Hi everybody. I'm Jessica Tidwell. I'm from Microbe Formulas. And I know I was starting to get a little bit fidgety in my chair and I was, I was going to invite everyone to stand up and sit down, but seems like a lot of work. So what is easy though, is breathing. You guys want to take a deep breath with me? Maybe. So here we go. I just want to chat with you today about how I think that powerful branding starts with your employees and there may be a little bit of overlap here, but I feel like our messages worked very well together. I, I really just want to stress the fact that instead of adding people to our payroll as ambassadors, we have all of these people that are already a part of our brand that if we just can get them excited about what we do, we have built in ambassadors.
So I think as you guys probably agree, the best way to gain loyal customers is through word of mouth. You know, for example, right? One of your friends comes to you and they're like, Hey, my basement's flooded. Oh, I know this wonderful lady, Tracey. And she works for Paul Davis. She trusts her company. I trust her company, you know? So you trust your friends, your friends have jobs, and we might as well be talking with one another about what we do. And if we're passionate about our companies, it'll just be a very authentic and easy way to share our brand with the world.
So how can we get our employees to want to talk about us and to want to talk about us in a positive way? You've probably heard so many people say I can only sell something if I believe in it. So I'm saying, let's make our employees believe in us. Let's make them believe in our mission and what we're doing to help the world. And, you know, it depends how many employees you have, but you have 21 more sales people on your staff. Okay. So I think that these three principles are a really good way for us to help our teams believe in our companies and what we do. So I want to talk about first of all, unifying our brands and our teams. I want to talk about linking our teams with the end results. And I want to talk about leading intentionally. So these first slides here
<Laugh>, I I'll be honest with you. I was going through my presentation and I'm like, this is such a common thing to talk about. We all know that we need good within our companies. We all know that we need our employees to trust each other and to like each other and to care about each other. And so I want to rip through these slides pretty fast and talk about the second two topics a little bit more, but at Microbe Formulas, first of all, I should say, we are a supplement company. <Laugh> we create supplements for detoxing, immune support, gut health, that type of thing, but we're also a really creative, fun group of people. And we come up with some pretty off the wall ideas. And so I just kind of wanted to share with you some of our ideas
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That's okay. So we're going to go through like 10 and I'll make it pretty quick. One of the first ideas of course is when we're doing community events and building our brand, and we've already taught our employees to believe in our company. We might as well have them representing us at community events. So we have a partnership with BSU athletics, and also with their leadership development department. And so one of the things we get to do is we get to represent our company on game day. And we had so much fun just inviting our employees to come hang out with us and invite people to take pictures, you know, post on social media. So community events is one, here's some other funny ones. We did a field day last year. And we're going to continue to do it every summer. Of course, just like, you know, was that wheelbarrow races.
We had a blow up obstacle course, all of those things. So fun. This one's called draw your friends. And we all, during our lunch break, sat together, drew a name out of the hat, whoever you drew was the person you had to physically draw. So we each drew each other. You can see our chief technical officer here. Sorry, jump back. Shawnda, my boss, VP of communications. It doesn't want you to see <laugh> anyway, these are so fun. This is Kay. Who's right there. She's my counterpart public relations also at Microbe Formulas. So really fun activity. Hang out with your friends, Y your coworkers make them, your friends interact with them. Who's that baby, we had everyone submit their baby picture. And during passing time, people got to go through and yes, who was who? This is me right here. Still cute. No, I'm just kidding.
And celebrating birthdays obviously. We had someone get married recently. We got together, got them a visa card. I'm sure a lot of you do this already. So onto the next, holidays, of course, Christmas time Halloween, we had an activity where we got everyone together for this. One's actually really unique. <Laugh> I had never done this before, but we had teams build leprechaun traps, which was so fun. So this is my team. And I got to work with our VP of marketing, who I don't actually interact with that often. So it was a really good opportunity for me as well on the networking front to get to know other leaders in my company. And for them to kinda like trust me in a way, like, look, I can engineer a leprechaun trap. <Laugh>. Here we also did a shark tank.
<Laugh> yeah, it's really in depth. I'll show you the video shark tank. We had teams get together and come up with a marketing idea for our company and then present it to leadership. So what, not only are we asking people to step outside their comfort zone coming up with awesome ideas. We told them no budget, say whatever you want. You know, we had one team come up with, let's do a wellness retreat. Let's take a bunch of people to The Bahamas. Let's rent an island and we're like, we can try <laugh>. And then I just want to circle back. We actually have a committee that's dedicated to planning and executing these team team building activities. And if you personally ever want some fun, crazy ideas, please reach out to me. And my team Shawnda, our VP of communications is off the wall. She has so many crazy fun ideas, and I sincerely would love to help you guys out connect with you all of those things.
So please like reach out to us. Our team's pretty, we really like that stuff. <Laugh> okay. So moving on the second point, I think it, this is way, way, way important. I think you guys recognize that as well, but linking our teams to the end result, I think, okay. First I'll say it's really important, of course, for individuals to see how their work is impacting customers, how they are individually. Seeing the world I previously was working as a project manager on a marketing team, and I found myself less and less satisfied with my work because I was doing all this behind the scenes, you know, technical planning, things like that. And I didn't get to see what is this doing? So it took me some time to figure out like, how can I connect to the end result? How can I feel passion and satisfaction in my job?
Because I'm changing the world somehow. A, a lot of us think that knowing our mission statement as a company is really important, but I really don't think our mission statement say everything right? So the micro formula's mission statement is creating solutions. That work is what we do restoring hope and health is who we are. Yeah. Okay. That's beautiful. <Laugh> and, and we should know it, but what does that mean to me as a person? And so I think that we should really individually be able to explain what we do and how we impact the world. And I kind of today want to break that just into two parts. So, first of all, specifically like objectively, specifically, this is what the customer got out of what you do. And then generally more like metaphorically, how are we changing the world? So on the next slide, this is an example of specific impact, right?
So you can see, this is a testimonial here in, at Microbe Formulas. We have a slack channel called epic reviews. We invite all of our people to share reviews that they find so that people like us, who don't necessarily interact with the customers every day, get to see the cool stuff we're doing, how we're changing people's lives. So you can see here. Like, I don't think I realized how bad I was feeling before. Thank you for the recommendation and excellent guidance. Like that's powerful to be like, wow, like we're actually changing people's lives. So on the next slide, this is actually a concept that I just started thinking about. I would say like two days ago, <laugh> I I, as Matt knows, I changed my presentation very last minute last night, but I got the opportunity to participate in this online event. And it was called the pursuit of happiness.
So the entire thing hosted by the Atlantic was about how can we be more satisfied with our lives? And one of the topics that really, really stuck out to me Arthur C. Brooks, he talks about how important it is for us to connect to who we're actually serving. So here's the example we talked about an insurance agent, right? An insurance agent potentially every day could be going to their jobs being like, oh, you know, like I have to convince these people that they need insurance. It's like pulling teeth or getting people to eat their vegetables. I know they need it, but they don't know they need it. So of course, someone with that mindset going to work every day, that sounds terrible. <Laugh> offense if anyone's an insurance, but we can change that. What if this person was thinking as an insurance agent, I get to take fear away from these people.
They get to sit in comfort, knowing that they're covered no matter what happens. And instead of worrying about what could happen, the potential terrible outcomes, they get to focus on their passion, their mission, what they want to do and give to the world. So just imagine, you know, in each of our areas, we were able to help each of our individual employees be like, this is what I'm doing every day. This, this, this is the person I'm helping metaphorically. I actually just really quick to O I want to open up a question to you guys. Do you have any examples of how or who is the person that you dedicate your work to? Who is that end user? What are you doing for them quick though? Cause we don't have a lot of time. <Laugh> someone, hopefully your brains are still working. Now we're getting glazed. We
Do leadership training and we've had women that say that they feel more confident at work and they feel more equipped to do their job. And especially when their job might be really stressful. So like we have women from the department of corrections that have talked about that impact and that's definitely something that drives
Me. Cool. Cool. So being able to personally reflect and, and be like that insurance agent, I'm taking fear today. I'm going to go to work. I'm going to take fear away from someone so they can actualize. They can work for their passion. Okay. So I changed my wording on this to intentional leaderships. So Carrie Ann and I are on the same page here. I feel like this is probably the most important topic I wanted to talk about today. Obviously being at the manager level, I'm at a little different level than some of you here. And I figured the reason I was invited to speak today was to give my perspective. And I think it might be a little different hopefully than what you've heard. Just like a little more insight.
So first of all, <laugh> engaging employees in the process. As you can probably all bring to mind yourself, like involved employees care more. If they were involved in the process of creating something, just think how much more excited they are about that, how much more pride they have. And they're able to say, I'm a part of that. Like this was my company, we did this awesome thing. So here's an example. <Laugh> so going back to the very beginning of the process of the creation of this billboard you can imagine us as a team getting together and brainstorming, right. We're brainstorming ideas for a new billboard campaign. And yeah. Like I said, microforms, we are off the wall. We're trying to catch eyes, get excitement around gut health. And so we're coming up with all these ideas, you know gut worms, like talking about parasites or like sharing statistics or, you know, we're like, let's do a product like throwing products in water and being like, you know, get out of the deep end or whatever.
We're coming up with all of these ideas and eventually landed on yay. I pooped today. And this was actually because my boss Shawnda was chatting with a friend who called her and was like, I feel so much better today cuz you know, stuff happened that should have happened. <Laugh> and we're all like that's a thing, you know, like we're excited when things are working properly anyway <laugh> so we decided on this, obviously it went to publish and because employees were involved in the process, we were so much more excited to be like, that's my company, you know? And, and it is pretty funny too <laugh> and these two are actually employees of Microbe Formulas. So our social media manager and one of our design managers are there in the photo. But I, I just can't stress this topic enough. I think that my personality, as I learn and grow my default is to think that I know best.
Right. You know, we all think we know best, but even when like this first bullet point here, even when you could do it yourself, there's so much value in asking for other people's ideas so that they feel heard and understood and connected to it's just like you were talking about like, no one cares about your knowledge until they know you care so much. I think the was, felt said better. <Laugh> <laugh> I dunno who it was. So let's make them feel the care and maybe you get a good idea out of it and you end up pivoting your original idea. Maybe you don't, but the time was worth it because they know you care.
Okay. So intentional leaders are unified and Karianne talks a lot about this. Just how important like culture and eventually brand starts with leadership and being unified two parts to this. So first of all, one thing that being in my position that I see more than people who potentially are on a leadership team is that it's really frustrating when one leader says one thing and one leader says a different thing. Right? And so one of the solutions that I propose for this issue is that we delegate tasks and we trust that leader to be the decision maker in that area. Right. So in your leadership team you know, you choose your chief marketing officer and you're like, okay, we want to do this campaign. These are the guidelines run with it. And you better have hired someone who you trust enough to create the idea and execute it and not have to have a say in every tiny detail.
So I'm seeing that the kind of like the micromanagement and people putting themselves in places they don't belong is slowing everyone down and hurting. Like we're working on things for two weeks and then someone comes to us and is like, actually we hate that. And we're like, freaking cool. <Laugh> so that's the second point here is like MIS misdirection can really hurt and we, we feel it it's, we can feel a vibe of you not being unified. And I really think at the leadership level, obviously you don't have to agree about everything, but you do have to trust, you do have to decide and put your heart behind that and show hope to your team that this is the right direction. And that kind of leads into here, clear communication. And this is kind of where I come in. My passion is internal communications and just how important it is that we have that consistency like Karianne talked about and clarity.
And I, I wrote it down. I love the fact like clarity is kindness. I think this is silly, but the thing that I think of, of course being in my stage and age and whatever is dating, right? Say you're interested in someone and you're not clear with them, or they're not clear with you how hurtful it can be. It can be if you're not clear with each other and it's that same thing in business. Like if you're not clear about the direction or you're not clear able to tell someone like, Hey, this isn't actually what I want you doing. This is what I want you doing. It hurts for a second. It's uncomfortable for a second, but in the end there's more trust because they know you're willing to correct them if you're wrong. So yeah, definitely very passionate about communications and it is the worst when they try to read your mind and then it's just gossip it's he said, she said, and, and even between leaders, you know, we'll have one leader tell us this and other leaders telling us this. And we're like, well, this leader said, you know, so I think overall just connecting people to leadership, having that intentional leadership mindset can really be a game changer for our brand in the end.
Yeah. So I truly believe that through these three principles here, I think this is the way to a unified cohesive, powerful brand unified she's got it. <Laugh> and I think if we implement these they can be game changers for our brand externally and internally.
And one of the main ideas with the employees being your ambassadors was just when they're in any networking situation, whether it's a party or it's an event like this, and they're asked about our company after implementing those three principles, we now have employees that have positive sentiment toward the company, because they're unified. They care about each other and they know the company cares about them. Secondly, they have clarity on how they're helping the world and how we are helping the world and third confidence in where we're headed, because of that clear communication, they're engaged in the process and they're connected to leadership and that's everything.