IAM2405 – Branding Expert Helps Small Businesses Stand Out in the Competitive Market

Dan Craddock is a serial entrepreneur, running Sure Shot Screen Printing, launching a brewery called The Barking Barley, and having a creative agency, Metro Nova Creative.

Dan has been in the design and branding world for over 20 years. He’s passionate about making branding accessible to small business owners to help them succeed, believing that their success directly impacts community growth.

Dan shares his approach to educating clients about the branding process. He points out that while clients may be tempted to opt for cheap or AI-generated logos, those options lack the strategic insight necessary for long-term business growth.

He explains that a logo is more than just a visual mark – it's a tool to create an emotional connection with customers and to ensure that a business stands out in a competitive market.

Despite managing multiple businesses, he ensures to maintain a healthy work-life balance, spending time with his family and focusing on self-care, like going to the gym and spending quality time with his kids.

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Transcription:

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Dan Craddock Teaser 00:00

My team is going to take time and energy and commit time and energy to your business.

We are investing ourselves into learning your business and learning your customers.

Because if we don't create a brand that is attractive to the people you are trying to sell to, we've missed the mark.

Intro 00:18

Are you ready to hear business stories and learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and level up your business from awesome CEOs, entrepreneurs, and founders without listening to a long, long, long interview?

If so, you've come to the right place. Gresh values your time and is ready to share with you the valuable info you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

Gresham Harkless 00:46

Hello, hello, hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO Podcast, and I have an awesome guest back on the show today. I have Dan Craddock. Dan, excited to have you back on.

Dan Craddock 00:53

Glad to be here, man.

Gresham Harkless 00:54

Yes, super excited to have you on. Dan provided so much value that it's been far too long, but we're super excited to have him back on.

And of course, before we do that, I have to read a little bit more about Dan so you can hear about some of those awesome things he's been working on.

And Dan has been in the design and branding world for over two decades. In that time, he's built a reputation for caring about small business owners and making branding more accessible for them.

He believes that when we properly brand small businesses, we increase their chance of success.

And when our small businesses succeed, our communities succeed as well, too. And as I mentioned, Dan was a guest on episode number 896 of the I AM CEO Podcast.

He's been rocking and rolling, doing so many awesome things. He's I'm going to call him serial entrepreneur.

I don't know if he would use the word, but he has a print shop called Sure Shot Screen Printing that he's that he has.

And he's also launching a brewery as well, too, called Barking Barley. One of the things I absolutely love about Dan is he really embodies what I just read about being in that Fredericksburg area, making such a huge impact there and beyond.

I absolutely love everything that he's doing, because I think so many times we forget the things that we do extend not just beyond the products and services, but around the community impact that we have.

Dan, excited to have you back on. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

Dan Craddock 02:04

Yeah, absolutely, man. Thank you.

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Gresham Harkless 02:06

Absolutely. Well, let's get it started then. So to kick everything off, let's rewind the clock a little bit, hear a little bit more on how you got started, what you've been working on, what I call your CEO story.

Dan Craddock 02:13

The short version of how Metro really started was I was working as a production designer in a print shop.

About a million years ago, it was before Fiverr, before Vistaprint, before any of those things existed.

And I would see these business owners come in, they need business cards, letterheads, and I'd say, hey, do you have your vector files?

And they'd kind of like blank look at my what now? And I said, yeah, you know, you're professionally done logo and this and that.

And they said, we don't have like 40 grand for these firms in DC or Richmond or whatever.

And I was just like, well, there's gotta be something in the middle here. Right. And so, that's really where Ventra started was building these small packages that are accessible for business owners.

I actually had a rough time at the shop that I was at. It wasn't really going anywhere. My wife and I had just had our second child and I quit.

Our daughter, newborn baby, and called my wife and I was like, I just put him on two weeks notice.

And, we kind of hit the ground running though, man. And it was a testament to hard work.

We had, we used to have clients from the print shop who had my cell phone number because I took care of them.

And they call me, they say, hey man, where'd you go? What's going on? I said, hey, and I've started my own company.

And they're like, well, we want to go with you. And I actually said, no, I said, I don't take the food off other people's plates.

I just, that's just not how I do things. I appreciate it. And they were like, well, but you sold the business to this other guy.

We don't really like working with them. And I'm like, what do you mean? They thought I owned the company because I put that much effort in and care into their business. Right.

I invested my time and energy into them. So they assumed I owned it. And I said, no, I just worked there.

And they're like, well, we're not going back. We wanted to work with you. And so, we were so fortunate to have built up this reputation of caring and concern and hard work.

And that's how we really launched. And my daughter and my business are nine years old and doing well.

The rest, so to speak, is history, but that's really where it came from was we put together these small packages that say, we'll get your logo, your business card design, your brochure on your website, like kind of bundle these things to make it less intimidating for a business owner to come in.

And just it almost like McDonald's, they should have it. Like, I'll take a number three, please.

We want a little barrier of entry for business owners to understand what they're getting and understand the process and see the commitment that we put into it. So, yeah, it's been great.

Gresham Harkless 04:42

Yeah, absolutely. I absolutely love that. So I wanted to drill down a little bit more. I know you touched on a little bit.

I would love to hear, like, how you're making that impact, how you're working with your clients. What does that process look like for you?

Dan Craddock 04:52

So it starts even with a sales, right? So like if somebody comes and said, hey, we want to hire you to do some branding and website or do some marketing or whatever it is.

It starts from consultation and just kind of giving them the understanding of why us. A great example of that is logo design, right?

It's kind of a hot topic right now because look, you can go and people like, I can go to Fiverr and get a logo for a hundred bucks or AI for free.

And I tell them, absolutely, you can get a logo done for a hundred bucks or AI for free, but you cannot get your logo done for a hundred bucks or free.

So I tell them, absolutely, you can get a logo done for a hundred bucks or free, but you can't get your logo done for a hundred bucks or free.

And then they kind of look at you a little weird. Like, I don't really know what you're saying, but that's the point where you get to educate them.

Look, my team is going to take time and energy and commit time and energy to your business. We are investing ourselves into learning your business and learning your customers.

Because if we don't create a brand that is attractive to the people you were trying to sell to, we've missed the mark.

So when you get that $100 logo or the AI generated logo, you're not getting any resistance.

You're just going to make the thing that you think looks cool. Like, well, yeah, it's a You're already sold on your product or service.

I don't need to impress you anymore. I need to impress the people that don't know you personally, that are just wandering by that might just go.

That's an attractive looking thing. Let me go take a look. That's the job, right? That's the investment that you make into hiring a professional company on to develop your identity and your brand and strategically think that through.

And here's the flip side of it. Your market base is very knowledgeable about AI and clip art logos.

I, as a consumer, if I look at a business and they've, they're the 9,000th person this week to have the three peak roof for their roofing company or their real estate company, right?

And I'm gonna go, that person didn't even invest the time or energy into their own business. Are they gonna invest time and energy into me as a consumer?

Right, and so those are the types of things that we highlight in consultation to make that customer understand that we are a process because we care about your business because you should care about your business.

Gresham Harkless 07:14

Yeah, that's such a huge thing in that process piece. And of course, being able to be and look at those things strategically.

And it's so funny that you say that because I almost feel like I hear that along the lines of you building everything, your journey, how you mentioned that you really focus on value and education without an expectation.

And that sounded like to me, like part of that branding, like those are things you don't really you don't really know until you see what a person's doing.

So I imagine those are the conversations that you're having where you get the logo, but the logo is not just a logo.

It's not some like ancillary thing that you just put together. It sounds like you had those conversations.

You understand how they're showing up, what their superpowers, their secret sauce, the thing that makes them unique.

And they're able to kind of showcase that in their logo. But I imagine everything else that you're doing as well too.

Dan Craddock 08:00

Yeah, and we have to remind business owners that a logo is not your brand, right? The brand is the emotional feeling that your consumer has with your product or service, right?

The warm and fuzzies they get. And our job isn't necessarily to make that customer have warm and fuzzies.

That's your job. Your job is to provide great customer service and a great experience to that customer.

Our job is to make a logo and identity that is a part of the brand, that is old, recognizable, easy, understandable, so that they associate that good feeling with those colors, with that icon, with the word mark, with those pieces.

So that six months down the road when they've kind of moved on and they need a service and they see your truck drive by, they go, those are the guys that gave me that great feeling and great product and great service, let's call them.

So the logo is a recall mechanism to the great customer experience that you should be providing your consumer. It's our job to make it recognizable and attractive.

Gresham Harkless 09:06

Yeah, thanks so much for breaking that down. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit, and I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO hack.

So this could be like an Apple book or even a habit that you have, but what's something you lean on that makes you more effective and efficient?

Dan Craddock 09:18

A couple of different things, but I think the biggest one is just kind of like trying to prioritize need.

And so running two companies right now and soon to be a third, it can get a little tricky. And so I definitely recommend, I just get one of these little regular little notebooks and I, you can get a target or wherever.

And then essentially what I do is I'll create like this side's my metronome of a creative column, this side's Barking Barley, this side's Sure Shot Screen Printing.

And assets that are projects or tasks that essentially are only Dan can do this thing, go into this book and I write them down.

And if it's only Dan can do this thing and it needs to happen today, it gets a blue highlight or a pink, so I'll highlight that item.

So, and then, using your CRM or your inbox and mark as unread. So, basically, priority starts in this book and once these tasks are completed in this book, I can move on to other tasks.

So, just understanding how to… kind of categorize and prioritize things is massive because it is very easy.

One business or three businesses is so easy to like go side questing on something and then you're like, wait, I didn't do the 16 things that are going to put money in my bank tomorrow.

So I really suggest figuring out a way that's going to make your life a little more organized and a little more makes a little more sense so that you can get through the day. Right.

And a lot of people go like, do you just work 20 hours a day or something? I, nope. Nope. My day starts at 8 a.m. and between 5 and 6, I'm done. I go home.

I have dinner with my kids because we have three kids, so we have dinner together almost every night.

I go to the gym three nights a week. I help put kids to bed. I read stories. I tuck in. I do all those things.

Sometimes I'll watch TV with my wife after. I live a totally normal life outside of business hours.

And what happens is there are maybe two or three nights a week after all of those tasks are done, right?

Because my kids, my family are the highest priority client, period. Their time is their time and not somebody else's, unless it's like an absolute emergency.

So very rarely do I leak into their time. After everyone's, you know, had their time and they go to bed and all that stuff, I might fire off a couple of emails or get a thing, a couple of things done, prep for the next day.

But it's just about delegating your time. So delegating things that somebody else can handle, right?

I always say, delegate what you're good at, excel at what you're great at. Don't bag yourself down with these menial tasks.

If you can hire someone and get that done efficiently, do that so you can focus on the things that are important.

Gresham Harkless 12:05

Yeah, that's such a huge thing. So what would you consider to be, you might have already touched on this, a little bit more of a CEO nugget.

So this could be a word of wisdom or piece of advice. I like to say it might be something you would tell your favorite client, or if you happen to a time machine, you might tell your younger business self.

Dan Craddock 12:20

If I could go back and talk to tell myself something to remember and to focus on as a business owner, right?

There's a couple of things. One, don't be a jerk. There's a more not friendly version of that, but don't be a jerk, right?

Just be decent to people, take care of people, be kind to people, have empathy, because that will take you a long way in business.

And also on the same time, going back to when you get into the position to take care of your community, give back to community, to donate to charities and all those things, as soon as you are in a position to do that, you should and are obligated to do so.

You have to support the community that has supported you. So that's why this year, our new initiative is once a quarter, we're going to do what's called a flash mob fundraiser.

So once a quarter, we're going to pick an organization that is near and dear to our hearts. We're not going to tell the organization we're doing it, and we're going to put out merch kits.

So they're designed here at Metronome Creative, the t-shirts printed at Sure Shot, the stickers are printed at Illusions Wraps.

And then we're going to donate the funds, the proceeds from that to that organization.

So we're doing the first one is the library. Library is near and dear to our hearts. We're all big library fans.

And so that's part of that, right? Like, speak with, like, do what you say. And so, yeah, that's where this year we're excited to launch that program.

And it's team-wide, right? So we're doing all three companies, all three teams. Everyone's working collectively.

And that's, I think, the biggest advice to anybody getting started. Don't be a jerk and support your community.

Gresham Harkless 14:07

Absolutely. So now I want to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO.

And our goal is to have different quote-unquote CEOs on the show. So, Dan, what does being a CEO mean to you?

Dan Craddock 14:18

To me, the first part of CEO is chief, and I think we have an obligation as a CEO. The CEO is a position that is multifaceted, but if you look at it as a family, we are the maternal and paternal aspect of this family.

We have to nurture and we have to push. I think a true CEO means that we have the opportunity to work for our team.

And I think that we need to adjust the way CEOs start thinking about themselves and remind CEOs that we have an obligation to our team and to our customers, and we have the opportunity to serve both, and I think that's what a CEO is to me.

Gresham Harkless 15:04

Dan, well, I truly appreciate that definition. Of course, I appreciate your time even more. So what I wanted to do now is pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know.

And of course, how best people can get out of you, find out about all the awesome things you and your teams are working on.

Dan Craddock 15:19

First, thank you so much for having me on. It's always great to have a conversation with you.

I truly appreciate your time and your insight. So thank you so much. And thank you to your audience for giving us your time. Your time is valuable. So thank you.

You can learn more about us from MetroNovaCreative.com, SureShotPrinting.com and TheBarkingBarley.com come in spring of 2025.

So if you're interested in those, if you're interested in helping with our fundraiser, there is a shop page on Metro Never Creative, so you can find those cool library t-shirts.

That would be fundamentally awesome if we can get more eyes on that. Thank you for everything and have a great one.

You can work with anybody anywhere, is that correct? We've had a client in Australia once.

We are located, our office is downtown in Fredericksburg, right on William Street in the heart of Old Town, which is important to us. But, we can work regionally, all over the country.

Gresham Harkless 16:20

Yep, absolutely. Even down under. So we'll definitely make sure that we highlight that as well, too.

And I hope you have a phenomenal rest of your day.

Dan Craddock 16:25

Yep, you too, man.

Outro 16:26

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by CB Nation and Blue16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co. I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community.

Check out the latest and greatest apps, books, and habits to level up your business at CEOhacks.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless Jr. Thank you for listening.

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