[This transcript was generated from YouTube’s auto-captions, not a verified human/AI-diarized transcript. Timestamps and wording may contain errors, and speaker labels below are Claude’s best-effort inference from context, not confirmed against audio. Please review before publishing.]

[Music]

Host: We’re here with Marc Ensign. Marc has shared the stage with the likes of Gary Vaynerchuk, Brené Brown, Simon Sinek, Chelsea Clinton and many more. His writing has been featured in Forbes, The Huffington Post, CNN, the New York Post and many other publications, and his theories on marketing, leadership and personal branding are currently being taught to people around the world. Marc…

[The host’s opening question is not captured in the auto-captions; from Marc’s answer, it appears to be what he is up to these days.]

Marc: What am I up to? Well, that’s an open question. I’m kind of juggling three main things, I guess. I own a personal branding agency called Loudmouth, and we work with a lot of speakers, authors and coaches to help them define and communicate their message, to grow their audience and make a bigger impact in the world. I’m a speaker and author myself, so I’m working on a book and getting out there and speaking. That’s how we met, speaking at INBOUND. And then I also have an online program that teaches personal branding, where I’m helping folks that want to build a powerful brand but don’t want to jump all in with an agency. They’re do-it-yourselfers, and so they’re able to go at their own pace and build a solid personal brand for themselves.

Host: And how can people find that course?

Marc: If you go to marcensign.com, M-A-R-C E-N-S-I-G-N dot com, you can find it on there. That’s my primary website.

Host: Tell me about branding. I heard something really interesting lately: that the major change in the last five years in branding is that, instead of looking for how people can see a message, there’s now enough reach for everybody, and it’s actually about how to be highlighted, or how to communicate likability, as opposed to just saying “hi, nice to meet you” for a brand. The branding is not a certain message. Like, I didn’t know that there was this type of Coca-Cola, and now we don’t care about the types of Coca-Cola, do we like the brand at all? So it’s like acting as if the brand is a person.

Marc: Yes. So our focus is speakers, authors, coaches, entrepreneurs and those types. However, it’s my belief that everybody should have at least some face of the company, even a big company. For that reason alone: we don’t care about the product as much as we care about how it makes us feel, and the fast track to getting somebody to feel something is to connect on a human level. That’s why people use celebrity endorsements, and that’s why influencers are able to make an impact with a company. It’s just a lot easier for us to grow attached to another human being than it is to grow attached to a hamburger or a pair of sneakers. A pair of sneakers is just a product: you put it on, you walk around the block, okay, these are fine, they feel good. But when you’re talking about Michael Jordan, you’re talking about somebody that, even though it’s one-sided, you have a history with. I’ve been watching him since I was a little kid, I remember when the Bulls won. All of a sudden you have a history with the product when there’s a person involved.

Host: How do you manage that, though? I’m thinking there’s a lot of ego in it. When you’re doing a sneaker, there’s a creative side to that, but when you’re doing a Michael Jordan, everything is personal messaging. It’s sensitive, it’s him. How do you manage the sensitivity?

Marc: Personal branding, from the agency side, when I’m working with a client, is exhausting. It really is. I owned a marketing company for 15 years before I got into personal branding. If you sent me a product, I would wear the sneakers for a couple of days, look at them, talk about the color, talk about the feel, find some funky way to talk about them, create some messaging around it. It was very static, just something clever based on what I’m looking at. With a person, you really have to dig in deep, because there are so many layers to the onion. You have to be able to tap into that thing inside, otherwise it’s just not going to feel very authentic when you’re talking about somebody.

Marc: So one of the things that we’ll do is, I’ll fly out to my client when we first start working together, and we’ll spend two or three days together. I move into their house. We spend every waking moment together for two or three days, because that’s really how you’re going to get to know somebody. If I’m going to market you as a human being, I have to know you inside and out. I’ve got to know what you like and what you don’t like, what pisses you off. A lot of times during those meetings it’ll start to get a little heated, because I’m digging in a little too deep. I get to see the look on your face when the mother-in-law calls and you’re annoyed. All that stuff is what makes the person.

Host: And people let you do that?

Marc: Exactly, and it’s uncomfortable and it’s vulnerable, and there are parts of it that are uncomfortable for me too. I’m moving into your house, and you’ve got kids and animals. If they’re dead set against it, I won’t. I’ll get a hotel and we’ll just spend the days together, and I try to make sure we’re hanging out until eight or nine o’clock at night. Let’s go out to dinner, bring your friends, bring your clients. Because when you’re talking about personal branding, if I just have you fill out a Google Form and talk to you for half an hour, that’s not enough for me to get into the stuff that really matters, the stuff that people really connect with. People want to see the scars. They want to hear the story. That’s great that you’re here, but how did you get there? People want to hear that because they want to know that it’s possible for them too. And we protect those stories, we protect those scars. So to get down into the meat of it, you have to live with somebody. Nobody knows you better than your spouse. Well, I’m going to be your spouse for a couple of days. That’s how you have to approach it.

Host: I’ve never heard of this approach, it’s so unique. I’m wondering, do you work with companies or just with one person? Because if it’s either a big company or a startup, I’m sure, going back to what I was saying about ego, there are going to be a few people that might want to be the front, and sometimes you’re the one who’s going to have to decide who it’s going to be. And sometimes people don’t want to be the front, but they want their startup to succeed. Is that a price they have to pay, that they have to be at the front? How does that all work?

Marc: So we do work with companies, however we work with people within the companies, and this can happen in one of a couple of ways. I’m not really looking to brand your company. I did that for 15 years, it’s not exciting to me. But I want to make sure that your CEO, or whoever the forward-facing person of the company is, has a really strong brand, because they’re representing the company. They’re the ones on the news, the ones being written about, the ones doing the interviews. It’s not always the CEO, but it usually is, or somebody higher up within the company. And then I’ll also speak to, or do workshops with, entire teams, especially sales teams, customer service teams and marketing teams, in order to help them build their personality within the company, because these are the people that are touching the users. Let’s say somebody calls customer service: if you can create an environment where that customer service rep, or the person answering the phones, is able to build a connection with the person calling, you’re going to have a much better experience all around. So I’ll help them build kind of mini brands within that brand.

Host: What would be the natural KPI, the end game, for something like that? Because a shoe wants to sell, it’s revenue, right? There’s a fine line, and I’m not meaning this in a bad way, between “I have an ego, I want myself in the front” and the value that the company is getting out of that. I’m wondering what the KPI is to measure that.

Marc: The interesting thing with branding is that branding is a process, it’s not a deliverable. It’s not like, “All right, great, we created the brand, we’re done.” Coke has been out for a bazillion years, and I think they spend somewhere around a billion dollars a year, maybe a little more, on branding. So it’s a constant process to build a brand. Now, as far as levels of success, ultimately that turns into sales. It turns into positive reviews. Depending on who you are and what you do, it turns into media impressions, more speaking gigs if you’re a speaker, selling more books because people have heard about you, you have a bigger audience, a wider reach. Bigger audiences, higher-paid speaking gigs, higher-paid consulting gigs. So it does show up in that way. It’s not a matter of somebody saying, “Look, your brand scores 80%, so now we’re going to pay you more.” It’s that your phone is just ringing more, so now you get to charge more. Or you put your book out and you have enough people that already like what you do and know who you are, so you’re not starting at the very ground level, you’re at another level, and it instantly sells a bunch more.

Marc: One of the examples that I used in my talk at INBOUND is J.K. Rowling, who wrote the Harry Potter series. She released a book in a completely different genre under a pseudonym. She wanted to basically start over, pretend she was a nobody, write a book and go through that process again, and just experience it without all the hype and hoopla that comes with being J.K. Rowling. So she put this book out, and it took 40 or 50 letters to publishers before somebody finally signed her. The others are kicking themselves. Over the first month or so, the book sells 1,500 copies, which is not terrible, I guess, for a first-time author. But then word got out that it was J.K. Rowling, and within a short amount of time after that, it sold 1.5 million copies. It was the same book, same words, same characters, same beginning, same ending. The only thing that was different was the perception of who wrote it. And not only did she sell 1.5 million copies versus 1,500, but it also went from a three-star review to a four-star review. So we liked the book better, and a lot more of us bought it, and it was solely because once we found out who wrote it, it changed everything. That is 100 percent return on investment for your brand. And now they’ve turned it into a TV series or something like that, on Showtime, and she’s got six books out and she still writes under this other guy’s name. It just shows you how powerful your brand can be.

Host: I’m wondering, because a lot of our listeners are entrepreneurs: how does a startup, or even a one-man show, get their name out there?

Marc: The first step in every case is to be clear about who you are and who you’re communicating with. Most people skip over that. They have a pretty good idea, “I kind of know what I do,” and then they start on “let me post on social media, let me buy Facebook ads, let me update my LinkedIn profile, let me get interviewed on podcasts,” but meanwhile they’re still a little iffy on what they do, how they do it that’s different and unique from others in their industry, and who they’re going to do this for. Who are the people that are lying awake at night worrying about this problem that I’m going to fix? If you’re not crystal clear about that, it doesn’t matter what you do on Facebook. You might have some success, but you’re not going to reach the level that you really want to. You can get interviewed, you can write the book, you can be a speaker, but if you can’t shout it from the tallest mountain, who you are and what you do, with your head held high and your chest puffed out, you’re always going to struggle at least a little bit.

Host: So how do you become clear about that?

Marc: I move into your house, right? You have to really dig in deep. It starts with asking yourself a lot of questions. There’s no set formula, but there are exercises that you can do, and I talk about a lot of this in the course. The name of the course is [course name uncertain from the audio; the captions read “has chosen personal branding”]. It’s really about not trying to figure out “how can I package up this thing so other people will buy it,” but really digging deep: “This is what’s really important to me. I want to make an impact, and this is how I’m going to do it. These are the people that I love and want to help, that I want to be there for, that I want to serve and stand up for, and this is the thing that’s keeping them awake at night.” You have to be able to answer those questions, and that’s where it starts. Then you have to keep digging deeper and keep asking yourself, to get deeper than “I want to help these people because they have a lot of money.” That’s not going to work, people are going to see right through that. But if you can really grab onto who they are, in a way where they feel like you’re there for the right reasons, you’ll start to build that community.

Host: Out of all the branding campaigns that you did for people, what was your favorite campaign, let’s say, or creative idea to bring someone to that level?

Marc: Okay, so this was kind of an interesting idea. I had a client that really wanted to be featured in a specific magazine. It took a long time, six or eight months or something like that, to get an article on the online version of the magazine. So I was like, okay, now we’ve got our foot in the door, however that’s not enough. So what we did was spend a bunch of money, not a ton, probably about two grand, somewhere around 1,500, in paid ads to drive traffic to that article. Not to his website, not to his post on Facebook about it. We drove traffic to that article, to pump up their stats and get everybody all excited about it. After about a month or a month and a half of that, they called and said, “We have no idea what’s going on, but people are loving that article. We would love to have you come in and write for the magazine.” So we wrote an article for the magazine, and we did a very similar thing, because again it was on the online version. It worked the first time, let’s try it again. And that turned into, “We would love to interview you for the magazine.” So as a result, we got two articles and then an interview in that magazine over the course of a year, by buying ads to pump up those stats. His message was so powerful that it was a great fit. It was just about getting them to notice him, which was really the key in that whole thing.

Host: I’m curious, and maybe it’s not going back, because it’s in correlation to what we’re saying, but I think there’s a theme of understanding yourself and adding value as part of some formula for staying out there for the long run. And that’s making me think, and I wonder what you think about this, about what I would call a trend of all these Instagram influencers. Where do you see them in about five years? Because people are striving to be Instagram influencers, and to be fair, they’re making a lot of money, so far.

[Brief crosstalk and joking between the hosts and Marc about Airbnb and getting an endorsement; partly unclear in the captions.]

Marc: It depends. The influencers that are really working it, that really do love their audience and connect with their audience and build a connection with them, do much better than those that are just creating numbers in order to have something showy and then try to sell something to them. There was a story that came out a couple of months ago. I don’t remember the exact numbers, but it was a woman who was an influencer, with something like 2.5 million followers on Instagram, and she started a clothing line to sell to those people. She ended up having to cancel it, because there was a minimum of something like 36 items that needed to be sold in order for the production company to go into production, and she wasn’t able to sell 36. It was a very, very small number, considering you have 2.5 million people. If you can’t sell 36-some-odd products to 2.5 million people, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re fake users, it’s just that they’re not really sold on you. They’re not in love with you, they’re not paying attention, they’re not voting with their dollars, whatever you want to call it. I would choose 1,000 raving fans over 2.5 million people that are half listening. With a thousand raving fans you can make a really solid living. They’ll tell their friends about you, they’ll buy the CD when it comes out, buy the t-shirt, come to the speaking gigs, buy the books. I think it’s more about that engagement and attention moving forward than about the numbers of how many likes. And you’re starting to see all the social media platforms removing those stats, because they’re so meaningless now. They genuinely don’t matter.

Host: Which, by the way, as a side note, those social platforms that are removing likes: this is based on dopamine, and on people returning to see how many likes they’re getting. So I’m wondering what’s going to happen with the traffic to those websites once that’s gone. I’m sure they have some sort of plan in mind, but I don’t see where that’s going.

Host: I’m sure it’s strategic. I do not believe this is just them being benevolent and thinking “we’re doing harm to people and society, let’s remove it and we’ll be fine.” There’s the strategy about stars on Instagram, real influencers versus non-influencers; they’re trying to differentiate between them. That’s kind of their mission, isn’t it?

Marc: Yeah, I think they’re doing that because there’s so much fake stuff out there, and from a selfish perspective for the platform, it raises the question of credibility. So in their mind it’s, “Let’s take this off the table completely and see where it goes.” Now, they’re still going to collect that information. I don’t think for a second that they’re not going to fill it in the database. They are still going to make decisions based on it, they’re still going to push posts. But the thing that they found is that once people see that a post has a certain number of likes, they just instantly hit the like button to join that crowd. It’s hard to get to 100, but it’s easy to get from 100 to 500, because everybody wants to be part of the group. So we start liking things just because everybody else likes them, not because we actually like them.

Host: Isn’t that human nature?

Marc: Yeah, of course. We’re sheep, we have a need to belong, and that shows up on social media, it shows up in our everyday life, it shows up in the restaurants we go to. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve looked at reviews of a restaurant, and this one has five stars but it’s empty, and the one next door has four stars and it’s packed. We should go to the one that’s packed, right? That’s what we do. If nobody else likes this one, there must be something wrong with it.

Host: So now with social media you’re going to go in with your eyes closed and just taste the food, and decide if it’s good. You’re actually going to have to like things.

Marc: Yeah, and it’ll be a much more honest result, because people will like things because they like them, not because the crowd likes them. And I think it’s going to make life a little more difficult for influencers. It’s going to force them to prove their value. Because that’s the other thing: if I pay you to do a sponsored post for me, and it gets ten thousand likes on Instagram or whatever, you get to point to that. I don’t know if that helped me at all. I don’t know if you bought those ten thousand likes, I don’t know if they’re legitimate customers for me. But for you, it’s a job well done. When you remove that from the equation, all of a sudden, as an influencer, I really have to be able to prove my value. I have to be able to say, “Because I posted this sponsored post, it turned into this many phone calls, or this many sales.” It forces influencers to be marketers.

Host: A lot of [influencers? the captions read “businesses”] are going to be looking for a job soon, probably.

Marc: I think it is a big deal. It’s going to make a big difference, and it’s just going to change things. And what’s going to happen is new people are going to come out of this and find another path to something cool, and then a bunch of them will show up and ruin that too.

Host: Marketers [ruin? the captions read “are in”] everything.

Marc: That’s right.

Host: A lot of entrepreneurs that are really successful, like yourself, come from two genres: either they came from a sports background or a music background. Not all of them, but a lot of them. So first of all, how did you move from there to here, and how did that help you?

Marc: So I have a background in music. I went to Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts, and graduated with a degree in music performance, and then I moved in with my mom because I was an unemployed musician. But I had this dream of wanting to work on Broadway. It was 1996 or ’97, something like that, and there was really no Facebook or Google. The internet was basically chat rooms, and it was almost useless. So I would go into the city every day, collect the Playbills and programs from the shows, and try to meet all the musicians. I was really good at networking and getting in front of people. I created a logo for myself, I used a specific font, I got headshots done, and I used certain colors every time I sent them something, so people would always know it was me. This was before personal branding existed, and I don’t want to pretend for a second that I invented this thing. It was mostly because I was unemployed and living with my mom, and I was seeing, well, this is what the big companies are doing, so I should do the same thing. So now I was clear about who I am, and I had created this look for myself, and still people wanted very little to do with me. I was completely unqualified for the job. I had no experience, I had just gotten out of school, I had no connections, short of stalking people, which is really what I was doing, and it was incredibly creepy.

Marc: So I then started positioning myself as an authority. I reached out to Bass Player magazine, which was the big bass magazine at the time, since I’m a bass player, and said, “Hey, look, I’m friends with all these people on Broadway. How about I write an article about what it’s like to be on Broadway?” They loved the idea, so they gave me 350 bucks and I wrote this article. But now I was able to call everybody. I had something to give them, and I was also an authority: “Hey, I’m writing an article about what it’s like to be on Broadway.” And my terms were: you had to give me an hour interview, you had to give me a copy of the music for your show, you had to introduce me to every musician on your show, and you had to let me watch your show from the pit. If you wouldn’t do any of those, you were off the list. So it gave me a chance to meet everybody and to get a copy of the music so I could practice. Eventually the article came out and I was a big hero. One of the guys I really connected with, I ended up writing some more articles about his dad, who was also a bass player. It was that combination of being clear about who I am, having a clear visual brand, and being an authority that got me this gig. If any one of those was missing, it wouldn’t have happened. And so I ended up playing in the show Rent for maybe ten years, on Broadway, on national and international tours, and all that kind of stuff.

Marc: How I made the transition was, I was really good at marketing. It came very naturally to me, just like music did. So I said, well, I should help other people. I started a company to help musicians and artists market themselves, in 2000, I think it was, building websites. And I didn’t realize how broke musicians and artists were, and how seldom they paid their bills. Then one day somebody from [company name garbled in the captions; he goes on to say it was American Express], a huge company, reached out and said, “We have this small project for you.” I did the project, I doubled my invoice, and I sent it to him. The guy called me the next day and said, “I can’t submit this invoice,” and I figured I got caught double-charging him. He said, “It’s going to cost us more to cut the invoice than the amount. You should at least double or triple this.” So that’s how I got my start. I saw this as a way to get out of doing wedding gigs.

Host: How did American Express hear about you? How did they approach you?

Marc: I was doing mostly artists and musicians, and my work was really creative. You have to remember this was 2000, 2001, something like that, so websites were very boxy, HTML tables, and I was designing stuff that was really cool and very fluid. I figured it out as I went along. I kind of didn’t know what I was doing half the time, and looking back, I should be a little horrified at the code I was creating. I was hacking.

Host: Are you techie?

Marc: Yeah, I pick stuff like that up really easily. My mom is a computer programmer, and she was taking me to adult night classes for computer programming since I was six or something. I had an Apple II Plus. I’ve got this awful picture of me in an orange trucker hat, sitting in front of an Apple II Plus programming, with buck teeth and braces. So I was very good at picking that stuff up, and I was able to develop websites that were pretty creative, and there weren’t a ton of people doing it at the time. Now, of course, everybody’s a web designer and you can get websites for free, but back then it was just different, and I had a different way of solving the problem that they seemed to connect with. American Express turned into Nike, which turned into Berkshire Hathaway, which turned into all these other big companies. And then I realized how much I hate working for companies like that.

Host: The next evolution.

Marc: Yeah. It took me 10 or 12 years, something like that, but I eventually realized that the world doesn’t need somebody to sell an extra can of Pepsi. I want to make an impact in the world, and working for these big companies I wasn’t doing it. So I exited that company, because I wanted to work with people.

Host: You’re saying that as if you woke up, had breakfast, and exited the company the next day.

Marc: No, no, it was ugly and scary and all that other kind of stuff. [A few words unclear in the captions.]

Host: Tell me about the minute when you realized you didn’t want to do this anymore.

Marc: I remember I was out for a walk, looking back on the last 10 or 12 years. It was a year before I actually left. It was coming up on New Year’s, and I was deciding what my goals for the next year were, and I found that every single one of my goals had nothing to do with the company. It was all about how I could get away from the company. “Maybe I’ll write a book and become a New York Times bestseller, so I don’t have to work for this company anymore.” Every goal I had was to get away from it. So I was like, okay, clearly my number one goal has to be to leave. And I left, and I realized that it wasn’t that I didn’t love what I did, it’s that I didn’t love who I did it for. I didn’t like working with big companies. I was just another cog in the wheel. They paid well and all this other kind of stuff, but at the end of the day I could come home from work, put my head on the pillow, and know that I made absolutely no difference in anybody’s life. That was a tough pill to swallow. Because at the end of the day, as people, we want to know that we made a difference, that we’ve done something that can be remembered. Maybe we’re not going to be the next Steve Jobs, but damn, shouldn’t we at least try to do something that makes this planet spin on a different axis because we were here?

Host: That drive, you’re saying it as if all people have that.

Marc: I think everybody has a drive to want to leave some kind of impact. Now, changing the world could mean changing your family, it could mean changing your community, or it could be changing the world on this grand level. It doesn’t have to be this grand thing. Sometimes it’s just doing one small thing that matters in somebody else’s life. You don’t have to walk across the country in a pair of flip-flops for a good cause in order to change the world. You can do something locally. And as a kid, until I was probably 10 or 11 years old, probably more like 15 but I don’t want to admit it, my mom would sew snaps onto all my pajamas for a cape. Every pair of pajamas I had had a cape, and it didn’t matter if it was big Mickey Mouse pajamas. So I spent my childhood jumping from the ottoman to the couch to the La-Z-Boy recliner, saving the world. And then as a musician, I spent the better part of 10 years of my life ending every night with a standing ovation at the end of the show, knowing that I had created something that changed the lives of the people in that audience, for a short amount of time. So when I realized that I had created a company that does the complete opposite, that was a punch in the face to me.

Host: No standing ovations.

Marc: Yes. It just didn’t matter. I’d walk in the door and nobody was standing and clapping for what I did.

Host: Were you living with your mom then?

Marc: No, no. I’d come home to my wife, and I didn’t get any kind of standing ovation. It was just, “Yeah, okay, you went to work, that’s what you do.” And I’m like, well, I don’t like the sound of that. I just had an inherent need for people to know that I did something that mattered.

Host: So who did you sell the company to?

Marc: I had a business partner, so I just exited.

Host: Oh, okay.

Marc: Yeah, so it was easier, because agencies are tough to sell, so that would have been a nightmare. [A few words unclear in the captions.] And just to be incredibly transparent, this is why I was curled up in a ball: we had a disagreement about buying me out, and we couldn’t get past it, and it was so important to me to move on that I resigned from my own company. I didn’t sell, I didn’t walk away with anything. I literally woke up one morning and said, “I’m done, I can’t do it anymore, here’s my resignation, just take a hundred percent of the company.” Now, there was value there. I could have sold it, we could have negotiated for the next six months or whatever. It was just more important for me to move on. That’s what made it so scary, because I woke up one morning, wrote a letter, sent an email, and now I don’t have a job, I don’t have a company, and I don’t know what to do. I was just like, okay, I guess we’re going to figure this out right now.

Host: You’re probably better, as an entrepreneur, in an uncomfortable spot than in a comfortable one.

Marc: I think so. Looking back, it’s the best thing I ever did. At the time, I’d probably fight you a little on that, because it didn’t feel like it, but things happen the way they’re supposed to happen. So I had this idea: what if I just do this thing that I do, but for different people? And that’s where Loudmouth came in. I came up with the name Loudmouth on a vacation. My wife and I went on a weekend trip, and I said by Monday I need to have a name, and she agreed, because she was going to kill me. I had been going over this for a month, and it was really important that we come up with the right name. So I came up with the name Loudmouth, and I looked, and the domain was taken. I reached out to the guy that owned it, who wasn’t using it, and said, “Hey, look, I really want to buy the domain name. Would you sell it to me?” He called a couple of days later and said, “I just want to let you know that people have tried to buy this domain name off me for years. I had this idea for a product and never did it, but people have offered me as much as ten thousand dollars for this domain name.” So I said, “You’re not getting ten thousand dollars out of me, so I’ll do Loudmouth Media dot com or something like that. Thank you anyway, no worries.” And he goes, “Well, hold on a second. In your email you had a link to your blog, and I went to your blog,” and he read a post that I had written about my neighbor, who is this extraordinary guy, very giving, just a wonderful human being. And he said, “I’m so touched by that story that I want to be able to give back to you. I’d like you to have the domain name.” And I was like, “Well, I’m not paying ten thousand dollars for it. What’s the best you can do?” He’s like, “No, you don’t understand, I’m going to give it to you right now.”

Host: Wow. Like a sign from the universe that you’re doing something right.

Marc: Yeah. Well, I’m thinking the guy’s a lunatic and there’s no way he’s going to do this. So he goes, “Get in front of your computer right now, open GoDaddy, give me your account number,” and within 10 minutes the domain was in my account. We got off the phone and I was shocked. Then he called back an hour later, and I figured it was buyer’s remorse and he wanted it back, and he said, “I totally forgot, I also have the dot net, I should give you that as well.” And he gave me the dot net too. That was right when I started this company, that was the day that I started it. So I started this company on the foundation of a guy named Lance in California, who I’ve become friends with over the years, who believed in me more than I believed in myself. Because I was not willing to spend ten thousand dollars, but he was willing to give up ten thousand dollars. And that’s a harsh reality. It’s like, wow, so I have to make this work, I have to do good, I have to be able to give this back and somehow create something to make up for the fact that I didn’t believe in myself as much as this other guy did.

Host: Yeah.

Marc: And that’s one of those things that drives me. Every time I get a little tired, or a little beat up, I think about that. He could have gotten ten grand for this domain name, and he said no and gave it to me for free. And he doesn’t make me pay for it in other ways. It’s not like he’s reaching out going, “Hey, I need a website, I’m going to need you to step up.” We’ve talked a bunch of times, at least once or twice a year we’ll talk to each other. It’s just a cool foundation to have, where it’s like, okay, I know I’m on the right path, I just need to believe in myself like this guy did.

Host: I believe that you did, because you left everything and you went for this. But I think this was some sort of cue from whatever, to show you that you’re on the right path.

Marc: Right, yeah.

Host: So, we want to be respectful of your time, and we know that we only have a few minutes left. I wanted to ask you the obvious Real Life Superpowers question: what’s your superpower?

Marc: I think it’s connecting with people through stories. Being able to tell a story, being able to connect with somebody, being able to dig and find their story, and just connect with people on that human level, whether it’s on social media or in branding. It’s why I think what I do is so important, and why I love it so much: it allows me to play matchmaker, get people to fall in love with each other. How do I get other human beings to like that human being? And I think that’s a really convoluted way of answering the question. I don’t know if you got the right response out of that.

Host: No, I get it. I also think that you practice what you preach, because listening to you, I think the process that you do with your customers is what you did with yourself. You drilled down and asked yourself what value you’re bringing, and all the other questions that you try to understand and unpack with your customers in order to bring them to the front and make them the best versions of themselves. I think you asked yourself that series of questions, got answers from yourself that you did not like, and through that made your own path. And it’s sort of meta, because now you’re doing it with other people. I think it’s pretty big, and I think it’s very brave to listen to your heart and just leave everything and go do it. And it paid off, right?

Marc: Yeah, absolutely. Like I said, it’s the best decision I ever made. Or one of the best, I guess. I have kids and a wife, that’s probably terrible. One of the best, top five or top ten, something like that. Got to factor in the dog and stuff too.

Host: [Joking exchange, partly unclear in the captions.] Let’s say top fifty, just in case.

Host: And then, your kryptonite?

Marc: My kryptonite. Figuring out what your superpower is is so deep and so much more difficult. Figuring out what’s wrong with you: easy. I’m a perfectionist. That can be positive sometimes, because I’m very meticulous, especially with my clients. But I probably have two books that I’ve written that are sitting in a file on Google Drive that have never seen the light of day, because it’s not perfect. So I’ve gotten stopped by perfectionism a couple of times.

Host: It’s not too late.

Marc: Oh yeah, I’m constantly working on that side of it. Got to do the book.

Host: If I would ask you to put on your consultant hat, would you advise writing a book? I think I know what the answer is.

Marc: Yeah, of course. [A few words unclear in the captions.] Good idea.

Host: Thank you so much for this. Is there anything else that you want to add for our listeners?

Marc: No, I think, hopefully they got some value out of this, and if not, it’s all your fault, not mine. [Partly unclear in the captions.] Because it’s never the bass player’s fault.

Host: [Partly unclear in the captions.]

Marc: My pleasure, guys. Talk soon.

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We have the technology. Real Life Superpowers.

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