Meet the Team

– Can you introduce this one? Can you just be like hey what are we talking about today?

– Yeah, I got it.

– [Sarah] Okay.

– [Ian] Hey, so, what are we talking about today?

– [June] That was awesome Ian!

– Awkward laughing.

– Yeah, yeah.

– So I wanted to dive in a little deeper about what the team is that we’ve built here.

– [June] Cool! Would you like me to start, Sarah?

– [Sarah] That would be awesome June!

– Well this is June Schmidt and I’m gonna give you just a synopsis of who I am. Primarily in my adult life I was a choral director and loved that career. I unofficially or officially graduated from that aspect of my life three years ago. And then when to work, and then here is the proper preposition with my husband at Chic-fil-a three years ago, and was primarily responsible. I did a lot of the day-to-day. I was responsible for team building, team success, and whatnot, and oh by the way I also was privy to a lot of incredible information and speakers and cutting edge people that sit under the umbrella of Chic-fil-a. So able to walk away with a wealth of knowledge. Well my husband decided in turn, to move into his next chapter of life on November 1st in 2018. And we had become aquatinted with Sarah our boss and one of the first questions my husband asked Sarah was. Would you be interested in hiring my wife? And she unequivocally said, “yes!”

– You made that sound like he pushed you on me! That’s not exactly how he asked it.

– Oh I totally know it was $1,000 that he gave you in turn. It’s called B-R-I-B-E, Sarah.

– He said, June isn’t too happy about me retiring cause then she doesn’t get to work with you. Do you think there would be a position? She’s wondering if there might be a position for you in the company. I’m like, come on, if June Schmidt wants to work with you, you just have to say yes.

– That being said, my real passion for building teams is looking at situations and coming up with strategies to help teams become more successful, to work well together, and in turn, build the business. And I’ve gotten to dabble in a little bit here at Banowetz Marketing, and just really being able to enjoy being able to develop my craft, and turn my passion, in a different way.

– So I’m Trent Davis. I’m 18 years old and just graduated from Linn Mar high school. I’ll be going to North Dakota State this fall to run track and also study communications, but my role here at Banowetz Marketing is primarily a writer for social media content and for any sort of commercials or video content that we produce. I’ve had a lot of fun. I’ve worked here since the beginning of January already, and it just kind of really takes one of my biggest passions which is writing and kind of communicating to others. And gave me this outlet, gave me this opportunity to do more of it and kind of explore more of it. And so that is really what I’ve really enjoyed about the job so far.

– You do really well with the voice that you portray. I’ve been really happy with that. So it’s been really excellent. And then you can keep working for us from college, too. Because this can be done, you don’t have to be in the office to do this.

– Exactly, this can be done from anywhere, and writing is just something I love doing all the time and it’s kind of seamless, you know, for me sometimes. So I can just sit down and write whenever, anything you need me to do.

– [Sarah] Yeah.

– Yeah.

– Well then he was referred to Banowetz Marketing by this next guy over here, Ian Crumley.

– Yo, yo.

– [Sarah] Who everyone really everyone that works with us you’re like the rockstar, really everyone here is a rockstar but you’re like the famous Banowetz Marketing person. Because everyone’s like Ian is awesome!

– Oh, well thank you everybody.

– Who doesn’t know Ian Crumly

– Like people will come, So Ian does our podcast editing, and people will come into this office and they’ll be like you’re podcasts sounds so amazing. And we are like yup, Ian.

– Yeah well I mean honestly this has been like kind of a dream job.

– [Trent] Yeah same thing for me.

– I would have never expected like me doing audio stuff in high school like that’s like kind of crazy. So this has been like a huge huge blessing. So basically what I do, what my job entails is, we record podcasts, and I take those raw audio files and I make them sound good through many different ways. I’ve got a lot of techniques and tricks up my sleeve to make those sound good. I cut out all of the arbitrary parts and kind of make it commercial, I guess. So, yeah, it has been great. It’s been wonderful.

– It’s been really awesome to have you on the team! And so Ian did just graduate, and then you are going to Iowa State and you’re going to keep working for me.

– [Ian] Correct.

– Unless Sara. you guys know this is the other half of the Sara Squared podcast.

– Hi, hey podcast world, hey YouTube.

– So unless Sara and I convince you that you should just dive in deep to this audio stuff. You don’t need to go into engineering!

– [Ian] Yeah, well.

– So this is Sara Leisinger.

– Yes, yes pleasure to be on the BanMar podcast.

– So Sara Squared has become so popular that we are kind of branching off on our own areas, too, while still doing Sara Squared.

– Absolutely, so there’s so much that can be talked about with enterprise level brands that I’m so glad BanMar is doing their own podcast.

– Awesome, and so Sara is also a contractor for us because she is the rockstar and guru of, you’re going to get embarrassed aren’t you.

– I really wish you’d stop calling me that.

– So I feel like I am the general practitioner of marketing and you guys are all specialists in your own field, and Sara Leisinger is like the specialist in like social media and SEO analysis.

– That’s your basic ear, nose and throat. You’re basic ear, nose and throat doctor, right?

– [Woman] So what do you do Sara? Don’t call me for that. It’s gross.

– Tell us what you do.

– So, as a contractor for Banowetz.

– Or just in general yeah.

– Well in general I own Huslance digital media. We specialize in, I keep forgetting about that like I do this a lot and I keep forgetting be right up in the mic. Right, so, Huslance digital media is all about social media and scaling your social media. I usually help business take that scale using from three to 10 platforms slash voices. And then for my loving agency friends that need a specialist for search engine optimization I specialize in onpage and offpage specifically relevant to Google.

– And she’s awesome.

– [Sarah] So Annalise, tell everybody who you are. What you do.

– What I do?

– [Sarah] What are your life goals?

– Well, I want to be a Christian filmmaker. And I don’t really like this side of the camera, as you can tell, but I would like to go into the film industry and in the very very far future maybe a production company.

– Hopefully not too far.

– Not too far, hopefully yeah.

– Yeah, Annalise is awesome. So Annalise’s story how she started with me is way awesome.

– [Annalise] It’s very interesting.

– It’s very cool. So on the previous episode I was talking about the Warehouse Auto commercial and we had a bunch of teenagers helping with it, and we actually… Well I didn’t know Trent yet, we did not have a videographer. I was a professional photographer before I got into marketing. So I was going to do it, but I really hate videography. They’re two different things: photography and videography.

– [Annalise] Very different, yeah.

– And so it was the Wednesday before recording the Warehouse Auto commercial, we were recording on a Sunday when it was closed, and she comes over to interview for help with my daughter.

– [Annalise] Yeah, I was not interviewing for, yeah

– No, and she’s sitting at my dining room table and I said, so what do you want to do with your life? And she’s like, I want to be a Christian filmmaker. And I looked at her and I’m like, can you work this Sunday? And she was like–

– I was trying so hard not to yell. I was like, yeah, yeah, and I was like keep yourself together.

– [Sara] Didn’t you tell me the other day you like screamed in the car on the way home?

– Yeah, I was like turned up the radio and was like thank the lord! It was definitely a God thing.

– And see I was feeling the same way because I was so overwhelmed with the idea of filming this by myself and it worked out, we really needed it. Because then you really helped Ian with the… You really helped lead that commercial too, I felt like.

– Well we had like we had to kind of cooperate with like the video and the audio since we had like the whole jingle going on in the background. Mixed with the video.

– [Sarah] Yeah, and the jingle had three parts to it, if you guys look up the, we should link to it in this, the Warehouse Auto. It goes through the years.

– YouTube annotation right there. Click right there in the top corner

– See these young people know how to do all of this social media. Yeah, so link to it. So this is the cool thing. You redid the jingle because the jingle had been professionally made for Warehouse Auto years ago. Probably like 15 years ago. Everybody knows it. ♪ Warehouse Auto, your family car store. ♪ And it needed to be redone and so I had you guys rerecord it, and then you also changed the first 20 seconds or so, 15 seconds?

– So for the commercial we had like the 1940s, then we had like an 80s version, then we had the modern. It was like through the generations car buying. And so like I redesigned the jingle, it had the same melody kind of like the same chord structure and all that, but it was like in different styles. So I used like, some like old fashioned vinyl crackling, sound effects and stuff over the 40s one. And some like synth pop for the 80s and stuff like that, it was really fun actually.

– You guys worked really hard on that because we had a bunch of singers do it and they worked really hard on that. It was awesome. That was the day we were recording at your house to get the audio and my family texted me a photo. Do you remember this?

– [Ian] Yeah, I do remember this!

– My family texts me a photo, just a photo with no, I don’t know if I ever told you, with no context, of in front of my house it looked like a bicycle. It looked like my daughters bicycle with a car, like there was a car accident, with someone getting hit by a bicycle. And I thought, I literally could not process at that moment. My dad was there too because he owns Warehouse Auto. And I was like Dad we have to leave right now because I thought my daughter had been hit by a car. Because that’s what it was, but it was actually a motorcycle that looked like my daughters old fashioned bicycle. It was like an old fashioned motorcycle, and the picture was like pulled back. I could not think at that moment. Like I just was like, but yeah that was when we were recording the audio for the Warehouse Auto. It turned out it was someone else, it was not my daughter. And we actually don’t know what happened to those. She skidded out, she did not get hit by a car. She skidded out, she had just purchased this motorcycle. She skidded out, and then she landed. But there was nothing on the news so I don’t know what happened to her. But yeah, that was when we were recording the audio for the Warehouse Auto commercial.

– My dog also like attacked a bunch of people.

– [Sarah] Yes, Nina, right?

– I think it was Melina.

– [Sarah] Was it Melina?

– Yeah because she was sitting on the ground petting my dog, the my dog just like.

– [Sarah] Like bit her arm or something, right?

– Yeah, it was crazy. My dog is, if people report the amount of times he has been, he’d probably be put down by now.

– So all of the business owners watching this podcast are what is going on here? You don’t have to–

– Know that statement.

– [Ian] I edit, so I can take that out.

– No, you might as well leave it in, but yeah he’s calmed down.

– We don’t know his name, his name is incognito.

– You’ve got a laptop now so, that was when you had the desktop. So, Ian can record audio now in the office, so yeah.

– I could probably hook this one up, too.

– Yeah?

– Honestly. There you go. So let’s get Annie in here. So tell us what you do here at Banowetz Marketing, and where are you at?

– I am all the way from Clinton, Iowa. Lumberjacking capital.

– So Annie works for us from Clinton, Iowa. You have ties to Cedar Rapids which is how we ended up getting connected, and so we have worked together. We’ve met in person, but Annie does most of her work from Clinton. Annie was, I probably be using this, Annie was hired to just do social media management, but then her skill set is just amazing. She is going to be taking over for me one day, running the marketing direction, I’m not kidding you. I will remain CEO and Annie will be leading the path of the marketing direction, I’m anticipating that. She’s amazing. So tell us what you do, Annie?

– So I would say that I am a content creator and an idea generator. I love expressing the way people feel into words and painting pictures with words so people can feel as though they’re there. So I would say that is my main role.

– Yeah, she’s amazing at that, and then what was it? What did you say? Idea generator.

– Idea generator. Whether it be for projects, or for marketing, or for events. Generating ideas.

– And that’s the part of Annie’s skill set that I feel, or I know, makes her a good marketing director. And so we’re working in that direction. Or whatever direction Annie wants to work in.

– And I’m having fun, that’s the biggest thing for me.

– It is amazing how much, I mean, I don’t know. Everyone here, I am just so blessed by the team here, it’s just, all of you guys are just amazing. So, Annie and I work together so for business clients this is how Annie and I work together. Well it’s helping with the entire team. So Annie and I use Trello, which is a project management tool. And it’s in the cloud, so Annie can work on it. We use a lot of Trello, we use a lot of Google Drive. And so we can collaborate together. Actually I feel like Annie and I, even though she’s out of the office, Annie and I. We’re either like, well whenever I stop moving so I can touch base with you. But otherwise Annie just keeps plugging away, and then it’s really easy for us to collab between Zoom, Trello, email, and Google Drive.

– I feel like I’m in the office, but I’m not.

– And I feel like you’re in the office, too. Yeah, and our clients they love Annie!

– I love them!

– Her ideas are just amazing. She’s constantly coming up with ideas, and her joy and her passion. So what she is currently transitioning into is project management, which heads towards marketing directing. So, Annie is amazing. Is there anything else you want to say?

– No, you got it!

– Okay, and then our last, our last team member here is Melody Sedlacek. And Melody is our graphic arts person and creative assistant. And she is usually here on Fridays, but today she needed to be somewhere else so yeah. So we will have her on later, but she’s also very integral to the Banowetz Marketing team, and as is graphic arts. It helps tie everything together, so we’ll have her on later. But, that’s the team, that’s an overview of the team.

– I wanna interject you. So one of the things, and you’ve just heard, everybody here at the table or remotely that everyone has a particular skill sets that’s been invested into this company. And I speak for everybody and I think I speak truthfully and that’s one of the beautiful things Sara allows us to do is to really run with who we are, and what we like to do. And to let us grow, and yeah. As we get a chance to do that, there is no fear of making mistakes. There is no fear of that. So that’s one of the biggest endorsements I can give for Sarah is that, we are all very diverse people in our own way, and Sarah just encourages us to continue doing, what we like to do and the gifts that we’ve been given. So it is a really incredible team and just speaking from one of the things I study is high performance leadership teams, and the people that we have around this table, and filming right now would certainly define that because of all of those things. So thank you Sarah, for what you give us the freedom to do. I really appreciate that.

– Well put.

– That’s very sweet. You guys are awesome. Thank you. Yeah so my role is I’m CEO and then marketing director. Although, passing that off as soon as we grow enough that I can do that part of it. I would like to, that would be fun, it’s been fun to have Annie on. I love like have someone else on that has like a similar brain to me. Sorry Annie, sorry for that offense right there. Did you hear me? She’s muted right now. Anyway, so I am CEO and marketing director. My role is what I’ve been working towards with this company is, it’s a newer company. So we started in January of 2018. My role that I am working towards, I have to do more right now as we grow ’cause we’re a start up, but it’s to build my team, not run out of money, and set the vision. And that is what I want to be doing, and so yeah going back to what you were saying. I want everybody working in their strengths, because that’s where everyone shines. When they’re like working in their strengths. And that’s so sweet that you said like no fear of failing because there’s a book that I’ve been meaning to read it’s on my nightstand. But it’s called like “Failing Forward”, I think. Is that by Maxwell?

– It’s by John Maxwell, yeah.

– John Maxwell, “Failing Forward”, I haven’t read it, yet.

– What’s also the book we just read by Carol Duwet called “Mindset”.

– Yes, we did just read “Mindset”. We went through “Mindset” with a client. Well, thanks for tuning in, and we hope to see you next time! You can find us online at Banowetzmarketing.com. That’s B as in boy A-N-O-W-E-T-Z, in all the social channels. And we we’ll talk to you later, bye!