EW 047 – How Leaders Can Use Storytelling and Social Media To Stand Out In A Crowded Market – Winning with Bill Harper, CEO of BrandBossHQ

Gordon Sheppard (00:01.03)
Bill, welcome to the show.

BrandBoss - Bill Harper (00:03.544)
Thank you so very much for having me. It's a pleasure being here.

Gordon Sheppard (00:07.45)
Well, I got so lucky because as sort of a surfer of TikTok, where I'm looking for things to come into my world, you came into my world with clear messaging that really kind of kicked me in the butt without even meeting you about what I needed to think about around branding and those types of things. So there you were doing your thing. And that was sort of a big reason to reach out to you. And then getting a chance to pre-interview, learn a little bit about some of your deep history in this area was super valuable. And so I know this is going to be a wonderful

podcast where you're going to share one of your biggest wins but a lot of people haven't met you yet and if you had to introduce yourself what would you say?

BrandBoss - Bill Harper (00:44.206)
So I'm Bill Harper, I'm the founder and chief creative officer at BrandBoss HQ, and our big reason for being is teaching businesses the stories they need to tell so that they can scale.

Gordon Sheppard (00:56.602)
Why is it so important for businesses to figure out the story they need to tell?

BrandBoss - Bill Harper (01:01.304)
That is a phenomenal question. Almost every business suffers from what we refer to as better mousetrap mindset. And by that, I mean that they go and they create whatever it is that they do sunglasses or financial services or bubble gum or sunscreen, whatever. And they're so wound up in the development of their products and services that they want to tell the world about that. And so they go out and they say,

Look, look at our glasses. Our glasses are the best glasses ever. And then the next company comes along and they say, look, look at our glasses. They're the best glasses ever. And then the next company comes along and says the same thing. And when you talk to them, they all answer the same question the same way. What makes you different and unique? And they say, Bill, it's our people and our products and our services and our customer service. And I say, no, it can't be that. And they say, what do mean it can't be that? That's that's what makes us great. And I say, that might be what makes you great. Experientially.

but that isn't what makes you great as a brand. And the thing about brand is that you must differentiate yourself or you become commodity. And for most business leaders, they're so heavily invested in the building of the mousetrap and the ideas behind the mousetrap that they simply can't see what it feels like to be their customer. And so they're like, if I just describe it, they'll see.

how great it is like it will obvious it will just make itself so obvious that my product is better than everybody else is that they're going to leave all the other products behind and they're going to come by my product. And if that was true, none of us would ever buy a product more than once because every time we walk down the street, we would suddenly be overwhelmed by this better pen that was sitting in a cup next to the other better pens. And we'd suddenly just be buying those pens. And then the next time we go out, the same thing would happen again. Unfortunately, that's not how we buy. We buy

not the best brands, but the brands we like the best. And that little piece of truth that we buy emotionally as people and then justify our choices logically is widely lost by the public. So that that little transition, which sounds so easy when you say it is really, really hard for business leadership teams to do. And that's what I spend most of my time doing.

Gordon Sheppard (03:13.796)
I love the tone of your voice. I think it's one of those things where there's something about whatever you've added up to this point to kind of get it. Like you can see that your first meetings would be a blast. I'd love to be a fly on the wall in your first meetings with clients, because I can hear you wouldn't be holding back. You would just be this way and they're either going to be rolling with you to get the secret sauce for...

BrandBoss - Bill Harper (03:22.35)
Well, thank you.

Gordon Sheppard (03:36.698)
If I read on your website about the case studies, a better haircut or whatever those moments are, because you said they're in the middle of it, but you are, there's something unique that you're doing. And I just mean to dig into your pedigree a little bit as we get to know you. What is it that got you to be able to have this assurity in your tone at this point? Like what led up to this moment in terms of how you've got there?

BrandBoss - Bill Harper (03:41.163)
Yeah.

BrandBoss - Bill Harper (03:55.746)
Well, there were certainly a lot of time when I wasn't, as I think everybody is, but what I realized along the path is a couple of things that are true. Number one, business leaders don't know what I know. And there aren't a lot of agency owners that know what I know anymore. Everybody has become so performance marketing centric and so tactically driven that strategy.

is missing. had the tremendous compliment one time of working with somebody that had worked at Procter and Gamble. And he pulled me aside after we were working with him. And he said, Bill, you could be making a half a million dollars a year as a strategist over at PNG. Why do you want to run your own agency? And I said, because I love this light bulb moment. When that happens. There's no better joy than watching a brand that's been beating themselves into a pulp trying to figure out how they could

get their sales to work and nothing's working, nothing's working, nothing's working. And then all of a sudden they get how to differentiate themselves and sales comes into alignment and product or service development comes into alignment and they start getting excited again and then things go. So part of it is just the enthusiasm of teaching people how this works so that they can benefit from it. Marketing isn't really a stranger. It's just so foreign and unknown that people don't know how to take advantage of it.

As to presentation and the rest of it, I guess after owning five agencies, I just got to a place where I was comfortable letting folks know that it's okay that you don't know this. The reason you hired me was to do something that you don't know. If I knew how to drill my own tooth, I'd never go to the dentist. I just sit at home and do it myself. But the truth is that I don't know. And those people don't. They're too busy making the world's best running shoe or bubble gum or shampoo or financial services, right?

They're off doing the thing that they know they've hired me to shortcut their education process so that they can benefit from this faster. The easier I can make it for them to understand what it is that I'm trying to convey in a way that they can actually wrap their head around the faster they benefit. And so I learned a long time ago that if I was a flower, you know, on the wall and sorry, if I was a wallflower, I should have said it appropriate, then they would never listen.

BrandBoss - Bill Harper (06:16.728)
But if I was willing to take center stage, if I was willing to say, hey, by the way, I'm in the room because I know this and you're paying me to be here because I know it, there's no sense wasting any time. What we should do instead is everybody just get excited about the fact that knowledge is about to change hands and that we're going to get traction from that knowledge. So the sooner we're able to do that, the better. And I think that's really what fuels it.

I'm not worried anymore because I'm not selling anything anymore. If that makes sense at this point, I'm educating. I'm not selling and I think that takes a lot of the sting out of that.

Gordon Sheppard (06:51.555)
love it. It's just thank you for five agencies and whatever, a family and all the things that you've had to put in there to get the chops to be able to be that confident in a room. But you can hear that it's money well spent when they've got you there because while there be all that messiness in there, you're cutting through, you're going to help them get to that story. And you've done it over and over again in terms of the work that you've done. And that's a wonderful thing to have there. So thank you so much for giving us a good sense of who you are. I know what

I know things you don't and you've got the confidence to say it so that when they get it, you go further. I can't even imagine the hundreds of millions, billions of dollars of revenue that you would have helped to motivate from just that very seed of being in the room and helping these brands across that you've done along the way. That's great. Well, it leads me to my first question in the interview, which is if you had to describe your biggest win in this body of work, what would that win be and how would you describe it?

BrandBoss - Bill Harper (07:45.134)
Honestly, the biggest win that I've had recently was one that I never expected. And that was the success that we had on TikTok. Well, I would normally not talk about something like that, except that I was so vehemently against being on the platform in the first place. And boy, am I glad that I was wrong. And was I ever wrong? And the gentleman, Tom, that was really pushing me to be on the platform.

He kept coming to me month after month and he would say, you know, you should be on TikTok. I think you'd really be good at it. And I just laugh and be like, no, I don't belong on TikTok. No, no, no, no, no. And what I really learned, I was so absolutely ignorant about the platform for its greater value, which is the mini mentorship that sits underneath the layer of popular garbage that sits on top. You know, all the little silly videos of people falling down on ice and

bears chasing people across playgrounds and like all the dumb stuff that you know, we think about when we think about social media in general. But the real beauty of the TikTok platform is the thing that I was totally unaware of at that moment, which is mini mentorship. Any subject that you want to learn about, there are a thousand hours in one to 10 minute segments for it available online for free. It's literally the largest searchable how to library.

on the face of the planet and I just don't think people truly understand that and that's why so many businesses fail so hard when it comes to their social media because they just don't get what they're supposed to do on it. So they show pictures of them at the holiday party and they show pictures of their new product and they show pretty backgrounds of things that match and none of that stuff is important on those platforms. What's important on the platform is

having a sense of learning and value or being entertained. And if you're really, really good, edutain, which is the bridge between entertainment and education, where you walk away feeling that was a few minutes well spent. I learned something a little different and I see the world a little differently from it. And our success there in generating about one hundred and seventy thousand followers and multiple millions of dollars in that new business, all from

BrandBoss - Bill Harper (10:03.308)
the platform was the biggest win and surprise for us because I was such a tremendous doubter and I was convinced, absolutely convinced that that would not work for a B2B marketing company. And I have repeatedly sent thank you notes to Tom about, know, thank you, thank you, thank you for convincing me to do this. Not only did it get me over my hurdles with being on social media and finding a way to make that

voice heard and the rest of it, but it took us global. You know, we have worked now with countries on almost every continent and I was invited this year alone to go speak at the Distillers Convention in Australia as the keynote speaker. mean, none of this would have been possible without TikTok. And so who knew? And fortunately, some people that were smarter than me on the subject did and I didn't. So I got to benefit from that.

Gordon Sheppard (11:00.091)
how lucky that you've got some good people around you to take you in the right direction, even when you're pulling in the other direction, because you've led situations. You don't need to listen to these guys. You just keep going along the way you're going. And yet here you are at this moment of revelation. TikTok has influenced my golf swing. It's made me tell bad jokes. Do you know what mean? Like there's all these things that I've gotten on there. And a lot of reason why I'm on TikTok originally, funny enough, because I was resistant to it as well, is my son is 24 and there's just stuff we can swap back and forth. It's how I want to stay engaged with him. But then...

it's led to meeting you and getting a great interview on the podcast and learning from you in ways that I just, in those, that same thing around, if we call it micro learning or what you said, that sort of short burst has been influential. Yeah, it's fantastic. And I think it's been, the other thing I'm seeing is you're showing up here today, like I've met you on TikTok. TikTok is not a different person than I'm seeing. I'm seeing you here, I'm seeing you there. So whatever you've done to be on that platform and be your authentic self.

BrandBoss - Bill Harper (11:39.404)
Mini mentorship, yeah, micro mentorship.

BrandBoss - Bill Harper (11:45.326)
.

BrandBoss - Bill Harper (11:51.982)
Mm-hmm.

Gordon Sheppard (11:57.34)
is coming across. So congratulations on making that happen too, because you know the way you're showing up. Obviously, it's working and the proof is in the pudding for what you're doing there. So the win is the unexpected win from TikTok. You've invested in it and it's led to a global opportunity, speaking opportunities, all kinds of things. That's great. So I jump into what I call the anatomy of a win at this point and say, well, what's the strategy, work plan, people, operations, and results behind the win? Strategically,

vision, mission, values, goals, in a sense. You might have had a goal to expand your business or whatever that was. What would you say was a strategic highlight for making this win occur?

BrandBoss - Bill Harper (12:29.912)
The beautiful thing about strategy is that it's the same for everything. Whether you're trying to do personal brand, meaning, hey, I'm an individual that wants to get recognized at work to I'm a student that wants to get good recognition in a class to I'm a person that wants to be a CEO of an organization. The structure is all the same. And the structure is what is your one thing? The one thing that you bring to the table that everybody enjoys now.

When I say one thing, what people tend to do is they tend to get scared and they say, but I can do a lot of things. I can do a lot of things. And when that happens, you inadvertently devalue yourself. And I'll give you two quick ways to think about this that people will remember. The first one is if you want a great steak, you go to a steakhouse. You don't go to a buffet restaurant. Now, why? Why don't you go to a buffet restaurant? Well, because if you go to a buffet restaurant, you know that you're going to trade.

really good one thing for really mediocre, lots of things. And so if as a business owner, I come out and I say, or as a personal brand or whatever, I come out and I say, Well, I've got an answer for everybody. I can do this and I can do that. And I can do this and I can do that. What happens is the person who's hearing you immediately begins devaluing each one of the things that you say that you can do. Because much like a buffet, they assume, well, you're not really good at one thing you

kind of can do a whole bunch of stuff and now I have to be careful about hiring you. So I think the the first way to really kind of look at that is, you know, let's make sure that we're being the steakhouse and not and not the buffet restaurant. But I think in a bigger sense, the value of it is in recognizing that you need to find your one thing. I'm sorry, the second way that I was going to tell you the second way that people can think about that. If you think about the super successful brands of the world,

Each one of them has identified a single thing and I'll use cars because they're really easy and people can wrap their head around it. So cars are and I'm a car guy so I hate saying this but it's Cars are essentially commodity products because all you can do is get in them with you and your stuff and go from here to there and back. None of them does anything different. None of them flies or know bakes baked Alaska or you know whatever they just drive from here to there and back again.

BrandBoss - Bill Harper (14:47.15)
But now try to imagine, you know, a Porsche owner selling a Porsche to a Prius or vice versa, right? Like, good luck. The value system is wrong. If you take a look at car brands, they're excellent at having eeked out a story territory. If you want a safe car, you buy a Volvo. If you want a luxurious car, you buy a Mercedes. If you want to buy a sports car, you buy a Porsche. If you want to buy a sports car and you have a family, you buy a BMW. And if you want to save the world one gas tank at a time, you buy a Prius.

Those are the stories around those different brands. And so the structure is the same for all of it, which is if this problem exists and I am good at solving that problem, then this is my brand promise. We are Volvo. We only make cars for people who prize safety. We are a Porsche. We only make cars for people who prize performance and fun and what have you. And so that's the same no matter what. And so even in this

instance of being on TikTok, the fun was, how can you start by saying what is the one problem I'm solving, people don't get enough out of marketing because they don't understand it. And so they misuse it. And then it doesn't give the results that they want. Or they hire people that sound like they know what they're doing, but they don't have the education to make good use out of it. Okay, so if that's the problem, and if I'm good at simplifying explanations, then I can say, hey, my whole role here is to make sure that you understand marketing.

better so that you can make better use out of it and therefore dot dot dot dot dot. So it makes it super easy once we have that big lantern idea that one thing that we're doing well then the stories that fall out of it are super easy. I don't have to worry about telling stories that don't relate to the thing I'm trying to educate people on. I just have to find more stories that are relevant to when they don't get it or how they don't get it or how does something work or how did it.

fall apart and not work well. And as long as I continue to explain that, then they benefit. And then beyond that is just all the operational stuff, right? Like how can you get so many videos made? Which channels should you be on? Which ones do people like you on? Instagram is not a particular fan of my kind of thing. I'm a little too explanatory for that particular channel that they don't react to it the same way that other channels do. So it's like you gotta find which channels you're good at. You gotta figure out where your audience is.

BrandBoss - Bill Harper (17:12.758)
And then it's operationally how many videos can you do and how do you get them edited well and how do you distribute them evenly and so forth and so on. But really it's the fun of just putting the pieces in place and then executing and optimizing.

Gordon Sheppard (17:28.143)
Love it. So you found, you've got your one thing. You're very, very clear. You're able to sort of take your own medicine in a sense and be able to then go into this TikTok platform scenario strategically because you've done the experiments in the different platforms. And this is the one that you wanted to enter in the way that you did enter. And it's paid off again in the way that you sort of noted at the beginning. So that's the strategy for this win on TikTok. Anytime we have a strategy, the second step is to look at sort of the work plan or the timeline.

there was resistance leading up to a certain day or month or something when you pulled the trigger. Then how long when you pulled the trigger to be on TikTok did it take to sort of get on TikTok and be successful at it? Was it a year, two years? When did that start?

BrandBoss - Bill Harper (18:07.502)
Well, the funny thing is that I really had no idea what success meant. I remember the first time that I had a viral that went quote unquote or I'm sorry, a video that went quote unquote viral and I didn't even recognize that I was supposed to be excited about that. Like I had no idea that that was a big deal. had no like I just just it just was so far out of my realm because what we were doing was television campaigns and radio campaigns and outdoor and print and gorilla stuff. You know, like I just wasn't thinking about that. And so

I went on and you know the first videos did what everybody's first videos did five views 10 views whatever the algorithms figuring it out. But it didn't take long before suddenly there was 500 views and then 1500 and then 2000 and so within the first year we had 70 or 80,000 followers. Just within that first period of time and.

I remember it was maybe two or three months, maybe not even that long, maybe two months in that I had something that actually really went what I would consider viral, which is over a million views. And I was watching it scale and it was just taking off like a rock. mean, like every time I would refresh the screen, it was another like thousand people and I was just watching this thing go. And I remember everybody on my team was sitting there.

watching over my shoulder going, what are you, because I don't ever just sit and I'm sitting and watching this thing and I'm like, you got to be kidding me. And it just kept going and going and going. I don't, I don't think it is the same for everybody. The thing that everybody needs to realize is that you just talk to what's true and right and real for you that that you can educate on and your audience will eventually find you, you have to be patient, you have to be consistent.

and you have to be willing to engage them. And I think that's the big piece there is when you talk about engagement, you have to be willing to be contrary. You have to be willing to say something that isn't necessarily pleasing to everybody. You have to say something that makes people think. And so, you know, it's not it's not always I remember the first, you know, one of the first

BrandBoss - Bill Harper (20:27.48)
videos that I had that went viral, I was talking about proving that branding works. And I said, go to a coffee shop, sit down and wait until somebody opens a Mac, wait until they open a laptop and tell me what your first reaction is. If they open a Mac product, an Apple product, I'll bet the first thing you think in your head is, they're doing something creative. And the first person that walks in with a Dell or a Lenovo or an HP or whatever you're thinking, that guy's doing like he's working a spreadsheet, know, like whatever. And a

bunch of people responded and were like, that's wrong. You don't get it, that's like such old thinking. And then a bunch of other people were like, no, no, no, you're wrong. Like he's totally right. And it just went back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and back and forth. And all of a sudden, this was up over a million people. And it was a really great lesson because it didn't matter that people disagreed with my opinion. This was just my opinion. What do I care? So you know, it was here's here's an opinion.

You might not agree with it, but that's okay. And some of the conversations that came off from the disagreements were really fascinating. It was like learning from a from a little focus group. You know, why didn't you think so? Why did you disagree with me? You know, some people were like, well, you're just old and you don't get it. And I was like, okay. And some people said, well, you know, it's not the same way in Europe. And I was like, well, that's interesting. They're like, yeah, Max in Europe are a flex. They're not a

you know, they're not just a choice here. It's like, have an apple and I was like, okay, something new I didn't think about. So it was really interesting to see how different people perceived what it was that I was talking about in these different ways. All of it, all of it learning all of it positive, even the ones where people got really, really ticked off when Bud Light had its Mulvaney thing and it tanked and everybody was, I went on and I said, the reason that this happened is because they turn their back on their base.

The people who drink Bud Light are Joe and Jane Americana, barbecue in the back, blue collar worker, like get the job done, come home, have a beer. And that doesn't jive with where they were trying to go with this DEI initiative. And I got hate mail for weeks and two and a half million views. And I was like, OK, so, you know, another 100,000 followers or whatever came along and it just you've got to be OK with having opinions and sharing them and having people respond to them. As long as it's under the veil of

BrandBoss - Bill Harper (22:52.654)
or the header of education and sharing and knowledge and learning, you've got nothing to fear from people who have a different opinion. I think it's the best thing out there. I really do.

Gordon Sheppard (23:06.125)
And you're always in your lane with the one thing, because you're coming from your brand experience and how you're helping. you're observing from that thing. So we know the authenticity is there. You've given us sort of a playbook now of the patience level that it takes, the experiments you need to try along the way, the fact that you're not going to hit it out of the park with that first video you put out the first week or whatever it is. You've got a bit of a runway that you've gone there. And then you've helped us think about different ways to maybe get a little bit more viral. But what I like about this approach is interesting is that you're always.

BrandBoss - Bill Harper (23:24.886)
Yeah.

Gordon Sheppard (23:34.988)
you're on many sides of it. You're not just trying to put some, you're not in one way putting something out. You're actually interacting with the comments and gaining insights from the comments that would actually feedback into sort of into your work in almost a circular way. I mean, how neat to see how many different ways you're using it. So we've got the win, the TikTok. We've got the strategy piece behind it with the one thing and what we're doing. The timeline, this is about a year, a year and change when things get kind of moving. Was that about right for the total time to get popular?

BrandBoss - Bill Harper (24:00.834)
Yeah, for us, it was closer to six months, I guess, like four to six months that we really saw some traction and I was amazed. I have been told that. I have been told that, but I really, didn't think anything of it. I was asked by on a podcast one time, somebody said, why did your stuff work? And I was like, I just started laughing. was like, I have no idea.

Gordon Sheppard (24:05.305)
Yeah, which probably is, yeah, that's probably pretty remarkable, I think, in TikTok years. So yeah, that's pretty good. But there's something then, that you're doing as well.

BrandBoss - Bill Harper (24:28.928)
I have absolutely no idea why it worked. And he said, he said, I have never had anybody be so honest about it. He goes, everybody always tries to give me some rationale for it. I was like, I said, I wish that I could tell you I had a rationale for it. I just talked about the thing that I liked. And there it went. And so that was it.

Gordon Sheppard (24:48.729)
Well, but there's something, I'll just add in though. mean, you know things other people don't know. So, and that's earned over decades. So there's something about that that's in there somewhere that does, if you started to pull apart some secret sauce, there's something in there, but I can hear the honest part that you're saying, but again, there's something about Bill and the way you're coming across that's obviously grabbing attention. There's some aspect there. And then the also the content is working. So how great to see the playbook here. Strategy, work plan, there's always people involved. How would you describe?

Well, you actually described it a little bit, your attitude at the beginning and then throughout this process, but at the beginning you were like, nope, not gonna do that. And then you kind of got into it and then you had these moments of like kid in a candy store, seeing the million, you know, the views rack up. How would you describe it? Was it sort of like an easy street kind of thing or peaks and valleys? How would you describe your attitude through this adventure?

BrandBoss - Bill Harper (25:36.622)
So there's definitely plateaus that happen on the system that are inherent in the system. You'll hit certain numbers and then all of a sudden it won't let you grow for a while. It seems as though it's almost a little like, see if we can keep them going kind of a thing. I hit 97 or 98,000, I forget what it was. And it was like, I'd been growing, growing, growing, growing. And then it just plateaued. And we were at 97.2 or 97.3 for.

months and I was like, what happened? Like we were growing like a rocket ship and then all of a sudden it just stopped and I started doing some research about what happens and everybody that has, you know, a couple hundred thousand followers like, ah, that's totally normal. this, the algorithm just wants you to post more often, like don't listen to it. Just keep doing your thing. And it is hard.

It is such a dopamine cycle about, you post it and you got and you post it and you got and so you want to post and then when you don't get, you're like, well, why am I not getting right? So sure, there are some frustrations about the growth. But honestly, what I found that's really interesting, and I don't think a lot of people think about this, social media is not one platform, it's many.

And so the beautiful thing is, is once you understand how engagement and attention trading and all that works, then you're like, okay, well, let me jump over. TikTok's cool right now. So I'm to let TikTok work itself out. And while that's happening, I mean, I'm still going to, I'm still going to do my thing, but I don't want to lose my excitement about doing this because then my stuff will fall flat. So I'm going to run over to LinkedIn or I'm going to run over to Facebook or I'm going to run over to, I don't know, Substack or whatever. And

This is a good opportunity to see what kind of things happen over there. So, you know, it's really kind of fun to chew on the puzzle. It's harder to find the time for it, honestly, than it is to do the work. The work itself is actually quite enjoyable because you're looking at it and you're saying, OK, well, let me look at other things that other people have spoken to that that do well and dissect. How would I approach that same subject and and.

BrandBoss - Bill Harper (27:49.304)
You know, so it's research and it's development of these scripts and it's fascinating actually. It's really, it's like you could spend a whole lot more time than you should working on all of those things without any trouble.

Gordon Sheppard (28:03.221)
fantastic. And it's funny because you've got experience. You know what it's like to buy a billboard campaign that succeeds. You know what it's like to buy television ads that succeed. Just off the back of the napkin, for input versus results, how would you sort of grade the TikTok experience?

BrandBoss - Bill Harper (28:24.25)
it's been amazing. I paid nothing.

BrandBoss - Bill Harper (28:30.966)
Millions of dollars in. Nothing!

Gordon Sheppard (28:31.587)
Nothing, and here you've got this experience, because like you said, you could have been staying where you were, traditional radio, doing things or whatever you were to get the word out, guerrilla marketing, you know what it takes to do that. And here you are, finally invest in this area and you've got an angel on your shoulder who got you into it and made sure that that occurred. I love it, it's a great thing. So we've got strategy, work plan, people.

BrandBoss - Bill Harper (28:39.096)
Yeah.

BrandBoss - Bill Harper (28:49.795)
Yeah.

Gordon Sheppard (28:53.293)
Operationally, you've explained that a little bit. There's something operationally about making this work. Is it funny to break it down, but is it like a couple videos a week, the early ones you experiment, you learn? Operationally, what's it take to kind of get this to go?

BrandBoss - Bill Harper (29:02.798)
So yeah, you're in you've got a couple things that are we're kind of talking about simultaneously that we should break into pieces. One of them is optimizing and learning what works and that's sort of your testing, right? Like I'm going to tell the joke this way on Monday night and we'll tell the joke that way on Tuesday night and let's see who laughs more. So you've got that kind of thing that's happening. But then there's the efficiency play, which is how do I create content and when do I create content and under what circumstances and what's my flow and process?

And I think for most people you move from a I'll just make it when I have time or when something strikes me to something that's much more intentional. I'm going to block this day and over the course of this day I'm going to write my newsletter, my long form, my short forms, and then I'm going to record some of them and then I'm going to do editing on the next day. And then I'm going to put those into a distribution thing that'll let me just think, think, think, think, think. And then when something pops up like

you know, the big Omni-Com deal that closed still angry about this DDB and foot cone building. You have time to be able to say, those are interesting topics that are right now. Cracker Barrel just changed his logo and everybody's popping off about it. I'd love to add my two cents to it. So it's a combination of sort of the evergreen.

ongoing momentum thing that you've generated that keeps the flywheel moving and then these little sparklers that pop up from time to time and it's like, ooh, Jaguar just totally ditched 100 years of heritage. That's one to go talk about and then everybody runs up and goes and talks about it and people are like, comment, comment, opinion, opinion. And that's what really makes it fun. Social media is super easy if you look at it the right way. And that is that it's the world's largest cocktail party. And so the same rules apply.

that would apply at a cocktail party. If you talk about yourself and your stuff all night, you're going to be lonely most of the evening because you're not giving anybody any reason to stick around. But if instead you take yourself out of the equation and you just try to help people achieve something that they're already on their way to achieving, which is the recipe for any good cocktail conversation, then you know, you will never be without someone visiting and talking with you. Your content will always be worthwhile.

Gordon Sheppard (31:24.289)
Mini mentorship first. It sounds like a great success formula in terms of how this is worked, strategy, work plan, people, operations. Finally, there's results, quantitative and qualitative results. Quantitatively, you've mentioned some revenue, some opportunities to go around the world, clients getting out there. Any other quantitative highlights that you'd like to point out from this win?

BrandBoss - Bill Harper (31:46.146)
Diversity of client type. I think when you start doing work globally, if you didn't really consider that as a market previously, what you realize is that, you know, we're all just people and it really does make the big blue ball small, right? Like all of a sudden, I'm talking to with people down in New Zealand. This was one of my favorite ones, a guy that called me early on. He's a shoe repair man in New Zealand.

woke up at five o'clock or six o'clock in the morning for the time difference to have a call with me and talk to me told me about how he started this shoe repair company and like he's is he the typical guy that we would work with? No, but here I am having this delightful conversation with this guy. And then he called me a year later and he was like, you know, I did this and this and it worked really well. And like I did that and that and you know, if you're ever down here and I cannot tell you how many times people have said this to me, if you're ever in

Insert country here. If you're ever in Dusseldorf, Germany, if you're ever in such and such New Zealand, if you're ever hanging out in Gold Coast, you know, Australia, like I'll take you out to dinner. It just blew my mind. There was a time there's a so there's one story that I tell about a tow truck that went viral early on, and it's a story that I've used in our businesses for years that I made up to try and help people understand.

the perspective difference between the business owner and the customer. And I got a phone call or not a phone call, but a text message from this gentleman in Germany. And he said, Hey, I really, really like your tow truck story. Do you mind if I translate it into German? And I was like, no, I'd be thrilled. Like, go ahead. So he goes and he translates it into German. So meanwhile, that kind of kicked off a relationship between him and I and we're like trading information and he's working in marketing and I'm working in marketing and daddy daddy.

So a couple months go by and I get this discovery call coming in and it's from another guy in Germany who's working on a sports drink. And I get on the phone and he starts speaking German really fast. I was like, I don't speak German like you're going to have to switch to English for me. And he jumps on and he goes, I was at a beer garden a month ago and I was talking to this guy and I was telling him about this business idea that I have. And he said,

BrandBoss - Bill Harper (34:09.334)
You've got to talk to Bill Harper. And he pulls him up and goes like this and he goes, I have a meeting with Bill Harper in a month. And I said, so I called the guy that did the TikTok video. I said, let me get this right. You're at a beer garden in Berlin. Talking to somebody else about a video that you saw of mine and he's like, I'm talking. I did that really happen? He goes, yeah. And it just like I said.

It just shrank the world, right? Like, and both of them are like, hey, if you're ever here, come, let's go grab a beer, we'll go out to lunch, you know, this kind of thing. And it's so unbelievably human and real and personal. And it's just been one of the most amazing things to walk away from this experience, like all the rest of it's nice. But the thing that's so surprising is just how open and warm and everything people have been about.

Hey, I just want to learn if you're willing to give me some time like that would be amazing. And I do that now. My entire job now is just giving my time. Anybody that ever wants to talk, I give free time 30 minute calls to anybody and we don't talk about the agency at all. It's just where are you with your business? What are you trying to achieve? Where are you trying to go? Here are some things that I see. If that is enough for you, great. If you want more help, you know where we are.

That's it. That's the whole thing. It has been a remarkable transition for our business world from top to bottom.

Gordon Sheppard (35:44.388)
Well, and how enjoyable you've been through, you know what traditional is to run the agency. And this takes you into a different kind of realm and a different, this isn't the stuff they teach you in school or when you were coming up in the business, they didn't teach you this kind of thing. Is that fair?

BrandBoss - Bill Harper (35:59.724)
Yeah, very. And I will never, ever, ever pitch the same way again. Like at this point, it's become a joke. You know, years ago, we used to have a bet when we went into presentations that we would take the portfolio. This is how old I am. We actually had portfolio and we would go in and we would set it down on the conference room. That's right. We actually did it in person and we would go in and we would set it down in the middle of the conference room. And the game was you don't show the work.

Gordon Sheppard (36:02.521)
Incredible.

BrandBoss - Bill Harper (36:29.986)
That was the game. And that was the game that I put in place at our agency years ago. And I was like, here's the thing. If you have to open up the portfolio and show the work you lose, I want to see if you can win without ever showing the work. Can we show that we understand the problem and them and how to fix things without ever having to get into the portfolio? And you'd be just amazed at how that opinion in and of itself has changed the way that we all think about.

people are actually listening and communicating and sharing things. that is, you know, there's no better compliment than somebody knocking on the door going, the other agency is waiting and you guys have gone over. And you're like, we were just chatting, right? I've already won that one. that, I just walk out and I feel bad for the next agency, because I know what they're going to do. They're going to walk in and be like, on slide 12,

You know, and they just they can't compete on that. They just can't.

Gordon Sheppard (37:31.61)
Incredible. Nancy McKay, who helps CEOs build, she's building inspiring leaders with as many CEOs as she can. She talks about leading with generosity. And I can hear that theme underneath the, you're talking about. And what a wonderful place to be in, in terms of what you're doing. Thank you for this, sharing this win. Thank you for lighting us all up with maybe a new chapter in your world, pre-tick tock-ish and then post in terms of, but more than that.

pulling all those things together to be in a really neat time where you're getting asked out to lunch and going for a beer in Germany the next time you're there because of this. So it gets bigger than the work. It's bigger than all those things. If you, you know, there's a lot of leaders that listen to this show. Maybe if you had a couple sentences just to leave with a leader that's pre-tick-tock like your brain or whatever, what would you say to somebody to be encouraging from a leadership perspective in terms of getting them this type of win or trying to lead them down that garden path?

BrandBoss - Bill Harper (38:28.108)
I would tell them to slow down for a minute. You know, the performance marketing thing has everybody jumping so fast, so much, so often that there's not any real thinking anymore. Everything is so reactionary. Nothing is proactive. And I would say that if you can just slow down long enough to really notice the fact that no one is listening and talking and find a way to get that connection back, that it will change, it'll change your world. Like, you know,

They get so worried that they're not going to hit a number that they're not going to get there that they're not going to get there that they've actually stopped doing the thing that will get them the success. know that the recipe for this is very, simple. Your single greatest value is in helping somebody else's dream come true. Like it does not get any simpler or more fundamental than that. If you want to have great value in somebody else's life.

help them make their dream come true without asking anything of in return. It's just that easy and they will lift you without you ever having to lift yourself. And I think that that is one of the biggest misses in our society today globally is that we've lost the understanding that if you just give to somebody else, you will get

back and it might not be the person that you gave to maybe they then go and have a meeting with somebody else and go you got to talk to this person and I can't tell you how many times that's happened to me somebody that I talked to like the shoe repair guy that I was talking about earlier has a friend who's you know the senior VP at Quaker Oats right and you're you get this phone call and it's like hi I'm the senior VP at Quaker Oats I got a buddy that runs this shoe company that I've known since I was a kid he swears by you

and says that I will be an idiot if I don't have a conversation with you. And you just sort of sit back and are like, okay, wow, that just happened. That's great. Let's do it.

Gordon Sheppard (40:33.059)
Incredible, listening, talking and make people's dreams come true. Bill, it sounds like you're doing that on a daily basis. Thank you so much for being on the podcast.

BrandBoss - Bill Harper (40:41.527)
Thank you so much for having me. It's been a pleasure.

Gordon Sheppard (40:49.094)
Lee.

BrandBoss - Bill Harper (40:50.638)
Do you get what you?