Breaking Down the Academics of Branding | Marcus Collins

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we are trying to get people to move we're trying to get people to adopt behavior and we invest in these vessels of meanings that we call Brands to conjure up thoughts and feelings in the hearts and minds of people to increase their likelihood of moving Dr Marcus Collins an award-winning marketer a professor a former Chief of strategy officer at WID Kennedy also formerly worked with the likes of Beyonce Nike Apple Justin name a few that's what people forget right Nike Dill Knight Once Upon a Time was a small disruptive

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startup he was making his sneakers with a waffle iron literally making sneakers with a waffle iron Steve Jobs and Steve wnc were in a garage like everyone starts with no fans no listeners no subscribers we all start that way and then we grow to something to something else if Nike fails oh we're talking about it I.E everything in the headlines we talking about this earlier you were saying that they're getting punched in the face right now that's right do you think there's so many guys out there on

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road boats right now that are just like absolutely swarming in on the market about the the retailer so then when people started going back to malls back to stores Nike wasn't there Dr Marcus Collins dude we've been uh friends for a while I think we met uh five years ago just about yeah it co times about 2,000 years I was in uh my living room in my Underpants and we became friends um and to add some context so that doesn't sound weird uh we we did some projects together that's right yeah totally one with Michigan

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Ross uh University and I think um what you're just bringing to the equation and teaching has been just incredible to watch you over the years not only grow but like expand and evolve and transform and seeing you go from like doing lecture theaters to speaking on stages here in australi man like you're crushing it I I appreciate it DOC and truthfully I feel like a peer I feel like we're peers for sure yeah with friends Manon I think um we're excited to have you here and I was like

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salivating I'm like I can't wait till he comes like I can't wait to dive in it's been too long and and I think um yeah like what you've been able to accomplish in your career has been is been insane man so I'm just excited to dive in and um just unpack some of that but I guess to kick things off and we're joking about this before the Pod there's some Australian isms that you're like what are you talking about so first and foremost raw dogging it um has a different different context and um

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subject matter in the US um but here it just means to freestyle it and go for it yeah in the US it means something a bit more uh not safe for work yeah yeah yeah so you're excited you get to say it a lot right so let me throw some arism at you and then by the nature of how they sound or feel like they're branded I want you to guess what you think it is okay let's do it all right so the first one is um smashing tinnies smashing tinnies yeah uh I suppose it's Dr and beer yeah oh that's correct man good job okay good

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um I first thought you say smashing something else I was like okay raw dog smashing got to work on my pronunciation smashing tennies tennies the tennies the tenes made me think how did you know what that was uh when you said tennies I thought cans smashing them you drinking then wow okay so it's well branded internationally okay there we go there we go just learn something but long as you to annunciate it though you got to make sure you pronounce tenes ten n [Laughter] this hasn't even started man it's off

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the rails already I love it there's another arrain one which is um uh we're not here to [ __ ] spiders okay um is that not we're not here to F around saying we're to [ __ ] around yeah yeah yeah totally okay that trans why spiders what it's just stupid okay and they're a plethora of Yeah the more confusing and illiterate and stupid it is I think the more it resonates okay yeah and you'll notice that we uh we tend to shorten everything so instead of say McDonald's we'll say mackas oh

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interesting or we'll change it and distort it we'll call it Mickey D's oh yeah we do Mickey D's too mackas that's a new one for me though that's new for you yeah macas never heard Mickey D's for sure yeah but not macas it's weird if Australian says let's go to McDonald's everyone's like interesting you mean Maas H yeah okay yeah so we we like to steal Brands and change them okay I like it and Starbucks is stares star okay yeah what does Chuck aiki mean

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Chuck a sticki chuck aiki Chuck a Sicky uh is that smoke a cigarette no it means to be uh you're gonna have a sick day Chuck a sicki yeah that's great Chuck acki yeah it's like I'm not going to go to work that day I'm just going to pretend I'm sick oh got it okay it's like playing hookie what's that mean playing hookie is when you're going to skip school oh are you going to skip work you know Skip a thing I'm playing hookie yeah so we we um I know I don't know the atmology of it but

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we we call it we're going to wag like I'm going to wag school tomorrow everyone's like know what you mean Chuck a hookie Chuck a hookie okay what uh what's a bludger a bludger oh um I think VI something violent like someone bludging you with a knife I can see how that would translate yeah so so a bludger is someone who's um uh who doesn't do anything and lives on what we call the doll and the doll is um uh the government pension oh so bludger is like someone who doesn't have a job

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and relies on the government yeah yeah yeah we call him a slacker slack where we are slacker do anything we call him a blooder like you don't do anything you know um okay so next one is um having a squiz having a squiz uh having a squ saying that sounds so terrible I don't know what's going through my mind right now having a squiz just don't to think R-rated it's it's pretty standard having a squiz oh I have no clue I mean I have no clue just take a stab in the dock uh for some reason

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think you're having a poop I don't know I don't know like so squiz means to like uh like peek or stare oh having a squiz yeah so like if pretty work pretty girl walks past you like I'm GNA have a squiz oh yeah interesting yeah having a squiz kind of like yeah it's kind of like squinting oh got it got it okay okay okay I'm G have a squiz or have a squee at that or I love this took a squee I this is this is so enlightening for me I love this I just want to give you a layup for tomorrow man when you're

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on stage to totally this next one all right uh what's a wanker a wanker oh this is like uh this is a is a prority for someone who sucks oh that's such a technical term it's very British right a pejorative it's like a negative something to say something negative about someone man I'm learning these words but that's that British thing right this wanker yeah yeah I heard Clive Owen say a movie or something uh what does it mean to be pissed pissed yeah like upset okay cool that

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translates that's cool W what's another what's interesting is that we'll say I'm pissed but we don't say take the piss out of it oh you don't say which a that's a British thing right you guys say that too take a piss out of it something I think it is a British term yeah we we don't say take the piss out of it yeah we say I take a piss I got go to the bathroom I take a piss out of it like how you take a piss out of a thing I don't know I remember I was like um uh in Germany

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last week and I was like do you know where the bathroom is a toilet and they're like what are you talking about it's like water closet and they're like oh it's over here water closet yeah so in Germany it's a water closet they don't use toilet or bathroom uh and then in Britain they go the Lou yeah do you guys say the L we say the dunny the dunny I think that's trending out it's not cool anymore but like when I was a kid you're like I have to use the dunny I have I think this is so fascinating

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yeah and because what was what like what we're highlighting here is that even though we speak English yeah like we speak the same language culturally there are colloquialisms there are shorthands that we use that have different meanings and the idea is that you need to you yet to be close to the culture to understand the meanings even though we're speaking the same language I would agree with that and it's like almost in a weird way this could be translated into what is branding and branding is creating uh a

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new set of meanings that's right that's right like the literature talks about branding or Brands as vessels of meaning they're identifiable signifiers that con up thoughts and feelings in the hearts and minds of people and these meanings are negotiated and constructed just like you know dunny yeah like that's like people gave it meaning and to your point like it's moving out that it's moving out of favor and therefore its meaning the the significance of that meaning is decreasing it's depreciating yeah

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exactly and those things we de decide that like we decide what's acceptable I mean 10 years from now we may be saying take the piss out of it in States I only he that because a lot of Brits who work in advertising who are planners go because the piss out of it of course you oh you'll probably go back home and take all these inside your family like what does that mean I tell you if I had an English accent y'all couldn't tell me nothing I I'd be like the killer strategist for sure like each with the

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British accent you always sound better it always sounds way cooler totally yeah you could say the most mundane thing and it sounds interesting yeah but if I said that in Australian isms no one cares it's it's so true it's so true all right I got two more for you so next one is um uh Chuck on some tracky dacks what truck on some Chuck on some tracky dacks Chuck on some tracky dacks dude I have zero clue so Chuck on which means to put clothes on okay I didn't realize that and usually Chuck on is

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like I'm Chuck on my shoes Chuck on my hat Chuck on my watch we're just going to put items on myself okay uh or on on self um tracky Dax is like a track suit H yeah and like the pants the track like the full outfit I I thought you were play with me I thought you we were in the car the other day my daughter was like oh Dad it's so skibbidy and I was like Georgia you just made that up right now she's like no that's a thing like skibby Georgia that doesn't mean anything and she's like yes

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it is like like you just don't know are you too old how old is she she's nine I know what's cool sure enough skib is a thing that's like the new de Chuck I thought you just made that up right there to play with me out of it for no for real you you you probably weren't hear it in Sydney but it's thing uh okay last common one which is um uh what are Budgy Smugglers budy Smugglers uh um I don't know I don't I don't know so think about your package and you could smuggle it with a

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thong oh like your butt no like your uh frontal crutch R oh y your package just think it it looks like a budgie that's being smuggled get out especially if it's yellow looks like a little budgie this is amazing this is stray man welcome you've only been here for 6 hours by the way amazing my IQ is through the roof at this point unbelievable so you're ready but yeah so you arrived you were on a 21-hour flights you went to Detroit then to um LA and then straight here about 21 hours

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did you sleep I slept for sure I slept uh slept for a little while did a little work ate a little bit went back to sleep watched the movie here yeah yeah Tri to La I just like work the whole time oh yeah and the Wi-Fi wasn't working from LA to Sydney and I was like what world do we live in right now which is wild because 10 years ago we didn't have Wi-Fi available like that no but I it says so much about the honic treadmill that we're on that we have these expectations for things that weren't a

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thing and like I was literally upset like I was like great I can't talk to anybody yeah like what am I going to do for 19 hours seriously I can't check my email it's wild and and I think that it's this is this becomes a challenge for companies for brands that people are constantly updating their expectations because of the world that they live in and as a result as a brand you have to live up to that I think of it this way you know before you're getting catching a cab you had to wait for the cab to

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come then you get in the cab and then you had to you know hassle with the person after the fact pay it then go but now you jump in a car is frictionless you have to talk to anybody yeah in the Uber like M right over here I didn't talk at all yeah you know it's great we don't even have to know each other I can stay I can be on the phone talking and not stop the phone call at all get out say nothing go to a restaurant when I get there I have to wait for someone to acknowledge me and then wait for someone

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to seat me and then wait for someone to take my order if someone could just make the Uber of restaurants I mean that these are all ways of which we disrupt because what a a restaurant may not realize is that it's competing with the experience I just had at Uber like I had a frictionless experience and then now I'm experiencing you with all the sort of with all the the ease of before now I'm just taking inventory of all the discomforts that are happening here because if you have something to

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contrast your because again you're just going through U kind of like an unconscious sedation of experiences and then all of a sudden you're like hang on a second this experience feels so different to the one I just that's right I just had a seamless easy simplistic ease ofuse experience now I'm like making decisions what the hell's happening yeah and why I have to wait I'm waiting I have to wait for my foood then the fool gets here I have to wait to pay you it's like why am I waiting so

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much yeah and it's and we only have that angst because we didn't have to wait before and it's this level of friction L experiences that we have that then becomes the frame by which we view everything else m I I saw um a comedian make a joke which in a weird way was kind of like you could take it seriously but you know when someone masks a joke so well you like this is hilarious but then when you sit on it afterwards you're like that's actually kind of dark but what he was saying was like he's like um our society

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right now um you know we we are so conscious of having mindfulness because Society no longer has mindfulness and he's like when's the last time I took a [ __ ] without being on a phone and like being on the internet he's like that was 10 years ago he's like not taking a [ __ ] without my phone in 10 years but then he's like you know when you had to catch a bus somewhere you didn't have Wi-Fi or um a subscription to a cable service in your pocket you had to wash the condensation on the

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window and just wait so you had mindfulness that's right he's like you had heaps of mindfulness you could watch condensation you could watch grass grow you could like you just didn't have this constant need or um like almost like unconscious reaction to go oh this is a bit of an awkward conversation know one's talking to me I'm going to pull my phone out totally yeah I my daughter's especially my eldest daughter you know she'd be like I'm bored I'm like bored look at

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everything you have around you are you kidding me right now bored like I remember being a kid at my grandparents house watching hours of MTV just waiting for a Michael Jackson video yeah I'd sit there and watch this why I know so many songs that are out or so much music that are outside of like the genres I grew up listening to because I just watched the video was waiting for thriller or be it to come on or Billy Jean like those I just waited hours and like you're like oh it's here weord you know and like my

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daughters have everything on demand like like there's just a level of of sort of agency that you have now that we didn't have and as a result we were much more resourceful with our time we were much more imaginative like we bored like my mother would take me to the library with her when she was working on a dissertation I'm like I'm here for 7 hours I guess I got to read a book yeah no it's interesting we had um we had a guest on the Pod and and um he went to Survivor and he was um in the Australian

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Outback for I believe 42 days and he said he came back because it's like no phones no internet uh no technology you're just with this group and you're living on rice and beans and like that's it and he said for like the first like 16 days it was horrible yeah and then eventually he's like your sadian Rhythm kicks in and you start to realize like this is pretty good I I got a routine I W up I eat at the same time I hang out with people I do the same kind of you know monotonous routine and then he said

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um when he came back to society everything like was hyper stimulative sure so like the LED lights were way brighter the beer hit way different phone gaming was 10 times more addictive it's like everything flooded him uh with so much more dopamine yeah it's uh when when you cut sugar out your diet or you minimize sugar in your diet everything tastes sweeter interesting and it's you know I think it's that is this honic treadmill that we find ourselves on that we are always sort of calibrating to

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what's around us the environment that's that's around us and that's sort of the Adaptive nature of of of humanity and I think that the the technologies that we use extend human behavior but it's still grounded in what it means to be human and we adapt to where we are and that first couple you know first couple weeks first couple days terrible after a while you go this is so bad actually this is so bad I I want to try and kick sugar that's definitely something I want to do yeah man I got

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sugar bad yeah me too man yeah we got coffee here there's plenty of sugar in it for you dude catch me up on what's been happening because I understand you were um yeah you were at Wen and Kennedy and about the time we met um you were in the middle of riding your book and then now all of a sudden I'm seeing you on television on stages you're traveling all the time you're a big sh about that I don't know about that you came dude no word of a lie you came in the office and someone saw you was like

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dude is that Marcus Collins and I was like yeah and he's like I got to give him a hug he came up he high-fived you that's very very sweet he was panicking very sweet so you know interesting I am very grateful uh because life has been life has been uh life has been significantly different um we met I was teaching at Michigan I just signed uh a publishing deal for my book and I was doing like consultanting work I was working with like Google and pelaton and whatever and I I joined widen Kennedy to to lead strategy there

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in the New York office which was awesome me widen Kennedy is considered you know one of the best agenes in C can you just describe why Kennedy for the why Kennedy is uh crave agency independent fiercely independent and they're known for being great storytellers you know um the founding client for widen Kennedy was Nike wow and the way the story goes that Dan widen of widen Kennedy uh was in Portland organ he met this guy named Phil Knight who owned this company called Nike that at the time wasn't big

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like they were kind of they were very very new focused only on running and they met each other in a social setting and Phil Knight says hey I'm Phil Knight you know I run this company called Nike and and Dan goes I heard of it before yeah and they weren't big at the time he's like I heard it before and Dan says I work in advertising and the way the lore goes Phil goes I hate advertising and Dan goes H interesting but you know I kind of hate it too sometimes I think you know and he said

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maybe we just find ways to work together I think what Phil was emoting is that he hated traditional advertising the way we traditionally told stories about Brands and branded products there always value proposition driven and none of it like spoke to the soul and Dan and his partner Dave Kennedy began to work with Phil Knight and Nike and they wrote they made just do it incredible yeah so all of Nike's work has been made by wi Kennedy so that that like the tagline was because of widen and Kennedy yes and

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apparently the way the story goes is that Dan widen was watching the news and uh there was like a serial killer or something like that I've heard this to validate this story got got arrested and you know uh they asked him why did he do it he said just did it and Dan said that's what we should do in Nike just do it that's my understanding of the story that's the way the folklore is told there's a lot of folklore I wanted to vet this out because I've heard this uh Through The Branding space which is like

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literally heard a serial killer on the news and was like that's the focal it's a great shoe campaign that's the lore that's the lore and and for a brand like Nike makes all the sense in the world you know here's a brand that believes every human body is an athlete big small short tall we're all athletes the only thing keeping us from realiz our best athletic self is us so therefore we should just do it and I think you know Dan uh uh grisal like those early folks there at w Kennedy they really changed

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how we think about advertising I mean they create they were the standard Bears of how we told Rich evocative stories for uh for Brands and I was very grateful uh to be a part of it to contribute you know one brick on the edifice of that is Biden Kennedy um while I was there I was still teaching full-time at Michigan and was writing this book and in my mind honestly I Dana I kid you not in my mind the book was going be a thing I did just something that you know one other thing I'd add to the resume in my mind I thought I would

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be at widen still still teaching and like giving some talks on the side about the book truthfully but the book comes out and it does way more than that like very early and I go whoa I think this is a thing and I was telling my wife I was like I think this might be a thing to do outside of the thing outside of like the agency world I just felt like you only have one time to be a firsttime author and just considering the momentum in the marketplace out the gate I was like I think I'm I think I'm going to do it I'm

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bet on me I me give it a shot and thank God I did it's just been awesome and it's not like I don't think it's because like I'm so great at at all I think it was the right it was the right story for the right time which know so very well yeah you hit the right note and you struck a cord and I think that's you know whether you look at it as marketing or branding or advertising what have you it's just you you struck a cord yeah itates just just some some sity there business owners if you're stuck using

00:23:13 - 00:24:23

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of like abstract talk about culture and I provided some concreteness a way to talk about it apply it codify it and then show case studies the how those things work because I think in the book you add context it's like oh that's what culture is exactly right and I think it's a concept where a lot of people goow culture and they really struggle to know what that means that's 1,00% like if you ask a 100 people like hey like What's the culture of your company just watch them go like and like unfolds into

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origami you know like they're like what do you mean what is culture it's a OD thing to Define that's right and I think that like and thankfully the literature has been so overwhelmingly great at defining it I just kind of took it and recontextualize it right people who are a million times smarter than me who've been working on this for literally a century like ail durkheim 1800s wrote about this just taking it and contemporizing it for a modern context and then providing work that I've done

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as a practitioner to say here's that thinking in action taken from the intellectual to the practice and I think it was just very timely um and some early people caught on to it and like this is good and it continue to move and moved and moved I think that right around uh I think the October of 2023 when I won the thinkers 50 award it was it was a pretty big inflection point think thinkers 50 is you know it's this in it's a it's an institution in many ways that sort of recognizes some of the

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biggest thinkers in management business management I didn't know about them honestly they weren't on my radar at all because I'm not an academic and this is not you know this is a world that I've been you flirting with not really in it like one foot in one foot out literally um but when thinkers 50 recognized it and won the the radar award for the idea most likely to shape the future of business management I think people started paying attention and again and it wasn't like overnight kab

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it was just you mean this is everything you talk about this is just consistently consistent consistent consistent consistent and when that happens you get this you know you get this network effect of of of aggregation that just going really really well how long was the book in the market uh until it so this is 2023 you're talking about yeah at what point were you finished writing and and it was publishing now on the market oh so I finished the book I think I submitted the Manus script in October

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2022 yeah and then the book hit shelves um May 2023 so it's been a year and a half since the book has been out but I tell you I feel like the book is just starting to catch on interesting which is wild I mean it it feels that way for me now when I cuz a lot of books are like that right yeah these long tail things there are a lot of long tail books that that take their but they just become like uh how would you say like they have shelf life they they just seemingly hit a note and sometimes they

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don't really strike a cord until it it it hits a certain threshold that's right that's right yeah and for me coming from the music industry I thought that like you know first the first week sales matter the most you it's like it's like movies music that it's those first week sales tend to Signal the life of of the the product now I didn't come out the gate you know selling thousands and thousands of books out the gate that wasn't the case at all it was a slow burn over time was a consistent burn

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which for me felt like oh if I do this well then it will continue to have consistency that consistency would be at an angle you know when you were writing it were you conscious of like I'm trying to ride something that is kind of permanently relevant and contextualized or or were you just like I'm just trying to ride something that I'm really feeling like what was your head space I wish I had that level of Clairvoyance that level of vision was it more like oh [ __ ] I got to write this book I got get

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the publishing date you know here's honesty I'm going keep it TR with you because it's keep it TR keep 100 man 100% um I wrote the book thinking that I would take my doctorial dissertation and just transfer it over to a book so interesting so you were like I've kind of done the work I'm just going to like restructure it to fit a book legit I was like I'm just going to take my dissertation just going to turn into a book boom done so in fact I had a uh a really successful assignment

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and so I had 18 months to deliver the manuscript the first three months I didn't even touch the book because I was like what's my dissertation like I'm just going to chill for three months you know just kind of you know chill for a little bit you know enjoy myself and I sat down to start writing the book I think I wrote maybe 5,000 words and you know a book is more like it's like a chapter you know yeah exactly yeah I wrote like 5,000 words and I go I'm done I got nothing else to say I legit was

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like I have I don't know what else to say here got nothing else to uh to communicate and I was like oh dude this is not good like I don't know how I'm going to finish this book I've never done who who am I to believe I could write this thing Marcus you're an idiot why I mean I'm like literally beating myself up like dude you this is a bad deal this isn't going to be great um and how much time did you have between this Revelation got like 14 months like okay wow what I'm going to do here so I

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thought like all right what can I say about culture that hasn't been said already and of course I study this at my doctoral program and I just found myself just kind of going over things that people already wrote like there's nothing new that I'm giving to this like well maybe I can like look at it through a hipop lens because I'm a fan of hip-hop and my doctorial work was in the field of hip-hop as well and I go yeah but like how interesting is that that didn't feel like terribly interesting or

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terribly helpful so I me I like talked to my wife about this like I don't know what I'm going to do like I don't know what to write I'm like legit don't know what to write and something dawned on me I was like well how did those earlier scholars in sociology approach culture they observed religion I go oh I'm a church boy like I grew up I'm a church boy yeah I could talk about culture through religious lens and focus it on marketing and sort of color it with hip-hop I was

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like that's an interesting bin diagram I think that's a book that only I could write like I'm gonna do that and and I wrote the book not thinking I'm going to write this like Manifesto I didn't think anything at that all I still don't think that that's what it is either I just wrote the book that I thought was the most honest version of how I saw the world that's it like I was like just be so honest and I was more vulnerable than I thought I was going to be I revealed

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more than I thought I I planned to do uh but what I find so reassuring is when I meet people who read the book and was like dude I never thought I could talk about my faith in the world of business CU I feel like faith and business don't go together wow but the fact that you talked about yours so talked about me I could talk about mine or like dude you talk about your kids all the time I never thought you could do that it just I feel like being vulnerable gave people permission to be vulnerable and that

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felt really cool what is it about the the way you wrote the book that you felt like really resonated was there like one consistent thing or was it like different for everyone I think I think it was the balance between the academic lens and the practice lens that the academic lens I think gave it Credence like credibility exactly yeah yeah and it gave people language for things they already felt and like that like you know we first met you like you knew this stuff forwards and backwards yeah and

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you talk about it in your content in ways people go oh yeah I get that yeah like you just did this so well you're able to translate sort of the scholarly literature about Brands and say hey this is basically what it means people go yeah I like that guy and you become the conduit for uh for connecting the dots in this way and I think that for me is sort of similar in nature that I talk about culture in ways people go oh I get that right when I talk about like you know that people see the world

00:32:49 - 00:33:53

differently you know that abstractly we know that sort of uh intellectually but if I say for some a cow is leather for others it's a deity for for some it's dinner people go oh I get that yeah like that takes a very you know a very aceric idea and makes it very very tangible and I think that people got that out of my book at least that's what I've it's digestible it's they they can uh they can add and apply to themselves pretty easily and quickly and by the way I didn't think I was writing that that way

00:33:21 - 00:34:17

I didn't think I was like I'm gonna break this down so that the Layman can get it I just said I'm GNA communicate this in the ways that I communicate to my clients the way I communicate to my my students and hopes that people who need to understand it can understand it I I think that's so important because when whenever I'm trying to communicate my best work it's always like this is how I would say it that's right and I think people can honestly and oftentimes get caught up like if you're trying to

00:33:49 - 00:34:50

produce content or you're trying to write your own book or you're trying to you know create something we tend to think oh we have to come up with completely a original new uh never seen or thought about before ideas right and you're saying that often times you can be a conduit and just translate the amalgamation of things that you know and just go I see it this way that's right and it's original because it's You Like It Be You by the very nature of being you there's only one of you and when you

00:34:19 - 00:35:14

communicate way communicate in ways that are true to who you are it's going to be novel and I think that like you know you you do this all the time so you know this well that we try to find like what other people are doing when it comes to content like let's mimic that so my stuff can go viral people can see it and you go oh man it's hard to differentiate one from the other but it's when you do it your way in a way that's uniquely you that people who see it the way you do or

00:34:47 - 00:35:42

gravitate to it go that's really cool and then they take it and go share with other people who are like them and you get the the the reverberation of that Network effect is far greater than what you could ever do by yourself M so when people who are like hey so and so told me about your book that has much greater uh a much greater appeal than me trying to hwk my book at people trying to get them to to buy it and so then how long did it take to write that and at what point were you kind of done and ready

00:35:15 - 00:36:21

you know I think it was I was up to the last minute for sure I think that like 95% in the last month you yeah once once I got a feel for like that V diagram of like I'm going look at culture through a religious lens look at the Theology of culture as a metaphor to talk about it with Brands leverage my experience either as a practitioner or things that I loved in the market that maybe I didn't do um and then like always kind of look at it through like a hip-hop lens or well maybe argue like a

00:35:48 - 00:36:58

very black lens like through my lived experience and just be very very honest once I got there the writing was the writing started to flow now I'll say that and say I am not a like fast rider at all in fact I find writing to be very very painful very painful like I don't like writing but I love to have written so I write that's a nice reframe seriously I mean it's like it's painful it takes like it's like it's like you know chugging the the gears to get it going takes so much time then once it's

00:36:23 - 00:37:14

going then it starts moving but it's a it's tough man you got crank crank crank to get me going it's like you open a blank page and you type in the and then you're like okay now what that's right that's right and I I took all the advice where I say you know start early in the morning start writing in the morning that didn't work for me because it takes me so much time to get going start writing at night by the time I do that I'm like exhausted from the day they tell me to write every day I didn't do

00:36:49 - 00:37:43

it just it was it was difficult and actually I did most of my writing on airplanes I did the same thing flying in a hotel like I wrote this book in like seven different countries and every I was going somewhere else write a little bit write a little bit right on the plane right here right right right there I had the same experience I was like Hong Kong Mexico City LA because I I was on this big trip was like a I wrote the the biggest chunk of my book on like a 46 hour trip from like here to Mexico

00:37:16 - 00:38:11

City and why was it a 46 hour trip because my friend uh was flying me business CLA the whole way and he was trying to make at work so um but the interesting thing was I had like like a matter of like weeks to hit this deadline and I had so much going on I got kids and I got the business and everything just going haywire and I was like this is perfect I'm going to have this like 14 days in Mexico it's going to be brilliant I'm just going to be isolated and most of it was written on the flight and the best part about

00:37:44 - 00:38:39

flying uh business class was you literally lay there and you have a table and that's it and it's boring as hell there's no Wi-fi no distractions and people just hand you food every two hours every 2 hours would you like a hot towel would you like coffee would you like food I'm like yes let me keep writing that's right right right right right so that was that was that was my experience I just wrote a lot and I wrote to the very end like to the very very very very end and I was grateful

00:38:11 - 00:39:13

and I was I had the benefit of having a really good editor yeah that's a big one so my editor was amazing her name was Colleen um and she did a good job of making sure that I didn't go too deep in rabbit holes and did didn't assume that the audience knew things so she'd be quick to be like n lost me here they're talking about or like you just went straight to this thing you got to give me some context or like dude you are so deep into this thing please come up yeah and she was really great in helping me

00:38:42 - 00:39:40

balance because I just got done writing for three years my dissertation which is extremely academic literature and language and I wanted to make sure that my peers on the academic side wouldn't read my book and go you water down everything dude like you just was not significant but I didn't want to talk to High futin where the average person would read this like I don't know what you're saying and and my editor was really good at like just say it like you talk say it like you talk and I go all

00:39:12 - 00:40:03

right that's what I'm gonna do like and she was like you know when I read this like this doesn't sound like you at all this sounds like academic Marcus yeah and so she was really good at that and right to the very end she's like pushed me and pushed me and pushed me and I think I turned the the the the manuscript in like the day it was do and I was like the 18 months in does that sound familiar Cam he's like it's j tomorrow I'm like I'm writing tonight you know seriously

00:39:37 - 00:40:30

yeah it was like it was up to the last minute and then you you get the proof back and you get to to do some edits on the proof and I went to write some more and she was like no no no no no I had the same experience yeah no how good edit is because it's like you you think you're writing this great material and you're you I I went on a rampage for one chapter and I wrote like 16,000 words and I was like it's all great it's like it's the best thing I've ever written it was fantastic then the the team and and

00:40:03 - 00:40:56

the editor come back and they're like yeah we're going to use about 2,000 words of this dude I'm like wait what no like I I that's my best Stu and they're like no you went too deep here and this didn't make sense we called this I'm like oh [ __ ] when I saw her first edit I was like yo you're cutting out all the good stuff this is the good stuff this the best story why you cutting that out yeah but she was right she was right and I think you know for me I've spent so

00:40:28 - 00:41:33

much time working as like a solopreneur you know even in an agency like as I'm I'm running the department or I'm running this thing it's sort of my perspective that I'm trying to impart on the team and then have it apply to to the to the work and even though I get push back which is which is good it's typically not from not from someone where like they're they have more agency than I have in the matter because my my editor could have be like nah we're ain't doing it nope

00:41:01 - 00:42:08

and she would have final call you know so I had to like get her to buy into it not just like convince her you know uh and that was a new Dynamic for me and I had to tell myself look she knows this better than you do a b um she wants you to win I think that that's something that I had to like wrestle with because I feel like in the past as a practitioner I was always trying to convince people to understand it so I could win as opposed to saying these people have a vested interest in me winning and there do what do you think

00:41:35 - 00:43:02

that Revelation really was if you were to get concise on on what you felt you learned oh I think I felt I I learned for sure that a I need editing first that like the ideas are you think of it this way think of it this way um Quincy Jones who just passed uh amazing producer unbelievable producer but he G he bring in Bruce Sweden who did who engineered all of Michael Jackson stuff he'd bring in the best songwriters the best players the best and even Quincy would go no too much of this turn that down a little bit

00:42:18 - 00:43:31

that don't play on the eighth no play this note even Quincy's giving advice to the best Michael Jordan had a coach and he is in my opinion the best basketball player ever yeah you're talking about Tim gr right yeah we all need coaches he had Phil Knight too like we all need coaches everyone needs a coach and in that scenario my editor was my coach and I think in working as a practitioner I didn't have a coach I had a boss Theo right and which is a different Dynamic different Dynamic cuz

00:42:55 - 00:43:50

a boss you're like all right your word is the lore where as a coach you're like I'm the one that's doing it that's right and then it can be easy for you to say well you don't get it because I'm the one that has to think of the ideas and write it and they're like yeah but my job is to make it good make it legible and make it sell so then I think that for the the boss to employee relationship is that the boss cares about the organization winning that's true not me

00:43:22 - 00:44:23

necessarily there there instances where like I may not win but the organization wins but I felt like with my editor for the first time in like a professional relationship that I felt like she was invested in me winning that the book winning meant I win and the book wouldn't win if I didn't win and it like that became just very clear for me I was like okay this person wants you to win Marcus listen to her so would you like Define it more of a like um I don't know if this is the right terminology but

00:43:53 - 00:45:02

like a symbiotic relationship where it's like both parts equally need each other to survive whereas in the workplace Dynamic a boss and an employee don't really need that same outcome yeah like I I think give it like use the basketball metaphor again the general manager wants a team to win like win we need butts and seats at the game and we get more W's than losses like that means more money the coach wants the team to perform well but they need everyone to operate the highest Fidelity possible

00:44:27 - 00:45:39

and I just felt like she was like a coach for me that like she wanted me to win and therefore her feedback was in an effort to get to the best Solutions based on her interpretation of my work so going through that experience have you then looked at other places in your life and asked yourself I need a coach oh for sure absolutely I think that like I find myself more Curious than I ever have been because I want to know what how would you approach this like tell like tell me like walk me through your

00:45:03 - 00:46:01

thought process so I can learn from it and even someone asked me the uh a couple months ago or two months ago and they said um how can I help and I was like oh man I was like well you could give me this this that and the third they go no no no no how can I really help you and I go you know I never really thought about it that way I've always thought about I need opportunities but really I need someone to sort of look at the things through lenses that I haven't looked at it and give me some point of view that help me

00:45:32 - 00:46:37

optimize it and like that's what coaches are that's what like your board of directors are like it's those people who are invested in you winning and they'll tell you the things that might hurt a little bit but it's going to make you better I think that's so important and interestingly enough like to pull this back to culture would you say it's a cultural norm for people to have that kind of mindset on um you know whether be in business or Academia or you know working for an agency do you think

00:46:05 - 00:47:18

people maybe need to adopt more that culturally in society to be to be better it's definitely a cultural uh a cultural mindset for instance um in Israel Israel is considered a Innovation Hub an Innovation Hub like so much Innovation comes out of Israel seven miles of desert right it's been industrialized of course but it's what's unique about this place well you hear Israel you don't think Innovation but tons of it like the firewall was created in like yeah like unbelievable like and scientists have

00:46:42 - 00:48:09

gone to Israel to get an understanding of what what's happening here and here's what they find it's based on ridic uh culture RAB rabbis oh Israel like like a like Jewish rabbis like the passing down of knowledge or so interesting this for rabbis they believe that debate is sacred that to debate a thing was like Divine so like they debate the Torah forwards and backwards like every word in the Torah in their Bible is Up For Debate that is like a sacred part of what it means to be a rabbi and one would say Jewish in

00:47:24 - 00:48:34

general and that theologic theological uh perspective is then shifted over into the secular so people who are even if you're a secular Jew you still hold on to this idea about debate so much so that even entrepreneurs in in Israel will say if you don't debate then you're an idiot so think of it this way when they are in their rooms in their boardrooms coming up with ideas they are debating the ideas forwards and backwards it's being interrogated ated two ways from Sunday and by the time it

00:48:00 - 00:48:57

leaves the room it's been vetted rigorously it's like a CIA agent idea compare that to United States if the most senior person in the room goes Dane that's a great idea everybody goes yeah totally that's the idea absolutely 100% go room go that's never going to work but the culture is such that when we're in the room you agree with the most senior person you don't debate and that's why the failure rate of ideas in the states are like 70% relative to what what it is in Israel

00:48:29 - 00:49:30

not because the people are smarter not because people are better but because of the culture why does debate add value to contextualizing an idea yeah because debate does what the market is going to do debate provides different perspectives to scrutinize where there are shortcomings but when you don't debate you go this is great nothing's bad this is amazing you put in the market go why didn't anybody like this and you go you know what actually this did kind of suck I knew this was going

00:48:59 - 00:49:59

to suck and that was kind of bad no one ever said it we should have said it uh never again so culturally I guess if we take the states in in in your frame of reference it's um you know I would agree we tend to go along with what the leader says that's right and you know um there's been points of our business where about 70 odd per of our clients are us-based and I've sat on Zoom calls where there's like 16 people on a call yeah and there's one person talking and the CEO that's right and everyone else

00:49:29 - 00:50:32

just appears to be a little timid or when someone does creep their head up and say something um the senior people just kind of like bulldoze over it or shoot it down and then you just see him go Meek and sit on their phone the rest of the that's right right so like you're saying that like um it's maybe not culturally relevant or it's not being um sewn into society yeah it's not a part of our Orthodoxy it's not a part of the operating system that govern what it means to be us you know and it's these

00:50:01 - 00:51:13

it's these conventions that ultimately govern how we go about our day-to-day lives it's just what we what we do what we do around here you know um that's what culture is for us it's a governing operating system and if we change the way we see the world then we operate in the world differently and then we get different outcomes so to kind of go back to the the original question I think that for me I thought that when someone sort of pushed against your idea then like it's actually an attack on you yeah

00:50:37 - 00:51:29

we see it as criticism or yeah or they're hating on me that's right that's right you go I thought the idea was great what do you mean what do you mean what's wrong with you like it it becomes a personal attack as opposed to no no no I'm not attacking you I'm attacking the idea I'm interrogating the idea you know we we in the stakes we call it you know a crap sandwich you say I love this about it I struggled with this but it's a really good idea crap sandwich you know yeah um and that's a way to serve

00:51:03 - 00:52:15

up feedback so that you don't bruise the ego but you try to kind of get to to the idea because of the cultural armor that people have based on what their expectations are of you but if you're in a place that is far more aggressive or aggressive is probably the wrong word they're far more um conflict loving you're G to get much more debate and that debate gets to better better better ideas do you think that there's a part of that that could be seen as a negative regarding like um if someone

00:51:39 - 00:52:39

did have an idea and people criticize it that they would then quit or do you think that that also is a cultural thing where it's like people have a healthy appetite for debate in somewhere like Israel uh whereas someone like in the United States or in Australia it's seen as criticism yeah I I did a um I was working with anheiser Bush years ago this when I was at translation work with anheiser bush and we did this like offsite with with Facebook and that's a big brand huge brand huge brand right so we're at we're

00:52:09 - 00:53:06

at Facebook we're at mow park at Facebook's headquarters with our clients from Ander Bush we're all talking about like the power of Social and content etc etc and our client goes hey put up put up the the the Facebook page for for budlight and I go what it's about to happen here puts it up on the screen and like everyone just goes to town on it like why did we do that and that's dumb and that's blah blah blah and I'm like seeping into my chair like oh my God what is happening here for like a

00:52:37 - 00:53:26

good two hours just going in our lives we're the social Agency for them we're the agency of record but we do the social for them and they're just like cutting the work like to shreds so when we break for lunch the client goes up to me like yo Marcus why aren't you like why aren't you talking like you're not weighing in on this conversation I'm like dude you basically said my baby is ugly you just cut everything down he's like no no no you got to get in there you got to fight you got to get in there

00:53:01 - 00:53:56

what you get in there and I go no that is not how I'm wired that's not how we do things in America Jack you know like he's he's Argentinian yeah like I didn't realize this was the UFC exactly I didn't realize that I was getting punched in the face for two hours like that's what I signed up for he goes no man a white he's like this is the debate like we need the debate the debate is good the debate is good we need provocation provocation that was ingrained in the culture of the

00:53:28 - 00:54:23

organization and that wasn't how my team was built so we're just in there like just getting puliz you know and and what we what I realized that oh they're doing that not because they thought the work sucked they did that because they thought that this kind of pressure on the work would get to better work interesting so they knew by default by uh debating everything and ripping at the shreds you guys will come back with something better that's right but we didn't see it that way we saw it

00:53:56 - 00:54:48

at has a criticism of our work and I think many I guess beginner uh creative workers uh really take it personally like for example you know we have a design team here we have a copyrighting team we have a web development team the first time a client rips their work to shreds they they take it really hard gut it I'm like they're like I need a sabatical I need a couple days off you know I'm like can I get you some soup you know and it's um it it's just a lore of the L like I think when you start

00:54:23 - 00:55:24

working with people in business especially at the level of you know we're talking about here it's it's like it has to you have to be willing to have robust conversations and to fight for your ideas that's right there's H one of the best chief strateg chief strategy officers sorry one of the best creative officers Chief creative officers I worked with uh was at wien Kennedy um uh this guy named Carl he was the CCO there global CCO there this guy was unbelievable his whole approach to

00:54:53 - 00:55:59

creative ideas he said it's like making pancakes man just keep making pancakes he's like you make one batch is not good make another just make another just make and the dude was like he was like a gumball machine of ideas like you put a quarter in you get an idea like he was unbelievable I've seen this guy work and it just mindblowing but this it was a dis Detachment from the ideas and his person I think just allowed for him to have freedom of creativity so he would create something his batch of Pancakes dude

00:55:26 - 00:56:32

Andre that's a batch of Pancakes it's not me it's just I created it pancakes yeah and detach pancakes man pancakes and he's like just make another man that one's bad make another just keep making you just keep making pancakes and for him and by the way the pancakes were great like his ideas were really really really good mless saw pancakes brilliant Carl is a monster and what I thought was so awesome about working with him said I'm running strategy he's running creative uh the the MD of the of the New

00:55:59 - 00:56:53

York office he used to be have my job guy named Neil who was just brilliant um and work with those guys as a trio was like really really awesome to do but Carl would be like you write it dude like i' like I you have this idea like you know rough idea you know Carl make magic he go not write the script Marcus I go I'm not a copywriter just write it you got it you got it because for him it's all pancakes and he's like you Rite it like just give it a shot you know if someone goes uh you know it's a little

00:56:26 - 00:57:28

burn on the side we cut the sides the next the next batch would be better and think it's like that Detachment from the work in his identity just allowed for a level of creative freedom I think that many of us don't have do you think that when when someone's creating an idea you're saying okay part of the equation is you have to debate the idea yes and and if you were to say what are the the I guess Optics of debating and at what point is it healthy and at what point is it like that's too much say SA say more

00:56:57 - 00:58:09

say more so so okay if you take the concept of debating mhm I understand it is like one's um ability to take a uh a subject matter y to challenge it um in a way that exposes uh its weaknesses sure that um then might Garner a response and then you go back and forth yeah it's not just one exchange I understand a debate is like back and forth and back and forth until it's like everything's being said yeah everything's on the table we've looked at all the Optics all the scenarios The Good the Bad the Ugly the

00:57:33 - 00:58:37

opportunities the risks the rewards everything's out y um do we still like the idea yeah so I I think of it this way I think um think about comedians you know what comedians do they make a whole bunch of bits and then there's like little you know jokes their jokes written out and then they go to small little comedy clubs they just try it out try on the market like they laugh I like that that's good that's the market debates exactly like that that the discourse between the way the market

00:58:05 - 00:59:05

responds in that small little setting is a signal to them and go okay cool I'm try that not that not that and honestly that's what I do when anytime I put together a new talk I'm just trying things like I like say say 80% of the talk I kind of know what I'm going to do 20% I'm always going to try something new always just to see how it works I try to see people sit up in their seat and I go oh that's a thing or if I give it and like no one responds I go that's not a thing and it's and it's and it's

00:58:36 - 00:59:30

thisan so you're just reading signals and you're like I'll take that signal as a yes and these three as a no and that's another it's like a uh Matthew mcc's book uh green light yeah right like it's discourse like that is the discourse in companies the discourse happens in the boardroom when we are creating things in the marketplace the discourses between us and the audience like you try something you do it like for you I mean you're making content you're making

00:59:03 - 00:59:51

you're making pancakes you know I mean like if the one you posted on Monday doesn't hit maybe Tuesday's going to hit or maybe Wednesday's going to hit or maybe you got those all going then Friday boom like you're just putting them in there you're putting in the world to see how the world responds and you're constantly iterating along the way constantly iterating I think comedy's a good example of that CU I remember being um backstage in The Green Room uh here in Sydney and and Andrew

00:59:26 - 01:00:29

Schulz was on stage and I know some of the guys on his crew and this is before I met him and the second he got off stage his whole crew went into a back room I wasn't a part of it but they went in there to debate what went well what flopped where he can improve body language tonality eye contact timing Pace everything Y the second he gets off stage they're debating that's the move I mean that that is the move Kobe Bryant used to say he just watch film he would watch film religiously constantly

00:59:58 - 01:00:54

watching film of other when say fil like uh playbacks of games exctly how he played how other people played constantly over and over and over and over again it's that it's this iterative approach to optimization that gets us better and and many times we don't have film so we need people in real time telling us this that that and the third we've talked about this before because we both love Kanye West remember this this conversation we had before some years ago I think beautiful dark Twisted

01:00:26 - 01:01:20

Fantasy is one of the best albums ever made I would agree I this is why we friends I would agree I remember that conversation we had about this many people would debate this and you can hit us in the comment section but I would agree it it just to me it felt like the most um prolific and and also like a roar expression of how he felt exactly and that album Kanye changed the way that he went about creativity see Kanye used to like write his own stuff do his own things it's all about him and he got

01:00:53 - 01:01:51

writers coming to help him with it but for my beautiful Twist of fantasy he went to Hawaii and he brought in everybody Kan Hawaii they were all together in sync they'd wake up they eat breakfast they go work out then they all they talked about was music they go in the studio there were rules of how to operate in the studio and everyone was just adding a little bit here a little bit there and Kanye's job was to be the curator of it all he was he went from being Kanye the artist to Kanye the

01:01:22 - 01:02:17

creative director taking this that and the third and putting the pieces together and like the conversations that were happening over dinner over lunch while you're playing basketball while they lifting weights all these things go into coming with a new product that no one would have made by themselves individually and I think that when it comes to creativity whether you're a marketer whether you're a content creator whether you're a musician uh whatever the case may be whatever your

01:01:48 - 01:02:58

your your your canvas is it's this back and forth that helps us get to better things and I think about my relationship with my editor she was just really really good at pushing this way pushing that way and giving me the freedom to express but also pulling me out of rabbit holes and telling me to go deeper in other places if we if we take all of that which you just contextualized so beautifully and and we take it to the canvas of business yeah now I'm I'm trying to understand it and again look

01:02:24 - 01:03:19

at this as a student sure not as Master by no means I feel like I've mastered business I'm still very much in my mind I'm like dude there's so much I don't know right if you're looking at business and you're going from I guess Grassroots startup you know bare knuckling it and and trying to bootstrap something from the ground up yeah would you say that it's potentially monumentally difficult because they're not yet in a ecosystem where they're supported and being

01:02:52 - 01:03:57

challenged by the right people so I think that for for the it depends on the company when you think about like big cpg big big companies you know they they operate like a year out like they they're planning for 2026 right now you know we going into 2025 they're already planning for 2026 they just so far ahead in their lead times so they don't get a chance to have discourse with the market very much they go boom we have a big release and now the Market's going to weigh in and maybe they did some market

01:03:25 - 01:04:22

research to get some input but they're not having great discourse so much of discourse is happening between them in their boardrooms and their Partners their agency partners they're like I think it's that I think it's this that's how it kind of happens the smarter ones may tease things in Social to get a sense of like how like tissue test it let's see how the market reacts let's debate a little bit before we do a big launch but in many cases because the timelines are so long they don't get a

01:03:53 - 01:04:53

chance to do that I think for Scrappy companies you have a lot more a lot more tolerance a lot more generosity and you can go we don't need to do a big launch we can like the new product could come out in a week and we could test it out with some people now we could do beta tests now and it the the risk is not as great as the reward would be and therefore you have a level of you have a level of Grace that like big companies don't have right so so someone who's like uh running a small operation you're

01:04:24 - 01:05:13

saying that they can throw the dice a little more aggressively they can test a lot more frequently because they don't have the weight of like let's just say you know it's it's the concept of maybe you have a tiny and like some ores and you can like go wherever you want what's a TIN a tin is like a little boat okay cool okay yeah sorry man um I did say smashing tenes early which means no no so I'm not talking about beer again um but we're talking about like being in a

01:04:49 - 01:05:52

in a like a rowboat let's just say a small business is a rowo and a big corporate Enterprise uh like you're talking about is like a giant um you know oil rigger yeah right um and and it's so difficult for the Big Oil ship to turn that's right whereas if you're in a small company you can turn quickly you can go that way super easily that's the benefit you know I I I when I talk to entrepreneurs and I they see examples like Nike and McDonald's and apple they go I can never be that like that doesn't

01:05:20 - 01:06:24

appeal to me or does apply to me and I go well they started where you are at one point that's what people for getet right nikee Phil Knight Once Upon a Time was a small disruptive startup he was making his sneakers with a waffle iron literally making sneakers with a waffle iron Steve Jobs Steve wnc were in a garage like everyone starts with no fans no listeners no subscribers everyone starts that way no customers we all start that way and then we grow to something to something else the benefit

01:05:52 - 01:06:42

of not being so big is that you can be more agile you can move fast not only that like you can fail and not many people know if Nike fails oh we're talking about it I.E everything in the headlines we talking about this earlier you were saying that they're getting punched in the face right now that's right that's right why do you think um okay back to the like the boat concept like why why do you think right now Nike is not doing well uh do you think there's so many guys out there on

01:06:17 - 01:07:21

rowboats right now that are just like absolutely swarming in on the market well I think I think Nike made a few mistakes um I think they read the tea leag wrong they saw during during Co what is it that let's predict the market they saw during Co that people were weren't going to stores to buy you go yeah because we were locked at home so their online commerce was through the roof they saw the margins there would go let's just do more of this so they started cut out the middleman they cut out the the retailer

01:06:49 - 01:07:42

so then when people started going back to malls back to stores Nike wasn't there now and by C out the retailer the way I understand it is they they started to I guess tear up their Partnerships with people that had relationships with for decades that's right now like you can't have our shoes anymore no so we're going to sell them direct because we get more margins that way but that's the benefit of having a retailer is that they have traffic you know fancy that maybe they'll take a

01:07:16 - 01:08:14

photo of the shoe and buy it on the website and not only that but they were looking at what people are already buying and they were just making more of it they didn't understand sneaker culture m that if everyone's rocking the shoes I don't want them anymore if everyone has the Jordan 3es you go oh man the Jordan 3es aren't that you know uh they don't feel that special anymore there has to be this level of enough that people know what they are and they're cool but not enough that

01:07:45 - 01:08:49

everybody has them I mean there was a time when Yeezys were like the biggest sneakers there are I remember going into the gym I worked at will jym you'd walk on the floor at 6:00 and all you would see is Yeezys that's right that's right and like Yeezys were a thing cultural phenomena and but then you know fast forward a few years later and I you see Grandpa's wearing Yeezys you go oh man oh no I think I think we're done here you know I mean and I Nike misread that and the stories they were telling they

01:08:16 - 01:09:19

weren't telling stories about every human body's an athlete and the combination of those factors did them in while you have these entrance in like um like on sneakers and uh New Balance like they just start to like go oh I'm just going to attack these guys are weak we're we're going to start attacking now and it worked out really well for them unfortunately would you say that like the the discourse there is maybe um maybe not arrogance but maybe hey we got this recipe figured out and you know

01:08:48 - 01:09:55

there's no need to debate anymore there's no need to really exercise um I guess the same robust conversations that got here yeah I think it's a lot of what do the numbers say the numbers say people are buying our sneakers more than ever this is great awesome you know and I think in the short term it tells us a story about right now but we have to always look at it in the long term right we had to look at it because things happen in two different time Horizons um and when we fail to see

01:09:21 - 01:10:24

it that way it puts in a very bad situation now to to put culture together yeah and and to I guess everything we're talking about here with like business and debate and like discourse and and understanding the market and knowing what it wants and knowing not how to get pulverized like Nike is when you look at the word culture it's I guess um in many aspects my my mentor Chris doe uh he says there's things that he calls a briefcase word and a briefcase word is a word that means too many things sure it can be too

01:09:54 - 01:10:58

intangible sure it can have a thousand definitions when you take culture and you add your definition to it the way you see it today yeah like how do you define what it is yeah and then the second part of that question is like how can I then learn how to apply it to my business yeah so well stated I think about culture through a sociological lens particularly through lens deryan lens Emil durkheim talks about culture what was that Emil durkheim okay he's one of the founding fathers of sociology

01:10:25 - 01:11:33

you got Marx durkheim and vber aill durkheim talks about culture as a system of conventions and expectations that demarcate who we are and govern What People Like Us conventions and expectations exactly they're like their characteristics they're elements of what it means to be us so when you say conventions can you just yeah wrak down what you mean by that yeah so the conventions are the artifacts what we wear what we da okay um the language that we use right that for for Australians Australians thongs are

01:11:00 - 01:12:04

flipflops but in the states thongs are the underwear that goes up your butt right this is a convention the language you use right if a black cat crosses your path in the state it's bad luck in Japan it's good luck right like these conventions are what is acceptable and what is expected of people like us right so it's all about us as our identity who we are and because of who we are we see the world a certain way there's truths that we hold that's why for some a rug is decor for others souvenir and for

01:11:32 - 01:12:32

some it's a place of worship which one is it it's all those things depending on who you are and how you see the world and because of how you see the world you therefore engage in the world accordingly so if a rug is a place of worship for you you treat it with some sacred SE right but if a rug is Decor you put your feet on it right you know and because of how we see the world we now navigate the world accordingly and express ourselves accordingly through shared work literature film television Pottery

01:12:02 - 01:12:58

poetry and Brands and branded products the Alchemy of these systems or systems of systems make up our culture and when you think of culture that way you go oh oh I got it okay cool so we talk about sneaker heads they have expectations of what it means to be a sneaker head if you talking about Runners there's expectations what it means to be a runner if you're into cosplay there's expectations they are expectations there's an etiquette there's a a resonance an aura that's

01:12:29 - 01:13:40

right a frequency uh a shared sense of belonging people like me do something like this and therefore I do it because that's what's expected of people like me and if you think of culture in that sense you go oh okay great so who do I want to engage what are their cultural conventions what are their beliefs their artifacts behaviors language cultural production and we'll engage them accordingly it takes what is esoteric and omnipresent and Abstract culture like is a briefcase word and it makes it

01:13:04 - 01:14:06

extremely concrete and in doing so we look at people in different ways now excuse me bless you thank you that was plain that was a nice sneeze um so so then okay how do we let's start to move to translate that over to like how do I apply that how do I make that useful for me so like I guess what you're saying with Nike let's just say you know someone in their marketing Department's looking at the numbers on the screen and going holy crap e-commerce is going wild right now how do we capitalize on this let's pump the

01:13:38 - 01:14:27

brakes on retail and get more of this right that's great for Nike it's great for the investors everyone's going to be happy we're going to crush and I would say that's a that is a economic decision that has not been looked at through a cultural lens so they've looked at it economically they've looked at the numbers and often times you'll sit with a lot of people in business and they're looking at the numbers and I think if you even if you were to criticize today's day and age of advertising it's

01:14:02 - 01:15:02

a lot of number conversations 100% it's like oh what's the ROI what's the row ads what's the conversion rate da d d like that that seems to be where everyone's mind is right now when they think of advertising yes I'm seeing this uh the pendulum swing back the other way because it's like I think people are getting so um despondent to just the number conversation both a it's not exciting for the business owner to talk about all the time and B um it the numbers don't tell you everything so

01:14:32 - 01:15:44

you're saying let's put a a a limelight on the cultural piece in tandem with the numbers that's right and so would you say that most businesses are oversimplifying how they approach scaling their companies well I would say that many businesses look at the numbers which tells an economic story without the intimacy of the cultural story so how does one identify the cultural opportunity in front of their compan requires tremendous intimacy you got to be close to it so like you may say hey these

01:15:08 - 01:16:08

colorways of these dunks are through the roof let's pump out more and you go whoa whoa whoa whoa you can't do that why what do you mean people want it clearly there's a demand for it let's meet the demand with with the supply and you go dude because in sneaker culture if too many people have the color way than it's whack yo it's like uh the pandas cuz I remember I I had a cup full of knives yep and uh I was like oh the pandas are kind of cool and I put them on and then everyone's wearing them like I don't

01:15:38 - 01:16:44

want to wear them anymore exactly yeah so to understand that threshold where it's enough that people know it but not too much that it feels saturated you got to be close to it and I think that when we rely only on the quantitative we miss the qualitative which requires a level of intimacy can you add definitions to those because these are Big Concepts quantitative and qualitative just for the a the quantitive are the numbers like what does the number say the numbers say that there's great demand for these sneakers

01:16:11 - 01:17:08

people are paying more money they're paying they're going to the secondary Market to the stock exis of the world to get these sneakers in this color way they want it let's put more in the marketplace put more in the marketplace because for Nike Nike Nike doesn't realize the value from the second Market unless they go through their own app sneaker app but when stockx sells Nike sneakers Nike doesn't realize any of that that money so they're like well let's just put more in the marketplace

01:16:39 - 01:17:35

great it's like they're making out money yeah put more in the marketplace that's what the quantitative numbers would say the qualitative numbers would say oh dude you got to stop too much great example um cuz like if like just to jump on that for a moment to make a distinction cuz it's like if they make too many of them it's not cool anymore it's whack then therefore people stop buying them right which means you lose that's right you know if you if you do too many you lose um but if you stop

01:17:07 - 01:18:22

selling them you can just drop a new colorway and win which requires Innovation which I think another thing that Nike was struggling with so look at this through the lens of Music in the early 2000s the Neptunes this F Williams and Chad Hugo the production team the neptun murdering the game like murdering the game I think in the states they like they had like six of the top 10 songs in Billboards like for years like for a good two three year run and for some reason Fel and Chad completely switched

01:17:44 - 01:18:41

their sound Completely Different Drums different they don't do the uh kind of was an ear there exactly there was a Neptune sound they completely changed it and people are like why for real what are you doing why he's like you're so in demand and he was like you have to leave before people are tired of you like you had to change it up when people still want you Goosebumps man seriously you you change up when people still want you not when they're tired of you but the only way to know

01:18:13 - 01:19:18

that is to be close enough to the street to know it I think that when you are in your Ivory Tower when you're in your board room and your only proximity to people is through what the quantitative numbers are telling you you're going to miss it so the idea of intimacy which I love how does one become more intimate with their audience yeah to to pick up on these um these Concepts these these subtle debates the markets throwing at them so this is this is where culture enters the building because what we're

01:18:46 - 01:19:45

essentially saying is how do we get closer to culture how do we get closer to the artifacts behaviors language cultural production the beliefs of these people the only way to study culture is through ethnographic means can you define ethnographic ethnographies are when we immerse ourselves in the cultural contexts of people so like if I want to know about cosplayers I'm GNA go to Comic Con I'm going watch them dress up like them eat what they eat talk with they go they be one of them I'm going to

01:19:15 - 01:20:23

go native essentially and I'm going to like live life like them to understand who they are this is how anthropologists study people that we don't know right like the first uh ethnography were done in the 1700s think sir Frederick Mueller uh wanted to know more about uh serbians so he took an expedition and they went to Serbia for Siberia sorry not serbians Siberia went to Siberia for 10 years to understand what it means to be these people and live like these people you immerse yourself in the spaces the

01:19:49 - 01:20:59

cultural places where they occupy you watch them you eat with them you be them you become them you learn about them so the way we find intimacy with our Market is through ersion exactly ethnographic undertakings you do a field ethnography where I go there live become one of them or you do a netnography an online ethnography where you use social platforms as a proxy to observe them and unobtrusively and translate meaning and I guess one could do that through looking at comments uh looking at chatter on Reddit or stockx or what have

01:20:24 - 01:21:37

you my entire Doo dissertation was all Reddit data really all of it all of it all of it was like it had 12.5 million lines of discussions from seven different subreddits over three years that's what I analyzed so you actually like scrolling through Reddit scraped Reddit through seven different subreddits about hip hop related subreddits that talked about uh 12 specific Brands and in that discourse I'm watching people go back and forth just talking it's it's like someone being a fly on the wall observing how we

01:21:01 - 01:21:57

come up with words things that we say what we do how we behave and you go oh I know what's happening here so two co-brand strategists someone sitting on the wall like oh that's what they are interested in it's exactly I mean it's I mean it's essentially that they're obsessed with Nike oh Apple eh and the thing is that like when you observe people you find out a lot I would agree with that and and through this like and and again it's hard to proxy culture right cuz one

01:21:29 - 01:22:11

could go on the internet like I remember before I went to Mexico City I was like okay let me just do a little bit of research about Mexico you know know what I'm in for and then I get off the plane I'm like oh this is what it's like to be Spanish that's right you don't have conversations at a distance we're like this really close you hug get really close everyone's kissing me on the cheek this is and like you don't you don't you can't pick that up from Google no you

01:21:50 - 01:22:49

know it's like you got to be there you got to be you got to be in it you know or read a lot of Reddit I read a lot already exactly or you hear people talk about it you know and think and it's that it's that level of proximity where things get illuminated we go back to comedians they know this very well comedians just watch people they do people watch they watch people go H that's weird that's odd she did that he did that okay this is a thing and then they start applying Theory to why this

01:22:19 - 01:23:19

is happening and then they go on stage and go you ever notice every time you go to the mall you do X Y and Z we go I totally do that of course they have observed human behavior pulled out some causality based Theory to describe what was happening and said all the truth but tell it slant like Emily Dickson would say and as a result it felt more hookie so so sitting with this and and and and thinking to ourselves okay let's just say you know those that are listening work in branding or marketing

01:22:49 - 01:23:49

or advertising or run a company mhm let's just say I'm paying close attention to my target market yeah and I'm um trying to be intimate I'm trying to immerse myself in the culture and understand what's happening what are some things that they should be looking for like how do you know you're observing culture or like something that's irrelevant yeah you I say this when you're observing people you're trying to find the familiar and the strange it's almost like what we started

01:23:20 - 01:24:20

off with the game we started off with you gave me a a a a a phrase and go like what does it feel like what do you think it means right and as you say something I'm trying to relate to it based on things that I know right I'm trying to find the familiar in the strange to make sense of it that's how it is with us when we're watching people we're in a new country or a new place we're going huh all right they talk like this well here's okay now I know how to act the other way to do this is to find

01:23:50 - 01:24:53

the strange and the familiar we're observing people who are like us things that we take for granted that ends up sort of triangulating how we make sense of the world you know uh we think scientists refer to it as nose blindness nose blindness yeah where like you don't know that you're house stinks oh until someone comes in and go what's that smell what are you talking about what do you mean like you smell that what are you talking about right we don't we become blind to what is our

01:24:21 - 01:25:24

everyday yeah and this is why the social sciences are so Illuminating but also frustrating because we think we know us we think we know everything about us so much so that when someone calls it out to us we go I'll do that all along which is I Know It All Along bias right the obvious isn't obvious till someone points it out to you and someone walks in the room and they're like smells like it smells like dude in here that's right you go what do you mean yeah is a little musty isn't it right it's that's what we

01:24:52 - 01:25:54

do as researchers study culture we're observing the go H you notice that they do this instead of that interesting and we adapt to it talk about this idea this honic tread meal we talked about earlier we adapt to it very quickly we like anyone who travels internationally knows this soon as you get off the plane you go oh that's how they that's how they age okay I gotta do this thing so that I don't offend anyone I do this thing so I'm like one of them that's what we have to do as researchers observe what people

01:25:24 - 01:26:27

like them do when you're thinking of this concept of looking for the familiar and the weird or the weird and the familiar can you think of an example of uh a brand right now maybe other than Nike or some of these other big names but that have a really good dial on culture y I've say McDonald's full stop oh definitely I write about this in the book I'm biased I worked on McDonald's when I was at wi and I work on them work with them now as a professor in Residence um McDonald's came to widen

01:25:56 - 01:26:59

Kennedy in 2019 with a big problem they like in the states they were not doing well I mean like it was just a decline and actually in 2014 they were voted the most hated company in the country really it was bad it was bad and the team goes yeah hate you because McDonald's is basically the punching bag for everything wrong with The American diet but people definitely hate you but 68 million people show up at your door every single day that's a lot of love won't you focus on them McDonald's goes yeah I think you're

01:26:27 - 01:27:22

right the thing is McDonald's didn't know them very well they knew their credit card data right but they didn't know them as human beings these fans very very well people who are willing to self-identify as a fan of McDonald's even though it came with a lot of vitriol so the team did an ethnography started in Chicago drove through the heartland of the country talking to real life human beings who self-identify as fans of McDonald's They transcend demography different age age different

01:26:55 - 01:27:50

race different gender different household income different education different geography clearly because they Liv Place different places in the country excuse me and what they found was a set of fan truths that were both specific social and special to what it means to be a fan of McDonald's some of these truths may ring true for you for instance your friend will ask for fries a fry even though they say he didn't want any fries it's a fan truth like you go want anything I'm all good you get

01:27:22 - 01:28:10

your Fred like let me get a fry whoa whoa whoa whoa you said you a want nothing fan truth right uh is there anybody out there who doesn't eat the cheese suck to the rapper if you don't you're a monster that cheese is great right and then we saw all these list of fan truths all these fan truths that the team put in in a book they call the book of fan truths there was one truth that was more powerful than any of them and it was this no matter how big how famous you are everyone has an order everyone

01:27:46 - 01:28:56

has a McDonald's order that's true no matter how big how famous you are order goto meal so the team decided to engage fans through famous orders so we did a spot we had like Kim Kardashian's order uh Kanye West's order Magic Johnson wiy Goldberg all these people and then decided to partner with a famous person to make their order available by name and that was Travis Scott and we made this order called the Cactus Jack which is a double cheese a cheeseburger with bacon shredded lettuce barbecue sauce

01:28:20 - 01:29:20

and uh uh and a Sprite same order he's been ordered since since he was a kid in Houston made that order available and the first week we broke the supply chain of quarter pounder ingredients people were so ravenous about the campaign they were stealing posters off the wall when the restaurants closed wow and uh in the four weeks the campaign ran doubled the sale of Quarter Pounders added $50 million to incremental revenue and Wall Street added 10 billion to McDonald's market cap unbelievable so from there we

01:28:51 - 01:29:59

partnered with Jay Balvin with his famous order then we partnered with with uh BTS K-pop Superstars he partnered with sweetie Southern rapper partnered with Mariah Carey partnered with cardi ban offset and like McDonald's saw for four years year-over-year double- digit growth for four years these products are all the same no new products the same products just framed through a cultural lens based on the Brand's intimacy with fans and they've taken that idea and lateralize it all across the globe right

01:29:24 - 01:30:19

here in in uh in in uh Australia last year they did a partnership with kid looy yeah I saw that I remember I remember like going through the drive-thru of McDonald's and going the kid looy like why is he poting up with McDonald's and I was like I I remember ordering his his meal that's right I was like I'll try it that's right and and the same thing we saw in the states and the same thing we saw here in Australia just like frenzy right this is the brand not changing his products at all literally

01:29:53 - 01:30:52

the exact same products could have ordered the kid ly a month before the day before the campaign came out it's not by the name kid looy but as soon as you frame through a cultural lens based on what's true of these fans people consume that's really really powerful it's completely changed McDonald's business McDonald's business is that we engage fans like fans we don't act like a corporation talking to customers fan engaged with fans so in the and I think this a phenomenal example like

01:30:22 - 01:31:12

goosebumbs like now that makes a tremendous amount of sense of like why McDonald's has really turn up the heat when it comes to branding marketing for someone who's like let's just say yeah that's great that's McDonald's they got the budget to do that yeah how do I apply that to what I'm doing in in the event where like maybe I don't have a lot of fans or I'm still just trying to get my legs I'm trying to get customers yeah I that that to me I think is the

01:30:47 - 01:31:51

cop out okay that like I don't have the big budgets of McDonald's McDonald's had big budgets forever but they were still Los losing I mean we had big budgets in 2014 they were called the most hated company in the country like big budgets don't win you anything but media weight so why is it a copout and what can they do about it yeah so the cop out is that I don't have the budget I can't do that and you go no no no the same rules still apply same rules still apply so the market doesn't care about your feelings

01:31:19 - 01:32:18

about your budget it's the same rules for everyone exactly the hard the the hard part part is that McDonald's can turn on the media quickly you have to go door too but just like we said earlier if McDonald's fails it's much more conspicuous but if if you fail nobody cares seriously like I mean that there there's there's consequences positive and negative always always trade-offs so for a small company who doesn't have a bunch of fans I go great engage the fans you do have and activate them to go tell

01:31:49 - 01:32:59

other people and they'll go tell other people and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on artists we go back to artists again artists know this very well especially musicians comedians too they go I have to win fans every night that I'm on stage every night if I'm a new artist I go to smallest Pub little bar no one's there I gotta win this thing over if I can convert one today convert one the next day over time I build over time more and more and more that's how you got to be with your brand

01:32:24 - 01:33:25

so many people in business try to go but I want to go straight to the Netflix special I want to go straight to having the whole collection well I can't do that because you know uh you have all the advantages and I don't and you're saying that there's no excuses you 100% I love that analogy it's man like there there there are no elevators in life you take the stairs for some people for some people they're overnight successes but it is so rare relative to the rest of us you got to

01:32:55 - 01:33:51

take the stairs you don't get the whole deck right away you get it card by card by card McDonald's has been in business for decades they got holographic everything they've been building cards stacking cards and what you see is the results of that it's like it's like um it's like going to the gym work out for a day and then go where's my six-pack it doesn't work that way like you got to keep going like take the STS [ __ ] over time and then you get it you don't like

01:33:23 - 01:34:29

get on the scale after one day at the gym and go that failed up I'm done then you know you keep going I think the same thing goes with with business you know there are times that I've created content I'm like yo this video is the one oh this is going to murder and it gets no engagements I go what in the world happened here and then there's one that I'm like the throwaway and it gets tons of Engagement I go what what's going on right the market is talking to you and you take the feedback and you continue

01:33:55 - 01:35:05

to iterate to make it better and you do it day over day stage after stage product release after product release for the big guys and the small guys it is the exact same game it's like basketball NBA basketball plays by the same basic rules as WNBA and the same basic rules as NCAA basketball different contexts the rules are a little bit different but it is still the same same game the same thing goes for the big Brands and the small ones it's the same game we are trying to get people to move

01:34:31 - 01:35:21

we're trying to get people to adopt behavior and we invest in these vessels of meanings that we call Brands to conjure up thoughts and feelings in the hearts and minds of people to increase their likelihood of moving and the way people make meaning the way people translate the world is through their cultural lenses through their cultural frames and therefore we have to understand how they make meaning so we can make meaning in a way that's congruent with them and I think you're are saying essentially those who are in

01:34:56 - 01:36:11

business you know need to shift perspectives or be willing to shift perspectives or like you said go on an expedition and go loar y so think about this um how many you have how many followers do you have on on Instagram uh Instagram 631 th000 yes when you making content when you had six followers is there a very big difference between the way you make content now and then I'd say technically yes I'd say um mindset it's about the same exactly same game you've got better skills you got a

01:35:33 - 01:36:29

better shorthand you have a better understanding what's going to work in the market but you're still doing the same thing you're still playing the same game you just play better it's still Instagram it's still the same Planet you still got a break through you still have you still all you still have to do all those things you just have better you have better skills to do it but you're still doing the same thing even that and when you get to a million followers you be doing

01:36:01 - 01:37:12

the same thing as well you still got to break through and and just to add a caveat here would you say that people are trying to rush this process absolutely absolutely I've heard someone came to me and says um you know I want to teach one day I really want to be a professor one day I go great start now they go no like I'm working right now I got young kids and like you know once you know once all that's done then I'm like oh it's gonna be over by that time like d like you had to start like right

01:36:36 - 01:37:51

now you got to start when it's hard like I started teaching 12 years ago 12 years ago and I was teaching for free I like there was nothing glamorous at zero glamour at all you know I did that work for a long time and over time overtime overtime over time over time over time find myself to the University of Michigan but like it took a lot to get there you don't just go I want to do this now I'm G to do it no no no you start start now and you build over time start when it's hot yeah that

01:37:14 - 01:38:35

really resonates and and there's there's no such thing in time there's no such thing in business as the perfect time never ever nothing in life as the perfect time there's a a book called die empty and it has one clear premise and I love this idea in fact this has sort of been my Mantra since covid um is that the most expensive real estate on the planet is the graveyard because that's where ideas went that never got made songs never got recorded movies never got uh produced books never got written

01:37:55 - 01:39:06

companies never got started potential everybody just waiting for the right time dude we are on borrow time my I had a friend of mine who passed early in co uh March 24th guy Nam Marlo STM this guy had like everything going for him man like this guy is like everything going for him family business doing well so much clout in the city he was like the guy and he passed from Co and and when when I heard he died like immediately I just thought it's like dude there is no perfect time you have to do it now you

01:38:31 - 01:39:27

do it when it's hard because it's never going to be easy there's always going to be an excuse why not to do it do it when it's hard Goosebumps man and I think you're right like so many times people just no matter how it's framed it it NE things never get easier man think about your story right I think your story you would to go see Gary bayner Chuck right is didn't have very much money didn't have nothing going for you feel like you were on a dead end and you like I'm

01:38:59 - 01:40:17

going to start this thing you had every reason why not to do this every reason but you're like I'm GNA do it while it's hard now look at us yeah you can where we are you can have a thousand excuses or you can have one reason absolutely one worth one is worth more than the other absolutely in conclusion with everything that you're doing now and intended do how do you want to be remembered oh man that's a good one um honestly I feel like a part of me wants to say I want to be remembered as the

01:39:37 - 01:40:37

person who helped people be great but than being really really honest like really really honest I want to be remembered as Georgia and Ivy's father because I think that they're going to be great beautiful man beautiful I connect with that I can I can really relate I got a daughter yeah you know I feel that I feel that it's something different you know what's a quote or a mantra that you've carried with you on your entire Journey that you wished everyone listening to this would immediately

01:40:10 - 01:41:27

Implement take your time DMD has been the one I've been on but I think the one that's been the longest uh the one that's sat with me the longest probably two things if I can give you two one is like more sort of philosophical the other one's much more practical um the first is uh the quote that uh who you are is God's gift to you but who you become is your gift to God right so it's like deep where you go like what you manifest that is like your way of praising your way of blessing God

01:40:49 - 01:41:51

the other one is much more practical and this a Steve Jobs quote and I'm a par phrase it but essentially says this that if you look at everything around you everything around you it was made by someone no more smarter than you are average person if that be the case what's keeping you from making a dent in the world that brings it down to earth 100% it's like like an average person made these things and we go well why can I do that yeah I mean if Australians can make Wi-Fi like what C you

01:41:19 - 01:42:46

do I mean we made Wi-Fi like it's pretty good yo there's some guys in the desert in Israel made made firewall yeah was keeping you yeah and I think when you think of it that way you go oh you why not why not why not me yeah exactly if not you who 100% when you wake up in the morning what's something unique that you do that keeps you fired up oh oh unique that I do I don't know if it's something I do but something I definitely think about well the first thing I do when I wake up at work right away so right away

01:42:03 - 01:43:05

like it was interesting I I found myself maybe a year ago feeling like I wasn't productive like I used to be I used to be like a night Ow like I would stay up super late at night the kids go to bed like around 8 maybe 9 on a late side my wife go to bed like an hour after that so 10:00 10 to 2 man I would be flying like I'm like the house is quiet it's just me going to work but then like I realized like a year ago I just wasn't productive at night anymore I was sit at the four hours go the B I've done

01:42:34 - 01:43:28

nothing and I was like I need to change this so I wired my body to wake up at 5: in the morning at 5 in the morning no matter where I am like even here I'm wake up at 5: in the morning and I work right away immediately I jump right into work I think that like I think I am you don't make coffee or anything you just straight on the laptop straight up man like right way I wake up quick prayer go go right to it dude that's why I call Raw dogging it you know what I mean like you don't even get dressed yet you're

01:43:01 - 01:44:11

like I'm immediately and and and I tell you like like strap your laptop to your like chest the sack in you wake up dude the thing that gets me fired up though is that I want to be great yeah I I want to be dope and I feel like I feel like I'm always on the cusp of it I feel like man it's like right I can see it it's like I could see see it I just got to do it and I I wake up to that like every day and like so you have a visceral feeling that you're on the edge i d how long have you had that

01:43:36 - 01:44:25

forever forever even like something your mama said to you like you no I don't know I I Ian I don't know if it's just like I don't know if it's naiv I don't know I don't know what it is but I always feel like it's right there it's like right there even like the for the culture feel like we're just starting to hit our stride like right there it's right there love how good is that feeling when you like it's about to happen I don't know if it'll ever I feel

01:44:01 - 01:44:56

like I mean telling my team for like five years something Big's about to happen everyone's like what I'm like I don't know I don't know what's GNA happen it's going to be big I mean and and that to me that just really gets me going because like this might be the day this might be the day you never know this might be the day dude I love how like almost childlike that is but in the best way possible I feel like you've got to have that level of you know delusion is probably too strong of a word but you

01:44:28 - 01:45:27

got to have that level of Faith yeah you know uh like uh the scripture talks about faith as the substance of things hoped for the evidence of Things Not Seen and that like you stepped out like I don't know what's there but I'm GNA step out anyway like that is like that is a remarkable thing to do you know we're always looking for evidence that a thing is there before we do it to go like no I'm gonna start a company I'm G start an agency and I'm sure people were like who do you think you are to start

01:44:58 - 01:46:17

this thing what agency you work at beforeand never worked at one before who do you think you are like there there's a there's a boldness that comes from that and I think that those who are willing to we talk about earlier sort of push against the orthodoxies and go now they I'm going do this and and be committed to it and that is commendable I saw I saw a quote from Denzel Washington he's the best he just a dude just a absolute murderer yeah he is and he said anxiety is Faith dissolving a word that is a word and

01:45:39 - 01:46:53

that is true that is true and the way I interpreted that was like you have to have faith and some would say well faith is a weak word and I'm like depends how you feel and think about it yeah and for many of you know the listeners here you know whether you believe in God or some other deity or what have you I I think if you have genuine faith that something can happen and you're slightly delusional about it sure and you're giving your power to it Y in many ways it can in my personal experience help uh

01:46:17 - 01:47:12

remedy the feeling of anxiety that's right that's right the scripture would say faith and fear can't Co exist you can't have faith and have fear no so things doesn't work faith is like I'm going to step out boldly it's like you have solidarity that it's going to happen that's right bold boldly I'm going step out you know and I think that when other people can't see it that actually gets me fired up and I'm like oh I'mma show you then you know like

01:46:44 - 01:48:03

something big is about to happen yeah exactly when people can't see it you go oh man and and honestly like that was something um that Steve Stout used to say Stout uh owns and runs translation he was my boss for four years um and stout would say if you have an idea that is logical and sound and no one understands it no one gets it you're on to something [ __ ] that's some good advice yeah great advice last question yep what's a door you need to kick in right now to take yourself to another level o

01:47:30 - 01:48:49

um someone asked me how can I help and I was like yo it was before opportunity opportunity opportunity and he said if you sold a million books today would you be able to like really fully realize the value of that and I was like no I was like I have like my infrastructure is not in order I'm like rag tagging it I'm Raw dogging it out here don't I'm like I'm just like I'm like I'm just being super reactive I don't have like a infrastructure that's door I need to

01:48:11 - 01:49:00

kick in I need like you have a team of people and these people are brilliant yeah behind this camera is a haet nest of people brilliant brilliant people seriously you brilliant people who are giving you ideas and you're like oh man you are you are the Kanye of the situation old Kanye not new Kanye yeah I'll take that I'll take I'll take I'll take the the Crave director in this that like you're getting ideas go oh that's cool that's cool and you're putting it together to make pancakes yeah like we

01:48:36 - 01:49:38

had a serious conversation last week about how do we stack people on top of each other here because we're running out of space yeah I mean so like and like absent of like human capital for me it's just me and my assistant right now and I think that there opportunities that I miss either just CU my inbox is flooded but like that aside that's like minute I think but it's like they just things I can't see because my head is down where I need to either have my head down and someone looking over or

01:49:07 - 01:50:19

someone's head down and I look over but to do both I think it's uh there's a there's a ceiling that I'm approaching so what is the door the door is heterogenity and and ideas diversity of ideas I need someone I need a coach to do this I need someone to do that need someone to do this to say hey Marcus like you need think about that it's like it's like a company who hits you know $10 million in revenue and can't get over it why can't we get there why can't we get there it's like because

01:49:43 - 01:50:48

you don't have someone telling you like if you arch your your wrist a little bit more give it a little flick the free throw mean your your your your jump shot would just be better and that that's the door I'm like rigorously kicking in yeah kick that [ __ ] door in man try man we'll have a chat off it I I got some ideas um but dude um from the bottom of my heart you're a beautiful friend we've known each other for years and um just so incredible to watch what you're doing and it's been such a joy

01:50:15 - 01:51:16

just to see you growing and crushing it and bringing value to the entire Market oh I'm grateful for it man and I feel exactly the same way about you hell yeah brother yes sir appreciate you being here thank you so much yo my name is Dane Walker and I am disgustingly obsessed with branding I had to figure out a way to do branding every single day so I branded myself then I started my agency rival and hir a team of branding Mavericks hellbent on creating brand so good that they'll make you a competition

01:50:55 - 01:51:56

their pants so here's the thing you want your brand to go viral and rival makes Brands go viral that's why we're offering you a free 30-minute branding session to get an expert's opinion if you don't believe me the proof is in the pudding here's what clients have to say about rival rival is trusted by Brands like nutrition Warehouse light my bricks and VY so if you want to absolutely smoke the competition and make your brand go viral hit the link below and book in your free 30-minute branding session