Transcript

 

Michael Palumbos (00:59.358)

Hello, welcome everybody to The Family Biz Show. I am your host, Michael Palumbos with Family Wealth and Legacy in Rochester, New York. And we have a incredible story and an incredible show for you today with Maureen Ballatori from Agency 29. Welcome Maureen. 

 

Maureen Ballatori (01:16.75)

Thank you. Thanks for having me on the show, Michael. I appreciate it. 

 

Michael Palumbos (01:20.194)

We don't do a ton of, I think we've got one, maybe two episodes where we're talking about branding. I've got a bunch where we talk about strategy, but not so much on the branding side of things. So I'm really excited to bring in another episode about this because, Juan, I wanna hear about your background and how you got to where you're going. But I think for our people to realize that, you know, some people might know Maureen Bellatorri as 29 Design Studio. 

 

Michael Palumbos (01:49.344)

and not why the shift to agency 29. And it's for exactly the same reason as a lot of family businesses might need to shift somewhere along the line as they're doing things. So welcome again. Let's talk about your journey into the world of branding and marketing and advertising and all the things that you do today. Tell us about it. 

 

Maureen Ballatori (02:17.11)

Yeah. So I grew up on a dairy farm and so in upstate New York. And so I, I've always been connected to agriculture and never planned on doing that in my adult life, but I've always loved art and creativity, you know? So I, as I was going into college, I was seeking something that allowed me to kind of take the business interest that I had and merge it with art because I really wasn't looking to be a fine artist and 

 

Maureen Ballatori (02:46.654)

know, creation for art's sake. While I admire that, it really wasn't, I wanted something more purposeful and useful. a pretty, you know, pragmatic person. I like function. And branding just turned out to be the area where I could see a lot of value in the artistic creation of an identity and a brand and the story of what it stands for. 

 

Maureen Ballatori (03:13.582)

and the creative execution from that standpoint with a true business sense of impact of how are people connecting to your business in general. So I went to school for graphic design and illustration at Nazareth University in Rochester, which is what brought me into Rochester and the creative space here. And I graduated in 2008. was a huge economic downturn. No one was hiring anyone at that time, really similar to the 

 

Maureen Ballatori (03:43.17)

Brad's from 2020. And so I started a freelancing side venture called 29 Design Studio and ran that as a freelance side project while I worked full-time for 10 years. So seven years ago, eight years ago, I took the business full-time. took the leap. left my full-time job. I had been working in professional services and I decided this is the time to do it. And so I took that leap. 

 

Michael Palumbos (03:57.432)

Okay? 

 

Maureen Ballatori (04:12.994)

And we stayed as 29 Design Studio for a long time, but really focused on honing our services, scaling the team, honing in who we wanted to work with and why. And that landed us at Food, Beverage, and Agriculture because of my personal background in agriculture. My husband was a fine dining chef who moved into then food manufacturing. I found that fascinating when you think about function, right? In terms of 

 

Maureen Ballatori (04:41.486)

creating something that comes out of a brand. But I always loved the agricultural aspect of it too. So 29 Design Studio existed, honed in in 2020 down to Food, Bev and Ag. And then as we continued to grow and scale, we realized that we were not the freelancing design studio that we always were. And so after much liberation and internal work, 

 

Maureen Ballatori (05:10.102)

and strategic planning on our part, our evolution of that identity is agency 29. 

 

Michael Palumbos (05:16.972)

Congratulations. Now I want to, I want to dive into what you're talking about because you just said, you know, pretty much 20 some odd years in four minutes. And I want to make sure people don't miss some of the things that were important that I heard in there and feel free to, you know, chime in at any time. It started off as a side gig. Right. And you grew that into your full time position, your full time job with employees. 

 

Maureen Ballatori (05:46.336)

Right, yep, we now we have a team of 10 now. Okay, yep. 

 

Michael Palumbos (05:51.958)

And that's wicked cool. But on top of that, when you started, know, even going back to when you were freelance, who would you talk to? 

 

Maureen Ballatori (06:05.912)

Excellent question. So I hope it's not revealing too much. You and I were talking earlier about coaching and the importance of that. I can't emphasize how important it's been in my career to be able to lean on coaches. And so I've engaged executive leadership coaches. I've engaged business coaches, various folks to help me through what was holding me back at the time. So my first coach, I engaged 

 

Maureen Ballatori (06:33.912)

I've always had mentors, right? Folks that I could call on peers in the industry to kind of tap for different areas where I needed support. remember when I was taking the, when I was leaving my full-time job and taking the company full-time and planning to make my, all my money from this, what used to be this little freelancing side project. I called another agency owner who owned a firm in Rochester and I said, what do I need to know here? This is what I'm going to do. I'm taking this full-time. 

 

Maureen Ballatori (07:04.426)

And his advice was being aware of your shortfalls, right? What is the biggest area of opportunity for growth that you have? And for me at the time it was sales. said, I don't know how to bring in new folks to this agency, you know? And he said, then that's the thing to focus on. And that was great advice. And so I've had a number of coaches over the years that have helped me hone different aspects of the business. 

 

Michael Palumbos (07:28.206)

Talk about clients for a second. When you first began, what was your, you know, what was a typical client for you? You know, did you have, you know, today you're in food, beverage and ag. What was the core customer when you started? 

 

Maureen Ballatori (07:48.142)

So when I first started, was a lot of folks like me. was, it was people who had a side project that they wanted a logo for, or they needed business cards or a rack card brochure or something like that. That was simple work that I would do. My first logo design project I did for a hundred bucks. We've got a couple extra zeros at the end of that now, which is great, you but we also understand more of the layers of impact. 

 

Maureen Ballatori (08:18.124)

that work like that has. 

 

Michael Palumbos (08:20.96)

And then through the years, you started developing a reputation. You're building your business. What types of work were you doing? Let's say before you hold in on what was the mix like back in the day? 

 

Maureen Ballatori (08:43.541)

Yeah. So I would say at that time, which let's call it three to five years ago, we were a general services firm that offered branding work. I don't think we were doing a, we were doing some strategy at the time, although not a lot of strategy. Most of our strategy now is in brand strategy and you know, who is your customer? How do you find them? That kind of thing. 

 

Maureen Ballatori (09:08.974)

Whereas at the time, think our strategy work was very light, very simple, marketing plan kind of thing. And we were doing still a lot of graphic design work, advertisements for newspapers and a lot of brochures, my bread and butter at the time, especially on the longer side, five, six, seven years ago, I did a lot of annual reports. 

 

Maureen Ballatori (09:35.854)

And I loved those because it was taking a lot of really complex information and figuring out how to organize it in a way that the customer would understand, the reader would be able to be guided through a story. And so I loved that. And I think that that did kind of start to plant the seeds of what we're doing now in brand development work, right? Where instead of taking a bunch of complex information that is 

 

Maureen Ballatori (10:02.85)

content for a brochure and organizing it in a way that a user can understand, we're taking a complex story of a brand and their history and where they're trying to go and taking that timeline and projecting into the future to say, these are the different puzzle pieces for you. And so there's some parallels there with what we used to do on the animal report side of things, but. 

 

Michael Palumbos (10:29.494)

And that's one of the reasons why people might be asking why is Maureen on the show? She's not a family business. It's because of exactly what you just said is, you you have these family businesses through the years that you have served. And they might be second, third, you just mentioned before a 12th generation family business. Well, things change. And how do you honor 

 

Michael Palumbos (10:57.42)

you know, the past and move to the future and what, you know, 2023 needs from a branding purpose. So do you mind, you know, sharing with us some of the stories of how family businesses were able to make that shift with your help and to think through those pieces? Cause I think oftentimes people don't really understand the power of branding. We're really good at getting things done. 

 

Michael Palumbos (11:23.534)

We're really good at finding our niche in the marketplace, but what does brand mean and how do we make it come alive? 

 

Maureen Ballatori (11:30.894)

Maureen Ballatori (11:31.214)

Yeah. Really what I see brand doing best is helping get out the who you are, what you do and why. Right. And so the more you can do that more clearly, more concisely, the better your customer, your potential customer, your colleagues, your industry connections, strategic partners. 

 

Maureen Ballatori (11:54.188)

the more you're able to clearly and succinctly explain that, the more other people are gonna understand what you do and what they should call you for. So yes, we work with a lot of family businesses. we work with Fee Brothers, for example, they're a fifth generation owned brand based here in Rochester. great, great. I love them so much. 

 

Maureen Ballatori (12:21.664)

I mean, they're a fantastic client to visit and see their museum and talk about stories, right? Rich stories to tell. Everybody has them and the family businesses have them more so. So yes, we just took on a 12th generation dairy in New York state as well. So it's even more important to lean into brand and strategy and storytelling and understanding the foundational work. 

 

Maureen Ballatori (12:49.728)

of who you are and where you're trying to go when you are a family business, because there's so much more, so many more layers to that story that you have to determine, what do I want to carry on, right? What aspects of the story do I want to pull out from the generation that's moving on and carry through to the next generation that's coming up? 

 

Michael Palumbos (13:12.246)

And how do you help somebody think through that? What are the important pieces for somebody to be thinking about? 

 

Maureen Ballatori (13:18.627)

Yeah. 

 

Maureen Ballatori (13:22.998)

A lot of it is, would say one of the places where clients sometimes need a little help thinking if they haven't been probed, the question is, are your goals? What are you trying to do here? Because I think sometimes with family businesses and the generations and the history that goes into it, there can be a bit of, we do what we always have done. 

 

Michael Palumbos (13:51.406)

100%. 

 

Maureen Ballatori (13:52.622)

So what we sometimes try to do is challenge the business, the old regime and the new regime to both share their thoughts and perspectives on where you're trying to go. And then once everybody's on the same page about that, new incoming generation more so than the old one, right? Cause somebody's that's their vision for the future. You know, you've got to honor the past, but also project forward. 

 

Maureen Ballatori (14:20.806)

Once you have an understanding of what puzzle pieces are on the table, brand strategy and the brand across the board, right, can help add clarity to that direction, give force to where a company is trying to go so that it's not just a plan in a document. It's the story that's told on your website. It's the way you're engaging in your emails with your customers. It's the 

 

Maureen Ballatori (14:49.516)

what goes on your sell sheet, it's what services that you provide, it's the way that you engage in your customer relationships. All of those things ladder up to brand and how you talk about yourself. 

 

Michael Palumbos (15:03.114)

Looking at your experience, is there a story that you wouldn't mind sharing with us of somebody who went through that process? Maybe you can, and if you can't, that's fine. But to talk about the, know, here's what they looked like when you came in and here's the after, here were some of the things that we went through to help them get from point A to point B. 

 

Maureen Ballatori (15:25.61)

Yeah. 

 

Michael Palumbos (15:26.194)

Maureen Ballatori (15:27.21)

Yes. and so the, one of the ones that comes to mind is a family business, based down in the Finger Lakes. They're Billsboro Winery. So if you, haven't been there, fantastic stop along the Seneca Lake wine trail, husband and wife team, his grandfather taught him how to make wine. She runs the business. They're an excellent team. and so we didn't come in and throw the baby out with the bath water. 

 

Maureen Ballatori (15:54.782)

We met with them and talked with them to understand what aspects of how you're presenting yourself are not resonating with the way that you would like to be perceived and how you want people to understand you. So from that, were some, sometimes there's functional things as a part of those challenges. So the, 

 

Maureen Ballatori (16:18.766)

a logo that was on their wine bottles was, and that they were using in many places was the cross section of a grape. So that looks a lot like an amoeba. It's a little muddy. It's kind of hard to tell what it is. When you know what it is, it makes sense, but they were challenged with, you know, it wasn't immediately clear and they, so that was one challenge that is a technical execution of the brand, right? 

 

Maureen Ballatori (16:47.114)

Then there were more non-tangible or tactical things that were part of that as well. So they had a very low key vibe there. It was very laid back, was open to anybody kind of place. We'll teach you about wine or we'll cater to the experts as well and all are welcome here kind of mentality. 

 

Maureen Ballatori (17:14.606)

was reflected when you went on site, but it wasn't really projected when you visited their website and when you kind of engaged with them from the outside. So we helped them right size that, right? So we didn't make major changes. We still kept the Billsboro of their typeface, for example, and we changed the cross section of the grape to a quilted style. They have a barn quilt on the side of their barn. 

 

Maureen Ballatori (17:41.856)

version of the identity and helped update their, overhauled their entire website to use more of that relaxed and laid back language that resonates with who they are at their core. So those are some of the examples of changes that can be made on brand that are micro adjustments that make a big difference in how you're engaging and connecting with your ideal customer. 

 

Maureen Ballatori (18:05.336)

that does not necessarily mean we took everything that you have, we threw it out the window and then started fresh, right? So I would say more often than not, that's what we're doing. We're taking an existing brand and we're elevating it and we're right sizing it to be aligned with the customer that you're trying to reach more so than a total rebrand, name change, logo change all across the board. 

 

Michael Palumbos (18:32.93)

Got it. Has there been, as you're saying that, understanding that that's probably 70, 80 % of the time, 90 % of the time that's what you're doing. Is there a story where you did have to go in and, my goodness, we totally rebranded everything. 

 

Maureen Ballatori (18:53.614)

Yeah, I'm trying to think who comes to mind for that. I mean, the most immediate example is ourselves, right? Changing from 29 Design Studio to Agency 29. There were a lot of factors that went into that decision, right? What name should it be? Is this the right path? Are we making, or are we gonna confuse everyone with this change? 

 

Maureen Ballatori (19:21.6)

And ultimately it came down to the benefits. We felt strongly at our core that the benefits outweighed the drawbacks of making a major change like that. And the clarity that our customer was going to have is in agency 29 is going to allow us to go further with the customer that we're trying to support. 

 

Michael Palumbos (19:46.83)

Got it. What about for, you know, upstate New York and in the food and beverage agriculture industry, there are, there are brand new products coming out. There are brand new brands that are happening today. Have you been involved in any of those kinds, that type of work? 

 

Maureen Ballatori (20:07.126)

Yeah, we do a fair amount of family of brands work and also helping agriculture focused companies launch new products. And specifically there's some grant funding available to do that. USDA has some value added processing grants available for agriculture businesses that will help fund making it possible for them to add some longevity and shelf stable. 

 

Maureen Ballatori (20:33.454)

you know, timeline to their agricultural products, which helps them diversify, you know, their revenue and make them more secure for the future. You know, it's an excellent program. So I would say more so we're doing family of brand work where it's a farm that is creating a new line of products. What do we call it? How do we position it? Or we want to take, and there's a couple that I've gotten the pipeline that unfortunately I can't share the stories yet. Um, but. 

 

Maureen Ballatori (21:03.17)

that they've got like a core line of products and they wanna sort of sidestep into something else that's kind of a brand extension without losing the traction that they've already gained in their current line of products. That's another example where we'll kind of help them with what should you call this? How do we make this look similar to the current line of products without changing too much, but making it clear to the consumer when they're looking at your line of products on shelf that this one is different from that one. 

 

Maureen Ballatori (21:32.686)

And a lot of also packaging work, you know, we're doing for food and Bev too, that uses color theory to help differentiate different, you know, flavors and that kind of thing. We're doing a lot of that as well. 

 

Michael Palumbos (21:45.6)

Interesting. All right, so you just said words that 90 % of us don't understand. What was it? Color? Color theory. Give us give us a little what is color theory? 

 

Maureen Ballatori (21:51.906)

theory. 

 

Maureen Ballatori (21:56.462)

Sure. So with that, you know, we're using another term that is probably equally as confusing color language, right? So when you think about, I always, I try to like pull examples that are at my fingertips, but I have nothing right now. When you, when you go to buy your favorite pasta sauce, right? You are used to looking for the bottle with the red logo and the, I like the blue one, right? Because that is the traditional sauce or whatever it is. 

 

Maureen Ballatori (22:26.466)

So that color language is what communicates to the customer that this product, my logo is red and this label has touches of blue on it compared to this one has touches of green on it. Help that customer when they're in the grocery store and they're grabbing for a product to immediately be able to hear color language, right? This is mine, this is the one that I like. 

 

Michael Palumbos (22:50.542)

Okay. The way that I have been, I have talked about this before and I was taught was when you're designing your product or your service, you want to make sure that it fits on the same shelf as everything else, but stands out. 

 

Maureen Ballatori (23:07.886)

Exactly. 

 

Maureen Ballatori (23:09.206)

I was hoping that's where you were going with that. 

 

Michael Palumbos (23:11.084)

Yeah, and the way you just talked about it, that's called color language. Makes perfectly good sense. You do not want to package your sauce to look like an oil can. 

 

Maureen Ballatori (23:22.914)

Right, right. Yeah. And I will also say that there are times where you can have a lot of fun with that. So there's a line of hot sauces called general something that puts it in, they make a custom glass bottle for the hot sauce that's shaped like a grenade. So. 

 

Michael Palumbos (23:43.978)

jeez. 

 

Maureen Ballatori (23:45.538)

The beautiful thing about that is they are different, right? From everything else on the shelf. Everything else in the hot sauce aisle is generally, you know, a squat bottle. You know, you can- Right. They're generally all packaged the same. So when you see one that's shaped like a grenade, that is an example of how brand story can help be brought into the entire strategy of a brand. What is the, is it worth? 

 

Michael Palumbos (23:57.151)

Exactly what it looks like. 

 

Maureen Ballatori (24:15.796)

investing in getting a custom bottle shape made for my hot sauce, or we're working on a water right now that's coming on the market. When you think about highly competitive products, water, right? mean, something you can get for free, in some cases, right? If people are lucky enough to have access to clean, fresh water. But in other cases, there's a lot of instances where there's high competition in the water category. So, 

 

Maureen Ballatori (24:43.33)

you have to kind of determine is the investment in this thing, whether it's brand or bottle shape or the packaging identity for the labels, right? All of that, that's gonna pay off in terms of alignment with my customer and them being able to find me more easily and me stand out. And that grenade hot sauce company is highly giftable, right? So they can now go after gift sites. 

 

Maureen Ballatori (25:11.968)

and have locations in terms of online or brick and mortar stores and have a whole different channel and ability to stand out because they went down the rabbit hole with that shape. And so there's lots of ways that you can stand out as a brand in the execution of those tactics. 

 

Michael Palumbos (25:29.41)

Interesting. So now we're maybe a little above my pay grade when you say, what did you bring you in for? It is to help you think through all of these pieces. 

 

Maureen Ballatori (25:40.204)

Right. And 

 

Maureen Ballatori (25:41.925)

honestly, I want to say one more thing about that too, Michael, and why it does relate so closely to the work that you do too, is because from a financial aspect, the business has to be able to project, right? At least with good in, you know, to feel good about that investment, to believe that it's going to pay off. Because I will never promise a brand, you know, that factors change, pandemics happen, right? 

 

Maureen Ballatori (26:09.58)

You never know, I will never make a promise to a brand that you invest in this specially shaped bottle that it's going to yield 10X in a result. Cause you just don't know. But working with someone like you, you can help them understand, okay, what is the cost of getting a custom mold for this? And what additional channels of sales opportunities is that going to 

 

Maureen Ballatori (26:34.186)

open up for you. And if you reasonably project that you've got 10 new sales channels as a result of this investment, the numbers shake out like this. And so even if you hit 80%, you're still looking good. So that's why partnerships with, you know, folks like me and folks like you are all really important for all types of businesses, but especially family businesses where you've got multiple opinions in there and you need that justification too of is this the right move? 

 

Michael Palumbos (27:03.372)

Love it. Okay. Let's talk about, agency. Agency 29. So it makes perfectly good sense now, you know, 29 Design Studio sounds like we are a graphic design house. We will help you with all of those pieces. When you say agency, now we've added in services. So since, you know, since you started, 

 

Michael Palumbos (27:31.726)

29 design studio, what are some of the services, what are some of the things that, know, beyond the world of branding, what else are you doing for family owned businesses that they ought to be able to know about? They should know. 

 

Maureen Ballatori (27:47.456)

Yes, we do a lot of strategy. So, and it's similar in the, you that the sense that we're both doing strategy work, ours is brand focused strategy work. Right. So in that vein, can be how, again, how do we talk about who we are? How do we articulate, you know, what is going to resonate with our customer? Who is that customer? What is the competitive landscape look like? So that's all under that kind of brand strategy umbrella. 

 

Maureen Ballatori (28:17.27)

One that we're often also asked to do is a mess. We call it a messaging platform. So that's messaging strategy work. How do I talk about understanding who I am? How do I talk about that? What is the content that goes on my website and on my cell sheets and in my radio ad, because I reach farmers with radio ads, right? So it can be, those are some examples of strategy. 

 

Maureen Ballatori (28:41.134)

We also venture into marketing strategy work as well. What kind of channels should I be utilizing to get the word out about who I am and what I do now that I have a clear understanding of what that is. And then the identity work, right? The brand identity work that we've talked about pretty extensively here in terms of logo, packaging, that sort of thing. We do a fair amount of websites as well. And then we do some ongoing marketing. 

 

Maureen Ballatori (29:10.506)

At these days in terms of, you're asking about like what's changed and honed as we've continued to grow. We are pretty selective about the types of marketing retainer engagements that we take on on an ongoing basis. Because we really want to work with folks who come to us at the strategy point that we can help hone all the way through so that by the time we get to marketing, we both know. 

 

Maureen Ballatori (29:38.274)

who each other is, right? You know how we work. We know how you like to tell your story. And so we can then pretty simply in the grand scheme of things, right? Run your social media channels, send your emails, know, put campaigns together, that kind of thing. Not to say that we don't in rare circumstances also work with, you know, others that are just coming in, hey, I need support with a campaign. You know, can you make it work? 

 

Maureen Ballatori (30:03.586)

We'll do that sort of thing on an ongoing basis on occasion, but most of the time that strategy, brand building, refinement, and then ongoing marketing is our typical engagement these days. 

 

Michael Palumbos (30:16.18)

Okay, so I told you before we started that we have just been going through creating our new strategy and putting some together. So I wanna drop a few words and a few things for you just to see, know, get your feedback. So one, you know, all of the people that we serve, they're looking to grow their revenue, grow their profit, grow the value of the business, or they're dealing with people problems. 

 

Maureen Ballatori (30:31.694)

That's right. 

 

Michael Palumbos (30:43.502)

And they need to get through those things. that's, know, we call our core customer, curious George. There is George is, know, the 55 to 75 year old business owner. They're the type a personality. got the stuff done and they might be second generation even. And, know, or third generation, but they're still in that mode of getting up. Story short, um, we, but they're curious to say, I'm open to learning more. They're not just. 

 

Maureen Ballatori (30:49.89)

Okay? 

 

Maureen Ballatori (31:05.378)

Yep. 

 

Michael Palumbos (31:12.494)

They're not just, it's my way or the highway. They're looking for it. They're tired of being the CEO and they want to be the CEO and even make that shift from everything's on their shoulders to, you know, developing a full team. So we have, we create, and I've heard this and you're going to, I know I'll be surprised if you don't love this. we, visual hammers. And so we're big giant. I can't remember who I got that from. want to say. 

 

Michael Palumbos (31:43.096)

Scrooge was some branding guy and his daughter came out with it and I don't remember who it was, the visual hammer, have one for CEO and leadership team development. We have one for creating a culture of accountability, one for creating company culture and one for strategy. Just recently you saw my one for strategy. It came from that. 

 

Michael Palumbos (32:12.142)

that blog post that I did about my crazy socks. So when we're talking about crazy, you when we're talking about strategy, we're going to be talking about don't be a beige sock company. 

 

Maureen Ballatori (32:15.52)

yes, that's right. 

 

Maureen Ballatori (32:23.276)

Yeah, right. Yes. 

 

Michael Palumbos (32:24.938)

a 

 

Michael Palumbos (32:25.048)

whole logo and a visual hammer for that based off of that story. So each of these different things as we're telling the story to social media and putting those pieces out there, we can drip on that. you know, mine came from a lot, I mean, years, probably years of me festering with these things and putting it together. And then we interviewed a lot of CEOs to figure out what we need to do to get there. 

 

Michael Palumbos (32:54.83)

I love what you're doing. And the name change is gigantic. know that, know, what do know about design studios? You're a baby. to make your baby and say, oh, we're going to change you, you know. 

 

Maureen Ballatori (33:04.066)

Big deal. 

 

Maureen Ballatori (33:12.302)

She's just graduating from college. know, she, yeah, she's just growing up a little bit. But the other thing I want to reflect back to you too, that you just said is the changes that you're making in your business and the reasons why you're doing them are because you took the time to step back, right? And reflect on what was working, what were your customers asking for when they came to you? 

 

Maureen Ballatori (33:42.286)

What are the challenges that they're facing? And you take in all of that information and you kind of let it marinate and reflect on what should I do? What do I want to do with this information? And then you make decisions and determinations from there. And so in terms of actionable information that your listeners can take away from this, that is a great one that I often tell colleagues and folks that I'm working with the importance of reflection. 

 

Michael Palumbos (34:10.196)

Awesome. I think it's so important. I want to give credit to the person who created Visual Hammer and make sure that I don't do that. Come on. Rice, R-I-E-S is her father. Laura Rice, who came up with the Visual Hammer. And when I read that book and it's this white hammer with all kinds of logos on it and then a 

 

Michael Palumbos (34:36.267)

redhead on it. When I read that, like, I want a visual hammer someday. So it was when we doing this rebranding, it's not about my logo being the visual hammer. It's all things that are the keys to running a successful business and making that transition. so each one of the social media posts will have, you know, the different visual hammers on what we're teaching. 

 

Maureen Ballatori (35:03.244)

which all letters up to the brand, right? That's who you are and why you do it and who you serve. And all of those things are elements of your brand. 

 

Michael Palumbos (35:14.702)

When we talk about strategy work, one of the things, so I don't do what you do. And that's, I want to make sure people understand that there is an intersection between what we do. I help, I do two things when we're building strategy. We have three things. One is that core customer work, which we do that work and that's, know, fun. It's really cool. And like I said, I named them and I love it when companies name who their core customer is. And you should only have 

 

Michael Palumbos (35:44.738)

one or maybe two core customers. And then we do market mapping. So you can see the whole arena and we want not just your customers, but everybody, know, all the customers that are out there and all of the suppliers. And I know that's a lot of the work that you do as well. The strategy piece, my favorite part is going through and looking at in your industry. 

 

Maureen Ballatori (35:59.928)

Yep. 

 

Michael Palumbos (36:13.102)

What are all the different attributes of the industry? so much, know, like, like pricing is usually one of the attributes. Sure. might be, you know, 24 hour service or, no 24 hour service, you know. 

 

Maureen Ballatori (36:27.758)

What are the common factors for the industry, things that are happening? 

 

Michael Palumbos (36:32.002)

Yep. And so 

 

Michael Palumbos (36:33.242)

we try to get 12 or 15 of those. Yep. We map out where you are today. We have a way of mapping out the competition against that. And there's a special unique way that we lay it overlay that. And then all we're looking for is white space. Where isn't there competition in areas of attributes in that marketplace that make a difference for them so that we can help them to compete to be unique. 

 

Michael Palumbos (37:01.137)

and not just the best. 

 

Maureen Ballatori (37:02.19)

and that they don't have to do everything on that list, right? So how do you work with a company to help them determine that for themselves, right? So you've got these 15 factors that are kind of industry standard of, I've got to have 24 hour service and I've got to have this 15 things. How do you help them determine which ones are right for them that are going to help them stand out and fit into that, find that white space? 

 

Michael Palumbos (37:27.458)

Right. It's going back and looking at that core customer and say, do they want? Let me rephrase that. It is not what they want. I said that I misspoke. What do they need? You have to need it and you have to be able to solve that problem with those things. then what one of the, so like you would come in then and take those pieces that we just put together and help create the brand story, the everything around those pieces. 

 

Maureen Ballatori (37:32.429)

Right. 

 

Michael Palumbos (37:55.022)

And then we create swim lanes and what we'll do, and I think my favorite is Southwest Airlines. Southwest Airlines, if you think about them, you can tell their story and they've got probably five or three or four really core things that they do differently. They're not flying free. We're going to have fun on the flight. We load our passengers differently. you can't find us on the normal system. You've got to come to our website 

 

Maureen Ballatori (38:14.924)

Yep. 

 

Maureen Ballatori (38:24.245)

Right. 

 

Michael Palumbos (38:24.918)

these things. We flight point to point. We only fly 737s. And so all these different attributes of their industry. if you look at, they tie them all together. They're interdependent entities. And, then, so we create swim lanes of the three to five different activities that you're going to do differently and figure out, okay, what are we doing next to make that even stronger and keep flexing that muscle so then 

 

Maureen Ballatori (38:53.646)

love that. 

 

Michael Palumbos (38:54.83)

and you 

 

Michael Palumbos (38:55.14)

put it all together, you create this little secret soul no one can compete with. Yeah, so I thought I would share that with you because that's something different. But again, I go back to them, take all of that. And we will have, we're going to have to do this with some of our, you know, a joint client one of these days. And we'll create this wonderful, unique strategy. And then we'll be like, now we got to go see Maureen and turn this. 

 

Maureen Ballatori (38:58.094)

Right. 

 

Maureen Ballatori (39:01.676)

Right. Yeah. 

 

Maureen Ballatori (39:21.55)

Yeah, but I, so what I'm hearing you say is you kind of take those 12 things or 15 things or whatever it is and kind of start to ask some of the hard questions too of this is the industry standard, but what are some of the ways that we could do this differently? And so then those items of what those swim lanes are and what are the factors that you're doing differently? 

 

Maureen Ballatori (39:47.058)

ladder up again to who you are, who you serve, why they should care. What is the story that you're telling that's going to resonate with this customer and going to make them care about this swim lane, right? So that's how those things are so interconnected. And I think the other factor that's so essential, family business or not, is the ability to execute on those items as well, right? 

 

Maureen Ballatori (40:13.016)

to take the abstract understanding of that swim lane, of that brand ladder, of that clarity of who you are and be able to disperse it in your day-to-day marketing, in the way that you answer the phone, in the time that it takes you to respond to an email, right? Those day-to-day belly up to the bar, way that you come to the table are what make a difference in 

 

Maureen Ballatori (40:42.654)

a company versus a brand too. 

 

Michael Palumbos (40:45.71)

And we call that, you want to get to the point where all of these swim lane activities, all these differentiating activities, create brand promise. And so when you have that brand promise, the famous one was, Domino's will be there in 30 minutes or it's free. And that was a huge brand promise, but everything that they did. 

 

Maureen Ballatori (40:56.579)

Yes. 

 

Michael Palumbos (41:09.558)

on the production side, on the taking of the order side, and everything they did had to interconnect to make that brand promise come true. 

 

Maureen Ballatori (41:16.052)

Absolutely. 

 

Michael Palumbos (41:19.118)

I, um, I love talking about strategy and in the brand piece, it's taken me a long time to really understand the brand side of things. I was, I was focused strategy, strategy, strategy, but what, what I learned through people like you and others is that, that brand is all of those pieces. And then what is the visual component that ties it all together and makes you feel that. 

 

Maureen Ballatori (41:48.982)

Right, right, right. In those minor moments, right? In the major moments of where are you showing up and how, but in those small day-to-day pieces as well. I'm gonna ask you another question. Going back to, we're talking about a lot of the positives, right? Of how people can work with you and work with me and our teams. What are some of the ways, challenges, right? Looking at the flip side of the coin. 

 

Maureen Ballatori (42:18.688)

what are some of the ways that you see brands, companies, family businesses falling short? 

 

Michael Palumbos (42:28.158)

Hmm, good question. Well, think number one, think on the family business side, the biggest mistake I think that they make is that they don't tell people that they're a family business. That is the biggest mistake. There's the Edelman Trust Barometer is a study that's done every single year. And every single year when you look at the Trust Barometer, it says family-owned businesses. 

 

Michael Palumbos (42:55.982)

have a seven to a 10 point more trust than a non-family business competitor. And that's for their customer and for their employees. I think the flip of that though is the moment you start telling people that you're a family business, they will go up to it. And that means that now you're responsible for 

 

Maureen Ballatori (43:04.11)

Interesting. 

 

Michael Palumbos (43:21.964)

those core values that you say that you're doing, you better really mean that. They mean they have to have some teeth. What you? What do you see? 

 

Maureen Ballatori (43:29.58)

Yeah, yeah. 

 

Maureen Ballatori (43:33.832)

I would say, one of the common challenges I see when folks come to us before, not after, of course, they're clear as day after they leave us, is confusion. Right? So they, I had a conversation with someone recently who said, I'm doing this, I'm doing this, I wanna go in this direction, I wanna do this thing, I wanna do that. I see opportunity over here, I wanna. 

 

Maureen Ballatori (44:02.882)

delegate to my team, but none of those things are happening, right? You're not able to, unless you are an expert delegator, you've got a team that can take things from you and run with them and get on board with your idea that it gets, it's challenging to get to that place and it can be done. But so I would say confusion over who you are and where you're going is the biggest issue that we abstractly, right? 

 

Maureen Ballatori (44:32.814)

companies overcome. And so once you go through this deep work, right, the strategy work is deep work. When you do that deep thinking and reflection and set intention and add clarity to that direction, what happens? Brands are more successful. Companies are making more money because they're walking the walk, because they're living that promise, right? All of those things are coming to fruition. 

 

Maureen Ballatori (45:00.684)

because they are moving forward with direction and using that as their barometer for, this the right decision for me? Is this the right hire for me? Is this the right new service channels for me? Because they have that to kind of benchmark it against. 

 

Michael Palumbos (45:15.982)

love what you just said. And I say it the same, you said it way better than I'm going to say it, but I just use one word for it, focus. And so, and I say this because it was, that was two, 2023, when we sat down with the team to do our planning work for the year. we do it quarterly. We, it's not, doesn't stop. We're always quarterly meetings to go through. What are we doing? You know, where are we at? What are we doing? 

 

Maureen Ballatori (45:26.232)

Absolutely, yeah. 

 

Michael Palumbos (45:46.062)

but we do a two day kickoff every year. And when we look at what our goal is for the year, we list the number one priority that has to happen for the year in order for us to be successful. our team came back and every one of the teams had the same thing. We need to finish our marketing and sales funnel. need all the points to connect so that all the messaging is right. And remember, we're changing, you know, 

 

Michael Palumbos (46:15.404)

We're putting the pieces together. I will tell you that was the hardest thing for me to do this year because it was like, I just, I just talked to my Vistage group and I shared with them. like, you know, it was, it's a tortoise in here kind of feeling I'm ready. I should be jumping out and doing all this stuff and going with all of these, you know, pieces of the puzzle, but with the puzzle not being complete. 

 

Michael Palumbos (46:43.168)

It won't make sense. So I needed to slow down. Instead he's going to win this race. And all right. So it took us a year instead of the six months that we were hoping. And I'm taking it. 

 

Maureen Ballatori (46:55.595)

Right, but it's better that it's right. 

 

Michael Palumbos (46:57.612)

Yes, and in the long term scope of things, we are going to be much happier that we've got all of our marketing funnel built and done and everything fits. You know, if I start turning on that marketing and all those, I've got 40 blog posts and about 200 different social media posts ready to go. If I turn them on and the website doesn't have the message 

 

Maureen Ballatori (47:22.889)

Exactly. I totally hear you. We, are in the thick of that right now. So by the time this podcast go a lot goes live, we will have gone live with the agency 29 brand, but in the moment right now we're doing all of that building and it is, it's painful. You know, we're writing the blog posts and updating the website and changing, you know, this and that it's all of those little things. And then, but 

 

Maureen Ballatori (47:49.806)

paying attention to those items as well, understanding where you're going, what that direction is, waiting until you have all of the pieces built out before you flip the switch is gonna mean that it's gonna resonate that much more with that customer that you're trying to reach because it's all aligned. So yeah. 

 

Michael Palumbos (48:08.204)

share 

 

Michael Palumbos (48:08.574)

something with you. This is totally off the topic, but totally relevant. Okay. Have you ever heard of the five F's? You know, people talk about the five F's, faith, family, fun, fulfillment, finances and fitness. Okay. And I, so I, I coined this as I was, as I was looking at what I did with the VISTAs group, it's not the five F's. 

 

Maureen Ballatori (48:22.0)

I have heard this. 

 

Maureen Ballatori (48:28.547)

Yep. 

 

Michael Palumbos (48:37.59)

It's the six Fs. Okay. F is focus because if you don't focus on your family, you work too much. you don't focus on your finances, you know, so you need to, and at different times in our lives, we need to focus at different things. Sometimes you're trying to balance and that can beat with each other, but you have to remember that whatever you don't, unless you focus on it, doesn't happen. 

 

Maureen Ballatori (48:56.407)

Right. 

 

Maureen Ballatori (49:04.436)

Exactly. 

 

Michael Palumbos (49:06.676)

all of this for the family businesses, yeah. 

 

Maureen Ballatori (49:08.6)

Yeah. So do you follow, you mentioned that you do your annual goal setting and then you're doing quarterly as well. So you set your annual kind of vision and then you're meeting quarterly. Do you use a framework for that? Like we do, we recently shifted over to the 12 week year so that moving from an annual goal setting of, we'll get there, we'll get there, we'll get there. And then we would get to the end of the year and we weren't terribly far off of the goal, but we didn't hit it. 

 

Maureen Ballatori (49:36.142)

for the last couple of years, right? In terms of financial goals or whatever. So that shift for me to 12 week year and looking quarterly has made a huge difference. 

 

Michael Palumbos (49:45.262)

The answer is yes. We coach a program called Metronomics. So we utilize Metronomics internally. If you, you've heard, you might've heard of Scaling Up, you might've heard of EOS. Yep. 

 

Maureen Ballatori (49:52.76)

Gotcha. 

 

Maureen Ballatori (50:01.102)

I 

 

Maureen Ballatori (50:01.502)

follow EOS as well, so 12 week year and I love EOS. 

 

Michael Palumbos (50:05.262)

So EOS does a really great job of implementation and execution. That's what their framework is. take, so all of these programs, for the most part, they came from Vern Harnish's Scaling Up and Mastering the Rockefeller Habits. Most people don't know that. you know, Wickman was a former Scaling Up coach. 

 

Maureen Ballatori (50:26.601)

interesting. I did not know that. 

 

Michael Palumbos (50:28.578)

Yeah, Shannon Susco, who's the founder of Metronomics was a former scaling up coach. they all just kind of, know, Gino said, I'm going to simplify this for the businesses that are doing under $10 million because all they really need to focus on is getting stuff done and executing and community. Shannon was focused on startups that were trying to sell. And so if you're trying to sell, you're trying to get to multi-multi-millions and as quick as you possibly can. 

 

Maureen Ballatori (50:56.814)

You're trying to sell as in take the business to acquisition? Got it. 

 

Michael Palumbos (51:00.92)

So it wasn't, she wasn't even thinking about under 10 million. She was thinking way past 10 million. And so hers was very, very strategy rich. So when you heard me talking strategy, could hear that in your head going, yeah, that's really cool. I like what he's thinking about. you get, so that's where that came from. We went through and did our attributes map. 

 

Maureen Ballatori (51:06.638)

Interesting. 

 

Maureen Ballatori (51:22.893)

Great. 

 

Michael Palumbos (51:30.382)

you we had to look at things like, of course, if you know, because we're wealth advisors, you want the tax plan and you want the investments, you want that stuff. And we had to look at and say, at what level is, do you need to be at each of these different attributes? And so like us, some of the attributes that we really decided to push into the white space were, how do we show up for the family? What are we doing to strengthen the family and the businesses that we serve? 

 

Michael Palumbos (51:59.522)

We use metronomics to strengthen the business. We use total family management and family meetings and our understanding of family dynamics to help strengthen the family. And when you put those pieces together, it helps with the legacy. But it was like that way. There was other business coaches out there. There's other wealth advisors out there, but there wasn't a lot of people working in that space where they did all of those things. I don't have to have a degree in psychology to be able to run a family meeting. 

 

Maureen Ballatori (52:22.539)

Alright. 

 

Michael Palumbos (52:29.324)

I just need to make, you know, I love what you're doing. If you're sitting in a room full of family businesses right now, are the three questions that they should be asking themselves to think about their future? 

 

Maureen Ballatori (52:49.282)

Well, the first one that comes to mind, would say for the family to all talk about where they're going and get on the same page about that. So what do we want this to look like for the next generation to come in? So if we're talking to generation two, who's transitioning to three, I would be talking about what do we want this to look like for gen four to come in, right? So clarity on that direction. 

 

Maureen Ballatori (53:16.158)

I would say another good question is what kind of resources do we want to allocate to making this happen? Because some folks just don't want to invest, right? They don't feel comfortable. They don't want to add fuel to the fire. They just want to go the slow and steady and make micro changes along the way. And there's nothing wrong with that. Others want to throw money at it so they can go really, really fast. They want the Ferrari, right? 

 

Maureen Ballatori (53:44.468)

the both of those approaches are totally fine. And that it comes down to resources, how much time, energy and effort and money do we want to put into this to make it go to move the car, right? And a car is probably a good analogy for many reasons. Third is I would say, how are we going to communicate and get on the same page about communication, which I firmly believe is the strongest area of foundational work that any person can do. 

 

Maureen Ballatori (54:14.294)

Talk about those five F's, know, communication is a pillar that relates to all of those. To be a great communicator means conflict resolution with your team, with your spouse, with your children, with your parents, you know, all of those. understanding how you're going to communicate and bring opportunities to the table, bring challenges to the table, bring difficult conversations up. If you can get everybody on the same page about how you're going to communicate, it makes the outcome of those much simpler. 

 

Michael Palumbos (54:44.334)

Love it. You said something I want to tie it in real quick and then we'll wrap. But what you said is I want to know where I'm going. We were talking about the 12 week program or email and all those things. I'll share with you one of the things that made a huge difference for us is the setting of a 30 year goal. 

 

Maureen Ballatori (55:11.138)

Okay. 

 

Michael Palumbos (55:12.75)

10 is minimum. for me, I'm 55 years old, I'll be 56 in a couple of weeks. And a 10 year goal, most people are retiring at that time. So as I was doing my design work, I found myself having one foot on the gas and one foot on the brake. And so by setting, by moving the goal out to say, what are we going to look like 30 years from now when I'm not even here? And then pulling it back to the one year. 

 

Maureen Ballatori (55:29.102)

Thanks 

 

Michael Palumbos (55:40.014)

It really helped to make sure that the direction was very, very clear. One, you do that for your families. What do you want to look like in the fourth generation? I would throw to you, take your 12 week, that's fine, but get a really good BHAG that 10, 20, 24 for the agency 29. When I'm not at the helm anymore, what is this going to look like? 

 

Maureen Ballatori (55:51.192)

Right? 

 

Maureen Ballatori (55:57.6)

Yeah. 

 

Maureen Ballatori (56:04.792)

Right, right. And we've done some thinking around that in terms of what the future, but it is very hard to plan out that far, right? But you're right, setting all comes down to focus. 

 

Michael Palumbos (56:20.238)

planning, it's not planning. All it is is a North Star. You pull the bowstring back on that, you know, on the bow and arrow, and it just seems dumb to shoot at. The odds of getting it, because it's 30 years out, I don't know, you might surpass it more than your wildest dreams. But at least you're going to get close. And it helps. And it helps that three year and the one year goal setting. It up a little bit. That's what 

 

Maureen Ballatori (56:24.834)

Right. 

 

Maureen Ballatori (56:39.725)

Right. 

 

Maureen Ballatori (56:46.614)

Yeah. 

 

Maureen Ballatori (56:48.944)

Love that. 

 

Michael Palumbos (56:50.164)

Okay. Maureen Bellatorri, before we say goodbye, how do people get a hold of you? 

 

Maureen Ballatori (56:57.742)

So LinkedIn is honestly the best place. I am frequently putting information out there as you are. know that you're in my feed often. I make a point to share value added valuable information on that platform. So that's the best place to stay in touch. 

 

Michael Palumbos (57:15.278)

Perfect. Maureen Ballatori, agency 29. Thank you, thank you, thank you for a fabulous show. This was just a lot of information in a short period of time. Make sure you reach out to Maureen on LinkedIn and connect with her. Just a rock star in the branding and strategy work and just you're not going to go wrong. Take a look at her portfolio of people that she's worked with. And Fee Brothers, Jonathan, ah, love you. 

 

Michael Palumbos (57:44.846)

My name is Michael Palumbas. You've been listening to the Family Wealth and Legacy in Rochester, New York. You've been listening to the Family Biz Show. Thank you everybody for joining us and we really look forward to having you listen in on the next episode. Have a great day everybody.