Fabian Geyrhalter builds a brand platform in one very long day
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Fabian Geyrhalter is the principal and founder of FINIEN, a Los Angeles-based branding agency. Fabian’s also a prolific writer; you can find articles he’s authored in Forbes, Inc., The Washington Post, Entrepreneur, and Mashable. He’s also written two books: How to Launch a Brand, and his latest, Bigger Than This: How to Turn Any Venture Into an Admired Brand.
Fabian and I talked about his books, his agency, and the approach he uses with some clients to build out an entire brand platform from scratch in one very long day. We started off talking about his background as a designer and how it contributes to his work. He feels it helps him imagine the strategy coming to life in the real world—visually and verbally—which puts him “a couple of steps ahead.”
After talking a little about the types of clients FINIEN helps, we got to a unique aspect of Fabian’s process: the one-day strategy intensive. Throughout the day, he takes his clients through a series of exercises. As they work, they complete an interactive PDF on screen. At the end of the day, the PDF contains all the key elements of the brand platform: positioning, core values, philosophy, personality, mission, vision, target, and competitors.
I figured, if I worked with startups, they are founders, they are entrepreneurs, they think very much like me; they want to get to the heart of their brands very quickly, and they don’t have the time. Usually, literally, they don’t have the time. They need to launch in a couple of weeks from now. Doing a couple-of-week exercise to talk about brand purpose, brand philosophy, and positioning is not going to happen with them.”
Fabian Geyrhalter
Later in his process, Fabian creates the brand’s identity along with a variety of touchpoints needed to launch, which he refers to as the “brand atmosphere.”
Next, we talked about Fabian’s new book, Bigger Than This. He was inspired by brands like TOMS, which “are absolutely commodity-type products,” yet consumers fall in love with them. He explored this phenomenon further, looking at many similar cases, and distilled eight “commodity brand traits.” The book outlines each trait along with an example and some practical recommendations.
As usual, we wrapped up the conversation with some book recommendations and advice for junior people in the industry.
To learn more about Fabian, his branding agency, and his books, visit the FINIEN website. (Also, here’s a hint: You can buy his books on Amazon, but if you want a signed copy of Bigger Than This, buy it through his website.)
Lastly, Fabian recently decided to recreate his one-day intensive as an online workshop. To check it out, use the affiliate link* below. Use the code “HBAB” to get 10% off the workshop!
Below, you’ll find the full transcript of the episode (may contain typos and/or transcription errors).
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ROB MEYERSON: Fabian Geyrhalter, thank you so much for joining me.
FABIAN GEYRHALTER: Hey, my pleasure. Good to be here.
R: I know that you’re training as a designer. You’re classically trained, from what I understand, as a graphic designer and an identity designer. Do you think your background as a designer gives you a unique perspective on how to do brand strategy?
F: I believe so. I can envision strategies turn into reality. I can do it much easier. It enables me to see them come to life better. As we work on strategies, I’m a couple of steps ahead because I really see it rolling out visually, verbally, and see that full experience come to life. So, I do believe so.
R: How do you carry that point of view into what you do at FINIEN? I’d love to just hear a little bit about your firm. I’m also curious, what kind of work are you doing and what kind of clients are you working with?
F: The way that I put it, I can say we create strategic verbal and visual brand clarity. Brand clarity is what it’s all about for me. Yes, it’s identity. Yes, it’s verbal, visual, there’s a lot to it, but in the end, it’s all about we want to make sure that the client sees his or her firm in better focus. What we do is we create brand strategy. We create names for companies or products. It pivots into that all-encompassing brand identity.
I talk a lot about startups. I actually work with fewer and fewer of them. Our business is pretty much medium-sized companies to large corporations. They have an annual revenue of $1.5 million to $100 million and what they have in common is they all have big opportunity in front of them. Usually, it’s a big relaunch, or it’s a launch of a new brand under their brand, or they’re spinning off to a completely new field. They suddenly go from B2B to B2C or vice-versa, and all of them know that they need a brand that is big enough to fit their aspirations and their goals.
R: I want to talk about process a lot on this show. I guess I’ll start by asking since you just said that. Do you find that you have to use a very different process or approach depending on whether you are working with a startup or one of those more mid-sized companies or is it a pretty universal approach?
F: I didn’t know if it’s right or wrong but based on my experience, it has been a positive experience. I used the same process. I actually see my corporate clients. If I work with a Fortune 100 in that startup manner—in a maybe swift but educated manner—they actually really, really love that. In the end, everyone wants to go speed to market. Everyone needs to get it done quickly, but they want to make sure that all the right boxes have been tracked along the way.
R: Let’s talk about that approach that you take. I want to talk about your first book because you documented that approach on How to Launch a Brand. You broke that into four parts: Brand Platform, Naming, Identity Design, and the fourth, Brand Atmosphere Touchpoints.
Why don’t we start with the first part? I heard you say on another interview that you approach the brand platform phase a bit different than most firms. Can you just talk a little bit about how you do that?
F: Yes. I ran a design and brand agency for a fair amount of time. I hated the entire idea of all these processes and up-selling clients to do really long projects and lots of spreadsheets, lots of meetings. It drove me crazy. With this new consultancy, I figured, if I worked with startups, they are founders, they are entrepreneurs, they think very much like me, they want to get to the heart of their brands very quickly, and they don’t have the time. Usually, literally, they don’t have the time. They need to launch in a couple of weeks from now. Doing a couple-of-week exercise to talk about brand purpose, brand philosophy, and positioning is not going to happen with them.
For me, it’s not so much about the type of exercises I do with my clients. It’s more about the process of how I do it. The process is a one-day intensive. I like to call it “intensive” instead of “workshop” because it just feels so intensive.
R: It foreshadows to your clients what they’re in for, I guess.
F: It really does. If that doesn’t scare them away, please, come in. It’s me flying solo, myself, to a client—the farthest it took me was Croatia from LA. It’s pretty far distances—sitting with them for an entire day. Sometimes that’s 6 hours and sometimes it’s all the way to 10 hours. That comes from someone who doesn’t like meetings. I love these intensives because if you have the actual decision-makers in the room—I’m not talking about the marketing guy or gal or the CMO, I’m talking about literally the founder, co-founder, and then any VP in the company—if those six or seven people sit in the room, and together with them you derive your brand to be or you rethink their brand, it just makes so much sense because they own it. They actually feel like they’re reshaping their company and I am just the guide. I am the guide to create that clarity for them. To me, it really turned out to be the only way that I do brand strategies. Literally, my brand strategy never go past one day.
R: Wow. That’s quite different, as I’m sure you know, from what I’ve experienced having to come from firms like Interbrand and Siegel+Gale. I’m just curious. Do you see any strengths and weaknesses between the two approaches? Obviously, you feel yours is better or at least, better for you. I got to say, if I was hired as one of your employees, I think I’d be having palpitations about not having the research before we go into that room, and not having weeks to do competitive analysis and things like that. Talk me off the ledge here.
F: The interesting thing is I worked with companies like FutureBrand, etcetera. I’ve seen all the processes. To a certain extent, we used some of them ourselves because in the industry, everyone is using a little bit of the same ingredients to create their own stew. I just figured, if you’re in a rush to create a brand but you want to make sure it’s done the right way, I can bring in enough of the expertise, background, and the core exercises that the other companies would do over months and months, to be based on very much emotional intelligence, I would say, and group thinking. We can get you there in the most safe and secure manner given the time frame.
Also, the more I work with new companies, the more I see them pivot after a year or two. The idea of spending the amount of money and the amount of time to create your brand strategy when you know that the business might, because it’s just the way a market place is these days, everything is shifting so quickly and unexpectedly, my goal is just to get you through the first 6-12 months. Either you start embodying it and you start owning it or you start shifting a little bit.
I have clients where I’ve done the same strategy intensive three times already over the course of eight or seven years because they love the process. They still shift around and they knew how to gain focus again.
R: I want to probe on that one-day workshop with just a few more questions. I think I heard you say that you purposely walked into that room without having done too much background research or getting into another company because you want to be on the clean slate. Is that true? And then, do you ask your clients to do or Do you give them some pre-work assignments so that they come into the room with the right frame of mind or even just with the right information to make the decisions that need to be made in the room?
F: Again, the interesting thing is that my clients are usually the founders. They have every single data. It may be emotional, otherwise in the head. Actually, my favorite client ever that I haven’t met before—we just had phone calls—signed up for an entire brand package and it started with the workshop. He flew in from Denver. He literally walked into my office with bare hands. He did not have a laptop. He did not have a notepad. He did not have a suitcase. Nothing. He just walked in. I thought that, that is the ultimate sign of being an entrepreneur. It’s like, “I don’t need anything. I have it all in my head.” It shows you the type of people I work with.
There are some exercises I like to do in prior. I like them to fill out a questionnaire about their target audience. I like to fill them out a little exercise about the three key competitors that they aspire to compete with realistically in the future. It’s very much brand-related. It talks about a lot of what’s happening in the social media channels, a lot of how they actually talk rather than just go into their website, and read the “About Us” page.
R: Right. Can you tell me anything about how you document the clients’ brand platform at the end of this workshop, the next day, or whatever it is? Are there any certain frameworks you use or just what’s included in FINIEN when you say this is your brand platform? What are the components of that?
F: I got a pretty much the core elements. From positioning to core values, philosophy, personality, mission, vision, but we also talk about the target. We talk about the competitors. In the end, it’s a pretty hefty takeaway for one day’s worth of work. Usually, what I do, the way that I structure the intensive is that it’s an interactive PDF. We’re getting a little tactical now but it’s an interactive PDF. Basically, at the end of the day, the core exercises that we do—the really important ones, the positioning, or the why does your company exists, the brand DNA, things like that, they all are on the screen on the last slide, at the end of the day.
At that point, everyone is completely tired and exhausted. They just want to leave. This one slide pops up and it’s already dark. It basically says, “Listen, this is your brand.” It’s from the top down. It goes all the way down to just showing your brand in one word. That kind of group, it’s like Christmas. It’s like the holidays. It’s like they looked at it and like, “Oh my God, this is amazing.” There’s really not much of a followup after that.
We create a document which is basically, already automatically spit out pretty much by the PDF, but we create a document that’s just all the exercises and all the answers that we’ve done that day. There’s one page in it that is like, “This is your brand.” It’s very much like that in the last slide that people look at. That’s just two days later. Then, we get started working with the client on other stuff.
R: Great. I want to pivot here to part four of How to Launch a Brand. You used the phrase, brand atmosphere, in the heading of that part of the book. That’s not something I hear used that often. Should I take that to be pretty much the same thing as brand experience that I hear people use? Or do you distinguish between those two terms?
F: First of all, I loved that you haven’t heard it because I coined the term. It came out of that idea of far away from experience, actually. It was more about the idea of you create a brand identity and then you create a collateral around it. Back in the days, we used to call it brand collateral. It’s really a sad way of calling something that is consumer facing.
R: Yeah. It sounds like brochures to me.
F: Totally. “Here’s the letterhead. Don’t stretch the logo.” The atmosphere in my eyes was it’s the type of atmosphere that the consumer has to poke through in order to get in touch or to get familiar with your brand. It’s everything from the Facebook ad you see to the email newsletter you get, to a trade you attend, to word-of-mouth. Basically, your visual and verbal brand as it is out in the marketplace for the consumer to have to witness in order to understand and start learning about your brand. That’s what I see brand atmosphere being, and now, obviously, this sounds a lot like experience. It’s really more the foundational elements of the brand experience. It does not really create the experience, but it allows a brand to start building up the actual experience.
R: I see. That makes sense given the title of the book. You’re just giving them the foundational elements to launch that brand knowing that in the future it’ll become more holistic, more complete.
F: That’s right. The experience is so much more. That’s customer service, first and foremost. That’s sales. That’s how people are being trained and the subsequent behaviors. This is the toolkit where you can start building all of these elements.
R: For that toolkit, do you have any specific steps that you always take in creating that? Is there any kind of—I don’t want to make it sound too tactical—a checklist of, “We recommend that most brands start with these six things,” or, “Here’s the list of things that you could consider creating,” as that launching point atmosphere?
F: Yeah. We take a different approach to that, too, and not just because I want to have everything be different for the sake of being different but more because of the way that I’ve worked with clients, I realized that it’s actually the easiest way for them to sign off and to understand how the full brand looks like.
The way that we do that is once we have the brand identity design established. So, literally the logo. There’s nothing else to it yet, there’s the colors and there’s the logo. At that point, we tell our clients to take two weeks, we’re going to be back, at which point, we present the full brand atmosphere. That changes from client to client.
Some things are standard. What does a client need to launch? They need an email signature, they need a business card, they need a landing page of sorts, they need iconography, they need patterns, they need a visual language, they need social media. We actually don’t set up the social media accounts but we fake their accounts. We say, “Here would be the first six Instagram tiles. Here’s how you use the images. Here’s the type of clothes you would use. Here’s what you would do with Instagram. Here’s the text that you would actually use for it.”
We write little bits of copy but it changes completely from client to client. I asked them before the phase. I’m like, “Look, you’re in fashion. I guess we’re going to do hand tags and we’re going to do labels,” or, “Your startup is a new business for you. We need to create pitch deck,” or if you’re in ecommerce, “We’re going to do fun packing tapes or cool cards that we flow into the order.”
That’s where we get the fun. That’s where the differentiation between brand atmosphere and brand experience, that’s where we get to blend it. That’s what’s really exciting, but we only show one of those big posters of like, “Here’s your brand coming to life,” instead of you have three versions of this and three versions of that.
R: I see. It’s not a complete surprise to the client because I’ve already signed off on what the logo looks like. They have a sense of the colors and things that they’ll see when they walk in to see that atmosphere presentation.
F: That’s correct. For them, they are so excited to see the next step, but we don’t spoon feed them one design at a time which is shown as a huge, “Here’s your brand coming to life.” It’s the most mesmerizing thing to happen to a client with a new company or if they go suddenly to B2C from B2B and they suddenly start saying, “Oh my God. We would’ve never thought about creating a packing tape like that,” or, “I love how you speak in social media,” and, “Oh, we could do this.”
For us as a small consultancy, that’s where we have fun because there’s absolutely no client in more than two weeks and any idea goes. It all goes back to that brand intensive, what did we learn about the brand during that one day.
R: Let’s talk a little bit about your newest book, Bigger Than This. What motivated you to write another book or specifically, this book?
F: I thought about all of these brands today that people are fascinated with. You and I are the same, 100%. It’s all about tech. It’s all about disruption. It’s all about innovation. It’s all about how a new product is being designed in different ways. It’s all about different but from an actual product or service point of view.
I just stumbled across a couple of companies. I’m surely was inspired subliminal by TOMS. It’s the same old shoe. There’s absolutely no innovation in their shoes. I started to see more and more of those companies emerge. I started to realize that they are absolutely commodity-type products. It’s like nothing changed with those, whatsoever, besides people falling in love with the brand very quickly. It’s only because of brand thinking. I started to realize, “Wait a minute, if they don’t innovate in any other way but through their story, through their belief, through a cause, whatever it is, wouldn’t that be super inspiring for a strategist and for entrepreneurs to be able to put those to a couple of different chapters, like this is how companies that are not hugely innovative are actually winning customers?” That’s how it came about.
R: In the book, you’ve identified eight of those what you call commodity brand traits. Eight of those ways that companies can stand apart without any kind of huge technological innovation. I’m curious, what was the process for coming up with those eight traits? Was it hard to get it down to eight? Did you have others that you have to cross off the list? Just tell me a little bit about getting to eight.
F: Yeah. In the end, it was a tedious process of reading through all of these magazines and trying to not to fall for anything that’s exciting from a tech and innovation perspective. You basically go through a magazine. Potentially, one small article about a brand where you’re like, “Wait a minute, this product seems like every other product, yet, they’re writing about it and people seem to like it. What is this about?” It started with tons and tons and tons of case studies. Then, I started to categorize them.
They’re very much like a brand strategist would do with a report. I think that all of them, in one way or the other, are about storytelling in one shape, form, or the other. I didn’t want to make a book about a story. I want to make a book that is bigger than that so people can literally—I guess that was a pun—take one trait and say, “You know what? We are about a strong belief. Our values are what drives people to buy a product,” rather than, “We can tell a story about anything.” I really want to narrow it down to it. I’m sure they were 12, 13, or 15 at some point, but I did not want any of them to become too redundant.
R: Yeah. You really teased them apart quite nicely. I take your point that there are some similarities between all eight. They all seem to blend or bleed into each other a little bit and we’ll talk about what some of them are. In fact, we should just list them out here for the listeners.
The eight, I’ll just read them out here, are: story, when the background story is bigger than the product, belief, cause, heritage, transparency, solidarity, and individuality. For example, story and belief or belief and cause. To me, they have some overlap, but they’re also potentially unique ways of building something more powerful that sits behind the brand than the product alone.
F: Yeah. I really wanted people to be able to picture it. A lot of entrepreneurs, some of them are scientists or engineers. It’s not necessarily right brain, left brain evenly. I want people to see, if they see one of those traits and they say heritage, “Wait a minute, this is exactly what we’re about.” For us, it’s all about this one city that we come from. It’s the pride that’s […]. Obviously, with Shinola, it’s that perfect example where it’s less about the actual background story. It’s not so much about the story but more about the celebration of a region, like, made in the US and the heritage.
Sometimes, there’s a fine line. I just want it to be something where people read a quick chapter and they’re like, “This is me. I think I can start infusing this into my brand.”
R: You’ve mentioned Shinola as one of the examples in the book, but you also have case studies throughout the book for each of these traits. Other than Shinola, are there any other favorite examples? Some of these I haven’t even heard of before, but I’d love it if you’ll just pick one or two that you feel like they’re really doing everything right.
F: I’m glad that you said that you haven’t heard a lot of those. I wanted to make sure that this is not going to be the TOMS and Shinola book that everyone’s already going to say, “Yeah, I know all about that.” I wanted to celebrate smaller brands that have a cult-like following and then study those. I think it’s more interesting to read about new brands rather than the ones you have already read about. One of the ones that is really peculiar, it’s called Fishpeople Seafood.
R: The name is peculiar.
F: The name is actually fantastic, which is even more peculiar. The commodity product is fish. I hope—I just keep my fingers crossed—that we can call a fish a commodity for a mighty long time. It’s no frills, chowders, bisques, bouillon. They come in a pouch, there’s no celebrity chef, there’s no packaging innovation. You just basically put those pouches in steaming hot water, then you heat it up. At the back of the package, that’s where the genius comes in. There’s a small little note saying, “Trace your fish.” It allows you to use a code that you have to cumbersomely put into your phone or into your laptop. Then, you meet the fisherman who put people in fish people. That’s how their name came about. I have nothing to do with the company. I literally just learned about them.
Suddenly, while you’re eating your stew, you meet Stefano. Stefano lifted your fish out of the boat and then you get to see Ryan’s boat because that was the boat that actually that got your fish. More importantly, you start seeing the exact location that your fish was caught and the time in which your fish was caught. You’re sitting there eating this otherwise, pretty boring dinner, out of a bag. Suddenly, you have this entire emotional reaction of, “Oh, these people really care. This is from a location I can pronounce, that I actually know about. Ryan’s boat is called Sunset Charge. Isn’t that great?”
The more you go through that and the more you start learning about why this product is great but in the story form, you just get hooked. You get hooked on the brand. You start realizing that this is not just soup. This is a brand. If you go through the entire book, if you go through some of the chapters, delight. It’s totally delight. It’s transparency. You know exactly what happens when. It’s solidarity. It’s like, “I believe that food should come from the waters off of my shore rather than the head of the fish from China and the tail of the fish from Thailand.” I feel like there’s a lot of the traits in the entire book that are part of that very simple little story.
R: Yeah, that’s great. Some of the case studies in here, even though you forced fit them into each of the eight traits, some of them ticked off multiple traits, which is another good learning for people reading this book. You don’t just have to choose one of these paths. It’s not sort of a choose your own adventure. You can mix and create something really interesting by learning from each of these stories.
F: Absolutely. I think some people actually mistake the book to be a guide of, “These are the eight traits that it takes for you to become an admired company.” I see some people that are struggling to put all eight into the business. You don’t need to do that. Just take one or two, whatever works for you.
All of these are very positive traits. I don’t think that anyone can go wrong with those. The problem is that’s when, as an author and not a strategist in those shoes, I’m just not a part of seeing it through. It’s really difficult for me to see how successful to be able them to pull it off because it has to be intrinsic. It has to be something that is empathetic to the customer and not just, “Here’s a book and it inspired me. I want to start doing this.” You actually have to live up to it.
R: I have a few wrap-up questions for you here. Funny enough for a business book author or someone who writes about branding that you really prefer business magazines to business books. If you had to tell somebody, “These are the three magazines you just have to subscribe to or really should read if you want to be up on the latest business and branding,” what would you point to?
F: Just to defend myself on the author versus not reading a lot of business books, I own a lot of business books. I just happen to not read them from cover to cover. I usually just quickly go through them. I read the first two pages, the last two pages. Then, if I feel like I missed something, I go inside to the bullet points sections. I very quickly digest it. That’s also the way I like to write. I like to write very quick tidbits and nuggets of information. It’s the way that my brain works.
The magazines that I think every strategist should definitely read are the big ones. I think it’s Fast Company, Inc, Fortune, Forbes, Entrepreneur—all the business magazines. Not even going too deep into strategy type magazines, but really keeping it very top level to see which industry is moving where, what stories are being created, what actually sticks, which stocks go up, and why is that? How did it have to do with branding? Those are the type of magazines.
There’s also business books. Someone told me after I wrote Bigger Than This. They said, “You know what? It reminds me of Building a StoryBrand by Donald Miller.” I’m like, “I should better pickup that book.” I did and I thought it was really enlightening. I like that idea of how can you actually clarify your words and your message. It’s very much what we do. Yes, there are similarities. That’s a great book for instance that I would recommend actually reading from cover to cover. Obviously, anything by Marty Neumeier. If his name is on it, you’ve got to get it.
R: Yeah. The Donald Miller book is very pragmatic, I found, as compared to Marty Neumeier, for example. They’re almost opposite under the spectrum where Marty Neumeier’s books are inspiring and really give you a big picture point of view that he’s managed to distill down almost into as few words as possible, whereas Donal Miller comes from that author background. He knows how to tell a story and how to write a story. He’s applying that to business, but he makes it very step-by-step. Just do this, do this, do this, which is kind of refreshing also, in its own ways.
F: Right. It would be fantastic if Marty Neumeier would write the second edition of Donald Miller’s book. It would be suddenly 20 pages.
R: The best of both worlds.
F: Without the up-sell at all times. Webinar.
R: That’s right. I listen to Donald Miller’s book and yeah, you get to hear him say it in his own voice, “Now, go to this website and do this.” I take your point about your book as well, Bigger Than This. It’s funny. I suppose it’s purposely a small book, a little pun, also. It’s a large type, it’s an easy, quick read. I like that you sort of do some, “I’ll tell you what I’m going to tell you. Then, I’ll tell you what I told you,” approach. You really can just skim it once and get a really good sense of what it’s all about. If you have questions and really want to apply something, you can go back and read that chapter more deeply.
F: I think it’s important. I worked with a fantastic editor at the end. She’s like, “You have to bring in those action points. You have to just put up bullet points at the end of each chapter.” I think it’s a really, really, good move. Especially, that’s the way I work too. It was the perfect way of doing it.
R: Great. I’ll leave our listeners with this one last question here. Any advice for people either trying to get into brand strategy or maybe they’ve been in it for a few years but they’re trying to grow their careers?
F: If you’re thinking about getting into it, it’s really a more defining way you think you’re going to be really great at. Is it visual? Is it verbal? Is it strategic? What type of branding is it?
If it’s strategic, I think, just practice design thinking. Test if you’re actually good at emotional intelligence. I think that in the end, that’s what it really takes. I think that there are hundreds of great books out there about branding. If you want to create your own, “This is how I go through my branding process with clients,” it is very easy to do that. It just takes time.
You don’t have to necessarily be talented at deriving these strategies or these systems to derive strategies. What you would really have to be good at is to connect with your clients on different levels at different times during your conversations. I think that’s what’s the most important thing is to […] everything out of your client, define good ways to reformat what they say in a way that you know what makes for a good strategy, and something that in the end, you make them feel like they own it.
R: It’s the only way to practice that to take on a client engagement and just try your hand at it?
F: From a selfish point of view, it would be the best thing to do. I’m not sure about the client’s point of view. I mean, it is. I think a lot of public speaking, a lot of interviews, a lot of panel discussions, just getting yourself out there, and start to work with questions or thoughts that are inscripted. Then, start to see how do you get past those hurdles and actually have really great answers should you come up with something on the fly.
I think that goes back to the question of why I like reading so many magazines because it’s really about just having enough knowledge to be able to have great conversations with pretty much any client. I think that’s the way that I would practice it and then unleash on the client when you’re ready.
R: Alright, Fabian. We’ll leave it there. Thank you, again, so much for joining me. I hope we can connect again soon.
F: Great pleasure. Thanks for having me.
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