What got you here won’t get you there.
What will it take to reach your next big breakthrough?
Whether or not we want to admit it, we all have limiting thought patterns that create a sort of blindness, preventing us from seeing breakthroughs.
I first met Will when he was the Head of Growth for Organifi. He helped grow the brand from an $18 million per year run rate to a $100 million per year run rate in short order.
In today’s episode, Will Hughes wants to help you think differently. And not just a philosophical kind of thinking, but big, business-altering, breakthrough kind of thinking.
Here’s a look at what we cover:
- The remarkable story of the Hollywood Blacklist and how we can find treasure in what others are rejecting.
- Using creative thinking as a competitive advantage.
- How to avoid being a copycat (while still paying attention to competitors).
- What Google vs. Yahoo can teach us as entrepreneurs.
- The power of reticular activators.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Transcript:
Brett:
Well, hello and welcome to another edition of the eCommerce Evolution Podcast. I'm your host, Brett Curry, CEO OMG Commerce, and today we have a very unique episode. I think this will blow your mind. I think it will unlock some things for you that will be extremely beneficial. This'll be a ton of fun to listen to. I've gone through this material, I've seen one of these courses. It's fantastic. And so my guest today is Will Hughes. What's up Will? How you doing, man? Welcome to the show.
Will:
Yeah, man, great to be here. Great to see you again.
Brett:
Absolutely. And so just a quick intro so folks know who you are and how we met, but we worked together when you were the head of growth at Organify. Yes. When you were there for years, you kind of saw that really the explosion of that brand and it went from just a kind of cool little brand to something really massive. And so I know that'll come out a little bit. I've seen this presentation or some of your content they're going to go through today. I know Ezra Firestone saw you speak and he immediately invited you to come to his Blue Ribbon Mastermind and present as well. And so we're talking about how to think differently to really unlock scale in your business. And so your, your approach to process called Liquid Mind. Yes. But tell us just a little bit about that, and then I want to get into your background, but Liquid Mind, what is this? Let, let's kind of tease this topic a little bit and then we'll talk about your
Will:
Background. Yeah, for sure. So actually I come with gifts. I'm going to actually do sort of a case example. I'm going to do some straight hardcore learning for everybody listening today. So we'll get into that when you're ready. But just to paint a picture, so what I like to teach is creative thinking as a competitive advantage. So what I rail against is the copy culture. I hate that everything in the e-commerce industry with D to C brands, everybody's just ripping everybody else off, right? There's very few originals, there's very few innovators out there. And if someone's going to launch some new strategy or program in their business, a new subscription program, 99 out of a hundred times, they're going to find a brand that they appreciate and they're going to just go rip off their stuff. And that might be the efficient thing to do, but it's such a lack of originality and innovation in doing things that way.
It drives me crazy. And more importantly, it leads to this oversaturation of the same type of marketing that everyone's doing the same thing. So if there's a new hot kind of video format, well all of a sudden everyone's doing the same thing. And that dilutes the impact of what that strategy might have when everyone's just copying everybody else. And so what I teach is these frameworks for business, creativity and innovation, how to think differently, how to think creatively, how to have frameworks to get these big creative ideas on a much more regular basis. So we all have these big aha moments once or twice a year. I want to give people a form, a formula, a format for a formal thought process for getting it once or twice a month. And the reason that matters is creativity equals innovation. And innovation equals revenue. So I want to teach people to be innovators. That's what I'm after.
Brett:
Yeah, I love it. And there's something to be said about, you have to pay attention to your competitors and you do need to look at benchmarking. And they're sure if they're ahead of you in certain areas, you may have to make some shifts, but that's not how you achieve breakthroughs. You don't achieve breakthroughs by copying the competition. You achieve breakthroughs by thinking differently and by making unique connections and combining things that nobody else's combined before, going with the fresh novel idea and then executing on that idea. So I love this phrase. I love your approach here. Love the content. We're going to dig into it. But you and I got to hang out when you were at Organi and yes, I quickly did see the, you are a guy that thinks differently and you were able to push the envelope. And can you talk a little bit about what that experience was like? Because I know a lot of people know organi, but sure, you were there for years. What changed as you were there?
Will:
Yeah, so I got to identify, mean it's been years when I first got there. Now, I moved out to San Diego maybe five plus years ago to work at Identify. When I got there, about 18 million in revenue. And some of the genesis of all this is on the, my first week on the job, this EO came to me and said that my goal was to grow the business to a hundred million in revenue in 18 months. And we had to do that at either breakeven or profit,
Brett:
Right? No big deal. Hey, it's not. So just put a pen in this or come back to it later. But yeah, a hundred million. So basically that's more than five x growth in 18 months. And yeah. Yeah. Can't lose money. You got to
Will:
Do, yeah, got to do pretty no profit,
Brett:
Right? No, no, no problem. No problem. So
Will:
Real, really aggressive goal. And when he first said it to me, I mean, it kind of was really disheartened. I'm like, I just moved across the country to take this job. That's not realistic. That's not the way these things work. You know, want both profit and massive growth at the same time. So I had some concerns about this opportunity, but I sat back and I thought about it for a couple days, and where I landed was I could do this, I could figure this out. And the way I was going to figure it out was thinking differently than everybody else. I was going to make it my mission to be more creative and find frameworks for unlocking creativity. And it set me off on this journey. And in fact, I did get the company to a hundred million run rate in about 18 months. It was just more than a little more than 18 months. But I did actually get them there. And I've been using these frameworks ever since and kind of replicating that success. So it was definitely a fun ride. I've got amazing friends still working at Identify left there about two years ago. But just it great company, great friends all the way around. Really good experience.
Brett:
And really, it's a great product. We enjoy New mg. Got to work with you on some YouTube projects. I remember sitting in your office and you were whiteboarding and talking about stuff, and it was one of the most fun conversations I had sketching out YouTube ideas for campaigns and stuff. Sure, yeah. What a cool company. Glad our paths collided. And that was super fun. So you grew from 18 million a year to a hundred million run rate, which is phenomenal. A lot of that was done by thinking differently. Because you're right, you either, you got two options. You can either scale or you can be efficient, but you can't do both
Will:
Really hard to do.
Brett:
Wow. Maybe you can, there's creative ways to figure things out. So, sure. Let's talk about this a little bit. You talk about thought patterns and thought patterns that we have as entrepreneurs, as humans that are limiting. Yep. So talk about that a little bit. What have you observed?
Will:
Yeah, so this is interesting. So thought patterns. This is a really big blind spot that no one's paying attention to. So over time, we learn how to think efficiently. Our brains learn how to take shortcuts to get to the answers that we're seeking faster. And that's great. That helps us to multitask. It helps us to move a thousand miles an hour. As entrepreneurs, it served us well. But at the same time, this is a really interesting area, which is it. It's a blind spot that no one's paying attention to. So over time, we all learn how to think efficiently. The brain learns how to take shortcuts to get to answers faster. But we'll give you an example. So if you counter a problem in your life and then you encounter a similar problem down the road, you've experienced something like that before, you're going to get to the solution to that problem much quicker.
And so your ability to short circuit getting into answers gets faster and faster and faster. But it also locks you into one way of thinking, one single approach in how you solve problems. So this is really good for efficient thinking, it's really good for multitasking and moving a thousand miles an hour, but it's the antithesis of creative thinking. And I can give you an example that's kind of interesting. So I have this, it's in one of my presentations, but it's a visual. And I know we're on a podcast, so no one's looking at the visual, but it's a heat map. And it's a heat map of how the eyes move on an article website. So think the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal or whatever, we all know and understand the concept of banner blindness, right? And so what's happening when you look at this heat map is everyone is immediately going to the content.
And the content as we know, is on the left through the center of the page. And no one's looking at the top or right of the page because you've learned in the past, there's no content, there's no value there. Let's go right to where the value is. Your brain being efficient, let's not waste time looking to the right and to the top. But when you're doing this in your business, when you're trying to solve problems, that might actually be where the creative solution is. So if you go to some new article website, and the actual great answer you're looking for is on the right rail, you're never going to see it, right? You're blind to it's,
Brett:
Yeah, we're trained to not
Will:
Look for that. Yeah, you're trained to not look for it, and you're not look going out of your way not to look for it. You're going out of your way to be efficient and find the answers that you want and what's blinding you to what other opportunities might exist. And so what it's really doing is it's locking you into one way of thinking, having one single perspective, and not having the ability to think differently. And that that's the case study I actually brought today. And if it's a good time, we can jump into that now or yeah, let's do,
Brett:
Let's go right to the case study and there'll be lots of follow ups and stuff. So yeah, let's lay it out there.
Will:
So for those that are going to watch this, I am going to do a screen share, but you got sweet, this is going to be fine for just listeners as well. So lemme just pull that up. There we go. Okay. So what I like to teach are these case studies of people that have done something extraordinary, something different, that had extraordinary results. And sometimes I'm profiling famous business leaders like Steve Jobs or Elon Musk, and sometimes the people you've never heard of. In this case, we're going to profile a gentleman by the name of Franklin Franklin Leonard. And Franklin Leonard was the founder of a company called the Hollywood Blacklist. And the Hollywood Blacklist is a collection of some of the most successful movies that were ever produced out of the rejections of all the major studios. This is a guy who is really thinking
Brett:
To love that concept, love that concept.
Will:
So what his job was in Hollywood is he was a script reader. Now, I don't know what that job title actually is, but he would read scripts all day long, eight hours a day, and I don't know how many scripts they can get through in a day, but very monotonous job. And he's looking for that needle in a haystack. He wants that one movie he can pass on to his boss, and hopefully they'll buy this script and fund the movie and make the film. And his goal was, how can I find more high quality scripts in a more efficient manner? And the genius in what this guy did is he found a creative solution that was in the trash bin of all the major studios.
Brett:
Nice.
Will:
And so what we need to know, or the problem that works we really want to overcome here is studios have been making decisions on what scripts to greenlight, which movies to fund and produce. They were making these decisions on the wrong criteria or very limited criteria I should say. And so for some of the reasons they would,
Brett:
Their version of banner Blindness, right? Yeah. They were viewing movies through this certain lens and only doing what was successful before. Yes. So it was that translation there. You
Will:
Fully nailed it, right? There's one way to do it, there's only one way to do it, and now we're blind to other approaches. So that's exactly right. So the criteria they were using to decide which movies to green light were things like, if a script comes in with a star actor attached, like if Brad Pitts attached to a script, the odds be getting made, obviously are much higher. The genre of the film is going to matter because some genres make more comedies versus drama, whatever. Some make more than others. They would evaluate the script if it's going to do well in foreign markets, is this going to translate overseas and in another language? And of course, what they really want is, is this movie going to have a sequel? Can we follow it up with another movie if it's successful? So is the criteria that they were using.
And so what Franklin wanted to know is what are the favorite scripts that didn't meet these criteria from these other movie studios that were being rejected? But yet they were really high quality scripts. And so back in the early two thousands, I think the number was 12, I think there was 12 major studios back at that point in time, universal MGM and so forth. And so what he did is he went around and he took an anonymous survey of his friends that were also script writers at the other studios and other executives at these movie studios. And he asked them to give him a list of the 10 favorite movies that they had rejected or passed on in the last year. And he simply tallied up the list. Super smart, which of these movies got the most votes? Went to the top of the list regardless of how everyone ranked them individually and
Brett:
Here. So the same movie was on multiple lists, so multiple rejection lists, but it was still the favorite of those rejected. Those went to the top of his list.
Will:
Exactly. Right. And it didn't matter if everyone listed a movie, one versus two, that was irrelevant. It's just a total cumulative score. Yep, exactly right. And so the blacklist is a summary of these 10 we're the movies that were most voted on by the executives. Now remember, these movies have been rejected by every single major studio. So here's the results. Fast forward to today, over 400 of these movies that were absolutely dead, 400 have been made into movies. Wow. Now let's look at the quality.
Brett:
Sorry, what type, I know you just said what type period is this again?
Will:
Well to today? So started in 2005 and now 2005
Brett:
To today, still 400 movies, over 400
Will:
Movies. None of these ever were been made into movies. 300 of them were nominated for an Academy award. So this is showing you, they were high quality scripts. They were missing on high quality scripts. 54 of these movies actually won an Academy Award, and four of the last 10 pictures came from the Hollywood blacklist. They never would've been made. So those four movies are Slumdog Millionaire King's Speech Spotlight.
Brett:
What's funny, that was the movie that came to mind first when you said it was Slumdog Millionaire, because it's such a beautiful story, but it does not fit any, it doesn't fit any mold. So that that's, there you go. So cool. That was one of 'em. Yeah,
Will:
That's exactly right. So those four movies, Argo was the last one. They never would've seen the light of day. In fact, they were rejected. These were turned down by all 12 major studios. What revived them was the blacklist. So in Q 440 scripts have been produced into movies making over 30 billion in revenue. Wow. Now, here's the hero slide. Harvard Business School actually did a research study around the blacklist, and they said movies from the Hollywood blacklist generated 90% more revenue than non-listed films with a similar budget. So not only are these higher quality as far as getting accolades and academy awards or high quality scripts they were passing on, right, 75% of 'em get nominated for Academy awards. So high quality stuff, but yet they're earning 90% more at the box office. They've been, what tells you is Hollywood's been evaluating films incorrectly for the last 100 years.
They got locked in that thought pattern. There's only one way to do it. And you kind of nailed it just a moment ago, Brett, is, it's almost a two layer effect here. Number one, we get locked into a single way of thinking, one perspective, there's only one way to view things. That's our thought pattern. But then when you work at a big company, they give you the way that they do business and they then force on you, this is the way it's been successful in the past, and there's no other way to view it. So it's a layering effect there where you really, it's, it becomes impossible to think creatively. So to be different, to think creatively, you have to learn how to break these thought patterns. And that's something that I really like to teach. And we'll go through one example here that basically Franklin Leonard is teaching us, which is I like to teach people how to approach achieving how to overcome the problems in your business or how to achieve these aggressive growth goals from different angles, altitudes, and directions.
In his case, Ray Leonard's case, he was taking the opposite approach, the inverse approach or the reverse approach to what everyone else was doing. By doing the opposite, he's getting these big outsized returns. So that's the opportunity. How do we think differently from everybody else? Let's think in different directions. I want to teach people how they can see what they don't and your competitors can't, right? We're blind to this stuff. And it's shocking at how blind we are. When people go through my masterclass, we do a bunch of puzzles and it is ridiculous how adults can't solve these puzzles, but yet kids can solve 'em like that. Kids are far more creative and imaginative than adults because they're not stuck in the thought patterns that we are. It's just, it's crazy. So I like to teach people how to think differently to scale businesses up to nine figures and beyond.
So let's do a couple, we'll do two more quick examples of this. So who else took the inverse approach and did really well with it? Right. Well, how about the Yahoo Google fight, which now fast forward today is going to be the Google Chat, G B T fight or AI fight. But back in the nineties, Yahoo was the most trafficked website on the planet, right? 125 billion in market value. And we all know what the Yahoo homepage looks like. There's a million things going on there. There's probably 40 different links that you can click before you even scroll below the fold. And here comes Google with their very clean interface and only one single thing to do type in a search bar. And Google just cleans their clock. They take the opposite approach and just bury Yahoo. Google's current market share is 85% for search versus Yahoo's 3%.
And remember that valuation? Yahoo. Yahoo was valued at 125 billion. They sold to Verizon for just 5 billion a couple years ago where Google's valued at a trillion. Wow. So they're taking the opposite approach in getting extraordinary results. And that's all that's also playing out right now in front of us with AI and chat G P T and all the competitors rolling out compared. When you look at Google compared to chat G P T I typed into a search, which is on the screen for those watching, is what are the best things to do in New York City into Google? And we get what we always get. We get a bunch of ads, we get a bunch of blogs, we get a bunch of articles that we got to navigate our way through the junk, the good, the bad sift through research versus I throw that same question into Chad G P T and it gives me 10 recommendations of what to do in New York City. And they're all great. They're exactly what you would expect. Not only is it telling me to go to the nine 11 Memorial and Statue Liberty, but it tells me to see a show and gives me restaurant recommendations. Go eat here.
So this is yet to be fully played out, but it's certainly a different approach of the way things been happening
Brett:
On. It's going to be really interesting to watch that play out. I do think, and I'm a little bit of biased cause I'm a Google guy and our business is somewhat built on
Will:
Google as a month.
Brett:
Eventually someone's going to take some of their market share, no question about it. But there's still times where if I'm searching for a product or searching for something, I want to use Google and not chat gps. I don't want just text, I want visuals and other things. But for sure the AI revolution and the progress that's being made and the speed at which it's improving, it's crazy stuff. And Google's still on the heat for sure. Well, the
Will:
Speed is incredible. Cause when I was playing around with chat G P T around the holidays, December-ish, you, the results I was getting out weren't very good. And where it is today, obviously we are all getting better at training the ai and the AI itself is getting better. Oh my gosh. The results are spectacular and it's just a couple of months later.
Brett:
It's insane. It's insane. And one kind of highly, one thing too sure that I think we will add to the comparison between Yahoo and Google. Yahoo is very traditional. Let's sell banners, but let's make the banners better and let's make them more interrupting. And then let's just, it's native ads and stuff, which all worked. That's fine. Sure. But Google's thing back in the day was, Hey, what if a good ad is just an answer to a question? There you go. And that's what they built the business on really, right? Well, it was organizing the world's information, but making an ad, just the answer to the question and making it the right answer and different way of thinking, unlocked immense value areas and great user experience. And really to a large degree, they just earned that 85% mark market share. I know they're people made disagree and stuff like that, but people want to use Google and why it's happened
Will:
For sure. Okay, so we'll do one more example of someone, Colin, of following this inverse reverse logic or orthotic flaw pattern or thinking that Franklin Leonard did. And so this is an example, is Blank Street Coffee, a coffee chain in New York? So probably only people living in New York will have heard of it, but they're taking the opposite approach to the big boys who obviously is Starbucks. So what they're taking is a very small efficient approach. They are starting with their square footage. So the typical Starbucks is going to be 1500 to 2000 square feet, where these are little micro stores. These are like 350 square feet for blank Street coffee. Or they're even these food trucks like the taco trucks, we all know it's a mini taco truck. It's almost like a VW kind of old school seventies VW bug on a truck,
Brett:
Which is very small.
Will:
Yeah. Yeah. They're tiny. And what they're doing is just giving you a great product that costs less and it, it's a different experience. Starbucks is saying, come in and sit down in our living room and spend the day. And these guys are saying, Nope, no, move on with your day. We're just going to give you a great cup of coffee. So they're automating the process of making a coffee, which is cheaper for them. So they then can pay their employees even more. They're paying 28 bucks an hour, which is way above them of wage.
Brett:
$28 an hour for just the coffee shop. It's crazy. Yeah,
Will:
Crazy.
Brett:
But you need that if you're living in New York City for
Will:
Sure. Of course. And then their coffees on average, it's about 30, 25% less expensive than Starbucks. So it's a value. Those companies growing really fast, they've raised $80 million, they've opened 40 different stores. But here's the key for Blank Street, these stores turn profitable within 30 days of launch.
Brett:
No
Will:
Way. What retail store have you ever heard of turning profitable 30 days of launch way, right? 30 days. So they're taking the opposite approach and crushing the big guy. I mean, they're not crushing Starbucks's back obviously, but they're doing a great job. And no Starbucks is turning a profit in 30 days. So Scott Galloway says, when something is successful, everyone else piles in, right? Yeah. The copy culture stuff in our rail against. But this creates the opportunity for someone else to come in and take the opposite approach. So instead of always thinking, how do we copy the next guy? I want people innovating. I want people thinking creatively, how do we actually think different? And this is one way to do it. How do we think in different directions? Come up with the inverse approach. And I actually just had a big win for myself on this.
So just in teaching you this masterclass, liquid Mind masterclass, and I was thinking about how do I market and grow this program? And I came up with a very cool idea. I'm actually building a case study around it right now. So I won't reveal the answer on this one, but people can get on my email list and it, it's a case study that's going to come up, but it's the opposite of what everyone else is doing. And what it's landing me is the opportunity to speak in front of my exact target audience, which is CEOs and founders of digital brands, e-commerce companies, rape anywhere between a million and a hundred million plus. And I'm getting in front of these opportunities to speak to these founders anywhere from about a hundred in the room all the way up to a thousand in the room. And this is not through any traditional way you can think of. This is not me going to a conference. This is not me going to a mastermind. This is not me on a podcast. This is something new. So I'm having this really good win on it now I'm documenting it as I go do.
Brett:
Now I'm totally curious. Now you got to tell me this half of the podcast.
Will:
I'll share it with you now for sure. But then for everyone else, they can join my email list. It's free to get on. So this case study we're going through now, I produce two or three of these a month and just get on the email list and I'll put them on the distribution for it. So they can just go to liquid mind masterclass.com/join, J O Y N, just join. And that's just free opt into the email list, and then you'll get these case studies and even this one will come out as a, you'll see the video recording of this case study. So sweet. Anyway, really interesting. And just a good, it's just one practical way that I can teach people. How do you think creatively? How do you think differently? Okay, well here's a practical way to do it.
Brett:
Yeah, I love that. And it's all linked to that in the show notes, but it's liquid mind masterclass.com/join. So check that out. Yeah. So I love this because we want to, there's this old saying, and I agree with it, that success leaves clues. And so when you see someone is successful, a company is successful, you say, well, what are the clues? Well, the most obvious thing is, well, we just do what they did. Let's offer more products at lower prices or whatever. But maybe that's not the answer. And one of the things where I live in southwest Missouri where an hour and 45 for the Walmart headquarters. So northwest Arkansas is not too far. And one of the innovations that Walmart had was, instead of, so this great service at the time, whatever, low prices and stuff, but rather than going to all the major cities where everybody else was, their approach was, let's go to small towns. Sure, underserved small towns that everyone else is overlooking. And that's really where Arkansas, or that's really where Arkansas is, where they're from. But that's where Walmart really gained a competitive edge. So I do like this idea of, what if I did the opposite? So here's what every else is doing. Success leaves clues, but what if I did the opposite? Is there something in that
Will:
It's got with the speed of technology and the speed at which we all move today to be successful, to compete on these platforms? I feel like you almost everyone just seems like you have to steal from everybody else. How are they doing it? Let's borrow theirs. What's their upsell flow? What's their how bundling and pricing, let's just borrow a borrow bar. Whereas if you can just slow down and be creative, you'll put such distance between you and your competitors. It's ridiculous. So the way I think about it is the leverage points of a business, and I have a slide on this in one of my presentations, but I probably throw 20 of these leverage points on the slide. I just said subscription programs, bundling pricing, copywriting, video ads, whatever. There's probably 50 to 75 of these leverage points in any D two C business. But if you can stop in 80 20 those and then get creative around the ones with the highest impact, you'll put such distance between you and everybody else because everyone else is being lazy and just copying. So being creative is actually the competitive advantage. So that's what I'm really after.
Brett:
Yeah, I love that. And it is true. Most of your competitors, all they're doing is copying everybody else. And those are the conversations that are taking place in marketing meetings and CEO level meetings of the C-Suite. And other companies are just copying what everybody else is doing. And so there's
Will:
A weird thing with that. You do want some, it always validates a bit to go, oh, someone really impressive. Everyone wants to copy some of the models from, like Dr. Squash has done so phenomenally well and Manscape has the amazing ads, and so everyone just wants to copy, copy, copy. But you know, it's copy everything and be successful. Just because it speaks to their audience doesn't mean it's going to speak to yours. And I feel like it's the movie example I was just giving in Hollywood where it gives you cloud cover to say, well, that's what they're doing, so we should do it. But it doesn't
Brett:
Mean it's the safe thing where you say, well, this formula's worked before. I mean, tell all the other Tom Cruise movies sell. So if we get him on this movie, it'll do great. Sure. But what's also, what's so great, and I'm so glad you shared that example, I did not know about the Hollywood blacklist, so I definitely learned that that's a new perspective for me. But he didn't just say, give me all your garbage, give me all the trash movies. But what he identified was that he believed the model was wrong. He believed the way Hollywood was looking at was wrong, but he knew there was some gold buried in the scrap pile, right? So he is like, Hey, what are your favorites? Tell me the ones you rejected because you had your model's broken, even though he probably didn't say that, but what were your favorites? And he started there. And so really a smart approach because it's looking for things that everybody else is missing. Yeah,
Will:
Exactly. Right. If you actually put just a little bit of creative thinking time in each week, why can't you come up with a two degree shift on a subscription program? And that's better than anyone else in your industry. You know, don't have to, we're about inventing the iPhone, but how can you make a two degree shift that is better than everybody else? And if you can just get into this process of thinking, the results are spectacular. So I actually do some work with a company called Size Advisory, and they've got a venture capital arm out of Silicon Valley, and they'll bring me into consult and do growth marketing for some of their portfolio companies. And what I am doing behind the scenes is I'm bringing this framework, I'm looking at the leverage points of their business, and then I'm looking for the creative opportunities to accelerate them past their competitors. Because invariably, when I go to meetings at other companies, if they're looking at a website redesign, if they're looking at their funnel, if they're looking at their ad copy, the meeting always starts the same way. Well, this is our biggest competitors doing, how do we copy that? But it's the way every meeting goes in these companies.
Brett:
And these are really smart people,
Will:
And there are very smart people, really talented people. And any of the companies that size is advising, these are incredibly well funded, talented, smart brands. But I'm telling you, the meetings almost always start with, we need a new X, y, Z funnel strategy, and this is how the competitor's doing it. Let's build off from there. And it always ends up being full and emulating what everyone else is doing. So I'm okay to look for inspiration in those places, but then innovate on top of it. And a good first step for that is let's think about thinking in different directions.
Brett:
And I remember hearing this quote, I think it was maybe from Jim Collins or Jim Collins references this, but it says, one thing that's worse than failing is succeeding and not knowing why you succeeded. Really. Right? So there's like the success, it was created, but you're like, well, I don't know. I dunno what I did. It just happened. And I think sometimes when we look at other companies, we see, oh, they're really successful at attracting new customers, or their margins are greater, whatever. And so we copy something. But that wasn't really what made them successful. Don't, we don't understand. I think what's key there is understanding why is this company so successful and what are the elements in that I should maybe learn from or implement? And what are the elements that I should do the opposite? Cause there's more opportunity in the opposite. I think sometimes we make assumptions as to why people are successful and we're going down the wrong path.
Will:
So yeah, you're really interesting because I've definitely worked with some companies who have some spectacular marketing that people love, and whether I'm in a mastermind with them, or maybe I was advising them as a consultant, but you go in and I'm now working with maybe their head of growth or head of creative, and they're shockingly little there. And what that shows is what you just said is their secret sauce was actually something else. Maybe they just had the perfect product market fit or the absolute perfect tagline, or the absolute perfect name, liquid iv, the most genius name ever in that one word. If it's considered one word, I'm not sure Liquid iv. But what I get from that is it's hospital grade, which means it's premium and it's a
Brett:
Hydration problem. Instant, instant hydration, get all everything you need, just get an IV what you're drinking. That is a brilliant name,
Will:
Genius. It's absolute genius. And so there could be other reasons for the success you're pointing out. So yeah, I've actually got into these companies and I looked under the hood and I'm like, wow, that's not where the competitive advantage is. So it's just really interesting. And sometimes maybe they're just outsourcing all of it to an agency. They definitely have, there's some magic somewhere for these companies to be scaling Point
Brett:
But point. There's some unfair advantage somewhere in the business. There is. It's allowed it to happen.
Will:
But to your point is if you're just emulating everything that may not be where you might be copying the wrong things,
Brett:
Right? Yeah. So you're here. Totally. And I love the examples you gave of Qua and Manscaped and shout out to Raindrop, a Jacque Spitzer in the gang that they helped create those ads or did create those ads. Amazing. Yeah. Yeah. They're fantastic. But then you look at something, is it what? What's Ryan Reynold's mobile company that just sold the T-Mobile for like,
Will:
Oh, mint, mince
Brett:
Mint. Yeah. So his ads are the opposite. And yes, obviously they lean, he leans into Ryan Reynolds as a celebrity and instant trust and stuff, but they're the most simple ads ever. And he kind of tongue in cheek talks about how simple these ads are, right? Sure. So that you can't just look at it and say, well, we got to be funny like Dr. Qua, or No, we have to be really simple like Mint Mobile. Well, but why are you doing that with Mint? It totally lines up with we're no frills, we're super cheap, it's all, and then we're leaning into the credibility of Ryan Reynolds. So yeah, so why are you doing it? Yep. What's the strategy here? What is this unlocking? What is your competitive advantage? Because otherwise you're just copying and who knows what kind of results you're going to get. So
Will:
Creative unlocks looking for the creative unlocks. That's what we want.
Brett:
So any tips? And we're about out of time, and I want, hopefully people are like, dude, I got to know more about liquid mine. And so we'll talk about sure that in just a second. But in any tips or tools, how do I know that I maybe am locked into a thought pattern? Or how do I know that I'm not thinking creatively enough any, or maybe we should just all assume you're not thinking creatively enough. Right? I am locked in patterns, but any tips or suggestions there?
Will:
Yeah, I can cut to the end of the book or movie on this one. You are thinking in thought patterns. We all are. Yeah. And it's human nature, right? Yeah. It's human nature. And look, it's served us very well. Why we're successful to begin with is we figured out we have pattern recognition, we figure out the patterns and we shortcut our learning. It serves us really well. In general, it's just the antithesis of creative thinking. So we are thinking in thought patterns. What I'm trying to uncover, and I do in a lot of the presentations I'll give from stage is I try to give people some unlocks to really show them just how blind we are. The visual that's not in front of us of the banner blindness, right? It's, it is just a representation that we just get locked in one way of viewing things like, this is what you need to understand.
We get locked into viewing things from one single perspective, whereas a second per, it's why it's really helpful if a third party expert gets dropped into your company. And it's why if an outside consultant gets dropped in, I get dropped in sometimes they immediately see something just so obvious and so that everyone else couldn't see it. And you're just like, holy, how do we miss that one? Right? Yeah. And it's just because you get so stuck in your way of thinking, you just can't see the right, can't opp other opportunities. And all it takes are these unlocks to say, oh my gosh, well then once I break free of the thought pattern, you're no longer blind. And so that's why builder, these just kind of step by step frameworks. So yeah, I do that through my masterclass, which is a formal training. I teach it live to founders of TC brands and e-commerce companies.
And I teach on stage a fairmount going to Blue Ribbon, as you mentioned, in a month or two here down in Puerto Rico. And then I produce these case studies. So those are free. So if you like the material we cover here today, I'll produce two or three of these case studies a month. Not all of them go public. Some are from my innovation group, but the public ones, I will send out one to two every month over email to those on my list. So that's awesome. So you want to learn more, just get it, go to the join section of the website. So just W Liquid, my masterclass slash join.
Brett:
Awesome. So I want to talk about the, these life cohorts, the training and stuff that you do. So we'll talk about that in a second. But how do you find these case studies? Are you trained now where you see a good idea like that and just immediately resonates? Or how are you finding these great examples?
Will:
So actually I go, I'm going very deep into content. And so I'm always trying to think differently than everybody else. And one potter that I do see happening now today is people not going nearly as deep. They TikTok. Everyone's moving towards TikTok. I know some brands that are turning out 100 plus TikTok videos a month, which is just blows my like, well, you and I work together with identify or other similar brands. We were working, we were talking actually just about a month ago about a brand, but at the peak of any of these I've ever worked for 10 to 20 videos a month, max. Totally. And that was a lot. That's just going to have all openings, all closings and hooks and chop it up in different ways. But you're talking 10 20. So now people are cheering out a hundred videos a month, and of course you can hire talent and U G C and all that, but my point is they're not going deep on the content.
It's all surface level. And so I'm going the other way. I want all my content to be very deep, very well thought out, very tried and tested. In this particular example, I have used this thought process to great success so much Cibo, our entire case study on it. So I don't have any answers to how I come across them other than I devour content the way everyone else does. I listened to a ton of books, ton of podcasts. I go to a lot of masterminds and all the like. But because my brain now is in this space of trying to think differently, of thinking creatively, I do very quickly find out who, who's doing something different, whether it's people or you don't know. So I actually have two case studies coming up with people you've almost certainly have never heard of before. One, she's a bestselling author, but it's a book on sugar-free living. And her book was number one on the top of the charts. I don't know if it was actually number one in South Africa and in England. So she's very smart and she's very accomplished, but she's not a household name, but she's done something different and extraordinary that we all can learn from. So I'm just finding people that I can profile and somewhere where I take inspiration, oh, I'm going to incorporate that in my way of doing business, and then I build a case study around it.
Brett:
Yeah, that's awesome. And I love the comparison, and I think this will tie in nicely. You get the TikTok machine, which who knows if it'll be banned or not or whatnot, but it's huge. It's hot, but it is a content, it's an insatiable beast. You got to keep feeding a content. Or you can look at something like YouTube where I've got some friends who are pretty large on YouTube, and it's more about viewer pieces of content between them really well, high quality, and they're just going to get better over time. They're going to get more views, more traction that they're going to explode over time potentially. So very different model. No right or wrong, but it's like, nah, I don't want to be this content factory. I want to do fewer piece of content and succeed. And one concept I want to throw out, I'm just curious if you're familiar with this or not, but it's the idea of a what's called a reticular activator.
And I wonder if you've like got this triggered working for you. So the idea behind it, have you heard this term before? Sure, yep. Yeah. So it's like your name is probably the most powerful reticular activator, and that's where if you're in a room and there's tons of noise you could hear when someone's like, will you hear it? Or you go to buy a vehicle, and I just bought my wife a 4runner not long ago. And so red car, no, I see every 4runner on the road, right? And it wasn't that they weren't there before and now suddenly they are there. It's just that my subconscious is looking for this. It's looking for this pattern. Exactly. And so I think you've probably trained your brain to start looking for these breakthroughs. That's
Will:
Exactly right. And now can we take some of those lessons and put them to use for us? That is actually one of the case studies. I have not actually built that one yet, but that is actually on my outline to do so. That's sweet. That's really interesting. The example is you're in a really loud crowded restaurant and you know can't hear anything. Then the person sitting directly across from you, but all of a sudden someone a hundred feet away in the corner says your name at a very low tone. You're still going to pick it up. You
Brett:
Hear it? Yeah. It's just so fascinating the way the subconscious mind works.
Will:
Yeah, for sure. Mind will pick that stuff up. So yeah, it's literally breaking through the noise. And so those are the concepts. When I come across those, I'm like, there you go. That's something I want to explore deeply and use to my benefits. This is exactly the kind of material I love to teach. Yep.
Brett:
Love it, love it. Well, I am super excited about hanging out in Puerto Rico and hearing the full talk and maybe sit poolside or something. That'd be super fun. So tell everybody, if you were listening like, Hey, I want to go through one of the live trainings, the life cohort, that's all@liquidmindmasterclass.com
Will:
As well. Oh yeah, I didn't mention this. So I do offer the, it's a six week, six hour, one hour week, six week masterclass that I give the first section. I'll actually give train for free, so it's not recorded. Again, thinking differently. I don't do anything recorded. Everything I do. Well, that's not true. My case studies are recorded, but that's more because they're going to end up on YouTube and that's just the content engine. But when I'm teaching, I teach live, and when I'm teaching the masterclass, I teach the masterclass live. And now why would I do that? Well, what's the completion rate give? Give me a guess because you'll get close if not nail it. What's the online completion rate for an online course?
Brett:
Oh, it's got to be like what, 10% or something
Will:
Like that? Like five to seven? Yeah. Yeah, it's five 7%. The online completion rate of the Liquid run masterclass, it's 97% and no one drops out maybe. But I'm teaching it live. It's same thing. There's a concept there that's related to a personal trainer at a gym. If the personal trainer's waiting for you, you are good. That's, you show up. The reason you hire a
Brett:
Trainer, you're paying for it. They're waiting on you, you're going, you're
Will:
Going. Yep. And that's part of it. So I do teach it all live. I teach it in small groups. It's almost all founders, a million to a hundred million. So I teach section one for free that you can get on the homepage. There's just a little button on the homepage if you want to go through section one for free, or if you just want to get on the email list and get those case studies. Again, they come out one to two a month, but that's just forward slash join to get to those case studies. But yeah, other than that, you'll see me floating around at various masterminds, they're on stage and yeah, Puerto Rico's going to be great down there for Blue Ribbon.
Brett:
Yeah, dude, you're hitting the circuit and doing it in a unique way, which I can't wait to learn about and learn your ways on that. But yeah, you're hearing your name pop up all over the place, which is awesome. So we'll link to everything in the show notes. Do check that out at a minimum of ethos case studies, but also consider the masterclass as well. But Will Hughes, ladies and gentlemen, will, thanks for joining us. Tons of fun. And we'll have to do it again sometime.
Will:
Yeah, it's great to see you. Absolutely. Look forward to hanging out soon.
Brett:
All right, man, really appreciate it. And as always, thank you for tuning in. We'd love to hear more from you. What would you like to hear more of on the show? Give us some feedback. If you've not done it already, leave us that review on iTunes. It helps other people find the show and hey, it makes my day. And so with that, until next time, thank you for listening.
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