Amanda Slavin, Co-Founder & CEO, CatalystCreativ
Amanda Slavin is the Founder & CEO of the award-winning, experiential and engagement marketing firm, CatalystCreativ, and Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree for Advertising and Marketing. With a Masters of Curriculum and Instruction from NEAG School of Education at UCONN and a rich history in the nightlife and entertainment industries, Amanda now fuses her diverse expertise to help brands achieve deep and meaningful engagement with customers that goes far beyond superficial likes and shares on social media.
https://www.catalystcreativ.com/
https://the-seventhlevel.com/
AUTOMATED EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
[00:00:01] You're listening to Scaling Up Services where we speak with entrepreneurs authors business experts and thought leaders to give you the knowledge and insights you need to scale your service based business faster and easier. And now here is your host Business Coach Bruce Eckfeldt.
[00:00:22] Are you a CEO looking to scale your company faster and easier. Checkout Thrive Roundtable thrive combines a moderated peer group mastermind expert one on one coaching access to proven growth tools and a 24/7 support community created by Inc award winning CEO and certified scaling up business coach Bruce Eckfeldt. Thrive will help you grow your business more quickly and with less drama. For more details about the program, visit eckfeldt.com/thrive . That’s E C K F E L D T. com / thrive
[00:00:57] Welcome everyone. This is Scaling Up Services. I'm Bruce Eckfeldt, I'm your host. And our guest today is Amanda Slavin. She is CEO and Founder of CatalystCreativ. She's also the author of The Seventh Level. We're going to talk to her about engagement, engaging employees, engaging customers, critical for service based businesses. We were talking about the fact that for many service companies, their entire value assets walk out the door every day and hopefully return the next day. So getting engagement right is going to be really key. So I'm excited for this conversation with that. Amanda, welcome to the program.
[00:01:32] Thanks so much for having me. And yes, I felt I was laughing silently as you were talking. Yes. They could just walk right out your door. What a major asset you're here. Distinct value proposition and can just walk out the door. So excited to chat more about how to keep them engaged.
[00:01:48] Yeah, exactly. It's a. A little bit with background. How did you get into this space?
[00:01:52] How did engagement become a topic for you? And then and then we're kind of dig into the topic and what people can learn from it.
[00:01:58] Sure. So I have a master's in curriculum and instruction. So as a teacher and during my master's year, I wrote my thesis on engagement. And I wanted to really understand, assess, identify what engagement actually looks like when it comes to learning. And, you know, and really be able to kind of think outside the box when it came to absorbing information, applying information with, you know, a non-conventional way of learning. So that to me started with what engagement looks like. It wasn't necessarily just about, again, test scores or or again teaching to the middle, if you will. It was really about this nuanced approach to connecting with your quote-unquote customers, which for my students and garnering their attention to get them to think differently about a subject and then applying that subject so that they can then grow as an individual. And then I ended up in hospitality and the restaurant industry shortly after and and applied that theory that, you know, that understanding of engagement, a framework which was which essentially is the seventh level into the hospitality industry and helped build, you know, multi million dollar restaurant brand all over the country and really started to recognize that there was a lot that customers and students had in common. And it was all around this idea, again, of garnering attention and connection. And I mean, to do that, it really required this understanding of your customer in this deep way of being able to connect with them and make them feel seen, heard and and then walk them up this customer journey. And again, it's it's really depends on what you're trying to sell them, whether that was math or an open bar package.
[00:03:21] But it actually is very similar in the way of how we could combine those things. Yeah.
[00:03:28] But, you know, and in the sense of then, you know, how I built my company, I ended up meeting my business partner, Tony Shea, who see of Zappos and a super passionate about customer service and corporate culture and and really, again, kind of going the extra mile to to engage his employees and his customers. And I ended up starting the company with him seven years ago, as well as, you know, my my best friend, Robert. He's, you know, kind of an experienced all design expert. And we started the company with the intention to use my understanding of engagement, of education, of branding, of experiential and marketing, you know, with kind of this combination of efforts of understanding the internal customer or the employee, as well as the external customers through being able to offer creative services, all with this foundation of understanding engagement. So starting with how do we deeply connect with our customers and then determine creative outputs to help execute on behalf of that understanding of what we need to do to connect with that customer.
[00:04:25] Fascinating. Until it's I guess let's define engagement. And we we have I think in the industry through all these terms of, you know, satisfaction and enjoyment and happiness and all these things, like why I guess my engagement and what is what does it mean? How is it different and why is it kind of more important or why is become a good way of kind of evaluating relationships with internal and external customers?
[00:04:50] Yeah, I love that question. So I this is I talk a lot about this in the book because the definition we have of engagement is first of all, wrong. And also everyone has a definition. So so I think, you know, the first thing that in terms of the way that I define engagement is this meaningful connection between a person and another person or an idea or a brand or a concept. It's that real connection that we're measuring and that meaningful connection. And what I mean by that is, you know, so often we think of engagement as binary where it's engaged. Disengagement, when, in fact, you know, the 7th level framework has seven distinct levels of engagement and each level has an action associated with that so that you can actually start to identify again where your customer, whether it be an internal customer and external customer or a potential relationship, you know, your kids where they fall into those levels. So disengagement is actually level one of the summit bubble framework. And the seventh level is defined as literate thinking. And literate thinking is when your personal values and beliefs align with a message. And that's what we're all really striving for. You know, when we talk about businesses and we we look at those businesses and we especially again in the service space industry where we're constantly trying to sell companies on, you know, you want to be the next Apple or Nike or Google or whatever it may be the next, you know, big company with these very visceral messages and these very strong identities. And, you know, we are striving towards a set of bubble without actually having that terminology in that language. And same thing with our employees. You know, our employees are our best customers, and they have access to tools that allow for them to share their opinions and perspectives of our company, particularly Glassdoor is one where they are now.
[00:06:26] Either the biggest advocates of our company is or, you know, biggest detractors, depending our news. Yeah, exactly.
[00:06:34] So I think I think it's really important that, you know, we want employees want to have a sense of purpose and identity and connection to their workplaces, workplaces. Systrom have dramatically changed on what employees are expecting and employers want more from their employees. But, you know, again, it's where do we begin and end this term? Ubiquitous term of engagement normally is defined as productivity or, you know, again, in marketing and social media marketing its likes or comments or shares. That's how we define engagement. But that's not the way that that I define engagement. The seventh level and personalized beliefs or y is what I feel we are striving for when it comes to engagement. But the real question is how do we get there? And that's those, you know, seven distinct levels being able to climb step by step towards this highest form of connection.
[00:07:17] So I'm the Glassdoor comment is making a connection for me because I'm one of the things that I've kind of discovered a red over time. I've had several clients who have been frustrated with Glassdoor ratings. And, you know, they get a negative comment.
[00:07:29] And one thing that I've learned to kind of distinguishes between, you know, just a raw and negative comment and a comment that is an indicator of someone who is not a cultural fit in. And what I'm finding or what I've kind of learned over time is actually negative comments are not bad, particularly when they're they're characterizing why the type of person who would not be a good fit at this company.
[00:07:52] Yes. And in fact, I think a lot of people are looking at Glasser ratings. And if all they see is positive feedback, they get skeptical. But if they see that, you know, one or two people who have been like, you know what, I left here or I was fired because, you know, they think this is really important. And that's just not something that I'm focused on. If that helps me see what it's like to work at the company, that can actually be a good thing.
[00:08:12] Yes. I talked about this all. I love that you're saying this. I also talked about it with Yelp reviews, by the way.
[00:08:17] Oh, yeah. Because it's about it's not a I guess maybe the idea. Which is why I like the engagement term rather than kind of happiness or satisfaction. Because, you know, I mean, satisfaction seems like such a low bar, as you said.
[00:08:31] Yeah. Well, you know, I say what? I could be a lot better. Yeah. That's a barometer.
[00:08:34] But but it's about this fit. It's about a cultural fit. Not necessarily about, you know, it being fun. Is this is this the right place for me? Is this the right product for me? Is this the right company to be working with? The fact is, it's not going to be for everyone. And the more that that can be distinguished, I think the more successful you can have actually kind of this this unique, valuable position in a market or in a from an industry point of view.
[00:08:56] Yes, a million percent. And, you know, when it comes to the opposite of engagement, I said disengage and level one of these seven levels, the opposite of engagement is apathy, not necessarily disengagement. So disengagement is defined as when someone is avoiding or idle from the task at hand. That's very different than an apathetic person, an apathetic person. That's why I use Yelp as an example, as someone that really just wants to, you know, be a hater.
[00:09:19] And. Yeah, you could tell on Glassdoor, too, when someone is just really resentful and angry and spiteful as opposed to if someone is really tried to give constructive feedback to someone that is looking for a job to help them. That's a very different place that they're coming from. And, you know, level three is frustrating engagement, which is when you want to engage or something, but you're distracted. So, you know, perhaps there was distractions that were limiting for that customer, that employee. And they're communicating those distractions and they're coming from a place that is, again, productive, not destructive. And I think that that there's an opportunity. And I'll also say with what you what you just mentioned around and if the right fit the framework, you know, you start with identifying your own seventh bubble statement. And what that means is before you can connect with someone else's personal values and beliefs. You have to identify your own. But that's the beginning. I think a lot of times as companies, we want this simplified version of how to connect with our customers and we want, you know, this very easy formula. It's like, okay, now we know what we stand for. So here's this like Losey mission statement we're gonna put on our website.
[00:10:19] Everyone's going to. You know, this is who we are. But you start with your seventh level statement and then you go through the framework one through seven and use that as a lens in which you connect with others. And some people, you know, might status engaged at the level one. Your job is to identify who is your customer and how are you connecting with them. And then at level to unsystematic engagement, it's when someone's confused by the messaging. So at your job there is to talk to figure out how are you talking to that customer using your SL statement? So it's not changing who you are to fit the needs of who you feel again as your customer. It's communicating who you are based on who your customer is. And so as you just said, again, not everyone is going to be obsessed with you, but it's being able to discern between that apathetic person that's just, you know, got a hater and someone that really is trying to help and and wants to communicate maybe those distractions that limited them from being their best self in that job.
[00:11:10] Yeah. So. So we started with the seventh level statement. Walk us through the seven levels that we then apply or we then use to validate or to put this in place.
[00:11:20] Sure. So there we broke out the the levels into three buckets attract, engage and delight. So the bottom three levels are all around attracting your customer and we the whole entire book has broken out with into your internal customer, which again I keep using that as a reference. Is employees an external customer, which is your audience. So you start with disengagement and the one, two and three are for me really around identifying problems that could surface that were so often ignoring. And we're just thinking that again, we're gonna put something out in the world and we're going to build it and they're going to com and everyone's going to be happy. But that's not normally how it is. So so when when you know, coming up. And the framework can be used for a project. It can be used. Overall, like to assess your culture. But I'll use it in the sense here of just how it works generally. So level 1 disengagement I've already mentioned defined as someone avoiding your ideal from a task at hand. The framework works for there's an action questions and a goal. So perhaps at that level it could be that, you know, you send out an email to your team and your employees are not responding or majority or not responding.
[00:12:20] And then questions would be, you know, as email, the best way to communicate with them have a shared why this is important to me. You know, have I created rules around, you know, when what I expect from employees when I send out an email and then goals would be to set the guidelines around communication process. So that's one example of one level level to unsystematic engagement when they're confused by the messaging. This is a lot of the times with with employees, particularly in service based companies that are reliant on client work. You know, the services sometimes change based on the client, which is exhausting. You want to keep the services the same, but then you also want to be able to pay payroll. So you just have to have them balance. So it's extremely important a level to that. You know, employees know what their responsibilities and roles are internal to the organization as well as external to clients and that there's no confusion. And this is where account managers and project managers come in. This is a huge thing that we've really needed to wear a fully remote team or 10 people. And then we have contractors and vendors based on projects like know those contractors and vendors and freelancers can't. There's not a sense of accountability or responsibility on those people that you would have for your internal full time team. So how are you identifying roles, responsibilities? How are you ensuring that everyone's on the same page? How are you also assessing who's going to be managing those freelancers and hundreds? It all seems like while we're already doing this, but it's not all in one place.
[00:13:39] So the framework allows for you to do one, two and then three frustrated engagement, which is again when you want to engage or something, but you're distracted. So going back to those employees walking out the door, this is extremely also important when it comes to B2B service based companies is that there's just so much going on for so many different clients as well as your own business. And so, you know, Slack, which is always bring up slack, which I love for certain things, is also can be very distracting when you need to do higher level thinking and really kind of buckle down and do work by yourself or with one team member that you're getting 200 slack messages. So it's around limiting the distractions for your employees or for your customers at level 3. So that's attract. So once you've been able to attract your customer, will that be internal or external? You can then start to engage with them and interact with them and level four. And I've got I'm mainly focused on employees at this point, but I could do this all throughout. For marketing as well. But for for its structure, dependent engagement and structure. Dependent engagement is really kind of the traditional work environment with micromanaging. So chucker dependent engagement, do this, do that and then someone does it. So this is kind of the way that again, I talked about before was social media marketing like likes, comments, shares a share of this comment below.
[00:14:54] Like you can kind of transactional.
[00:14:56] Exactly. Four and five or very transactional. That's correct. And which is fine. I actually feel the reason why I like this framework is because you're building off of each level. So you're not like building a house on sand. But also, you know, I think sometimes as millennials, I'm like an elder millennial.
[00:15:12] It's what I call myself all the time. The millennial gap is so big, you know, from like a fetus to like.
[00:15:22] So, you know, I feel that when it comes to millennials and when when companies talk about millennials, I think they they really kind of only talk about like this mission, vision, inspirational communication, processing without recognizing the importance of you start to do your work. You start to get things done. You start to offer insight like there still needs to be transactions involved if you want to be a business and not a nonprofit. So for structure to get engagement, do this, do that. It's really based on clear call to actions, you know, and you're always going through going looking at one, two and three. So who am I speaking to? How am I speaking to them? What am I saying to them? And limiting the distractions so that I can then continue to have them do the job. But sometimes people don't want to, you know, do what you ask of them. And they need some type of incentive. And that's five and five is self-regulated interest when you're picking someone's interest and getting them excited. And that's an employee standard. It's, you know, commissions, bonuses, vacation days, comp days, like anything that's piquing their interest. Again, it's fairly transactional when you get to the top two levels.
[00:16:20] You know, the delight the delight bucket six is when you're inspiring someone to set goals to make a difference in their life. So that's when your employees are really starting to think differently about how to build the business and how to be involved in those processes and and how to grow within the organization. Not only for themselves, but for the company. And they start to see the company as this malleable, you know, organism, if you will, that they have a way of being able to improve. And then finally, visa above all, when their personal values and beliefs align, it's when they really become these brand advocates for your company. And that's what you see with Fortune 100 best places to work at. And you know, these top agencies where these people are, you know, wearing the merchandise and, you know, representing the brand on their social media without being asked or referring, you know, referring other employees. And really staying there for the long haul because they believe in what the company stands for. So that's kind of that entire process. And again, the whole the way it works is we have all these free resources on our Web site, but it's action question goal identifying action per level, questions that guide you and a goal to help bring you to that next level. Always striving towards that. That seventh level, that deep, meaningful connection with your customers.
[00:17:25] Yeah. Is a great one.
[00:17:26] The one the one that I see so many public companies kind of struggle with or they make a big pivot around is when they go from this kind of managing the role, you know, giving people, you know, clarity around roles, which is really important to really giving clarity around career development, because I think that, you know, so many companies just kind of think about all of their people just kind of staying in their current roles and just kind of not realizing that, you know, one of the basic needs that people have is to grow and, you know, improve and take on new challenges and to excel. And one of the big challenges with growth or one of the big reasons that people that companies need to grow is to accommodate that. Right. And we'll sit in a room and we'll go I'll ask somebody at the table and say, OK, are you okay? Be in your position for the next 20 years. You know, and they look at me like, you know, it's and then the CEO is gonna like, oh, I get it right. Like, one of the reasons I have to think about how I'm going to grow and Skelton's business is because, you know, I people want to grow in scale and they want new opportunities if I'm not providing it. You know, that means they're going somewhere, somewhere else. And if I expect to keep them around, I need to create that opportunity.
[00:18:28] Yeah. And I really like it, though, where it's not in the same bucket, you know, level to want systematic engagement. Confused by the messaging combating that is clearly defining roles and accountabilities six. I mean, that's a huge jump from two to six. Is that career development and the personal goal setting and being able to really help the individuals shine and determine determine what goals even look like and how to set those goals? I mean, so that's a you know, if we bunch them all in the same in the same category. That's what I think we become limited because we can't discern between, you know, what what are the first thing that we need to do? You know, what are those first steps? But if we break it out, we're like, OK, to is just about identify and I can go. This is probably a whole other podcasts that we have to do because my company operates it's something within it. Corporate infrastructure called to locker C really?
[00:19:14] Which is a self organization. Yeah. So say well. So. Oh so Brian's like the one who trained me.
[00:19:21] Brian. Well, very, very well. So Tony, you know, Zappos is one of like the largest companies that self-organize. And in the beginning of of his investment within Zappos of a locker C, he offered a few companies to be trained idiocracy and become self organized. And I was one of those companies. So I, you know, became fully trained in a locker C and we do like Holacracy Lite or like Diet Locker C, like our own version. But when it comes to roles and accountabilities, I do think Joe Ocracy does a great job. And there's you know, again, I think there's things to be taken from it and there's things that might not work for everyone, but the roles and accountabilities, identifying what, you know, not just having a job title and then assuming that that job title means that, you know what you're actually doing on a day to day basis, but separating the separating that out based on the roles and accountability that the organization needs and then identifying the people that fill those roles is something a ocracy does.
[00:20:10] I agree. I came out of the lean, agile space and was through those things. But yet I had one of these.
[00:20:16] I was like about Holacracy and kind of the concepts behind it was.
[00:20:19] Was being intentional and being very specific around functional accountability and process and discussion and decision making, and I mean, I think that serves companies well, particularly when they're growing and scaling quickly, because the fact is the needs change, right? I mean, at the moment, you figure it out for what you need today. Tomorrow it's going to be outdated. Right. So the real power comes in a company's ability to constantly question and change that as the situation changes. And I think a lot of companies just get stuck, right. They get fixed on a way of doing things that ends up becoming the biggest bottleneck as they grow to go to grow in scale.
[00:20:53] Yeah. And I think CEOs get stuck. You know, I think I think that's where I remember Brian saying he he really built a ocracy for the CEO as well. Because, you know, I say this is a big thing with level six where if you want to inspire someone to set goals to make a difference in their life and in the organization, then you need to create a culture that's conducive for goal setting for the company. And so I don't really understand companies where like the executive at the top makes these decisions, which impacts, you know, all of the people who are then doing the work. And there's no real process other than like maybe a feedback forum that allows for the people who are doing the work to make the decisions and actually guide a lot of the, you know, the CEO and a lot of ways. So, you know, I think that that's why I really appreciated having a process that, you know, Locker's is all based on tension's the space between where the company is and where the company could be. And it allows for everyone in the organization to be thinking differently. And even if that's all that Holacracy does, you know, even if it's not, take a company going from a hierarchy and a bureaucracy to being self-organised. If all that a company thinks about is OK, you know, the tension is I call it potential, but like where the company is, is where the company could be. What that space in between. What can we do to move the company forward? And what can each and every individual be thinking about to move the company forward, not just themselves. I feel like it at least gives more again of that of that malleability and that flexibility with scaling a business. Or again, sometimes you're not just scaling. You're also downsizing in order to scale. So it's like what does the company need at that moment?
[00:22:23] Yeah, it does an important point. It's it's really about what's the next what's the next most sort of beneficial configuration of the company that will get us to where we ultimately did be. And yes, sometimes that is is downsizing or transforming or pivoting into another mode in order to get us to our long term goal. So, yeah, I do. I think one big takeaway for me, for folks listening is this idea of really kind of evolving from management by kind of prescriptive rule definition, like, you know, CEO leader as, okay, I'm going to figure out what all the rules are and figure out what our services are. I'm going to define all the boxes and then I'm going to put people in boxes. And that's gonna be my operational excellence strategy, you know, to really one more of how do I create a culture of identifying functional needs, identifying those gaps and then the processes and the culture and the resources that are gonna allow people to figure out how to fill those gaps and then evolve themselves through that system. I think it's a really big is a big change. I'm not I'm not sure every CEO can make that. But there may be, you know, a little bit of a challenge for a lot of folks in there. But I think it's an important kind of reframing of what does it mean to be an excellent leader? What does it mean to be an excellent manager and those kind of high growth situations?
[00:23:40] Yeah, I'm like the most type-A person ever. So the only way that I felt that anyone would ever be able to get a word in or communicate or share insights, which I wanted, because everyone who works at the company is smarter at something more than one thing, many things than me or or why would I need them to, you know, work at the company? So I needed to create structures that would really shut me up. And how locker. see? You know, it's when the person is talking, it's the person's proposal. It's not all about what you think. And you know, and I think that that's extremely important. And I you know, I only say that because I talk extremely fast and I'm, you know, very loud and animated and charismatic. And I think those are the leaders that need infrastructures like this more than ever, because, you know, it's very lonely. You don't realize you just kind of do it based on what feels normal to you and you just keep going and going and going. But then you realize that there's so many people that want to.
[00:24:34] And also, it's, you know, my seven level statements, I believe in the power of inspiring and educating like I believe that everyone deserves the right to be inspired and educated. So that is the way that I want to work at a company. You know, I wouldn't want a company where I was having to be at Level 4 all the time and tell everyone what to do all of the time like that wouldn't feel gratifying to me. So I wanted in a a way of creating an organization that allowed for each and every person to step into whatever greatness that was for them in and outside of the workplace and challenged them to grow as human beings. So that to me is important to me. But maybe it's unimportant. Everyone everyone has to identify again that seventh level statement. You could do your own personal and your company is seventh level statement to use that as the North Star in which you then. Make your decisions and, you know, you know, determine what's best for you and for your company.
[00:25:23] Yeah. You know, I'm curious and with the leaders and the companies you've worked with as you go through this process, I have to imagine that if you take a company who hasn't really done much of this and you get them super clear on their seventh level statement, you get the leader really clear on what their personal Seven-Eleven statement is, that that you are potentially in a situation where there's a whole bunch of people in the company that are not aligned to that. How does that come up? We'll deal with that. I mean, what's I mean, there's there's there's a there's fallout that we run into this agile in time running companies. Yes. Hire us and we come in and do an agile transformation. And the first conversation I'd have with the CEO is like, look, you have to be prepared for 20 to 30 percent of your people leaving. Yeah, I'm not okay with that. We should not do this project because if we're really going to do this, it means that we are we're laying down a new framework for thinking, for working, for operating, from making decisions. And not everyone's gonna be okay with that. So I'm curious if you run into that and how you kind of advisor process that with the companies in leadership.
[00:26:21] Yeah. So I think, you know, again, once you identify that seventh level statement, it should it should be. I would hope that it wouldn't be so far off from what companies have already been doing, because that would be very scary. And if it is very far off, then there needs to be a full. As you mentioned, like a full reorg around. OK, what is wrong here and how have you gone so long without understanding? Again, this Northstar is like g._p._s. And you know where what has been directing you thus far? So I think that's kind of a bigger a bigger problem. I call it brand acupuncture, like this idea of really, you know, you go into a room and it is actually why this bubble was so important to me and it is so important to me because as an agency, we would get hired for one problem that was on the surface. And so, you know, maybe again, it was like, build us a Web site, produce an event, create a marketing campaign. But then once we could have done a little bit deeper, we were like, oh, but there's a lot more problems that we're not being hired to solve. And this is affecting us being able to do our job. And so, you know, it's it's really not setting us up for success or the company up for success. It's like putting really a Band-Aid on a much bigger problem. And with acupuncture, it's being able to kind of identify that very specific pain point. So what I what I've seen is, you know, by using this framework and walking through the process, you're really starting to see where your employees are within these levels.
[00:27:43] And, you know, ninety nine point nine percent of the time. Well, I would just say 100 percent of your employees are not going to I'll be at the seventh level, which just makes no sense. But it's really important that and that's where the framework, I think is a little bit less daunting, that if I were to go in and be like, oh, you are really screwed, like you have not been living by yourself. It and everyone's going to leave. It's more like, OK. So 30 percent. And we actually have a qualitative and quantitative assessment like diagnostics that go into companies and say like, OK, where are your companies around this issue, this launch, this concept, your mission, your values, whatever? And we can then start to look at, OK, 30 percent of your employees are, you know, maybe at level 3 or most of your employees are level 5. How do we get them to 6? How do we get them to four? So it's really about being able to, again, identify where these individuals are within these levels and then helping them get to that next level. Always striving towards some level, but recognizing that, you know, you might not get there with everyone. But the other important thing to note is that those who have reached the seventh level is to keep them at the seventh level and not to lose them and to utilize them in a way that helps you build your business.
[00:28:46] So it's not just all on you. So those who are deeply engaged, what are you doing with those people to continue to build your business? So even in that company where, you know, maybe there's 20 to 30 percent drop off, there's probably 20 to 30 percent of people that are obsessed with what you're doing, but you don't even know where they are or what to do with them. And maybe you're treating them the same way as you're treating those people who are at level 2 or 3. And that's a big problem to me, is we need to have a way of being able to do it also in an unemotional way. Non-Personal way. Like not be like that person's my favorite. And that person is just annoying. It's more like those people are deeply engaged and those people are distracted. And how can I get those distracted people to be more productive? Or how can I get, you know, those people who are at self-regulate interest, who are doing it because of the money to be a little bit more inspired? And how can I get those who are disengaged to be maybe a little bit more understanding of what they're up to and not so confused by their job? So I think it's it's a it's a little bit of an easier thing to wrap your head around. It's not as daunting as again. As I mentioned before, just like, well, everyone hates you.
[00:29:44] So tell me a little bit about the companies you work with. What are your engagements like? Give me some insights into the work that you do.
[00:29:52] Sure. So, I mean, really for the past. So we're a seven year old company, Cattles Creative is. And the seventh level has been our methodology that really our secret sauce that we've used and creative output. So we've worked with a lot of major brands like Coca-Cola, W Tell's and Dell and Google, and it's really been on utilizing our framework to assess what we need to do creatively, whether that is, as I mentioned before, an output like, OK, you need a new Web site. What are the problems? How are we using the seventh? Framework to identify those problems and then the solution is a Web site. Up until a year ago where I again as this educator and if my seven bubbles statements to inspire educate. I didn't really realize that I was just selling fish and not teaching anyone how to fish. And then I always say, like, when you're standing on the sun, you're blind, like when you're doing it. You're not necessarily realizing what you're actually doing and that you're like, you know, the cobbler's kids have no shoes. So we really backtracked and were like, we need to get the seventh ball out there and get everyone to understand that and to know about it and to learn about it as opposed to us just using it for our own for our own ways of being.
[00:30:54] So we have multiple ways of working with with companies, whether that's again, we have an internal, as I mentioned, diagnostics tool fuel or we work with internal organizations through surveys, through interviews, through this analysis and really identify where their employees are within this engagement, disengagement, scale, fuel. We have an external engagement roadmap. So we work with companies and we use the framework to say, OK, let's analyze all of the work that you're doing in terms of your your external efforts with your audience and then use this to determine, OK, where where's your resource allocation? How much money are you spending per love her. Like, let's say, you know, analyzing a quarter, an effort, efforts over a quarter. And we could actually see like you're spending 90 percent of your budget at level 5. But it seems like your customers are actually at a level, too. So what are you doing to get them from two to three? Why are you spending all of this stuff on influencer marketing level 5 or sweepstakes or, you know, promotions when you should really be focusing on clarifying your message at level 2? So it's being able to create that success roadmap of like this is where you should be spending your money. These are the resource that you should be, you know, utilizing in-house. These are the resource you should be outsourcing.
[00:32:00] And then these are your next steps. And then we also have, you know what, on one more consultative individual packages where we work with, you know, one person and we say or, you know, a very small business and we say, OK, let's use the framework to be able to just give you kind of a smaller package. So like, what is your seventh goal statement? What's your positioning? What's your messaging? How can you start from the beginning to really make sure that you're coming from this place? That is true to to what you believe in. And that's more of a guy, kind of a hands on package with one individual. And then the last is, again, we have all of our creative services. So using that methodology, how to execute. So all of those things I've just mentioned are more like us giving it to the organization to be like, OK, now you can take this with whatever you want and run with it. But then we also can, you know, use our findings and execute on your behalf and actually build out a campaign or an experience or a brand, you know, or a website, et cetera. So that's kind of the way that we've we've worked with companies in the past that we were working with companies in the future.
[00:32:58] Now, it's great if people want to find out more about Catalist creative about the seventh level, the book, the what you do, what's the best way to get that information, b?
[00:33:08] the-seventhlevel.com and seventh is spelt out. And a friend of mine, Karl Forstman, who's one of the best storytellers I know, he told me that Muhammad Ali always called himself like the greatest instead of the greatest. So he made sureo tell me to always go to the seventh level. So that's why we have that dassk that's really emphasizing the V Dash Seven spelt out level WSJ.com and you could find out more information about everything there.
[00:33:34] Great. I'll make sure that's in the show. Notes that the dash gets a nice shout out. I love it. I love the stories. This has been great. I really appreciate your time. This is a great conversation.
[00:33:45] I think, you know, really inspiring leaders, particularly for server space companies that are looking to figure out how to increase engagement, really thinking through those levels, really moving beyond the kind of functional, you know, functional role descriptions and moving more into this real satisfaction. You know, focus on people's self-actualization and what's the inspiration that you can provide them. It's gonna be a much more successful, much more productive strategy. I really appreciate the time. Thanks for being on the program.
[00:34:11] Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. Can I add one more thing to worry? I wanted to also add that I feel this framework is really beneficial for service based companies to validate the work they're doing to their clients. So to teach their clients about the levels and then use that language. So it's not a he said she said a was site like, oh, well, we just know better. Listen to us. We're making the most informed creative decisions because we know what's going on rather than they can now use these levels and say, like, listen, this is your employees or your your customers are on a level 2. We want to get them to a level 3. So I hope that this also empowers these service based organizations to really use this framework as a common language and teach their clients about this so that they can validate the work that they're doing, which is it's just so much work. And I would what I would only want this to make their life easier.
[00:35:02] Yeah, well, I think any stakeholder really any stakeholder in inside their ecosystem you can apply this to and even nonprofits, you know, people that are looking to, you know, create value or benefit to, you know, lots of different folks, you know, whether they're volunteers or the beneficiaries and investors and donors and things like that. You could really use this framework to think through each one of.
[00:35:19] Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for having me. This was awesome.
[00:35:24] You've been listening to Scaling up Services with Business Coach, Bruce Eckfeldt. To find a full list of podcast episodes, download the tools and worksheets and access other great content, visit the website at scalingupservices.com and don’t forget to sign up for the free newsletter at scalingupservices.com/newsletter.