S4 Ep20: Three Ways to be a More Effective Communicator with Tom Geary
“Branding takes a long time and communications are hard. So give people a reason to be able to differentiate your message from everybody else’s and you’re going to have a lot more success standing up.” — Tom Geary
The first step in making a change is communicating it. When the meaning of your message is received in a way that evokes action, that’s when you start making an impact. This applies to anything in life, including your business.
In this episode, Justine sits with Tom Geary, Founder and Creative Director at School of Thought to talk about what effective communication really means in business. Tom also shares how to handle differing opinions, how humor influences your message, the way your message is received by your audience, and why effective communication may, at times, mean “less talk”. Tune in for more tips on effective communication and business building!
Connect with Tom:
Tom Geary is the Founder and Creative Director at School of Thought, a fresh and innovative creative agency based in the San Francisco Bay area. With decades of experience in the industry, Tom has become a thought leader on topics related to the world of branding, strategy, media, and content creation. He has positioned his agency as a leader in sustainability and social responsibility- creating high-impact campaigns for brands including Cisco WebEx, eBay, Bing, and Red Bull.
Tom Geary's philosophy is based on "Making Them Care" - the guiding principle driving School of Thought's compassionate, socially-conscious and relatable campaigns that create meaningful connections between brands and consumers. His light-hearted and humorous approach to some of the biggest issues impacting the industry and world today makes him a perfect guest on podcasts with audiences interested in creative innovations, industry insights, and branding strategy advice.
Episode Highlights:
01:17 School of Thought
05:50 Entrepreneurship Requires a Leap of Faith
08:29 Everyone Loves Funny!
11:39 Don’t Just Talk, Show
14:34 3 Ways to be Effective at Communication
17:58 Don’t Do Try Everything
Inspirational Quotes:
02:21 “There's lots of earnest lectures that are well-intentioned, but not necessarily effective.” -Tom Geary
06:43 “If you're wired to be an entrepreneur, you just take the leap of faith.” -Tom Geary
10:24 “Everyone loves funny!” -Justine Reichman
12:07 “A lot of companies go out there and say, they’ve got to work on diversity inclusion, and a lot of them are talking about it. What is far better is to show that you're actually doing something.” -Tom Geary
12:57 “We're changing the future of food. People are working to change it every day. We’re seeing meats grown in laboratories. We’re seeing people talk about plant-forward diets. We’re seeing people talk about all these alternatives.” -Justine Reichman
12:29 “Audiences are going to sniff out if your efforts are disingenuous.” -Tom Geary
15:35 “It's important to have communication that has some stopping power. You can't start communicating with somebody until you have their attention.” -Tom Geary
16:53 “Branding takes a long time and communications are hard. So give people a reason to be able to differentiate your message from everybody else's and you're going to have a lot more success standing up.” -Tom Geary
18:39 “Don't try to do everything… It will free you up to do whatever it is you're great at with more energy and passion.” -Tom Geary
Transcriptions:
Justine Reichman:
Good afternoon, and welcome to Essential Ingredients. I'm Justine Reichman, your host. Today, I have Tom Geary, Co-Founder of School of Thought. Welcome Tom.
Tom Geary:
Thank you, Justine. Great to be here.
Justine Reichman: Thank you so much for joining me today, we're excited to have you and to introduce you to the Essential Ingredients Community, I've been excited to have you on to share with our community, you and School of Thought because I think that it is a such a much needed conversation. I know that I struggle so often with putting words together, and it is a gift to be able to eloquently and succinctly communicate. So I'd love for you to just tell everybody, what is the School of Thought?
“There's lots of earnest lectures that are well-intentioned, but not necessarily effective.” -Tom Geary
Tom Geary: About once a month, somebody walks into our office and says, kind of take classes or something, or they confuse us with School of Rock. But the reality is that we are a creative firm that started in 2009, because my sense of timing is epic. We've always been a strong creative shot. But over the last seven or eight years, we have basically really leaned into the sustainability world, and we kind of use sustainability in a very broad sense to mean things like diversity inclusion, social impact, clean energy, food access, anything that is really purpose led. We've kind of leaned into that for two reasons. First of all, it makes us all feel better to be able to have a slight impact, helping our clients do some good, but also the category is earnest. Everyone is well intentioned, but it's kind of the usual suspects. The solar companies are using pictures of the sun, and there's sort of lots of earnest lectures that are well intentioned, but not necessarily effective. And so what we're trying to do is bring best practices from other types of communication to a category that could really use a boost. And it's great to be able to make a difference.
Justine Reichman: Wonderful, thank you. Yeah, it does feel good to make a difference. I know that it's the most, it's what gets me up in the morning, and it's one of the more important things that I valued when I started my company.
Tom Geary: Yeah, it's great. I mean, having variety is important for us, for the team. And so being able to kind of work on clean energy this time and healthcare initiative there, we worked on a vaccine hesitancy effort recently trying to get more people to kind of overcome their concerns. And that was a really tough thing behaviorally to kind of work address. But to be able to make a difference in whatever the respective category is just really, it's great when we can move the needle ever so slightly. Sometimes, literally, in the case of the vaccine
Justine Reichman: The vaccine, I mean, that's a big, very relevant topic right now. And there's a lot of people talking about that. There's people that are opposed to it, and I won't get into that with you right now because we're not here to talk about that, although it's everywhere, anywhere right now. But what I would like to ask you is, when did this idea originate for you? I mean, I know the year, but how did it originate for you initially?
Tom Geary: You mean opening School of Thought?
Justine Reichman: Yeah.
Tom Geary: Well, I think I've always kind of been a serial entrepreneur. I had a shop when I was in my late 20's. For about five years, I've kind of got tired of wearing all the hats and went to learn more as I needed to. And then I'd worked at a number of really well known creative agencies all over the country. When you work with in a small company, you can get a lot more done very quickly and efficiently. I was working in a place with 600 people, and it took three weeks to open a job jacket, and it just kind of drove me nuts. It was like turning a supertanker. I knew that at the end of the day, a handful of people inside this 600 person agency actually do a lot. So I knew that if I could get the right group of people and kind of bring a more nimble approach to bear, we could do a lot of good, and that's how it started. I mean, in a case of kind of a meta problem, we were talking earlier about how it's hard to sort of get out of our own way and have perspective about our unrespected issue, which is why I'm a big fan of getting somebody outside the bubble. But truth be told, School of Thought was the 300 names that we came up with, and 299 of them were garbage. Everybody faces the issue of communicating their own offering, and so I have total empathy for anybody out there who's struggling, because I've been there too.
Justine Reichman: I guess it is a struggle, and it can be scary especially when you go off on your own. Was there God fears when you went off on your own as an entrepreneur? You went from a big company with security, 401k and all those things? Or were you just an entrepreneur that knew that this was your calling?
Tom Geary: Yeah, it's a good question. The way we started, we secretly pitched an account for this consulting company, and it's kind of a small company, or midsize now, I guess. And we had no idea what the budget was going to be. We kind of won the pitch, and then they told us what the budget was. I immediately did the calculation and I'm like, oh, man, we're gonna take a serious pay cut here. I had no idea how we were going to. I think the first budget that we had, it was like 1500 bucks for a few computers, use computers and a printer. I don't know what my pay was, but it was back to college, my part time gigs--
Justine Reichman: Or a cup of noodles?
“If you're wired to be an entrepreneur, you just take the leap of faith.” -Tom Geary
Tom Geary: Yes, exactly. It was top ramen time, once again, my wife was ecstatic. And that I kind of had this faith. And if you're wired to be an entrepreneur, you just kind of take the leap of faith. And I think by and large, it's been a good decision. I have done some things. If people are made some choices, that people kind of can't believe. Like for example, I was offered to be the chief creative officer of salesforce and I turned it down. And lots of people, including my wife, rightly say, what were you thinking? If you're a dyed in the wool creative, it's pretty hard to think about working on one branch for the rest of your life. And so rich or poor, we are where we are.
Justine Reichman: Yeah. Well, being an entrepreneur is not for everyone, and it's true. I know myself, it gets me up in the morning doing my own thing, and building my own business, and changing the world one step at a time. So it's not the same thing as going to an office, but there's something to be said for working for a company that provides you that security too. So I'm not here to judge.
Tom Geary: That's definitely the case as well to do their thing. I know everybody uses their own, different people are, yeah, there are lots of different ways to go. And it's not for everyone. But beyond that, there's something to be said for having a hand on hand in your destiny. Trade offs everywhere. I've never worked at a company that didn't have trade offs. Big companies, small companies, and they're definitely the case with us as well. But generally speaking, I really enjoy it.
Justine Reichman: I'm sure you've had your share of challenging situations and difficult moments where you've had to make really hard decisions. So maybe you can share some, one of those.
“Everyone loves funny!” -Justine Reichman
Tom Geary: Sure. There's a dynamic attention in what we do between the clients wishes and what they kind of objectively need. I was talking a little bit earlier about that sort of the tree hugger notion for some of our clean energy clients, facetiously. They're not the target market, by and large, they're far more passionate about the subject than we are or than our audiences. And sometimes, you get into a situation where the client thinks X, and your job is to basically bring the audience to the table and say, we really think that the audience wants a different message or wants to be communicated to you in a different way. So for example, we did a campaign for the Department of the Environment in San Francisco, it was about recycling and composting. And I think the notion was, before we got into it, why are we even doing this? Everybody in San Francisco knows how to recycle and compost.
But the reality is, about a third of San Franciscans are transplants from places like the Midwest and elsewhere where people didn't grow up with three different coloured bins. And so we thought, okay, it's a different audience than we thought. And so we had to kind of reframe the conversation. And so rather than lectures, which I think was kind of what the client was suggesting, we suggested using humor to disarm people so that they would pay attention to the message. And it'd be more accessible and end up working really well. We got about 25% lift by using humor and all these kinds of wacky San Francisco idiosyncrasies talking about the hills. If you don't recycle, we're going to add more hills.
Justine Reichman: And everyone loves funny.
Tom Geary: Most people are funny, or at least if you can relate to it. When you're smiling at something, you don't think about it being an ad, just smiling at it and it's disarming, you're paying attention. And then hopefully, you will receive the message.
Justine Reichman: And I can't stand rollercoasters, so please don't add any more hills.
Tom Geary: Yes, we got an F, it's true. I do still have a [inaudible] Street and it's tall enough, pushing my son when he was one up the hill is not for the faint of heart. But yeah, we used a lot of kind of funny topical things to make people pay attention to the messages and to come up with a campaign that was more effective. But I think back to the point about tension, up river, it was a challenge, I think the client kind of thought that we can just go out there with straightforward kind of luxury headlines, and we felt like there was a better way to communicate. Luckily, they were trusted enough to let us go with it. But that sometimes happens.
Justine Reichman: And you have all these great clients that are all doing these better free things, whether it's around sustainability or changing behavior, and that's clearly your focus. Am I right about that?
“A lot of companies go out there and say, they’ve got to work on diversity inclusion, and a lot of them are talking about it. What is far better is to show that you're actually doing something.” -Tom Geary
Tom Geary: No, that's definitely our focus. The Department of Sustainability campaign that we did in San Francisco was one of our kind of first things, but we've done a lot of campaigns in healthcare. And we're doing a lot of work and diversity and inclusion, a lot of equity issues, social impact, all of these things are just super important to be able to, I think one of the things that I think about with a lot of this is a lot of companies kind of go out there and they say, yeah, we've got to work on our diversity inclusion. And a lot of them are talking about it. What is far better is to show that you're actually doing something. And so we thrive, basically helping clients demonstrate that they're actually walking the walk. Because audiences, people out there are going to sniff out if your efforts are disingenuous, and a lot of people unfortunately are doing things for that, doing things for the wrong reasons. And so if somebody is doing things for the right reason and they want to sort of demonstrate, help tell stories about these sustainable issues, we love doing it.
“We're changing the future of food. People are working to change it every day. We’re seeing meats grown in laboratories. We’re seeing people talk about plant-forward diets. We’re seeing people talk about all these alternatives.” -Justine Reichman
Justine Reichman: So Tom, one of the reasons I was so excited about having this conversation is because, as you know, we're changing the future of food, people are working to change it every day, we're seeing meats grown in laboratories whether that's good or bad. We're seeing people talk about plant forward diets, we're seeing people talking about all these alternatives to dairy and all these different things. And there's all these people that are saying, this is good and this is bad, and all these different kinds of implications. And we have founders that listen and watch these videos, and we've got researchers, and I really want to be able to offer resources to all these new innovators, researchers and founders as they build their business to be able to really effectively communicate what they're doing. And so when we spoke, I was so excited, because one of the greatest challenges, as you know, that I see as being to effectively communicate. So when we spoke, and I was thinking about this, with all these new things that are coming out there, I thought about you. I thought about, wow, with all these new things coming up, what an opportunity for people to hear from you. Somebody that is changing the way people think and the way people hear, helping people re-calibrate. So what would you say to some of these people, if they're listening, how could you potentially help them overcome some of the challenges and really craft something that would be effective and honest, and communicate what they're trying to do?
“Audiences are going to sniff out if your efforts are disingenuous.” -Tom Geary
Tom Geary: It's a great question. The thing that I think the biggest mistake that people make, we talked a little bit about the kind of being inside the bubble thinking you're the target audience. That's one issue. So if you can sort of detach, I mean, one thing I think about is it's good to be the consumer that you are at home versus the consumer that you are at work, or the business person that you are at work. So if you've got a new plant based food invention that is coming out and you're really passionate about, and this is your life's work and you're just driven by this, you're obviously going to be not the most objective person in evaluating it. But when you go home, you're the person who's fast forwarding with a DVR through all the ads that you're skeptical about. If people can basically adopt the latter mindset, the skepticism that they are at home, when they're evaluating their communications at work, they will be more effective. That would be one suggestion. Another thing is, it's really important to have communication that has some stopping power, that's arresting. You can't start communicating to somebody until you have their attention. That's always the number one thing.
“It's important to have communication that has some stopping power. You can't start communicating with somebody until you have their attention.” -Tom Geary
We've got clients who are looking at social media ads or something, and they're looking at the cat, the tiny copy of the bottom. And I'll be like, don't worry about the tiny copy of the bottom, worry about whether or not somebody is going to look at this in the first place. That's your first goal, to get people's attention. So if you're not grabbing them, if it's not emotional, if there's no reason to kind of stop people in their tracks, keep going. So those are a couple other things, or those are a couple things that I think of. Another point that I like to make is to think about the competition. If everybody, right now I think they're a trillion tech firms that they're all using the exact same art direction. Design is the same. The typeface is this one typeface called Open Sans. I mean, my kingdom for a tech company that wants just to come out and use something other than Open Sans because we don't need another ad that looks exactly the same. People need to have, branding takes a long time, and communications are hard so give people a reason to be able to differentiate your message from everybody else's. Make the look distinctive, make the voice distinctive, do something that everybody else is doing in your category and you're gonna have a lot more success standing up.
“Branding takes a long time and communications are hard. So give people a reason to be able to differentiate your message from everybody else's and you're going to have a lot more success standing up.” -Tom Geary
Justine Reichman: Okay, I think those are some great tips. And for those that want to watch this, if you're just listening to it, you can check it out on the NextGenChef YouTube channel.
Tom Geary: My emotional support, dog in the background.
Justine Reichman: I’ve got two support two dogs around here, but they're very good and quiet. So I'm not gonna mess with that.
Tom Geary: I know how that goes. Careful what you get.
Justine Reichman: Exactly. Before we wrap up, do you have any advice for young entrepreneurs? You've had this long journey, I don't know if there's anything that you might have changed since you started your journey, but any last minute advice that you would give to these entrepreneurs that are just starting out?
“Don't try to do everything… It will free you up to do whatever it is you're great at with more energy and passion.” -Tom Geary
Tom Geary: When I had my first agency, I was in my 20's, and pros and cons to that, but I definitely wore too many hats. In fact, after five years, I closed the shop kind of when we were successful, but I was kind of cooked. And my resume for the next chapter was this kind of grid, almost an infographic with the hats that I had worn, pictures of the hats that I'd worn and like it billing all this other stuff. And then creative director, and kind of wacky different hats. And then I gave myself a grade for each of the roles that I'd worn. I was great at some of those things, and I was atrocious at others. And everybody's that way so don't try to do everything. I think it would be my one bit of advice, get complimentary people. There are a lot of amazing people out there who are better at billing and project management than you are. Hire them and let them do their jobs because it will free you up to do whatever it is you're great at with more energy and passion that I'm trying to figure out why the config dot or whatever it is on the PC isn't working. So delegating and hiring great people, and kind of lowering your limitations would be my advice to Tom at 25.
Justine Reichman: Well, I would tell you that my dad would call those pearls of wisdom, and my mom gave me the exact same advice. When I was younger, she said, surround yourself with experts, experts that know how to do all the things that you don't know how to do or you don't like to do so that you can focus on the things that you're really good at doing.
Tom Geary: Yeah, it's not easy, for sure. We all have kind of a passion for our respective businesses and companies, and it's hard to let go. But it's a better use of your time and their time and everyone's energies, and your company will be the better for it.
Justine Reichman: Awesome. Thank you Tom. So if anyone wants to reach out to you, what's the best way for them to connect?
Tom Geary: Well, this thing called email is kind of getting around, tom@schoolofthought works. And our website is surprisingly schoolofthought.com.
Justine Reichman: That's great. Okay, awesome. And are you on LinkedIn or any other social?
Tom Geary: I'm on LinkedIn and Instagram on School of Thought, that's School of Thought. Yeah, happy to communicate with anyone.
Justine Reichman: Will make sure this is all in the show notes, so thank you guys all for joining me. Thank you, Tom, for joining me. And we're here every Tuesday at Essential Ingredients which is powered by the NextGenChef.
