Transcript of Interview with Joshua Adams
Joshua Adams, the Head Honcho of Rock Paper Simple, lives and breathes entrepreneurship, branding, and marketing. Joshua started programming at 11 years old and began his freelance web career at 14. As a result of working with over 700 clients, he has become an expert in the fields of web development, digital marketing, and branding. Joshua founded Rock Paper Simple in 2011 with the vision of empowering businesses who are awesome at what they do by developing their brand and digital presence. He is never satisfied with the status quo and is always working hard to find the simplest, but most effective ways to create results for his clients and ventures. You will frequently hear him say “Ever Forward!”, as he believes the best option is always, always to move forward. He lives to empower talented people and dedicates his work in every endeavor to the glory of God. Amongst other accomplishments, he was named a finalist of LEAD Brevard’s “4 under 40” award in 2016 and again in 2017
Rock Paper Simple http://rockpapersimple.com/hugh
Hugh: Hey, it’s Hugh Ballou. I have a guest who is a fairly new friend, but a couple years. We have connected, and over the couple years, we have had significant conversations. This is Joshua Adams. I’ve seen him and his team do amazing work. I wanted to share some information today with all our listeners about branding. We want to do a website. We’ve given no thought to what it looks like, what representation it is for who we are and what we stand for. Joshua, hello.
Joshua: Hello, how are you?
Hugh: I’m awesome. Tell people a little bit about you. What’s your background that has brought you to this really good place of branding, marketing, and web design?
Joshua: Absolutely. I actually got in the industry more on the web programming side of things. When I was 11 years old, my dad handed me a programming book and said, “Here, learn this.” I remember picking up the book and going, This is bigger than the Bible. At that time, the Bible was the biggest book on the planet in my mind, so this was a big deal. I dug into it, loved it, and dove into programming. My friends were playing games, and I was at home programming, clockin’ away, making games and applications. As I got older, I got into web and focused on that. When I was 14, I started freelancing. When I was 18, I started my own web design company in my parents’ garage. I had three desks all lined up and said, “I’m doing it.” It took off. I loved business. I loved entrepreneurism. It was natural.
A couple years into doing that, I merged with a marketing agency. This is where my mindset shifted because I went from a programming mind, that engineering, tell me what to build and I’ll build it—as you call them, propeller-heads—to thinking more along the lines of, How can I build it? How can I make this cool? I realized that these marketing clients don’t care how cool this is. They want it to make the money. They want it to have results, to have a purpose. I learned what marketing was, what branding was, and that influenced me.
A month into this new partnership, my partner decided to disappear for an extended period of time. I went, Great. Here I am, a programmer, running a marketing agency. During the day, I’d be on phone calls; they’d want printing, design, or logos. I’d go, “Absolutely, great,” and I’d hang up and go, Crap. Google is my friend. I searched online courses and had to learn this on the fly. Here we were, developing for big clients in the area, and I had to figure this out. That was trial by fire. A few years into that, I had to part ways with my partner for more reasons than just going our separate ways. I brought all that marketing and branding knowledge with me and said, I want to develop a company that takes all the complexities away, all these over-the-top things that we were doing in the previous agency. I want to simplify it and build websites that are marketing-focused. At the time, my passion was still websites. I loved branding and marketing, but I wanted to focus on websites.
We launched Rock Paper Simple five years ago with the premise that we would build websites on purpose, bring all this knowledge, and build marketing-focused website platforms. That was our claim to fame. People knew us for that. You want a marketing website? Go to Rock Paper Simple. You want a technical product? Maybe go somewhere else. A marketing-focused one? That was what we did. We took off with that.
The funny thing was we’d sit in those planning sessions because we were big on planning. We would be talking about the brand and logo, and I’d be advising them on brand messaging and how they should position themselves. They had never thought about the unique value proposition. Our website planning session would often become a branding planning session. People started asking, “Do you do branding?” “No, we don’t.” Finally we said we ought to create a product. I’m a big believer that if you can’t do it well, you really shouldn’t do it. We said, “We’ll offer branding when we’re ready.”
We set off, and about eight months later, myself and my lead designer created a brand product. It was logo and brand colors and messaging, the whole deal. We launched that and won a Gold Addy for it that year. That was about three years ago. Fast forward to now, we’ve added digital marketing services to our repertoire. It’s no longer just me and a couple guys. It’s a team of ten here in Florida. We focus on helping brands and organizations figure out who they are, their identity, build a web platform, and then get known in the world. That’s a fast forward of where I’ve come from and what I do.
Hugh: You do it really well. I call people propeller-heads because they are geeks that put up pretty pages, and they don’t do any of the stuff you’re talking about. There is a whole back side of a website that drives traffic.
We’re talking to social entrepreneurs that run a church, synagogue, or charity. The organization is a cause-based nonprofit. Why is marketing important to those organizations?
Joshua: Sometimes marketing can be a bad word in some of those cases, just like profit. They’re making profit. We use different words for types of organizations. I myself was a youth pastor for three years. I have been involved in ministry my entire life. I get it. There is a bad connotation to it. But in many ways, we have to be careful how we say this, but the way you run any organization is like a business. There is a balance sheet. There are margins. There is overhead. You have customers, kind of. I use that loosely. Ultimately, any organization, whether it’s nonprofit or ministry, etc., you have all of those things. You have to cater to those people.
In the terms of a nonprofit or a ministry, you still have to get out to your audience. You have an audience; you are trying to attract them. Whether that is because you are trying to make a profit or make an impact, it doesn’t matter. What your goal is as an organization may be different, but you still have to get to people. Regardless of what it is you are trying to do, you have to reach people with your message. Sometimes that marketing is to get donors, to drive revenue, to be able to do bigger things. Sometimes for outreach, to be able to reach people who are in need. There is plenty of need for that, to reach people who need the organization, whether that be a ministry outreach or a support group or whether that may be. How you get that message out there is important.
Taking that step back to what we want to focus on today is that branding. What is that message? If you don’t have a clear, concise, consistent message, people don’t know what it is you stand for. That’s very important, even more so with these organizations. What is it that you stand for? I want to get behind something. We are very involved with that here at Rock Paper Simple. We believe in giving back to our community. I believe it’s in my fate; I believe I am supposed to give back. We are supposed to be an impact and a light to our community. That is a responsibility I have even more so because of my position, where I’m at. We do have the resources to do it. When I am asked to contribute or be involved or be an emcee for this or come and lip-sync battle over here—yes, we did do that—I am looking at who is this organization, what do they stand for, what is their message, why should we be involved, why should we give. They have to have a clear message.
We have sat down with organizations before and said, Hey, we just did a branding project for a nonprofit. We went through the whole process. I can admit that sometimes it can be a challenge to sit there with a board. It’s a little bit easier when it’s one-on-one with a stakeholder. If you have a board, it can be challenging to make sure you really break down what you stand for.
Hugh: This is all a lead-up, an umbrella for this interview. All of this is setting the context, which you have done quite well. The whole context of this is about design. Underneath that design is all the stuff you’re talking about and principally, for this interview, we are talking about design, how we engage the board, not that they are going to help you draw the logo. We think brand is a logo. I want to move into this umbrella of design. Also, you do work with boards. That was a really good segue. I didn’t set you up for that. That was just a predestination theory. I think people misunderstand brand. If you are going to do a really good design, all that work you talked about manifests itself in a very relevant design.
Let’s talk about brand. We hear these words “brand image,” “brand promise.” People think a logo is a brand. Give me a short definition of brand. We need to have this brand so you can do the design, correct?
Joshua: Absolutely. Understanding like you said, most people think I need a brand, so it’s a logo and some colors, etc. While that is part of your brand, you have to understand that your logo is a representation of your brand. Your true brand is really the character and essence of your company, the personality of it, what it stands for. That is your brand, not necessarily that pretty logo sitting there. When you have a truly great logo, a truly great image representation of your brand, it comes from a good understanding of who you are.
I was talking about this yesterday at Shannon Gronich’s event. We were talking about branding and the concepts of that. What happens is people don’t know themselves. We have to stop and say, “Know thyself.” I like to use that. Who are you? What are you trying to convey? I was joking about how a lot of people do their 60-second pitch, their elevator pitch. Here is who I am and what I do. A lot of people come up and go, “Hey, I’m John Smith, and I build websites,” and they walk away. Okay. But really, what makes you different? You have to convey that. Know yourself. Know the true part. A lot of businesses don’t. Not only do a lot of businesses not, but a lot of organizations don’t. They will say, “Yeah, we help feed the hungry.” Okay, but more than that. Who are you? Why do you do that? What sets you apart? What kind of an impact are you making on the world that is different than the other ones doing it? Why are you more trustworthy? Tell me more about you. Tug at my heartstrings. These are all things that people miss.
We take a step back and say, “Okay, yeah, we want to make a logo, but let’s talk about what you stand for.” We call that “brand vision” here. What is the vision of your brand? Before the mission, before the promise, all that: what is the vision? We say within ten words or fewer, what is the highest calling of the company? What is that headline in the newspaper you are so proud of? Ten years from now, a headline says, “Rock Paper Simple: Empowering people who are awesome at what they do.” Boom, there’s a vision. Something we want to accomplish. What is that brand vision? What is that battle cry? That is my favorite terminology to use for that that you can rally around as an organization. That’s brand vision.
When you can define that, then you step from there and say, “Okay, what is my mission statement?” which is the how. How do I accomplish that vision? What is my brand promise? Who am I making that promise to, and what is that promise, that unique thing I am promising to every customer, stakeholder, donor, whatever it is? What is that unique promise I am making?
The reason it’s important to define this is this stuff can float up in the head of the leader(s) or even the organization’s members or employees or staff or team members or clergy, whatever. When it comes out on paper and becomes real, you can live this stuff out more. Helping pull that out, I’ll sit there with boards and pull this stuff out of them. Tell me more about this. Let’s build this promise. Once we have a unified promise and everybody can get around what they’re promising, now it’s so much easier to deliver on that brand. We work on things like brand personality, how it should sound, how it should look, how it should act when you’re out there. Core values and value statements. That is the essence of your brand.
With all that stuff, I give you a logo that represents it. When somebody asks me to define a brand, that is 90% of your brand. Your logo is just the representation of that.
Hugh: Then you build a website to manifest that brand image, right?
Joshua: Exactly. Now not only are you matching color and logo and style, but now you are matching personality and belief and message. That is what is so important. Design is so much more than just some pretty pictures and colors. It’s a message. True design has a purpose. Why are you doing what you’re doing? I am a big believer in questioning just about anything. Why are we doing this? There is always an answer. I am a little over-the-top with it, but there has to be a purpose. The first board I ever sat on, I was sitting there at 19, 20, and I go, “I am 20 years younger than everybody else. Can somebody explain why we’re here? If there is no point here, I don’t want to be here.”
Hugh: That’s a key point, my friend. Too many people on the boards, it’s a nodding board. They come home, they nod, and they go home and do nodding.
Joshua: Then I nodded at you.
Hugh: Everything we do, we should ask why we’re doing it.
Joshua: Yes.
Hugh: We’re not going to delve into it in this particular interview, but we have talked about a web experience versus a website. What I’m gaining here is you are getting a whole experience. There is an engagement. At the beginning of that, people have to understand why you’re there, what your purpose is. Too many charities complain they don’t get donations. Well, there is a reason behind that. This is that structure that is so important. Let me focus. We are looking at the design element.
Let’s take all those components. We are talking to the executive director of the clergy. They have an idea for this. They want to engage their board and get them on board with this. When you work with a board and define a course, the more people you have, the harder it is to make finite decisions. There is a general education level before people can make decisions. Can you give us two or three points for a nonprofit executive for clergy, how will they approach the board and get them focused on the work that needs to happen so they are supporters and understand why this work needs to happen and their role in giving input to it? How do you work with a board?
Joshua: I have worked with individuals and boards. I have done 13 people. I have 13 stakeholders in a room. I got to get them all to agree. That can be challenging. What you have to rally around is core goals, a core vision. What are you trying to accomplish today? Typically, that is unity, a strong message, focusing our scattered message, nobody knows who we are. That is normally the pain we are running into. We say, “All right, let’s rally around this.” For me, the easiest thing is to work on my first step, that vision. If I can get 13 people to agree on a vision, the rest of it is much easier. We can build out from there.
Before that even, why is it important? I think a lot of times an executive director is that person who has to go to the board and say, “This is important to me because…” People don’t know who we are. People don’t know what we are. Our name doesn’t represent what we do.
I’m dealing with one board that I sit on—I am co-chair of it—where they are saying our name doesn’t represent what we do currently. It represents what we did 20 years ago. We needed to talk about that. Is this even relevant currently? We talk about that. It’s understanding that you have to make sure you are speaking the right message to the right audience, that you’re differentiating yourself from the crowd, that you’re making an impact with your message, and that you’re being consistent. These are all things that are important to any organization with their brand.
Hugh: Great. You have created a page for our listeners. Your brand is RockPaperSimple.com. There is a backslash with my name, Hugh. There is a page there with some special offers. Is there a place people can request a consultation with you?
Joshua: Yes. Click on the tab “Schedule Free Consultation.” It pulls it up right there.
Hugh: It would occur to me some leader listening to this says, “I have an idea I need to go in this direction. I want to brainstorm how to present to my board.” Is that a good reason for somebody to schedule a consultation?
Joshua: Yes, I am working with someone now. We are more than happy to strategize how you present to a board, how you say, I’d like to explore this. You can even bring us along. We’ll tag along, show up at a meeting, have a chat real quick. No pressure. We won’t sell the board. If we are able to help, then great. If not, then we can move on from there, that’s fine.
Oftentimes, getting the board to understand why this is important, everything you do is influenced through your brand. If people don’t trust your brand, they are not going to donate, they are not going to show up to your events. It’s the same with a business. If you go to a website and see a product you might be interested in and the website doesn’t look good and the logo looks like it was made in MS Paint, you see the Buy Now button, and you are going to think twice about clicking the Buy Now button. This is just regular business. You’re afraid you don’t know who they are.
The same thing is true with nonprofits. If I go to your website and it looks like not great, then I am afraid to make that donation. It’s just the way the world works. We are trained that if it’s trustworthy, it’s consistent. That’s just how we are trained with our world that we are around. That’s why it’s important to have that brand cohesiveness. It doesn’t have to be the most amazing, wondrous design on the planet, but it does need to make sense. It does need to convey the right message. It does need to be consistent. Speak to the right audience. You choose your design, style, colors, and everything else based on what your audience wants, not necessarily your stakeholders’ favorite color.
Hugh: That is a key point. What I am getting from this for you to approach the design piece of this at all is a whole lot of thinking that the leader with their teams, the board, the staff, whomever, need to go through so that they can give you intelligent answers for their questions.
Joshua: When we work with somebody, we have a discovery session first, which is that pre-sales process so we really understand what’s going on. If we decide to work together, then we have a planning session. Prior to that, we even send them a questionnaire to learn more. We review it in that planning session. Then we get to work. Before I even start working with that board or company, we have gone through three steps of gathering information, understanding who they are and what they are. Then we wipe it clean and say, All right, tell me. What makes you guys different? What’s the vision? What sets you apart? We work on it right then and there. Sometimes in that first meeting, we knock out half the document. Sometimes in that first meeting, we have four or five choices for a brand vision, and we reschedule. Depends on the board honestly.
Hugh: I would encourage people not to rush this part of it. We gotta have a website up next month so we are going to do something. That may do you more harm than good. There is such a thing as negative brand recognition, isn’t there?
Joshua: Understanding that your brand says something, what does it say? Are you controlling that? Are you purposely driving that message? Your brand is going to say something. Whether it says we knew what we’re doing, we’re fun, we’re exciting, we do all this stuff, or it says, maybe we don’t know, maybe we’re not put together, maybe we’re not organized. It’s going to have a message. People are going to take that subconsciously without even knowing it. There are plenty of fantastic organizations out there with horrendous logos. They come across my desk. We donate to this. I look at it and push it aside. I look at this one over here. I know these guys. Later on, I find this other organization is fantastic, it just didn’t look good. I wasn’t writing a check to it because I didn’t trust it. I’m not saying that there is somehow a correlation to how good an organization you are. But it does impact perception.
Perception is so key. Regardless of the truth, perception is the truth to most people, right? How often are we misjudged? I am just talking personally as people. We misjudge or we are misjudged all the time. This is another conversation. That is perception. You can’t just say, That’s not who I am and get mad about it. Unfortunately, to that person, perception is their truth. Until it’s corrected, that perception is what they are going to believe. The perception of your brand unfortunately is the truth to your audience until you change that. You take control of your brand and say, “I want my brand to say this.” Therefore, everything else will follow it.
I want Rock Paper Simple’s brand to say that we empower people who are awesome at what they do. Whether that is they do, we empower them to grow and build. The rest of our statements go into how we do that. Our core values talk about how we go about doing what we do with the character of the company. Things like integrity, growth, and teamwork. These are all things in core to our team. One of our core values is community. That is why we do so much in the community. Why do we do that? it’s part of the brand essence. It’s part of the message we want to speak. I was speaking the other day and somebody made the comment, “Oh yeah, Rock Paper Simple does all kinds of stuff in the community.” The brand’s working. We are doing stuff. People know us as a company that does that. That’s important. Is my brand going to accidentally just communicate to people that we have integrity, that we are team players, that we are fun? No. I have to decide that’s what I want the brand to say and then push it out there. We are a very fun brand. One of our core values is legitimately fun. We do things that convey that.
Hugh: You are a mushroom. You are a fun-gi. All right. This is helpful information. To do your design, there is a whole bunch of stuff underneath that: engaging the board in meaningful conversation around this. People can go to rockpapersimple.com/hugh and get some more information.
Joshua: Absolutely.
Hugh: There are some special offers. Joshua Adams, I know you have a very fine team behind you, but you are the leader and you have created this powerful vision for yourself. Thank you for helping us think about design and how we engage our board around that.
Joshua: For sure. Glad to help.
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