Our Process to Success

– Who wants to June, why don’t I throw it to you?

– I would love to start first. I have had a lot of incredible experiences in my life. And those have allowed me to be a very relational person. And while I’ve done a fair amount of work in the 20th century, I have emerged into the 21st century and do understand 21st century skillsets. And thus, that had become not strictly as we were talking about in the room before we turned the mics back on again, but just the fact that it’s not the business of the top down concept, it really is working with a lot of collegial sharing and that requires a developmental skillset not only from your team members, but from whoever is the boss, quote on quote. And so therefore, I’ve done a lot of studying and as I shared with these people around the table, one of the things that I wanna make you aware of is that you will tend a year from this day, to be the same person with the exception of two things. One, the people that you meet, and/or the books that you read, or the podcast that you watch, or whatever it happens to be. Your own self-educating. And so therefore, as I spend a lot of time researching and really making what I do relevant for other people, I use the information and assimilate all the information. I’ve assimilated the information to create a package and concepts that I can go out and share with businesses on how to create an effective, high-performance leadership team. That is crucial and just essential in any business. As people work together, they don’t always agree, but again, as we alluded to in our previous cast, that everybody being in the right seats on the bus to create that leadership team that’s able to work together and also is in the process of casting a vision for what’s not only gonna happen in 2019, but in the months and the years beyond.

– June, can you give us an example of how you’re doing this with our clients?

– I would be happy to Ms. Sarah. I’m working with one particular client that is really keen on launching forward and being relevant in their particular industry. Before as I met with each member of the team, to be able to allow them to examine what they’re doing or in some cases, not doing, to help develop the team and encouraging them and admonishing and challenging them to become a more effective leader not only as an individual, but as part of said team. It’s been exciting to see and their response back to me is been is I’ve done assessments with them has been those are the things that they felt like have been the most relevant to them and allowed them to grow.

– Yeah and I’ve been because I work directly with clients too, hand-in-hand with June and just watching how our clients resonate with June is really amazing. The staff really enjoy talking to June. Sometimes they go to you for HR stuff.

– That’s okay.

– They just, they love June. And it’s the atmosphere is just really excellent when she’s around, and I think people just feel encouraged and equipped, and so it’s been really great. What book do you have in front of you here?

– That’s a great question, and I was just talking to the guys about this. Should be all books in our lives that are game changers for oneself. And as I told these guys, I went through a paradigm change a few years ago in terms developing and honing my leadership skills. And this book happens to have been written by Ken Blanchard that wrote “The One Minute Manager,” kind of the Bible of business; And a man by the name of Mark Miller who is one of the senior VP’s at Chick-fil-A Inc. They were asked to study the concept of leadership. This reads in narrative form. It’s called “The Secret,” talks about an acronym of developing leadership skills and I will just say that this is a concept that’s being used by Chick-fil-A leadership, not only in Chick-fil-A Inc., but also as they move out into other parts of the world, teaching perspective entrepreneurs. For example, as my husband had the privilege of doing a number of years ago in Peru of teaching perspective entrepreneurs on how to run their own businesses. Powerful book.

– And you mentioned Chick-fil-A and let’s just throw this out here too.

– Of course.

– So June is a teacher. She’s a retired teacher from Linn-Mar High School–

– I’m a graduated teacher–

– Graduated yes.

– That’s an implication of old, I’m never getting old Sarah.

– And June is not old, let me tell you

– O-L-D is a four-letter word, even though it’s a thing.

– I think June’s the youngest person at this table. Not joking. But so June is a graduated Linn-Mar High School teacher, and then her husband, Bob Schmidt, so it’s Bob and June Schmidt is a graduated Chick-fil-A operator, owner operator so Bob started over at Westdale when it was in the mall, and then it moved to Lindale, and then, actually sorry moved to Coralville that’s what I meant. Moved to Corral Ridge.

– I assert that I know my own team!

– Yes, and then got the Lindale store, and so yeah they’ve been it’s been a huge blessing to have June Schmidt with her history. That’s actually how we met, obviously I mean the Schmidt’s are well-known in the community, business leaders. But how we got to know each other was through Chick-fil-A and that’s been amazing. And then with your Linn-Mar background. And you two know each other.

– Right.

– ‘Cause what, how did you? So Ian’s Banowetz marketing business card was on the desk, right? And you were like?

– Yes.

– You go you’re working with Ian Crumley?

– Oh my word, yeah, yeah.

– [Sarah] ‘Cause how did you two each other then?

– My freshman year, I was in show-choir. I was in the middle instep, and she was my director.

– [Sarah] And you got like awards for–

– Oh, just a few.

– She’s a big modest.

– There’s a big streak.

– There was a big yeah.

– She was directing.

– [Sarah] June’s got a lot of leadership behind her. Yeah, a lot of leadership background.

– You know, and I’ve gotten the privilege of watching Ian a little bit more from afar. But it’s been really a joy to watch how you are growing, and that you are using the gifts and the talents that not gonna lie, knew they were there.

– [Sarah] So that’s a great lead-in for Ian, so how have you been helping our clients?

– Well… Actually so I don’t you guys do a lot of like communicative–

– You’re behind the scenes.

– I’m behind everything.

– [Sarah] But yeah, you do a lot, but you’re behind the scenes.

– Yeah so whether it’s commercial, podcast, or I don’t know, jingles, I’m kinda like the main guy that edits everything together. I kinda like I don’t know–

– [Sarah] You make it sound modest. Tell us about okay, Gold Revere, tell us about Gold Revere and then you’ll do a shout out for Gold Revere too.

– All right yeah so Gold Revere is a group that me and my friend, Akash Guru Raja made our sophomore year of high school. We released so it’s a music group. I did the production, we kinda sketchily recorded the vocals with the mics we could find around the house. Our first volume fact, was recorded on a Rock Band Wii mic.

– Wow.

– So we’ve come a long way.

– Everybody starts somewhere.

– You do what you can with the things you can find. So yeah, so we’re just a music group. We’ve put out 21 songs at this point, accumulated just actually we just hit one million total streams on–

– Congratulations.

– Spotify and iTunes and SoundCloud.

– That’s cool. So cool.

– [Sarah] And you just told me today that you guys have been actually making money off this too and what, ad revenue?

– Yes so, Spotify, Apple Music, all the streaming services pay the artists that distribute their music on their platforms. Very small amounts but over time it really adds up, and if you’re getting like in the tens to the hundreds of thousands of streams, it’s noticeable.

– [Sarah] I actually I was listening to a YouTube channel this past week, and they had music on that sounded like Gold Revere.

– Really?

– [Sarah] I wonder if they had licensed your music. It hasn’t even licensed your music for YouTube yet?

– I’m not sure. I don’t think so.

– Nobody’s–

– I mean sometimes–

– [Sarah] Maybe they stole it.

– Some of our songs aren’t there’s like for YouTube there’s songs that automatically like copyright themselves. They file a copyright claim if there’s like a certain amount of music being played. We don’t have like any of that on all any of our singles, so it could be very well that somebody used our song. Because it’s, I mean they can–

– Well ’cause you have a unique sound. Where would people find your stuff at?

– Oh well, we’re on basically every streaming service you can find. I mean even if you have an Amazon Echo or a Google home, you just say hey Alexa, play Gold Revere and we’ll be there.

– All right. So if I’m ask a question Sarah. So why Gold Revere? Why did that become your name?

– So this is actually very interesting. We originally wanted it to be Red Revere because it was like each word was something from I’d like a trait of me and Akash, so red would’ve been my hair, and then revere, Akash lives on Revere Court, and so before we did that, we looked up red revere. Turns out it’s some random video game boss for this like I’m not sure what game it is but apparently it’s really popular. So we didn’t wanna like steal that.

– [June] Already copyrighted, yeah.

– Yeah so, our next–

– [Sarah] I like Gold Revere better.

– Yeah and plus there’s kind of like a meaning behind it too like revere is like a deeper spec for something, and gold obviously like your chains or like your bling and stuff like that. It’s kinda like kind of reflecting on like the hip-pop community right now. It’s like kind of focusing their I don’t know, too much focus on the show and the bling and all that stuff which it doesn’t need to be.

– When you guys have some live events too, and I saw a sign, I was at Linn-Mar High School last night and I saw like a poster up with it said like you guys won an award or something like that, said Gold Revere. Do you know what I’m talking about? It’s above one of the lockers, I took a picture of it.

– Yes.

– You know what it why are you guys laughing?

– Because that was not an official award. I actually Photoshopped that and printed it out and taped it to the wall.

– Oh my God, okay there it is.

– [June] That’s awesome!

– It looks like the reals. It says congratulations Gold Revere, best hip-hop duo in the 319, sponsored by Taco Bell.

– [June] Oh my gosh, that is awesome!

– That’s too funny.

– I have a quick question for Ian too.

– Yeah, what’s up?

– Are you and Akash going to continue to make music into college?

– Yes. So Akash is going to Vanderbilt in Tennessee which is actually pretty cool, they had like a 6% acceptance rate this year.

– [June] Wow!

– [Sarah] He’s a talented dude though.

– Yeah he’s incredibly intelligent. He had a perfect on his ACT, got the Coca-Cola Scholarship which was like 150 people in the entire U.S. for $20,000.

– But out of everything he’s done, my favorite thing none of that matters, what really matters is he made an excellent donkey on Shrek. I mean oh my gosh.

– He did make an excellent donkey on Shrek.

– [June] He wasn’t bad–

– You didn’t see Shrek did you? Oh my goodness. So then, you know Trent?

– I do know Trent. Trent is one of my best friends. He’s in the same grade as me, we just graduated.

– Yeah we did.

– Congratulations on your graduation.

– Thank you.

– [June] You’re freshmen again.

– Yeah.

– Now this guy, this guy here very talented.

– [Sarah] He is very talented.

– Tell us about yourself.

– [Sarah] Tell us how talented you are Trent.

– Before I get into all that, I wanted to mention something that June had talked about earlier, is just kind of like the atmosphere that we’ve created here is it feels okay to fail, almost. Like you can try anything you want, and I think Annie mentioned it on the previous episode of the podcast. And sort of about that where businesses are moving away from the top down processing to more of these like you give individual leadership and responsibilities to everybody, and you make everybody in the company feel important. And you give them a certain amount of creative freedom, and I think that’s something we’re doing here and that’s something that we can show other businesses, like hey, this is how this works.

– [Sarah] Like to be an example.

– Exactly, yeah so it’s kind of like a model company for other businesses that employ our services through marketing and not just through marketing, but through leadership experience and training. I think that’s something that we do really well.

– I think just listening to you talk to in previous episodes part of how that comes about is I sit here and I think about skillset, so while you’re talking I’m like, okay where is Trent? ‘Cause what are you going to college for? This was actually what I’m thinking.

– I’m planning on majoring in strategic communications.

– Okay, see I knew, okay so here’s the thing is like while I’m listening to people, I’m like okay what is it that they’re going–

– Yeah.

– Where are they going forward in life.

– Yep, so I’m gonna do strategic communications with a visual arts focus, and then well actually I was just talking to one of my admissions counselors this morning, I’m gonna plan on doing a double major in strategic communications with the visual arts focus, and then English education. Because there’s a part of me that really wants to become a teacher as well, and so it’s like I’m kinda torn between the two and I don’t think I’m ready to make that decision, but I wanna give myself the necessary tools for when I do have to make that decision, I have education in both. And then I’m also gonna do a Spanish minor because Spanish is something that’s I think Annie likes it. I think it’s something extremely important in the adapting environment that we live in, and I think employers look at that and they see if you’re fluent in multiple languages especially Spanish which is starting to become the norm in the United States.

– [Sarah] Yes it is.

– It’s very important, and I think it looks great on job applications and resumes that you can speak both languages, not only that but language is such a intricate thing. If you can break language barriers, I think you can develop relationships a lot easier with a lot you know, diverse amount of people.

– It’s amazing to listen to all of guys talk and just and June I think this is where you and I really jive, is to listen to all of these youngins talk. And just wonder where are you guys I can see all three of you ’cause Anna Lisa’s behind the camera. I can see all three of you and just where are you guys going in your life, because 10 years from now, you guys are gonna be so busy and so like–

– Yeah, it’s weird. When you guys are like yeah, okay so think about 10 years from now, I’m just like you guys are just gonna be off and I won’t even be able to get you on the phone anymore ’cause you guys are gonna be Ian’s gonna be in like L.A., like popular .

– Yeah, it’s for you.

– Pulitzer.

– Did you get, guys that’s recorded, they said they’re gonna answer.

– Special spot in the phone book for Sarah.

– There you go.

– Oh, you guys are sweet. Okay so now you guys can guess what Trent does for the company, which is strategic communication.

– Yeah pretty much. A little bit, and I do quite a bit of writing too I think for a lot of our clients. So mainly social media writing through Facebook and Instagram, and then as well as writing commercials and kind of like helping put together video packages.

– I don’t know if anyone else in this room knows about this but I have had book ideas for years that I’ve been writing notes about, and Trent has even started ghost writing one of my book ideas.

– Right, and I just think it’s a great opportunity for me because writing is such a passion of mine that I kinda have this outlet I think I talked about it in the last episode, to write into you’ve given me quite a bit of creative freedom. I mean even like the littler things like commercials, like most people would think this is how a commercial has to be made, but I wanna take a look at it and say how can we be different, and how can I use my creative ability to make this product even better.

– And you’re a good pair with Anna Lisa too ’cause she wants to be the videographer. And then I didn’t namedrop you because I didn’t wanna like pressure anyone, but when I had a client meeting today, I said that they should think about writing a book. Because they’re a longterm business leader in the Cedar Rapids area, and I was like have you thought about writing a book, and I said I know a guy who can ghostwrite it for you.

– I mean like even leadership I think is something that I have quite a bit of experience with already. I don’t know if I mentioned earlier, I’m going to run track at North Dakota State. And so the last four years running track, but especially the last two or three, I’ve kinda stepped into a leadership role, not only on the team but I feel like kind of in the state of Iowa’s. Not only one of the better competitors but I kind of generally step up and do a leadership role. And this year really got the opportunity to kind of inspire other guys on the team and try to get ’em to work harder, and we came together to become this cohesive unit that in my four years, I’ve never been closer with every single person on the team. And it was just something that was really cool and kind of life changing for me to see that maybe I can be in these leadership positions and have like just building confidence for myself I guess.

– That’s awesome. Very nice. Okay let’s throw it to Annie. Okay Annie, do you want to so Annie works with me on marketing, specifically marketing. And so, do you wanna explain what you’ve been doing in account management for our client journey coaching?

– Yeah, you know one thing when I think of marketing, I think it’s a largely misunderstood field. You know, people think what is marketing and what do you do? Is it just throwing stuff up on social media and that’s it? And I think simply put, marketing is a solution finder. I look at myself as a solution finder. There is a problem and there’s a solution to it. And we’re all running in this race together but we’re looking for the most unique and efficient way to do it. And that’s marketing, it’s finding the solution to the need in a unique way that maybe hasn’t been done before or been done in a better way. And so when I think about our client journey coaching, I think they have a huge need in our community that they are solving. And part of what we’re doing for marketing is getting their name out there, showing the world essentially that hey, there’s a need and we have a solution to it. Do you want me to talk about what that exact problem is?

– [Sarah] Sure.

– So one of the clients I work for journey coaching the need that they are finding in this world is that we have this deep longing and need for connection. And with social media channels, we should be having the best connected lives that we possibly can, but we’re finding we’re just not. We are struggling to connect, and you know the younger generations sometimes they don’t even know what’s missing, and why do we need to connect in a better way if we have Facebook and Instagram and Snapchat? And so we’re finding that we need to make real life connections but we don’t know how. And so one thing that Journey Coaching is really focusing on is developing one-on-one relationships with people and really essentially just coming and connecting individuals who have walked a path before you that is similar to the one that you’re walking on, and saying, hey I’ve been there, let me show you what I’ve learned. I’m not an expert, but let me show you what I have learned. And so the large part of what Journey Coaching is doing is just showing that hey, this is a solution, and getting their name out there and showing what they can do and how they can help, and connecting people and changing lives.

– Awesome. And so I’m going to show what we’ve been doing. So we started a podcast for Journey Coaching, that’s just getting ready to be released. We started social media channels for them, we got them a new website because the old website needed to be redone. And then this is what they had designed in-house and they were using this for about five years, and not having good luck with it. People weren’t taking them very seriously, they were having a hard time getting traction with this, and so what Banowetz Marketing did is we had it redesigned. So this is now this, and it was professionally redesigned. We had a graphic artist on contract, Connie Collins. She did the initial design with my input and how I wanted it to look. And then this is the workbook, and then this is the leaders guide. And then she did the initial design, and then from there, our in-house graphic artist Melody, who will be on another podcast, she’s not here today. She did a lot of the actual implementation of these so a lot of the editing. So what we did to save our client money is we had the out-of-house graphic artist with a lot more branding experience, she did the design and then Melody took it and ran with it. And so she would actually duplicate the pages and keep going with the design that the other graphic artist had started. And Melody in-house really has done a lot. We worked together to do edits, Melody knows a lot about coloring and about how printing works. Because she’s trained in this area, she got her degree in graphic arts. So yeah, this is one thing that we’ve done this past year is taking this from this, doing a website, so a rebrand website, rebanding podcast, social media for them, and that’s all just getting started. ‘Cause they are a startup which has been interesting to work with, neat and interesting to work with–

– And I think Journey Coaching is a really good example of what we do kind of as a team. So like you were saying, you kind of are the marketing director and you spearheaded that. Obviously Annie and I have been doing a lot of social media writing for it, and then you help out with the podcasts as well, Ian edits the podcast,

– Ian does the podcast.

– June helps with advisement and leadership on that.

– Exactly, and so that’s just kind of what we do for businesses and I think that’s a good like prototype.

– It’s a whole team effort. It is really a whole team effort.

– [Trent] And we all have our individual roles in each project.

– So then to wrap this up sort of for how we provide for clients, you really did help wrap that up. Annalise is behind the camera, she does a lot of videography and editing. I’m actually a professional photographer too, we have other professional photographers like Lisa Lois out of Mount Vernon who we can contract with, and then obviously I mentioned Annie sorry Melody who does graphic artist and stuff. So essentially what I have done is created a marketing department that a lot of times growing companies can’t afford that in-house marketing department yet, but we work together as a team to try to get them there so that we can–

– And I really like the way you explained it to me at my interview a couple months ago.

– [Sarah] How was that?

– Well you kinda like laid it out on a sheet of paper but you were saying like you gave an example of the bank. So if there’s a really small, independently owned like community-credit union that’s down here in terms of like recognizability and sort of like involvement in the community, and they wanna be up here in terms of like membership and everything; But they can’t afford to have an in-house marketing director then we service sort of that middle man, that helps them get to the point where they can afford an in-house marketing director. And that’s just kinda how you explained it to me at my interview, and that’s what kind of drew me in to want this job even more, as I thought that business model was a really good idea.

– How awesome. So we are not like, I’m not creating a marketing agency like your typical marketing agency.

– [Trent] Right, we help get businesses from point A to point B–

– Yeah from point A to point B because well I grew up in family business and we needed that. I mean there were times when I was traveling to Ethiopia a lot and we needed a marketing company to come in or marketing people, and it was just really hard to find that because the agency, you’ve got the two models, you got the agency model who comes in and does projects. They’re not really there to hustle for your company, they come in to do projects. And then you have your in-house marketing team that a lot of people can’t afford. I’m trying to merge them together so that we have the hustle.

– [Ian] We’re jumper cables like you can jumpstart your car and drive it.

– I love that analogy. Thank you Ian.

– [Ian] Or you can get out and try to push your car all the way to your destination, but obviously there’s an easier choice there.

– Well thank you everybody for being on the podcast.

– [Ian] Of course.

– Thanks for watching the podcast. Yeah this was fun. Well tune in, this is just the beginning of the Banowetz Podcast, and we would love to have you on the podcast. So we wanna really connect and network with local business people, help local business people connect and just grow and help the Eastern Iowa community together. So if you’d like to be on the podcast, give us a shout out and we will see you later. Bye.