The Hidden Power of Brand Identity | Ed Howie | The Building Texas Show

Justin McKenzie (: 00:07

Welcome to The Building Texas Show. I'm thrilled to be visiting with Ed Howie today and talking about the wonder of woo. Everything else that you do, BTY, EO, San Antonio, so much that we're going to dive into. And then I think our paths should have crossed much earlier.

think it should have. man, this is remarkable what y'all have built.

Well, I'm thrilled to have you in building. But I'm thrilled to have you at Das GreenHaus talking about, well, we're going to talk about strategy and branding and marketing and really what does it take to do life in a lot of ways, but how that connects into work, how that connects into experience. I've really appreciated hearing you on your podcast, The Wonder of Woo and how you connect with your audience. So Ed, thank you for joining me today and thank you for coming to.

Building Texas.

It's an honor and I agree we should have met years before. It is amazing what you have endured as well as what you're inspiring. So congrats.

Justin McKenzie (: 01:09

Well, I appreciate that. And, it's a journey that I think a lot of people want to dive into when they have a passion, when they're very serious about making a positive change in their life or for their life. It's not easy. You're going to come with the headwinds to push back the hurdles and that barrier to entry, whether it's financial or time, whatever it might be.

It really takes a village around you to make it happen.

does. And I think that's one of the wins, but also the challenges of the barriers inventory of having a dream or vision of how you can serve others better and then figure out how you figure out how to create an enterprise or machine around it. It's daunting and isolating. And as we've talked about, I realized even after 12, 13 years in corporate America,

that while I cared for, I was with HEB in the last corporate real job. I had incredible responsibility and stewardship for my role there, but we had the opportunity through my buying team to meet with the entrepreneurs who were trying to get that product on the shelf. And I had incredible passion, empathy, hope, and also some concern. I mean, it was really interesting. We're sitting there and because of HEB,

typically whether it's a startup or an established brand, tended to get like the owner or the executive leadership and I'd be sitting there and my team would be going through all the dynamics we do to determine if it's good for HEB. And I'm participating in that, but I'm also having this like second brain working. You're like, my gosh. One, that owner has no idea how great their product is. frankly, that owner has no idea how bad their product sucks and they think it's right. Or.

Ed Howie (: 03:02

They have a great product. have a great vision, but they have no idea how to communicate it. And that is frankly, oftentimes the death now because one of my foundation principles, if they don't know you have it, they can't buy it.

And we see that in pitches that come into the angel network as an example. And I would say it in that sometimes they don't know what their core offer is. Right. They might be right on the cusp of a great product, but they haven't taken the feedback or heard from their customer or audience. That little extra shift in thinking that takes them to that next level. And they haven't thought about what does it mean to sell to an HEB? I when you think about

just the inventory need to service that contract. That can be great ambition for that zero to one entrepreneur, but really you need to be in the two and a half to four area to handle that type of situation. But I appreciate that you're meeting them early and you're growing and crafting them. And I think in the work that you do now, you're helping those brands tell their story in a different way, more intentional way, think. Yeah.

That is exactly what BTY and record businesses does. BTY stands for boldest true view. And one, I personally believe we are all designed very uniquely and distinctly. And there's a boldness about each human being. There's a trueness about us. And when we combine and understand those two things and live into it and communicate it, we show up as a more powerful you than we can even imagine.

First, you are my youth.

Ed Howie (: 04:39

I believe that on a human standpoint and the reality is that businesses are led by humans and businesses are an enterprise and ecosystem of humans. so the highest, the best performing, the most impactful organizations, matter what the P and L structure is, is organizations where you have humans aligned together around a common mission and common purpose. They know exactly what their expectations are and other people know what they're doing because they want to join in.

in it, you know, think branding ultimately is, for good or evil, it's basically, ignition of a movement. So you think about, the brands you love, we believe you love them for two reasons and it is experience, but where people lose the side is impact. Okay. So.

Absolutely.

Is it just a Chick-fil-A sandwich or is it a memory, a meal, a Chick-fil-A, you know, is it where someone actually looks you in your eyes and says, pleasure. You know, where they, step out of way. So it's not just, you delivering the transaction of your business is how are you impacting your customers, the community, and most importantly, your employees. And I think that's where, especially in startup, we get so caught up with how to build the business. We forget to like literally.

program in our intentionality around impact. I think that's where those that succeed faster, that scale faster, they have an impact mindset, not just an experience mindset.

Justin McKenzie (: 06:17

And that happens in the talent acquisition phase when you're recruiting who's going to be on that team, who is your co-founder, who are your investors. That's right. All of those experiences with humans influence the culture of your brand going forward.

And I think that is so easy to do when you've talked about pitching new business and when we're talking about the vision of our business, my gosh, it's like, we can do this and we can change lives and that kind of stuff. But what happens is, I see more times than not, is once it becomes official, once you collect the initial funds or you sign the operating agreement, you're on the clock. And what it then goes into that run the business mindset and we

on the clock.

Ed Howie (: 07:03

can lose sight about why we're doing it. mean, will tell you, B2R, our strategic marketing brand firm here in San Antonio, we do this all the time, but we're in leadership meeting through each guy. like, wait, time out. Why are we doing this? Like, why do we want to refine and perhaps even reimagine exactly how we position ourselves the next 10 years? And we're on this whole what, and this is

This is what we're really good at and this is what we make money at and this is our outcomes is. But we literally stop and say, wait, okay, let's make sure we're on the same page of why. And what's amazing is we're on the same page, but we had not verbalized it. We had not acknowledged that, that commonality of why. And frankly, in those days where it gets dark and ugly, it's the why that fuels you. It's not the why.

Absolutely. And you're 21 years into that business. a reminder, that isn't a constant comeback. It is something that we want to see leadership teams come back to often. And I appreciate that you mentioned Chick-fil-A. You've worked for some great brands, HEB, Chick-fil-A. But in both of those scenarios, the experience is at the front line.

But

Ed Howie (: 08:15

It is the experiences at the frontline, you know, I'm not lacking statements and beliefs and principles, but I feel like you have to have some of these anchors. so one of my anchors that, is a by-product of getting to be a part of two incredible brands and trigger of times in life is that one, you cannot out market a poor operation. Yeah. All right. So we live in the marketing brand new world, but we've had clients go like,

Why are we talking about the transaction? And this is more probably 10, 20 years ago more, but still, you know, I thought we're here to talk about the advertising or the marketing or the website. It's like, yeah, but you can't put something on a website. This aspirational and hoping that your enterprise or your system is going to deliver it. You know, we had an opportunity to work with Texas med clinic here, South Texas, um, celebrated 40, 41 years before the founder, a sole founder, entrepreneurial led business.

innovator cutting it. mean, literally created a, a, a, market of urgent care in South Texas 40s on the probably 42, 43 years ago, Dr. Bernard Swift. His ultimate exit plan was to sell. right. And what she did in that transaction, I would imagine a very happy transaction happened. We're probably looking at two years ago, whatever we had the opportunity to work with Texas MedClin for 12 years. And our second.

major campaign that lasted about five years was we went back to the core, the core reason why people choose urgent care and they choose Texas by clinic. Everyone else was talking about how fast you get to be seen. That's that is literally experience. Okay. That's the transaction. We are like one, we couldn't compete on speed because we were already the market leader. We already had the most patients. We already had most clinics. And so we said, okay.

We can't win at that, even though it was kind of a lie because it said be seen in 15 minutes. Well, you see a doctor, it's going to be an hour no matter what. Right. So it was a little bit a snowman, but we won't go there. It was, was, it was a statement. We're like, we can't win in that. So we went back to why do people choose Texan by clinic? Because they want to be well. They want to be well. Also, the dynamic was they want to believe that they made the right decision. The mom.

Ed Howie (: 10:37

to pull her kid out of school, just pay the copay, just take two hours away from work to take their child to a doctor versus self-treat with the pharmacy and the drug section at HUB. So our campaign for five years was not just a marketing campaign. It was a branding campaign. And that campaign was, treat you well. We treat you well. It was a promise. It was also an operational governance issue.

And we help Texas Med Clinic communicate that not only externally on billboards and ads, but first and foremost internally with the operations training messaging, because what was communicated to the team was we can't say we're going to treat our patients well if we don't treat our patients well. And to treat a patient well, it is experience and impact. is, did you like functionally, credibly, safely diagnose a situation, prescribe a solution, but then impact is did you treat them well?

And we believe that model is universal to Indian Airpods, B2B, B2C, anything. We are called to treat it as well. And you have to hardwire that into.

You do, it's the culture aspect of not only the marketing and branding, but operations, the sales. And then when you do that, well, all of that gets amplified by your customers and by your audios.

Yes. I mean, the, the, the most powerful advertising any person can do is for two people to be sitting at their son's baseball game and say, Hey, when's the last time you went to text my clinic or more importantly, you can't believe the incredible experience. had to text my clinic or, or Chris Madrid's or H E B. Okay. So, so, so pause your referral. mean, that's why, I mean, for, for those of us that

Ed Howie (: 12:32

are a little older, you know, before Google and all that kind of stuff, you know, positive referrals, word of mouth advertising remains, whether it's via a tweet or via conversation, positive referral is the most powerful, powerful, powerful advertising you can do. And really the only way you truly ignite that is focusing on the experience of what you deliver to your customers, your employees, your community.

way more than we did back in: 1990

But they're less organic. And they can be, we see the bad actors that will make this statement, but then you don't have that experience when you show up. And how disappointing is that?

And that's where, you know, a B2R model is, basically you have brand, which is the overall enterprise experience, the messaging, you have marketing, the way you amplify that. And then you have operations, the way you deliver that. And, boldest true issue stands for a bold, true you. And we believe that when those three things overlap and there's much less synchronicity versus disparity, that's when your true distinction. And that's what the founder started with.

The founder starts with an idea. Now, I would tell you, we don't gravitate to founders who start only with a P and L. Okay. If it is purely a financial exercise of how to make money faster, which is not bad, is not evil, but if that's all it is, that's not really the clients we serve well. It has to be beyond the P and L. has to be out of passion. And frankly, mean, tell me, I I would say 95 % of the zero to one entrepreneurs we have worked with, and I bet it's same with you, it has started with a passion.

Ed Howie (: 14:19

not a profit mindset. Would you agree?

That's right. And I also think the outcome of that is also the formation of too many nonprofits because there is the imposter syndrome of, I'm passionate about this, but I don't think I should get paid to do this. I need to do it for others. And I'm so passionate about it. And I would just caution the entrepreneur that you give a lot away when you do it that way. No, because you can always give more. It's the fuel to impact.

There is nothing evil about profit.

Ed Howie (: 14:46

It's to scale. It's, mean, yeah, it's a fuel to impact. cannot grow business without business, without cash. Yep. Okay. And I guarantee you, if your sales are not greater next year than this year, you're not going to make more money. And you're going to, you're going to reduce the impact you have that is what fueled the whole.

thing to start off with. That's right. So I agree completely. It starts in passion. It starts in a hobby. That's how this started. but it has to be formalized. And then to your point on knowing your story, telling your story on the show, we've talked about own, earned and paid. And we have a mentor here at dust greenhouse that helps our founders understand that concept because it's so easy to come in and, I need a logo. need a website and I want to pay for.

Advertising online. That's a complex thing to unpack. And she does it so well to just say, unless you can tell me your story and you own what your story is, what is your offering? How are you impacting? What is the value you're creating? You can't do paid because you have to earn somebody else sharing your story really well. That's going to be the impact that you want to see in the market. That's how you grow your audience, which then converts to customers. And then.

converts into that amplification when you delight them in ways they don't expect.

that, wow. you know, I, the, for, I've had an opportunity to work with all kinds of businesses, profit, nonprofit, we've worked with brands locally, regionally, statewide, nationally. but we also try to distill it down into simplicity because running a business is hard and, typically founders have kind of their superpower.

Ed Howie (: 16:41

It's either like visionary, it's either like I'm like the CFO mindset. If you look at C-suite, typically a founder has to be responsible for all areas of the business, but they have an area they lean into. More than not, there are a lot of founders that just don't always get marketing. And that's always one of the riskiest things to me, that and not understanding like cashflow and like taxes. Those two things could be kind of hazardous. And so to kind of like...

take things to common denominator, not lowest, but common denominator. It's very easy from a consumer standpoint and from a business standpoint to go back to a restaurant. All right. Whether it be one rest, you have one pizza joint or you have 20 pizza joints. And what I see business owners do, no matter the size or scale is when you're in the business, when you're consumed, we believe there's three things every leader has to do. You have to run the business, you have to grow the business and you have to change the business. And no matter what, running the business will take your attention.

If you do not have that in a, a, a self, nearly self-managed self, self-fulfilling prophecy, self-fulfilling system so that you have the opportunity to grow the business. And then if you've got the ability to run the business and grow the business, then you have to change it. It's difficult to do all three. So you've got to have a team. You've got to have a posse if you will, to be able to do that effectively or opinion and a strategy. So the strategy is the deal is that you talked about messaging. We believe marketing is messaging and methodology.

strategy.

Ed Howie (: 18:09

And what we do, especially if we were less marketing minded, we immediately go to methodology and we forget about messaging. It's the situation where I've just started my own pizza restaurant. I've been open three months. Things are great. We've got great feedback. The grand opening was a smash and then off some month for no customer show up on Monday. And then maybe 10 show up on Tuesday and Wednesday. What happens? And I'll use a 1990s example when this thing called the yellow book, the yellow book, yellow pages. Thank you. Used to exist.

or there's a thing called Val Pak, which is still around, but you go in and get a coupon is the next ad sales person that walked in the door became your marketing strategy. Oh my God. And it happens today. All of a sudden you see something LinkedIn. need more sales. Oh, let's start $3,000 or $30,000 into SEM. But the messaging on your website doesn't even reflect truly who you are, or it is so undistinct.

Or like mine, there's no point of conversion. Yeah. I mean, I'll be critical of myself. That is a hard thing to think about. when you're in the effort of running the business, those are the little breadcrumbs that you have to leave out there for your audience to follow.

on our Beach on website. We're working on it right now because we have a form fill. We don't have an offer. were through and what we want like so for example, what we want to do is we want to talk to a business owner. We don't have a thing is book a call with us. I mean, that's changing. but you know what mean? But but but again, we're so busy running the business, which is taking care of our clients that we lose sight of taking care of ourselves. And that's what we all

We do that as business owners, parents, we do it in every phase. And I like to talk about on the airplane, that's why they tell you to put the mask on yourself and then take care of the kids. You can't do one or the other.

Ed Howie (: 19:58

Yeah. And right now we're talking about like the enterprise side of it, but you and I both have a passion on the human side of that.

Yeah. This is something that happens to new founders, entrepreneurs, small business, really starting, but you've helped some older brands that were old and established. They'd been doing the same thing for a long time. And because of what they do, that story did or didn't get told. And so how did you help SAEDF transform? Cause I think that's a great story.

Oh, well, thanks. so yeah, and it's actually, uh, that is a, that's great. saying that that is a great commonality of what we've done. You know, I believe that, that every business basically, um, well in life, you know, we, grow, we have plateaus, we grow, we have plateaus, we grow, we have plateaus. And I think, um, instinctively, if you look at your friends, if you look at businesses, you look at enterprises, um, there's some that hit a plateau and say, we're good, we're fine.

there's some that hit plateau and say, we're exhausted. And there's some in plateau and said, way, we're just, we're just like, we're just scratching the surface. And we have had the blessing of working with leaders who want to do more. You know, as I shared with you earlier, my foundational principle and life is actually on this. I'm is a stewardship and that is the principle of, of doing all you can with what you have today.

Personally, believe we don't, tomorrow's not guaranteed. Yesterday is done. So today is like, I mean, we put this together in 48 hours. Dude, you think like, mean, literally Jeff connected us like, Hey, I'm going to be up in Bernie Saturday. We're here right now. It was like, let's make it happen. Okay. So, so, so opportunity today, let's make it happen. with San Antonio economic development foundation, Jenna Herrera Sassata was brought in.

Justin McKenzie (: 21:43

I guess.

Ed Howie (: 21:57

after about 43, 44 years, and if you don't know Jenna, well, if you know Jenna, you know, Jenna, you don't know Jenna, you need to know Jenna. she had a vision of that, that we could truly, she could truly and her team could truly connect the San Antonio region, which is, think officially like an eight county collective, into, creating an incredible.

engine, but incredible identity and put a flag on the stand is that we're going to do this. We're going to do this together. San Antonio economic development foundation is originally SAEDF as you said, was founded 50 some years ago from business leaders who said, okay, municipalities and government is good, but if we're going to contribute as community, we have to come together as business owners and leaders.

and fund an additional and ideally complimentary engine. That complimentary between private enterprise, which is more of what they are and government is not always effective. And I believe Jenna, her team have are tapping into this effectiveness between municipality and private public private enterprise, you know, than ever before. Okay. So incredible team. So here's a couple of things that are interesting in that one is

we do not believe you change your name without your thought. They had decided they needed to change their name. Well, so in our first meeting, we're like San Antonio, San Antonio economic development foundation, five letters, not always ideal. It's like, so explain how you're a foundation. Well, at that point, they weren't even foundation. So their name was lying to the world. Okay. so that was one part, but then the deal was that they wanted to create.

a framework of scalable messaging that could support all that they envisioned and all that could come. So what it started with, was first is working with them on their all in capital campaign, all in SATX. And the business leaders rallied together as investor-based, volunteer-based. The team literally completed a $38 million capital campaign, which has led to what we've seen happen in this region.

Ed Howie (: 24:21

On the operations side, the relationships that were forged really was creating a, um, uh, a net sum greater than the independent value of a County of an area of heck, even a, um, uh, County economic because it was adding a layer of combustion to it. So, uh, they approached us, um, we had never worked with them before. I got introduced to it through a great friend.

And they were, they were stuck on the naming. They, they had incredible list of 179 names they were considering and, and it happens. And when you have a lot of really smart people, everyone has an opinion. are a lot All right. There are some tremendous good options. And so we had worked on different iterations and with the internal team, I'll say we got to a, we collaborated with them to get to a recommendation of.

good options in there.

Ed Howie (: 25:16

Here's what we think it could be. And we've gone through this, but there were still night consensus. And so one of the scariest things, sort of scary I did is looked at Jenna and Erica who was there at the time and said, give me, identify the 10 people who must be a part of this decision and give me and my team two hours in a room and we'll come to decision. Well, I will get into the inside baseball, but we had some very powerful brains in a room come together.

And we started with a list of 179 and we got down to one in two hours. And that conclusion was greater as a TX. Now you may go greater. Oh, that's creative. Okay. I've heard of greater chamber commerce where the difference was two things. And this is where the magic of distinction comes in. The foundational principle was you're not a foundation and you're not just San Antonio. So what is this area?

This area is really SATX, right? And the, can't go into some things, but, but, our first, our first lever was we had to get consensus among those leaders to refer to the organization as more than San Antonio, greater than San Antonio. So SATX. what's, what's amazing is if you notice the Spurs, jerseys the last two years.

Let's just say we were all thinking the same thing at the same time several years ago. It was come to fruition. So SATX had to be great. Greater was not the sexiest name, but it fulfilled the story is that we will be greater as SATX tomorrow than we are today. We'll be greater is a call to action is also a promise, but it's not, was not just aspirational. They were doing it already. The, in the enterprise, the operation was delivering already. The magic was the colon.

really.

Ed Howie (: 27:10

This greater colon S-A-T-X because that built up an entire, I'm going to go literature here, but that built up an entire, basically storyline structure that greater opportunity, greater growth, greater community, greater jobs. built a store structure, which they still use today.

They can tell the story of how a company from Germany or company from Chicago or upstart from San Marcos. us working together and you tapping into all that we have in this region means you can do more faster, greater if we do it in collaboration than not. I will tell you that is that foundational principle goes back to stewardship.

Is this is what we've got. We've got this incredible opportunity. We've got this credible space. We've got this incredible mindset. have this incredible, emerging generation of smart minds who have never been in college, who've never considered, technical or, or cybersecurity or whatever kinds of jobs. We have all of this stuff that no one knows about. So we have to create a framework to tell the story and inspire.

and inspire the story. Because you're bringing the audience along. And I like, what I like about the colon is it's a pause.

There's a pause, which we all need a pause.

Justin McKenzie (: 28:40

It's not the run on sentence that we're used to in today's common marketing world where it's, it's got to go now. That pause allows you to think about the possible allows you to fill in that blank. And I'll say it's a challenge that we're having in the space around Texas with Texas investors and Texas incubating hubs, because historically we've competed. Historically, it's been the silos of Texas by county and

That's right.

Justin McKenzie (: 29:08

That's a frustrating reality to me because my personal belief is that we are better together as a region. For sure. We're better collectively. So Das Greenhouse and Geekdom together is a better formula than Das Greenhouse and Geekdom separate. Yeah. We should be agnostic and it's really the stewardship of what we're offering to those founders, those businesses. And I appreciate the word stewardship. It's come up in my life in the last 60 days in a lot of ways.

As I've been working with the comfort area foundation and comfort Texas. And we talk about comfort. No, yeah, I comfort. but it is the stewardship of a heritage. It's the stewardship of the land and the conservation, the water. There is a fear of growth. When you talk about greater SATX, you talk about the greater Hill country district. there's a lot of angst in our public persona.

Great day.

Justin McKenzie (: 30:06

that I think if we can pause and really think about who we're impacting, it is that next level of workforce. It's the kids graduating from all of these high schools. how do we keep them here? Because right now, the greater SATX region exports so much talent.

That, you know, that is exactly, we, I can't say, well, I can't say we have never taken a client because we needed the sales. Okay. But as I've gotten older and wiser, past the first couple of years, we, as I talked about allotting with, we've had the blessing to work with people who allot.

You know, it was, it was incredible opportunity for us to work with Jenna, team and now Ceci Redmond leads that. But what you just hit on, was what was our driver for this messaging. And like I said, Ceci and the entire, team with Jenna, their passion is jobs. I mean, that is truly their metric because their passion is the, the, the future.

S A T X community member and the families they impact again, experience impact. Their passion as an organization is impact and it is, it is, um, it is intentional impact. And just what you talked about is that, that we can fear growth for the unknown. However, if we align together with our key stakeholders,

and find the common good purpose. is incredible, incredible accelerates.

Justin McKenzie (: 31:57

And in San Antonio, and this is the history part that I love, I imagine I can name some people that founded the foundation that was SAT EDF. And it was the General McDermott's of the world in the fifties and the red barn and the group of leaders that were privately investing in the future of San Antonio and public funding was following it. And in so many ways we've tried to flip that script and

I'm guilty of it here with public support from our county and city, extremely appreciative. But it had to be matched with private funding, which is the ongoing sustainability of success.

Well, it had to be matched with funding, but before the funding, there had to be a community. Yes. And, and, you know, the, I don't want to misspeak, without Google helping me, but, community and common. There's a, there's, there's a lot of connective tissue there, right? Okay. And so what you've done here, as far as rallying the community, it's hard to get the funding if you don't have the commonality of purpose and you have that alignment, right?

Energy. Yeah.

Ed Howie (: 33:09

And I mean that literally and figuratively for whether it's doing what you're doing here, whether it is starting a business or whether it is like literally like, for whatever reason, your business, you, built your business to a hundred million, 200 million, and all of sudden the operations team or the operations is all over the rail. What's happened is someone's lost the common, the common expectation, the common purpose, the common vision. so yeah, so, so it's, and.

You know, uh, as, stewardship is my, like my guiding foundation, um, I have such a heart and passion for entrepreneurs. One, I was, uh, I was a closet entrepreneur for, uh, maybe since birth, you know, I, I, I mean, this is, you could probably appreciate it. I had it, but like, I mean, I wasn't the best employee and I'll a little slowly build up, but like,

But I always like, realizing what, but yeah, we could do this, but what if we did this? It was always the what if.

We share that in common. have frustrated many of CFOs and because there's always that what if. And then the impact of entrepreneurialism is, this could be a game changer. This could make this so much easier. This could really help this group of people.

entleman who hired me back in: 1989

Ed Howie (: 35:00

because like I was the one going, Hey, we need sales in this restaurant. We're not selling brownies. Let's do cookies. Uh, wait, wow. Imagine that warm cookies at two o'clock at a down to his, and I'm the one that got called to the president's office. The Chick-fil-A reminded me that in 1996, we don't sell cookies. I will know that they sell cookies. Now they sell tongue cookies, but that's all they do really. Right. But, the deal is that, that it is that entrepreneur spirit.

was a good idea.

Justin McKenzie (: 35:22

Well, I'm dead.

Ed Howie (: 35:30

which at the same point you have this vision. had a speaker at event last night that said, at the same point you have that track in your mind saying, yeah, but, but you're just like 30 seconds away from failure. You know what mean? So what I love about having just met you, but this common like passion for the isolated entrepreneur. And I believe you can be an isolated entrepreneur, as a CEO of a probably whole company, you'd be a isolated entrepreneur as the one who owns the business, but.

Yeah.

Ed Howie (: 35:58

that entrepreneurial, that forward driven leader, there is risk and isolation. And that's what I love about what y'all are doing. What I try to do is that name it, claim it, and come together and let's help each other.

And we would welcome that for mentors to come find our community and plug in and for that closeted entrepreneur or that mom that has a business, but she didn't call it a business. It's just something she wants to do. come in and find other people that are doing similar activities and recognize that everything you're frustrated about, they're frustrated with too at some level. And you might find a way that-

Yeah, that's right. They found a solution. You found the solution. It is coming together and finding what's going to help accelerate that impact. it, and I think that's true of elected leaders too. I have a heart for local leadership because it's not partied elections. It truly is a servant, public servant that is putting their brand out there and they're putting themselves out there in today's world.

And I think for all of our entrepreneur friends, this whole concept of being visible on the internet is hard. Opening yourself up to social media and the commentary and everything that comes with it, very difficult. But I have to applaud the disruptive employee that does bring innovation, like cookies, that does bring change and it takes a forcing function for any culture, any group, any momentum.

to cause that shift and see a different track. And so it takes the wild ones a little bit. Um, but our elected leaders, I just want to give that for our mayors and city council. And we're to go through a change in San Antonio over the next season. and there, there's a lot to that for the family, for the person, uh, for the greater audience. That's really supportive of the last guy or the next guy or.

Ed Howie (: 38:05

And I think, you know, I know, well, what I love about that, that is, I think it's a great reminder, whether it be government, whether it any organization is that, that I got to believe most, and I am definitely a hopeful enthusiast, okay? And I'm okay with that. I believe most people really want to do the right thing. All right.

or gals.

Ed Howie (: 38:35

I believe things can happen whether it be you have a horrible boss that makes your life miserable directly and directly. And so you lose that fire or whatever. I don't believe people like for the examples I use on multiple areas again, bringing back to restaurants is that when's the last time you were served cold fries in a restaurant? Okay. Probably more than once, but that doesn't make sense because the billboard doesn't say cold fries is exit. says hot fries is exit. Well,

What happened is whoever cooked your fries and got them to your plate. Was it, they set it their intention to give you cold fries or they got distracted. believe they got distracted. The world's distracted. We're distracted today more than ever. You know what mean? and so I, I, I had a mentor look at me, and after a very direct conversation and she looked at me said, do not get distracted.

The world's distracted.

Ed Howie (: 39:33

And I have that voice in myself because for the last year, personally, I've been working on mitigating distractions and refining focus. And as business leaders, as entrepreneurs, as anyone, but specifically whether you're startup, whatever that entrepreneur mindset is like, is our, our secret sauce is kind of the ability to think about multiple things, but we also can't get distracted. And I think that.

Working from your home for four weeks on your project or your business versus coming together like what you're doing here is for is an incredible antidote to distraction. And frankly, it also, I think, is an incredible enabler to you even being a better steward of.

Well, I'm excited to get to know you further after this episode and to figure out where we make connection, where we can continue to connect what we're doing here to what you're doing in a broader, greater SATX, entire region. But the BTY model of how you're taking that whole human approach, whole organization approach to excellence, to impact.

Yeah. And, and, and, you know, I'll, I'll let you in behind the wizard's deal is that,

Ed Howie (: 40:57

What we do is we listen to the business leader and we help them realize that they typically have their story within them already. The business leader, entrepreneur, CEO, CBO, whatever, the, the, team in our brand mapping sessions, we ask great questions and then we listen. And then we literally kind of like harvest out the gold. We kind of mind for it. And then nine times out of 10 is a refinement of what

We're saying already, but again, in trying to the business and grow the business, change the business, we're distracted. And so there's, think the greatest joy our team delivers and yes, sales matter, but as when you get a organization aligned around their story and they can tell their story over and over again, and it, and it attracts people that they can then impact more. That is incredible stewardship. It's incredible gift. And, uh, it is incredible to see.

deceive, to see, to see vision at whatever stage it is realized. And, I think that's why, I think that's why we started a business. think that's why we joined the new company is that we believe we can do more through this opportunity than we did in our previous or current deal. but you talked about it and it's kind of a trite phrase, but it takes a village. It takes a community.

I think anything anyone could do to attract community and foster community is a gift to themselves as well as others. So I celebrate what you are.

Well, in all of what you just said, go back to every leader in that world needs a colon. They need that pause of what is it that's next. And what a beautiful idea that you've given greater SATX in this example. But to the people you impact and the people you lead, is, I'm sure it's an often reminder for them to tell their story more intentionally and more directly.

Justin McKenzie (: 43:01

How do people get in touch with you? How do they find the wonder of woo? Yeah.

Yeah. So, there's several ways. so our, our, our primary enterprises, BTY creative, be bold T true Y Y U U BTY creative.com. and then I have another company called serve others well as a training company to help, with several business partners. we refer to a service royalty kind of fun, some chick-fil-a folks, some USA folks. but we basically, can help companies that

They kind of already know their story figure out how you kind of operationalize it, how you systemize it, how you impact that experience and the impact as well. So from that, we have a new podcast called the Wonder of Woo podcast. The Wonder of Woo has three O's. We've got about 40 episodes there, but then specifically, and it's not that it's current, but it's not new content as several years ago, me and my team produced about 70 episodes of my first podcast or first show.

called How We Grow a Brand, H-O-W-I-E, How We, my last name, Grow a Brand. That's available out there on YouTube on podcasts as well. And each episode really is speaking to the entrepreneur about how you can grow your business faster, more effectively, or with more intention. And so there's some great stories we tell our brands that have, that were, especially for startups. So frankly, like if, if you're a startup, you're considering a startup,

There's incredible insights. think you can find from just going to how you grow brand, even though that is not the newest episodes, but then, uh, I'm ed Howie.com at howie h w i e.com. So we'd love to help anyway.

Justin McKenzie (: 44:41

It's a good reminder to me at this moment to encourage people to follow The Building Texas Show and subscribe on YouTube and really go find where we can connect.

The people you're connecting with already and the stories, what I love is that what you're harvesting here is scalable, applicable principles that I can learn from someone who's already done it to increase the probability of keeping myself out of the ditch.

And if we can help one person do that, it's worth everything we're putting into it. stewardship. It comes back to stewardship. So Ed, Howie, I appreciate you taking the time on a Saturday to come sit down with us and really dive into how you create impact around and where we can all do that in our own little ways as well. That's awesome. Thank you for the way that you're building Texas and I look forward to getting to know you.

I look forward to continuing the conversation for sure.