Rebranding Your Ecommerce Store With Best-Selling Author David Brier

David Brier is the President and Creative Director of DBD International, Ltd., a branding consultancy that helps design and build global, regional, and local brands. As a branding expert, he is the recipient of over 330 international industry awards in branding, rebrands, design, and brand strategy. He received the Presidential Ambassador for Global Entrepreneurship medallion and has been featured in Adweek, Forbes, Inc., Huffington Post, Entrepreneur, Business Insider, and numerous podcasts. David is also the author of the award-winning book Brand Intervention: 33 Steps to Transform the Brand You Have into the Brand You Need.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

How David Brier drives growth for globally recognized brands
The importance of differentiating your brand in the market
When is it time for a brand intervention?
Tactics for developing a discernible brand
How to increase brand loyalty with LTV
David previews his upcoming book Rich Brand, Poor Brand
Obtaining branding buy-in from senior management
Strategies for cutting through the noise as an apparel brand
Why David is passionate about brand-building
The story of meeting Daymond John

In this episode…

Branding involves more than simply developing a clever name and eye-catching packaging to drive repeat sales. You must generate loyalty through post-purchase efforts and differentiate yourself from the competition. Yet 95% of brands ignore post-sale branding, blending in with the millions of other brands in their category. How can you rise above the noise to assert your dominance in the market?

Branding interventionist David Brier urges brands not to be tentative in their efforts. Instead, communicate your values, mission, and personality with a sense of conviction and be bold in your endeavors. To differentiate yourself authentically, evaluate your competitors, look ahead into the future, and pivot based on the insights you’ve gathered. When it comes to generating lifetime value, you must provide customers with compelling reasons to engage with your brand post-sale. Rather than spamming them with countless emails promoting similar products, reimagine how your brand can function in consumers’ lives beyond the initial purchase.

On this episode of the Up Arrow Podcast, David Brier, the President and Creative Director of DBD International, Ltd., joins William Harris to reveal revolutionary brand-building strategies. David shares when you should consider a brand intervention, how to develop a recognizable brand, and how to obtain buy-in from senior executives.

Resources mentioned in this episode

Sponsor for this episode

This episode is brought to you by Elumynt. Elumynt is a performance-driven e-commerce marketing agency focused on finding the best opportunities for you to grow and scale your business.

Our paid search, social, and programmatic services have proven to increase traffic and ROAS, allowing you to make more money efficiently.

To learn more, visit www.elumynt.com.

Episode Transcript

Intro 0:03

Welcome to the Up Arrow Podcast with William Harris, featuring top business leaders sharing strategies and resources to get to the next level. Now, let's get started with the Show.

William Harris 0:15

Hey everybody, William Harris here. I'm the founder and CEO of Elumynt. In the host of this podcast where I feature experts in the DTC industry sharing strategies on how to scale your business and achieve your goals. I'm excited about the guests that I have today. David Brier, Best Selling Author of brand intervention and Google's number one ranked rebranding expert, David's rebrands have generated over 7 billion worldwide. He is a native New Yorker and Google's top ranked rebranding expert. David's four decades of branding expertise are sought after by companies of all sizes. In addition to David's work, being featured at Adweek, Fast Company, Forbes, Inc, Huffington Post entrepreneur Thrive global. I need a breath, The New York Times in numerous blogs and podcasts the world over, He is the recipient of over 320 international awards, including the rare honor of being presented the presidential ambassador for Global Entrepreneurship medallion. David, it is fantastic to have you here today. Well, dude,

David Brier 1:10

thank you, William. I mean, this has been a long time coming. And I'm thrilled man, I'm thrilled. I mean, likewise, we've actually been, we've been friends and and sort of, you know, colleagues ish, sort of in that sort of in that space for a while, I don't know of several years at this point.

William Harris 1:29

Yep. I can remember when we first met it was through online, and then we ended up connecting in person invited you out to Minneapolis, kind of shared a stage together. And so yeah, we've gotten way back. And I don't want to unnecessarily interrupt you giving some praises over this way as well. That was very nice. But I'm going to do the sponsor here real quick. This episode is brought to you by Elumynt Elumynt is an award winning advertising agency optimizing e-commerce campaigns around profit. In fact, we've helped 13 of our customers get acquired with the largest one selling for nearly 800,000,001 That IPO recently. And we were ranked as the 12th fastest growing agency in the world by Adweek, you can learn more on our website@elumynt.com which is spelled elumynt.com. That's it with the boring stuff onto the fun stuff. We are going to be talking about what's possible with branding in today's world, how to recognize your branding problem and how to fix it. We've got a bunch of great insights from your Amazon bestseller. Let me just show everybody the book. I have it right here. Brand intervention, you've got another new book on the way we'll talk about that one a little bit later. Let's start off just talking about a little brag time here. You've worked on doing branding for Estee Lauder Rolling Stone, you were telling me about one client that you had 3% growth in 30 days without launching a single new product. How?

David Brier 2:51

Well the here's the the thing that probably many of us take for granted is what is it that first gets lit, let's look at it really simply grin in a granular way. How does something first get onto our radar? It's not because of a pitch or a campaign or an offer? Or this that the other? It's like, what's that? What's that little lever? The little first lever that actually even gets them on our radar, rather than just being one of the 1000s of messages that we get every freaking day? Right? I mean, we get bombarded right you you get you and I and everyone listening to this we get texts, we get we go on social media, we get pre rolls, we get mid rolls, we get post rolls, we just BUM BUM BUM BUM BUM belly rolls. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah, holiday rolls, you know that? And so and so, you know, it's like, what is that thing? And it is it is this element that that thing was different enough. And I'll give you a fantastic example. Like every, like 2023 has been the year of AI, right? Everything, everything AI everything i, which I which I find interesting from one standpoint and pathetic. From another standpoint, it's interesting because it shows it's a lot of potential. But at the same time, the internet when it first came out was a lot of potential. And but the first step out of the gate is crap. The first step out of the gate is just the and everybody, everybody despite there, there's no there's no barrier to entry. So anybody with no talent, no judgment, no experience can enter as quickly as someone with a lot of a lot of judgment, etc. So we've got this whole thing, but I literally saw in my email just a little bit ago before I came to the office. I got this thing, and it talked about it positioned something as like prompt plus AI. I was like, Now wasn't that interesting? Because all of a sudden, it's like they took AI. How do you differentiate AI? It's like it seems almost impossible prompt to this AI Whoa, now that elevates it into a whole new realm. Okay, whoa, this this is AI mind read is it psychic? What the hell is Neil? But but the, the little trigger and the point about this is it's different. It was different. It wasn't just hey, we got really better AI or we got AI that sounds more like you everyone's pitch and try and that's gonna sound more natural and organic. But it was like propolis Yeah, okay, that was a differentiator, we noticed differentiations we noticed things that are distinct, we don't notice. It's like, we don't need another flavor. You know, it's like, what's the thing that's different? Right? So, you know, and that comes from everything from your product offering your service offering, as well as how you communicate it, are you doing it, like, like these guys like these, this chocolate brand, mid mid, mid day squares, you know, they've exploded, and they came onto the, onto the marketplace, you know, where it's been dominated by Hershey's and bars, and there's been like, basically four key chocolate companies that have dominated the space. But they came in as a as really, it's a, a woman, her husband and her brother. And it's the three of them and they are rebellious. They are raw, they are unfiltered. And they're like their whole thing is we're going to come in because it's spite because everyone needs like a bit it's like we all can use something better instead of being dominated bum of a bum and so they're coming at it with like absolute their fire breathing beasts. And they got they got no filter, man. I mean, you think you think I got a mouth? These guys got it guys are loud. But it's differentiation. Differentiation is how we did it. Because on that particular brand, I mean, it literally was one store boutique chocolate here. And they and I looked at what they were doing. And this is an I'm a you know me I'm a real when it comes to being shocked like good chocolate. I want only artisanal. Amazing high quality. Good, good dark chocolate. And I'm and for those that are listening. Yes. Do I love a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup? Yes, I do. Okay, let's Yes. But when I want to actually get serious about just sitting in enjoying man, a really good handmade truffle or some like that. That's amazing. These guys made amazing stuff. But their stuff their box look like crap. It was first of all was flimsy. It was crappy. I already knew that their audience was 85% women. I already knew that. I was like, and I I came from a family where I have two brothers. Now. I married my wife out here in the Midwest. She had two sisters. Okay. And so I watched whenever the sisters got together, I watched with fascination. I just watched how they interacted. I found this fascinating. To me, it was like, it was like it was like a little mini documentary a spontaneous documentary. I like watching it and learning, right. And so I've found this passing this stuff they could talk about, and this and that. And just the things that seemed tangential, but to them, it was like the entire universe. And so I built an entire brand, the box and everything. And it was the box was sturdy. I made a box that would have an afterlife in the home. Because I knew this was that women were the audience. So I was going to have really cool tons of cool chocolate trivia, little bits, little ridiculous bits of facts and things that you didn't know about. Because at the same time is some people were approaching it like cosmetics. Cosmetics is all about appearance. It's theater. It's like it's it has an aura of everything while saying nothing. Right? It's how it smells and how you touch it. Or you feel boo the paper. Ooh, the foil stamping Ooh, it's oh, well has all these little. But it doesn't say anything. It's like this aura of magnificence. You know, it's kind of like if if Kim Kardashian were a box, that's what cosmetics would be because, you know, it's not like Kim Kardashian has ever shared with us, Hey, I have something that's really going to change the quality of your life. No, she's, she's like, well, she is. That's it. She has a particular stratosphere where she exists. But it's not deep, right? It's a particular layer. Well, that's what I basically did with these guys. And it was crazy. The bar they literally the box was sitting on the back counter. There were no new sexy people. There were no new flavors, no new products, no change in pricing, no promotions, no change in hours, nothing. The same people that were coming in for their coffee and espresso those tea, scones, muffins, chocolates, all this kind of stuff. We're coming in with this box and on the back. They're like, Oh, I'll take one of those all day what? It blew them away because of the aesthetic because it went against the grain. It was absolutely different unlike anybody else. And they literally saw a 300% increase I'm in trouble. And then the fight. And this was, by the way, in the summer, when sales of chocolate is rusher? Sure,

William Harris 10:07

wow. I think the takeaway that I have from that, that you talked about is how you know, different is what gets our attention. It's what's good and and that can be different in a good way it can be different than an abrasive way. There's a lot of different ways that we different, there's every flavor

David Brier 10:22

is different that there absolutely there could be different in an ugly way, it could be different in a snarky way. It could be different, aesthetic way, it could be different in a volume way. I mean, she absolutely totally different

William Harris 10:34

cuts the noise. And you know, I think about other brands that have done very well with this. Liquid death has done very well with that lap, so abrasiveness and I just liked the idea of you were talking about like that kids are attention. And I'm thinking about the way that we, let's say our brains work from a survival perspective. I've heard it said that we think logarithmically, we can, we can understand the difference between one wolves, three wolves and nine wolves more intuitively than we understand the difference between, you know, three, four or five wolves because there was a big difference logarithmically to understand the difference between one wolf, maybe I've got a chance three bowls, a slim chance, nine, well, I don't have a chance, right, but like three, four or five, it didn't matter as much to think linearly. And so it's that compounding difference that I think cuts through the noise from a survival basis. So I like where you went with that,

David Brier 11:25

you actually make a very, very important point, which is, it's like some companies or brands will want to take let's take, let's take an incremental move, let's do something. Let's do just a little, I'm like, and I will challenge and I'll say, Do you want an evolution? Or do you want a revolution? I say you're a giant don't expect rapid exponential return on tentative on tentative initiatives. Let's be let's play a little, let's do a little safe little city, it's, you haven't moved the lever enough to know I mean, and this comes from even when I've had when I've worked with, with with people in my company, and they'll say, hey, I need to see this in a couple of little colors didn't make make this make this blue, or make this more red or whatever like that. And they'll move the no move, whatever is the is the dial, like a little bit. I said, dude, move the dot, let's push it far this way, push it farther. Let's see which way it goes. And then we can back it down. And then we we know where it's headed. They said, but they literally, they take this alternative. It's like, what do you think's gonna happen? You think that computer is gonna blow up, move, move the frickin thing. Let's see where it's headed. And Let's Discover, we can look, we can assess. But because if you don't take such small, incremental steps, that it's like, well, something happened. But we don't know what caused it. Because the move was so subtle, that basically you had to put it under a microscope to detect anything. Yeah,

William Harris 12:57

yeah. I, the entrepreneur in me loves the Gopika go home kind of approach. So let's talk about for brands who are looking at this, what are the warning signs, the telltale signs that you need a brand intervention, that that branding is the thing because I'm, I work with brands all the time, and we are making a lot of those incremental changes. And that's what we should be doing is, you know, people who are managing their ad spend where it's like, Great, let's test this advert, this ad, this landing page, this landing page, and there is some value to that. But there comes a point where you say, this isn't the answer anymore? Well, yeah, we've we've done what we can do within reason here, you need this bigger play. What are you looking at that you'd say this is the sign that it's time for brand intervention? Well, the

David Brier 13:43

first thing I want to the first myth that I want to absolutely blow torch the hell out of out of existence, is oftentimes when that's being done, it becomes a an exercise in, let me look in the mirror and see if I can detect something. No, how it's like, it's like, it's like this, let's say you're going to an event. And you're like, Well, I, you know, I really want to stand out at this event. And so you know, I want to make a statement, I want to like, you know, I'm going to the going to the Met Gala, or something like that. And I want to make a statement. And so now there's two ways you can approach this, you can approach it, you can look in the mirror and say, How can I be different? How can I be different? How can I be there? And you can keep asking the the frequent mirror and the reflection and just keep looking at yourself, you're not going to make a lot of progress, which is what a lot of companies do. It's like, how do we know whether we should be there? No. How are you going to have the insight necessary to know if you need to make a shift? Now you need to look okay, let me look at the guest list. Let me look at who's going to actually be at this event. What Intel do I have with regard to what they're going to be wearing? Now with that information? I can now make an informed decision. How far do I need to pivot? A lot a little big, small, raw bodacious, You know, are very nuanced. So that's the point is like, the first thing you have to do is you have to look and take inventory of, okay? If we're not making the kind of progress we want to be making, if we are plateauing, or if the competition is starting to increase, and the noise is getting, oh, now, others are copying us very common, because if you're gonna get any level of success, people are going to copy you. Well, the only way to stay ahead is to stay ahead, let me repeat that the only way to stay ahead is to stay ahead, that means you need to be moving that needs means you need to be looking into the future. Not like tentatively, where it could be maybe but but but that I cannot emphasize enough, you need to those of you that are listening, you need to slay the living shit out of tentative, you know, little a little let's tippy toe, and like, let's be this cautiousness, you know, look, you can, you could do what you need to do, you could do the testing, you could do all that stuff. But if you don't have enough clear man, bang, we really reached out into this direction reached onto the strike. And these are clearly different from one another, you know, how are we going to actually be able to conclude anything? And how is the audience out there going to be able to differentiate and distinguish us from our competition. So, you know, it's be bold, and being bold, doesn't always mean being loud. It doesn't always mean being obnoxious. It doesn't always mean dropping F bombs like Gary Vee, that's not what I mean, by being bold, I mean, have conviction, take a stand. Wherever your stand is, you may be a hardcore traditionalist in your in your space, you know, we're really traditionalist will then be the most hardcore, traditional traditionalist they're ever freaking was. That's the kind of fire you need to lean into it. Or you could be anything, but do it with conviction, do it not attended away, and do it with boldness, so that you know where you stand. And the people out there can actually hear you, and you can get on their dial because 10 did a shit is gonna get you tend to give shit results.

William Harris 17:15

Yeah, yeah, actually reminds me of something that is in your book here, that I have dug it. I have so many pages dogeared from this. You wrote, there's a law you must know, if your brand is using cliches you're promoting your category, not your brand. Yeah. And I liked that. Because that's that whole, like, generic stuff. That's not making a difference. Unless you actually kind of, like you said, Take a Stand

David Brier 17:41

people. Yeah. And here's an here's this one little a little other nugget I'll share with you and and listeners, is that, you know, when people talk to me about about brand loyalty and various things of that nature, I tell them, you know, the one brand that I that I would absolutely never want to ever, ever, ever be under the sun would be Walmart. And they're like, what? And I'm like, Yeah, you know why? Because Walmart, actually, they don't have any, any customers that are loyal to the Walmart brand. They're loyal to the low price. If another company came along and said, Hey, anything you can get at Walmart, you can get for 5% cheaper at our place, those people are going to split because the only differentiator they have is price. Right? Sure. And so that people are loyal to the price, not the brand. Walmart happens to own that bid. And because of the negotiating, and their business model, and all that kind of stuff. But I wouldn't want a brand that was not that had no customer loyalty to my brand. They're only loyal to the lowest price out there. Yeah,

William Harris 18:43

that makes it hard to compete. Yep. So let's talk about this. So you need to know your brand. Now. I've said before to people that I think you can get to 10 million without having a really massively clear brand. That's hard. And that's not true for everyone. But I think that you can do that. I've seen a lot of people do that without having a very clear brand. But you can't grow beyond that without having a clear brand. How, how are you thinking about developing that clear brand? What are others that you're seeing in the space? Or like how do you go from having a kind of brand to a very clear brand? What's that process? Well,

David Brier 19:22

I mean, I mean, the basic thing is, is, is if I can't identify what your brand is, like, for example, it's like I mean, what's the difference between an Apple iPhone and a Samsung? Technically, technologically? Probably not a lot? Not much, not much. But there are those who are absolutely freaking diehard loyal to Apple. Right? It was It started out first of all, it was connected with a human being, in my experience, some of the best brands and sustainable brands I actually do have a human voice. In other words, we certainly for those of us who have been around we know Okay, Steve Jobs, Apple, right. Richard Branson, Virgin. Harley Davidson, it's like not not as much. But the bottom line is, is but the but the individual Harley is so connected to a lifestyle that that individual on the open road is the human connection. You know, and you know, and you can look at, you could look at tons of entrepreneurs, you could look at Mark Cuban, you could look at Daymond John, you could look at Grant Cardone you could look at you look at the Spanx CEO, you can look at all of these, all of these individuals. To me, there's a there's a human quality, that if that's if that's there, that makes it a hell of a lot easier. Now, when I say human quality, let's let's Let's raise our IQ a little bit and recognize this when I get on to my Delta airline. And I see the CEO delivering that stupid thing, you know, delivery helping people you know, one flight at a time, Baba Baba, but that is that is an empty jacket. That is a void. That's that there's nothing human there. There's nothing, there's, there's no personality. Because we as brands must have, there must be a clear hero and a clear villain. If you don't have a clear hero and a clear villain, as part of your brand story, you your growth will be absolutely limited. Completely. You've got to have something that I'm like, yeah, man, they got my back. I love that. Right. Yeah. And I hate that crap, too. Right. I mean, so you know, it's like, it's like, you know, liquid death? It's a very clear. I mean, if yes, they have they have their personality. But besides the personality, and I love I love their language and their marketing. They're just off the charts crazy. Absolutely. You know, but they've taken water and put in a can. I mean, what it's like, what is it, but yet, yet, they ended up they ended up with this, you know, getting 100 I think was $125 million dollar, you know, like, investment, like not in funding, not too not too long ago. So it's but it was clear who the who the hero was and who the villain was. So I will tell you, I mean, it's I mean, what brands do you like?

William Harris 22:20

Well, I mean, yeah, Apple, you mentioned Apple, Apple, I'm a die hard Apple fan, right? I've got everything Apple through. And beyond that I'm not a huge brand loyalists. I'm not a huge just consumer, which is an interesting thing, right? I think I like to approach things very, very, very methodically when I go to do this. So I am the person who will create the spreadsheet of all of the different options and try to find the one that is the right option for me. This creates. Oh, absolutely. And it's, it's, well, yeah, I mean, for just about anything, which is, I will say, is a problem. It creates a analysis of paralysis of sorts for a lot of things. And, and I struggle with some of those things. But if it's apple, I don't think twice about it. I'm like, yep, that's the one I want. I don't have to even compare the future features. No, no. You talked about even with, you know, having this enemy in there, and Apple in its early days did that as well. And they don't do that as much now. But they did that they had the enemy. They had the 1984 commercial, they ended up having like the Mac versus PC sort of thing. And I think in order to understand who your enemy is, you need to understand your audience. And I think that's something that liquid death did a great job to your point. And this is a quote that you have in your book as well. David Ogilvy said something along the lines of like, there's literally not much materially different between the different products, the different detergents, the different waters, the different whatever. The difference is, knowing your audience, knowing what they see as a hero and what they see as an enemy, and how can you make sure that you are aligned towards those things? Yeah.

David Brier 23:54

Yeah. And that's and that has to do with values. This is a this is a point that too few. Again, so many companies will be I will hear, like I'm sitting on I'm talking about, let's say, we're going to determine whether we're going to work together. So tell me, tell me and I to ask him. Here's the question. I will always if I ended up if any of your listeners and I end up ever working together, you will hear this question from me that it that is this, why should I as a prospect? Choose to do business with you? Why should I choose you instead of all your competitors? And then I proceed to listen? Sometimes that answer is five minutes long. Sometimes it answers 30 minutes long, but I let them answer the question, after which I thank them. And then I asked them, I say now let me ask you something. Why do I know that if I went to any of your competitors, that they would pretty much have a very similar, if not identical answer to what you just told me. Because the differentiators that the reasons that they think are the are the reasons You know, it's like, oh, well, we're can be anything from well, we're family owned, we're made in America, we're, you know, we've we've, we've invested X amount of hours X amount of money we've, we've done this r&d, we've had it tested on, you know, on Siberian, you know, you know, lions? Sure, you know, it's whatever. So and so that is the thing, it's, they're looking in the wrong places, and you're never going to come up with the right answers, looking in the wrong places. It's like the guy. It's like that scenario, looking in the mirror, you can ask that mirrors 40 45,000 times you will not get a legitimate answer for what you should be wearing at this special event to achieve the end result that you want to achieve. You're looking in the wrong place.

William Harris 25:47

Yeah. You, you brought up this idea to have? Were we looking for the right answers. And I think sometimes in DTC, the place that we try to find answers are in the nuances of data. And that's not wrong. But I think sometimes we're only looking at the subset of data that we have. And we're not looking at the data that we don't have. And so when we're looking at the data we have, it forces us to want to make these smaller, incremental changes. But we're not looking at the data that we don't have, am I not seeing that I think that we miss a part of the bigger picture of where we're going. And to me, when I think about the importance of branding, I see the plateau that you've talked about, I see that come up where it's like, great, we've we've nuanced this as much as we can, within the ads platform, there's only so many more changes we can make. We could maybe get you know, another 1% 2% 3%. Like, we're not going to make another 3040 50% gain, like you're adding on channels, but then you've added on most of the most big channels, and it's like, what are you gonna go to now Reddit fine. There's some value to be on Reddit ads as well, like we can continue to expand out channels, but there's only so much that you can do there. And then thing that's missing is this branding and this positioning that's taking place that makes people say, I absolutely have to have this. When we talked about lifetime value. We talked about how it increases brand loyalty, how to increase brand loyalty with LTV, and what LTV is really measuring.

David Brier 27:11

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And, and see and hit well. Here's what here's the thing. I mean, it's like so yeah, but let's, yeah, so we can be we're still recording. Yep. Yep. So the thing Yeah, the basic thing with with with lifetime value is, you know, no business, no business is built on a one time sale. It's built on, okay, I actually, I gave you a reason, I gave you a compelling reason to first engage with me a brand. Now I need to give you continuing reasons why you should engage with me. And here's the amazing thing about that. Most companies will look at branding, from the standpoint of you know what it's going to be, it's gonna be like, we're gonna attract the client, we're going to close the deal. We're going to they're going to complete their their online sale, and we're going to be happy. Well, that's good. You've what you've done right there. And this and here's the crazy part. Most companies think that that's successful, I consider that I first of all, that's not only not successful, that's the beginning, that is not the finish line. That's the starting line. So what happens is, is that and that's literally only two thirds of the actual branding pillars that actually make up the relationship. We have pre sale branding, during sale, branding, and post sale branding, one of the things that's amazing. post sale branding, is where we have the opportunity to leave not only a lasting impression, but to really build a relationship, the more that single brand builds in future into every action that they take future. That means like, Whoa, I mean, isn't it rewarding when someone says, I mean, look, you have experiences I have experiences anybody's experiences. It's like, it's like, how did they know I needed that? It's like they're inside my head. That's pretty powerful. Well, that's post sale branding. That's where you go, bang, yeah, we attracted your attention. We treated you like gold. So you were you you it confirmed that blew away any light possible. And maybe I should maybe I shouldn't take you to the to the first finish line, which is actually the starting line. And now we arrive in a special place, a special place where we now get to prove that they really made it. One of the great things you and I being advocates of Apple loving apple. One of the great things that I love of Apple is the amazing engineering that goes into their boxes. When I unbox a product, it's like it fits like like a freaking glove, it's and it's and it's the material is amazing. The every corner is perfect. It's not sloppily put together. That is post sale break. Do they need to do that? No. Does any other brand do that? No, they try some aspire to. But that what does that do that confirms you know, this $800? This $3,000 Whatever the hell the price tag is this, this is why I spent the money it confirms. So what does that do as far as customer lifetime value that makes the next sale 1,000% easier, and almost a guarantee. And then the next, the next the next. So we're doing we're actually creating a brand, presale branding poll, and during the sale branding, and then post sale branding 95% of any of your competitors. Anyone listening to this 95% of them ignore post sale branding. And when I say post sale branding, that doesn't just mean Oh, you mean like when Amazon just like says, Hey, you bought this, here's an email and say maybe you like this too? Is that post sale? Branding? Yes, it is. But it's, it's a message that's an email I'm talking about? I'm talking the experience, what are you going to do to elevate just the normal transaction into Wow, those guys blew me away. And I'll give you a very simple example. When I moved out here, please. I was within it was within I think a year of me moving out here from East Coast. And my wife and I, we were going to movie in a nearby Mall. And I I ended up I was like, You know what, we're here early. Why don't we go around, walk around the mall and I and we went to a place. And I was like, Oh, great. You know what, I'm gonna get some sneakers here. This is awesome. So I got some sneakers. The guy took great care of us. But here was the crazy part. I mean, took great, great care of us. Got some good sneakers, he gave some good advice. Six days later, I received a hand written, freaking folded over card that said, Hey, by the way, how did you did? And I was like, where did I frickin just move to Mayberry? What the hell gone? I couldn't be I was I was like, You gotta be kidding me. And of course, he had my loyalty from that point on. It was a little gesture, it can be something like that. Or in the case of the chocolate company. Here was an example. I made sure that that box was not only gorgeous, but was so that sucker would survive a nuclear holocaust. Okay, I'm saying that thing was built with so sturdy women. And I know it from husbands who once they learned that I was the guy that did it. They're like, Oh, you're the guy. That because they refuse to throw the boxes away. They would always reuse the boxes for recipes, or for sowings none more for this so that those boxes had an afterlife. That's post salesman, I had a little mini billboard in their home all the freakin time. And that was smart. And it was intentional. You know? So these are examples that you want customer lifetime value. You need to build future into your brand, not just, you know, yeah, blah, blah, blah, yeah, let's, let's do it good. And let's, let's get the transaction. And then let's follow up and hammer with an email sequence. You know what you and everybody else you do and everybody else. Trust me, if you're doing the same shit as everyone else. You're doing the same shit as everyone else. It's not because but we're doing it that doesn't make it special. Just like your passion isn't going to be the differentiator that separates your brand from your competitors. You've got to you've got to look at the world from out there inward. We're all being hit with a shit ton of noise. It is deafening. We have to outsmart that if we're going to outperform that level of noise, we have to outsmart it. We have to out strategize it we have to out think it we have to we have to let go. How the hell are we going to just totally reframe change the change the game entirely change the conversation entirely change the standard entirely.

William Harris 34:14

Yeah. I think you brought up those pillars, right, like the pre sell during sell, post sell. And that's coming out of your new book, if I'm correct, right. No, I

David Brier 34:25

just talked about that unbranded dimension. Actually, I covered them very

William Harris 34:28

well. I must not have dog eared that page. I apologize. But let's use this as an opportunity to transition into something that you told me in your new book because I haven't read that one yet. You haven't even given me that one yet. But the preview which you said I might need to burn this after this year. I'm talking about that magic ingredient that made everything from the Seinfeld sitcom to the Rolling Stones Pay Pal to the Rat Pack and Motown in the Declaration of Independence not only possible, but inevitable. The books called Red his brand poor brand. What did you mean when you're saying this? Because I think this is where you're getting at with this, where it's like cutting through all of that noise. What is this?

David Brier 35:09

The bottom line is, is that brands. It's not only limited to brands, it's what's put away with brands are a reflection of culture and culture is a reflection of people. Right? Make that very simple, very logical. Okay. So the thing is, is that we live in we live in AI at this point, I think culturally we are we have taken many steps backward. I think there's, there's an overemphasis on being overly safe. There's a there's an overemphasis of being I'm willing to be insulted, there's an overemphasis on, let me let me just say things in the most vanilla way possible. So that way, it may be me, it may be meaningless, but at least I will not have offended anybody. And you know what? Sure. It's like that that's that's not going to get us anywhere. So that overly cautious that that that element has resulted in us diluting and compromising our most vital ingredient, which is our willingness, that level of conviction, that level of ownership, that level of undeniable, almost contagious, you know, when you're in the presence of someone who's got that? Because you're like, man, they are freaking all in. They are not going. Yeah, I think so.

William Harris 36:26

Yeah, yeah. It reminds me of one size fits all right. One size fits all is another way of saying one size fits absolutely nobody, or maybe just a handful of people. But I think that that's what we've done with a lot of companies, a lot of brands is we have said, how do we make sure that this, this brand fits everybody and not necessarily fit from an actual size standpoint, but like that, it's absolutely right for everybody. But the reality is, it can't be right for everybody. And so how do we do a better job? Let's just say it's lazy. It's lazy marketing, do a better job of knowing who your ideal customers are, and be absolutely irreplaceable to that group of people. Yes, yes.

David Brier 37:02

And the bottom line is, is that is that what most people don't get? Is there looking for shortcuts? Well, you know, what insight is the ultimate shortcut. And the playing the long game is the ultimate shortcut. I mean, that's the, that's the bottom line. It's like, and I always find it fascinating. Whenever a company, I'm talking to a company, and there's this desperation that they gotta get sales. Now they got to do that. It's like, well, wait a second, you're coming to me, after you've already banged up your frickin vehicle running into like, every wall that you could possibly see. And you're asking me, if I can make can't go from zero to 60, in 2.5 seconds, excuse me, you screwed it up before you ever came here. So it's like, so now we're gonna have a real conversation, or you're gonna give me this bullshit scenario. Because if you're that desperate, I already know that lack of money is not the cause of of a company's problems. Lack of money is a symptom. I want everyone to get that lack of money is not the cause lack of money is not a cause of your problems and lack of customers is not a cause of your problems. Those are symptoms. And the bottom line is, is the only way you're going to remedy this stuff is by actually finding the cause the levers that will move things forward. And sometimes you got to freaking get really a big dose of frickin whip out the whipped cream, and then your your pie and your little pie thing and pull out, you're gonna eat some Humble Pie. You're gonna freakin apple pie with whipped cream all over that sucker. Because you screwed up, you screwed up, you made some bad calls. And that's okay. There's nothing wrong with making bad calls, what's wrong is making bad calls, and then saying how right they are bullshit. And you screwed up, the best leaders will be able to say, You know what, I that was the stupidest move I made. I made a batch I made a bad choice. For XYZ reasons. You know, this is what I did. I didn't correctly look at it. I was looking at through filtered lenses. I was whatever. Yeah,

William Harris 39:03

there's a lot of people may not realize this, but this is actually how your doctor works a little bit more. This seems counterintuitive. But your doctor says you've got these three or four different symptoms. 80% of the time those symptoms are this, here's the medicine, this is diagnostic to a point, take this medicine, if you get better. I was right. If you don't get better, come back and see me and we'll figure something else out. But to a point. That's what we need to do for brands sometimes too is we say, hey, look, when I see these couple of things going on, most likely there's a there's an issue here and if you just do a B tests, you're never gonna get anywhere kind of to your point. You need to take this pill and it's gonna be a pill. It's a little bit hard to swallow, but it's going to have some effect. And that effect is going to tell you if we made the right decision or not. If it works, great. We were right. If it doesn't work, okay, we were wrong. But we've at least very clearly identified that this was not the thing that you needed to do. Yeah.

David Brier 39:52

I just, I mean, you just reminded me of something which is like I actually I actually ended up rebranding I'm a naturopath who helps women with a drug free solution for menopause. And when I was when I was branding this company, here's the thing I learned. Hormonal, imbalanced hormones. Those are not the cause of menopause. Those are actually a symptom. I learned that from her. I was like, no shit. Because if you're approaching it from a set point, oh, that's the cause of your limited? Are you ever going to come up with a workable solution? Hell no. But if you realize it as a symptom, that changes everything. So it's always very I'm I'm fanatical when it comes to really finding, what's the cause of this decline? What's the what's the thing that's going to shift things dramatically.

William Harris 40:47

So let's say hypothetical, let's say that I run an E commerce retail brand, let's say doing 100 million booth only 5% of that is ecommerce. So five, we've got 5 million that's going towards ecommerce, the brand is very much based on all the creative we have is very much catalog based creative, we don't have a lot of good assets. And let's say that I'm the director of E commerce for this brand. And I'm bought into this, I get your book, I read it, I say yep, this is what needs to happen. How do I get buy in from senior management that we need to invest in branding? When senior management may think this is my baby? I love it. It's worked so well for us so far. How do you go about what are the things that you could say to get buy in? Very

David Brier 41:35

simple. So the thing is, is you take you take quick, quick inventory, take quick inventory, and you say okay, what's our competition doing? What's our competition? What's one of the metrics say, Okay, our top our top competitor, they have 25% of sales is ecommerce or not on top of our second top competitors. 25 our top competitor or second or third, another competitor is 40. And our top top competitor has 70% is ecommerce based. Now we go holy crap. Now we have a barometer by which to go there. 70 and we're five. Now we can make it now we realize you've got to you've got to be able to look at and understand what what are the what are the numbers, what's possible in this space. And at the same time now, that's unknown territory. Sometimes you're going to have unknown territory. Like for example, when when Steve Jobs said we're going to do retail stores, and I loved all the naysayers at the time, were like, oh, it's gonna fail. It's ridiculous. That's stupid. It's impossible. And these naysayers, well, it's a number one retail, the sales per square foot, it trumps everybody. But the interesting thing is, I remember when they were developing the stores, nine months into the development of the stores, they were using the model of the existing stores, meaning how products were laid out. So like if you and I go to a Best Buy, it's crap. You just see, okay, there's there's 45 laptops, here's 25 job dryers. Here's 50 TVs, it's just like, there's no anything. Well, Apple after nine months of doing this, I remember the guy who was in charge, came to Steve said, we got it all wrong. And Steve blew up. What the hell do you mean, we got it all wrong. And what they did is they built the stores around interests, meaning okay, this quadrant was video, this quadrant was created for creative this quadrant was for gaming, this quadrant was for music. And you and you could come in and actually simply just try the stuff out, not in a prior high pressure scenario, but it actually became an extension of their own curiosity. If a brand is not fostering curiosity on the part of prospects, you are leaving hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue on the table. If you are not fostering curiosity, it's like I want to know more just shouting at people the same shit they've heard from everybody else for decades is not the smart way to do business or do branding. We'd like we need I mean if I'm if I'm not helping a client intrigue, the imagination and curiosity on the part of their prospects certainly wow. Oh, I didn't know that that was possible. Well, that's interesting. I didn't know that. That it at it up and hitting on all these points. Just seduce me in a nice way at every point of contact. And so it's not that's really what a brand needs to do. It's like you're in the you're in the the industry of Building Curiosity. Nice, high quality seduction, not low grade, low grade crap. You know, and not just the cheesy little Hey, offer by now 50% off edited, and all that kind of crap.

William Harris 44:59

That's gonna destroy your LTV that destroy, you don't want those customers. That's right. Um, this, this neck part might just absolutely blow up on us. And if that's the case, we can cut it out. But I wanted to kind of imagine like a scenario where we run through this, we got a lot of customers that are shoe brands, apparel brands, and oftentimes to your point, there's nothing that really separates them in any significant way from everybody else out there. Yep. How do those brands, brands that are selling water in a can? What is the biggest way that a brand like that? And I want to keep it more on apparel, though, apparel, shoes, things like that? What are some ways that they can cut through the noise? Instead of just going after features, we have this material or whatever, because that's fine. That works for small segment of people. But most people don't care if you have this material. What are the better ways to approach cutting through the noise as an apparel brand?

David Brier 45:56

Well, here's what I would do. I'll tell you very exactly what I would do, I would take I would take inventory, I would do three columns. And I go pre sales, branding, during sales, branding, post sales branding, okay, in terms of pre sales, branding, which is everything from your name, to your slogan, to your positioning to your to your advertising, to etc. That's the pre sale, okay? And then it's during sale, which is like, whether it's online, or if it's a brick and mortar, it's an in a location that, and then the post sale. It's like, take each one of those and say, What, and list out, take inventory, what is everyone doing? And what are we doing? Fill out those columns, fill it out? What's everyone doing? What are we doing? How much and then take it take start now doing analysis, how much of what we are doing is simply our version of what everyone else is doing. If you're at 90%, if you're at 80%, you are leaving money on the table, you are not building a brand you're selling product. Don't confuse those two things. And you could sometimes be selling product, like you said earlier. You said hey, we can get to 10 million that. Yeah, at a certain point. But then it's going to plateau. And you go, why to plateau? Because you didn't build a brand, because you're just driving a Sales Machine. And yes, you need to have a strong sales machine. But if you have built if you build a sales machine on top of a brand, how many people need to actually ever be sold when they walk into an Apple Store? Zero, they walk in with a credit card, it's like, I want that color. And I want that much memory. Thank you, boo. And oh, and by the way, while they're walking back, oh, and I'll take those earbuds and I'll take that microphone, and I'll take that. It's like boom. $5,000 later. $10,000. Later. Great. And they're happy as a clam. Good. Yep. So the bottom line is, is you take it, you take those three pillars, and you then you go, Okay, what percentage of what we're doing is essentially our variation, our spin on what everyone else is doing. If it's a high percentage, you're in the shitter. You need to you need to widen that gap. You need to go okay, we are not thinking big enough. We're not playing big enough. We're not making we're taking incremental changes and think that they're going to actually be noticeable. That's no, it's like get get ahead get a bit bold. It's like, you know, what, what, what do you need to do to widen that gap? There's your $64,000 question. What do you what steps do you need to take to widen that gap? Is it the experience when they get in the store? Is the the experience when they get online? Is it? Is it something? Is it having something remarkable, something magical? What are you doing after the sale? What are you doing at the sale? Are you going to blow my mind? I'll give you I'll give you a perfect simple example. And it's not it's not apparel related, but it is absolutely from the standpoint of buying something alternative catalog. So so to two to one East Coast and one west coast. Artisanal food catalogs, one William Sonoma and then the other one was was the amigos de amigos. And so now that the amigos it's on the east coast with begins it begins with the D I haven't gotten the catalog in a while so I don't know what the hell they're doing. But the thing is, they both had chocolate towards like flowers chocolate towards I'm a sucker for a really good flower just talking to her. I look at them, I could really not hardly tell the difference. Price is just about the same. I'm like, Well, shit, which one should I take? And so I was like, You know what? Screw it. I'm getting both them. And I'll see which one's better. Okay, so I get I get both, but one of them comes. One of them comes and, and it's like they're nicely presented. And it's just the tort. The other one comes. It's there. It's the torte and on the top, it says, you know, there's the flowers, chocolate torte and on the backside of this little card, probably about three by three by five people. Before the back of the card is the recipe for bourbon whipped cream, which they say is the most wonderful accompaniment of that. Now, it's a post sales branding. Let's see, what did it cost them? Probably about two cents to print up that card. What did it costs him in terms of labor to add that frickin card? On top of that thing? Probably, I don't know, whatever, whatever. It didn't matter. Which one was I going to remain loyal to? Because I mentioned it earlier, I'm going to mention again, because I guarantee no one understood it to the extent that they need to, I talked about not include the amount more future than your competition. They gave me more future, they thought ahead of the steps that I would be taking. That's how you include future, what are the next steps that your customer will inevitably take? You could do that in the pre sales side, you could do that in the during sales side, you could do the post sale side, what's the amount of future? Okay, so the going here? Don't we love it? When we go to a site, and the site is like, they not only have that, but they now are providing the information. That was our next question. And it's like, Woohoo, they knew our journey. And there was like, wow, bang, there it is. So what happens is, is you must include, anticipate the next steps. And that's what I mean, when I say include future in with everything. The more who you know who wins at the end of the day, the company that has the most amount of future incorporated into each of those steps, who wins the business, who has more customer lifetime value? Who has more brand loyalty, it is the company that builds more future into each of those steps, you build more future, you will be the winner, you know, and it's commonly said, hey, the one that wins is the one with the best story. Yeah, that's true. But the bottom line is the one who wins them over the bet the one amongst those who have the best story, it's going to be the one with the most future built into each of these three columns that we've been talking about, you do that you will kick ass. That's how you build it.

William Harris 52:09

It's brilliant. I love it. I'm gonna move us from the future to the past. Because I do want to select to talk a little bit about who is David prior. So I want to talk about your childhood. Let's just say, maybe not even childhood, but just why do you see branding? In a way that's so different from other people?

David Brier 52:36

I would say it's probably a number of different reasons. I mean, one is is that for those of for those that are seeing this, if you look where my fingers pointed, that's, that's a painting I did a George Harrison when I was about 15 or 16 years old. A lot of this artwork you see over here, and there's tons of artwork over here that you don't see. And there's paintings over here, all kinds of stuff in the office. And that which you've been to where we were we did

William Harris 52:57

that right. And I didn't know you made that though. That's pretty cool. Yeah, yeah.

David Brier 53:01

And so the thing is, is that is it so I come from I come from the standpoint of like, I know what it is to actually create. You know, the the most frustrating was when I was starting my career in New York, and I saw art directors and I and I because I was a designer let it initially I was just the logo design. That's how I started. And I would work with art directors who couldn't even draw a sketch to describe to me what they had in their mind. And they're directing, like, how the freakin hell can you do that? You can't even draw. It's so so I come to it with that standpoint. The other thing is that I also was a drummer in my teens. So I've always, I've always been a big, big lover and admirer of music. So I appreciate. And I and my music goes everything from Motown to The Beatles to the free, you know, to, to, to to jazz to classical, I mean, I cover the gamut. Because there's, there's a certain aesthetic that I appreciate, but I also appreciate, there's a contrast. It's like, the catch, like, for example, music can't go on. Nor can a story go on or a movie go on is like that, um, but um, but, um, but, um, but um, and dump and dump and dump a dump, but we're like, okay, what is it gonna be changed here? What's going on here? We're like, now getting restless. It's like, Hello. So there's got to be like, you know, it's gotta be like, boom, bah, bah, dah, the earth I also Whoa, okay, we're getting it now. So, so something too. So there's gonna be a bit of that tension, a bit of that something that keeps us hooked, that keeps us connected. And so I'm looking at and when I grew up in New York, we went to we would oftentimes go to Greenwich Village and we would go to where it where there was the art festival and around Washington Square Park, and I And I'd looked at the street performers, and I'd smell the foods being cooked in the street. And I'd looked at the different art. And I always was intrigued by something that would make me do a double take, and I go, What the hell? It's like, what is that? What is that thing? What does that smell? What does that sound? What does that amazing note that that person just sang? And so things that that just cut through? Right, I was always fascinated with things that cut through, right? It's like, you know, there was no shortage of visual stimuli in Greenwich Village. But what was the thing that just boom, that totally made me go, Whoa, I gotta walk up and really check this artwork out? Or, you know, okay, there's 40 different street performers. Why am I I'm blown away by that one. That really, and I wanted to know more about that come full circle to what we talked about early about where it is incumbent upon us, we must own our roles in commanding the curiosity and attention of those that we seek to communicate with. If we can't do that, get the hell out of business. Just work for somebody, you got to if you're going to be an entrepreneur, if you're going to be a CEO, if you're going to be a build a brand. You need to be willing, how willing are you to actually command someone's attention to actually do something to enough of a degree that you're willing to actually pique their curiosity? You know, it's like, I mean, that's why I mean, I love I love showing up at an event and talking and knowing that the first 15 seconds are going to be have I hooked them or not. Have I done something to disrupt it to disrupt their what they expected? Because if I just show up, and I give them what they expect, will I be acceptable? Yes. Will I be memorable? No. Get that difference? Will it be acceptable? Yeah, being acceptable is not an achievement. Yeah, look, someone laying dead in a coffin is acceptable. Okay. We're not offending anybody. That's not an achievement. Yeah, but being memorable. Every moment of our interaction is a moment, it we can leave a morsel a breadcrumb of, of our legacy with every interaction. That's what we can do. And if we're not doing that, that is a forfeited opportunity.

William Harris 57:36

That's a good point. You also talked earlier, we were talking about books and podcasts. And you had a good stance on books and podcasts as far as basically saying that, too often people get books that are about topics, subjects that they're interested in, versus once you can actually learn something. What do you mean by that?

David Brier 58:00

I will admit, freely. And I'm very comfortable admitting it. Because I know everyone listening to this is guilty of the same thing. How many books do we actually have on our bookshelves that we actually bought that we thought was a great idea, but we never actually read? It's like, let's get real here. Let's get real.

William Harris 58:17

I tell you, like, I'll read it. I'll read it. I'll read it, you know? Yeah,

David Brier 58:22

exactly. Exactly. And, and the cool thing is, and here and here's the cool thing for those that actually, if you're just learning about this for the first time, and you're just so you know, like, that's why I wrote my book with such big freaking type. Okay, I wanted to punch in the face or the punch of the face. So you didn't have to basically search for the goodies. I I don't like, I don't I don't I mean, there are some folks. And you know, and this was one particular there's one particular person sort of in my space. I respect his his business acumen and his achievements. I find them boring. As boring as shit. I think he is exciting. I think he's as as exciting as watching tofu come to room temperature on my counter. Okay. And so I'm not gonna I'm not gonna name him. But the bottom line is, is he's boring as shit. But he's a very, but he's a smart business person. Sure. He's built he's built a decent brand. What I want to what I trade places with him, hell no. Because I'd be bored out of my freaking wits. I'd want to hit my head against the wall. We you know it to me. If we're going to attract people to buy a book, or if we're going to attract them to watch a YouTube video or attract them to listen to our podcast, we need to reward them. We need to reward them with with actionable things. And I think there's some people that really do that. Well. I think Alex Rosie is really good. Yeah, I think Alex is I think he's really smart. I mean, Alex, if you're listening to this, you're an asshole because you didn't accept my invitation yet. I invited you to actually like get on the thing with me So Alex, if you're listening to this or or later if you are listening to this as well tell Alex Alex What are you a freaking asshole? What are you a butthead? You didn't frickin take David Breyers invitation you asshole call them up now.

William Harris 1:00:15

Shots fired

David Brier 1:00:20

so it's good I will not arm wrestle with you Alex, I know you'll kick butt eat shouldn't die, buddy, you didn't freaking respond. So anyway, the basic thing is is, but he rewards you He gives you stuff. You know, but and there's some, you know, I think Seth Godin has. It has some great moments. I think Simon Sinek has some great moments. But I but I'll let's let's be honest, I was blown away with Simon cynics. You know, start with why. You know, his TED Talk. That's how I first discovered that then I was like, if he can achieve this shit in 18 minutes. His book must blow my frickin mind. I got the book, I was very, I was completely heartbroken. I learned nothing more from the book. The best part of the book was in that was in that I didn't I never needed to he didn't give me more. He didn't take me to a new place. Sure. It was just a longer version. The TED talk was the Cliff's Notes version, which was great. That's all I wanted. So we must respect and reward because people are going to, what's going to happen is people are going to first invest with us, they're going to invest their time. That's in the form of trust. The question becomes, are we going to reward that trust? Where they've invested five minutes? 10 minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes, whatever it is, are we going to reward that trust with something valuable? If we have not, we have lost that relationship. If we have rewarded them with something, then it will graduate where they're like, oh, maybe David has something more valuable to say. In addition, Oh, watch the males. Oh, wow, I was rewarded again. Oh, wow. Now now if we become if we become continually rewarding them for their trust in us that will eventually evolve where now we're an authority. And we're a trusted source, and it will result in business or referrals. And that's as true for apparel as it is for food as it how many people think that Gordon Ramsay is amazing but have yet never not yet eaten in one of his restaurants, but guaranteed. But if there's someplace where it's like, hey, like Vegas or someplace, oh, there's a Gordon Ramsay thing. How quickly will they it's like that he's got the street cred he's he is rewarded you and me with value because of whether it be whether you're watching his master chef bucket where he's more in a mentor role, or he's going for the full fiery theatrics, the pyrotechnics on freakin you know, Hell's Kitchen, where he's beaten, everybody's asked to the to the ground. But the bottom line is, he's still rewarding, whether it's entertainment or information. Yeah.

William Harris 1:03:04

You have met some interesting people over the course of your career here. Yep. One personally that I have enjoyed is Daymond. John, writing the foreword to your book. And I got to ask how does that happen? How do let's say I write a book in the future? How do I make sure I get either Daymond John or a Daymond? John like character to write the foreword of my book? What was it like meeting him? Tell me the story here. Okay.

David Brier 1:03:30

So here's basically how it happened. So I had at the time, I was I had a I have a column, I have about 3040 articles on Fast Company at the time, probably about the second season into Shark Tank. That was like my wife and I are guilty pleasure. It's like we would stay home watch Shark Tank. We freaking love that we thought the coolest thing. And so we were like, it was like, I think it was just the second season. We were like this is cool. So I was like, you know, I really haven't seen anybody really write about like, what is it that makes the difference of those that get a deal and investor. And though Nitin as I'm going to do my own analysis, what is it? And so I wrote my own article on that. And it was a great article. And it was well thought out. And I just would get my viewpoint. Within a couple of days. Daymond John, tweeted, this is the best article ever written on Shark Tank. Wow. And I was like, son of a bitch. I'm like, how cool is that shit, right? So I immediately I see this come up on my feed. And I'm like, and I'm like, Thanks, man. I didn't know him at the time because I know him at time and so on. Um, I was like, That's freaking cool. And I And so immediately my, you know, I'm like, open door. I'm like, How can I leverage this? How can I build this? So I immediately thought, what can I do? above the level of expectation? What can I do to exceed expectations, because everything I've been talking about, that you and I have been talking about here, it's like, it's recognizing there's a bar that's been set, either deliberately or under or intentionally or not, there's a bar that's been set, sometimes that bar is low, sometimes that bar is high, but it's an agreed upon bar, you know, whether through just actions or through customer expectations, or customer demands, but it exists, and to the degree that we only meet that bar, and that band is the degree that we fail to the degree that we go beyond that is degree that we succeed. So with that being said, I looked at this, and I was like, you know, I'm going to so I need I need I need to, like, I need to wow, Daymond How can I do that? I said, you know, I want to I want to write an article about Daymond. And I'm going to tell him that I'm going to tell them, I'm gonna say, Damon, you need an ID by this time, I already thought it out. And all this probably took 20 minutes. It was like, my world is going. Like, alright, so I came up with an amazing a killer headline. And I said, you need you need a you need a slogan, that's just killer. And now I can tell by the speed with which he was responding. It's him. It's not someone doing social media. And he was cool, man. Like, what? And this is what I texted back, a message back. I said Damon was a girl's best friend.

William Harris 1:06:47

Nice.

David Brier 1:06:50

So and for those that might be young, young folk listening to this, that from a diamond is a girl's best friend, a very famous line from from an advertising I'm they think that I think that's the beers actually from their phones, right? You know, and so so if you're, if you're very if you're young and yellow, never heard that before, you could Google it. A diamond is a girl's best friend. There you go. But a diamond is girls, my friend. And he was like, that's awesome, right? And he loved it. And I said, Cool, man, let's schedule a time. I'd love to actually do an article based on this letter, we'll do an interview. He goes cool. Let's set it up. So we set it up anything. That's how it happened. So I didn't do it with the agenda of oh, maybe I can attract the attention of one of the sharks. But I was like, I was like, I'm just gonna do my thing. That's it. Same way that I will tell you as a side note, it's the same way that I actually met Claude silver. Who's Gary Vaynerchuk. Number two? Yeah, yep. It's like, I literally I saw an article on her. And I was like, You're, I was, and I watched a few of her videos. And I immediately fell in love with her. She's incredibly special, very unique, very unique, being really from the heart of very, very phenomenal person. And so I just simply sent her a message on LinkedIn, I just said, I just said, I want you to know, I said, I found you. I saw this, and my jaw hit the ground. I said, you're amazing. I just want you to know that just for me to you. You blew me away. You're amazing. And I want to thank you for being who you are. And thank you. That was it. No expectation. And four days later, she was she was so open. And she was like, Oh, my God, she was like, thank you so much. That's like, she was like, totally, you know, she wasn't like, thanks so much. We'll be in touch. It wasn't like one of those attributes. You didn't have that layer of corporate Bureau bureaucratic bullshit, you know, that's a cement suit. And so, but that's basically how it happened. That's how that's how David's so when, by the time they came for noon, so David and I started working on some little pet projects and stuff like that together. And I ended up and by the time I was doing my book, I said, Damon, I'd love for you to write my right mind forward. And that was that, you know, it's I'm very, I will tell anybody. My own personal philosophy and policy is when I am dealing with VIPs. I'm very, very deliberate and intentional with what I asked for, and very intentional about what I don't ask for I don't, I don't take lightly. I know that they're being bombard and again, it's the ability to look at the world, just like you. I've been talking about. You got to look at the the the world of your audience. That's my audience. Yeah, I am not I am not going to ignore the fact. I mean, I literally I remember. I remember asking Damon at one point I said, Dude, how many pitches do you get a day? Here's 100 Yeah, I don't doubt it every day, every day and people come to him. Hey, my thing special bullshit. You think your thing special? The fact that you're even thinking that and you're coming up to him and thinking that he hasn't already been pitched 65 times shows the level of naivety that you have yet real. So it's just the wider our awareness can be to all the sides of the relationship, the better off we are.

William Harris 1:10:12

That reminds me a little bit of how I got my first article on I believe it was entrepreneur at the time, the subject line that I put in there knowing your audience, I said, another boring pitch from a mediocre writer. I thought everybody's talking about how great they are. What do I put this in there? It did backfire on me. He actually replied back he was like, Well, then why would I even read it? I was like, oh, no, no, no, wait a minute, hold on. But I got his attention and it turned into eventually me getting on entrepreneur. Good. One of the other things I'd like to talk about then are like, just to say silly quirks or talents, things like that. And when we were talking about this, we jokingly said that you have a very good French accent it is much better than than most people mine unfortunately sounds a little bit like a sick Lumiere from the beast. Yes, your your

David Brier 1:11:00

is minimun that when I listen to you, it makes me kinda like it is. It is disgusting. When you Americans try to stand like like us frosh. It is it is a it is a cultural insult. It is a slap in the face. You are disgusting. You make me just sick to my stomach.

William Harris 1:11:21

That sounds very French. You actually, it reminds me even yours is much better. But it reminds me of Pink Panther. Oh, who was the guy who played in that now? John a blank on his name. But he's like, hamburger. Sellers. Yeah. Hamburger hamburger.

David Brier 1:11:40

Oh, yeah. He was he was so bad. It was so bad. It was bad in a good way.

William Harris 1:11:47

But he better a good way. Yes. I want to wrap it up. You talked about rewarding trust. Is there some way that we can reward the trust that people have given us and so we've talked about a lot of things that cover the gamut of branding. There's so much more we could go into. Is there any other thing that you would like to leave is like parting words of wisdom to people who are thinking about branding in some way, shape or form?

David Brier 1:12:13

Yeah. Stop sitting on the sidelines. Go into action fast. Find out what the hell works. Find out what doesn't work. Just stop stop the stop the tentativeness. Stop the text. Is that okay? Well, you know, we're going to we're going to read it, we're going to read this we're going to watch these YouTubes and we're going to do some tutorials. We're going to bullshit. Do you know I mean, it's like, like, you know about my you know about my masterclass. So, I mean, so during my nine week master class, I mean, I put, I put I put 100 entrepreneurs through the masterclass, they probably collectively generated about 789 million in revenue. Since completing Okay, wow. The thing that's crazy, though, is that the amount of them that didn't know what branding was, until I forced them to look at it, forced them to answer questions, forced them to start working it out, they couldn't look the greatest, you're the greatest challenge that anybody's gonna have is, one, you're gonna You may initially think we can do it all ourselves. That's one potential barrier. Another potential barrier is, we know all about our product, we don't need anybody's help, you're full of shit. If you're thinking that I will tell you, because I love you, you're full of shit, trust me, you're full of shit, you're leaving money on the table, I already know that you've got just by that admission, if you're saying that or thinking that you're already are easily seeing 25 to 50% less the actual revenue and income than if you actually looked at it honestly, because the bottom line is is you knowing about it is important your knowledge of your product, your knowledge of your service is important. It's one of your greatest assets. It's also one of your greatest liabilities. Because you're too freaking close to it. You don't know what's important, because not all the things are equally important. Not every feature is equally important. Not every feature might even be a point that even differentiates you from your competition. So it's not on well we know what's important great if all your competition knows the same thing, then you're all just adding to the noise which comes back to the beginning of this which is what everyone who should do anyway should listen this entire thing again, because this conversation was freaking that there was some fire and gold on this man. This is people shouldn't be paid. People should be sending you and me checks after listen. This is there's some bad thing is it comes down to differentiation. It's like, if we don't differentiate, you're not even gonna get on their radar. So it doesn't matter. But we're better than great. I'm glad you're better. I hope that you're better. I want you to be better. But that doesn't mean you're going to you know how many starving artists are there? How many starving genius entrepreneurs are there who've made the most incredible breakthrough in XYZ, but they couldn't brand it for crap. Yeah. So the thing is, is that that's the that's the stuff. That's the stuff to look look for. Just like Don't Don't be tentative. If you're going to try it yourself. Try yourself and do it fast. Do it fast and do it deliberately don't go well. I'll devote 30 minutes a day to bullshit. That's a cowardly move. Acknowledge it's a cowardly move. That means you're scared. Okay, good. It's okay to be scared. Now. Just get the hell over it. And just like freakin lean in. Seriously, do it for real. And then you'll know if you have the stomach for it or not. If you and you and if you are, if you do, congratulations. That's incredible. If you don't get the expertise of someone like myself, there are many that are like me, but you know, but you at least now you now know me. And you. So bottom line is, is you should you should go out and buy yourself a freaking lottery ticket. Obviously, the fact that you've been listening to this, and you're here listening to this right now, just obviously, you're doing something right? Because you're listening to following William, you're following me? Boom, there it is.

William Harris 1:16:23

Boom. David, if people wanted to follow you more they wanted to interact with you follow, where is the best way for them to stay in touch with you?

David Brier 1:16:33

Best way is certainly go to risingabovethenoise.com Rising ri s ing risingabovethenoise.com. And you and that's where you'll have the entire website and where I have over 300 actual articles where I show you brands that I've met, I take you through the journey. It's like I show you here's the before, here's the after, here's the result, here's what we found. And I show you the actual stuff by my book Brand Intervention. And you can certainly reach out to me on LinkedIn. If you're kind of like, hey, you know what I heard you and William. And it's like, and you're like, and you're like and you know what? And by the way, I really look closely at your two beards. And I like Williams better. And like, you know, I won't hold that against you. I'm okay with that. If you'd like Williams beard better, that's fine. I'm not going to tell you to Eat shit and die unless you say something really stupid after that. Now. So the thing is, is you know, so they're rising above the noise.com read intervention and reach out to me on LinkedIn, you get that there's other social channels, my YouTube channel, etc. But those are the three good core ones to connect with me on.

William Harris 1:17:34

It's amazing. I appreciate it. David, it's been so good talking to you today. I appreciate you sharing your wisdom, time and knowledge with us.

David Brier 1:17:42

1,000% Man, I had a blast. I had a blast.

William Harris 1:17:45

Thanks again. And thanks, everyone for listening. Have a great day.

Outro 1:17:49

Thanks for listening to the Up Arrow Podcast with William Harris. We'll see you again next time and be sure to click Subscribe to get future episodes.

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