00:00Yeah, you are chuckling because obviously you've had a relationship with Mickey over the years, given your experience in the retail sector.
00:07But I do want to start just overall with this new venture that you have.
00:10I mean, you're roughly about two years into a fundamental goal.
00:13You've had some big changes at the top, obviously, with Johnny, with yourself, and now with the new CEO who's going to take things, I guess, to the next level, wherever that may be.
00:21I mean, it's been exciting.
00:22We started with this idea, and it's really a new idea.
00:25We're taking this idea of value creation but really putting brand at the center.
00:27And I think when you look at the traditional marketing, it often gets segmented separately from strategy.
00:33And what we've really done is trying to join those two things.
00:36And I think my experience with Mickey and really understanding how brand needs to permeate every level of what you do, it's what people remember.
00:42It's the touch points.
00:43It's what's the center of gravity of your company.
00:45And that's just as important.
00:46But sometimes it gets relegated into a logo or a marketing campaign.
00:51So in the past two years, we've really made an effort to bring those two things together and also to share with PE firms who may not be as used to this kind of conversation how important and central it is to the business we do.
01:02And so, you know, we're two years in, and we're growing.
01:05We've just hired Alex Lubar.
01:06We have a new CEO, and it's exciting.
01:08So Johnny's now not in the day-to-day, which I think is good for him.
01:11And it's allowed us to really step up and focus on the next phase.
01:15So, Johnny, I am intrigued by some of the work you're doing with some of these private equity firms.
01:18We've talked a lot on this program about sort of the capture we've seen with a lot of the sponsored companies, the idea that they're staying private for longer.
01:26They're not able to go public.
01:27Some don't want to go public.
01:28But it also means these PE firms, they're not just investors anymore.
01:31They are real managers of these companies.
01:33What does a branding experience look like when you're working with financial engineers who maybe aren't necessarily well-versed in branding?
01:42Well, first of all, you want to say that I'm very much still in the day-to-day.
01:45I'm just taking on a slightly different area of focus.
01:50But to answer the question, what we do, regardless of where a company is in its investment cycle, whether they've just been acquired or whether they're getting ready to sell,
02:03we help orient the company around a set of ideas that define what is the company's next chapter and is the company transforming into its most valuable potential form?
02:16So when a company is acquired, what had typically happened in this PE-backed context is there would be, they'd buy a company, then there'd be a lot of interventions, and then they'd bring the brand people at the end to say, who are we?
02:32And why we exist is to really bring that brand thinking much further upstream in the sequence of value creation and ask the question, what could this company become next?
02:43And then tether all of the interventions to that set of ideas that create real alignment between the investors and the management teams.
02:52And we started the practice with Insight Blackstone.
02:55They were the earliest adopters.
02:57And we spun ourselves out into an independent company two years ago.
03:01And what's exciting is that we've proved the theory out beyond Blackstone to some other big sponsors like Towerbrook and Thrive and Apollo and Bain Capital.
03:12And we're doing this work for a bunch of their portfolio companies, too, as well as now some public companies are approaching us and asking,
03:21can you apply some of the learnings that you've had at the private markets to the public markets with a view to enterprise value?
03:29Well, Johnny, that's what I was curious about, how you build up this roster of clients that you work with.
03:34I'm sure a lot of it is repeat business.
03:36But are you going out and establishing those relationships, pitching, if you will, or are you at the point where folks are coming to you?
03:45Well, it's a little bit of both.
03:47Our business has grown 100% on referrals.
03:51And we are growing through doing more work for more portfolio companies within a pretty small group of sponsors.
03:59But they're all giving us more works and more assignments.
04:03And we are starting to now have the bandwidth to take on more sponsors and different PE firms.
04:09And, Johnny, you made the point that a brand needs to permeate everything when it comes to a business.
04:14It's not just a logo.
04:15And I wonder, you know, how often you see just plain missteps.
04:20I'm thinking about Cracker Barrel, of course.
04:22What a difficult summer they had.
04:24But I'm sure that, you know, that's the exact type of situation you want to avoid.
04:29I agree.
04:29And I think what's interesting is that that's where people get caught up.
04:32And they get caught up in the idea that it's a visual, that it's a marketing play, as opposed to, like, a set of ideas that everything gets organized around.
04:39So who do you want to be?
04:40What do you want to say?
04:41What do you want the public to know about you?
04:42What's important?
04:43What is your mission?
04:44And then everything you do has to go back to that mission.
04:47So if it's really important to you to sell the best cheese in the world, then let's make every single decision around that.
04:53And oftentimes what happens is that it gets separated to the marketing area, which it's really about the strategy that happens way upstream.
04:59And I think you asked the question about how do you get people in that world who don't really understand it?
05:04Yeah.
05:04When you push it, when you lead it back to value, how does this add value?
05:09How does this create value?
05:10How does it continue to help you grow your value?
05:12It helps, I think, that team really understand the mission and what the advantages are.
05:18I am curious, though.
05:18I mean, doing it further upstream obviously makes a lot of sense.
05:21But what about sort of legacy brands that maybe have lost their way?
05:24I mean, we talk about the resurgence of J.Crew on Gap, Macy's, all these great brands that have lost a certain sort of cachet and identity.
05:32Can you get that back without having to completely rebrand?
05:35I mean, it's a great question.
05:36I think you can.
05:37I think the biggest challenge is in those moments, there's a lot of people that have been there for a very long time.
05:42So how do you galvanize them and get them organized around an idea?
05:45Because over time, there's like a creep.
05:48Everyone is a slightly different version of what they think that brand has become.
05:51And it's very hard.
05:52So I think oftentimes legacy brands are, it's the most valuable because they need a moment to regroup, retrench and say, what do we really care about?
06:01What do we want to be?
06:02What do we want to say?
06:02And how do we want to say it?
06:03And what are we doing from the very inception?
06:05What is our strategy, not just for tomorrow, but for five years?
06:08How are we going to get there?
06:09And getting everyone in a room to really agree on that and understand it in a similar way, it takes a lot of experience.
06:15And I think having had the experience, I've done it at J.Crew and Madewell, Mickey, too, you start to realize bringing everyone in is just as valuable.
06:21It's not about just the CEO.
06:23While the CEO is important, it's really about bringing the entire team together to say, like, your piece of the pie is just as valuable.
06:29You're in accounts payable.
06:30I want you to know what our mission is.
06:32You're actually in marketing.
06:33Of course, you have to know.
06:34But every single person in the company needs to feel connected to the trajectory and what we're about.
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