What It Takes Podcast Ep 5: How Our Infographics Landed Million Dollar Deals ft. Brian Wallace

Welcome back to another episode, episode five of the What It Takes podcast, where we interview people who literally did what it takes to be successful. My name is Tony Krauss from Blackbird Recruiting. And today's episode, we're going to be interviewing Brian Wallace. Brian has been a mentor of mine for quite a few years. I'm excited for him to share many golden nuggets with all of you. We spoke about his journey from not growing up religious to becoming an observant Jew today. We spoke about how he helped a basketball player get a contract to over $60 million, what it's like working with global companies like Google, FedEx, Lexus, Captain Crunch, Skype, which is now extinct. But before we go into today's episode, I just want to share that Brian lives in Israel. He was here in New York City. I quickly booked a studio a little bit on the fly. Didn't come very well prepared. And I also learned from feedback that we've been getting about the other episodes that I need to learn to shut up. So don't worry, episode six is going to be phenomenal. This is also a really good episode, but it's getting better as time goes on. I'm learning what we can do better all the time. So I hope you enjoy and I want to apologize in advance for interrupting him quite a bit. He's a good friend of mine, but I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Let's dive right in. So Brian, thanks for coming on to the show. Introducing my pleasure. Where do we begin? So I started at a very early age, a product of uh a bunch of Brooklynite Jews from circa 19 1880s or so. Born in Brooklyn, grew up in Rockland County, just a bit north of Muny and a nice little town in the nestled in the Ramapo Mountains called Pomona. is kind of its own thing these days. And I've spent some time in a lot of different kinds of places of different cultural understanding. I I think everyone is really a product of their surroundings and everything that they learn outside of it. So started out there, went to school in upstate New York in Big where I met my wife. We later spent some time in and around New York City or the city as we should say. Not the big apple. Don't you even start with that. No, it is not the big apple. That's for tourists. Go on your stupid double-decker bus and go look at Times Square and, you know, take some selfies and by stabling, you know, take some selfies with your celebrities in the wax museum. Get out of here. Madame Tuso, get out of here. Forget about it. My wife used to work in the city and she used to pack the city. The city. She used to pass mad. There's no other city. There's no other city. Yeah. But it there um I've met people that call the city Brooklyn instead of like Manhattan. People grew up in Muny. That's a different cultural understanding. Yes. So you're aware. I didn't grow up in Brooklyn. You got to remember. I don't sound like a Brooklynite. I sound kind of like a suburban or something like that kind of kid. Because we moved away when I was a year old, right? So my wife and I met at Bingington University. We spent some time in and around the city. Eventually got our way out to where the South and the Midwest come together in Louisville, Kentucky. and later Cincinnati, Ohio. And these days I also hang out a lot in Israel. You did not grow up religious. I did not. I want to know your story of like some people they had a moment. Did you ever have a moment or was it like a slow um was this over time like hey I know it's there. I want to get a little closer to it. Not growing up completely religious. Right. I didn't grow up religious at all. At all. Right. Becoming religious. What was that story like for you and your wife? So, I don't always get to unpack all of this. I hope you're sitting down. I think you know the story already. Yeah, we're good. Let me check my rear end. It's carefully planted in this comfortable leather seat. So, there's a little bit of a sad story, so I will give your audience a trigger moment. Okay. So, like I said, I didn't grow up religious. Did your father grow up religious? My father also did not grow up religious. Who was the last person in your family to be religious? I don't even know really. I might have extended family like way out that is but I don't know anybody that is. So I come from a very different world than you understand. Wow. In any case, so I grew up in an environment of there were definitely some Jews in the greater area. So for those of you who don't know Rockland County, it's the home of Muny, New York, which has an extremely large Orthodox and ultraorththodoxidic herd, whatever words you understand, right? Environment. But that's a relatively modern construct. You go back a few decades and there's almost nobody there, right? And before that, people were in Brooklyn. People used to be in Europe. But were there Orthodox Jews when you were growing up there? So I did not grow up with Orthodox Jews in the ways that you know and understand. It was already a bustling Jewish community, but there were still Christmas lights and Christmas trees going down the major thorough affair that were there. So I didn't grow up with like neighbors that were like that. But my grandmother of blessed memory actually started a jewelry business in lower Manhattan in the diamond district before it was on 47th Street where Canal and the Ballery meet where the uh Manhattan Bridge is. So a lot of my experience was Orthodox Jews with these were gold and diamond manufacturers that would actually sell to my family. So I wasn't super close got a little bit close to some of them but it wasn't like they were a regular part of my life. So, I could see these people and have no idea what was going on. Honestly, I thought, how do I say this nicely? I thought that they were just kind of this club of people that would wear a bunch of things and would want absolutely nothing to do with me because what do I have to do with their life, right? Could that maybe even could be true sometimes and we're not going to unpack that one. But um you know that there's a certain type of style of person if you're Jewish or not or Christian or Buddhist or Muslim or whatever. There's a certain type of person that is very comfortable only with their own kind. And then there's some people that love to be just a global bridge builder. I've always liked to think that I prefer that way of doing it. I wish more people were like that. I think that it's a much more helpful paradigm of the world to understand. 100%. In any case, so I didn't grow up with a frame of reference for what that meant. So a lot of people, especially in the American, you know, incredible unprecedented history of wealth manufactured era that's only been around for a few decades don't really understand it. So a lot of people in the American context understand that there is something like a high holidays Jew. The by the holidays we mean rash shana and yam kapor the start of the year and the day of atonement and the days in between. The Christian context would be like a person that goes to you know the church in like Christmas and Easter and that's it. I grew up where we weren't high holiday Jews. Like we didn't even go to that. If you actually look at the broader context of Jewish America, I would say probably at least 80% of Jews are just Jews that fall through the cracks. Like if you look at the Pew Research study that they did a few years ago, maybe decade ago, I forget exactly when it came out. There's a lot of people that are just Jewish and they're culturally Jewish or they have fond memories of a couple things. Hanukkah is a big thing. Passover thing at Zade and Bobby sometimes. Yeah. But we don't have words like Zade and Bubby necessarily. I mean, I guess my grandmother like knew some Yiddish, believe it or not, but it wasn't really a part of everyday life. And by wasn't really a part, I mean it just wasn't. Not at all. Right. So, I didn't know what kosher was. I didn't really know what shabas was. Like everything that you kind of think about that you take for granted as you're running through your head where you your brain works in like Yiddish and Hebrew and English, it doesn't work like that where I wouldn't say that I was like an atheist or anything like that. I thought that there was a higher power, but I really like you don't just go like randomly invent your own religion. Like how would you know what to do? Like I felt like there was something more than me and my family and you know you could be the biggest atheist in the world and when the sun rises every day and the moon comes out and the tides come in and out and flowers bloom to a level of intricacy and perfection, right? How does that work all the time? Right? you know, you could just take out a macro camera and look at bees pollinating botanical gardens and it's mind-blowing. So, there's an incredible tapestry that's part of the song of the universe that we all take for granted all the time because we're not dialed into that wavelength because a lot of people have not been trained how to think whether they're inside the religious box or outside of it. So, I always felt that there was a frame for religion but I didn't know how it would be accessible. So, did you have a longing for it to experience? I didn't know that I had learn about it. I I kind of wanted to learn about it, but I didn't really know where to take it. So, for me, I went to public school my whole life and I actually went to a public school where there were a lot of Jews that the school district had like Orthodox Jews like running it that I didn't even know about. We even had as a public school like Rashashan and Yamapour off. Not that that really mattered for what I was doing, but it was always close to me, but a little bit far away. And so for me, like Judaism was I had some friends that would have bar and bot mitzvah, a temple, whatever, but that was kind of it, right? Um, but I met my wife in Sunni Bingmpington, Bingington University, a bit upstate from here. Actually upstate, not like upstate Rockland County. Yeah. For those of you who aren't in the New York area, uh basically New Yorkers just love to compare neighborhoods and argue about who's closer to the city and what the traffic is like. And it's just we're going to need a couch and a copay to unpack all of the mental trauma. In any case, so I'd like to think that my wife and I kind of met on the elevator. So she didn't grow up Jewish. She actually grew up a religious Christian and we kind of found our way together. We started out um in conservative because we didn't exactly know what all these denominations are. And I think a person from the outside, so imagine this over here as a spectrum. So all the way to the left are people who are not practicing religion at all and then you have reform and then you have conservative. So if I'm talking about politics, a political conservative is far to the right. So conservative Judaism is clearly once you become religious and then you see like Orthodox is like another galaxy. Like I'd have to be like square blocks that way. My arm has fallen off. And again, I'm not picking on anybody. I have friends of every race, religion, whatever. But I'm just talking about the spectrum is not what people think. Reform and conservative are actually very close. The origins of reform and conservative are different, but they're getting closer together. And orthodoxy is actually going further to the right. So, we started with conservative because Orthodox sounds scary to an outsider, right? And we were in Westchester County at the time. We're at a place that was conservox, whatever that means. I'm not going to throw some identifying names because I don't believe in throwing shade. What happens? You go to like the the rabbi of the what is it? It's considered the temple or synagogue. What do they call it? Uh, they called this particular place a Jewish center. I'd prefer to not have identifying places that people I want to be careful about what I say there because I don't mean anything I say is like oh well I'm superior because I'm observant and there I don't believe any of that. I think that everybody has their own challenges in life and it's from where you start to where you end up. And I think sometimes people think that they have religious superiority holier than that. And I think you can wear whatever Halloween costume and be a horrible person and wear something completely different and be a wonderful person. So I I don't mean any of this with any disrespect, right? So you understand. In any case, so we went to this place. I think the rabbi was actually orthodox. I'm not sure, but whatever. Yeah. I mean, there's certain parts of the conservative movement that consider some things to be conserv. Okay. Which is like further right than like some of the conservative that a lot of things I've observed in America, conservative and reform are kind of merging a little bit in some cases. It's kind of fascinating. So, we started out there. Um, we got married through there originally. And something that I like to say is that I have found a lot of people who become religious whether they are a balta you know a person who was not religious and became religious or a convert I've found through the years that typically people come to these moments through ava or yura you want to translate what those are for love and fear love and fear okay good how how is play how does era play how does fear play a part of this fear of hem of God correct so how do they tap into not talking about religion if you think about political philosophy if you've heard of makavelli nope makavelli like totalitarianism and all that I've heard the term totalitarianism but I don't know what does it what does it mean like just very like ruthless and bare bones and how you run stuff it's not a great framework let's let's move the conversation on but it's interesting that he has a whole thing that he thinks about and asks the question if it's better to be loved or feared. But that's not what I'm talking about. I actually am saying this in a context of God. We'll unpack that. I think loved, just to answer, I think loved. Well, Judaism will teach you that there's different levels of love and fear that get you to a higher level of understanding so that you can appreciate and serve God and serve humanity. And I here's what I think this I think this is my opinion. I don't remember hearing this from some book or some rabbi or anything like that. So, and take it what you will. I think that a lot of the people who come into the fold in religious Judaism either come in through the love or through the fear. And how fear? How? What do you mean by fear? I'm getting to them. Sorry. ADHD for you. Squirrel. You want me to like get a fidget spinner out for you? No, those aren't in style anymore. What do we carry now? Now we just have vapes all day or something. It's not that kind of podcast. My father calls it a tummy. A paci. I didn't know that word. Thanks for educating. Interesting. So, okay. So, love and fear, Ava and Yura. And I think that a lot of people, this isn't everybody, and I'm not teaching people how to be or whatever. I think the people who come in through love and they're just like, you know, dancing around in a circle and they're having a bunch of food and beer and pizza and stuff, once the music stops and they need to get married and have a job and have a mortgage and actual responsibility might burn out when it's not just fun and games. And when you are built through a crucible of fire, through fear, boy, do you wake up really fast. I know that there's a famous rabbi whose brother drowned and he got into all that. Again, I don't like throwing names and I like to make sure that stories are out there. We can talk. This is a well-known story. Um I forgot her name. Maybe it is. She has a a wick company. Okay. Uh for the Orthodox. So, for those people who don't know, um, Orthodox women will go with their hair covered. They'll wear a wig. Um, you want to tell them why since you're already I think once you get married, you're supposed to cover your hair, right? Because uh, it's only meant for the husband to see. Right. Right. Yeah. We do a lot of separations where there's public and private space, right? And a lot of things are also for respect for God, which is why we're wearing this, which is not a Halloween costume. It gets into perm costume, but we'll save that for another day. That's for now. She her heard I think she had a child that drowned. Mhm. And she asked God, "God, I will start covering my hair and encourage other women to do it as well." And I think the child drowned or was drowning and then came back to life. Someone did, I don't know, CPR or something. Child's alive and well. And she has a very successful wig company and she travels around speaking to women um encouragement, you know, getting women to cover their hair and they they take it very person. It's a beautiful thing. I don't know the story actually. You don't know. She's very big on Instagram. Talks a lot everywhere. We can get into it later. Yeah. Would that be considered fear? Coming to closer to Judaism because of fear. Are you kidding? What do you think? Does it sound like it's fear? I hear that. But it turns into love. You say it like that. Correct. That's what I said. So there's different levels. So when you start on the fear ladder, so for those of you who don't go pray three times a day and stand before God, which is sort of intimidating, right? It's not just like a fun happy place. It's very serious. So we have a phrase, no before whom you are standing, which in Hebrew is there you go. So, we are supposed to actually have a level of fear to get a closer level of love. So, there's like two levels of love and two levels of fear. And I'm not going to get all this esoteric stuff out correctly. I'm not a rabbi and I'm not not none of your rabbis, so don't even try it. You don't need Rabbi Brian. I got enough stuff to do in my life. In any case, let's just say we came in through the fear route. So, once upon a time, we couldn't have kids. You've heard the story, I think. But a while. It's been a while. Not that I want to hear it again, but I look to hear your journey. I don't say this on most podcasts. There was a while where we couldn't have kids and then we could. And our first child together unfortunately died. And that although there is love in that, I can't even put into words what the fear is on that of what it does to your mind. and he lived to be one day old and I sat there and literally watched him die and we have baby pictures where we're holding him and he's not attached to machines and he's already dead. So if you can the hospital says would you like a photographer to come take a picture of your like they do actually. They do because these are your baby pictures. You don't get to have baby pictures like other people do. Wow. So, what I'm trying to explain to you, they're not asking you to pose. I hope this isn't like go put it on Instagram and No, no, but photographers usually, you know, they'll try to make cute baby. No, you're crying. Are you kidding? Just stick with me here, man. So, look, if you can watch your child literally die and like emotionally just go through fire. I mean, it's basically like crashing into a telephone pole where you have like a traumatic brain injury and you have to teach yourself how to everything again. If you can go through that, you can basically do anything in life, hard stop. So for those of us that don't actually kill ourselves after that, I think once you come out the other side where it looks like you're a functioning human adult once again, how do you you've actually how do you do that? You've you've heard of the ego death. I People get divorced, lose a child. Yeah. I think many people I don't know the stats, nor do I want to look it up, but I think that many people end up divorced. Many people end up how do you get out of like how do you I literally I'm not sure I can even explain it to you but what I'm saying is is that I felt that our faith helped us a lot. We left Metro New York. We went back to upstate New York where I was trying to keep a job where I was trying to keep a job further down state. It was very very difficult time. That's when it happened. It happened here or up upstate like it happened when we were in Westchester actually. Westchester. Wow. Yeah. Any advice for someone who went through something traumatic? how to um become a 2.0 version of themselves. I think it's very I think it's very right. But my experience isn't everybody else's experience. I'm saying that it's a very different experience for each person. I don't think that I could just give you blanket advice. But what I would say is don't give up. What I would say is try to find a lifelong connection with that special person. Whether it's your spouse, whether it's somebody else, seek help. I've never been divorced. I can't really speak to that, but there's all sorts of trauma that we carry and we need to surround ourselves with people that can help. I really do feel like our faith helped us and I feel like that was the start of ramping it up to something different. We were seeking more. We became more religious and did you connect with a rabbi? Yeah, we did. Mhm. Wow. Yeah. I We're done. No, now we're Thanks for coming. Happy little puppies and clouds and businessy things. Wild. Wait, so you had your first You couldn't have kids. Then you have a kid passes away. Yes. And now you have a beautiful family of how many kids? And by the Thank God we have six children. Can't even name it. And you know like I will tell you the world is not easy on you when stuff like that happens. I had somebody at work tell me at the time, "Don't worry, you'll have more." And it's nobody's fault. You have to understand that like I'm a communicator for humanity, not just Jews or whatever. I talk to people all over the planet about all sorts of stuff. We have our own conference, marketing, communications, and all that. You can't think that everybody has the words in a given situation. And I can understand where a person that gets hit with you didn't come home with a baby literally doesn't know what to say to you and feels the need to say something. So I don't even remember who that was nor do I have any malice for them because I can't I don't know that I would have the perfect words to say back to somebody when I would hear music like that. Like when you go to a house of mourning, you don't have what to say. You just listen. But that's very interesting in our custom about the laws of mourning. Think about who has to initiate the speech. The person mourning. The person who's mourning has to start the conversation because in Judaism's rigor, it actually was thoughtful of that. So, I think that that was a it was a very helpful time to have us kind of retreat back into our cocoon and come back out stronger. Out of curiosity, when was your next child born? Not too long after. Yep. We had four beautiful moment. And I've diapered a lot of a lot of people. How far apart are they in ages? Yeah. So, we have four boys four years in a row after that every year basically. Yeah. And then we have a girl a couple years a few years. I had a drum teacher who lived in my neighborhood till Sunday. I was about to say, what does drumming have to do with this? Y he had quintuplets. We didn't exactly have that. We sort of had Irish twins there for a minute if you know what that means. I don't. Meaning that they're close apart. Very close. Okay, fair. But quintuplets and they're all like 28 or 30 years old. Healthy. I can't even imagine. Quintuplets. It's wild. That is a lot of diapers. You get size diaper, man. Yeah, I know. Dude, you're you're buying out Target every time, right? I hope you're enjoying today's podcast. Today's episode is sponsored by Blackbird Recruiting. Chad GBT, what do you think about Blackbird Recruiting? Blackbird Recruiting, the team that finds you the right people so you can stop wasting time on resumes that look like they were written by someone's dog. If you're a business owner struggling to find top talent, let Blackbird do the heavy lifting. They'll help you find candidates who actually get it. Visit blackbirdrecruiting.com and let them take your hiring game to new heights. You heard it here first. Enjoy the rest of the episode. Now you have a very successful business called Now Sourcing. By the way, you should check them out on their website and go to his client page. Like anytime I wanted to introduce Brian to somebody, I said, "Okay, let me show you who this guy is. These are the companies he's worked with." And then boom. Yeah. Um Brian knows a lot of people. Brian knows a lot of people and a lot of people know Brian. Pat yourself on the back. That's a lot of hard work and a lot of things going right. You've done some crazy stuff. We have done some amazing stuff over basketball. Like what's what's that story? That is a famous story. One day a basketball in the NBA in the professional leagues, a basketball player's agent contacted us up one day and said, "This kid is amazing. He's not getting played as much as he should. The team is not using him and he's going to get the league minimum, which by the way is a lot of money. If nothing happens for him, he needs his break. He's an all-star. He's an incredible player and he comes from a family pedigree where other people were pro. So, like he was just drilled in as like a little kid and was in fact amazing, but because you're amazing, when the world doesn't see it, there's problems, right? So, they said, "Go get him a gigantic contract." And I don't know why everybody in the world always like throws these weird challenges. How did that happen? Why would they call Now Sourcing for such a unique problem? So when we talk about what infographics are and what I do, but that doesn't even matter. What people don't seem to understand about what we actually do is that we take the world's overcommunicated blah blah blah salesy, heavy-handed, idiotic, bunch of jargon, acronyms, salad of crap. And we spin that into something that instead of going over somebody's head, speaks to them and they feel seen and heard. Because have you ever tried to have a conversation with somebody where you dive right into your sales pitch or you don't bother to make a relationship and it's almost like I'm shaking for your hand, but I'm like reaching for your wallet. Humans aren't a piece of meat that are there to serve you like an ATM. Get a grip, bro. What are you doing? 100%. Right. And we reach people on emotion first. We tie it in with stories and visuals and then we put in a bunch of facts and stats. So we were already like a nationwide and a global name before they came to us. So a lot of those fancy company logos that you saw, we already did incredible stuff. There were companies that would get noticed, get in the press, and get acquired for tons of money. Not only because we did the thing, but it was definitely a contributing factor. So, I honestly couldn't tell you where they originally saw our stuff, but usually people see so much of our work that people come to us, such as this case. So, they called us up. They said, "This is what we want." And we said, "We don't really know if we can do that, but okay." Like, we're not there. Like, I don't have Mark Cuban on speed dial that I could say, "Hey, Mark, give this guy millions of dollars." What is the NBA minimum contract? 5 million 10. No, I think it's less than that yearly, but I mean it's still significant. It's like way a lot of money. It's way more than like a normal job that you get, but there's a big difference between a league minimum and like max contract where you're getting tens of millions a year, right? Yeah. Any case, once upon a time there was a concept called Moneyball. Moneyball. Moneyball. There's a movie, there's a book. They're both pretty amazing. You should definitely check them out. And it basically was like this. Started in baseball, which is a very old sport. 150 years we're up to something like that. Wow. 1870s, I think. Like turn of the century, something like that. I don't know. I don't have fact check. This isn't the Joe Rogan podcast where Jamie is looking it up for when you take out your phone. But no, we don't need that. Whatever. It's old. And as old as it is, it had a certain style of how things were where you would have a scout, which was a person that would look at a young player and look at that guy and he'd be like, "That looks like a good hitter. That looks like a good pitcher." I didn't have any of the good movements, but I'm not pro. So, so a person would evaluate another person by how they look. Now, what's wrong with that? We all know the old adage of don't judge a book by its cover cover. But they did judge a book by its cover all the time, which doesn't make sense. So that means that if you look cool and athletic and you hold the bat all fancy, you're a star. But if you hold the bat weird, but you hit better, you're not right. So there was some there's a big gap that was missing that a lot of data science and saber metrics, which is like sports analytics, figured out. And that movie and that book talks about this, right? So basically, you used to have giant teams like the New York Yankees that would spend tons of money, buy the best players, and win, right? And then you'd have everybody else that would be like, whoa, like barely able to get any star players that would lose every year, right? So it was almost like two leagues that it wasn't fair. And then one day all this data science stuff came in and then teams that didn't have big budgets suddenly beat the bigger budget because they found that if they did the right calculations, they would find undervalued players. Or in the movie they say, I'm not gonna ruin the whole movie, but they say like uh misfit of island of misfit toys, right? Where they get all these crazy players that don't look the part, but they are the part and together they win, right? And then they all started winning. And then suddenly every sports team would have a data science saber metrics department and they were playing a whole other game, right? And it's not that the scouts were obsolete, but they had other pieces that made it a more complete picture and understanding of what the sport was. And now it's very technical and they have all these motion cameras and all this and different sports. But at the time, I'm not just talking about baseball anymore. Now we're getting into basketball. Basketball didn't really get into this mode yet. There was still this whole style and one-on-one and all these personalities, Dennis Rodman with the crazy hair and Michael Jordan and all Yeah. All that stuff. But they started getting into it and it was at the perfect moment in time where we got to architect a piece where we basically said, "Here's a great paradigm shift. This is happening in the world of basketball." And when you look at all these stats and then these facts and this emotion and how cool this young guy is pound-for-pound Stafford stat, he's one of the best guys in the league if you actually bother to look at it, right? And then we started talking to all the media and before you knew it, it was on ESPN and all over Twitter and all over the place. You have people reaching out to media companies. Correct. So the way that we operate is that we we're all pretty creative when we come up with ideas about it. Sometimes clients come to us with the ideas and sometimes we come and sometimes it's a group dialogue decision, right? But we have the first layer which is what we call the blueprint. Let's say we're building you a house. You don't want us to just go to Home Depot and get a couple of guys and some hammers and nails and your house falls over, right? That's probably not a successful project. So everything good things in life require proper planning, right? Sometimes you get lucky, but usually you want to think through stuff a little bit if you want it to last a little bit. So the blueprint is equal parts emotion, storytelling and data where it's all the words and the statistics and the numbers and the flow through which then gets handed over to the design team which then gets handed over after it is implemented and launched to the promotions team. Were they doing research? So the research team does the the first of three does the research. Research then design. So the guy helping us with some of the advanced sports analytics and stuff but we put it all together. Yeah. And then we designed it and then we got it out to the media and we started talking to everybody and they all started talking and it went crazy all over the internet to the point that right before the trade deadline which is the time when all the company owners have to make decisions. Are they going to trade? Are they going to give this guy it's up to them or it's up to the players. How does it work? It's probably outside the overall scope. So there's a lot of negotiations and agents and it's his own world and I'm not really in the middle of that. But the point is is that the players, the agents, the league, the owners start getting into all of it. But instead, the real story, the thing that we're at here is instead of this guy getting probably the league minimum, he got a fouryear $64 million contract. 64 over four years. Yep. And then he got a 180 on top of that. Million. Uhhuh. And then the next contract or the next contract. And now he's on another one. He's with the Detroit Pistons now. What's his name? Tobias Harris. Tobias Harris. Tobias Harris. It's actually a very famous person in the league. He used to be on the 76. Does he know you? Yeah. Like his agent called, you know, now sourcing, but does he know Brian Wallace? Cool. Yeah. It's not like these are all just people. They're they are people, right? But I think his latest I think he's getting like 32 mil a year on like a two-year deal or something like that, right? Two or three year deal. I forget. Um, wow. Also, for those of you, where can people see that? For those of you who infographic, okay, so if you ever get an email from me, it's in my signature because it's kind of incredible. I feel like there's there's overlapping concentric circles in life. And I've told you this before. Concentric circles are the the two circles that overlap together. So, so here's a circle. Here's a circle. There's that overlap on either side. So, a lot of people do work on one side of the circle, which is they do work for a big famous company, but it might not be cool work or something cool and sexy that they can show off. And sometimes they do something legendary, but it's not necessarily for a giant company. So, like, you know, you help your corner ice cream shop or something like that. Hooray. Like, they get more customers. But once in a while, you get that thin little thing in the middle that's legendary for something cool for something notable. And that's why that's something I'm probably gonna talk about forever, right? Because it's be like a once in a lifetime kind of a thing. It's a special, it's a perfect moment of everything lining up. What was the research that the team did? So, some of it is, like I said, the emotion and the storytelling and some of the advanced stats that go into it. Wow. Yeah. Um, I was going to say one other thing. For those of you who are into different movies, uh, for those of you who like Netflix, Adam Sandler seems to be like on a run where he's just like endlessly making movies and he's like just making like all these millions. So he has a movie called Hust Hustle. The Hustle, I think. Yeah. Is he wearing like a sweatshirt and sneakers and stuff? Yeah. Yeah. So it's like So it's a basketball movie where it's not like an actual league. There's a lot of actual players in it. And what's amazing is so there's like one main character who is a professional player, right? And then the a main guy that he keeps running into is actually Tobias Harris. So Tobias was actually in this movie. Oh, cool. And then there's a special moment. Again, I'm ruining the whole movie for you, but I don't think you've seen this movie, so I'm just catching up to speed. There's a wonderful heartwarming moment that I really enjoyed. So the first time that the main player and Tobias are facing up on this like street ball scene that's like this exciting montage. Okay. So Tobias just destroys like a three right over the main character's head and then it shoots back to the audience and you see this guy like slow clapping and another guy standing next to him and that was his dad and his brother and they got a cameo in the movie just doing it was just such a wonderful scene. That's it. Everyday you excel at what you do. If people could see how you work, they'd instantly fall for your brand. But how do we make that happen? At Everyone Needs a Video, we capture the essence of your daily magic in video and turn it into a 24/7 showcase that lets you share your passion with the world. From ABA therapy, construction, web design, home care, nonprofits, and more. We ensure your value shines through. Visit everyone needs avid.com today and let's make your business stand out. You've also done work with uh you once showed me this infographic. I remember it being full of colors and different colors bring out different emotions. Sure. Was it for a paint company? It was. Tell us about that. There's a famous piece of work. So remember how you said how did people hear about you? So once upon a time this is a while ago. This is how long was this project with Tobias? How long ago? Tobias I think was 2015. 10 years ago something like that. And this other one we'll talk about even older probably 15 years ago. Okay. So this piece that you're talking about which has to do with the psychology of color has been translated into multiple languages featured in National Geographic like all over the place. It's in psychology textbooks. You don't get money for that do you? For what? Royalties if it gets put somewhere. It depends on the specific kind of deal but sometimes we do. Yeah. Okay. Because you need permission and licensing and stuff like that. Okay. Yeah. A lot of our stuff finds its way into a lot of interesting context. Uh there's one that I I don't know that I'm actually allowed to talk about it, so I'm not gonna talk about it. Okay. Yeah. We'll save that for another day. Maybe off camera. Yeah. So, tell us about that project because I I remember the colors. So, that's actually one of our more famous things that ever hit the market. And even though it's 15 years old, people find it brand new every day. They pin it on Pinterest. So, there's people that have seen this work millions and millions of times throughout the internet. But once upon a time there was a paint company and they said instead of That's not true. They I think wanted Oh, just make it that we sound better than the other guy and it's like is that company still around? Yep. Would you feel comfortable sharing the name or not? Um so it's part of a CertaPro franch I think they're still part of that franchise in Louisville, Kentucky. It's not like Bear or Benjamin Moore. We have done work for bear but that's a different this is meaning this is a service that paints sort of pro is painters that go around you know and offices and stuff like that bear paint which we actually have done work for. We did something really cool there. They're the people who manufacture the paint that you put the paint. Can you believe that we're doing a podcast where we're talking about paint? That sounds really boring. Like you ever hear like the phrase like this is so boring it's like watching paint dry. But it is proof that anything can be interesting if you bother to think through it differently than everybody else does with normal rinse and repeat stuff. If you just ask chat GBT how to do crap. I thought it was for a paint company like like painting a painting company. So start a pro or Okay. Correct. For a specific franchise that ran a Midwest district of it. Cool. So So what happened? They called you said make us sound better. So they than the other painters. So yeah, I think a lot of companies they go into sales mode and the first thing that they do is be unremarkable and compare themselves to everybody. Okay. And they don't seem to understand that if they tell a better story than everybody in the industry, they're going to get a much larger reward if they can actually hit that right. Okay. In that world, you can say we better guarantee and we use high quality paint and people are happy and we're going to cover your furniture. But everybody can do that. Everybody's got the same story. What makes you special in that? Kind of nothing. So instead of just doing the same thing like everybody else, something I'm fond of saying is that every company is and should be considered a media company. That's why I'm looking at you because it's you too. And you that's why you're doing it, right? And when you think that way, when you actually start to believe it, your entire world and field of vision changes and God or however you understand it expands your mind to a different way of thinking. So instead of you worrying about the competitors and what does this guy do, who cares, right? Like you're a recruiter. I feel like I'm interviewing you. You're a recruiter, right? Like what do you do? You organize bunches of recruiters to get together. Other guys would be like, "Oh, what are you crazy? That guy's going to eat me alive." and you're like, "Dude, I can't be the only recruiter in the world. Like, I would die with the amount of stuff." So, it's irrelevant. So, when people understand that they're a media company and their personal brand matters and who's running the company has like a strong face and believes in things, people align with that and that matters. So, in this case, we were able to basically say, what is the psychology of color? Because a lot of people don't seem to understand that who you're selling to is not an expert. That's why they hire you, right? If somebody could recruit people on their own, why are they calling you, right? They're not. Not cuz like you're charging them money. It's not free. Like what are you kidding? Like you don't want to starve and just help everybody for free. You can help people in life, but that's not appropriate when you're trying to make a living, right? So when we thought about it differently, we understood that a person who's painting these wall, well these walls are padded because we're podcast studio, right? Yes, I'm painting a wall. So feel free to use that as a clip. Sounds like a cat. Yeah. So instead of just here, here's this special price blah blah blah. Can do it the same day like everybody can do and be unremarkable. What if we tried to do something remarkable? Does a person understand why they pick the colors that they do? Does the average person understand color theory and color psychology? Do people know that if you take the color blue and it makes it more productive? And if you take the color yellow, it makes babies cry. That's what the Panone Institute says. It's in the piece. You can look at it. I don't know that it's true. I never like put my babies in front of the cry. Dang it. What's the matter with you? Let's go, kid. I'm paying you here to cry. So, I don't know. You're gonna get weird, Brian, once in a while. I'm these show. Hey, you're the one who you want. You're like, do a 15inute podcast. Do it for an hour. I could talk all day, bro. Who knows? For reference, Brian, what's it been like five years? Um, you used to do podcast and it was only 15 minutes. Short, to the point with really good guests. You should go check it out. It's on You shouldn't check it out. You should. It's been five years, but it's good content. He had some incredible guests. Okay, fair. Um, what was it called? It was called The Next Action Podcast. It still exists. You can look it up on Spotify and all other platforms. Um, I just felt like we got really busy during the pandemic and I was needed for many different things and I really didn't feel like it was the right season. I've considered bringing it back. I think if I ever do bring it back, it will have a very different context. Back to the emotion of color. Back to the emotion of color when Hey, I mean, you wanted to go down that rabbit hole to give you a little plug. That's fine. Yep. So with this, when you educate people, when you entertain and educate or infotainment or edutainment, when you do that, you're giving people a gift. And why does everybody just pound you with stupid sales messages, right? They don't feel heard. They don't feel seen. Don't you skip ads? Don't you have ad blockers on everything? Don't you have a crap filter in your email? Don't you sometimes just delete a bunch of emails and mark things as spam? The world is so over advertised I can barely keep my glasses on. It's just such a shake your head moment. I don't like advertising. Remember my spectrum of Judaism? I have a spectrum of marketing. Over here is advertising where you pay money and you force people's eyeballs open and it's really uncomfortable. Here's marketing where you give somebody a great idea that's better than what they had in their head and then a seed plants in their head and it germinates and then it's their idea. And that's marketing. Maybe do that. just a little bit perhaps. Okay, we'll have a segment on the show. Brian's vents. Brian's vents. Brian's vents are probably a very uncomfortable place that we don't need to go to anytime soon. Um, so when you educate and understand, you're giving them a gift that people would say, not only am I going to buy from you, but I printed this and I pinned it on Pinterest and I translated to a different language and I'm going to buy from you because you actually made me understand why I want these colors and these accents and that it matters because everything that we do in life has purpose and meaning, right? And you can find it in things as mundane and boring as paint. What was the creative process going like? So what happened? and you started asking them questions and you're like, "Oh, wow. They know a lot. We're going to talk about this." No. What is the process to make the infographic that went viral for years and is still going viral? Where can people see it on your website, right? Yeah, they can see it on the website. They can see. I mean, if you just search psychology of color infographic. Yeah, you'll find it. It's very famous. A bunch of people tried to copy it over and over and over for years. How do you prevent that from happening? you are better. How do you how do you outreruit people? Right. What are you talking about? Right. Um I would say you're talking about the creative process. So there's different clients and different mindsets and different maturity models when it comes to that. Some clients are naturally creative and they're open-minded and understand that we're going to bring them to a very weird place from when they started because a lot of times we uncover a dimension of their business that they take they take for granted because every day they're in and out and they're in their four walls. So sometimes people have a treasure chest and rather than opening it up and seeing all the pirate and gold the balloons and whatever and all these priceless artifacts, they just put a freaking tablecloth on it and it's in the break room and they're just eating lunch and they don't even know. They're not dumb. They just don't understand this incredible jewel that they have to give to the world. And that's the world too often. So sometimes we break people out of that mindset. Sometimes people are there already. Sometimes clients have worked with us for years and they're like just make stuff. We know what's good. Sometimes people bring other stuff. I like to collaborate. I think that a good client relationship is to have accountability partners. Like if you're powerlifting in the gym, I mean, I'm not a powerlifter in the gym. If we're like just crushing this, don't you want a spotter, right? You need accountability buddies. So, if somebody's running it in an industry, they're going to be better at it than me because they're the one running it, right? Sounds like some Jerry Seinfeld. They're the one doing it. So, Yeah, like I like to have it as a collaborative process and sometimes we need to break them out and sometimes we need to learn. Sometimes it's through a series of discussions. That's how it is. And there's iterative checkpoints through. So first we want to agree on an idea and then we need to step through that blueprint and sometimes we get wrapped up in a bunch of argument. Argument doesn't mean that we're calling another person a jerk. An argument is iron sharpening iron to make a better product. Okay. Then after we have that blueprint, then we have to make the design. So we first start with a little piece of the design to make sure that we understand the design thinking that we've heard them. We understand their brand, their coloring, logos, use of photobased things, different illustrative basis. We have to get the right design aesthetic right and then we go off to the media. But what were you going to say? So I think we'll finish off with this. My question is it's called what it takes podcast. You've worked with Fortune whatever number companies. 500 500 100 50 like Yeah. Some of the biggest. Drop some names. Lexus. Uh Adobe. Yeah. You name it. Yeah. DHL. You said FedEx, so I said DHL. Both. You I I saw Captain Crunch on your website. Crunch. Uh Skype. Yep. Well, they're retiring. I'm so sad. Yeah. So, I haven't used Skype in probably 15 years. Don't rub it in, bro. Don't rub it in. I I've been reminiscing with surprises over that. Yeah, fair. We've moved on. I think we've moved to WhatsApp and Signal and stuff like that now, but that's okay. Um, so my question is, yeah, if someone wants to do business with these large corporate companies, what does it take like in the beginning when you started your company? Yeah. Like with the contract with um the $64 million contract from the basketball player, that was inbound. They saw you, they heard about you. Yeah. Amazing. But when you're doing outbound, what does it take to do work with searchbound? No, I I don't think I think there's a select few of people that can handle the enjoyment. You should understand most of our world. Listen, I mean, I grew up in a diamond district. I'm a killer. Just like, you know, no, I look like I'm all pleasant and buttoned up, but yeah, I I can I can sell. But the point is is that we don't really do outbound. You must have done outbound in the beginning, but we've done it's not really the way you think. I've really worked the relationship economy a lot over the years. So, people get to know you and when they need you. So, a lot of people get to know me. They know my body of work. I've written things all over the internet. So, like a lot of people pretend to be like an expert because they read something on the internet and then they just quote it. But I have actually done a lot of deep work and lots of things on the internet for decades that I have my unique opinions that other people follow. Right. Right. So again, this is not ego. I'm just some regular dude named Brian. Okay. Like I don't Ego is like the ruiner, the ruination of man. The biggest thing you can do for yourself is to make sure that you have like an ego death and keep in check. Yeah. But what advice would you give to somebody? I would say who wants to, you know, work with every person. Sure. Every person is a universe. So, some people are like, "I don't have a big network. How do you do that?" And it's ridiculous. You can answer your own question when it comes to that. You've built, you're not that old, and you've built a ridiculous network, so much bigger than people twice your age that they're never going to reach that network in their entire lifetime. And you didn't work in corporate America like I did and go to school with people like that, network their way through. So, you've built a relationship with thousands of people across the internet, Jewish or not, whatever, it doesn't even matter, right? and you've done it because you show up and you believe what you say. And I know that like some people use like this stupid stereotype and it's like be authentic, but like the actual authenticity you can feel when a person is being authentic. Do you think I'm reading from a teleprompter over there? I am not. I sound terrible when I read from something. Like I've I've filmed stuff in and they make me read something and then they're like, "Yeah, it was pretty good." So we have a new evolution in our history of business where we fell into a unique opportunity where we got to do the infographic side is taking very complex problems and making that understandable for humanity and getting it all over the internet and the digital we figured out a way to do that on the physical side when we started the innovate summit in Owensboro Kentucky last May and you were there and you know how good it is and I think when you hand select some of the best speakers in the world and some of the coolest innov innovators. The biggest thing, no ego. None of these people are just going to run away. They're all sitting there waiting to talk to you like a famous Harlem Globe Troder that's been on the Amazing Race for four seasons, just sitting there playing basketball with everybody, just one of the guys, right? And when you can gather people like that and get to real issues, so instead of just talking about marketing or business or recruiting or whatever, people were having very real conversations. They were talking about what lurks beneath the surface that they don't always get to put out there into the world, right? So, there was so much trust and warmth in that room. 100%. I'm really excited to do that again this year. You should come in. Uh, where can people find it? They can find it probably if you follow any me any of my social day, but the innovates.com. innovates.com. The innovate. The innovate. You should follow Brian Wallace on LinkedIn. Um, wow, what an episode. Thank you so much for watching. Make sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel. You can also check us out on Spotify. My name is Tulie Krauss from Blackbird Recruiting. See you at the next episode. [Music]