Transcript – Ideology: The missing ingredient in your content gumbo

Learn more about how having a strong ideology is the tabasco that adds flavor and interest to your marketing messages, blog posts and other content… Join us and work up a cajun-style appetite for polarizing content — all before lunch.

Thanks for joining us on this stunning fall day. We’re glad you’re here for our webinar. I realize your time is valuable, so I appreciate you sharing some of it with us today. Apologies for the reschedule. We try not to do that, but business called again. So sometimes that happens. Anyways. Quick note C42D webinars cover a different marketing topic every quarter. The format is as follows.

I will cover my prepared remarks for about 30-45 minutes. And the end there will be time for questions. If you have a question at any time you can type it in the Q&A box. A video of this webinar will be available on C42D.com by the end of the week.

So this was one of those topics where I wasn’t 100% sure if there would be enough material for a full webinar, but as usual, when I got into it I found there was a wealth of stuff to talk about in terms of this topic of ideology. And to me at least it’s exciting and I hope you’ll agree. All right, so let’s get into it.

Getting into our gumbo inspired agenda. First, we’re going to talk about why most content falls flat and why it lacks a point of view that can make it more interesting. And then we’re going to look at what is an ideology, what are we talking about here, and how ideology can help you bring a focus, and ideally help your company prosper when applied to content creation. Next, we’re going to get into some exercises around creating your ideology if you don’t have one that’s fully formed, or maybe you have one that’s half baked or half cooked in terms of the gumbo analogy. Next, we’re going to go through a few pitfalls or mistakes to avoid. And then we’ll walk through a couple of examples of what I consider to be some killer content gumbo. And finally we’ll sum it up and we’ll have a few minutes for your questions. Sound good?

Let’s start with the basics. What is an ideology? So a lot of times this is what we think of, right. We’ve got the New York Times, which is talking about the serious issues of our days, like whistle blowing complaints, attacks on Saudis, serious things that are effecting our country. And then Fox News we’ve got Area 51, right. So left versus right, democrat versus republican, a lot of people think of this. And by definition, an ideology is a set of opinions or beliefs of a group or an individual. Very often ideology refers to a set of political beliefs that characterize a particular culture. But we’re not really talking politics here, and I encourage you all to not politics during your business dealings. In this webinar we’re going to look at how having a strong set of beliefs can improve your content offering and make all kinds of good things happen for your country … for your company.

So, why does most content fall flat? Why are you putting people to sleep? I mean look at this poor guy, his whole audience has zoned out. Don’t you just feel sorry for him? We know you can do better, guy. And keep in mind when we’re talking about content we’re talking about stuff that goes up on your blog, maybe it’s your white papers, your social feeds, things like that. So, all right, the usual suspects, we’ve all seen this before, right? The same old, lame-o post that nobody wants to read. Why? Because it’s all about me, me, and more me. It’s not about the customers. There’s no new information. It’s got a case of the listical-itis.

Five reasons why lists of five reasons are lame. Number one, it’s all been done before. Number two, you’re just copycatting somebody else’s content. Number three, you get the point. It’s all been done before, you’re copying other people’s content, the design’s clunky, the images are stock, sometimes it’s in German. You know what I mean, it’s no good.

So let’s have our obligatorily quote here. This is from Brittany Berger, founder of Brittany Berger, and she says, “There’s no excuse, no matter what the topic, for dry content with no emotion or enthusiasm. You can’t convert without getting your readers excited. Instead, throw in personality and stories, create a voice and be human.” So, we’re talking about having a strong point of view, POV, you’ll hear me use that interchangeably with ideology throughout this webinar. And what does that mean? So what you’re seeing here is these are just some articles from some website. I can’t remember the name of it, but it’s got a really strong point of view. There are strong titles like, It’s Perfectly Moral to Bring Children Into a Shitty World, The Hills Are Alive With the Sound of Money, and, All the World’s a Stage, Especially When You Have No Job Prospects. So, yeah, strong titles, but that’s not the point.

Having a strong point of view is nothing if it doesn’t harmonize with the rest of your brand, and if it’s not an extension of that brand itself. So, let’s pause for just a moment and review what we mean by all this. So, your ideology is part of what we would call your brand core, your core promise, your point of view. This core is at the center of all your touch points. So all of the touch points around your digital on your website, your advertising, what is your internal culture all about, how are you answering the phone as my friend Lyle likes to say. The actual product itself. How are you interacting with customers on social? And what we’re talking about today, the content, right. So ideally we want all of these to resonate and ring true with your brand core and essence, that’s going to help you grow equity over time, it’s going to help build your brand, it’s going to have everything work as this cohesive whole.

What we’re talking about today is how this ideology or point of view can be used as a lens for framing how you write your content. So let’s talk about that for a second. So if you think of it as a lens, it’s an overarching viewpoint that’s unique and specific to your company. It can also be framed as the problem as you see it. What’s the one thing that’s wrong in your vertical market, with the world today, with your customers, that you’re going to fix, that you’re going to take a stand on? And a lot of times, typically, it’s rooted in the company values or mission. And when you have this strong point of view it helps you focus your content to razor sharp perfection, and don’t we all want that, right?

Let’s take a look at how to do this. First, let’s talk at some of the benefits of this approach. Here you can see we’ve got our ideology Tabasco sauce here, which we’re going to put into the gumbo to bring it to life. So, when you have this approach your customers and people who read your content, potential customers or prospects, they’re going to find they can relate and they can connect with your brand more because it’s going to feel more human, you’re going to be talking about stuff that’s meaningful, stuff that resonates with them, that means stuff to them.

Another benefit of this approach is it’s possible for you to own a perspective, right. So what do I mean by owning a perspective? That’s having a point of view that makes you more unique in comparison to your competition. So you could be in a category where you’ve got several competitors that are more or less doing the same thing. And at least on paper, there might be not much of a discerning difference between you. But one thing that can make you different is your ideology or your perspective. And that’s how you view the world, and that’s how you can jump out to potential customers as seeing your company as meaningfully different. That is an element of what we would call brand positioning, and you always want something that is distinctive and ownable, which is another word you’re going to see a lot today.

As we’ve been saying, it allows for easier content creation. So I’ve experienced this myself, it has just been so easy for us to create content once we honed our positioning, honed our point of view. I’m never running out of things to talk about, as far as a content creation perspective goes. It’s great to have this point of view, it gives everything more personality. It’s actually more fun to write. So, all in all, it’s a win/win for everybody. It’s a win/win for those who are consuming your content, and for those who are creating it. And hey, who thought about this, right, it can actually help you win more customers because it reinforces your challenger status.

When you stand for something that maybe your competition or other businesses are afraid to stand for, this is going to position you as a challenger. And if you’re curious about that, it’s actually been proven that challenger brands do better than those who don’t. If you want to know more about that there’s a book out there called, The Challenger Sale, and I encourage you to check that out.

Perhaps this ideology already exists in some form. But if you’re just getting started or maybe you never gave it much thought or your ideology, your mission of your company’s not fleshed out enough, no problem. We’ve developed some exercises to help fast track your thinking. I’m going to get into those, just bear with me one second, please. It’s allergy season here, and I’m not subjecting you to me blowing my nose.

Exercise one, examine your customers. So think about, if you could, get out the pencil and paper. Think about what are the biggest problems or issues, pains that your customers face? And what are the implications of those problems? So what are you talking about here Dave? Well, you’re looking for problems, implications of those problems. And by way of example, just think of potentially the biggest problem in the future or right now for Generation Z is, maybe it’s paying back our college loans, and the implication of that, they’re more open to new financing ideas. They’re less likely to buy a house.

How could you frame that as a way to create content? You could position some of your content about some new ways of financing, about some of the pains of home ownership, about how people are looking at new ways … I think there’s something called QuadPay out there. So how can you frame your content around this? What about the future? What problems could they face in the future, and so on?

The next step is to examine your marketplace or your markets. So are there certain conventions that every other firm follows? And can you go the opposite way? How can you go against the flow of everything else? What can you stand for? What’s missing in the market? What subjects are taboo or off limits? Is there a strong stance you can take that scares everyone else? An example we’re going to show later is a company that takes a stance that, “Hey it’s okay to talk about your period,” and I’m not talking about the periods at the end of the sentence.

Another thing to think about is, what about the future of your market. What’s coming in to focus? Is there any future legislation on the horizon? What are the trends? A lot of things that are big these days are things around privacy, new legislation around the cannabis industry is big. So, how can this all translate into something that you might stand for? We’re going to stand for always being respectful of our customer’s data, and always letting them know what we’re doing with it, right? Right. I’m sure that’s what we all do. And again, how can the technology or future legislation have implications, what issues your customers face.

Exercise three is to examine your values. So list out your company values. What are the things that you will never compromise on? These can be internal values that you use to motivate employees or external values that you want the world, your prospects and customers to know that you stand for. And out of all these what are the strongest ones? Which ones are the most ownable? Which ones are the most unique? So what do I mean by this?

I was doing a little research on this webinar and some cool values I thought were ownable was the idea that we have the warrior spirit, right. We lead by example. We embrace the adventure. Now some of this sounds sort of like hodgepodge stuff or whatever, but to me, it sounds a lot better than lame values, like, “We satisfy and delight our customers. We’re honest and transparent.” Oh really? Who’s not? What are you going to say, “We are dishonest and shady.” I mean is that something that really you’re standing for? I don’t think so. “We’re focused on service. We’re focused on the customer. We’re focused on service.” No, you’re not, everybody is. Okay. So try to keep it ownable, try to keep it unique.

Exercise four, mind your mission. Does your mission have a strong belief at its core that can attract and repel customers? So my opinion, if you’re not repelling some people, then it’s probably a little too watered down. So keep it sharp, keep it strong, keep it specific and ownable. There we go again, how many more times can I saw this on the webinar. In the end, this is all going to be the raw material you can use to craft your ideology statement. So, like everything, keep it brief, keep it specific, one to two paragraphs. And this is just my opinion, but I think bullet points are okay for this. Once you’ve written it down, this is a tip I got from Stephen King, author of The Shining and 5,000 other kick ass novels, “Put it in the drawer for a week or three, then come back and review it.”

When that statement or that piece of writing, and you should do this for anything you write. Put it in the drawer and while it’s sitting there little elves will go in there and they’ll change stuff, and when you come back and look at it in three weeks you’re going to be like, “Wow. Look at all these things. This isn’t what I wrote.” But really what it is is you’re giving yourself some breathing space and a little bit of time for it to sit, and you’re going to see it differently, you’re going to see things that you’re probably going to want to tweak, change, refine, and et cetera.

On that note, I’m taking a sip of my coffee. Bear with me one second. Here’s an example of an ideology statement. We’ll show this full example later, “Treating people right is fundamental to how we do business. We treat our customers as we’d want to be treated. We treat each other like family and we treat ourselves to a good day’s work and a good night’s sleep. Our goals have always been the same, have fun, do exceptional work, build the best product in the business, experiment, pay attention to the details, treat people right, tell the truth, have a positive impact on the world around us, give back, and keep learning.” Okay. So a lot packed into there. But if we break it down to these components we can see how some of this, in theory, could’ve been unearthed through some of those exercises we just did, right.

So treating people right is a company value. It also relates to the customer pain that they experience when they go through a poor customer service experience. So this is from a company that does software as a service, we all know what it’s like to get tech support through that. So, “We treat our customers the way we’d want to be treated,” which, ideally, is good. And look what we have here a good night’s sleep, “We believe in a good night’s sleep.” What? How many firms have championed that value, right? I think that’s a great value. In fact, I could go for a good night’s sleep tonight, I don’t know about you.

Also, in the second paragraph, you see some market driven values like, “We build the best product in the business, we experiment, we pay attention to the details.” Yeah, a lot of people say that they do that stuff, but it’s good. “We tell the truth. We have a positive impact. We give back. We keep learning.” Other stuff that could be mission related. So all in all a nice concise ideology statement. So how do you use this to shape your content? This is, it’s really they easy part. It’s as easy as asking this question, before you create after it’s done. Does this content fit our point of view? I mean that’s really all it is. This is a litmus test, this is yes or no. If not, back to the drawing board, rewrite it.

This is much easier to do if you have a professional editor, either on staff or on a freelance basis, someone who can maintain your standards, ensure this point of view is enforced. And, as I said, it could be freelance or full-time based on the size of your company. If you have 200 people I think you should have a full-time editor on staff instead of just another software engineer or a head of, I don’t know, innovation or the head of cool stuff, or whatever the titles are that people have these days in startups. See, there’s my perspective coming through.

As you can imagine there are some things to avoid as you’re crafting your ideology. Let’s look at those. Too broad, right. Something that’s really, it’s unoriginal, it’s too common, “We make the world a better place,” right. And this is sort of a running joke, if you have ever watched Silicon Valley, you don’t want to be like Hooli, right. You don’t want to be making the world a better place. I hope we have some Silicon Valley fans on the show. Opposite of that, too narrow. So we’re empowering and connecting seniors in Spokane, Washington. Okay, so you don’t want to have something that the whole world can sign up for, and you don’t want something that’s so narrow that only a narrow slice of the entire planet is going to relate to.

Unownable, here we go again. “We believe in treating each other with respect,” well that’s great, I believe in disrespecting everybody I meet. Have something that’s unique. And finally, I think I don’t need to say this, but you’d be surprised. Having a cliché or nonsense like, “We believe in super pumped-edness.” And you’re like, “No, that can’t be real.” Well, there actually is a company out there, I’m not going to say who they are, but they believe in super pumped-edness. Oh, I gave it away. I’m sorry, it’s Uber, what a surprise. They’re also always hustling and stepping on people’s toes. So I think they had to rewrite this afterward. I mean, seriously, are you creating content around super pumped-edness? If you do, please send it to me, [email protected], I’d love to read it.

Okay so here’s an example of what I will call some of these pitfalls that we talked about. So, the company’s called Kinsta, they do WordPress hosting. And I’m not really trying to call them out here. I think they do provide a great service, they’re a good company, they have some decent branding. But like anything, I think there’s room for improvement. So, WordPress hosting, not the most exciting service. But they thought about it, they tried to find some values around speed, dependability, things like that. I’m sure that’s based on things that they perceive their customers experience as pain points. All in all, I think they’re trying to do the right thing. But when browsing through their content, some great hero images, we’ve got the little people standing around charts and graphs which we all love. But this all, it just tends to be about tech stuff that’s probably … I mean maybe it’s helpful to their users. Maybe you want to know about the 405 method not allowed on your WordPress site. Or what was it on this side, proven website ideas for your online side hustle.

But I’m not really seeing stuff that’s related to that mission or to that ideology. Here’s another example, here is this from Stripe, they’re an online payment company, I’m sure you’ve used their product, you’ve seen them, they’re huge. So in addition to increasing the GDP of the internet, whatever that means, they want to help new businesses get started, expedite growth, and increase output, and trade globally. Kind of capitalistic, but makes sense for a payment processor, so I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt on that. But here, and when I went through their blog, I see updates on their change log, I see notes from the annual conference, more change log notes. A story about greenhouse gas emissions, which, hey that’s commendable. Maybe that should be part of their ideology or their mission, we only believe in a sustainable payment process. I don’t know.

I think this is a case where I’m not really seeing any of those values come through until I finally tripped over their featured stories page. And there really wasn’t a lot, there was probably about six of them. And here we’re finally getting to some talk about globalization, international trade, internationalization. So I can see some of that ideology is showing up in their featured stories here, which is good. But it was really hard to find, which brings up a side issue here, which is don’t make your content hard to find. It’s hard enough for people to enjoy your content, but they really can’t enjoy it when you got it hidden.

All right, killer gumbo recipes. Ever since the first time I went to Louisiana and I was with my buddy, his name was Cajun, actually, that was his nickname. But we went to his maw maw’s house, and that’s Cajun for grandma or great-grandma. And she made the best gumbo I’ve ever had in my life, and ever since then, I’ve been a huge fan of it. Hence the theme of this webinar.

Without getting sidetracked, here are a few examples of brands that are doing it well in our opinion. So first off, Blume. If you haven’t heard of them they’re a startup that’s focused on period products for teens and young women. They’ve just launched this year, and I love this brand. I think they’re doing a lot of things right. They’ve got a great mission based positioning. Their look and feel, while it tends to be startup 101, is still very, very cool. I love their design elements, their photography, their typography, and the overall concept behind what they’re trying to sell, which really boils down to products for women that they use during their period. Hey, we’re not afraid to talk about it. I’m not either. And a lot of it is based around this idea of stuff that’s good for your mind, body, and spirit. So we’re talking 100% organic, no chemicals, all that good stuff.

So here you can see outlined in red, they talk about their values or their ideology if you will, “Sisterhood is womanhood. Why is the way the world treats periods so weird, maybe even wrong? Is the silent treatment society gives periods and puberty somehow connected to the shame girls grow up feeling about their bodies?” And hey folks, this is a legit question, right? You got to really think about the way the world thinks about this thing. “Blume was created to de-stigmatize periods and create the next generation of confident, tenacious, and conscious women.”

Okay, so we’re de-stigmatizing this taboo thing. We’re creating a new, empowered generation, open dialogue around menstruation. And hey, maybe this de-stigmatizing thing’s getting thrown around a lot. We’ve certainly seen a lot in the health tech vertical. But still, it’s a strong point of view. It’s contrary to a lot of what you see in terms of the medical and pharma type of businesses, websites that are out there. So, thinking back to our exercises. So they looked at their customer pain, periods suck, there’s shame around that. Marketplace issues, nobody talks about periods, there’s a stigma here. Leading them to come up with some values, we’re going to de-stigmatize this, which I think is a very ownable position. We’ve put together a compelling mission that can add to this ideology around creating the next generation of confident, tenacious, and conscious women. I would add diversity to that too, which you see throughout their site. Altogether this forms the basis of their ideology.

Let’s look at it in action. You can see some of the highlights here, “Your period shouldn’t be taboo anymore.” Here’s another one, look at this, “Menstrual products should be free and accessible in public washrooms,” right. There’s something that not everybody believes. “Today we’re launching an initiative to raise awareness about the need for better sex education,” which honestly, in 2019 I can’t believe we’re still trying to figure this out, but these are things that need to be talked about, right? And even the predictable stuff like headaches, okay you know, that’s kind of predictable, we’re going to have content around that. But it still falls under their value of talking about topics that previously weren’t discussed too much unless you were an aspirin company, right. Midol, right.

More content around inclusiveness, better sex education, the puberty redo we’ve all been waiting for. I think that really sums up their ideology. Here we have their Instagram feed. Again, it’s another channel, it’s a different kind of content, but it fits the lens that they’ve defined already. Look at here, Gryffindor, brave, daring. That fits into this archetype of this new, empowered young woman that they’re helping to support. Stuff around moving out of your “comfort zone,” et cetera. So, again, content fits the lens. Well done.

Let’s move to the world of B2B. Copper is a CRM, customer relationship management SAAS company. And they’re all about building lasting relationships and making it easier. Of course, not too many surprises there. Now B2B tends to be less passionate than say, redefining puberty, but I think they brought a focus to bear here. So it’s a different kind of CRM. It’s easy to use, ***cough*** Salesforce. It makes for growing relationships easier, for quality relationships. Okay, so it’s not a super passionate mission, but it’s something. It’s a little bit ownable I think. So taking the right steps here.

And here we got some content that they’ve put out that fits that. “This is not your uncle’s CRM. We are all about a CRM in the relationship era. We’re standing distinct from the Salesforces of the world, which are notoriously hard to use.” If you’ve ever tried to set up Salesforce, you need to usually hire a consultant, which is obviously the opposite with their product. And look at here on the left, “Must have construction project management software.” Well, that’s going to put everyone to sleep, right? Probably, but they’re putting it through the lens of what’s the most user-friendly. So again, hitting back on that core value, user-friendly stuff, which is something that they stand for. Other stuff around productivity there was well.

Here one of their directors is blogging about building engaged, long term customers. Which again is all around this idea of better relationships. And here we have content around building better relationships again through B2B journey mapping. Maybe not the most exciting topic, unless you’re a digital marketing nerd like me. But it makes total sense. Satisfied customers with equal quality relationships. They’re satisfied because you thought about their journey, and you built a good website. You build a quality relationship with them, and that leads back to satisfaction, it’s their core values.

Okay. Final example. This is from Basecamp. I am a Basecamp pimp. I love Basecamp, I’m a big fan of it. We use it here at C42D. And if you hire us we’ll invite you to collaborate with us using Basecamp. So I think you can sum up their ideology, “It’s as simple as giving a damn and doubling down on simple and straightforward.” This is taken right from their website. What you see is what you get with these guys. And that ideology statement you see under, “Giving a damn. Treating people right is fundamental to how we do business,” that was the example that we gave previously. And again, this is a really nice, concise ideology summed up right from their website.

And you can see how they talk about, “We’re going to continue to make big bets on simplicity, clarity, ease of use, honesty.” And hey, here we go, it goes for their products, publications, and our company. So they get it, these values translate to everything they do. You would be wise to do the same. This is their blog, Signal V. Noise, great blog if you ever want to read it. And right here they’re saying it, “Strong opinions and shared thoughts,” that’s what we’re looking for here. And what do you get on their blog? You get titles like, Giving Un-actionable Advice, what? Un-actionable advice, what is that? I don’t know. I’m not sure, read the article if you want to know what it’s all about. But it is definitely strong and definitely it feels like Basecamp. It feels like them.

You also see them talking about the cult of overwork. This is a point of view … I would say out of any company out there, they have single handedly owned this point of view. And this is what I was talking about earlier, about owning a point of view. They’ve literally written the book about working too much. And at Basecamp you work 40 hours a week and that’s it. It’s not done at 5:00 p.m., too bad we’re going to pick it up Monday. Wouldn’t we all love to be like that? You can do it. Own your point of view.

We also see article titles like, Let’s Stop Shaking People Down For Their Email Addresses, getting back to that ideology of we’re going to be straightforward and honest. Now this, this turns a whole industry best practice right on its head. I mean everybody shakes people down for email addresses, right? No. They’re saying you don’t have to do that. So how can you stand in opposition to what everybody else is doing? And how does that make for compelling content? You’re seeing it right here. How to Motivate Employees, Don’t. They’re all about treating people right, employees and our customers. And you can infer by their content that if they treat their employees right, they’re probably going to treat you right. They treat everybody right. So, getting back to our original hypothesis. It’s super easy to write content. This stuff practically writes itself when you have a strong ideology. Think you can do it? I hope you can.

Let’s sum it up. So summing up, an ideology is a set of opinions or beliefs that can be used as a framework to improve your content offering. Most dull content lacks a strong point of view, uses really bad stock photos. Good content has personality, has a voice, tells a human story that people can relate to. A strong point of view is nothing if it doesn’t harmonize with the rest of your brand. So like a jigsaw puzzle, this all has to work together. Not sure how to do that? Hire a company like ours.

Examine your customers. Examine your markets, your company mission, and values. If you don’t know where to start, go through the series of questions we went through. Put down your answers, then write an ideology statement. Use this as a litmus test for your content. Avoid ideologies that are too broad, too narrow, too common, or too super pumped-ed, nonsensical. Don’t be an Uber. B2B tends to be less passionate, but it can still be compelling, and Basecamp’s a great example of that. They’re totally B2B. Finally, use a professional editor if you can afford one. Even if you can’t, scrape the money together, I don’t know. Sell that used laptop you have in the closet. Hire a professional editor, help them help you maintain your standards, your point of view, enforce your ideology, and good things will happen.

So we’ll get into your questions in a second. But first, we’re going to talk about what’s coming up next. At C42D we do these once a quarter, roughly. And next quarter we’re going to talk about how to name your company. This is something I am super excited about. We have been talking about this internally and with some of our partners lately. And we’ve got all kinds of content coming out in our blog in the next coming month or two. More content once we get closer to the webinar. And this is a big thing for startups, it’s even a big thing for existing companies.

A lot of people don’t give a lot of thought to their name and hence they have to rename. So how to name or rename your company, so learn more about what’s in a name, Shakespeare, and how you can come up with one that will stand the test of time, all before lunch. This is a must-see webinar, it takes place on Tuesday, December 10th, 2019 at 11:00 a.m. Eastern. To register visit c42d.com/blog. Look for the signup link which will be up by the end of the week.

In case you missed anything on this webcast, we’ll have a copy of this up along with a transcript on c42d.com by the end of the week, probably sooner. We also have lots of great content so check out our blog, c42d.com/blog. For more thought leadership our fantastic Subway Startup series, and of course great webinars like this.

Question and answers. If you have any questions feel free to type them into the box and I will pause for a moment here and drink more of my delicious organic coffee. So Hugh says, “What is your ideology at C42D?” Great question. I would say it’s aspirational, it’s all about driving equity through brand building. So how building a brand builds the long term equity of your firm, kind of mixed in with a little bit around the reality of not taking the startup world too seriously. So we like to poke fun at some of the ridiculous things that we see in the startup world. That sums up our ideology. Check out our Subway Startup series on our website if you want a great example of that.

Okay, TJ asks, “Is there any difference between a mission statement and your ideology statement?” Right. So kind of yes and no. They’re kind of interchangeable for sure, but I would encourage you, if you already have a mission statement, review it, see if it feels compelling or if maybe this was just a checkbox along with 10 other things you had to get done as you were starting your company or something you haven’t revisited in years, it’s blah, it’s not really feeling authentic, maybe your company’s evolved. So if that’s the case I encourage you to go through those exercises we talked about and rework it to reflect what your company really stands for today. And use that as your lens to frame your content.

Any other questions? I’ll pause for a minute. No. Okay. Well, thank you again for joining us. I appreciate you sharing part of your day with you. And again, we’ll have this up on the website if any of you guys missed part of it. And thank you for joining us on this webinar. Good luck. You guys will do great. Thanks.