Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode
of Vision Pros Live. I'm your host and coach,
Fletcher Ellingson. So glad you're here. I'm
so glad that you're in this conversation. Why?
Because on this show, we're talking with people
with vision. We're talking with people who had
a story in their mind and they took efforts and
deliberate action to create that in the physical
realm. Today on the show, we're talking with
Christian Helms. Good morning. Good morning.
Thanks for having me. Pleasure. Hey, my pleasure.
Hey, before we dive into what you do and who
you are, let's start off with a win. Let's start
off with something that's going well. There's
a lot of uncertainty. There's a lot of suffering
in the world. I like to remind people that there
is still good in the world. What's right with
the world is always available. What's wrong with
the world is always available. It matters where
we place our focus. So what's something that's
been going well for you? Our agency at the moment
is working on a brand collaboration between Nilla
Wafers, the sort of vanilla wafers in an iconic
yellow box, and Star Wars to launch essentially
Baby Yoda blue Nilla Wafers. And so we're working
with the Disney team and Star Wars and Nilla,
and it's just how often do you get to reach back
in time to your old you, you know? So we're pretty
excited about that at the moment. Wow, two iconic
brands, right? That's super fun. That is so cool.
Yeah, that's got to be really fun. I can't wait
to see the advertisement and see what you all
come up with. That's cool. It's going to be a
lot of fun. Yeah, right on. Christian, you are
the founder of Helms Workshop. And for those
of our viewers or listeners who are not familiar
with what you do, Tell us a little bit about
what your company does. Yeah, absolutely. So
we build and launch brands for all sorts of different
clients and a variety of industries. But we're
one of the rare agencies that gets to work on
really fun stuff. And we don't take that for
granted. So we work with Nestle, Diageo, Target,
MTV, Tecova's. haller brothers all these really
spirited fun exciting brands that are out in
the world yeah i i went to your website and your
website is fantastic i mean i encourage people
to visit you at helmsworkshop .com helms is h
-e -l -m -s go to helmsworkshop .com because
this is a fantastic website You know, there are
all sorts of websites out there and this one
captures your attention. You're telling the story
of all the brands you're working with. And it's
very engaging. Nicely done, by the way. But the
show is called Vision Pros. And we're interested
in what your vision is. You know, many of our
listeners are visionaries and they are entrepreneurs,
solopreneurs, you know, people in the business
world. who are efforting to take that clarified
story and bring it into the physical realm. So
I want to ask you, what is your vision? Yeah,
absolutely. So I build brands, but really I think
about my job as creating moments of wonder. these
little moments of surprise or delight or insight
that kind of stick with people throughout the
day. And that can be through a big environmental
design. It can be through a piece of packaging.
It can be through a clever ad or any of those
things. But really, you know, my purpose and
my vision is to create things that bring joy
and value to people's lives. Wow, that's fun.
Yeah, it is, right? Yeah, I mean, there are not
a lot of people that when I ask them what their
vision is, give me the answer you just gave me.
Well, it took a lot of work. Years ago, I got
hit with Lyme disease and was pretty much knocked
out of commission for a couple of years. So when
I was able to get healthy again. I had to kind
of rebuild my life. And I used a lot of the principles
of branding to kind of craft my vision and my
purpose and my North Star and all of these things.
I kind of used the tools I use for brands every
day to figure myself out as well. Right on. Yeah.
I love that you said your vision is to build
wonder and bring delight and allow an experience
of joy for people. I've been a professional magician
for 35 years, and one of the absolute number
one reasons I got into magic was because of what
you just said. I love the experience of delight
and wonder and awe, right? Because especially
as adults, that moment of awe and wonder and
joy, it's more fleeting than it used to be. as
a child right i mean so many things used to bring
awe and uh that's still one of the things as
an adult that you know you see a good magic trick
and there's that moment right after the card
is revealed or whatever the climax of the trick
and for that brief moment of just a few seconds
your brain is confused it it can't reconcile
what it just saw yeah right and there's that
moment of like And frequently people will say
the words that come out of their mouth is, how
did you do that? Because they simply can't understand
it, right? I can't make sense of that. How did
you do that? So I love that moment of awe. I
mean, I've been a magician for 35 years. I still
love to be fooled. I love that moment. Yeah,
it's cool. What you do, what I do, what comedians
do is essentially take people down a path that
they expect and then quickly switch them over
to something unexpected. Exactly. It can be a
joke. It can be a little piece of a brand. It's
a joyful thing. Yeah. I love walking through.
you know the the airport or shopping malls for
the very reason of looking at all the all the
tag lines all those little those just like what
you said like you have a message and then there's
a they flip the switch right and there's like
something unexpected or or clever um and as we
all know and especially you like when you land
on that that that bit that's magical oh my gosh
it can propel a brand into like, you know, incredible
things, yeah? Absolutely. The best versions of
that essentially get past the functional benefits
of a brand or product, right? And get into the
emotional and the social benefits, how it makes
me feel about myself, what it says about me to
other people. And yeah, if you can create those,
it's a really special thing. Yeah. Yeah, and
you just nailed it on the head, right? You, as
a brand guy, are interested in meeting people
at an emotional level. Is that accurate? Absolutely.
Yeah, a real genuine connection on an emotional
level. Yeah, because most of us know, a lot of
us think we're above this. A lot of us think
we are, that doesn't apply to me, but we always
are buying based on emotions. Would you agree
with that? Absolutely. Walk down now in the grocery
store, right? Olive oil. There are 30 different
varieties. So at that point, you're buying brand
as much as you're buying the olive oil. It's
all generally the same stuff within a quality
tier. And people will make the decision based
on brand. We had a sparkling water brand we did
years ago. It had all these really cool flavors
like pickle and jalapeno pineapple. And it was
really fun. But the plain sparkling water that...
that we branded for them outsold like the the
grocery store in -house thing that was twice
half as expensive and it's just it's all water
with bubbles like there aren't dramatic differences
people are buying the brand yeah they really
are that is such a great example um because i
i think i saw i was at the lake the other day
and i think i saw someone's can it said liquid
death yeah and right and i and i i hadn't heard
of it before so um i took a closer look and it
and it was just water and i was like wow okay
liquid death they i mean nothing to do with with
water uh but sounds intriguing sounds dark and
ominous or something right and uh and it met
that person emotionally and engaged him and he
purchased Absolutely. You won't forget that brand
when you run across it. It's just peculiar. And
it's a really great example of lateral thinking
versus linear thinking, right? Tell me a little
bit more about that. Definitely. So linear thinking
is really important to life. Like we know A leads
to B leads to C. Lateral thinking is like A leads
to baseball, B leads to crocodile. It's taking
you a few steps away from what's expected. And
it puts your mind in a different place where
you can come up with solutions that are unique
or different or surprising. Got it. Got it. Is
that in a sense like a word association almost?
It can be. There's a really great book by a guy
named Edward Debono called The Thinking Course.
And he basically just teaches you all these tricks
to kind of snap your mind out of linear thinking
and into lateral. A good example is we do a lot
of naming for brands. If you think in a linear
way about naming, you get. IBM, International
Business Machines. Sure, that describes what
it is, but nobody's going to wear that on a t
-shirt. There's nothing sexy about it. We just
branded a huge entertainment destination chain
that has like movies, bowling, games, restaurant,
bar. And it had previously been called EVO Entertainment,
which nobody's excited about. We renamed it Hookie
with the idea of like ditch the everyday. get
out and connect and play and it's been a huge
hit for them so proud of the client for going
with the name hooky that's cool yeah uh what
a great contrast from evo which doesn't mean
anything to me right to hooky which immediately
brings me back to playing hooky from school like
absolutely right this idea of skipping out on
something boring and going to do something fun
and maybe a little mischievous or something I'm
not supposed to be doing, right? Yeah, but then
you cut to me having to go to the Hutto City
Council meeting because one parent on the board
is saying, you're encouraging my children to
play hooky. This is awful. I just stand up and
explain the name. That is not a part of my job
that I want to do again. oh that is funny that
is yeah there's there's always going to be somebody
who like has this all this other viewpoint that's
like oh come on man it's just just being like
fun here if you're trying to build brands that
please everybody you're you're gonna fall short
um to do something that everybody kind of feels
okay about that's how you get evo cinema right
like nobody's intrigued by it but nobody's offended
by it no one is is It has to take a minute to
wrap their head around it. But if you can do
something like hooky and have a really great
story behind why that's the name, it's just so
much more resonant with folks. I like that statement
you just said, and I invite our listeners to
really hone in on that. What you said was if
you're looking to create a brand or a name that
appeals to everyone, it's not going to happen.
Yeah. So you're going to be spinning your wheels.
So you're going to have to be you're going to
have to be bold. You're going to have to make
a decision at some point. Right. Yeah. The example
I use a lot with clients is called the ice cream
party. If you put 15 kids in a room and you say
you're all getting free ice cream, but you have
to agree on a flavor. Guess where you're going
to land? Chocolate every time. Maybe vanilla.
But you're not going to get something like Rocky
Road or Jamocha Almond Fudge or the really interesting
Ben and Jerry's flavors. Right. Like that's what
we want to do as a brand is something that. is
different and stands out and it's okay if there
are folks who don't like it if there are a lot
of people who really love it you know so this
is great there's a again our audience is largely
people in business entrepreneurs who are scaling
or looking to scale who are struggling with a
brand identity so sounds like I mean, of all
the people I've interviewed around this topic,
I mean, you guys are head and shoulders above.
I mean, just when I go to their website, check
this out. OK, it's Helms Workshop dot com. It's
it's and one of their lines right when you get
there, it says it's time you had an unfair advantage.
Right. I mean, that is a bold statement. Who
doesn't want the unfair advantage? If someone
is finding themselves at this point in their
business and they need to have this conversation,
what's the best way to reach you? And what does
it look like to begin that conversation with
you? Yeah, definitely. Usually it comes via email
through our website. Folks find us in a myriad
ways. But we get an initial email and then we
schedule an initial consult where we just. ask
a lot of questions learn everything we can about
who they are what they do why it matters where
they want to go what problem they're looking
to solve then we essentially build a proposal
for how that process would work and dive in and
the first thing we really do is strategy where
we get in and learn everything we can about the
company the competition the culture all those
things so that we can start to mine these little
insights these little gems that make them special
and different Mm hmm. What if someone's had their
brand for some time? Is it I mean, is it ever
safe or a good idea to change up brand identity?
It absolutely can be. I wrote an article last
year about simply how to evolve a heritage brand.
And the word evolve is really important. It needs
to the new brand needs to ladder back to a lot
of the things that. are that heritage aspect
of the brand, but also take a bold step into
the future. Done the right way with care, refining
and relaunching a brand can be absolutely transformational
for a company. Done the wrong way and you get
the Cracker Barrel scenario that happened last
month where there was absolute outrage because
essentially folks felt like they had lost any
of the personality or heritage that the brand
had. No, really. I hadn't I hadn't heard about
that. That's interesting. Yeah, because there
and as I think about brands that I've been accustomed
to over the years, I'm even thinking about Safeway.
You know, there are I remember they updated the
look of their ass. You know, there are there
are things that people do and it's probably always
risky. But. It's an attempt to stay relevant,
yeah? Yeah. If you can keep the personality and
the culture and the heart of the brand in the
new work, you build a bridge for people who were
fans of the brand before to find that thing that
they love again. Our goal is always when we refresh
a brand is that I want the brand to be 100 %
itself more than it ever has been. I want people
to look at it and go, man, that is even more
Nilla Wafer than Nilla Wafer used to be. They
really doubled down on the things that make them
special. Yeah, yeah. Very cool. It sounds like
you have a wealth of knowledge in this area.
And I have no doubt that that's accurate. You've
been in it for a while. You've been working with
some incredible brands. And it looks like from
your website, having a lot of success. What would
you say to somebody who's new and... They don't
have a big budget. Where could they go besides
Fiverr or Canva? Is a small business, can they
reach out to you as well and have that conversation?
Absolutely. A lot of our work is just advising
folks on the best way to get where they want
to go. That is free in the initial meeting. There
is no charge for that. And sometimes folks don't
have a budget that's big enough to work with
us. And we will refer them to a better solution
that we trust. I love that. Thank you for saying
that. That just. what that does tells me is that
you guys have a lot of integrity. Like, so yeah,
we, we may be not a good fit for you because
of budgetary reasons, but we do know this other
outfit who we can confidently refer. I love it
when companies are, are, you know, willing to
just say that up front and then send us in the
right direction. So thank you for that. You know,
it's really important to try to allocate a decent
budget for building your brand. Budget branding
is a dangerous thing. It's kind of like, sushi
and dentistry, right? Like pay full price for
that stuff. Don't pick the cheapest option out
there because you're not going to be happy with
where you land. Yes. Yes. I've had that experience
in both, in both of those categories. Yeah. So,
um, Christian, so great to talk with you. Um,
again, the company is Helms Workshop. They specialize
in branding and refreshing your brand and consultation
about brand. So if you are thinking, man, this
is something I need. We've been thinking about
this or I've been confused about which direction
to go. Hey, talk with an expert. Talk with somebody
who's got the experience who you can potentially
work with. or if you're not ready to work with
them, they're going to point you in the right
direction. Love that. Christian, thanks for being
on the show today and sharing your vision and
expertise. Any closing remarks before we wrap
up? I don't think so, Fletcher. I really enjoyed
this. You're a great interviewer. You have awesome
insights. I love the magic connection and the
fact that we do very different things, but we
do very similar things at the same time. Right
on. Right on. Well, thanks again and best wishes
to you. And now it's time for you all to get
out there. Be a source of kindness. Be a source
of contribution. You do have something to offer
this world. And I believe in you. Thank you for
being here today. I'm really happy that you tuned
in to Vision Pros Live. I'm looking forward to
seeing your reactions as these episodes continue
to move forward. This is going to get more and
more fun. We'll have more and more engagement
as well. We'll invite people to participate in
the show. And thank you for giving us your time
and attention. Have an excellent time building
out your vision and becoming a vision pro yourself.