Dennis Hahn is Chief Strategy Officer at Liquid. He is a multi-disciplinary design-thinking strategist with expertise in brand, business and experience strategy. Dennis is also a well-rounded, entrepreneurial agency leader, business builder and trusted advisor to executives.
Dennis leads teams of strategists across all of Liquid’s offices, providing expertise, mentoring and consulting on a wide range of significant strategic initiatives for clients that include GE, John Deere, HP, Microsoft, Nike, Nasdaq, PayPal and Walmart. Check out Dennis' LinkedIn profile to learn more
“Don’t second guess your value.” - Dennis Hahn
Max Traylor:
Welcome back, world. I know you've missed me. Got a new drink for you today. This one is called... well, I forget what it's called, but it's going to be Suntory Japanese Whiskey and High Noon. I was talking to my guest, Dennis Hahn, about the brilliant name that I came up with for it, and alas, I've already forgotten. Maybe that means it's not brilliant. What was I calling this?
Dennis Hahn:
I believe it was called The Rising Sun.
Max Traylor:
Yes, The Rising Sun, a pun on High Noon, and the Japanese Whiskey. Thank you. Yes, indeed, it is brilliant. That will be $5,000. Perfect.
Dennis, now, you had a bit of a... you're drinking some iced tea, but you're a Manhattan guy. Is that right?
Dennis Hahn:
I'm a bourbon whiskey guy for sure. Today, it's tea. Whoops, here we go. I'm a little under the weather. Good old fashion summer cold, so the tea is going to be the way I'm rolling today.
Max Traylor:
Yeah. That's totally fine.
Dennis Hahn:
I'll pretend there's whiskey in here, and then we'll all feel good.
Max Traylor:
Well, it's the thought that counts.
Dennis Hahn:
Exactly.
Max Traylor:
Now, what do you think of Japanese whiskeys because I'm a big bourbon fan myself and I did one of these subscriptions. The Japanese flights always really... they really got me. What are your thoughts?
Dennis Hahn:
Well, Japanese whiskeys are very much like the traditional, almost like the scotch whiskeys. They're that peaty, island malts vibe. Some of them are a little bit more neutral, like scotch whiskey, so you get this kind of like... almost like a Canadian style or a lighter style. They're good for sipping neat primarily. I know people who make cocktails, like you, for instance, bold people that want to make a Rising Sun or something new. Yeah, for the most part, I think mostly they're consumed neat or a little bit of water.
Max Traylor:
Yeah. Yeah. I'm usually a little bit of ice, but like you said, I'm an adventurer. I wouldn't go with the watermelon High Noon again on this, that was the wrong choice, but I didn't have any peach left.
Dennis Hahn:
Yeah.
Max Traylor:
Peach would have been my thing, but it's good. It will suffice. Dennis, what do you do professionally?
Dennis Hahn:
Well, I'm a strategist. I work for a branding agency called Liquid, so my role is to be head of strategy, essentially, so I lead a team of strategists. We solve all kinds of brand, employee, and customer experience challenges for our clients. Then, we hopefully activate those through creative solutions.
Max Traylor:
How does one find himself running a strategy team? Is it a logical progression of junior strategist up to the head of strategy or do you go through a phase of collecting knowledge from a ton of different areas and then, magically, you land it?
Dennis Hahn:
There's a lot of ways into a field like that. I'm actually a designer by education and training, so I started through design, in graphic design, and I asked all the annoying questions of why. All the why... why this? Why that? Could it be this? Could it be that? That led me on my own path to figuring out more what's beneath the visual aesthetic of design and how design functions, so it sort of led me to coming into strategy through that door.
I worked with business strategists in one of my career lives and learned, oh, strategy is a thing, you can do that. Then, just applied it to my field, which is branding and marketing.
Max Traylor:
If I'm not mistaken, you did your own thing there for a while. Is that where you discovered that strategy as a thing can be sold and delivered?
Dennis Hahn:
Yeah. Well, yeah, so I started an agency when I was 27, and I did that for about 10 years. I sold it during the dot com heyday when everything was blowing up in a good way. Then it blew up in a bad way, but not to get to that point exactly right away. Essentially, yeah, I worked with business strategists, and we put a lot of rigor around how we were building brand strategy for digital primarily back in the day and it was really kind of an awakening like, oh, you can actually start to productize, and your process for building strategy, it has monetary value. You can sell it. It's tangible and it has value to a customer.
Max Traylor:
Well, I'm going to unpack that and that you said a lot of-
Dennis Hahn:
Yeah, there's a lot in there.
Max Traylor:
You don't have to intentionally buzzword drop. That's fine, but I do appreciate the... I use the word productize, and then people are like, "What does that mean?" Steps and things, that's my...
Dennis Hahn:
Yeah. Sure.
Max Traylor:
What I've found is for some reason in the strategy space, I think a lot of organizations just work with really brilliant people that can wing it and charge a lot of money, so it seems to be a department that doesn't traditionally get the operational mindset and the process rigor that some of the... call it more deliverable based... like, building a website. People have really strict processes for building a website, but when it comes to strategy, it's sort of... Anyway, in our initial conversations, it was clear that you apply an operational mindset to it with the-
Dennis Hahn:
Absolutely. Yeah.
Max Traylor:
... intent of reaching others.
Dennis Hahn:
Oh, yeah. We have a very robust approach to building strategy, and it is like you said earlier, I mean, we do groom young strategists, teach them how to do it. We're essentially building strategy capabilities in our staff as they progress.
Max Traylor:
Before we talk about monetizing these unique things that you have, give me some context. Who are your best customers? That might be a dangerous way of asking the question. Who pays you the most for strategy?
Dennis Hahn:
Who pays the most? That's [crosstalk 00:06:07]
Max Traylor:
Or who are your ideal customers? I mean, fill in the blank. I just want some context of the types of clients that you're working with on the strategy side.
Dennis Hahn:
Sure. I guess I look at it this way. Our customers come to us with a problem to be solved, so in the traditional agency setting, there's a brief that's written by a customer. They give the brief to the agency, the agency fulfills the brief, and they provide a little bit of smart thinking or insight, and then they go right into creative. Right? They're building a campaign or they're building some kind of a website, like you said, or whatever.
We start much further upstream, so we are wrestling with a business problem or a brand challenge or a customer problem. Those are our best customers because we're solving... we're helping them frame the problem, and then figuring out how to solve it. That's what strategy is really about, it's about deciding what you're going to do, and more importantly, what you're not going to do, and how you're going to focus.
Max Traylor:
The pre-brief-
Dennis Hahn:
Yes, the pre-brief, essentially.
Max Traylor:
... decision making.
Dennis Hahn:
Yes. Yeah, and there's a lot of research and discovery and analysis that goes into that whole process of getting to the answer. There's no right answer. There could be many right answers, so it's which is the best answer for that client based on the kind of thing they're trying to solve.
Max Traylor:
Well, if you're able to talk about it, make it real for me.
Dennis Hahn:
Sure.
Max Traylor:
Like, a recent client where they brought you in pre-brief and the business, but we don't have to talk about it for a while, but just to make it real.
Dennis Hahn:
Sure. We work with a lot of tech clients right now, and B2B technology is pretty... they're investing a lot in brand building and trying to drive awareness and things like that. These are crowded spaces-
Max Traylor:
They're not focused on making a profit, I can tell you that.
Dennis Hahn:
Yeah, exactly. Well, later.
Max Traylor:
Maybe.
Dennis Hahn:
Yeah, but these are companies that have lots of challenges. They're trying to figure out who's the customer we're really trying to reach. Are we even talking to the right customer, for example? We have ways of understanding the mindsets of their customers and they're saying what they really want and need from them. Once we understand the customer, we can then build a brand that relates to that customer, so there's a connection, and make it more direct because a lot of times, companies just start doing things. They just go to market, they start to sell product, but they don't really know exactly. It's all anecdotal in many cases what they think they know based on their experience.
We can provide rigor, we can provide research, we can provide analysis to that process to give them a much more assured way into solving their challenge. That's what strategy is really about, so it's a lot of research, it's discovery, it's workshopping. We do a ton of workshopping to build the strategy together with our clients, and then that sets us up to activate and execute creatively based on the strategy we've set.
Max Traylor:
Yeah. As we talk about it, we're kind of talking in generalities I'd say about the strategic process, but I was so excited to speak with you because you've really, we'll use the big word, productized not just the strategy work that is the output of what you do, but the process. You've got real intellectual property, defensible, a way of going through the strategic process, and I think you're monetizing it in a number of ways that people should hear about.
Dennis Hahn:
Right.
Max Traylor:
The story of how you acquired such intellectual property and your role in this whole thing I thought was really interesting, so I'm talking about your role in the commercialization process. Again, stop me if we're not supposed to talk about this, but the acquisition and how you acquired some of this packaged knowledge in the first place.
Dennis Hahn:
Yeah. What you were saying earlier was interesting. You were saying people think of strategists as consultants, people that sit in a room and tell you what... they take your watch and they read it, and they tell you what time it is. They're basically-
Max Traylor:
They've had long careers and they're kind of [crosstalk 00:10:22]
Dennis Hahn:
Ivory tower, they're pondering things, the world's problems and all that. In this kind of strategy we're talking about, it's very actionable, so it's taking thought and putting it on paper essentially and orchestrating an argument for or against something. It's making the case. To do that, you have to have a process in which you can make it real and tangible for clients, so they understand what it is you're doing, so you don't feel like you're winging it, there's enough rigor brought to it, but it's not so rigorous where you never get to a decision, or you drag it out. The goal is to find that sweet spot between can I move this along on a path that meets a client's time frame based on what's going on in their business and their world, and can we start to put some shape and structure around the thinking, involve them in the process to get to a conclusion. That's how we do it in a very high-level way.
Max Traylor:
Yes. I put squares around things in my notes when I know they're really important.
Dennis Hahn:
Perfect.
Max Traylor:
One of the squares is that your role is really to... well, someone at the organization is out there going, hm, there are brilliant strategists that think of these methodologies and these and processes that facilitate the things that you're talking about. Unique approaches to arriving at actionable strategic conclusions.
Dennis Hahn:
Right.
Max Traylor:
We were talking about your organization's approach of identifying those individuals, perhaps acquiring them or partnering with them in a way where your role as Chief Strategy Officer is really charged with commercializing these processes that exist out there in the world today. I think that's a brilliant way of expanding the intellectual assets that an organization has is going out and finding them and purchasing them. You don't have to make it up yourself.
Dennis Hahn:
Correct. Yeah, so Marty Neumeier, he's one of our thought leaders. He works for us at Liquid, he writes books, he dreams big, he's breaking things. Right?
Max Traylor:
Yeah.
Dennis Hahn:
Which is a great gig, right-
Max Traylor:
The dreamers.
Dennis Hahn:
... if you can write about it.
Max Traylor:
Yeah.
Dennis Hahn:
Yeah, dreamers, but if you can take those concepts and then, like you said, commercialize them, make them actually work for you and your clients, then you can take a concept and convert it into something that you can put action around and make it, like I said earlier, tangible. How do we do that?
The foundation of everything we do is rooted in design thinking. I don't know if you're familiar with that, but yeah. Design thinking is-
Max Traylor:
I'm shaking my head yes as I'm halfway through my drink. Yeah, definitely heard of that. Sure.
Dennis Hahn:
Yeah.
Max Traylor:
Yeah.
Dennis Hahn:
Design thinking is this principle where you basically tightly frame a problem, and then you solve it through prototyping. Prototyping is the making of potential solutions that can solve the problem. It's a step between knowing and doing. As executives in business, we know something, we go off our past experience, and we say, "Oh, that's the decision. Go do it." That's good, but it doesn't lead necessarily to new, innovative, breakthrough thinking. It just moves you down the road.
What we do is we insert this making step in the middle, so it's thinking, making, and then doing. Making allows us to explore opportunities or solutions to potential problems that we may not have gotten to otherwise. That's what design thinking is really based in. If we can do that, then we can get to somewhere new and more powerful than if we just made a decision and told somebody what to do.
Max Traylor:
Sounds like trying.
Dennis Hahn:
Trying.
Max Traylor:
Yeah.
Dennis Hahn:
Yeah, it's a [crosstalk 00:14:19]
Max Traylor:
Like, if I was explaining it to somebody drinking a Manhattan, I would say, "Design thinking is the process of trying things."
Dennis Hahn:
Sure. It's like The Rising Sun, like you're making it now. This is the first time you've made the drink. Right?
Max Traylor:
Well, now the second time, that's right.
Dennis Hahn:
Well, right. You're-
Max Traylor:
I'm just freshening it up.
Dennis Hahn:
Yeah, you're prototyping.
Max Traylor:
It turns out that only a small bit of... a prototype, yes. There we go.
Dennis Hahn:
You're making prototypes, you're testing the prototypes, I see they're quite good, so the prototypes are working.
Max Traylor:
They are good, but with modification. With modification, Dennis. Less... because of the... The watermelon was a bad choice, so I'm going light on the whiskey. It does add a little-
Dennis Hahn:
There you go.
Max Traylor:
... meat to it, but I think [crosstalk 00:14:56]
Dennis Hahn:
Yeah, see. That's kind of the nature of it. Oh, yeah. I know about peach. If you're going for that southern vibe, [inaudible 00:15:05] peach and whiskey kind of go together.
Max Traylor:
Well, I grew up in Florida, so it's kind of the north of the south.
Dennis Hahn:
Well, there you go. There you go.
Max Traylor:
Tell me about the process. I got swarming.
Dennis Hahn:
Yes.
Max Traylor:
I got a square around and a star around swarming.
Dennis Hahn:
Yes. Swarming, yes.
Max Traylor:
Yeah. I do want to talk about how you're educating and bringing up folks in your own organization and some of the other ways in which you're monetizing this stuff, but let's talk about the stuff for a second.
Dennis Hahn:
Sure.
Max Traylor:
Swarming and the other concepts that you've got.
Dennis Hahn:
Yeah. Back to process, you mentioned the process earlier, so swarming is our method for co-creation, so the reason we do co-creation is we could tell clients what to do, we could go do our research and analysis and say, "Oh, go do this," but they have no skin in the game. They have no contribution to the outcome other than whatever we'd happen to talk to them about or maybe include that they handed us, but they're not really part of creating the strategy.
What we've found over the years is that if we can involve stakeholders from the company in co-creating the strategy with us, it's much more powerful. Now we've worked cross-silos in an organization, so we don't have to go sell it in later because somebody didn't create it. If I had a hand in forming that strategy, I'm more likely to accept it because now I'm part of it and you're not just telling me what to do. I'm part of the solution, essentially. That's why we do swarming because it gets us to a consensus around what we're going to do, and everyone feels like they were part of that process, and we know that we have the right answer because we've involved the client in our approach.
Max Traylor:
I heard once that being right is not sufficient for being effective.
Dennis Hahn:
No. You can be right, but-
Max Traylor:
Hence, swarming or co-creation.
Dennis Hahn:
Yeah. The co-creation, yeah, the swarming.
Max Traylor:
Hey, just pay me for the rights and you got it. Just acquire me as one of these people.
Dennis Hahn:
There you go. Yeah, see.
Max Traylor:
Being right is not sufficient. I'll have to call whoever I got it from. Then it gets complicated.
Dennis Hahn:
Right. Well, then you have royalties and all that, on pennies, on pennies, so it's going to be tricky. Yeah. [crosstalk 00:17:24]
Max Traylor:
I think I get five cents for every book I sell on Amazon.
Dennis Hahn:
Oh, look at you.
Max Traylor:
I know. If we were in the 90s, I could make some collect calls for sure.
Dennis Hahn:
Absolutely. Yeah.
Max Traylor:
What a succinct pitch for co-creation. I think that's something that really brilliant people... like you said, you're taking brilliant people with strategic mindsets, the dreamers out there, some say they're not the only one, but you're adding this business acumen of having to sell it across divisions and taking a lot of those challenges related to taking action on some of these brilliant ideas and putting it into a formula that reduces... it makes it less of a pain in the ass.
Dennis Hahn:
It not only reduces risk, it increases-
Max Traylor:
Risk, that was what I was trying to say.
Dennis Hahn:
Right. It increases the power of what we're creating. I do believe that in doing it this way now, we've been doing it like this for years, is that the outcomes are better because you're not grinding the thing down. You're not coming up with something and then you're putting it through the corporate spanking machine as it gets sanded off. Right? All the edges-
Max Traylor:
Did you say spanking machine?
Dennis Hahn:
I did. The corporate spanking machine where you go through and it goes from department to department, and they beat up on it. Then, they change it because they weren't there, and they don't understand. Then you end up with something that just doesn't really have any power or efficacy. It just isn't going to work. By doing swarming, you concentrate it. You come up with stuff you never would have come up with before because you're involving different minds, different people, different levels in the organization. I mean, we have had CEOs swarming with us to people that are maybe a store manager in a retail company. It's very multi-level, multi-input, and then you get to a new place. You get to lots of new places, and then you decide which of the right paths are the strongest.
Then, we can go test that. We can actually test these things with customers in the field, validate what we came up with in a swarm. You get something very powerful, very fast, and it's quicker. I mean, it just takes less time.
Max Traylor:
There's got to be an acronym around short circuiting the corporate spanking machine.
Dennis Hahn:
Yeah, there must be. [crosstalk 00:19:57]
Max Traylor:
I'm going to credit you with that. I don't know if you got this from somebody. I'm going to credit you with it, but there will be a chapter in volume 31 of my book...
Dennis Hahn:
Right.
Max Traylor:
... sometimes I lose track of how old I am... volume 31 of my book called The Corporate Spanking Machine.
Dennis Hahn:
Corporate Spanking Machine, yeah.
Max Traylor:
Brilliant. Okay, so swarming, there's probably some other stuff, but how are you unleashing this on the world? Let's talk first about bringing up strategists in your own organization. You've got a hierarchy of-
Dennis Hahn:
Yep.
Max Traylor:
... from junior strategists to senior strategists, and you are responsible for developing these skill sets and building a team that can last, so just talk to me about your approach of building and growing that team.
Dennis Hahn:
Sure. Well, so young strategists come in usually as interns or their first job. What we look for is their ability to build a point of view. A point of view is taking different inputs and saying, okay, well, based on what I'm learning, whether it's through desk research or I'm just going on the internet and looking up things or I'm looking at reports or I'm maybe collecting data in some way, I'm going to say what I think it means in the context of this business or this thing. That's where we start young strategists, build a point of view, and they work on components and pieces of the branding process.
As we think about the deliverables we make for strategy, they're working on the subcomponents of it, so to speak. They're learning from the ground up how to build a perspective that eventually a more experienced strategist would have to not only build that perspective, but then sell it in. Get people enrolled and engaged around it. We call that orchestrating and argument. You can build an argument, but then be able to orchestrate it is a completely another level. It's thinking about all the stepping stones that a strategist has to learn to be able to basically do strategy and get people enrolled in that strategy.
Max Traylor:
The junior folks are... your goal is to make them masters of a singular argument, which represents one piece of-
Dennis Hahn:
A component. We're componentizing it. We're saying, okay, well, if you can build a point of view-
Max Traylor:
Componentizing.
Dennis Hahn:
... you're learning how to... Yes, you're learning how to do research, you're learning how to put your thoughts on paper, you're learning how to convince me that your point of view is sound. That's where we start. They also learn how to build-
Max Traylor:
One at a time.
Dennis Hahn:
One at a time [crosstalk 00:22:37]
Max Traylor:
Get good at one, so you understand what it takes.
Dennis Hahn:
Yeah. They're also helping prepare swarms, so then, that's the other thing they're doing. They're building... We do a lot of our swarms, and we used to do them in person back when we could all hug each other and not wear masks and all that stuff in a very physical world, but in a digital world, we now do all these swarms online. We prepare the workspace, the environment for where the collaboration is going to happen. Our young strategists will build those tools, they'll prep the space for collaboration to happen. Then we start teaching them how to facilitate breakout groups. That's the other thing they have to learn is how to facilitate, which is a whole another set of skills in its own right because strategy isn't just going into your office and writing something down, it's also interacting with people, it's engaging people and guiding them to a good space.
Max Traylor:
Is that your... because I am a believer that facilitation is one of the most important... right along with co-creation. I mean, you have to facilitate a conversation.
Dennis Hahn:
Right. Yes.
Max Traylor:
What would be... putting you on the spot. What's your definition of a successful facilitator who does this really well?
Dennis Hahn:
That's a great question. I feel like the successful facilitator really guides the clients, in this case, to do the work. I think that's the difference. When I see inexperienced facilitators, they're doing the work on behalf of the client. They're up at the whiteboard, they're writing everything down, they're basically doing everything, and they're just validating stuff. The clients are yelling things at them and they're writing stuff on the board. That's a terrible facilitation in my mind. It's not really a facilitation. It's just the strategist is doing the work and somebody's watching them do it.
A good facilitation is you engage your audience. They're the ones doing the work, so you give them the opportunity to... we say if you don't write it down, it doesn't exist. If you don't write the idea down on a Post-it, or anywhere, it's just talk, it's just words in the ether. We can't capture a conversation like that, so we want them to write things down. Then we organize and construct the work that's being captured on these Post-its and we structure it in a way where we can actually start to look for patterns and themes in what's being captured, so we can start to look at possible solutions to how we might be... It's like structured brainstorming, so to speak [crosstalk 00:25:11]
Max Traylor:
A great facilitator facilitates co-creation.
Dennis Hahn:
They do. They don't do the work. They get the best work out of the people that they're facilitating. They are monitoring to make sure of that, and they're organizing. They're looking at the patterns and themes of what's being collected, and they're looking for what is it we think this means, what's the conclusion of these different inputs that we're collecting, and how can we start to put shape and structure around them. To me, that's good facilitation.
Max Traylor:
How do you know when a junior strategist is ready for the big time, and by big time, I assume a senior strategist is the one really leading a marquee client engagement rather than supporting the senior strategists?
Dennis Hahn:
Yeah. When they can learn how to master not just building an argument for strategy, but orchestrating the argument, is when we know they're ready. Orchestrating is the facilitation, it's leading the conversation, and it's driving that little point of view they make when they're young strategists. When they're building a perspective, that's a much broader point of view, and that's making the case for strategy. When they can do that, they're ready.
At Liquid, because we are training this so good, I mean, literally, we've had interns that have gotten there in just three or four years. Those are sharp people but giving them structure and a method and a way of getting there, it just accelerates it.
Max Traylor:
Can you hear my three-year-old?
Dennis Hahn:
No.
Max Traylor:
Oh, wow. Okay, so it's just noise in my brain. Okay, so it's not real.
Dennis Hahn:
Yeah. I can't hear it.
Max Traylor:
If you can't hear it, it's not real.
Dennis Hahn:
Your listeners might be hearing it, but-
Max Traylor:
That's what I tell myself really early in the morning when I'm just psyching myself up for the day, it's like, it's not real.
Dennis Hahn:
Exactly.
Max Traylor:
I just can't hear it.
Dennis Hahn:
Nope. I can't hear it, doesn't exist.
Max Traylor:
It's just voices in my head. My wife claims they are real, so... How else are you... Okay, number one, you are enabling the business model of building up really smart people and selling their knowledge in the form of actionable strategies-
Dennis Hahn:
Yes.
Max Traylor:
... but you have such well documented processes and methodologies and the demonstrated ability to take someone from junior to senior, quote, unquote-
Dennis Hahn:
Right.
Max Traylor:
... in a couple years. How else are you monetizing this? How do we get the world of lost individuals that have a desire to help solve business problems, how are you delivering this skill set to people in mass or in groups or... what else are you doing?
Dennis Hahn:
Well, timing is good for that question because I was just asked recently to teach a master class on swarming, so how to do it. Basically, it's a four-hour seminar teaching people the fundamentals of swarming essentially, which includes two hours of instruction and two hours of actually doing it. Hands-on.
Max Traylor:
All right, so we're breaking into the group. How big is the group?
Dennis Hahn:
Don't know yet. We're still promoting it. We just announced it last week. I'm doing it through an organization called Level C, and Level C was founded by Marty Neumeier, who works for Liquid, and Andy Starr. They put it together because they wanted to certify brand strategists around the world. Marty has a huge following. He's written eight books, published in multiple languages, so his following is global. They wanted to be able to certify brand strategists because there isn't really... You asked it earlier. You said, "Where do you get training for this?" There really... the training is... there are places where you can go to learn it, but there is no formal governing body that says you're now a brand strategist. That's what they're doing.
Max Traylor:
Well, I mean, so I ask, and I'll go one layer deeper than super general how many people are in this group. There's formats of... there things that you can do with 25 people online or in a group. Everybody has a chance to participate and when it comes to co-creation that's a very important thing to know when you're approaching how you're going to do a master class.
Dennis Hahn:
True.
Max Traylor:
Then, there's... and over the past... well, primarily in the last five years, online education or do it yourself programs has become we'll say , saturated.
Dennis Hahn:
Yeah. Right.
Max Traylor:
Everyone and their mother has-
Dennis Hahn:
Everyone's doing it.
Max Traylor:
Everyone's doing it, right, it's saturated.
Dennis Hahn:
Yeah, sure.
Max Traylor:
You've got someone with a global presence saying, "Hey, I can drive demand for this." Is the plan to go small group, hands-on, we're really going to make sure that these people have the skill sets because we intend to monetize that skill set in some way, perhaps placing them in these organizations or driving opportunities through Liquid to these certified individuals and maybe making some cheese in a little revenue share thing, or you just say, "Hey, to hell with it." It's a thousand-dollar online thing and you've got a million people taking it.
Dennis Hahn:
Right. No, that's-
Max Traylor:
That sounded biased. It is. I have [crosstalk 00:30:48]
Dennis Hahn:
No, I hear you. No, I hear you. What Level C is going with their master classes for brand certification is very deep, it's very hands-on, it's expensive. It's smaller groups, so I'd say groups of 50 they're working with, but they're going deep. It's 40 hours of very intensive hands-on work. I've been through one of their master classes just to see how they do it. I assisted them in facilitating it, and it's really great stuff. It's four different levels over a period of time, so you really build up to it.
Max Traylor:
Okay.
Dennis Hahn:
The master class I'm doing, it's a four-hour, one shot. It's these master classes, the Artisan Series, that they call it, which is what I'm doing, there's a bunch of other people doing them on different topics. Mine just happens to be Creative Swarming, there's another one on naming, there's another one on brand culture, building a culture around your brand, so there's different... these are ancillary to what Level C and master class are doing. I feel like I could teach a hundred people to swarm in four hours, and I still feel like it would be valuable. I don't feel like it would be we're just going an inch deep and a mile wide. Right? I feel like [crosstalk 00:32:10]
Max Traylor:
You have the experience of breakout groups. I mean, you would know-
Dennis Hahn:
Absolutely.
Max Traylor:
... how they're going to take that hundred-
Dennis Hahn:
That's how you do it.
Max Traylor:
... and do the compartmental-
Dennis Hahn:
Yes, correct. Yeah. That's exactly it.
Max Traylor:
Most people's approach to teaching a hundred people is a projection approach, I'm going to say things that a hundred or a thousand people could hear, but you've got that extra level of understanding that teaching a hundred people is really teaching four groups of 25, which is really-
Dennis Hahn:
Exactly.
Max Traylor:
... having groups of five people experience each other's experience five [crosstalk 00:32:44] anyway.
Dennis Hahn:
Yeah, exactly.
Max Traylor:
Math is one of the first things I lose after a cocktail or two.
Dennis Hahn:
Well, there you go. That's true for most of us.
Max Traylor:
You've got the master class.
Dennis Hahn:
Yeah.
Max Traylor:
Need there be more?
Dennis Hahn:
Well, we're just trying it out right now. I think this is new, and the reason they're doing it is there is demand between... the Level C courses were... there was a long time between them, so their community, which is growing and getting quite large and vocal, they were like, "Well, what else could we be learning in between these master classes?" They said, "Oh, Artisan Series, let's pepper in these smaller formats, shorter format, more focused things to help round you out."
Creative swarming is definitely... I think it's vital to anyone learning how to do brand strategy. If you don't know how to facilitate and co-create, it's going to be a lot harder for you to be successful, in my opinion. To me, this is like a vital skill.
Max Traylor:
It's a skill set that applies across a lot of different [crosstalk 00:33:53]
Dennis Hahn:
Yeah. What's cool about swarming, we can swarm anything, so it's not just brand strategy. We swarm employee experience challenges, culture problems. We've swarmed customer experience. We use it for innovation for companies because swarming is a method. It's not a strict process. It's a method of co-creation. You can co-create anything you want with it. Think of it like the ultimate Lego, you have a three-year-old, the ultimate Lego tool kit. Right? It's like a big box of Legos. It's like, what am I going to go and make with this?
Max Traylor:
Legos are the bane of my existence. How many times have you stepped on an extra-large Lego, not the small Legos? Talking about extra-large, jagged edge-
Dennis Hahn:
What's an extra-large like. That sounds-
Max Traylor:
They're massive. They're like-
Dennis Hahn:
That sounds ugly, yeah.
Max Traylor:
Yeah. At night and you step on that, I have small feet, I thought I...
Dennis Hahn:
Yeah. My kids loved Legos and we had... They were all over the place. Yeah, it was always a hazard zone.
Max Traylor:
And cars. What do they call them? Hot Wheels.
Dennis Hahn:
Oh, yeah, Hot Wheels. Yes.
Max Traylor:
Those things need to be rounded out. Somebody needs to take a sander to those freaking things. The edges are too sharp.
Dennis Hahn:
Oh, yeah.
Max Traylor:
Fatherhood, geez.
Dennis Hahn:
Yeah.
Max Traylor:
You know what? Here's a question. This is probably my last one. You're doing so many things correctly, and if I was listening to this, I'd be like, I want to be like Dennis, but for the folks that are trapped, they haven't really operationalized or begun to monetize the things that they know, but they have things that they know-
Dennis Hahn:
Right. Yes.
Max Traylor:
... that are great contributions to the world. What do they do? Looking back, what is your advice to just somebody, if you only could give them one piece of advice for the whole of their career, like the North Star to like-
Dennis Hahn:
Yeah. I would say this, and having come from the design field early on, I would say, don't give it away for free. I feel like that's what people... they want to give it away because clients are wanting the proof that you have value. You have value, don't second guess your value. We charge a hell of a lot for the strategy work we deliver. It's expensive, but it's valuable and it's worth it. Clients, when they receive it, they go, "Oh, my God. Now I know why it was so expensive because it got us somewhere we never would have gotten on our own." I feel like, yeah, don't give it away.
Max Traylor:
Don't give it away for free. That is, you know what, that is... I'm so happy you said that. I said it was my last question, but that's like a trigger-
Dennis Hahn:
The trigger, uh-oh.
Max Traylor:
Well, no, because somewhere along the line, business culture said give it away for free...
Dennis Hahn:
[crosstalk 00:37:13]
Max Traylor:
... as a marketing tactic, as an [inaudible 00:37:16] generation tactic.
Dennis Hahn:
Sample, it's a sample. Here's the sample.
Max Traylor:
I won't get into it, but I think it was driven by this whole Mar Tech boom, the technology boom, and in order to generate demand, you have to give away value and it sacrifices the professional services. I don't want to get into it, but somewhere along the line, somebody said to professional service providers, give away your intellectual property for free-
Dennis Hahn:
Right.
Max Traylor:
... in order to get taxable [inaudible 00:37:38] services that you can charge pennies for and through becoming increasingly commoditized by said software companies.
Dennis Hahn:
Yep.
Max Traylor:
Anyway, like I said, triggered. That's it.
Dennis Hahn:
No. You got it. Yep.
Max Traylor:
All I got to say about that, but don't give it away for free. There's a chapter in my book, Free Equals Not Valuable, so A, I think people deserve to be paid for their value, but B, there's an impact on perceived value. If you give it away for free, how valuable can it be?
Dennis Hahn:
Exactly.
Max Traylor:
The same concept as co-creation, it has to be their idea, they have to be bought in, they have to have contributed time and insight into the process for them to feel that it's valuable. Same thing on the monetary side. If they don't pay for it, how valuable can it really be?
Dennis Hahn:
Exactly. The other piece of advice I'll add to that is that if you're not going to give it away for free, whatever you provide, make sure it is valuable. Get training. Go learn how to create value because a lot of people, like you said early on, they might be a strategic thinker, but if they can't figure out a way to package in a way where it feels valuable, then people aren't going to see the value and they're going to feel like it wasn't worth it.
Max Traylor:
Numbers and words.
Dennis Hahn:
Numbers and words, that's it.
Max Traylor:
Well, there's either numbers that say it is valuable, or you interview your client, I'm a big fan of interviewing your clients.
Dennis Hahn:
Yes.
Max Traylor:
Saying... it needs to be a third-party, a third-party interviewing your clients, because they'll tell you because they want to be nice to you because you're great, and you [crosstalk 00:39:19]-
Dennis Hahn:
Of course, yes.
Max Traylor:
... great work. They feel bad, but a third-party interviewing clients, saying like, "No, how valuable was it though? Was it valuable?"
Dennis Hahn:
Right.
Max Traylor:
Numbers and words. Well, that's all I've got, Dennis.
Dennis Hahn:
Okay.
Max Traylor:
I tell you what, the Rising Sun-
Dennis Hahn:
Is it a keeper?
Max Traylor:
Yes.
Dennis Hahn:
Okay.
Max Traylor:
There's something there, and it has to be Japanese whiskey, I just haven't found the right High Noon combination because watermelon ain't it. Caution-
Dennis Hahn:
That ain't it. No.
Max Traylor:
... ladies and gentlemen, caution. That's not it.
Dennis Hahn:
No, I could have pretty much told you that.
Max Traylor:
Well, that's why we do these interviews, Dennis.
Dennis Hahn:
I know. We didn't consult-
Max Traylor:
I've learned so much from you.
Dennis Hahn:
... on the recipe.
Max Traylor:
Sometimes, you just have to design the drinks.
Dennis Hahn:
You do.
Max Traylor:
AKA, test.
Dennis Hahn:
That's the fun part, that's the fun part. Prototyping has-
Max Traylor:
[crosstalk 00:40:14] fun.
Dennis Hahn:
Yeah.
Max Traylor:
Experimenting with wrong answers is fun.
Dennis Hahn:
It can be.
Max Traylor:
Thank you so much, Dennis.
Dennis Hahn:
Yeah. Thanks, Max, for having me on. It was fun hanging out with you, and yeah, good luck with that next chapter, 31.
Max Traylor:
Yes. What was the name of the chapter?
Dennis Hahn:
Well, 31. I don't know what the name of the chapter is.
Max Traylor:
No, no, no. That was volume, but in the new volume-
Dennis Hahn:
Oh, volume. Okay.
Max Traylor:
... there will be a corporate spanking machine-
Dennis Hahn:
Oh, that's it. Yes.
Max Traylor:
... chapter. Yeah, that has two stars, which means it's a chapter in the new book. For those of you listening, if you're not operating any heavy machinery, go ahead and binge on Beers with Max, and call me if there are any problems with your experience. Thank you so much, see you next time.
