Greg Hill, founder of marketing consultancy BrandBirth

0:00 The topics and opinions expressed in the following show are solely those of the hosts and their guests, and not those of W FOURCY Radio. It's employees are affiliates. We make no recommendations or endorsements radio show, programs, services, or products mentioned on air or on our web. No liability explicitor implies shall be extended to W four cy Radio or it's employees are affiliates. Any questions or comments should be directed to those show hosts. Thank you for choosing W FOURCY Radio. Churchill said, those who failed to learn from history are condemned to repeat it. Kevin Helenan believes that certainly applies to business. Welcome to Winning Business Radio here at W four CY Radio. That's W four cy dot com and now your host, Kevin Helena. Thanks everybody for joining in today.

0:54 I'm Kevin Hallanan and welcome back to another episode of Winning Business TV and Radio. We're on W four cy dot com. We're streaming live on Talk four TV in addition to on Facebook and that's at Winning Business Radio, and of course we're available in podcasts after the live show on many other platforms including YouTube, iHeartRadio, Spotify, Apple, pretty much wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. The mission of the show winning business radio and TV, as regular listeners know that viewers as well, is to offer insights and advice to help people avoid the mistakes of others, to learn best practices, right, that's the how tos, the what toos, the what not tos, and to be challenged and certainly and hopefully to be inspired by the successes of others.

1:38 But you know, virtually every successful person that I've ever had a chance to talk to has had some form of failure in their lives and careers. So, like I say, every week, while we all have to get our knees scraped once in a while, I'm driven to keep those scrapes from needing major surgery. Let's endeavor to learn from history so we don't repeat it today. My guest is Greg Hill, founder of marketing consultancy brand Birth. Here's his bio. Greg Hill has earned a reputation as a transformational leader and entrepreneur with a unique ability to redefine and reinvigorate brands. His experience runs the gamut from senior level positions at multinational and advertising agencies to serving as a principal in several boutique agencies. In these roles, he's been fortunate to advise some of the world's leading brands, including Sony, Mattel, Microsoft, Virgin Land, Rover, Jaguar, and Oakley. He may be best known for opening Lunch Lunch Advertising almost said Launch Lunch launched Lunch Now Lunch Advertising, where he managed the launch there. It is a national rollout of Red Bull Energy Drake.

2:38 Greg currently serves his clients through Brand Birth, a marketing consultancy dedicated to creating viable brand foundations for new and evolving brands. Through Brandbirth, Greg partners with dynamic, entrepreneurial brands looking to define and execute on their brand promise and present their story to consumers in more innovative, empathetic, and unexpected ways. Over that time, Greg has also acted as in house chief marketing officer for several of his clients, including Bo's Spirits, where where he supervised all aspects of the branding and launch of the first line of fruit infused spirits, and Bare Humboldt, the legendary Humboldt County cannabis extraction and technology brand. Earlier, Greg was a senior vice president at Young and Rubicam brands, where he was tasked with creating a new operating division responsible for developing and staging more innovative and non traditional marketing efforts for a roster of multinational brands. Prior to Young and Rubicam, Greg was a partner at several nationally renowned creative agencies to manage the introduction of Red Bull to the Northern American market. As you heard, Greg opened the storied Lunch Advertising Agency. Under his leadership, Lunch established itself as a vital agency during an industry wide recession, growing in one year to fifty plus employees spread over four offices with one hundred million in billings. As a result, Greg was featured in a featured Excuse me in a cover story in Adweek, and the agency itself was identified by Creativity magazine as one of the ten hot new agencies in the US. Before launch, Greg served as the

4:11 managing director of the M one Agency, best known for staging the broad based consumer launch of Oakley Sunglasses. He also served as agency foreman I Love This Name at G and M Plumbing, growing agency buildings tenfold and developing award winning work for clients including Del Taco, HBO Video THHQ Video Games, and Red Robin Restaurants. Greg graduated with highest departmental honors from Claremont McKenna College with a double major in literature and political science. Greg's wife of twenty five years this August is Jamie. They have a twenty year old daughter named Lulu, and their dog parents to Franny, a Golden Retriever that's beloved by literally every person who's ever met her, and I believe that, as Greg says, they're total dog people. At one point they had six Greg, welcome to Winning Business Radio and TV. Thanks for being here, Thank you for having me.

5:00 I appreciate it, my pleasure. It's been a bit. Tell us about Jamie. Let's start with the good stuff. Yeah, great, Jamie's awesome. Jamie is. There's the Beach Boys song with the line God only knows what I'd be without you, And that's essentially I think of her, because whatever I am, or whatever my failings are, she has put up with me. Bless her heart, and and sort of been right there in the middle of guiding and directing and leading my life. So yep, and Lulu, your daughter, She's equally awesome in her own twenty year old way. She's just couldn't be smarter and funnier. Yeah, she's up at school up in the Bay Area, and she has no idea what she wants to do. She loves working with kids. Kids love her. She's got something that they just think she's the coolest person in the world. And she loves art and there may be something in that intersection for her. So but I'm in no hurry for her to figure it out. They keep trying to tell her, your twenties are of the decade of not knowing, like the entire decades. To take advantage of that, and we'll go from there. Well, when I grow up, I hope to make some of my out of myself. So I'll keep you tuned. Uh. And of course the star is of the family's probably Franny tell us about Franny's actually asleep right here, but she sleeps well, so I know this is don't have a dog in the room. Yeah, she's ten now, which is crazy, but she's just she's the perfect golden retiever. She goes to what she understands to be the people park right the dye, and she just goes from person to person to person. And as I see she's she's every dog own her second favorite dog because she knows exactly how to work the crowd and they love her.

6:30 So so I know you asked a question. We'll get to this. I won't explain. We'll explain, you know, probably after the first break. But I'm an Isle and I'm a dog person. That's the part I want to get to, a dog person. But everyone will know what that what we mean by ale or window a little bit. But so let's get a little bit of background. Tell us where you grew up. So I was born in Santa Cruz, but but I was relatively young when we moved to Orange County, and that's really where I grew up. And I always viewed Orange County is a good place to grow up in a better place to leave. I was never moving back. I went to the school at a small school outside of LA and then really had the bulk of my career in Los Angeles. Then, once we had our daughter, my wife had also grown up in a different part of Orange County. She really wanted to move back.

7:15 I really didn't. And here we are, and we're back. So they raised our daughter down here and now she's out of the house. The question is Okay, where next kind of how it works, right? Yeah, Yeah, I ended up in the city. I grew up in the suburbs of a town called Midfield, about twenty something miles south west of Boston. But I've been in Rosendale, a neighborhood in Boston for a long time, many years, almost forty because of my wife. I don't regret it. It's great, by the way. But so what made you choose Claremont mckenn I always liked to and I don't know much about the school. I always like to just get a sense as to what people were thinking and also what your early interests were. Right, So Claremont when I went there, there were eight hundred and fifty students there. There are five schools of the Claremont colleges together, and I think there are four thousand students, So it's small, which I loved. I've always just super involved in school, and I wanted to go someplace where I could stay sort of the heart of everything.

8:09 But the thing that stealing for me I played water polo in high school, really competive water polo, but I knew I didn't want to do d one polo. It was it's your life. Yeah, and IoT it, but I was done with that level of commitment. But Claremont had the best sort of D three program nationally. But the first time I went out there, I went out with a buddy and the guy's walking us around campus. I remember his name was Mark Cuff, his nickname was Muff, and every single person we walked by just said, hey, mof pay up, like like everyone knew everyone. I thought, this, this is where I want to be. I want to be in a place where I where I know everyone, And yet you have these other schools so you can always go out and meet someone new. But I just loved the interacy it was. It was a good college, and it was a rigorous college, and it was such a different time because it was the only school I applied to. I applied early admission by November of my senior year. I was done with the whole same in the school, right, and it's such a different world now I'm just poor kids. Yeah, So why English and polyscid just straight up liberal arts, just thinking and ideas. I mean, that's really and in retrospect, I would have traded out the polic side for history. There was a moment in time when I thought, oh maybe I'll be in politics, So that was sort of naturally part of it. But it is really just a focus on ideas and communication. I always say to my daughter, if you can write and you can talk, you can do anything, and the people who understand what that thing is will work for you. And I believe that, like the ability to communicate and express an idea is everything. You

9:43 know. It's funny I had a troika. Doesn't mean we don't need to explain that word, by the way, but I had a troika earlier today and you know, small network group meeting of three people for lunch. Okay, I guess I did explain the word. But the question was, you know, why do better people get into politics? And the answer was would you I spent well, other people were spending a semester, a broader year abroad. I spent a semester in Washington, DC, took classes at Georgetown and work on Capitol Hill, and and he thought I had about going into politics was dashed, you know, while I was a junior in college. Because the people, I think still many people go in genuinely wanting to help, but the trade offs are so immediately apparent and the just the crushing of one's spirit and it's it's depressing. And again, I think they're really good people. I think the real heroes are the sort of lifetime people who aren't elected, who are running, you know, the day to day of government.

10:39 Those are the people who are truly dedicated. So when did you know you wanted to get into advertising slash marketing? So the second semester senior year, I looked up and sort of realized that I had to get a job. And I had sort of let me give you the second The follow up is how'd you get the first job? So I might go ahead, I'll do this right. So I was like, oh I I oh, I have to work. And I spent a lot of time, again going back to being a small school, I spent a lot of time throwing parties. There was actually a budget for throwing parties, and I would do themes for the parties and flyers and promotions. It was just fun for me. And I'm at one of these parties I've thrown and I'm talking to this cute young woman and she says, you should go into advertising, And I said, you're right, I should go into advertising, and literally out that appealed to me. It was very broad and so you do the thing, you send out the resumes, you meet the people, each person, intership, you go through that whole thing. And then at the same time four doors down for me was the son of the chairman of Gray Advertising, and he's like, you need to meet my dad. When in we hit it off.

11:50 He believed in the school, so I sort of had a leg up. This was also back when the people had training programs, like they invested in people just to them. At that point in time, their training program had only ever been MBAs. I was the first person to get in with just an undergraduate degree. But it was such a fantastic opportunity and that was really the jumping off point for it. Cool. All right, this is a question. It might cause you to think, and this will be the question that will probably take us into our first break. Okay, from that experience of getting that first job Gray Advertising, you there for a good junk of time, six years. That's significant for a first job. I think, I know times were different than they are now, and I know that makes us sound all well, but what was your key lesson learned from that experience?

12:37 My key lesson learned from that experience is is it was a great training in a hundred different ways. But I am not someone who can work in a corporate environment. I am not someone who can go and be one of a really big group of people working every day and doing the same thing every day, which which really teed up well. First of all, when I left Gray and I've been in a relationship since college, they both tend to end. I left the country for a year, I packed a backpack, I cashed out. Fortunately Grave was very fiscally conservative, so there was essentially retirement money. But I literally I left to leave Gray, and then when I came back, it was much more focus on what can I do, what might create, And part of that was that second phase of my career where I started opening my own agencies. But that was really the take.

13:22 I mean, great training, how to write, how to think, how to communicate, all those things, but really, okay, I can't work in it. I can't go into an office every day for these hours and do this thing. It ain't me and I'm not good at it. That's a good answer. That's a good answer. All right, We're going to take our first break. It's just about a minute, we'll be right back with Greg Hill. Excellent. You're listening to Winning Business Radio with Kevin Helene on W four CY Radio. That's W four cy dot com. Don't go away. More helpful information is coming right up right here on Winning Business Radio.

14:03 Have you ever dreamt of being on the radio, Well, now it's your chance. Be a radio show guest on the number one ranked internet radio station and promote you and your business for free. Yes you heard it, free business advertising right here on W four cy dot com. Call five six one five zero six four zero three to one now to get booked on one of our shows. That's five six one five zero six four zero three one. Get your free advertising now. And now back to Winning Business Radio with Kevin helenan presenting exciting topics and expert guests with one goal in mind to help you succeed in business. Here once again it's Kevin Helena. We're back with Greg Hill. He's the founder of Marketing Concer. To see brand birth.

15:01 We're going to talk more about that in a bit. And so I don't want to go through every work experience, but can you share some key lesson learn lessons learn either from a campaign or from a mentor or a boss or a particular role. I know you were at M one after that was like second job or somewhere in there early, but can you reflect on some of that. I know it's a while ago, but being a best well, I think there were two I'd love to call the mentors, but that might be a little presumptuous. But the founder of Oakley, Jim Jynard, and the founder of Red Bull Deetrich Mode Shits. Both of them had this insight and this understanding of the difference between branding and marketing, of the idea of more empathetic connections, of the idea of how you really you identified the people you care about the most, and not how to sell with them, but how to help them and between them. Those two were so sort of formative in my understanding of what I do now and this idea of how you remove yourself from the utilitarian sense of what will it cost to get someone to do the thing I want them to do, as opposed to who do I care about? How can I help them? And how do they you know, how do I invite them in to be a part of my club on their own terms? So those two were really sort of the foundational I think influenced for me. So I got asked, did you come up with the wings?

16:21 So the wings is actually the original. It's it's German, and it's it's much it's a much more elegant statement in German. It flows a little bit. Spell it wrong, by the way, I'm teasing, they spell it wrong. There's multiple eyes. I forget how many eyes are, but yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But but the way that that job happened was Red Bull. What they did in every and they were already in a dozen countries by the time they came to us, and what they did in every country is it would just sort of hire a local agency to translate or transliterate the work that was created Germany. It's just it was just function here, do this. To their credit, they realized that the US couldn't be handled that way, that it needed to be something genuine and authentic and reflect you know, this culture. And so instead of finding the hiring an agency, we actually built an agency from scratch with around red Bull as a first client, and then built it out from there. But that allowed us to sort of take the culture to be immediately integrated into and I'm talking.

17:22 When we started, there was you know, twenty eight people at Red Bull in one test market, like it was, and people just thought I was insane to leave my you know, cool oacally agency to do a risky account like Red Bull. Yeah. Well they're like, there's no such time. Yeah, there's no such thing as an energy drink. You can't just make up a category. Normal will ever spend two dollars on eight ounces of yellow sugar water. You know you're throwing your career away. But as I say, degit modists had such a vision. He's far and away. He's just passed last year, which is that, but not just the wealthiest person I've ever worked with directly from his work, but the one most deserving of every dollar stood exactly what he was doing there, and so it was so the job was to take what they'd done and reframe it for the American market and make because it is a brand all about personal connection. So what was the biggest challenge of starting Lunch? And then part of that answer as well is Hodu land red Bull. Well, so the biggest challenge of starting Lunch was bringing other people in who who could understand the vision when it was a complete unknown, right, bringing a creative partner in bringing people to then ultimately you know, in addition, this was our core offices in Santa Monic, but Open Ups is in Chicago and Tribeca and Miami and people to run those.

18:45 And it was a very unique kind of person who could look through all the doubt and go, oh, this is something important. This is something that is you know, groundbreaking. And the way that I the way I was brought into it the head of the guy who owned the office in uh well, technically in Frankfurt, but Red Bull is an Austrian company and he'd been longtime friends with Dietrich with the owner of Red Bull, and Red Bull has been owned by a guy. It is a privately held company. It remains a private hell company. Yeah, and he he's the one that found me when they'd made the decision we need to build an agency agency from scratch. And he was a writer and he kept meeting creatives and he realized really quickly, oh, I need someone who can actually run a business about the creatives.

19:30 And so someone connected him to me and the rest was history. Well, I do want to ask about G and M Plumbing. Yeah, it's a great name, right, that's a great name, foreman, And yeah, there were two founders, were gentlemen whose initials were G and M. And I laughed as I came in, is that they were both creatives and they brought me in as sort of the managing partner, the you know, doing all of that piece of it. And I said, yeah, you know, they could only hire someone whose first name star with a G, R and M. So it was a great limited window of applicants there. But just you know, the name reflects the culture. Really fun agency a really interesting model because they it was both the creative and the production house together and so it worked. There was never sort of going outside of the room and so a lot of TV production, a lot of great ideas. But yeah, just you get a sense of the culture from there. And then that was my role is to come in and they were very real, and I can say make them real, but get them to that next level of growthity and normalcy. Yeah, we'll toss out a fun fact for you.

20:33 The Boston based audiences, the viewers and listeners know, but there's a long time morning radio host in Boston named Greg Hill's. There was a Kansas City chief. There was a motorcrot it is. It is a weirdly, weirdly common name for Greg being a name. I like Greg because everyone knows the name, but it's not that common. But Greg Hill. There are a bunch of Greg Hills out there. So yeah. So being a Red Sox fan, uh, we were watching the four playoff series, during which the Red Sox finally won. But uh, the I don't know if you remember this. I don't know if you watch baseball at the time, but Pedro Martinez, you know, fiery guy. Well, Don Zimmer from the Yankees comes charging. I forget what had happened, you know, something at the play through a ball whatever, But Don Zimmer starts to charge Pedro, and Pedro kind of knocks him down like an ol a, like a bow.

21:30 And the announcer says, where's Kevin Hallinan? And my mother called, and a couple other people called. That was the then head of security for Major League Baseball. Nice. Nice, So I never met the guy, but say, check, that's it all right. So I'll mention a couple of companies. You tell us, maybe which one strikes you as where you learned the most or had something impactful. Young and Rubicon of course box spirits. I don't know how he pronounced is it how? Yeah? Yeah, So let's talk it. We can talk about yn R because that was an interesting that was sort of a for What happened was I just sold my stake in my last agency up in LA when we were moving back down to Orange County with a kidnall. And and again I didn't want to move down and I thought I was being clever by saying, okay, listen, if I can find a job, because I wasn't gonna start something from skyttry, then if I can find a job, we'll move. So it was sort of anti interviewing. I didn't want to move back down here. And and what happened is I met that you're betting against yourself and throwing the game. That's exactly exactly, and it didn't work. I still lost. I met the chairman of yn R, and at that point in time, it's this this agency in Orange County whose roster is therefore is Sony is Land, Rover is Jaguars, and Microsoft is like this astonishing blue chip roster for this you know, concrete tilt up and an anonymous business party. But they were it was this was going back to you know, sort of web two point zero, and

23:03 they were still completely reliant on TV. It was all TV, it was all credit spot and I, you know, part of my anti interview and he was a great guy. Did Murphy, the CEO of yan R time. I said, look, you know, what are you doing here? Like everything is a TV spot and you came up with a spot, you sell it, and then you do everything. You've got to go the other way, stop relying on TV. Start thinking about how to make these genuine connections even with brands that size. You know, there's an opportunity for this to be something else. He's like, fine, you do it. It's like no, no, someone else just say so. I ended up opening a division called brown Swell, which is a name I really liked I came up with. But the idea was, how do we shift dollars away from just this knee jer sell a TV spot and then build stuff around it, to find these ways to engage even on these big global brands, in more genuine ways. Find ways to do long form, find ways to do events, and ways to do all these different things and shift away from just we make TV and then we spin stuff out of it. And that was a great experience. That's that's a good one right there. Let's see, oh, bare Humble, that's an interesting one to me. Yeah. So I as a rule, I try not to work in any industry on a repeat basis. I'm a huge believer in what I call the genius of stupidity.

24:29 Like the red experts get hired to tell you everything, and that is not my job. My job is the opposite. My job is to come in and ingest as much information as possible and sort of drive meaning out of it. The only industry that I work in pretty consistently is cannabis, and there's a couple of reasons for that. One is that for a brand guy, it's so fun. I mean, it's pure commodity, right, It's it's dirt, water, a seed in your story, right, and so it's it's fantastic in that way. Also, at this point in time, people work in the industry are really cool people. They're in it for the right reasons. They want to see things happen responsibly but move forward, and so so it works there. So there was a really fun assignment and sort of sad in the sense that Humble has really gotten hurt weirdly by legalization. If anyone knows anything about the California, Canada's market, it's struggling. And you have all of these farmers up there, you know, second generation farmers with all the institutional knowledge. They do grow the highest quality cannabis that's grown really anywhere on the planet. And they needed help, and there is doing a really good job of trying to defend the local farmers, of working with them, of partnering them, and you know, trying to just keep them alive and get them through the sort of the hard times. So it was it was great opportunity there. It was great to be up because it's mecca as cannabis goes, right, and it's everything you want to understand about the culture about people founded it. It's really interesting. The reason Humble is as humbled

26:00 isn't because the people went there to grow weed. It was really the whole all the back to the land in the late sixties, people leaving society and people not happy with what was happening everywhere else, and they all moved there because it was off the grid, and then sort of accellently discovered that it is the perfect environment, the perfect sort of you know it's the weather, it's the breeze, it's the you don't need a greenhouse. And and sort of accidentally we're like, oh, this is what this is what happens here. That's cool, all right? So through all these I mean, you founded brand birth in six and you've obviously had other projects both in house outsourced, uh not, project relationships and campaigns, et cetera. What was behind this prop This question will take us to the next break the founding of brand Birth trying to not do anything anymore. So, I am my career has gotten I've been getting smaller and smaller and smaller by design. I was at big agencies and I had my own agencies. And there were a couple of things about bram Birth. And the first one was once I'd sold my last agency, it was done with that. I had this really long list of what I didn't want to do anymore, right, employees, leases, over all that stuff. Yeah, and this really short list, which was creators, owners, entrepreneurs. These people need help, they need protection. They know what they know, they know why they started their business, but they have no idea how to really tell their story. And that was sort of

27:33 the jumping off point for what I have now and over time, it really is just focusing on this one single element, which is the thing before everything else. Why do you exist? And why does anyone care? On their own terms? I like that good answer. We're at the bottom, almost the bottom of the hour. We're going to take a break right here. About another minute. We'll be right back with Greg Hill. Excellent. You're listening to Winning Business Radio with Kevin Helene on W four CY Radio. That's W four cy dot com. Don't go away. More helpful information is coming right up right here on Winning Business Radio. The yp dot com website is your local search engine. If you're looking for a good restaurant, it can help you find the right one nearby with ratings and reviews. Or if your car breaks down, you can use the YP app to find the closest repair shop, or maybe you're just looking for something to do on a Friday night.

28:32 While it has great local coupons for all sorts of things in your area. No matter what, when or where. If you're looking for something, YP local search can help you find it. So go to YP dot com or download the app to search local, find local, and save local and now back to Winning Business Radio. With Kevin Helene, presenting exciting topics and expert guests with one goal in mind to help you succeed in business. Here once again is Kevin Helena. We're back with Greg Hill, founder of marketing consultancy Brand Birth, and let's see. Okay, So now I want to dig into the work that you're doing now, you know, today, for whom, et cetera. So, first of all, you raised a question on your website. I thought it was a great question. What is brand?

29:29 Yeah, and that's the question. And I think one of the challenges when I when I'm working with a client, one of the things we're always talking about is who is your enemy? And your enemy is not the competition or some perception, some ideas and whatever. Brand Birth enemy is the many and varied uses of the word brand, right, It's used to covering multitude of sins out in the world. And it's and that's really where I get on my little soapboxes, is the idea of designers and brand colors and brand loaders and brand. When I'm working on a brand, I always warn a client. I always say brand is a agnostic there is no design at all attached. When we're working on a brand strategy. It is. It is aerial on white, as I tell them. If I can't get you all sort of goosebumpy just with words on a page, then yeah. I think David Byrne had a quote I loved. He said talking Againstbury. He said, uh said, words are a trick to get you to listen to music for longer than you otherwise would and that and design is a trick to get you to feel something that you otherwise wouldn't feel. And so I want to, you know, I always want to sort of move that outside. So brand, you know, people see The simplest answer is brand is a promise, but brand is a culture. Brand is the idea of understanding why you're here, why you exist, and why people want to be a part of you. And that may be working for you, that maybe inviting them in on their own terms. But I think the idea is you can't chase people.

30:48 You plant your flag. You're able to say in the clear, simplest terms, this is what I believe in, this is what we do, this is why we're here, and if you're with us, join us, and in doing that, that's when you have the opportunity for people to you know, take up your flag and become your sort of evangelist, because the other thing about brand is that any great brand is polarizing, right that. You know, you have to have enemies to have friends. And we say you, everyone's fine with vanilla, but no one will walk across the street for it. But there's a flavor of ice cream that you love and I hate, and you'll walk ten blocks to get it. Oh want ten blocks next to you to tell you how awful it is exactly sort of bolsters your passion for it. And that's what that's what you're looking for. You're looking for something that isn't broad and applicable to everyone. You're looking for something that that you know what Jim Jinnard, the founder of Vocally, always called the first five rows. There's people right here in front of you. Those are the only ones you care about, and everyone else will figure it out from there. Yeah. I noticed you use two words, connection and emotion.

31:45 Yeah, yeah, I think those the two go hand in hand, and brand should be I'm very proud of the fact that every single client I've worked with and these are owners, right, these are their babies, and that's what they all have in common. It's all different industries, it's all different sizes, but they own this, not just financially but emotionally. And I want to get them at least welling up at one point and during the process and all of them because they're finally seeing their belief system what they've always wanted to say, but it hasn't connected in a way that now everyone's going to feel what they feel about it. And that's the key. That's really good, all right, for the audiences, we have viewers, we have listeners.

32:27 Can you differentiate branding for marketing? Yes, I can, and I think it's a really important differentiation. I think that that brand is the process of understanding who you care about, what they need, and how you can help. Marketing collectively is the process of getting someone to do what you want them to do at the lowest possible cost. Now that's critically Now, that's that's marketing, right, That's a key thing, and everyone needs to do it. But if you do the marketing without having done the branding first, it's so self interested and so forced and so sort of jaded or contrived in a way, right, you really turn people off because they see that all you're doing is like Hey, hey, can I for a buck ninety where you buy my thing? Right? And as I've got a spam folder, junk folder full of those right now. So yeah, yeah, And so that's it's And the idea is it's not an either or right. Marketing is mar marketing is the absolutely the journey. But brand is the map. You know what I mean? You and you can go on the journey without a map, and you may eventually get there and it will be long and painful, or you can end the time to know where you are where you're going and get there really efficiently. So I've interviewed a lot of authors and I ask about inspiration, where do your ideas come from? And I know that's probably not an easy question to answer, where does that inspiration and idea come from? You know, the socause my brain doesn't work that way. And that's why I'm asking, Yeah, well, and it's it's a hard thing.

33:53 So a huge part of my process is I'm really really believe in quality tative research. I've had clients where I do sixty or seventy hours of one on one interviews, and that's that's the c suite, you know first, or the leadership team or they want to call it. And that's the second circle of employees. And I like to start with the c suite because they're going to tell you what you already sort of know, but they talk first until you get that out of the way. But it gives you a frame because when you talk to the employees and the you know, like I want to talk to employees like or, here are my ten best employees, I'm like, thank that's not the list I want. I want the one who quit and it's come back. I want the one who hears every you know, I have a very specific list, and they start to understand. But when you talk to the employees, they're like, oh, yeah, they said this right, so let me tell you. And part of the deal is that everything is absolutely confidential. I will, you know, I will use specific verbatims when I'm trying to express a point, but I want to attribute them. And then the third circle is clients, and it's the same way. They're like, well, here's my best clients, like thanks, where are the ones who fired you? And you don't know why? Where are the ones who've never or hired you even that you've pitched them three times?

35:01 And there is a little reticent, but those people are never malicious. They're happy to help. One of things I found that's really interesting is when you talk to people who have fired your clients, Invariably they don't really tell the client why because they don't want to have the argument at that point, right and and so, But they'll so they get some benign answer. It gets out of our control. But usually it's usually it's accompanied by at this time, yeah right right right. But but they'll tell me honestly simply, you know, friendly and so that works out in that way. So I once I have all the all the one on one interviews, and I sort of have gotten good at this thing where I can have the conversation separately, be kind of typing the transcript as it were. The absolutely unscientific part of the job is then I have the stack of transcripts, I walk on the beach, I have a recorder, I talk to myself and I just start unread. I just start making connections. I look at five people have said the same thing in five different ways, as a rabbit hole there to go down, and it's as unscientific it is the best the knowledge I've always had is it's that string that tangle of Christmas lights and you just keep tugging at it, and at one point it's like, oh, there you are, there, it got it now. And and so that's that is the the most unscientific part, which is also why I can't really scale. I can't have you. I've got to you know when we go to the second half, which is the agency part of the business and all the resources. But

36:31 for the brand part, it is me and one person who sort of runs my life because I know what I'm good at and on I'm bad, bad running my life. That's right, But it really is just that's that's the part I think that's that's hard to explain or hard to you know, quantify. So you've mentioned unscientific. I get that, and I know about you know how, I don't know how, but I know you measure results after the fact. Do you know sometimes that you have a home run before you're able to measure, because I'm sure you measure it. Yeah, oh yeah, no, there there are some that are so uh, I hit a moment and I hid my idea and and it's like, yeah, that's that's it. And and that tends to happen, you know, knock on wood.

37:15 That's the goal every single time out is because I just keep sort of digging at it until they have they until it's there, until until I've sort of found that thing. And you know, with the clients, you know their reaction, right, they're they're like, oh oh. And that's the real fun of it is is an owner showing an owner a way to talk about a thing that they created in ways they've never understood, and they've been frustrated, like I, you know, I can't I can't get this problem. Why I can't I communicate this? And so that that's the joy of it. I mean, that's the part that I love so much. I'm very very very lucky to do what I do. I love what I do so much, and and so you know, it keeps from going. It shows in the way you're answering these questions, what are some of the more subtle problems that you help clients solve. There's always culture, there's always disconnects with their team, with their management style. And one of the things we rewarn them is is sort of after doing all the one on ones and doing my own sort of brainstorming and putting this together, the first really big meet and what I sort of benignly call a brand workshop is at least a half day, and it's not about brand. It's about let me tell you the story of what's going on in your own company, let me show you why, and connect the dots and sort of have this linear narrative from beginning to end. And invariably in that there are some sensitive or touchy there are things that you sort of got to put out there. But I've also found that's how that's how I earn their trust. All of my business, all of

38:50 it is inbound referral. I realized over time can't I can't do any cold outbound. I can't convince someone they need a new brand, no matter how empirically wrong their brand may be at the point if they don't already have some doubt about it. So I have some level of trust, but it's borrowed. It is because someone said to them, you need to talk to this guy. Moving forward from the brand workshop of that, now I've earned the trust. Now they're open to everything we're going to do after that, and that's really when we start creating all the moving pieces of the brand. All right, So this is the obligatory question and you have a unique way of answering this, and I tend to agree with your answer. By the way, how would you describe your ideal client? So one of the things is that all of the traditional it's this size, it's this industry, none of that matters. My ideal client is an owner, someone who has that passion and is building that business, who realizes that, for whatever reasons, their vision isn't being communicated inside and outside the company, and they and they're open to the fact that we're going to radically reinvent their understanding of themselves in a way that even though it appears like a radical reinvention out here, they still see the essence of who they are and what they do in it. Right.

40:10 So I'm not freaking them out. I'm not like, yeah, we'll change your business model. But but they have to be open. They have to be willing to embrace change in a foundational way. And they and they need to be able to realize that brand isn't a sales and marketing tool. It is even near over everything inside and outside, right, it is the absolute sort of surface of every interaction, every engagement team to team, internal, external, You know, every single way and are your clients, like like ours, and like most these days, geography doesn't matter a whole lot. Domestics, international, big versus small, really doesn't matter. No, no, no, and I it's it is really important. I mean, obviously, since the world ended and came back to life and we've sort of been out there, there's there's been more and more people being more comfortable virtually.

41:00 I still I'm always going to be face to face, at least for a period of time. At the beginning, I'll spend a week sitting in offices. It's an excuse to do all the one on ones and things, but it's really just about absorbing a culture. It's just about sitting in a cube in the middle of everything and hearing it, hearing how they talk, seeing what the vibe and the energy level is, you know, and all those pieces of it, because otherwise it's sort of an academic exercise, right, and it has to go beyond that. Well. I noticed one example you wrote about where there was to call it a thirteen week engagement. Your comment was, you're going to spend six weeks ish understanding, right, learning, developing that information, you know, all that information that culture, et cetera. Yeah, yeah, if you sort of distill it down. There's there's two halves to the work. There's, in the simplest terms, there's ingestion and then expression. There's all the learning, all the bringing it in and just getting my head around it, and then sort of distilling it down into this pure, perfect crystalline essence, and then the abuilding it back up over the expression, you know, and then creating the language that reflects that.

42:05 And and so that's and the second half is really fun too, because that's when it starts to take shape. It's all very amorphis in the beginning, like what am I doing? What am I talking about? It's all big and broad. And then when you start feeling you know, purpose, which is always the first thing, why do you exist? Over and above what you do? Which is you know, first to say, how are you not a commodity? But more than that, what's your legacy? What are you doing? What are you leaving? Right? And and you if you start with that, it's so thirty thousand feet that that you invite them in to, you know, dream and imagine in that larger way. Now our most engagements of finite length or the ongoing. Yeah, so the brand project is a finite length and that and that's what it is is a project.

42:49 It's a fixed feed project. I can tell them every single week what's going to happen over the period of it. Then what happens is once we're done with this, you know, areil on white with the brand on on the page, then we sort of go the other way. I'll spend it six months at least with every client launching their business. Sometimes we take it down to the studs. Right. There is new names, there's new visual identity. A lot of times there's new logo because they realize it's tired. There's always new website, there's always new salesmen. Right, there's all the outbound expressions of it are different. But then some clients just sort of never leave. And I've realized that even though, you know, going back to my long list of what I didn't want anymore, the value of that for me is that I can continue to watch the brand as it sort of comes to life out in the world. And that's what the clients really just want to know is that I'm still I have my eye on it, even though I brought in these teams and built these teams to actually execute on it.

43:45 They just need to know that I'm still that first call. That's really good. All right, now this is just fun for me. Okay, there's one I'm an aisle, so explain that. Okay, I have a belief system and that is And one of the things I'll always ask clients is window or aisle. Windows, vision, aisle is function, And it's very it's insight to me into a client of which way they answer. And then you get the clients who are like, well, I have my own plane, like you can't imagine going back to when you weren't so but but and that helps me understand early on because again those are questions, especially with founders with owners, that there's a set of questions like that I like to talk about. But but if someone is a window, that is someone who who is thinking, looking, who is open and outback. If someone is an aisle, that is because they are working their function, their they're head down, they're doing their thing, and they view a plane specifically as an opportunity to shut out the world and get stuff done, as opposed to viewing a plane specifically as a time to think and imagine and you know, look at a horizon. That's good I loved it. I had fun with that myself.

44:52 All right, you're a member board of directors of Pure Game. Tell people what pure is. Super So Pure Game is a charitable organized here in Orange County based on soccer. But what they do is they use sport to bring underprivileged kids sort of out after school, to give them a safe place to be, to give them a community. A lot of a lot of kids still who don't have parents at home at the end of the day. And so we set up programs, we have training, we have coaches, we're out on the fields, we're out with the kids, you know, in these areas, and it just is a way of first of all, keeping them safe, but also using sport as a way to teach you know, confidence, self respect, teamwork, all the things that we know that team sports do, and to do it, you know, at a relatively the age. These are elementary school kids, right maybe maybe through seventh grade, and so it's just it's wonderful in that way. And it's one of those things that you you know, I like knowing what I made. But when I had my agency, it was and I've talked to people about it.

45:57 It's maybe a random illusion, but way back. That is the X Files and the Vanity played at the end of it with this frockety sound, a little kid voice saying I made this and I always love that, like and you can picture like I made this right and and and that idea of and I would you know, talk to what I was interviewing, like this is the expectation at the end of the day, Like I want to know what you made, Like what did you actually do today? Because people can spend a whole lifetime in advertising and not doing anything but move paper across the desk, and so I think it's important that that you're looking for creators at every level. And so going back to the kids, that's a huge piece of it is what are you doing? What are you making? How are you building? How are you building a team? So it's fun, that is cool, All right, big question you may have already answered it without me knowing, But in your professional life, what are you most proud of?

46:49 Boy? That's a good no. I mean, I you know, I'm sorry, I just said, yeah, that's that's a hard question. Probably the narrow down, right, there's a there's there's always going to be a thing about Red Bull. There's always going to be a thing about like even now when I look and it shows up in the culture, and it's and it's and it's far beyond me at this point in time. But but I'm incredibly proud of having been there and having built that agency, you know, to work with them day one, because I think there was a foundational when we got them off on the right track. But beyond that, it's it's the thing I'm working on now. Is is much of a easy out answer that that may be. It's it's really is just in the moment, the thing that's happening right now. I'm doing a project right now with a set of of what they call Federal qualified Health centers uh serving deeply, deeply under serve East Los Angeles. And we had about three and a half months to they they lost their funding partner, they lost their name, and over the course of the you know, the last four months of last year, a rebrand, a new name and a complete relaunch and and watching the teams in the center is the pride that they have over there new name and their engagement.

48:00 And that's a big thing. Like it's always more about employees than clients or customers for me, Like so those are the people that you know, you know, And I do think of what I do and in the perfect world as being an inflection point in the lives of these companies, and so I'm just generally very proud of that work. That's awesome. All right, we're about to wrap up. What is the best way for people to reach out? We've put your brand ash birth url in the crawl. We put your email address on the crawl. Yeah, somebody wants to reach out? Is that the best way? Yeah? Yeah, the email is always going to be that's gonna be twenty four to seven. I'm gonna see that before anything else. If you're curious, you can go on the website, which is brandash birth dot com and you can see what that is. But yeah, and I always tell people like this ABE is more self serving than it is, but reach out. I love love having these conversations. And I'll spend an hour talking to anyone about their business, not pitching them. But it's just if I can give some things to think about, it's a little direction forward that that for me is time really well spent. It's a lot.

49:01 It's for you. It's nice. So i'd be a lawyer and have to account for every hour. Right, I can just spend an hour and hang out and talk to someone about their business and I love it, love it. Hey, thank you Greg for being here. I know you're really busy. I appreciate you taking the time out. Oh absolutely my pleasure. Thank you so much, Kevin, and thanks you know, anyone who's just start listening, I appreciate it. Thank you, and thank you all to your point for everyone for watching and listening. This is a show about business and business challenges. If you've got concerns about the growth of your company, feel free to reach out to me on Facebook or LinkedIn at Winning Business Radio, or you can drop me a note. One of my many email addresses I always say is Kevin at Winning Business Radio dot com. Our company is Winning Incorporated, part of sand Or Training. We develop sales teams into high achievers and sales leaders into true coaches and mentors. We're not right for everybody, but hey, maybe we should have a conversation. Thank you to our producer and engineer one for another job well done. Thank you one. Be sure to join us next week Monday May twentieth, when my guests will be here and writer of Sales acceleration. Until then, this is Kevin Hallanan.

50:05 You have been listening to Winning Business Radio with your host, Kevin Halenan. If you missed any part of this episode, the podcast is available on Talk for Podcasting and iHeartRadio. For more information and questions, go to Winning Business Radio dot com or check us out on social media. Tune in again next week and every Monday at four pm Eastern Time to listen live to Winning Business Radio on W four CY Radio w four cy dot com. Until then, let's succeed where others have failed and win in business with Kevin Haleanan and Winning Business Radio