Jeremy Weisz
You know, I love that because it’s like, a lot of companies are now seeing the need to pivot and grow, you know, with a different initiative from what they had before. And you kind of bring that, that leadership, the marketing leadership together to help them navigate what that looks like. So they kind of came to you with, here’s what we’re thinking and you kind of built out this whole program. It
Steve Dobbins
absolutely, absolutely, yeah.
Jeremy Weisz
What would you say from talking to Cheryl? So it was some takeaways you said she, you know, she’s a woman leader in a man like in the construction or contractor industry in a man’s role. What were some of the things that struck you about her as a leader and running the company?
Steve Dobbins
I think she, she’s able to use some of her soft skills and a you know, it’s, especially in this time when empathy is probably the most important when we’re all kind of worried about health and safety. She leads with that and she leads with great clarity about her own business and how she she made a commitment. I’m not laying off anyone during this pandemic. I’m gonna you know, no matter how much we suffer economically, I’m taking care of my people. That’s first and foremost. That’s the message out to all of Orange County. She wants to help fellow co so she’s speaking directly to CEOs. to like, Hey, we your people are your most important asset. Let’s take care of them and make your place a safe and healthy as possible.
Jeremy Weisz
Um, Steve, what’s another one of people that someone came to you and in this craziness?
Steve Dobbins
Yeah, another one, we’re working with Tim magic, which is a VR company out of New Orleans, so they do virtual reality and xR, and they were so focused, they were they launched a product in February. It’s a digital twin technology. And they were focused on oil and gas. So it was a company that was completely you know, dependent on oil and gas which at the same you know, when COVID came in, oil and gas also tank, so it just went completely crazy. They have pivoted and recast themselves as virtual teams so they create virtual spaces, so meeting rooms, whiteboard spaces, planning, all that sort of thing specifically for any team And they’re making it accessible, they just tend to change their technology a slight bit to be open to anyone from whether, from originally a direction of going into massive projects that were multi year projects to being you know, almost anyone could could take advantage of the products that’s been a lot of fun to watch that we had to panic mode. And it came through with just like a new vision and it’s been really cool to watch again the CEO kind of takes a leadership and find some way learn ways to innovate.
Jeremy Weisz
Walk me through the process. So they call you and what what do you help them with?
Steve Dobbins
You’re working with them on we’re working with them and I mean, on any on any clients, you know, we kind of we first we go through a they may come with one set of problems, and we do a you know, kind of dig deeper call where we’ll explore what the really issues are, what the issues are and and in through conversations can be typically uncover. There’s a lot bigger they generally will start with something tactical, but they probably have something strategic that is a much bigger issue and probably have some challenges with how they’re messaging. So we like to help them step back and take you know roll a 360 view of their of their challenges generally love starting with messaging and we We consider ourselves first and foremost storytellers and helping brands tell their stories and then like absolutely back it up with you know all the different marketing channels and metrics and data that feed into that story but it all starts with having a having a beautiful brand story.
Jeremy Weisz
You know, you guys go deep and I want to hear your thought process because they know you have like when you bring in marketing strategy and execution you bring in these specific foundational frameworks to working with someone and I think it weird analogy Steve like when I when you I heard you say that I think I’m weird health analogies. So I’m picturing like, I don’t know why a freckle that like is discolored. And then you go in and you take a biopsy and there is an issue there and you have to dig. Like, there’s this whole thing underneath the surface. It’s kind of what you do is if they like, yeah, this email things off and you’re like, yeah, in your messaging and the whole kind of when you dig deeper, you find these other underlying foundational issues. So if you could talk about just some of the phases you put people through with this process.
Steve Dobbins
Yeah, we generally love when we have the freedoms that we love to start any new engagement with a messaging workshop and we create a messaging playbook. In a three hour workshop, that we use a variety of interactive exercises to really pull apart, you know, the, the DNA of the brand, so we’ll gather together the other To CEO, we’d like to have about five or six of the key stakeholders participating in this because they all have a different view. And what we really quickly uncover is not everybody’s not always aligned. So you know, marketing doesn’t marketing, in an unaligned organization doesn’t do any good. You know, you have to have alignment around who you are, what you do and why it matters. And from all creating that framework really helps you to create much more effective marketing but also much more effective communications within your own messaging internally, and how you work as a team. So we, we start with that. We go back and create a messaging playbook that we present to them a week later. And it turns out to be a really cool interactive experience for the team not just for us, but they it’s proven to be a great like bonding experience for them. CEOs sit back and Marvel what they’re what they hear from their team. But that’s a great foundational practice for for any projects that we take on. And I love I love just we started off with, you know, tasking the CEO to, to tell the story of the brand and it’s not a sort of brand, it’s your story. So if especially if it’s a founder, founder CEO, how did we get here? How did we get to today really treat it like a compelling story. And that just feeds so much into the narrative.
Unknown Speaker
And the messaging.
Steve Dobbins
The other tools we use, we love personas, really, helping teams understand who it is that they’re, you know, selling to, who are they speaking to. So your marketing is not you know, having a real understanding of the challenges that your your customer is facing, what are their pain points and how are we helping address that? So really kind of given a, a create a persona market is is one of my favorite things just like actually having a, you know, a face and a name that you can actually envision whenever you’re creating marketing. This makes it so much more empathetic and effective.
Jeremy Weisz
Awesome. What’s next after that when you work with someone,
Steve Dobbins
simultaneous, you’re awesome just doing deep dives into the actual metrics going in and looking at their systems, what systems they have in place. Invariably, there are, you know, brokenness in the systems you know, their emails, a mess, they may have you know, haven’t scrubbed their email list and you know, a decade they’re doing things just in wasting time, not being effective in their marketing. So there’s, there’s all kinds of great stuff. There’s so much great data you can collect from marketing that most companies are probably not taking advantage of. So we love not only just doing the creative side of the messaging side, but digging into the metrics and data behind All of their existing marketing
Jeremy Weisz
probably there’s a lot of stuff we were talking before we hit record. Oftentimes people neglect their email, you know, and that’s a one to one communication is or other things. I know that you have social media solutions as well.
Steve Dobbins
Yeah, and social media, it’s always a it can be a hard sell because people don’t see necessarily the quick you know, return on social media, but it is, you know, not having a social media presence is you know, itself giving a brand state but, and you know, no one that’s it’s the world we live in. It also allows you to be like super nimble and your messaging makes you you know, direct contact with your end user your target. And you can see brands have a lot more fun and be a little bit freer and social media. We We love the social media component
Jeremy Weisz
what our mistakes
Steve Dobbins
But it all has to tie together. I mean, nothing, nothing lives in silos. So it’s what is your piece of content? What is the content journey? Whether it’s a blog, how it gets used email, how it gets used on social, which does it like, turn into infographics? Is there webinars around it? But you know, it’s all about how can you how many ways can you leverage good content?
Jeremy Weisz
How do you what mistakes are people making in their content marketing?
Unknown Speaker
I think,
Steve Dobbins
again, doing it in a vacuum not leveraging it the way they should and not tying into the metrics behind it would, you know, you can have a great email against a great open rate, but are you what are you learning from it? So we want every piece of marketing to have some kind of learning from it, you know, what did people click on? What did they respond to? What was the time of day? What did you know? What are all the different data points that you can learn and get better about and you know, better serve your Yeah you’re in customer
Jeremy Weisz
so there’s messaging you look at the messaging, the persona marketing and then the different systems that are going on simultaneously. What else?
Steve Dobbins
No, we’ll create a hill content engine content calendar putting together actual you know processes for development of content and just you know, turning it into a welcome engine. Again most organizations just don’t really have that especially especially at the level that five to $10 million dollar they probably have some Junior during their yesterday not a newsletter every week. That is featuring a product versus you know, really providing helpful information.
Jeremy Weisz
What’s some of the most important you know, when you go in there’s there’s probably can be overwhelming for people I imagine because there’s so much stuff you could do. Where should you will start with
Steve Dobbins
Oh, it also depends on you know what industry you’re in who your target audiences, I think versus understanding who your who your audiences and looking at what their pain points and creating content that don’t just try to sell your services but show that you’re empathetic and that your trusted partner and that you provide value. So getting them there and get them hooked before you know, so they come to you for when they’re when they have a need.
Jeremy Weisz
You know? So yeah, the mistake you’ll see people make is maybe they just push out their own agenda or products too much and they’re not looking at it from their clients perspective of what would actually serve them what questions are they having, what pain points do they have? What else when you go in so the messaging for Sona systems, the content calendar
Steve Dobbins
well Do we’ll do a competitive analysis? What can we learn from the looking at the landscape? What are others doing? Were they doing right or wrong? We’ll do a real you know, current state assessment and be very blunt about, you know, this is this is what we noticed it can be, it can be challenging for people to hear, but some are better than they think they are. They think they come to us knowing that they have some issues, put all that together into a marketing student developing a kind of a, you know, 12 month marketing strategy around that all you know, using all of those pieces.
Jeremy Weisz
You probably had to have a lot of a hard conversation, but like, you know, just showing someone I don’t know if this is the right analogy, Steve, but like, it’s not so much their baby’s ugly, but sort of, I guess it’s a tough conversation, right? Maybe your baby’s not perfect is a better analogy, but What are some of the heart You don’t have to mention the person’s name or company, but talk about some of those hard conversations because on one hand, they’re coming to you for advice other hand, you want them to listen to your advice, if you come at it in the wrong way, they may not be as open. So maybe if you could talk about maybe a tough conversation you had to have and how you navigated that?
Steve Dobbins
Sure, I mean, I think there’s, again, there’s goes back to my many, many years working straight with CEO, so knowing kind of how to have those conversations. So you know, there’s, there’s a lot of diplomacy that goes with any kind of worship. So, you know, you’re never going to just like slam everything. There’s always somebody get defined so you can find out, find the, find the good things to compliment them on. And then you know, then you can ease them into the realities and come with a solution as well come with like, like, hey, this actually needs a lot of a lot of work, but it’s absolutely possible. I think some of the hardest some of the bigger challenges are when you know, like when the CEO has been handling marketing his or herself or they’ve created systems or they’ve created a you know, they’re they were hands on in the development of a website or logo or whatever it is. And you know the other grown and it’s not you can’t have this ragtag marketing that’s got them to the where they were. But you typically by the time they they’re at the size though when we start talking to them, they’re they’re willing to hear that they know that they’re looking at their landscape and know that they they want somebody to be honest with them.
Jeremy Weisz
Yeah, they’re ready for help sometimes, but I mean, sometimes they aren’t maybe ready to hear what you’re what you’re willing to share either even though they know there’s a problem but but I’m sure that at least in reached out and they want to help, I guess, right.
Steve Dobbins
And not you know what, honestly, not everyone’s a good fit. I think we’re always looking for people that are wanting to work with us that respect our opinions that are willing to also have, you know, be having difficult conversations with us. I mean, we got to be a level of trust and candidness I need to confirm this work.
Unknown Speaker
Yeah.
Jeremy Weisz
Um, I wanted to ask about SWIMS in a second. But is there anything else that you want to touch on in in the process that we didn’t hit?
Steve Dobbins
Again, every project, every client is completely unique. So we really pride ourselves in being an agile agency of being able to provide a unique solution. Yeah, we have systems that we have a lot, a whole toolkit of things that we can use, but not everything applies to everyone. So that ability to really identify what a what a client needs and having those conversations
Jeremy Weisz
you’ll Steve I know there’s a lot of people probably there’s there’s a number of companies in a position kind of like SWIMS was where they maybe weren’t ready to hire a full time kind of Head of Marketing at this point. And maybe would take it could take a long time to find that person also even when they’re ready, so they need your team to come in and step in and kind of lead the marketing efforts. So I’m just wondering, like maybe take SWIMS as an example. Um, because you have to quickly go in and assess everything kind of like triage everything and like move forward quickly. So talk about the experience and what you do with SWIMS.
Steve Dobbins
Yeah, SWIMS is a global lifestyle brand and they specialize in these amazing waterproof shoes, loafers. They were founded in Norway got bought by private equity. Private Equity hired a CEO in Long Beach. All of his marketing team was in Oslo. I got introduced to him, right. And he had to take the job but for four months earlier, had no marketing here in the United States. And really, His goal was to grow us cells specifically. So he we started talking, we hit it off, quickly ran came into had an agreement, and, you know, with an understanding that he was eventually going to hire a head of global marketing, but that could be a year down the line which turned out to be So he and I worked again, side by side. I was part of his leadership team, working, you know, to connect the dots between marketing and sales and product development. So I was brought in my full team, writers and designers, PR people to kind of do the assist and we became his, you know, fractional marketing agency. So he had a whole marketing team at his disposal with Not having to have any headcount added while you waited so we did you know had a really fun time going in us making a during this estimate we did exactly what I just explained and messaging workshop we did personas, we did a competitive analysis created a content engine. And really quickly within probably a month we were up and running and you know, taking their email marketing, especially social media, as well as you know, their website, do you know great solid, all those things. So it was a lot of fun. And we, you know, we had no he was in a conscious community with no experience and footwear. But that’s one of the things that we love to do is just to tackle a new industry.
We kind of use that journalist to go in and dig and learn and quickly learn a new industry. So that’s how we got into technology, real estate construction all brand new industries for so we’ve been able to come in and work with the CEO and quickly understand the industry.
Jeremy Weisz
It’s interesting. I mean, the foundational principles apply to any industry. Right? Not
Unknown Speaker
exactly. Yeah.
Jeremy Weisz
What’s interesting to Steve is that you do a really good job and you work yourself out of a job like you do a good enough job, you put everything in place. And then they’re like, okay, you did amazing Steve by so how do people work with you on going past that point where then they bring someone else says,
Steve Dobbins
And we actually did keep it with SWIMS, we have more we kept for another year and a half or working in more of a execution. But we knew all the systems so I had my team members are already well placed in they knew every system that’s once had. So we kept on it. So we don’t you know, we always want to have that ongoing relationship, even if they hire someone to do.
Jeremy Weisz
Okay. Yeah, cuz I’m like, wait, that’s terrible. It’s great for them. It’s terrible for you. Great. You just hand it off to the next person, the keys, keys to the car or whatever.
Steve Dobbins
Yeah, but we also like to, you know, there’s always there’s always something on the horizon. And and, you know, Jake Brandman, who is a CEO has been one of our biggest supporters and has numerous other clients. So, you know, we’re almost 100% referral days. So that’s, you know, it’s building that’s what it’s all about relationships.
Jeremy Weisz
Yeah, no, totally, totally. And I’m sure there’s always ongoing things or oversights and everything, I think I think of the analogy to like, the chiropractor, you you fix someone’s back, or you have their back like, well, they’re never coming back to you. So he did a great job. You know, but if you educate them, just like in your, your situation, they know they need some kind of maintenance, you know, and the people who understand that that’s what’s needed. You talked with the journalists background, and so you have a journalist background from years of Texas, where I actually almost went I went to Madison, but I thought about going there just because the food’s amazing. The barbecue alone, I would go to University of Texas. But how did you go from journalism? And then you went to YPO?
Steve Dobbins
Yeah, so I, I was again at University of Texas. From day one was on the daily Texan, which is a amazing probably one of the top free college newspapers in the United States. went to work for them loved it, made my way all the way up to editor or managing editor, my junior year. So I had 150 people working on a daily newspaper that was that competed with the paper and really figured out that my love was not showing for the day to day reporting, but the management side of things. So, you know, senior year switched, focus a little bit and went on more of a communications versus straight journalism. And that’s what brought me into into YPO as A writer. So I helped them launch a magazine. And he was doing, you know, editorial work for YPO. You know, all around the world. The rest of my career.
Jeremy Weisz
What was the toughest part about managing large staff while you were at the University of Texas? I think
Steve Dobbins
juggling all the different personalities, it was the toughest, but also probably the most fulfilling. I loved and I still love leading teams. So that really gave me my first glimpse of what leading teams would look like I pride myself without creating amazing teams that are, you know, the right have the right all the right talents and creating diverse, diverse groups could not have been a more diverse group than that. The team we had at the daily Texan, lots of Pulitzer Prize winners. Yeah, super proud of them.
Jeremy Weisz
Talk about your team at The Dobbins Group and how you assemble the team
Steve Dobbins
Yeah, they are 100% individuals that I’ve worked with various parts of my career so a lot of them have worked together. So they’re really I consider them the kind of the best and brightest, the people that I have great relationships with that I have a trust already built in. I know their work ethic. They know mine, we know how to communicate, there’s no challenges they all have, you know, they’re all have their own independent businesses as well. So they’re, you know, dumped in just on the Dobbins group, but you know, where I’m bringing them a lot of work so we work great together and build some really cool teams again. Yeah, it’s just like there’s never skip a beat when a new project starts.
Jeremy Weisz
Yeah, I want to kind of get some of your favorite stories because you have a really amazing, an amazing career so far from YPO starting spin creative, and then again at YPO, then Vistage then revolution in LA. I mean, it’s it’s pretty amazing. And tell me about going, working YPO doing your own company and then going back to IKEA.
Steve Dobbins
Yeah, well, it’s interesting. So I was in YPO for seven years. absolutely loved it. It was a dream job that I was in my 20s. And traveling around the world, working with some of the most amazing business leaders must have direct exposure to them. It’s fantastic. But I was you know, living in Dallas, I wanted to live in what I wanted to live in California. And at that time, nobody, nobody worked remotely. It was not I never thought of anywhere. So I would tell a really, not even having a concrete plan of what I was gonna do is gonna Get to work, I was going to work at an agency got a contract job with YPO at the you know, as I was leaving that label, give me a little bit of cushion. And that led to the creation of spin creative. So, for the next 1112 years, I had been creative, which is my first agency. We did a lot of work still with YPO. And it could have expanded our reach. We’re very event marketing focused, so traveling around the world. So it was it was a love the adventure of working for myself. And then also somebody who is still getting, you know, the diversity of clients did that for 12 years and in Wigan brought me back as our chief marketing officer. So it’s kind of I went from an intern in, in my 20s, to cmo in my mid 30s, which was, you know, just opportunity as YPO was expanding its global reach and its public profile, lots of other cool opportunities.
Jeremy Weisz
It’s interesting, so when you went to LA. You have a little bit selling you a little bit of plan, but not much. What was it was a big leap for you to make that decision. Like I’m just going or what were you thinking at the time?
Steve Dobbins
Yeah, it was a big leap. But it was very counterintuitive. I’m a Virgo. I always have a plan. So going and not having an exact plan. Yeah, I had I had the cushion by the time I actually made the move. But I you know, I had contacts, I had bad friends and I had some business contacts that I figured, you know, and had a little bit of savings might as well you know, let’s head west for the American dream, and it paid off and that kind of gave me a impetus for the rest of my career where it’s really made it easier to take those leaps.
Jeremy Weisz
So what was the conversation like with YPO and they lured you back? They’re like, okay, we want you back. And what was that? What was that conversation? I was awesome. And I in fact, I had a zoom call with The CEO
Steve Dobbins
at the time, yesterday, David Martin gave me a call I was still very familiar with, you know, I was working in within the organization as a contractor, Sprint creative was doing all of their international events, we were very much ingrained in the organization. And getting that call was, for me, it was a professional. It was a huge opportunity to expand my own, you know, you know, digging into PR, global marketing, and really, you know, grow considerably, and I certainly did over those seven years.
Jeremy Weisz
You know, a shout out. I had Sean McGinnis on who’s president now YPO and it just shows a YPO because they’re an amazing organization. I mean, I think last time I research and you could probably correct me see, I think there’s like over 27,000 members, like executives and other people like that are in the organization and these are like top top companies in the world.
Steve Dobbins
Sean is a dear friend of mine who actually were. He was one of my clients when I had been created. He was head of eo. He was our international president. He and I work together was doing like their annual reports and stuff we never met face to face until I was back at cmo and he became CEO. So we were served on the senior team of YPO. together to see Greg.
Jeremy Weisz
Totally what what things have you learned from talking to Sean?
Steve Dobbins
You know, Sean’s a real master of, of servant leadership of empathy. He is a relationship builder. He is calm and collected, but you know, also has it has a vision. Just Yeah, just a great guy.
Jeremy Weisz
You know, so what’s some of your favorites, a favorite story from your YPO days that you remember maybe interaction with the management or maybe interaction with a one of the members of YPO.
Steve Dobbins
my very favorite story was working in 1990 You five in South Africa. And I was given the task of body guardian for Nelson Mandela. So that’s my, you know, he was a surprise a surprise speaker and an opening cocktail party and they needed someone to make sure that no one rush the stage. So I escorted him in
Jeremy Weisz
I know you did an Iron Man or half Ironman everything See, but like, you know, are you gonna be fending off like crazy people?
Steve Dobbins
Yeah, not probably not the best body guard in the world and keep his own bodyguards but you know, I like to tell it
Jeremy Weisz
that way. I like it. I like it was what was that event like that he spoke at?
Steve Dobbins
Oh, it was amazing. It was my first time to South Africa first and more than 50 or 60 times I have a deep love for South Africa. deep love for Nelson Mandela, who is probably my number one role model as a leader of empathetic leadership. And vision tenacity and you know, just incredible. So he Yeah, he, he was the highlight of the next morning we had Fw de Klerk, we had you know, Desmond Tutu Jane Goodall. It was a it was a powerhouse eye opening week in South Africa that again, I think it’s been it’s been inspirational throughout my career.
Jeremy Weisz
What did he tell you remember what he talked about?
Steve Dobbins
You just told the story. He was, you know, this is 1985. He had just become president. So it was a his story of leaving prison and his hope for a new South Africa and then in the early days of its democracy. That’s extraordinary.
Jeremy Weisz
Wow, that’s amazing. You need to update your LinkedIn profile. Steve mentioned that former bodyguard warmer now Nelson Mandela bodyguard
Unknown Speaker
I left that off.
Jeremy Weisz
I mean, I’m really shocked he left that up, actually, we need to update it today.
Unknown Speaker
Um,
Jeremy Weisz
this edge, you then went on the edge. So what’s a favorite story from distich
Steve Dobbins
This is amazing visit another really amazing organization that sits in the same space as YPO as far as peer to peer leadership, and they really gave me an opportunity. I went in left marketing a little bit, I was more entrepreneurial, and they put me in charge of coming up with various strategies to add to the member added to the member experience and create value streams for members of message, which is completely out of my normal, you know, traditional marketing. So it was a great entrepreneurial opportunity. I think it again gave me some great room for professional growth. building a business And a great contacts a lot of my current clients are Vistage members I’m still a message member I’m a huge believer in white the message to all of the peer to peer learning organizations
Jeremy Weisz
and then you can’t help yourself but then you create two more companies with revolucion in LA and the dominant group. tell people about that. That company which is it seems like it’s a yoga inspired fitness company. So yeah, so revolution
Steve Dobbins
was my husband launched it and watch it together. It was a sort of a tom shoes meets Lululemon. So every Okay, he’s the workout clothing, had a social give back. So you have a pair of leggings that provides you know a week of school for girl in Thailand escaping trafficking or ports that’s providing works skills training for a teenager in San Diego Swiss launch company. And really I was I left Vistage and was planning to start to look for a CMO role somewhere and realize, you know what, let me do the marketing for revolution for the first three to six months when we get launched, and then I’ll go off and find something else and you know, go back full time somewhere. And that’s when the Dobbin trip started was really, I don’t have a back to work for anyone at this point in my career, I want I’ve done an agency before I can do it again, and see where we go with it. And you know, four years later, it’s going incredibly well.
Jeremy Weisz
You know, some of the hardest things, I think, is to launch a company. Right? And what were some of the strategies things you use to get that off the ground?
Steve Dobbins
Yeah, well, I think in both the case of revolucion and with The Dobbins Group that was first founded just like I would with any other client is finding, you know, what is your story? What is your brand out those and really understanding who you are as a brand And then working from there and creating from that and making sure that every aspect of the company connects to that DNA. So especially with revolution, which our tagline was, love and action, everything from the logo, the, you know, every product tag to every marketing collateral, spoke to that bigger vision of creating a better world with our purchases. I mean,
Jeremy Weisz
there’s so many meanings, right? Obviously, people are an action, but also the purchase creates love and action to exactly how long did it take you to come up with? I mean, right now you say it. No, it’s like, makes perfect sense. It probably took you like 70 hours to come up with that. You
Steve Dobbins
know, I have to give my husband complete credit. He actually, he was the he was the co founder. I was president and he is social, his MBA in social entrepreneurship. It was working on the concept for four or five years. You It was not an overnight
Jeremy Weisz
No, totally what helps with the selling so you have the messaging in place. Now you need to get the word out what helps sell?
Steve Dobbins
Lets, you know it’s a understanding your marketing channels. It’s building a tribe, we did a lot of in person events. So being you know, at yoga festivals and interacting and creating that excitement, and you know, it was a it was a lot of, of the groundwork, which was fun. It was also super rewarding. Yeah, so, yeah. Especially with the lifestyle brand.
Jeremy Weisz
Yeah. The Dobbins Group. What have we missed are some companies or stories from the Dobbins group?
Steve Dobbins
Let’s see where We’re working with a great organization called Alliance Resource Group which is a staffing organization for people and leaders in the finance and accounting realm and they’re hard headed by the nobody’s nobody’s hiring right now. So it was interesting that we started working with them about a month ago and have loved teaming with them. It’s a it’s a husband and wife run business. We’re working with a side by side with them to kind of just navigate through this. They’re you know, again, we’re when on on the tracks like having some record breaking here, and then just immediately Oh, like everyone when COVID hit some major halts, but slowly, we’ve been working for about a month we’re already starting to see things turn around, so watching their vision and watching them being comfortable in the uncomfortableness has been really wonderful and you know, their trust level they’ve given about us it’s been absolute collaboration, what helping them create empathetic brand messaging that also has you know, that’s that’s getting the results that they want. So there’s they’re starting to see, obviously, you’ve seen a lot of job, people hunting for jobs, but slowly starting to see more and more people actually thinking about hiring. So looking at the look at that horizon, when hiring starts, again, we’re just starting starting to look at especially q3 and q4 what those might look like.
Jeremy Weisz
Thanks for sharing that, Stephen in. First of all, thank you. Thanks for sharing your your decades of knowledge with us in your thought process. It’s so valuable to hear how you go about going in to basically help a company. I have one last question before I ask it. I want to tell everyone, go into the Dobbins Group. Okay. Is dobbins-group.com do BB I ns dash group.com check out what they have going on, you can read some of the stuff about their messaging workshop, their social media, Kickstarter, the brand strategy and what they do as a fractional cmo and come in and basically kind of take a full service approach to your company. So check it out. So thanks. Thank you, Steve. My last question is, you know, we can’t do this journey alone. And it seemed like you are you seem to go to these amazing organizations and help them who are some of the mentors along the way that really helped you give give you advice along the journey?
Steve Dobbins
I would think, certainly my peers of YPO I think a buddy teacher who was a CEO of soles for souls has been a great inspiration throughout my career. We started YPO way back the same time I saw him Call yesterday and then you know, YPO members around the world to, you know, I’m still close friends with their continued inspiration with what they’re doing in their careers. And then my Vistage group, I super I have a lot of value, I get a lot of value out of it on a regular basis especially we’re meeting on a weekly basis during COVID-19. It’s been a super, super important and it’s a great asset to really balancing out the my own personal Board of Directors on a regular basis.
Jeremy Weisz
Steve, thank you so much, everyone, check out dobbins-group.com and really appreciate you
Steve Dobbins
thank you Jeremy.
