290: Chris Gruler on Local Produce, Local Restaurants.
Telling the story that helps build business in a local market.
Chris has been in the branding/internet game for close to 12 years, using his strengths in branding, storytelling, website development, and online strategy for growth. He has worked with Fortune 500 companies, professional athletes, and small businesses who are looking to expand or protect their brand online.
Chris started ProtegeBranding.com in 2007 with the intent to assist companies and brands with their online presence. One such project dedicated to restaurants and local dining is ScottsdaleRestaurants.com where they create video reviews of local area restaurants to showcase the positive aspect of each restaurant! A key piece that they highlight is how each restaurant uses locally grown produce. Chris is all about telling stories and assists his customers in telling the right one for their brand!!Don’t miss an episode! Click here to sign up for weekly podcast updates
In This Podcast:
After spending some time in Major League Baseball, Chris Gruler recognized the benefit of a personal story and owning your own branding. He now works with companies big and small to help identify and promote their brands, a process that one of his projects is using to help promote the restaurants in his home town. This essential of building a marketing strategy is valuable to local food businesses as well.
Listen in and learn about:
- A baseball career that got benched and how he got started in the area of branding
- Starting his new career in branding for small business
- What “domaining” is and how this subculture affects businesses
- Creating a new brand of scottsdalerestaurant.com to showcase their branding and the local restaurants
- The importance of branding
- Reprograming thinking to not make money first year
- Getting sponsors to participate
- The business plan and how traffic is driven through the site and to the restaurants
- Understanding how to market in a hyper-local market
- Things to look at for branding and monetizing
- What is your story?
- The social strategy
- What is your demographic
- Cool recognition stories of times the restaurants say thanks
- Including the local produce into the story as a badge of honor for local eateries
As well as:
- His failure – The time they worked hard for weeks to get a project launched and then competing company launched a similar project before they could
- His success – The time he was pitching a big game and saw his parents in the stands; and getting affirmations from his parents when they see something he has done
- His drive – Living and leaving a legacy
- His advice – How do you eat an elephant? one bite at a time
Chris’s Podcast recommendations:
Tim Ferris podcast on businesses
Joe Rogan podcast on comedy
How to reach Chris:
Email: chris@protegebranding.com
Websites: protegebranding.com and scottsdalerestaurants.com
UrbanFarm.org/ProtegeBranding
