What Makes a Brand Fruitful?
What is the secret to growing a healthy small to medium-sized business?
The answer could be as simple as delivering more value to your employees and your customers.
Whether you're starting a new business or rebranding an existing one, you want to see your business grow and be fruitful. The first thing that comes to mind when thinking about a growing business is profit and sustainability, but measuring a healthy business doesn’t start and end with profit.
In recent years, we’ve seen a shift in focus across numerous industries, from retail to warehouses, where businesses are taking stock of employee experience as a measurement of overall business health. Surveys like Great Place To Work and Survey Monkey host employee satisfaction surveys that businesses use to improve the work-life of their employees.
Why are businesses focusing on employee well-being? The key to having happy customers who want to continue to do business with your company is creating a work environment that nurtures happy employees. This investment in employee satisfaction and development is especially important in creating sustainability and ensuring your business is always growing.
On this week’s episode of Growing a Fruitful Brand, Raj and Ben discuss how delivering more value and making sure your business is built to grow are fundamental to growing a fruitful brand.
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Ep.2: What Makes a Brand Fruitful?
Automated Transcript
Raj Lulla 0:00
All healthy things grow; children, trees, vegetables, anything that you want to be healthy you expect to be growing.
Ben Lueders 0:11
Welcome to growing a Fruitful Brand where we discuss how to create and grow a brand that makes the world a better place for you, your customers, and your employees. I'm Ben Lueders, Founder and Art Director of Fruitful Design and Strategy here in Omaha, Nebraska. I'm joined by my business partner, and Brand Strategist, Raj Lulla and today we want to talk about what makes a brand fruitful.
As you may have noticed, the name of our firm is Fruitful Design and Strategy. So we're all about fruitful, there's no surprise, this is actually the name of our company. When I was looking to name this company years and years ago before Raj came into the picture. I really loved this idea, this kind of biblical idea of fruitfulness, right? Be fruitful and multiply. And that idea of flourishing and growth and abundance. It just kind of spoke to me at the time, maybe even in ways that I didn't fully understand. But now that I'm a business owner, many years have gone by, I've really felt like this really embraces much more than just a cool name for me.
Raj Lulla 1:19
It's not just a vanity exercise for us to talk about a brand being fruitful. We're not trying to put our stamp on other people. But instead, we know that there's a bunch of you out there who aren't just in business for a few more dollars, a few more cents selling a few more widgets. But it's really about more, It's about caring for your employees, your customers, your family, and yourself. It's bigger than just, you know, dollars and cents.
Ben Lueders 1:47
One of our values here at Fruitful is this idea of abundance, we believe in abundance, and it kind of leads to all the other areas, all the other values of our company. It really stems from this idea of believing that there's more and that we want to always be growing. And that's the kind of company that we want to connect with as well.
Raj Lulla 2:12
When I think about abundance, I think about the fact that we live on a planet that naturally sustains life. And there's not a lot that we are I mean, there's really nothing that we did to deserve that. We could have been plopped on a planet that is impossible to grow food on. And, there's no fish in the sea, and kind of all of that, but instead, we live in this world where the root of commerce, farming, is the oldest profession.
Ben Lueders 2:41
We’re Nebraskans here, so we go to the farming metaphor.
Raj Lulla 2:44
The root of commerce, being rooted in the ground is something that we did nothing to, create for ourselves because the world was already hospitable to, our activity to our business to our livelihood. And sure, it's a lot of hard work. But it's a world that's already set up for us to succeed. And, and so if we can take that mindset into business, sure, a lot of us work behind computers and those types of things now, but if we can take that mindset that the world is already set up for us to succeed for us to work hard, for us to deliver value to other people, then it's just a much better and, and more gracious way to start a business.
Ben Lueders 3:27
I feel like there's no Growing a Fruitful Brand podcast on Mars.
Raj Lulla 3:35
Growing a rocky brand.
Ben Lueders 3:38
Exactly. The motto of our company, or our mission statement, I should say, is grow something good. You might even see it here on our mug. But I think when we talk about a fruitful brand, I think that's what we're talking about. We're talking about companies that want to grow something good in this world, there are already things growing that are good. And we want to be a part of that. We want to maximize that. And that's basically what it means to be a fruitful brand. So what makes a brand fruitful, first off a fruitful brand delivers more value.
Raj Lulla 4:14
So around here, we like to think of it as we don't have 50/50 relationships with our customers. It's not that they bring their half by signing the agreement and paying their investment with us. And then we deliver our half. We see it as that we always want to feel like they got more value than they paid for. We have the 51% rule around here that we always want them to feel that we gave at least 51% of the relationship, not just exactly what we were scoped to do and down to the I's and T's -that we that we delivered a little bit more, whether it's, marketing advice, or a graphic that needs to be resized for a social media platform or something like that. We wanted it to feel like they got an outsized value for what they paid for.
Ben Lueders 5:04
What happens psychologically there, though, obviously, when you give someone a little bit more value than they feel like they put in, doesn't something happen there? I don't know if it's karma, or what, when they, they might feel like they owe you? Are we trying to manipulate people there?
Raj Lulla 5:19
No, I heard marriage advice, one time that if you were unhappy in your marriage, that you should try to out-give the other person. And so instead of trying to get your needs met, just start with trying to meet their needs. And a lot of times, you'll find that your needs are met in return.
It's not about making them feel a sense of obligation to us. It's like saying “if we treat you really, really well, we believe in you,” getting that sense of abundance, “you'll treat us well, in return, that we'll have a long relationship, and that things will be healthy between us.” We believe that fruitful brands are more than just worth the money. How many times if you go out to eat and go, it was worth the money, it was fine. But if you go, Oh, my gosh, that was like, the whole meal was done. And then there used to be this restaurant here in town, that would be these little cookies that were wrapped up right by the door, and they would give you those on the way out the door. And it's funny, because you almost always forget that the others, there's just one more touch, there's one more thing what restaurant was that I was the great plume with its went away. But you know, it's that kind of thing, of just surprise and delight and value. There are businesses out there that deliver just exactly what you expected. Again, we talked last time about Walmart, a great value brand. And that's okay because you want to pay the lowest amount possible for a tub of sour cream. And you get a tub of sour cream, and it's in plastic that's a little bit cheap. If you drop it on the floor, it's probably going to spill all over the place. So you just get what you pay for in that. But then there are other brands that you're not just paying for, but you're going to get a greater experience, whether it's the way the iPhone box opens- that suction that experience, it's going to be more than just what you paid for.
Ben Lueders 7:23
Next, a fruitful brand is built to grow.
Raj Lulla 7:28
All healthy things grow- children, trees, vegetables, anything that you want to be healthy, you expect to be growing. And, the same thing is true for brands- for companies. If they are healthy, then they're going to be growing. And that can be in a number of different ways: it can be growing in sales, it can be growing profit, but it also can be growing in impact, or it can be growing in value. But regardless, it is growing a healthy thing or a fruitful brand grows.
Ben Lueders 8:01
I liked that you didn't limit it to just the financial because I think that oftentimes, you think that's the only way that you could be growing, but there are a lot of different ways to be growing.
Raj Lulla 8:11
There are a bunch of service-based businesses that are expanding, so if it's a craftsman of some kind, and then you try to hire another craftsman or contractor or whatever to handle part of the business, a lot of times that will degrade the experience. I've known some people, especially in sort of the decking business, or roofing those kinds of things where as soon as they spin up to multiple teams, they can actually grow their revenue quite a lot. But sometimes their profit margins shrink, because they're spending so much time and effort managing these different crews and paying for gas all over the city, cleaning up and somebody makes a mistake that the business is actually somewhat less fruitful when at a higher revenue. Now, that's not always true. There's some businesses that have all the right ingredients, and it's time for them to scale to have a multiplying effect to reap a big harvest. Because they finally put all the pieces together you kind of think of like Taco Bell or Chipotle or those kinds of things. Where they, you know, they can make millions of different things out of those ingredients. And people love it.
Ben Lueders 9:20
They're basically just like the same things, but just kind of shuffled around. Yeah,
Raj Lulla 9:24
Yeah, Crunchwrap is essentially a taco inside a burrito. But we love it. So it's great. So now I'm hungry. And so it really depends on your type of business. It's not necessarily that you should, you know, be trying to sell a million more dollars next year. But at the same time, if you're a different kind of company, then it might only be a good goal to try to get 10 or 100 million more dollars next year. It really depends on your company.
Ben Lueders 9:52
Another kind of growth that you know, I immediately think of is, you know, one of our values is always learning. Yeah. and always learning new things, new lines of business. That's another way that individually we can grow in our companies and how our companies can grow together, when we encourage learning new things, and kind of diversifying what we do how we do things, expanding our services, which of course, you know, ultimately should should result in, you know, added profits and growth in a financial way. We think those have tangible financial results in the marketplace. But I think that's another way that that, you know, you can tell if a company is healthy and is growing, as if they're, they're trying new things, ya know, that, you know, you're, you're breaking the stereotypes, and you're, you're trying, trying new ways of learning and doing things.
Raj Lulla 10:45
I mean, if you think about a, again, let's go back to the Craftsman if you ever watched those videos of people, like laying bricks, and, and you know, it's like, I never knew that I was interested in a video of a guy laying bricks, but when you watch them just like, seamlessly, you know, it's like, grab a brick, grab the mortar, and they they smeared on, and it's perfect every time. Oh, yeah, better than I could do with a machine.
Ben Lueders 11:09
You know, my brother, he lays this fancy flooring for Hello garage, a company here in town for like, high end garages, if they want to do that. And he does these time lapse videos of what they do. And it's just so satisfying. Yeah, watch and watch them do that.
Raj Lulla 11:23
Yeah. So growing in your skills, growing in your knowledge, it makes it more fruitful, it makes it a better experience. Because, you know, probably the first one that you do is a lot slower. And then you go, Oh, I need to bring this kind of spade or trowel or whatever. I'm not. I don't lay those things, but a lot of it. Yep. You know, and, and, you know, I had a friend one time who literally painted himself into a corner of a room. And, you know, it's like, when the professionals dude who have experience, we're gonna have to wait. But yeah, you know, it's they the experience the knowledge and makes you your product worth more, even again, if you're even if you're just a one person, service based business, the experience that your customers get in your 10 is a lot different, a lot more valuable than they get in year one. And you know, to look out for certain things like, you know, if there's a crack in the floor, and it might be a leaking problem or something like that, you, you know, sooner because you've seen this type of problem before. And so you're, you're helping a customer avoid a very costly problem by providing that solution up front. And that's something you don't know the first time that you do it. Yeah, absolutely. So another thing about brands that are growing is that at least in our world, what makes a brand fruitful is that it's sustainable. You know, we don't, we don't want to plant the seeds for an orange tree, one day, water it and then the next day, it springs up, and it's 20 feet tall, and, you know, hundreds of oranges are falling off of it. And then the day after that it's dead. That's not helpful. Like, you can't build a business off of that, right? You know, hyper growth can can be, you know, really interesting, but, but a lot of times, it's it's brands that are focused on being around next year, so that your employees have jobs next year, so that your customers have a place to shop next year, and you're practicing healthy business fundamentals that you are, you know, doing the right right price, right size of delivery for your customer, so that your business can be around. And like I said, employing people or serving people for years to come.
Ben Lueders 13:41
Lastly, a fruitful brand makes the world a better place. Now, you heard me say this, at the beginning of the podcast, this is part of our intro, you know, makes the world a better place for you, your employees and your customers. So let's just take those one at a time. First, a fruitful brand makes the world a better place for you.
Raj Lulla 13:59
Yeah, you know, there's books out there like Profit First, that's a great read. But the idea is that if you're not taken care of by your company, then you're not going to be very much good for your customers. You're definitely not going to be very much good for your employees. If you're running around stressed all the time, you know, worried about like, don't use that stapler, stapler, Staples cost money? Like you don't, you don't want to be in that place. You know, Staples
Ben Lueders 14:26
do cost money. That was a little insensitive.
Raj Lulla 14:30
No, I mean, you know, I think the point is, anybody who runs a business has been there before like, yeah. And what's happened like for you, you started this business? Yeah. You know, what are some of the war stories of coming up through that? Well, yeah, it's
Ben Lueders 14:43
funny, you know, running a business goes through many different phases, right? So oftentimes, when you start you're in this kind of like startup phase where things can be a little crazy and you kind of deal with a lot of high stress, maybe not a lot of money, you know, asleep, in hopes that It gets better, though you kind of tell yourself and it does. It does. It really does. There's, you know, Mo Money Mo Problems as they say, but But seriously though, like, you know, there definitely was a lot of stressful moments early on, because
Raj Lulla 15:16
also no money to emote problems.
Ben Lueders 15:20
Really just different kinds of problems. You know, usually you do that when you're a little bit younger, you got a little more energy in you, but you know that like, this isn't sustainable. Like, I want to see my family. I want to enjoy, you know, my life. But yeah, like trying to take care of yourself looks kind of different in that phase, you know, there's a little bit of, you know, maybe self discipline and dying to self and some sleepless nights, kind of like when you're going to college, like, you're expected to cram and do the Mountain Dew all night and bootstrap it. But if you were to think like, oh, this is the rest of my life, you know, the way that you lived when you're 18 or 19 years old? If you're like, Yes, this is my, you know, vision of my life. No, then it's not
Raj Lulla 16:01
healthy. It's not sustainable, sustainable. Do you remember the time that just speaking those bootstrap years, do you remember the time that you called me? So I was a contractor before I joined fruitful as a partner. And, and, and I was serving our customers, and I needed an email address for fruitful to serve our customers. And Dave, every time you called me, and you're like, do you use your email? Because it's like, $5 a month? And if you're not, we probably should just shut it down. I was like, yeah, so I use it all the time. And I've been using it now for seven years.
Ben Lueders 16:36
Like, I'll go into like our Google Admin, are we using this one? This is like that mindset of like, $5. dollars or whatever, yeah, whatever bananas cost. But like, yeah, that's, it's a whole different world, you know, you have similar stresses, but maybe different amounts of zeros behind them. But you know, the problem is real, though.
Raj Lulla 16:59
Yeah. And, again, all of this really just comes down to the fact that a fruitful brand, if you're growing a company that's healthy, you do have to pay attention to how attention to how it's taking care of, you have your family like you, you have dreams, you have goals, even have, you know, if you've got kids and wanting to cinema college or sort of vacations that you want to do, that's what you're building the company for. And, you know, maybe dreams beyond that, maybe you want to sell the company and retire and go SIP umbrella drinks, on the beach, and whatever, whatever sounds good to you. But if you're just, you know, just driving away, day in day out, and and you don't get to see any reward for that, it's going to lead to burnout, it's going to lead to not treating your employees as well as you would like, it's gonna lead to health problems from stress. It's gonna lead to your customers picking up on you being overwhelmed. You know, I mean, how many times have you hired a contractor or a business and, and they go, oh, sorry, sorry, you know, things are crazy yet, we'll get on that this week. And it's not a great experience. And, you can't deliver a great experience if you are constantly under stress. Now, I don't want to be, you know, naive and immune to the realities of the world. Yes, we go through difficult economic times. Yes, there is, as Ben said, those startup times, where things are a little bit more lean, but when you are able to, when you're able to get to the point where you can pay attention to those business fundamentals to make those goals. You know, one thing that helped us a lot was, you know, traction, the book traction by Gino Wickman. A lot of people who read Profit First, also will read traction and you know, kind of make these systems get your money, right, get your processes right in your business. So that you can actually make real progress towards those goals. And, you know, once you sort of exit that bootstrap phase, then it's time to start planning and making choices. And you know, we've been running the EOS system entrepreneur, why operating systems sometimes just kind of slid through entrepreneur Entrepreneurial Operating System. We've been running that for about three years now. And, and that's huge. Again, that's from that book traction by Gino Wickman. And that's, that's a good step towards making sure that you know that your business is going to take care of you. It's gonna take care of your employees, which kind of leads us to the next thing next,
Ben Lueders 19:30
The next part is, you know, a fruitful brand makes the world a better place for your employees too.
Raj Lulla 19:36
I know you've done a really good job of making sure that everybody feels like they have a future, not only here, but also just outside of here. How do you approach that idea? Like what do you think about when you lead employees here? Yeah,
Ben Lueders 19:55
That's a good question. I think you know, I think part of it is you know, just cuz some of it just kind of comes naturally, you know, I'm not like, always deliberately thinking, hey, if I do this, it's going to result in x. And sometimes I probably should think that more often, you know, I'm just trying to treat them like humans treat them the way that I would want to be treated. But one rule of thumb is that, you know, if you really believe in this idea of abundance, this is an abundant world, you know, your company is not the be all and end all. And really, at some point, this individual who's working for you will probably be somewhere else, you know, they'll, you know, grow in your company, and maybe outgrow you, or, who knows, you could be even working for them someday, this world is so abundant, you know, I've seen situations like that happen. So really just be thinking in that way that like, you know, not trying to keep people at this low level, trying to, you know, keep them doing the same thing always and kind of burning them out and not giving them a path, sometimes in a small company very hard to make a clear path for people to grow, but always encouraging them to learn more to take on more responsibility, and to give them, you know, small goals to work towards. Because, yeah, no one wants to be stuck in that same rut forever. It's just not, again, not very sustainable.
Raj Lulla 21:18
Yeah, I really liked that idea, that sort of, if they're going to be here next year, we want them to be better than they are right now. And not because we need them to be better, but because we want them to be healthy and growing, because they're bad. But, if they're not here, if they choose to go somewhere else, we want the employer to be able to look at before they came to fruitful, they were probably at this skill level. And then after the time they spent at fruitful, that they are at this other skill level, maturity experience, all those things, because they had opportunity, that that for us is a sign of our weaving fruitful towards our employees, are we helping them grow to their next stage in life, whether that's with us, or whether they're, whether that's somewhere else, or even launching their own thing?
Ben Lueders 22:05
Yeah, I just think that's so crucial that it just really be kind of open handed with that, and I think you'll get the most, just the best results to you know, for your own company. If you don't, you know, try to hold on too tightly, or to try to, like keep someone in a certain position against what's naturally happening. You know, like, when you're growing a plant, sometimes I was just talking to Angela today, our admin assistant and she, she, we have all these plants throughout the office, which I love, and she's really like taking care of each one, we have the snake plant and like the front lobby that is just getting huge. I mean, it's like turning into a dinosaur. But like, it's like, what do you do, like when a plant starts outgrowing its, you know, the pot that it's in, it's like, you gotta you gotta figure out how to report this thing gotta get this or, you know, trim it down, like, what do you do? You know, and so trying to contain people and trying to keep people places that they're just naturally outgrowing. It's like,
Raj Lulla 23:00
don't don't trim your employees.
Ben Lueders 23:04
Yeah, get a bigger pie, or put them in a different one, you know, in a different position in your company. How do you utilize that growth? You know,
Raj Lulla 23:13
If people are being taken care of, well, they are going to naturally grow just like a kid or like a plant like, you know, a vegetable. That's a natural thing. So don't don't try to stifle it. And we experienced this all the time in dealing with businesses, right? Like if you go to a fast food place, and you know that the worker does not see any sense of growth or trajectory for themselves. And you get the Hi, welcome to, you know, experience. That's why, you know, you don't get that kind of experience at a place like, you know, I really admire Thrasher and you know, Dan Thrasher who promotes 25% of his workforce every year. Yeah, I mean, can you like, that's crazy. I've worked in a lot of, you know, not a ton, but some retail environments and that sort of thing. And, and a lot of times, it's, you know, hey, here's the minimum that we can pay you if we're in good luck getting a raise here at all. But a place like Thrasher where one out of every four employees gets promoted each year. That's amazing. And but that's half that has to be done on purpose has to be done intentionally. I hope we can have Dan on to kind of talk about how he does that. If you're listening, Dan, give us a call.
Ben Lueders 24:23
Yeah, exactly. And just so people know, he has more than just four people working for him. He picks them on. It's like 500 plus employees at this point. Yeah. That's a great business. Amazing, great
Raj Lulla 24:35
business. So the other thing is, as you know, we talked about how the business has to be fruitful for you. It's got to make your world a better place. It's got to make your employees' world a better place. And, you know, actually storebrand that was a part of does that really well to Donald tells the story about how he likes to buy the first lawn mower for somebody who wins when they buy a house. Oh, yeah. And there are these you know, People aren't just, they're not just workers, they're they're humans. And they've got families or for babies or, you know, passions for traveling or whatever that they have when they are working for you. And you enable those dreams, the paycheck that you write enables those dreams and
Ben Lueders 25:18
men as owners, like, I think that's yeah, we've talked about this, it's like, one of the most satisfying things we get to do is just, you know, the way that we're able to support people's families and dreams. And I remember when Aaron, our first employee, bought her house. Yeah, that was such a big deal. Yes. Crazy, you know, yeah. It was weird. It was just weirdly like satisfying little scary to it's
Raj Lulla 25:42
like, there's a 30 year mortgage,
Ben Lueders 25:44
gonna be around in three years. But then I was like, oh, man, we better get our stuff together. And it's kind of like when you have a family of your own, where it's like, it's super scary in one sense, but then also like, satisfying and fulfilling. I'd like a whole nother level.
Raj Lulla 25:59
Yeah. So we talked about a better world for you and a better world for your employees. Next one is a better world for your customers. And this is something that we believe really, really deeply, this is why we became a story brand certified agency. Again, we talked about this in episode one. So feel free to go back and listen to that. But basically, story brand is a marketing framework that puts your customer as the hero of the story using the principles of story they've been around for a long, long time, and puts your customers the heroes and story instead of putting you as the hero of the story. And it makes you the guide to your customers' success. And we think that that is just probably the most succinct way to put what being a fruitful, brandwood fruitful company to your customer really means. It's still delivering that kind of value to your customer. Because you recognize that they're trying to go somewhere, we're just we're just helping where they're going. What are some brands that you think do that really, really well that really embody this idea of making the world a better place for their customers?
Ben Lueders 27:07
Hmm, that's a good one. One that comes to mind. Home Depot? Have you seen some of those Home Depot commercials? There's, what does it say? How Dewar's get more done, or something like that, it's about like, you know, really, instead of looking at it from the angle of, you know, we're home depot, and you know, we're gonna help you do this, or, you know, we're gonna do this for you. It's like, just focusing on you, which kind of reminds me actually, of the famous Nike “Just Do It”, you know, it's really putting the person wearing the shoes in that hero slot, and he's just kind of helping them accomplish their goals.
Raj Lulla 27:45
You know, we were looking at some other taglines for other companies. And yet he had one that was, I feel like it was like, almost there. It said, built to go the distance. And, you know, that, to me, kind of makes them the hero of this story. But even if you just added two words, to it, it's like built to go the distance with you, you know, and so this idea that, like you're traveling, you're going,
Ben Lueders 28:11
there's a subtle difference between like, we're the best to, like, you're the best. And we're like,
Raj Lulla 28:18
Yeah, we're reliable for you for what you're trying to accomplish. What you're where you're trying to go. Yeah, you know, Apple, of course, we love Apple. And it's, it's classic, just brought to you by but, you know, they really stick their brand on being great for creatives. And, you know, several years ago, they took all the ports away from the MacBook Pros, and, and they forced us on dark days. Yeah, they forced us on the USBC land, which actually is a great connector. And so that was a customer focused move. But the big problem was there's a lot of creatives out there like us who need to use these cards called SD cards that go and cameras and recorders and all those things. And computers used to have this slot where you could just slide that card and dump all your photos and videos and all that and start editing and then they took that away from us. And we all entered dongle land dongles, everything, yes, my whole backpack you even got like a little carrying case for oh, you know, for all of your connectors, and I'm sure you know, but they listened to us and, and with the latest release of MacBook Pro, they brought that for and, and it's been a lot better. It's been so much easier to edit photos and videos ever since. So, you know, it's like they know that their target audience is creative people, they listen to the needs of creative people. And yeah, and even, you know, what did what would have been considered going backwards in design, but was a better solution for customers.
Ben Lueders 29:52
I mean, I think similarly, since we're talking about this MacBook Pro example, you know, they brought in that little, what do you call it the touch bar? bar, though, you know, again, maybe creative people will use this, you can scrub video really fast and do all this kind of stuff. And it probably had some good use cases. But I don't think that it just didn't work the way that they envisioned. And they, you know, they removed it.
Raj Lulla 30:13
And a lot of developers use those top rows of keys for different functions. And, and a lot of us had gotten used to sorting out our quick shortcuts and, yeah, it just wasn't functional. They got rid of it. Exactly. And there's nothing wrong with that. Yeah. You know, a lot of it is doing what's right for the customer, regardless of if it matches, what was your idea? You know, there's a lot of good examples of that in history, where it's just like, hey, we thought, Well, this was going to work. But we recognize that what our customers really need is something else. Yeah,
Ben Lueders 30:46
It was like trial and error, like on a very high level. Yeah. It's like you think you could like focus tests that are A B tests a little bit, but sometimes you just have to kind of go all in? Yeah. And then just listen to your audience. Yes. Sometimes.
Raj Lulla 30:59
Nobody wants new coke. I liked Pepsi Clear. But I'm like, I think the only person on planet earth who actually did so I'm okay, accepting the demise of that drink. But yeah, I mean, it's listening to customers, knowing what they're really there for, and, and trying to make their world a better place.
Ben Lueders 31:19
Right, just like I said, at the beginning of the podcast, you know, we're here to help people create and grow brands that are good for themselves, for their customers, for their employees. But the natural outgrowth of that, obviously has ramifications in the community and the community that you're in. Can you speak to that a
Raj Lulla 31:38
a little bit? Yeah. So in the early days of Fruitful about 50, to 75% of our business was nonprofits. And we have a really special place in our heart for nonprofits. And we have loved doing work with them over the years, growing their donor bases and increasing their impact in the world. But there's also just something really special about a great company. People need great places to work and shop and do business. Of the hours that you spend awake, you spend the vast majority of your time, either working, or patronizing a business working in a business or patronizing a business. And that's everything from groceries to plumbers, to legal services, car dealerships and beyond. I mean, there's, we're almost always interacting with a brand of some kind or another, we're wearing your brand, we're, you know, we're driving a brand, we're, you know, sitting in a brand. They're working on a brand. Yeah, there's all of these ways that we interact with these companies. And we believe that more businesses should be amazing places to work, that they should create futures for their employees and their customers. They should make their customers feel honored to do business with them. And they should anchor communities with generosity and opportunity. We believe the world needs more fruitful brands. If you're growing a fruitful brand, or you want to, you're in the right place. Like that's what this whole podcast is about. It's not about us. Yes, our name is in the show. But it's really because we believe this, it's who we are. And, we love doing business with fruitful brands with great brands. And that's not just ones that we've designed. It's ones that help other people, you know, we have a great partner red fox consulting, they've, you know, helped us grow our business. They're the one to get us set up on EOS. You know, Thrasher has been repaired. I think both of our homies, you know, there's easy, great places that aren't just about, again, kind of squeezing out that next dollar or scent. It's they're about helping people when they encounter trouble, you know, that they're, they've got water coming in their basement, or they've got a legal issue or they, you know, are trying to start something up, or they're trying to get healthy or you know, whatever it is that they're trying to go through a fruitful brand, a brand that says, hey, we're going to give you more value, that we're going to treat you the way that we would want to be treated if we were on your side of the table. The world needs more of those kinds of brands, amen, Raj.
Ben Lueders 34:13
At the end of every episode, we always want to give an opportunity for you to take a step back, look at yourself and give you an opportunity to become more fruitful yourself. And so the question we want to leave you with today is why do you do what you do? So not just you know, what do you do and how do you do it? But like, What's the reason behind what you
Raj Lulla 34:35
do? Yeah. And this isn't navel gazing. It's not just, you know, pontificating. It's really thinking about, you know, when you got into the business that you're in, whether that's, you know, something manual, you know, roofing or plumbing or any of those things or whether that's something very skilled on the different end of surgery or medicine or in Those types of things, or even if it's something that you think is maybe not terribly sexy, but as is important for the world that you know, like, somebody has to sell the pipes that become our sewers, and somebody has to, you know, there's all these businesses that kind of operate behind the scenes in the world. And, and just asking yourself, why did I get into this, what first drew me to either start this business or to join this business or to help promote this business? And I think that's one of the most interesting things about Thrasher for me is I never would have imagined that a basement waterproofing company have found so inspirational Yeah, I imagined a lot of like, you know, boots and mud and concrete and all those things and you know, their vision to redefine the customer experience the contractor experience. It really guides them to make a company that is great for the employees, it's great for, you know, their customers and, and does well for them as well. So same thing for you like, how, how can what drives you? How can that make it a better experience for you, your employees, your customers, and then ultimately your community? Why do you do what you do?
Ben Lueders 36:15
Thanks for joining us for another episode of Growing a Fruitful brand. Let's grow something good together.
