Digitiv Podcast Guest Appearance

Transcript:

Brittany Brown: Hi, you’re listening to digital dirty marketers podcast with Rob winters and Brittany brown. This is our entrepreneur edition, and today we have Bobby G, the owner and founder of Propr Design. And he’s here to talk to us today about how his unique perspective has been the key to his success.

Rob Winters: Welcome, today. We’re joined by the founder and owner of Propr Design, Bobby G. Bobby G. Thanks so much for joining us today.

Bobby G: Thanks for having me.

Rob Winters: I have to admit that Britain I, we went completely stocker on you leading up to this interview, going through your website might have been on LinkedIn a little bit, all of that serves to show you have a really impressive history, both in education and the professional spaces where you kind of exist serving as adjunct design faculty for the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, as well as a board member for the American Advertising Federation of Baltimore, I thought was pretty cool. And that your positions as senior and principal designer for some well-regarded agencies, all of that show you have a really clear passion for branding and the marketing industries. But what led you to make the decision to found Propr Design?

Bobby G: Well, I appreciate you stalking me, and sounds like I’ve done a good job of making sure that information I went out there is what you found. Now there why did I find myself taking the plunge and getting myself in this predicament? That’s a good question. So unlike other people, I think my story has been a fight but an adventure, but it hasn’t been easy. Everything from high school. I mean, my whole life. And when I kind of found myself out of grad school, geez, about ten years ago, my number one goal for my career was to be, you know, a senior level designer, art director, Creative Director for an agency. And within two years of graduating, I had that job well, those people that that’s extremely self-motivated because I don’t like regret, you know, if I can vision for the future, and I’m, you know, an old man. And I look back and say, Oh, what, nothing terrifies me more than not busting my ass to reach my potential.

I found myself as a creative director of an agency, and I helped, you know, I worked with that agency for about two and a half years, just under that when it was time to part ways there, I was at a crossroads. And I reached my career goals; I was worried that I wasn’t ever going to hit that mark. But once I did it, I was like, well, now why I took about a month or so off, just to kind of recover and regain my sanity before I knew what I wanted to do. And, you know, thinking back to then in 2014, the day that that agency for the last time I was 5050, wanting to go be you know, a senior person at another agency, or, you know, a senior person at some other job that I didn’t know what it was, or to start my own agency, there was a few things that had to happen for me to be able to confidently make that plunge. But every day that went by, the needle pointed towards starting my own agency. The real reason was that looking back from my life; if you asked me in 2014, if I ever envisioned myself to be an entrepreneur, I would say absolutely not never. But now, you know, reflecting back, like, I’ve always had sort of this entrepreneurial spirit that made me kind of the worst employee that you could hire because I have a lot of ideas. And I bore easy for not challenging, and I’m not able to kind of learn and explore and be challenged in my job, then one of two things would happen, I would either bust my ass to try to change that culture. So I can make a difference, or I bust my ass to leave that job. Once I hit that peak role as a creative director, and I looked around at some of these other agencies, my true entrepreneurial bog was that I saw a better way to run agencies. That’s sort of been my one mission since then, is to actually work in our client’s best interests. It’s surprising to me, after all these years, that’s still a differentiator for us. Most entrepreneurs see a better way to do something or a different way to do something to improve a situation. I see other agencies and other people starting and running agencies that are successful, despite my perception of it, all they could do and I can do it. And that’s all the motivation I needed to, you know, take the plunge plus, you know, some things had to happen with health care and things like that with my family. All those things fell into place about six years later, and you know, kind of more motivated than ever.

Brittany Brown: Did you always know that you wanted to start your own thing? Or did it kind of just happen when you have that moment of I’m not doing this anymore, but I need to figure something out?

Bobby G: No, I never felt like I needed to figure something out. Nor did I ever see myself starting an agency. Oh, my God, no, because my mission was to, you know, move the Baltimore from Philly beginning of 2007, the end of 2006. Rather, my goals were to work at agencies. I had some in housework. I had some agency experience at that time, but I didn’t have the career I knew I could have. It was always getting a job applying for a job to make myself the best my mentality coming out of grad school was I would choose who I wanted to work for. And I made sure that I knew when they were hiring and when they were hiring, it was the easy choice to hire me. So I made myself the best possible candidate. And that’s just through hard work and reading and practicing and learning. Never in a million years thought about starting an agency until I left my last job. And again, it was like, Well, where do I go from here? And I talked to some of the other big agencies and really to demotivate her from getting another job was, well, if I’m going to bust my ass, why don’t I plus my ass and make my dreams come true versus someone else’s, then back to if they can do it, I can do it put the chip on my shoulder. Like I said, I’m a fighter. So kind of just went after it putting the time in and working hard and undergrad and grad school even you know, they were like, I want to start agency, even co-workers like I want to run an agency and they’re still not doing it. Somehow I found myself doing it, though.

Rob Winters: No time like the present. I’m just envisioning that I think we’ve all seen this meme where the person has the no records tattoo.

Bobby G: I say that quite often. “No Ragrets”!

Rob Winters: Okay, so you have extensive education in different forms of digital art and animation. I thought actually, you have some really cool combinations. There were a lot of people I’ve worked with who they might have been a creative director or something, they often seem to have one specific specialty. So I thought it was really cool that you had this kind of wide variety of expertise that made me curious on how has that shaped the Strategic Services that proper is offering to your clients?

Bobby G: That’s a great question. So the way I look at it is there’s no dogma in branding, Design, marketing, those words of agencies that practice one philosophy of marketing, like inbound, we’re inbound, it’s going to work for everybody. And that’s not true. It’s always a combination of different practices, different schools of thought, different approaches, different strategies. It’s always been my way to learn the most I can about the situation and then apply what I understand or bring collective minds together to brainstorm solutions. Really, I just had this insatiable curiosity. I wouldn’t say I have any expertise in animation, I wouldn’t say I have any expertise in multimedia. I would say my expertise, I have experience, I have knowledge, I have practice, but I didn’t have the enthusiasm for those things like I do for running a brand development marketing agency with that enthusiasm. Plus practice leads to being passionate about it. A lot of people talk about, you know, following your passion. I think that that’s obviously cliche and bad advice. But it’s what are you enthusiastic about what excites you? Right? And why don’t you put into practice, and really get into it and live it, that’s when you could be passionate about right, I have a creative mind, I had that insatiable curiosity. You know, I read a lot, I continue to pursue, you know, knowledge and understanding across nonfiction and fiction, like it just you know, makes you a well rounded, well read thinker, when we put that into practice. And how we can help our clients best is that we want to holistically understand our situation, we don’t want to look at symptoms, and address symptoms, because most agencies will come in and say like, they’ll intake a lead, and the clients like I need a new website and the agency, my experience, and what I’ve seen other agencies, rather, ours will say we’re happy to help you scope that out and put it together, they’re not asking why they need it, and why they think they need it. Most clients come forward with a solution to a problem they don’t understand. It’s my job, it’s our job and proper to consult with them, advise them on the best way to not address just that symptom, but the causes of those symptoms. You know, that’s where the sort of integrated holistic thinking comes into play. That’s where sort of our cognitive thinking where we learn and experience and understand and collectively come together, one of the best traits of human beings is that, you know, with our collective learning and understanding, we can solve any, almost any problem. That’s an inherent trait that we all have. And I certainly like to exploit it to be able to best serve our customers and help them create an advantage and see their brand has potential.

Rob Winters: So I can really appreciate that coming from an agency space where my last agency life, that is not how it was ever described. I think you can feel that pain where it was, if we’re going to do a website, we want to do scalable websites we want to go in we want to be able to do this step and repeat so we can sell this to 50 people and not have access cost. So actually I really like your approach, I can see why from a client perspective, that would be a huge value add versus just coming in to sell me something.

Bobby G: You see, we’re definitely irreverent here me as the most irreverent person, you know, we don’t want to sell cake to fat kids, right? We don’t want to sell you what you want. We want to help you understand what you need and then deliver that, again, that’s working in our clients best interest; there’s no shortage of my colleagues and peers out there that will be glad to take your money and give you exactly what you want and fluff your ego all day, we have no interest in that we want every client to be a case study every engagement to be a referral to be a recommendation to be a review. We want our customers to be allies and fans of us and appreciate what we’ve done for them. It’s not how can we systematize this and create sort of this factory or, you know, interchangeable parts type approach to where how can we maximize revenue from each client? How can we, you know, milk them dry? How can we nickel and dime them? How can you know, none of that is any interest to me, we won’t do it. And I don’t even see the value of it. Because when you look at how agencies were their profit margins are around 20 25% agencies like proper are more like 40 to 50%. That’s not because we charge too much, like one of my colleagues said to me, and rather insulted me because he has no idea how we operate. It’s because we’re so profitable because we’re freaking great at what we do. And you know, we have processes and people in place that kick-ass, and that allows us to charge competitive rates, competitive prices make a lot of profit off.

Brittany Brown: I like your approach. And I will say that I think you just gave me my favorite quote, ever the selling cake to package I love that.

Bobby G: I didn’t make it up. Someone taught me how to coach a couple of years ago that told me to do that. And he’s just so fake cake, the fat kids. And I’m like, that’s why he wasn’t my coach for very long.

Brittany Brown: I do love that quote, though. So switching gears a little bit going to social media, we’ve spoken to several businesses that are fairly active on their social media. And when we asked them if they use it to support their business for growth strategy and client acquisition, they say it’s more about word of mouth than social media that makes a big difference for them. As a brand strategist, you know, the value of social media? are you leveraging that to drive client acquisition or lying on word of mouth?

Bobby G: Great question. You got to know who your customers are and where they’re at where they’re looking for you for us. You know, number one, fuck Facebook, too. I do LinkedIn; the business has a LinkedIn. And we maintain that and keep you know fresh content up there. We’re not acquiring any clients through our business, LinkedIn, by personal LinkedIn. Absolutely. We bought as a consultant, as a brand advisor, as a marketing advisor, creative advisor. All those things I do from an advisory perspective, and a consulting perspective, my thought and ideas need to be out there. My whole content strategy or marketing strategy for 2021 is building off of what we did in 2020, which is I got inspired again to start writing; I was fortunate to find some great people to bring on the team that has allowed me to extract myself from working in the business to be able to work on the business. For us, LinkedIn, having a great LinkedIn profile for me and the team kind of get on board with that doing their own is important. As a general rule of thumb, social media depends on what your brand is all about, your business strategy, and where your customers are. So if you’re running a direct-to-consumer brand, you need social media, right? That’s really how it all works. If you’re a retail brand, you need some social media, if you are a b2b brand, it’s again, getting your leadership on LinkedIn, sharing your content, having them create share opinions, and through writing and videos and things like that, that’s going to help. There’s no dogma here. There’s no one approach. I think if I was going to give any advice around how to use social media, as an agency, use it to just, you know, stay top of mind, whereas Instagram, we just post good-looking work on there. For us. It’s not about good Design as the purpose of our existence. It’s a good design that brings results. So just showing the work while that’s appealing to peers, colleagues, and potential customers don’t tell the right story, the designing and building beautiful gauging website, of course, we’re going to do that three 612 18 months down the line. What are those results? That’s what we get excited about—not just kidding over the finish line. Some agencies look at that as the when I look at that to start thinking about where your customers are, who they are with apathy. Right? That’s a big message from Twitter. 20 You know, empathize with your customers; what’s influencing them? Where are they looking? Who needs help, who’s the decision-maker, who’s the champion, and you know, make sure that you’re in front of them. So when the time comes, they’re looking for help. They’re aware of your brand. And learning that 65% or something like that of buyers, buy from brands are familiar with, you know, use the right social media, just get in front of them, and stay top of mind, but you know, definitely have a strategy in place that you’re not just adding to the noise that you’re adding value. And, you know, helping them think a little bit differently about their situation.

Rob Winters: This is sort of on topic, but I just had to comment that when I create the social posts that go out for this episode, I’m just going to use sound bites as the hashtag. So it’s going to be no cake for fat kids. And yeah, you’re just building that post for me. It’s fantastic.

Bobby G: Oh, good, good. Doing my job, then perfect. Like I said in the beginning, if you ask me what I think, you’re going to get what I think.

Rob Winters: I like it, I am all on board. And so as I was sleuthing, your website, one thing that you all do that I really like is, well, it’s on your about page, but sort of front and center, you call out that you have a mostly remote team, Brittany and I have always worked in that environment. Three COVID, the UN agency I had worked for more than a decade, we had a mostly remote team, but it was almost kept secret. Like we didn’t really promote it, people seem to often get uncomfortable if they couldn’t come to the Baltimore office if they couldn’t meet people. And I think COVID has changed that because everybody was forced to go remote. I was curious, on your opinion of Have you always promoted that you had a mostly remote team? And has that actually benefited you all during the last year? Just kind of the crazy COVID company culture.

Bobby G: I’m not sure if you’re familiar with it has a lot of names. But the one name I gravitate to is the Hollywood model. So the Hollywood model for agencies or any teams is you hire Quentin Tarantino to direct your film, right? He’s going to bring on the best people he knows to fill those roles for the rest of the jobs on the production. So that’s the way we operate. And we’ve always operated that way. Is that okay? Again, we’re working in our client’s best interests. So what are the priorities? What’s the budget, what’s the goals, okay, then we’re going to help facilitate putting together that dream team to be able to deliver on our promise. And that’s always been finding the best people we could find no matter where they are. Now, we do have a Baltimore office take since St. Patrick’s Day; I’ve been the only one here besides my children and wife and dogs; two of our people are in the Baltimore area, our most recent person is in Santa Fe. And then we have partners that we use almost monthly that are Jersey pa all up. So I’ve always been transparent around how my team is made up, treating them like adults as another one of my big things because God, I can’t tell you how many jobs I’ve had, where people didn’t treat me like an adult, which is ridiculous. I expect people to understand what their tasks are, how to contribute to the company’s success, and where they’re needed, where they need to do and manage our expectations on when it’s going to get done, and how we can communicate that all that’s been at the core of what we do, I don’t think that we need the office. I like it. And it’s 250 steps from my house. So it offers me a reprieve from my home. And I don’t like working from home. But we’ve been very transparent about that. What kind of advance should it give us leading up to cover, and we’ll say cub? It was mid-March when he hit here.

We lost a couple of clients for that exact reason. You mentioned a client in Idaho client in LA because they want it to be in the office like that. That’s just ridiculous. To me as a control thing. I think there’s some baggage involved with wanting that, or there’s like this perception that coming and working in the Agency office is like this fun and exciting thing. And just it’s really not that great. You know, it’s cool, definitely cool. But you shouldn’t be choosing an agency based on proximity; you should be choosing an agency based on the results that can deliver. So we did lose, you know, a couple of clients lead up to COVID. But it really was part of my 2020 strategy to stop working with a majority of our clients within the region and start growing our reach nationally. We had a couple of warm leads that we worked on, and we didn’t get it. Like I mentioned we there was a couple that we did get in Texas and Arizona and Puerto Rico; we lost two got three. The proximity thing is definitely something I don’t want to pursue. I don’t want to only work with clients in my region; I don’t want to have to be face to face with them because none of that even matters anymore. It’s just having genuine connections and real relationships with your clients going into COVID. We already had that event we’ve been working remote. You’ll be able to communicate virtually at a super high level and be very effective and driving you No unmatched results for five years at that point; I always felt that that big agency model where everybody was under one roof, the only thing that really accomplished was a higher bottom line. And, and a lack of diverse talent, being able to find the best people for our team be able to find the best people for our clients. Obviously, we would want to reach out across the country across the globe even and not kind of be limited to our geographic location.

Rob Winters: I agree. State lines mean nothing so much, though, that actually we can take this part offline later. I lived in Puerto Rico for the last five years, and this is my first year back in the States proper, and this winter stuff is killing me. It’s not even that cold. Oh, there’s not even snow yet. I’m ready to go home. I’m like, What am I doing?

Bobby G: I feel you, man, every year even though I lived in you know that? Philly Baltimore my whole life every year, around February, I forget what it’s like to be warm. Like, what’s it like.

Rob Winters: In Puerto Rico? It’s lovely in February. It’s a nice 78 degrees. Not too much fun. You can actually get the ocean stills. Great.

Bobby G: Yeah, oysters and beer and rum. Yeah, that sounds good. You can do all that here. So but it’s cold.

Rob Winters: You do it, but you’re not quite as happy.

Bobby G: I’m a big vitamin D guy. So you know, give me an out in the sun. Please. Even though I’m very Irish. I still seek out the sun.

Rob Winters: As my grandma said, we got that cheap Irish skin. So we turn that very attractive lobster red.

Bobby G: Yeah, dude, just another sheet of red.

Rob Winters: Exactly.

Brittany Brown: We’re going to turn from Puerto Rico, which is lovely. I do like a good PR trip during the pandemic. Did your business have to pivot? And what did it look like for you guys?

Bobby G: I actually put a lot of thought into pivoting, not actually what was dependent but companies that have pivoted over the years to survive. And I wrote a blog about it early in the COVID, pivot or die. And here’s a story I compose that blog was you look at a company like Polaroid cheese; I can’t remember the years but let’s just say 1999. Polaroid was worth like $3 billion. They look at their core values as a product, this camera that spits out an instant picture. Therefore, when the world was starting to transition to digital, they didn’t pivot because they felt their core values were a product. Ten years later, they suffered their second and final bankruptcy and liquidated and sold all their assets. Which sidebar, I learned that Fujifilm bought the technology because we bought our children older cameras for Christmas, but it’s not the same. But then you look at a company like Nokia Gen Xers like me know that Nokia is best known for our first cell phones. Historically, Nokia has been involved. I think they’re a British company in origin. They provide it sort of mining technology; they’ve always kind of been involved with telecommunications. Over the years, they look at their core values like innovation and communication and other things like that. When the world ebbs and flows, and the iPhone was released, that Nokia phone became very passe. Even though I kind of do yearn for simpler devices attached to my hand,

Rob Winters: Right, that’s gonna say you’re making me nostalgic for my 3360. And just a good old game.

Bobby G: I still have the same cell phone number from my first Nokia cell phone; I remember I had a transparent cover on it. So you can see the guts. But they’ve been able to pivot over the years because they know what their core values are. It’s not attached to a product. It’s attached to a way of thinking, a way of operation. So today, Nokia still exists. They create infrastructure for telecommunications; they don’t create the device even I think I saw an article recently that they might be involved with putting Wi-Fi on the moon. I don’t know I didn’t read the article, but they’re looking to do that which I don’t even know why they have terrible internet in the United States. And I’m going to put on the moon. But I digress for us to pivot. We didn’t need to pivot what I needed to do. And it’s what I’ve been thinking about ever since I started the business was positioning coming into 2020. Before the pandemic was even on anyone’s radar, positioning proper was consuming all my headspace, and it always has the cobblers kids shoes. While he wishes the kids had good shoes. I wish the company would be positioned better, and I actually worked at it. I didn’t just get stuck working in the company. I worked for the company. So it was more about positioning the company better. And you could say that’s a pivot a lot of what I’m talking about today and sort of how refined My thoughts are on how we help our client. That’s all positioning where we’re brand first, where we take a holistic approach, And everything’s integrated while working in our client’s best interest. And all this stuff has always been part of it; it was really being able to define it and make it clear and concise and succinct and then doubling down on it, anything we would take on that would not fit into our really tight positioning, even if it was lucrative, even if it was good portfolio work, you know, would just take us further away from my vision and the goals for our brand, being able to recognize the wrong fit quicker and getting the knowledge you know, really fast, getting to yes, fast, but not as fast as No, all those things were really where my head was going into 2020 COVID just gave us the opportunity, what everybody was freaking out. And a lot of our clients that didn’t fit the really refined positioning that we had at the time show themselves the door that allowed us to kind of hit the reset button there and say like, Okay, from here on out; we’re only gonna take on clients that align with our values, align with our approach, and really fit our ideal client profile. I like to use the lifted from good to great the hedgehog concepts hedgehog concept. I think it’s a children’s book, but it’s essentially just a hedgehog and a fox. Right? A fox has to know a ton to be very creative and clever and wily and smart just to survive. The Hedgehog has to only be good at one thing. And that’s not the if the hedgehog concept is this Venn diagram. If you can envision these three ellipses overlapping uncommonly good doozy, gastic, and what drives your economic engine, what will people pay for, and then our overlap is your hedgehog concept. If anybody’s looking to pivot, like Nokia, they know what they’re uncommonly good at; they know what they’re enthusiastic about. They know what people will pay for, which allows them to pivot within a radius around their hedgehog concept. But if you’re Polaroid, to them, a pivot is a new product that does the same thing. It emails you the image as well as prints it out. That’s not a pivot; that’s just throwing shit at the wall and hoping it sticks. So there’s no business strategy in there pivoting for us. It’s just refining positioning; it’s understanding our hedgehog concept and continuing to refine and improve our ideal client profile. And who needs us the most.

Rob Winters: And so with that in mind, I think it sounds like you all have put in us as an owner and entrepreneur put a lot of thought into what version of the Hedgehog are you What is next for proper in 2021 and into the future?

Bobby G: There’s so much noise and madness. Where are we going in the future? The business is constantly evolving; I don’t use that word lightly. It’s evolving. Because over time and with pressure, we’re improving it right. It’s a true Darwinian sense of evolution; wherever we’re going is to continue to refine who we are and improve who we are right to get better to learn new ways to learn from our experiences to learn from our customers from to learn from one another. But where are we going? I have this competitive side of me that I keep very well disguised.

For example, when I was in grad school, comebacks from that regret thing like I want it to be the best, I want to be the best in the University of Baltimore, design grad, master’s programs, because if I wasn’t the best there, then how can I be the best in the city? And how can I be the best in the state? And how can we be one of the best in the country? And I’m not; I’m not trying to be the best ever. I’m just trying to be uncommonly good. I want to be so good that this is revealing a lot. I wanted people to have doubts. I want to people question their career pursuits, question why they were there, and then fail to drop out. And it’s not because I was any sinister thing. It’s that I’m so motivated and competitive that someone came in with a better project. And I had, you know, I wouldn’t be jealous. But I would go home and bust my ass extra heart; I really think that there’s a better way to run an agency. And I’m doing that by example, one client at a time; I’m proving that case to be right. But how are we going to do that? Well, it’s your dog food, right? So we have to market ourselves, we have to position ourselves, we have to be top of mind and get the right message in the right voice to the right person at the right place in the right place. So when they are looking for someone like us, they’re ready to move, right? The same thing when I left grad school in terms of being hired as an individual; we need to do the same thing being hired as an agency. So I don’t have these aspirations to grow this big, you know, monolithic agency. I like being nimble, like being agile.

I have an awesome core team of very talented and smart people drawn to the same approach. I think that with working in our client’s best interest and being positioned properly and having awesome processes that deliver unmatched results, I’d like to work as little as possible and make as much money as possible. I think that there’s the potential there, right? The potential is because we don’t charge by the hour, we charge a flat rate, and people value your work and the results that you deliver, then the price doesn’t matter anymore as long as it’s reasonable. We’ll continue working with mid-market and upper small businesses. And you know, having a great time doing great work and getting kick-ass results.

Brittany Brown: I love your perspective. And I also love like, you’ve left these little like gems of quotes that I’m just I’m very excited about. So thank you for that. I just want to say I love the Sally O’s website that you guys did. I love it. It’s wonderful. And it’s very unique. I just want to comment on that.

Bobby G: Thank you, Sally O’s is my friend Jesse Pancakes. If you’re in Baltimore, you definitely gotta check our food out. It’s freaking awesome. You know, I love fighters. And we have a number of clients that are fighters and she’s definitely had to be one because, you know, she was supposed to open in March, and everything was delayed. She couldn’t get inspections and things like that she’s been able to open she’s been able to kind of just be agile and pivot and think creatively to sustain and thrive. I hope she’s thriving, but they’re getting curveballs all the time because people aren’t being saved and wearing masks. There’s no curve flattening anymore. No one even says out any go any longer. You know, she’s kicking us and they’re her food is definitely good comfort food. If you guys are down near Highland town, there’s no excuse. You have to go.

Rob Winters: Yeah, that’s pretty close for me, so Britney’s a little farther, but I’m always happy to go and eat some food.

Brittany Brown: I need to visit, I feel like I’m gonna have to go there, because you’re the second person to mention here that we’ve interviewed for this podcast. So I feel like I need to go to Sally O’s. Last but not least, would you say the glass is half full or half-empty?

Bobby G: It’s hard to be an optimist these days. Here’s one thing I’m seeing that is cause for optimism. I read an article early on; it’s probably q1 of last year that the outgoing CEO of Unilever said that companies that don’t have a purpose beyond translate, and I’m paraphrasing don’t have a purpose beyond transactions will be short-lived. We’ve always, you know, brand development agency, we always have our clients leave with their values compete with their values. They don’t understand what their values are. What’s the first step in our engagement? It’s usually the first step every time younger folks, millennials, Gen Z, millennials ease whoever else is younger them they want to buy from or engage with brands that share their values, they have something in common with companies that their sole purpose is to make money.

I think that hopefully that they’re on the way to extinction because if not, they’re going to lead the human race towards extinction. That’s something to be optimistic about. The people are going to vote with their money, you know, they’re going to change the culture from it being about me to being about us. The one thing I’ve been pushing in conversation is I think that we’ve all been done. Terrible disservice, being kind of indoctrinated from a very young on that our happiness is the most important thing in the world—what a terrible way to teach your children to be incredibly selfish. The most important thing is not our happiness; it’s kindness, right? So when we’re thinking about others, we’re thinking about being kind and thinking about doing the right thing. We’re thinking about giving a shit, not doing something, standing up for something, or fighting for something because you believe in it. That’s being kind, being kind to Earth, being kind to one another. That’s something that we need to make our monitor. And I see that happening, unfortunately, is a generation that is incredibly selfish, self-centered to the detriment of the world, kindness and seeing the kindness and seeing people give a shit and speaking up that gives reason to be optimistic.

Brittany Brown: I love that, and we’re going to kind of wrap up here. We’re a little over on time. You have been a wonderful guest. I’m very excited for this podcast to air, and if you guys want to check out Bobby G, his website is proper. And that’s PR o PR design.com. Thank you so much for your time, Bobby.

Bobby G: Oh, man, what a pleasure. Thank you.