Episode 75: Order Taker To Problem Solver With Aaron Pierson

“Worry less about the impressions your brand will get, worry more about the impression it will leave.” -Aaron Pierson On this episode of Bella In Your Business, Bella and Aaron Pierson, International Branding Consultant, sit down to discuss how he went from an order taker to a problem solver. Bella & Aaron discuss important topics such as: How often business owners should be asking questions versus talking to clients. Why pet sitting and dog walking business owners need to disrupt in their local communities and online, and HOW they can accomplish this. When pet sitting and dog walking business owners need to modify their pricing model Pains, gains, and solutions! Aaron Pierson is also a Best Selling Author and Digital Strategy Director/Founder at Vitals Agency. Learn more about him at his website, www.vitals.agency, where he offers free resources as well as his podcast and his book. Subscribe To The Show Leave A Review: Transcript: Bella:This is episode 75 of Bella in Your Business. Welcome to Bella in Your Business, where Bella will discuss anything and everything about your pet sitting business to help you land on target. So get ready, Bella's got your chute. Let's jump. Welcome to Bella in Your Business. My name is Bella Vasto, your host today. And today I've got something pretty interesting for you. My guest today is talking about disruption in the marketplace. I met him and holy cow, like there are certain times in life where you meet people and they say, “Oh, I do marketing,” and you go check out their website and it's like, “Yeah, you do marketing, whatever.” You look like every other marketer. But Aaron says he does this thing called disruption, and I really wanted him on today because I really feel like pet sitters could be disruptive if they just were inspired. So I hope over the next 20, 25 minutes we get to inspire you to be disruptive in your own thing. So without further ado, Aaron, what is up my friend? Aaron:What is up, Bella? Thank you so much for having me on. Bella:Absolutely. You guys, I want you to know that Aaron isn't just like some rinky-dink business owner. He is a best-selling author, a digital strategy director and founder at Vitals Agency, an international branding consultant. I know you were just in Australia playing with Legos, which we're totally going to get into later. And you're just an all-around awesome dude. Like, I mean, you're also a Lego champion when you were younger, I heard. Aaron:Yo-yo. Bella:Yo-yo? Aaron:Yes, I was 8th or 11th in the world at playing with a yo-yo when I was 15 years old. Bella:That is incredible. So talk to me about more recently, you know, how you started Vitals Agency, which the website itself is disruptive. It's vitals.agency. People are like, “You mean .com?” or I bet you get that all the time, right? Aaron:Sometimes, yeah. I mean, those extensions now—like .agency, .club, .io—are becoming part of what the brand identity is. So we just rolled with that. We wanted something short and simple to remember, so yeah, we landed on that. Bella:I love it. So on your website, there's a quote from you. It says, “Worry less about the impressions your brand will get and worry more about the impression it will leave.” How did this passion for leaving impressions and being disruptive kind of come about with you? Aaron:Yeah, that's a good question. I think what ended up happening was that this isn’t my first agency. This is technically my third. I’ve built and sold another, I had a consultancy, and then how I started Vitals Agency, which is one of your questions, was I realized very quickly what my strengths were as an entrepreneur and what my weaknesses were. To be really successful, it’s not so much diverting and subbing out, but really managing your weaknesses and finding other people who can lift you up in areas where it’s difficult to thrive. I knew my weaknesses after my first go-around at the agency I had built. We had 30 employees, a 10,000-square-foot studio, a massive overhead. It was not the type of business that I was anticipating. When I decided to merge these relationships with my partners Mauricio and Aiden, it was a collective decision. The focus was to create a company where the three of us collectively are way more powerful than we are individually. And that’s what we’ve done. This idea of being very customer-centric—worry less about impressions you’ll get, worry more about the impression it leaves—that’s just a fundamental belief in branding. So many people are worried about vanity metrics: clicks, website visits, likes. I’d rather have one really solid brand ambassador advocating for us and being a voice for our brand and culture than a hundred impressions on a Facebook ad. Relationships are the key to building successful businesses. I’ve built other businesses that were not successful at all. Anything to do with marketing or advertising, both of my agencies were successful, but I’ve also tried other things that didn’t go well. A lot of it is knowing yourself. If you have a heightened sense of awareness and you’re awake to who you are, you can find people you align with. Being a customer-centered company is something we believe in. I always say we care more about your business and your feelings. We are not a “yes” agency. We advocate for your customer because our job is to help our clients align with their customer in the most meaningful way possible. Sometimes that requires deflating the ego of the business owner. They need to be open to ideas. We have to be proactive in prescribing things that may be uncomfortable. Lee Clow says, “You’re the judge of your business, but the consumer is the jury and executioner.” If the consumer isn’t buying into your idea, you’ve failed. And as an agency, we’ve failed if we just say yes to everything. That’s the old method of being an order taker. We view ourselves as problem solvers. Bella:I want to slow you down there because I think that’s huge. As business owners—pet sitters, dog walkers, and other small business owners listening right now—many of us hire someone to do something for us, like design a logo, and they just take the order. And that’s okay, but business owners need to understand that not all providers are the same. So talk about that difference of knowing what you want. Aaron:Sure. So here’s how a conversation usually goes. Someone calls and says, “Hey, we need a website.” The typical response is, “Would you like fries with that?” You’re order taking. The first thing I do is shift the perspective to less about the thing and more about the motivation. My question is, “I know we can help you, but what primary business objectives are you trying to solve by having this built?” Good designers should understand what’s motivating you to hire them. A lot of designers are introverted and don’t ask these questions, and that’s okay—they’re tacticians. But I want to know why. Because if I can understand the motivation behind the decision, it’s my job to prescribe other things to help them meet their objectives. We spend a ridiculous amount of time in the intention phase. We charge for that discovery process. It would be fiscally irresponsible to prescribe solutions without context. It’s like walking into a doctor’s office saying, “My foot hurts,” and the doctor just gives you a prescription without seeing you. So we spend a lot of time diagnosing before prescribing—hence the name Vitals Agency. Some companies hire us just to figure out their vitals and help create a roadmap. We don’t need to do every creative execution. To me, providing clarity and alignment is more valuable than the actual thing we create. Bella:That’s so powerful. What I’m hearing also translates to sales. Pet sitters, for instance, are often more expensive than competitors like Rover or the kid next door. Asking questions as part of your sales process shows people why you’re valuable. Aaron:Exactly. If you can understand the motivation of why people do what they do, that’s the first step in disruption. Disruption has become a buzzword, but it starts with understanding motivation. The idea is to shift your customer conversation from being an order taker to being a problem solver—helping them live better lives, have more time, or whatever their motivation is. Bella:I love it. We’re going to take a quick break, but when we come back, I want to talk about Legos because I’ve seen this Lego thing you do. (Ad segment omitted — no content added or removed.) Bella:And I’m back with Aaron Pearson from Vitals Agency. Tell me all about this Lego thing and how it plays into your whole shebang. Aaron:We facilitate corporate workshops and strategy sessions to help companies get real-time alignment and clarity. We use Lego—specifically, Lego Serious Play, which was developed at Lego’s headquarters in Denmark. It’s an actual facilitation tool that helps people express complex ideas using models. In a typical strategy meeting, only a few people—like the CEO or CMO—speak up. Everyone else stays quiet. Lego introduces kinesthetic communication. People can build models to represent ideas, like “This piece represents my department.” It helps everyone remember the concepts because they’re seeing, talking, and building them. The process encourages 100% participation. We use it in workshops around the world, like in New Zealand recently, where we helped 75 franchise owners identify their strengths and weaknesses using Lego. They each completed self-assessments, which helped the CEO understand how to train and support them better. It’s a form of self-discovery that leads to internal conversations, and it’s extremely memorable. Bella:That’s incredible—and so true that you’re creating your own brand experience through this process. People will never forget it. Aaron:Exactly. It’s about creating experiences that wow customers. Bella:Alright, let’s wrap with this. For small companies just starting out,