Most people would look at the brand when buying a product, and that’s an essential part business owners should delve into. Joining us in this episode is Fritz Colinet, who is a seasoned executive creative director, strategist, and brand builder with over 25 years of experience in marketing, brand development, and creative direction. Fritz discusses how business owners could build a powerful brand and explains the five stages of a buying cycle and the role of a strategic advisor to the business. Fritz also touches upon the customer journey and why it’s important to think about. How will you keep your customers in your business and make them remember your brand? Join us and grab nuggets of wisdom from your brand builder, Fritz Colinet, in today’s conversation.
—
Listen to the podcast here
How To Build A Powerful Brand For Your Business With Fritz Colinet
Do you know that phrase, “Birds of a feather flock together?” My guest is a bird of the feather. “Andy, why do you say that?” I say that because our guest loves business. He’s creative like me, with photography, music, and so forth. For Fritz, our guest, I’ll let him tell a story. You’ll understand why you call him a creative. He comes from the Great City of Houston, Texas. Fritz, what’s the feeling around there about the Texans?
We’re a sports state. We love our teams. We love the Texas. We love the Astros and Houston Dynamo. We love all our team. It’s that passion that we have within the city. It’s a Rodeo cook-off. You’re going to see more cowboys in Houston than you’ve ever seen in the Great State of Texas.
They told them instead of motorcycles hanging around, it’s a bunch of horses and belt buckles.
If you do see a wagon trail on the highway, do not be surprised. No one was shocked for those who live here.
That happens every year. That is Fritz Colinet. He comes to the Great State of Houston Texas. He runs his own media company. Let me read his bio like I typically do so you have some idea of his background, and we’ll give him an opportunity to fill in the holes for us. Fritz is a Season Executive Creator Director Strategist and Brand Builder, which should be no surprise to you if you’re a regular reader to this show. That’s all the stuff we love to talk about.
With many years of experience in marketing, brand development, and creative direction, he embarked on his journey in communications and design at Pratt New York where his passion for art and design flourished, establishing him as a leading force in the industry. Fritz’s creative genius shines through in his role as the Executive Creative Director at Retna Media, a full-service branding and marketing agency based in Houston.
On his guidance, Retna Media has revitalized and modernized iconic brands such as The Houston Open, The Astorian, FullyRaw Kristina, and the Houston Dynamo. Fritz’s dedication to fostering a corporate culture of whatever it takes ensures that clients benefit from Retna Media’s dedication to intelligence processes resulting in unrivaled marketing solutions. He leads by example, spearheading pro bono campaigns to get back to the community and highlight corporate social responsibility. Fritz, with that being said, thanks for coming on to the show and sharing that finite resource of your lifetime to come to spend it with the community and sharing your wisdom with us.
Thank you. I appreciate you having me on the show. I’ve been a fan for a long time. I listen quite often. It is great to be on. I appreciate it very much. I can’t wait for us to get into it and talk about branding, marketing, brand storytelling and the challenges of small companies or large companies or even personal brands.
As I appreciate you listening to the show, my big thing is about the huge overlap between life and business. We’ll get into that later in the conversation. You have a podcast yourself.
I started a broadcast, and it’s once a month. It is the Marketing Maverick With Fritz. It’s the last Thursday of every month. Feel free to DM me. I’ll send anybody the information. You just register. It’s fantastic where you learn a lot about branding marketing, but also I bring in some guests who are leaders within the industry, whether they’re selling celebrities, they’ve won challenges on TV or have business acumen. It’s going to be an interesting ride. I forward to it.
Let’s start off. I typically do pick a spot in your lifetime line. Give us the Readers Digest version of how it is that you got to where you are now.
I’ve been creative since I was little. I draw, paint, and sculpt. I have a passion for creativity, art in itself and how artists are always solution-driven. Even as a young man, I had this entrepreneurial spirit. I remember drawing and painting on apparel and people hired me to do that. When I was young, I was always an entrepreneur. I used my creativity to make money. That led me to go, “I could do this for a living at a young age.” It wasn’t far-fetched when I saw other people working from 9:00 to 5:00 in jobs that they didn’t love. I said, “I’m doing this right now as a kid, and I’m doing it easily. I’m making money as it is.”
I wasn’t a trained artist. I grew up in the Bronx. I wanted to go to the high school. I had to put a portfolio together. It’s another challenge. I overcame that challenge, understanding how to put a portfolio together, how many pieces and traditionally the kids that are going to some of these schools had outside training. I didn’t know. I went to the library. I did my research. For anyone who’s a younger demo, you’re going to have to do research at the library, which was great. It taught me tenacity and if you want something, there are going to be challenges in front of you. Either you can accept the challenge, go over it, through it, around, or under it, or face tag. Those are all things in your own life, but also in the business world. In the business world, there are always going to be challenges that help me lead and pour into my creativity and my future self.
We’re kindred spirits in that way because I never went to photography school. I had maybe three months’ worth of voice training late in my life for my singing. I taught myself the guitar. I use them as examples all the time when I go on another podcast for interviews and so forth. Particularly, with the guitar. I use that as an example of self-leadership from the perspective of I have something in it within me.
I have a desire and curiosity. I know I’m not going to be Eddie Van Halen in five minutes. I know it’s going to take some work, but I know the joy and the passion I’m going to get out of it going through the process, and the experience is going to be worth it for me. I made a promise to myself,” I want to go spend $250 and buy this guitar.” I’m going to promise myself. I’m going to spend fifteen minutes with it at least every day, which is what I did. Now, I sing and play guitar with my praise band at church every Sunday.
In everyone’s life, we have these goals that we want to achieve. We don’t look at the micro wins to achieve that goal. We only look at like, “I want the big win. I want to make the home run. I want to score the goal. I want to land the client,” but that’s the celebration. All of these micro wins, you have to celebrate those and look forward to that because that’s what’s going to help you move through the days that you don’t want to do something. That’s your push past through. It’s going to help pull you through that. It’s important for business owners or in your life like, “I know that this is a big goal over here, but I have to achieve these little goals to achieve this larger goal.” How do you get to the top of 1,000? One step at a time.
I used the ‘eat the elephant’ example in a lot of my coaching. To learn how to play guitar or to start a business with creativity in mind is like an elephant. How do you eat it? One bite at a time. Each bite is a micro win in that process. You have to visualize it and think about it. It’s a process, not a light switch. You have a successful business. You’ve got to build. It’s little micro wins at a time every day or every week to get yourself there.
Learn The Lingo
One small hack or tip that I always use when I’m trying to learn something new, I always learn the lingo first. If you want to learn how to play the guitar, it’s always great to learn the lingo of playing the guitar because now your mind is not thinking about, “What do they mean by bass, treble, strum?” You need to know what that means. The learning pop process is a lot faster. I always learn the lingo, then I start to adapt or apply the practices throughout.
Learn the lingo, then adapt or apply the practices. Click To TweetDo you know those little knobs at the end of the guitar? Do you know what they are called?
No, I don’t play guitar.
Building A Brand
They’re called tuning machines. I was like, “Tuning machines?” I would have never come up with a name like that for that device at the end. As you said, learn the lingo. I had to learn the lingo. I’m talking to other guitarists in my group or so forth to have that vocabulary so that we can communicate with each other and talk about the technicalities of playing a guitar to know that that’s called a tuning machine allows me to communicate with other people. They know what to talk about.
When we talk to a client, we try to learn as much of the trade lingo as possible. It’s not as difficult when we’re having a conversation and they understand that we understand their business a lot closer than someone else. We could talk to them and speak in their own language. They’re like, “Okay.” They understand what we’re trying to do in at least the industry where they’ve shown that they’re willing to learn more than someone else.
Don’t go work in the aviation industry. We had many acronyms. It’s ridiculous. It takes forever to learn the vocabulary. Creativity came to you naturally and decided, “I do this for my own enjoyment, but I can also do it to help others and bring value to others in life by starting the business.” What was it like to start your business?
I worked for a couple of companies and advertising agencies in-house, and I was very successful. My mindset was, “You have to go in and add abundant value. You have to make sure that you know the software inside and out because that’s creative. The software is a tool and a lot of creatives don’t know how to wield the tool.” I always go back to Michael Angelo who had the same chisel that someone else had. Maybe his marble was a higher quality, but he had the same amount of minutes in a day. They probably had more challenges than someone else.
He’s creating works of art that other artists want. He knew how to wield the chisel better than the next guy. You have to know how to wield your tool better than the next guy because if not, you’ll settle for where your level of expertise and then that translates into your client. You’re not delivering what’s in your mind’s eye to the client and now something inferior that you’re like, “I’m not happy about that, but they don’t know.”
If I know that we should deliver something, a high level that we’re going to do it. I made a point of knowing all the tools as a designer or creative at that time inside and out so I could push the pixels the way I wanted them to be playing. In my career, there are very few creatives that can do three components. You have a creative who’s creative. I’m very creative. I’m also very strategic so I can build creativity and also use a strategy for how we’re going to move this project in the right direction.
From a strategic standpoint, what are the steps of what’s the roadmap in it? I’m one of the few that I know of who can do that successfully in the creative space of the creative industry. Take the business acumen and I understand the business objective and Jam able to identify additional revenue streams for our clients that they haven’t even thought of. Now you have an individual who leads a team that can do three things very well to help you win in your industry or outpace your competitor. very fast right and do it in a creative strategic and financial way. I love that. I love showing these other opportunities that we do this roadmap. We’re able to execute not only what you want to achieve but 2 or 3 other revenue streams that you haven’t even thought of.
When I was trying to penetrate or go into a new country or market at Boeing and sitting down with their FAA, it’d be different letters but it was their FAA the organization that’s in-charge of aviation in the country. I was always trying my hardest to get into the strategic planning process for the government because often they are asking us to come in and build a procedure at this airport and it felt like Band-Aids. It’s like filling in holes. I was trying to get to that win-win of capacity and efficiency for their organization’s flight operations. I’m like, “I’ve got to get in your strategic planning and start from scratch to build that foundation of a new house for you that is going to bring that result, but we’ve got to get way back when we start with a totally different foundation than what you have today.”
Right now, you’re working with antiquated 30-, 40-, or 50-year-old technologies plans. You’re not taking advantage of new technologies and the cockpit of the airplane. I want to get as high as possible. In your strategic organization to help you out and start building airspace 2.0 to get the results that they are truly looking for. It sounds to me like you are trying to do the same thing. Get me into your strategic planning process and let me bring my creative skills with marketing and branding, everything else, and be a partner with you to help you to achieve that, but if you keep me at that middle management or lower tactical side of your business, there is only so much impact I can take on your business if you keep me down there.
A lot of times, when you’re running a business, and what we found is a lot of companies piece mail everything. They have a person who does their social. They have a web guy, social, and PR person. I utilize Canva or I talk to a freelancer. I’m like, “That’s great. It sounds like you’re saving money, but how much money are you losing in the long run?” What we have to do is there has to be a steward of the brand. People buy brands. They don’t buy products. That’s it. They know the brand delivers on this promise. When you said Boeing, people already have an association with image and the traction that they had of a large company or however it is. When they’re buying brand services, there’s an association with a positive or negative.
People buy brands. They don't buy products. Click To TweetThe Five Stages Of The Buying Cycle
The buying cycle for anything, I don’t care what it is, maybe except for water and sunlight, but the buying cycle is at five stages. 1) Awareness. They have to know who you are. The days of our ability to come, that’s not going to happen. 2) Findability. They have to be able to find you. Just because, “I love this,” they have to be able to find you. 3) Reputation. What does your reputation say about you when you’re not around? It’s important. That’s when the conversion happens. 4) The conversion. Everybody wants to convert before they go through the steps of Awareness, Findability, and Reputation. The last step is Advocacy, “I bought this product. I service. I love it. Let me go tell somebody.” We all want to live between 4 and 5 steps, but in reality, you have to do 1 through 3 first before anything else.
You have to build the awareness. You have to make sure they can find you and you have to start building a strong reputation so you can convert. You can sell it the first time, but it’s never about the first sale. About the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th sale, that is it, “You’ll get me the first time after that. I’m not coming back.” That happens a lot of times. You’ll see places open up. You’ll see restaurants open up with this big hoopla you go away and you’re like, “It’s not exciting. The food wasn’t great.” You download this online course and you are like, “I knew that already. I got lost in the glitz and the glam.”
Someone else delivers something to you and you are like, “This was much abundant value. I can’t wait to tell a colleague or a friend of mine.” You’re inspired. If you’re not creating that experience that inspiration and that abundant value, then whatever your business is is going to be a challenge to break through to the 4th and 5th stages. It’s all strategy. It’s not before we put pen to paper. It’s about that strategy first. We think the think tank over here. It is very strong, and the team is great.
I have clients who are looking to launch a business or have a very young business. I asked them, “Do you have a business plan?” If they say yes, I say, “Can I see it?” I chuckle on myself when they come out with a 100-page document because for me, the beginnings are always about flexibility and what assumptions you use in building your strategy. That is the name and game after you launch is that flexibility and either proving or disproving your assumptions. If you’re launching a restaurant and you’re not taking polls or stopping, asking how the experience was, food and gathering, that information about who’s walking through the door and what their experience is like and forth, you’re not taking the time to prove or disprove your assumptions and your strategy. If you’re starting to disprove a lot of your assumptions, you have to be able to pivot quickly.
Pivoting is important in any business. The goal is the same. We would like to think it’s a straight line like, “I get from A to B,” but it goes like this in science because the market changes, things happen within the business, and there are new learning and technology that you can adopt to get to the destination a lot faster or there’s a learning curve like, “It’s going to take us some time to learn this,” and then move forward right or you thought that this was the right target audience and it was more this type of demographic or psychographic.
We do a lot of that thinking up front and then there’s a lot of testing. Everyone wants to have a silver bullet, but if there were silver bullets, especially let’s say with SEO, the vast majority of people would not shoot and afford it because the top 1,000 will buy all the bullets and it’s done. That’s even as playing fields can be online.
I often talk with my clients about that path from A to B. The most value comes from the shortest distance, “How do I get there the fastest?” Think about my former employer, Boeing, trying to push planes out as fast as they can and that shortest distance to the cashflow and look where it’s gotten them? The real thing is to choose the path that brings you the most value. How are you capturing or generating value along your path to point B? It may take you a little bit longer, but if you’re learning a lot through that pathway that it puts you in a better spot when you arrive at B, why won’t you do that as opposed to the straight A’s short distance to point B?
I’m going to segue into building a brand. Nike, Apple, Oprah, Dubai, Houston, and The Big Apple, all of these are either personal brands businesses or personalities. What you know about them is what they’ve done very very strategically as they may acquired a slice of your memory. When I said those words to you, those brands, you associate them with images, and video contexts whether you wanted to or not. If I said Michael, you’ll pick a Michael and if you thought of Michael Jackson, you already associated The Moonwalk, the glove, and the mask that he wore.
Pepsi.
He has built a personal brand that you’ve already associated images. It’s quite a slice of your memory and that’s what’s important when you build in the brand. It’s, “How do I choir a slice of memory for my prospect and my customer that we are the only solution for their frustration or their pain point? We do that very well.” Identifying what can we create to acquire that slice of memory in the hearts and minds of the Prospect and the customer, and delivering on the awareness the findability and the reputation. You get the sale and the advocacy. Branding especially in today’s market is important for your personal brand and business brand.
What conversations do you have with your clients centered around who the ideal client is? When I’ve dealt with small business clients, particularly, if they’re brick-and-mortar, it’s like every person who walks to the door has a dollar sign on their chest. It’s all yes. When the reality is, as the owner, you’ve got to learn when to say no for your own mental health and so forth as well as expenses time and other things that come into business but you’ve got to understand who your ideal client is and how to recognize them.
What we do is real. We ask a series of of questions. We do a session with our clients. Understand who they believe their target audience is because I want to make sure that this is who your target audience is and what are you trying to solve for this particular person. When someone tells us, “Our product is for everyone,” that’s a red flag. There are only a couple of things that are for everybody: sun, air, and water. If you’re a mushroom, you do not need anything.
It's a red flag when someone tells you your product is for everyone. Click To TweetEven if someone says, “I’m opening up a restaurant.” Are you a healthy restaurant? Is it for business owners? Is it for, “This is where I signed the deal?” Is it more luxury? Does it have more aesthetics? Is it a restaurant that you want Instagram float shoots for? Are you trying to strive to have the best type of food experience here or is that a quick serve? What does that mean? How fast is fast? Was it expensive? What does expensive or inexpensive mean to you as an owner? What does inexpensive mean to the customer?
Where is the value being generated? Is it being generated in the quality of the food? Is it being built in the atmosphere of the place? Is it being built from speediness? There are different ways to add value for the customer in your restaurant. Are you thinking about it in that way as opposed to going, “I want to open a restaurant and serve food, and therefore I’m going in the business?”
I get a lot of business coaches that come to us for branding and marketing. The vast majority say the same thing, who the target audience is, high network individuals, high achieving individuals, CEOs, and retired athletes. What you’re telling me is that you want someone who can pay your fee. That’s what you’re saying. If 90% of your industry is going after the same audience, they’re measuring you against everyone else. Let’s say 90% is a huge number. Let’s say 50% of your preparers are going to have the same audience. We have a talk about a psychographic/demographic, it’s a broad statement. Let’s get some awareness and a niche group first, then let’s move it from there.
Let’s build a brand on the niche horizontally or vertically depending on the strategy.
Narrow it down. That’s what most business are like, “Let’s not go wide. Let’s narrow the focus, drill down deep, and create a strategy whether it’s an online strategy, a social media strategy, or a content strategy to build awareness for your brand and then for peppering in some sales strategies as well. When we’re talking about marketing, everyone’s gravitating towards say social because the hardest thing that any brand could be is in someone’s pocket.
With this great device, how do you become relevant in someone’s pocket? They have so much opportunity to go anywhere. You build your website and your website person designs your website and they show you the website how it looks on a desktop. Eighty percent of your audience is wondering about your website on the phone. It is not real. The reality is on. We come in whether it’s from a consultancy standpoint or a brand standpoint like, “This is how we want this how it should look.” We have to understand how things need to look on a mobile device first then everything else because our audience is on a mobile device
There are a little nuances that when you don’t have a strategic advisor or or someone like myself who’s going to come in and Stewart, the brand and understand all the assets that you need to build a brand, you’re going to have challenges throughout. I like to make sure that I have all the right pieces up front first and then move forward, building the plane walls in the air. I’ve done that and it is a challenge. If you’ve done it often enough, it’s not a challenge anymore, but a lot of times folks are trying to build everything in the air and they have a business plan. There’s no marketing plan in the business plan.
There’s no line item at all. How are you go to market it? They’re going to come. It’s like, “Okay, fine. That sounds like an interesting idea,” or I could go into logos. I’ve won multiple awards for designing logos. I’ve won Addies or Webbies. I’ve won awards. I’ve got enough brands to understand how to design a very effective logo. One thing I always tell business owners when they’re having their logo design is, “It looks great when it’s on the screen because it’s 8.5 or 6 inches wide. You can see all the beauty that you want on it. You want to be like a pegasus and you see the wings and the feathers. You see the hoof and the flowing of the tail of the horse.”
“It would look great on your wall. You can hang that on the wall and be a nice picture.”
Is it very illustration? “Would that logo shrink to half of an inch because that’s how someone’s going to see it?” All of that beauty and that tagline that you were insistent on to have it in your logo, now you can’t read it.
Another area I find business owners fall short in is picking the right types of marketing channels. I have used this analogy before. You’re watching a football game. What’s your favorite part of the football game? It is the offense when you score points. A lot of focus on wide receivers, running backs, quarterbacks, scoring points. Translate to the business world, that’s the product, service, and the revenue in the dollars and so forth, and that’s what everybody loves to start.
“I need a strong defense, but that’s not where all my focus is.” On the expense side, they’ll start there is their Foundation what’s the cost to hang a shingle outside the door and be in business? Therefore, they don’t drill up to go, “If my sales closing rate is 20% and I need X number of sales to make my numbers for the month, how many lead generations do you need with a 20% success rate?” That lead generation is going to tell you what kind of marketing you need to get those leads.
If you don’t need a lot, then you don’t need to spend a lot of marketing because you don’t need a lot of leads with what you hope your close rate to be on your sales, but if you need a ton of them because the close rate is only 10%, then maybe you need to look at TV or other avenues. It’s going to get that much market exposure to get the potential that many leads. They don’t drill it from below. They get so fixated on the offense on the football team that they don’t think about that because everybody got the marketing figured out before they even get to those kinds of elements and figure out, scratch their head, “Why is it not working for my business?”
A lot of times, the circle of influence is for the solopreneur or small business owner is challenging because they see, “It’s all social media,” and they’re doing great or, “Fritz, I want to build a personal brand and I want to make $10,000 a month.” Let’s think about how long did they took to get there. That’s one thing. They don’t put that into the formula. Once you create the formula, “These are the metrics to achieve this goal or this outcome.”
This is the outcome of these metrics. If I want to scale this outcome, then I will have to scale the metrics. They’re not looking at it from a mathematical standpoint. They’re looking at it more from an emotional standpoint saying, “It works for them so it should work for me. This is what’s trending right now. Everyone is on TikTok. I need to do TikTok videos.” Do TikTok videos. We have to do X amount of TikTok videos a day. That’s a lot of TikTok because is like trying to drink out of fire holes. It’s like coming at you. The last time I read the attention span for TikTok was 1.7 seconds.
“I found somebody new on TikTok two months ago. I’ve known this person for two months. They’ve gotten to the status in two months.” No, they’ve been at it for five years. You’ve only been aware of it for two months and you’re taking that into your equation thinking, “They did it in two months, so I can do it in two months. It took them five years, but lots of ups and downs, maybe even lost some money before they finally were able to get themselves to that. Are you ready for that path? Did you do enough digging to understand? It took him five years to get to that point.
Walking Through The Roadmap
Was adding an abundant value to our clients where you always go above and beyond. It goes back to whatever it takes. I understand that every business there’s going to be challenges and I treat their business like it was my own. I want to make sure that we’re doing right but also the customer because that translates into dollars and walking them through the roadmap. That’s important, and say, “These are the challenges that we’re going to have here. You understand this is how we’re going to overcome that. If this doesn’t, if we can’t do pivot this way, we’re going to pivot this other way. I’m just letting you know.”
You understand where we’re going, what are the challenges that we’re going to have and what you’re going to face in your business. You’re going to get an uptick and we want to make sure that the customer’s emotional journey is touched upon because a lot of times from a market standpoint, we don’t talk about the emotional journey of the prospect. We are like, “This is the customer journey. These are the steps.” We understand how they’re walking through it, but we’re not taking into account the emotion of each step and what they’re feeling during that step. We’re creating lead magnets and we’re selling. We have one in a program and then now they’re through the program and then we’re going to sell them another program. Your business model is the key this person here throughout for how many programs. There’s no exit. Just keep them in the program. If you want to keep that customer in the program, we’re going to have to have multiple profiles. We’ve had to start seeing these programs.
That’s where I found my clients to fall short too. They’re thinking very short-term and they’re thinking about that one time that the customer comes in as opposed to, “Truly, what is the life cycle of your customer over their lifetime? How long do you hope to keep them when you’re looking at the marketing dollars and branding dollars, you’re spending look over that whole lifetime?” You may spend not enough money in marketing because you’re looking at your dollars in a very short-term basis and financial results as opposed to the lifetime where over the lifetime makes a lot more sense to spend a little bit more money in that customer capture and getting them into your pipeline for a lifetime then maybe spend less dollars down the line to keep them in because you’ve already built up the brand with them because they’re already way down the pipeline video.
We are building the brand, also in our conversation we make sure we understand what is the cost of the product. What’s the margin for each product? What is the number one installed product? We have to understand what are the top-selling products. What are the highest-grossing products? Where do you make the most profit out of which product or service? For a marketing standpoint, we have to understand which product or service your customers gravitate for us and which one is converting the most with these dollars.
A lot of times, there’s we call vanity products or services that a lot of folks are purchasing but it’s not healing the revenue that the client will like. We come in and we go, “We understand the creative. You’re doing these tactics, but your strategy is off because you’re trying to achieve this goal from a financial standpoint and your marketing loss leaders. You’re not upselling a higher ticket item,” whether it’s a restaurant, professional services or an online business, understanding the creative, building the awareness to find ability the reputation ten the conversion and then how that customer journey they’re walking through or being pulled through that journey. Now you are touching them throughout that dirt journey, and now they’re excited about the next level.
Branding a marketing is super exciting. It’s fantastic. I remember we worked on the Houston Dynamo. The challenge with what we work on with the use of Dynamo is you’re in a city that has a lot of sports options. It’s not like the secondary city that doesn’t have a professional team. We have multiple professional teams everything from women’s to men’s to collegiate sports that almost feel and look like professional sports. You have high school sports that look like professional sports.
They’re all chasing the entertainment dollar market.
You have a sport at that time that even into America, came into states, which wasn’t large that Americans in general did. American baseball, basketball and football. All the rest of the secondary sports touched on but soccer or football they did it. It wasn’t as popular. Coming in is a challenge because now. You’re talking to your target audience. They didn’t grow up with it. The parents didn’t grow up with them.
If they did they were either international point out. Now you talking about non-born Americans. We have to talk to them and they already have a brand that they love. It’s going to be very difficult to convince someone from Europe to abandon their Dynasty brand. There were a lot of challenges. We overcame those challenges very strategically, but we had to spell it out like, “I know you want this audience,” I get it. It’s difficult to convert someone who’s like, “I am an FC United fan and I can’t be seen with anything else.”
It’s the power of the and versus or. You don’t have to choose between the two. You can be a fan of both.
What we did is we poured into the passion of soccer and football. If you love the game and the passion of the game, then try us up. We showed a lot of passion. it was almost this FOMO or Fear Of Missing Out that when folks didn’t go to the game, they were like, “This is such an exciting game and entertaining.” The strategy was definitely on point there. We were able to drive. It went from a modest 9,000 but since seats to 14,000 to 29,000. It grew the life expectancy of the account. It was very strategic and pointing out like, “This is what we’re going to be doing.”
It may not have this issue in other countries where football is popular but with many sports choices here you’ve got the game of football with a ton of scoring, you got baseball with a potential of a lot of scoring in the game whereas soccer is like hockey in that it’s a lot of action without any goal scoring. You tend to get a lot of 2 to 1 or 3 to 2 games like you do with soccer. You got to make it a lot more about the experience than you got to have your eyes on the game all the time because you’re going to miss a score because it happens often. You get that instant gratification from the game.
That’s why I think with your soccer grew well here in Atlanta with our team because the ownership saw it that way. They built a stadium that was cable handing the Falcons and soccer and create a great experience behind the seats the pricing of the food and so forth to make it a great destination if you will to come and have a great time and get entertained by the game of soccer as well as everything else that surrounds it.
Customer Experience
Experience is important with every business. It’s like, “What is the experience that my customer or prospect is going to have.” You have to paint that picture and tell them because it’s that you’re adding that abundant value and that experience is important because the positive experience everyone will talk about like, “This was fantastic,” but the negative experience, it would create a file in your mind. That’s very difficult to extract. Even when you go to the hospital or clinic like you already you walk in you’re not feeling well.
I was talking to a prospect the other day in the clinic. I said, “I walked into your clinic. I’m not greeted immediately, but then when I see someone, they say, ‘Put your name,’ I had an appointment.” I have to put my name on the clipboard so that you already know that I have an appointment for him at this time. I’m not going to come here because I want to hang out at the clinic. You already know that I have an appointment and it’s not like a hospital. It might an emergency. I’ve scheduled an appointment this probably 20 seats in this waiting room and you’re not seeing 20 people. You’re seeing 5 or 6 people. I walked and there were already a couple of people there. I’m the next person who has an appointment during this time. You should know that I’m coming in.
She can greet the person asking, “Are you Mr. Smith?” “Yes.” “It’s great to see you. I have a seat that will be right with you.”
My experience already started off like, “Why you guys aren’t doing this?” At the beginning, when you collect the money. Depending on how the experience went, the emotional experience, “What are you guys going to do?” Make sure that when I’m exiting my emotional experience goes up. My frustration turns into something else.
Ensure that when customers exit, their emotional experience goes up. Turn their frustration into something else. Click To TweetThat’s why I harp on my clients about when I go in other podcasts to talk about it quite a bit that value comes in many different shape, sizes and colors and are you paying attention to that? There’s you’re in a clinic. There is value with whatever true medical things that you provide to the person but it’s much more than that where value gets created from the experience like you said. Unfortunately, our time is coming to a close, somebody wanted to reach out to learn more about you or your business or anything of that nature, what’s the best way they can reach out to you and connect?
Everyone can reach out on LinkedIn, @FritzColinet. I’m one of the very few named Fritz on LinkedIn. My hashtag is #IknowFritz. You can send me a DM on Instagram or go to RetnaMedia.com and send an email over there. If it’s okay with you, I’d like to offer your subscribers a complementary audit on their business in the adding abundant value. We do an audit and online reputation audit.
If you’re reading, take advantage of it.
It’s complementary because you are reading and subscribing the show.
One last question, and we ask this question to every one of our guests and I know you’ve been listening, you probably know what’s coming. That question is what do the words ‘generate your value’ mean to you?
That is always a great question. It’s always great to hear what people are going to say.
That’s why we’re asking it with everybody because we like to see what the common thread is amongst everybody when they hear those words.
What it means to me is adding solutions and abundant solutions for the people around me, whether it’s friends, family, clients and prospects. I want to make sure that when they interact with me, they walk away with a couple of pearls that help me throughout my life. I’ve learned that I can say, “You don’t have to do it this way. This is the way that I handle that situation and it works for me.” That’s what I’m leaving the place better.
It’s because you added value. It bumps it up to a higher level. That being said, for the audience, I greatly appreciate you taking your valuable resource, that finite nature of your time to listen to Fritz and I’s conversation. Hopefully, you got golden nuggets out of our conversation that you can integrate into your life or into your business. We’ve added some abundant value if you will to use Fritz’s words to your life or business. All we ask is that you turn around and pay it forward.
If you’ve got a lot out of this conversation, the way you pay it forward is by sharing it on your social media, email, or whatever to those you think would also get value out of the conversation in their own lives. That’s how we create a ripple effect in the world. Before I leave, I want to highlight one thing. We’re doing a different episode. We’re bringing a panel discussion. I’m bringing in five experts in leadership and other areas to talk about spirituality in business. Hopefully, you’re going to walk away and scratch your head and go, “Spirituality in business?” That’s the point.
We hope you tune in to know things about what you mean by spirituality, how one brings spirituality into the business, and what are the benefits of bringing spirituality. In the panel, I have my coronation meeting with them. Now is the time for those types of conversations and that’s why we’re doing this on March 28, 2024, Thursday, that episode is released. We hope you’ll tune in and know what the panel has to say on the subject and hopefully, some golden nuggets came out of that conversation and something you might be able to use in your life or business.
I wanted to highlight that before we leave. Hit that subscribe button. We’re here with great guests like Fritz to talk about their life stories, how they got to where they are today, as well as their expertise in particular topics that could bring value. In the meantime, have a great day. We’ll see you next time. Take care.
Important Links
- Fritz Colinet
- Retna Media
- www.CanvaSrebel.com/Meet-Fritz-Colinet/
- www.VoyageHouston.com/Interview/Exploring-Life-Business-With-Fritz-Colinet-Of-Retna-Media/
About Fritz Colinet
Fritz is a seasoned executive creative director, strategist, and brand builder with over 25 years of experience in marketing, brand development, and creative direction. He embarked on his journey in communications and design at Pratt in New York, where his passion for art and design flourished, establishing him as a leading force in the industry. Fritz’s creative genius shines through in his role as the Executive Creative Director at Retna Media, a full-service branding and marketing agency based in Houston. Under his guidance, Retna Media has revitalized and modernized iconic brands such as The Houston Open, The Astorian, FullyRaw Kristina, and the Houston Dynamo. Fritz’s dedication to fostering a corporate culture of “whatever it takes” ensures that clients benefit from Retna Media’s dedicated and intelligent processes, resulting in unrivaled marketing solutions. He leads by example, spearheading pro-bono campaigns that give back to the community and highlight corporate social responsibility.
