 Hi and welcome to School of Hustle, I'm your host Sarah and this is the show where we chat with everyday entrepreneurs about everything that goes into starting a new venture. Over the last 15 years social media has taken the world by storm and our lives are becoming increasingly digital with the average American spending nearly 11 hours a day looking at a screen. Our next guest knows this all too well as both the co-founder of a digital marketing agency and an influencer with nearly one million followers. Adam Padilla is the CEO of BrandFire, an agency specializing in brand strategy, content creation and social media. And aside from his professional accomplishments, Adam is also an influential content creator. His Instagram account Adam the Creator is one of the largest original meme pages with over one billion total yearly impressions across social channels. You can find him giving his expert branding advice in Adweek, the Wall Street Journal, Forbes and Fast Company. Adam welcome to the show it is so great to have you here. Thank you great to have you here. Yeah in your office here at BrandFire in Manhattan. That's right. So tell us a little bit about BrandFire. BrandFire is a creative agency founded in 2012. We handle all kinds of accounts from consumer packaged goods to healthcare companies and we basically create brands and do digital marketing for companies. And you also do some content creation I believe too. Yeah a little bit of that on my sort of personal side. Yeah that's I'm so interested in that as well because unlike a lot of entrepreneurs you also have a huge social media presence just as a person with Adam the Creator over 700,000 followers. Yeah yeah it's sort of my passion project and my expression of sense of humor and you know art and I guess if you it's a loose term just to call it art I guess. It is art though I mean you create some hilarious memes on that account. Thank you. It's one of the largest meme accounts in social media today. Well at least in the original sector in terms of original content you know when I started Instagram posting it wasn't even you know because it was a cool thing or I wanted to try to get a following or anything like that it was really to post my sketches I was doing a sketchbook. So what I try to do is express myself through the creative agency but I found that when I did a lot of work for clients to keep myself fresh I wanted to do work for myself. Right because you have to have your own passions there as well. Yes. I hear you. Yes because it's you know it winds up winds up dulling your creative you know inspiration a little bit if it's only if everything you're doing is in service. Yeah. So at some times you know I had to look back I had to say I hadn't drawn for a long time I used to illustrate a lot and I picked up a notebook and started to draw a sketch every day and posted it to Instagram. Oh was it a mean it wasn't a mean comedy style or not really it started out just as sort of illustration exercises like finishing I created a little game for myself. I said I want to finish a drawing because I kept kept a lot of sketchbooks in the past problem with sketchbooks is you don't finish things. You kind of do partials. Oh my God I hear you. I have like a sketchbook as well and it's pretty much all just half parts parts. Yeah because sometimes you get to the middle and then you just come up you're like I don't know. I'm not going to have time to finish it. I don't know what to do with it. Yeah. I don't know how to resolve this hand. I'm not going to forget how you envisioned it in your head years and yours thinking you know I'm just going to start from the beginning and do something else. That's the key. That's the thing I wanted to really like tackle is that yeah the idea of perfection and what I wanted to do it never really works out that way. You know you start the thing and it never really works out that way so you give up. So my thought was I'm going to do a sketch I'm going to finish the sketch every day. How do you continuously create these brilliant concepts and not get creator's fatigue. I'm a YouTuber and it is I put out a video every week and I'm struggling to come up with ideas. Yeah it's a struggle. It's a struggle. So it's every single post is a struggle and it's and when I say every that's a broad stroke of course maybe maybe one in 10 I wake up or something and I have an idea. I feel so inspired today. I have an idea. It's not even like it doesn't hit you like you know I don't consider it like you do this high art but I just I do consider every act of creation some sort of like an experience like a spiritual experience in some level. Yeah. Like something hits you. Yeah. Maybe one out of 10 I'll go I have a funny idea. I'll chuckle about it and I'll do it and it's not that painful and it goes out nine out of 10 times. It's like what am I if I do this is derivative if I do it and I think too hard. I have to pull myself away from it. Yeah. I find myself if I'm trying to think too hard and solve the problem of how to write something funny. Right. You kill it. Well I was going to do this later in the interview but since we're on the topic I have some memes that you created and I love for you to walk me through your creative process with how you did this. So let's let me let me get the ones that I found hilarious. So this is a bunch of fish with mascara and they're doing their eyelashes and it says nobody girls putting on mascara. So where did you come up with this concept? I had watched my wife put on any eyeliner or mascara product anything in her eye. Right. It's kind of like that. That looks pretty good. Every time. I see it. You know it's like it's a funny we make fun of it with you know it poke fun and stuff you know she's the best and we're laughing about it and then I went to bed that night and it just this is one of those the one out of 10 that just came like I said it's like a fish like a grouper or something and I'm like huh I went to and you know it's like went to bed around 11 30 or something. I went to my nightstand took out my phone and started looking at pictures of fish just so I wouldn't lose it. It was right. It was my version of us of writing down the note. Yep. Yep. Yep. I can't tell you how many times I think I have the idea. Great. I'll write it down. Gone. Yes. Gone. Yes. And it's interesting to me that you came up with this in bed because I feel like my best ideas also come up when I'm like laying in bed. Yes. Bed and shower. Why do you think that is because we're not thinking about it. We're just like zoning out and that's when the creative moments come to you. Yes. It's when you're not trying. You're not trying. This one is my favorite that you did recently. It's a take on night quill except it says year quill hibernate and it just says shut up and take my stimulus money and then it says sleep through the entire year and 2020 fast. This I thought was hilarious. Like end your headache fast right. Yeah. This is the headache. If you produce these items I think they would be a big seller. They would sell. I think they sell those on the corner but I don't think they're called year quill. These are I think it's just everybody you know that's the thing. It comes from frustration. Yes. It's like I look at something. I'm like this is insane. Yeah. I really am. And you think can you just fast forward it. I wish I could go to sleep and wake up. Yeah hibernation. Hibernation. Yeah hibernation. Great option. Hibernate through it. I'll lose some weight. I'll get right all the good things. Let's talk about brand fire a little bit. Yeah. What came first? Adam the creator of brand fire. Brand fire came first. Adam the creator came about two or three years after that. Oh okay. Yeah after the creation of brand fire. And why call it brand fire? Well it was actually I was trying to find a name that was explanatory in and of itself. So that any client would just get it what we were trying to do. Yeah. I was going through different styles of name. One of them was like really kind of funky hipster-y you know stones and sticks or something. Yeah yeah yeah. Like some abstract. There's a lot of those but I think brand fire it's clear what you do. It's just clear. It's like not trying to be so cool it's just what it is. But you are so cool. Yeah. Without trying. You know you never feel that way but it's you know but the idea being like you know get out of the way you know it's what it is you know and to try to build somebody's brand up and I've always been fascinated with brands. So talk to me about how how'd you get started and how did you end up there. So what was the first steps you took when you started brand fire to kind of get the name out. Well you know I was lucky to have a great mentor in Jesse Itzler who was sort of like a super connector and he's a partner now in brand fire and then he grows from word of mouth. So it's like the first degree circle you know there's a six degree of separation thing and the first degree is the you know the initial contact when you do work with some of these people and then their secondary contacts know about it and then you start to hear you know you start to create a buzz. Word of mouth at first. Yes. Okay. Yes. And then it continues to be. So you started it about three years before adding the creator. So I believe that was in 2009 you started. Yeah. Brand fire. Yeah. You know Incorporated under the name brand fire in 2012 but was operating as brand fire like started up that that company at around that time. So how did you get the funding to do this. Was it through your partner. It was through my partner at the outset and sort of modest you know it wasn't anything crazy. Like you know we didn't have a huge lease or anything and there wasn't a massive overhead because it was small. Right. So it was just enough runway pretty much to cover salaries for let's say half a year and you know and modest salaries at that just to keep people going. Yeah. Because you have to start somewhere. You have to start somewhere. You have to live. You have to eat. But again you're not going to get. You don't get rich. You know you're not making yourself rich. You know. Right. You're just creating sort of running. You're just starting the base of success in building from there. Exactly. And it grows itself. You know you want to you want to eat off of that once it grows. And then as it started to grow the finance wasn't a problem. It became self-sufficient. Nice. And right now you know as things are changing even with this COVID situation. Yes. You know things adapt. People need more nimble agencies that are more flexible. So with Brandfire do you also help brands with their social media presence. We do. Yeah. It's really about you know creating a good content mix connecting with the audience. You know what I do with the you know with my clients is you have to turn your brand into a personality. That's what a brand is. It's so true. I think that's a really good point you make is people don't buy for the product sometimes they literally buy for the brand. I mean think about how many people just buy an Apple phone just because it's the new Apple phone even though it's so much more expensive than the Google Pixel which is just as good in my opinion. I think it's a matter of you know we're used to the commoditization of a lot of things especially nowadays like you know you know I'll go on to Amazon and if I'm going to if I'm in the market for a glass protector for my phone I'm not brand loyal it's like I look for the glass protector with the best rating yeah and I look and I go okay this this looks pretty good this looks it's a good price so I think things are commoditized that way a lot of things are commoditized that way you can differentiate when you do have a solid brand you still have to have a great product that gets well reviewed and gets talked about but the brand itself if you could step out from the commoditization pack you can even charge a premium but you could you don't have to but I think it just creates like more of a connection between you and the customer yeah and they understand where you're coming from and so where do you start when you have a new client and they want to establish themselves with a really solid brand what's that conversation like I listen I listen to the to the leader the thought leader okay whoever the thought leader or leaders are they're usually one at the head that really has a vision yeah and you listen to where why they want to do what they do and you know because I always look at something like you have a you know the classic story is that you have the how you do things yeah and the why you do things yes the how is just like a mechanism right I'm doing the why is the important thing you have the why now right and the next step would be coming up with creative branding concepts to help them reach their prospective consumer yes so what's what's the next step for you when you're working with a client do you ask them maybe what did you have in mind or do you guys come up with a bunch of creative ideas yes so you get you'll typically get a creative brief for a project so they might want to launch a new because it's usually not just launching a brand into the marketplace it's usually changing the brand along the way while they launch products or launch something so it's like you kind of like pivot you know so let's say the new product is you know trail mix or something we're doing and it's nature's eats is one of my one of my clients who I love and so okay if the trail mix is coming out the brief is you want to sell X amount of units across these you know platforms and this is where you're gonna sell and this is what you want to do this how many want to move so they decide on the platforms they decide oh that's the why and then you know the platforms and then you yeah you know where they're gonna go you want to know where you know I want to know if this product is gonna be in Kroger's like or is it gonna be just an Amazon product I need to know who the consumer is and who the competition is okay those are the two things that's how you triangulate you look at what's the competition yeah and when you create a brand yeah think about it like you're running you know it's almost a political race because if somebody stands for this and someone stands for this and you're gonna come in as the Green Party or whatever right how are you different what can you be about what is that what is your lane that is both differentiating and true to you okay that's the puzzle it's like how do you differentiate it yeah but how do you make it also an expression of the your authentic self as the brand gotta be how can you fake it because only you can be your best self it's true and that's what you do you tell you find their best self and you find the version of that self that's going to differentiate among the be marketable as well yeah so now is is that when you start coming up a creative yes then you create I like to create sort of a mood board that's about that style and what you're trying to do when you just kind of get abstract a little bit okay but you take them along and that's now we've entered the creative process fully it's yeah past research and this is where things can can get sometimes really challenging yeah and we were talking about creators fatigue and I feel like that's sometimes where this kind of comes into play yes or you just have a brilliant idea that pops into your head suddenly and it just works so well it's you know I like to bridge that logic because you're sort of detected the shift between the logic and then the art yeah art is like you know muse and fancy and logic is more like well if this than that if the X is Y then you have to be Z and yep I like to try to bridge the logic right into that creative process it's not as artistic as you think a lot of it is whether it's a font choice whether it's a color choice it's analytical because you look at it and you say well we can't do a font like this or like that okay it's like process of elimination a lot of times gotcha or you know well you know every typeface or every color scheme has a has a meaning something that's create it's communicating it means if I did something and sort of like a rag tag kind of look you'd say okay that's small market kind of artists and look if I did something that looks really clean and sleek you think oh okay that's elevated yeah everything has a meaning to it so it's not like art it's more like communication right so you're creating whatever you landed on let's say logically you said well you know you do one of those coordinates but we want to be in the luxury space but we also want to be a reimagining of the luxury space so a little bit of it so you create okay that's what you're doing so what typefaces would accomplish that what styles would accomplish that and you run it against those metrics and then when you I like to pick no more than two or three varieties I feel like it's irresponsible for a design company or creative yeah to give too many options then what do you do if you if I'm that person I don't know what to do I think of it like there's too many options it becomes overwhelming much it's like a stylist like I'm like their stylist yeah imagine somebody gives you choice of 12 different outfits I don't know right right say A or B maybe see okay I like that one yes so I try to do the hard work to call it down okay I might look at 12 versions myself but then I kill it with your expert opinion in creating your own brand you really do know what works best well yeah yeah you like to hope that there's that respect going into the relationship yeah where they do kind of defer to a lot of your choices and that's a good thing that's always a healthy thing yeah at the same time you also want to be flexible enough especially if the client has great taste I know my profile of my perfect client they do have good taste if they admittedly don't which is okay because that's what if you're hiring us to create something that's okay as long as they're also open-minded enough to take a risk yeah then that's awesome then bad taste doesn't matter away a client recently you know I don't like to consider it turning away yeah yeah yeah it's usually you could just tell yeah beginning stages of the conversations where it's like maybe down the road at some point but I don't know yeah because it's it's not even just for me it's preservation for them I don't want to I could be so annoying if you if you don't want to hear like you're passionate about my stuff right so like I'll call the client and go oh my god I had this great idea let's see if you're not into it I could be a little much yeah a little much and that's okay it's not their fault right you know it's just not the right fit it's not the right fit but for me the best client like I said if you're open-minded willing to take a risk yeah willing to go you just got to do it you can't like you know analysis paralysis yes overthink the thing for a year well I think that goes back to how you started Adam the creator where you were getting yes you weren't actually completing things and so you just said I'm gonna hold myself accountable and I'm just going to post these every day and it goes back to your original beliefs so yeah it's very much they're different things but they're so tied together I love that you connected it because I that's exactly right and it's what I keep on trying to I call it the finishing muscle and anybody who's worked with me knows what I'm talking about is that I consider the first 95% of the of a project equal in difficulty to the last 5% it's equal interesting it's equal it's very easy to get something 95% done but not launch it yeah actually I shouldn't say very easy but it's it takes this much work to do that and it takes this much work to actually close it off and say we're done let's ship the thing yeah so I think there's a lot of fear in that oh yeah people you know they don't want it to go the launch to go poorly yes you know accepting the vulnerability that you're putting yourself in it's fear it's vulnerability it's it's knowing that you're falling short of the perfection in your mind yeah because you're the perfection in your mind's a fantasy yeah it's true you ever have moments like that I mean you've accomplished so much but I think even the most accomplished people have moments where they doubt themselves and they have all the time it's full of doubt it's it's on either side it's just doubt so how do you handle that you go you make the commitment to I have to go yeah it's like I have to that well that was the practice that I continue to practice and Adam the Creator is I have to post before I go to sleep every single day wow I have to post before I fall asleep tonight but this isn't perfect but although all the words you know all the voices it's not it's not perfect it's not I could be better this isn't the greatest idea Adam you got to post it well you certainly are a very creative person you've done a lot you've accomplished a lot and I wonder like looking back at yourself when you first started doing this is there anything that you would want to tell yourself maybe some advice or something that would be good to avoid something happened that was a giant waste of time you know it's so funny you say that because here you say that thank you it's so kind to say you know I tend to not feel successful I think the most successful people feel that way because we're always looking at the next thing the next thing yeah you know true and I like ah like I just had like a deja vu moment or something you know I have to have like a you know a host talking to me about my success it's like this is success right yeah I guess what I would tell my younger self is you're never gonna feel successful unless you feel successful you're never there's never gonna be a moment where you're like I did it to any to my younger self yeah the idea is like just create don't look for create and finish and put it out finish finish finish the thing opening up when I say that 95 five thing it is so much easier to open up a new project when you're at 95% done or 96% done and not close this one so much easier it doesn't seem easier and you elevate it to say because you're always thinking on to the next one on to the next one finish that one yeah not only finish that one but put it out get feedback and then do another one yes don't do parallel things do the thing and do it and put all of the energy into a simple thing and finish it because you look at it and go it's 98% done I'm not seeing any results from it there's no there's magic in the finishing yeah not in the beginning well that's such good advice and you're just filled with it I feel like this is one of the most inspiring interviews because of all of the advice I mean I'm certainly gonna take a look at the projects I haven't completed and finish them so thank you for that yes it's been so wonderful speaking with you Adam and thank you to everyone who tuned in today and if you want to learn more about Brandfire visit brandfire.com and follow them on Instagram at brandfire or if you would like to laugh follow Adam on his meme account Adam the creator trust me it is hilarious I follow it it's just a good laugh every day this is all for this episode of school puzzle you can keep up with all of our episodes on YouTube Apple podcast Google podcast or wherever you can stream and download podcast and if you like what you heard please leave a review share it with your friends and subscribe to our show we'll see you next time bye