team and how can I connect with them on an emotional level and better understand and predict what’s going to happen when I’m working with these people and things aren’t going well, or something unexpected happens? It is not just about the dollars, it is also about this emotional element. That’s why we’re having an interview. You also have to understand that most people don’t enjoy this process. They don’t enjoy speaking in public, and they’re going to … their fear response is going to be dismissive of it as an exercise.

Craig Atkinson: I’m often working with teams to help them draw out their story, and make sure that we’re hitting the emotional notes, not just the technical notes or the financial notes when we’re doing a pitch.

David Lecours: Absolutely.

Craig Atkinson: Empathy is a big one. And then action bias is … I would like people to default more towards doing something rather than hesitating. I would say that I saw that in myself as well. Fearful pause, procrastination, which really oftentimes is not laziness. It’s just another expression of fear. I would like to draw people into … if we’re curious, resilient and empathetic, we’re going to be more likely to take action rather than hesitate because … especially as leaders and influencers in the marketing world, we’ve got to get people to do things. That’s the reason for our jobs.

Craig Atkinson: We’re trying to get customers to make decisions. We’re trying to get business partners to choose us. We’re trying to influence the customer to maybe alter the way they’re thinking about how they want this project to be built, or guide them through a process they’ve never been through before, or a project of a scale that they’ve never experienced before. The response to that is oftentimes that people will resist making decisions and taking action. And that is action decisions are actually the fuel for every project.

Craig Atkinson: If you were to ask most people, “What’s the fuel for any project?” They would say money. It’s a very common answer. Money is not the fuel. It’s decisions. It’s action. Most of the time when you see projects that are in jeopardy, money is an issue. But what happened was the decision making process broke down in some way, whether there was a loss of trust, some hesitancy on the client’s side, unexpected events. Something broke the decision making process down and decelerated it, and that’s what kills a project. So we try to … trying to get people to take action. To get into a habit of making decision, taking an action and then quickly evaluating whether or not the results were what it was we were expecting.

David Lecours: Nice. And M, tell us what M means.

Craig Atkinson: Maturity is not about acting grown up-

David Lecours: Damn right.

Craig Atkinson: … because heaven knows I don’t. I define maturity in this fashion. Maturity is when I completely own my role in what’s not working. Not that I take all the blame, but I very openly and honestly own my role. Whatever I’ve done that has contributed to what I’m not happy about in my life or what’s not working here on this project, rather than push that off and blame it on a bunch of external circumstances. That’s maturity. When it comes to leaders, I believe that that is actually the most important quality. It’s this ownership of what’s not working. We celebrate what is working and what we’ve done successfully in appropriate ways that are motivating for people, but we also take ownership of what we have done and are doing that’s contributing to the things that we’re unhappy about and that are not working.

David Lecours: Yeah, absolutely. Well, I love that. It’s a great acronym, and there’s a ton of great info here. We’ll list that in our show notes. Craig, I have one more question. What I found is that creative output is directly proportional to creative input. In other words, you really can only pull out what you put in. So you’ve got to feed yourself well, whether it’s reading or going to movies or conferences or things like that. I’m curious what you do to solve the input part to keep yourself creatively nourished.

Craig Atkinson: That was a little piece of wisdom that struck me earlier in my career. What happened was … I’ve worked very intentionally to become a good public speaker over time. But early in that process, I remember asking … there was a gentleman who was a very good public speaker that I admired a great deal, and I asked him, “How did you get to be so good at public speaking?” I asked the question … I already had an answer in my mind that I thought I was going to get, and I didn’t get that answer. What he said was, “Oh, that’s easy. I read. I read a lot. I read everything.” He said, “You’ve got to build a database.” He said, “It’s about the database.”

Craig Atkinson: If you want to be good at public speaking … now I’m going to extend this to say if you want to be good at the output, whether it’s public speaking or generating written words or images, graphics, whatever-

David Lecours: A creative proposal.

Craig Atkinson: … it’s about the database. He said, “You’ve got to build a really big database because you’ve got to be able to … you got to have all that stuff in there so you can start to create associations and metaphors.” And a lot of what we do in our proposals is we’re laying out technical information and some straightforward things. One thing we’re always trying to do is figure out ways to render things graphically. That can be a more efficient way to show how a team is going to be structured or how a process in particular is going to work. To be good at that, you have to be good at metaphor. And to be good at metaphor, you have to build a very large database of stuff that can collide together.

Craig Atkinson: That’s why my practice of image and text, is I’m always collecting and then later figuring out how could things fit together in ways that are novel, interesting or compelling? It doesn’t have to be novel or new, just that are compelling. The same thing is true when you’re putting a proposal together, or when you’re trying to think of like, “Okay, we have that we have to make a chart of a safety process. We could cut and paste the one we used on the last proposal. Or we can find is there a better way to show this that would be more efficient and more compelling, and do a better job of giving our client the assurance that we totally understand what this is all about.”

Craig Atkinson: The best way to show someone you understand what it’s all about is to be able to explain to them clearly what it’s all about. Even if they’re not. You were absolutely right, that this is about … for me, it is about reading, and it’s about reading both industry related information for the knowledge purposes, but it’s also about reading poetry and some other things that are a little more abstract or a little more esoteric because those are in the realm of metaphor. Sometimes when I want to write, I will go read a chapter’s worth or something or five or six poems from someone who I think is a really good writer because it dials you in to, “How do I put words and thoughts together?”

Craig Atkinson: You’re absolutely right, that good output is based on good input. But I think that early on about creating and nurturing a database was really important.

David Lecours: That’s golden. Hey readers, listeners, if you want to read something inspiring, we’re going to include a couple of inspirational quotes in the show notes and hopefully that’ll get you going. Well, Craig, this has been fantastic. You’ve been really generous with your time, and you’re full of knowledge. I know our audience is going to get a lot out of it, so thanks so much.

Craig Atkinson: Oh, absolutely. I love this topic, because I think at the end of the day, this is … the spark of life really comes with the ability to “create”, which doesn’t always mean making something new. It could be solving a problem, or putting a connection together or making a friend. I always appreciate the opportunity to talk about this and share a little bit about what I’ve learned. Hopefully people will find it useful.

David Lecours: Oh, for sure. If you guys have any questions out there, or you have comments, you want to reach out to Craig or I, you can get the information at psm.show. You can scroll down and there’s a contact form, and we’d love to hear from you. That’s it for this episode of PSM Show. Thanks to our sponsor, SMPS, and thanks to Craig Atkinson. From myself and my co host, Josh Miles, keep the creative fire burning.

This episode runs 30 min.

It’s 2019 so David and Josh ask each other 10 questions to set 10 goals for the year. This episode is part two of two. For part one, click here.

Subscribe to PMS Show on iTunes

Mentioned in This Episode 135: Goals, Part 2

From Jinny Ditzler’s book, Your Best Year Yet

1. What did I accomplish this year? (looking back through your 2018 calendar helps)
2. What were my biggest disappointments (acknowledge, and look at what caused them, then move forward)
3. What did I learn during the year? (look at accomplishments and ask how did I do that? look at disappointments and ask what would I do differently?)
4. How do I limit myself..and how can I stop? (what story am I telling myself to explain these limitations? Pick one, and shift it into a positive affirmation)
5. What are my personal values?
6. What roles do I play? (i.e. husband, boss, designer, podcaster, dad, etc. List them all, be sure one role is to take care of yourself)
7. Which role is my focus for the upcoming year (which role would make the biggest difference if you had a breakthrough performance?)
8. What are my goals for each role? (list as many as you like but at least one per role)
9. What are my top 10 goals for next year? (not discarding ones from #8, just creating a manageable, focused list. Aim for balance. Make a one page summary including guidlines from #3, new paradigm from #4, major focus #7, top 10 goals #9. Keep this summary where you can see it, share it.)
10. How can I make sure I achieve my goals? (accountability partner, coach, friend check-in. Review summary while weekly planning)

Production of PSM Show is underwritten by:

 

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Let us know what you think about this episode. Should we do more interviews? Or, would you prefer just Josh and David (no guests)? Or should we get rid of Josh and David altogether? Use the form on our homepage to let us know.

 

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Read the Episode

Announcer: Welcome to the PSM, the Professional Services Marketing Podcast. It’s insight applied.

Josh: Hello and welcome to PSM show, the podcast for AEC marketers. I’m Josh Miles, and today I’ve got my partner David here with me. Hello David.

David: Hi Josh. Glad to be back just a week from last time.

Josh: Yeah, nice to do the old back to back so we could do part one and part two of our topic on goals, and I would encourage you if you have not listened to our previous episode, which I believe is 134, make sure and go back and listen to part one on goals, and I think this episode will make a whole lot more sense.

Josh: Yeah. Especially ’cause these sort of build on the previous five questions, and we’re gonna we’re going focus on six through 10 today, and I’m excited.

David: Well, hey, before we get too far, I’d like to give thanks to our underwriting title sponsor SMPS who reminds us business transformed through marketing leadership. Visit smps.org to learn more.

Announcer: This is PSM. It’s insight applied.

Josh: Okay David, so I think we left off last week … We just kinda wrapped up a little chat about our personal values. Again, if you haven’t already listened to that episode, make sure and go back and check out 134, but we’ve got this list of these 10 kind of goal setting framework things that you’ve been using for like, what’d you say? 10 or 15 years now?

David: Yeah. I can’t remember when I first started doing it. My parents sent me this, and at first I was like, “Oh man.” But then once I did it, I was like, “Wow, this is really insightful.” And so yeah, it’s been super helpful for me.

Josh: Yeah. I love your consistency with this because I am like always, “Ooh, shiny.” And then I’ll try a different goal setting approach for the next year or maybe three different ones in the same year, but I think this has got to be really cool to be able to go back and look at historically how you’ve answered these questions over the years.

David: Yes. Especially, you remember last time we talked about like question number four was how do I limit myself, and I can look back over 10 years, and if I’m seeing I’m limiting myself the exact same way every year, then I’m not following number three, which is what did I learn? So it is really kind of cool to go back and just kind of remember some of the accomplishments and disappointments. It’s sort of like a history of my life in a way like the things that matter, and it’s fun to kind of have that little time capsule to check out.

Josh: Well, I guess speaking of your life, we could jump into number six, and I’ll let you answer first, but that question is what roles do I play? So that’s like, for example, you might be a husband or a boss or an employee or all these other things. So, how would you list that out?

David: Yeah. So first, I just want to say that it’s really important for our audience to list all the roles that you play, and I think you’ll be kind of surprised in today’s modern society, how many different roles we play, but if you don’t sort of acknowledge the fact that you’re playing all these roles, then you could sort of short change one or the other just by sort of lack of awareness. So, I’ll list these real quick, and some of them are pretty self explanatory, but some might need a little explaining.

David: So, first one is I’m a husband. Second one is I’m a Principal of my firm, LecoursDesign, which means I’m the owner and the main driver of strategy of the firm and then business development and creative. The next role I play is as designer. I still get my hands involved with designing brand identities and websites. Often, the next role I play as brand strategist. So within projects, I will take the lead in terms of helping our clients strategically position themselves in the marketplace. One of my roles is athlete. I mentioned last time I’m a competitive pickle ball player and a surfer, and that part of my life is important. Family member, so other than my sort of immediate family of my wife and I, my sister lives nearby, and my dad lives nearby, and then close with my mom who doesn’t live nearby, but it’s aunts and uncles and cousins and things. So, I value that as well.

David: The next role may require a little explanation. I call it saw sharpener, and I think I got this from Stephen Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, but it’s this idea of like kind of looking out for myself, not in a selfish way, but more of like a self kind of care way of continually to sort of improve, and that may mean just sort of like taking time out and doing like a reflective day or a workshop or something where I don’t do a whole lot. But oftentimes, it means like taking classes or going to conferences and just sort of continuing to sharpen my saw or like make me better at using my tools, whatever they may be.

David: One of my roles is as a manager, helping to mentor a staff and guide them and move them forward. One of my roles as homeowner. My wife and I are about to embark on a backyard remodel, and so that’s gonna be fun, I hope.

Josh: You guys have had the epic journey of remodeling for the past few years.

David: Oh, I mean, yeah, that’s the kind of the benefit of buying a house that needs some love and having kind of a blank slate, and we both like it. My wife’s an interior designer, and I’m a designer, so it’s sort of a hobby in a way.

David: So two more. One is a role I play as thought leader, and I think of this as being a writer of blog posts and then as a speaker and a podcaster, and then final one, the role I play is friend, being friends to my friends.

Josh: Excellent. Well, I’m sort of like the last episode when we were talking about your values, I think I could probably just say yes and to yours, but definitely would agree with the husband and dada number one. Dada is what my kids call me. So this is kind of new for me in that kind of business owner entrepreneur role that I played for a really long time has shifted to being an employee and more of a manager and leader within another organization. So, that’s a big shift for me, and it’s something I’m still learning my way around, I think. I would kind of wrap up a lot of the things that I do with the heart of a teacher. So whether I’m speaking or on video or on podcasts, like the thing that I really enjoy is helping other people learn and helping people apply their learnings in new skills into … We talked about this with the values thing as well as that just kind of my desire for impact.

Josh: So, as I’m teaching, I want to give people, not just fill an hour but also deliver some value to the listener or the viewer or the audience, and I think maybe also similar to one of yours is I am just a crazy consumer of data, of information, of learning. I love to improve myself and kind of learn tips and tricks and techniques and hacks and all of that good stuff for how to do things better or to learn and acquire new skills. So again, would agree with a lot of yours, but those are some of the ones that are maybe unique to me.

David: I love that you framed that one sort of like whether you’re podcasting or doing video or writing or giving talks as teacher because then it’s like, so serving. There’s that whole sort of school of servant leadership, right? So it’s like you’re really serving an audience. It’s not like you’re getting up there to sort of feed your ego, but it’s … Yeah, I think that’s a great way to sort of frame that, and I think our audience, when they’re thinking of how can we share our expertise, people call this content marketing, but if you just sort of think of yourself as a teacher or think of your people as teachers, that’s just a great way to consider it.

Josh: And it also saves time from listing all the other things.

David: Yeah.

Josh: Just say teacher, then I don’t have to say author, writer, speaker, podcaster, blah blah blah.

David: No. Yeah, no, for sure. So yeah, we all play a lot of different roles, and I think as I mentioned earlier, it’s important to identify those. So the next one sort of plays off of that is identifying, hey, what is your focus role going to be for the upcoming year? It doesn’t mean you’re going to neglect any of those other roles, but maybe ask yourself this question: Which role would make the biggest difference if you had a breakthrough performance in that particular role?

David: So for me this year my focus role is going to be on principle. I am interested in growing our firm a little bit and taking on more national projects which we’ve started to do and sort of elevate our brand out in the marketplace. I’m also very interested in kind of improving some of our internal processes about how we manage projects and how we kind of forecast our workload and sort of all the things that go along with that.

David: So, I’m working with a consultant, and that’s gonna be my focus role, and I have my wife and other people that sort of keep me in check making sure that I don’t neglect those other roles. But I just feel like if I make a really significant impact in that one role, it’s going to have a cascading effect and make me a happier and better person in the other places too.

Josh: Yeah, that’s good.

David: How about your thoughts? Do you have one or two that you are going to kind of put in front?

Josh: I think the one that would be the biggest difference is in the teacher piece. So, being more focused in what maybe media or venue through which I’m teaching, and I don’t have all the answers just yet, but I’ve kind of started out the year doing a little research on a potential new book, and unfortunately I wouldn’t … It’s just not practical for most humans to lock themselves up in a cabin for a month and just write, so for me, it’s getting in regular like maybe 30 minutes a morning just to focus on it or maybe 60 minutes if that’s possible first thing before I really start my work day to just focus and think about what I’m writing. So, putting out regular content and/or compiling something for what might become this new book that I’m exploring is the thing that I think would be the biggest difference if we sit here next year and had this conversation.

David: Yeah. No, Well I look forward to what that new book might be. If I could take the role of sort of your accountability partner, you also mentioned wanting to do the audio recording of your existing book, Bold, Bold Brand 2.0. So, I’m just going to ask you a sort of provocative question. Would it be better to finish that first or do you think you can do both?

Josh: I think I can do both. I think there … I think I can record in the evening or on the weekend and get the book recorded pretty quickly. It’s just a matter of making that a to-do item that actually gets to done. The writing thing I think is more of like you can’t just sort of find time here and there and end up with a book at the end of the year. Like it’s got to be a much more focused endeavor for sure.

David: Yeah. Much more intentional.

Josh: Yup.

David: Nice. Okay. So number eight is … All right. You’ve identified what roles you play, so now we’re going to get into some goals, and it’s essential that to sort of keep yourself as a balanced human being, that you have at least one goal for every single role, and I, of course, am a fan of making these goals smart, in other words, specific, measurable, actionable, realistic and time based, but kind of even more important in this case is just making sure you have a goal for each role that you play. And you can list as many as you like, and then we’ll kind of narrow the focus a little bit in a subsequent question.

Josh: Yeah. I feel like most of my … I guess in full transparency, I’ve been working on this goals list for like the last week and a half, and it’s been kind of a few minutes to think through things here and a few minutes to think through things there, and like we talked a little bit last episode, if anything, I sort of find myself over committing to doing all of the things so I end up with like 800 goals, so then I have to go back, and maybe 800 is a slight exaggeration, but sometimes it’s tough for me to prioritize the top three or the top five and then to like really focus on those.

Josh: A lot of the things that were bubbling up for me were kind of in the area of publishing. We talked a little bit previously, about, my learning of video last year, so I ended up publishing 52 short videos to YouTube last year, and I wanted to up that this year. So, I wanted to still do … I do a weekly series called 59 Second Friday that came out just about every Friday last year and then also did a couple longer form pieces. So, my goal this year is to do 72 total videos in addition to whatever this new book becomes and then also to record that audio book. So, those are kind of my three big publishing goals.

David: And I think it’s important in this sort of … This question number eight is don’t feel like you do have to edit down and narrow the focus. We’ll have an opportunity to do that. So just sort of get it all down, sort of like in the creative brainstorming, like now is not the time to edit. Get it down, and then you can start to prioritize from there.

David: So one of my roles as principal, so I set a goal of certain revenue that we’re trying to hit of course, set a goal of improving project management. As an athlete, I’ve identified like four big pickle ball tournaments that I want to play in. What else? Thought leader, I want to do another 25 episodes of this podcast, identified a couple of conferences that I’m going to try to get hired to speak at. My wife and I have identified some joint goals, and one of which is to, on a monthly basis, get together with friends, certainly out in the real world or IRL, in real life, whether that’s hosting dinners or going for hikes and .. And then also, she and I want to move out and just sort of get outside of our little bubble of exploring the vast area of Southern California and doing kind of more hikes and finding interesting things because there’s just so much cool stuff, and it’s real easy to hang out at home.

David: So yeah, those are some of the goals that are related to specific roles.

Josh: Yeah. Good stuff. Like it.

David: All right, so question number nine is to identify … So, question eight was just to come up with a big list of all your roles, all your goals, and then question number nine is just to identify, hey, what are my top 10 goals for the next year? So you’re not going to discard roles from number eight. It’s just, you’re going to sort of create a manageable focus list. And the way I sort of like to think about this is like, once you get those first 10 done, now you’ve got that manageable … Now you’ve got that other list that you created for question eight that you can go back to. So you’re not like killing your dreams. You have a list that you could go back to.

David: But you also, I think, and I think you alluded this earlier, Josh, that if you just have so many of these things, you just can’t focus the time or energy to accomplish the ones. And I’m guessing there’s some that are just going to be … And this is why I sort of asked that question of like, hey, if I were to make a difference or accomplish this one goal, like it would probably have this kind of cascading effect on other things, and the other part of this is after you’ve established these 10 goals, create some sort of like maybe cheat sheet or summary. Maybe you print it out and post it on your screen or in your workspace. Or maybe there’s a private place you have in your home so that you’re just constantly seeing it. It just sort of becomes like part of your life. I use Evernote and kind of on a weekly basis when I plan my week, I review that list and say, “Hey, is there one little thing that I can do to kind of move forward to meeting one of the particular goals?”

Josh: Yeah. That’s good. I think like we were discussing before, I don’t really have all of them fleshed out yet, and some of the ones that were easiest for me to kind of put my hands on were some of these content goals, and some of those are ones that maybe I need to revisit and say, “Okay, is making 72 videos really, really that important?” Or is it more … One of those goals in particular is I’ve got some friends that own a coffee shop, and we’ve been talking forever about making a short film/video for their coffee shop. Like, you know, just for free. Like, “Hey, how about we work on this project together?” They’re creative people. I would want them to collaborate on it and just to make a really cool piece at the end, like that almost is more important to me than the 72 individual episodes.

Josh: I think like you’re saying just getting all of those goals out there is a great way for you to really think through and like give weight to okay, if I could only do a portion of these, which are most important? Or like my business coach would always say, “You know, most people make all these goals for the year. Most people don’t write them down, and most people will never accomplish any of them because they’re not focused really on any particular one or two.” But he would always say, you know, at most three, but ideally, you’ve got one or two really, really important goals, and if your focus is on those and you get some of the others done, that’s great too.

David: Yeah, and I don’t think 10 is a magic number that you absolutely … But I would cap it at 10 for sure. I think anything more than that is probably not realistic because either that or you’re not setting high enough goals. Like if it’s so easy you can accomplish 50 of them, maybe you’d be better off just doing 10 that are like really more stretch goals that can help you.

Josh: And some of these might even be like semantics, right? It’s like, what’s the difference between a goal or a habit. Like is going to the gym four times a week, is that a goal or is that just, I want to make that a habit. The goal is to have the habit of going to the gym.

David: Yeah. And I think I could address that in a way like I think if it is specific, going to the gym. It’s measurable, four times. It’s actionable, you have to take certain steps to get yourself to the gym. It’s realistic, you can probably do four, and it’s time based. It’s within a week. So I would definitely category that as a goal. It’s awesome if these goals do become a habit because then they’re just so much easier to do. It just becomes just part of your … Like the last probably three or four years ago I started a meditation practice, and now I just feel kind of awkward, something sort of off if I don’t do the 15 minutes that I set out to do every morning, and it just like, feels weird. So yeah, that’s become a habit.

David: Yeah, so from the sort of list of goals that I shared before, I don’t have new ones. It’s just a few of those that I’ve identified that I mentioned earlier that I want to hit.

Josh: Yep. Sounds good.

David: So yeah. Alright. You have your 10 goals, you printed it out, you’ve made it real. There’s a 10th step that’s like really kind of critical to this process, and I think it’s something that people sometimes don’t do, and it prohibits them from meeting those goals, and that is having a plan which is different from your goals, but it’s basically how can I make sure I achieve my goals, and that can take the form of a lot of different things. It could be having an accountability partner. Josh and I have now publicly shared some of these things with each other, and so we have this kind of like built in accountability. I can check in and say, “Hey Josh.” And maybe we do that throughout the year even here on the podcast like, “Hey, how’s it going with this?” Although that could be really embarrassing if we haven’t made any particular progress.

Josh: A little public shaming via podcasts.

David: But you could step it up, and you could potentially hire a coach to help you. There is something about paying for help that makes it a little more real and painful if you don’t do what you say you’re going to do because then you’re just kind of wasting your money. But maybe you just have a friend or a family member that you can check in with.

David: You know, I found that what helps me really well is, like I said, I do this kind of weekly planning usually now kind of on Sunday nights. I try to plan my week ahead so I can kind of hit the ground running Monday morning, and part of that, and I used David Allen’s Getting Things Done methodology, and he suggests having this weekly kind of check in with yourself about like what are the outstanding issues? What are all your projects you’re working on? What sort of state are they in? But one of the things that I review is that list of goals that I’ve set, and so I can check in and see how I’m doing there.

Josh: You know, two of the variations on the reviewing your goals thing. Something I’ve used in years past is kind of a visual version of that. So keep a little poster of a vision board or like hanging that up at your desk or making that image your desktop background, or there’s a lot of different ways that you can make sure that you are literally visualizing your goals, and some people will say, “Okay, not just your goals, but maybe like the so what.” So if you sell so many widgets, you’re gonna buy yourself a new car. Well, what car is that? That’s the image that goes on the vision board. So it’s not so much a visioning the X million dollars in sales, but it’s envisioning your [crosstalk 00:25:17] that you’re going to buy when you close those deals.

Josh: And I just heard this one yesterday actually, Sunny was one of our SMPS Max speakers, at Build Business back in Indianapolis in 2017. She’s got a really great podcast. If you check out I think it’s probably slash podcast, but we’ll put the real link in the show notes, but she was talking about what she does is she writes herself a letter from the future so she writes it to herself from herself for every 90 days.

Josh: So, she kind of chunks her goals down into quarterly, and every 90 days she updates this letter and then she reads the letter aloud every day. So, you know, I’ll let her explain the rest of it, but I thought it was a really powerful idea of like hearing yourself say the things as if it were already done, kind of creates something in your mind that you think, “Oh yeah, this is doable. This is happening. There’s no question about it.” So again, check that out. I thought that was a really interesting take on how to review your goals.

David: Oh Man. Some great stuff there, Josh. I think whatever sort of format you feel comfortable expressing yourself, if it’s calligraphy, if it’s a graphic design, if it’s photography, if it’s making collage, I think we can all tear things out of magazines. Yeah, I love the idea of like taking your, hopefully your own magazines, not like public library ones, but like taking your goals and making it visual into some sort of piece of art, your own little special art piece that represents your goals.

David: And there was one other thing you said. Oh, it was about chunking. Let’s say you’ve got a year goal of like a certain revenue target. Let’s say it’s a million dollars. That kind of year long is super long, and that number is real kind of big, but if you start to break it down by month or even a by week or something, then it becomes more realistic like when you’re in the moment trying to hit those, and then you have a better sense of like a thermometer reading of how you’re doing.

David: That was something that I did a while back, and I think I’m going to do again is literally sort of make one of those sort of like almost fundraising thermometers. And there’s something really fun about each week getting out the colored marker and sort of filling in the ink of letting that thermometer starts rise and seeing like, “All right, I’m making progress. I’m hitting these goals.” And you can do that, not just for revenue, but kinda anything. Like, you know, you can have little four check boxes a week for every time you want to go to the gym. And like just the satisfaction of checking off that box. There’s just something visceral and analog about that that I think encourages you to keep it up that behavior.

Josh: Yeah, absolutely. I love that. So, if you are extra stubborn and did not go back and listen to episode 134 on goals and you made it all the way through 135, I would encourage you to now go back and listen to the first half of this, and if you made it through both of them, thanks for listening. You’ll have to Tweet out to us and let us know what you think about goal setting or maybe if you have other thoughts or approaches that you use, make sure and tell us that in the comments over at PSM Show.

Josh: So, I think that about wraps us up for today. If you have any other questions or comments or thoughts on future guests, make sure and write to at psm.show. Just scroll all the way down to contact and drop us a line.

Josh: Thanks again to our sponsor, SMPS. Visit smps.org. That’s all for today’s episode of PSM Show from myself and David. We’ll see you next time.

SaveSave

This episode runs 32 min.

It’s 2019 so David and Josh ask each other 10 questions to set 10 goals for the year. This episode is part one of two.

Subscribe to PMS Show on iTunes

Mentioned in This Episode 134: Goals, Part 1

From Jinny Ditzler’s book, Your Best Year Yet

1. What did I accomplish this year? (looking back through your 2018 calendar helps)
2. What were my biggest disappointments (acknowledge, and look at what caused them, then move forward)
3. What did I learn during the year? (look at accomplishments and ask how did I do that? look at disappointments and ask what would I do differently?)
4. How do I limit myself..and how can I stop? (what story am I telling myself to explain these limitations? Pick one, and shift it into a positive affirmation)
5. What are my personal values?
6. What roles do I play? (i.e. husband, boss, designer, podcaster, dad, etc. List them all, be sure one role is to take care of yourself)
7. Which role is my focus for the upcoming year (which role would make the biggest difference if you had a breakthrough performance?)
8. What are my goals for each role? (list as many as you like but at least one per role)
9. What are my top 10 goals for next year? (not discarding ones from #8, just creating a manageable, focused list. Aim for balance. Make a one page summary including guidlines from #3, new paradigm from #4, major focus #7, top 10 goals #9. Keep this summary where you can see it, share it.)
10. How can I make sure I achieve my goals? (accountability partner, coach, friend check-in. Review summary while weekly planning)

Production of PSM Show is underwritten by:

 

We Want to Hear From You

Let us know what you think about this episode. Should we do more interviews? Or, would you prefer just Josh and David (no guests)? Or should we get rid of Josh and David altogether? Use the form on our homepage to let us know.

 

Subscribe to our Podcast

To subscribe to the PSM podcast in iTunes – click here

 

Read the Episode

Announcer: Welcome to PSM, the Professional Services Marketing podcast. It’s insight applied.

David: Hello, and welcome PSM Show, the podcast for AEC marketers. I’m David Lecours, and I’ve got Josh Miles here with me. How are you doing today, Josh?

Josh: You know what, I am doing well, sir. It has been all winter without winter here in Indiana, but we are expecting seven inches of snow tomorrow and I can’t say I’m excited about it. I’m not the world’s biggest fan of winter.

David: You’re not gonna pull out your sled and your saucer?

Josh: I’m probably gonna pull out my shovel for sure.

David: Oh yeah.

Josh: Fireplace and wish I were in sunny San Diego with you.

David: Yeah, I hear you. Well I just got back from Portland, it wasn’t so sunny there, so I am glad to be back home.

David: well, hey, it’s 2019 and I thought it’d be great for us to talk about goals, and we can unpack what that means in a minute, but first I want to point out we’re so happy and proud to have our underwriting production sponsor, SMPS, who reminds us that business is transformed through marketing leadership.

David: If you want to find out more about SMPS, go to SMPS.org.

Announcer: This is PSM, it’s incite applied.

David: Alright Josh, let’s talk a little bit about goals and maybe we should sort of set this up in terms of why we thought this was relevant and how this can sort of be for SMPS marketers to establish some personal goals and also some professional goals, does that sound good?

Josh: Sounds good, this is like the time of the year that every other influencer on Instagram or YouTube or Twitter or whatever is talking about their own particular life hacks and all the ways of setting goals and all that good stuff, so it’s good timing.

David: Yeah, and I think setting goals can happen anytime of the year, so if you already have something in place, maybe this can be a framework that you can add to or maybe you change it up going forward.

David: And so, what Josh and I are gonna do is we’re gonna go through these ten questions, sort of a top ten and it’s a process that kind of builds on the previous question, and by the end, you end up with your top ten goals of the year, and I think it’s a great way to kind of reflect on where you’ve been, take stock of where you are now, and then really consider where you want to go in the future.

David: So let’s start off with question number one, and that is what did I accomplish this year? And one of the great ways that I’ve found to sort of go through this task is literally go back through my calendar, I use a digital calendar through the Mac, and just sort of look at all the different things I did and that sort of helps jog my memory ’cause I can’t remember everything I did all year. Certainly the highlights are gonna stand out organically.

David: But it’s a really amazing exercise, ’cause my experience in doing this, and I’ve done this same sort of ten questions for the last 10 or 15 years, is that you really forget how much you’ve accomplished in a calendar year, and all those sort of great things that you’ve done. It’s real to sort of get sucked into negativity bias and think about maybe things that you didn’t accomplish, but this is a really great sort of self esteem booster and just memory booster to remember what you did that year.

Josh: Yeah, I think it’s helpful, too, in addition to the calendar thing, however you’re producing content to kind of go back and look through that, whether that’s your Twitter feed or blog posts that you’ve written or YouTube videos or even just a notebook.

David: Instagram, yeah.

Josh: There’s so many ways to just be like, “oh yeah, I kind of forgot we went on that trip or did that thing or learned that new skill,” so I think in addition to the calendar, maybe look back through your social and otherwise publishing and just recall all the things that you did knock out that year.

David: Right, and also look at the sort of projects that you completed or maybe sort of review all the proposals that you put out as a way to jog your memory. Hopefully those will be positive memories, but yeah.

Josh: As a side point, there is a designer that worked for me a few years back and every year that we would do his annual performance review, he would always hand me a print out of here’s every project I worked on in the last year. So he just did a great job of cataloging all the things that he did and just as a side point, as an employee I think that’s both a great way to talk to your supervisor about your performance, but also to handle this, number one, to remember all the things that you’ve accomplished.

David: Right, so our plan for this episode is to, of course, share these really intriguing ten questions, but we want to let you, our audience, sort of get to know Josh and I a little bit better, and we want to share our answers to these questions because this has been a great exercise for us and it’ll be a great way for you to get to know us a little bit better.

David: So Josh, why don’t you start us off and maybe highlight the top three to five things that you accomplished this year?

Josh: Yeah, well I went through some pretty major changes this past year, so selling my portion of the business and taking a new job at SMPS, now the chief marketing officer, so that was very exciting.

Josh: One of the maybe less significant things, but was exciting to me was sitting for and passing the EFAA drone license exam, so that was a pretty exciting thing so I can officially-

David: You’re now a pilot!

Josh: … I’m a pilot, a very small pilot, but yeah.

David: That’s super cool.

Josh: Yeah, so those were some of my chief highlights, of course. How about you?

David: Yeah, I think one was a personal highlight which was my wife, Holly, and I traveled to Africa for the very first time, back in July, and I’ve always said, oh Africa, that’s a trip of a lifetime, and now that I’ve been and had such an amazing experience, I don’t want it to be the trip of a lifetime, I want it to be one of many trips to Africa because it was so incredible. The wildlife that we saw and just the topography and the people, just the whole experience was so positive and so amazing and it just reminds me of how much travel opens you up to new ideas and new cultures and I just think it makes me a more tolerant, more global citizen and it also kind of rekindled my love for photography.

David: It’s really hard to take a bad picture in Africa, the light is terrific, the subject matter is phenomenal. So I got some really great shots of wildlife and so that was unbelievable.

David: Probably the second big highlight was the national conference at SMPS, and the national conference just happened to be in San Diego this year, which is of course my hometown and I had a nice role at the conference where I got to MC the Max talks, and if our audience has never been to a national billed business conference, you should. It’s gonna be in Washington D.C. next year.

David: We have these things called Max talks which are sort of like short talks similar to a TED talk where members and professionals get up and share sort of more personal stories and more, less sort of educational content and more inspirational content. Is that a safe way to sort of describe the Max?

Josh: Yeah. Yeah I think that’s great.

David: Okay, yeah. So at that conference I got to MC and then my firm, along with our client won three national awards. Won the best website, best rebrand, and best print recruiting piece and so as someone who hasn’t entered a lot of awards contests, and if you’re interested in learning more about awards, we’ve got a previous show that was all about awards. Episode number 129, but of course it’s fun to win awards.

David: And then the third thing is, and it’s still sort of in soft launch, but for the last two years I’ve been trying to launch a new website for Lecoursdesign.com, my firm, and it’s sort of been a case of the cobbler’s kids not having shoes, which if you’re trying to sell website services and your website isn’t outstanding, there’s a bit of a disconnect, and that disconnect has been painful for me, but finally we’ve soft launched and still kind of tweaking things, but I’m proud of this new site we launched.

Josh: Yeah, very exciting and you guys kind of swept the awards show, that was pretty impressive, so congrats again on that.

David: Thank you. All right, so those are some accomplishments, and again we think it’s great to sort of list as many as you can, and I think you’ll be surprised by how long that list can be.

David: So of course it’s probably, you can imagine what’s coming next, which are what were your biggest disappointments of that year? And I think it’s important to acknowledge those, maybe look what caused them and then maybe how to move forward and avoid or pivot and learn from those. ‘Cause, you know, not all disappointments are bad, a lot of times it’s just information and it can help learn and pivot.

Josh: Yeah, I think maybe along the lines of your Africa trip I had big hopes early in the year to do a European trip and that just didn’t work out in the schedule, couldn’t’ get everybody’s calendars to align for that, so that was a bummer, maybe we’ll work that in this year.

Josh: But one of the things I wanted to get done that just keeps kicking the can down the road is doing the audio version of my book, of Bold Brand 2.0, so actually the whole impetus for writing the second version of the book was I got halfway through recording the audio book for the first version and realized I had some things that I wanted to update and rewrite and I thought, you know what? I’ll just take the time and do version two of the book first, which I did, but now I’m still stuck on getting this audio book done, so I just need to lock myself in the studio for a couple of hours and go read the book to myself.

David: Yeah, yeah. That’s good. Yeah, in terms of disappointments I had a couple pursuits that we did not win, that we really had no business going after, and it was just kind of a reminder of making sure that you have a really go, no go, and you kind of stick to your values there.

David: And not sort of overinvest in a sale, and I think people don’t like to hire somebody that’s real needy, I think that maybe we over invested in the sale, like flew to the clients location and did a bunch of presentations, and we didn’t do free work for them on spec, which we absolutely don’t do, but just over invested in the sale, so I’m gonna try to not do that going forward.

David: Another thing that kind of happened at the last part of the year was I seemed to get into arguments, but offend or upset, it happened, like I offended four people within a period of about two weeks via email communication and it was just a further reminder to me that email is just a terrible way to communicate anything sort of sensitive, you should definitely pick up the phone or try to meet in person because you just lose all tone and you just can’t control the environment in which somebody reads an email, and usually that environment is not great because you don’t know what email came before yours and it could have put the person in a bad mood, so that was kind of a heads up.

David: And then finally, I had set some pretty high revenue goals for our firm, and we did not hit those, and it kind of forced me to sort of think about what my role in the organization is gonna be and I’m probably trying to do too many things because I like the design, I like to bring in business, I like to project manage, but I’m really world class at any of those things, and in order to become world class I think I need to narrow my focus a little bit and hire other people that are really great at some of those other roles.

David: Alright so that’s kind of-

Josh: I think you might be cutting yourself a little bit short, having won three of the biggest awards in the industry this year, so maybe, maybe.

David: … so any other thoughts about the disappointments or should we move on?

Josh: I would just love to say this time next year I won’t have the same disappointments on my list.

David: I love it, right.

Josh: So I need to make sure I chalk those up to get those knocked out this year.

David: Yeah, you’re now making yourself accountable because everybody that listens to this is gonna check in on you, “hey Josh, have you recorded that audio book?”

Josh: Exactly.

David: Yeah, I like that and I think that’s an important part of goal setting is making yourself accountable, putting it out there, like literally putting it in writing, and we’ll talk about that later as we go through our list.

David: So question number three is what did I learn during the year? And I think probably the best way to do that is look at all your accomplishments, look at all your disappointments, and say for the accomplishments, hey, how did I do that? Don’t just take it for granted that it happened, there were certainly decisions and steps that you made to make that happen, and then the second part is of the disappointments, what would I do differently? Or what are some things that could be better?

Josh: So I think looking at, as far as learnings go from the year, I guess I could have included this in accomplishments, but one of the things that I had mentioned so many times the previous year and early last year that I just wanted to try to figure out this YouTube thing as a marketer, looking at video on the whole and thinking, I don’t really know enough about that. I don’t know, I had never tried to optimize a post on YouTube, I had never tried to get views, I’d never really done the product piece of filming and adding audio, and how do you do transitions and so I kind of jumped into that with both feet towards the end of February last year and looking back on some of the videos that I made early on in the year, they’re a little bit more cringey than others, but towards the end of the year, I felt pretty good about it so I was excited that I feel like I figured out kind of camera basics, frame rates and sound, and all that good stuff.

Josh: So I was very excited about what I learned in the world of video to the point of like, now I’m kind of addicted to it, so already looking, maybe I need to upgrade my lighting or maybe I need a different microphone. So I’m sort of becoming a video gear head, but that was something I definitely jumped into and I feel like that’s probably an area that I grew the most last year.

David: Yeah, no, I think that’s super cool and I think one of the things I’ve always admired about you, Josh, is that if you want to do something you just kind of jump in, and you’re kind of fearless about sort of taking it on, I think sometimes I, “oh I gotta like do this in private and figure it all out before I take it out into the world,” but there’s something about sort of having the pressure of starting to just do it and you have learned this whole new skill that, yeah, if you want to learn something new, and I this is a take away for our audience, just start doing it.

David: There are so many resources out there, one of which is YouTube, you can pretty much find out how to do anything, and there are so many coaches out there and resources for figuring out how to do stuff. I firmly believe as marketers, we gotta always be uping our arsenal of tools and as technology changes, we gotta try new stuff.

David: So one of the accomplishments that I didn’t mention, but that I am the proud of is the fact that you and I put out 25 episodes of PSM Show last year, and I guess, yeah, go us.

David: And I think the sort of take away there is to just kind of say yes. You had asked me to cohost with you and I was like, oh I don’t know, I don’t know to do that, got a lot on my plate, but I said yes, and I kind of learned somethings along the way, so yeah. Just the same sort of theme as your video, just sort of jump in and start to learn how to do things.

David: I think another sort of important thing I learned or just reconfirmed is like how important it is to make connections offline. There’s this real ease, I sort of think of social media sometimes as junk food, right? It’s sort of gives you an instant hit, but about 30 minutes later you bonk and bonk meaning like you hit a low blood sugar and it’s not really very nourishing.

David: And I think sometimes we can mistake likes or people reaching out to say happy birthday on social media as like a real connection, and I don’t think, at least for me, and I’m not gonna proselytize here, but for me, man, getting together with people in real life is so much more validating and just get a lot more out of that.

Josh: Yeah, that’s good stuff. Anything else you want to include in your learnings or you want to move onto number four?

David: I think that’s it, yeah, let’s move on to number four, and so number four is how do I limit myself and how can I stop? And sometimes this means, like what stories are you telling yourself?

David: So we all have these internal dialogues and often it takes the form of I’m not good enough, I’m not smart enough, that kind of thing. But I think it’s critical to acknowledge what’s going on in your head and ways that you may be limiting yourself and then pick one of those and sort of shift it into maybe a more positive affirmation or to turn the corner on it and change it around, because a lot of times these things are just in our head, they’re not actually real.

David: I heard this acronym once about fear standing for false evidence appearing real, and a lot of times we’re scared to do new things or try new stuff and it often, once we start doing it, we’re like “oh, that was ridiculous, I can’t believe I was so scared to do that,” it was false evidence that appeared real until we started doing it.

David: So were there any ways that you thought about that you limited yourself in the last year?

Josh: This might sound like an oxymoron to this answer, but I think the way that I limit myself is that I tend to feel like once I start doing something, I have to keep doing it, and so I end doing quote, unquote “all the things” and I think that that’s a good example of why I don’t have an audiobook recorded because I’m doing 20 other things that are also, they feel like the right things, so sometimes it’s hard for me, when there’s so many shiny things to choose which three shiny things really are the most important or the most valuable, so it probably limits my ability to go really deep in any of them because I kind of dabble a little bit or kind of chase them all at once. If that makes sense.

David: So let me see if I understand you, so the idea that you start something and you feel like you got to just continue it no matter what rather than maybe cutting your loses and focusing in on fewer things?

Josh: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think we’ve done a really great with this show in that we weren’t overly ambitious to begin with so we’re not trying to do a daily or weekly show, we publish about twice a month, and we were really good at doing that consistently, so it was a very sustainable pace, but other things that I’ve done maybe are less sustainable, so cramming them all into the day and then you feel like you can’t go, for instance, maybe I wouldn’t have time to do more PSM show if I wanted to, but maybe we should do more, I don’t know.

David: I think we’ve had a great sort of format in that, well, it’s just having a partnership. It doesn’t all fall on you or it doesn’t all fall on me, and so we do these individual interviews and we’ve alternated episodes between the two of us and then also episodes of interviewing people and so that helps kind of break it up and allows to us to get more episodes done and yeah, have to sort of cram it in.

Josh: Yeah, and I guess to just let people a little further behind the curtain, even when we do our episodes together, we frequently, not always, but frequently try to record two in a row so it’s even a single time commitment as opposed to multiple times a month.

David: Yeah, ’cause just the scheduling of it takes time and energy and so yeah, if we can just bang out a couple at a time while we’re together, we’re focused, we’re sort of already warmed up and we can just sort of flow from there.

Josh: Yeah. How do you see that one or do you find yourself limiting in certain areas?

David: Yeah, for sure, I really kind of had this epiphany and it’s such a constant problem that I find myself in and I have to remind myself of being reactionary in terms or planning my day, my week, it’s so easy to get sucked into those sort of dopamine hit of answering an email as it comes in, thinking in your head, “oh I’m a hero, I just answered that,” or a text or a slack message or whatever.

David: And it’s so counter productive, because I’m somebody that needs to have long periods of time to do deep work, and think about things and I need it to be quiet and so if I get distracted by a bing or a beep or a whatever, the email or text, it just throws me out of my rhythm and I have to ramp back up and so that is really a microcosm, but really the idea of planning my week and letting others maybe dictate my priorities and what I’ve reminded myself is what I need to do is Sunday nights or Monday mornings, real early, is plan the entire week and literally put in the calendar, I’m gonna have deep creative work for these five hours and break it up, I like 90 minute increments.

David: And be proactive, rather than reactive, and man at the end of the week I just feel so much more productive and like I did something that nourished my soul, and got stuff done rather than just being quote, unquote “busy” for the sake of being busy.

Josh: You know, that’s a really great point, I just did a little story on one of my recent YouTube videos about, similarly, how valuable that first hour in the day is for me. If I let email or whatever other pings or dings or whatever dictate what I’m doing in that first hour, then that just starts your day off on the hamster wheel.

David: Yeah.

Josh: If you start your day with an hour of writing or an hour of thinking or an hour of really deep design work or strategy and it’s focused time. The rest of the day you just feel like you’re three inches taller. Wow, I just killed it all morning and then you get into all the busy work and maybe the urgency of the moment, but not letting those things drive your day I think is huge.

David: I love that you said that, and one of the things that I do is I’m not allowed to look at email until noon and the idea of starting your day with something that is creative or maybe contemplative or reflective and that’s you sort of controlling your destiny and you’re setting a tone, and it seems like so much of this is about momentum.

David: If you set the tone at the first part of your day, you’re less tolerant of distractions or things that are gonna deviate you from your goal, and I recognize that our audience, there’s other people who have priorities and they have kids and they other things, but man, if you can just set boundaries to give yourself permission to start your day, start small, like 10 minutes, 15 minutes. Whether it’s like meditation or writing or journaling or something to help you maybe plan the rest of your day, I think you’re gonna find that to be incredibly effective.

Josh: So maybe we should move onto number five?

David: Yeah, let’s do number five and so number five is identifying what your personal values are and I think we all sort of know what values are, but the things that you hold dear and you’re passionate about so that it can help you make decisions.

Josh: You want to go first on this one?

David: Sure, yeah. Yeah, I think I’ll list most of these ’cause it’ll go pretty quick.

David: So one of my personal values is creativity and I sort of make an equation that creative input equals creative output, so I’ve got to feed myself with creative inspiration if I’m expecting to pull out creative work.

David: The other one is winning, I’ve come to realize that I’m a competitive person, I like the pursuit of winning, don’t always win, but the pursuit pushes me to elevate my game. I’m a competitive pickle ball player, and I also like the new business process.

David: I alluded to this earlier, but personal connection is a value, so my affirmation there is I reach out to friends for connect and laughter.

David: Another one is renewal, I practice yoga, I try to sleep well. One of the things I haven’t done in a while is take a quarterly retreat or take a personal day where it’s just me or maybe it’s a weekend where I go away and do some sort of long range planning or writing or thinking.

David: Travel and adventure is a big value, I love going to new places and learning new things, tasting new food, experiencing new culture.

David: And let’s see, my marriage is a value, I try to continually invest in our relationship, and then maybe the final one is design. I love marrying beauty and strategy to communicate the soul of a brand.

David: I feel kind of naked, just sharing all that stuff, but-

Josh: Wow.

David: … It’s fun.

Josh: Well maybe I can help you, I would just say yes to all of yours.

David: Okay, yeah, me too.

Josh: Yeah, me too. I think with the nuance of really putting family first is something that I have talked about often and have actually been able to live out here recently so that feels good to have that as well as health and fitness had not really been a thing for me for most of my adult life and the last few years they’ve been really important parts of being very aware of what I’m eating and maybe more importantly of what I’m not eating.

David: Yeah.

Josh: And just taking care of myself, actually using that gym membership instead of just paying for it, which I used to be really good at sending in the check, but not so good at sending myself in.

Josh: And then, I heard a quote the other day that was that the entrepreneurial types impact is their drug of choice and I’ve thought, man, that hits home. That’s been my pet word for such a long time is that with all of these things, impact is the thing that I’m always kind of hungry for, to make sure that where you’re spending your time and where you’re putting your effort is actually moving the needle and making a difference so, if I could accomplish that in everything that I touch, then that always feels more valuable.

David: Yeah, no, for sure. All right, well, I value your values. I think those were solid and inspiring. So we’re half way through the list Josh, and I think we’re gonna wrap up today, and then do the second half of the list, so we did one through five, we’ll do six through ten in our next episode, that’s gonna come out a week from today, so if you have any questions or comments or suggestions for future shows or guests that you think we should interview, pop on over to our website, we are at PSM.show, and if you scroll down there’s just a simple contact form, and you can tell us what you think, we love feedback. Of course we love ratings on iTunes, we’d love referrals of this show to other people.

David: We’re also very thankful for our sponsor, SMPS, you can find out more about them at SMPS.org, so that’s it for this episode of PSM Show. David Lecours, who’s me, and Josh Miles we’ll see you next time.

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This episode runs 51 min, 30 seconds.

David Lecours interviews Tim Asimos, CPSM about content marketing. Tim is VP and Director of Digital Innovation at circle S Studio

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Mentioned in This Episode on Content Marketing

• How did you enter the world of A/E/C marketing?
• Value of CPSM vs. MBA for A/E/C
• What inspires you to write and speak?
• Do you call this “content marketing?”
• Are their personal and professional benefits to writing and speaking?
• Using content during BD process
• How much should firms be writing?
• What other channels should firms publish content on besides their website/blog?
• What does being a syndicated blogger mean?
• How do you balance speaking and writing with billable work?

Production of PSM Show is underwritten by:

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Read David’s Conversation with Tim

Announcer: Welcome to PSM. The Professional Services Marketing Podcast. It’s insight applied.

David Lecours: Hello and welcome to PSM show. The podcast for AEC Marketers. I’m David Lecours and I’m joined by a special guest, Tim Asimos. [inaudible 00:00:27] PSM. And our topic today is content marketing, the why, what, and how. I want to remind our listeners that we have a new title sponsor, which is SMPS. To remind here that business is transformed through marketing leadership. You can find out more about SMPS through their website, smps.org. And you can find more and the show notes for this episode at psm.show.

Announcer: This is PSM. It’s insight applied.

David Lecours: Alright, so Tim, welcome to PSM Show. I would love for our listeners to get to know you. And I thought a good way to do that was if you could just tell us sort of a short story of your career path and what led you into your current position.

Tim Asimos: Thanks, David, for having me on. Excited to be here and tell you a little bit more about myself as well as talk about one of my favorite topics, which is content marketing. Yeah. So I did not wake up one day and decide I wanted to be an AEC marketer. Believe it or not, I didn’t dream about it as a kid. It wasn’t my plan in college. I really kind of ended up in this industry accidentally. I started out in media and was working on my MBA. I wrapped up my MBA and was kind of looking to make a jump in my career. And also relocate. And by chance, I happened to get a job running the marketing department for a civil engineering firm. I had no idea what I was walking into. Was very, very, very much a shock to my system when I ended up there. It was overwhelming simply because everything I knew about marketing I felt like I had to check at the door when I walked in.

Tim Asimos: This was 2006. So I don’t know that I’d have that exact same experience if it was 2018. I think the industry has come a long way for as it relates to marketing. Still long ways to go, but back then, yeah, it was overwhelming. It was really exciting though at the same time. My first impressions were like, oh, I don’t know how this is gonna work. And then after I was there, well, one, I liked the firm. And two, I found the industry just fascinating. Especially civil engineering, honestly, I had never even thought about the work that a civil engineer did. You’ll hear a lot of civil engineers say if they do their work well, you never know they were there, you never know they existed. It’s only when they don’t do their job right that you kind of even know if there’s such a thing as a civil engineer, right?

David Lecours: Right.

Tim Asimos: It was a really interesting time. I got there before the great recession. So when I started, one of the firm’s biggest priorities were hiring staff. Sound familiar, right?

David Lecours: Yeah.

Tim Asimos: And then the economy bottomed out and fell. So that was a really interesting time to be in the business as well. Whether that was … I was in the industry about six years and was ready for a change. My passion was always digital marketing, content marketing. We were doing that when I was at the firm but not nearly the level I’d always wanted to do it. I’d actually started my career interning for an agency. So I kinda knew I always wanted to get back and the opportunity kinda came about and I jumped to circle S, where I am now. And the rest is history.

David Lecours: Alright. Well, we’re thankful you’re in this industry because you make a great contribution. And so back to your sort of history, I’m guessing that during your MBA you weren’t studying case studies for civil engineering marketing. Is that a fair guess?

Tim Asimos: No, yeah. That is very fair. It was big brand. It was the Amazons, the Procter and Gamble. It was … Maybe there was some B2B in there. Maybe an IMB or a Salesforce.com. Perhaps they were exploding at the time. Yeah, but nothing about civil engineering. I literally had to Google what is a civil engineer when I was even gonna apply and interview for the position. I just had no idea what it was. Interestingly, my father was a bridge engineer. But it was more on the structural side. I just wasn’t … Waste water, treatment plants. And I was like, “Oh, storm water. That’s why that big humongous lake is next to the shopping mall.” I didn’t know what that stuff was all about. So I had to discover that. I knew who to blame now for why parking lots sometimes are really frustrating to try to drive through. But yeah, it was interesting.

Tim Asimos: Fascinating. I’ve told this story before to SMPS crowds. I joined SMPS literally my first day on the job because all the people working for me were like, “You need to join SMPS.” I think they could tell that I did not know what I was doing as it relates to marketing for an AEC firm. The good news was I was confident as a marketer. So once I could figure out what this business does, I knew that my skills, and my knowledge in marketing would be helpful. I just needed to figure out what the heck we sold in order to kinda help the firm move forward.

David Lecours: So you got both an MBA and the CPSM, which are impressive. I have to say, I’m a little jealous on the CPSM because I actually earned mine back in 2005 and then I let it lapse. I didn’t keep up with the CEUs and I’m embarrassed to admit that. But anyway, between those two things, what do you think’s most valuable for AEC marketing?

Tim Asimos: That’s a touch question. Both have very different benefits. I think the CPSM is a validation both to your peers in the industry as well as the rest of the folks at the firm that you know what you’re doing in the industry. The industry is filled with people with lots of initials after their names. Some people have so many, I always tease they need a period at the end. It’s so long. Right? They have 10 acronyms after their name. So I think it’s a little bit of that. So it’s like, “Hey, we’re certified too in what we do.” I also think it’s helpful. Just the camaraderie of the industry with SMPS that these are people that have been in the industry a while and that have dedicated themselves to really becoming experts in AEC Marketing. So I think there’s a lot of validation there.

Tim Asimos: I will say the MBA for me, I think it was really like the growing up I needed. Not that I didn’t care in undergraduate. I did. But undergraduate is always a tough thing because while you’re excited about your career, you really have no idea what the real world’s like. You can’t apply a lot of those things to the real world because you aren’t living it. And all that social aspect is mixed in with undergraduate. It’s like you’re distracted whereas when I started my MBA, I had been out of school for two years. So not a lot of experience. But I just found the principles I was learning about so much more real because I could apply them at least in some way, shape, or form to what I did. Concepts made more sense. I didn’t have the social college sort of environment, so I was more dedicated. I got much better grades. I always like to share my GPA with my Masters degree much more than my undergraduate degree because I definitely was better at that than I was in the undergraduate level.

Tim Asimos: But I think for me, it just really taught me a lot of very broad business and marketing principles that as I walked into the career in AEC, I really walked in understanding business concepts, marketing concepts, brand concepts that really are the same in every industry. You just have to apply them differently. And so I think they’re both important in very different ways.

David Lecours: Yeah, the fusion of those together sounds ideal. And so that’s where you are.

Tim Asimos: Yeah. And my undergraduate was in communications so I was an advertising major.

David Lecours: Oh, wow. Perfect.

Tim Asimos: So then the design and the artsy kind of writing in communication sort of really rounded me out with between the two. I think that’s helped me kind of be right brain and left brain.

David Lecours: Yeah. Alright. Let’s focus our energy on this topic of content marketing. And I like to structure it the why. Then we’ll talk about the what and the how. So let’s talk a little bit about the why. So one of the reasons I wanted to have you on as a guest is I really admire your discipline that you write regularly. You speak regularly to the AEC community. What inspired this? Why are you doing this?

Tim Asimos: I think on a personal level, I’ve always liked to teach. I’ve always liked to share knowledge. I love to learn. So I’m a learner. But then once I learn, I love to pass that on. And so even back before I was with circle S, I did some speaking even when I was working with the firm. I like to share knowledge. I love seeing light bulbs go off in people’s head. My favorite thing to do specifically in this industry is to take out of industry concepts and make them tangible, and practical, and applicable in this industry. I think there’s so many things we can learn from outside the industry. But I always felt there was a disconnect. You bring an out of the industry speaker or workshop facilitator in. And they try their best to apply it. But because they don’t live it, they just … There’s some misses. And not everyone has the patience or even the ability at times to really think, well, how does this thing you just told me about Starbucks apply to my serving firm, right?

David Lecours: Right.

Tim Asimos: And I felt like I enjoy being that bridge to taking those out of industry concepts and just making them real. And so that’s always motivated me. I remember the first time I ever spoke at a conference. It was actually a Zweig. ZweigWhite back then. I think it’s just Zweig now. They used to do a marketing conference. I talked about SEO. This was like 2007 and it was a topic that no one had really thought about a whole lot in the industry. I mean, people were still having websites for the first time back then it seems like. I just love the whoa. Wow, I never knew that it could be a lot easier to understand than that. So I think that’s just … I like to be able to help people understand concepts and principles. My mom was a teacher. That probably has influenced me. There’s a little bit of a teacher in me. Maybe one day I’ll even be a college professor when my kids are grown up, and out of the house, and I’ll have more free time to burn. I’ll probably maybe even consider that adjunct professor kind of role. But I like teaching people.

David Lecours: Yeah. Absolutely. That’s so interesting. My mom was a first grade teacher as well. I think that’s part of the reason why I like getting in front of audiences and sharing knowledge. Yeah. So that’s cool. I sorta call what we’re doing here sharing expertise where clients gather. And the sort of name I put on it is content marketing. But there’s a lot of names out there. I’m curious if you have a favorite sort of name for this or do you just call it content marketing?

Tim Asimos: I mean, I call it content marketing and it’s one of those terms that people still … It’s kind of a bad term, right? Because the product is content but marketers have always had content. Probably too much content and a lot of the wrong kind of content. It doesn’t really get to the heart of what it is, which is really what I said I was passionate about which is teaching, and educating, and informing, and opening, and providing people with knowledge and information that’s helpful, and relevant, and useful to them. I always like to share most firm’s content is not helpful to the people that it’s targeted towards, right? Most of the time it’s this is what our firm wants to say to our audience. Not really a consideration of what is our audience interested in hearing, or reading, or watching, or clicking on. And so I love content marketing because it really focuses on what people care most about. And the term itself, it is what it is. It’s the term. I’m not one of those people to create a new term just for the sake of it.

David Lecours: Rebrand it, yeah.

Tim Asimos: But that’s what it is. And sort of the guy that coined that term, Joe Pulizzi, respect him a ton, he totally understands the intention behind content marketing, and he’s an advocate, and an evangelist for it. So if it’s good enough for him, it’s good enough for me. But yeah, thought leadership, a lot of times I’ll talk to clients about thought leadership, which is another term that a lot of people either don’t understand or it’s been thrown around a lot. But the principle behind thought leadership, one, we’re gonna have an original thought. And we’re gonna try to lead in the thinking of our industry. So whatever industry that is. I love that concept. We’ve got something to say. And we’re experts. And we’re not afraid to kind of put a stake in the ground and make a case for this idea, or this principle, or this concept. So I really like that too. A lot of times, firm leaders can wrap their heads around that more than content marketing because that just sounds like a buzz word or it just sounds like more of the same. So I really want to get it the heart of content marketing, which is really flipping marketing on its head.

David Lecours: What do you mean?

Tim Asimos: I mean, it’s instead of talking about your firm and how great you are, which is the natural inclination of every marketer, and sales, and business development person ever, it’s not selling. It’s like resisting the urge to say look how awesome we are. And instead it’s sharing knowledge and information that in essence, demonstrates how awesome you are without ever having to say it. And that’s just counterintuitive to a lot of marketers, a lot of sales people, and honestly, a lot of firm leaders are like, “We’re gonna do what? You want me to put out all that secret sauce out there on my website and then go and speak?”

David Lecours: Yes we do.

Tim Asimos: Yeah, “And you want me to share a presentation at a conference and not have the slide that starts out by saying this is our firm, and this is what we do, and these are all of our great projects?” Yeah, that’s exactly what I’m asking you to do. And they’re like, “What?”

Tim Asimos: So it’s a little counterintuitive to the traditional approach to marketing. But in an age where people are bombarded with messages, and marketing, and advertising, as consumers, we want things that matter to us. Not the things that interrupt our day. So the idea that you’re gonna interrupt someone’s day with a welcomed interruption, that’s really the goal I think of modern marketers is to be a welcomed interruption. Not on a nuisance, or an annoyance, or just another email in their inbox.

David Lecours: Yeah. It’s gotta be useful information. Or otherwise, just delete it.

Tim Asimos: Yeah. Absolutely.

David Lecours: So I don’t know about you, but I found it … So not only I think it’s a great marketing tool, I recommend it to my clients and I also do it from our firm, Lecours Design. But I found there’s really good personal growth benefits. I feel like I’ve become a better communicator, a better listener as a result of speaking. In terms of writing, it sort of helps me clarify my thoughts and what I really sort of believe on a subject. Have you found that to be true?

Tim Asimos: Oh yeah. Absolutely. Any of the best speakers, the best presenters, the best thought leaders if you will, the quote, gurus, although I don’t really like that term. But the gurus in the industries that they are also the best learners, right? They are life-long learners. And they are hungry for knowledge and information because the truth is especially in an industry, I’ll say marketing as an industry, as a profession that changes so rapidly, you have to stay ahead. And in order to do that, you have to continuously be learning. I mean, constantly tweaking your message. I’ll do the same presentation at 10 different conferences. And every single time I present, I’m updating, and tweaking, and adding this, and taking this away. My views are evolving to fit with, one, what I’m learning as a practitioner in my day job at my agency. As well as what I’m learning and hearing from others.

Tim Asimos: And that’s what I think to your point. Practicing content marketing, being a subject matter expert, writing thought leadership content forces you if you’re doing it right, you want to make sure that you are giving your audience the best information you can give them. And you have to do a lot of research. And you have to stay on your toes. Because simply regurgitating what else is out there a million times, the likelihood is there could be a lot of misinformation in there. So I do think, yeah, it keeps you current, it keeps you on your toes. And I learn so much. I mean, whenever I’ve had to teach anything. Any kind of class I’ve taught, any presentation, I know so much more about that topic after I got [crosstalk 00:17:39]

David Lecours: Right, right, exactly.

Tim Asimos: Than I would’ve ever known before. So yeah, it’s sort of a win win on the personal side.

David Lecours: So if our audiences are marketing directors of AEC firms, this is one of the sort of bullet points you can use when trying to sell this into your firm is that it’s gonna make the principles. It’s gonna make the sort of service line leaders. It’s gonna make the market leaders smarter and more effective at their job. And have these marketing benefits as well.

Tim Asimos: Yeah, absolutely. And one thing that I always try to emphasize, a lot of times when we’re helping clients with content marketing strategy, we want to identify who are the thought leaders, who are the people that are already recognized, that are already speaking at conferences, maybe they’re already writing in journals, and publishing articles, and they’re already the go to people on that particular subject matter in the firm. Those are the easy ones to identify but I like to say but who else below them is emerging? Right? There’s a lot of younger, less experienced folks in engineering, and architecture, and construction that you know what, they have a lot of knowledge, they are hungry.

Tim Asimos: And in some ways, and I say this without intending to offend anyone. But there can be times when that 20 something engineer may be more up to date on certain areas of engineering than the person who’s been engineering for 30 years simply because they’ve just been in a mindset of learning for so long with their school. And they’re in that stage of their career when they’re trying to get ahead that they’re just pushing themselves to grow, and learn, and advance. And so you don’t want to exclude those younger folks. And to the point that you were just making, yeah. If you say, “Hey, we need you to write an article about the benefits of urban stormwater management,” guess what? They’re gonna learn a lot and they may very well come back with some ideas that some of your subject matter experts hadn’t considered, or hadn’t heard about, or this study here, or this innovative thing this firm over in China did. You just never know what can come back.

Tim Asimos: So I think there’s a lot of benefits to the firm just from doing it without it being this direct sort of the big three letter term that every firm principle wants to bring up with ROI. Well, it’s like there’s a lot of return on this initiative that may not come in the form of we publish this blog post and here’s the project that we landed because of that blog post. Sometimes that could happen, but it’s a little bit more broad than that. But I think what you said, that is definitely an ancillary benefit is that the people doing it are gonna just become better experts because, again, they’re doing the research, they’re doing their homework. And they’re making sure that the thoughts that they’re putting out are as solid as they can possibly be.

David Lecours: Thanks for mentioning ROI. This wasn’t the plan. But our previous episode, 130, was on ROI. So go to PSM.show if you haven’t heard that episode and check that out. But I love what you said there. We can’t assume that the people that are creating the content are or even should be the leaders or principles of the firm. There is this principle in Zen Buddhism called beginner’s mind where you approach a problem and you approach things with this unknowing, fresh, blank slate. You don’t have assumptions. And I love what you said about the person maybe being more hungry and bringing a new, fresh perspective because they just look at it in an unexpected way. And isn’t that what we want? In order to differentiate our firms, we want to look at problems and solve them in a new fresh, more efficient, more cost effective, et cetera, et cetera kind of way.

Tim Asimos: Absolutely.

David Lecours: One thing that happened to me, just yesterday, I was pitching a new website. And in the meeting, the prospective client brought up an interesting question. And I said, “I could spend an hour answering that, but I know your time is limited and why don’t I just send you an article that I wrote on that topic?” And this is not a unique phenomenon. So what I found, and I’m curious of your take on this is that, I found once you’ve written the content, it doesn’t just live the life of going out in an email, it lives forever on your website and you can use it in the BD or sales process. Have you found that to be true or is that something you recommend?

Tim Asimos: Oh yeah. Absolutely. I think for me and my agency, I think it’s true for our clients as well. I mean, from my perspective, if you have a content marketing strategy that’s aligned with your target audience, the things that you’re writing about are the questions, the concerns, the pain points, the information gaps that your prospective clients have as well as your existing clients. So to your point, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve followed up with, “Hey, here’s a few articles related to our conversation.” Or frankfully, we even write some blog articles with a specific client in mind. A client emails us or calls us with a question. And to your point, it’s a long answer. And so that prompts us to write a blog post.

Tim Asimos: We had one client that said … We’re having a conversation about marketing and we’re throwing out all these marketing terms. And he was just real candid and said, “I gotta be honest. I don’t understand half of these terms that you’re throwing out. I’m not a marketing guy. Do you guys have a glossary or something you can provide?” And I was like, “No, but I promise you, I’ll get you one.” And so literally within a week, we wrote a blog post that’s like-

David Lecours: So this is cool. This inspired your editorial calendar.

Tim Asimos: Absolutely. It was like … I don’t remember what the post is titled, but it’s sort of like Business Owner’s Glossary of Marketing Terms or something of that effect and sent it to him. And he was incredibly grateful and thankful. And it’s a pretty high ranking post on our blog that gets a lot of traffic, a lot of views. So clearly other people have needed that. So we often will inform our editorial calendar. A lot with conversations, with clients, and prospects. And that really drives that. Because it’s like, well, if these are the things they’re always asking us and they clearly … Other people are looking for answers to those questions, again, it gets back to writing about the things that your audience wants to hear and read. Not what you want to say. And it’s really, really important. I mean, I do think there’s an element of sometimes answering questions your audience doesn’t know to ask, but they’re gonna be really intrigued to read it because they don’t always know what they don’t know or they don’t always know what to ask. So sometimes, you have to think about what should they know that they don’t know. But even that mindset is still from the lens of what’s gonna really matter and be relevant to the user.

Tim Asimos: So yeah, it’s definitely … It’s not just … If all you do is post your blog articles on your blog and leave it at that, you definitely are not maximizing the use of that content. It should be your business development folks should be having conversations with prospects. And coming back. And instead of sending out a boring old statement of qualifications that that prospect never even asked for, and then it gets thrown in the trash, you follow up with here’s a couple articles related to integrated project delivery that we talked about. And benefits of IPD versus design build. Whatever that might be. Whatever that topic or that conversation is, imagine when you can follow up with something that’s incredibly relevant and pertinent to that conversation. That’s when you’re gonna get some traction with that content.

David Lecours: Well and late in the sales cycle when somebody’s needing to be reaffirmed, they’ve kinda already made the decision to hire you, but yeah, there’s maybe a little buyer’s remorse in their mind. If you can follow up with that expertise to just reassure them, “Look, we know about this. We’ve done it before. We’ve written about it,” just instills that confidence that you really need to close the sale.

Tim Asimos: Yup, absolutely.

David Lecours: Oh, that’s really cool.

David Lecours: Alright. So I think we’ve pretty much covered the why. Let’s move on to sort of the what. And I’m curious if you offer suggestions to your clients on how frequently they should be putting out content. Like their word count targets or just times per month. Any thoughts on that?

Tim Asimos: Yeah, great question. I get asked all the time. I’ll start with frequency before I get into the word count. I always … My analogy that I always share is content marketing is a lot like working out. The more you do it, the more results that you’re gonna see. So I think publishing a blog post once a month, once every few months, once a year. You’re not gonna see a whole lot of traction from that. At the same time, it’s not realistic for me to be in the gym seven days a week. So three or four days is pretty good for me in gym. So same with blogging, right? Like hey, if once a week or once every other week is only what’s realistic based on staff, and availability, and resources. But the key is to be consistent and to do it enough. I’d say at a minimum, twice a month is really what you should be aiming for if you really want to have impact. I think weekly is an ideal. That’s where we are. We used to be at three or four times a week, which kinda makes my head spin to even think about.

David Lecours: Wow.

Tim Asimos: And that’s just … That wasn’t sustainable. And that was when we were pretty much blogging was our number one sort of form of content. As we do more speaking, as we do webinars, as we do other forms of content, it’s spread out a little bit more. So once a week is kind of a nice cadence. I think the main thing, too. And I use the word cadence, is if you want to attract an audience and kinda have sort of subscribers, if you will, having that regular cadence, they know, alright every week there’s gonna be a new post. Or every other week. or every month. That establishing that cadence, whether it’s your blog, whether it’s your email newsletter, or the emails you send out. People need to understand what that frequency is gonna be. But a lot of times I’ll see firms, they’ll go like, “Oh crap, it’s been three weeks since we posted to social media. So they try to make up for it.” so then all of a sudden they’re posting multiple times a day and I think collectively, their followers are like, “What the heck’s going on? Ah, stop. It’s too much.” So cadence is a good thing, right? We know those weekly new episodes are coming out on TV. Although, we’re all now getting suckered in with the binge watching with Netflix series. But and that’s neither in or there. But the cadence is really important to what people can expect.

David Lecours: Yeah. With our podcast, we put it out every other Friday. And people expect it. And it’s good to have that deadline. And yeah. I think people appreciate that rhythm.

Tim Asimos: Yeah. Absolutely. And I would say plan for the big day. So if you or every other week or once a week, don’t skip Thanksgiving week, or don’t skip the week of Christmas, don’t take a two week break. Because guess what? When people are on their holiday break-

David Lecours: Yeah, they have time.

Tim Asimos: They’re still reading. So keeping it regular. They’re just … Again, just like the gym analogy, when you take breaks, you’re just tempting yourself to never go back again, right? So I think with content marketing, you just have to do it regularly and be disciplined. And depending on your goals and your effort, not everyone’s trying to be back to the gym. Not everyone’s trying to be Mark Wahlberg. So that’s okay. But you have to establish what you’re trying to accomplish, and where it fits into everything else you’re doing, and really aim for that.

David Lecours: Yeah. I mean, you’re going to the gym every day. You’re looking so good. People aren’t gonna be hiring you for your mind, they’re gonna be just focused on your body.

Tim Asimos: Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. But it’s a simple thing. That’s the other thing that I find really interesting about marketing and as I talk and consult. None of this stuff is rocket science. I always hope I can bring new ideas and new perspectives. But at the end of the day, the key to being healthy is eat right, get sleep, and exercise. And you can come up with a million fads, and a million new things. Every day, there’s some new thing. But at the end of the day, it just kinda comes down to those simple principles. Marketing’s kinda the same way and content marketing is too. And we have to just dedicate ourselves to the principles.

David Lecours: Right. So you mentioned you guys are now in the rhythm of once a week. How many different contributors at your firm are creating content?

Tim Asimos: So that’s a great, great question. Not enough. We have a plan for 2019 involving a lot more people. You’ll probably see my name on the blog more than anyone. There are two to three others that fairly regularly contribute. But it is a lot of me. I think part of it is I have a passion for it. Part of it is it just kind of goes with the territory of my role. But not enough people. So I think the same would apply for firms. Most people, you’ll find someone who wants to publish blog articles in your firm. Rarely, rarely have I ever found an engineering firm or construction firm where there isn’t someone there that doesn’t have something to say and isn’t willing to put it onto paper. The problem is when you rely too much on any one person, they get burned out and you just want diversity of thought. I think in our agency, we’re smaller. We’re just a marketing agency. It’s okay that there isn’t as much diversity of thought. But if you’re a multi-discipline engineering firm and you do site, civil, and environmental, and surveying, and storm water, and infrastructure-

David Lecours: Different markets.

Tim Asimos: Yeah. That’s it. You can’t have one or two people writing all the content. You need people speaking about different things in the areas where your firm is more focused in growing that subject matter expertise and thought leadership. So you need more people. But the bigger motivation for marketers should be that person that’s gong ho about writing a weekly blog post today, fast forward six months, they might be very much burned out. Whereas if you have a few others in the mix and they’re only having to write once a month, once every six weeks, then if anything, the best thing can happen is they say, “Man, I really want to write more.” And then you can say, “Oh, well, how about you do a webinar. Or we might launch a podcast next year. Are you interested in that?” You can get them to contribute to other types of content beyond just articles.

David Lecours: Yeah. Absolutely. So you guys are going four times a month. It doesn’t have anything to do with length. Are there … And that’s where I sort of ask, word count. Is there a target?

Tim Asimos: Word count.

David Lecours: Yeah. Is that something that you guys do?

Tim Asimos: Yeah. So basic SEO, Google recommends more than 300 words, which immediately-

David Lecours: For a simple post.

Tim Asimos: A single post, a single page on a website which immediately eliminates probably 80% of web pages out there in the AEC industry that have … The architects have three words on the page. The engineers might have 3000. And the construction firm might have 300. So maybe they’re a little bit there. But a blog article, 300. And I would say minimum recommendation would be in a six to 800 words goal for that, I would say longer form content like 1200, 14, 16, 1800 words. Even in an era where everyone’s saying no one has attention spans, the data shows it delivers. It is more effective. The reality is good content people will focus on. When everyone says, “Oh, well, no one has an attention span.” Yeah, but we’re also the society that will binge watch Stranger Things in an entire weekend, right? So no, good content will keep people’s attention. And people crave long form content for this reason. They’re looking for an answer to their question. They’re trying to better understand a topic.

Tim Asimos: Think about it. What’s gonna give you more understanding of a topic? A 600 word article or a 1600 word article, right? So that’s where the longer form is more beneficial. It also improves your SEO rankings because a longer article … If Google has a choice between a 600 and a 1600, in their algorithm, more than likely, they’re gonna come to the conclusion that there’s more value in the 1600 word. With that said, a long article needs to be broken up. You need to have some bullets. Every paragraph should probably have a sub-headline. You need to have a list. 12 things, eight things, seven things. You don’t just want a 1600 word term paper because that might give people some bad flashbacks from high school, junior high, or maybe college. But yeah. You want to break it up. But at the end of the day, I always tell people, write as many words as are necessary to add value to the topic that you’re writing about. And for me, it always ends up being 1400, 1600 words. For others, maybe they can do it in 600, or 500, or 800, or 700. But you want to add value to that topic. And if you think about other articles that might exist on the internet on that topic, bring something new to the conversation. And oftentimes, a longer article gives you more ability to kind of expand on a topic and bring some in-depth insight to it.

David Lecours: Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, the benchmark I’d give clients is they should aim for 3000 words a month of fresh content. Google tends to reward that. But yeah, use that as a guide. Like you said, don’t just spill it with a bunch of junk. Tell the story or write the article as efficiently as you can.

Tim Asimos: Yeah. Those back to the high school term paper, those teachers could always sniff out the kid that wrote a three page term paper and it needed to be five and he just sort of fluffed it. I’m sure I never did that ever.

David Lecours: No.

Tim Asimos: But they fluffed the next to get five pages. Your users are the same way. They’re gonna start reading and they’re gonna be like, “This is just long for the sake of being long.” The goal’s not to be long, the goal is to be thorough and to be valuable. So kinda make that the measuring stick. But from my experience, that tends to give you more than 300 words if that’s the measuring stick.

David Lecours: So I noticed in your bio, it says you’re a syndicated blogger. What does that mean and is that something our audience can use as a tool?

Tim Asimos: So there’s a few wesites that syndicate my blog articles. So they kind of republish them through an RSS feed, I’ve given them permission to kinda republish the content. And so it just expands my audience beyond just people that find our blog and people just have a larger audience. Just like a syndicated radio show gets picked up in other markets and other stations. It’s kinda the same way. I know that in the industry, there’s definitely websites and publications that accept guest posts, and guest writers, and guest articles. I think actually that whole publishing today in 2018 is a lot more about articles on the internet versus getting in the magazine. That was always the goal from that PR angle of we want to get published. Get this article published. It’s a lot easier to do that now because a lot of publications would be at ENR or something like that. They’re looking for contributors. And so I think that’s a helpful thing to just get your content expanded beyond your firm’s website just to kind of amplify your reach and to attract a larger audience.

David Lecours: Yeah, I know I’ve had experiences where somebody has read a post and asked me to write on the same topic but a little bit different or a little spin and then it ends up being shown … In this particular case, I’m thinking of it showed up in one of the PSMJ Journals. And it just gave me that wider reach. Somebody ended up reading it that isn’t on my mailing list and it led to a project. And so it was fantastic that they were able to help sort of be the megaphone to amplify what I had already written. I fine tuned it. I wrote a new paragraph or two to make it fresh. But I love what you’re talking about there.

Tim Asimos: Yup.

David Lecours: So there’s this whole kind of ecosystem of content, right? We’ve been talking about speaking and if our listeners want to go back to episode 112, Josh and I did a whole talk on speaking. We’re talking about writing, we’re talking about blog posts, we’re talking about social media, possibly podcasting. The recommendation that I give clients is that all these things should point back to the hub which is your website. Is that something that you say or do you have another approach?

Tim Asimos: Yeah, I mean, I think the website is the hub. It should be sort of the headquarters of your digital presence. Your social media. The goal of the social media should be to get people back to your website. Which is why when we design and build wesites, we never recommend people put their social media up in their menu and their main header because it’s like you’re immediately inviting people to leave to go to your social channels when the goal is to get people to your website, not to get people to your social. So I think that the website is the hub that you ultimately want to send people to. Your email gets people back to your website. But I also think that the value is in that own platform. When you’re on Facebook, you’re at the mercy of Facebook. And their daily new algorithms that are increasingly more of a pay for play situation, whereas your website, you own it, it’s yours, and if you can drive people there, then that’s the goal. So I definitely agree with that. For sure.

David Lecours: Yeah and if our audience isn’t familiar with that term, owned media is media that you own. You don’t own Facebook, but you certainly own your own website. And you can control the whole experience. And you’re not dependent on the, like you said, the algorithm and whims of whatever platform, maybe your social shows up on.

Tim Asimos: Absolutely.

David Lecours: Cool. Alright. So I think we’ve covered why. We’ve covered what. Let’s get a little bit into how and then we’ll wrap it up.

Tim Asimos: Okay.

David Lecours: So I’m curious how do you balance … And this is sort of the question I get a lot from clients is how do you balance this writing and speaking with having to do billable work?

Tim Asimos: This is something I harp on a lot. The billable hour and it’s called utilization by a lot of the firms in the industry is the primary performance metric. And I just think in an age of client experience and thought leadership, it can’t be the only metric that you’re measure. There has to be unbillable time. Not only allowed, but encouraged for your people to serve clients better as well as to position yourself and the firm as thought leaders, as subject matter experts. So I think that, again, this is a paradigm shift if you will where firms are realizing it’s okay to not have someone be 90% billable. If 20 or 30% of their time is spent investing and nurturing client relationships is out there promoting the firm on a national scale as subject matter experts, that is gonna … It’s gonna be producing dividends for the firm long-term. So that’s really more of a long-term play than a short-term play. I think when you’re just focused on the billable dollar, it’s a short-term metric. Not a long-term value metric. And that’s where I think you have to kind of change your perspective.

Tim Asimos: So that’s my take on that. With that said, obviously, most subject matter experts are billable. I’m billable. My role, part of my role is sort of thought leadership is business development in addition to kind of overseeing our digital and our content effort. So I’m not expected to be billable at 80%. I’m expected to spend a chunk of time. But I know there’s a lot of seller doers. And this is even a challenge for seller doers. They’re literally called seller doers, but they get penalized when they-

David Lecours: They’re selling

Tim Asimos: Don’t have enough hours doing instead of selling. So this is where I just think the industry really has to kind of rethink some of the way we look at utilization and the billable hour. And there has to be a commitment that you’re gonna have to expect your people to spend time doing things that aren’t billable. But these are very, very, very important initiatives. And that’s when I think incentivizing, and rewarding, and measuring folks on things other than just utilization is when you’re gonna start to really get traction with people being willing to invest their time doing that.

Tim Asimos: With that said, a lot of my content creation happens after business hours. I’m not always writing blog articles or preparing presentations during the work day. A lot of that happens on air planes, in the hotel, late at night after my kids go to bed. So it’s not like … I keep going back to the analogy of working out, but it’s not on … You can find a million reasons. And I have found those reasons not to go to the gym. But if you really care, you’ll make time and you’ll figure out a way to work it into your already busy life in order to do it. I think it’s easy to come up with excuses why you don’t have time to do it. But it’s the people that are doing it and doing it well. They find time to squeeze it into a busy life.

David Lecours: And once you get a little bit of reward, you get some sort of return on that investment. Whether it be complements or praise. Or once you see you just gotta win one project that sort of the key factor was content or somebody heard you speak, now you’re really gonna be motivated. You’re gonna get that sort of adrenaline and dopamine hit of alright … And just a little return on investment, and it makes it all worth while.

Tim Asimos: Absolutely. Yeah. It’s kinda interesting, David, because you already have folks in the industry. They’re speaking at conferences, right? They do this all the time. No one’s having to convince thought leaders in an engineering firm or an architecture firm that you need to go speak at that higher ed conference, or that water treatment conference, or whatever it might be. They already go. They’ve been going for years. And they’re trying to speak. Blogging and all those other forms you mentioned are just taking that idea and putting it in a different format. So they clearly are making time to put together those proposals for call for speakers. They’re clearly making time to write that article for whatever engineering magazine that they’re trying to get published in. This is just a different medium, a different format, and it’s the same principle. So that’s kind of another way I like to point out.

David Lecours: [crosstalk 00:44:18] they’re already doing is they’re already writing proposals. And a lot of times those proposals are answers to specific questions that clients are have in terms of problems they’re trying to solve. So literally, within proposals, you could start pulling out a ton of content that would be great blog posts. Maybe content for a talk. And yeah, like you said, you’re speaking, just take that 45 minute talk and start to pull out all these little options or opportunities to share maybe in written form.

Tim Asimos: Absolutely. Yeah. I think there’s a lot of content. I always share this with firms that haven’t actually truly launched a content marketing program is don’t reinvent the wheel. There is likely already content as you described in proposals, in PowerPoint presentations already there that’s at the very least, it’s a starting point to where you’re not giving that blank sheet of paper to the engineer, to the architect, to ask them to write on topic. You’re getting them to edit that topic.

Tim Asimos: I’ll share an example. My old firm, when we were launching content marketing, we did a webinar. And one of our engineers, it was an hour long webinar and about 10 minutes into the webinar realized he was reading from a script, right?

David Lecours: Ouch.

Tim Asimos: I’ll be honest. It wasn’t the most energetic and exciting webinar, but halfway though, I had this light bulb. I’m like, “He wrote that entire script. It’s an hour of talking.” So after it was over, I said, “Hey, can I get a copy of your PowerPoint with the notes?” Oh yeah, sure. Well that was a dozen blog articles I was able to coble together from his notes. Obviously, I had to polish it and tweak it. But we’re talking I wrote 12 articles from that one webinar with very minimal effort. And he was tickled because all of a sudden his name’s showing up on the blog pretty frequently and he didn’t have to lift a finger. That sort of scenario likely exists all over firms everywhere, right? You’ve got your virtual design, your BIM person probably has tons of presentations that are just waiting there for you to kind of go through and sift through to see what you repurpose and turn it into an article or an infographic for a video even. So there’s just a lot of good content hiding in plain sight.

David Lecours: So another perfect example of that is so for this show, we send the audio file to a transcription service. Rev.com, if you’re interested in using them. No, we don’t get paid or anything. And they turn our audio file into the written word. And so now we’re starting to post the transcripts of these podcasts on our PSM.show website because some people just don’t like listening to audio. They prefer to read things. It creates content. It’s not as good as original content. I think Google’s algorithm is sophisticated enough to realize that it’s not the same. I mean, it’s original content, but it’s not written in a way.

Tim Asimos: Sure.

David Lecours: It’s a transcript. But anyway, there’s so many different ways. And I think your point here, and this was actually gonna be my next question but you already started to answer it is, some first steps for our audience to sort of begin at content marketing. And I think what I’m hearing you say is you’re already doing it. Just start to formalize it and sort of pull out the nuggets that are already being created.

Tim Asimos: Right, right. Yeah, we were meeting with a client. Our potential client yesterday. And they had thought leadership content on their website, but it was stuck in their news and event section. And I’m a real firm believer. It’s sort of like in the old newspaper business, there was a separation of editorial and advertising. That’s the sacred divide between promotion and original thought. And I think the same should exist on your website. Don’t throw your thought leadership content in the same place where you’re saying, “Hey, look at us. We’re awesome. We hired this guy. We won this award. Whatever. We just had this event and hot wing contest.” Whatever it might be that you see. Don’t put those in the same place.

Tim Asimos: And so I think part of that is making sure that you have the infrastructure in place as you’re getting started. If you don’t have a blog or if your blog is on another platform or another website. You really want to integrate into your website. One, so you get SEO credit, but two, so that it feels like it’s just part of who you are as a firm and you’re able to kind of promote that thought leadership throughout your website instead of just on a blog. And you know what? That word, sometimes, people … It’s a misnomer. They don’t understand that word or that word sounds … I don’t know. It doesn’t always … I don’t think it always hits principles the right way. So forget that word. Call it insights. Call it whatever you want to call it. Right? Just call it articles, thinking, ideas, whatever you want to call it. Just make sure that the user understands that I’m gonna go here for knowledge, not just more promotional news and information about the firm.

David Lecours: Yeah. No, that’s really important. And so I’ve always given this recommendation. If you’re sending out email marketing, maybe six to one or eight to one ratio of offering. So the six is meaningful thought leadership content marketing. Stuff they can use. And then you got … You’ve afforded yourself the opportunity to do the one, which is we won this project, we hired this person. Because if it’s all me, me, me, nobody likes a relationship with somebody that talks about themself all the time.

Tim Asimos: Absolutely. Yeah. I call that the 80/20 rule. 80% of the thought leadership and 20% of the firm news and firm promotion. If you give them 80% or six out of seven as you put it, that’s thought leadership, that’s educational, then you’ve earned the right for them to actually not be offended or annoyed. When you do have something to say about yourself, they’re like, “Okay, alright. They’ve earned the right.” Yeah, but to your point, I call it the boy who cried wolf. A lot of times, people will just send the same sort of boring stuff over and over and over again and people become conditioned to just ignore your email all together. And then you might actually post something great. But because you’ve bombarded them with a lot of things that aren’t relevant or aren’t interesting to them, they don’t pay any attention. So you gotta build that sort of reputation as somebody that sends out good stuff that’s interesting.

David Lecours: Well, Tim, speaking of reputation, it’s awesome to have you. Your reputation is really awesome and you follow it up with great content. I appreciate your time and you sharing your expertise. Talking about sharing your expertise. So meta.

Tim Asimos: Yeah, absolutely.

David Lecours: This has been fantastic. And I want to encourage our listeners that if you want to go back and read the show notes, if you want to read this article, you want to listen to it again, you want to share it with somebody else that you think maybe a principle in your firm that has been resistant to getting content marketing going, share this episode because I think there’s some good stuff in there that might help you make your case. And if so, go to PSM.show. If you want to contact us, just scroll down and drop us a line through the simple contact form. And that’s it for this episode of PSM Show. For Tim Asimos and myself, David Lecours, we’re out of here.