Mets Kramer and Mike Pentz join us as we identify the value and importance of your Brand

sir. Good afternoon.

Sure. So my name is Mike Pence. I am the vice president of Calvin Group Incorporated. We are a equipment dealer that all we do is buy and sell asphalt paving equipment around the world. And we've been doing it since 1996. I tried to avoid the industry like the plague and it didn't work. So I got out of college. And as I was talking to Ron earlier, I worked for an industrial lighting company where we designed signal relays. And it was kind of like Six Sigma lighting, basically, like in an assembly plant. We would help determine and set up lighting schemes so that you'd know if you were out of materials. at a station and have a master control board and all that fun stuff. So I kind of got quickly thrown in over my head doing some customer service, some programming. I did the purchasing in Germany, troubleshooting, kind of what name you. And after that, I went the complete opposite direction and went madmen and worked for a product development firm called Fitch. And I was there for a year or so that and I really, again, one of the one of the trends that you'll see as we discuss anything is I'm always thrown in over my head, but that's where I like to swim and choke. And so at Fitch, you know, I worked with Apple and LG. I worked with Specialized on all their structural packaging. We redesigned all the Bic pens and Sanford pens that many of you probably use. I got a really healthy dose of branding, marketing. What does that look like in terms of industrial design? And it was just an overall great experience. And as the market started to tank 2008 or so, they decided to get rid of all product development and just focus on retail design. They were also behind all the Abercrombie & Fitch limited brands. If you've been to the Apple store in New York, we designed it. The one in Arizona. we designed payway, all sorts of interesting things like that. So they wanted to focus on retail design and retail experience. And so I, at that time, they asked me, they said, do you want to stick around? And I said, okay, sure. What, what accounts? And they said, well, Victoria's Secret and Bath and Body Works. And I said, do I look like a Victoria's Secret guy or Bath and Body Works guy that would understand it as opposed to look at it? And it was like, no, probably not. And so I came on board with my dad then in 2008 to do a little bit of marketing, web design, some sales stuff. And, you know, the rest is kind of history. Now I'm stuck in it.

So for me, I'll always draw everything back to I like to write. And so I like to draw everything back to storytelling. And I think being able to figure out what your story is. And I've got a great example of that. When you are just one guy, you kind of embrace you are the story. It's who you are. It's your personality. It's your attitude. It's your work ethic. It's in your integrity. It's what tools you decide to use. There's a lot of things that come into play that way. But having a basic understanding of what you do and what your impact is, I think is probably the biggest thing. Best example I can give is out here. So about we moved out to Denver 2011, about 2012, the equipment industry tanked. We tend to on the asphalt side, we tend to be recession proof. And our recession dip happens either two years before or two years after a normal recession for everybody else. And so as we dipped, I actually took another job at the same time I was doing Calvin Group stuff and ran a, I was director of client services for a marketing firm here in Fort Collins. And one of the customers that came in, it was kind of like, it was kind of a one guy shop. And what he did is he designed water sensors and he made these. if you asked him, what do you do? Well, I make these sensors that they measure the pH and they make this and acidity and they measure contaminants and they do this. And he'll tell you all of these things that the product does. And I'm like, no, no, no. What do you do? He's like, well, we, we sell these. And I'm like, okay, what are they used for? I'm trying to get at something more, something that he's aspiring to that his company is actually doing. That isn't just the bare bones manufacturing description. Right. And what I come to find out is here, he manufactures most of the sensors that go into the aquifers that make sure our aquifer and drinking water is safe. And I said, no, no, that's what you do. You design products that make our water safer because you can measure it. And just that little nuance, and you'll hear a lot from me where I talk about the nuance and the difference between saying something this way and then emphasizing it this way. It can be two different things as far as I'm concerned. And so as soon as he started talking about that, it's like, okay, I can buy into that. I can check into that. I can get other team members on board. I can, if I bring other people on, that's something they can aspire to in our industry with the, I call them the lone wolf salesman. It's, it's no different than my father. My father is, I obviously like him because I work with him and we get along. And he's the ultimate sales guy. Everybody loves him. He's got a super sharp mind, knows the equipment, knows how to deal. He's amazing at that. But now how do we talk about ourselves so it's not just the Mark Pence show? How do we attribute anything to Calvin Group? Well, when we talk about Calvin Group, we talk about our combined experience, not just him. We say over 30 years of experience, we buy and sell asphalt paving equipment. around the world and that's like our concise story thing and then the way we talk about it is not in terms of widgets or units moved it's about what can we do for our customers or for businesses or the dealerships i like to say that we augment people's businesses and so it's like how do you try to figure out and that could be different for everybody it might be just fine to have one guy but what i found is that for businesses that want to grow and have more responsibilities and more employees, I find finding those things that you can unify yourself around that are aspirational, that latching onto those key story points, I always find creates the most effective brand. Look at Apple, right? Apple runs design simple and they want it to be easy to use. Do they use the absolute cutting edge processors and stuff like that? Until the recent silicone series, they didn't. It was just what could they get that was stable and fit the bill? It wasn't cutting edge or anything. But people still bought it because of the experience that they have and the story that Apple tells through their branding. And so for me, I kind of latch on to that idea and try to look at anything that we do as how can we articulate ourselves better. And so that's kind of like my brand philosophy, I'd say.

There's a couple of great examples, but the one that's sticking out most in my mind is there's a great on one of the McDonald's documentaries that just recently came out. And it's two guys sitting in a room and they're talking and they say, no, you don't understand what McDonald's is. You're not selling hamburgers. What you're doing is leasing real estate. And it's like, you just totally changed the idea of what you're actually doing. It's the idea of experience versus like product focus, right? Or a tire salesman. is the other example that I've heard from people is you can have a guy who wants to sell you tires and you walk into their lobby and sure there's coffee, but it might be a day or two old and everything's a guy all oiled up and everything else comes in. And he's like, yeah, I can change your tire. Of course he can give you a good tire. But then you go to a Les Schwab or one of these other more polished places that you walk into and you have an experience with them that, hey, here's someone smiling, no oil on them whatsoever. Everything is nice. The floor is clean. Here's a fresh cup of coffee. Here's some donuts. What do you need? And suddenly you can recognize the difference between good branding and bad branding, right? It's a different mentality. It's a full philosophy is what it really is. And it's not. A lot of people want to try to adopt some sort of branding and say, oh, well, my brand is this. And if it's inauthentic to who you are and to who your company is, it's not going to be effective and you can't really build stuff off of that.

Well, it's terrible. I had to make 50 calls a day and I'd record them and then report them in a weekly meeting. And it was like, this isn't going to get us anywhere. How am I actually generating anything that is substantial or matters? And the best example that I give is when I talk to dealerships. One of the things that amazes me is, you know, we talk about what companies are really doing. A cat dealer is really a parts and service company. It should be, in my opinion. Because that's where you make your money. That's where the service happens. That's where you create brand loyalty. That's where you create an actual tangible experience as opposed to just the sales side. And so many people fall away from that. So many dealerships kind of fall away from that. And they say, no, no, no. I got to push pins or I got to do this or I got to get my sales quota. And the reality is your sales quota is useless. If you're not keeping your mechanics and people constantly engaged with you, it's just going to falter.

I've got a good example of that. So I gave a talk at Colorado State up here, and it was with the Sustainability Fellowship. And so these are guys are postdoc, and they are doing their thesis, doing these researches, research and stuff. And they get finished with it. They get their doctorate, and then they go look for a job. And they say, here's my resume. And it shows their research, and they hand them a copy of the thesis. And it's like, am I supposed to read this as a recruiter? Am I supposed to like, what do you, who are you? Well, here's my thesis. No, no. Who are you? Tell me about yourself. What do you bring to the table? Here's my thesis. And suddenly things, suddenly it's like, okay, this, I know you're qualified. That's why we're talking. Right. But what are you bringing to the table that's going to fit into who we are, what we are, the culture? Elon Musk talks about it and Tesla does recruiting this way. They're not concerned about your CV. They're concerned about whether or not you're going to fit with the team and what kind of work ethic and attitude that you have because they can teach everything else. And so there's that dichotomy that gets caught up when you're in the middle of something, whether it's your dealership, parts and service, or whether it's selling stuff. You get caught into the... I just do this. And the reality is, is you're actually impacting people a whole lot more than what you think you are. And the way that you view yourself tends to be very linear or very vertical as opposed to

Yeah.

that in the consulting world.

It's like, what are you to people? One of the things that I always pitch to new customers, especially with dealers, is my job is to make you. Yes, I sell you equipment, but my job is to make you the best contract you are by providing you the equipment you need. My job is to make you the best dealership and used equipment manager that you are by giving you proper trade values. Even if you don't let me sell it, whatever I do, if I can make you better at it, I'm doing my job correctly. And that's where our brand sort of comes from. We want to be a tool that literally anybody in the industry can say, hey, I need some help. What do you think of this? And we're there. And there's a lot of stuff that we don't get paid for, but the stuff that we do get paid for is why we do it.

Yeah, absolutely. I think, and I wrote a little bit about this in an article, in that Lone Wolf article, about some practical things that you can think of this and we can talk about next time and some good examples of, okay, now what? We talked about brand. It's great. Does that mean I post three times on Facebook? And usually no.

Yeah, so there's some good direction there, I think.