Today, we have Travis Brown on the call. He is the CEO of Mojo Up Marketing + Media, which is a Black owned and minority operated agency up in Indianapolis. I'm super stoked to have him on the call. He was introduced to me a while ago, we connected a while ago, and we're just now being able to have this call. So I'm really excited to have Travis on. And it was just this idea. He was introduced to me because they were like, "Hey, you should talk to this guy. He's a creative agency guy, but yet he's so ingrained in building healthy culture." And you just don't hear a lot of that within the agency world where I come from, and where a lot of people exist today. It just kind of organically and accidentally happens sometimes, but being intentional is all the things that goes on in Travis' brain.
He has done a lot before this. You'll hear a little bit about that. But first and foremost, he's a keynote speaker that has been on over 2,500 stages. Fortune 500 companies, associations, small businesses, real estate market stuff, NFL teams. He has spoken to a lot of people, influenced a lot of people. You're going to get a little bit of his brain today, which is going to be super cool. Get ready, here we go.
Mr. Travis Brown, what's up man?
Travis Brown:
Man, I'm excited to be here with you today, and love jumping on these podcasts, diving into some cool stuff.
Skot Waldron:
Yeah, for sure. It's awesome having you. Love the stuff you're doing over there. I skirted around the website a little bit. Y'all are doing some really cool stuff. You've experienced some really good growth in just four years over at Mojo Up, so congrats on that.
TRAVIS BROWN:
Thank you, man. I think when you're building a marketing agency, it's one of those that you don't know what you don't know until you're building it, you're diving into it, and as you mentioned, before you know it, you're climbing and then you're trying to figure out how not to plateau and not to go down, and staffing, and rightsizing. So it's been a great journey and I'm excited for it.
SKOT WALDRON:
Yeah, it's kind of like, "Wait, I want this thing to grow at the beginning." And then you're like, "Hold on a second. Do I want this thing to grow some more?" It gets a little nerve wracking. So I feel you. I feel you. Tell me about your background though. So before the agency life, you had a life before the agency, but what was that?
TRAVIS BROWN:
Well, for people that don't know or haven't followed me, so I'm the founder and CEO of Mojo Up Marketing + Media and my background really started in the finance industry almost 20 years ago in the mortgage business. Got out of that and really got into training development, which then led me into spending 10 years on the speaking circuit, traveling across the country. I started really talking about leadership, conflict management, communications. But I had about a five year passion project where I got to go into schools, talk about anti-bullying and leadership, school districts consulting with me on policy and procedure, which was a really fun part of my world. But the truth is traveling that much. I have a family, I have three kids and a wife. Man, I was gone too much on the road and wanted to find something more local that would allow me to still use my talent to speak. But the strategy of what I learned from it is what I started to apply and that's what led me to starting Mojo Up Marketing + Media.
SKOT WALDRON:
Cool. All right. So the thing that I think is pretty cool about you, now I'm going to talk a little bit from a personal standpoint building my agency back when I did and running it and I would go to marketing conferences, I'd go to design conferences, I would be involved with my local associations and doing that stuff. We never talked about culture. We never talked about leadership. No, we didn't do it. It was just something that we just didn't do. We talked about how to be more efficient at new Photoshop tools and how to manage your process more and video. And we talked about new audio and how to build social media platforms and we talked about all this tactical stuff and we got into that quite a bit. We did some strategy work. Well, I mean we did a lot of strategy work, but we talked about strategy a little bit. We just never talked culture and leadership. That's a corporate suit thing. We never talked about that in the creative world because we were cool. We had a cool culture, so we don't need to worry about that.
What I love about what you're doing, what attracted me to wanting to have this conversation is you are so engulfed in the culture side, right? Where did that come from? Did that come from that speaking background world? How did that happen?
TRAVIS BROWN:
Well, I think the culture for most entrepreneurs, especially in today's environment, it's like, "Hey, I've been down a certain road working for somebody else and there are missing elements of that culture that I didn't really love or appreciate respect or want to be a part of." And not knocks on those companies, just you wanted to do it differently. That's why you're an entrepreneur. And so what I started looking at was man number one, there are very few just Black marketing executives in the Indiana area where I am, very few agencies that had any diversity. So most people have a person or maybe two if they're large agencies. I start thinking about this, how could we create truly a diverse culture that could think differently, could imagine things differently, that could use race obviously, but also use our age, our background, from a gender perspective and really come to the table to build something.
So I started down that path, which is I wanted my employee base to look very different than the normal agencies that were out there. But then that kind of led into the, "Okay, that sounded great. We brought a bunch of cool people in there, but what is our culture? What are we made of? What do we believe? What are truly our core values?" And I think if you don't have those in today's environment, it will be very difficult to succeed if you don't really have true core values. Not something in the back of a magazine or a book or a HR guide, but I'm talking about what you believe at your core, what you're willing to hire, to fire, to reward, recognize. What is that thing? And that's what became pretty fascinating for me to think about what are we trying to build today and ultimately in the future?
SKOT WALDRON:
All right, so I'm going to put you on spot. What do you believe?
TRAVIS BROWN:
Man, I love that question. And I always challenge our people to go, it can't always just be me, the person saying, here's what we believe. We have to have this. Vision for us is to be the go-to diverse and talented marketing agency that competes at the highest level. And the reason why that's so important is because all of our accountability starts right there.
Number one, if we're trying to be the go-to agency that represents diversity, then we've got to be great. And we have to be able to do that. We also want to compete at a high level. We even toyed around with, is it high level or highest level? But really we talked about this point in my career. I'm 46. I'm not willing to do personally what it takes to probably compete at the highest level. Meaning I'm not going to work 15, 20, 30 hours. I'm not going to abandon my family going, I'm just going to grind all weekend. I've been there in that my career. I crashed a career and a marriage that way. I'm not going to do that again. And therefore I don't ask our people to do that either. We got to hustle, we got to grind, we got to get stuff done, but we want to compete a high level, but we're not trying to burn everything.
Two, one of our internal passions is really that through our excellence, we're paving the way for other Black owned and minority agency owners, creatives and business owners to have opportunities that are more difficult for us today. So that's part of our internal passion. But our purpose is really simple, is to tell the story. It's shape brands so that whoever we're working with and whatever is important to them, we can help them make their greatest impact. So that's our purpose and that's our vision and that's also our internal passion.
The other side of this is our core values, and we have four that we believe and one is people first, and that's very clear that we're not person first, which means we make decisions that are in the best interest of people. Two is being growth mindset. We learn, teach, and grow, which has been fundamental to all my successes. So that was true to us. Then we have a third one, it's called committed heart. That means committed to our purpose, vision, values, all those things. You can't work here and be a part of our culture if the things that we believe, you don't believe, it just won't be a good fit. And we say we're okay with that. So when I interview people, I'm explicit about here's who we are, here's what we believe, here's what we're doing, here's our expectations. And if it's not a good fit, we're like, "Hey, no big deal. This is not a good fit."
But the last one is really being be accountable and that's just doing great work. And when you think about doing great work in today's environment and a market agency, our work is always put on display. And our clients literally do have to love the work that we produce. So we believe it. That's up on our wall. We have shirts that say we believe, and that's the core components of those things. And here's how emphatic we are about this, is that I always tell people, either you're going to retire at Mojo Up or this is a stepping stone. And that stepping stone may come because you get to a point where maybe you don't have our shared belief anymore, and that's okay. I'll help you find a place that you do love and want to be a part of. But as long as we're here, it's about getting our leadership team and our employees bought in to our philosophy.
SKOT WALDRON:
I love that. We talk about from a marketing perspective always too is that finding people that believe what you believe is going to create so much more loyalty than if you just try to push your stuff on them all the time and then just trying to... And it goes the same way with employees and staffing. You're so desperate to get somebody on board because they're really good at their job. They're really great designers, they're really great videographers, whatever. You bring them on board, but they just don't believe what you believe, it's just not going to work. It'll be okay in the short term. They'll produce great work, but at the end of the day it's not going to fly.
TRAVIS BROWN:
I think what's important for me to say out loud for people to hear is that we understand that in diversity we have different philosophies or different personal beliefs outside of our life and our world, and that all comes together. But when we're talking about our beliefs, it's about where we're going, what we're doing, how we're going to get there, why we're going to get there, why is it important, the standard that we operate by. Because I had somebody one day challenge me, "Well, if everybody has to believe what you believe, is that really diversity?" Well, what I mean is that in some core components. It's like anybody that's married on this call goes, you and your spouse had to have some universal beliefs that allowed you to connect, but you don't believe everything. But those core things, those things that divide households, you got to have those. And we do double down on those.
SKOT WALDRON:
That's good. That's good. So let's get to a how-to thing then. How do you make sure that people believe what you believe or how do you test that or how do you filter that out either early on or even midway? I know it's kind of hard right out the gate, but what are you doing to bring that on?
TRAVIS BROWN:
Well, in our interview process, there's a couple things that we're trying to achieve as we go through the process. Number one, we have our specialized experts. So we're hiring, say, a graphic design person. They're going to meet with our graphic design, they're going to meet with our COO, try to figure out, can they do the work? When I meet with them, doing the work is assumed at that point in time. We've looked at it and know that they can do the work. All I care about is are they a cultural fit? A hundred percent all I care about from the interview perspective is from a mindset, are they going to understand what that means in our day and age? I'm just going to be honest with you and your audience or really transparent, is for people that are coming to our agency, we are Black owned marketing agency. I know it sounds crazy, but there are people that won't work with us because of that. And I had a conversation with a person-
SKOT WALDRON:
Are you saying clients or staff?
TRAVIS BROWN:
I'm saying clients.
SKOT WALDRON:
Clients.
TRAVIS BROWN:
Yeah, clients. And the reason why I point this out is because I was sharing a new business development guy, "Hey, here's who we are. DEI is important to us. This is a real thing. We talk about this, we embrace this, but you may lose business and opportunities trying to sell us that you won't lose selling somebody else." And he just looked at me very nicely and he said, "I don't even know what DEI is." I'm like, "Well, that's diversity, equity and inclusion," and had to go through this thing. Well, I wasn't saying he couldn't learn and figure out how to really mesh and grow with us, but what he realized was going, "I'm really not in it for that." That's not wrong. But that's one of those things that I wanted to make sure that people understood some of the challenges.
And it's not just those challenges, but we're a young company. You know what it's like to be three years old. There's instability in a three year old marketing agency and that life is not for everybody. So in that interview process, I'm throwing things out like that. I'm talking about where we are from a diversity perspective. I'm talking about how much we change stuff. We change stuff a lot. And historically, I've learned for some people like that sends them in a tailspin. But I'm not the guy that's going to be like, "Hey, we know we're going the wrong direction, but I don't want to ruffle feathers, so we're not going to change anything." No, we're like, "Hit the brakes, stop, and let's get it going to the right direction." And that starts with me admitting that we make mistakes, we have failures and getting on the right track, but it's just being super committed to who you are, who you're figuring out that you are, who you want to be, and then doing a good job telling that story.
SKOT WALDRON:
I love it. It's cool. Let's talk about the diversity angle and you being a Black owned agency and running that. Because again, I will say going to design school, when I did, I think we had two Black guys that were in my graduating class. It was a small design school. There was a hundred of us that went to this private design school. And now I've gone back to teach at that school. Now the diversity has gone up. It's probably 60% white, but there's a lot more diversity in there. We're bringing Asian, Indian, African American cultures into that now. And I'm noticing that uptick of diversity happening, which I love seeing in those graduating classes coming up.
But I will say, and there is a but, when you go to conferences, when you go to places where there's agency leaders, it is full of white males. Right? There's a few white females in there, and then the Black population is even less than that, right?
TRAVIS BROWN:
Sure.
SKOT WALDRON:
So leading the cause of this and seeing the need for it is there, and it's so cool that you're doing that. How are you being intentional about doing that, fostering it and being a voice for it?
TRAVIS BROWN:
Well, I think that yes, we're getting better. And I think there are more and more creatives of color that you see. We are not seen as agency owners. And I think that's really the gap right now. And because truthfully, it's hard. I mean it's hard for anybody to own agency, but when they talk about lack of capital opportunities and showing up and figuring out, I mean, I had a banker this year tell me that they wouldn't lend money because of where we were financially. However, the caveat was because one of the last Black businesses that they loaned money to like that caused some problems, didn't pay their bills and kind of put him in a tough situation. So he didn't want to go out and limb for me right now, there's a whole bunch of issues in that in itself. But here's really why our internal passion is so important, which if you rewind it back to what I said was through our excellence, we're paving the way for other Black owned agency owners, creatives, business owners and executives.
And that's super important because a lot of people believe in today's environment that if I choose diverse, I'm not also choosing talented. That's why our campaign was diverse and talented that we launched in 2022, doubled down here in 2023 because we want to show people that listen, we can have this diverse group of people that really have a standard of excellence. I know it sounds crazy for some people listening to this that we're actually talking about this in 2023, but it is a real thing and it's a real thing where we have to go and prove it. You can go to our website and you can check our work and you can see all the things that we've done and our proven track record, but it's a real challenge. So I challenge our people all the time with, "Hey, we have to be excellent." And that's hard when you're learning and growing, figuring stuff out to try to live at that standard. But we've kind of taken that as, "Hey, somebody has to do it and go through it and be out front." And so we're doing that.
As we film this, right now we're in Indiana. We're a suburb of Indianapolis, so we're in the Indianapolis market. We're the largest Black-owned marketing agency in Indiana with 13 full-time staff. So think about that, where if you look at on the other side of it, we're competing with people staffs that are a hundred plus. But in that 13 versus say the bigger agencies in our city that has 50 to 100, we have more people of color in an agency of 13 than they do in agencies of hundred. So that intentionality question means it's just that. It's intentional.
I had two male videographers on staff and we went to hire a third one. I said, "We will only hire a female because if we need diversity of thought on the set of shooting, I need a female that can see things that I'm not going to see." We made that mistake when the lady that we videoed was super shiny because we had four dudes looking at her going, "We thought it looked fine." The first woman that saw it went, "Well, sure she's going to not like that." So to have that diversity of thought, you have to have people that can experience it and that know it. So that was how intentional it was like, "We are going to hire a female." I didn't hire less standard, I just hired a female that was great. So I just think those are things that people have to be willing to intentionally go down in and say, "Okay, how can I really change my diversity?"
SKOT WALDRON:
How do we, and I say we in the creative world if there's creative agency owners listening to this, but I'll just say we as businesses. Diversity, equity and inclusion, belonging, all of that is a big deal across everywhere, corporate America. I was just having a phone call this morning with a client of mine, global organization, and she said to me, she was bringing this up to some of the people she's talking to. She was like, "Out of this entire support team, we have two women out of 90 something different positions. The rest are all men." And the titles are a little bit different that we give. There's just flags being raised everywhere. So back to my question. This isn't just an agency owner issue. I feel it because I've been close to it. You feel it because you're living it every day. What do we do? How could we start to make little bits of momentum? Because you're doing it within your sphere of your agency, but you've got to be a voice for the bigger industry as a whole. How do we though make little steps in what we do?
TRAVIS BROWN:
Well, part of this for me personally, is I'm using this platform and every platform that I have to have this conversation and hopefully on the other end of your audience right now, somebody's like, "Hey, I just didn't really think of it. That's cool." I understand everybody's at different spots in their journey right now of how they think about diversity, equity, and inclusion. I really focus on that E portion honestly, because we want to have a conversation with people about understanding about equitable opportunities. What that really means is that just because you put out an ad for a designer or a person in your company and only white male or female applied, that doesn't mean you shouldn't go on the fence to go find somebody. Equity means you got to go find people and give people opportunity. I'll give you the example.
I'm an Indianapolis, and so we have a quarterback issue. We've had a couple quarterback issues on our Indianapolis Colts. So what I know is that they're looking for a quarterback, but if only offensive linemen apply for their quarterback job, they're not just going to hire an offensive lineman. They're going to go seek out, being intentional, a quarterback to fill that role. And that's what we have to look at. So I challenge anybody that if you walk into your leadership team and they're only people with the skin tone as you, then you're not doing it right. And I'd also subscribe to the fact that you're missing on opportunities of diverse thought to be able to actually help your bottom line just because you're not really tapping into all the different thoughts and opportunities that are out there. But it does take people like yourself, having people like me on your show, but also then challenging other people that have big teams and leadership out there to say, "Hey, what does this look like? And how can you be more intentional about the diversity in your organization?"
SKOT WALDRON:
Unlocking diverse thought. Yeah. Because that's really what we're getting to here is the fact that there's a history of voices not being heard or voices not being given a chance or voices being almost suppressed or not acknowledged because of the lack of diversity. There's this mentality, and we're battling that every day as a culture and as a society and as businesses and just people in general. But that's the gold is that we're missing out on those voices and that diverse thought. And we've been like this with blinders on without hearing that. And that's just been a huge, huge loss I think for a lot of us over the course of the years.
TRAVIS BROWN:
I think as leaders, we have to look at... As leaders go, there's a comfort level that we all have around, if we have a position open, how I'm going to fill it. If we need somebody at our leadership, how I'm going to fill it. And there's a safe option of familiarity. And there's this other option that's like, "Well man, how do I really open my horizon to have somebody at the table that can really challenge how I think, what I do, how I've prepared things?" And we've done this from a religious perspective. Listen, I'm a Christian. I love Jesus. That's who I am. But man, not everybody thinks that way. So when you enter that to the equation, it challenges you. If you think about LGBTQ+, if you think about that realm, maybe outside of your realm and your comfort loan of what you've been exposed to, but it will change your thought process.
At the end of all of this, here's what happens, and this is my own personal belief is that the more diverse we make our internal circles, our cultures and our company, the more love and respect we have for our differences and the easier it is to accept and respect them, which ultimately changes our world. I didn't mention this, but when I was on my anti-bullying tour, I talked about this with kids a lot, but really it was about the parents. I used to have a line that I said, "Hey parents, you teach your kids how to treat other kids." No kid goes to school and just on his own comes up with, "I'm going to be a jerk." That's a learned skill from typically a mom and a dad, a parent, a guardian, some family member.
But if we start to interact differently, surround ourselves differently, challenge our own biases and thoughts, it softens us up, changes, and we start going, "I never thought of that that way." And now we can teach our kids different and now we have the ability to do it. So you're right. It's about unlocking that mindset to diverse thoughts.
SKOT WALDRON:
Gold, gold, gold. What are we doing here, man? How do we get in touch with you? If there's something we want to talk to you more, my audience is tapping into you, I've got agency people that want to talk to you, or I've got people that just want to maybe work with you and bring some diversity into their vendor pool. How do people do that?
TRAVIS BROWN:
Yeah. We are a certified MBD national supplier of diversity, MBD, which is the Minority Business Designation. So we do work with people on that. But our website is mojoup.com where you can see all of our work, all that stuff. You can reach out to me. LinkedIn. All my social media is @TravisJaydenBrown. I'll make sure everybody has that. Would love to have any conversation. Anybody that's just going, "Okay, dude, it sounds cool, but I don't really know how to do it." I'd love to jump on a call and help anybody out.
SKOT WALDRON:
You're a rockstar, man. Thank you, Travis. Appreciate it. It's been a good talk.
TRAVIS BROWN:
Thanks for having me. I appreciate being here.
SKOT WALDRON:
I think we finally got to it and what the payoff was was that unlocking of the diverse thought, that thinking that we just don't get enough of because we're so stuck in our own minds and our own circles of influence and who we surround ourselves with. We surround ourselves with people that think like us and the people generally that think what we think and believe what we believe and all those other things, which isn't a bad thing. That's just kind of what we do as human beings. But to be intentional, to seek out different ways of thinking is powerful. And I think we're losing out on that when we don't bring in diverse cultures into our sphere, when we don't surround ourselves with different conversations, when we don't think about possibilities of different ways of thinking, when we're so siloed into our own thoughts and mindset, we are not opening up opportunity for others and ourselves.
This is not just a touchy feel. And Travis said this when we got off the call. He said, "This is a business thing. This is a business opportunity." It's not just a feel good thing. It's a business opportunity. And I think that if we start to grasp that idea that it's not just about humanity, it's about business and opportunity and strength and all kinds of things within our culture, we're going to make some waves and we have to start thinking that way. So I'm grateful for Travis. Appreciate you being on the show. If y'all want to find out more about me, you can go to skotwaldron.com. There you'll find a lot of my information. You will find some of these recordings. Find me on LinkedIn and connect with me there. I love having conversations and like, subscribe, comment on this YouTube channel. Please, please, please and get the word out. I really appreciate it. See you next time on another episode of Unlocked.
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