Elevate Your Business: Jenn Givlin

Good morning and welcome back. Kent Bain with Nine Business Group and Elevate Your Business chat spotlight interview. We have Jen. Jen joining us today. Jen, please introduce yourself. First and last name and more importantly your company. What you guys do and what sets you apart from your competition. Welcome.

Thank you Kent. I appreciate being on here this morning. My name is Jen Giblin. I’m the owner of Wicked Blue Owl Creative Marketing. I have the great pleasure of working with both my husband and my daughter. My husband helps set up things. He’s our systems guy. He does all things systematic for a successful business and my daughter is a huge creative mind and her job is to work in lockstep with me to make sure that our clients get the proper care that they deserve for community building and brand development.

If she doesn’t know them, I know them or if we don’t we go out and we love to meet new people. We’re meeting new people all the time. Not for the purposes of selling anybody anything but more for the purposes of better understanding business in the community and understanding what they’re trying to do with their business.

Okay two things to pick on there. Let’s start with what does it mean for you to be a community builder and can you give us some examples of why you’ve put and make that a big part of your business. Why it has been a big part of your business and why it’s still a big part of business going forward.

Well so I love to understand what a business is but really what their motivation for going into business was. Why do they do what they do every day? What makes them happy? What makes them excited to get up out of bed? In some cases when I have conversations they figure out that they maybe aren’t as happy with what they thought they were going to be doing or the transition has happened and they’re looking to do something different.

That’s always fantastic but I want to understand why a business does what it does and why why the person who started the business wanted to be part of it in the first place. So that’s always huge for me and we’re not from around here. I came out in January of 2021 from Ontario and I didn’t know anybody aside from my cousin who lived in the northwest side of the city. I didn’t know anybody and I knew when I came here that I wanted to start a business because I’d been a business owner.

We had bought, grown and sold five businesses in Ontario. I sold two of them before we came out to Alberta and I knew that I wanted to still be an entrepreneur. It’s part of my blood but I didn’t know anybody. So networking became it has always been a huge part of what we do but networking became the cornerstone of everything I do and when I network, I’m not networking so that I’ve got something to sell. I’ve got, I network so that I can better understand the people around me.

It also teaches you through networking the culture because a southwestern Ontario culture, even though we’re Canadian, is a little different than an Alberta culture and that high drive, get in your face, this is what we’re going to do, which is a little more American like, is not going to work with anyone here. Not that it should work there but they’ve got a culture that’s always the just on time, everything’s happening now, step up. Their leisure culture is very different than what happens out here.

Weekends aren’t a weekend so I needed to come in and learn the culture and not act like I knew anything because I didn’t and we wanted to make sure that Victoria, when she joined me later, she joined me actually last year and she moved out from Ontario. She wanted to better understand her cultural equals and so she got to meet a whole brand new group of people because you know, like attracts like and you attend, you seem to work with the people in your own age demographic as well as interest level.

So Victoria’s age demographic, she’s in her late 20s and her interest level, she was an actress model prior to ever coming in to work with me and she still does that. So completely different circles to run in, completely different experiences from a people perspective but culturally very similar.

Fantastic, okay so let’s go back to that, you’ve talked about the community piece, the connecting, I guess great to know your audience and understand their culture and you know effective communication. So talk a little bit more about brand development and how you do brand development, I think we get a sense of it, you’ve shared with us before we hit record on kind of the why but dig into a little more about how you do brand development and what does it mean, I guess how do you do it if you can and then also what’s the impact?

So there are very few unique industries where there’s one person in it and there’s no one else and branding in that situation is education. We have to educate everybody on what you do because they’ve never heard of it before and they wouldn’t understand what you were talking about until you get an education campaign out there. For the most part, most of us work in industries where there’s lots of other people that do what they do.

Some people define them as competitors, I define them as just other people in your talent pool because you’d be surprised when you talk to someone that you think is your competitor, what do you find out about them, about their passions in the industry and your passions in the industry and they may not mesh. So you may have gotten stuck at the very beginning with, well I can’t talk to my competitor, I cannot talk to my marketing competitor because oh my goodness we’re all trying to fight for the same person.

Actually I’m not, I know exactly who I want to talk to and when I want to help them and they may be at a completely different point and have a completely different passion for what they do. So when I talk to people about brand, I want to understand their story, I need to understand who they are, how they got here in the first place and then I help remind them that they are not their business.

Much as we all love to believe that we are our business, that business has to be a standalone entity and there has to be some planning on what you want done with that entity when you decide not to do what you’re doing anymore. And if you can put some distance and some perspective on what happens to you when you choose not to do something anymore, it stops being as much your baby and you stop taking it all as personally.

Because I can guarantee even if you are your business and you are the only portion of the service that you’re offering, that is not a hundred percent of who you are as a person. I’m sure you’re not bringing Moody Monday Jen out to talk to people when you’re doing your business. The business is something different than who you are as a 360 degree person.

So when I talk brand story, I want to know their motivations, I want to understand what brought them here, I want to understand their story, I don’t want their business plan. Their business plan is great, they can have a business plan, that’s fantastic, they should have a business plan, but I want to understand the people part of what they do.

When you look at fast food industries by way of example, people can remember three items in a vertical. So if I pick something like a hamburger place, I think McDonald’s, I think Burger King and I think Wendy’s. They are not all the same thing. They all have a brand identity and a brand story that is unique from each other, but when you look at the base thing they do, they create hamburgers in a fast food fashion.

They all have different stories, even if they’re in the same industry. So what we want to do is establish the different stories that each business has and the motivator behind why they do what they do.

Okay, I get the big business, McDonald’s versus Burger King versus Wendy’s. Let’s bring it down to a quote-unquote more local level. Can you give us an example of maybe having worked, have you had clients in the same industry and can you give us an example of how their story brand worked out different, whether it be plumbers, electricians, renovation contractors, whatever. Can you give us some example of kind of roots?

Let’s pick on realtors because there’s 7,200 of them in the city of Calgary and they’re all buying in a very, very tight market right now. Okay, there’s no, there’s no houses for sale and there’s lots of buyers. So how do you attract the person that you want to work with to sell their home and how do you get that right person in there to buy the home and how did they find you in the first place?

I’ve worked with realtors. They have to have a story. They can’t just be the bus bench, their face and their information on it because that’s great. That is great for product awareness but it doesn’t tell the consumer why they want to work with them. So I spend a lot of time asking them, well what realtor are you? What, who are you?

Are you the pet friendly realtor? Are you the dual income, no kids realtor? Are you the luxury realtor? Are you the first-time homebuyer realtor? What realtor are you? Who are you in your sphere and then who are you as a person? They need to understand who they really enjoy working with and so I want them to tell me who they don’t like to work with and that’s business owners always say, oh my goodness I’ll work with anybody.

Yeah I will too but who do you love working with? I want to understand who you love working with and when I start to have those conversations with people on a local level to say so you tell me you’re allergic to dogs and you hate cats so I would suggest that being the pet friendly realtor is not where you want to differentiate yourself or you know what you like kids but you’re not the guy who’s going to drive around with coloring in your car and markers and you want the kids to be occupied in a different fashion before you’re taking people through that means you’re probably not going to say that you’re the kid friendly realtor because the marketing doesn’t match up.

It always comes back to finding the five key characteristics that make you you in your business and working on those to highlight how you’re going to develop your business. Who’s your audience? Victoria late 20s talks and works differently than I do in my early 50s and that’s great and there’ll be times when she’ll tap me on the shoulder and say hey you know what it’s better if you work with this client because they want you to speak on at their level with them and I turn around looking and go you know what better for you to talk to this client over here because they’re looking for someone younger generally generationally that has a different perspective on things but knowing that is super helpful it means that we can bring the best opportunity to our clients all the time because we tailor our conversations the people that we’re talking to so we’re not talking to the wrong people.

Businesses spend a long time at the beginning talking to the wrong people because anybody’s the right customer.

Isn’t that the truth? So as you look back now you’ve been in Calgary three four years you got quote-unquote a business is it going concern um if there was a pirate a thief in your business what would they be stealing from you?

We tailor our time. Well if I don’t and it’s it’s my own beef if I don’t stay focused on the task at hand in 2024 I had to come to the conclusion there were two things I need to efficiently do in my business. Every time I talk to a business owner it needs to be it needs to have a purpose and a focus. It isn’t just a coffee hour there are times for coffee hours absolutely and there are times outside my business day where I talk to friends but during my business day I need to stay focused on the task at hand which is supposed to be the benefit both people at the table.

I think it’s huge I mean it’s not the first time I’ve heard that in context of the thief but I love that clarity of if I’m spending time with somebody in my business purpose and focus why are we here what are we looking to accomplish what’s that win-win so that’s a great summary.

One last question before we wrap it up you’ve been in business now you’ve had five six businesses you alluded to earlier on what does success look like for you today what is your definition of success?

Helping my clients achieve their goals fills my bucket you don’t have to be perfect if you wait till you’re perfect you’ll never do it you don’t have to be perfect you’re allowed to make mistakes learn from them but my goal is to see success tailor and shift where we need to but help the client get success and when their bucket is filled my buckets full and it makes me feel better.

Love it so in summary marketing for you comes down to one knowing your audience speaking the language of the marketplace to really understand your why why you got into business who you are how that reflects in your business number three is understand the five characteristics of who I am or who I’m going to market with my five characteristics and then lastly be intentional with purpose and focus where we spend our time.

That is the summary of me absolutely fantastic so for those realtors out there entrepreneurs out there struggling with their purpose and why where can they find you working at that more information and who should be finding you?

You know what anybody that’s in growth mode that and I don’t care where you are in that in that kind of journey but if you’re in growth mode if you really want to see something change and you’re ready to embrace change in your business you’re a driver you’re ready to move things along I’d like to sit down for a coffee with you my name is Jen Giblin I’m the owner of Wicked Blue Owl Creative Marketing you can find us at wickedblueowl.com or at 403 804 7235 and I’m always happy to chat with people.

Awesome thanks Jen love the answers looking forward to hearing the rest of your story keep up the good work.