How Purpose-Driven Storytelling Builds Brands That Inspire and Scale With Christopher Erkelens

Intro: 00:02

Welcome back to the Response Drivers podcast, where we feature top marketing minds and dig in to their inspiring stories. Learn how these leaders think and find big ideas to push your results and sales to the next level. Now let’s get started.

Rick Rappe: 00:19

Hey, I’m Rick Rappe, host of the Response Drivers podcast. Here we dive deep with marketing executives, experts, and innovators to uncover how they approach targeted marketing and use data driven strategies to acquire and retain new customers. We’ll talk about what’s working, what’s changing, and how we can stay ahead in an evolving marketing landscape. This episode is brought to you by RPM Direct Marketing. RPM helps companies develop hard hitting direct mail creative and utilize advanced testing and targeting methodologies so you can fully optimize your marketing performance to drive more sales and exceed growth expectations.

With a proven track record, RPM delivers more profitable direct mail Solutions, so you can turn your direct mail programs into a predictable, efficient sales channel. Visit rpmdm.com to learn more. I’m really looking forward to learning from my guest today. I’m thrilled to have Christopher Erkelens on the show. 

Christopher is the Founder and Chief Storyteller at Marketing Impact, a company that empowers purpose driven brands to captivate hearts and minds through effective storytelling. With almost 20 years of experience in B2B, B2C, and nonprofit sectors, he’s known for his unique ability to uncover the core of a brand’s identity and craft narratives that inspire action. Christopher also serves as a senior brand and marketing strategist at In House Strategy, bringing a wealth of knowledge in brand development and marketing strategy. Thanks so much for joining me on Response Drivers today, Christopher.

Christopher Erkelens: 01:50

Thanks for having me, Rick.

Rick Rappe: 01:52

All right. Well, can you start out by telling us a little bit about your journey into the marketing world. And what brought you here?

Christopher Erkelens: 02:03

Yeah. I had no intention of being in the marketing world. When I first started and I wanted to be, you know, an entrepreneur, a business person, and I learned quickly that that requires a whole lot of systems, processes and, you know, a lot, a lot of back office administrative stuff. I’m like, I want to get out there. I want to be able to tell the story of what we’re selling.

I’m so excited about this stuff. So I’m like, give me a shot, right? So I went to my boss and I said, go ahead. And, you know, just let me write some copy for you. And sure enough, that was it. 

Like, it was one of those first moments when I realized, oh, wow. My words, my vision, my creative vision actually drove a result. And people started, you know, they started purchasing because of that difference. And there was nothing different that they had done other than they told a better story. So I said, well, that’s fascinating. 

Let me do it again. And so I did it again and again and again and again. 20 years later, here we are. Not really changing much of what I do other than being super curious about story and understanding human nature. You know, love to read, love to communicate, love to spend time with people. 

And that’s essentially what marketing is.

Rick Rappe: 03:30

Yeah, that sounds great. Well, what inspired you to create your company Marketing Impact and how does your company differ from other traditional marketing agencies?

Christopher Erkelens: 03:42

Yeah, this is a bit of a scratch my own itch kind of situation. I was working in the nonprofit world, and I had been successfully recruited from one company to the next company been poached in several times. And because my intention, my heart really is to make the world a better place and said, listen, like we have got to do this. And the way I know how to do it is through marketing. So I want to work with purpose driven companies.

And the way I understood Purpose Driven was nonprofits. They have a charitable angle. They interact with people and make the world. They make the people and planet a better place. And I realized, wow, they can’t scale. 

The nonprofit world is so limited by their revenue model, essentially in donations. And so you’re depending on individuals, foundations, government and public institutions to, to fund this. And the results can only be so incremental. I said, is there an opportunity in the world of business to actually create profitable businesses that are growth driven, are market, you know, the market influences our market drives, whether or not something is successful while at the same time making an impact in the world. And how do I get involved? 

Sure enough, I discovered the world of social enterprise about five years ago. Took a little side client. You know, I was still working at one company and I’m like, hey, let me let me just do some branding for you. Let me just create that, that basic story framework for you so that you can then go out and pitch this to the world. Nobody knew about social enterprise where I live in Southern California back then and and in the short time since we started that they’ve become synonymous with social enterprise. 

So I’ve worked with them and it became a huge success. They started a fund, they started an incubator. They started multiple companies that are actually doing this in real time. And of course, the marketing component is an essential bit to be able to get that buy in to, to, to resonate Nate with with audiences. So yeah, that’s that’s how we got here.

Rick Rappe: 05:57

That sounds so intriguing to me. I mean, it sounds really wonderful. Can you give me a little bit more of an idea of, like, the types of companies that you’re working with and supporting and what the what what you’re talking about? I think I need to hear an example or two.

Christopher Erkelens: 06:12

Yeah. It’s not an unusual thing because we’re like, hey, what do you mean? So let me start with somebody that I don’t work with. But they’re the industry standard, the model. So everybody knows Patagonia, right?

Patagonia is, you know, ubiquitous. Everybody’s got their logo on. They know what they stand for. And they’ve become a luxury item at the same time. Right? 

But they’re so committed to their people. They’re committed to the communities. They impact their community. They’re committed to, you know, eliminating waste, in fact, not just doing less bad, but doing more good than bad. And so they became like the, the, the model social enterprise out there. 

And so there are companies like that all over the place. So for example, one of my clients like they are creating an opportunity for people on Medi-Cal and Medicare to get healthy. We’ve seen a lot of these food box programs where you get like subscriptions and you get, you know, or, you know, subscriptions that you purchase into it. And all of a sudden, you know, you start getting your meals and it’s designed for you. Yeah. 

But it was fully out of access for people with low income and high chronic conditions. So this company said, hey, we’re farmers. We know how to grow stuff, how to distribute stuff. Why don’t we go and pitch this to the government and see if they’ll pay for this? Well, the government said no, but the healthcare providers. 

So, you know, the big insurance companies, they could actually use this. Sure enough, that’s what they do. And now they’ve distributed over 5 million meals in about, I guess four years time. So it’s and it’s just growing exponentially every month. We have, you know, about 90,000 people coming to the website and signing up.

Rick Rappe: 08:10

I love that. Yeah, I love that. I’ve got several friends who have what I would call purpose driven businesses. Now that you now that you’ve explained it to me and some of them are not, you know, huge enterprises or anything, but boy, it sure adds a such an interesting extra dimension to the, to the business because obviously profit is motivating and important and all that stuff. And, and running a business is important because obviously it creates jobs and helps the economy and the country and everything else.

But that extra added element of purpose is so and of helping people in an interesting way is so interesting and compelling.

Christopher Erkelens: 08:52

Yeah, I’ll add this, which is it’s not just compelling from a feel-good perspective. It’s actually really good for business.

Rick Rappe: 09:01

Yeah.

Christopher Erkelens: 09:02

So. Right. Ever since Covid, everything, everybody’s changed. Everybody. Everybody else is like, hey, hang on a second.

We can’t just be just churning out the same kind of, you know, factory mindset. We have got to be doing something. So these companies that are actually putting in their values first and actually figuring out a way how they impact the world, how what they do is actually making a positive or negative impact, are able to retain people, employees, a lot better. People are willing to take actually lower salaries based on a McKinsey study or Deloitte study. I can’t remember a Deloitte study that was saying that people are willing to take up 10% less knowing that their company was actually doing a better job at stewarding natural resources. 

Right. And then from a brand perspective, you know, that’s storytelling heaven. That’s it’s gold for guys like me, right. Because all of a sudden it’s like, hey, buy my product versus this product is really good. And it’s doing something more than just just making somebody rich. 

This is actually doing something, making a difference for your community, for communities around the world and for the planet, for environmental purposes. So, yeah, it’s I don’t know, I get too excited. So, you know, talk me off my soapbox if you need to.

Rick Rappe: 10:24

No, I enjoy hearing about this. This is very exciting. I mean, we certainly like to work with companies like this too, that have a really interesting and compelling story to tell. You know, one of the things about direct mail marketing, which we’re sort of heavily focused on, is it’s got the ability to have a little bit longer format and to tell a little bit more involved story. And so, you know, we like to leverage brands that have a strong story and use that in direct marketing.

Obviously we’re trying to get at the end of the day to a result and action. But, you know, I think it’s easier to tell an interesting, compelling longer story with print and something that’s tangible rather than sometimes digital marketing has to be so brief and so just billboards and headlines, you know, that that type of thing.

Christopher Erkelens: 11:18

Yeah, it’s flashy images all day long. Our attention. We’re in the attention economy, right? You know, in the digital marketing space, you know, this is this is an area that that I struggle with because I love I love the I love long form content, I love reading, I love videos that are ten minutes long, you know, like, don’t give me AA3 second, you know, snippet. I want, you know, give me content, give me something that’s going to give me real value.

And that’s really tough in a world where it’s, you know, just scroll, you know, like a flip flip of the thumb is all you need to ignore me forever. And. Yeah. And and, you know, direct mail, I think that that actually is in the right context, the, the best way to, to achieve some, some valuable content and, and not just content, but valuable information that people actually can say, hey, now I feel like I have some a resource that I can use. And we’ve used this for what? 

Yeah, fundraising. We’ve used it for political campaigns. We use it to sell homes. Yeah. It all, you know, it’s all different format, but it makes a huge difference.

Rick Rappe: 12:28

Yes. 30 years ago when I started my career in direct mail marketing, I actually started as a print production coordinator at an agency that did nothing but nonprofit fundraising. So that’s how I got my start in the business, way back. Way back when. Well let’s see.

Let me ask you another quick question about sort of. What emerging trends do you believe will sort of shape the future of marketing at this point and, and moving forward?

Christopher Erkelens: 13:02

Yeah, man. I think if.

Rick Rappe: 13:04

You have a crystal ball.

Christopher Erkelens: 13:06

No it’s we I, I, I. Right. We’re not we’re not quite there where we would actually be replacing human beings. But I see this already in my business. I see it in my clients’ businesses.

It’s changing everything. And what’s really fascinating is that it’s affecting not entry level, you know, blue collar workers, which is what normally gets affected by any kind of disruption like this. It’s affecting the managerial class and the C level executives and everybody knows it’s coming. And yet, how many times have I gone into a client meeting and they’re just. They don’t know what they’re doing. 

You know, how do you use this property? How do you use this as a tool, as an augmentation of the human capacity? It’s a learning partner versus, you know, just seeing as a threat. So it’s a lot of what I do. Yeah.

Rick Rappe: 14:06

We’re noticing with AI that there’s a lot of people that are trying to figure out how to use it. And it’s obviously powerful and can do some great things, but it’s the human AI interaction and the human AI coupling that really produces the most outstanding results. And so you have to have people that understand what they’re doing and understand what they’re looking for. You know, one of my recent episodes with another marketing CMO, we were talking about this very exact thing. So it’s very interesting.

Christopher Erkelens: 14:40

Well, let me give you, let me give you some value that your listeners might actually benefit from. There’s a couple telltale signs that I is involved. And it’s that uncanny valley, right? We all can detect it. We don’t know why we can detect it, but it’s one of those things like what is what is off about this?

And there’s certain phrases, certain ideas that I has that blends it all that makes it all so bland. There’s no point of view. And so with my clients, what I do, the first thing that we do is we develop a two page strategy that basically defines their point of view. And in some ways you’re really saying, who are you going to piss off? You know, somebody is gonna develop some enemies. 

Somebody’s not going to like this. But that’s okay. You know, that’s a perfectly legitimate thing. But they can’t not like you because you’ve been sneaky or trying to be as everything for everyone. So developing a clear point of view allows you to basically utilize or plug that right into ChatGPT and say, hey, based on this, based on this framework, give me an article, give me a letter, give me an email. 

Right. And so.

Rick Rappe: 15:58

You’re, you’re directing it with and feeding the ideas into it, just as if you were giving the ideas to a ghostwriter basically.

Christopher Erkelens: 16:06

Yeah. It’s, you got to train the model. So, you know, I’ll build custom GPT for every single one of my clients. I’ll load it with all sorts of branding information, all previous articles that they’ve ever written, blogs, websites, that type of thing. And then we’ll develop basically a well, first thing, the point of view document, right.

Which explains not just your why but your you’re not this, you know, you are this and not this. And then we develop a messaging matrix. You know that messaging matrix tends to be ten pages long and includes every detailed word. That is, use this word instead of this word. Say this, use this. 

We never talk to you know, they’re not customers. They’re members or they’re not members. They’re, you know, patients or whatever you want to call this particular messaging that goes into it. So that’s the second document. And then the third document that we loaded is a prompt. 

Right. So we pre-build all these prompts and we basically give them as part of our delivery package to a customer saying hey you want to build marketing? Don’t we don’t have to pay somebody to go build this stuff. You can still use ChatGPT, but use this prompt. And that prompt tends to be, you know, paragraphs long so people don’t realize like, hey, hey, ChatGPT, give me, give me an email to send to this customer.

Rick Rappe: 17:30

Right?

Christopher Erkelens: 17:31

Okay. What am I going to do with that? No, no, this this this this tends to be multiple paragraphs. and it and it gives them, you know, it gives a system who you are, what your voice is, who you sound like. You know, one of my clients, I, we couldn’t figure out who he sounded like.

And then I listened to an interview with Sam Altman. I’m like, Holy smokes, they sound exactly alike in real, in real life. Like when they interact. I’m like, let’s see what happens if we change. Your newsletter. 

Introduction to the voice of Sam Altman. Bingo. It was like it was spicy. It was to the point, like it was a little bit distracted. And I’m like, this is like, that would have been something that would have taken me, I don’t know, ten hours, five years ago and now and seconds I have what I want to say, you know, the marketing message with the voice of the CEO and it revolutionized everything.

Rick Rappe: 18:27

Yeah. Wow. That’s some pretty cool stuff you’re doing with creating custom GPTs and all these. And the document that you described sounded incredibly valuable for brands I know. As a direct marketing agency, we love it when clients have strong brand guidelines.

We use their brand guidelines, and we learn them and internalize them and work them into their direct mail. Well, use them really as a guide, as a guidepost to make sure that we’re using their voice and their key messaging in everything that we do. So I think companies that have a strong brand and know who they are, it’s easier to go to market and to and to really sell aggressively when they have that defined right.

Christopher Erkelens: 19:15

That’s exactly it. The customer doesn’t buy your product. They buy what you believe in, right. What you stand for. And I know I’m talking like a marketing guy, not like a growth engine kind of guy.

Like, you know, there’s a lot of my colleagues that are growth specific or growth marketers and they’re like, what is you know of this A and B test. Like what? What is this? What is the word that really triggers it? Is it free or no cost? 

You know, for me that’s a little bit less of the point, which is okay, well what does somebody feel when they interact with you? Do they understand what you do for them? You know how they become part of this story. How are they the hero of the story and how are you there to guide them, to use language from oh, man StoryBrand, what’s his name? Donald Miller. 

There you go. Yeah. Donald Miller. Yeah. I don’t want to. 

I don’t want to take credit for it where I. I didn’t make that up. But it is to let people see themselves as the hero. And that’s much more of a branding exercise.

Rick Rappe: 20:20

Well, it’s important for all marketers to remember that people make decisions with emotion mostly. And then they search for the rational justification for those choices and those decisions. But it’s emotion, really, at the end of the day, that’s causing a lot of a lot of decisions.

Christopher Erkelens: 20:38

And it tends to be the same three emotions, honestly. I don’t know, I mean, I’ll keep it PG, but you know, it tends to be they’re either hungry, they’re angry or they’re how do you put it this way. Excited you know.

Rick Rappe: 20:58

Yeah. Those are good. Yeah for sure. Those are definitely emotions that drive action. Yeah.

We touch on fear and greed and all these things. Obviously fear of loss is obviously super motivating in many cases. But yeah. Yeah.

Christopher Erkelens: 21:16

Well that’s part of that. That’s part of that point of view document is that the Frodo, the Frodo, the from to like, what is the world gonna look like if you take this product? That’s one of the things that we often forget is that, hey, here’s the product. Here’s my solution. Yeah, especially very product driven companies.

They tend to focus so much on the hey, this is an amazing product. I don’t care about your product. I care about how that’s going to make my life better. Yeah, right. Is it really going to offer me that and then like, not just incrementally better, but like, how is this $10 purchase actually going to make a massive improvement in the way that I do daily life.

Rick Rappe: 22:01

Right. Right. Well, and with some of the purpose driven brands that you’re talking about, I think I feel like when I buy them, it’s like, yeah, I need to buy socks anyway. I might as well buy socks where they give another pair away to somebody that really needs them. You know, like, it’s like a nice way to do good in the world just by making a normal, everyday purchase that I would have bought anyway.

And it’s like if I have two coats that are the same, I’m going to probably go with the one that has a little social benefit on top of the fact that it’s a cool coat.

Christopher Erkelens: 22:34

Well, yeah, it’s you know, there’s it’s not just that. It’s all sorts of ways that you’re actually like the the story that they’re telling you. Right? Yes. It’s like, yeah, we’re helping people.

We’re delivering stocks. But like, what if those people don’t want socks? Well, we know they want socks because we’re in the field. They’re talking to them. We there’s a human connection. 

That’s what’s so essential. Yeah. Nonprofit gets that extremely well. They get heart. You know, they get the, like connection to human beings. 

Yeah. But the business world, they’re just that human to profit perspective that gets often lost because there’s shareholder pressure.

Rick Rappe: 23:14

Yeah. I feel like there’s some companies that, you know, push their founders to the forefront and their founders really tell the story. And then you feel like you’ve gotten to know the founder of the company, and you feel like they’re cool people and good people to like, doing good in the world. So you’re like, yeah, I want to buy that guy’s stuff. You know, you’re so it’s actually tying it to the personality as opposed to, you know, if I buy something on just off of some big giant website, I’m helping another billionaire buy a bigger and bigger superyacht or whatever the case might be.

Christopher Erkelens: 23:46

Man, you’re so right. That’s another major trend that I’m seeing, is that personality driven marketing has become basically a way to humanize the brand. Yeah, right.

Rick Rappe: 23:58

And especially because your face in your video and everything out on social media gets so much exposure and it becomes more about the person who’s running the company, or could in some cases become more about the person that’s running the company than the actual product.

Christopher Erkelens: 24:13

I think the spokesperson essentially is why content creators have become such a commodity, right? The idea that content creators actually are the, the, the future and you can’t control them, which is really problematic for a marketer because, you know, it’s not it’s not a very clinical, you know, neat little package. It’s like, no, no, I’m going to give you this product. I’m hoping you say the right thing. I’m going to give you all the framework, but it’s not necessarily there.

But it is people we want to trust, other people like we look at people whose lifestyle mimics that which we are, which we want, and we’re like, hey, I respect that person. I like that person. That’s why I’m buying it. So yeah, I see a huge trend for the future. The future really does belong to the content creators, and I think in-house content creators are going to become, you know, one of the most valuable people in the company.

Rick Rappe: 25:05

Yeah. Well, I mean, social media has definitely become a more and more powerful tool over the past, you know, ten years since it really. Bloomed, I guess. But it’s also interesting because of how the social media market is so fragmented right now. And it seems like people are sort of also kind of getting tired of social media.

and in some cases, they’re opting out of some of the big platforms. In some cases because of, you know, different political views or whatever the case might be. But it seems like that market or that channel is particularly challenging to reach, like an entire target audience. You know, we always like to say, well, everybody’s got a mailbox and we can hit the whole target market with direct mail. It’s a little bit more difficult than social media, but I guess you have to be able to work on multiple different platforms, multiple different channels to make it work.

Christopher Erkelens: 26:03

Yeah, that’s it’s tough because we have some clients, for example, where we’ll be doing a LinkedIn, you know, campaign, but we’ll also be doing an Instagram campaign and they’ll have like the exact opposite results, you know, like it will not work in that channel versus in the other channel. So you know, an Instagram campaign B2C slightly younger demographic. And, you know, people are not motivated by the same cause of action as the LinkedIn page, LinkedIn longer format. You know, people, you know, presenting, having conversations, podcasts great for LinkedIn, that type of thing. So yeah, it’s you’re adapting at the same time.

I’ve always been agnostic as to the tools. You know, if ChatGPT goes away tonight, there’s going to be somebody else going out there. And there are so many you got, you got Gemini, you got Gronk, all sorts of different platforms that you can use. Right. But so I’m totally agnostic as far as that goes. 

What is important is, is always that consistency of messaging and that that includes direct mail. And you’re right. Like there’s not an opportunity to to write a mean comment back at the bottom of a direct mail and send it back. I guess you could do that if actually, funny story, one of my favorite was when I worked at one nonprofit. There was this guy that every month we send out a monthly appeal. 

Right? Sure. And he’d always send change a bunch of, like, loose change. And it was so heavy. And I’m like, the postage costs more than me to process all this change. 

Yeah, right. Yeah. And you never know, right? Like, that guy could just be doing that, and then he’s got a huge inheritance that he’s gonna leave behind. So you treat them the same way. 

And you. Yeah. You still process it. Thank them. You know, you do all of that. 

But yeah, direct mail like not a whole lot of back and forth there. But when they do get back to you it’s sometimes pretty strange.

Rick Rappe: 28:05

Yes, I know, I remember in the nonprofit, my nonprofit days, we used a lot of business reply envelopes because back then there wasn’t the internet. And so we were getting checks in the mail back with a business reply envelope and that’s a postage paid business reply envelope. Yeah. Which we had to stop using because occasionally people would tape them to a brick and send us a brick postage paid on our dime. You know, it’s like, thank you for the brick.

We really appreciate.

Christopher Erkelens: 28:36

That. Yeah. Great. We’re trying to do some charity here.

Rick Rappe: 28:39

Yeah, we’re trying to do good in the world. Of course. Their opinion of what was good in the world and our opinion might have differed a little bit, but that’s how it goes.

Christopher Erkelens: 28:48

I mean, and then that applies to things like, like selling homes, you know, like I think. So this is that’s my work a lot with, with in-house strategy. I no longer work necessarily with the real estate department with them, but unless it’s in the brand development, if there’s a client, one of the first things we get to develop the brand. Okay. Great brand new client.

They don’t they need everything. They pull me in, but they’re still sending out mailers all the time. And it works. It works better than anything else because they get to I mean, this position as you own this neighborhood, right? Figure out your territory and you’re going to own them. 

And people are like, oh, isn’t that outdated? No no, no. Consistency matters. You know, you know who. You know who the realtors are. 

They’re actually in your neighborhood because every week or every month, like you’re getting something from them. Yeah.

Rick Rappe: 29:42

Right.

Christopher Erkelens: 29:42

So.

Rick Rappe: 29:43

Well, there certainly is a lot of there. There can be a bad direct mail marketing as well. There’s of course, there’s bad in every channel as well as there’s good. That’s where we try to come in and definitely help our clients be more effective at what they’re doing so that they’re getting the biggest return on their marketing investment. That’s what really matters.

Christopher Erkelens: 30:04

Yeah, man, I could talk to you. Okay, I don’t know. I don’t know how long we have to talk about it, but one of my daughters, my daughter, she’s 15, she’s. One of the things she loves to do is grab direct mail pieces. And I’ve ever since she was, like, ten years old, Like I’ve walked her through design principles.

I’m like, okay. Rule of thirds. Fonts. Legibility. Bad. 

Photoshop. Like, it’s like we’ll sit there and we’ll just like circle, you know? Oh, this, this. We should improve this. There’s no margin over here. 

The call to action is not there. There’s no phone number. Like, how do I get in touch with you?

Rick Rappe: 30:38

So maybe she should be a guest on my podcast, I think. Yeah. Oh, it sounds like she might be a direct marketing expert at this point.

Christopher Erkelens: 30:47

She loves it.

Rick Rappe: 30:49

That’s great. I never thought about doing that with my daughters. They probably would have told me to go away, but I guess that’s my problem. I have another.

Christopher Erkelens: 30:58

Daughter. You did tell me to go away. I’ll tell.

Rick Rappe: 31:00

You that. It’s not.

Christopher Erkelens: 31:01

It’s not for everyone.

Rick Rappe: 31:03

Oh, yes. The joys of being a girl dad.

Christopher Erkelens: 31:07

Indeed.

Rick Rappe: 31:09

Well, a couple more quick questions for you before we wrap up. Can you tell me a little bit about a daily habit or a resource that you’ve used that has helped you in your career and in what you’re doing today.

Christopher Erkelens: 31:27

Oh, man. Yes, I’m, I, I’m a bit obsessed with daily habits and resources and routines. Just because I’m what was what would you call it? A.D.D. like ADHD, like we talked to the beginning, right? Like it’s everything gets its shiny object syndrome gets me.

Distraction gets me. So. So I got a couple for you. But I’ll tell you one that I was just fascinated by. I used to overthink things and have these gigantic to do lists. 

Right? Enormous to do lists. And I realized the reason I’m doing this is because I need the satisfaction of just putting it down, because then I’ll feel like it’s something got done. Right. And I realized that wasn’t actually getting anything done. 

Anything pushed it forward. So I got myself three by five cards and I keep them by my desk. And every day I’m not allowed to fill out more than one. Three by five. Card of ideas and thoughts and everything like that. 

So I’ll even write really small. But that’s all I allow myself. And then from a task management perspective, I’ll basically time block and I’ll go to my calendar, my, my Google calendar. And I will just chunk out big time. And I’m pretty good about respecting those times, you know. 

But it’s really great to just have them in there to say, okay, this is what needs to get done here. And oh, shoot, like that’s due in three days. You know, I gotta move stuff around. So from a productivity standpoint that’s essential. And then every day, you know, just just getting out, getting mobile, getting exercise in every day and, you know, eating right and all the other things that everybody tells you. 

But in the way I joke around with a friend of mine, that’s a lot of the problems that we have, you know, from a health perspective, from a mental health perspective can really just be solved with, you know, a six pack of Bud Light and a couple of Doritos. You know, sometimes you just gotta chill, man. Let’s just take it easy. It’s not it’s life is not as complicated as we want to make it.

Rick Rappe: 33:32

Take a break and daydream a little bit. I like that idea. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.

Getting outside is wonderful, too. It certainly is important.

Christopher Erkelens: 33:45

Yeah. Being in Southern California, we’re so spoiled. Getting outside is just like. That’s just what we do. There’s no winter.

Rick Rappe: 33:51

Yeah. Yeah.

Christopher Erkelens: 33:53

It affects the pace of life here too. That’s amazing. Yeah. It’s.

Everything is so fast in Southern California. Everybody has somewhere to go. You’re never going to get to something that’s like. You got to go there. If you’re a business here, like you’re just grinding to try to make it work. 

It’s so expensive, and everybody’s competing against you. And I like that speed. You know, so it’s it’s great for me. But, you know, I’ve been to places in the South, for example, where it’s like, hey, you can have a mediocre Mexican food restaurant, you know, not really serving Mexican food. Just put a bunch of slimy cheese on it and you’ll be in business for ten years. 

You know, nothing against the South. It’s just that people are a lot more forgiving with, with, you know, the, the, the level of, of, of expertise that you need to bring into stuff.

Rick Rappe: 34:45

Well, competition for sure is more extreme for everything and for in California and certainly would weed out the mediocre options and keep the best ones.

Christopher Erkelens: 34:59

Yeah. Have you heard of the California test?

Rick Rappe: 35:03

No, that’s the California test.

Christopher Erkelens: 35:05

The California test is actually a marketing principle. Oh, man. I can’t remember the book. I’ll come to me. But this idea that if you want to validate an idea, if you want to validate a market, see what California is doing.

If it’s picked up in California, it’s going to take it’s going to work the rest of the world. So what happens in California, actually, which, you know, as crazy as we’re seeing and I don’t, you know, politically, like we’re we’re very odd. But it is true. So electric cars, 50% of electric cars in the United States are sold in California, right? There is definitely a market. 

It’s just that everybody’s lagging a little bit in accepting it. So it’s very interesting.

Rick Rappe: 35:56

There are certain communities that are like that. I think Seattle might also be like that to some degree because like they do testing with products like bird scooters and things like that, and the electric bikes and things like that. They brought that to Seattle first and then tried, tried different concepts and, you know, they would be on our streets for six months and then they would all disappear and like, wow, okay. And they moved on to something else. And they were just experimenting to see what would get traction before they and I guess Seattle people, maybe more or more easy early adopters, they’ll try new things more quickly than other places.

I’m not sure where, but California is probably the same.

Christopher Erkelens: 36:37

Yeah, yeah, I think Seattle is, in my experience working with people in Seattle. Absolutely. I think there’s an innovative spirit that just lives there. You know, you just can’t pull it out of it. It’s like everybody’s like, okay, I’m willing I’m willing to do that crazy thing you just said to me.

Doesn’t seem so crazy. Go ahead. Go, go build it.

Rick Rappe: 36:58

Yeah.

Christopher Erkelens: 36:59

Let’s see. Let’s see what happens.

Rick Rappe: 37:01

Well, especially new ideas like, oh, here’s a you know, here’s a car that’s just on the street. And I can just walk up and get in it and drive it away with, you know, all I have to have is this app and like, so cool. I’ll try it. Like. Absolutely.

And people are just down for whatever. So anyway. Well, I have one more quick question before we wrap up. And what advice would you give to aspiring marketers looking to make a significant impact in their career?

Christopher Erkelens: 37:31

Oh well, for one, I’m an aspiring marketer. I’d say I’ll start with that. You know, I’ve been doing this for 20 years, and I’m still aspiring to be better every day. Every morning I wake up. I’d say watch for the imposter syndrome.

We all have it. Every single one of us. No matter how high you get up into. Like you were always like, this could be better. This could be. 

You know, I’m clearly presenting a false side of myself. That I’m not good enough. Right? You’re. You’re showing up and you’re like, you go to a client meeting, you go to somebody to a prospect, and you’re just like, if they only knew how much of a hack I am, they would never buy from me.

Rick Rappe: 38:13

Yeah, yeah.

Christopher Erkelens: 38:16

Yeah. I think everybody goes through that I think so. So there’s something wonderful about knowing that because the adults aren’t coming.

Rick Rappe: 38:26

Yeah.

Christopher Erkelens: 38:26

If everybody struggles with this, no matter how much of an important CEO is like, the grown ups are just never going to show up.

Rick Rappe: 38:32

Yeah. I worked my way.

Christopher Erkelens: 38:35

I love that.

Rick Rappe: 38:36

I’ll tell you about imposter syndrome. I worked my way up in the agency world to VP of Account Services when I was 29 years old, and I was working on the AT&T account, and it became the national AT&T Direct Marketing program. So it was a massive, massive program.

And I was basically in charge of a big agency team that was doing all this work. And I definitely had imposter syndrome. And I was like, wow, you know, what am I doing here? This is crazy. And the agency owner said to me, Rick, in the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king. 

And I was like, oh, oh, okay, I get it. And so that helped ease my imposter syndrome a little bit. I don’t know, it helped a little bit.

Christopher Erkelens: 39:24

I don’t think it ever goes away, but I think that the empathy that we can have for each other, you know, like the older I’ve gotten, the more experience I’ve gotten, the more I realize I just have to relax people. You know, they’ll they’ll they’ll want to work with me because I’m. I’m me, you know. And sure, there’s tons of competitors out there. There’s tons of people that are more experienced that have a lot better, have more, more books than I have.

And I’ve written none, as we were talking about earlier.

Rick Rappe: 39:58

Well, none yet. None yet. But there’s one. There’s one just right around the corner.

Christopher Erkelens: 40:03

I think it’s in me. It just needs to be, you know, right there. I need to get some more caffeine in me, and maybe that will fix it. Yeah, but it was I think this idea that like, no, we’re all just people and we’re all humans. And what really connects us is not how smart we are, how much information I can throw your way or how, you know, impressive.

I look, it’s do you really care? Do you really care about this? And are you willing to do you know, are you willing to be in the trenches with me when you know, when this ship starts sinking, you know, like, can you work with me? And those types of people were, you know, the people you can call and be like, hey, I got this problem. Will you help me? 

And that person says, yeah, like, you know, let me, you know. Yeah, I’m busy right now, but how does 12 p.m. or 12 a.m. sound like? Like, can we start at midnight? You know, like, I like those people, you know, you never forget them and you’re loyal, so.

Rick Rappe: 41:02

Yeah.

Christopher Erkelens: 41:03

Yeah, I would say that that would be more of a mindset issue there for aspiring marketers, from a mindset issue, from an actual tactical perspective. I’d say most jobs are going to go away. Most marketing is going away. AI is going to automate just about everything in the traditional track. So I’d say get really, really, really good at understanding how to train and how to prompt.

Right? Not just not just learning how to write better prompts. Those you can download, you can get from other marketers like me. Yeah, but learn how to train AI to do the thing that you wanted to do.

Rick Rappe: 41:49

Yeah. And it makes sense that in the future, we’re all going to be sort of AI engineers a little bit. That definitely feels like the direction that things are moving in.

Christopher Erkelens: 42:00

Yeah, I think it’s solved a lot of this stuff. It solved a lot of the day to day kind of operational for me as a marketer. I mean, I don’t think there’s a day that I’m not on ChatGPT maybe, I don’t know, 4 or 5 hours a day.

Rick Rappe: 42:16

Well, I think, you know, with the ability to create content at a rapid, rapid rate the issue is going to be. Still, people have to create content that breaks through the clutter, right? Like, there’s so much there’s so much marketing that people are hit with on a daily basis in all different ways, all different channels. But what’s going to get people to actually stop and pay attention? I mean, the more we’re bombarded with marketing, the better and better we get at tuning it out.

So there has to be some way to tell a different story, to put a different spin on things to, to, to differentiate, to, you know, to make it feel different and compelling. So that’s where I think human beings can be creative Native more so than I.

Christopher Erkelens: 43:03

You absolutely nailed it. I mean, that’s kind of that back to back back to the point of view perspective. It’s you don’t want to be better. Being better is incremental. Being different is blue ocean right.

Like it’s you just have everything. Like there’s no competition when you’re just a totally different category. And I get not my own, not my original ideas. This just comes from a book called Play Bigger. Yeah. 

And that idea of category creation where you’re just in a totally different world. Well, that’s what’s going to. That’s what’s going to set you apart.

Rick Rappe: 43:45

Well, that’s great advice. Well, thank you so much. That’s all the time we have for today. So sadly I have to wrap this up. But thank you so much for your time and this opportunity to learn from you today.

Where can people learn more and where can people get in touch with you? Two.

Christopher Erkelens: 44:00

Yep. Check me out on marketingimpact.us. Or you can also check me out on LinkedIn. I reply to just about everybody that wants to connect with me. Christopher Erkelens is my name and if you type it in, I’m sure you’ll find it.

Rick Rappe: 44:18

So we’ll put your website and things like that in the show notes. And, so people want to look in the show notes. They’ll find your contact information there too.

Christopher Erkelens: 44:28

Fabulous. I had a lot of fun. Thanks.

Rick Rappe: 44:30

Yeah. Thanks. All right. We’ll talk to you later.

Outro: 44:33

That’s a wrap for this episode of Response Drivers Thanks for tuning in. If you found today’s insights valuable, make sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode. And if you’re enjoying the show, we’d love it if you left a review. Got a question or a topic you’d like us to cover?

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